01.03. THE AUTHORITY OF THE MINISTRY
CHAPTER III THE AUTHORITY OF THE MINISTRY The writers of the Bible speak with authority. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, it was not to say to the Children of Israel on the plain, I advise you not to steal, not to kill, not to commit adultery; you will be a great deal happier if you do not do these things; the experience of the world indicates that this is disadvantageous. He says, Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery. He speaks with authority. When Isaiah speaks to the Children of Israel, in a later age, he does not say, I think you are mistaken in putting such stress on forms and ceremonies; it is far more important to keep the heart clean than it is to offer sacrifices; the experience of the world indicates this; and there are other good reasons for thinking so. He says, in the name of God, and speaking as for him: " To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well." [l] These prophets spoke in the name of God. Their customary phrase was, " Thus saith the Lord."
[1] Isaiah 1:11, Isaiah 1:16-17.
They spoke with authority. When Christ comes and a great audience gathers to hear that ordination sermon which we call the Sermon on the Mount, he does not argue, he simply affirms; and when he has finished, the ^people say, This man speaks with authority, and not as the Scribes. He promises to his apostles similar authority. He says, " Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." When Paul writes his Epistles, it is still with power. The Gospel, he says, is "the power of God unto salvation." [1] From the Exodus to the close of the canon the Bible speaks with authority. Where did these men get their authority?
What was the secret of it? What was its nature?
They certainly did not get it from the Bible, because the Bible is composed of what they said; it is the product of their utterances. The Bible gets its authority from the prophets and the apostles; the prophets and the apostles do not get their authority from the Bible.
They did not get it from the Church. Moses spoke before any church was organized. The later prophets stood in no relation to the Church; they did not belong to the hierarchy. The priests were in a succession, but the prophets were not. In the later times, Christ and the apostles did not get their authority from the Church. Christ did not;
[1] Matthew 7:29; Acts 1:4-5, Acts 1:8 (cf. Luke 24:49); Romans 1:16 (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18). the Church excommunicated him; the major part of his life the Church was fighting him. Paul did not; the Christian Church was divided on the question whether he was an apostle or not, and the Jewish Church turned him out of the synagogue. The sacred writers did not get their authority from reason. Their affirmations were not deductions; their revealings were not conclusions of arguments. The Hebrews were not philosophers.
They did not argue. Jesus Christ rarely argued. His most emphatic declarations were not syllogistic in form and cannot be put in syllogistic form. His great sermons - the Sermon at Nazareth, the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Bread of Life - are not logical. Paul argued; but only for the purpose of making the people accept the conclusions which he had reached by a different process. Sometimes his arguments are formal, not real; sometimes the processes are illogical; sometimes the premises would be doubted or denied by most modern readers; generally his most authoritative declarations are not preceded by any arguments, as: " We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now; " or " We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." [1] Where does he get his authority for such a statement? How did he know? How can he know?
These writers did not get their authority from [1] Romans 8:22, Romans 8:28. miracles. Granting that all the so-called miracles in the Bible were performed exactly as narrated, still it remains true that the great majority of the Bible teachers performed no miracles. Most of the prophets performed none. Of those Biblical teachers who did perform miracles, the great majority made their utterances independent of any miracles.
They did not get their authority from the fulfillment of prophecy, for the prophecy was not fulfilled for years, in some cases not for centuries, after the prediction. Events occurring from two to four centuries after the death of the prophet could not have given the prophet his authority during his lifetime. Their authority did not come from prophecy, nor from miracles, nor from argument, nor from the Church, nor from the Bible; and yet they spoke with authority. The character of this authority has been described by Canon Liddon in an eloquent passage, Wherein did this power which the Apostles were to receive consist? Creating political ascendancy, yet utterly distinct from it; fertilizing intellectual power, yet differing in its essence from the activity of mere vigorous unsanctified intellect; working miracles, (it may be) gifted to work physical wonders, yet certainly in itself more persuasive than the miracle it was empowered to produce; intimately allied with, and the natural accompaniment of distinct ministerial faculties, yet not necessarily so, - what is this higher, this highest power, this gift of gifts, this transforming influence, which was to countersign as if from heaven what had previously been given by the Incarnate Lord on earth, and was to form out of unlettered and irresolute peasants the evangelists of the world? My brethren, it was spiritual, it was personal, it was moral power. And spiritual power may be felt rather than described or analyzed. It resides in or it permeates a man’s whole circle of activities; it cannot be localized, it cannot be identified exclusively with one of them. It is felt in solemn statements of doctrine, and also in the informal utterances of casual intercourse; it is felt in actions no less than in language, in trivial acts no less than in heroic resignation; it is traced perchance in the very expression of the countenance, yet the countenance is too coarse an organ to do it justice; it just asserts its presence, but its presence is too volatile, too immaterial, to admit of being seized, and measured, and brought by art or by language fairly within the compass of our comprehension. It is an unearthly beauty, whose native home is in a higher world, yet which tarries among men from age to age, since the time when the Son of God left us His example and gave us His Spirit.
It is nothing else than His spiritual presence, mantling upon His servants; they live in Him; they lose in Him something of their proper personality; yet they are absorbed into, they are transfigured by, a Life altogether higher than their own: His voice blends with theirs, His Eye seems to lighten theirs with its sweetness and its penetration; His hand gives gentleness and decision to their acts; His Heart communicates a ray of its Divine charity to their life of narrow and more stagnant affection; His Soul commingles with theirs, and their life of thought, and feeling, and resolve is irradiated and braced by His. [1] [1] H. P. Liddon: Clerical Life and Work, pp. 159-161.
Eloquent as this description is, it yet leaves something to be desired. Can we by analysis approximate an understanding of the secret of this power? Can we state it in psychological terms? Two writers have done this: one an ancient, the other a modern author; one theological, the other antitheological; the one called himself an Apostle, the other called himself an Agnostic. The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians thus describes this authority, And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. His power was a demonstration of the spirit.
What does that mean? A little later in this Epistle he tells us what it means, But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God. [1] Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not [1] That is, as in the next sentence, "the spirit which is of God." the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no Man 1:1
Every man has a body, a physical organism. He has a social and intellectual character that is somewhat akin to that of the animal. And he also possesses a spiritual nature, - a faith, a hope, a love, - that transcends the animal nature, the social nature, the physical nature. This spiritual nature in man searches the deep things of God. It is all the time groping; it is all the time looking for something the eye does not see and even the imagination has not conceived. It feels, it realizes, it knows, because it is spirit; knows something that transcends the senses, something that argument cannot bring, something that logic cannot demonstrate.
Every man has this spirit in him. If we so speak that we evoke that spiritual response in the men who listen to us, our words are with authority, because they themselves see also that it is true. We are ourselves revelators. We draw aside the veil that hangs over men’s souls, and then they see and know: not because the Church has told them, not because the Bible has told them, not because miracles have attested it, not because fulfilled prophecy has proved it, not because reason has reached it, but because they see it.
Such is Paul’s explanation of the secret of his [1] 1 Corinthians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 2:9-15. power. His preaching was powerful because it was in " demonstration of the spirit; " not " proof by syllogistic deduction of a conclusion from known premises," [1] but proof by the revelation to the spirit in man which is able to perceive spiritual truth upon the bare presentation of it. In very different language, but to the same effect, is Professor Huxley’s explanation of the source of our knowledge of ethical truth, and so the secret of power in the ethical teacher, Some there are who cannot feel the difference between the " Sonata Appassionata " and " Cherry Ripe "or between a grave-stone-cutter’s art and the Apollo Belvedere; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged. "While some there may be, who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty; but neither does their existence affect the foundations of morality.
Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness; and the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would ignore abnormal specimens. And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaeles, in whom the innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to spring into full vigor, and through whom the human race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty: so there have been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordinary mankind could never have attained, though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a [1] Aristotle: quoted in Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon under &.p65*t£is. vision which lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world. [1] An analysis of the closing sentence of this paragraph shows two statements in it, each of which throws some light on the authority of the Biblical writers. The first statement is that the men of moral genius have possessed not merely ideals of duty, but also visions of perfection; that is, they have not merely imagined an ideal which we might seek to realize, but they have seen an existing standard of perfection to which we may endeavor to conform our character. The second statement is that to these ideals of duty and visions of perfection ordinary mankind could never have attained, except through the disclosure of them by the men of moral genius; in other words, we need not wait for an original ideal or vision, but may well accept both at second hand from another, and count that life well spent which shapes some image of it in the actual world. This is the authority which underlies all effective ethical teaching. Goodness is a kind of beauty; and the prophet is one who sees this beauty himself and is able to make others see it. This is the authority which underlies the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. When Moses says to Israel, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, their own con [1] T. H. Huxley: Hume, pp. 239, 240. sciences respond, This is right. When Jesus Christ says, Do not indulge in lustful thoughts, love your enemies, do good to them that despitefully use you, he speaks with authority, because there is in men the capacity to see the truth and beauty of these utterances. There is no need of argument. The congregation say to themselves, That is true. The authority lies in the preacher, because it lies in the heart of the hearer. It lies in the preacher, because he is able to evoke in the heart of the hearer the same voice that has spoken within his own heart. But the soul of man has need of something more than ethical principles to guide his conduct. Man needs God, as the body needs water. Man can see and know God as one with whom he can have spiritual communion, as he can know the spirit of a friend. The preacher speaks of God with authority when he realizes this need of man, and when he is able so to present God that his presentation satisfies that need. That there is such a need, sometimes underlying consciousness, sometimes acutely felt in consciousness, sometimes openly expressed in sorrowful words, is abundantly testified to by literature.
One of the most ancient expressions of the soul’s need for God is found in that splendid " epic of the inner life," the Book of Job, Oh that I knew where I might find him, That I might come even to his seat!
I would order my cause before him, And fill my mouth with arguments.
I would know the words which he would answer me, And understand what he would say unto me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
Nay; hut he would give heed unto me.
There the upright might reason with him; So should I he delivered for ever from my judge.
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; And backward, but I cannot perceive him, On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him, He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him. [1] Not less pathetic is the testimony of a modern agnostic, Professor W. K. Clifford, to the same truth, It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or received it in our childhood and have parted from it since with such surging trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead. Our children, it may be hoped, will know that sorrow only by the reflex light of a wondering compassion. [2]
Professor Clifford is mistaken. As long as man is man and God is God, so long will man not be content to see " the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; " so long he will cry out, sometimes in articulate outcries, sometimes in inarticulate and half-conscious moanings, like a child in his sleep reaching for his mother,
[1] Job 23:3-9.
[2] W. K. Clifford: Lectures and Essays, p. 389.
Oh that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat! This is the reason men allow one day in the week the wheels of the factory to stop, the store to be closed, the plough to stand unused in the furrow, even the courts to halt in the administration of justice, that those who are busy for six days accumulating material wealth, or serving their fellow men on the earthly and material side, may take one day for seeking a knowledge of him to whom they are always coming, and yet who must ever remain in some sense the Unknown. Surely it is significant that Herbert Spencer, who is preeminently known as the apostle of agnosticism, - the doctrine that the Infinite and the Eternal is and ever must be the Unknown, - surely it is significant that his last word to the world, in the closing paragraphs of his autobiography, is a testimony born of his own experience that the longing to know the Unknown is irrepressible, Behind these mysteries lies the all-embracing mystery - whence this universal transformation which has gone on unceasingly throughout a past eternity and will go on unceasingly throughout a future eternity? And along with this arises the paralyzing thought - what if, of all that is thus incomprehensible to us, there exists no comprehension anywhere? No wonder that men take refuge in authoritative dogma!... Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that solutions could be found. [1] No philosophical solution ever did, ever will, or ever can satisfy this need. The need is not intellectual, but spiritual. It is not need of a solution, it is need of a God. It is not the desire of a philosopher to solve an enigma, it is the desire of a child to find his Father. If the preacher can bring to his congregation nothing better than a solution of the enigma, nothing better, that is, than a theology, the people will go away unsatisfied. If he has in himself some experience of God, however superficial, fragmentary, and imperfect, and if he has the power to evoke in his congregation an experience of God, though it be as superficial, as fragmentary, and as imperfect as his own, they will come again. It is neither the "authoritative dogma" nor the " rational interpretation " which the souls of men hunger for; it is the Living Person; and it is for the minister to answer this need by evoking in the soul a consciousness of the Living Person.
Helen Keller, deaf, dumb, blind, shut out from the world of sense, from the world of beauty, and to a large extent from the world of men, seeks to know God, and writes to Phillips Brooks, " I wish you would tell me something about God; " and thus he answers her, [1] Herbert Spencer: An Autobiography, ii, 548, 549.
Let me tell you how it seems to me that we come to know about our heavenly Father. It is from the power of love in our own hearts. Love is at the source of everything. Whatever has not the power of loving must have a very dreary life indeed. And so God who is the greatest and happiest of all beings is the most loving too.
All the love that is in our hearts comes from him, as all the light which is in the flower comes from the sun. And the more we love, the more near we are to God and his love. [1]
He proves nothing, cites no authority of Church or Scripture; simply bids her look into her own heart, and in its testimony find the revelation for which she longs.
Charles Dickens was not a theologian; he was not pietistic; he was a dramatist; he saw clearly, and described effectively, the common experiences of common men. He dealt chiefly with plain, unlettered, uncultivated people. In " Bleak House " he portrays Allan Woodcourt standing by the form of poor Jo, a heathen who had been living in the heart of London, - and there is no pagan land more pagan than some parts of our great cities, - as the breath is departing from the body of the poor boy, who has never known anything of religion or of God or of Christ. Allan says, " Jo, my poor fellow! "
" I hear you, sir, in the dark; but I ’m a-gropin’, a-gropin’, - let me catch hold of your hand."
" Jo, can you say what I say? "
[1] Helen Keller: The Story of My Life, p. 187.
" I’ll say any think as you say, sir; for I knows it ’s good."
" Our Father."
" Our father! - yes, that ’s wery good, sir."
" Which art in heaven."
" Art in heaven. Is the light a-comin’, sir? "
" It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name."
" Hallowed be - thy " - The light is come upon the dark benighted way.
Dead! [1] That is preaching. If the minister can say " Our Father " so that the men and women in his congregation will also say "Our Father, yes! that is very good," this is enough. He will not need to go to bishops or archbishops for authority; he will not need to quote texts for authority; the authority is in the hearts that are before him. If the minister cannot evoke this response from the hearts of his congregation, no authority of gowns and crosses, of ordinations and laying on of hands, of books and writers, ancient or modern, inspired or uninspired, will suffice to make him a preacher. The authority of the preacher lies in his power to make other men see the God whom he has himself first seen. And if he is able to make them see the God whom he has himself first seen, a God whose forgiving love and inspiring power are manifested in Jesus Christ and in the history of Christianity, he will, in imparting to them this vision, impart also that forgiveness for the past and that inspiration for the [1] Charles Dickens: Bleak House, chap, xlvii. future, that peace and that power, which are the deepest needs of the human soul, and are at times its most intense desire. If he can first awaken that dormant desire and make it dominant, and then if he can satisfy it, by leading the soul to him who alone can satisfy it, no other evidence of his authority need be offered, for no other will be demanded.
If he cannot do this, ecclesiastical indorsements will be cited by him in vain; for none such will be sufficient. Is there, then, no authority in the Church, and none in the Bible? Are there no standards of truth and duty? Is that for each man the truth which he thinks to be true, and that for each man right which he thinks to be righteousness? Are truth and duty subjective terms merely, - truth only the opinion of the individual, duty only the impulse of the individual? No; this would be an intolerable conclusion: truth and duty are realities; opinions and impulses are only the method by which those realities are interpreted to us. There is an authority apart from the judgment and conscience of the individual man, - a real authority; and it is to be found both in the Church and in the Bible. And it is of the utmost importance that the modern religious teacher should understand the nature and source of this authority. The authority both of the organization and of the Book lies in the fact that both appeal to the spiritual nature of man, give expression to the half-conscious spiritual life of man, and by their message respond to the imperfectly realized spiritual wants of man. When the authority of either the Church or the Bible is regarded as though it were something apart from the authority of God, speaking to and in the spirit of man, when the attempt is made by the authority of either the Church or the Bible to repress the questioning of the human spirit, to impair its life, and to impose obligations upon it against which its conscience and its judgment rebel, there can be but one result, - a weakening of all religious authority, if not an open rebellion against it. Certain it is that the religious teacher must understand clearly the two antagonistic conceptions respecting the authority of the Church, and the two antagonistic conceptions of the authority of the Bible, and must choose between them. The Koman Catholic theologians define with great clearness, and accept with entire consistency, what may be called the ecclesiastical conception of Church authority. This conception is thus defined in the " Faith of Catholics: " The way or means by which to arrive at the knowledge of divine truths is attention and submission to the voice of the Pastors of the Church: a Church established by Christ for the instruction of all; spread for that end through all nations; visibly continued in the succession of Pastors and people through all ages. Whence the marks of this Church are, Unity, Visibility, Indefectibility, Succession from the Apostles, Universality, and Sanctity.[1] [1] The Faith of Catholics, Prop. VI, i, 9.
All churches which regard a visible, historical organization as the basis and source of authority in religion, whether Greek, Roman, or Anglican, belong in the same category. For convenience’ sake, this theory may be termed the Catholic theory. It is accepted by all loyal communicants in the Greek and Roman Catholic communions, and by a considerable number of the clergy in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The other conception of the authority of the Church regards the Church as the whole body of those in all ages in whom has been developed the power of so perceiving the Infinite as that their moral nature is changed by the perception; who are inspired by the spirit of faith, hope, and love; who possess in their own souls that life of God in the soul of man which constitutes the essence of religion. The Church thus defined is the Republic of God; it is the temple in which he dwells; it is the body of Christ, the historic continuation of the Incarnation. Its unity is not in creed, or ritual, or sacrament, or orders and organization, but in spiritual life. The authority of the Church as interpreted by this conception is the authority derived from the testimony of the concurring experience of unnumbered thousands. It is the authority of the individual consciousness, multiplied by innumerable witnesses. It furnishes a standard of faith, exactly as the testimony of many witnesses furnishes a standard of observation. If a thousand men have seen the same phenomenon, and a hundred who were in the same place at the same time did not observe it, we accept the affirmative testimony of the thousand and disregard the negative testimony of the hundred. We accept the testimony of the Church of God, bearing witness to its experience of Divine life in the souls of men, and do not count the testimony of those who have no such experience. Such negative experience is of no weight whatever in counteracting this affirmative testimony to a real life. And we use without hesitation that which is concurrent in the consciousness of many witnesses to correct that which is idiosyncratic in the experience of a single individual. This conception of the basis of authority is disavowed by practically all Greek and Roman Catholic theologians; unfortunately, it has been but dimly held and inconsistently inculcated by most Protestant theologians. But as the one theory may be entitled Catholic, so the other may be entitled Protestant. It is impossible to combine the two.
" In vain," says Auguste Sabatier, " will eminent men in both camps, with the most generous and conciliatory intentions, arise and endeavor to find some middle ground, and effect a pacific reunion of the two halves of Christendom. All compromises, all diplomatic negotiations, will fail, because each of the two principles can only subsist by the negation of the other."[1] He truly adds, that in actual [1] Auguste Sabatier: Outlines of a Philosophy of Beligion, p. 211. life " this opposition is attenuated by the fact that in all Catholicism there is a latent Protestantism, and in all Protestantism a latent Catholicism." But the Koman Catholic Church is quite right in refusing to tolerate in its hierarchy this latent Protestantism; and Protestantism will never become the spiritual power it ought to be until it frees its clergy from this latent Catholicism. In vain does an unhistorical hierarchy endeavor to attach authority to the creeds of the Church while it disavows the Roman Catholic definition of the Church. Those Protestants who endeavor to invest the creeds of the past with authority really revert, however unintentionally and unconsciously, to the Catholic affirmation that the " means by which to arrive at the knowledge of the divine truths is attention and submission to the voice of the Pastors of the Church., They affirm what Zwingli denies, " that the meaning of the celestial Word depends upon the judgment of men; " and they deny what Zwingli affirms, that " faith does not depend upon the discussions of men, but has its seat, and rests itself invincibly in the soul. It is an experience which every one may have." [1] But though the authority of the Protestant minister is not derived from the Church, it is enforced and strengthened by the Church. His authority rests, primarily, on his own spiritual consciousness, and on his ability to evoke some answering testi [1] Quoted by Auguste Sabatier: Religions of Authority, p. 163. mony in the dormant spiritual consciousness of his congregations, but it is confirmed by the testimony of a great body of men and women in common with whom he has that spiritual consciousness. When he bears his testimony to the laws of righteousness, to the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ our Lord, to the pardon and peace which that forgiveness of sins has brought, and to the presence of God in human life, enabling the weakest of his children to say, I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me, he bears testimony not only to his own experience, but to that experience confirmed by ten thousand times ten thousand witnesses. He does not stand alone; unnumbered are the voices which reinforce his message with a loud Amen. The glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the noble army of Martyrs, the holy Church throughout all the world, unite with him in acknowledging the Father of an infinite Majesty, his adorable, true, and only Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. He speaks for the Church universal. He is and ought to feel himself to be the voice of an innumerable silent host, and he speaks, or ought to speak, with the authority of their spiritual experiences interpreted through his utterance. The Keformers for the authority of the Church substituted the authority of the Bible. It is not necessary for my purpose here to trace the history of the conflict in the Protestant churches between the two conceptions of authority, - that of spiritual experience in the individual soul, and that of a written record of a revelation external to man, - for both conceptions have found their place in Protestant theology. ’But despite the persistence of the spiritual conception, affirmed by Zwingli, and by Luther in his earlier writings, reasserted by the more spiritually-minded of the English Puritans, reappearing in the doctrine of the Inner Light affirmed by the Friends, and again reasserting itself in what in our time is called the New Theology, it may, nevertheless, be said, in general terms, to quote again the words of Sabatier, that " the Catholic system finds divine infallibility in an admirably organized social institution, with its supreme head, the Pope; the Protestant system finds infallibility in a book. [1] It would be easy to find extreme illustrations of this doctrine of the infallibility of the book. Avoiding these, I quote, as interpretative of eighteenth-century New England Puritanism, from one of the more liberal of the Evangelical Congregational divines, Lyman Beecher. In his lectures on " Political Atheism " he declares " the impotency of reason and the light of nature to meet the exigencies of man, in time or eternity; "affirms that " the Bible, in its adaptation to our necessities, meets all our exigencies, personal, social, and civil, in a manner more rational and benignant than any other system that claims a [1] Auguate Sabatier: Religions of Authority, p. 186. parentage from God; " declares that " we must have the broad seal of Heaven, which none can counterfeit, set upon it [the Bible], or we cannot give it credence; " and affirms that this seal consists " in the miracles and prophecies connected with that book., These he thus defines, A miracle is such a control, or suspension, of the laws of nature, as none but God, who made the world, can accomplish; and in such relation to a revelation as give it the Divine attestation. Prophecy is a declaration of future events which no finite could foresee or conjecture, any more than it could work miracles. [1] This theory has been held and taught by Protestant theologians in different forms: sometimes, that the Bible was dictated by the Spirit of God to the writers, as amanuenses, and that every word and letter is divine and authoritative; sometimes, that this divine authority inheres only in the original manuscripts, and that the errors in our English Bible are due to imperfections in preservation, transmission, and translation; sometimes, that inspiration did not preserve the writers from scientific error, and that the writings are infallible and inerrant only in the moral and religious realm; sometimes, that this inerrancy and authority can be predicated only of parts of the Bible, as, of the New Testament, or, of the teachings of Jesus Christ. But, in whatever form, and with whatever limitations, this doctrine of the Bible has been in [1] Lyman Beecher: Works, vol. i, Lecture IX, pp. 203-206. culcated, underlying it has always been the same substantial conception, - that man can have no immediate and direct knowledge of God or of divine truth, that for this knowledge he is dependent upon an external revelation furnished through a book, and that the evidence that this book does furnish a trustworthy revelation is afforded by external evidences, such as miracles and prophecy.
It is not necessary to trace here the historical process by which this conception of Biblical authority has been gradually undermined. The contrast between the conception of the Bible entertained by the liberal orthodoxy of New England in the first half of the nineteenth century, and that entertained by the same school in the latter half of the nineteenth century, will be apparent to the reader by comparing Part I of " The Self -Revelation of God," by Dr. Samuel Harris, Professor of Systematic Theology in Yale University, with Dr. Lyman Beecber’s two lectures, on "The Necessity of a Revelation from God to Man," and on " The Bible a Revelation from God to Man."
Two disconnected paragraphs from Dr. Harris’s work must suffice here,
If God reveals himself it must be through the medium of the finite and to finite beings. The revelation must be commensurate with the medium through which it is made and with the development of the minds to whom it is made. Hence both the revelation itself and man’s apprehension of the God revealed must be progressive, and, at any point of time, incomplete. Hence, while it is the true God who reveals himself, man’s apprehension of God at different stages of his own development may be not only incomplete, but marred by gross misconceptions.
God’s revelation does not consist of inditing the Bible and giving it to men to convert them to the life of faith and love. He reveals himself in the grand courses of his own action in the creation, preservation and progressive evolution of the universe, in providential and moral government, and in redemption... What God reveals is himself as distinguished from a religion. He reveals himself in the experience of the person as the quickener of his faith and love, as the being with whom he communes in worship, who is with him as a present helper in the work, and the burdens, the joys, and the sorrows of his life. This communion with God is religion, but it is so because God has revealed himself, and not a religion; and the man has found God in his revelation of himself, and so has found access to him in communion. [1] The difference between these two conceptions of the Bible is radical. The first regards the Bible as a book indited by God, and containing infallible information concerning religion which man could obtain in no other way; the second regards the Bible as a book expressing the experiences which devout men have had of God in their own souls, and have uttered in their own language, each one according to his own temperament. The statesman saw God in human conscience, and interpreted him [1] Samuel Harris: The Self -Revelation of God, pp. 8, 58. as the authority for all just law, human and divine. The historian saw God working out divine ends through all the tangled course of human history, and interpreted that history as a process of human development divinely guided and controlled to a divine result. The poet saw God in nature and in human experience, and wrote his poem, whether it were an epic, like the Book of Job, or lyrics, like those contained in the Hebrew Psalter, to interpret his vision of God, and inspire others with a like vision. The philosopher, whether ethical or theological, saw a moral order in the universe, and God inspiring that order, and making it conqueror over the chaos which sin had introduced into the world, and he wrote to give, through philosophy, an interpretation of his vision of an immanent God and his hope of the final achievement of God’s kingdom on the earth. This literature has an authority, but it is spiritual, not external. The evidence which substantiates that authority is spiritual, not external. We do not believe in the Bible because we believe in miracles; it would be more true to say that we believe in miracles because we believe in the Bible. It is the character of the Bible, and its spiritual efficacy and value, not extraordinary events occurring eighteen centuries ago, which give to the Bible its authority. Says Samuel Taylor Coleridge, In the Bible there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together; the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being; and whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit. [1] We believe that it is inspired because we find it inspiring. Our experience confirms its revelation.
We read the Twenty-third Psalm, and looking back along our pathway, our experience of life replies, God is also our Shepherd. We read the eighth chapter of Romans, and recalling our song in the night of our sorrow, our souls reply, Neither shall death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The Bible is an authority because in the Bible God finds us and we find God. When the Bible contradicts our spiritual consciousness, we refuse to accept its dicta, - as when it seems to attach the divine approval to the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites. When it contradicts our reason, we seek to find some other interpretation, - as when it seems to say that the sun stood still in order to prolong miraculously a day of battle, or that a big fish swallowed a prophet in order, on the one hand, to preserve him from drowning, and, on the other hand, to compel him to take up a mission which he had refused. The minister in our time may profitably use the Bible as an authority, but he can use it as an authority only as he uses it to [1] S. T. Coleridge: Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Letter H. interpret to men their own spiritual experience, to confirm that spiritual experience, or to reveal to them truths of life to which their own spiritual experience responds with instinctive approbation.
Even its distinctively historical revelations find their substantiation in the answer of the individual soul. The evidence for the Divinity of Jesus Christ is the character of Christ himself; it is the fact that when we look upon this character thus portrayed, this life thus lived, we say, This character, this life, presents a divine ideal; this character is worthy of our highest reverence, this life, of our sincerest imitation.
There is also an authority in the reason. But the authority of the preacher does not depend upon his logical powers. The reason is rather a critical than a creative faculty. The scientific method can at best only deduce hypotheses respecting the invisible world from observations of visible phenomena. The relation of the logical faculty to the religious life is well defined by Paul, in a verse which is often regarded as though it were nothing but a combination of four separated aphorisms, but which is really the Pauline philosophy of life condensed into four pregnant sentences: " Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings; prove all things; hold fast that which is good."[1] a Every man has a spiritual nature; he is able to look upon the things that are unseen and are eternal: let him not quench it.
There are prophets, " men of moral genius to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection which ordinary mankind could never have attained: " do not despise them. For knowledge of the outer world, study the works of the great scientists, the men of observation; for knowledge of the inner world, study the works of the poets and prophets, the men of insight. But take no man’s testimony, be he scientist or prophet, with unquestioning credence. It may fairly be doubted whether the credulity which sometimes passes for faith has not inflicted on the world more injury than the skepticism which often passes for irreligion. The alleged revelations of a Joe Smith or a Mrs. Eddy, accepted by too confiding natures, have probably done more to hinder or to divert the moral progress of the race than the respectful agnosticism of Herbert Spencer or even the scoffing agnosticism of Robert Ingersoll. And this leads us to the true test by which all visions of poets and prophets are to be tried. Says Jonathan Edwards: " The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine." Says St. Teresa: " A genuine, heavenly vision yields to her [the soul] a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength." Says William James: " The way in which it works on the whole is Dr. Maudsley’s final test of a belief. This is our own empiricist criterion; and this criterion the stoutest insisters on supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end." [1]
These authors do but repeat, in another form, the Pauline test: Hold fast that which is good. The visions which stand the test of experience are visions whose guidance we are to accept. The function of the logical faculty is less the discovery of truth than protection from falsehood. And this, which is Paul’s declaration, is the affirmation also of modern philosophy: " The greatest and perhaps sole use of philosophy is after all merely negative, and instead of discovering truth has only the modest merit of preventing error." [2] The Christian minister must speak with power or he speaks in vain. He must overcome the currents which sweep men backward and downward toward the animal condition from which they are gradually emerging, - appetite, sensuality, avarice, lust of power, love of applause, self-conceit, self-will. This he cannot do with pleasant literary essays, pious or pungent phrase-making, theological philosophizing, or the exhibition of beliefs, once living, now dead, and preserved like mummies in the tombs of the past. He must speak with authority. That authority must be either in some external standard or in spiritual experiences which he has evoked in the souls of those to whom he is speaking. If he wishes
[1] William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 1921, where these quotations from Edwards and St. Teresa may be found.
[2] This saying is attributed to Immanuel Kant, though I have not been able to verify the quotation. to depend on an external authority, the Roman Catholic, or the Greek Catholic, or the Anglican Catholic Church is a better external authority than a book, because it is more vital and more flexible.
It is able to adjust its teachings to the differing needs of different generations. He who has no spiritual authority in himself, and therefore can awaken no spiritual authority in his hearers, should either abandon the Christian ministry or seek to fulfill it in some branch of the Catholic Church. If, on the other hand, he depends for his authority on his spiritual experience and on his power to evoke spiritual experience in the men and women before him, then he belongs in some branch of the Protestant Church. The fundamental question is easily stated: Is the minister’s authority without or within? Have we preachers to go to a vicegerent and representative of God, or have we to go to God himself, sitting at our side, walking in our path, manifesting himself in our experience? If the latter, we may enforce the authority with which we speak by the concurrent testimony of the living Church, and by the revelatory experiences recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and we may use the scientific method to test those experiences, fearlessly asking, Do they work well? and fearlessly and impartially recording the answer of history to that question. But the real secret of our authority must lie in our own consciousness of sin forgiven and life imparted by an ever-present God, and in our power to reproduce in other souls the life which God has produced in our own.
Before passing to consider what are the qualifications necessary to enable the modern minister to give with authority that message of peace and power which it is his peculiar and distinctive function to give to the world, I wish to consider more fully the distinctive character of that message.