Part One
Part One
Introduction to Commenting in General
Reflections on the Necessity of a Clear and Proper View of the Inspiration of Scripture as a Presupposition for Correctly Approaching the Bible
By way of preface . . . I would wish to say a few words with regard to the spirit in which we should enter into the study of the Greek New Testament and the manner in which our work should be carried out. The following remarks have been hastily written down and therefore are very imperfect in point of expression, but I venture to hope that the matter is less faulty. At all events, it has been well thought over: for I should consider myself very reprehensible indeed, if I should dare to speak on such subjects without due preparation.
First of all then, our method of study and system of interpretation must necessarily be dependent on the view we take of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. It will be so either consciously or unconsciously. This we might reasonably have supposed a priori, and the history of Biblical Criticism teaches us that such has in fact been the case.
Now in an inspired writing there are two elements, the human and the divine, or as it is sometimes expressed, the letter and the spirit, and the different views held of the doctrine of inspiration depend on the prominence given to one or the other of these elements, and the judgment formed of their mutual relations. Hence it will be seen that no conceivable shade of opinion is excluded, and every attempt at classifying these views must be more or less fallacious. But it will be sufficiently exact for our present purpose roughly to assume a threefold division—in the first of these the divine element being too exclusively considered, the second the undue prominence being assigned to the human agency, and in the third and only adequate view of inspiration, each of these elements being recognized in its proper sphere, and the two harmoniously combined. The first of these views is irrational, the second is rationalistic, the third alone is in accordance with the highest reason and the fullest faith.
The irrational view—that which loses sight of the human agency—is prior in time (I am speaking now of Modern Criticism)—to the rationalistic. It refuses to recognize any peculiarities in the individual writer, who is under the guidance of the Spirit. It is insensible to any varieties of style, any difference in the method of treatment in different books of Holy Scripture. It reduces the whole Bible to one uniform color. It is needless to say that such a view must fall at once before the assaults of criticism. If this were all, it might be borne patiently, but unhappily it has dragged down the tottering faith of not a few in its fall. It may also be said that it is derogatory to the majesty of God, that it has no support from analogy in his workings elsewhere, and no authority from Holy Scripture itself.
This theory of inspiration provokes a reaction. The rationalistic view is the natural consequence of its exaggerated form. In this the human agency is put so prominently forward that the divine is obscured. The divine agency is perhaps not actually denied, but it is so virtually. By indefinitely extending the action of inspiration, it is in fact rendered meaningless. It is allowed that Moses and David, that St. Paul and St. John, were inspired; but then it claims the same privilege for Homer and Aeschylus, for Pythagoras and Plato. Now I should be the last to deny that ‘whatever is good, whatever is beautiful, whatever is true’ in the heathen writers derived from the primal source of all beauty, truth and goodness. I have been taught, and fully believe it, that every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from above. Nor do I care to contend strenuously that the difference is one of kind and not of degree. It is difficult in most cases to maintain the distinction when hard pressed. It is not easy to say where the one ends and the other begins. But what I would say is this: that practically there is such a vast difference between the illumination of apostle and prophet and the illumination of the philosopher and poet, that calling both by the same term ‘inspiration’ instead of tending to clear our conceptions, does in fact leave a very erroneous impression on our minds. Inspiration is thus emptied of its significance.
The true view of inspiration is a mean between these extremes—or rather it is a combination of the two—it recognizes the element of truth which each contains, adopting and uniting them. And it recognizes them too in all their fullness. It does not assign less power to the divine agency, nor does it ignore any of the characteristics of the human instrument. The truth is one, but it has many sides. One man is more fitted than another from natural endowments, to appreciate it from some particular point of view. No man is capable of seeing it from every side, else he becomes more than a man. The Holy Spirit has chosen its instruments, as Christ chose his apostles for their natural gifts, whether intellectual or spiritual, and has inspired them for our instruction and guidance. But it has not destroyed their individuality. One sacred writer, St. Paul, views the Gospel as the abrogation of the Law, another, St. James, as the fulfillment. They are not contradictory, but complementary the one to the other, for the Gospel is at once the abrogation and the fulfillment of the Law. One Evangelist, St. John, dwells chiefly on the eternal Sonship of the Savior; another, St. Luke, on his human tenderness and his sympathies with our infirmities. They are both true, for he is very God and very Man. It is not that the different writers of the New Testament held discordant views, but their individual temperament or the circumstances of their education led them to dwell more fully on some special point. They were therefore fit instruments under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to develop their particular truth, and we may suppose without presumption, that they had each their part assigned them according to their natural capabilities or their acquirements in penning the volume of Holy Scripture, as we know that they had in raising the fabric of the Church.
I have made these remarks on what appear to be the right and wrong views of inspiration because, as I said before, the method we adopt in studying Holy Scripture and our System of Interpretation is of necessity closely connected with the theory we hold on this point. Where there is an exaggeration in the one, there is a corresponding exaggeration in the other. Where any point is lost sight of in the one, something is found to be missing also in the other.
Thus we find that when the theory of inspiration, which I have ventured to call irrational, prevailed, the interpretation of the New Testament was marked by corresponding defects. As the human element was entirely lost sight of, so criticism and grammar were alike disregarded in the interpretation. ‘The spirit and not the letter’ was the watchword of those who held these views—and those words of St. Paul are equally abused by many now. I will not stop now to discuss the sense in which we are to discard the letter and cling to the spirit, but one thing is plain. If St. Paul used the words ‘the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life’ in the sense in which he is supposed by such persons to use them, then he condemns himself. For you will recollect that in a passage in Galatians he bases his interpretation of a prophecy in the Old Testament on the basis of a singular instead of a plural number οὐ λέγει καὶ τοῖς σπέρμασιν, ὡς ἐπὶ πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐφ’ ἑνός καὶ τῷ σπέρματι σου, ὅς ἐστιν Χριστόs (Gal 3:16). Other instances may be multiplied, but this will suffice. I think it will be seen from this that the minutest points of language are worthy of our consideration in studying the New Testament, and I think we have a right [to say and do so]. We have a right to appeal to St. Paul in our defense when we are accused of over subtlety and unjustifiable refining in dwelling on grammatical forms. In fact, according to the loose system of interpretation, which unfortunately has not yet disappeared in England, language is a mere plaything. Words have no fixed meaning. They are at the mercy of the interpreter. I will give you an instance from a book which was very highly thought of—and still continues to be in some quarters. It is a Commentary on the Epistles published about the middle of the last century. The title of one of the preliminary essays is ‘On Translating the Greek Used by the Writers of the New Testament.’ We are there told, among other information sufficiently starthng, that the indicative is often put for the subjunctive and vice versa (ἵνα καρπὸν πολὺν φέρητε is translated ‘when ye bear much fruit’), that the infinitive was used by the Hebrews for the verb in any of its moods and tenses and therefore, it is implied, by the New Testament writers, that the present tense is sometimes put for the preterite, sometimes for the future, sometimes for the imperfect: we learn that ἀλλά means ‘yet certainly,’ ‘now indeed,’ ‘for because,’ ‘wheretofore, therefore,’ ‘unless except,’ ‘yet however,’ that γὰρ at times means ‘wherefore, therefore,’ and that, as Phavorinus tells us, ‘it is put for δέ, consequently it has all the different meanings of δέ accordingly.’ It is to be translated sometimes ‘and now’ at other times ‘but yet, although.’ εἰς signifies ‘in, concerning, with against, before, by, in order to, of or concerning, among, at, towards.’ ἐν means ‘with, to, into, towards, for, by, of, through, concerning, on, nigh to, instead of, among, at, after, under. . . .’ I have spared you some of the more egregious blunders. These instances are taken from a book, which enjoyed a considerable reputation. Interpretation based on such principles, if they can be called principles, is hopeless. It is needless to remark how unworthy, not to say irreverent (free from any such intent may have been the motives of the writer) this view becomes. It is not against this particular author that I would wish to direct the remark. He undertook a task of great labor, and discharged it, I doubt not, in a conscientious spirit. But the whole system is as bad as it can be. It is the offspring of gross indolence—there is no loving spirit here. It is not the spirit which gathers the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. We cannot expect the blessing of Jacob, unless like him we wrestle with the angel until the breaking of the day.
And I may remark here in passing that I see no ground whatever for supposing that the language of the Inspired Writers is careless or ungrammatical. It is true that the dialect, in which they wrote, was not the pure Greek of earlier times and that in certain cases the grammatical forms and significations of words had undergone some changes. But a language may be impure and yet exact, and so at the time of the Christian era, there was, I believe, as certainly an acknowledged standard by which language was measured, as there was in the age of Xenophon and Plato, though this standard may have been different. And it is not too much to say that on examination it will be found that Aristotle himself is not more exact—in his use of terms—than St. Paul.
I have pointed out one result of the irrational view of inspiration—the neglect of the language of the New Testament. I will allude to another. It begets an extreme jealousy of any attempt to reproduce the circumstances under which the Gospel was first preached, to enter into the character and habits of thought of the preachers themselves, to decipher the influences which directed their words and actions. This jealousy culminates in the case of St. Paul. Yet how much valuable instruction would thus be excluded! If St. Paul is indeed the model of all for all Christian missionaries, he is only so, because like them he is molded by outward circumstances, like them he is influenced by human feelings and sympathies, like them he has his own individuality of character. And they who would study this model to most effect, must strive to enter into his struggles, to appreciate his weakness as well as his strength, to think his thoughts and to live his life. And surely, if this were not intended, it would be strange that so perfect a picture of the character and working of the great Apostle should have been presented to us, that his external actions should be so faithfully reproduced in St. Luke’s narrative, that his inward feelings and motives should find such lively expression in his own letters or as it would be expressed in modern phraseology, that he should be the most subjective of all writers, that in short we should know more of him than we do of any other person of antiquity. Surely it were a cruel and irreverent thought, that these opportunities and inducements were put in our way as our temptation—not for our guidance.
But faulty as this system is, in its leading idea at least, the spirituality of mind necessary for the study of Holy Scripture, it is exalted far above the opposite extreme, which, by the general principle of reaction, it provokes. The rationalistic interpretation, as is the case with the corresponding theory of inspiration, never rises above the mere intellectual. It is the boast of this school, if school it can be called, that it approaches the study of sacred writings, free from prepossessions. It subjects the Scriptures to a dry searching criticism, as it would handle any other book. Let us examine this boast. In the first place, is it possible? In the second place is it desirable? It is not too much to say that no such freedom is attainable, and that those who profess to have it, do in fact, at least in most cases, substitute in place of these prepossessions others more questionable in their character, certain favorite dogmas and philosophical systems.
Nor indeed, even if attainable, is this freedom to be desired, in the sense in which it is professed. For under the head of prepossessions, which they wish to banish, they include two totally different classes of sentiments—those which are produced by outward circumstances, as from our education and social position—prejudices in fact—and those which result from the inward dictates of our heart—the voice of God speaking within us—the light which [enlightens] every man who cometh into the world and which speaking to us of the moral distinction of right and wrong, of our inherent sinfulness, of our spiritual destitution, and our dependence on a higher power, naturally disposes us to any system, which recognizes these truths and supplies these defects.
The former of these prepossessions we must indeed resign; the latter we must cling to at all hazards. Most of all we must avoid this dry heartless criticism, which professes to undertake its task in such a spirit. Wordsworth warns off from his poet’s grave the mere intellectualist. From these more sacred precincts we must ‘warn him’ off too. It is not for such as these that the truths of the Gospels are open—not for the ‘reasoning self-sufficing thing, the intellectual all in all.’ For, in fact, this school transfers the cause from the proper court of judicature. The human element must indeed be tried in fons rationis. The text must be discussed, the interpretation fixed, historical questions decided before this tribunal—but there is a higher court of appeal. The forum conscientiae, I use the word in its widest sense, as signifying our moral and spiritual consciousness, and in this court the verdict will often be reversed.
To this Caesar of our inward nature, the inspired writings appeal, and to Caesar they must go. It may be that they would have been acquitted when tried before Festus and Agrippa, as most certainly they will, if the judges are sufficiently able and unprejudiced. But there is always this rectifying power to appeal to. It takes into account elements which were before neglected. It has larger data from which to give a verdict. What then I mean is simply this—that mere human criticism cannot grasp the entire question. It is only conversant with the human element in the inspired writings, and thus though it may come to a right decision, it is almost equally liable to failure, for there is scarcely any historical fact, there is no moral or philosophical doctrine which, cannot be and has not been disputed with some plausibility. And as the importance of the fact or doctrine in question rises, in the same degree are diversities of opinions multiplied. I believe it is this reference to our inward tribunal that St. Paul means when he speaks of comparing things spiritual πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες, i.e. referring to doctrines which are offered to us as spiritual truths, to the standard of spiritual experiences within us. ψυχικὸς δὲ ἄνθρωπος οὐ δέχεται τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ θεοῦ· μωρία γὰρ αὐτῷ ἐστιν. The blessing is denied not to the carnal man only . . . but also to him, who may possess every intellectual endowment, but yet wants this spirituality, without which they are all in vain. This is the error of the great body of later German critics—not all of them, for there are some noble exceptions, an error far more dangerous than the former.
Still, though we deprecate their views, we are not at liberty to discard the result of their labors. They have accumulated a vast amount of useful matter. They have subjected the sacred writings to an exact and searching criticism, and they have not failed to throw considerable light on special points. All that acuteness and learning could effect, they have attained to. It is impossible that we should not find something valuable at least, where so much labor has been spent. I shall therefore avail myself from time to time of anything in these writers which may elucidate our subject. One protest I must enter in the name of charity and truth. A sweeping condemnation of everything that is German is not honest, it is not Christian. There is as much diversity among German writers, as there is among ourselves. Then and then only shall we, as a nation, have a right to inflict this undiscriminating censure, when we have spent as much time and pains over the sacred writings as they have and produced results as considerable. If the amount of evil in German criticism is to be deplored, the amount of good is at least greater, than anything we have to show on our parts.
The timidity which shrinks from the application of modern science or criticism to the interpretation of the Scripture, evinces a very unworthy view of its character. If the Scriptures are indeed true, they must be in accordance with every true principle of whatever kind. It is against the wrong application of such principles and against the presumption, which pushes them too far, that we must protest. It is not much knowledge, but little knowledge that is the dangerous thing here as elsewhere. From the full light of science or criticism we have nothing to fear. The glimmering of light, which rather deserves the name of darkness visible, hides and distorts the truth. I am also afraid to refer once more to lines which of late from frequent quotation have become almost hackneyed, but it appears to me that the thoughtful theologian can choose no more suitable than the words in which Tennyson has so nobly portrayed the harmony of faith and reason:
Let knowledge grow from more and more
That more of reverence within us dwell
That mind and soul according well
May make one music as before.
[‘In Memoriam,’ Prologue, stanza six]
I said I should not refuse to make use of writings the main principles of which I should strenuously disown where they threw light on our subject. Whether it is advisable for young students to meddle with them is a different question. If they have not sufficient time to devote to the study, it is better that they should keep aloof. In that case they will only start objections, which they have no time to answer, and confuse rather than clearing their notions. Supposing they have time and energy, I cannot deprecate their doing so, even where I do not advise it.
For I do not feel any right to abridge for others the Christian liberty which I claim for myself, but it is with this sincere desire to learn God’s will that you may act upon it. And then I have no fear of the result. I have no fear of the result because I have the most trustworthy assurances of it. You recollect the words of our Lord in St. John ἐάν τις θέλῃ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ποιεῖν (if any man is ready to do God’s will, desirous of doing it) γνώσεται περὶ τῆς διδαχῆς πότερον ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν. There is the old maxim ‘Pectus facit theologium.’ Here the heart may often lead you right, where the head fails, but the head without the heart, will never make you or me a divine in the high sense of the word.
I wish I could have said better what I wanted to say to you, but if these remarks have in any way served to lead you to right views on this important subject, it is sufficient. I felt that they were not altogether unneeded. I mean that the more exact our study of Scripture becomes, up to a certain point, the more difficulties present themselves. There may be apparent discrepancies, which it is difficult to reconcile, facts narrated, which it is difficult to explain, doctrines propounded, which we cannot account for. We naturally dwell on single points. Thus a particular difficulty assumes an undue prominence and threatens to destroy the balance of our minds. But if we approach the subject in a proper frame, the poison will bring with it, its antidote, the evil will right itself. We shall find that special difficulties are multiplied, difficulties too which we are often forced to leave unexplained, the foundations on which our faith is built, are widened and strengthened at the same time. It is the aggregate of evidence by which the case must be judged. Special objections must sink in comparison with this.
Last of all, these remarks would be most defective, if I failed to remind you, as I need to be reminded myself, that above all things prayer is necessary for the right understanding of the Holy Scripture. As speaking to Christians, I might appeal at once to the authority of Scripture itself, an authority which you all recognize. But if it can be said that as a matter of argument, I am arguing in a circle, because the recognition of the duty of prayer presupposes a belief in the truth of Holy Scripture, I could put the matter in this light. If you are studying an ancient writer, a historian for instance such as Thucydides or Tacitus, you would not expect to understand him unless you endeavored to transport yourself into the time at which he wrote, to think and feel with him, and to realize all the circumstances which influenced the life and actions of men of that day. Otherwise, your study would be barren of any results. So it is with the study of Holy Scripture. These documents come before you as spiritual writings, and to appreciate them you must put yourself in communication with the Spirit. Prayer is the medium of communication. And therefore it is necessary for the right understanding of the Bible.