16. J. B. Lightfoot (1828–1889)
The English Revised Version of the New Testament was placed in the hands of the British people on May 17, 1881, culminating ten years of work by fifty-four outstanding scholars. Public response was predictable: this new version, with all its announced accuracy, could never replace the Authorized Version with its beauty and, above all, familiarity.
The Anglican clergy were confused: could they legally use the new version when only the old version was officially authorized by the church? The man in the street was critical and skeptical. After all, the translators had promised not to deviate too much from the King James Version, and yet they had made 36,000 changes. Perhaps the new version was more accurate, but the public preferred tradition to scholarship. Prime Minister William Gladstone stated the problem clearly: “You will sacrifice truth if you don’t read it, and you will sacrifice the people if you do.” But Charles H. Spurgeon put the finger on the real problem: “It is strong in Greek, weak in English.”
Indeed the new version was “strong in Greek,” and one reason was the presence on the New Testament Committee of the “Cambridge triumvirate”—B. F. Westcott, F. J. A. Hort, and J. B. Lightfoot—names that still stand for scholarship in New Testament studies. Of the three, Lightfoot was undoubtedly the best scholar. In fact, Owen Chadwick called Lightfoot “the greatest scholar in the Jerusalem Chamber.”1 In his memorial essay on Bishop Lightfoot, W. Robertson Nicoll called him “pre-eminently the scholar of the Church of England.”2
If you have ever used Lightfoot’s commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, and Colossians, or any of his studies on the church fathers, you probably agree with Nicoll’s conclusion. But what you may not know is that Bishop Lightfoot was a godly man, a teacher of pastors, and a preacher with a burden for lost souls. “When goodness is joined to knowledge, it counts for much,” wrote Nicoll, “and when these are crowned by spiritual power, paramount influence is the result. Lightfoot had all three.”3
Joseph Barber Lightfoot was born in Liverpool on April 13, 1828. He was taught at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, by the noted James Prince Lee, whose pupils seemed to capture every prize and move into places of influence, particularly in the church. Lee taught Lightfoot to love the Greek New Testament; and the teacher saw in the pupil tremendous potential for both Christian character and scholarship. “Give him the run of the town library!” Lee ordered.
At age nineteen, Lightfoot entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied under Westcott. (“He was Westcott’s best pupil,” Hort later admitted.) He captured several honors and prizes and seemed destined for a teaching position. In 1854 he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England, and in 1858 he was ordained as a priest. The next year he became a tutor at Trinity College, and in 1861 was named Hulsean Professor of Divinity. So popular were his New Testament lectures that they had to be given in the college’s great hall. Ten years later he was made canon of St. Paul’s, sharing the ministry with the great Henry Liddon and Dean R. W. Church. He was named Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in 1875, and it seemed that his ministry as scholar, writer, and teacher was established.
But in 1879 he was appointed bishop of Durham, and the scholar had to make the most critical decision of his life. In the last public message Bishop Lightfoot preached, on June 29, 1889, he confessed that he had spent a “long wakeful night” making the decision to leave Cambridge and a life of scholarship for Durham and a life of administration. He wrote to his friend Westcott:
At length I have sent my answer “Yes.” It seemed to me that to resist any longer would be to fight against God. My consolation and my hope for the future is that it has cost me the greatest moral effort, the greatest venture of faith which I ever made. Now that the answer is sent I intend to have no regrets about the past.
Westcott called the decision “a kind of martyrdom,” and perhaps it was.
In the months that followed, Lightfoot received letters from all kinds of people urging him to continue his studies and writing in spite of his new ministry. In a memorial sermon to Lightfoot, given on November 24, 1929, George R. Eden said: “Few men can have passed through such an agony of choice as we know he suffered. . . . Yet the choice was made—upon his knees, ‘wresthng with the Angel in prayer.’” It is interesting to note that R. W. Dale warned Westcott in 1883: “Forgive me for saying—do not let them make you a bishop. I do not know what Dr. Lightfoot may have done for Durham; for those of us who are outside he has done nothing since his elevation.”
What did the great Greek scholar do for Durham and for the Church of England? His years as bishop are still called “the golden age of Durham.”
Westcott preached the consecration sermon (April 25, 1879) and urged the new bishop to “choose between the important and the routine . . . and do the important.” Lightfoot did so gladly, delegating routine matters to his associates and concentrating on the things only a bishop could do. Lightfoot was gifted with the mental, physical, and spiritual equipment a man needs to make a success of such a high office. He had a robust constitution and a love of hard work. An early riser, he put in two or three hours of study before breakfast, and he often remained at his desk when the rest of the staff had gone to bed. He had a remarkable memory and could tell a secretary where a quotation was in a given book, even its location on the page.
During a holiday in Norway, he was seen correcting proofs while riding in a cart on a rather precipitous road. He was a gifted linguist, fluent in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Latin, as well as Greek; he was able to use Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. He enjoyed telling the story about the professor who isolated several newborn babies to discover what language they would speak if not influenced by English. After a pause, Lightfoot would say, “The poor little children spoke pure Hebrew.”
The new bishop was a worker and an innovator, much to the surprise and delight of the clergy under his jurisdiction. One of his first innovations was the “Brotherhood.” Never married, Lightfoot each year “adopted” several young men who studied with him for a year before their ordination. It was an internship program on the highest level. But the bishop made it clear to applicants that the fellowship was “a brotherhood in Christ, not an exclusive association of clique or caste,” and that their union was based on “participation in a common work and the loving devotion to a common Master.” The bishop was their leader, teacher, example, and spiritual father. As one member of the Brotherhood put it, “We read, we worked, because Lightfoot was working and reading.”
Men in the Brotherhood—“the sons of the house,” as the bishop called them—were kept busy. They breakfasted with Lightfoot at 7:45, at 8:15 were in the chapel for morning prayers, and by 9:00 were either reading or listening to lectures. They ate lunch at 1:15, then scattered for practical ministry in the diocese. Each man was assigned a district where he worked with resident clergy. The men gathered during the week to share experiences and learn from one another, always under the watchful eye of the bishop. As the program developed, Bishop Lightfoot set aside St. Peter’s Day (June 29) for an annual reunion of the “sons of the house.” (Spurgeon followed a similar pattern with the men in his Pastors’ College.)
The bishop viewed the Christian ministry highly, and he applied high standards to himself before he applied them to others. His essay “The Christian Ministry” in his commentary on Philippians upset more than one Anglican, who saw it as a departure from Church of England tradition. His friend Canon Liddon requested him to withdraw the essay, but Lightfoot refused to do it. “The Christian minister, whatever else he is—and I shall not enter upon controversial questions—is, before all things, a pastor, a shepherd,” said Lightfoot in his last public appearance in his diocese.
Bishop Lightfoot also blended scholarship and Christian devotion. I once listened to an impassioned sermon by a well-known preacher on the impossibility of being both “a soul-winner and a deep Bible student.” The apostle Paul would have smiled at that sermon, as would Charles G. Finney, Jonathan Edwards, R. A. Torrey, Charles Spurgeon, and J. B. Lightfoot. All Greek students should write on the flyleaf of their Greek New Testament these words of Bishop Lightfoot: “After all is said and done, the only way to know the Greek Testament properly is by prayer.”
Lightfoot’s own walk with God was the secret power of his life, and his concern to obey God and help others find Christ motivated him. He reorganized his diocese so that pastors would be able to reach more people and build more new churches. A great admirer of John Wesley, Lightfoot organized lay evangelists who helped carry the message from district to district. He mobilized the women of the diocese and encouraged them to serve in “sisterhoods” or as deaconesses. Before long, Durham was vibrating with new power and excitement because a great Greek scholar had placed himself and his ambitions on the altar that he might serve God. What he said to the Brotherhood, he practiced himself: “You go where you are sent, you work till you drop.”
Lightfoot is best remembered as a writer. His commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon ought to be in every pastor’s library. These scholarly works are part of a series that he had projected with his friends Westcott and Hort. The series was not completed, but Westcott did publish excellent commentaries on the Gospel of John, Hebrews, and the Epistles of John. Lightfoot died before he could write his commentary on Ephesians to complete the quartet. Lightfoot also wrote four articles for Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (Acts, Romans, 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians) and published the definitive edition of The Apostolic Fathers. The latter work demolished the position of the Tübingen school that centered around F. C. Baur, the German critic. More of a historian than a theologian, Lightfoot was at home with ancient documents and textual problems.
When an anonymous author attacked his friend Westcott in Supernatural Religion, Lightfoot took up his pen and wrote a series of articles for the Contemporary Review that pushed the bestselling book off the market. His facts were so devastating that the public rejected Supernatural Religion, and the book ended up glutting the used-book stores. Lightfoot’s book On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament is still available, as are several posthumous collections: Ordination Addresses, Leaders in the Northern Church, Cambridge Sermons, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, Sermons Preached in St. Paul’s, and Historical Essays.
Lightfoot had requested that no official biography be written; however, a memoir, Bishop Lightfoot, was published anonymously in 1894. Hort wrote the excellent article on Lightfoot in The Dictionary of National Biography; in fact, it was the last thing Hort wrote before his death. Lightfoot of Durham: Memories and Appreciations was edited by George R. Eden and F. C. Macdonald, and published in 1933.
Westcott did not heed Dale’s warning. Not only did he become a bishop, but he succeeded Lightfoot at Durham. And his successor was one of Lightfoot’s students, Handley C. G. Moule, also a Greek scholar and writer of commentaries. Durham was privileged to have men who combined academic excellence with spiritual fervor, resulting in a balanced ministry.
The day after Bishop Lightfoot died, one of the leading British newspapers, the Times, said: “He was at once one of the greatest Theological scholars and an eminent Bishop. It is scarcely possible to estimate adequately as yet the influence of his life and work.” In preparing his “sons” for ordination, Bishop Lightfoot used to say: “Forget me, forget the [ordination] service of tomorrow, forget the human questioner. Transport yourselves in thought from the initial to the final inquiry. The great day of inquisition, the supreme moment of revelation, is come. The chief Shepherd, the universal bishop of souls is the questioner. . . . The ‘Wilt thou’ of the ordination day is exchanged for the ‘Hast thou’ of the judgment day.” This is good counsel for all of us, but especially for those who serve as ministers and who want to hear our Master say, “Well done.”