Understanding the Scriptures by Francis McConnell
F >>
Francis McConnell >> Understanding the Scriptures
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Bob McKillip
and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE MENDENHALL LECTURES, THIRD SERIES
DELIVERED AT DEPAUW UNIVERSITY
UNDERSTANDING
THE SCRIPTURES
BY
FRANCIS J. McCONNELL
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
CONTENTS
FORWARD
I. PRELIMINARY
II. THE BOOK OF LIFE
III. THE BOOK OF HUMANITY
IV. THE BOOK OF GOD
V. THE BOOK OF CHRIST
VI. THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
FOREWORD
The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D.,
of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are
delivered annually in De Pauw University to the public without any
charge for admission. The object of the donor was "to found a perpetual
lectureship on the evidences of the Divine Origin of Christianity and
the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The lecturers must
be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship, who
firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian faith. The
selection of lecturers may be made from the world of Christian
scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each course of
lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent publishing house
and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the University."
Lectures previously published: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt
Hughes; 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George Peck Eckman.
GEORGE R. GROSE,
President De Pauw University.
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
The problem as to the understanding of the Scriptures is with some no
problem at all. All we have to do is to take the narratives at their
face meaning. The Book is written in plain English, and all that is
necessary for its comprehension is a knowledge of what the words mean.
If we have any doubts, we can consult the dictionary. The plain man
ought to have no difficulty in understanding the Bible.
Nobody can deny the clearness of the English of the Scriptures.
Nevertheless, the plain man does have trouble. How far would the
ordinary intelligence have to read from the first chapter of Genesis
before finding itself in difficulties? There are accounts of events
utterly unlike anything which we see happening in the life around us,
events which seem to us to contradict the course of nature's procedure.
There are points of view foreign to our way of looking at things. More
than that, there seem to be actual contradictions between various
portions of the books. And, above all, the way of life marked out in the
Book seems to lead off toward mystery. To save our lives we have to lose
them. All the precepts of common sense seem set at defiance by some
passages of the Book. How can we explain the hold of such a book on the
world's life?
When once the problem of the understanding of the Scriptures is raised,
various solutions are offered, all of which contribute a measure of
help, but most of which do not greatly get us ahead. For example, we are
told that the Book is translated literature, and that if we could get
back to the original narratives in the original languages, we would find
our perplexities vanishing. There is no question that a knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an understanding of the Scriptures, but
this aid commonly extends only to the meaning of particular words. One
who knows enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sympathetically into the
life of which those languages were the expression is prepared to sense
the scriptural atmosphere better than one who has not such equipment.
Very few Scripture readers, however, are thus qualified to understand
Greek and Hebrew. Very few ministers of the gospel are so trained as to
be able to pass upon shades of meaning of Greek or Hebrew words against
the judgment of those who teach these languages in the schools. With
graduation from theological school most ministers put Hebrew to one
side; and many pay no further attention to Greek. Even a trained
biblical student is very careful not to question the authority of the
professional linguistic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the meaning
of this or that passage, there is very little that the biblical student
can get from Greek or Hebrew which is not available in important
translations. We cannot solve the greater difficulties in biblical study
by carrying our investigations back to the study of the original
languages as such. The fact is that emphasis upon the importance of
mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an insight into scriptural meanings
rests largely upon a theory of literal inspiration of the biblical
narratives. It requires only a cursory reading to see that the
narratives in English cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so that the
upholder of inerrancy is driven to the position that the inerrancy is in
the documents as originally written. No doctrine of inerrancy, however,
can explain away the puzzles which confront us, for example, in the
accounts of the creation as given us in the early chapters of Genesis,
or throw light upon the possibility of a soul's passing from moral death
to life.
Great help is promised us by those who maintain that the modern methods
of critical biblical study give us the key to scriptural meanings. There
is no doubt that many doors have been opened by critical methods. Now
that the flurries of misunderstanding which attended the first
application of such methods to biblical study have passed on, we see
that some solid results have been gained. In so far as our difficulties
arise from questions of authorship and date of writing, the critical
methods have brought much relief. Even very orthodox biblicists no
longer insist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching that the first
five books of the Bible were written at different times and by different
men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel with the theory that many
parts of these books are not merely anonymous, but are documents
produced by the united effort of narrators and correlators reaching
through generations--the narratives often being transmitted orally from
fathers to sons. There is no reason for longer arguing against the claim
that the book of Isaiah as it stands in our Scriptures is composed of
documents written at widely separated periods. It is permissible even
from the standpoint of orthodoxy to assign a late date to the book of
Daniel. No harm is wrought when we insist that the book of Mark must
have priority in date among the Gospels, and that Matthew and Luke are
built in part from Mark as a foundation. It is not dangerous to face the
facts which cause the prolonged debate over the authorship of the fourth
Gospel. It is not heresy to teach that the dates of the epistles must be
rearranged through the findings of modern scholarship. There is not only
no danger in a hospitable attitude toward modern scholarship, but many
difficulties disappear through adjusting ourselves to present-day
methods. If contradictions appear in a document hitherto considered a
unit, the contradictions are at least measurably done away with when the
document is seen to be a composite report from the points of view of
different authors. The critical method has been of immense value in
enforcing upon us that the scriptural books were written each with a
distinctive intention, apart from the purpose to represent the facts in
the method of a newspaper reporter or of a scientific investigator. In a
sense many of the more important scriptural documents were of the nature
of pamphlets or tracts for the times in which they were written. The
author was combating a heresy, or supplementing a previous statement
which seemed to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust a religious
conception to enlarging demands. The biblical writers are commentators
on or interpreters of the truth which they conceive to be essential.
Making most generous allowances, however, for the advantages of the
critical methods, we must use them with considerable care. Results like
those suggested above seem to be well established, but there is always
possibility of the critic's becoming a mere specialist with the purely
technical point of view. Suppose the critic holds so to the passion for
analysis that for him analysis becomes everything. We may then have a
single verse cut into three or four pieces, each assigned to a different
author, the authors separated by long periods. Even if the older
narratives are composite, the process of welding or compression was so
thorough that detailed analyses are now out of the question. Apart from
its broader contentions, the method of the critical school must be used
tentatively and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must always remember
that the critical student comes to his task with assumptions which are
oftentimes more potent with him from his very blindness to their
existence. Assumption in scientific investigation is inevitable. Suppose
a critic to be markedly under the influence of some evolutionary
hypothesis. Suppose him to believe that the formula which makes progress
a movement from the simple to the complex can be traced in detail in the
advance of society. He is prepared to believe that in practically every
case the simple has preceded the complex. He will forthwith untangle the
biblical narrative to get at the ideal evolutionary arrangement,
ignoring the truth that except in the most general fashion progress
cannot thus be traced. In the actual life of societies the progress,
especially of ideas, is often from the complex to the simple. Many
evolutionists maintain that movement is now forward, now backward, now
diagonal, and now by a "short cut"; but if the evolutionary critic
sticks closely to his preconceived formula about progress as always from
the simple to the complex, he can lead us astray. Again, almost all
great prophetic announcements are ahead of their time. They seem out of
place at the date of their first utterance--interruptions,
interjections hard to fit into an orderly historic scheme. Or suppose
the critic to be a student of the scientific school which will not allow
for the play of any forces excepting as they openly reveal themselves,
the school that will not allow for backgrounds of thought or for
atmospheres which surround conceptions. Such a student is very apt to
maintain, for example, that Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus
as he mentions in the epistles. Such a student cannot assume that Paul
ever took anything for granted. We can see at once that a method so
professedly exact as this may be dangerously out of touch with the human
processes of the life of individuals and of societies. Or suppose still
further that the biblical student holds a set of scientific assumptions
which are extremely naturalistic; that is to say, suppose that he
assumes that nothing has ever happened which in any way departs from the
natural order. We have only to remind ourselves that the natural order
of a particular time is the order as that time conceives it; but it is
manifestly hazardous to limit events in the world of matter to the
scientific conceptions of any one day. To take a single illustration,
the radical student of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast out
forthwith from the Gospel accounts everything which suggested the
miraculous. The conceptions of the order of nature which obtained a
generation ago did not allow even for works of healing of the sort
recorded in the Gospels. At the present time radical biblical criticism
makes considerable allowance for such works. Discovery of the power of
mental suggestion and of the influence of mind over body has opened the
door to the return of some of the wonders wrought by Jesus to a place
among historic facts. This does not mean that the radical student is any
more friendly to miracles than before. We are not here raising the
question of miracles as such, but we do insist that an assumption as to
what the natural order may or may not allow can be fraught with peril in
the hands of critical students of the Scriptures. We say again that
while, in general, the larger contentions of the biblical school can be
looked upon as established beyond reasonable doubt; and while, in
general, the methods of the school are productive of good, yet, because
of the part that assumption plays in the fashioning of all critical
tools, the assumptions must be scrutinized with all possible care. A
good practical rule is to read widely from the critics, to accept what
they generally agree upon, to hold very loosely anything that seems
"striking" or "brilliant." This is a field in which originality must be
discounted. There is so little check upon the imagination.
It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in
biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense.
Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical
processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast value
in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large measure of
justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same reservations must
be made as in the case of the critical methods. The assumptions play a
determining part. If we are on our guard against any tricks that
assumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical methods to
aid us greatly.
We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must
speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the language
of a particular time implies at the outset very decided limitations. The
prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must clothe their ideas
in the thought terms of a particular day and can accomplish their aims
only as they succeed in leading the spiritual life of their day onward
and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate himself to the mental and
moral and religious limitations of the time in which he speaks. Only
thus can he get a start. It is inevitable, then, that along with the
higher truth of his message there will appear the marks of the
limitations of the mold in which the message is cast. The prophet must
take what materials he finds at hand, and with these materials direct
the people to something higher and better. Furthermore, in the
successive stages through which the idea grows we must expect to find it
affected by all the important factors which in any degree determine its
unfolding. The first stage in understanding the Scriptures is to learn
what a writer intended to say, what he meant for the people of his day.
To do this we must rely upon the methods which we use in any historical
investigation. The Christian student of the Scriptures believes that the
Bible contains eternal truths for all time, truths which are above time
in their spiritual values. Even so, however, the truth must first be
written for a particular time and that time the period in which the
prophet lived. When the Christian speaks of the Scriptures as containing
a revelation for all time, he refers to their essential spiritual value.
The best way to make that essential spiritual value effective for the
after times is to sink it deep into the consciousness of a particular
time. This gives it leverage, or focus for the outworking of its forces.
No matter how limited the conceptions in which the spiritual richness
first took form, those conceptions can be understood by the students who
look back through the ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out
with perennial freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which
are of most value for all time are those which first get themselves most
thoroughly into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let
us look at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The
historical student points out to us that the science of the first
chapters of Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that
substantially similar views of the stages through which creation moved
are to be found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known
type of student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first
chapters of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors
of the Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by
reference to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference
between the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in
the Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the
vehicle of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning
man and concerning man's relation to the Power that brought him into
being. The worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few
of us would be inclined to question. Assuming that any man or set of men
became in the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how
could they speak them forth except in the language of their own day?
They had to speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they
had to use the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the
science of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the
sake of bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had
attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to
Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the
spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the
proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often
clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth
of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would
insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep
penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has shown
the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's "Paradise
Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from an upper to
a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the centers of
other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more foreign to modern
science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside "Paradise Lost"
because of the crudity of its view of the physical system.
Assuming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever, in
what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their
position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses
present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim
moral and spiritual values. Nobody can claim that modern scientific
theories are ultimate, and nobody can deny, on the other hand, that vast
good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high religious
purposes.
A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man's constitution
to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with
which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is
heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a
finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain
for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that
all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see no
value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister's sermon
because of the minister's mistaken conception of nervous processes. I
suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well
taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon
because of an erroneous illustration; and yet sometimes all the
essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more
consequential than that suggested in this illustration. The Scriptures
aim to declare a certain idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a
certain idea of the relations between God and man. Those ideas are
clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions
and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth
which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time
and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which
were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been
greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which
so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The
fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later
Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making
apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see
that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so
important as the character of that kingdom.
Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but he
must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect that
revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of the
day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement. If
the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a standstill, he
might well despair of accomplishing great results by his message. He
would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as a sort of
vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But whether the
prophets have through the ages had any theoretic understanding of human
intelligence as an organism or not, they have acted upon the assumption
that they were dealing with such organisms. So they have conceived of
their truth as a seed cast into the ground, passing through successive
stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom of God as moving out of the
stage of the blade into that of the ear and finally into that of the
full corn in the ear. This illustration is our warrant for insisting
that in the enforcing of truth all manner of factors come into play and
that the truth passes through successive epochs, some of which may seem
to later believers very unpromising and unworthy. The test of the worth
of an idea is not so much any opinion as to the unseemliness of the
stages through which it has passed as it is the value of the idea when
once it has come to ripeness. The test of the grain is its final value
for food. The scriptural truths are to be judged by no other test than
that of their worth for life.
In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we
should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is
influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an
important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of
the hardness of men's hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon
by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done
with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a book
published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the
hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual
revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the
openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the
"tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was
merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different
order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into
tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness
which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an element would
condition and limit the prophet.
Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to
them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke.
Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people
to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our Lord
1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off explosives
from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the need of a
specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is desired.
Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a button and blow up
all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of munitions in
Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor? Very likely
it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely locked in his
own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European combatants in
their present temper, it is a question what would he left on earth at
the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds in their
present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to trust them
with any such revelation. And this illustration has significance for
more than the physical order of revelation. There are principles for
individual and social conduct that may well be put into effect one
hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to receive some
revelations. All of which means that any revealing movement is a
progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely the utterances
of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the receiving mind. In
the play back and forth between giver and receiver all sorts of factors
come into power. The study of the interplay of these factors is entirely
worthy as an object of Christian research. We may well be thankful for
any advance thus far made in such study and we may look for greater
advances in the future. For example, the historic students thus far have
put in most of their effort laying stress upon similarities between the
biblical conceptions and the conceptions of the peoples outside the
current of biblical revelation. The work has been of great value.
Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for larger emphasis on the
differences between the biblical revelations and the conceptions
outside.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6