Volume XXIII
July, 1925
Number 3
/ O
The Princdtoh
Theological
Review
CONTENTS
The Judicial Decisions of the General Assembly of
1925 353
Benjamin M. Gemmill
The Authority of the Holy Scriptures 389
Clarence Edward Macartney
The Incarnate Life of Our Lord from the Point of
View of His Moral Character 397
F. D. Jenkins
The Evangelical Faith and the Holy Spirit 422
Harmon H. McQuilkin
Old Testament Emphases and Modern Thought 432
Part I. Oswald T. Allis
Notes and Notices 465
“The Reformed Principle of Authority,” C. W. Hodge
Reviews of Recent Literature 476
Survey of Periodical Literature 523
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BOOKS REVIEWED
Allen, E. F„ Who’s Who in the Bible
Ballard, F., Reality in Bible Reading
Bevbridge, a. J„ The Art of Public Speaking
Boreham, F. W^, a Casket of Cameos
Boullaye, H. P., de la, L’Stude Comparee des Religions
Charles, R. H., The Adventure into the Unknown
Dickson, V. E., Mental Tests and the Classroom Teacher
Earp, E. L., Biblical Backgrounds for the Rural Message
Evans, S., The Currency of the Invisible
Garrett, W. O., Church Ushers’ Manual
Grose, H. B.. Never Man So Spake
Howard, H., The Peril of Power and Other Sermons
Jefferson, C. E., Five Present-Day Controversies
Jones, E. D., When Jesus Wrote on the Ground
Kennedy, E. R., The Real Daniel Webster
Kuyper, a., To Be Near Unto God
Kyle, M. G., The Deciding Voice of the Monuments
Loisy, a.. My Duel with the Vatican
Lorenz, E. S.. Church Music
Macfarland, C. S., International Christian Movements
Magary, A. E„ Character and Happiness
McKeehan, H. D„ Great Modern Sermons
More, L. T., The Dogma of Evolution
Nes, W. H., The Breach with Rome
Norton, F. E., Parent Training in the Church School
Noyes, C., The Genius of Israel
Price, E. S., Elements of Hebreiv
Roberts, W. R., The Ravages of Higher Criticism in the Indian
Mission Field
Royden, .\. M., Christ Triumphant
ScHWEiZER, J., AJcolaus de’ Tudeschi
Simpson, J. Y„ The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature
Sinclair, J. S., Rich Gleanings After the Vintage from “Rabbi”
Duncan
Smith, J. M. P„ The Religion of the Psalms
Strickland, F. L., The Psychology of Religious Experience
Stroh, G.. God’s Program
Walker, P., Sermons. for the Times by Present-Day Preachers ...
Wallace, O. C. S., Looking Toioard the Heights
W^anamaker, O. D., With Italy in Her Final War of Liberation ..
Ward, T. W. G., The Master and the Twelve
W EST, R., Purposive Speaking
W'hitley, M. T., a Study of the Junior Child
Wood, B. D., Measurement in Higher Education
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Copyright 1925, by Princeton University Press
The Princeton
Theological Review
JULY, 1925
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS OF THE
GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1925
The most dramatic moment in the sessions of the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., is the
report of the Judicial Commission. The members of the
Commission, fifteen in number, file solemnly in and take
their places behind the Moderator. The Assembly is then
constituted a “court of Jesus Christ” by prayer offered by
the Moderator; and sitting as the supreme court of the
denomination, it hears the preliminary judgments of the
Commission and decides whether its decisions shall become
the final judgments of the Assembly.
There was more than usual interest this year in the cases^
brought before the Assembly because of the importance of
the matters under adjudication. The doctrine of the Virgin
Birth, with all that it involves as to the sinlessness of Christ
and His Deity, the authority of the Holy Scriptures which
record it, especially the credibility of that pervasive superna-
turalism which is characteristic of the Scriptures and of
which the Virgin Birth is an outstanding illustration, and the
authority of the Confession of Faith in which this doctrine
is expressly stated; the right of the Assembly to review the
acts of Presbyteries, the obligation of Presbyteries to be
faithful to the standards of the Church, the right of direct
appeal to the Assembly in cases involving doctrine — all this
was involved in the cases decided by the Columbus Assembly.
The cases were the following: Case No. i was known as
1 These cases were six in number. But two of them (Nos. 2 and 5 on
the docket) were apparently withdrawn, since the Commission presented
no preliminary judgment to the Assembly regarding them.
354
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
that of Albert D. Gants et al vs. the Synod of New York. This
was originally a complaint against the Presbytery of New
York in licensing two candidates to preach the Gospel. It
had been taken to the Assembly of 1924 and was remanded
to the Synod of New York for hearing and appropriate
action. The Synod heard the case, but in doing so, made itself
liable to a complaint because of certain irregularities in the
proceedings. Mr. Gantz, thereupon, complained to the Gen-
eral Assembly. Cases Nos. 3 and 4 were complaints of
Buchanan et al vs. the Presbytery of Nezv York for licensing
a student and receiving a minister who “failed to aflhrm”
belief in doctrines declared to be essential by the General
Assembly. Case No. 6, known as the Fosdick Case, was a
complaint of Buchanan et al vs. the Presbytery of New York
for allowing the First Presbyterian Church of New York to
retain Dr. Fosdick as special preacher for some months
after his refusal to accept the creed and to come into the
Presbyterian Church.
Taking up the cases in the order in which they were pre-
sented to the Assembly by the Commission we find that they
pass upon the following important questions : i ) Promptness
in obeying the mandates of the Assembly — Case No. 6.
2) Direct appeal to the General Assembly — Cases Nos. 3 and
4. 3) The right of the Assembly and the right of Presby-
teries in the matter of Licensure — ^^Case No. i.
I. Promptness in Obeying Mandates of Assembly
The “Fosdick Case,” although it had aroused the greatest
popular interest was not as last year the most important case
before the Assembly, since as far as Dr. Fosdick was con-
cerned it had become a moot, or settled, question, by his
withdrawing from the Pulpit of the First Church of New
York; and the complaint was filed largely to prevent his
return to that pulpit. The complainants, therefore, anticipated
that the complaint would be dismissed; but they expected
that the dismissal would be accompanied with instructions to
the New York Presbytery that when the Assembly issues an
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
355
order, mandate or decision to a Presbytery, the Assembly
expects immediate obedience. This was, in fact, the gist of
the decision in the Fosdick case. The decision, of course, sets
forth in historical recital the facts leading up to the complaint,
and quotes from the decision of the Assembly of 1924 and
from the letters of the Committee of the Presbytery of
New York advising Dr. Fosdick of the action of the Assem-
bly of 1924, and from the reply of Dr. Fosdick repudiating all
creedal subscription. It then set forth the reasons why an
earlier date for the withdrawal of Dr. Fosdick could not be
fixed, including a statement from Dr. George Alexander, and
recommends that the complaint be dismissed.^ It is to be
noted, however, that despite the fact that the complainants
were not sustained in their specific charges against the Pres-
bytery of New York, the decision very clearly presents and
upholds the principle for which the complainants contended.
It declares that “It is of the utmost importance that the
authority of our highest court should be resp>ected and
maintained. ... in the absence of a definite time fixed by the
judgment the action of the Presbytery should have been
reasonably prompt and not unduly delayed.” The Presbytery
of New York fixed March i, 1925 — nine months after the
decision of the Assembly of 1924 — for the termination of the
relations of Dr. Fosdick and the First Presbyterian Church
of New York. Regarding this the Commission expresses the
judgment “that the date fixed was not as early as it should
have been to comply properly with the decree of the court.”
But in view of all the circumstances, the Commission recom-
mended that the complaint be dismissed. In this decision the
Assembly concurred and it became the final judgment of
the Assembly.
There is one paragraph in this otherwise excellent decision
that mars its unity and is not based upon facts. The Com-
mission said :
* The decision which is a lengthy one is given with some abridgement
as an Appendix to this article. See p. 385.
356 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
A preliminary matter must first be disposed of. On the argument of the
case a motion was made to suppress the brief filed on behalf of complain-
ants, because of some of the language used. While we do not grant the
motion, the Commission desires to suggest that in the future, care should
be exercised by litigants not to use violent language or to make charges as
to the good faith of parties which are not justified by the facts.
This paragraph might well have been omitted. In the
hearing of the Fosdick case an effort was made to have the
complainants “censured,” not “to suppress the brief”; and
the language objected to was not in the complainants’ brief,
but in the complaint itself, and the words objected to were
words used last year by the Commission itself :® as the word
“anomalous” and such other words as “dishonest” and “un-
ethical.” This surely was not “violent” language, and in the
judgment of many was not half strong and expressive
enough ; and such terms were based upon facts. The Commis-
sion might well have omitted that paragraph or, at least, have
been more guarded in its own statements ; for that paragraph
mars the symmetry and clearness of an otherwise very lucid
decision.
II. Direct Appeal to the General Assembly
In the cases Nos. 3 and 4, being complaints against the
Presbytery of New York in receiving Mr. Fuller, a Baptist
minister, and in licensing Mr. Hall, both of whom failed to
affirm their faith in certain doctrines of our Confession, the
Commission remanded these to the Synod of New York for
appropriate action. But as these cases are practically settled
by the decision in the Gantz case, i.e., since that decision is
a precedent by which these two cases must be determined
either by the Synod of New York, or by the General Assembly
upon further complaint to that court, they are of interest
chiefly because the “passing by” of the Synod was not
approved by the Assembly. The Judicial Commission held,
in remanding them, that no reasons had been assigned for
passing by the Synod of New York and coming directly to
s Minutes (1924), p. 195.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
357
the Assembly.^ Certain reasons were assigned, but apparently
these were not deemed sufficient. The writer understands now
that the Commission desired at first to treat the three cases
dealing with licensure and reception as one and to make
one decision cover these cases, but this was overruled.
This decision raises the question as to the circumstances
under which a direct appeal may be made to the General
Assembly. The following is quoted from a statement of the
Stated Clerk of the General Assembly prepared for the
guidance of the Judicial Commission :
Prior to the revision of the Book of Discipline in 1820, no discrimina-
tion was made by the General Assembly between appeals and complaints,
* The two decisions, almost identical in form, were as follows ;
Case No. 3 — Walter D. Bwchanan et al. vs. the Presbytery of New York.
This is a complaint that the Presbytery of New York received into its
fellowship as a PresbjTerian Minister, the Rev. Carlos G. Fuller, a Baptist
Minister ; although his examination showed, it is alleged in the complaint,
that he did not believe certain doctrines of the Presbyterian Church
alleged by the complaint to be essential. The complaint is made direct
to the General Assembly against the Presbytery passing by the Synod
of New York. No reason is alleged by the complainants for passing by
the Synod. Paragraph 84 of Chapter 9 of the Book of Discipline requires
that complaints against an inferior judicatory must be made to the
next superior judicatory in a non-judicial or administrative case. This
case is in that class. The case must be remanded to the Synod of New
York for appropriate action and is so ordered.
Case No. 4 — Walter D. Buchanan et al. vs. the Presbytery of New York.
This is a complaint that the Presbytery of New York licensed to
preach the Gospel Mr. Cameron Parker Hall; although his examination
showed, it is alleged in the complaint, that he did not believe certain
doctrines of the Presbyterian Church alleged by the complaint to be
essential. The complaint is made direct to the General Assembly against
the Presbytery of New York, passing by the Synod of New York. No
reason is alleged by the complainants for passing by the Synod. Para-
graph 84 of Chapter 9 of the Book of Discipline requires that complaints
against an inferior judicatory must be made to the next superior
judicatory in a non-judicial or administrative case. This case is in that
class. The case must be remanded to the Synod of New York for
appropriate action and is so ordered.
By the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., convened at Columbus, Ohio, May
26, 1925.
358
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the two designations being indifferently used to express the carrying of
any decision, whether judicial or otherwise, to a higher court, by whatever
parties. The common formula was, “We appeal and complain.” . . .
After 1820, and until 1884, a complaint w^s defined as “a representation
to a superior judicatory by any member or members of a minority of an
inferior judicatory, or by any other person or persons, respecting a
decision by an inferior judicatory, which in the opinion of the complain-
ants, has been irregularly or unjustly made.” While the words “a superior
judicatory” are indefinite so far as defining whether a complaint could go
directly from a presbytery to the General Assembly, nevertheless the
principle guiding the General Assembly during those years was that where
there was no sufficient reason for passing by the next superior court (the
Synod) the case should go there. But where good reasons for carrying a
case directly to the General Assembly were assigned, the complaint was
entertained. In this the usage was the same both as to appeals and
complaints. Examples of this practice may be found on Page 666 of the
New Digest.
In 1884, the Book of Discipline was revised, and a complaint was defined
as “a written representation by one or more persons, subject and submit-
ting to the jurisdiction of an inferior judicatory, to the next superior
judicatory.” Since that time the General Assembly has repeatedly®
declared that complainants cannot pass over the next higher judicatory,
and in accordance with Presbyterian law and usage must not eliminate any
of the judicatories of the Church in addressing their complaints. Examples
of the deliverances of the General Assembly upon this matter may be
found in the New Digest, Page 557, and in the Minutes of the General
Assembly, 1924 page 193. ... In this connection, an exception to the
regular mode of procedure is to be noted in the action of the General
Assembly of 1924 which received and heard a Complaint of certain mem-
bers of New York Presbytery protesting against the action of that
Presbytery in its report in compliance with the directions of the General
Assembly of 1923. See Minutes, General Assembly, 1924, page 195.
This definition of a complaint, however, must be inter-
preted by the statements of our Form of Government which
permit complaints involving doctrine and the constitution to
go directly to the Assembly and in the light of the decision
of the Assembly not to permit or remand a case involving
doctrine or the constitution to a Sjmod.® The Constitution
® The word “repeatedly” is used here unadvisedly as the practice of
the Assembly has been the very reverse of this.
* See case of complaint from India {Digest, Vol. i, p. 272), where it
is declared that the Assembly cannot remand to a Synod a case involving
doctrine or the Constitution.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
359
permits complaints to come directly to the Assembly and the
practice of the Church has accorded with these provisions.
a. The ConsHtutiotial Provisions regarding Complaints.
In Chap. 12, Sec. 4, of the Form of Government the
General Assembly is given power of receiving and issuing
complaints, and in Sec. 5, power of deciding in all contro-
versies respecting doctrine and discipline. Sec. 4 confers an
authoritative power and Sec. 5, an advisory. The question
before us is one that relates to a single point — that of power.
It is not what is wise, nor what is best for edification but
what is the power of the Assembly in receiving and issuing
complaints. This can be determined by reference to the Con-
stitutional provisions and to the practice of our Church
courts. The Presbyterian Church is a constitutional body.
No judicatory has any legitimate functions save those which
the Constitution confers either expressly or by clear impli-
cation. The question is, What is the power of the Assembly
in respect to complaints? The only correct answer is, The
function of the Assembly in regard to complaints is of two
kinds, authoritative and advisory; and between these there
should be a careful discrimination. The advisory function is
of very wide scope. This is set forth in Chap. 12, Sec. 5, “Of
deciding in all controversies respecting doctrine,” &c., “Of
reproving, warning, &c.” This power may be exercised with
reference to any grave evil, nor is it an unimportant function.
The testimony of such a body as the General Assembly must
needs have great weight. In Chap. 12, Sec. 4, is conferred the
authoritative power, which function can only be exercised by
the Assembly in the forms and methods marked out by the
Constitution. The methods by which this power may be
invoked appear from the Book of Discipline to be four : by
reference, by appeal, by complaint, and by general review
and control. The three processes first named do not originate
in the Assembly. Their beginning is in a lower judicatory.
But where a lower judicatory neglects its duty then general
review and control is invoked, as in the case of any important
360 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
delinquency or unconstitutional proceeding, or the spread of
heretical opinions or corrupt practices.
The complainants came directly to the Assembly with
complaints against the Presbytery of New York for the
following reasons, the first of which applies specifically to
the Fuller Case: (i) Because they believed that this was an
“exceptional case,” if we may use the words of the decisions
of last year. They held that it was outside of the usual cate-
gory or class of complaints in that it concerned the reception
of a minister from another denomination who failed to affirm
or deny certain doctrines declared to be essential, and excep-
tional in that the Presbytery of New York by the conduct of
the case hindered or precluded the taking of the complaint to
the Synod of New York. (2) The complainants passed by the
Synod of New York in both cases because Chap. 12, Sec. 3,
of the Form of Government gives the Assembly power to
receive and issue complaints “regularly brought up,” and
these words have always been understood to refer to the
method of procedure, as reference, complaint, or appeal, and
never to “gradation of courts,” as in civil law. The Form of
Government confers power on Presbyteries to receive and
issue complaints from Sessions, upon Synods to receive and
issue complaints from Presbyteries, but when it states the
power of the Assembly, it does not say “Synods” but
“inferior judicatories,” and that means Presbyteries as well
as Synods.'^ (3) “The next superior judicatory” has always
been held to mean the one that has to do with the matter at
issue, or to which it can be appropriately taken; namely,
matters of doctrine and constitution go to the Assembly and
matters of administration or non-judicial questions to Synods.
This has been the rule of procedure since our Church began
in America and has always been the rule for the guidance of
the Judical Committee of the Assembly. Why reverse it
now ?®
^ See discussion of this whole matter in Biblical Repertory for 1835.
8 Minutes (1924), p. 107.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
361
h. The Practice of the Church regarding Complaints.
The practice of the Church in the matter of the Assembly’s
receiving- and issuing complaints, before and after the revi-
sion of the Book of Discipline in 1884, accords with the
Constitutional provisions that certain classes of complaints
may come directly to the Assembly.® It would be necessary to
transcribe almost our entire judicial history were all the
precedents to be cited illustrative of the rule that where
doctrine and constitution is concerned the Assembly takes up
and issues complaints which come directly to it. Also, there
are numerous cases, which have been dismissed since no
doctrine or constitutional question was involved; but these
need not be cited. The following reasons were ofifered, there-
fore as “urgent and substantial” for asking the Assembly to
issue these cases :
(a) The Assembly itself has passed upon that question in finding the
Complaint in order and remanding it to the Judicial Commission for
hearing and determination.
(b) “The next superior judicatory” is that which has jurisdiction of
the matter in question or to which it is appropriately taken and in this
case it is the General Assembly.^®
(c) It is important to have the questions involved in this case finally
determined by the representatives of substantially the entire Church,
apart from all other reasons mentioned and would seem to require, in
® Complaint of certain members of a Presbytery vs. a Decision (1823
Digest) ; Complaint of Minority of Philadelphia Presbytery in Barnes
case (1831) ; Complaint of an Individual vs. The Decision of a Superior
Judicatory (1827) ; Complaint of Minority vs. The Decision of a
Majority of Same Court (1831); Six complaints directly to the
Assembly (1832) ; Appeals and complaints (1835) ; Several complaints
(1839). Then omitting the hundreds of such complaints to the Assembly
in the years which follow and coming down to more recent times we
have: Hoberly vs. Presbytery of So. Oregon {Digest, Vol. i, p. 248) ;
Eagleson vs. Presbytery of Steubenville {Digest, Vol. i, p. 247) ; Barker
vs. Presbytery of Neosho {Digest, Vol. i, p. 247) ; in 1915, McMordy vs.
Presbytery of Rio Grande {Digest, Vol. i, p. 169) ; in 1919, Ellis vs.
Presbytery of Indianapolis {Digest, Vol. i, p. 180) ; in 1922, First
Italian Church of Detroit vs. Presbytery of Detroit {Digest, Vol. i, p.
179) ; and finally last year the Assembly heard and issued the complaint
of Cremonesi vs. Presbytery of Carlisle.
1® Minutes (1924), p. 107.
362
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the interest of fairness and justice to all concerned, that the Complain-
ants should take their Complaint directly to the General Assembly and
that the Assembly should entertain and determine the said Complaint.
The Assembly has no right to remit the decision of any matter that
effects the doctrine or constitution of the Church to an inferior judica-
tory. Minutes of General Assembly 1896 p.p. 149, 150; Digest p. 272.
Memorial from Synod of India. McLane vs. Presbytery of Steubenville,
Digest p.p. 664, 665.
(d) The Book of Discipline and the Form of Government do not
absolutely prohibit the carrying of a Complaint to the Assembly when
it says “Either of the parties to a Complaint may complain to the next
superior judicatory,” (Book of Discipline p. 92), except as limited by
Chapter xi. sec. 4. Form of Government.
(e) It is important that a final settlement of this case should be
reached. Such settlement has been delayed by the action and conduct
of the Presbytery of New York, as shown by the following:
At the meeting of the Presbytery in June, the Committee on Examina-
tion and Licensure said Mr. Fuller had been examined by the Committee,
whereupon he was examined in open Presbytery. As he did not affirm his
belief in the Virgin Birth, and as there seemed to be doubt as to what
course of action should be taken, the matter was referred to the
Committee to report at the October meeting of Presbi’tery for final
action. During all the interval until the October meeting the Committee
was never called together, .^t the October meeting of Presbytery the
Chairman of the Committee stated that it had seemed impracticable to
hold a meeting of the Committee, and after consultation with certain
parties, he had decided, especially in view of the crowded condition of
the docket, not to bring the matter up. Asked with whom he had
consulted, he said he had conferred with the Stated Clerk of Presbytery,
because he thought the Stated Clerk knew more about the matter than
anyone else. Asked with what members of the Committee he had
consulted, he replied, “I took counsel with myself.” This delay excluded
the possibility of a Complaint to the Synod of 1924, thereby delaying the
settlement of the case for another year.
(f) We believe that there is no hope for an impartial decision of this
case in the Synod of New York, because in the Complaint to the Synod
of New York by the Rev. A. D. Gantz et al against the Presbytery of
New York in licensing two candidates who refused to affirm belief in
the Virgin Birth, the Synod dismissed the Complaint, stating that “They
cannot feel that the Deliverances of 1910 and 1916 were of equal weight
with the former set of Deliverances.” See Minutes, Synod of N. Y.
1924, Case
In view of these reasons which were duly presented to and
argued before the Commission, the language of the decision,
See The Complaints and Complainants’ Printed Briefs.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
363
“No reason is alleged by the Complainants for passing by the
Synod,” is singular. A number of reasons were alleged but the
Commission clearly did not regard them as adequate and so
recommended the remanding of the case to the Synod —
which decision was adopted by the Assembly.
III. The Right of the Assembly and the Right of
Presbyteries in the Matter of Licensure
The questions involved in Case No. i, known as Gants
vs. the Synod of New York were two. The Commission in
its decision clearly defined the issue when it said “This
case presents for decision two serious questions involving
the constitution of the Church — the right of the General
Assembly to review the action of a Presbytery in licensing
candidates for the ministry; and the necessary requirements
for licensure.”
a. The Right of the Assembly.
It was contended by the respondents that the Assembly has
no right to review the acts of Presbyteries, that its testimony
against error is of no binding authority unless concurred in
by the Presbyteries, and that each man is to judge for himself
how far he will respect the deliverances of the highest court.
The complainants on the contrary showed from the origin,
the Constitution and the practice of the Church that the
theory of Presbyterianism advanced by the respondents was
religious anarchism, that it was false, and that it had no
countenance in the history of the Church.
The facts are these. First, as early as 1788, the Synod^^ in
adopting a Constitution, said, that they “having fully consid-
ered the draught of the Form of Government and Discipline
did, on the review of the whole, and hereby do, ratify and
adopt the same, as now altered and amended, as the Constitu-
tion of the Presbyterian Church in America; and order the
same to be considered and strictly observed, as the rule of
The Synod was the highest judicatory at that time.
364 the PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
their proceedings by all the inferior judicatories, belonging
to this body.” Here we find the Synod, as the highest court,
not only making laws, but adopting a Constitution by their
own authority and ordering all inferior judicatories to obey
it. They went further and fixed the Constitution unalterably,
unless two-thirds of the Presbyteries should propose changes,
and they could only propose, and the alterations were to be
enacted by the highest court. This is an act of the highest
power and authority, and is to be commended to the consider-
ation of the sticklers for the “securit}- of religious freedom.”
This is not mere advice, but the exercise of the greatest
power.
This Constitution of 1788 remained unchanged until 1804,
when some verbal corrections were made. In 1821, some
changes were made in the phraseology of certain parts and
in the forms of process. But not a single principle of our
system was altered. It seems like a waste of time to call
attention to the powers of the Assembly, since they are so
obvious and since the burden of proof so clearly rests upon
those who call these powers in question. Let them tell us if
they can when and where the Assembly was ever divested of
its original powers to legislate for the whole church.
As recently as 1911 the General Assembly said, in making
a deliverance as to the authority of the General Assembly
over congregations :
This General Assembly declares and re-affirms that the authority of
superior judicatories in the Presbyterian system of government over
congregations is an authority based upon New Testament warrant, has
also been acknowledged for centuries as an integral principle of govern-
ment by the Presbj-terian Churches of Great Britain and the Continent
of Europe, and has always been, from 1706 down to the present time, a
cardinal feature of the government of the Presbyterian Church in the
U. S. -A
That decision also said : “It pertains to the eldership to
take heed that the Word of God be purely preached within
their bounds.”^®
13 Minutes (1911), p. 245.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
365
Secondly, the Constitution clearly teaches that the General
Assembly is more than an appellate court or an advisory
council. In Chap. 31, Sec. 2, of the Confession of Faith, we
find these words :
It belongeth to. synods and councils, ministerially, to determine con-
troversies of faith, and cases of conscience ; to set down rules and
directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and
government of his church; to receive complaints in cases of mal-
administration and authoritively to determine the same; which decrees
and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received
with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the
Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an
ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his Word.
This is clear and explicit language. “With regard to
matters of faith and conscience, their power is ministerial;
but with regard to matters of discipline and government, it is
legislative.” To set down rules is to make laws ; “to determine
controversies of faith,” is to interpret and re-affirm the
doctrines of the Confession. This power is inherent in
the Assembly. It is not delegated. The General Assembly
is the highest judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, and
“represents, in one body, all the particular churches of this
denomination.” Its power is limited only by the Word of
God and the Constitution of the church ; but its power reaches
the whole church, and it is especially charged with the duty
of “superintending the concerns of the whole church,” and
with “suppressing schismatical contentions and disputations.”
In Chap. 20, Sec. 4, of the Confession of Faith, we read :
And because the powers which God hath ordained and the liberty
which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but
mutually to uphold and preserve one another ; they, who upon pretense
of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exer-
cise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God.
And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such prac-
tices, as are contrary to the light of nature; or to the known principles of
Christianity; whether concerning faith, worship or conversation; or to
the power of godliness ; or such erroneous opinions or practices, as either,
in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them,
are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ has estab-
366 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
lished in the church ; they may lawfully be called to account and pro-
ceeded against by the censures of the church.
Such is Presbyterianism as laid down in the Confession of
Faith and the Form of Government. The only question, then,
before us is. Did the Assembly exceed its powers in making
the doctrinal deliverances of 1910, 1916 and 1923, and the
decision of 1925 in the Gantz case, by re-affirming what is in
the Standards of the church? Surely no one can say that the
Assembly transgressed any right or exceeded any power in
so doing. The Assembly did not erect new tests of ministerial
communion, but only re-affirmed what was already in the
Standards. No one questions the right and authority of the
Assembly to do this except those who do not believe the
doctrines announced to be necessary and essential. These
doctrines had been assailed, and the Assembly came to their
defense. The evidence that the Assembly has power to re-
affirm the doctrine of the church is overwhelming. No one
can read the records of the church since 1706, without
agreeing with the interpretations of the power of the Assem-
bly which have been given above and without being convinced
that the modern theory of “advisory power” is unsustained
by the practice as well as by the Standards of our church.^*
In 1787, the Synod said: “The Synod take this opportunity to
declare their utter abhorrence of such doctrines as they apprehend to be
subversive of the fundamental principles of religion and morality.”
The General Assembly has declared : “In some parts of our land,
attempts are made to propagate the most pernicious errors with a zeal
worthy of a better cause, and under lofty pretensions to superior
rationality and to deeper discoveries in religion, some are endeavoring
to take away the crown from the Redeemer’s head ; to degrade him who
is the mighty God and the Prince of life to a level with mere men and
to rob us of all our hopes of redemption through his blood.” (1822)
Again, “The General Assembly are deeply impressed with the evidence
of an improper spirit and an evil tendency in this sermon, are of the
opinion that Mr. Craighead ought to retract or explain his sentiments,
as to afford reasonable satisfaction to his brethren.” (1824)
Again, “Mr. Barnes has published opinions materially at variance
with the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church and with the
Word of God.” To refuse to sustain this complaint, the Assembly said.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
367
h. The Right of Presbyteries in Matters of Licensure.
The second question involved was the right of a Presbytery
in licensing candidates for the ministry. It follows from the
right of the Assembly, which we have been considering, that
no Presbytery has exclusive control of admitting men into
would be a “direct avowal that great and dangerous error may be
published and maintained with impunity in the church.” (1836)
“And this Assembly disavows any desire, and would deprecate any
attempt, to change the phraseology of our Standards, and would disap-
prove of any language of light estimation applied to them ; believing that
no denomination can prosper whose members permit themselves to
speak slightly of its formularies of doctrines ; and are ready to unite
with their brethren in contending earnestly for the faith of our
Standards.” (1836)
There are many decisions and deliverances on doctrines. The Synod
pronounced against Universalism and Socinianism ; it condemned the
doctrines in a book entitled. The Gospel Plan; it issued a letter to the
Churches under its care on the maintenance of doctrinal purity which
ought to be republished as it suits the discussion of today. On this I quote
from Dr. Hill’s Institutes, the highest authority on the discipline and
government of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Hill says. “In the exercise of
these powers (judicial, legislative and executive) the General Assembly
often issues peremptory mandates, summoning individuals and inferior
courts to appear at its bar. It sends precise orders to particular
judicatories, directing, assisting or restraining them in the exercise of
their functions and its superintending, controlling authority, maintains
soundness of doctrine, checks irregularity and enforces general laws
throughout all districts of the Church.” It must be admitted that the
Assembly had a right to make doctrinal deliverances. This is not a
question whether it was wise to do so or whether there was any adequate
ground or reason for so doing. Both of which questions are not now
argued but only the power of the Assembly and the binding authority of
such deliverances.
The wisdom and adequate grounds of such action on the part of the
Assembly are not open to discussion when we reflect upon the challenge
hurled at the very heart of the Church’s doctrines. It would be necessary
to transcribe the records of the Church almost in tolo if we were to give
all the evidence which they contain on doctrinal deliverances. “The
origin, the constitution, the uniform practice of our Church, therefore,
prove that our judicatories are not independent of each other ; that
the higher bodies are not mere courts of appeal and advisory councils :
but that it belongs to them to set down rules for the government of the
Church, which, if consonant with the Word of God and our written
Constitution, are to be received with reverence and submission, out of
regard to the authority of these courts. It is their duty to take effectual
care that the Constitution is observed in all parts of the Church.”
368
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the ministry. The Assembly of 1874 made this deliverance,
“That it has no power over the functions of the Presbytery
in granting and continuing licenses save that of review and
control,”^® but in such review, the Assembly shall examine
whether the proceedings in such cases have been constitution-
al and regular, and whether they have been wise, equitable
and for the edification of the Church,^® and the Assembly has
the power to examine into the use and abuse of the discretion
of the Presbyteries. Furthermore the exercise of this review
and control over the acts and proceedings of a lower court
can only be secured by complaint or appeal or reference
inasmuch as the minutes of the Presbyteries do not come
before the Assembly for review. The complainants contended
that the individual Presbytery is not independent ; that it has
no power to declare what the doctrines of the Church shall
be. They also maintained that the power to grant licenses
implies the power to recall them ; that all rights vested under
an unconstitutional act are null and void — this was the
position taken in the abrogation of the plan of union in 1837
and in the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in the Yazoo
land cases in the State of Georgia — and that, therefore, if the
Commission held that a license procured by failure to affirm
certain doctrines was unconstitutional, the license of these
young men was automatically recalled, and they would be
preaching without license or authority.
The decisions of the Assembly in relation to licensure are
many and explicit. The above views are upheld by the
Constitution and the deliverances of the Assembly, some of
which it may be well to cite :
The Synod do now declare that they understand these clauses that
respect the admission of intrants or candidates in such a sense as to
oblige them to receive and adopt the Confession and Catechisms at their
admission in the same manner and as fully as the members of the Synod
did that were then present — which overture was unanimously agreed to
by the Synod.
Digest, Vol. i, p. 379.
Book of Discipline, Section 73.
Minutes 1730, p. 98.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
369
. . . that no Presbytery shall license or ordain to the work of the minis-
try, any candidate, until he give them competent satisfaction as to his
learning and experimental acquaintance with religion and skill in divinity
and cases of conscience; and declare his acceptance of the Westminster
Confession and Catechisms as the confession of his faith, and promise
subjection to the Presbyterian plan of government in the Westminster
Directory.!®
In 1910 the Assembly enumerated certain doctrines —
inspiration of the Bible, virgin birth, atonement, resurrection,
miracles — and then said :
These five articles of faith are essential and necessary, others are
equally so. We need not fear for God’s truth as it is revealed in the Holy
Scriptures and contained in our Westminster Standards. We bless God
for the doctrines of His Word shining in our Standards. They stand
firm like the towering beacon on the shore, casting a beam across the
dark wave of this world’s sin. Foolish birds and bats dart out of the
night and dash themselves against the lenses of the lighthouse only to
fall back senseless at its base. So heretics and skeptics have hurled
themselves against the Word of God and against the Westminster
Standards, only to fall back baffled and broken.
And it further declared ;
Reaffirming the advice of the Adopting Act of 1729, all the Presby-
teries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any
candidate for the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function unless
he declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary
articles of the Confession.!®
The Assembly of 1896 made the following deliverance :
While fully recognizing the constitutional right of Presbyteries in the
matter of licensing candidates for the ministry (Form of Government,
Chap. 14) we are nevertheless urgent that Presbyteries have special care
of their examinations in subjects required by the Form of Government,
Chap. 14, Sec. 4, and that due respect be given to the deliverances of the
General Assembly in the matter of the education of students for the
Gospel ministry.
We are equally urgent that the same care be taken by Presbyteries
in their examinations of ministers coming to us that is urged upon them
in the licensure of candidates already under the care of Presbyteries.®*
!® Minutes 1758, p. 285.
!® Digest, Vol. I, p. 276.
20 Minutes 1896, p. 161.
370
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In 1895, i” answer to an overture from the Presbyter^' of.
New York the Assembly said :
Therefore, inasmuch as obedience to the Constitution of the Church is
obligatory on all Presbyteries, we recommend that, in accordance with
the provisions of the Form of Government above cited, the Presbytery
of New York be instructed and enjoined not to receive under its care
for licensure, students who are pursuing or purpose to pursue their
studies in theological seminaries respecting whose teaching the General
Assembly disavows responsibility.®^
In 1896, the word “enjoined” was explained to be “an
emphatic repetition in the expression of its response to the
Presbytery of New York, touching the specific question in-
volved.
In 1837, the Assembly in condemning certain disorders
and irregularities bore its testimony against
. . . the licensing of persons to preach the gospel, and the ordaining to
the office of the ministry such as only accept of our standards merely for
substance of doctrine and others who are unfit and ought to be excluded
for want of qualification, but of many even who openly deny fundamental
principles of truth and preach and publish radical errors as already set
forth.®®
®i Digest 1922, Vol. i, p. 363.
21“ The word “enjoin” implies more than mere advice. The old Sjmod
and the General Assembly claimed more than advisory powers, “direct,”
“order,” “enjoin,” are terms used from the beginning of our Presbyterian
history. These orders relate to all manner of subjects. In the records,
too, of the New School Assembly we find the word “enjoin” used to
mean to “require,” and to “direct” in the most pointed manner. In 1795,
1799, 1809, 1810, there are cases where the General Assembly exercised
its power of superintending the concerns of the whole Church by
enjoining certain things to be done. According to the Constitution, the
General Assembly is the bond of union and confidence among the
churches. It makes our Church a denomination. But according to the
theory of mere advice, the Church is an aggregate of a number of
independent Presbyteries. The whole Church then is at the mercy of one
Presbytery. Suppose such a Presbytery should admit a dozen men who
were Unitarians, according to the “mere advice” theory the Assembly
could only look on in silence, and give advice. This is not Presby-
terianism and those who maintain the “mere advice” theory are not
Presbyterians.
®2 Digest 1873, p. 231.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
371
The Assembly has, also, directed that the theological course
should be taken in approved institutions :
That the Assembly calls attention to the judgment already frequently
expressed, that candidates for our ministry should be educated, so far
as possible, in institutions of our own Church, or those in hearty
sympathy with it, and in particular hereby direct all Presbyteries to
require that the theological course be taken in institutions approved by
the General Assembly.^®
In 1911, the Assembly instructed New York Presbytery
to see to it that its “modus vivendi” be so carried out that
“purity of doctrine shall be maintained, and the peace of the
Church be not disturbed.”®^
In 1912 in answer to an overture from the Presbytery of
Minneapolis, in the matter of “licensing and ordaining to the
ministry of our church men who doubt or deny the teachings
of God’s Word, as interpreted by our Standards,” asking the
Assembly to “take such action as will put an end, both to this
flagrant defiance of rightful authority, and to this forcing
upon the Church teachers of doubt and unbelief,” the Assem-
bly adopted the following answer :
The Constitution fixes the authority and responsibility for the licensing
and ordaining to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the
Presbytery. Any Presbytery that licenses and ordains to the ministry
men who deny the teachings of God’s Word as interpreted by our
Standards, is guilty of perjury in violating the Constitution of the
Church, and such violation should be remedied, but the remedy, to be
effective on the part of the Assembly, must be upon protest, complaint or
appeal, upon specific charges giving names and dates and whatever is
needful in proof of the offense charged.®®
In 1916, certain overtures and papers were received by
the Assembly, complaining of the action of New York
Presbytery, “in receiving and licensing candidates for the
ministry, whose theological beliefs do not accord with the
doctrinal standards of our church.”*® It was admitted on all
2® Digest 1907, p. 1071 or Minutes 1904, p. 82.
2* Minutes 1911, p. 183, and Minutes of New York Presbytery for
1906.
25 Minutes 1912, p. 192.
2« Minutes 1916, p. 132.
3/2
THE PRIXCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
hands that such practice was bringing reproach upon the
Church and was hindering the cause of Christ and that
something must be done effectually to stop it. Those con-
cerned met together and agreed to the adoption of a paper,
which the Assembly intended to serve as a warning to all
Presbyteries against receiving and licensing any candidates
for the ministry who cannot give their assent to all the
fundamental doctrines of the Church. This paper was as
follows :
Whereas, the records of the Presbytery of New York, show that on
April lo, 1916, that Presbj’tery licensed three candidates for the ministry,
who neither affirmed nor denied the doctrine of the Virgin Birth
Whereas, it is admitted that by the Constitution of the Church each
Presb>-tery is the judge of the qualifications of candidates for the
ministry, but each PresbjTery in licensing these candidates should strictly
observe the declarations of the Confession of Faith in doctrinal matters.
The General Assembly calls attention of the Presbj-teries to the
deliverance of the General Assembly of 1910, which is as follows :
1. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards
that the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and move the writers of Holy
Scripture as to keep them from error.
2. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards
that our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.
3. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards
that Christ offered up “himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and
to reconcile us to God.”
4. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and of our
Standards concerning our Lord Jesus Christ that on the third day he
arose again from the dead with the same body with which he suffered,
with which also he ascended into heaven and there sitteth on the right
hand of his Father, making intercession.
5. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God as the supreme
standard of our faith that our Lord Jesus showed his power and love
by working miracles. This working was not contrary to nature, but
superior to it.
Presbyteries, therefore, are hereby enjoined not to license or ordain
any candidates for the ministry whose views are not in accordance with
this deliverance of 1910. This General Assembly renews its positive
mandate with full expectation of loyal compliance by all our Presby-
teries; and directs when a candidate appears who is found to be not
clear and positive, on any one of the fundamentals of our faith that his
licensure be deferred until such time as in the judgment of the
Presbytery he has become so.^"
27 Minutes 1916, p. 132.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
373
This Assembly emphasizes the fact that all the Presbyteries of the
Church are under one Constitution, and that what is lawful in one is
lawful in all, and that what is unlawful in one is unlawful in all. And the
Presbyteries in the exercise and discharge of their rights and obligations
are subject to the constitutional powers of the higher judicatories. 2®
The Assembly of 1910 said :
The complainants are right in attaching the greatest importance to
such wide departures from the faith as they allege — departures which
if allowed not only would dissolve the foundations of the Presbyterian
Church, but equally would destroy historic Christianity in all the
Protestant Evangelical Churches throughout the world — .... This
church stands today as she has stood in all her history for the inspira-
tion, integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures, and confesses
the virgin birth of our Lord, and his actual, bodily, resurrection as
component parts of the faith once delivered to the saints and most
surely witnessed to in history. These doctrines have been confessed in
the immemorial testimony of the Church, and the facts involved are the
facts upon which among others Christianity rests. No one who denies
them or is in serious doubt concerning them should be either licensed
or ordained as a minister.^®
This same Assembly, also, said :
It has had brought to their attention the fact of the deep concern in
the Church in regard to the induction of young men into the ministry
whose views on fundamental facts of the Scriptures and our Standards
are sometimes immature or unsound, therefore we deem it timely to
suggest to the Assembly that it set forth a public deliverance enjoining
all Presbyteries under its jurisdiction to use great care in the examina-
tion of candidates and that men of immature or unsettled views be
placed under Presbyterial oversight until their views are matured and
brought into full harmony with the Word of God as interpreted by our
Standards.®®
The General Assembly has often borne its testimony
against any unfaithfulness in these matters. It has enjoined
on the Presbyteries, on the one hand, to abstain from making
anything a condition of ministerial communion which the
Constitution does not prescribe, and on the other to be firm
and faithful in demanding everything which the Constitution
enjoins. In giving this injunction the Assembly has required
Digest, Vol. i, p. 365.
2® Digest, Vol. i, p. 155.
®® Digest, Vol. i, p. 156.
374
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
nothing that is unjust or unreasonable. No man has the right
to join any voluntary society or organization unless he is
willing to submit to its rules, much less has any man the right
to assume the ofihce of teacher, ruler or steward in a church
unless he fully assents to its doctrines. All those who approve
of the doctrines which the Church is pledged to sustain, and
who are otherwise qualified for the work, are cordially
welcomed to its fellowship ; but all should protest against the
unfairness of any Presbytery forcing upon the Church men
who, by examination, show their unbelief in the Presbyterian
standards, as dishonest and an injury against which the
Presbyteries or if not they, then the Assembly, are bound to
protect the Churches, and against which the Churches should
both watch and pray.
The Presbyteries should remember that they are not
independent bodies, each acting for itself alone, and therefore
at liberty to receive any candidate whom they may suppose to
be qualified to do good. The Presbyteries are coordinate
members of an extended communion bound together by a
written constitution. When, therefore, they admit a man who
is unsound in the faith they are guilty of a breach of faith.
So also the churches and sessions are not at liberty to desire
or urge the continuance of any men as preachers unless they
are known to be men who hold fast the form of sound words
and show in doctrine uncorruptness. The truth of the Word
of God as interpreted by our Standards is a sacred deposit
which we are bound to treasure and transmit uncorrupted. It
is the fire upon God’s altar which we are to watch, without
which there can be no acceptable offering, and which, if once
extinguished, can hardly be rekindled. The sanctuary remains
dark and desolate for ages. The history of the Church is one
solemn admonition on this subject. Indifference to truth is a
sure sign of a decline of vital godliness in any Church. Every
loyal Presbyterian should deplore any manifestation of such
indifference. It may put on the guise of liberality or assume
the name of charity, but its nature is not thereby altered. It
is only the more dangerous from these false assumptions.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
375
It is gratifying to observe that in the “Gantz Case” the
Commission rendered a decision that leaves no further room
for debate upon the binding authority of the deliverances
of the Assembly and the right of the Presbytery under the
Constitution in licensing candidates for the ministry. The
decision made clear that the Assembly has the right to review
and control; that the Church is not a mere confederation of
Presbyteries, but each Presbytery is subject in all its acts to
the higher judicatories; that the General Assembly has the
constitutional right to review the acts of the lower courts ;
that a candidate’s affirmation of the constitutional questions
is qualified by his replies in his examination ; that no one who
is in serious doubt concerning the doctrines of the Church
should be licensed or ordained as a minister; that the
Assembly has repeatedly declared that clear and positive
views must be held by the ministers of the Church, and
therefore that the Presbytery of New York erred in the
licensure of Van Dusen and Lehman. It therefore remanded
the matter to the Presbytery “for appropriate action, in con-
formity with the decision herein rendered.”
The following is the full text of the decision which we give
because of its far-reaching importance, and significance ; and
because, as pointed out above, it ably discusses the two
great questions involved, namely, “the right of the General
Assembly to review the action of a Presbytery in licensing
candidates for the ministry ; and the necessary requirements
for licensure.”
DECISION OF PERMANENT JUDICIAL COMMISSION
This is a complaint against the action of the Synod of New York in
dismissing the complaint of Albert D. Gantz and others against the
action of the Presbytery of New York in licensing one, Henry P. Van
Dusen, and one, Cedric A. Lehman to preach the gospel. The parties
agree that during the examination of these applicants each was interro-
gated as to his belief in the Virgin Birth of our Lord, and each applicant
declined to affirm his belief therein, stating he could neither affirm nor
deny the Virgin Birth. This is the sole question of doctrine at issue and
the respondent says both sides seek a decision upon constitutional lines.
This case presents for decision two serious questions involving the
376
THE PRIXCETOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
constitution of the church — the right of the General Assembly to review
the action of a Presbj-tery in licensing candidates for the ministry; and
the necessary requirements for licensure.
It is the contention of the respondent that the jurisdiction of a Pres-
bj-tery in the matter of licensure is exclusive, that its action therein is
not subject to review; and respondent moved the complaint be dismissed
for want of jurisdiction.
Chap. lo, sec. 7 of our Form of Government says, among other things,
“The Presbytery has power ... to examine and license candidates for the
holy ministry.” This power is original in the Presbj-teiy. This, however,
does not imply power not subject to review, otherwise each Presbytery
would be a law unto itself. The Church is not a mere confederation of
Presb3-teries — it is a united church, with a well defined politj' that order
and S3'stem and unit3' prevail rather than confusion and disunion. Chap.
12, sec. I, of the Form of Government provides that the General
Assembl3' “shall represent in one bod3% all the particular churches of
this denomination.” In 1874 the General Assembly, in answer to an
overture, declared “the General Assembl3' has no power over the
functions of the Presb3-tery' in granting and continuing licenses, save
that of review and control.” (See i Dig. 154.)
In 1910 complaints were lodged against the S3Tiod of New York in
sustaining the action of a Presb3-ter3' in licensing and ordaining certain
candidates. The General Assembly took jurisdiction of the complaints and
heard and determined the issues therein, (i Dig. 155; 156)
Chap. 12, sec. 3, of the Form of Government says, among other things,
“The General Assembl3' shall receive and issue all . . . complaints . . .
that affect the . . . Constitution of the Church, and are regularly brought
before it from the inferior judicatories.” Sec. 5 of the same chapter gives
to the General Assembb' “the power of deciding in all controversies
respecting doctrine.” In 1912 the General Assembly, in answer to an
overture, said : “The Constitution fixes the authority and responsibility
for the licensing and ordaining to the ministry of the Presbyterian
Church in the Presb3'tery” and says, further, “that any violation of the
Constitution by the Presb3'tery in so doing should be remedied ; but the
remedy to be effective on the part of the Assembly must be on protest,
complaint, or appeal, etc.” (i Dig. 278.)
Even where matters are left to the “satisfaction” or “discretion” of
Presb3-ter3' this “satisfaction” or “discretion” is not an arbitrary one
and must be exercised in a constitutional manner; otherwise it is
subject to the review and control of the General Assembly, (i Dig. 564-)
As far back as 1835 the General Assembly defined the extent of such
terms as “satisfaction,” “satisfactory” and “discretion” in the question
of the admission of ministers and showed that while it is the Presb3'tery
that is to be “satisfied” 3'et the General Assembly said “it being alwa3'S
understood that each Presb3'ter3' is in this concern, as in all others,
responsible for its acts to the higher judicatories.” (i Dig. 174.)
Hence this “satisfaction” and this “discretion” are not arbitrar3’; but
must be exercised constitutionally, and are subject to review. This power
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
377
of the General Assembly to review and control cannot be said to infringe
the constitutional power of Presbytery in licensing candidates for the
ministry. It is conferred by the constitution itself. The constitutional
power of both judicatories must be considered in determining the con-
stitutional power of either. That the General Assembly has the right to
review this matter complained of has been practically determined before.
This case was brought before the General Assembly at Grand Rapids,
Michigan, in 1924, upon direct complaint against the action of Presby-
tery; but the General Assembly, while taking jurisdiction of the case,
deemed it advisable that the usual constitutional procedure be followed
in having the matter presented to Synod first; not deeming such
emergency existed as to justify ignoring the power and position of the
Synod. Accordingly, the complaint was presented to the Synod, and
against the judgment rendered by the Synod this complaint is filed.
It is the judgment of your Judicial Commission that the General
Assembly has supervisory power to review and control the action of the
Presbyteries in issuing and continuing licenses to preach, and therefore
the complaint against the action of Synod for dismissing the complaint
against the Presbytery can be heard and determined by the General
Assembly. The motion to dismiss is overruled.
Having determined the constitutional power of the General Assembly
in such matters, we come to the next question presented. In this case it is
conceded the applicants for licensure were amply qualified in education,
training, and character. However, in their examination as to the
doctrines of the church and their fidelity thereto, they were questioned as
to their belief in the Virgin Birth ; and each stated he was unable to
affirm or deny the truth of this doctrine. It is claimed that as the
applicant did not deny the truth of this doctrine the Presbytery was
justified in licensing him.
Constitutional Rule No. 3 requires Presbytery to examine candidates
under its care concerning their fidelity to the doctrines of the Church ;
and Chap. 14, sec. 4 of the Form of Government requires the Presbytery
to continue the educational exercises “until they shall have obtained
satisfaction as to the candidate’s . . . aptness to teach in the church.”
It must be remembered this is an application for leave to preach the
Gospel. This license is a guarantee on the part of Presbytery that the
candidate is qualified to preach the doctrines of Holy Scripture and that
he is not uncertain as to the Truth. The Presbytery must be satisfied
that the applicant is clear and positive in his belief as to the doctrines of
the church, and unless he is thus clear and positive it is the duty of
Presbytery to defer licensure until he becomes thus clear and positive,
(i Dig. 284.)
It is not a question as to the character of the applicant, his education,
amiable qualities, or even his piety. It is a question as to the positiveness
of his belief. Bearing this in mind, was it necessary the candidates affirm
their belief in the Virgin Birth?
When the constitutional questions were propounded to the applicants,
after the examinations were completed, each candidate answered all of
3/8
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
them in the affirmative and without qualification, despite the uncertainty
of mind expressed. These constitutional questions, however, must be
interpreted in the light of the Constitution of the Church. Without this
they mean nothing; and the affirmation of these constitutional questions
is qualified by the views expressed or statements made by the candidate
in setting forth his belief.
The candidate was not required to state his views as to the mystery
therein contained. He was not required to attempt to explain it. He was
asked whether he believed in the Virgin Birth — his attention being called
to the narratives as contained in the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke,
and he declined to affirm, stating he could neither affirm nor deny. He
was in doubt as to the truth of these portions of the Holy Scriptures.
Hence, he was unable to affirm his belief in positive, definite statements
in the Gospels regarding the Virgin Birth. Constitutional question No.
I, regarding belief in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament,
means the Scriptures as defined and described in Chapter i of the
Confession of Faith. Constitutional question No. 2, requiring the
candidate to receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this church
as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures
means the Confession of Faith including Chapter 8 thereof dealing wdth
the Incarnation. Thus, while he answered these constitutional questions
in the affirmative, his affirmation is qualified by his doubt hereinbefore
set forth. He gave his assent knowing he could not affirm his belief in
the Virgin Birth and the narratives thereof as contained in the Gospels
and as declared and defined in the Confession of Faith, and knowing
the Presbytery knew he could not so affirm.
The General Assembly, under the Constitution of the Church, has the
power, and it is its duty to review the action of lower judicatories. In
the discharge of this duty, in a case regularly brought before it, the
General Assembly is exercising its power as a Court, and as the highest
judicatory in the Church; and its decision regarding doctrinal matters
in such a case is therefore binding until modified or reviewed, or until
the Constitution is amended. In 1910, the General Assembly, in an
action on a complaint against the Sjnod of New York in sustaining the
action of a PresbjTery in licensing candidates who, while not denying
the Virgin Birth of our Lord, failed “to affirm it with the same
positiveness as for some other doctrines” said that “no one who is in
serious doubt concerning this doctrine should be licensed or ordained as
a minister.” (i Dig. 156.)
The General Assembly has repeatedly passed upon the importance of
clear and positive views regarding this doctrine. It is the established law
of the church. The church has not seen fit to alter it and your judicial
commission sees no reason for amending the constitution by judicial
interpretation.
The above sentence of the decision “The church has not seen fit
to alter it (the law of the church) and your judicial commission sees
no reason for amending the constitution by judicial interpretation”
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
379
The applicants, being each uncertain as to his belief and being unable
to affirm his belief in the Virgin Birth of our Lord as set forth in the
Gospels and declared in the Confession of Faith, the Presbytery erred
in not deferring the licensing until the candidates were certain and
positive; no matter how amiable, educated, or talented the candidates
may have been.
The action of the Synod in failing to sustain the complaint against the
Presbytery is reversed and the complaint against the Presbytery is
sustained.
This matter is remanded to the Presbytery for appropriate action, in
conformity with the decision herein rendered.
The meaning and significance of this clear and cogently
argued decision should be unmistakably plain to everyone, as
well as the fact that it is merely a reaffirmation of what has
been the fixed policy of the Presbyterian Church throughout
its history. As to polity it affirms the right and duty of the
General Assembly to require of the Presbyteries that they
strictly conform to the constitutional requirements in the
matter of licensing candidates. As regards these constitution-
al requirements it lays down the great essential principle that
a candidate cannot truly answer the constitutional questions,
if he is unable to affirm his belief in essential doctrines of the
Scriptures and the Confession of Faith. The decision finds
that the Virgin Birth is in the Confession of Faith, Chapter
8, and makes faith in it a part of the belief of all ministers
who enter our Church. It thus declares the doctrine of the
Virgin Birth essential and a belief in it a requisite for minis-
terial standing in the Presbyterian Church. The Church has
been troubled a long time by rationalists who could not or
would not affirm faith in this doctrine. This has been the cause
of all the controversy and debate within recent times. This
decision settles the matter, and makes it clear that any man
who cannot accept this cardinal doctrine has no right in the
ministry of the Presbyterian Church. This decision is to be
is a rather infelicitious statement because the Constitution can not be
amended by judicial interpretation. It can be amended only in a constitu-
tional manner by the submission of amendments to the Presbyteries.
The declaration that the Virgin Birth is a part of the Confession of
Faith is not an amendment.
380 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
a guide for the future. It is sent to the Xew York Presbytery
for “appropriate action,” which means that that Presbytery
and all Presbj-teries are to act accordingly. If any Presbytery'
licenses any one who does not affirm this belief, it is in open
rebellion and is liable to discipline.
This decision, it is important to observe, makes no new tests
whatsoever. It finds the doctrine of the \"irgin Birth in the
Scriptures and the Confession of Faith and so states and
stands by the Constitution, and demolishes the unethical and
dishonest acts of men who assert that they believe the
doctrines of the Church while their examination discloses
that they do not. It is not a new test or added requirement to
require what the Constitution requires. We can do no less and
remain a Constitutional Church. This decision does not “bind
the conscience with any commandment of men.” The liberals
who lay stress upon this fundamental principle of Presbyte-
rianism quote only so much of the language of the Confession
as suits them, but leave out the words “which are in any thing
contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or
worship.”®^ The declaration of the doctrine of the Virgin
Birth is consonant with the Word of God, and, therefore,
does bind the conscience. It is in the Bible, and in our Confes-
sion of Faith, and to declare this by judicial decision is no
new test.®®
®- In full it reads : “God alone is Lord of the conscience and hath left it
free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any-
thing contrary to his W'ord, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship”
{Form of Government, Chap, xx, Sec. 2.)
Of course it is the imperative duty of everj- inferior court to obey
the direction and mandate of the superior, and such obedience, if
necessarj-, should be enforced by the superior court. {Digest 1922, Vol.
I. P. 57i). hen the General Assembly adjudicates a case or orders it
adjudicated, its orders are to be carried out by the lower judicatories
{Minutes 1919, p. 180). Xo minister is entitled to maintain his status as a
minister and teach doctrines fundamental in character, which are con-
trary to the doctrines of the Confession of Faith. The doctrines specifically
named are the Deity of Christ, the sacrificial death of Christ and the
inspiration of the Scriptures (Grant Case, 1911, p. 138). All ministers in
our Church are to refrain from giving utterance to sentiments which
unsettle the Church, and which are in conflict with the Standards of
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
381
This decision of the Assembly of 1925 is more than a mere
“warning to be more careful and not do it again.” It is
claimed that the decision is a “mild decision,” and yet in the
same connection it is said to be “dogmatic” and “un-
Protestant and Roman, which seems to imply that the
decision is not self consistent. But, despite cavilling critics, the
decision is final, and binding upon all Presbyteries and upon
the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, until the Constitu-
tion of the Church is changed in a constitutional manner. To
reverse a judicial decision is to declare it erroneous and to
render it inoperative. This decision being the decision of the
the Church (1911, p. 140). The troublers in the Church are those who
deny or assail the doctrines and constitution of the Church and not the
loyalists who stand for these.
*■* “The decision on the Complaint against the licensure of Mr. Van
Dusen may be called a mild decision. The Assembly might conceivably
have ordered the Presbytery of New York to put him on trial for heresy,
and if he could not positively affirm his belief in the virgin birth of
Jesus have ordered that he be deposed from the ministry or it might
easily have censured the Presbytery for having licensed him. But it did
neither. It did not attempt to touch his standing as a Presbyterian
minister, nor did it censure the Presbytery. It merely said that the
Presbytery had made a mistake in licensing him. It had erred. It was in
the nature of a warning to be more careful, and not do it again.
“But despite the practical mildness of the decision if it once be
allowed to become a binding interpretation of the law of the Church,
there is no safeguard for the freedom of any minister, elder or deacon.
The very language of the decision suggests the rigor of a dogmatism
which one had hoped that the Church had outgrown. It places the
emphasis so plainly not on religion but on theological exactness. Hear
it : ‘It is not a question as to the character of the applicant, his education,
amiable qualities, or even his piety. It is a question as to the positiveness
of his belief.’ There speaks the voice of the dogmatist of every age. It
is so plainly un-Protestant and Roman in its demand that a man accept
what the Church teaches whether he understands it or not : ‘The candi-
date was not required to state his views as to the mystery therein
contained. He was not required to attempt to explain it. He was asked
whether he believed in the virgin birth — his attention being called to the
narratives as contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and he
declined to affirm.’ Open your mouth and swallow, or you should not
come in. Is that Protestant Christianity, or the voice of papal Rome?’’
(Extract from a Sermon by Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, preached in the
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, May 31, 1925.)
382 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
judicatory of last resort, is of necessity final. A decision of
one Assembly in a judicial case can not be reviewed by a
subsequent Assembly. There can be no remedy after the last,
a judicatory higher than the highest. The only question here
is. Did the Assembly decide judicially the case before them.
A judicial decision, in the sense here intended, is a judgment
of a judicatory' in a decision of a case. This was a complaint.
The Assembly heard it. The Assembly resolved itself into
a “court of Jesus Christ” for that purpose. The Judicial
Commission, after reading all the record, and hearing the
parties, presented a preliminary judgment to the Assembly
which, on motion, became the final judgment of the Assembly.
This was not a recommendation, or mild advice but a judicial
decision, and in accord with the provisions of the Constitution
of the Church. Such a decision can not be brought up and
re-examined by any subsequent Assembly, or ad interim
committee. Such a decision is final and irreversible. It can
not be reversed on review, nor by an administrative act.®""
Obedience to the voice of the whole Church as expressed by
the Assembly is the truest liberty. “Obedience to lawful
authority is fundamental and essential to the maintenance
and prosperity of our beloved Church. Our Constitution
provides ample remedies and procedure for determining the
lawfulness of all authority exercised thereunder, and until
the same is set aside or reversed pursuant to the Constitution,
it is in full force and effect and merits the obedience of all
subject thereto.”®® We may not like the decision and it may
cost some of us the lowering of our haughty spirits, but
nevertheless, the decision remains final and as loyal Presby-
terians we are bound to obey it until by a vote of the
Presbyteries and approval of the General Assembly the
Constitution of the Church is so amended as to eliminate the
35 Digest (1907), p. 1091. Digest (1898), p. 686— “If an inferior court
has authority to declare that its own decisions are in force, after they
have been reversed by a superior court, then all appeals are nugatory,
and our system, as it relates to judicial proceedings, is utterly subverted.”
3« Digest (1898), p. 754-
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
383
doctrine in question from the Confession of Faith, which
will be a very difficult, we hope an impossible, task. Against
the decision of the Assembly a protest was admitted to record.
When this protest is signed and published we shall see who
in the Church do not believe in the Virgin Birth.
The Presbytery of New York had memorialized the General
Assembly as to the status of a Presbytery in licensing candidates for
the ministry, and the First Presbyterian Church had asked to have its
good name vindicated. These memorials were laid upon the table and
thus ended. However, when the decision in the Gantz case became the
final judgment of the Assembly an attempt was made to offer several
papers as protests. These were ruled out, but the next day a protest v/as
admitted to record which assigned certain reasons why the decision was
in error: namely, (i) It violates Chap. 31, Sec. 3, of the Confession of
Faith which provides “All Synods or Councils since the apostles’ times,
whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred ; therefore
they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice but to be used as a
help in both.” This objection is based upon the pure assumption that the
General Assembly erred in its decision. It certainly is rash for a few
men to set up their views as to a mistake being made when fifteen
picked men sat night and day and went over the entire case with all the
facts before them and rendered a decision that accords with Scripture
and the Constitution of our Church. It would be well if the objectors had
studied the scriptural proof texts appended to the section of the Con-
fession of Faith which they quote, i. Cor. ii. 5, 2 Cor. i. 24, Eph. ii. 20.
(2) The second objection was that it violated the “historic policy” of
our Church in allowing each Presbytery to judge for itself as to the
satisfactory examination of candidates. This is a half statement of the
Church’s policy and is ably answered by the decision itself which shows
that no Presbytery has the exclusive right but only such rights as the
Constitution gives under review and control.
(3) The third objection relates to liberty of conscience. Chap. 20, Sec.
2, and here again we must call attention to the misquotation of the
objectors, when they omit the words “which are contrary to his Word,
or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” The doctrine in dispute is
neither contrary to nor beside the Word. It is in it and a part of it. We
would again call the attention of the objectors to the Scriptures, Acts
xvii. II, John iv. 22, i Peter iii. 15. “The wise men are ashamed, they are
dismayed and taken; lo, they rejected the word of the Lord, and what
wisdom is in them.” — Jer. viii. 9.
(4) Another objection contained in the protest is that it adds to the
constitutional vows of a minister which can only be done by a two-
thirds vote of the Presbyteries. It is no new test nor addition to the
constitutional questions asked a minister to affirm what already is in
the Constitution. If this was a new, extraneous doctrine then the
contention of the brethren that it was a new test would have some
384 the PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Conclusions
In view of the Constitution of the Church and its doctrinal
standards, and the frequent deliverances and instructions of
the Assembly in the matter of licensing candidates for the
ministry and the actions of New York Presbytery in openly
defying the Assembly and becoming a law unto themselves,
the complainants held that the Presbytery of New York was
chargeable with ( i ) disorders and irregularities in receiving
men from other denominations and licensing candidates who
do not measure up to the doctrinal standards of our church,
(2) disobedience to the voice of the whole Church as ex-
pressed by the General Assembly in the deliverances quoted,
(3) nullification and revolutionary conduct in setting up its
will above that of the General Assembly. Which is the
ultimate authority in the Church? The Presbytery of New
York rejects the authority of the deliverances of the Assembly
and rejects her judicial decisions making them null and void,
thus arresting the legislature, executive and judicial power
of our church, and elevates another power to supreme domin-
ion, namely itself, and surely this is revolutionary.
That this decision expresses the convictions of the great
majority of the members of the Presbyterian Church, there
can be no serious question. It accords fully with the Scriptures
and the Confession of Faith, and with the great creeds of
Christendom and the belief of the Church until recent times;
it upholds the Constitution of the Church and its doctrinal
standards; it maintains the right of review and control by
the Assembly and secures the rights and liberties of each
member of the Church. The Constitution of the Presbyterian
Church is founded upon equality and liberty and is repre-
sentative in character. The Presbyterian Church is a great
weight. The decision makes it clear that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth
is in the Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, and is a component part of the
Presbyterian faith. There surely can be no sane objection to that.
(5) Other objections were that it violates the spirit of certain reunion
movements. This cannot be tenable, because these reunions took place on
the basis of the Standards which included Chapter 8 of the Confession of
Faith.
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
385
denomination among the various branches of the Church ;
glorious in her history; our Church has trodden down no
man’s liberty; it has crushed no beneficent hopes and has gone
on and will go on with youthful vigor, enterprise and courage
throughout all time.
Hartsville, Pa. Benjamin M. Gemmill.
APPENDIX (see p. 355 supra)
Decision in Case of Dr. Fosdick and First Church
The Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church of the U. S. A., as to the complaint of the Rev. Dr. W. D.
Buchanan et al, protesting as to the action of the Presbytery of New York
in matters relating to the First Presbyterian Church, beg leave to report.
The complaint is as to the action of the Presbytery of New York
respecting the adoption and sanctioning of the arrangement of the First
Presbyterian Church of New York, continuing until March i, 1925, the
preaching and teaching of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in face of and in
insubordination to the judicial decision of the General Assembly of 1924.
It is alleged that the action of the Presbytery of New York was a con-
tempt of court, and various grounds are assigned as to the impropriety of
the action taken by the New York Presbytery.
A preliminary matter must first be disposed of. On the argument of
the case a motion was made to suppress the brief filed on behalf of
complainants, because of some of the language used. While we do not
grant the motion, the commission desires to suggest that in future, care
should be exercised by litigants not to use violent language or to make
charges as to the good faith of parties which are not justified by the
facts.
When the subject matter of this complaint was considered by the
Judicial Commission during the session of the General Assembly in
1924, the Commission reported that the relation then sustained between
Rev. Dr. Fosdick and First Presbyterian Church was “anomalous,”
because he was not actually connected with the Presbyterian Church and
had been known as a “guest preacher” for a period of five years. The
Commission recommended to the General Assembly that the existing
relations should no longer continue, and said that if Dr. Fosdick “can
accept the doctrinal standards of the church, as contained in the
Confession of Faith, there should be no difficulty in receiving him. If he
cannot, he should not continue, to occupy a Presbyterian pulpit.”
This report of the Judicial Commission became the final judgment of
the General Assembly after the same had been presented to it. On June
9, 1924, the minutes of the Presbytery show that the action of the
General Assembly had been efficiently communicated to the Presbytery.
386
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
This action of the General Assembly was then referred to a committee
of which the Rev. Dr. E. W. Work was chairman.
Dr. Fosdick was at that time abroad and did not return to this
country until September. On September i, 1924, Dr. Work wrote Dr.
Fosdick as follows :
Your absence in Europe, prolonged into the summer and the
subsequent vacation-time separations have made difficult such
intimate discussion as might have been desired on the subject
that is uppermost in our minds. Nevertheless, you have, I think
been fully advised of the action of the General Assembly, and
there have not been lacking as you know correspondence and
personal conference on the subject.
At this time, however, in view of the approaching meeting of
New York Presbytery, I am laying the matter formally before
you in order that you may consider carefully the proposal of
the Assembly and give your formal answer to it.
The letter then proceeds to advise Dr. Fosdick fully of the action of
the General Assembly. In response to this letter, under date of September
7, Dr. Fosdick wrote Dr. Work as follows :
The proposal of the General Assembly calls for a definite
creedal subscription, a solemn assumption of theological vows,
in terms of the Westminster Confession.
In answer to this proposal I must in all honesty set my
long-standing and assured conviction that creedal subscription
to ancient confessions of faith is a practice dangerous to the
welfare of the Church and to the integrity of the individual
conscience.
There are many creedal statements, such as the Augsburg
Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Thirty-nine
Articles, which express in the mental formulas of the generation
when they were written, abiding Christian experiences and
convictions. I honor all of them; they represent memorable
achievements in the development of Christian thought, but for
me to make a creedal subscription in terms of any one of them
would be a violation of conscience.
♦ * ♦
The decision of the General Assembly was clear to the point that if
Dr. Fosdick could not accept the doctrines and the standards of our
church he could not continue in a Presbyterian pulpit, and that his
connection with First Presbyterian Church must then cease. It is of
the utmost importance that the authority of our highest court should be
respected and maintained. Were there no other facts and circumstances
to be considered than that Dr. Fosdick declined to accept the conditions
imposed and to enter our church, unquestionably it would have been a
violation of the decree of the Court for him to continue in the church
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
387
for such a length of time, but as we have seen there are other facts
necessary to the proper consideration of the case. Is the Commission
justified in holding that the failure of the Presbytery to terminate the
relation immediately was in contempt of the Court and that the com-
plaint must be sustained: The final judgment of the General Assembly
did not fix any definite time at which Dr. Fosdick must relinquish his
position if he could not accept the conditions imposed. Of necessity, this
could not be fixed because it was dependent upon the submission to Dr.
Fosdick of the conditions which had been imposed and until it was
learned whether he would accept those conditions, the Assembly could
not determine in advance when the relation should terminate. Necessarily
some latitude was permissible but in the absence of a definite time fixed
by the judgment, the action of the Presbytery should have been reason-
ably prompt and not unduly delayed. The respondent urges that the
peculiar conditions surrounding the case and all the circumstances,
demanded that the action should not be hastily taken. Dr. Fosdick had
been a minister for a period of more than five years. He had attracted
large congregations. The people of the church were devotedly attached
to him and deplored the necessity which had arisen for severing his
relations with the church.
At the meeting of the Presbytery, the venerable Dr. Alexander,
Pastor of First Church, said:
You will certainly appreciate what the problem has been.
It has been difficult for everybody. It has been difficult for the
church because it has been considering the two loyalties —
loyalty to the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A., and loyalty
to a minister who, for five or six years, has served them with
marvelous acceptance and power. It is not perfectly easy to
reconcile these two loyalties, and it might be difficult to induce
the church to confess its major loyalty if it had not been
permitted at the same time to express its love and loyalty for
this associate minister.
It was, therefore, a situation requiring the exercise of great tact and
caution. The members of the church, not by their own volition but by a
decree of the highest court of the church were obliged to give up a
minister to whom they were warmly attached. Unless the matter had
been handled with delicacy there was danger that many of them might
be alienated.
The majority of the Presbytery decided that it would be wisest and
would work less harm to the interests of the First Church if they did not
insist upon the immediate retirement of Dr. Fosdick. The Commission
believes that the date fixed was not as early as it should have been to
comply properly with the decree of the Court, but if this be an error on
the part of the Presbytery it was an error of judgment.
Contempt of court is a wilful and deliberate disobedience of its
decrees with the intent to defy the authority of the court. The action of
the Presbytery does not reveal in the records above quoted any evidence
388
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of an intent to deliberately disobey the mandates of the General
Assembly, nor to do anything in defiance of its decree. The stenographic
report of the debate in Presbytery submitted by the complainants and
not objected to by the respondents does not show any disposition on the
part of the Presbj^tery which would lend color to the charge that any
disrespect to the General Assembly was intended.
This Commission, therefore, recommend that in view of all the
circumstances, the complaint be dismissed.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES*
The liberal Protestant churches are slowly losing their
faith in the Scriptures, and as they lose their faith in the
Scriptures they are slowly losing their religion. The Protes-
tant churches came into existence as a sublime witness to the
Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. That was many
centuries ago. But now it has come to pass in the strange
revolutions of the wheel of history that some of the Protes-
tant churches and many Protestant scholars and theologians
are the most determined and dangerous enemies of the Bible.
It is four centuries since our noble pioneers of the Reformed
Churches gave to the world the Bible as the only rule of faith.
Today no one will deny that at a meeting of representatives
of the churches throughout the world holding to the Presby-
terian system the question of the authority of the Bible is
timely and critical.
The whole issue of Christianity and the spiritual destiny of
mankind depend upon the answer to this question, Has God
spoken to man? This fundamental question of religion is
admirably stated by Bishop Gore in his book. Belief in God :
“This then is the question — Has the Divine Mind, or Spirit,
taken action on His side to disclose or reveal Himself to
those who are seeking after God?”
From the very beginning the unfaltering answer of the
Christian Church has been that God has spoken to man, and
that we have an infallible record of that revelation in the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. This has been
the ground upon which the Church, Catholic as well as
Protestant, has stood from the very beginning. The only
alternative for an infallible record of a divine revelation for
our salvation is human reason, and human reason is as the
eloquent American agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, declared it to
* An address delivered at the Quadrennial World Convention of the
Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System, Car-
diff, Wales, June 2Q, ig2S.
390
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
be, “a flickering torch, borne on a starless night, and blown by
the winds of prejudice and passion.”
Enemies of the Bible today within the Protestant Church
are trying to create the impression that the idea of an infal-
lible Bible goes back only to the Reformation, and was foisted
upon Christianity by extreme Protestants who set up an
infallible Bible in the place of an infallible Pope.
Nothing could be more preposterous. The Roman Catholic
view of the Scriptures is summed up by the declaration of
the Vatican Council of 1870, which, having named the books
of the Bible, declares them to be sacred and canonical, not
because approved by the Church, nor because they contain a
revelation with no admixture of error, but “because having
been written by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost they have
God for their author.” In his Bampton Lectures of 1893 Dr.
Sanday says of the traditional Protestant view of the Bible,
as expressed in the great confessions of Protestantism ; “This
was the view commonly held fifty years ago. And when it
comes to be examined it is found to be substantially not very
different from that which was held two centuries after the
birth of Christ.”
This idea of a true Bible, of course, only with the greatest
difficulty can be made to agree with the view that although
the Bible contains high moral and spiritual truth, even
revelation, it is also a mass of scientific blunders, historical
inaccuracies and low moral views. The difficulty as between
the Bible and science is probably not so acutely felt today as it
once was. Men are beginning to realize that we know very
little about the beginnings of life and of human history, and
that while we talk learnedly about the Rhodesian man and the
Pithecanthropus, we are merely decorating the impenetrable
veil of silence and mystery with the trinkets of human fancy.
At the same time, although the so-called war between
religion and science has abated, we must face the fact that a
Bible which is childish, grotesque and absurd as to its astron-
omy, geology and biology can never exert the moral authority
over the minds of men that the Bible did exert over those
AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
391
heroic souls who established the Reformed Churches and
built up the civilization of the Protestant nations. You can
never open the door to the reception of the Bible as a spiritual
authority and guide by first of all describing it as a collection
of fnyth and folklore, silly notions of the earth and of man,
with here and there very low ideas of God. Yet this is the
impossible task that many of our so-called “liberal” Protes-
tants are attempting. But it can never be done until the east
meets the west.
The solution of the scientific difficulty lies elsewhere. What
we are so sure is experimental and established fact today,
may assume a different aspect tomorrow, and the last word
will be God’s. The remarkable thing is that in a book written
so many ages ago there should be any ground for a dispute
as to whether or not this book is in agreement with the latest
findings of physical science. The grand steps in creation
outlined in the Bible are so in keeping with those outlined by
science that, as a President of the British Association, Sir
William Dawson, once put it, “It would not be easy, even now,
to construct a statement of the development of the world in
popular terms so concise and so accurate.”
The most dangerous attack on the Bible is made by those
within the Churches who claim that only by such reinterpre-
tations can we mediate between the Bible and the “modern
mind,” that terrible monster which now threatens to destroy
Christianity after it has survived the shocks and the storms
of the ages. Perhaps the best key to the whole liberal and
modernistic method with the Bible is what is called “Pro-
gressive Revelation.”
That has a good sound. We all believe in progress and we
all believe in revelation. Therefore, Why not Progressive
Revelation? But as used by the modernists. Progressive
Revelation is not the true Biblical teaching that God has
revealed His will successively and increasingly through patri-
archs, prophets and the Gospel, culminating in Jesus Christ.
On the contrary, it is an idea of revelation and inspiration
which has been invented to give the Bible some shadow of
392
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
divine authority after it has been convicted of scientific
blunders, historical inaccuracies, and low moral views.
How does this theory of the Bible work? It claims to save
the Bible for intelligent faith. But how? In brief it is this:
We find in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament,
conceptions of God that are crude and low, narratives of
impossible transactions, and statements about the world and
its physical history which even a child in the grammar school
knows to be absurd. But we are not to let this shake our faith
in the Bible as the revealed will of God. The solution of our
difficulty is “progressive” revelation. It is the philosopher’s
stone which transmutes the base metal in the Bible to purest
gold.
Apply this stone to Genesis, and the whole difficulty is
gone, for now we see how God could, for good and sufficient
reasons, reveal Himself as the Creator of the world, and at
the same time permit man to imagine and to record a way
of creation which is childish and absurd. But we must not let
that trouble us. What God had in mind was to tell us about
Himself, not about the heavens and the earth.
The Bible says that God commanded Abraham to offer up
Isaac on Mt. Moriah. But God was only adapting Himself to
the prevailing low ideas of God and of what pleased Him,
and only by the medium of a contemplated sacrifice could
God reveal Himself to Abraham. The stupendous miracles of
Moses, Elijah and Elisha did not really take place. But God
did speak to and through these prophets, and after genera-
tions added the miracles. The Old Testament attributes to
God the sanction and approval of acts which are repugnant
to the conscience of this generation, such as the judgments
upon the Canaanites. But these commands and sanctions were
put in God’s mouth by men whose moral ideas were those of
their own age only, and to whom God Himself, apparently,
could not give any higher ideas.
Such is the modernistic idea of the Bible. As one of their
most popular preachers has phrased it, “To take a trip through
the Bible is to move from the presence of primitive religion
AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
393
to the noblest expression of the religious spirit that the mind
of man can take.” But we fear that this tour through the
Bible, personally conducted by the Modernists, proves too
expensive. What the average man wants to know is this ;
“Where does your primitive religion come to an end in the
Bible and where does your true and divine revelation com-
mence?” Does primitive religion end with Genesis, or with
Judges, and true religion commence with the Psalms, or with
the Prophets ? Evidently not, for all that is taken exception to
is scattered through the Bible, and not the most expert of
reinterpreters and restorers can reconstruct the history of
revelation showing where the human stratum of misinforma-
tion is succeeded by the strata of divine truth.
In short, this popular theory of progressive revelation gets
rid of the difficulties in the Bible by getting rid of the Bible.
These learned men are simply saying in high sounding terms
what the child said in its naive comment, “I suppose God
wrote the Old Testament before He became a Christian!”
Why use the word revelation at all, progressive or otherwise?
For what such an interpretation of the Bible means is that
the Bible is largely made up of the guesses or opinions of
fallible men about God, and is not the Word of God.
There is a true and Scriptural idea of revelation, but it is
remote from what I have just sketched. The true revelation
in the Bible marks a progress from the partial to the complete,
from the transient to the abiding, from what was suited for
a people hardly touched by the gracious rays of revelation to
what could be received by a people who had been trained for
centuries to hear the voice of God, from the law to grace,
from patriarchs and prophets to Jesus Christ Himself.
This is the progressive revelation to which John referred
when he said the Law came by Moses, but grace and truth
by Jesus Christ. And this was the progressive revelation the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind when he
said in the sublime prologue, “God who at sundry times and
in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the
prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.”
394
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
But the progressive revelation of the modernist would compel
a revision of the passage in Hebrews, making it read some-
thing like this : “God who at sundry times and in divers
manners deceived mankind in times past, giving them false
and cruel and ridiculous notions of Himself, of man, of the
history of the earth, finally decided to tell the truth in Jesus
Christ.”
But has He told the truth in Jesus Christ and in the
New Testament? Progressive revelation at once raises that
question. Does progressive revelation stop with the New
Testament? Or will it go on indefinitely? And will the
unknown revelation of centuries hence make obsolete the
revelation of the New Testament as, according to this theory,
the revelation of the New Testament has negatived the reve-
lation of the Old Testament?
Let no one imagine that the Old Testament difficulties are
the only ones which are to be treated with this theory. The
idea of Abraham offering up Isaac is disposed of ; but so also
is the idea of God offering up His own Son for the sins of
the world. The great New Testament idea of the Atonement,
as explained and proclaimed by St. Paul, and the other
ajxistles, is just as repugnant to the modernist as the sacrifice
of Abraham. One distinguished theologian goes so far as to
brand the Pauline idea of the satisfaction of Christ for our
sins as comparable to a “frame up” in the criminal courts,
where, for evil purposes, or to satisfy the demand for the
punishment of a crime, the perpetrator of which has not been
apprehended, the police “frame” an innocent man !
And so this theory would deal with other New Testament
facts and doctrines. The story of the Incarnation is not a
revelation, but just man’s way of trying to account for the
preeminent personality of Jesus; the story of the Resurrec-
tion does not represent an actual historic fact, but merely
represents the only way in which the minds of that day could
account for the continuing personality of Christ; and so His
Second Advent is only the phrasing of man’s hope for the
triumph of righteousness. Thus the glory of revelation fades
AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
395
from the pages of the New Testament as well. That great
and tremendous music, “Thus saith the Lord!’’ shaking the
earth with its echo, casting down kingdoms and empires,
ushering in the glory of redemption in Christ, dies out of the
Bible, and in its place we hear only this : “Thus saith the mind
of man.”
We go back to the question with which we started, with
which all discussion of religion must start, Hath God spoken
to man? And if He has, do we have a true record of what
He has said? All the hopes of mankind depend upon the
answer. The Scriptures say that God has spoken, spoken
through men who were moved by the Holy Ghost, and for
centuries the Christian Church has dared to speak to human-
ity only upon this ground, that it possessed and declared the
Word of the Living God.
But now, if we adopt the idea of the Bible that is rapidly
and fatally gaining ground in the Protestant Church, then
the Church can no longer arrest the attention of a fallen race
with that ageless cry, “Thus saith the Lord !” At first hearing,
it seems very easy to take a trip through the Bible and mark
when we leave the territory of primitive religion and pass
into the true religion. But what is to be our guide? If some
parts of the Bible are false, and others true, if this is only
tribal religion and stone-age morality, and this the highest
and the purest, what is to be our guide in judging, and in
distinguishing the one from the other? Ah, there is the fatal
question, and the fatal answer must be, “Man’s reason 1” And
this, in turn, means that ultimately we depend not upon reve-
lation, but upon human reason. The final authority is not the
Word of God, but human reason. Thus the world is plunged
back into the abyss of human ignorance and despair where
we can hear only the taunting, mocking echoes of our own
cries in the darkness.
As to the practical effect the “new view” of the Holy
Scriptures is having upon the Christian Church, there could
be no more striking evidence than the sad subsidence of re-
demptive teaching and preaching in the Protestant Church.
396 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The great question of the Reformation was this; What shall
I do to be saved ? and the great answer went with it, Through
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever a Protestant church
lifts its spire towards the heavens it stands as a monument
to the doctrine of salvation by faith. Historically, this is so.
But alas! if we enter the churches and hear the message and
read the sermonic output of the pulpits, we must conclude
that in many churches there are now more important ques-
tions to be answered than the old c[uestion which rang out
on the midnight air at Philippi so many years ago, “What
shall I do to be saved ?”
A deleted Bible means a diluted Gospel. The Bible as the
Word of God and the proclamation of the Cross as the power
of God unto salvation, stand or fall together. Men and
brethren, what shall we do? What can we do but pray
that the Holy Spirit who gave the Scriptures to our fallen
humanity, and who has used them through the Church unto
the salvation of souls and the glory of God in Jesus Christ,
may again be pleased to revive in the Church a great faith
in the Bible as the Word of God. Come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live!
Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south, and blow upon
our garden that the spices thereof may flow forth!
I conclude with these noble words from the hymnal of the
Lutheran Church :
God’s Word is our great heritage,
And shall be ours forever.
To spread its light from age to age
Shall be its chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way,
In death it is our stay.
Lord, grant while worlds endure,
W’e keep its teachings pure
Throughout all generations.
Philadelphia, Pa. Clarence Edward Macartney
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD FROM THE
POINT OF VIEW OF HIS MORAL CHARACTER
The usual mode of approach in proving the sinlessness of
Jesus’ character is to review the evidence furnished by (i)
His own consciousness, (2) His disciples, (3) His enemies,
(4) His teaching, prerogatives, and conduct. This a poster-
iori method will suffice for general apologetic purposes, and
these arguments will be found amplified in any treatise on
apologetics. But as there is a general consensus of thought
among all but the more crassly thinking theologians of the
nineteenth century,^ regarding Jesus’ sinless character, it is
no longer a serious point of issue. But while Jesus’ actual
sinlessness is not such a theological or historical problem, the
more ultimate question of the possibility of His sinning,
produces a real and a most delicate dilemma — one which has
divided the most conservative of theologians.*
It is, therefore, to this more ultimate question, that we
shall direct our attention. If it should be shown that Jesus
was impeccable in the abstract sense, then the more concrete
question of Jesus’ actual sinlessness is antecedently settled.*
Our first postulate is pure theism — a God who is infinite in
wisdom and power, who not only has eternal purposes but is
1 Even writers whose general principles would lead one to imagine the
converse affirm Christ’s sinlessness: Marheineke, Rosenkrantz, Vatke of
the Hegelian school (v. Dorner Person of Christ, pp. 121-131) ; the
Mediating school, all types — Schleiermacher (Der Christliche Glaube,
II: 83, 108) and Ritschl (Unterricht, p. 191) ; liberals like Hase (Ge-
schichte Jesus, p. 248: but Hase only regards Christ as sinless from his
entrance to his public career. Sinlessness was won by struggle, cf. Men-
ken) and Schenkel. Even though these last two unite in denying overt
or actual sin, they all diverge inter se on the question of the abstract
possibility of sinning.
2 Eor example Augustine and Anselm against Theodore of Mopsues-
tia : Shedd against Hodge and Schaff.
® But the converse would not be true, i.e., if the posse peccare were
provable, perchance, the actual sinlessness would still be an open question.
The familiar phrases non potuit peccare, and potuit non peccare express
the alternatives before us.
398 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
sovereign in effectuating them; all of which rests not only
upon a knowledge of all possibilities,* but upon a foreknowl-
edge of the actual eventuation of His purposes in space and
time.® The Trinity also must necessarily be postulated, for, as
the Reformed theologians so much emphasized, the Holy
Spirit with His sustaining, sanctifying and presenting office
was one of the chief factors in rendering certain the non
potuit peccare in all of Jesus’ temptations, for just prior to
them the Spirit descended ovk he fierpov upon Him, and then
led® Him to the encounter. On such theism and Trinitarianism
the plan of salvation, from which the doctrine of Christ’s
impeccability flows, is to be founded. Christ, in this plan, is
called the ^ between God and His people, and as such
He is not the mere internuntiiis that Moses was® but a
plenipotentiary®; nor is He the ineffective Old Testament
High-Priest, but one unique in effecting once for all the
atonement by sacrifice.*® He is further the eyyvo<: or surety of
the covenant by virtue of His priestly and kingly functions.
Now infallibility and unchangeableness are the basal no-
tions in the idea of eyyvo^. In a double capacity the whole
weight of the execution, and responsibility for success of the
olKovoiiCa ^eoO** reposes in Christ as the Redeemer in the
Covenant of Redemption, and in Christ as the iMediator and
“surety” representing the people of God in the Covenant of
Grace. That the “surety” will remain sure we must rest confi-
dent, not only because of the nature of the underlying theism
and Trinitarianism already indicated, but because of the ex-
* Scientia siviplicis intcUigentiae or scientia iudefinita, according to
Reformed Theology.
® Scientia vision's or defiuita.
® Matt, and Luke state it as avgydgv and r)ycro respectively.
^ Applied three times in Scripture: Heb. viii. 6; ix. 15; xii. 24.
® Gal. iii. 19.
® Matt, xxviii. 18.
Rom. iii. 25.
I Tim. I. 4.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
399
plicit Scriptural declaration of the eternal purpose of God/^
that an accomplished salvation will be offered sinnersd®
Secondly, the manifold promises of God, unless their validity
be doubted, assure the success of the messianic and mediatorial
work. That these can be doubted is impossible for “if ye can
break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night,
and that there should not be day and night in their season,
then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant,
that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne.
Again, “God cannot break an oath”^® for it is said, “God,
willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the
immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by
two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to
lie, we might have a strong consolation.’’^® His promise is as
immutable as His decree; His covenant is an “everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things and sure.’’^^
These promises are not only general ones made to the
Church regarding the Messianic work,^® but very specific ones
that God would give the Church a righteous, sinless Saviour,
described variously as a “righteous branch” who shall be
called “the Lord of Righteousness” d® and of whom it is
declared, “Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of His reins” ; “He had done no
violence, neither was deceit in His mouth.
More specifically, God promises such aid by the Spirit
that the “surety” cannot fail : though He is a “tried stone,”
He is a “sure foundation”^^ for, “Behold my Servant whom
The hidden things which irpowpicnv 6 6e6s wpo tu>v aldtvoiv tts S6$av
■^piwv (i Cor. ii. 7).
1® Eph. I. 4; iii. g, lo, ii ; i Pet. i. 19, 20.
Ter. xxxiii. 20.
“By myself have I sworn,” Gen. xxii. 16.
Heb. vi. 17, 18.
2 Sam. xxiii. 5.
Gen. xxii. 16, 17, 18; Ps. Ixxxix. 3.
Jer. xxiii. 5, 6.
Is. xi. I, and liii. 9; cf. ix. 6, 7.
Is. xxviii. 16.
400
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
I Uphold : . , . I have put my spirit upon Him . . .
He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judg-
ment in the earth” f~ again, “I the Lord have called thee in
righteousness, and will hold thine hand,” and, “in a day of
salvation have I helped thee and I will preserve thee, and
give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth.”
The Messiah on His side expresses assurance and a deter-
mination to overcome His temptations : “I was not rebellious
nor turned away my back : I gave my back to the smiters, and
my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face
from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me;
therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore have I set my
face as a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is
near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us
stand together : who is mine adversary? let him come near to
me. Behold the Lord God will help me ; who is he that shall
condemn me? lo, they shall all wax old as a garment; the
moth shall eat them up.”'®** We have here not only a remark-
ably detailed prophecy of the earthly testing of the Messiah,
but one couched in the “perfect of certainty,”^* a tense
expressing inevitableness of futurition.
This already apparent non potiiit peccare may be further
corroborated by promises of the permanence of the media-
torial office, “The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou
art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” and by
the promises pertaining to the rewards of the Mediator**
22 Is. lii. I, 2, 3.
230 Is. xHx. 7, 9.
23*> Is. i. 5-9.
2^ A tense where “actions depending on a resolution of the will of the
speaker or of those whose mind is known’’ or which appear inevitable
from circumstances, or which are confidently expected, are conceived
and described as having taken place’’ (Davidson, Hebrew Syntax, p. 62;
cf. R. D. Wilson, Hebrew Syntax, p. 3).
23 Ps. cx. 4ff; Ps. ii. 7, 8; Ps. xlv. 3, 4; Is. lii. 13, 14; liii, 10-12, xlix
(passim).
26 Exaltation (Ps. xlv. 7, cf. Phil. ii. 6-1 1), universal dominion (Ps.
cx. i).
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
401
which rewards the New Testament represents as achieved
and by the subjective benefits sequent to, and contingent upon
the certain mediatorial success.^®
In the days of His flesh the Mediator said before the last
of His two^® most exhausting trials, “The prince of this
world cometh, and he hath nothing in me and with equally
clear prescience and serene composure He predicted His
impending sufferings and death, not once doubting the
successful eventuation of the divine mission.
In fine, to deny the impeccability and actual sinlessness
of Jesus is not only to subvert the reality of theism and
Trinitarianism, but to crumble away the far-reaching system
of the divine mediation “which God, who cannot lie, prom-
ised before the world began.
Considerations issuing from the pecularity of the thean-
thropic being cannot be thrown up against this conclusion.
Because the Theanthropos possesses a finite nature He is
not therein necessarily peccable, unless finitude be considered
sin in itself, as Leibnitz (and Fairbairn) maintains. This
finitude of Jesus in poiver, is to be offset by the facts that ( i )
as God is both aTrelpa(no<i^^ and tempts®® no man,®^ the
tempting power must be finite, either man or fallen angel:
(2) a temptation by a finite power, when met by infinite (and
finite) power in an infinite-finite person, must result in the
defeat of the tempting finite power, to state it abstractly.
We must posit the omnipotence of the Theanthropos.
John V. 22; Phi!, ii. 6-1 1.
2® Tit. i. 2; I Cor. i. 30.
2® “And angels came and ministered unto Him” is spoken of Him
only after the ordeals of the wilderness and Gethsemane.
John xiv. 30.
Tit. i. 2.
®2 Jas. i. 13.
®® He only “tests,” “proves,” as irtipaJ^tn indicates, (i) by etymology,
and (2) by context. Jesus quoted “Thou shalt not tempt,” from Deut.
vi. where HDJ is used as a “test,” a trial of the attitude of heart of the
Israelites; cf. “that He (God) might humble thee and so put thee to
the test, and thus know what is in thine heart.”
Heb. vi. 18.
402
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Finitude in intelligence certainly does involve the possi-
bility of sinning in man for it renders him subject to deceit,®®
but the infinite knowledge of the Theanthropos precludes
this possibility for Him. We posit Jesus’ omniscience over
against His peccability.
We posit above all, the immutability of God as Thean-
thropos in the attribute of holiness. He is the iryevixa 6<TL0Tn<t^^
in His divine nature, a irveviia and has become
the “author and finisher of our faith,’’®* for His nature as
the heavenly high priest is ocno<;, uKaKos, aixlavro<; K^-gcopicr-
fi4vo<i airb rwv afiapTco\S>v If the Theanthropos is thus
Himself the author of holiness He cannot possibly have
sinned, or entertained the least proclivity to it.
Behind this principle of immutable holiness we wish to
place the general psychological principle of self-determina-
tion of character to good or evil respectively according to
its quality, and this regardless of the rank of the intelligence,
be it angel, man, God or God-man. For the most urgent
gainsayers of Jesus’ immutable holiness have been those who
proclaim the theory of a voluntas in equilibrio and freedom
of choice ad utrumque, as Dr. Whitby originally phrased it,^“
in the supposed interest of moral freedom and responsibility.
They say that “to advocate Christ’s impeccability is to be in
active co-operation with necessitarianism,” and that “we
must hold to Christ’s peccability or forever abandon the
doctrine of human accountability and moral agency.”^’^
To hold, however, that God can choose to sin or not sin is
“The woman [i.e., Eve] being deceived was in the transgression’’
(i Tim. ii. 14).
36 Rom. i. 4.
3' I Cor. XV. 45.
33 Heb. xii. 2.
39 Heb. vii. 26.
^6 A cardinal historical issue between .\rminians and Calvinists. See
Episcopius in particular.
W. Jones, Methodist Review, 77 : 126.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
403
to posit a power of divine will that is pure fiction/^ If we
ascribe to Him self-consciousness, self-determination and
moral discrimination we will have the desiderate of “moral
agency.” Self-determination exclusively to eternally holy acts
is the liberty of felix necessitas boni (Augustine), which the
Theanthropos, respecting His Godhead, must possess.^® But
as there is no Nestorian duality of persons in His nature this
must also be predicated of the entire God-man, of His human
nature as well as of His divine nature. For it is the divinity
and not the humanity that forms the deeper base to the whole
personality, and dominates the whole complex, especially in
such crises as the temptation must have been. If this principle
of the self-determination of the divine nature by the divine
character {felix necessitas boni) is unreservedly accepted we
have reached the very heart of the non potuit doctrine. The
reality of Jesus’ temptability is not affected by the conclusion
of Jesus’ impeccability.
But if Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, today and
forever” in holiness, does this mean that His nature is so
hermetically sealed from sin, as it were, that he remained
“unappalled in calm and sinless peace,”^^ before temptation?
If not, how far, and in what sense is Jesus tempted “like as
we are” ? This is now to be determined by His relation to sin.
Jesus was baptized as sinless, as John recognized, though
For if we ask what it is that determines character, they say the acts
of the will. But what determines these acts of the will? Other acts of the
will ; and these are determined by others until we reach the absurdity of
an infinite regressus — a completely detached voluntas, or else a more
ultimate fatalism such as H. G. Wells’ “Veiled Being,’’ which limits even
God.
That the God-man must have the libertas ad utrumque because the
first fallen angel and Adam chose evil, though sinless by nature, is a
non sequitur in that it disregards the fact that the solicitation and
entrance of evil in these two cases is an inscrutable mystery.
** “Infernal hosts and hellish furies round
Environed Thee, some howled, some yelled, some shrieked.
Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou
Sattest unappalled in calm and sinless peace.’’ — Milton.
404
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
John’s formal baptism was for sin. This baptism was that he
might “fulfil all righteousness,” the righteousness which
Israel owed; and it was only for a time, as shown by the
statement “suffer it now.” It thus appears that He bore our
sins before the law vicariously.^® But as He bore our sins
vicariously He did not possess them as part of His nature.
Concerning His relation to sin as corruption we presuppose
the fact of the incarnation, which describes how the Word
became flesh by supernatural immaculate conception : how
Jesus though He was found in the form of a servant partook
( (lericrxev ) of “flesh and blood” that He might “in all
things be made like unto his brethren,”^® yet with all this He
remained This partaking of “flesh and blood”
is to be interpreted in the sense of Rom. viii. 3,eV ofiocdoixan
crapKo^ dfj,apTLa<{, with the emphasis upon the 6p,oia)p.aTi. The
following theories overlook the force of 6p,ouop.ari (i.e.,
mere similitude) and the fact that it qualifies crapK6<; chiefly
dp>apTia<i by position. The crdp^, which Jesus assumed was
not that un fallen <rdp^ of Adam, for the 6p,oi(o6rjvai kuto, irdvra
would therein be falsified. This 6p,oi(op.a consisted rather
in the inheritance of those effects entailed in Adam’s sin
but which are not entailed from possession of a sin-vitiated
body, namely death and physical and psychical “sinless in-
firmities,”*® which effects are incident to generic, and not
individual human nature.*® But the “sorrowfulness unto
*^’Aipt» and ava<j>(po) (Heb. ix. 28; i Pet. ii. 24) nowhere mean, it is
said, that Jesus “bore” sin; but they involve this most certainly, for the
figure of “debt” (Matt. xxvi. 28) and “load” (Heb. ix. 28; i Pet. ii. 4)
are implied. ''Aipw is used as the Greek equivalent for NUtj consistently.
The terms ttoAAwv and Koarfjioiv indicate that which is substituted for.
The mode is that of ‘7rpo(T(f>eptiv eirt to 6v(ria<TTi^piov, Jesus being
considered now the victim, now the high priest.
Heb. ii. 17.
This preposition denotes utter and complete separation as is abun-
dantly manifested by its consistent usage throughout this epistle, Heb.
vii. 21 ; ix. 18, 22.
Called by John of Damascus, ra <f>vcriKa nal aSid^Xrjra vaOijpaTa.
Henry Alting states it, “Infirmitates et defectus, non huius vel
illius individui, ut lepra (Matt. viii. 2), caecitas (John ix. i) scd totius
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
405
death,” the “strong crying and tears,” pain, despair or joy,
or the pangs of hunger, are emotions and appetencies that
are not to be identified with xaxCa arising from the iTrivoia
of the heart,®® nor with iSiat iTriOv/xiai^^ which give vent to
“worldly ambition, selfishness, pride, malice, voluptuousness,
idolatry, hatred, emulation, envyings, murder, wrath, un-
cleanness, drunkenness” and such like, called “concupis-
cence.” Were the nature of Jesus like ours, we fallen natures
would indeed ask, “art thou also become weak, as we? art
thou become like unto us?”, as the kings in the state of
the dead called unto the King of Babylon. These above-
named sinless natural infirmities when carefully considered
will be found to constitute a sufficient fulcrum to make
morally real the temptation, especially when it is considered
that the purity of His holy constitution made Jesus more
highly sensible to these sinless passions®^ than the average
human nature.
naturae, ex eiusdem per peccatum corruptione suscept. Examples given
are tristitia, dolor, timor, ira, as physical infirmities. According to the
Confession of Faith, “he endured most grievous torments immediately in
his soul (Matt. xxvi. 37, 38 “sorrowful” and “heavy” “unto death,”
Luke xxii. 44 ; “agony,” “bloody sweat” ; Matt. xxvi. 46, the cry of
forsakenness) and most painful sufferings in the body” (Matt xxvi. and
xxvii.). Owen (The Holy Spirit, II 13) states it more fully: “Although
Christ took upon Himself those infirmities which belong to our human
nature as such, and are inseparable from it until it be glorified, yet He
took none of our particular infirmities which cleave unto our persons,
occasioned either by the vices of our constitutions or irregularity in the
case of our bodies. Those natural passions of our mind which are capable
of being the means of affliction and trouble, as grief and sorrow and the
like. He took upon Him : and also those infirmities of nature which are
troublesome to the body, as hunger, thirst, weariness and pain
But as to our bodily diseases and distempers which personally adhere
to us upon the disorder and vice of our constitutions, He was absolutely
free from them.”
-A.S the avarice of Simon, see Acts viii. 21, 22.
Cf. Gen. vi. 5 : "'If' Sd arising from the 3b as source. The formally
defined basis of man’s temptation is given in Jas. i. 14, “Every man
is tempted when he is drawn away of his own desires.” “Then iniOv/Mia
begets afjLaprtav and dfiapria when it is finished, brings forth Odvarov.”
To disallow that Jesus was subject to even these infirmities is to
make the temptation a docetic “useful pretense” as Cyril says.
4o6
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Attempts to order these simple Scripture facts so as to
constitute a basis for a temptation “in all points” like ours
has resulted in a two-fold errancy, ( i ) anthrop>omorphic
extension of the sinless infirmities into the sphere of vitia so
far as to make Jesus in a most crass fashion, a sinner —
somewhat of the “feeling, struggling, working, praying
‘Ich’ ” that Harnack styles Him: (2) attenuation of these
facts to a docetism that transfigures the temptation into a
phantasmagoria.
Regarding the former, the most shame-faced theory under
this head is that which hides behind such compromising
words as “taint of,” and “tendency” to sin, e.g., “we may not
believe that in transmission of the human nature of Jesus
a miracle prevented the transmission of an evil taint. That
would make Jesus’ victory over sin the result of a mechanical
miracle of moral filtration.”®® Next, we have the theory that
Jesus partook of a sinful nature, but was successfully sus-
tained by the Holy Spirit in His temptations. Thirdly, the
adoptionist view held that Christ belonged to the “mass of
perdition,” “wearing a body half-burned by the transgression
of his first parents,” over which “the shuttle of the cross
wove for Him a tunic of innocence,” and which “by His
virtue He was able to rescue from being utterly consumed in
the flames of hell.”®* Likewise we have the theory" of “re-
demption by sample” which held that in Jesus’ nature “all
infirmity, sin and guilt gathered into one.”®® Having assumed
the o-a'l/3 of our corrupt race He ethically hacked and hewed
His way to the cross. By a titanic struggle with temptations
arising from the “fragment of that perilous stuff” in Him,
which struggle extended even to a fearful conflict in hell. He
finally presented this diseased and infirm body of His, now
Stewart, Temptation of Jesus, p. 227. See also Guericke (Stud. u.
Krit. II, p. 261) who makes room for a hereditary corruption, but only
in the slightest degree. This sinful incentive in Him was kept subordi-
nate by the divine principle until it was abolished by death.
Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ, p. 251.
55 Irving, The lncarnatio7i Opened, p. 188; v. Bruce, p. 256, op. cit.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
407
externally sinless, as a first-fruit of redemption, to the
Father. These several views proceed upon the wrong theory
of the relation of sin to sins, or of being to conduct, which
is based, in turn, upon misinterpretation of Rom. viii. 3
( €V OfLOUOfiaTL) ,
The docetic types of view veer off to the other extreme.
For Hilary, Jesus’ sufferings with “strong crying and tears”
were but an economic accommodation to the fiop<f>Tj SovXou
which He had assumed. These sufferings had to be mani-
fested in order to evince the supposed reality of His assumed
nature, or to evince the divine power, or as a gratuitous
conformity to the habits of ordinary men. Such a bloodless
shnulacruni He is likewise made out to be by the historic
Aphthartodoketists who made Jesus to suffer thirst and die
by special acts of the will.®’^
In place of Jesus’ being impeccably temptable as we shall
uphold, we have in these views a being on the one hand
untemptably impeccable — Jesus “repelled and dissipated the
assaults of the enemy like smoke,” says John of Damascus — ,
and so temptably peccable on the other, that it is nothing but
tour de force which prevents us ascribing to Jesus high
flown commission of sins — for “all sin , . . nestled in
Him.”
We have made above the deduction from theism, Scripture
and psychology that Jesus was impeccable. We are now
ready to put the question : was Jesus, on the basis not of these
two extreme types of theory, but of these innocent, natural
affections and infirmities of His, temptable? and the involved
question, if He was temptable, does this disannul His impec-
cability, which we have already established as Scripturally
axiomatic? and if not, how reconcile temptability and im-
peccability?
Vide Ullman, Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 125, note i.
Similar docetism is found in the Apocrypha, but inwrought with a
most fantastic speculation involving a weird and unrestrained use of
the supernatural.
4o8
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In opposition to our opening line of Scriptural proof for
impeccability we find the following apparently contradictory
statements. Jesus is called a “tried stone,”®® and in God’s
promises to Him that He will “not fail” there is the vague
implication of a possibility of failing. Though in Hebrews
the high-priest is called oo-to?, a/fa/co?, a/itan'o?, Kexo}picrfj,ei^o<:
aTTO T<ov dfiapT(o\(i)Vy he is also TreTreipta p,ivo<; Kara irdvra Kad'
opoLOT-qra. In Luke xxii. 28, 29 Jesus says that His disciples
had continued with Him in His temptations. This not only
assumes that Jesus had temptations, but that they were so
appreciably close to those of sinful disciples in identity that
they could suffer His and He theirs and gain the same
rewards.®® Again, Jesus was promised rewards*® which im-
plied that they must be attained in and through trial and
conflict. Twice Jesus was tempted so fiercely that He required
angelic sustentation. In the second instance — in Gethsemane
— though Jesus says “the Prince of this world cometh and
hath nothing in me,” yet we hear Him cry at the same
time, “now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say; Father,
save me from this hour.”®^ Finally, even the idea of reXeiWt?
implies within itself an antecedent imperfection of some kind.
These suggestive passages as they patently imply the
doctrine of temptability call forth treatment of two questions :
(i) \\’hat was the mode of temptation if it was
dpapTi'a^? ( 2 ) in what sense or what degree was the tempta-
tion KardvavTa like ours? For it is the chief objection raised
against the doctrine of impeccable temptation that such a
temptation cannot be equivalent to ours Kara Travra.
The concept first, of the mode of the temptation must be
dominated by the true etymology and thought-content of the
terms originally used by the inspired writers. They state
Is. xxviii. 16.
59 “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations;
and I appoint unto you a Kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto
me.’’
®9 Is. liii. 10-12, Pss. ii. and cx. Is. xlix. 7-9.
John xvi. 32.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
409
that, “then Jesus was led up” vy^^o), that is, by
rational deliberate consciousness of the divine purpose, and
in pursuance of the next momentous step in the divine plan,
all of which the significant word elra marks out.®^ Then
follows the phrase so misleadingly translated by the A. V.
and R. V., “to be tempted” {ireipaa-Oi^vat.) . The English word
“tempt” bears in its bosom all of those illicit suggestions of
“seduction,” “deception” and sinful allurement which are
only predicable of the experience of ignorant and sinful man,
but not of a sinless and omniscient*® God-man. The proper
translation is “put to proof, ”®^ or “test” just as Abraham
was “proved” by God in respect to his love, faith and
obedience in the sacrifice of his son,®® or, more specifically,
just as Israel whose attitude of humility,®® faith, and depend-
ence was “tested.” The purpose of Jehovah was to “know
what was in thy (Israel’s) heart,” viz. : to try their attitude:
it was His “chastening” of His Son Israel.®^
So far, then, from this being a seduction of Israel it was a
disciplinary and educative training; the same is true mutatis
mutandis, with Jesus. Jesus’ quotation from the Old Testa-
ment showed that He deliberately assimilated His position
and experience to that of Israel in the wilderness. The points
of analogy distinguishable are two : first, the “test” pertained
to the conception held by Israel of the relation of God to
the subject, and of the subject’s relation to God. Israel
Vide Trench, Studies in the Gospels, in loco.
For it seems necessary to allow full margin for the presupposition
that the ir«ipacr/xds was faced by Jesus with the foreknowledge of His
possession of the divine nature, which He at other similar crises exhib-
ited. The supposition is vital to the doctrine of impeccability.
®^ Vide Meyer, in loco. He properly makes the term depend upon the
context for its particular application, which context in this case is that
of Deut. viii. cited by Jesus, where the idea is “prove.”’ In Jas. i. 13 the
term 7r«pd^«v involves depravity of nature in the one tempted. This
is decided by the context just as clearly.
®® Gen. xxii.
66 Cf. “That he might humble thee.”
®^ Deut. viii. 5, “as a man chasteneth his son, so Jehovah thy God
chasteneth thee.”
410
THE PRIXCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
is repeatedly called Jehovah’s “son” who is “chastened”
(Deut. viii. 5) that he might “keep the commandments of
God” and be “humble.” This same filial relation of Jesus is
tested by Satan’s mocking play on the word “Son.” “If (note
the very hypothetical air) thou be the Son of God” is
repeated twice and is antiphonal to the allocution, “thou art
my beloved Son.” It plainly tests out our Lord’s conception
of this allocution as to whether that conception rang true,
and measured high enough.®* If He Zixus the Son of God, He
would faithfully manifest this in the strict humility, faith,
obedience®® and open-eyed submission, that He might live
out the length, breadth, depth and height of that creaturely
dependence which He had determined in the counsels of
eternity to assume.
Hence the second point of analogy is the test not of the
filial conception but of the filial spirit involved in this con-
ception.'^® If He were the Son of God he would restrain
immediate use of His supernatural power, which Satan
consequently would taunt Him with not having. He would
turn away from outright apostasy from God as in the third
temptation. IMore positively. He would, for the joy that was
set before him — the joy of the exercise of Kingdom power
at “the right hand of the throne of God” — endure the cross‘d
despising the shame, and sit down at the right hand of the
The conception of the filial relation showed itself back at twelve
years of age in the nascent form, “I must be about my father’s business.”
^^v-rraKorjv ifuiOev Hebrew says. Rom. v. 20 makes obedience the
summ.ary characteristic of the Second Adam.
Jehovah’s purpose was to “prove thee to know what was in thy
heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or not” (Deut.
viii. 3), in the case of Israel.
The so-called “passive” temptations as opposed to the “positive”
ones in the wilderness. The latter solicited active and immediate use of
Kingdom power, while the former required patience in endurance of
afflictions, and delay of the use of the Kingdom power. This is only a
convenient and general distinction, however, for even in the Tra^ij/xara
we must consider that the moral strain upon a natural and innocent
propensity to immediate!}' exercise His divine power to escape suffering
was just as great. The tendency was just as positive.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD 4I I
throne of God.” And this spirit Jesus did undauntedly
maintain throughout all the “days of his flesh,” which were
a perennial temptation^^ in the sense of “test,” an unceasing
via crucis in which the tension between the use or non-use of
Kingdom power, the present or the future Kingdom-rule,
never relaxed. By evincing this spirit of submission and
restraint Jesus proved that His original conception of Son-
ship was the true one as opposed to that of Satan.
Returning more specifically to the original question, viz.,
the mode of the temptations, we can now more clearly
understand it. We now have a God-man who is “tested,”
not “tempted,” by God, and by Satan only as the agent of
God. The “testing” focusses upon the concept and spirit of
His relationship to God. The transferring of the attention
from the devil as the dominating personality with the sinister
associations of a possibility of a collapse resulting from his
finding vulnerable contacts in Jesus’ nature (all implied in
the infelicitous translation “tempt”) to God as “testing” the
attitude of an already approved’’® Son, through the subject
instrumentality of Satan — this transfer gives the key to the
matter. It not only secures the fact that God, Himself airei-
pacrfio’i'’* and not allowing us to be tempted above that we
are able, will not suffer His “test” to overcome Jesus; but it
presupposes that the test in the divine purpose will not be di-
rected to the tSiat iTrcOvfjLiac, nor even necessarily to the sinless
infirmities primarily,^® but to the highest nature of the
^2 This is despite the statement that Satan left him “for a time,”
which is falsely interpreted as a very long period (an Italian MS.
inserts ad usque passionis based on the fact that Jesus predicts Satan’s
coming a second time, “Now the Prince of this world cometh,” John
xiv.) and the fact that there are two times only when it is recorded that
“angels came and ministered unto him.”
Viz., at the time of the Baptism.
Jas. i. 13.
^5 These infirmities were secondary causes that entered in and made
more acute the “test” of the higher nature, as the gnawing hunger made
more exigent the necessity of exercising divine Messianic power, yet the
terminating point was always in the higher sphere as witnessed by the
fact that twice Satan explicitly attacked here, i.e., “If thou be the Son
412
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
God-man and to the most characteristic element in that
nature, the power and right of Messianic rule. Further, we
may find a basis in this highest nature for temptability
afiapria<i in the fact that the object presented is per se de-
tached from sin, or neutral, i.e., the exercise of Messianic
power. As regal power was a most natural and inherent
function of Jesus’ pre-existent and exalted mode of being,
the thought of its present exercise could enter into Jesus’
mind without in that act itself contaminating it. It would
only become sin when the thought was actually carried out.
This is not the idea of “worldly Messiahship” that A. B.
Bruce proposes,^® for this would involve Jesus in the lust of a
vaulting ambition. Stated otherwise, the principle of the first
three and ultimately of all “tests” was the innocent desire of
Jesus to usher in the spiritual kingdom and power immedi-
ately instead of patiently delaying it till His appointed time —
a desire made more intense by the contrasting weaknesses,
sorrows and afflictions of the humiliation.
According to this view we may conceive a “temptation”
so dynamically real that it not only transcends our power of
conception, but enables us to get a suggestion of the sense in
which Kara rrdvra rreTreipaafievof; should be taken. Certainly
the quality and the intensity of the regal “joy that was set
before him” and of the “enduring the cross and despising
the shame,” and of the tremendous conflict of these two
of God.” The secondary provoking causes or the sinless infirmities varied
in number and quality and intensity throughout His life, but always
the true concept of Sonship involving the restraint of Messianic power
remained as constituting the ultimate point of possible weakness, if the
term is permissible. This is strikingly seen in the fact that Jesus betrayed
His consciousness of the point of Satan’s attack by shifting the attention
of Satan from the higher nature and its divine prerogative to the human
nature by Old Testament quotations concerning the necessity of crea-
turely humility and dependence.
’'® “So Jesus was tempted to choose the path of the worldly Messiah-
ship.” “Two ways were set before His view, the way of popularity, and
the way of the cross,” (p. 265, op. cit.). This Jewish Messiahship was
connected with such earthly and sensual notions that its very presence
in Jesus’ thoughts would betray His sinfulness.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
413
extremes when placed side by side in Jesus’ actual experience,
is beyond our power to enter into. Jesus’ moral character
must in this way be vindicated regarding its sinlessness.
But the next question is, can the temptation of a sinless
character be real? or if so, like ours “in all points’’ ? Tempta-
tion dfxapTia^ is SO alien to our plane of ethical exper-
ience that modesty in face of what is essentially unknown
prevents us from forming any dogma as to the quality and
degree of the resemblance of the two planes of experience.
We must rest content with the fact of this 6/j,oc(op,a, recogniz-
ing that it is, in some inscrutable sense, and not reasoning
too far into just what it is. How a sinless being can be
tempted from without, by means of a neutral thought-
object, intensified by the duress of sinless infirmities and
passions, in such a wise as to produce no wavering, no conflict
of concupiscent impulses, no harassing debate and qualms of
conscience — and how such a “test” can be equivalent Kara
irdvra to our temptations, is difficult to comprehend. We
illegitimately tend to assimilate our sin-colored and sin-
dominated experiences to this mystery the instant we attempt
to psychologize into it. We possess no sinless human nature
to be “tested,” and we do not share in the divine nature. Any
attempt, therefore, to homologize the experiences would be
impossible. The safer procedure is to leave the widest margin
for any and every dissimilarity as opposed to similarity as
we envisage this but partially known mystery.^^
We venture then, only to make some suggestions drawn
from the analogy of human experience.
First, in view of the form of Jesus’ temptation, as above
stated, being different from ours, we must say that Dr. Bruce
gives his case away when he attempts to explain the onotdofia
It is a matter of balancing over against each other the weight to be
relatively assigned to kuO' o/xotoTj^ra and Kara rravra on the one hand and
Xd)/3t5 d/xa/OTias on the other. It is evident that the importance of the
latter phrase cannot be sacrificed in any circumstance. Therefore the
former phrases must not be taken literally as Ullman and others tend
to do.
414
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
by the principle that the “same temptations may arise from
different causes.” The analogy holds good respecting the
possibility of “different causes” operating — for our above
conclusions postulate this. But it gives the case away when
it comes to the point of the analogy intended, the similarity
of the temptation. He transforms the similarity fairly into
an identity of temptation by deliberately assuming that these
are the “same temptations.” The homicide of the malicious
Joab, and that resulting from the religious “Aberglaube” of
the Hindu mother flinging her child into the Ganges River,
though diversely motived are identical in the essence of the
act, and both proceed from sin-perverted hearts: they are
“the same temptation” in that the external act in both cases
is per se sinful, however different in praiseworthiness the
causes may be. From this analogy we could only conclude
that Jesus was solicited to the same evil acts as we, only His
motive would be higher. It must be considered that the
qualitative disparity of the causes or motives is so great as
to require not the same, but a different order of temptations
in our case and that of Jesus.
To begin with the lowest element, the natural physical
infirmities, temptations arising from these may be far fiercer
than those arising from sinful proclivities, e.g., the pampered
appetite of an epicure compared with the ravenous hunger
of a famished man, or the craving of an intemperate palate
for wine, with the natural thirst of the parched traveller in
the desert. Jesus’ hunger after the forty days and His thirst,
may conceivably have been still more acute because of the
immeasurable contrast of this demeaning physical weakness
with the pleroma of his Messianic power and glory. The
physical pain of the crucifixion is itself, regardless of the
accompanying soul-anguish, the height of human suffering:
and when we add to this the horror of death, no greater
strain could be put upon human instinct to resist it all. The
psychical infirmities of “sorrow unto death,” weeping, and
the Gethsemane grief over the infidelity of His followers
and unrequited love shown to men, and the final awful
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD 415
sense of dereliction on the cross, together with the dread
apprehensions that arose from Jesus’ foreknowledge (for the
forebodings of suffering are often worse than the sufferings
in themselves), and finally all those physical and spiritual
sufferings in their concentrated form on the cross where the
dread of death still further intensified them, — all these con-
stitute a curriculum of temptation of immeasurable power
and poignancy and one incomparably more intense than ours.
In addition to these circumstances we must consider the
fact that because Jesus was impregnable in holiness, Satan’s
assault was correspondingly the fiercer; as W. G. T. Shedd
puts it, a heavier piece of ordnance will be brought up
against Gibraltar than against a packet-boat. In fact the
actual power of the temptation would seem to increase in
proportion to the degree of Jesus’ impregnability and im-
peccability. The most vital and vulnerable points in Jesus are
tried, e.g.. His conception and spirit of Sonship.
Still further, the more steadfastly the temptations were
resisted the more acute became the conflict. Bad men whose
natures are steeped in the habits of sin feel no temptation, no
struggle : for they offer no resistance. Like attracts like. An
external presentation or solicitation is but the signal for
immediate and automatic moral capitulation. The man of
integrity who resists, is the man who endures struggle and
suffers poignant spiritual conflict. Now Christ “resisted unto
blood, striving against sin, and offered up prayers and sup-
plications with strong crying and tears unto him that was
able to save him from death.” But His people “have not so
resisted.”^® The more the resistance, the more the perfection ;
the more the perfection the more there is to lose by a fall : the
more there is to lose, the greater the tension of the conflict.
Satan increases the power of his assaults pari passu with the
moral hardihood developed by the will resistance of the one
tempted.
A further consideration of the holy constitution of Jesus,
Heb. X. 4, V. 7.
4I6 the PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
viz: His spiritual sensitiveness, will afford another line of
approach/®
An innately innocent and holy man must experience none
of the attraction and all of the repulsiveness of sin. He has
a nature more sensitive and delicate to which objectively
presented sin is painful and offensive, causing instinctive
recoil and revulsion. Many virtuous persons have been known
to break into tears at the mere proposal of a wrong act. The
vile sinner more deeply and intimately acquainted with sin’s
corruption has become so calloused morally, and so seared
in conscience that the presentation of sinful alternatives
produces no such inner recoil : it has become so naturalized
in his being that even though he sees and strives for the
transcendent ideal of perfection, and even though he hates
sin in his best moments, yet in his unconscious and unvigilant
moments, and even in his entire subconscious life, he is
relapsing toward or compromising with it and indulging in
it. It is not an alien enemy. His hatred of it is not instinctive
and spontaneous.
If the attractiveness of sin becomes increasingly repul-
siveness and inspires a constitutional sensitiveness to its
presentation as we proceed from the more sinful individual
to the more holy, we may safely assume at the level of the
perfectly sinless being that not only does the attraction de-
crease and the sensitive repulsion increase, but that the
attraction passes totally over into repulsion ; and further that
the intensity of this feeling of repulsion and sensitiveness
infinitely increases. In a perfectly sinless being, the mere
objective presentation to mind, the mere presence of sin, must
be incomprehensively painful. Why was Jesus so exhausted
that He had to be ministered unto by angels after His initial
temptation? It was very”^ conceivably the fact that there in
Bengel well puts it: "Quomodo autem sine peccato, tentatus, com-
pati potest tentatus cum peccato. In intellectu, multo acrius aninia
Salvator percepit imagines tcntantes, quam nos infirmi; in voluntate,
tani celeriter incursum eariun retudit, quam ignis aquae guttulam sibi
objectam.”
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
417
the unbroken silence and solitude of the wilderness Christ
came into the immediate presence of, as well as into the most
painful and harassing face to face encounter with, this un-
hallowed power and personality. The term used
by Mark plainly indicates that Jesus’ very entrance into the
wilderness was not entirely sua sponte, but probably with an
instinctive premonitory recoil and inner shrinking such that
the Holy Spirit must needs not only lead, but more directly
“drive” Him. The instinctive recognition of the approach of
the Holy One of Israel by the demon shows how acutely
spiritually sensitive of the mere presence of the Spirit of
Holiness he was. That Jesus’ spirit was equally sensitive
of the devil’s presence follows by converse reasoning. In
anticipation of the return of the presence of His mortal
enemy, Jesus says®^ “the prince of this world cometh and
hath nothing in me.” He loathed all contact with and proxim-
ity to this harrowing personality. If we could receive some
more intelligible insight into, or intimation of this poignancy
of Jesus’ feeling and the intensity of His spiritual sensitive-
ness and pain beyond our childlike analogical reasoning, we
might apprehend how the Kara irdvra held true, if not in
precise extension, at least in intension and concentration.
Finally, we must realize that the focus of the temptation
during the whole earthly via criicis was not specifically upon
the physical or psychical infirmities of the human nature in
themselves but upon the higher divine nature, for Satan
chooses the strongest and most characteristic point for his
assault. Jesus’ conception of Sonship, and its implications
and its requirements upon Him (as already descrilied) was
the ultimate battle-ground : and the physical-psychical suffer-
ings and trials were only subordinate factors that sharpened
and rendered poignant the real issue of whether He should
now exercise His legitimate Kingdom-power which the deep-
est currents of His divine being favored, or whether He
8® “The Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.”
John xiv. 30.
4i8
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
would patiently postpone it. We can believe that even had He
had no provocative sufferings, there would have been a real
temptation in this respect. Hence in whatever respects Jesus’
temptation is like ours, it is unfathomably different from,
and above ours at this point.
The conclusion remains that the ireTreipaa iievo<; Kara irdina
cannot be taken literally. While there are certain principles in
common to the two planes of experience such as the strict
maintenance of the religious attitude of creaturely faith,
dependence, and obedience, despite suffering and sorrow, yet
the fact of the divine nature and all it implies makes the
temptations tower infinitely above ours; and the fact of these
all being in quality a/tapria? transfigures them into a
mystery and gives them an unsearchable significance. We
can allow a qualitative similarity only in respect to the part
played by sinless infirmities. We can allow a similarity in
intensity only in the sense that we experience part of the
intensity of his “trial.” His were not only more intense per se,
but their magnitude becomes inconceivably greater when we
consider that He successfully resisted them all. A successfully
“tested” man will receive infinitely more intense and even
qualitatively different temptations than the fallen man. It
serves the purpose of the divine mission and priestly office
that Jesus was thus tempted more severely than we even
though in extent it was not “in all points” as we are tempted.
It will be easily recognized from these considerations that
though the term Kara rravra cannot be taken literally, at least
in terms of quality, yet the intensity of the trial was so
transcendingly great as to stop the mouth of any who should
rise up and say that the temptations of Jesus were not real.
A serious and extended discussion, beyond the determina-
tion of these limits, of the question of the abstract possibility
of sinning is futile. For as Archbishop Trench well says,
“This question would never have been so much as started
except in a Nestorian severance of the Lord into two persons,
and thus in the contemplation of a human person in Him as
at some moment existent apart from the divine.” And “when
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
419
we ascribe to Him two natures, but these at no time other
than united in the one person of the Son of God, the whole
question falls to the ground. And such is the church’s faith.”®*
The solution of the question, therefore, depends upon our
perfectly realizing and powerfully welding this intimate bond
of union, as is decreed as early as Chalcedon®* by the word
aBiapeTO)'} over against the Nestorians, by Peter Lombard®'^
and by our Westminster Confession — “two whole perfect and
distinct natures, the Godhead and Manhood were inseparably
joined together in one person.” Bishop Martensen too is to be
numbered among the prophets when he says that the non
posse peccare obtains “in virtue of the indissoluble union of
the human and divine natures in Him ; a bond which might
indeed be strained and shaken to the greatest apparent tension
and contrast of the two natures, but which never would be
broken.”®® It was because of the very strength of the bond
and of the divine nature that Jesus was subjected to a severer
strain than we.
Positing such a personal bond it follows that the resources
of infinite knowledge and power are at the immediate disposal
of the God-man : and that the resistibility to temptation is
to be measured, not by the weakest, but by the strongest
resources of the total complex person. A following of the
events in Jesus’ earthly life shows how the infinite resources
of power and knowledge do govern and impenetrate the
humanity of Jesus especially in exigent situations or crises.
*2 Studies in the Gospels, p. 27.
*2 Also the Athanasian creed, without any heretical provocation, says
“One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person,
for as the reasonable soul and flesh are one man, so God and man are one
Christ.” Jesus is God and man (i) aTpcVroDs, as opposed to the Arians,
(2) aKtpia-Tiof, as opposed to the Apollinarians, (3) acrvy\vT(t><: , as
opposed to the Eutychians, and (4) dSiapcTous, as opposed to the
Nestorians. These are the keywords of the four councils.
Peter Lombard’s statement is of more value as being explicitly
directed to the non posse peccare controversy; “Non est ambiguum,
anima illam entem unitam verbo peccare non posse, et eandem, si esset
et non unita verbo, posse peccari.” {Lih. Sent. III:i2).
Christian Dogmatics, p. 285.
420
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
It is to be asserted then that the impeccability of the Thean-
thropos is to be gauged in the whole curriculum of temptation
by the divine energy and intelligence.
The inadequate types of theories on this point are as fol-
lows : ( I ) the humanitarian and the kenotic theories which,
ex hypothesi, advocate full peccability; (2) Adoptianism;
(3) the Nestorian views which tend toward abscission of the
two natures and their vital bond. This is the type of view
that originated the whole historical discussion centering in
the person of Abelard (4) the finiteness view ; “Limitation
is no physical evil, and imperfection no moral wrong, but
they involve possible error in thought and sin in action”
again, “whatever is less than infinite is temptable and pec-
cable: Christ was less than infinite: therefore His humanity
might have been overthrown”;®** (5) the development view,
peculiar to Schaff, posits a progress from a relative (posse
non peccare) to absolute (non posse peccare) sinlessness.
This view posits such an initial indeterminism of the will
in the imperfect stages, that it is impossible to safeguard
Jesus’ actual sinlessness, in which case the projxDsed “absolute
impeccability” could never be attained: (6) The theory of
voluntas in aeqnilihrio. This is the most commonly held basis
for the denial of the impeccability, and it was also the basis
on which the first historical denial of the non posse peccare
rested and it in fact underlies every such theory. Abelard,
assuming that free will to sin or not to sin is the true charac-
teristic of the individual, asserts the posse non peccare when
the matter is considered “in abstracto.” But when the matter
is considered “in concreto” Abelard concludes that Jesus
“nullo modo posse peccare.” To this Anselm replied, “Christ
could have sinned had He willed to : but He did not, and He
could not will to. Such a will would have stood in contradic-
tion to His holiness.”
For refutation of the objection that the non posse peccare
Neander, Dogmengeschichte, p. 98.
A. M. Fairbairn, Expository Times, 111:323.
Ecce Deus, p. 56.
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD
421
invalidates the reality of the temptation, we simply refer
to what has been said regarding the “mode” of Jesus’
temptation and the 6/jLoi(a/j,a Kara irawa . This is as far as
we can go in the direction of analysis of the possibility of
sinning. There is at most only a severe strain or tension
placed on the bond of union of the two natures; if there be
any remote possibility of breaking, it “serves only as a dark
and obscure background to show forth His perfect holi-
ness.”®*
Princeton. F. D. Jenkins.
Martensen, op. cit. p. 285.
THE EVANGELICAL FAITH AND THE
HOLY SPIRIT
We have in the title above two facts and their correlation.
The one fact is a great body of truth, living and life-giving;
the other is a divine agent. The correlation is intimate, vital,
organic.
By the evangelical faith is meant the system of Christian
belief, which, centering in the redemptive entrance of Jesus
Christ into the life of a world sunk in sin and despair, bases
itself on the historic transactions in this earthly career which
took place on Calvary and in the Garden of Joseph. “Crucified
for our sins and raised for our justification.” These are the
culminating steps in that redemptive ministry of our Lord
which is the very heart of the evangelical faith. They neces-
sarily imply antecedent and subsequent forces, and processes
which are infinite in meaning and importance. It is not so
much that there were a death and a resurrection, for these
there might have been without any redemptive power or
results. The fact which elevates the death which took place on
the cross and the resurrection which occurred in the garden
into a gospel of salvation is that it was God the Son who died
and rose again and that He died and rose with the express
intention of thereby restoring a race of sinners to the favor
of an infinitely holy God. The emptying of Himself which
was involved in His incarnation and sacrificial death, the
reexaltation which came to Him when He rose triumphantly
from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Majesty
on High, and the as yet unfulfilled determination to return in
glory to consummate His Kingdom — all are involved in the
fact and meaning of the death and resurrection which stand
at the center of the evangelical faith. Jesus Christ, the Eternal
Son of the Father; conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the
Virgin Mary ; suffering under Pontius Pilate ; crucified, dead
and buried; descending into Hades; rising again from the
dead on the third day; ascending into Heaven; seated at the
right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall
FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
423
come to judge the quick and the dead — this is the glorious
catena of redemptive facts that forms the Christian faith.
But this does not exhaust all that is included in this historic
faith of “the Holy Church throughout all the world.” There
are included as concomitant facts these two among many
others, viz., the fact of the record of the preparation, execu-
tion, and processes of working of this redemptive ministry on
the part of Jesus Christ in a divinely infallible, authoritative
and final form in the Sacred Word, and the fact of the
divinely revealed and applied glory and power of this redemp-
tive work of Christ by the Holy Spirit to all believers so that
it becomes effectual to their complete salvation forever. It is
justification by faith in the vicarious atonement of Jesus
Christ as it is authoritatively set forth in the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments and effectually brought into contact
with the heart of the believer by divine agency that constitutes
the “good news” of the Christian religion.
Having tarried to specify what is connoted by the evan-
gelical faith, let us turn to the consideration of the correlation
between it and the Holy Spirit. And in doing this let us first
incjuire as to what the Holy Spirit owes to the evangelical
faith, and, second, as to what the evangelical faith owes to the
Holy Spirit.
When we come to think of what the Holy Spirit owes to
the evangelical faith we recognize at once that the debt is a
relative one, in that all that the evangelical faith has to give
to the Holy Spirit it first received from Him. Nevertheless,
for the purposes of our thinking, it is profitable to remark this
relative debt. And the debt is incurred in the recognition and
proclamation which the evangelical faith gives to the Spirit
and His work. It is the great creeds of evangelical Christian-
ity which solemnly chant the sublime declaration, “I believe in
the Holy Ghost.” The teachers, preachers, and writers who
have all along exalted the Holy Spirit to His proper place are
the evangelicals. A Kuyper among the theologians and a
Spurgeon among the heralds have led the way where the
unnumbered hosts of the Church Catholic have bowed in
424 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
humble adoration and dependence before God the Spirit, and
have recited His wonderful works to the children of men.
The recital is drawn primarily from the self-revelation
which the Spirit gave through holy men of old whom He
moved by mighty dynamic impulse to pen the words of Holy
Writ. We say primarily, advisedly, for while every other
recital is to be tested by this Holy Depository of the Word,
there is nevertheless a secondary source from which a living
witness arises to the blessed operations of the Spirit, viz. the
the experience of the believer. New chapters are being daily
added to the Acts in the transformations of character wrought
through grace, the wondrous answers which come to earnest,
believing prayer, and the sacrificial service rendered by men
and women who have been saved through Christ and who
gladly spend themselves in turn for their Saviour, subordi-
nate chapters they are, derivatively authoritative, yet genuine.
In the self-revelatory recital of the being, offices and works
of the Holy Spirit, we find as a cardinal feature His person-
ality. Our Lord, the supremely authoritative spokesman of
God, the Word, the Incarnate Message from the Father to
man, pours into the New Testament depository of evangelical
truth the oft reiterated personal pronouns and verbs that fix
beyond all debate His recognition of the Spirit as essentially
personal in nature. They are the pronouns and verbs that be-
long only to personality, that is, to an entity which thinks,
feels, judges and purposes. Intelligence, sentiency, judgment,
volition — these are the qualities which mark the life of the
Spirit as the Son of God knows Him. We must never confuse
personality with corporealty. The former has a priority in
time, power and importance which may amount to complete
independence, certainly to determinativeness in relation to
the latter.
But not only is the Spirit believed in as personal, the third
Person of the blessed Trinity, and exercising all His hallowed
and hallowing ministries as we shall see later; He is also
accorded a place of equality with the Father and the Son, “the
same in substance, equal in power and glory.” And it comes to
FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
425
pass necessarily that He is accepted as indispensable both to
the perfection of the Godhead and to the whole redemptive
work in behalf of men. Joseph Cook in one of his great
lectures points out the fact that no two of the Persons of the
Godhead are God without the third. Thus for our thinking
now the Father and the Son are not God without the Spirit.
But it is the evangelical faith blazing and burning, like the
bush in the wilderness, on every page of the Sacred Word,
that reflects the Spirit thus in His full-orbed glory as “very
God of very God.” And for this reflection the Spirit is rela-
tively indebted to the evangelical faith in and out of the New
Testament.
But let us pass now to the far more profound and important
question of what the evangelical faith owes to the Holy Spirit.
Here we are face to face with an absolute debt. The Spirit
performs a threefold ministry for the evangelical faith.
First there is the ministry of provision. It was the Holy
Spirit who gave us our redemptive gospel. The mystery of
divine cooperation within the Holy Trinity in the work of
redemption must of necessity forever transcend the compre-
hension of the finite mind. But the infinite mind of the Spirit
Himself has thrown out fragmentary statements by which we
may steer our course in seeking to learn somewhat of the
mighty working within the Godhead whereby we sinful men
have been redeemed. And those statements, preserved for
us in the sacred writings which the Spirit inspired, make it
clear that He the Spirit was an indispensable agent in pro-
viding that redemption. There is an emphasis in the working
of the Trinity by which the Father stands out conspicuously
in creation, the Son in redemption and the Spirit in regenera-
tion and sanctification. But it is only an emphasis. There is
cooperation everywhere. The Son and the Spirit collaborate
with the Father in creation, the Father and the Spirit with the
Son in redemption and the Father and the Son with the Spirit
in regeneration and sanctification. The pages of Scripture
abound with this emphasis and cooperation. And so it is that
while the Son stands forth as “the Lamb of God that taketh
426
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
away the sin of the world” and will forever be worshipped as
Redeemer, yet the Holy Spirit may truly be said to have
provided us with the evangelical faith.
In the first place the mystery of the incarnation of our
Lord was accomplished through the power and activity of
the Holy Spirit : “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and
the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the
holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.”
The significance of that “wherefore” may well hold us in
perpetual wonderment and adoration. It binds as with a divine
rivet the deity of our Lord with His conception by the Holy
Spirit. “And in Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who was conceived
by the Holy Ghost” — run the majestic words of the venerable
creed of Christianity which has stood through many centuries
like some storm-beaten lighthouse on the rocky shores of
time throwing its beneficient beams of light out across the
dark waters of mystery and error. Could the incarnation have
been effected without the intervention of the Spirit? We may
not know, but this we know that it was not. And God chooses
the best way. But we must never forget that we owe our
divine-human Christ, of the seed of Abraham, son of David,
sympathetic and faithful High-Priest, to the mighty genera-
tive ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Then we are told again by the Spirit that Christ’s mighty
works were somehow dependent on the fact that the Spirit
had been poured out on Him without measure. Another
sublime mystery of great light! We may well bow and wor-
ship before it. But this much stands out clearly before us and
that is that our Christ would not have been what He was had
it not been for that immeasurable outpouring. It simply means
all through the life of Christ Jesus our Lord that He was not
God without both the Father and the Spirit, as we have before
remarked. And so all the wonderful words He spoke in
parable and sermon and interview issued somehow from that
effusion of the Spirit, and all His wonderful works of healing
and raising the dead likewise, and all His mighty influence in
the world until this day !
FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
427
And then at last when that precious life had been laid down
on the Cross, and the cry “It is finished” had fallen from the
parched and dying lips, and the lifeless body had been tenderly
laid away in the tomb, there to rest until the resurrection at
the last day, as the disciples thought ; what power was it that
wrought the crowning miracle in all the miraculous life of
the Christ, who was Himself the Miracle of God, when He
was raised triumphant over death and the grave and thus
declared to be the Son of God with power? Was it not pre-
cisely the power of the Spirit which wrought without measure
in Him? Turn over the pages of the self-revelation of the
Spirit until you come to the eighth chapter of Romans and
you find there these stupendous words, “But if the Spirit of
him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he
that raised up Christ from the dead shall give life also to
your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
What does that mean? Just this — that the Holy Spirit is the
immediate minister of resurrection, operating under and
with the authority of the Father, and that both in believers
and also in their Saviour. What else can the sublime move-
ment of the utterance signify?
Well, we begin to realize our incalcuable debt to the Spirit
for our Redeemer and redemption. All that enters into our
evangelical faith has come to us through His divine co-
operative ministry of provision. Incarnation, enduement,
resurrection — all are effected through His instrumentality.
Following the ministry of provision let us note the ministry
of application, whereby the Spirit brings the redemptive work
of Christ into effectual contact with the mind and heart of
man.
At the very threshold of the Christian life stands an imper-
ative work of the Spirit. To Nicodemus our Lord declares
this work in biological terms : “Except a man be born of
water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of
God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which
is born of the Spirit is Spirit. ... So is everyone that is
born of the Spirit.” The Apostle states the same necessity in
428
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
different language, when he says that no one can call Jesus
Lord but by the Holy Spirit, and just before the Saviour
ascended to the Father, He told His disciples it would be
when they were empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit
upon them that they would be enabled to bear witness to Him.
It all comes to the same thing, viz., that there must be a
change supernaturally wrought in the life of man by the Holy
Spirit before he can appreciate and appropriate Jesus Christ
as his Saviour and Lord. Our Lord’s figure for this super-
natural work has passed into a word which must never be
allowed to become obsolete in the vocabulary of the Church —
a strong, vivid, comprehensive word — “regeneration.” And
regeneration, without which no man can even see the kingdom
of God, is the sole work of the Holy Spirit. No amount of
culture can ever be a substitute for this supernatural trans-
formation. There is no other door into a living fellowship
with Christ, and they who do not enter in at this door, but
climb up some other way, may gain an organizational connec-
tion with the kingdom, but never a real relationship therewith.
And it is doubtless the failure to enter in at the one true door
of regeneration that has brought into the ranks of Christ’s
disciples in every generation those who profess to know and
follow Him but whose works betray the emptiness of their
profession. The proud heart of the unregenerate may be
attracted to Christ by the originality and beauty of His
teachings or by the purity of His character, but it cannot be
melted into contrition until by the agency of the Holy Spirit
it bows in the dust before the Cross and cries with the
Publican in the temple “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
Alexander Whyte had a great sermon on “Knowing Christ
Evangelically” in which he pointed out that it is one thing to
know Him historically, or grammatically or exegetically or
theologically ; but that it is quite another thing to know Him
evangelically, when the heart is broken and contrite and cries
out to Him for cleansing and pardon.
Christ lays great stress on this applicatory ministry of the
Spirit in the life of the believer. In the Fourth Gospel we have
FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
429
explicit and extended teaching from Him on this aspect of
the Spirit’s work. After declaring that there were many things
which He had to say to them but for the reception of which
they were then unprepared, He outlines to them the continua-
tion work in this respect which would be carried on by the
Holy Spirit : “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth,
is come, he shall guide you into all the truth : for he shall not
speak from himself, but what things soever he shall hear,
these shall he speak : and he shall declare unto you the things
that are to come. He shall glorify me : for he shall take of
mine and shall declare it unto you.” This predictive utterance
of our Lord finds a higher and a lower fulfilment. The higher
in the inspired teachings and writings of the apostles which
are in part preserved for us in the books of the New Testa-
ment; and the lower in the lives of all believers as their
horizon of spiritual appreciation widens with every new
experience of the grace of God in Christ. This fulfilment
which belongs to the whole body of believers is wonderfully
set forth to the Corinthian Church by St. Paul in the second
chapter of his letter to them, in which, after declaring his
deliberate purpose to confine his preaching and teaching
among them to the evangelical limits of “J^sus Christ and
him crucified,” he goes on to show them how utterly impos-
sible it is for the natural man to appreciate this message of
redemption. The eyes, ears and heart of the unregenerate man
are unable to bring him into a knowledge of the things of
salvation which God has prepared through Christ crucified
for all who accept Him as their personal Saviour: “but,” he
adds, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” Then
he goes forward with the delineation of this revelatory work
of the Spirit, saying it has to do with the deep things of God.
And he makes it perfectly plain that “the deep things of God”
are the things that gather about the Cross of Christ. The
“Cross of Christ” is “foolishness” to the cultured Greek : “the
things of the Spirit” are “foolishness” to the natural man,
by which correlation and identification it becomes apparent
430
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
that “the things of the Spirit” are the things of Christ’s
redemptive ministry, the very things Christ predicted the
Spirit would declare to His followers.
And the utter dependence of men and women on the
applicatory work of the Spirit is as great in the twentieth cen-
tury as it was in the first. No one, no matter what his position
in society or in the educational world or even in the Church
may be, can, unaided, apprehend the divine glory that resides
in the Son of God as the Saviour of sinners. And the clamor-
ous denial of the things that enter into the glorious ministry
of substitutionary atonement, and the labored attempts to
substitute other plans of spiritual recovery may be traced, not
to new knowledge or progress in culture, but to the spiritual
blindness which is so emphatically declared by Christ and
His apostles to belong to the life that has not passed under
the gracious work of the Holy Spirit; and from whose eyes,
as from those of the unregenerated Saul of Tarsus, the
scales have not fallen. All such are blind leaders of the blind
who are doomed to fall into the miry ditch of error and
ultimate ruin and to lead their unwary followers with them
in their dismal apostasy.
There is one more ministry in addition to that of provision
and that of application which the Spirit performs in con-
nection with the evangelical faith. It is the ministry of pro-
pagation. Provision, application, propagation ! Pentecost with
its three thousand converts in one day stands forth as the first
great example of the Spirit’s propagational activity. Peter’s
sermon and every other human instrumentality brought into
operation were secondary influences. It was the supernatural
power of the Spirit acting through all these that accomplished
the results. The divine order was prayer, power, preaching,
conversion. And it has been the order ever since. But it is
tremendously significant that the message which was given
that day under the divine impulsion of the Spirit was the
evangelical message of Jesus Christ as Son of God, crucified
and risen from the dead, and able to save all who repent and
tum to Him in humble trust. Indeed it will be a most profitable
FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
431
Study to anyone to sketch through the Acts and see how uni-
formly the message of the Spirit-filled apostles was this same
message. If we start with Acts i. 8, “But ye shall receive
power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you : and ye shall
be my witnesses . . . and then follow these self-same men
through the record in the book we shall find them testifying
to nothing else than this, that the Crucified is the Son of God
and the only Saviour of sinners.
With this message they shook the powers of darkness and
turned great masses of men and women from lives of
selfishness and sin to God. Fascinating indeed is the story of
the conquest of the ancient heathen world by this Spirit-
inspired, Spirit-endued Gospel. It is a conquering message
just because it is God’s message and the Spirit works in and
through it. And He will work through no other. So that while
other gospels, so-called, may please the fancy of those who
have never been spiritually “conceived by the Holy Ghost,”
they work no transformations of character and bring not the
peace of God that passeth all understanding. God is not in
any other gospel. It follows necessarily that the conquering
churches have been, and are, and ever shall be, the great
evangelical churches whose leaders and people fall in adoring
worship before the Lamb of God as the redeemed do in
Heaven, and hasten, impelled by the Spirit, to publish the
glad tidings to the ends of the earth. A Spirit-filled church,
carrying the Spirit-given Gospel, moves “like a mighty
army,” for it is the Spirit’s agency for the propagation of
the evangel of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father and
the Saviour of the world.
Orange, N. J.
Harmon H. McQuilkin.
OLD testa:^ient emphases and
MODERN THOUGHT
Sometimes when the discussion of an important question
has disclosed the fact that there is sharp difference of opinion
between the disputants, a would-be peacemaker will remark
that the difference is really only a matter of emphasis, or
viewpoint, and that at heart both parties are in agreement.
But such a remark is indicative of a disposition to overlook
the vital importance of emphasis. A godless man need not be
an avowed atheist; he is godless if God is not in all his
thoughts. A selfish man may not dogmatically deny the rights
of others; it is enough to stamp him a selfish man, that he
puts the emphasis on self. And though the difference between
the godless and the godly, the egotist and the altruist, may
be called a matter of emphasis, the difference is not greatly
lessened thereby. A marked difference in emphasis may and
often does indicate a fundamental difference in character and
lead to an equally fundamental difference in aim and end.
What is true of life is equally true of language which is
the expression of life, the vehicle of communication between
man and man. Next to a correct knowledge of the meaning
of words and of the relation in which they stand to one
another in the normal sentence, there is nothing more im-
portant than the emphasis. A slight change in phrasing, a
delicate intonation, and hidden meanings are suggested,
which otherwise might pass unnoticed. “Speak the speech, I
pray you, as I pronounced it to you” — is a matter of utmost
importance if the meaning is to be correctly conveyed by the
living voice. It is this which makes the study of elocution
important. And the pains which are constantly taken to ex-
plain the written word and safe-guard its meaning — italics,
black-faced type, capitals and small capitals, the dash, the
exclamation point, the piling up of words and phrases — these
and other devices indicate how important it is to call atten-
tion to the emphasis.
There are two ways of securing emphasis: by the manner
of statement and by the repetition of the statement. Both
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
433
have their place and both can be used very effectively by the
accomplished stylist or orator to secure the end in view.
The Bible is a very emphatic book. It abounds in strong
statements and in emphatic rei>etitions. This is natural in
view of its nature and purpose. It is not an erudite theological
treatise in which truth is stated with cold, logical precision
and withdrawn from the masses by the abstruseness of its
statement. Its writers do not assume an attitude of philo-
sophic calm, of lofty indifference whether their message
receives a hearing or not. It is intended for all men and it
aims to make its wondrous message clear to all, so clear
that the wayfaring men though fools shall not err therein.
The Biblical writers leave us in no uncertainty as to the facts
and doctrines which they regard as important. They em-
phasize them by emphatic statement and by repetition. These
emphases are consequently of great intrinsic importance; and
they deserve very careful study for their own sake. But there
is an additional inducement to such a study which is especially
strong today. Certain of these emphatic repetitions have been
seized upon and exploited by the “higher critics” as proof of
the composite character and consequent unreliability of large
portions of the Old Testament. A clear understanding of
these repetitions and of the reasons for their presence in the
Scriptures cannot fail to have an important bearing upon
the validity of these conclusions. We shall, therefore, con-
sider the following three topics: (i) the nature of Old
Testament emphases; (2) the intrinsic importance of these
emphases with especial reference to contemporary thought;
and (3) the bearing of these emphases upon the conclusions
of the “higher criticism.”
Old Testament Emphases — Their Nature
A good illustration of Biblical emphasis is found in the
“watchman chapter” of Ezekiel (xxxiii. 1-20). Who can say
how many men and women have been sent out to the mission
field or into religious work at home because of its searching
challenge? It is full of emphatic repetition. The words
“warn” (8 times), “wicked” (8 times), “turn” (7 times).
434
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
“righteous (ness)” (8 times), “die” (9 times), “live” (7
times), sound through it like warning bells. It is also distin-
guished by emphatic statement; but this, as is frequently the
case, is not nearly so clear in the translation as in the original.
It is especially noticeable in vss. 7-9.^ In the AV they read
thus :
So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of
Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth ; and warn them
from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely
die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked
man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he
do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast
delivered thy soul.
The following rendering though not as smooth as the AV
will help to bring out the emphasis of the Hebrew original :
So thou, son of man, a watchman have 1 set thee unto the house of
Israel; and thou shalt hear at my mouth a word and thou shalt warn
them from me. When I say to the wicked, “Wicked man, dying thou
shalt die,” and thou speakest not to warn wicked man from his way, he,^
wicked man, in his iniquity, he shall die, but his blood from thy hand, I
will seek. But thou, if thou warn wicked man from his way, to turn
from it, and he turn not, he,^ in his iniquity, he shall die, but thou,- thy
soul thou has delivered.
A very effective way of securing emphasis in Hebrew is by
1 These words are a nearly exact repetition of iii. 17-19, which stand
in close relation to the call of the prophet. The closing words of the
chapter, “then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them”
which are an exact repetition of the words in ii. 5, make it clear that
chap, xxiii does not speak of any “new departure” in the life or duties of
the prophet : he was made a “watchman” for Israel, when he was called
to be a prophet.
2 In Hebrew as in Latin and Greek the subject of the finite verb when
a pronoun is omitted (as included in the verb) unless emphatic. In the
instances indicated above it is expressed. This together with the arrange-
ment of the words, the placing of the object before the verb, makes a
very strong emphasis. This emphatic use of the pronouns in Hebrew is
not unusual and it is very effective. Thus in Isa. liii. 4 it serves to throw
into bold relief the antithesis between the popular misconception of the
suffering Servant and the real meaning of His humiliation : “Surely, our
griefs he bore, and our sorrows he carried them ; while we reckoned
him plagued, smitten of God and afflicted.”
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
435
using the so-called compound nominal sentence, in which the
important word is emphasized by putting it at the beginning
of the sentence (the place of emphasis), its place in the sen-
tence being taken by a word of reference. Thus, “A river —
its streams make glad the city of God” (Ps. xlvi. 4) sets the
river which gladdens the heart of man with its unfailing,
fructifying supply of living water, in contrast with the
stormy, menacing and mysterious sea; “Man — ^his days are
as grass” (Ps. ciii. 15), compares the brevity of humun life
with the timelessness of the gracious purposes of God regard-
ing him; “Jerusalem — the mountains are round about her;
but the Lord is round about his people” (Ps. cxxv. 2) by con-
trasting the Lord as Israel’s refuge with Jerusalem’s mountain
barriers gives the believer an a fortiori reason for trusting in
Him at all times.®
It would be interesting and instructive to examine other
passages^ where the form of statement is emphatic. But in
our present study of Old Testament emphases we shall devote
ourselves more especially to the subject of emphatic repeti-
tions.
To be repetitious is a serious fault. It suggests paucity of
ideas and superficial thinking. For one to whom a primrose
by the river’s brim is a yellow primrose and “nothing more”
to talk much about yellow primroses would speedily become
monotonous. It would be mere tautology. The first mention
would exhaust the subject. But on the other hand it is most
frequently by repetition that important matters are stressed
and their true significance made plain. And a man’s mastery
of his subject is on no wise made more clear than by his
^ Cf. also, “The wise man — his eyes are in his head ; but the fool
walketh in darkness” (Eccles. ii. 14) ; “God — his way is perfect” (Ps.
xviii. 31) ; “The Rock — his way is perfect” (Deut. xxxii. 3) ; “Their
cattle and their substance and every beast of theirs — shall they not be
ours?” (Gen. xxxiv. 23) ; “And I — this is my covenant” (Isa. lix. 21) ;
“And these four children — God gave them knowledge” (Dan. i. 17) ;
“Ephraim — their glory shall fly away like a bird” (Hos. ix. ii) ; “while
the serpent — dust shall be its food” (Isa. Ixv. 25).
* An excellent New Testament example of the importance of emphasis
is found in Luke xxii. 33 where the stress upon the words “with thee”
is of prime importance for the correct understanding of the verse.
436 -he PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ability to discuss it in all its phases and relationships without
becoming repetitious. The poet to whom the
the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;
finds more food for thought, more subjects of discourse, in
the flower in the crannied wall which speaks to him of “what
God is and man is” than an unappreciative visitor would find
in the fabled garden of the Hesperides. Great themes are
inexhaustible; they are like a mountain view, full of wonder
and mystery and never twice exactly like. And the story that
can never be told through is monotonous only when told by
one v ho does not really know it, who has no growing, deep-
ening appreciation of it, or listened to by one who is indiffer-
ent to its meaning. It is because it contains such “wonderful
words of life” that those that know it best are hungering and
thirsting to hear it over and over again and ever beholding in
it new wonders and increasing light. The Bible is full of
repetitions, yet it is not repetitious. Repetition and emphasis
may be rendered necessary by the difficulty, or magnitude or
importance of the subject, or by the slowness or indifference
of the hearer.
That the Bible contains many repetitions is too obvious a
fact to require proof. This is most marked in the New Testa-
ment. We have four narratives of the life of Christ, all of
which cover the same ground in important particulars and
three of which have been described as “synoptic” because
their viewpoints are practically the same. We have four ac-
counts in the Gospels of the witness of John the Baptist, of
the feeding of the five thousand, of the triumphal entry,
passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. Nearly half of
the sections into which the Synoptic Gospels can be divided
are found in all three of these Gospels.® Especially note-
worthy is the fact that the three predictions of Jesus’ pas-
sion are recorded by all three of the Synoptists. There is
also common material in Gospels and Epistles. We have four
5 Angus-Green, Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible (p. 629), gives the
total number as 89 of u'hich 42 are common to all three. Of course there
is considerable variation between these sections in the different Gospels.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
437
accounts of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, four lists
of the Apostles. Furthermore a considerable part of the repe-
tition in the New Testament consists of citation from the Old
Testament.
The same tendency to repeat is found in the Old Testament
though it is not quite so marked. Broadly speaking we have
two histories of the Jewish people from David to the Exile.
These may be compared to the Synoptic and Johannine ac-
counts of the life of our Lord. Samuel-Kings is our chief
source of information regarding the Northern Kingdom, and
the Synoptic Gospels describe especially the Galilean ministry
of Jesus. Chronicles and John are on the other hand pre-
dominantly Judean. Furthermore in Chronicles the emphasis
is placed upon the religious cultus, it is the “priestly” history
as compared with Samuel-Kings. And in like manner John
is often contrasted with the Synoptics as the “spiritual”
gospel. Yet while there are marked differences,® there is
much material that is common to both’^ of these Old Testa-
ment histories.
But it is not only in these two great histories that repeti-
tions— either exact or with more or less difference in content
and phraseology — occur in the Old Testament. There are a
number of other passages in the Old Testament which occur
more than once. E.g., Ps. xviii.=2 Sam. xxii; i Chron. xvi.
8-33=Ps. cv. 1-15, xcvi. i-i3a; Ps. xiv.=Ps. liii; Ps. xl.
i3-i7=Ps. Ixx; Ps. cviii=lvii. 7-11, lx. 5-12; 2 Kgs. xviii.
13-XX. 19 (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii.)=Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix, except
that Hezekiah’s prayer is omitted; 2 Kgs. xxv. 1-21, 27-30=
Jer. lii. 4-27, 30 -34; Jer. x. i2-i6=Jer. li. 15-19;® 2 Chron.
xxxvi. 22, 23= Ezra i. 1-3 ; Isa. ii. 2-4=Micah iv. 1-3 ; Ezek.
® E.g. Chronicles is silent regarding Uriah, Tamar, Absalom (his
name occurs three times), Elijah (except for 2 Chron. xxi. 12) and
Elisha.
^ E.g. both record the bringing up of the ark, the promise to David,
the incident of the well at Bethlehem, David’s census, Solomon’s prayer
of dedication, the visit of the Queen of Sheba.
® Repetition is especially characteristic of Jeremiah, there being many
instances where a phrase, a verse or even several verses are repeated
(cf. Driver, Introduction, p. 276f).
43«
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
iii. I7-I9=xxxiii. 7-9; Ex. xx. 2-i7=Deut. v. 6-21; Ex.
xxv.-xxviii., xxx.-xxxi.=xxxv.-xxxix. ; Ex. xxix.=Lev.
viii.
Now what is the purpose of these numerous repetitions?
Several answers may be given to this question. First, the
repetition may be simply for the sake of convenience or com-
pleteness. Thus, the nine chapters of genealogical material
which stand at the beginning of Chronicles contain much
material which is found in the earlier books. In view of the
relative unimportance of Edom, we might perhaps have
expected that the genealogy of Esau would either be omitted
altogether or given much more concisely than it is. It is
indeed considerably condensed, no mention being made of
the different wives of Esau. But the list of the kings of Edom
(i Chron. i. 43-54) is almost an exact repetition of Gen.
xxxvi. 31-43.® Similarly the fact that three complete lists
of the Twelve Patriarchs (Gen. xxxv. 22b-29, xlvi. 6-27, Ex.
i. 1-5) and a partial list (Ex. vi. I4f) in addition to the
elaborate birth narratives (Gen. xxix. 32-xxx. 23, xxxv.
16-20) have already been given, does not lead to the omission
of the list in i Chron. ii. i, 2.^® The account in Chronicles is
obviously designed to be complete in itself
® The long list of the high priestly line given in vi. 3-14 might seem
to render unnecessary the long genealogy given in Ezra vii. 1-5. Ezra
might have described himself as the “son” (i.e. descendant) of that
Seraiah who was slain by Nebuchadnezzar (cf. the historical note re-
garding Jehozadak in i Chron. vi. 15). But the giving of even this
abbreviated list serves to tell the reader at once what a distinguished
family "Ezra the scribe” belonged to. It also lends weight to his mission.
Ezra was not merely the favorite of the Persian king; far more im-
portant than this, he was of the high priestly line of Israel.
There is even repetition in these chapters themselves. Not merely
is the list of Aaron’s sons, which is known from Gen. xlvi, ii. Ex. vi. 16,
Num. iii. 17, given in vi. i ; but it is also repeated in vi. 16, and we find
it again in xxiii. 6. Likewise the sons of Kohath are named in vi. 2 and
again in vi. 18. And further the first part of the list of high priests
given in vi. 4-15 is repeated in vs. 50-53. These repetitions would seem
to be primarily intended to simplify the genealogies as much as possible.
Yet we find on the other hand in v. 4 the name “Joel” following that of
Carmi ; and the reader is left to infer that he is a descendant of one of
the sons of Reuben mentioned in vs. 3.
This does not mean of course that it is equally full in all its parts.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
439
Secondly, it is to be noticed that while a tendency to repeat
is not peculiar to, it is yet markedly characteristic of, the
Hebrew mind. This shows itself in several ways. We observe
it in the tendency to repeat a word or phrase for emphasis or
to express the comparative or superlative.^' The most famil-
iar examples are the Trisagion, “Holy, holy, holy,”^^ and the
phrase “Holy of holies.”^^ Again, it is found in the custom
in giving an affirmative answer of repeating the important
word of the question or even the whole of it. E.g. “I will go”’^®
(Gen. xxiv. 58) ; “My son’s coat” (Gen. xxxvii. 33) ; “He
will come down” ( i Sam. xxiii. 1 1 ) ; “There is” ( Jer. xxxvii.
17) ; “It shall be unclean” (Hag. ii. 13).^®
The clearest evidence of this penchant for repetition is
found in the poetry in which balance or parallelism (parallel-
ismiis membrornm) is the outstanding characteristic. Thus,
in the words “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the
The bare mention of Joshua (vii. 27) is in marked contrast to the
elaborate lists which are given of the family of Caleb and shows clearly
that the interest of the writer centers in the Southern Kingdom. No
genealogies of Dan and Zebulun are given ; and Ephraim and Manasseh
are quite meagre as compared with Judah and Benjamin. The prominence
given to Levi shows the priestly emphasis.
The frequent appearance of the infinitive absolute with the finite
verb (e.g. “dying thou shalt die,” Gen. ii. 12; cf. the AV rendering
“thou shall surely die”) is one of the best illustrations of this tendency
to repeat. But we also find examples of the repetition of other words.
E.g. “full of slimepits” (Gen. xiv. 10) is in Hebrew “pits pits of slime”
(i.e., bitumen) ; cf. “and they gathered them together heaps heaps” (Ex.
viii. 14) ; “righteousness righteousness shalt thou follow” (Deut. xvi.
20) ; “by means of the prancing s prancings of his mighty ones” (Judges v.
22) ; “make this valley ditches ditches” (2 Kings iii. 16). Other examples
are Isa. xii. 2, xxvi. 3, 4, 5, xxxix. 19; Jer. iv. 19; Joel iii. 14. To be
noted are also the expressions: “exceedingly” (lit. “much, much,nt<D ntto)
and “because even because” (l^r^l found 93 times in the Old Testa-
ment). Two or more words are repeated in Pss. xciv. 3, xcvi. 13, cxv. 1 ;
Isa. xxvi. 15, xxvii. 5, xxviii. lof ; cf. Ps. xciii. 3.
Cf. Jer. xxii. 29 and Ezek. xxi. 32; also Jer. vii. 4 where “the temple
of the Lord” is repeated 3 times.
Cf. “song of songs,” “king of kings,” “a servant of servants,”
“Lord of lords.”
The person is, of course, changed when necessary.
Cf. I Sam. XXX. 8, 2 Sam. v. 19, 2 Kings ii. 5, viii. 10. For a similar
repetition in a negative reply cf. i Kings xviii. 18
440
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure; making wise the
simple” the same thought is repeated in somewhat different
form. In this way the two contrasted principles of repetition
(sameness) and variation (difference) are brought together;
and the task of blending them becomes a fine art in which the
skill of the poet finds ample scope for its exercise. It is most
frequently also in the poetry that the fondness for repetition
shows itself in the form of a refrain.
Thirdly, there is to be noted the evidential value of repeti-
tion. When we think of the tremendous significance of the
Resurrection, for a world whose history is so frequently
summed up for us in Scripture by those ominous words, “and
he died,” it is reassuring to read that the risen Christ appeared
unto His disciples during a period of forty days and was seen
of above five hundred brethren at once. And if he appeared so
often and to so many, four accounts of the resurrection are
not too many. They are a distinct aid to faith. We read in the
Old Testament how Gideon, although he had already been
given clear proof that God was with him, requested a sign
and then asked that the sign be repeated in a different way.
In the New Testament we read that Peter’s vision at Caesarea
was repeated three times. The purpose was clearly to make
assurance doubly sure.
Fourthly, there is the didactic or homiletic value of repeti-
tion. Why is the story of Paul’s conversion repeated three
times in Acts ? Certainly not to prove that Paul could tell the
story three times without contradicting himself. The object
is clearly to show how epoch-making was the Damascus
An excellent illustration of refrain-like repetition even in prose is
found in the phrase “Is it not (or, behold it is) written in the Chronicles
of the kings of Judah (or, in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of
Israel) ?” Over thirty times this phrase occurs in the Books of Kings. A
modern historian would prefer to explain his method in the preface, give
a bibliography of his authorities, and then refer to them in footnotes to
the text. Yet there is undoubtedly something impressive about the way
in which this ancient historian repeatedly appeals to his sources — Is it
not wTitten? Behold it is written! — as if challenging his reader to deny
that there is full documentary evidence for what he has written as well
as further evidence accessible to those that desire it.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
441
vision, what a revolutionary effect it had on Paul’s life, how
constantly present it was in his thinking, how central in his
preaching, how impossible it is to account for the Apostle
Paul without accepting his account of his conversion as the
explanation.
There is a definitely didactic purpose in the recurring ref-
erences in Kings to David’s example and the promises
which centred in his line (“he walked in the way of David
his father” — “but not as David his father” — “for David’s
sake”), and to the crime of Jeroboam the son of Nebat “who
caused Israel to sin.” Nearly twenty-five times the sin of
Jeroboam and its evil consequences; and as frequently the
piety of David or the “sure mercies” promised to him are
referred to and made a standard for estimating the lives of
the kings. And the repetition is impressive and stresses the
great lesson which the sacred historian would impress upon
his readers that obedience and blessing, disobedience and dis-
aster go hand in hand.
The necessity, yet at times futility, of repetition is plainly
taught in Isa. xxviii. 9-13 :
Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to under-
stand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from
the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept;
line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with
stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom
he said. This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest ; and
this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord
was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon
line, line upon line ; here a little, and there a little ; that they might go,
and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
And the urgency of it is suggested by the familiar phrase
of Jeremiah “rising up early and sending.”
Fifthly, repetition shows the high value attached to what
is repeated. This is illustrated with particular clearness by the
great number of quotations in the New Testament. One of
the greatest sermons ever preached was Peter’s sermon on
the day of Pentecost ; and it was a most effective sermon —
three thousand souls were converted. Yet when we read the
abstract of the sermon as contained in the Book of Acts, we
442
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
find that a large part of it, about half, consists of quotations
from Joel and the Psalms. Why did Luke give so much space
to quoting Old Testament passages, which any one could
look up for himself instead of telling us more of what Peter
himself had to say? Plainly the reason is that Peter’s sermon
was largely an argument from the Old Testament; Peter con-
sidered it important to rehearse exactly what the Old Testa-
ment said, and Luke makes this clear in his summary. Peter’s
attitude in this sennon is characteristic of the New Testament.
There are more than 250 quotations from the Old Testament
in the New, or about one on every page of the average size
New Testament. And it is worthy of note that in the great
argument of our Lord based on the noth Psalm not merely
is the argument given by all three Synoptists, but the quota-
tion appears in full in all three passages.^® This may be partly
for the sake of convenience, but it serves to show the high
esteem in which the New Testament writers held the Old
Testament.
In studying the emphases of Scripture we cannot do better
than begin with the first chapter of Genesis.
Genesis I.
As a study in emphasis by repetition the first chapter of
Genesis is of very great interest. It is often referred to as the
“creation story” — a modernist would say, “creation myth.”
It should rather be called the story of “God, the Creator,” for
the theme of the chapter is, God and His absolute monergism
in Creation.
God, the Creator. — Turn to this chapter in our English
version and what do we find ? “In the beginning God created
. . . and the Spirit of God moved . . . and God said . . .
and God saw . . . and God divided . . .,”etc. Thirty-two
On the other hand, the quotation from Ps. cxviii which is appar-
ently given in full in Matt. xxi. 42 and Mark xii. 10, ii is reduced from
two verses to one in Luke xx. 17. In the matter of quotation as in other
repetitions the Biblical writers clearly allowed themselves considerable
freedom.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
443
times^® in this chapter of thirty-one verses “God” is named
and almost always as subject;^® “God created” (3 times),
“God said” ( 10 times), “God saw” (7 times), “God divided”
(once)®^ “God called” (3 times), “God made” (3 times),
“God set” (once), “God blessed” ( twice ).^® What is the
great central thought of this chapter? Plainly it is the Divine
monergism in creation. God is the author of the universe and
all that it contains. That is the great outstanding fact. Not
hozv it was made, but zuho made it. Together with this there
is emphasized the fact of the Divine complacence in this crea-
tion. Seven times®® we are told of the satisfaction of the
Creator with His handiwork, “and God saw that it was good”
and the last time (vs. 31) this is especially stressed: “and
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was
very good.” Furthermore He twice pronounced a blessing
upon His creatures. Finally in the oft-repeated®* formula “and
there was evening and there was morning, (the) day ,”
whatever the exact meaning of the words, evening, morning
and day, we have clearly an example of emphatic repetition
as is shown by the fact that it finds its climax in the three-fold
reference to the seventh day. The creative week of God with
its six days of labor and its seventh day of rest was to be the
norm and pattern of man’s life upon the earth.
Fiat and Fulfilment. — While, as we have seen, the primary
emphasis is not on the method of creation but on the Creator,
there is one point which it is very important to notice because
as we shall see more fully later it is characteristic of many of
the repetitions of the Bible. The story is told in terms of fiat and
fulfilment. It might be summed up in the words of the psalm-
The word does not occur in vss. 13, 15, 19, 23, 30; but is found twice
in 4, 10, 21, 25, 27, 28.
20 Exceptions: “in the image of God” (vs. 27), “Spirit of God” (vs.
2) is only an exception in the sense that “God” is genitive, and not
nominative.
In vs. 7, the subject of “divided” is uncertain.
22 Cf. “the Spirit of God moved” (vs. 2) ; also “he called” (vs. 5),
“called he” (vs. 10), “created he” (vs. 27 bis).
23 Vss. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.
2« Vss. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31.
444
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ist ; “He spake and it was done ; he commanded and it stood
fast.” The first example of this is in vs. 3. And God said, “Let
there be light : and there was light.” And the work of each of
the creative days is stated in similar terms. There are eight
fiats (vss. 3a, 6, 9, II, i4f, 20, 24, 26),^^ all but one (vs.
9)‘® of which have a repetitive fulfilment (3b, 7, 12, i6f, 2if,
25, 27). And six times the words, “and it was so” are added,
as if to emphasize the fact that the purpose of God had been
fully realized.
Identity and Variety in Repetition. — The primary em-
phasis in the chapter is secured as we have seen by the fre-
quent recurrence of the word “God.” This is an example of
identical repetition. There are a number of other Divine
Names which might have been used to vary the language.
But thirty-two times the same word “God” (Elohim) appears
in this chapter. The eight fiats are likewise all introduced by
the same formula, “and God said” : and in the case of the
first and briefest of these creative words the language of the
fulfilment “and there was light” (TS Vi'l) follows as closely
as possible the exact form of the fiat, “let there be light” ( Ti''
"nx).\Ve notice also that in the seven verses which relate to
the sphere of organic life (not including man whose distinc-
tiveness is otherwise clearly stated) it is ten times laid down
as the law of life that reproduction is to be according to
“kind” And finally as we have seen the words “and
there was evening and there was morning, (the) day ”
constitute a kind of refrain, and serve to emphasize the idea of
the creative week and the sabbath rest. Identical repetition is
sometimes the most effective means of securing emphasis.
At the same time it is to be recognized that identical
repetition may become monotonous. Consequently we observe
in this chapter a ver}^ marked tendency to vary the language
25 The third day (vss. 9-13) and the sixth day (vss. 24-31) have two
fiats each.
2® In vs. 9 the repetitive fulfilment is replaced by the confirmatory
phrase “and it was so,” which elsewhere is only used to emphasize the
fulfilment..
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
445
of fiat and fulfilment more or less. And these variations are
of no little interest. The following may be noted :
1) The most obvious difference is that while in every case except the last
(vs. 26) the fiat is addressed to the creation either as commanded to
“be” (vss. 3, 6) or to “do” (vss. 9, ii, i4f, 20, 24, 26), the fulfilment
is usually (vss. 7, i6f, 21, 25, 27) described as an act of God.^’’ Thus,
vs. 20 says “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly,”
etc. ; but in vs. 21 we read “And God created great whales . . . which
the waters brought forth abundantly. This seems intended to further
emphasize the divine monergism, which is as we have seen the most
prominent teaching of the passage.
2) The language is different:
a) Different verbs are used —
(1) In vs. II the verb “bring forth” is (used only here) ; in
vs. 12 it is ttyini (a verb of common occurrence).
(2) In vs. 26 the verb is “make” (•Tki'TJ) ; in vs. 27 it is “create”
(N13'l).
b) Different persons are used ;
(1) For the subject: vs. 26 “let us make” (plur. verb) ; vs. 27 “and
God created” (sing, verb) : cf. “our image” (vs. 26) with
“his image” (vs. 27).
(2) For the object: the language of the fiat regarding the creature
may be repeated in connection with the fulfilment as a fiat
addressed directly to the creature. The “and let them have
dominion” etc. of vs. 26 is repeated in vs. 28 in the direct
command “Be fruitful . . . and have dominion . . .,” cf. vss.
20 and 22.
c) The definiteness of the language varies :
(1) It may be more definite: “luminaries” (vs. 14), but “the two
great luminaries” (vs. 16) ; “male and female” is added in
vs. 27.
(2) It may be less definite: “tree of fruit making fruit” (vs. ii),
“tree making fruit” (vs. 12).
d) The order of statement varies : cf. vs. 24 “. . . the living creature
after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth
(yiN IH'n) after his kind” with vs. 25 “. . . the beast of the earth
(yiKDD'n) after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every
creeping thing of the ground after his kind . . .”
e) The corroborative words “and it was so” stand after the fulfil-
ment in vss. 7 and 30, in vs. 9 they take its place; but in vss. ii, 15,
24 they come between fiat and fulfilment.
/) Different expressions are used :
(i) Vs. 26 “in our image after our likeness” (two different words) ;
vs. 27 “in his image, in the image of God” (one word repeated).
The exceptions are vss. 3b and 12.
446
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
(2) Vs. 28 changes the “every creeping thing that creepeth” of vs.
26 into “every living thing that creepeth.”2s
The reason for these variations is obvious. It is first of all
to avoid the monotony of sheer tautology. The emphasis due
to repetition is secured without the dull monotony of entire
sameness. And besides this the variation in the language of
fulfilment which at times condenses at times expands the
language of the fiat tends to fix the attention of the reader
upon it. Were it exactly the same we might be tempted to
skim or to skip the repetitions."®
Emphasis upon details. — A further method of securing
emphasis which appears to some extent in this chapter is by
the elaboration of details. Thus in vs. ii the characteristics
of vegetable life are described in some detail and these details
are repeated in vs. 12. In vss. 14-15 the reasons for the exist-
ence of the luminaries are given (notice the words “for signs
and for seasons and for days and years”) and are briefly
repeated in vss. 17, 18. And in the description of the work of
the fifth and sixth days the details are given still more fully.
Man’s dominion over the creature is made impressive by the
details which are given in vss. 26 and 28 and which involve
in large measure a repetition of the record of the fifth crea-
tive day.
Our brief study of Gen. i consequently points us to several
important principles of emphasis which are readily observable
elsewhere in Scripture: (i) that repetition is frequent in the
Bible ; (2) that it may be in the same or in different phrasing,
the tendency with extended repetitions being toward variety ;
2* Variations are also observable between other parts of the chapter:
“between the light and between the darkness” (vs. 4), “between waters
and (lit., to) waters” (vs. 6) ; “seeding (I’nta) a seed” (vs. ii) is Hiphil,
but in vs. 29 it is Kal (ynt); in vss. 26, 28, the marine life is summarized
as “fish,” a word which does not occur in vss. 20-22.
29 While the relation between these repetitions of the Bible and the
divisive theories of the critics will be discussed later, it may not be
amiss to call the attention of the reader to the fact that the variations
we have been considering occur in a document the unity of which is
not disputed by the critics and which is claimed by them to have a
distinctive and unmistakable stjde.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
447
(3) that repetition in terms of “fiat and fulfilment” is an
effective way of securing emphasis; (4) that emphasis may
also be produced by enumerating and especially by repeating
details.
Before passing to the discussion of the intrinsic im-
portance of such Biblical emphases as we have been consider-
ing, it will be well for us to look at some further examples.
Identity in Repetition.
The emphasis secured by the repetition of the same word
finds many illustrations in Scripture. The eight-fold “and he
died” of Gen. v. is an eloquent commentary on the warning
of ii. 17; and when we observe the fact that even in the case of
Noah, the hero of the Flood, the rule finally applies (ix. 29),
the exception (Enoch) becomes uniquely conspicuous. The
“covenant” is only referred to in a few places in Genesis;
yet in two of them the word occurs twenty times.®'’ The word
“holy” occurs so frequently in Leviticus, especially the last
ten chapters, that the latter part of the book has been called
the “Holiness Code” by the critics of the Wellhausen school.
The six mentions of “the Lord’s anointed” in i Sam. xxiv.
and xxvi. are clearly emphatic. The frequent or prominent
occurrence of the word “praise” in certain Psalms has caused
them to receive the name Hallel or Hallelujah Psalms. It finds
its climax in the 150th in which the word occurs twelve times,
an average of twice to a verse. And it will be recalled that the
Hebrew name for the Psalms is “Praises.”®’- “Vanity” occurs
thirty-two times, alone or in combination, in Ecclesiastes.
That the fourth book of the Law should have early received
the name “Numbers” is not remarkable when we realize that
the word “number” occurs nearly a hundred times in the first
four chapters.®® And this frequent repetition receives an
3® Seven times in ix. 1-17; thirteen times in chap. xvii.
In speaking of the fitness of the Hebrew title Dr. Sampey remarks;
“HjTOns of praise, though found in all parts of the Psalter, become far
more numerous in Books IV and V, as if the volume of praise would
gather itself up into a Hallelujah Chorus at the end.”
The noun (13DD, 19 times) is of a different root from the verfanpa
(69 times) ; but it is the usual noun for “number.”
448
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ominous meaning when it is declared that the statistics so
carefully recorded regarding the generation that came out of
Eg)-pt represent the number of those finally doomed to perish
for disobedience (cf. xiv. 29, xxvi. 63f) — numbered and
found wanting, like Belshazzar.
Sometimes the repetition of the same word or phrase pro-
duces a sjiecially strong impression. In Daniel iii. the nine
mentions of the image which Nebuchadnezzar has “set up”
are not accidental. So too the frequent occurrence of the title
“son of man” in Ezekiel (c. ninety times) is significant. But
one of the best examples is the “battle-axe” passage in Jere-
miah (li. 20-24). In vs. 20 we read “Thou are my battle-axe”
literally means “an instrument for breaking in pieces”) ;
and the identical phrase “and I will break in pieces” ((‘'n:;2il)
is then repeated nine times :
Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war : for with thee will I break
hi pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms ; .And with
thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider ; and with thee will I
break in pieces the chariot and his rider ; With thee also®® will I break in
pieces man and woman ; and with thee will 1 break in pieces old and
young ; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid ;
I will also break in pieces with thee the shepherd and his flock ; and with
thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen ; and
with thee will I break in pieces captains and rulers. And I will render
unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they
have done in Zion in your sight, saith the Lord.
Break! break! break! — the words sound like the stroke of
doom, the doom of a world and its inhabitants. Here the exact
phrase is repeated nine times and with most impressive re-
sults.
There are many examples of repetition where the words
repeated sound like, and in some cases are clearly intended to
be a refrain. E.g. “For three transgressions of . . . and
®® It is noteworthy that in the AV (not in the ARV), vss. 22 and 23
change the phrasing to “with thee also” or “I will also.” This was proba-
bly with a view to varying the monotony of this 9-fold identical repetition.
The change has no warrant in the Hebrew which clearly intends the
identical repetition to secure cumulative emphasis. The tense of the
verb (whether future or past) has occasioned commentators much
difficulty.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
449
for four,” etc., found eight times in Amos i-ii; “I am
Jehovah” found nearly fifty times in Lev. xvii-xxvi ; “For his
mercy endureth for ever,” repeated twenty-six times®* in Ps.
cxxxvi.®“
Perhaps the best example of strictly identical repetition is
to be found in Num. vii. In this long chapter of 89 verses the
complete list of the identical offerings of the twelve princes
of Israel is given each time in full. The formula used is the
following :
On the day, prince of the children of , X the son of Y : his
offering was one silver charger, the weight whereof was a hundred and
thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the
sanctuary; both of them were full of fine flour mingled with oil for a
meat offering: one spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense: one
young bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering:
one kid of the goats for a sin offering: and for a sacrifice of peace
offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first year :
this was the offering of X the son of Y.
Except for slight variations at the beginning of the first
two lists, the difference is only one of name and date. It is
to be noted further that the name of the offerer is given twice,
at the beginning and at the end of the list of his offerings;
and that at the end of the chapter (vss. 84-88) the totals of
the offerings are cast up. This might seem to be needless
repetition. To read the list once is a little tedious; and we
might argue that the account could have been greatly simpli-
fied by only giving the full list after the name of Nahshon the
son of Amminadab of the tribe of Judah and then adding:
“in like manner offered the eleven other princes of Israel,
each on his day.” But this repetition serves to emphasize two
important matters : the great significance of the altar in the
religion of Israel and the fact that all Israel through their
official representatives®® had a part and an equal part in its
Note also that in this psalm the words “O give thanks” are thrice
repeated at the beginning and appear again at the end; the eight times
repeated “to him” is also emphatic.
Other examples of such repetitions are: Ps. viii. i, 9; xlii, ii ; xliii.
5; xlvi. 7, ii; xlix. 12, 19; Ivi. 4, 10, ii; Ixxx. 3, 7, 19; cvii. 8, 15, 21, 31.
It is noteworthy that the names of these twelve princes appear
five times in Numbers (once in the lists given in chaps, i., ii. and x; and
450
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
dedication. To treat this passage as merely the supreme illus-
tration of that “particularity of detail” which is character-
istic of P, and as intended to stress the liberality of the heads
of the people,®^ is to overlook the significant fact that the
occasion was the dedication of the altar.
Variety in Repetition.
While at times the intention of the Biblical writer to secure
emphasis by identical repetition is so plain as to be unmis-
takable, the tendency to vary the form or phrasing of the
repetition more or less is very strong. Sometimes the change
is only very slight. Thus in Ezek. xiv. 12-20 the four-fold
refrain-like reference to Noah, Daniel, and Job, in vss. 14,
16, 18, 20, is never twice exactly the same, indeed the lan-
guage seems to be varied intentionally; yet the cumulative
emphasis is very strong. Similarly in Gen. xxiv. 34-48 which
is intended to be a resume of what has already taken place,
there is a certain variety of statement. The same is true of
Pharaoh’s dream (Gen. xli. 1-7, 17-24) and of Ezekiel’s
discussion of inherited guilt (xviii. 6-9, 15-17). In such
passages there is more of similarity than variety in the repe-
tition.
On the other hand the striving after variety, the effort to
avoid repeating the same word is sometimes quite marked:
e.g., “The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dis-
solved, the earth is moved exceedingly’’ (Isa. xxiv. 19)
“See I have this day set thee over the nations and over the
kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and
twice in chap. vii). On the other hand we have only one list of the 12
spies (Num. xiii). The object would seem to be to point out how care-
fully organized Israel was and how thoroughly representative were the
acts of their leaders.
3" Driver, Introduction, p. 61.
3® It should be noted how'ever that the AV in rendering this verse
overdoes the striving after variety w'hich is clearly apparent in the
original. The adverbs “utterly” “clean” and “exceedingly” all represent
in the Hebrew infinitives absolute which are added to their respective
verbs for the sake of emphasis. Furthermore the fact that the verbs are
all similar in form (Hithpoels or Hithpolels) shows a tendency to
uniformity which is not apparent in the English translation.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
451
to throw down, to build and to plant” (Jer. i. 10, cf. xviii.
yi). But it is hardly necessary to enlarge upon this tendency
to variety here. The following paragraphs will give us other
examples; and, as we have seen the outstanding feature of
Hebrew poetry, parallelism, illustrates it very clearly.
Fiat and Fulfilment.
We have seen that the narrative contained in Gen. i is
largely constructed in terms of fiat and fulfilment: God com-
mands and He fulfils. This is a very common literary form
in the Bible. It is natural that it should be so, since the great
theme of the Scriptures is “the wonderful works of God” for
the salvation of helpless, sin-cursed man. The fiat may be
a command or a prediction, a threat, a warning or a promise ;
the fulfilment is the natural sequel. It may be confined within
the limits of a single verse or it may cover many chapters.
We have seen it in parvo in Gen. i. 3 which is the first of a
series of eight examples : “And God said “Let there be light :
and there was light” — two words each in the Hebrew for
fiat and fulfilment. We have it in magno, we might even
say in maximo, in the account given in Ex. xxv-xl of the
building of the tabernacle. Ex. xxv-xxxi is the fiat, it
gives the “pattern” shown to Moses in the mount; xxxv-
xxxix is the fulfilment, it relates the carrying out of the
instructions. Similarly, the first half of xl records the com-
mand to set up the tabernacle ; the second part describes its
execution. Thus, xxv. 10-15 gives the instructions for making
the ark. These instructions are caried out in xxxvii. 1-5. In xl.
3 the command is given to place the ark of the testimony in
the tabernacle and cover it with the vail; the command is
carried out in vss. 20, 21, which also record the placing of
the testimony in the ark as commanded in xxv. 16. This may
seem like unnecessary repetition. But it serves to emphasize
the vitally important fact that the tabernacle and its equip-
ment were oi'dained of God and that Moses carried out the
instructions which he had received.
The examples just cited are characterized at times by
practical identity of phraseology; at other times there is
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
considerable variation in language, order and content.®® As we
have already seen in our study of Genesis i, the phrasing and
relative length may both vary considerably. The fulfilment
may contain details not included in the fiat. Thus, in Josh, xx,
the fulfilment (vss. 7-9) records the names of the cities of
refuge which were left undetermined in the fiat (vss. 2-6)
and condenses very greatly the statement as to the reason for
their appointment. The fulfilment may be of considerable
length as compared with the fiat. The command to fight with
Amalek (Ex. xvii. 9) is much shorter than the account of the
execution of the command (vss. 10-13). On the other hand
the fulfilment may do little more than certify to the execution
of the fiat. Thus, in 2 Sam. vii. 4-16 we have the long instruc-
tions to Nathan, phrased as a message addressed to David.
But vs. 17 tells us simply “according to all these words, and
according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak unto David.”
In Jer. xix. 14 we are allowed to infer the fulfilment of the
command to prophesy in Tophet from the words: “Then
came Jeremiah from Tophet whither the Lord had sent him to
prophesy.” In i Kings xix. 19-21 we have the record of only
a partial fulfilment of the command expressed in vss. 15-18.
In Ex. xvii. 15 we are allowed to assume that the command to
write the curse on Amalek in a book was duly carried out.
In I Kings xvii. 3-4 we have the divine command to Elijah
to go to Cherith and “hide” himself there, coupled with the
promise that the ravens will “sustain” him. In vs. 5-6 we are
told that he went and “dwelt” in the brook and that the ravens
“were bringing him bread and flesh in the morning and bread
and flesh in the evening;” in vs. 16 the exact phraseology of
vs. 14 regarding the meal and the oil is retained. In xxi.
20-22 the words which Elijah utters to Ahab are not at all
the same as those commanded in vs. 19.
The most obvious difference is that the execution of the instructions
given in xxix. 1-37 is not recorded in xxxv-xxxix, but in Lev. viii. This
is apparently due to the fact that they specially concern the priests. “In
the main, the narrative [xxxv-xl] is repeated verbatim from the instruc-
tions in chap, xxv-xxxi. with the simple substitution of past tenses for
future ; in two or three cases, however, a phrase is altered, and there are
also some instances of omission or abridgement’’ (Driver, Introd., p. 41).
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
453
It is hardly necessary to give many examples of a feature
of the Biblical style which is so obvious as the one we are
considering. But a few more may be cited. In Num. ii we
have the command relative to the order of march of the tribes
of Israel, in x. 14-27 its fulfilment. Three times we read of
the command to Moses to die outside the land of promise
(Num. xxvii. 12-14, Deut. iii. 27, xxxii. 48-52) and Deut.
xxxiv. 1-7 records its fulfilment. In Joshua the narratives
dealing with the crossingofthejordan, the fall of Jericho, the
sin of Achan ; in Kings the healing of Naaman, the lifting of
the siege of Samaria, the anointing of Jehu, the crowning of
Joash, the destruction of Sennacherib’s army — these and
other examples prove how constantly the Biblical writer is
concerned to tell his readers that the word of the Lord shall
surely come to pass. Particularly instructive examples of it
are : the flood, the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea. These
we shall later consider in detail.
EmpJiasis through the Elaboration of Details.
Jer. li. 2of has been cited above as a remarkable example of
identical repetition in that the words “and I will break in
pieces” occur nine times in it. It also illustrates this principle
of emphasis by the elaboration of details which is really a form
of variety in repetition:". . . nations . . . kingdoms . . . the
horse and his rider . . . the chariot and his rider . . . man
and woman . . . old and young . . . the young man and
the maid . . . the shepherd and his flock . . . the husband-
man and his yoke of oxen . . . captains and rulers. . .
The destruction is to be a comprehensive one; and the illus-
trative details which are given serve to impress this upon the
mind."“
In Isa. iii. i the fact that the Lord will deprive Jerusalem
and Judah of ez^ery conceivable help or support is expressed
by the words: “stay and staff, the whole stay of bread and
the whole stay of water.” The words, “stay” and “staff,”
Cf., e.g., Isa. xxiv. 2, Jer. viii. 1-3, xxv. 10, xxxii. 10, ii, Ps. cxv.
12, 13.
454
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
differ in the Hebrew only in gender, the one being masculine
the other feminine. Since the Semitic languages recognize
only two genders, to say “stay (masc) and stay (fern)” is
equivalent to saying, every possible support, and to emphasize
this still further a reference to bread and water is added,
since without them life cannot be sustained.
One of the most striking illustrations of this method of
securing emphasis is the detailed account of the dress of the
women of Jerusalem given us by Isaiah (iii. 16-24). it
shows an intimate knowledge of the fashions of the Jerusa-
lem of his day which would entitle him to be called the M.
Worth of antiquity, were it not that he speaks with the de-
nunciatory accents of an Elijah or John Baptist. Yet Isaiah
is clearly not concerned to. prove his expert knowledge of
feminine finer>\ His aim is to show how utterly worldly and
superficial the women of Jerusalem were ; and by enumerating
the details of their adornment, he indicates to us how momen-
tous these minor matters were in their
The repetitions which we have been considering are not
accidental ; they are in many instances clearly intended for
emphasis and are therefore deserving of careful attention.
They are important first of all because of their intrinsic value
as showing us what the sacred writers regarded as of especial
importance. We shall now pass on to consider some of these
emphases with especial reference to the popular religious
thinking of the day.
Old Testament Emphases — Their Intrinsic Value
God in the Old Testament .
\\t have seen that in the first chapter of Genesis the pri-
mary emphasis is on the Creator, God the First Cause, and
on the fact that the creation was by fiat. It is important to
Still more striking is the detailed picture which Ezekiel gives of
Tyre under the figure of a mighty ship (chap, xxvii.). The elaboration
of particulars serves of course to fill in the details of a very vivid picture.
But it also serves to emphasize the might of Tyre as the great trading
nation of antiquity. The detailed description is continued under a different
figure in xxviii. iif.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
455
notice that the emphasis of this chapter is the emphasis of
the Old Testament and of the Bible as a whole. Thirty-two
times the word “God” appears in the thirty-one verses of this
first chapter of the Bible; and we read of what God has com-
manded and what He has done. And ten thousand times^“ in
round numbers the Divine Name appears in the twenty-three
thousand verses of the Old Testament and again and again
we are told what God has decreed and what He has brought
and will yet bring to pass. What a testimony this is to the all-
important fact that the great pervasive theme of the Scrip-
tures is God, God in His relations to this universe which He
has created, and to man whom He has formed in His own
image! As in the first chapter of the opening book, so
throughout the sacred volume we find God speaking and
working, the central, commanding Figure in human history.
The emphasis which the Bible thus places on “God” is a
most impressive one, especially because of that tendency to
secularize human life which has been characteristic of man
ever since he hid himself from the presence of God among
the trees of the garden and which is the direct result of sin.
Consequently the aim of that divine redemption which is the
central theme of the Bible is to restore man to communion
with God, to restore the lost emphasis in man’s thought and
life. Nowhere, probably, is the contrast between the ideal and
the actual more marked than in the cultured paganism of
modern times. With all their tragic misconceptions of God,
many of the ethnic cults which we call heathen make the
reality and potency of superhuman powers and agencies very
Were we to add the number of times in which the pronouns are
used to refer to the Deity, the proportion would be greatly increased.
Needless to say the frequency varies very much in different parts
of the Old Testament. In Zechariah the average is once in a verse; in
Haggai it is as in Gen. i slightly greater. On the contrary one of the
stock objections to Esther has been that the name of God does not occur
in it. It is also absent from the Song of Songs unless it is to be found
in viii. 6 (cf. the elaborate discussion of “The Names of God in the Old
Testament” by Professor R. D. Wilson, in this Review (July, 1920), pp.
460 ff).
456 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
impressive to their devotees. The missionaries sometimes re-
mind the Christians of our Western world how really pagan
our conversation is as compared with that of the oriental,
who is constantly embellishing his sentences with such
phrases as “if God wills,” etc. We sometimes hesitate even
to spell Providence with a big “P,” lest we be regarded as
queer or pious. We keep our religion well covered up. We
thank God in church or in the closet for His care over us ;
and in public we speak of luck and chance and fortune like
the veriest pagan. But this tendency reaches its extreme in
the philosopher who like Comte has advanced beyond the
“religious stage,” in the unbelieving scientist who knows
only matter and motion and a law of continuity and will
explain everything in terms of naturalistic evolution, and in
the “red” socialist who is determined to own “no master
below and no master above.”
We realize how serious the situation is when we read such
a statement as the following, coming as it does from the pen
of one of the most eminent of living biologists;
Mankind is such a mongrel race, good and bad qualities are so mixed
in us, marriage is such a lottery, the distribution of the germinal units
to the different germ cells and the union of particular germ cells in
fertilization is so wholly a matter of chance, the influence of even bad
hereditary units on one another is so unpredictably good or bad as is
shown in many hybrids, even the minor influences of environment and
education which escape attention are so potent in development, that the
chances were infinity to one against any one of us, with all his individual
characteristics, ever coming into existence. If the Greeks or Romans
had known of the real infinity of chances through which every human
being is brought to the light of day not only would they have deified
Chance but they would have made her the mother of gods and men.'**
It is hardly necessary to jxjint out the vast difference between
such an attitude and that of the Psalmist when he sings of the
omniscience and omnipresence of God :
My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and
curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see
my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members
were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there
was none of them.
** Conklin, Heredity and Emdronment, ed. 5, p. 306.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
457
And that this latter conception is the truly Christian one is
proved by the fact that it is emphatically the viewpoint of
the Founder of Christianity, as is shown by His statements
in the Sermon on the Mount.
Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye
not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add
one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Con-
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do
they spin : And yet I say unto you. That even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass
of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
The evolutionist may assert that he recognizes God’s
creatorship and God’s guiding hand in the affairs of men.^*
And the theistic evolutionist may even claim that the vast-
ness of the evolutionary process as taught by modern science
has given him a much worthier and more adequate concep-
tion of God than he formerly had. But the great tendency
of the evolutionist is to think in terms of evolution and
eugenics, to accept a law of continuity, which leaves no room
for God and the supernatural,*® as both the explanation of
the past and the hope of the future, and to forget or deny that
God has made the world by His power and that He has re-
deemed it by His grace. Is there any conflict between science
and religion? Yes and No. Between a true science, which is
seeking at all times to read the thoughts of God after Him,
Professor Conklin assures us that he believes in God, that God is
back of the evolutionary process.
A most significant statement of this tendency and one which illus-
trates how readily it may become a dogma is the following; “Immense
gaps in our knowledge are immediately apparent when we inquire into
the origin of living organisms upon the earth, the beginnings of intelli-
gent behaviour, the origin of Vertebrates, the emergence of Man, and so
on. We know very little as yet in regard to the way in which any of the
‘big lifts’ in evolution have come about, and yet we believe in the con-
tinuity of the process. That is implied in our ideal conception of evolu-
tion, which we accept as a working hypothesis. It is not very easy to
say what it is that is continuous, but we mean in part that there is at no
stage any intrusion of extraneous factors” (J. Arthur Thomson, The
Wonder of Life, p. 639).
458 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and the Bible which is the word of God, there can be no real
conflict. The Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation
cannot contradict one another though finite wisdom may mis-
read the message of one or both of them. But the moment
the scientist centres his attention upon second causes, upon
the processes of nature, and ignores or rejects the First Cause
there is an irrepressible conflict. And the great task of the
Church in its conflict with science today is to restore that
lost emphasis which is so marked in Genesis : to exalt God,
the First Cause, in all things, in creation, in providence and
in redemption, to teach the wise of this world that “the fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
The fact that this secularizing of human life, this ignoring
of God, has been enjoying a quasi-scientific vindication, that
it is spoken of as the Greek, the Western, the rational, the
scientific, the modern viewpoint and contrasted with the Bib-
lical conception which is characterized as the Semitic, the
superstitious, the religious, the old-fashioned conception,
makes the task of restoring the Biblical emphasis in modern
thought and life a very arduous one. But what has made the
task of the Church particularly difficult is the fact that the
opposition of the world to God, to the recognition of His
primacy in human life, this tendency toward secularization,
has reached its climax in a persistent attempt to secularize
the Bible, to eliminate from it that which is most distinctive
of it, “God,” the Creator, Saviour and Sovereign, and make
it the history of human progress and achievement. One of the
most striking things about the books which are being written
by “modern” scholars dealing with the Old Testament is
the alarming degree to which sacred history is secularized
by them. Let us glance at a couple of illustrations.
A good example of the old-fashioned, or as it should rather
be called. Biblical conception is found in the story of Joseph.
The religious interpretation of the singular career of that
Jewish boy who became the viceroy of a great nation, is
given to us by Joseph himself in his words to his brethren
after the death of his father: “And Joseph said unto them.
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
459
Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye
thought evil against me ; but God meant it unto good, to bring
to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Gen. 1.
19). The emphasis is here placed most properly on the re-
ligious factor, the hand of God in human history. Yet this is
the way these words are secularized by the professor of Bibli-
cal Literature in one of the largest women’s colleges in
this country ; “ ‘Forgive ?,’ he said, ‘you were forgiven long
ago. It has all worked out for good.’ Here the religious
meaning of the statement is eliminated : “it” is substituted
for “God.” Yet the author of this volume does not hesitate to
assure the reader in his preface that “every statement in dia-
logue or narration is intended to reproduce the Hebrew text
or its implications.”
Let us look at another example. The government of Israel
before the days of Samuel is expressly described in the Old
Testament as a theocracy. It was Israel’s great distinction
that Jehovah was her king. Moses, Joshua and the Judges
were His representatives. He was the king of Israel. Yet this
is the way Gideon’s refusal to be made king is described in a
recent textbook: “On his return, when the men of his tribe
sought to make him king, with true democratic spirit he de-
clined, taking instead the earrings that his soldiers had
stripped from the slain — 1,700 shekels of gold (about seven-
ty pounds’ weight).”^® This is a “modem” way of putting it.
But do you recall what Gideon really said ? “And Gideon said
unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule
over you : the Lord shall rule over you.” This shows us
plainly what political party Gideon belonged to. He was an
old-fashioned theocrat, who with all the crudity of his faith
— and Gideon was far from an ideal figure — believed that
Jehovah was Israel’s king and that Israel was a theocracy.
These modern scholars see in him an early advocate of a
democratic form of government. But between theocra.t and
democrat there is a tremendous difference. And the nemesis
Irving F. Wood, The Heroes of Early Israel, p. 69.
Bailey and Kent, The Hebrew Commonwealth, p. 79.
460 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of modern democracy is that it has lost or is fast losing the
theocratic spirit, the recognition that all authority is of God,
without which neither democracy, nor monarchy is “safe
for the world.”
In the Bible the religious factor is constantly to the fore ;
and it is this religious “coloring” of history as they regard
it that the critics of the Bible object to most seriously. It is
largely because it is especially prominent in Chronicles that
the “critical” estimate of Chronicles is such a very low one.
\\’’ellhausen in commenting upon it in his Prolegomena re-
marks: “In the kingdom of Judah it is not a natural and
human, but a divine pragmatism that is operative.” He speaks
of the prophets as “setting before their hearers prosperity
and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern.” And
he adds with a sneer: “Of course their prophecies always
come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing
harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance.
Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfor-
tune occurs is guilt wanting.” It is a “natural and human”
history of Israel that the rationalistic critic of the Bible
wants, in short, a secularized Bible. The emphasis oh God
and His sovereign control over the affairs of men offends him
and he seeks to “rewrite” or “interpret” in terms of natural-
istic evolution what the Bible so clearly states in terms of
“God” and “fiat and fulfilment.”
Sin — the Fall and the Flood.
If a person reading the Bible for the first time should turn
directly from the first chapter of Genesis, with its highly
favorable conclusion : “And God saw everything that he had
made, and behold, it was very good,” to the fifth verse of the
sixth chapter: “And God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” he would
be impressed with the tremendous change which had come
over that world which God had pronounced “good.” Seek-
ing for an explanation, he would find it in the intervening
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
461
chapters, in the fall of man. He would read that man who
was made in the image of God, enjoyed communion with
God, and had the divine will made known to him, dis-
obeyed the will of God, became conscious of fear and shame,
was expelled from the garden, sent to toil in an unfriendly
world, a world cursed because of his sin, and that he was
made subject to death. He would also learn of a promise of
deliverance, the protevangel; yet he would see in the sin of
Cain and the revengeful spirit of Lamech evidence of the
rapid growth of sin; and he would realize also that the world
had become, or was certain to become, a vast cemetery — “and
he died.” He would then be measurably prepared to under-
stand the climax of which he had read in vi. 5.
As an illustration of emphasis the story of the flood is most
impressive. It begins, as we have seen, with one of the most
emphatic statements in the Bible :
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con-
tinually.
“God saw the wickedness of man, that it was great.” That is
a strong statement and a sweeping one : it speaks in generic
terms of man who was created in Gen. i. But it is only intro-
ductory to the far stronger declaration : “every imagination
(yeser) of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continu-
ally.” What a heaping up of words like Ossa on Pelion : every
— imagination — thoughts — heart — only evil — all the day !
God had “fashioned” (ydsar) man in His image. And now
man uses all his faculties, even his God-given creative imagi-
nation, only for evil, and that continually. What stronger
picture could be drawn of the absolute dominion of sin — uni-
versal, all-engrossing, all the time. In this verse and the three
which follow we have a brief summary of the flood, a kind of
miiltum in parvo, a statement of its raison d’etre. We read
of the universal sinfulness of man (vs. 5), of the divine dis-
pleasure and purpose to destroy all flesh (vss. 6, 7) and of the
remnant of grace (vs. 8). As we examine the story carefully
we find that the points which are emphasized are the ones
which are set forth in this summary.
462
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
1. The cause of the flood was the sinfulness of man. As
we have seen this is tremendously stressed in the opening
statement (vi. 5-8). There the fact of man’s sinfulness is not
only stated most emphatically; but it is further emphasized
by the three references to the Divine sorrow and anger which
stand in sharp contrast to the words of satisfaction repeated-
ly found in Gen. i, and also by the reference to Noah’s ac-
ceptance, which in vii. i is explained as due to the fact that he
was “righteous.” But as if this were not enough, in vss. 1 1-13
we have a further emphatic statement, that the earth was
corrupt (vs. ii), that God saw that it was corrupt (vs. 12),
that God told Noah that it was corrupt (vs. 13). Repetition
could hardly make it more clear that sin was the cause of the
flood.
2. The purpose of the flood was to destroy “all flesh.”
This is made very clear in several ways : (a) By the frequent
references to it (vi. 7, 13, 17, vii. 4, 21-23, viii. 21) which
are expressed in the most comprehensive terms, words being
used repeatedly which are clearly reminiscent of the creation.
As we have seen, the language of vi. 5-7 is comprehensive :
“man” had sinned (vs. 5), God repented “that he had made
man” (vs. 6), he declares, “I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth” (vs. 7) • ^.nd then the
animals are mentioned in similarly comprehensive terms
“beast and creeping things and fowls of the air,” all words
found in the account of Creation.^® And as if to make the
vastness of the destruction unmistakably plain, it is stated
three times over in vii. 21-23 that everything not in the
ark died. And then finally the matter is stated the other way
around: “and Noah only remained alive, and they that were
with him in the ark,” as if to check up on the preceding state-
ments and leave no question of doubt, (b) It appears also
A further reason for supposing that the language used here is
reminiscent of the Creation and therefore to be construed in terms of
the first chapter of Genesis is found in the fact that the phrase after
his (their) kind” which is used there ten times in the description of
plants and animals is here repeated seven times (three times in vi. 20
and four times in vii. 14).
OLD TESTAMENT EMPHASES
463
from the emphasis placed upon the extent and duration of
the flood. The rain was to continue “forty days and forty
nights” (vii. 4, 12, 17); the waters “prevailed” (vs. 18)
they “prevailed exceedingly” (vs. 19) ; “fifteen cubits up-
ward” they prevailed and “the mountains were covered”
(vs. 20) ; they prevailed “one hundred and fifty days” (vs.
24). Equally gigantic was the abatement. The waters abated
slozvly: “assuaged” (viii. i), “stopped,” “restrained” (vs.
2), “returned continually” (vs. 3), “abated” after one hun-
dred and fifty days, ark “rested” on Ararat (vs. 4) ; “de-
creased continually,” “tops of mountains seen” (vs. 5);
“abated” (vs. ii) ; “dried up,” “dry” (vs. 13) ; “dried” (vs.
14). Noah was more than a. year (vs. 14) in the ark!
3. The saving of a thoroughly representative remnant of
grace. In the introductory summary it is stated that “Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (vi. 8). In vss. 21-22 it
is made clear that Noah and his family and representative
animals are to be saved in the ark which Noah is commanded
to build. We might think that one reference to the animals
would suffice. But this is not the case. In connection with the
command to enter the ark (vii. 2-3), in the brief description
of the entrance (vss. 8, 9) and in the fuller description (vss.
13-16), in the command to leave the ark (viii. 16-17), and
in the execution of the command (vss. 18-19) — six times in
all the animals are referred to, and always with some detail.®”
Now what is the lesson of all this repetition? Clearly this,
that in the ark there was saved a thoroughly representative
remnant of “man” and “beast.” We read the terrific descrip-
tion of the destruction :
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of
the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl
of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only
remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
And then as if to make assurance doubly sure there are
added the words : “and the waters prevailed upon the earth
a hundred and fifty days.” We have the picture of a waste of
In vii. I Noah’s family is referred to simply as “all thy house’’;
the animals are never so briefly summarized.
464
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
waters, typifying the universal sway of death, death the pun-
ishment of sin. But upon the waters there floats an ark and in
that ark as we are six times assured there is a remnant of
grace. Grace is prominent in this story of punishment and
destruction. Outside the ark the death-dealing waters hold
undisputed sway. But there is safety in the ark and only
there: “extra arcam nulla salus” is the great lesson of the
Flood.
Now it is significant that the features which figure most
prominently in the Biblical account of the Flood and which
are most strongly emphasized are the very ones which are
most questionable in the eyes of the “modern” man. That
there was any such tragedy in human history as we describe
by the word “fall,” any such dislocation in man’s moral
nature as would account for or do justice to the tremendous
contrast between Gen. i. 31 and vi. 5; that the flood, if there
was a flood, had any ethical significance ; that the flood was
universal and all land animals and birds perished except those
saved in the ark — all these Biblical emphases are elements in
the story which are minimized or rejected as myth or legend.
Man has not fallen, he has developed and progressed; the
flood was a purely natural phenomenon with no ethical sig-
nificance; the flood was local and did not destroy all life —
such is the “modern” interpretation. Yet the Bible emphases
are there. They are plain and unmistakable. And the Bible
student should seek to do full justice to them, and not to ex-
plain them away.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
{To Be Continued)
NOTES AND NOTICES
“The Reformed Principle of Authority''’
This is the title of a recent book which deals with the all
important question of the seat of authority in religious knowl-
edge.^ The author, very properly, seeks to discuss the matter in
its fundamental and underlying principles and to keep this dis-
cussion to these principles by showing how mediating standpoints
are inconsistent. It is a vindication of the principle of external
authority against the subjective principle of Rationalism. To put
it more concretely, the author vindicates the Reformation prin-
ciple of the authority of Scripture over against Modernism
which he classes as a form of Rationalism. Mr. Hospers goes to
the bottom of the matter and perceives at once the issue when he
says that without external authority, without the Bible, we could
have natural religion because man is naturally religious, but we
could not have the redemptive religion of historical Christianity.
The attack on the objective side of redemption and the factual
basis of Christianity, when logically carried out, will leave us
with natural religion just because Christianity is the product of
an objective and authoritative Divine revelation in the Scripture,
and is the product neither of reason nor feeling.
We believe that Mr. Hospers is right on this point. Of course
Modernism so-called is of an infinite variety of types, and con-
sequently many mediating modernists will object at once to
being called rationalists, and their objection, no doubt, will be
based upon the fact that they appeal not to the human reason,
but to Christ and the experience of the “Saviourhood of Christ,”
as their authority in religion. This sounds plausible. Their
principle of authority is Christian feeling or the Christian con-
sciousness “refracted,” as Dr. Kuyper would put it, in the light
of modern knowledge. This goes back to Schleiermacher, the
father of modern theology. It is claimed that Schleiermacher’s
great work was to overcome Rationalism. It is true that he did
attempt to overcome the rationalism of his day. But it is also
true that the “Christian consciousness” gives no norms of truth,
but results from faith, a faith whose doctrinal content must be
derived either from the Word of God, or from that Word sub-
^ The Reformed Principle of Authority. By G. H. Hospers. Grand
Rapids : The Reformed Press. 1924. 8 vo. Pp. XVI, 245.
466
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
jected to the test of reason or the “modern consciousness.” This
latter method gives not a “pure” and unmixed principle of
authority, but an impure or mixed species of Rationalism. It
must also be stated that our author is not dealing with the
myriad forms of Modernism, especially not with its so-called
more “evangelical” types, but with its more logical and radical
expression which he derives largely from The Christian Century
where it finds its more consistent and radical expression. We
have not space to give examples of his many quotations, but if
any one will refer to them he will see that they subject the Bible
to reason, not simply in the sense that reason must judge the
evidences of Revelation, but that it must pass upon its content,
and this is Rationalism.
Dr. Kuyper insisted that a true theology, being the science
which deals with the knowledge of God, must rest upon an
objective revelation from God, and consequently that any
so-called theolog}^ which denies supernatural revelation is really
a “philosophy of religion,” and with this view The Christian
Century apparently would agree, because it calls itself “A
Journal of Religion.” Also Professor Kirsopp Lake in an ad-
dress before the Harvard Divinity School asserted that the term
“theology” presupposed a divine revelation which “we” (the
Unitarians) do not accept, and proposed the term “philosophy”
in its place.
Mr. Hospers rightly concludes that theology rests on revela-
tion, that Christianity as a redemptive religion depends on the
New Testament, and that the Scripture is the Reformation
principle of authority in religious knowledge.
In the following chapter he discusses the divine origin and
unique character of the Scripture. He takes the position of the
Reformers that the ground of belief in the divine origin of
Scripture is that it itself bears the marks of its divine origin
because God speaks to men in it, but that the natural man is
spiritually blind, and that the witness of the Holy Spirit is
necessary to produce in the heart the conviction of the divine
origin and authority of the Scripture. So far we agree with the
author, and although his statement of the nature of this witness
of the Spirit appears to us lacking in clearness of definition, we
agree with what he appears to maintain as to its nature. It is not
the revelation to the Christian of a proposition that the Scripture
NOTES AND NOTICES
467
is God’s Word. This is the misconception upon the basis of
which Strauss attacked this doctrine, though Mr. Hospers does
not refer to this attack. This conception of the witness of the
Spirit is a form of mysticism and this supposed revelation would
itself need to be validated and so we would be involved in a
regressus ad infinitum. Neither is the witness of the Spirit the
cause of the emergence in consciousness of an ungrounded con-
viction of the divine origin of the Scripture, because the regen-
erate heart sees the mark of divine authorship in the Bible. On
the other hand the witness of the Spirit is not to be reduced to
the argument for the divine origin of the Bible from Christian
experience. On this point the author might have been more
explicit. There is such an argument. It has been developed by
such theologians as Frank, Kdstlin, and Ihmels, and has been
identified with the witness of the Spirit by H. Cremer^ and by
Wiesinger.® Our author does not distinguish his view sharply
enough from the one to which we have alluded. But that he has
not fallen into this mistake is sufficiently clear from his idea
that the witness of the Spirit is a witness of God to the Chris-
tian, and not an inference from the witness of the Christian’s
heart to the Scripture. In speaking of it as a deep mysticism of
the heart, however, he might give rise to such a misconception
of the doctrine. It simply expresses the truth that in Regenera-
tion the Holy Spirit removes the spiritual blindness of the
natural man so that he apprehends the marks of God’s hand in
the Scripture. It is thus that the doctrine was developed by
Calvin and received full recognition by Ursinus, Piscator, Zan-
chias, Wollebius, Wendelin, Maresius, Maccovius, and Heideg-
ger.
But this conception of the nature of the witness of the Spirit
to the Bible necessarily determines two further questions con-
cerning which our author seems not to be entirely clear. These
questions are the object of this witness of the Spirit or to what
the Spirit witnesses and the relation of this witness of the Spirit
to the grounds of belief. Concerning the former point he seems
to include not only the divine origin of Scripture but also the
questions of Canonicity and Inspiration. Concerning the latter
point, he states and accepts Dr. Kuyper’s view of the Inspiration
2 Realency, f. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, vi. p 760.
3 Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, ix. pp. 778, 779.
468 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of Scripture, and then follows him in saying that we obtain
divine certainty because the Holy Spirit guarantees the truth of
the contents of the Bible and also produces assurance of its
truth in the heart. This, we think, confuses the question of the
divine origin and truth of Scripture with that of the nature of
Inspiration. We cannot agree with our author that the Bible
gives no data for a definite view of the nature of Inspiration.
We do agree with him that the truth of Scripture rests ultimately
on the fact that God speaks in it, and we agree that the Spirit
produces assurance as to this truth. But all this, we believe, con-
cerns the divine origin of Scripture, not the nature of Inspira-
tion or of the divine influence under which Scripture was
written. The latter is an exegetical question and is to be deter-
mined exegetically, just as any other Scriptural doctrine. When
it has thus been determined, we must then raise the question as
to our grounds of belief that the doctrine thus ascertained is
true. These grounds are, in a word, all grounds of belief in the
divine origin and truthfulness of Scripture. The witness of the
Spirit enables us to see their force and be convinced by them. It
is thus indispensable, but it does not include matters of exegesis.
The witness of the Spirit, then, is not to the inspiration of the
Bible, since this witness of the Spirit is not the revelation of a
truth to the mind or heart. An examination of the doctrine in the
old Reformed theologians we have cited will show that they did
not conceive the witness of the Spirit as a testimony to the in-
spiration of the Bible. It is true that Piscator used the term
deoTTvevaroq in speaking of that to which the Spirit bears wit-
ness ;■* but the passage shows that he did not refer to a doctrine of
Inspiration, but to the divine origin of the Scripture. In this he
agreed with the other theologians above referred to who con-
stantly spoke of the “divinity of Scripture” and said that this
shone forth from it like the rays from the sun.
Neither does the witness of the Spirit have reference to the
question of the Canon, as Mr. Hospers seems to imply in his
chapter on the divine origin of the Scripture. He objects to
American theologians reasoning from “historical criticism” and
asserts that this is going over to the “liberals” and to the principle
of rationalism. Here again we think there is some confusion of
the matter. Mr. Hospers is correct in his criticism of those who
* Explicat'w Aphor. Doct. Christ. Aph. vi, p. 94.
NOTES AND NOTICES
469
contend that this necessitates a change of view as to the author-
ity of Scripture. Any so-called historico-critical discussion which
does this must be predetermined by an anti-supernaturalistic
bias. On the other hand Mr. Hospers’ comment on a quotation
from B. Weiss’ Manual of Introduction to the New Testament
appears to us to go over to the enemy and land us in subjec-
tivity. He quotes Weiss’ statement to the effect that a judgment
on the Canon based on historical research is “dependent on the
doctrinal construction of the conception of the Canon, that is to
say, on the question whether such construction makes the crite-
rion of Canon to consist in that which is genuinely apostolic, or
in a wider sense memorials of apostolic times, attesting each in-
dividual writing before the tribunal of the religious conscious-
ness of the ancient Church or of the present.” And he adds “It
will be noticed that the last clause of this quotation virtually
recognizes the testimony of the Holy Spirit.” This is not the fact
at all. Mr. Hospers here gives adherence to the view that the
Church was inspired to select certain books as Canonical from a
mass of ancient literature. The Canon would, therefore, be an in-
spired collection of books instead of a collection of inspired
books with apostolic sanction. Also the testimony of the Spirit is
reduced to the witness of the consciousness of the Church. This
is a misconception both of the nature of Canonicity and of the
witness of the Spirit. As to the question of the Canon, we must
distinguish between the principle of Canonicity which is apostol-
icity or apostolic sanction, and the question what books come
under this principle. The latter is an historical question, and is to
be determined by asking what books were imposed by the apostles
upon the infant Church to be its rule of faith. This latter ques-
tion can be determined by actual New Testament evidence in
some cases, and in others by asking what books were thus re-
ceived by the Church. But their canonicity does not depend on
the fact that they were received. On the contrary this fact war-
rants the inference that these books had apostolic sanction. Mr.
Hospers seems to accept the subjective view that the Christian
consciousness of the Church is the test of the Canon.
Moreover the witness of the Spirit, not being a mystical
communication of knowledge, does not inform the Christian
what books had apostolic sanction. Of course Mr. Hospers
realizes this ; it is specifically for a mystical view of Canonicity
470 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
that he is arguing as against rationalism as he supposes. But the
appeal from historical and objective considerations to either
the Christian consciousness or to the testimony of the Spirit
in this matter is not only vain ; it has been used in the interests
of a rationalistic and subjective view of the Canon. It is true
that the old Protestant theologians did sometimes speak as if
the Holy Spirit bore witness to the Canonicity of the books of
Scripture, as does also the Galilean Confession (Art. 4),
and the Belgic Confession (Art. 6), which our author cites,
not however the Westminster Confession (Chap, i. Sec. 5)
which is also cited. In regard to the latter it is the “infallible
truth” and “divine authority” of Scripture which is explicitly
stated to be the object of the Spirit’s testimony. As regards
some statements of the Reformers and the Galilean and Belgic
Confessions, two things should be noted. First, this is not their
prevalent way of stating the matter. They almost invariably
conceive of the witness of the Spirit as being to the “divinity,”
i.e., to the divine origin of Scripture. Secondly, when they em-
ploy the terms Canon and Canonicity, they use them in a twofold
sense to denote both the idea of the extent of the Canon, and
the idea of the divine origin and authority of Scripture. And
when they speak of Canonicity as the object of the witness of
the Spirit, it is the latter idea to which they usually refer. This
is true of Quenstedt the Lutheran theologian and of the old
Reformed theologians. Calivn has been supposed to have taught
that the Spirit testified concerning what books are canonical,
but this supposition rests upon a misapprehension. Reuss® and
Pannier® have misapprehended Calvin on this point, owing to
their misunderstanding of two passages from Calvin, as Dr. B.
B. Warfield clearly showed. In the Institutes (I, 7, i), attack-
ing the Romish idea that the Scripture has only such weight as
the Church gives it, Calvin says, “For thus dealing with the
Holy Spirit as a mere laughing stock, they ask, who shall give
us confidence that these (Scriptures) have come from God —
who assure us that they have reached our time safe and intact —
who persuade us that one book should be received reverently,
another expunged from the number — if the Church should not
® History of the Canon, Chapter 16.
® Le Temoinage du Saint Esprit, p. 252.
7 This Review, viii. pp. 283fT.
NOTES AND NOTICES
471
prescribe a certain rule for all these things. It depends, there-
fore, they say, on the Church, both what reverence is due
Scripture, and what books should be inscribed in her catalogue.”
Thus the Romanists argued that the Church assures us of the
contents and even the integrity of Scripture. But Calvin does
not say that we are assured of the Canon by the Holy Spirit. He
says that the Romish view is wrong, but does not imply that the
witness of the Spirit assures us of all that the Church pretends
to determine. This is made clear from the concluding sentences
of this section where Calvin asks what will be the condition “of
those wretched consciences seeking assurance of eternal life”
if the claims of the Romish Church are valid. Evidently he is
speaking of the “assurance of faith,” not of canonicity, though
he does deny that the latter rests on the witness of the Church.
The following section (§4) also bears this out. Since the Church
is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles,”
this prophetic and apostolic doctrine “has preceded” the for-
mation of the Church. Hence Rome is wrong in contending that
“the power of judging of the Scriptures belongs to the Church,
so as to make the certainty of it dependent on the Church’s will.”
It is evidently certitude as to the divine origin of the Bible of
which he is speaking. This is put beyond doubt by his conclud-
ing sentence of this section when he says of the original, to ask
how we can be “persuaded” of the “divine original” of Scrip-
ture without resort to the decree of the Church, is “just as if
any one should inquire. How shall we learn to distinguish light
from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? For the
Scripture exhibits as clear evidence of its truth, as white and
black things do of their colour, or sweet and bitter things of
their taste.” Evidently he is speaking, not of Canonicity, but of
the marks of divinity in the Bible, and of the Christian’s assur-
ance of them.
The other passage is in the Confession of La Rochelle, and
does apparently attribute to the witness of the Spirit the deter-
mination of what books are Canonical. But this article was not
written by Calvin ; it was added to a draft of his which did not
contain this idea. Calvin’s whole discussion shows that he takes
the Scripture as a whole, conceives it as given on historical
grounds, and conceives that the Spirit witnesses to its divine
origin.
472 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The other point concerning the doctrine of the witness of the
Spirit in respect to which we differ with the author concerns
the relation of this witness to the grounds of belief. He appar-
ently regards it as a “proof” of and ground of belief in the
divine origin of the Bible. Here again, it is true, he might appeal
to one statement of Calvin (I, 8, 13) where, after enumerating
reasonable “proofs” for the divine origin of Scripture, he
speaks of the witness of the Spirit as “that first and principal
proof.” But this is a mere mode of speech. He devotes this
entire chapter to setting forth reasonable grounds of belief in
the divine origin of Scripture, and his idea as expressed at the
close is that these proofs though numerous and objectively
valid, will not be convincing to the sinner apart from the wit-
ness of the Holy Spirit in removing the spiritual blindness from
his heart.
We are following Calvin, then, when we regard the witness
of the Spirit as the removal of the spiritual blindness due to the
effects of sin and hence as giving the spiritual discernment nec-
essary for one’s being convinced by the grounds of belief. These
grounds of belief, it is true, were regarded by the Reformers as
within the Bible. But these internal evidences of its divine
origin are the grounds of belief, and the witness of the Spirit
simply enables us to apprehend them and appreciate their force.
If this is so then we may extend these grounds of belief in the
existence of God, the divine origin of Scripture, and the super-
natural origin of Christianity, so as to include the rational
grounds of theistic belief and the historical evidences of the
supernatural origin of Christianity and the divine origin of
Scripture. In a word the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit
does not dispense with the necessity for philosophical and
historical Apologetics. The author’s view is that of Drs. Kuyper
and Bavinck. The latter is discussing the “certitude of faith.”®
His argument is that Christian certitude does not spring from
Christian experience but that the latter springs from the former
which is the product of a faith due to the work of the Spirit.
Also rational and historical arguments cannot produce true
faith. With all this we agree heartily. But because arguments
cannot produce the conviction of a Christian, it does not follow
that rational and historical grounds of faith can be dispensed
* Cf. Zckerheid des Geloofs pp. 63ff.
NOTES AND NOTICES
473
with. Dr. Kuyper worked these principles out fully in his
Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgelecrdheid? It is a profound
discussion. The unregenerate and the regenerate form two
classes, distinct in kind and hence totally separate in their in-
tellectual processes and results. The one class is thinking under
the obscuring effects of sin, the other class under the illumina-
tion of the Spirit. Hence no arguments for the science of the
regenerate can be regarded as universally valid. Apologetics is
for the benefit of the Christian and for the purpose of defend-
ing Christian faith, not for grounding it.
But we do not think that the Reformed doctrine of the wit-
ness of the Spirit implies this attitude to the arguments for the
divine origin of Christianity and the Bible. It is true that saving
faith cannot be produced by arguments, nor even by the revela-
tion of God in Christ, because faith and unbelief depend on the
condition of the heart. The source of faith is the Spirit of God
working in the heart. But faith is not blind trust, and reasonable
grounds may underlie saving faith. Without grounds valid at
least for the subject of faith, it cannot arise. The grounds of
belief and even of Christian certitude ought to be universally
valid ones, since the trouble is not in these grounds, but in the
blindness of the sinful heart. Furthermore the subjective condi-
tion of these two classes of men is not absolute. In the unregener-
ate no faculty of the soul has been destroyed and some religious
sense has been preserved by Common Grace. In the regenerate
the blinding effects of sin have not been removed altogether and
' all at once. This does not imply that there is any passage from
one class to the other except by Regeneration. We are fundament-
ally at one with Mr. Hospers and Dr. Kuyper. It is only intended
to indicate that the evidences for the divine and supernatural
origin of Christianity are universally valid and indispensable,
and that we believe that the doctrine of the witness of the
Spirit does not involve the minimizing of the importance of
Christian Apologetics, nor relegate it to the function allotted to
it by Dr. Kuyper. Neither does it involve any concession to
Rationalism to take the position of certain American Reformed
Theologians. Charles Hodge in his Way of Life showed that
since the Bible makes an absolute demand on faith from every-
one to whom it comes, learned or unlearned, the Scripture
8 II Afd. I pp. 52-129.
474
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
must contain in itself the marks of its divine origin. Also he
showed that the witness of the Spirit is necessary to enable the
sin blinded man to see these marks. At the same time he set
forth fully the rational basis of theistic belief in his Systematic
Theology and gave great importance to historical criticism and
historical evidences. The same is true of Dr. B. B. Warfield
who magnified both the Reformed doctrine of the witness of the
Spirit and at the same time held that Apologetics is a distinct
discipline from Dogmatics and that it lies at the foundation of
the theological sciences.
We have used far too much space in speaking of our points
of difference with Mr. Hospers. We do it only because we
believe that the task of Christian Apologetics is vital and
fundamental against the very attack on Scripture by modern
forms of rationalism which he is combatting. We agree with
him fully as to the absolute necessity of taking our stand on the
Scripture as the Word of God, as to the absolute necessity of
the witness of the Holy Spirit to the Bible, but we would add
the need of a full grounding of the principle of Christian
Supernaturalism, and we believe, as our author doubtless does,
that this Supernaturalism can only be successfully vindicated
against Modernism by an adherence to its consistent and thor-
ough expression in the Reformed Faith.
We wish we might give an account of the remaining chapters
of this book and express our agreement with its fundamental
positions. There is a chapter on the significance of creeds. A
creed is simply an expression of Scripture doctrine. Does
Christian life precede and determine Christian doctrine or is
truth the condition of life? If the former, then doctrines or
truths can have no permanent or objective validity, and we end
in utter scepticism as to any valid truth. This is the logical
result of modern pragmatism and modern mysticism. Some who
call themselves Modernists do not carry out this logic, but Mr.
Hospers is right in his contention that to take this position will
do away with historical Christianity. But if Chrstian truth
conditions life, then the Bible and the Christian creeds based
on it are of essential importance. We think he is right also in
his agreement with The Christian Century that the differences
in the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy are deep seated,
involving two world-views, two religions, two attitudes to the
NOTES AND NOTICES
475
Bible. Christianity is a historical, supernatural, redemptive re-
ligion with a basis in great redemptive facts authoritatively
recorded and interpreted in the Scripture. Modernism, in its
pure and principial expression, in abandoning the authority of
the Bible and the historical and doctrinal basis of Christianity,
must end in natural religion only. Even the theistic basis of
natural religion cannot be maintained if Modernism adopts the
agnostic position involved either in pragmatism, or in the view
that truths are but symbols of a preceding life.
Consequently in the chapters on the Nature of Christianity,
the Ministry of the Word, and the Program of the Reformed
Churches, the author makes it perfectly clear that two opposite
views are in conflict in each case.
The merit of this book consists in the fact that it starts out
with the exhibition and discrimination of two opposite principles
of knowledge — the Bible, and the human reason, and then shows
that each principle in its pure and unmediating expression must
lead to opposite results. With the Bible as our authority we
have the redemptive religion of Christianity and its purest ex-
pression in the Reformed Faith ; with reason as our source and
norm of truth we have only natural religion. Types of thought
which are mediating will not like this book because they are
regarded as impure mixtures and passed over without much
discussion.
Princeton. C. W. Hodge.
REVIEWS OF
RECENT LITERATURE
APOLOGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Dogma of Evolution. By Louis Trenchard More, Professor of
Physics, University of Cincinnati; Author of “The Limitations of
Science.” Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation Lectures delivered at
Princeton University, Januarj^, 1925. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 1925. Price $3.50 net.
The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature. By James Y. Simpson, D.SC.,
F.R.S.E., Professor of Natural Science, New College, Edinburgh.
New Edition Revised and Rewritten. New York: George H. Doran
Company. Price $2.25 net.
While the evolutionist and the anti-evolutionist are striving with might
and main to capture our public schools, one in the interest of freedom of
thought and the other in the interest of freedom of religion ; and while
the now celebrated “monkey bill” trial in Tennessee is occupying the
front page of the newspapers, and the cartoonists are representing the
counsel for the defense, Mr. Darrow, as saluting a monkey with a
deferential “Papa,” and the counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Bryan, as
passing by his alleged poor relations with haughty disdain, it is illuminat-
ing to read a discussion of the subject, calm and dispassionate so far
as lies in human nature, and written by one who is a distinguished
scientist and a prominent educator.
It has been a weakness of the anti-evolutionary critique that it has
been carried on largely by laymen in science whose testimony could be
dismissed as incompetent and as warped by theological bias, but Professor
More is a specialist in physics, the author of scientific monographs and
articles, and his invitation to deliver the Vanuxem Lectures at Princeton
is a sufficient evidence of his standing in the world of science. The title
of his book puts the evolutionist on the defensive at the outset and the
delivery of his lectures is understood to have created something of a
flurry in academic circles. He repeatedly charges the biologist with
looseness in thought and expression and as standing in need of the more
rigorous mathematical training of the physicist. To express a doubt of the
genetic connection of man in both body and soul with the lower animals
has been regarded as almost the unpardonable sin in well-informed
circles, and the experts of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science officially declared in December, 1922, that “the council of the
association affirms that the evidences of the evolution of man are sufficient
to convince every scientist of note in the world.” It is now disconcerting
to find Professor More saying bluntly that “the evolution of man from
the lower animals” is “purely a matter of guess” (p. 331).
It is clear that Professor More’s book is of enough importance in the
present discussion to warrant an examination in some detail of the
positions he maintains. He is an evolutionist in some sense for he declares
that “the evidence available supports our faith in a general law of
RECENT LITERATURE
477
evolution. We accept it as we accept the law of the conservation of
matter, not because it can be proved to be true from experience, but
because without it natural law is not intelligible. The only alternative
is the doctrine of special creation which may be true but is irrational”
(pp. 21, 22). Again he says: “I accept the general doctrine of the
evolution of organisms as a deductive theory on the same grounds that
I subscribe to the atomic theory of matter. It is the most satisfactory
rational theory to account for those relations between existing flora and
fauna which undoubtedly exist. But this is not equivalent to accepting
the metaphysical hypotheses which attempt to give the causes and
methods of evolution, nor does it mean that the biological theory of
evolution can be applied with success to the problems of man’s mental
and spiritual nature” (p. 163). Again he says that according to biological
science “species are mutually related in such a way that those forms now
in existence are modified forms of previous species. Since this law is
capable of statement as a scientific generalization which can be supported
by observation and experimentation it is a thoroughly justifiable assump-
tion and one with which we have no quarrel” (p. 303).
Aside from the guarded admissions in the three passages just quoted,
the lectures in their whole tone and animus might have been written by
Mr. Bryan or the most convinced creationist. The whole book in fact,
with the three exceptions noted, is a slashing critique of the evolution
theory in its popular forms, and Professor More is equally severe upon
the classical writers such as Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Spencer and
Fiske and upon modern protagonists such as Bateson, Osborn and
Conklin. He contends that the hypotheses of natural selection, inheritance
of acquired characters, mutations, etc., “are not proved and are really
metaphysical and unverifiable in character”; that these hypotheses
“inevitably lead to a mechanistic philosophy in which the phenomena of
life are to be explained by physical and chemical processes,” and that
“the facts are against this mechanistic view of life and the hypotheses are
unjustifiable assumptions”; and finally that the expansion of biological
evolution to include the realm of consciousness and social and ethical
life is based on metaphysical assumptions rather than on the scientific
foundations of biology, and that “it is this phase of evolution which has
created confusion and disaster” (pp. 303, 304). In its religious applica-
tion, “the real tendency of evolution is to be found in the philosophy
of Nietzsche and not in the life of Christ” (p. 383).
More in detail, it is contended that Osborn misinterprets Aristotle,
Augustine and other early thinkers in his zeal to make them out evolu-
tionists, that he reverses the true meaning of Lamarck, and that in his
mechanical explanation of life he gives four different and incongruous
definitions of his fundamental term of energy; that Bateson’s statement
that the mystery of the origin of species may be solved tomorrow
suggests that “the tomorrow of the biologist may be as long as the
million years or so necessary for the horse to eliminate his four toes”
(p. 29); that Conklin’s “irritation under fire seems to have confused
the clarity of his scientific reasoning,” so that he fails to distinguish
between evolution as a scientific theory to be tested in the biological
478
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
laboratory and as a metaphysical hypothesis to guide the social and
religious affairs of men (p. 24).
Professor More directs the shafts of his argument and his satire
against three points in the evolutionary armor : ( i ) against the attempt
to give a naturalistic account of the origin of species, (2) against the-
attempt to carry evolution downward into the realm of physics and thus
to give a mechanical explanation of life, and (3) against the attempt to
apply evolution in the spheres of morals, of society and of religion. At
all these points, while not a fundamentalist or Biblical literalist. Professor
More gives abundant aid and comfort to the creationist.
The positive evidence for evolution, he maintains, is to be found
in the existence of fossil remains, but palaeontology cannot be translated
into chronology, and the study of the records emphasizes the breaks
rather than the continuity of development. For example, “when the
Silurian vertebrates appeared they did so without any transitional form
having been preserved” (p. 154). Of the birds it is said that “the appear-
ance of feathers as an apparatus for flying is as nearly impossible a fact
to explain by evolution as can be imagined. By no known theory can a
feather be accounted for. — Evolutionists have wisely and persistently
avoided the solution of this problem” (pp. 156, 157). The sudden and
abrupt appearance of the higher plants (angiosperms) is an analagous
case in the vegetable world. “The more one studies palaeontology, the
more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone. — The
evidence from palaeontology is for discontinuity; only by faith and
imagination is there continuity of variation” (pp. 160, 161). Speaking of
Darwin Professor More says that the physicist, trained in exact phrase-
ology and rigorous logic, is discouraged by “the loose language and the
still looser reasoning of the evolutionist and of the biologist” (p. 236).
W'hen Darwin is extravagantly praised for dispensing with a superna-
tural factor in the explanation of living forms. Professor More is willing
to admit that “if it is degrading to man to depend ultimately on divine
intervention when no other explanation is attainable, Darwin has the
glory of avoiding it” (p. 237). Professor More has evident sympathy for
Lamarckism both because the importance of Lamarck has been belittled
by Darwin and his followers and because Lamarck’s doctrine, if it could
be proved, points to a non-mechanical principle as the distinctive factor
of life. He believes that the influence of Darwinism is rapidly waning,
and that the collapse of the theory of natural selection leaves both the
philosophy of mechanistic materialism and the applications of it in the
spheres of social polity and ethics in a sorry plight.
Professor More is plainly at one with the creationists in his theory of
the origin of life and of mind. The mechanical theory of life ignores the
difference between a dead man and a living man. After a lifetime spent
in investigating the phenomena and laws of physics he confesses that
he can find no meaning in the statements of those who correlate biological
and psychological with physical phenomena. To make out his case, it is
maintained, even Professor Osborn is guilty of a “reckless disregard of
physical law,” and “either willingly or through inability to comprehend
the elementary laws of physics, invents his own physics” (p. 269).
RECENT LITERATURE
479
Under the influence of a galaxy of thinkers which included Darwin,
Huxley and Spencer, the supreme effort of the Victorian age was, accord-
ing to Professor More, to establish a rational monistic philosophy which
would embrace the entire universe. “In such a grandiose scheme, the
spirit of man, with its element of free-will or choice, shrivelled to
insignificance in comparison with the inexorable majesty of natural
law” (p. 307). Professor More points out that the evolutionists based
their doctrine on the laws of physics, but “were pathetically ignorant
of the facts and laws of physics” (p. 323). He thinks it inconsistent to
rage against the doctrine of free-will and to make man a mere cog in the
machine, and yet to curse him for not acting otherwise than he does. The
evolutionary sociologist cannot predict the movements of human society
any more than the evolutionary biologist can predict the appearance of
a new species.
Professor More is not an alarmist but he fears the effect of the
evolutionary teaching upon the youth of today. “Our debauch of
evolution, aethers and electrons is fast carrying us back into the state of
mediaeval absurdities” (p. iii). And again, “The youth of today are
replying in no uncertain tones, that their teachers have failed to show
them a standard other other than to obtain out of life what pleasure and
success can be snatched” (p. 380). His own religious attitude is not
exactlj stated, but he can say of the Bible story of creation : “In spite
of the speculations of centuries we have not advanced a step beyond the
noble and dignified description of the creation as imagined by the
Hebrew Prophet in the Book of Genesis. We can dismiss his story of the
Garden of Eden as an allegory, but when he stated that man was created
out of the dust and that God breathed into him the Breath of Life, all
was said of that supreme mystery, as an eminent philosopher pointed out
to me, which can be said” (pp. 242, 243).
On the whole Professor More has made an important contribution to
the present-day discussion of evolution and his lectures contain an
instructive historical survey of the rise and progress of evolutionary
theories and perhaps also in part of their decline and fall.
Professor Simpson’s new edition of his Spiritual Interpretation of
Nature, first published in 1912, is much enlarged in its scope and is
offered as supplementary to his later work on Man and the Attainment
of Immortality, (noticed in this review, XXI, 3, July, 1923, pp. 463 ff.).
For his views in their mature expression both books should be consulted.
The significance of Professor Simpson’s work lies in his attempt to
combine the outlook of Christian theism with a thoroughgoing evolution-
ary view of the universe. It must be confessed that he is signally qualified
to attempt such a synthesis of evolution and religion because of his
evangelical sympathies and training, because of his wide scholarship
and high standing as a scientist, and because he is a master of a forceful
and graceful literary style. If Professor Simpson cannot “put over” this
synthesis it will go far to prove that he is attempting a combination of
incongruous elements.
As a Christian with strong evangelical leanings Professor Simpson
would admit no difference in personal attitude toward the Founder of
480
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Christianity in the way of reverence, loyalty or affection between himself
and believers in the older orthodoxy. He says that “the personal attach-
ment to Jesus Christ that is at the heart of any genuine Christian
endeavor, whether individual or social, is unaffectable by theories of
His life and work” (p. 8). As an evolutionist, however, he gives up
creation, both special and general (except “creation by evolution” which
is not creation at all), and his doctrine both of man and of the Son of
Man is far different from that of traditional Christianity. To avoid
admitting a break in the evolutionary series between man and the
animals. Professor Simpson holds that man is not immortal but is
capable of achieving immortality; and for a similar reason the virgin
birth of Jesus is denied and Jesus is allowed to have only an historic not
a cosmic significance.
The tension between the two tendencies in Professor Simpson’s mind
is apparent throughout the book. He would like to accept the credibility
of the Gospel miracles but to do so unreservedly would be out of harmony
with evolutionary principles. His conclusion as to the Resurrection —
“Something at any rate happened which convinced them (the disciples)
that He whom they had known in the flesh was still alive and had
triumphed over death” (p. 306) — is as hackneyed as it is weak. Of
miracles in general he finely says : “If the aversion to miracles is simply
an expression of belief in a purely mechanical self-contained world, then
the human spirit must hail them in defense of its liberty. For if God be
so bound by His laws that initiative is no longer His, much more are we.
And if He cannot intervene in the physical realm, still less can He in
the spiritual, for the two stand in close relationship. The miracle is the
sign of the Divine freedom” (p. 308). A directive factor in evolution is
recognized in opposition to an ultra-mechanical conception, and the
Ultimate Environment (capitalized) is allowed to influence the course of
events provided that continuity is maintained and there are no “breaks”
in the succession.
Of the two books, Man and the Attainment of Immortality and The
Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, evolution is more prominent in the
former and Christian theism in the latter; but in neither volume do the
two ingredients readily mix. Xo one, we are convinced, can improve on
Professor Simpson’s attempted synthesis, but we are left with the suspi-
cion that evolutionism will gravitate toward that monistic naturalism
which is proving to be the home of leading evolutionists in the twentieth
as it was in the nineteenth century, and that Christian theism will reaffirm
its great categories of Creation and Design as well as great doctrines of
the Deity of Christ and the immortality of man, made in the image of
God.
Lincoln University, Pa. Wm. Hallock Johnson
Psychology of Religious Experience. Studies in the Ps3chological Inter-
pretation of Religious Faith. By Francis L. Strickland, Professor
of the History and Psj'chology of Religion in Boston University
School of Theology, New York and Cincinnati: The Abingdon
Press, 1924. Pp. 320. Price $2.00 net.
RECENT LITERATURE
481
In these days books on the psychology of religion are becoming
numerous, and yet no one seems able to say what psychology of religion
means and what topics it should include. What is offered is an abstract of
contemporary psychological method and tendency as understood and
selected by the author, followed by a discussion, influenced more or less
by the principles chosen, of certain religious topics. The book before us
conforms to this description. In an “Introduction” the author explains the
“Fundamental Standpoints and Method in Psychology of Religion.” His
desire is to be “scientific” (p. 59, 73) but psychological description in
terms of behavior only is fallacious. Introspection must also be used,
and in the psychological study of religious experience, analysis into
elements must be followed by interpretation or determination of meaning.
This methodological device is, however, little used by the author in the
studies that follow. The topic then is religious experience, and by
experience is meant all that takes place in our conscious life, which
becomes religious when it involves an attitude towards God : “the Divine
Being who not only rules the universe but also determines many things
in our lives.” From this viewpoint our author proceeds to the discussion
of such topics as religion in childhood and adolescence, conversion and
evangelism, the subconscious, faith in God, worship, mysticism, and belief
in immortality.
Because of the lack of a clearcut conception of what present psychology
demands, the discussion frequently takes on the character of philosophy
of religion or apologetics. This is especially so in the last chapter where
an elaborate attempt is made after abandoning the concept of the soul
to prove the plausibility of the survival of a “self” after death : a self
without body, nerves, substance, or anything else associated with
endurance. How this can be called psychology is not clear, and yet the
book contains much that is interesting and instructive. Without enumer-
ating these in detail, it may be more profitable to examine the general
standpoint and what it implies with reference to the psychology of
religion.
Psychology of religion should be scientific. This means that its task is
to search for the functional relation between two or more variables.
What these variables are depends of course on the views of the
psychologist, but if we take (although it is not exclusively necessary to
do so) the psychology current in our colleges today, the variables will
be the stimulus, the resulting mental states and the responsive behavior.
In religion the stimulus is, speaking generally, God as He has made
himself known, and this knowledge evokes mental states and behavior of
a certain character which it is the business of religious psychology to
describe and explain. For the conservative Protestant the revelation of
God is the Holy Scripture, and his interest as psychologist is in attempt-
ing to understand the functional relation between this stimulus and the
various mental states and activities it causes. But our author is a
Protestant who has made the transition from the conservative to the
modern way of thinking. The Bible is no longer the stimulus that calls
out the Christian thought and action. He places the Bible in the same
class with the Vedas, the Buddhist books, the Zend-Avesta, and the
482
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Koran (p. 64). The religious prayers and hymns of the Rig-Veda and
the Hebrew Psalter are mentioned in the same sentence as valuable
because they are spontaneous expressions of religious feeling usually
on a fairly high level {ibid.). But the priestly writers set back the dates of
institutions, customs, and laws, in order to gain for them the authority
of great age (p. 65), and although the prophets of the seventh century
B.C. in Israel represent a high water mark in religion, nevertheless the
modern historical view of the Bible has had its effect in making biblical
theology obsolete (p. 281). What replaces the Scripture as stimulus, or
as the author would probably prefer to call it, situation, is the immanent
activity of God in the world. The old-fashioned distinction of natural
and supernatural disappears or if retained means that the natural is the
usual and the supernatural the unusual (to us) mode of divine activity,
or the natural is what is presented to sense, the supernatural the hj^to-
thetical atoms, electrons, ions, colloids, etc., invented to account for it
(p. 293). God’s great method of making Himself known is incarnation
(P- i/3)> and while the author does not say so, the usual modern view is
expressed by adding the words not exclusively and uniquely in Jesus
Christ. Inspiration is a state of mind that arises in the subconscious, and
therefore “If it is his (the prophet’s) habit of thought to ascribe all
things not clearly classified as under his own conscious direction to the
direct agency of God, he may say that his inspiration was from God —
that God helped him” (p. 147). The Resurrection of Christ does not
mean that His body rose. The Gospel testimony “which goes even so far
as to allege that he called their attention to the fact that he had flesh and
bones” (p. 288) is dismissed by our author with the remark that “the
farther we get away from the days of Christ the greater becomes the
tendency to interpret the ‘resurrection life’ in terms of the physical and
material,” due to the wish to conserve the reality of the risen Jesus in
the thought of people whose only reality was materiality (p. 289). The
Scripture clearly teaches that God can answer prayers for material
changes, but our author refuses this teaching. “To affirm that natural
forces may be influenced and changed by prayer is either to make prayer
essentially a form of physical energy or else is to suppose that prayer can
divert divine activity from its regular and ordinary ways of manifesting
itself. Religious belief may accept such a thing as possible under some
conditions. But it is belief for which scientific justification cannot be
offered” (p. 213). We might multiply examples, but let these suffice to
show that if, as our author says (p. 20), “in its essential nature religious
experience is religious faith,” the Scripture which evoked faith in the
old-fashioned Protestant, is but the stimulus for unbelief in the modem
Protestant. The latter, however, finds the stimulus for faith (p. 56) in
God “as he reveals himself to us. This revelation is made progressively
through the experience of our common life as well as directly and
immediately (as we may believe) in individual experience.” But we
submit that this was not the situation that evoked Christian experience
in the apostles and in those who have followed them. It may be religious,
but it will not remain Christian. At least it has never remained such in
RECENT LITERATURE
483
the past, and there is no good reason to believe that it will remain so in
the future. In saying this we may be in the ranks of the fundamentalists
who, as our author remarks (p. 281) “reiterate the formulas of a theo-
logy now pretty well discarded in the circles of scholarship,” but at
least it is our desire to think clearly and in our psychology of religion to
understand by patient observation and experiment the relations that
exist between the complex masses of responses called Christian experi-
ence and the only stimulus or situation that as we believe can arouse
them; the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and
Nezv Testament.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
L’Ltude Comparee des Religions. Essai critique par H. Pinard de la
Boullaye, S.J. I Son Histoire dans le Monde Occidental. Paris :
Gabriel Beauchesne. 1922. Pp. xvi, 515.
This is not a history of the various religions on earth nor of religion
in general, but of the study of comparative religions from antiquity to the
present day. It is not the first book on the subject — on page xv. of the
preface is a list of eleven, among them the late L. H. Jordan, from 1876
to 1878 a student in Princeton Seminary, who have written on the same
topic — but it is probably the most thorough, especially in the biblio-
graphical material cited. The author had three great libraries from which
to draw: that of the Scholasticat des jesuites franqais at Enghien, the
Bibliotheque Royale at Brussels, and the Library of the British Museum,
London. It would seem as if every work on the subject of comparative
religion is here mentioned in its proper class and duly appraised.
The contents are as follows : Chap. I. considers the study of compara-
tive religion so far as it existed in antiquity to the Christian era. Chap.
II. treats the same topic from the appearance of Christianity to the
Middle Ages. Chap. III. details the speculations of Arabs and Jews and
scholastic theologians concerning religion. Chap. IV. carries the story
through the Renaissance and Reformation. Chap. V. outlines the views of
religion held by Rationalists, and Chap. VI. does the same for the
Agnostics. Chap. VII. presents the period from Positivism to Pragma-
tism. Chap. VIII. and Chap. IX. review the various modern “schools”
of comparative religion, and Chap. X. epitomizes the “course of the
ages” and summarizes the “present currents.”
This last chapter is probably the most interesting for the ordinary
reader. What is the origin of Christianity? Our author divides the
answers into naturalistic and supernaturalistic. Among the “naturalists”
are the followers of Herbert Spencer, the Ritschlians, the symbolo-
fideists, and the many tribes of pantheists, who are convinced that the
basic support of the real by whatever name it may be called — Force, the
Unknowable, the Absolute, or God — merges its activity in the activity
of things. This doctrine of immanence enables them to keep the words
supernatural and revelation, but in new meanings, since for them the
activity of the divine is now the normal order, the very law of nature
itself. The supernaturalists comprise the Roman church, and the minority
of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican churches who have not gone
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
484
over to the naturalistic view. These also think of God as immanent, but
they emphasize His personality and the infinite distance by which His
being and essence are separated from the being and essence of the
creature. He has the power to modify by exceptions or miracles the order
He has Himself established, and in particular He can rouse in men’s
minds definite ideas, of which He can convince men He Himself is the’
author. This is the meaning of revelation.
The naturalists must perforce explain Christianity as the outcome of
normal and natural evolution. This is the common ground of all of them
from the sj-ncretism of Dupuis to the latest nuances of Gunkel, Wendland,
and those who follow them. The supernaturalists, without denying the
fact of progress, reject all rigid evolutionism, and would account for
Christianity by special revelation, and for the “analogy of doctrines’’
between Christianity and non-Christian religions by providential prepara-
tion. So far we go with our author. But w'hen he passes to defend certain
of the Roman dogmas, liturgy, and the adoration of the saints, against
the attacks of the syncretists, by asserting that in them is the development
of the germ evangelique, and that they are the great tree that our Lord
in Mark 4:31 said would come from the tiny mustard seed, we regretfully
part company with him.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criticism: An Intro-
duction to the Study of Biblical Archaeology. By Melvin Grov’e
Kyle, D.D., LL.D., President of Xenia Theological Seminary, Editor
of Bibliotheca Sacra, Archaeological Editor of the Sunday School
Times. Revised Edition. Bibliotheca Sacra Company, Oberlin, Ohio.
1924. 8 VO. ; Pp. xix, 364.
The first edition of this work was issued in 1912, and received favorable
comment in the Princeton Theological Review, January, 1913. “The
exhaustion of the first large edition and the undiminished demand for the
book now used in a score of universities, colleges and theological
seminaries calls for a second edition.’’ The opportunity has been taken
to add important material. Otherwise the original text remains as first
printed, almost without change save as the spacing of the type has
sometimes been altered in the resetting. Very happily, however, merely
by the removal of a single “not” and “but,” and the change of “yet” to
“now,” a long paragraph on ceramic art has been brought up to date
(p. 247). The new material in the book consists mainly of wise caution
regarding two “bugaboos of interpretation,” tradition and evolution
(pp. 184-187) ; “canons of research,” where Dr. Kyle’s common sense
is in evidence (pp. 189-218) ; an account of the Xenia Seminary expe-
dition to the Cities of the Plain (pp. 253-255) ; and additional reasons
for assigning the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the nineteenth
dynasty, and for the exemption of Israel from interference by the
Egj’ptians betw'een Meremptah and Shishak.
Princeton. John D. Davis.
RECENT LITERATURE
485
The Genius of Israel. A Reading of Hebrew Scriptures Prior to the
Exile. By Carleton Noyes. Boston ; Houghton Mifflin Co. 1924. Pp.
433. Price $5-00
A paragraph from the preface furnishes the key to an appreciation of
this volume : “An interpretation rather than a history, this book aims to
portray the Israelites as they were in the flesh, at work and at play, in
the actual circumstances of their everyday experience, and in their
relations with contemporary nations. The genius of Israel was supremely
a genius for religion. But beneath the passion for God and His right-
eousness beat the urge of human striving for the merely human goods
of life. If it was granted this people to mount the heights, the path
thither led along the ways of men.” (p. viii).
The social and religious life of Israel is neither adequately nor correctly
portrayed in the Scriptures and must be recreated by projecting the
discoveries of “scholars,” travelers, and archaeologists back to Biblical
times. “For the desert, niggard, harsh, and inaccessible except to its own
sons, does not change ; and in the isolation imposed by environment, but
accepted by the loyal tribesman as his primary obligation to his group,
the strain of race continues pure. So in the nomad Arabs of today live
again the ancestral Hebrews” (p. 4).
The approach to the religion of Israel is made not by the acceptance of
the Biblical record of God’s self-revelation to man, but by way of natural
religion. Israel reached the heights of monotheism only after she had
trod the path of animism, no worse and no better than her Canaanite
neighbors. When Jacob pours oil upon the stone that had served as his
pillow during the remarkable dream — he “offers a libation to the deity
resident in the stone, who had vouchsafed the portentous dream. That
these traces of early Semitic belief and ritual have been preserved is due
to the fact that the compilers of the narratives have transformed the
original local numen of spring or tree or stone into Yahweh, and they
impute to the ancestors the orthodox practices of the Mosaic religion”
(P. 17).
The author adopts the Documentary Hypothesis as true and in the
chapters entitled Scripture in the Weaving, and Justice and Law sets
forth the growth of J, E, D, and P. Little credence is placed in the
trustworthiness of the records of events of pre-Mosaic times. “Whatever
authentic material the Hebrew narratives supply in illustration of this
earliest period of Israelite history is at the most fragmentary; and the
result is chiefly negative” (p. 27).
The author of The Gate of Appreciation and The Enjoyment of
Art could not do otherwise than write an intensely interesting book.
The literary style gives it a charm possessed by few books in this particu-
lar field : a brief quotation may suggest something of this charm. “In
the multitudinous life of Egypt this little group of rude shepherds was
but the foam of a wave breaking on a farther shore. They felt, perhaps,
the momentum of the sea of empire that surged by them, as they lingered
and drifted on its edge” (p. 41).
In the prophets of Israel are to be found the true representatives of
486
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
its genius. “The visions of the prophets were of the essence of Israel’s
genius” (p. 235). “In so far as Israel was impelled to forms of art
expression, its culture found permanent embodiment only in its literature.
Its influence in shaping social conditions was exercised in the drafting
of laws, fused in the passion for righteousness which kindled the prophets
to fiery speech. Illumined by their vision, tempered in their ardor, the
genius of Israel uttered itself supremely in religion” (p. 261).
In the chapter on The Great Prophets we have a naturalistic conception
of prophecy clearly set forth ; as for example in the statement, “working
from general truths, won not by supernatural foresight, but by intuition,
reflection, experience, they rested their case on logic and necessity ; given
certain conditions, certain consequences must result” (p. 342). How
different is the testimony of the prophets themselves ! They base their
message, whether it be doom or comfort, history or prediction, not “on
their own sure knowledge of Yahweh’s character and purpose” (p. 381),
but on a supernatural revelation from God Himself. “The Spirit of
Jehovah fell upon me and he said unto me. Speak. Thus saith Jehovah”
(Ezek. 11:5). “The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because
Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek”
(Isa. 61 :i). Jeremiah’s call and protest of natural inability evokes God’s
reply “to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I
shall command thee thou shalt speak” (1:7).
The genius of Israel was indeed a genius that expressed itself in
religion, but it was born and grew not out of Israel’s natural talents,
but out of the love of God who chose Israel for His own, and then in
spite of her weakness and failure made Himself known unto her.
Glenolden, Pa. Charles F. Deininger.
Reality in Bible Reading. By Frank Ballard, D.D. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons. Price $2.25.
This interesting little volume has been put forth by Dr. Ballard with
an eye to the gain that accrues to Christian faith from critical accuracy.
Weymouth’s and Moffatt’s versions, and the Twentieth Century New
Testament, have been freely consulted. The general merits of the Revision
are acknowledged, but 400 examples are furnished of passages which
ought, in the estimation of the author, to be rendered more clearly. The
work of the English Revisers is had in view throughout, and many of
the suggestions offered will be found incorporated in the American
Standard Version.
Dr. Ballard writes with competent knowledge of New Testament
Greek, and the general result is a work which will prove a helpful
addition to the shelves of the scholarly pastor. His rendering of Luke
19:26 — “In fellowship with (wapd) God, all things become possible” — is
probably correct. In Luke 22:31, he translates, with Dr. A. T. Robertson,
“Satan has demanded permission to winnow you all as wheat.” The “all”
is not in the text, but the Revisers, in failing to supply it, leave the lav-man
under the false impression that Peter alone was the object of Satan’s
attack. In Phil. 3:11, he rightly calls attention to the fact that the word
for “resurrection” is a special form (e^avdo-racris) , not elsewhere used in
RECENT LITERATURE
487
the New Testament. He makes no millenarian suggestion, but does say
that the word should be treated as though printed in capitals. In II Peter
1:1, as in one or two other 'passages, he holds — as we think with good
reason — that apery should be rendered “courage.” In John i ;i8, he
adopts the reading p.ovoyeyr}<; Oeos, which seems well enough warranted ;
but his translation — “The only-begotten One, Himself divine,” is un-
doubtedly too feeble. Indeed, in quite numerous instances we are offered
paraphrases — often, to be sure, bringing out the true sense very accurately,
but paraphrases nevertheless. At times, they even surprise us. Is it really
repellant (p. 205) to hear read from the pulpit, “If she have washed
the saints’ feet”? Doubtless the inner meaning is, “If she has shown a
kindly spirit,” only the Apostle did not write this. As to I Peter 3 :g,
there is not a shred of evidence to justify the audacious emendation
proposed by Drs. Harris and Moffatt: “It was in the Spirit that Enoch
also went and preached,” etc.
The Old Testament passages touched are comparatively few, nor does
the author seem quite as much at home in this field. In Isaiah 1:18, he
follows Dr. Cheyne and Sir G. A. Smith, and renders ; “Let us have done
with talk — however grievous your sin, if you really repent, there is free
and full forgiveness.” To us, this seems rather too brusque and dictatorial,
considering the appended to the —“Come ye.” In Isaiah 52:15,
“sprinkle,” with its apparently unwelcome Levitical implications, is dis-
posed of by a quotation from Dr. Davidson : “It is simply treason against
the Hebrew language to translate ‘sprinkle.’ ” This is one of those sweep-
ing statements of the critics for which there is no adequate warrant. That
the verb usually means “sprinkle” in the Old Testament is certain.
Whether on the ground of this passage and Isaiah 63; 3 a meaning
“spring up” and so “be astonished” can be arrived at is by no means
certain. The chief argument for “be astonished” is the LXX rendering of
this passage. The argument that if the correct meaning were “sprinkle,”
it would be necessary to say “sprinkle (blood) upon many nations” is
far from convincing. And the parallelism is a too uncertain guide to
enable us to infer the exact meaning. As Alexander pointed out years
ago, “The real motive of the strange unanimity with which the true sense
has been set aside (by the majority of modern writers) is the desire to
obliterate this clear description, at the very outset, of the servant of
Jehovah as an expiatory purifer . . . .”
What may be called the background views of the author are much in
evidence. Without being a left-wing Modernist, he has nevertheless
travelled far more than a Sabbath-day’s journey on the road from
Jerusalem to Jericho. He seems (p. 192) to believe in the Incarnation,
but in most respects — e.g., in his view of inspiration, foreordination,
atoning blood and the Second Advent — stands frankly with the radical
school. We have only space to add that if Dr. Selbie’s quoted estimate
is reliable — that nine-tenths of the adult population of England are
quite out of touch with all Christian churches — the English clergy are
due to give themselves to very serious thinking.
Lincoln University, Pa.
Edwin J. Reinke.
488 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REV’IEW
Never Man So Spake. By Howard B. Grose, D.D., New York: George
H. Doran Co.
These studies, we are told by the author, are the outcome of a long-
continued effort to get at the real teaching of Jesus with reference to life,
death and destiny. The book is divided into two parts — The Teacher and'
His School, and The Teaching of Jesus. The latter is presented under
nine captions — Concerning God Himself, The Holy Spirit, Character,
Sin, Salvation, Prayer, Life Here, and Life Hereafter. While the
presentations are in large part made by verbal quotation, the result is by
no means a mere paraphrase. One meets with real analysis, and no small
amount of genuine insight. The appeal to recorded utterances also has the
effect of safeguarding the bulk of the great Gospel verities, which are
accepted at their face value. The weakest chapter is the sixth — Concerning
Salvation. W'e miss the Redeemer’s words in reference to His laying down
His life for the sheep, the pouring out of His blood unto remission of sins,
the eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood that minister eternal
life. “If God, in Paul’s phrase,” says Dr. Grose, quoting from Professor
Glover, “hath shined in our hearts, it was Jesus Who induced men to
take down the shutters and to open the windows.” Such a superficial
conception — however widely advocated and popular — can never be
squared with the acquiescence of Jesus in the tremendous proclamation
of His great forerunner: “Behold the Lamb of God!”
Lincoln University, Pa. Edwin J. Reinke.
Elements of Hebrew. By Enoch S. Price, Th.B., M.A., Professor of
Sacred Languages in the Academy of the New Church. Bryn Athyn,
Pa. : The Academy Book Room, 1922. 8vo., pp. 122.
The opening sentence of the Preface is calculated to awaken misgiv-
ings in the mind of the thoughtful reader: “There has long been felt
the need of a usable beginners’ book for those who are to take up the
serious study of the Hebrew language in our schools.” That the ideal
Hebrew grammar for beginners, or for the advanced scholar for that
matter, has yet to be written, no one will deny. But such wholesale con-
demnation of existing handbooks is surprising. It at least suggests that
Professor Price has only a very slight acquaintance with them. We do
not have to read far in this volume to find this inference amply justified.
Mistakes, inexcusable mistakes, begin to appear even in the discussion
of the alphabet. It is difficult to understand how one who acknowledges
indebtedness to “Green, Harper, and Gesenius, especially to the last,”
could speak of cholem as both “long” and “short” and omit qamets
chatuph from the list of short vowels, apparently because as he informs
us a little later “qamets chatuph ... is any qamets standing in a tone-
less closed syllable.” That “defective writing” of cholem does not indi-
cate that it is short, and that qamets and qamets chatuph, though repre-
sented by the same sign, are entirely different in origin, such matters as
these are fundamental to a correct understanding of Hebrew orthogra-
phy.
The reason alleged by Professor Price for regarding all hitherto
published beginners’ books as unusable is that they “plunge” the student
RECENT LITERATURE
489
immediately into the difficulties of the Hebrew as they appear in the
text of the Old Testament instead of approaching the subject “in some
gradual and consecutive order.” Such a charge is rather difficult to un-
derstand. It does not seem probable that it is aimed specifically at the
“inductive method” employed by Harper. Yet, on the other hand, it
apparently ignores completely the fact that there are grammars, and
good grammars — e.g., that of Davidson — which approach the subject in
gradual and consecutive order. Were this not the case Hebrew would
be a strange exception in the modern study of language. Whatever the
exact scope of his criticism, it may be noted that Professor Price
flagrantly violates his own canon of the “usable.” Almost the first verbal
form to which he introduces the student is the most anomalous form
of one of the most irregular verbs in Hebrew, the 3. f. s. perfect qal of
the verb “to be” (nn'n). If this is gradual approach, it would be dif-
ficult, we think, to convict any of those arraigned by Professor Price
on the charge of “plunging” too quickly into the intricacies of Hebrew.
It is to be regretted that Professor Price who shows a real interest in
language study and an earnest desire to prepare a manual which will be
helpful to students beginning the study of Hebrew has made so little
use of the work of his predecessors in this field that this book instead
of marking a real advance must be regarded as a backward step, far
less suited to the use of the serious student of Hebrew than the books
which Professor Price stigmatizes as unusable.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
The Religion of the Psalms. By J. M. Powis Smith, Professor of Old
Testament Language and Literature in the University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago Press. i6mo ; pp. ix, 170.
In this little volume Professor Smith discusses the Psalms under five
captions: The Hymn Book of the Second Temple; the Sweet Singer of
Israel; Suffering and Song; The Psalms and Immortality; the Idea of
God. The first of these titles indicates with sufficient clearness the gen-
eral position of the author. “The Hymn Book of the Second Temple” —
is a phrase which expresses the estimate placed upon the Psalter by
critics of the Wellhausen School. This estimate is in their opinion one
of the most assured results of criticism. And it must of course be recog-
nized that those who believe that all or nearly all of the documents of the
Pentateuch are later than the time of David, that the religion of Israel
did not reach the level of ethical monotheism until the 9th century or
even later, and that David was a “rude warrior” whose life reflected the
standards and ideals of a semi-barbarous age, must consider it absurd
to attach any real value to a “Davidic tradition” which makes David
the writer of half the psalms of the Psalter and the founder of the
liturgical worship of the First Temple.
It is of course impossible to go very deeply into either critical or theo-
logical questions in the brief compass which our author has allowed him-
self. Nor can we in the course of our review discuss more than a few of
the problems which emerge. Therefore, since David figures so prominent-
490
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ly in connection with the Psalter, we will examine several of Professor
Smith’s reasons for holding not merely that the “Davidic tradition” must
be rejected, but that ‘‘it is little more than a waste of time to attempt
to discover the original Davidic elements in the Psalter” (p. 6i).
Our author discusses two aspects of David’s life, the ethical and the
theological. Under the first we have the “Bathsheba episode,” the deceiv-
ing of Ahimelech, the duping of Achish, the bequeathed vengeance upon
Joab and Shimei, and the fact that David was a polygamist ; under the
second, his dancing before the Ark, the slaying of Rizpah’s sons, the tak-
ing of the census, his use of the “oracle,” and his belief in a “tribal god.”
In discussing these matters Professor Smith is never at all generous in
his estimate of David and in some cases he is grossly unfair. For exam-
ple, he implies that David’s words to Abiathar, “I knew on that day,
when Doeg the Edomite was there that he would certainly tell Saul. I
have brought about the death of all the members of thy father’s house”
(i Sam. xxii. 20-22), should be taken to mean that David foresaw all
the terrible consequences of the deceit which he practised, but was willing
to save his own life at any cost. For this there is absolutely no warrant
in the narrative.
That David should be criticized for being a polygamist is quite re-
markable. The Law of Moses does not prohibit, though it does restrict
polygamy ; and according to the critics the Pentateuch was not completed
until the days of Ezra or later. If the Psalter is the critics’ “Hymn Book
of the Second Temple,” the Pentateuch is their “Law Book of the Second
Temple.” Have they any right to require a higher standard of their
psalmists than of their priests and jurists? And if they reply by saying
that the prophets were proponents of monogamy, would we not be justi-
fied in asking how much interest the prophets who are regarded by them
as the arch enemies of priestly ritual and of the Law should be expected to
take in the preparation of a Temple Hymn Book? Certainly they will
not maintain that the Psalter is an exclusively “prophetic” collection !
But is the fact that David was a polygamist really an objection to his
being thought of as a psalmist ? Let us take an extreme illustration. The
128th Psalm is not attributed to David by the Hebrew Text or the Sep-
tuagint Version. We have no thought of asserting that he composed it.
But, when we think of the tragedies of David’s life which were the
direct result of the sins and mistakes which marred it in its most intimate
relationships, can we not realize what a wonderful attractiveness the sim-
ple, peaceful, beautiful life pictured in this psalm might have for him
especially in his declining years? The Song of Song is attributed to Solo-
mon and certainly he would be a very foolish critic who would cite the
Grand Monarch’s polygamy as a proof that he could not have written it.
A man who had seven hundred wives, but no wife, might be just the one
to write it!
Another element in our author’s indictment of David is that David’s
God is “restrained within certain geographical boundaries.” This is as-
serted on the basis of i Sam. xxvi. 19 where David complains of the
effort which is being made to drive him forth “from abiding in the in-
RECENT LITERATURE
491
heritance of Yahweh.” Since this charge that David believed in a “tribal
god” is often made, it is important to notice the witnesses that are cited
by our author as proving that “for that age and in that part of the world,
there were as many gods as there were people.” The witnesses are
Jephthah, the foreigners brought into Samaria by the king of Assyria,
and Absalom. Let us consider the value of this evidence, a) Jephthah was
an illegitimate son who was disowned by his father’s family and became
the leader of a band of wild spirits in the mountain fastnesses of Gilead.
His early religious training and manhood faith were probably as vague
and meagre as that of many a typical “bad man” of our Western frontier
of fifty years ago. In a contest of wits with the king of Ammon he
draws a comparison between Jehovah as the national God of Israel and
Chemosh as the god of the Ammonites. Just how much he meant by it
we cannot say. It may have been an ad hominem argument, and Jephthah
may not have been entirely ignorant of the superior claims of Jehovah.
b) “The men from Babylon and Cuthah, and from Ava, and from
Hamath and from Separvaim” — is it not perfectly plain from the narra-
tive that they were heathen, who did not know the Lord? And is it not
equally plain that the religion which they adopted was a
mixed and hybrid affair, — “they feared the Lord and served
their own gods”? What right have they to appear as witnesses as to the
faith of a true Israelite, of a king of Israel? c) Absalom is the third
witness. When he was plotting to overthrow his father, he gave as an
excuse for going to Hebron a vow which he had made while at Geshur :
“If Yahweh will indeed bring me back to Jerusalem, then I will serve
Yahweh.” “Why not serve Yahweh in Jerusalem?” — asks Professor
Smith. “Because,” he tells us, “the Yahweh of Jerusalem was not the
Yahweh of Hebron.” But this inference is not at all necessary. Absalom’s
desire to pay his vow at Hebron (supposing of course that there was any
truth at all in the story which he told) may readily be accounted -for by
supposing that the vow had some special reference to Hebron, for which
as the home of his childhood he felt perhaps an especial attachment.
When a Christian today expresses a desire to be buried in the old grave-
yard in the little country village vChich he has not seen for years, does
that prove that he believes in a tribal and localized deity, who might lose
sight of him if his bones were laid to rest in a place remote from the
home of his youth? We do not think so. Superstition and ignorance
show themselves in many ways. But such a desire as this is not incon-
sistent with the best and truest religious faith. Furthermore Professor
Smith’s interpretation seems to prove too much. If Absalom believed in
several Yahwehs, David must have done the same since Absalom was
using an excuse which would appeal to his father, not offend him. If so,
should he not have been more explicit in his complaint to Saul and in-
stead of speaking of being “driven out of Yahweh’s land,” have told us
which Yahweh he referred to ?
Yet these are the witnesses which Professor Smith introduces — Jeph-
thah, heathen immigrants from Assyria, and David’s unnatural son,
Absalom — to prove that David could not have written the 139th Psalm,
492
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
some verses of which he at once proceeds to quote. He ignores the i8th
Psalm, which the Book of Samuel definitely attributes to David, the
31st verse of which (“For who is God save the Lord? or who is a rock
save our God?”) certainly has a pronounced monotheistic sound, and like
Samuel’s words at Mizpeh (i Sam. x. 18) shows clearly that the
power of the God of Israel extended far beyond the limits of his own
land and that the great lesson of the Exodus was not allowed to pass
entirely out of the national consciousness (even Jephthah alludes to it).
He also insists on placing an interpretation upon the words “Yahweh’s
land” which is forced and unnecessary. The fact that Palestine is fre-
quently declared to be in an especial and peculiar sense Jehovah’s land,
does not necessarily involve the limitation of His presence or power to
it; the contrary had been frequently proved by his dealings with other
nations, notably Egypt. And that David’s reference to being cast out of
it and being told “Go serve other gods” should not be so understood is
made abundantly plain by other passages of Scripture which are only
ruled out of court by the arbitrary methods of the critics.
This leads us to cite in closing a few sentences which indicate Pro-
fessor Smith’s estimate of this Hymn Book in the preparation of which
he is so unwilling to permit King David to have a part. In the chapter
on “The Idea of God in the Psalms” we read as follows ; “The psalmists
carry their personification of God so far as not to shrink from assign-
ing even human limitations to him. Of course, personality itself is a
limitation, but they go far beyond that. He shares some of the frailties
of human personality, and is presented in a thoroughly anthropomorphic
way. He has a face, with eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He has arms,
hands and feet. He breathes, swallows, and talks. He grows weary and
may take a nap. He becomes angry and executes vengeance upon the
wicked ; but his anger may come and as quickly go. On one occasion, in-
deed, I.Ioses actually turned back Yahweh’s wrath. Appeals are con-
stantly made to his pride; he must intervene in his people’s behalf for
the sake of his name, i.e. his reputation among men. He needs and is
provided with a house ; sometimes his dwelling-place is in the heavens
and again it is on earth, in the Temple at Jerusalem. He is credited with
a great love of praise. This characteristic appears in the name of the
Psalter which is ‘Praises.’ It is shown by the great amount of praise
that is expressed in the Psalms. The last five psalms, each beginning with
‘Hallelujah,’ i.e., ‘praise ye Yahweh,’ are nothing but ascriptions of praise
from first to last. This weakness is made use of in a fine argumentative
way by some of the psalmists. Yahweh is not thought of as being above
considerations that affect his own advantage; he is a God that may be
reasoned with. Loving approbation as he does, he will naturally not wish
to act in any way so as to diminish the volume of his praise” (p. 141).
Here we have an elaborate sketch, fortified by references to one or
more verses in 45 different psalms (these references are added in foot-
notes), of a god who is merely a magnified man and who shows a whole-
some regard for “public opinion” which many a popular demagogue
might take example by. It would seem as if the thought of the necessity
RECENT LITERATURE
493
for the democratization of deity was not a modern but an ancient con-
cept ! We do not accept this sketch as correct. In fact we believe that a
well trained Sunday School scholar who knew his Bible and Catechism
ought to have no difficulty in perceiving its utter falsity. (The critics
charge the conservatives at times with being too literal in their interpre-
tation of Scripture ; but when it suits their purpose they can show them-
selves the most extreme of literalists.) The point which we would raise
is this. If this were a true picture of the God of the “Hymn Book of the
Second Temple” as Professor Smith would have us believe, might not
even so inept a theologian as David have had some very definite part in
its preparation? There is nothing in it of theological subtlety which a
“rude warrior” such as David could not grasp. Even an African savage
understands the value of flattery, if that is all the Hallelujah Psalms
amount to.
Professor Smith’s method of criticism as illustrated in this volume
can be summed up in general by the word “disparaging.” He disparages
David with a view to proving him incapable of writing psalms ; and then
he disparages the Psalms to show, it would seem, how far short they fall
of our modern standards. Yet the opening sentences of our author’s
preface are these: “Books about the Psalms come and go; the Psalms go
on forever. They belong to the permanent literature of the race.” That
this statement will prove itself true as regards this and other volumes
which have been and are being written from the same viewpoint and in
similar spirit, we are prepared to admit. But how in view of all the
crudities he finds in them Professor Smith can account for the obvious
fact that “the Psalms go on forever” we are at a loss to understand.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
Who’s Who in the Bible. A Directory of Scriptural Characters. By Rev.
E. Fletcher Allen, M.A. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York &
London. 1925.
“This collection of brief biographies,” the author tells us in the
Foreword, “does not pretend to include every name that was mentioned
in the Scriptures or in contemporaneous history. It has been compiled
on the basis that is laid down in present-day dictionaries of biography :
the individual mentioned must have some claim to inclusion. He (or she)
must have counted in some particular manner in the historical develop-
ment of religious history or religious thought. The contribution may have
been small or isolated, and, for the immediate moment, have been
seemingly inconsequential — ^but little happenings have frequently blos-
somed into a great magnitude when time has passed and the judgment
of centuries has been formed.”
The above statement will impress the reader as a fair and judicious
one, but when he comes to examine the practical application of the prin-
ciples stated he will notice some very strange omissions and inclusions.
Thus, the omission of the name of Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Shalmaneser among
foreign kings is surprising. Certainly no one of the world rulers had
greater importance for Israel than Cyrus the Great, and if Darius, Sargon
and Necho are to be included the three rulers we have mentioned should
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
not be overlooked. Again, it is surprising to find the name of Jehoiada
omitted (except in connection with Joash) when we remember what a
conspicuous role he played in the history of Judah. The omission is all the
more remarkable when we find so inconspicuous a figure as Bukki, son
of Jogli, mentioned whose only claim to distinction was the fact of his
being “one of ten to whom was entrusted a division of Canaan among
the twelve tribes.’’ Other omissions are Haman, Mordecai, and among
the minor prophets Joel and Malachi. If Joel is omitted because nothing is
known about him except his name, should not the prophet Obadiah be
excluded for the same reason?
“So far as is possible, the subject matter in this book is drawn from
the Scriptures ; where that is not so, it has been made obvious ; and, for
the commerce of the spirit, no other sources were necessary. By taking the
great men and the great movements of the Scriptures through their
various courses, the inevitability of Christianity stands out plainly” (p.
vii f). As is indicated by this quotation the data contained in this book is
in general a simple summary of the Biblical data. There are, however,
occasional indications that the author has been influenced to some extent
by “critical” theories regarding the Scriptures. Thus, the paragraph
which immediately follows the one just quoted reads as follows : “It
ceases to matter whether, as some say, Moses found his idea of God
during his sojourn in Midian and came back to his people with the God of
the Midianites, or whether he was driven into exile in order to appre-
ciate the virtues of the God of his own people. Wherever Moses got the
dominating inspiration is somehow insignificant, academic. The great
fact is that he returned capable of welding his people into a spiritual
unity first, and then to bring about their coalition into a nation. But the
spiritual unity preceded the national unity and has persisted long after
the national unity disappeared under economic pressure.” Here we have
an example of the attempt which is so often made to distinguish between
the facts and the religious ideas of the Old Testament. The Old Testa-
ment record tells us very plainly that Moses did not borrow his idea of
God from the Midianites, but that during his sojourn in Midian the God
of his fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, revealed
Himself to him and commissioned him to deliver His people from the
bondage of Egypt. This is clearly stated and the facts and the religious
ideas are so closely interwoven that to discredit the one cannot fail to
reflect upon the reliability of the other. The fact that it is an historical
religion, a religion whose facts are true and whose doctrines are derived
from the facts is the prime excellence of the religion of Israel.
It may be noted also that the sketches which Mr. .Allen gives us are at
times decidedly “sketchy” and one-sided. Thus, in the biography of
David (it is four pages long, the longest in the book) we read of “David
as a wanderer, David as king, David’s declining years.” The fact that
according to the Scriptures he was the author of many Psalms, the sweet
singer of Israel, is alluded to only in the following sentence: “The
inspired Psalmist, the great warrior, the wise king, yet had to reckon
with forces which he himself had loosed in his youth.” Surely this is
a very inadequate reference to David, the Psalmist. If the author does not
RECENT LITERATURE
495
believe that David wrote the Psalms attributed to him, the phrase “the
inspired Psalmist” is decidedly misleading. If, on the other hand, he
accepts the traditional view of David, this brief reference in a four page
sketch is utterly inadequate.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
HISTORICAL THEOLOGY
My Duel mith the Vatican. The Autobiography of a Catholic Modernist.
By Alfred Loisy. Professor in the College de France. Authorized
Translation by Richard Wilson Boynton. New York; E. P. Dutton
& Co. 1924. Pp. xiii, 357.
Despite the statement of Professor Loisy in his Preface that the
present work “is in no sense an apologia,” careful reading discloses the
fact that this is exactly what it is. It is an apologia pro vita sua all
through ; perchance not intentionally as much of one as the author could
have written, but the kind of an autobiography in which the fact of
self-defense bulks conspicuously large. How could it be otherwise? How
could Professor Loisy portray the struggles through which he passed
without setting up some defense of his career? Some autobiographies
are from their very nature apologiae. This is one of that kind.
We pass over the translator’s introduction of over forty pages,
re-printed from the Harvard Theological Review of January, 1918. It
is on “The Catholic Career of Alfred Firmin Loisy,” and is especially
valuable as giving a biographer’s setting to the autobiography which
follows. If we understand it correctly, however, perhaps few will agree
with the statement (p. 38) that “What Loisy hoped and desired of the
Roman Catholic Church was nothing excessive or unreasonable.” Indeed,
it was the enormity of his expectations and desires that utterly dislocated
his relationship in the Roman Church, and probably would in any other
church outside the extreme wing of rationalistic Protestantism.
As a unique venture within the Roman fold, this life is full of thrills.
It has all the tense situations and brilliant encounters that make the
novel a read book. A Marie Corelli or a Hall Caine could take Professor
Loisy and make a capital hero out of him. There is plenty of material,
background, character, theme-stuff — all leading out to a climax, and no
trace of any anti-climax. Even in Mr. Boynton’s translation there is every
evidence of a fine piece of work that cannot fail to lay hold of the
theological imagination, wherever that is found. From beginning to end,
this story is full of human interest. For the sake of an orderly view.
Professor Loisy, as he here unveils himself, leaves upon us a fourfold
impression.
I. He was wonderfully persevering in the face of the obstacle of poor
health. His delicate physical endowment was constantly before him. For
seven years (1899-1906) he was granted the official Indult or privilege of
saying Mass in his own room. He writes (p. 277), on Nov. 27, 1905:
“Physically I have not much to go on, and morally I am pretty desolate.”
Repeated hemorrhages in 1906 and 1907 reminded him again that his
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
health was, as ever, undependable. Notwithstanding this, his pen was
busy bringing out one book after another in his chosen field. This
indomitable energy, ever battling against the odds of physical weakness,
seldom fails to elicit our admiration, whether we see it in a John Calvin,
a Robert Louis Stevenson, a Sidney Lanier, or an Alfred Loisy.
2. He was a man of scholarly habits. He made it a duty, he tells us
(p. 102), each year to read through the Bible in the original tongues. A
glance at the titles of his books shows how far he had gone into the fields
of exegesis. Biblical criticism, and Christian theology. In all his many
works he dealt with themes that demand the intellectual equipment of
the scholar and the zealous application of the devotee.
3. Professor Loisy was, however, dominantly rationalistic in his
method and thinking. This autobiography ought to make this plain to an
unbiased reader. He not only broke with Rome. The logical trend of his
mental attitude was farther and farther away from a sound evangelicism
in the direction of a bold rationalism. This is not to say that he went as
far in this direction as he might have gone. But the fact itself is too
apparent to require very much debate. His confessions in this book are so
exceedingly frank that they are almost blunt. His Latin thesis for the
Th.D. degree was too radical for publication. He admits that Renan was
truly his master (p. 327). “It will some day,” he says (p. 126), “be
cause for astonishment, even in the Church of Rome — at least so I
should hope — that a Catholic University professor should have been
judged highly reprehensible for having said, in the year of grace 1892,
that the narratives of the first chapter of Genesis are not to be taken as
literal history, and that the alleged agreement of the Bible with natural
science is a rather shabby subterfuge.” In a letter of April 22, 1906, he
told a friend that “theology never has been and never can be anything but
a more and more purified mythology” (p. 279). Under date of June 7,
1904, he writes (p. 275) : “I feel myself in close enough communion
with the intelligent and moral portion of mankind in these days to desire
no other support. It will get me nowhere to believe firmly that Jesus
Christ descended into hell and that he rose again to the skies. Neither
do I find any spiritual solace in thinking that there are really three
persons in God, or in considering Him a person at all. For a long while
I have not found it possible to pray to God as one beseeches an individual
from whom some favor is anticipated. My prayers consist of retiring
into the depths of my own consciousness and there gathering my best
impulses together to determine what for me is right and lawful.” One
could scarcely find a bolder and more sadly self-sufficient subjectivism
than this. When a man’s prayers disclose nothing deeper and more
reassuring than his own self-consciousness, he is of all men most pitiable.
All this was but the subsequent confirmation of an earlier suspicion :
“W'hat I was beginning to believe regarding the Bible, Jesus, the Christian
principles and their origin, was the absolute negation of any supernatural
character for religion whatsoever” (pp. 102-103). A summer vacation’s
check-up convinced him that since 1881 the traditional idea of an inspired
Bible must be “charged among the losses” (p. 95). During his five years
RECENT LITERATURE
497
at the Convent in Neuilly he says he endeavored to “adapt Catholic
doctrine to the exigencies of contemporary thought,” and makes the blunt
confession ; “On my part, I never regained the simple faith of my child-
hood, nor could I accept literally a single article of the creed, unless it
were that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate”; yet religion
appeared to me more and more in the light of a tremendous force that
had dominated, and still was dominant, in the whole of human history”
(p. i68).
While these quotations have been taken from different sections of the
book, they are sufficiently related, not only to each other, but to the
contexts out of which they are selected, to show the main trend of their
author’s thinking, his Weltanschauung in these matters. They speak for
themselves. They could be weakened only in the interest of an equivoca-
tion against which Professor Loisy had all too often to struggle.
4. It would be unfair to the author of this autobiography to think of
him as irreligious. Indeed, he was very religious. There was no real desire
to break with the Roman Church. He could not, as he said, destroy in
himself the result of his labors, yet he could wish to live and die in the
communion of the Catholic Church. Here was an irreconcilable conflict
(p. 262!), which he clearly saw. The issue was clear-cut. He could not
remain a Catholic priest outside the Church, or even a Catholic despite
the Pope (p. 286). And so his ecclesiastical doom was progressively
sealed. Expelled from the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1893, his books
were put on the Index in 1903, he said his last Mass in 1906, and was
excommunicated by Pope Pius X. on March 7, igo8, an act which he felt
had been decided on four years before, and which came twenty years
too late (pp. 319, 322). As professor in the College de France, where he
was promptly received, and where Renan had taught, Professor Loisy
had the intellectual freedom which he had sought in vain in his church.
The impression closes in upon us, however, that this hunted heretic
was also at times haunted with his own misgivings as to the success of
his own life. On April 9, 1904, he writes in his journal : “I have given
myself a lot of trouble in this world with small result. I took my own
life and the Church seriously, and the consequence is that I have wasted
the one and disturbed the other ... I have strewn my intelligence and
my activity to the four winds of an empty ideal. That has made for me
an aimless life, a career that has led nowhere. I am gathering up my
fragments of life and strength to carry them to Marmouse, old before
my time, suspected by the Church, abandoned by the world, destined to
quick oblivion” (p. 272f). This was more than temporary depression. It
is the honest confession of one who certainly knew that he was fighting
a losing battle, and that therefore much of his effort could only be
“barren gain and bitter loss.”
From this standpoint we are forced to take a final view of Professor
Loisy. There are those who will, of course, see in him a prophet far
ahead of his day. But is not a “Roman Catholic Modernist,” after all, a
contradiction in terms? The logical place, it would seem, for men like
George Tyrrell and Alfred Loisy is not in the Roman Catholic Church,
498 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
but somewhere out of it. And if they are not out of it, it must be because
of silence on their part, or a toleration on the part of the ecclesiastical
authorities inconsistent with the fundamental tenets of the Church. It
is of little avail to speak of “his willing captivity within Catholicism”
(p. vi.). Radicalism is one thing; Romanism is another. They don’t mix;
They never have. And the human mind being constructed as it is, they
never will. Nobody knew this better than Professor Loisy. Through all
those years he labored in an atmosphere altogether uncongenial to his
own conclusions. Those conclusions inevitably made enemies for him.
They would do so in many Protestant communions today. He blames the
Church. But his case would rest on the assumption that his conclusions
are fundamentally sound, which they are not. You cannot harmonize
Christianity and the antisupernaturalism of Rationalism. That has been
tried too often, and failed just as often. Professor Loisy was a disturber
of the peace. His church eliminated him because, from her point of view,
valuable in many ways as he undoubtedly was, he was too great a risk.
And who can blame an institution for maintaining its own integrity?
Professor Loisy wanted more than it was safe to give. There is a safety
zone, in which the Church, both Protestant and Roman, is justified in
taking and maintaining its stand.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
The Breach with Rome. A Defense of the Continuity of the Church of
England during the Reformation. By The Reverend William H.
Nes, B.D. With an Introduction by The Rt. Rev. J. H. Darlington,
D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Harrisburg. Morehouse Publishing Co.,
Milwaukee, Wis. A. R. Mowbray & Co., London. 1924. Pp. vii, 62.
Price $1.
This booklet is another defense of the Anglican theory of succession,
though, as Bishop Darlington says in his Introduction, it aims not to
provoke needless offense. From the very nature of the essay, however,
it is polemic and controversial, being a reasoned disavowal of the old
contention that the Anglican Church was really a new sect created by
Henry VIII. Events between 1534 and 1570 are hastily reviewed, specific
instances of ordinations are given necessary (so the author believes) to
establish the historic continuity of the Church of England. The whole
matter is finally reduced to the question of the validity of one man’s
ordination, that of the consecration of Bishop Matthew Parker over the
see of Canterbury. “Upon this turns the whole question of the Anglican
episcopal succession, and, by inference of the organic continuity of the
English Church.” “If Parker was truly and validly made Archbishop,
the old Church still survives” (pp. 33, 34)- Data are summoned to prove
that this consecration took place in Lambeth Chapel on December 17,
1559. And as this was the supposedly (on the part of Romanists) absent
or at least weak link in the chain, its presence and strength being
established, the much desired succession follows. Which was the thing
to be proved.
From this brief survey of the argument it is plain that this book is
especially addressed to Roman Catholics, who brand the Anglican Church
RECENT LITERATURE
499
as schismatic, lacking a true succession in its ministry. The argument of
Mr. Nes should be taken seriously by all such. But to the Non-conformist,
who has never had much zeal for what Dr. Samuel Miller called “a
regular ecclesiastical genealogy from the apostles,” this essay will prove
interesting, but scarcely one of any great moment. It is a theory of the
ministry which is bound to take Romanism more seriously than Non-
conformity. To the latter it has ever been a comfort that the true
succession is not necessarily tied up with ordination links historically
validated according to certain prescribed ordinals.
To be sure, the question is one worthy of all the light which historic
investigation can shed upon it. Much has already been written. On the
Non-Conformist side, two books surely deserve the careful perusal of
all open-minded students in this field : one, very old ; the other, compara-
tively recent. They are: The Primitive and Apostolical Order of the
Church of Christ Vindicated, by Dr. Samuel Miller (1840) ; and The
Historic Episcopate, by the late Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson (1910). And
those who cannot accept Mr. Nes’s High Anglican position or even agree
wholly with his argument, can nevertheless be favorably impressed with
his spirit and the compact presentation he has made of an issue old, yet
ever new.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
Nicolaus de' Tudeschi. Seine Tatigkeit am Easier Konzil. By Julius
ScHWEizER. Strasbourg; Imprimerie Alsacienne, 1924. Pp. 194.
In the year of our Lord, 1432, when the Renaissance was still young,
the University of Padua called to its halls a brilliant professor of canon
law named Nicolas de Tudeschi. But the University of Florence refused
to let him go, alleging that if they did, “they would be forced to close
their university.” Nevertheless, not long after, he did leave, in order to
serve as envoy for the pope Eugene at the council of Basel. The council
of Basel was based upon the same principle as its predecessor the council
of Constance, namely, that a council was superior to a pope. Since the
emergency created by the papal schism no longer existed to give power
and usefulness to this principle, it became instead a source of controversy,
making the council of Basel a stage for unending and vicious intrigues.
Tudeschi was well-fitted to represent the pope at such an assembly of
wranglers, for he was a prince of opportunists. While he ascribed to the
pope as head of the church almost unlimited powers, including the right
to ignore the decrees of a council — if he were right — he denied that the
pope was infallible. Likewise, to an oecumenical council Nicolas attrib-
uted the chief pow'er in the church, if it did not err. But only the church,
with which neither pope nor council was identical, had the gift of infalli-
bility.
Holding such beliefs a man could fight with equal zeal for either pope
or council, and this Tudeschi did without scruple as the occasion made
it advisable. Ehiring his first stay he employed technicalities, long
speeches, and similar methods to prevent a trial of the pope. In Decem-
ber 1436 he came to the council again, but this time as archbishop of
Palermo and representative of King Alfonso of Aragon who sought to
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
win the throne of Naples from the pope and the Duke of Anjou. This
time Nicolas served his royal master by opposing the pope’s attempt
to transfer the council to Italy, and by advocating the suspension of
Eugene. At one time the excitement ran so high that only the presence
of soldiers in the cathedral kept the “holy fathers” from shedding each
other’s blood. As soon as the pope was suspended, Tudeschi, who had
won high honors as a champion of the council, changed his policy and
worked equally hard to prevent the final deposition of Eugene. This
he did because Alfonso could gain more from a pope precariously
situated than from a pope dethroned. But the wily intrigues to which he
resorted were of no avail. Eugene was deposed by the council, and it
was regarded as highly significant that during a thunderstorm the
houses of Tudeschi and other papal defenders were struck by lightning.
When Nicolas came to the council a third time, he wore the cardinal’s
hat, bestowed upon him by the schismatic pope, Felix V. Again he
championed the council and was rewarded with high offices. On one
occasion he spoke for three days and was answered by Nicolas of Cusa
in a speech of equal length. Tudeschi also seized an opportunity to display
his piety by assisting in the condemnation of a “wicked heretic” who
cried out against the riches of the clergy and announced a new dispen-
sation of the Holy Spirit. Soon after, the new cardinal was recalled by
King Alfonso, who had shown such great military superiority that pope
Eugene decided that he must be the rightful heir to the throne of
Naples after all. But Nicolas, since no reward was in view, refused to
submit to Eugene, or to lay aside the cardinal’s hat ; and when he turned
to his royal master for support, he received the reply that no aid could
be given to a man who had deserted his lord the pope so faithlessly.
Such was his reward. Soon after this he died of the plague, little
comforted by the riches and honors he had gained so dishonorably.
This, in brief, is the story of Nicolas de Tudeschi, as told, and well told,
by Julius Schweizer. The work is scholarly and accurate, based on an
exhaustive investigation of the sources, and is consequently a real con-
tribution to historical knowledge. It might be remarked, however, that
the account is not well balanced, being unduly full where the sources are
full. More explanation of important and not commonly familiar matters,
such as the most common reference “M. C.” would be helpful to the
reader. The most serious fault in the monograph is a weakness in
characterization, culminating in the concluding sentence, “Thus we can
draw his portrait with few lines: he was one of the greatest legal
scholars and one of the most zealous diplomats of his time.” A fuller and
franker statement than this of the author’s estimate of the man might
properly be expected.
May the wish be expressed that Dr. Schweizer will soon employ his
exceptional abilities on some more worthy subject than an unscrupulous
Italian ecclesiastic, and a selfish, worldly, mercenary, contentious council,
which could do anything rather than speak the mind of Jesus Christ.
Delaware, Ohio. Hastings Eells.
RECENT LITERATURE
501
PRACTICAL THEOLOGY
Looking Toward The Heights. By O. C. S. Wallace, M.A., D.D., LL.D.,
New York: George H. Doran Company. Pp. 174.
This volume consists of a series of sermons, preached before the
students and faculty of the College of William and Mary, by the pastor
of Eutaw Place Baptist Church, Baltimore, together with a foreword by
President J. A. C. Chandler and an introduction by Professor William
A. R. Goodwin.
It is not often that one is privileged to read a series of sermons,
especially a series of sermons preached in an academic atmosphere, so
soundly evangelical as those that Dr. Wallace has given us. Dr. Wallace
has not fallen into the mistake of supposing that he must empty
Christianity of its content before it can be preached in college circles. It
is not even a pared-down or diluted Gospel that is found in these pages.
Christ is presented, not as the flower of humanity but as the “Incarnate
Son of God, God in human form.” Moreover He is presented not merely
as a teacher and not merely as an example but as one who bore our sins
in His own body on the tree. It is as refreshing as it is rare to read in
a sermon preached before students such a passage as this : “It is not
primarily the Christ of peerless wisdom who stands at the door and
knocks, nor the Christ of loving service, but the Christ of redemption.
Knowledge brings light to the intellect, and loving service brings the
light of joy and peace to the burdened, shadowed heart ; but it is
redemption by the blood of Christ, symbolized by the pierced hand, that
hand which was fastened to the cross, when he became obedient unto
death, which alone can dissipate all the darkness of the soul, all darkness,
all gloom, all foreboding for time and for eternity.”
These sermons speak to the heart and will as well as the mind. Excellent
alike in form and in content, they present, in the words of Professor
Goodwin, a challenge to high courage, to noble ideals, and to the
sacrificial life. We are not at all surprised when he tells us that these
sermons produced a profound impression upon the students and faculty
before whom they were preached; and we share the hope of President
Chandler and himself that they may be widely read by the general public
and particularly by college and university students.
Princeton. S. G. Craig.
Christ Triumphant. By A. Maude Royden. New York and London : G. P.
Putnam’s Sons. 1924. Pp. 150.
This little book consists of two series of sermons by a woman who has
won eminence as a preacher. The book receives its name- from the first
series ; the second series deals with “The Meaning of the Cross in the
Twentieth Century.” These sermons are not lacking in elements of power
and distinction but from the viewpoint of evangelical Christianity they
must be judged sadly defective. Miss Royden shows a marked tendency
to ignore the dividing lines between the Christian and non-Christian
religions. She says, for instance, “I believe that the cross of Christ is
really the cross of all great religions.” While she says much that is
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Striking, and quite a little that is true, in her discussion of the meaning
oh the cross today, yet she is wholly silent concerning that which alone
makes the cross a solid ground of hope for sinners, viz., that there Christ
offered up Himself as an expiatory sacrifice for the world’s sin. More-
over in her discussion of Christ as triumphant she is concerned almost
exclusively with showing that the principles that Christ laid down for
our guidance are right principles from a common-sense point of view'
and that if followed they will lead to success in business, industry, in
social and international relations. It is well that this fact should be
emphasized but not that it should be emphasized to the neglect of the
fact that the bond that binds real Christians together is not primarily
their common lo}-alty to the principles and ideals taught and exemplified
by Christ but their common lo3’altj' to His person. It maj- also be
mentioned that Miss Royden speaks of our Lord as a Mj-stic in a sense
that finds no warrant in the New Testament. We sj-mpathize with her
desire to do justice to both Easter and Good Friday — ^both to Christ as
risen and Christ as crucified — but that can be done only by those who
share the presuppositions of the New Testament.
Princeton. S. G. CiLua
International Christian Movements. Bj’ Charles S. Macfarland, D.D.,
New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. Pp. 222.
This book by the General Secretary of the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America is an informing one and meets a real
need. It provides a useful reference book that contains a mass of
dependable information concerning the main organizations within Protes-
tantism that are international in their character and influence not
elsewhere readily accessible to the general reader. In addition it indicates
the sources to which we may go if we desire fuller information in regard
to any of these movements. It will be surprising to many to learn how
many such organizations there are in existence. Dr. Macfarland deals
particularh' with some thirty-five such bodies and movements and then
in his closing chapter, entitled “Other Organizations and Movements’’
confesses that he “has by no means exhausted the list of the Evangelical
Christian organizations which are either directly or indirectly contributing
to the cause of world brotherhood and evangelical unitj-.’’ Just why Dr.
Macfarland should regard “The International Congress of Religious
Liberals” as entitled to consideration in such connections we are at a
loss to understand.
Princeton. S. G. CR.-MG.
Sermons for the Times by Present-Day Preachers. Edited by Peter
W.\lker with Introduction by Thom.^s L. Massox. Fleming H.
Revell Co. Price Si. 50.
This volume consists of thirteen sermons by as many prominent
American preachers. In selecting the preachers who should be asked to
contribute to its make-up the editor was evidently guided by the desire
to produce a volume of sermons representative of the American pulpit
both denominationally and theologically. Its contributors include four
RECENT LITERATURE
503
Congregationalists, three Baptists, three Presbyterians, two Methodists,
and one Lutheran. Moreover they include about an equal number of
“Fundamentalists,” “Modernists,” and those who seek to steer a middle
course between the Scylla and Charybdis of what they regard as two
extreme positions. None of the sermons are polemic in nature; all of
them are excellent of their kind ; as a whole they are doubtless
thoroughly representative of the best preaching to be heard in the
American pulpit of today. The names of the contributors follow : David
J. Burrell, S. Parkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Newell Dwight
Hillis, Chas. E. Jefferson, Leander S. Keyser, Bishop McConnell, W. P.
Merrill, Bishop Quayle, W. B. Riley, Frederick F. Shannon, John
Timothy Stone, Cornelius Woelfkin.
Princeton. S. G. Craig.
A Study of the Junior Child — For Junior Teachers. By Mary Theodora
Whitley. Printed for The Teacher Training Publishing Association
by The Westminster Press. Philadelphia. 1923. Pp. 155. Price 60 cents.
A striking feature of present day church work is the increasing
activity of non-professional or lay workers. In this there is possibility
of good and evil, especially evil, for we have good authority for believing
that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Therefore
in addition to the fundamental requirement of sincere faith in Jesus as
Lord and Saviour, there is need of expert knowledge of the What and
the How of the teaching task of the Christian religion. The book before
us aims to tell the facts concerning the Junior child, i.e., the child of
nine to twelve years of age. It is one of the textbooks of the Standard
Course in Teacher Training, outlined and approved by The International
Sunday School Council of Religious Education. In successive chapters we
are told in bright and concise language how the Junior child reveals
himself in play, at home, and in the day school, and the physical and
psychological facts that the teacher of the Christian religion should
keep in mind. At the close of each chapter is a number of discussion
questions, and the book ends with a brief bibliography.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
Parent Training in the Church School. By Florence E. Norton. Phila-
delphia : Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church
in the U. S. A. 1923. Pp. 96. Price 60 cents.
This little book is intended for those who would teach parents how to
proceed with the spiritual training of their children. It is written under
the conviction that the home should be the main agency for the education
of children in the truths of the Spirit, but that many parents are today
woefully ignorant how to go about the task. Therefore we are told how
to reach the parents through the Cradle Roll Department, the Children’s
Division of the Sunday School, and the Parent Teacher Association. In
addition there are well selected programs for Mothers’ Clubs and for
Evening Meetings. There is here a wealth of suggestive material for all
who are interested in this much needed work.
Lincoln University, Pa.
George Johnson.
504
THE PRIXCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
To Be Near Unto God. By Abraham Kuyper, D.D., LL.D. Former
Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Translated from the Dutch by
John Hendrik DeVries, D.D. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925.
Pp. 679.
This is a great book by a great man. In the midst of gigantic labours
as a profound theologian — possibly the greatest of modern times — and as
a statesman of the first rank. Dr. Km-per always kept before him the ideal
of communion with God as man’s highest destiny, privilege, and duty.
To make this ideal his own and to stamp it on the life of his Fatherland,
this great theologian wrote more than two thousand devotional medita-
tions. This book gives us one hundred and ten of them, each from a
different viewpoint and a different Scriptural passage, but all on the single
thought from Psalm 73 : “As for me, it is good to be near unto God.’’
The translator has said too little in classing them with the best works
of Dutch mystics. We think they will rank with the best devotional
literature of all lands and ages. With powerful imagination and profound
theological insight. Dr. Kuyper has written with the heart of a child and
in language that a child can understand and yet in which a grown man
will find all his powers engaged to drink from this rich spring of living
water. We have here the humility of a great Christian heart in the
presence of the majesty of the Infinite God.
Dr. Kuj’per knew that in the deeps of religious mysticism there ever
lurks danger. The soul that seeks God, as he says in the Preface, involun-
tarily inclines to step across the boundary that separates the Infinite and
the finite, defined by the word “near,” and to force an entrance panthe-
istically into God’s Being. Another danger is that “spiritual emotion,
without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of
sickly mysticism.” Still another danger is to forget the estrangement
from God caused by sin and lose sight of the historical Christ and His
historical work of redemption. Each of these dangers Dr. Kuyper has
studiously avoided. No trace of pantheism can be found here, no “sickly
m}-sticism” for underlying all is the author’s clear apprehension of the
Reformed Faith which colours and sustains every thought, imagination,
and devout emotion, no neglect of the awfulness of sin, for all fellowship
with God is for Dr. Kuj-per through Christ and by the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit in the heart of God’s child. Yet it is a true “mysticism,”
nevertheless, which the author gives us. “Stress in creedal confession,” he
says, “without drinking of these waters (of communion with God), runs
dry in barren orthodoxy.”
Here, then, there is nc barren intellectualism, no stopping short with
thoughts about God, and at the same time no bathing of oneself in
“experience” and “life” which has no roots in the Divine revelation in
the Bible. What we find is not knowledge about God, but that knowledge
of God and Christ by the Spirit which is eternal life. Religion for Dr.
Ku>-per is not thought, feeling, or activity, but back of all a vital fellow-
ship with God which flows out into all spheres of human life, enriching
science, controlling feeling, and bringing to every human task a nobility
which springs from this deep source and which renders all human life
RECENT LITERATURE
505
something which is for the purpose of manifesting the glory of God.
It is difficult to give any adequate idea of the rich thought content
which gives form to these religious meditations. It is, first of all, deeply
Christian. The guilt and power of sin, the mediatorial work of Christ,
the renewal of the Holy Spirit, are all given full recognition as condi-
tioning the communion of fallen man with the Holy God. The Trinitarian
conception of God comes to its full expression, and the saving work of
each Person is clearly seen to underlie the whole conception of nearness
to God. It is not only Christian, each meditation is from the standpoint
of the Reformed Faith. To be near to God is not only man’s chief end,
it is for the purpose of manifesting God’s glory and giving Him the honor
due to our Maker. God is our Maker, our Fountain of life, our Sun and
Shield, our Rock and Fortress, Almighty Saviour, our loving heavenly
Father. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth the soul
after the living God. In this nearness to God, He is sovereign. He draws
us into communion with Himself, and only so can we enjoy it. He can hide
his face for a time if He will, either to test our faith or because of our
sin. Yet He is ever near and encompasseth us with His presence even
when we faint spiritually and fail to be conscious of His presence. We are
dependent on Him for everything, and this highest gift of conscious
nearness to Him is His gracious gift. He has provided the means. He
gives us the power. His is all the praise and glory. It is also in accordance
with the Reformed point of view that it is no cloistered “mysticism”
which is here portrayed. We are to be near to God in our vocation, and
to bring every calling in life, whether statecraft, business, art, or science,
under this walking near to God. We are to make our refuge in the
covert of God’s wings, and then to face the world and its tasks and to
bring all life near to God. Perhaps we can sum it up by saying that
Almighty God has created man in His image and for communion with
Himself, and as Almighty and gracious Saviour has re-established com-
munion with fallen man. God has thus made possible the attainment of
man’s chief end which is “to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.”
This volume forms a fitting climax to the labours of its author. After
graduating from the University of Leyden, he took his Doctorate there
in 1863. A year later he began his ministry at Beesd, from whence he
went to Utrecht, and in 1870 to Amsterdam. In 1872 he became Editor of
De Standard, a daily paper, the organ of the anti-revolutionary party.
Soon after this he became editor of De Heraut, a Christian weekly paper.
For more than forty-five years he filled these positions with power.
When he left the University of Leyden, he had advanced liberal ideas,
having studied under Scholten and Kuenen, among others. But in his
pastorate he learned the need and felt the experience of the Gospel of
Grace, through his contact with the simple people of his Church. Liber-
alism could not satisfy their spiritual needs, and so it came about that
their minister himself felt his own soul cry out for the bread of life. He
studied the mediating theology of Germany, but found no rest for his soul
in it. When he came to study Calvin he found both intellectual and
spiritual satisfaction. Here he found what the uneducated people of his
5o6
,THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
congregation had been telling him of and asking from him. From now on
Dr. Kuyper became a foremost expounder of the Reformed Faith.
In 1874 Dr. Kuyper was elected as a member of the Lower House of
Parliament, serving until 1877. In 1880 he was active in establishing the
Free University of Amsterdam where for many years he taught the
Reformed Theology. Five large volumes, Dicfaten der Dogmatiek, con-
tain his lectures as taken down by his students, though he left no Dog-
matic Theology from his own pen. His Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology
is probably his most important work, part of which is obtainable in an
English translation published by Scribners. His Stone Lectures at
Princeton Seminary on Calvinism made him better known in America.
Also his popular articles on the work of the Holy Spirit have been
translated and published in a volume in English.
After his return to Holland from America in 1898 he continued as
leader of the anti-revolutionary party until 1901, and from then until
1905 he was Prime Minister of The Netherlands. During his last years
he resided in the Hague as Minister of State, an outstanding figure on
the Continent. At the age of seventy-five he wrote a series of articles
on The End of the World, and was planning a work on The Messiah at
the age of eighty-two, but in November 1920 he died.
We have attempted no complete list of Dr. Kuyper’s works, nor any
estimate of his significance as a theologian. These brief references to his
works drawn partly from the translator’s Preface, have been given
simply because he ought to be better known in America. His labours were
prodigious, his learning profound, his exposition and defense of the
Reformed Faith unsurpassed in modern times. But it is his humble and
deep piety which is shown in these devotional meditations. It is our hope
that they will find a large reading public, which by them may be drawn
near to God by the Gospel of Grace as exhibited in its pure form in the
Reformed Faith which Dr. Kuyper made a living force in Holland.
Princeton. C. W. Hodge.
Biblical Backgrounds for the Rural Message. By Edwin L. E.aiRP, Pro-
fessor of Christian Sociology, Drew Theological Seminary. New
York: Association Press, pp. 77.
The book shelves of country manses are more or less cluttered with
volumes that rural pastors buy, from time to time, and by making many
quiet sacrifices, in order to increase their own usefulness to their people.
Necessarily, such books must as a rule be bought on the recommendation
of title and advertisement; — and many a bitter disappointment follows
the reception of volumes ordered in haste and repented at leisure.
In this little work the reader is treated to nothing but platitudes,
amplified into outline lessons. If the purchaser happen to have a well
developed sense of humor, he may feel repaid by reading the book. We
offer one little gem : “It is useless for the people of the land to seek to
change the climate in general by listening to professional rain-makers”
(p. 10). The booklet is full of equally helpful “backgrounds.”
Delaware City, Del. Robert Claiborne Pitzer.
RECENT LITERATURE
507
Church Ushers Manual. By Willis O. Garrett. D.D., Pastor, First
Presbyterian Church, Miami, Fla. New York: Fleming H. Revell
Co. Board. 12 mo. pp. 64. Price 50c.
This manual is designed as “a hand-book for church ushers and all
others who would promote the spirit of worship in the house of God.”
It is the work of a pastor who has had long experience in dealing suc-
cessfully with audiences far exceeding the capacity of his church and
containing a very large proportion of strangers and visitors. The advice
given in the manual for the guidance and instruction of “the Ushers,”
“the Head Usher,” “the Ushers’ Association,” “the Pastor and Governing
Bodies” is wise, practical and important. Every pastor realizes how vital
to the success of his work is the assistance of a trained corp of efficient
and faithful and consecrated ushers, and all who are concerned with
making church activities more efficient will do well to place copies of
this little book in the hands of those who are attempting to serve in the
capacity of ushers.
Princeton. Charles R. Erdman.
God’s Program, God’s World-Program, God’s Plans for Men and Their
Consummation. By the Rev. Grant Stroh, Professor in Church
History, History of Doctrine and Biblical Criticism, Moody Bible
Institute. The Bible Institute Colportage Association, Chicago, 111.
This is an interesting, reverent and scholarly discussion of the object,
scope and consummation of God’s program for the race as indicated in
human history and progress and interpreted by the Scriptures. The
author starts with the presupposition that things do not “happen, but
centre in the wisdom, power and personality of God ; and that the nature
and possibilities of men indicate a definite goal — ‘the one far off divine
event to which the whole creation moves.’ ” The book emphasizes the
value of the Scriptures, the Divinity of our Lord and His Atoning
Sacrifice.
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Montgomery.
A Casket of Cameos. More Texts that made History. By F. W.
Boreham. Abingdon Press. 1924. Pp. 271. $1.75 net.
This latest volume from the prolific pen of Mr. Boreham displays all the
characteristics which have won for him a host of readers, and estab-
lished his reputation as a writer of rare skill and charm. Here is the
power of discovering and portraying the spiritual in the daily course
of life; the apt and striking illustrations, always fresh and vivid, drawn
from a wide range of reading, observation, and experience ; the devout
and reverent treatment of the Word of God ; the worship of Christ as
the only Lord and Saviour. It is shown by examples taken from biogra-
phy and fiction how great a part the Scripture has played in shaping
the lives of men and the course of history. Thus the volume upon a
smaller scale though with wider range attempts a work like that which
Prothero has so finely accomplished in his Psalms in Human Life.
It is an interesting series of pictures which the book presents, with
5o8
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
that mingling of pathos and humor which life everywhere exhibits.
Noble and stately figures move before us, men who have filled the earth
with their fame, like Whitefield and Newman and John Bright and
Thackeray and Lord Shaftesburj'. And side by side with these men
of renown are others whose names are strange to us, as in the eleventh
chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews the true servants of God, great
and small, receive equal honor. The characters drawn from fiction are
in general less interesting than those drawn from real life, and happily
there are not many of them. It is difficult to see why in such a great
company a place should be accorded to Mark Sabre, the hero, if so
inappropriate a term may be applied to him, of If Winter Comes. Sound
judgment ordinarily, controls the natural impulse to paint the picture
in colors brighter than those which nature has employed ; but surely
it is not necessary to exaggerate the importance of Lady Huntington by
affirming that she “stands absolutely alone in history. Her extraordinary
achievement is without precedent and without parallel ; in all our annals
there is no record that we can compare with hers. Since the world
began, no one person of either sex has done for any nation what she
did for ours” (p. 212). We need look no further than her friend John
Wesley to find an answer to this extravagant claim on her behalf.
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
Church Music. What a Minister Should Know About It. By Edmund S.
Lorenz. Author of “Practical Church Music.” Editor of the “Choir
Leader” and the “Choir Herald.” Fleming H. Revell Co. 1923.
Pp. 466. $3.50 net.
This is a book of marked interest and value to the minister, and to
all who recognize the importance of music in the worship of the Church.
The Preface indicates that other volumes are contemplated by the author,
one on “practical efliiciency in church music,” and the other on “methods
of efficiency in the use of h}Tnns in the church service” — though it is
not clear how these themes are distinguished.
It is suggested that the book might be used in the classroom of the
theological seminar}-, and with this in mind each chapter is followed
by a number of questions.
A glance at the Table of Contents suggests the thoroughness with
which the work is done. Introduction : Ideas Underlying the EHscussion
of Church Music. Part I. The Philosophy of Musical Sounds. Part H.
The Psycholog}- of Music. Part III. The History of Church Music.
Part IV. The Pipe Organ.
The treatment of the History of Church Music to most readers will
probably be the most interesting and instructive section of the book, as
it is much the longest, covering nearly one-half of the volume. The
origin of music, pre-Christian music, and the development of various
kinds of Christian music from the beginning to our own time are
treated in an attractive and illuminating fashion. It is well to be re-
minded that “modem music is the child of the Christian Church” (p 36).
“The ancient did not cultivate harmony, but sang and played only the
RECENT LITERATURE
509
melody in unison. Harmony is a comparatively modern form of music,
not much over four hundred years old” (p. 80).
Parts of the book are of necessity somewhat technical, as in the closing
section, but in general it will prove of interest to any intelligent reader;
and a study of it would be of great value to our ministers, and to all
who are charged with the conduct of the musical part of the church
service. Many suggestions of value are made regarding features of
church worship which sometimes receive scant attention.
It is singular to read of the Psalms that “There was no self-conscious-
ness in them” (p. 283). There are a few typographical errors and slips
in grammar which are so obvious as to cause no difficulty.
The review of this excellent volume may be fitly concluded by two
quotations from the standards of our Church to which attention is often
called in the classroom. “As one primary design of public ordinances
is to pay social acts of homage to the most high God, ministers ought to
be careful not to make their sermons so long as to interfere with or
exclude the more important duties of prayer and praise ; but to preserve
a just proportion between the several parts of public worship” (Directory
for Worship, VII. IV.). “The proportion of the time of public worship
to be spent in singing is left to the prudence of every minister; but it
is recommended that more time be allowed for this excellent part of
divine service than has been usual in most of our churches” (Id.
IV. IV).
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
Character and Happiness. By Alvin E. Magary, Minister, First Pres-
byterian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
1924. Pp. viii, 264.
This is a volume of decided interest. The style is excellent, and there
is a blending of wisdom, humor, and good judgment in the treatment of
the practical questions with which life is concerned that arrests and
holds the attention and moves persuasively upon the will. It must be
added, however, that the religious element of life is sometimes obscured,
or even studiously ignored, as in the first chapter, entitled Self-making,
where man’s power of making character is pressed to the point of
virtually ruling God out of the life, instead of presenting Him as the
most potent force by which the life is shaped. We miss Paul’s great
words, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Generally speaking
the author is happier in his treatment of ethical than of theological or
philosophical themes. It is curious to read in the chapter on Purpose that
“Whatever it may be, trying to get it will bring happiness, even though
we never succeed in possessing it. Men who have tried and failed are
seldom miserable.” In the chapter on Happiness again the element of
religion is thrust into the background.
But this happily is not the prevailing tone of the book, and in general
the dependence of the soul upon God is fully recognized.
The style and mode of treatment remind us at times of Boreham.
Much is said well and wisely in essays. Between Dreams and Visions,
and a Look in the Mirror, on the perils of middle age, which indeed are
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
510
more serious than those of youth, as its errors are harder to retrieve.
Yet here too we crave a deeper religious tone, a clearer representation
of God as the refuge and the strength of men at every age. There are
times when the fondness for epigram leads to half truths. We are told
“that the man who sought for the pearl of great price would have had
an interesting and satisfying life even though he never found it. In
these higher reaches of the soul we are enriched by what we seek more
than by what we find. We are fed by our own hunger when we hunger
for the things of God” (p. 47). That is surely not the thought of
Jesus. There is a single instance of bad grammar (p. 48). Twice we
read spirit of God (pp. 123, 125).
The illustrations are fresh, apt, and admirable. For example: “It is
related that at the inauguration of a President, a certain Bishop was
observed sitting on the platform with an expression of deep profundity
on his face. ‘The Bishop seems to be thinking,’ remarked a by-stander
to his companion. ‘The Bishop is not thinking,’ was the reply. ‘The
Bishop never thinks: the Bishop is simply rearranging his prejudices.’”
(p. 64). But it is not true that “the people in the books of George Eliot
seem all to deteriorate as they grow older” (p. 74). In her novels as
in the life which they depict with such power there are those who grow
better and those who grow worse with the flight of years.
It is a good book, and answers well the purpose indicated in the
Preface : “These chapters have been drawn from the daily labor of a
preacher in a down-town church. They present no plan for the re-
formation of our social order, no criticism of international politics,
nor any theological innovation whereby the world may be quickly saved.
They are addressed to men and women who would find happiness and
continuing usefulness in the pursuit of those ordinary practices of good
common sense by which more of us must find the solution of our
problems.”
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
The Master and the Twelve. By Rev. J. W. G. Ward, Minister of Im-
manuel Church, Montreal; formerly of New Court Church, Tolling-
ton Park, London. George H. Doran Co. 1924. Pp. 255. $1.60 net.
This is a book of very moderate value. The portraits drawn of the
several members of the apostolic company are often too fanciful to be
convincing. The picture drawn of their inner life, their thoughts, feel-
ings, motives has in many cases no warrant in the Scripture narrative,
and is in itself highly improbable. That Peter was reluctant to believe
the witness of Andrew, and even suspected that his brother might be
out of his mind; that James, and perhaps Jesus himself, were suspicious
of the motives of Jairus when he sought the help of the Master; that
James was afraid to ascend the Mount of Transfiguration because he
believed that spirits haunted the hills ; these are illustrations of the
manner in which fancy is suffered to stray not only beyond the limits
of the Scripture but beyond the bounds of probability. And there are
not wanting instances in which the plain indications of the Scripture
RECENT LITERATURE
5II
narrative are wholly disregarded. “It is unthinkable,’’ we read, “that
Christ had favorites in the band of his disciples’’ (p. 32), and then we
are told immediately how the three were chosen to be his bosom friends.
We are told that when the Greeks sought to see Jesus, Philip stands
aside while Andrew tells Jesus ; but John informs us the “Andrew
cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus.’’ That the question of Judas,
“Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to
the poor?” provoked the anger of the disciples cannot be maintained
in face of the Scripture record that there were those among them who
agreed with Judas (Mark xiv. 4), while Matthew intimates that the
disciples generally were of the same mind : “When the disciples saw it,
they had indignation,” and the question which John puts in the mouth
of Judas is echoed by the whole company of the twelve (xxvi. 8).
Lincoln is said to have signed the Treaty that set the slave free (p.28).
These few examples may serve to illustrate the lack of thoroughness
which the book evinces. While much is said that is true, there is little
that is fresh or striking, and no new light of history or historic imagi-
nation is shown upon the life and character of the Twelve.
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
The Adventure into the Unknown and Other Sermons Preached in
Westminister Abbey. By Ven. R. H. Charles, D. Litt., D.D.
'London : T & T. Clark.
This volume consists of twenty sermons preached on various occasions
by a distinguished modern scholar. They are all sermons of a high
order but scarcely meet their professed aim, viz., “to set forth the great
truths of the Christian Faith in their bearing on the individual and
corporate life.” Dr. Charles moves almost wholly in the realm of ideas
and ideals and has little to say of the factual basis of Christianity. In
harmony with this he defines theology as the expression in formal terms
of religious experience rather than the expression of the objective facts
and truths of revelation. It is not surprising, therefore, that he rejects
all external authority in religion, except for those “not come to age,
morally and intellectually,” and that he is very severe on those who
demand any strict subscription to creeds. It is also not surprising,
perhaps — though it involves the rejection of the very heart of Christi-
anity— that in the four sermons he devotes to the subject of forgive-
ness there is a running and at times concentrated attack on the con-
ception of Christ’s death as expiatory. The essential condition of for-
giveness, we are told, is repentance. All satisfaction theories of the
atonement are rejected and we are told that “the object of Christ’s life
and death is not to placate, to pacify, to reconcile God to man, but to
reveal God’s infinite love to man and so to redeem and reconcile man
to God.” It is idle to expect any adequate setting forth of Christian
truth by any man, no matter how distinguished, who rejects the Bible
as authoritative and who is repelled by the thought of the cross as an
expiatory sacrifice for sin.
Dr. Charles devotes one sermon to Origen as the typical scholar of
512
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the early Church. He compares him with .Augustine — much to the
latter’s disadvantage. We are told that “whereas every advance in
thought and theology serves to render untenable leading doctrines in
the theology of St. Augustine, the same advancing thought of Christen-
dom tends to reaffirm the main positions of Origen.’’ “St. Augustine,”
Dr. Charles goes on to say, “is, in fact, in many respects the master mind
of the dark ages of the Church and of kindred obscurantist tendencies
of the Church of the present, but Origen is the forerunner of the nobler
theology of the times that have been and of the times that are yet to be.”
Princeton. S. G. Cr.mg
Great Modern Sermons. Edited by Hob.^rt D. McKeeh.\n. S.T.!M. New
York: Fleming H. Revell Company.
This volume consists of thirteen sermons by as many living preachers.
W'hile the editor, guided by what he regards as “the consensus of
opinion, the verdict of scholars, and of a world that loves inspired
preaching” exercised his own judgment in selecting the thirteen “supreme
preachers of this generation,” yet he permitted these preachers them-
selves to decide which of their sermons were representative of their best
pulpit efforts. The preachers thus honored by the editor are Canon
Barnes, Dean Inge, and Drs. Hutton, Kelman and Norwood among
British preachers and Drs. Burrell, Cadman, Fosdick, Gordon, Hillis,
Jefferson, Newton, and Shannon from among American preachers.
While the editor anticipates that these sermons will prove profitable
to the lay reader yet it is the student of homiletics whose interests he
is most concerned to further. “Here,” he tells us in his preface, “are
perfect models open to analysis and review. . . . No formal rhetoric or
other rule of homiletic art will have half as much force as the power
of example, of good models. These splendid creations of our modern
preachers are not intended to dazzle or to be slavishly imitated or to
submerge one’s individuality. They are meant rather to create new
thought and fresh devotion to the ministry, and to stimulate to a higher
order of effort.”
We do not share the editor’s high opinion of these sermons. Some of
them are excellent, notably that of Dr. D. J. Burrell, but as a whole
they scarcely deserve to be called great. What is worse most of them
contain little that is distinctively Christian. One might listen to a great
deal of such preaching without obtaining a clear answer to the question.
What is Christianity? or What is a Christian? We fear it is only too
true that these sermons are representative modern sermons. They may
as a whole be commended to the student of homiletics for their style
but not for their content. After all what we say is more important than
the way we say it. Since that is the case only a few, at most, of these
sermons are “really great sermons.” In as far as such sermons are
representative it is not strange that the fortunes of the Church are not
at flood tide.
Princeton S. G. Craig
RECENT LITERATURE
513
Five Present-Day Controversies. By Charles E. Jefferson, D.D., LL.D.,
Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York. New York:
Fleming H. Revell Company. Pp. 175.
This little book is made up of five sermons or addresses delivered on
successive Sunday mornings in the Broadway Tabernacle, together with
a brief preface. Brief as is the preface, however, it is perhaps the most
valuable feature of the book because of its defense of the right and
duty of controversy. No doubt it is an easy task to point out how
foolish it is for Christians to disparage or fear controversy, in view of
the example of Christ and His apostles. It is a task, however, that needs
to be done and, in view of the fact that it is so customary to disparage
controversy in liberal circles, it is a matter of satisfaction to have so
distinguished a representative of liberalism as Dr. Jefferson point out
that such disparagement “shows a strange ignorance of the way in
which the Church has advanced and added new dimensions to her life.”
The five controversies in which Dr. Jefferson seeks to play his part
are indicated by the titles to his addresses: “Two Views of the Bible”;
“Evolution and the Book of Genesis”; “The Virgin Birth”; “The
Use of Creeds” ; “Roman Catholicism and the Ku Klux Klan.” He
appears to best advantage, it seems to us, in his treatment of the
Ku Klux Klan issue — due to the fact, we suppose, that he treats it as
a question of policy rather than religious conviction. While he con-
demns the Ku Klux Klan he points out that there has been and is much
in the Roman Catholic attitude to justify the rise and spread of this
organization. This address contains much food for thought for Roman
Catholic and Klansman alike.
The pivotal address of those dealing with more strictly religious
issues is, of course, the one entitled, “Two Views of the Bible.” As Dr.
Jefferson himself says : “The Bible is the storm center of the religious
world in our generation. All the great controversies which are now
raging are rooted in the Scriptures.” It is because Dr. Jefferson has
been led to accept a view of the Bible that prevents him from looking
upon it as the authoritative and infallible Word of God that he is led
to minimize the importance of what the Bible says as to both the origin
of the world and the origin of Jesus Christ. Here also we find the ex-
planation of his estimate of the value of creeds. For while a man who
does not regard the Bible as the “Word of God” may place a high value
on creeds — as Dr. Jefferson does — ^yet it is evident that at most they can
have for him only a relative value, no matter how accurately they ex-
press the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures. If Dr. Jefferson
had a truer view of the Bible it is certain that the contents of his chapters
on Evolution, the Virgin Birth and the Creeds would be quite different.
In view of the pivotal significance of the Bible in present-day religious
controversy it is to be regretted that the address dealing with the Bible
is perhaps the most unsatisfactory of all. Dr. Jefferson champions the
“illumination theory” of inspiration, contrasting it with what he calls the
“dictation theory.” The impression his words are fitted to make on the
reader is that they must choose between these two theories. Such
514 the PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
plausibility, however, as attaches to his representation is due almost
wholly to the fact that the “dictation theory’’ as set forth by him is
little more than a caricature of the view of the Bible held by intelligent
advocates of an infallible Bible. If Dr. Jefferson had a more accurate
conception of the view of the Bible which he tells us was that of “our
fathers and mothers or at least of our grandparents” probably even he
would not imagine that so little can be said in its defense.
Dr. Jefferson manifests at times an almost child-like ignorance of
current conditions. For instance he tells us that “everybody” accepts all
the statements of the Apostle’s Creed except those having to do with
the Virgin Birth and the resurrection of the flesh. As a matter of fact
there is scarcely an article of that creed that is not rejected by many
calling themselves Christians. Many are as hesitant about saying, “I
believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth” as
they are to say that Jesus was virgin born. He is also guilty, it seems
to us, of a good deal of loose thinking, as when he defines evolution as
God’s method of creation and supposes that a person can properly be
called an evolutionist who believes in any happenings that can rightly
be called miracles.
We share Dr. Jefferson’s hope that what he has written may stimulate
his readers “to think more earnestly and fruitfully on these high and
perplexing themes” — because we are certain that in proportion as they
do so they will arrive at conclusions other than those presented in
this book.
Princeton. S. G. Cr.mg.
The Ravaffes of Higher Criticism in the Indian Mission Field. By Wat-
kin R. Roberts, Honorary Treasurer of The Bible League of India,
Burma and Cejlon. Fourth edition. London; Protestant Truth So-
ciety; Philadelphia: Wm. S. Wills, 1214 Pennsylvania Building.
Paper, Crowm 8vo. Pp. 27.
This pamphlet contains a telling array of facts backed by documentary
evidence as to the presence and harmful effect of modernism in India.
The organization which the author represents corresponds to the well-
know Bible Union of China. The spread of anti-supernaturalistic pro-
paganda in India has led to the banding together of many of those who
hold the conservative and evangelical position into a League for the
furtherance of the Gospel of salvation from sin and the defence of the
faith once for all delivered. Mr. Roberts, the Hon. Treasurer of this
Society has gathered data as to the presence and spread of destructive
teaching in Theological Seminaries, Colleges, Schools and Sunday
Schools; he has shown its effect upon w'ork among non-Christian
students, upon Indian Christian thought, its entrance into the columns
of Christian periodicals and its result in compromise wdth idolatry. The
condition here portrayed in barest outline is serious enough to demand
the attention of all true lovers of Christ’s cause in this Mission field.
There are many missionaries in India who do not hold to the inerrancy
of the Word of God, the Virgin Birth of our Lord, His substitutionary
death on the Cross to atone for sin. His bodily resurrection and actual
RECENT LITERATURE
515
return. Some believe in certain of these truths while rejecting others. A
president of a leading college when preaching to a group of missionaries
proclaimed Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, to be a better Christian than
may professing believers. Such a statement evinces a surprising vague-
ness of conception as to what constitutes a Christian. One young man
had not been in the country a year before he publicly decried the Apostles
Creed as being inaccurate in statement. A committee of representatives
from three Missions went on record as being neither conservative nor
liberal, thus priding itself in taking the middle-of-the-road position in
questions relating to eternal life. A number of missionaries joined to-
gether in writing a letter to one of the former moderators of the Pres-
byterian Church in the U. S. A. in which reference was made to the
theological discussion in the home church as something distressing and
detracting from the full measure of evangelical zeal, and praying that
under his leadership the Church as she then existed, part loyal and part
disloyal, might be held unbroken. One missionary of many years of
service disparaged the miracles of Christ while lauding the efforts of the
Mohammedan to gain merit by going without so much as a drink during
fast days, although his business was to carry water up a steep hill to
others. He told a group of ministers that one day while reasoning with
a young Hindu regarding the ugliness of the elephant-god as an object
of worship, he was startled by the reply from this mentally alert non-
Christian that to him the elephant-god was no less ugly than the form of
a dying god suspended from a gibbet. And the missionary felt the posi-
tion of this young man was a reasonable one to hold. Thus the extent of
confusion as to what is the Christian’s object of worship; thus the
range of wandering from the proclamation of the Good News of the
only Saviour from sin.
One group of loyal missionaries finding conditions in their former
society intolerable have organized themselves into a new body known as
the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society with headquarters at 14
Victoria Street, London. Their action is a striking testimony as to the
existence of modernism on the Indian mission field. But still there are
individuals who attempt to deny this fact.
A certain medical college in the north of India met with the most
severe opposition from missionaries and Christian workers when at-
tempting to insert into its constitution a definite basis of belief. The
cry was for union under no creedal banner whatever.
Most subtly is the influence of the modernist movement showing itself
in a gradual losing sight of the supreme and controlling aim of all mis-
sionary endeavour. Many regard the enterprize as a co-operative under-
taking to raise the tone of a community, a joining of hands across the
sea for mutual betterment, a spreading of a leaven of influence, in-
stilling within the masses ideas and ideals that will lift them to a higher
civilization. It is held to be a great educational movement stimulating and
developing innate tendencies to the higher life. But innate tendencies do
not trend in that direction. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we
have turned every one to his own ; and Jehovah hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all.” That is exactly as true on one side of the world
THE PRIXCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
516
as on the other, in India as in America, and no matter what the religion,
caste or status of India’s millions, she is suffering both collectively and
individually from the sting of the serpent, and only “He whose heel
shall bruise that head can ever save.’’ “And in none other is there sal-
vation : for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given
among men, wherein we must be saved.”
With India in her restless state politically there is much talk of co-
operative method. The zeal of westerners to decrease that easterners may
increase has resulted in some quarters in compromise. Christ has been
regarded as the “Crown of Hinduism,” the highest point of all towards
which the Hindu religion trends. We have been urged to build with
India. But there can be no building with India while India is building on
the sand. There can be no sharing in construction upon a false founda-
tion. The foundation must first be fixed upon the rock, and that rock
is the Rock of Ages. “For other foundation can no man lay than that
which is laid, wdiich is Jesus Christ.”
Ludhiana, India. How.\rd E. Anderson.
Rich Gleanings After the Vintage from “Rabbi” Duncan. Being Evan-
gelical Sermons, Lectures and Addresses by the Late Rev. John
Duncan, LL.D., Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, New
College, Edinburgh. (Hitherto uncollected and in part unpublished).
Edited, with Biographical Sketch, by the Late Rev. J.\mes Steven
Sinclair (Glasgow), Author of “Letters on Roman Catholicism,”
etc. London : Chas. J. Thynne, Ltd. Whitefriars St., Fleet St., E.C. 4.
1925. Pp. 397. Price 5 shillings, net.
To some this work may appear a belated appreciation of the life and
talents of the venerable Dr. John Duncan, who died in 1870. A post-
script, signed “A. R.,” and dated, December, 1924, says that it was pro-
jected for many years, the material for it was collected by 1920, and
delayed by providential circumstances. The biographical notice is fol-
low-ed by eight sermons, six Communion Table addresses delivered in
the Free St. Luke’s Church, Edinburgh, 1864-1869; twelve public exposi-
tory lectures on i Peter i; 1-2:6, and one on Psalm 85; three theological
lectures, and seven addresses before the Free Church Assembly, most
of them on Jewish Missions in Hungary and the Christian future of the
Jews.
The theology of these deliverances is explicitly Calvinistic. W’e pur-
posely say “explicitly,” because there is no attempt, by any circuitous
exegesis or over-cautious interpretation, to sidestep or mollify the bold
truths of many New Testament passages. Verbal Inspiration, Predes-
tination, Total Depravity, Human Inability, Irresistible Grace, Sub-
stitutionary Atonement, and Eternal Punishment are all definitely taught.
The premillennial view appears to be espoused (pp. 369-370, 385-386),
and belief is expressed in the near approach of the final consummation.
And now over sixty years have passed since this was written.
In all these addresses there is plenty of “solid meat.” The one on
“Preaching the Gospel,” although very brief, lays stress on the truths
that ought to be emphasized in preaching. Conversion, for instance.
RECENT LITERATURE
517
which is not a mere turning from one thing to another, but the turning of
an absolutely lost sinner to the God of a free and sovereign grace. Do not
tell sinners, says Dr. Duncan, that they must come to God and therefore
they can come. That is Arminianism. Tell them that they can’t come, and
yet must come. That will vindicate the Divine honor and shut them up to
God. (p. 392). It is clear that in material of this sort the promoters of a
diluted gospel and of a superficial theology will find little sympathy, but
for mental and spiritual nourishment it could hardly be improved upon.
Lancaster^ Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
When Jesus Wrote on the Ground. Studies, Expositions and Meditations
in the Life of the Spirit. By Edgar DeWitt Jones, D.D., Minister of
Central Christian Church, Detroit. Author of “The Inner Circle,”
“The Wisdom of God’s Fools,” “Fairhope,” etc. With an Apprecia-
tion by Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, Editor of “The Christian
Century.” New York: George H. Doran Company. 1922. Pp. 234.
Price $1.50.
Any one who reads these seventeen sermons will be repaid. They
disclose variety of themes, breadth of worthwhile reading, aptness of
illustration, and depth of tenderness sure to reach the hearts of those
who hear or read them. It is the constant freshness and warmth of
these discourses that make them real messages of the Spirit. The book
is named from the subject of the second sermon, on the famous passage,
John 8:i-ii, from which today one does not hear many sermons. Each
subject has a sub-title which very aptly condenses the main thought of
the sermon. A rather unusual feature (for an American preacher) is the
lengthy texts chosen.
There are at least two mistakes in English, as unpardonable as they are
surprising, coming from the pen of one who has such a choice style as
Dr. Jones. “Who have we in training to receive the standard,” etc. (p. 87).
“It is impossible to say which has accomplished the most good, the preach-
ing or the singing of the gospel” (p. 159). It will not do to reply that such
criticism is pedantic; certainly not in this day, when we are rapidly un-
learning the English language, and by sheer carelessness pulpit and
platform are repeatedly guilty of the most shocking perversions and
abuse of our own Muttersprache. It is time to have a care.
The Appreciation, covering almost eight pages at the beginning, is
somewhat fulsome. It is enough to say that the sermons do not need it.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
The Peril of Power and Other Sermons. By The Rev. Henry Howard,
Minister of the Australian Methodist Church. New York: George H.
Doran Co. 1925. Pp. 258. Price $2.00 net.
The seventeen sermons in this collection represent a certain homiletic
type. There is almost a total absence of any definite distribution of
material; illustrations are meagre; and in some of the sermons there is
a tendency to wander somewhat afield from the thought of the text.
Indeed, some of them might not be judged by homiletic experts as
sermons at all. Nevertheless the substance is distinctly religious and
5 l8 ' THE PRIXCETOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
spiritual, the thought is virile and stimulating, and the style forceful and
beautiful.
Mr. Howard argues for some views presumed by many to have been
outdated in our day. In the first sermon, from which the book takes its
title, he shows that the employment of physical force in home and state
is not the abandonment of moral purpose, because the morality of the -
situation is not in the instrument used, but in the person, and remains the
same whether he uses his tongue, his pen, or his sword. This is the
difference between the surgeon’s knife and the assassin’s dagger, (pp. 9-
ii). In the seventh sermon, on “Mental Unity and Moral Stability”
(James i :8), the answer is given to the superficial and popular cry of
the modern pragmatist that what one believes is of little moment (pp.
104-107). “The thing, then, that is not theoretically sound, that is not
correct in the realm of thought, cannot possibly be correct in the realm
of practice” (p. 107). Again, in a day when the social aspect of sin is
in danger of blinding men to its personal heinousness and guilt, it is
refreshing to have a preacher remind us that we have forgotten that the
social order is made up of persons; that society “is becoming over-
organized into so many sections and sub-sections, that the personal
equation is threatened with submergence and obliteration. The indi-
vidual is being lost in the universal, the unit engulfed in the mass” ;
that “We may sin jointly but our accounts will be rendered severally
and must be settled individually”; that “Every social evil in its last
analysis is an individual evil, and every individual evil in its last analysis
is an evil of the heart” (pp. 138, 142-144).
Often the author’s thought is uncompromising and his presentation
exceedingly vivid. “If we do not want the devil’s wages, then we must
quit the devil’s service” (p. 171). “When a man sins he not only releases
the brakes, he accelerates speed” (p. 157). “The teachers of the nation
are the true rulers of the nation” (p. 33). The man of a godless Kultur is
described by the following powerful accumulated simile; “He becomes
as destitute of conscience as an earthquake, as void of feeling as a volcano,
as pitiless as a blizzard, as relentless as an avalanche, as remorseless as
death, as insatiable as the grave” (p. 26). The statement; “It is doubtful
whether the pulpit has much to say to those who are succeeding” (p.
1 14), impresses us as unfortunate and open to a construction far more
serious than this thoughtful author would care to espouse.
Of these messages, we recommend especially; “The Peril of Power,”
“The Solvent of Doubt,” “Mental Unity and Moral Stability,” and “The
Back-fire of Sin.” In only one is there a specific reference to the cross
of Christ (p. 137). This is an outstanding defect in a series of sermons
otherwise noted for so many qualities splendidly essential.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin* F. Paist.
The Currency of the Inz-isible. A Spiritual Interpretation of Stewardship.
By Silas Evans, D.D., LL.D., President of Ripon College, Ripon,
Wisconsin. Introduction by David McConaughy, Director of the
Stewardship Department of the General Council, Presbyterian
RECENT LITERATURE
519
Church, U. S. A. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co.
1925. Pp. 96. Price $1.
Here are six brief chapters setting forth a helpful philosophy of
spiritual values in relation to the visible facts of life. We behold the
unseen in terms of the material world, human society, the Visible Church,
personal experience, and Christian stewardship.
Dr. Evans has his own way of putting things : a very happy way. Vital
Christian truths are compressed into epigrammatic expressions. So
evident is this, that those who have heard him. would easily recognize him
in these pages. It makes such a difference the way we say things these
days. Indeed, it always did; but especially so just now, when so many
voices are speaking. Many a much-needed truth goes down uncherished,
loses charm, fails to attract, because of its shabby dress. All through this
book the reader’s interest is held by some striking sentence giving forth
the kind of truth that does the soul good to feast upon because we know
that it is true.
To take only a few of many examples that might be quoted. “Men
organize, Jesus regenerates.” “God is always contemporary.” “To a
withered soul all is dry.” “Let Christ proportion the world’s budget and
He will in fact be remaking its civilization.” “The closed mind and the
constricted sympathies are no less lonely and belittling than the unopened
hand.” “The only money I have certainly never lost, never can lose, is
that which I have wisely given to Christ’s Kingdom and in His name.”
(pp. 35. 39, 79.87, 91, 93).
Moreover, some things are here said that need to be spoken, not only
because they are true, but because they are truths particularly in need of
stress today. If the author has committed any sin in these discussions, it
is not the sin of misplaced emphasis. We know that “Vital personality is
everywhere chafing against the bondage of apparatus” (p. 7). That is a
hopeful sign. “Personality must be central in history” (p. 31). We surely
do need to learn that “Only spiritual unity is unity” (p. 44). Any other
kind is mechanics. It is true that a church “stands or falls with the vitality
and truthfulness of the message that is entrusted to it. Its organization is
only a matter of course.”- (pp. 55-56).
A book, however big or little, that leads through the tangle and glare
of the material back into the reality of the spiritual, and holds one there,
has done well by its reader. This service Dr. Evans has performed in this
spiritual revaluation of the commonplace data of life. ’Tis thus we help
to refresh God’s people “on their toilsome way.”
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist
GENER.VL LITERATURE
Mental Tests and the Classroom Teacher. By Virgil E. Dickson, Ph.D.,
Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company. 1923. Pp.
XV, 231.
Measurement in Higher Education. By Ben D. Wood. Yonkers-on-
Hudson, New York : World Book Company. 1923. Pp. xi, 337.
520
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
These two volumes in the “Measurement and Adjustment Series”
edited by Professor Lewis M. Terman are written for teachers, principals,
supervisors, and school administrators in general. Although they do not
have in mind specially the problems of teachers of religion, they contain
much information of value to such teachers, since it cannot be gainsaid
that scientific method in the educational work of the churches should be
as helpful as in any other part of the educational field.
Dr. Dickson’s book is a sober and common-sense treatment of its
topic. He is fully aware of the extravagant claims made for mental tests
and of their misuse by extremists, and he points out a safe and sensible
path for teachers to take. His opening chapters discuss the present trends
of American education. The law compels all types of children to attend
school, and requires that each without regard to capacity or probable
destiny be given opportunity for such development as will enable him
to realize his best possibilities and satisfy the requirements of good
citizenship. To attain this end instruction must be adjusted to the
varying degrees of ability, and this at once raises the question of grading.
Mental tests are designed to answer this question. They are of two
sorts : individual tests that measure the ability of one person at a time,
and group tests that measure an entire class. These tests are constructed
in accord with the fundamental psychological principles involved in
reasoning, judging, and thinking, but to be of value must follow
standardized procedures of giving and scoring. If so conducted, their
results may form a basis both for grading and prediction of school
success or failure. A description then follows of the use of the tests in the
various grades from the kindergarten to the high school. The problem
of the inferior child, the one who cannot show results in the type of work
required in the elementary school, is then discussed, and also the problem
of the most neglected child in our school system, the superior child. Dr.
Dickson then explains how teachers may be trained for mental testing and
how the school principal may use the results obtained. The book closes
with an argument in favor of mental testing in a modern educational and
social program. Democracy means equality of opportunity for achieve-
ment, but education cannot create intelligence. It can merely recognize the
individual differences in children and give them the training that will
enable them to fill their places in the world, each according to his
ability. To diagnose this capacity, mental tests may prove useful.
The author of Measurement in Higher Education is a “Thorndike
man,” i.e. he believes that all human characteristics exist in some degree
and can therefore be measured provided the proper units of measure-
ment can be found. One such method for measuring intelligence is the
Thorndike Examination, the “non-coachable” general intelligence test
devised by Professor Thorndike to estimate the mental capability of
aspirants for entrance to college. The author gives a lengthy description
of the correlation between this test and the five group grading system
in use at Columbia University, and follows this with an interesting
discussion of the meaning of college success and the principles by which
it may be measured. The closing chapters tell the advantages and
RECENT LITERATURE
521
limitations of a new method of content examination — true-false, comple-
tion, and recognition tests — in Physics, Government, Zoology, Economics,
Philosophy, Greek Art, History, English, and Civil Engineering.
As previously noted neither of these books is written specially for
those who teach in our church schools, and yet there is much material
here that could be adapted to make such teaching more effective.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
The Art of Public Speaking. By Hon. Albert J. Beveridge, A.M., LL.D.
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1924. Pp. 67. Price $1.00.
Mr. Beveridge has from a boy been a student of oratory, and is himself
one of the best speakers of the day. He has had abundant opportunity to
listen to other speakers, and to watch the effect on the audiences of their
speaking and his own ; and he here presents the principles which in his
judgment form the basis of the most effective speaking. He states his
rules under two heads :
Matter.
Speak only when you have something to say.
Speak only what you believe to be true.
Prepare thoroughly.
Be clear.
Stick to your subject.
Be fair.
Be brief.
Delivery.
Speak quietly and naturally.
Be serene and never pompous.
Enunciate distinctly.
Control emotion — never get excited.
Dress well ; neither negligently nor with ostentation.
Suppress the craving for applause.
Stop when you are through.
The book is a reprint of a magazine article, and necessarily so many
subjects must be treated very briefly, and in an interesting, popular
manner. None of the suggestions are novel. Indeed the article is not
intended for those who have had proper instruction in the subject of
public speaking; and yet the manner in which each rule is explained and
enforced is so original and convincing that most public speakers would
be well repaid for reading it.
Princeton. Henry W. .Smith.
Purposive Speaking. By Robert West, Assistant Professor of Speech in
the University of Wisconsin. New York: Macmillan Co. Pp. 180.
1924. Price $1.25.
This book, as its title suggests, deals with all speaking that has a
definite purpose, whether addressed to one person or to many. It is thor-
oughly practical, not through rules, but by a discussion of principles.
Speech is concerned with human thought and action, and effective
speaking depends largely on a knowledge of fundamental human reac-
522
THE PUIXCETOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tions ; and the first part of this book discusses these reactions on the
basis of modern behavioristic psychology. That naturally puts much
stress on the subconscious mind and the emotions. Without accepting all
the conclusions of physiological psychology, one maj" be greatly helped
by its teachings, both in developing his own personality, and in influencing
others. With these principles as a basis, the author next discusses the
fundamental purposes of the speaker, his immediate aims, and the plan
of the speech, under these heads; The Functions of the Purposive
Speaker, Persuasive Speeches, Impressive Speeches, Argumentative
Speeches, Speeches that Organize Public Opinions and Customs, Enter-
taining and Instructive Speeches, and The Plan of the Speech. The book
closes with the application of these principles to the personality of the
speaker as shown by body and voice, the chapters on Suggestion and
Imitation, and Posture and Gesture, being especially helpful. The book
is original and practical in method, founded on a teacher’s experience,
and will be especially helpful to those who are not familiar with the
present methods of teaching public speaking.
Princeton. Hexry W. Smith.
With Italy in Her Final War of Liberation. By Olin D. Waxamaker.
With an Introduction by Professor Allan C. Johnson, Ph.D. Flem-
ing H. Revell Company.
.\ spirited account and interesting throughout, of the wonderfully
useful work done by the Y.M.C.A. in Italy during the World War. It
is a sufficient answer to the unjust criticism of the “Y,” partly inspired
and partly ignorant. Xot the least value of the book is the thrilling
story of the achievements of the Italian army.
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Moxtgomery.
The Real Daniel Webster. By Elijah R. Kexxedy, Author of “General
John B. Woodward,” “The Contest for California in i86i,” etc.
With a Foreword by Frederick Evan Crane, Judge of the Court of
Appeals of the State of New York.
The author’s father was a life-long friend of the great statesman and
Webster’s name was a household word in his boyhood home ; and this
explains the fact that this book is a defense and loving tribute rather
than a complete history. Indeed the author refers to the monumental
“Life” by George Ticknor Curtis for the full details of Webster’s busy
life.
Webster belonged to the formative period of the Nation. In Congress
as Secretary of State and especially before the Supreme Court of the
United States, he established the Constitutional law. He belongs with
Story and Marshall. The age to wffiich Webster belonged and to which
he contributed so much, practically ended wdth his death. Eight years
after he died, the great struggle between the States began. A new
chapter in the history and development of this country was to be written,
new leaders appeared and new issues had to be met. When the history
of the years from the adoption of the Constitution to the Civil War is
written — surely we do not need to wait much longer — then will the
RECENT LITERATURE
523
supreme value of Webster’s work appear. He prepared the people to
face the great issue that was finally settled at Appomattox. The ex-
planation of “The Seventh of March Speech” is well worth studying
and is probably correct. Why is it that moral reformers are so prone
to attack those who cannot agree with their methods ?
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Montgomery.
PERIODICAL LITERATURE
American Church Monthly, New York, April; William H. van
Allen, The Resurrection; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, Liberalism in
Religion; Frank Gavin, Limitations of the Documentary Method in
Historical Investigation ; Clarence A. Manning, Sobornost and Catho-
licity. The Same, May: Frank L. Vernon, Prayer; Chauncy B.
Tinker, Ritual or Gloom; Herbert H. Gowen, Dr. Moffatt’s Transla-
tion. The Same, June: Clarence A. Manning, Patriarch Tikhon;
Robert S. Chalmers, Training Children in Worship; William Y.
Webbe, Necessity of Ritual; Hamilton Schuyler, Betting and Games
of Chance.
Anglican Theological Review, Gambler, May: Lester Bradner, Edu-
cational Conviction in Religion; Cyril Hudson, Personality and the
Devotional Life; A. Haire Forster, Sidelights on the Life of an
Egyptian Working Man in Days of Jesus of Nazareth ; William S.
Bishop, The Chalcedonian Decree as an Interpretation of Our Lord’s
Person.
Biblical Review, New York, April: Henry C. Swearingen, “Rachel
Weeping for her Children”; E. G. Sihler, The Hasmoneans and Herod
the Idumean; Robert P. Wilder, Re-creating of the Individual; Samuel
M. Zwemer, New World of Islam.
Bibliotheca Sacra, St. Louis, April : W. T. McConnell, Christ and
Christianity; Leander S. Keyser, Problem of Man’s Origin; C. B.
Hurlburt, Ontological Interrelationship of the Persons of the Trinity;
J. L. Kelso, Three Major Themes of the Old Testament; Christopher
G. Hazard, Why Jesus was called the Son of God and the Only Be-
gotten Son; Charles E. Smith, Book of Ruth; William S. Bishop,
Genesis.
Catholic Historical Review, Washington, April: Henry J. Ford, A
Change of Climate ; E. J. Mahoney, Gregory Sayers a Forgotten English
Moral Theologian; James J. Walsh, The Church and Cures; John A.
Foote, Child Care in the Church ; Francis J. Siegfried, Historical
Criticism and Philosophy; John M. Cooper, Content of the Church
History Course in College and High School.
Church Quarterly Review, London, April : Arthur C. Headlam, The
Four Gospels ; W. Lockton, Age for Confirmation ; L. S. Hunter,
Morality and Mysticism ; Ibn Sabil, Genesis : the book of Bedouin ;
W. C. De Pauley, Man : the Image of God. A Study in Clement of
Alexandria; W. R. Matthews, Three Philosophers on Religion.
Congregational Quarterly, London, April : H. Wheeler Robinson,
524
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The Old Testament Approach to Life after Death; H. M. Paull,
Ethics of Hj-mnology; H. I. Bell, Athanasius: a Chapter in Church
Historj-; William Robixsox, Some Reminiscences of a vagrant Mis-
sionarj-; Paul Sabatier, St. Francis of Assisi and Today; W. J. Paylixg
Wright, Beware of Internal Evidence ! ; C. H.vrold Dodd, Present
Position of the Synoptic Problem; Fred Smith, Sacramental Trend in
Modern Protestantism; Jeffrey Browx, Congregationalism in Aus-
tralia.
East & fFest, London, April : T. Z. Koo, War on Opium and Narcotics ;
Bertram L.vsbrey, The Church in Nigeria; H. H. He.\tox, Archbishop
Cranmer and the Indian Peasant; Disabilities of Christianitj* in India;
W. S. M.vltox, Study of the Preparation of Native Candidates for the
Sacraments.
Expositor, London, May: H. J. Flowers, The Third Commandment;
T. H. Robixsox, Ten Best Books on Book of Job; H. R. M.\ckixtosh,
Grouping of German Theologians; P. Thomsox, “Know” in the New
Testament; How.a.rd T. Kuist, Philippians 3.
Expository Times, Edinburgh, April: F. J. Rae, Religious Education
in the Day School; J. Courtex.\y James, Son of Man: Origin and Use
of Title; Nicol M.\cNicol, Hinduism and Christianity-: Some points of
Contact and Divergence. The Same, May: Carey Boxner, The Sunday
School and the Child ; A. T. Robertsox, When the Western Text is
Right; Nicol MacNicol, Hinduism and Christianity: Some points of
Contact and Divergence, ii; Johx Lexdrum, Into a Far Country; T.
Grah.ame B.mley, Note on Two Passages in Dr. Moffatt’s ‘Old Testa-
ment’
Harvard Theological Reziew, Cambridge, January: George F. Moore,
Rise of Normative Judaism : ii. To the Close of the Misnah ; Robert
P. Casey, Clement of .Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian
Platonism; J. Rexdel Harris, Was the Diatessaron .Anti-Judaic? The
Same, .April: Campbell Bonxer, Papyrus Codex of the Shepherd of
Hermas; Gust.w Kruger, Literature of Church History, 1914-1920: iv.
The Church in Modern Times : 2. Nineteenth Centurj- and the Beginnings
of the Twentieth; Edwix R. Goodexough, The Pseudo-Justinian “Oratio
ad Graecos.”
Homiletic Reziezv, New A'ork, April : W. N. Schwarze, The Easter
Morning Moravian Service at Bethlehem ; H. L. L.ath.am, Spiritual
Healing; Albert G. M.\ckixxox, The House of Hermes; J. B. Reeves,
Easter Hj-mns of the Church; Worth M. Tippy, The .Art of Preaching.
The Same, May: Johx Moore, The Preacher as .Artist; F. Watsox
Haxxox, Pastoral Calling; Johx R. Scotford, The Minister and Women ;
Edward C. B.aldwix, .A Layman’s Protest against a Form of Clerical
Illiteracy; Johx B.^rlow, Preachers of Today and Tomorrow; Worth
M. Tippy, A Country Cure of Souls. The Same, June: Hugh T. Kerr,
Training the Child in Religion ; Conscience of a Three-year Old ; Edwin
R. Robixsox, The Churches and the Colleges ; J. H. Bodgexer, Harness-
ing the Dramatic Instinct of the A’oung; \\ illi.\m J. M.\y, Telling
Stories to Children; Mrs. Lioxel .A. Whistox, Pageantry’s Place in
the Church.
RECENT LITERATURE
525
Jewish Quarterly Review, London, April : Cecil Roth, Rabbi Menahem
Navarra, his Life and Times; Leo Jung, Fallen Angels in Jewish,
Christian and Mohammedan Literature; Israel Davidson, Note to “The
Amidah of the Public Fast Days” ; Solomon S. Cohen, Rosenzweig’s
Translation of Jehudah Halevi; I. M. Casanowicz, Works on Religion.
Journal of Negro History, Washington, April : Frederick Starr,
Liberia after the World War; L. P. Jackson, The Origin of Hampton
Institute; C. S. S. Higham, Negro Policy of Christopher Codrington;
Letters of Negroes addressed to the American Colonization Society.
Journal of Religion, Chicago, March : Henry N. Wieman, How do we
Know God?; Durant Drake, Critical Realism and Theism; James T.
Addison, Chinese Ancestor Worship and Protestant Christianity; Fred-
erick R. Tennant, Recent Reconstruction of the Doctrine of Sin: ii.
Original Sin; J. M. Powis Smith, Some Difficulties of a Translator;
Edward S. Ames, Religion of Immanuel Kant; Gerald B. Smith, What
Does Biblical Criticism Contribute to the Modern Preacher? The Same,
May: Eldred C. Vanderlaan, Modernism and Historic Christianity;
Enola Eno, Modernism in India; Ernest B. Harper, Individualizing
Sin and the Sinner ; i. Causes ; A. J. William Myers, Content of Religious
Education ; Archibald G. Baker, Afterthoughts on the Washington
Conference; Marion H. Dunsmore, An Egyptian Contribution to Book
of Proverbs.
Journal of Theological Studies, London, April: C. H. Turner, Marcan
Usage : Notes Critical and Exegetical on the Second Gospel ; G. H. Dix,
Influence of Babylonian Ideas on Jewish Messianism; P. R. Norton,
Biographical Form of the Vitae Sanctorum; A. V. Billen, Classification
of the Greek MSS. of the Hexateuch.
London Quarterly Review, London, April : Alfred Faulkner, Is the
Historic Episcopate Historic? ; Daniel Wiseman, Philosophy of Anatole
France; Thomas Stephenson, Origin of Civilization; Ivan D. Ross,
Mencius’ Doctrine of Human Nature; H. Reinheimer, Forests and
their Allies; A. Marmorstein, Learning and Work; Basil St. Cleather,
A Scotch Diary of the Sixteenth Century; John Telford, The Treasure
House of Belgium.
Lutheran Church Review, Philadelphia, January: Emil E. Fischer,
The Apocalyptic Background of Jesus’ Ethical Teaching; Luther D.
Reed, Church Architecture in America ; Paul Z. Strodach, The Collect :
a Study; Charles M. Jacobs, The Background of Modern History.
Monist, Chicago, April: Edward L. Schaub, Legacy of Kant; G. T.
W. Patrick, Need and Possibility of Imperativistic Ethics; Martin
Schutze, Cultural Environment of the Philosophy of Kant; Joseph A.
Leighton, Kant, the Seminal Thinker; Edward S. Ames, The Religion
of Immanuel Kant ; S. G. Martin, Kant as a Student of Natural Science ;
J. H. Farley, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion ; E. L. Hinman, Kant’s
Philosophy of Law; J. F. Crawford, Kant’s Doctrine Concerning Per-
petual Peace; E. F. Carritt, Sources and Effects in England of Kant’s
Philosophy of Beauty; Frank Thilly, Kant’s Copernican Revolution.
Moslem World, New York, April: H. Bjerrum, Moslem Literature
in Tamil; J. E. Graefe, Islam and Christianity in Guntur; D. A.
526
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Chowdhl’ry, Mohammedans of Bengal; Duncan B. MacDonald, Out-
line of the History of Scholastic Theology in Islam ; J. H. Linton, Cost
of Victory to a Convert ; George K. Harris, On the Borders of Thibet ;
S. Ralph Harlow, Morn of Song in the Near East; N. Kuzmany, Notes
on the Moslems of Bosnia.
New Church Life, Lancaster, April: R. J. Tilson, State of the
Christian World as Viewed in Spiritual Light; Theodore Pitcairn,
Heredity and the Future of the New Church. The Same, May: Hugo Lj.
Odhner, The Magic of a Name; Colley Pryke, Swedenborg in His
Maturity. The Same, June: E. E. Iungerich, Theosophy; Wilfred
How.\rd, Some Educational Problems of a Scientific Age; R. J. Tilson,
The Cross, as a Symbol in Public Worship.
Open Court, Chicago, April: Dudley Wright, Burnings of the Tal-
mud; Victor S. Yarros, Telepathy — Science and Mysticism; Hardin T.
McClelland, Man’s War with the Universe; Ch.\rles Kassel, Herald
of Emancipation. The Satne, May: M.aynard Shipley, The Sesquicenten-
nial of Ampere ; Martin Schutze, Coming Changes in Cultural
Relations; Wilu.am Nathanson, The New Culture Concept and
Marxian Socialism ; Antonio Ll.ano, Bias, Inconsistency and Herme-
neutics ; George B. Bowers, In Defiance of the Gods.
Reformed Church Review, Lancaster, April: John L. Barnhart, The
Project ^Method of Religious Education; Paul J. Dundore, Evangelism
and the Scientific Attitude; D.wid Dunn, The Fatherhood of God in
the Light of World Conditions ; A. S. Zerbe, Scientific, Philosophical and
Theological Faith; Harry Hibschman, What is the Matter with the
Liberal Church? ; J. F. Kauffman, The Lasting Armistice — Christianity;
Albert G. Peters, Aim of Religious Education ; H. L. Lath.am, Old or
New Motives for Social Action.
Review and Expositor, Louisville, April : Alexander McLaren, Coun-
sels for the Study of Life; John F. Purser, Founders; W. W. Ei’ERTs,
Paul’s Contribution to the Vocabulary of the New Testament ; John A.
F.aulkner, Paul as Church Organizer; O. P. Eaches, The Self-Emptied
Christ ; Albert D. Belden, The Spirit of Expiation.
Union Seminary Review, Richmond, January : C. L. King, A Trilogy of
New Testament Studies ; W. W. Moore, James Sprunt ; D. P. McGeachy,
Jesus and War; A. T. Robertson, W’hy the Revised Version?; Edward
Mack, New Translation of the Old Testament; M. R. Turnbull,
Studying the Bible by Books ; Russell Cecil, Resurrection of Christ ; S.
M. Tenney, Presbyterian Historical Society of Synod of Texas. The
Same, April : L. A. Weigle, Christian Education of American Children ;
A. H. Barr, The Great Day of the Preacher; J. Ritchie Smith, Motives
that Inspire God’s Service ; W. W. Moore, Centennial Celebration of the
Church of Nottoway: T. C. Johnson, Work of the Church; H. W.
McLaughlin, The Challenge of the Country Church; C. H. Pratt,
Effective Evangelism in the Life of the Church.
Yale Reinew, New Haven, April : James R. Angell, Democracy and
Education ; Henry N. Russell, The New Physics and the Stars ;
Bro.\dus Mitchell, Southern Spindles; William H. Gardiner, Insular
America ; Andrew E. Malone, The Plays of Lady Gregory.
RECENT LITERATURE
527
Bilychnis, Roma, Genn.-Febbr. : P. Sabatier, S. Francesco d’Assisi e il
protestantesimo odierno ; G. Tucci, La preghiera nella Cina; J. Evola,
£. Coue e I’ “agire senza agire.” The Same, Marzo : A. Pincherle, L’ar-
ianesimo e la chiesa africana nel IV secolo; D. Provenzal, Un
avventuriero eretico del seicento; S. Vitale, Teorie antiche e problem!
modern! : La dottr!na de! don! sp!r!tual!. The Same, Apr!le: R. Murri,
Stor!a sacra e stor!a profana ; D. Provenzal, Que! che va d! notte ; R.
Nazzari, I potenz!ament! della volonta.
Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique, Toulouse, Mars-Avr!l : Louis
Saltet, Insolement et association dans les etudes eccleslastlques ; Andre
WiLMART, Une curleuse expression pour designer I’oralson secrete; Z.
Carriers, La transmutation des metaux au moyen age et au xx slecle;
Ferdinand Cavallera, Revue d’hlstolre de I’anclenne litterature chre-
tlenne et de la theologle.
Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, Aalten, Maart : G. Keizer,
Korte schets van de geschledenls der Belglsche Chrlstelljke Zendlngs-
kerk en onze Correspondence met haar; F. W. Grosheide, Van “vrlj
vertalen”; H. Kaajan, Jublleum Prof. Dr. H. H. Kuyper; J. Waterink,
Kronlek. The Same, April : G. Keizer, Korte schets van de geschledenls
der Belglsche Chrlstelljke Zendlngskerk en onze Correspondent^ met
haar; E. D. J. De Jong Jr., Het tweede gebod en de verslerlng der
kerken; J. Waterink, Kronlek. The Same, Mel; J. Ridderbos, Jesaja
en Achaz; G. Keizer, Korte schets van de geschledenls der Belglsche
Chrlstelljke Zendlngskerk en onze Correspondents met haar; J. Wat-
erink, De strljd over “De gemeene gratle” in Amerika.
Recherches de Science Religieuse, Paris, Avril: Jules Lebreton, La
Theologle de la Trinite d’apres saint Ignace d’Antioche, 1; _\ndre
Bremond, La “Theologle” d’Aeschyle ; Gustave Bardy, Boanerges.
Revue Benedictine, Abbaye de Maredsous, Octobre : Van Hoon-
ACKER, Deux passages obscurs dans le chap. xix. d’Isaie; D. A. Dold, Le
texte de la “Missa catachumenorum” du cod. Sangall. go8; D. A.
WiLMART, Un lecteur ennemi d’Amalaire; W. B. Sedgwick, Origin of
Rhyme; L. F. Smith, Note on the Codex Toletanus; D. Anger, Les
preseances dans I’ordre de Cluny.
Revue d’Ascetique et de Mystique, Toulouse, Avril: M. Viller, Le
Martyre et I’Ascese; F. Cavallera, Livres d’Autrefois — I’autobiographie
du P. Surin ; J. de Guibert, L’Emploi de Methodes dans la vie spirituelle
— Comment se pose la question?
Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique, Louvain, Avril: P. G. Thery, Le
texte integral de la traduction du Pseudo-Denis par Hilduin (concluded) ;
Paul O’Sheridan, Ce qui reste de la plus ancienne Vie de Ruysbroeck
(concluded) ; E. Tobac, Le Christ nouvel Adam dans la theologle de St.
Paul ; P. Demeuldre, Une contribution a I’histoire des martyrs.
Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, Strasbourg, Janvier-
Fevrier; A. Causse, Les Origines de la Poesie hebralque; J. Pommier,
Renan et Strasbourg (Documents inedits) ; Maurice Goguel, Note sur
Apocalypse 14:14; Ch. Bruston, Une parole de Jesus mal comprise; F.
Menegoz, Albums d’autographes : souvenirs de trois theologiens stras-
528 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
bourgeois du xviii* siecle. The Same, Mars-Avril: J. Pommier, Renan
et Strasbourg (Documents inedits, suite) ; M. Halbwachs, Les Origines
puritaines du capitalisme ; Edmond Grin, Charles Secretan et le philos-
ophic de Schelling.
Revue de Theologic et de Pliilosophie, Lausanne, Janvier-Mai:
Charles Dombre, Les grands mystiques et leurs directeurs ; Auguste
Lemaitre, La pensee theologique de Georges Fulliquet ; Aloys Berthoud,"
La Lutte du supranaturalisme et du rationalisme au dix-huitieme siecle ;
Alexandre Lavanchy, Echos de la Societe vaudoise de theologie.
Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et TIteologiques, Paris, Avril: A.
Barrois, Le sacrifice du Girist au Calvaire ; F. A. Blanche, Le vocabu-
laire de I’argumentation et la structure de I’article dans les ouvrages de
Saint Thomas ; M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, La valeur relative de I’intuition.
Zeitschrift fiir katholische Theologie, Innsbruck, 49:2; C. A. Kneller,
Zu den Kontroversen fiber den hi. Ignatius v. Loyola, ii. Quellen der
Exerzitien ; Johann Stufler, Das Wirken Gottes in den Geschopfen
nach dem Heil. Thomas II; Lud\v. Hertling, Literarisches zu den
apokryphen Apostelakten ; Joseph Stiglmayr, Pseudo-Makarius und die
Aftermystik der Messalianer.
Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, Tfibingen, 6:2: Hinrich
Knittermeyer, Das Grundproblem des Sittlichen; Friedrich Tr.\ub, Die
christliche Lehre von den letzen Dingen (schluss) ; H. R. Mackintosh,
Systematische Theologie in Grossbritannien wahrend des letzten Viertel-
jahrhunderts ; Wilhelm Bruhn, Die Kantliteratur des Jubiliiumsjahres
und ihr religionsphilosophischer Ertrag.
THE PASTORAL EPISTLES OF PAUL
By Charles R. Erdman. The Westminster Press, Phila-
delphia. $1.00.
“This book is a new addition to a very goodly number of
commentaries on the New Testament. It is characterized by
the same sound, helpful, evangelical character as his former
commentaries. It is a real satisfaction to-day to read a com-
mentary which, while showing all thoroughness, careful
scholarship, and practical helpfulness, yet one can read with-
out finding those injections of personal unbelief which appear
in so many such works.” — The Presbyterian, Philadelphia.
CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERALISM
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1923. Price $1.75.
“This is a book that should be read by every thinking man,
whether he calls himself a conservative or a liberal. While evi-
dently the product of a thorough scholar, it is written through-
out in simple, non-technical words.” S. G. Craig in The Presby-
terian.
THE ORIGIN OF PAUL’S RELIGION
By J. Gresham Machen. The James Sprunt Lectures delivered
at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. New York:
The Macmillan Company, Second Printing, 1923. Price
$1-75
“Professor Machen’s work commands respect. It is worthy of
a high place among the products of American biblical scholar-
ship.”— B. W. Bacon, in The Evening Post (New York).
“This is a book which it would be difficult to overpraise.” —
The Church Quarterly Review (London).
NEW TESTAMENT GREEK FOR BEGINNERS
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York; The Macmillan
Company, 1923. Price $2.20.
This textbook is intended both for students who are begin-
ning the study of Greek and for those whose acquaintance with
the language is so imperfect that they need a renewed course of
elementary instruction. The book does not deal with classical
Greek, but presents simply the New Testament usage.
A DICTION.^Y OF THE BIBLE
By John D. Davis, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ori-
ental and Old Testament Literature in the Theological
Seminary at Princeton, NJ. With Many New and
Original Maps and Plans and Amply Illustrated. Fourth
Revised Edition. Philadelphia : The Westminster Press,
1924.
“The Dictionary has been subjected to a revision, perva-
sive yet unobtrusive, in order to incorporate material gath-
ered by biblical research during the past decade and a half.
Purposely the book has not been increased in size, nor has the
pagination been changed.”
IS THE HIGHER CRITICISM SCHOLARLY.?
By Robert Dick Wilson, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Semitic
Philology and Old Testament Criticism in Princeton Theo-
logical Seminary. With a Foreword by Philip E. Howard.
Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times, 1922. Price 25
cents. London : Marshall Bros., 1923. Price i sh.
"The book is a veritable arsenal of ammunition with which to
demolish the critical theories.” — Howard Agnew Johnston, in
Scientific Christian Thinking for Young People.
TtlE WORK OF THE PASTOR
By Charles R. Erdman, D.D., LL.D. The Westminster Press,
Philadelphia. 1924, 8vo, pp. vii. 257.
“This volume is intended to serve as a handbook to pastors
and as a textbook for students of theology. It should be found
helpful, however, to many others who are concerned with the
organization and activities of the Christian Church. . . . Large
portions of the last five chapters have been furnished by other
writers, who are recognized as specially trained and qualified
for their tasks.”
THE LORD WE LOVE
By Charles R. Erdman, D.D., LL.D. New York : George
H. Doran Company. Pp. 138. $1.50 net.
This series of studies deals with the most important events
in the life of Christ from his birth to his ascension. The
studies are expository in character, and while affirming the
central verities of Christian faith they are devotional and
practical in spirit and aim.
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