Appendix F: J. B. Lightfoot as Biblical Commentator: C. K. Barrett
Appendix F
J. B. Lightfoot as Biblical Commentator
C. K. Barrett
I find my task in giving this lecture on Lightfoot in at least one respect an embarrassment. Eighteen years ago, here in Durham, I gave to the Lightfoot Society a paper on Lightfoot; I touched other aspects of his work, but to a great extent the paper was devoted to his commentaries. It was published in the Durham University Journal in the following year, 1972. I am not embarrassed because I am under the illusion that my hearers today have turned up their copies of the DUJ and perused my paper; that is in the highest degree unlikely, I am embarrassed simply by the prospect of inevitable repetition, which I should prefer to avoid. I shall avoid it as far as I can, and this paper will follow a different line than its predecessor. But to some extent I shall be obliged to repeat myself. It will be necessary to give a certain amount of necessary information, and the basic facts about Lightfoot’s life and work do not change, though we are now better aware of Lightfoot’s manuscripts preserved in the Chapter Library at Durham; these provide some biographical material and throw additional light on Lightfoot’s work and thought. My earlier lecture was, on the whole,—there were a few exceptions—laudatory. This is because it was in the main descriptive of Lightfoot’s work, and what there is to describe is very good indeed. What Lightfoot set out to do he did with very great skill and very great thoroughness. In his own chosen line he has perhaps no equal in the English-speaking world. There is however room for more critical examination. His own work suggests questions to which it does not, at least on the surface, provide answers. Did he do everything that may rightly be expected of a commentary? Were the methods he used the right methods? Should his methods be replaced, or perhaps supplements by others? Did he take his own methods as far as they would go? Did he draw from them all the conclusions to which they pointed?
We shall see as we proceed how these questions, or some of them, are raised, and what answers Lightfoot himself can supply. The result will not detract from our estimate of Lightfoot; he is great enough to abide our question. In any case, repetition or not, we must begin with some facts.
Most of the biographical details may be found in my earlier lecture. Lightfoot gained his equipment as a commentator in the first instance at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee, later Bishop of Manchester, not only a thorough training in Greek and Latin, and wide reading in classical literature and history, but in a firm Christian faith and a devotion to hard work. He learned the meaning of Prince Lee’s own motto, Virtus constat in agendo. Thence to Cambridge, where he worked with Westcott, who had by three years preceded him from Prince Edward’s to Trinity. Having taken a first in mathematics he took the Classical Tripos in 1851 and came out as Senior Classic. The legend that he wrote all his Tripos papers without a single mistake is perhaps credible as far as language papers are concerned. It cannot have been easy to find passages of classical Greek and Latin that were truly unseen to him, and composition presented few problems. Inevitably he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity, and proceeded to improve his linguistic knowledge yet further by the best of all methods—teaching the language to others. Theology he was now learning in his spare time; that is, after others had gone to bed at night and before they got up in the morning. The same diligence that he had applied to reading the classics he applied to patristic literature, with results that appear not only in the editions of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp but in his contributions to the great Dictionaries, of Christian Antiquities and Christian biography.
In an even earlier lecture than that on Lightfoot, to which I have already referred, I described the way in which Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort divided up the New Testament with a view to writing commentaries on the whole. Lightfoot was to take Paul, and, as everyone knows, he wrote commentaries on Galatians (1865), Philippians (1868) and in one volume Colossians and Philemon (1875). Each contains an introduction, dealing with the usual questions; the Greek text, edited by Lightfoot, in consultation but not in complete agreement with Westcott and Hort (who, as we all know, were drawing up their text of the whole New Testament); notes on the text, which included brief explanatory paraphrases, which restate in English the meaning of the text; longer notes on special points of interest and difficulty; and dissertations on larger topics related to the content of the several epistles. A summary such as this cannot do justice to the width and detail of Lightfoot’s work; a brief outhne is called for.
In Galatians there are extended notes on St. Paul’s sojourn in Arabia, St. Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem, the name and office of an apostle, various readings in Galatians 2:5, the later visit of Paul to Jerusalem, patristic accounts of the collision in Antioch, the interpretation of Deuteronomy 21:23, the words denoting ‘faith,’ the faith of Abraham, St. Paul’s infirmity in the flesh, the various readings in Galatians 4:25, the meaning of Hagar in Galatians 4:25, Philo’s allegory of Hagar and Sarah, the various readings in Galatians 5:1, and the patristic commentaries on this epistle. In addition, there are dissertations on ‘Were the Galatians Celts or Teutons?’ and ‘The Brethren of the Lord’ and ‘St. Paul and the Three.’
In Philippians there are extended notes on the synonyms bishop and presbyter, the meaning of praetorium in Philippians 1:13, the synonyms μορφή and σχῆμα, different interpretations of οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο, lost epistle to the Philippians?, ‘Clement my fellow laborer,’ and Caesar’s household. There are dissertations on ‘The Christian Ministry’ and ‘St. Paul and Seneca,’ the latter with additional notes on the letters of Paul and Seneca.
In Colossians there are extended notes on some various readings in the epistle (Colossians), on the meaning of πλήρωμα, and on the epistle from Laodicea. There are no dissertations, but the introduction contains seventy-two pages on the churches of the Lycus and forty-one pages on the Colossian heresy, with an additional sixty-six pages on some points connected with the Essenes.
It has seemed worthwhile to read rapidly through these titles, which, taken together, give some impression of Lightfoot’s wide-ranging learning. There is scarcely one that does not reveal such patristic learning as probably no living New Testament scholar could claim. Jewish material, in the original languages, is called on when it is needful, and the extended note on Hagar and Sarah required the Cambridge University Press have not only a Syriac but also an Arabic font.
The three commentaries were published in Lightfoot’s lifetime. He left lecture notes, and other notes, on other epistles which doubtless he would have used in published work had he lived, and had his interest not become absorbed in what must be regarded as his greatest work, that on the text of 1 Clement and the Epistles of Ignatius (with 2 Clement and Polycarp added for full measure)—not to mention his conscientious, time-consuming work as bishop of Durham. The notes were edited after his death for his trustees and published under the title Notes on Epistles of St. Paul from Unpublished Commentaries (1895). Here we have notes, similar to but less full than those of the finished commentaries, on 1 Thessalonians; 2 Thessalonians; 1 Corinthians 1–7; Romans 1–7; and Ephesians 1:1-14. We may note here that the trustees did not publish all the available material. The Chapter Library at Durham contains a quantity of manuscript material which is interesting in that it shows both how probably the most popular teacher of theology at Cambridge in his time prepared and presented his material, and also how the finished commentaries took shape.
It will no doubt be proper to attempt a brief characterization of the commentaries that have a finished form. The first characteristic that the reader is likely to observe is their beautiful clarity. Except in the extended notes and dissertations, which are in the style of monographs rather than of commentary, there are no footnotes, and the reader takes in Lightfoot’s exposition, and the grounds on which he bases it, without distraction. It would be difficult to find a sentence that does not immediately tell the reader the author’s meaning. Of course, some of the arguments are complex because the text on which Lightfoot is commenting is difficult, but even in such passages the meaning is not in doubt. This appears pre-eminently in the explanatory paraphrases, of which I quote, more or less at random, that on Colossians 1:15-17:
He is the perfect image, the visible representation, of the unseen God. He is the Firstborn, the absolute Heir of the Father, begotten before the ages; the Lord of the Universe by virtue of primogeniture, and by virtue also of creative agency. For in and through Him the whole world was created, things in heaven and things on earth, things visible to the outward eye and things cognizable to the inward perception. His supremacy is absolute and universal. All powers in heaven and on earth are subject to Him. This subjected extends even to the most exalted and most potent of angelic beings, whether they be called Thrones, or Dominions or Princedoms or Powers, or whatever title of dignity men may confer upon them. Yes; He is the First and He is the Last. Through Him, as the mediatorial Word, the universe has been created; and unto Him as the final goal, it is tending. In Him is no before or after. He is pre-existent and self-existent before all the worlds. And in Him, as the binding and sustaining power, universal nature coheres and consists.
But this general note is followed by details, and here too, though the details are followed out at length, there is comparable clarity. Thus the note on εἰκὼν, which is far too long to quote in full, runs in outhne thus:
This expression is used repeatedly by Philo, as a description of the Logos [six quotations follow]. . . . Still earlier than Philo . . . the term was used of the divine σοφία personified in Wisdom vii.26. . . . St. Paul himself applies the term to our Lord in an earlier epistle, 2 Cor. iv.4. . . . Closely allied to εἰκὼν also is χαρακτὴρ . . .
So much for usage. Now meaning:
Beyond the very obvious notion of likeness the word εἰκὼν involves two other ideas: 1) Representation. In this respect it is allied to χαρακτὴρ, and differs from ὁμοίωμα. In ὁμοίωμα the resemblance may be accidental, as one egg is like another; but εἰκὼν implies an archetype of which it is a copy [quotations of and references to Gregory Nazianzen, Philo, Trench, Basil, 1 Corinthians, 1 Clement, Clementine Homiles follow]. The use which was made of the expression and especially of this passage in the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries may be seen from the patristic quotations in Perav. Theol. Dogm. De Trin. Ii.11.9sq.; vi. 5, 6. 2) Manifestation. This idea comes from the implied contast to τοῦ ἀοράτου Θεοῦ. St. Chrysostom indeed mantains the direct opposite, arguing that, as the archetype is invisible, so the image must be invisible also [quotation]. So too Hilary [quotation]. And this was the view of the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers generally. But the underlying idea of the εἰκὼν, and indeed of the λόγος generally, is the manifestation of the hidden [quotations from Philo, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Basil, John follow . . . ].
The example I have chosen to illustrate the clarity of Lightfoot’s exposition and argumentation can and must serve other purposes also and illustrate other characteristics, notably his knowledge of the Fathers and his independence. He always has at hand the right quotation to bring out the meaning of a passage and to support the interpretation that he offers; but he can also declare that on a point of considerable importance the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers were mistaken. Naturally he is no less independent of—and hardly less well read in—the works of his contemporaries. There is a characteristic note early in the description of the Christian ministry.
The origin of the Christian ministry is ably investigated in Rothe’s Anfange der Christhchen Kirche etc. (1837), and Ritschl’s, Entstehung der Altkatholischen Kirche, (2nd ed. 1857). These are the most important of the recent works on the subject with which I am acquainted, and to both of them I wish to acknowledge my obligations, though in many respects I have arrived at results different from either.
Lightfoot’s knowledge and use of patristic material can be illustrated by his account of patristic commentaries on Galatians. He knows Origen, Ephraem Syrus, Eusebius of Emesa, Chrysostom, Severianus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, Euthalius, Gennadius, Photius, Victorinus, Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, Pelagius, Cassiodorus, John of Damascus, the Catena published by Cramer, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Primasius, Sedulius, Claudius, Florus, Rabanus Maurus, Walafrid, Strabo and Haymo; Atto, Lanfranc, Bruno and Herveus are added.
Equally striking and characteristic but equally difficult to illustrate briefly and effectively is Lightfoot’s feeling for a Greek phrase or sentence, acquired over many years of familiarity with Greek literature of all kinds. For brevity, take these words, which provide a familiar problem in Galatians 1:19, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον.
Is James here styled an Apostle or not? Are we to translate ‘I saw no other Apostle save James’ or ‘I saw no other Apostle, but only James?’ It will be seen that the question is not whether εἰ μὴ retains its exceptive force or not, for this it seems always to do . . . , but whether the exception refers to the whole clause or to the verb alone . . . the latter is quite a possible construction. . . . But on the other hand the sense of ἕτερον naturally links it with εἰ μὴ, from which it cannot be separated without harshness, and ἕτερον carries the ἀποστόλων with it. It seems then that James is here called an Apostle.
Lightfoot was perhaps even greater as a historian than as a grammarian. He has especially in Galatians a set of historical problems as difficult as any the New Testament presents. His treatment of them is clear and in the main satisfying. His identification of the meeting described in Galatians 2 with council of Acts 15 is surely correct, and Lightfoot defends it with great force, though he labors under the difficulty that his principles made it impossible for him to answer adequately the two chief objections to it. He mentions them fairly. How is it that Paul passes from his first Jerusalem visit to his third without a hint of the second (described in Acts 11:30; 12:25)? And how is it that Paul in Galatians makes no mention of the decree decided at the council, according to Acts 15:29? These difficulties can be readily disposed of if one is prepared to say that the second and third visits in Acts are doublets and that the decree was promulgated in Paul’s absence and without his consent. Lightfoot would not have felt free to adopt these explanations, which impugn the veracity of Acts. This sets a very serious limit to the value of his historical work, illustrated by his discussion of Acts 15, in which he settles the historical trustworthiness of the Acts narrative by confronting it with Galatians after, not before, reaching his decision. Lightfoot was inhibited in his work as an historian by a false understanding of inspiration and authority; it is for this reason that his work on the apostolic fathers is even better, and is of more permanent value, than his work on the New Testament. Apart however from this defect he works out the historical relations of Galatians with reference to every scrap of evidence that the epistle affords, with great skill.
The story of the council points forward to Lightfoot’s long dissertation on St. Paul and the Three. It would not be proper to take this up in this lecture, for it will probably be dealt with in another of this week’s lectures. In any case I dealt with it in some detail in my earlier Lightfoot lecture and brought out its strengths and weaknesses. Lightfoot recognized as clearly as F. C. Baur ever did the conflict that lies at the heart of early Christian history and indeed treats it, or begins to treat it, even more radically than Baur in that he places the documents of strife and reconciliation at earlier dates than Baur. But he seems never quite to see how radical his understanding of early Christian development is, or, if he sees it, he shies away from it, stepping back from the brink of recognizing that the uneasy diversity, which he does clearly see, is part of the New Testament itself.
Let me add here, with a view to taking up the theme later, that Lightfoot did not neglect that other part of a commentator’s duty, the theological evaluation of the text. Of this I shall give one example. Lightfoot’s treatment of the notorious problem in Galatians 3:16—οὐ λέγει καὶ τοῖς σπέρμασιν, ὡς ἐπὶ πολλῶν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐφ’ ἑνός καὶ τῷ σπέρματί σου, ὅς ἐστιν Χριστός. First he deals with the language with a near quotation from Plato (Laws, 9, 853c) to show that the plural σπέρμασι is not impossible, and the argument that the point Paul is making is that where a plural (e.g., τέκνα) might have been used the Old Testament in fact has a singular. ‘The singular collective noun, if it admits of plurality (as it is interpreted by St. Paul himself, Rom. iv.18; ix.7) at the same time involves the idea of unity.’ At this point Lightfoot takes the important step. ‘The question therefore is no longer one of grammatical accuracy, but of theological interpretation. Is this a legitimate sense to apply to the seed of Abraham?’ Lightfoot goes on to show that the Christ ‘was the true seed of Abraham?’ ‘In Him the race was summed up, as it were. In Him it fulfilled its purpose and became a blessing to the whole earth. . . . He was not only the representative, but the embodiment of the race.’
I have deliberately ended this sketch of Lightfoot’s achievement as a commentator with a reference to theology because it is at this point that he has been attacked, and if this lecture is to be a critical discussion, as it must, it is here that we must begin. There cannot be many theologians still resident in Cambridge who remember Charles Smyth’s provocative University Sermon. It was in one of its less provocative parts that he referred, as Cambridge men often do,—or did—to the three great figures of Cambridge theology. His hearer expected him to name them: Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort. He said Westcott, Hort and Hoskyns. To take up the positive aspect of his substitution is a temptation I must firmly thrust aside. The negative aspect is relevant. Smyth of course was not denigrating Lightfoot the exponent of classical and sacred philology. He had used the word theologian, and it was theologians of whom he was thinking. Lightfoot was a great man; was he a great theologian? Was he a theologian at all?
Disparagement of Lightfoot as a theologian goes back at least to the year in which his Galatians was published and to his old friend and colleague Hort. Some passages in Hort’s letters must be quoted. He writes (2.35) to John Ellerton on 7 May 1865:
The main purpose of the volume [Galatians] is to determine precisely the nature of the Apostolic history, to which Galatians is the key, and that is its distinctive merit. . . . Doctrinal questions are almost entirely avoided, as Lightfoot means to keep them for Romans. However, that is certainly the weakest point of the book; and Jowett’s notes and essays, with all their perversities, are still an indispensable supplement.
I have been unable to find where Lightfoot expresses the intention that Hort ascribes to him—of dealing almost exclusively with the apostolic history and saving the Pauline theology for the commentary on Romans (of which we only have the imperfect fragment in Unpublished Commentaries). This is not to say that Hort was mistaken; Lightfoot may have said these things in conversation with his friend, or written them in a letter now lost.
Nearly two years later (21 February 1867) Hort was writing again to Ellerton, who evidently had asked Hort’s opinion of several books which he, Ellerton, had not read. Hort writes:
Touching Lightfoot’s Galatians . . . Certainly his doctrinal comments are far from satisfying me. They belong far too much to the mere Protestant version of St. Paul’s thoughts, however Christianized and rationalized. One misses the real attempt to fathom St. Paul’s own mind, and to compare it with the facts of life which one finds in Jowett. On the other hand, he is surely always admirable on historical grounds, and especially in interpreting passages which afford indirect historical evidence, so also all matters of grammar and language and such like essential externalities.
As myself a mere Protestant I find myself wondering what is the mere Protestant version of Paul’s thoughts; also how it may be, or needs to be, Christianized and rationalized. It seems that, having resisted the temptation to digress to Hoskyns, we shall be obliged to turn aside for a few moments to Hort, though I shall do my best to keep the digression within narrow limits, recognizing that a full account of Hort’s own theological position is matter for another occasion. It must suffice to quote two letters, both written to Westcott. The first was written on 23 September 1864 (2.30f):
I believe Coleridge was quite right in saying that Christianity without a substantial Church is vanity and dissolution; and I remember shocking you and Lightfoot not so very long ago by expressing a belief that ‘Protestantism’ is only parenthetical and temporary. In short, the Irvingite creed (minus the belief in the superior claims of the Irvingite communion) seems to me unassailable in things ecclesiastical. Yet that is not after all the essential aspect of sacred things. If we may take St. Paul’s life and work for our guidance (and St. Peter’s ‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons’ goes even further) we may well be content to put up with comparative formlessness for I know not how many generations than go back to ‘the elements of the world.’
Westcott must have replied, for five days later (September 28) Hort wrote again (2.31f.):
We must not be tempted into discussing the Church and the Churches in the opening line of a letter. I must take the chance of your misunderstanding me for the present, and merely state one comprehensive belief—that perfect Catholicity has been nowhere since the Reformation (strictly, indeed, it was cruelly injured long before by the Filoque and the Athanasian Creed), and that since then we have had the pre-eminence of the constitutional Catholicity and (not ‘Rome’ but) the Churches that hold to Rome in historical Catholicity.
Looking at the matter from the outside, and without adequate discussion, Hort, it seems, has all the appearance of a good middle-of-the-road Anglican. The Reformation was a regrettable necessity, called for by errors and excesses in the medieval church; it should have been carried out with greater tact and moderation. Luther was ‘a great and good man,’ but ‘he was sometimes violent and unwise.’
It is interesting to reflect that of the three, Hort was the only one who did not become a bishop; he seems to have been the likeliest candidate. One is almost disposed to see divine providence in the system of appointment by royal prerogative. Westcott was saved by his mystical piety and his profound sympathy with the unfortunate, Lightfoot by the fact that he was an historian, a fact that made him too much of an antisacerdotal presbyterian for Hort. Or was even this strong enough to save him? The question will lead to a further development in the critical assessment of Lightfoot.
No more than any other commentator did Lightfoot come to his work without presuppositions. What were they? I have said a little about theology, and I shall return to the theme. Two other kinds of presuppositions call for consideration: philosophical and institutional.
In one of my earlier papers I compared Lightfoot and F. C. Baur. I pointed out, what is now generally recognized, that Baur did not impose a Hegelian view of history on the New Testament documents, but recognized, as is certainly true, that Baur was a Hegelian; this Hegelianism had in fact a far more powerful, and I would add, harmful—effect on his theology than on his history. ‘Lightfoot in contrast,’ I said (p. 316), ‘was not a philosopher and showed no interest in a theory of history.’ He said himself, ‘I brought to the task nothing more than ordinary sense.’ I went on however to say (p. 317), ‘Lightfoot’s presuppositions were theological or religious, but it may be that behind them we should recognize a way of apprehending reality. . . . Does his “ordinary sense” represent a kind of empiricism?’ B. N. Kaye, in an important article, with most of which I can heartily agree, takes issue with this. In a paragraph of conclusions he writes:
The conflict between Baur and Lightfoot on early Christianity is really about the question of the origins of Christianity. It seems to me that in broad terms they agree about the importance of history and theology being related to each other. Their approach to historical method is very similar and they are both convinced that there is a vital connection between contemporary Christianity and its origins. . . . They differ, however, as to the particular and precise definition of the character of that connection; Baur thinking in dynamic and developmental terms, Lightfoot in terms of a ‘given’ in the incarnation and the struggle to maintain the truth of that ‘given’ through the subsequent life of the Church with the aid of the institution of the Christian ministry. It seems to me therefore not at all the case that Lightfoot has no philosophy of history. Rather, he appears to me to represent not just an empiricist philosophy but a fairly traditional Anglican point of view, such as might be found in the writings of Richard Hooker, whom Lightfoot is wont on occasion to quote. It appears to me most certainly to be the case that Lightfoot is very importantly involved, in his New Testament writings, in English church problems.
With most of this I agree—indeed with more of it than Dr. Kaye appears to think I do, though I cannot but observe that a concern with English church problems is not the same as a philosophical standpoint. I return however to my suggestion that Lightfoot’s ‘ordinary sense’ might be thought of in philosophical terms as ‘empiricism’; and if an outsider may be permitted to express an opinion on such a matter, few things seem to me more characteristic of a ‘fairly traditional Anglican point of view’ than a devout empiricism. I am inclined to think, though here in particular I would defer to the specialists, that this is by no means uncharacteristic of Hooker.
It may be worthwhile to dwell briefly upon the last sentence in the paragraph that I have quoted from Dr. Kaye. ‘Lightfoot is very importantly involved, in his New Testament writings, in English church problems.’ It is arguable that increasing involvement in these problems led to changes in critical attitude. Probably his most radical, most Baurian, work is to be seen in his earliest commentary, that on Galatians. I give one quotation only. ‘The systematic hatred of St. Paul is an important fact, which we are too apt to overlook but without which the whole history of the Apostolic ages will be misread and misunderstood.’ Lightfoot does not, I think, return to this vehement expression of the turbulent and disunited apostolic age. His language in Philippians, though firm, is more moderate:
If these sectarians resolutely opposed St. Paul they were hardly less zealous in preaching Christ. The incentive of rivalry goaded them on to fresh exertions. Their Gospel was dwarfed and mutilated; it ignored the principle of liberty which was a main feature of the true Gospel; but though their motives were thus unworthy and their doctrine distorted, still ‘Christ was preached’; and for this cause, smothering all personal feeling, the Apostle constrained himself to rejoice. (p. 18)
Most important, however, is the fact that Lightfoot found it necessary, after he had become bishop of Durham, not to retract his long dissertation on the Christian ministry, but to point out that it had been misunderstood. In this dissertation it is plainly stated that ‘the functions of the Apostle and the bishop differ widely.’ Originally, the terms bishop and presbyter were synonymous (argued in a special note, Philippians, pp. 95-99), hence it is deduced that ‘the episcopate was formed not out of the apostolic order by localization but out of the presbyteral by elevation; and the title, which was originally common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the chief among them.’ This is worked out in detail in the following pages. The last part of the dissertation (pp. 244-69) is devoted to an attack on sacerdotalism, defined (p. 245) as the view that designates ‘the Christian minister as one who offers sacrifices and makes atonement for the sins of others.’ This, though it subsequently developed rapidly, is not to be found in the New Testament.
Lightfoot on the origins of the episcopate is radical enough; but he can go farther. I allow myself to quote again passages I used in the past.
This then is the Christian ideal; a holy season extending the whole year round—a temple confined only by the limits of the habitable world—a priesthood coextensive with the human race. (Philippians, p. 183f.)
It may be a general rule, it may be under ordinary circumstances a practically universal law, that the highest acts of congregational worship shall be performed through the principle officers of the congregation. But an emergency may arise when the spirit and not the letter must decide. The Christian ideal will then interpose and interpret our duty. The higher ordinance of the universal priesthood will overrule all special limitations. The layman will assume functions which are otherwise restricted to the ordained minister. (Philippians, p. 268)
A pity, one may think, ever to live by the letter, rather than by the Spirit, by the lower rather than the higher ordinance. That Lightfoot never said; but he had said more than enough for some of his readers.
It would seem that partial and qualifying statements . . . have assumed undue proportions in the minds of some readers, who have emphasized them to the neglect of the general drift of the Essay.
The general drift was that from the apostles’ time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s church, bishops, priests and deacons. But Lightfoot had made it clear that in the apostles’ time, bishops were the same as priests (or presbyters) and that priests were to be understood in an entirely unsacerdotal sense. These were not the points that he now, in 1881, wished to bring out.
No one could accuse Lightfoot, whose integrity was beyond question, of springing to the defense of an order simply because he had entered it. But it is probably true that he did, in the last decade of his life, feel greater responsibility for the traditions and order of the Church of England.
Apart from such considerations, before perhaps they began to weigh heavily with him, how did Lightfoot understand the business of a commentator, and how did he set about carrying it out? To answer these questions I shall draw upon two sources.
The first is the introductory lecture to his course, given several times in Cambridge, on the Acts of the Apostles. Systems of interpretation (he says) depend on views of inspiration—a statement that can be made a priori and is confirmed by the history of biblical criticism. There are two extreme views, which stress either the human element in Scripture or the divine, each to the exclusion of the other. The latter stress is irrational, the former rationalistic. Neither is satisfactory. It is essential to give due weight to each element; this method only is in accord with the highest reason and the fullest faith. In modern times the irrational method came first. It reduced Scripture to featureless uniformity and falls immediately to the assaults of criticism; in falling it has carried with it the faith of some. The rationalist method arises by reaction. The divine element is virtually, if not actually, denied, and inspiration is lowered because it is claimed not only for Scripture but also for writers such as Homer, Aeschylus, Pythagoras and Plato.
The combination of divine and human elements is of fundamental importance; it makes it possible to recognize those differences in natural gifts and circumstances which enable us to understand how Paul saw the gospel as the abrogation, James the fulfillment of the law. It is when the human element is lost sight of that criticism and grammar are disregarded in a loose system of interpretation. Such indolence has not disappeared in England; and Lightfoot illustrates it. ‘I see no ground whatever for supposing that the language of the inspired writers is careless or ungrammatical.’ It is not ‘pure’ but it is ‘exact.’ Aristotle himself is not more exact in his use of terms than St. Paul. With precise study of language must go the attempt to reproduce the historical circumstances under which the gospel was first preached.
The irrational method of interpretation is to be avoided, but at least it is better than the rationalistic, which boasts that it approaches Scripture free from prepossessions. But is this possible? Is it desirable? There are two kinds of prepossession. There are those which result from outward circumstances, such as education and social position. These must be resigned. There are also those which come from the inward dictates of the heart, from God speaking within us. These we must cling to.
The human indeed must be tried in foro rationis. The text must be discussed, the interpretation fixed, historical questions decided before this tribunal. But there is a higher court of appeal—the conscience. Spirtual things are spiritually discerned; spirituality is necessary in the interpreter.
One specific piece of advice follows; young students should avoid German criticism, or at least approach it ‘in a spiritual frame of mind.’ This is not a wholesale condemnation. There is much to learn from German scholars; they have done so much work, there must be something of value in their results. ‘Then and then only shall we as a nation have a right to inflict this indiscriminating censure when we have spent as much time and pains over the sacred writings as they have, and produced results as considerable.’
Finally Lightfoot stresses the importance of prayer. If you study a historian such as Thucydides or Tacitus you must transport yourself into his time so as to think and feel as he did. In regard to the Bible this means the Spirit. Lightfoot does not say, though he probably meant, you must also learn to live in the biblical history.
A profound belief in the divine element in Scripture; a readiness to study its vocabulary, grammar and history with the whole of a senior classic’s resources; a devout spirit of prayer and readiness to hear the word of God. We cannot doubt that Lightfoot brought these to his lectures and his commentaries.
My second source is Lightfoot’s essay on ‘Recent Editions of St. Paul’s Epistles,’ in which he reviews the commentaries of Ellicott, Stanley and Jowett. Ellicott is soon dismissed; he offers grammatical criticism only. Evidently Lightfoot, for all his stress on grammar, regarded this as no more than preliminary to a commentary. The treatment of Stanley can only be described as savage. Stanley has ‘taken upon himself a task for which he was unfitted either by his intellectual constitution or by his previous training. . . . he seems to be entirely wanting in that habit of strict accuracy, which is the first, second and third requisite for a successful critic’ (p. 90). Examples dealing with text exegesis, lexicography, grammar and history follow. ‘The treatment of tenses . . . in these volumes is so hopelessly confused and contradictory that any attempt to analyze it would be vain’ (p. 96f.). ‘If our belief in Mr. Stanley’s efficiency as a commentator has not received its death-blow already, it will scarcely survive his self-contradictions’ (p. 98). So much for Mr. Stanley.
Jowett was a different matter and had to be taken seriously, though ‘his greatness appears in the Essays rather than in the commentary’ (p. 102). Here are discussed the questions which (I suspect) the mere Protestant in Lightfoot did not bring into commentaries, though he was capable of understanding and appreciating them when he met them. ‘How has this or that metaphysical question presented itself to different minds or to the same mind at different times? Under what contradictory aspects may a particular religious sentiment or moral truth be viewed? What phenomena does an individual mind exhibit at different stages in its growth? What contrasts do we find in the ancient and modern world of thought?’ (p. 117f). These are not improper questions. It is Jowett’s exegetical methods that evoke criticism. ‘He applies entirely different principles of interpretation to the language of St. Paul from those by which he would investigate Sophocles or Xenophon. He removes him beyond the pale of ordinary grammatical considerations. We cannot argue therefore from these volumes what treatment he would adopt with a classical writer’ (p. 102). He exaggerates the changes in the Greek language since the days of Pericles (p. 106) and—worse—makes the unwarranted assumption that degeneracy in a language implies indefiniteness. ‘It is impossible that Prof. Jowett’s views of the language of St. Paul should not to a great extent vitiate the character of his commentary’ (p. 109). Lightfoot gives examples, but is also able to say that Jowett’s ‘practice is better than his theory’ (p. 103).
The charge of inexact scholarship (which if put into reverse tells us much about Lightfoot’s understanding of the commentator’s task) may be taken a little further. It will bring us back to Hort, who joined in the criticism of Jowett. There was much in Jowett’s work that he liked; much also that he disliked. One quotation will suffice. In November 1855 Hort wrote to Gerald Blunt:
About Jowett, I don’t think you could go beyond me in enjoying and praising him. His wonderful sympathy, depth of insight into men, and thorough love of truth and fact are above praise; but alas! his theological conclusions seem to me blank atheism, though he is anything but an atheist. Even the learning and scholarship of the book you must not accept on trust. It is nearly always second-hand, and often quite wrong.
It is not surprising that criticism such as Lightfoot had published and Hort had written privately were brought into the controversy at Oxford over the endowment and remuneration of the Greek professorship which Jowett held. It was probably Jowett’s contribution to Essays and Reviews that precipitated the trouble, but the adequacy of his Greek scholarship was brought into it. It is surprising that Hort leapt into it. It is surprising that Hort leapt to Jowett’s defense in a letter to The Record. It is too long to quote, but Hort makes the point that Lightfoot (in the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology) had referred to a disagreement in opinion, not to lack of knowledge, and that Jowett had in any case not been asked to lecture on the New Testament. ‘Marcus’ replies that Lightfoot had referred to confusion of the perfect and aorist tenses, and that if Oxford had not asked Jowett to lecture on the New Testament there may have been good reason for the omission. I find it impossible to acquit Hort of a measure of disingenuousness. This however is not a point that I may allow myself at present to pursue. Strictly relevant to a consideration of Lightfoot’s biblical commentaries is the disagreement between him and Jowett about biblical Greek. We have already seen something of Lightfoot’s crirticism of Jowett. Let Jowett now speak for himself. He is right when he complains that ‘There is a danger of a making words mean too much; refinements of signification are drawn out of them, perhaps contained in their etymology, which are lost in common use and parlance.’ This might have been written by James Barr! When he asks for a lexicon not of the entire Greek New Testament but of significant theological words (he mentions πίστις, χάρις, δικαιοσύνη, ἁγιασμός, νόμος, πνεῦμα, παράκλητος, ἀπόστολος, ἐπίσκοπος, πρεσβύτερος, ἀγαπη, Ὁ και η δίκαιος [?], ἡ κυριακῇ ἡμέρᾳ), he is anticipating Kittel. But to him the language of the New Testament was simply degenerate.
The degeneracy of the Greek language is traceable in the failure of syntactical power; in the insertation of prepositions to denote relations of thought, which classical Greek would have expressed by the case only; in the omission of them when classical Greek would have required them; in the incipient use of ἵνα with the subjunctive for the infinitive; in the confusion of ideas of cause and effect; in the absence of the article in the case of an increasing number of words which are passing into proper names; in the loss of the finer shades of difference in the negative particles; in the occasional confusion of the aorist and perfect; in excessive fondness for particles of reasoning or inference; in various forms of apposition, especially that of the word to the sentence; in the use, sometimes emphatic, sometimes only pleonastic, of the personal and demonstrative pronouns. These are some of the signs of that the language is breaking-up and losing its structure.
Lightfoot knew better. The language was developing, and the New Testament was part of the development. It is possible to be too nice in the handling the language of the New Testament, but it is also possible to be not nice enough, and it can usually be assumed that the New Testament writers, not least Paul, said what they meant to say, even though by classical standards they did not say it in the most elegant, in the most ‘correct’ way. Lightfoot’s insight in anticipating the papyrus discoveries of ‘everyday’ Greek has often been celebrated, but the words must not be made to mean too much. He writes explicitly:
We do not believe that St. Paul can be said in any strict sense to have written in the Greek of every day life. He wrote perhaps in the religious Greek of the day. A language formed partly by the influence of the LXX version, and partly by other traditional influences, but in many respects very different in color from the language spoken every day at Athens or Antioch, or even Alexandria.
This seems to me well observed. Comparison with Jowett that illuminates some of Lightfoot’s basic principles may also serve to bring us to the last section of this sketch of Lightfoot as commentator. After dealing in Essays and Reviews with the language of Scripture, that is, with interpretation in the narrow sense, Jowett turns to application (p. 404). This is partly a matter of recognizing ourselves, especially in the parables, which speaks immediately to ‘well-satisfied Pharisees; repentant Publicans’ (p. 414), partly selection.
It is impossible to gather from a few fragmentary and apparently not always consistent expressions, how the Communion was celebrated, or the Church ordered, what was the relative position of Presbyters and Deacons, or the nature of the gift of tongues, as a rule for the Church in after ages—such inquiries have no certain answer, and at the best, are only the subject of honest curiosity. But the words ‘Charity never faileth’ and ‘Though I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing’—these have a voice which reaches to the end of time.
Over against this, Lightfoot has only one method of interpretation and application: the historical-critical method. The primary and inescapable task of exegesis is to determine the precise meaning of the words in question in the context in which they were first spoken or written. This task Lightfoot achieved with unsurpassed success. ‘Lightfoot’s strength lay in the historical interpretation of the documents which he handled.’ The New Testament commentaries set out to state, with the utmost accuracy and clarity, what Paul wished to say to the Galatians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians and to Philemon. There is a tacit assumption that this is also what Paul wished to say to Galatians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians and to Philemon. There is a tacit assumption that this is also what Paul would have wished to say to Christian Englishmen in the nineteeth century. This assumption comes, I believe pretty near to what Hort meant by ‘mere Protestantism,’ though whether Hort had found the best terms for denoting it is questionable. It is also questionable whether the assumption is justified; it is our last question in regard to Lightfoot as commentator. Does he complete his task? Does there not remain untouched a hermeneutical process which Lightfoot owed to his readers, but did not give them?
It goes without saying that nothing will be found in Lightfoot’s work of modern linguistic or semantic theory. It also goes without saying that we shall not be fair to Lightfoot if we do not study along with his commentaries, his many sermons, many published and many more that are still available to us in manuscript. These are interesting and instructive in their form; and in what they say and do not say. I take one, preached in St. Paul’s on Septuagesima Sunday 1877, on 2 Corinthians 3:6, ‘The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Giveth Life.’ It begins with matter that could have been used in a lecture or commentary. The contrast of spirit and letter was coined by Paul; it occurs in three places in his letters; each passage is given straight-forward historical exegesis. Then comes the turning point.
This is the primary sense in which the Apostle speaks of the letter killing and the spirit giving life. But, like many another maxim of St. Paul, the saying is far too full to be exhausted by its primary meaning. It has applications as wide as human life is wide, as human thought is wide. On one such application—perhaps the most important of all—I shall venture to dwell for a few moments.
Lightfoot then goes on to deal with the way in which the practical moral conclusions are to be drawn from difficult sayings such as ‘Give to him that asketh thee.’ In other words, a general truth was given to the Corinthians in a particular context. This context, reached by the skill of the historian and helped out by parallels, enables us to determine the precise meaning of the general truth. The general truth may then be applied to other contexts that were not in Paul’s mind when he wrote to Corinth. Thus historical exegesis has not only the negative function of saying to the modern theologian or moralist, ‘No, you may not base your proposition on that text,’ but the positive function of providing solid ground for inferences relevant to ages long after the original truth was stated. Lightfoot assumes—and if the assumption is valid he may be vindicated not only as a philologist and historian but also as a theologian—that the language and the historical circumstances of Scripture have a quality of universality that gives them a perennial applicability. Lightfoot’s extraordinary familiarity with the Fathers is enough to show that he was by no means unmindful of the postbiblical tradition and its value. It helped him in exegesis and provided examples of the way in which scriptural truth had been applied to postbiblical situations earlier than his own. He speaks also with admiration of Luther as well as of post-Enlightenment biblical scholars in Germany and elsewhere. There remains for him however an absolute qualitative distinction between the words of Scripture and all other words, and it is this, together of course with his splendid scholarly equipment, that places him securely in the line of great biblical expositors, from Origen and Chrysostom to Calvin and Bengel.