Theologian and historian
Edward Norman
The Acts of the Apostles edited by William Neil (Oliphants 0.50) It might be natural to suppose that those whose lives are given to the scholarly study of the Bible find themselves ennobled and sanctified by daily acquaintance with the central mysteries of the Creation. The supposition might be natural: the reality is often not. More devoted to the pursuit of the intellectually fashionable than their sacred materials , ought to suggest to them, the theologians have somehow managed to convert the most perfect religious ideas which the world has to show into a heap of desiccated commonplaces. Like bullied school
boys who later exercise a dreadful revenge upon their former tormentors through in tellectual intimidation, the theologians turn upon their sources in excited superiority and tear them to shreds.
How agreeable it is, then, to be able to turn to a collection of Bible commentaries by scholars whose spiritual obligations are never submerged. The New Century Bible texts, edited by Professor Black and Dr Clements, represent the most balanced thought of con temporary Protestant divines. A new volume just published, on the Acts of the Apostles, well maintains a good series. Its editor is Dr William Neil. "Many of us would prefer to give more weight to the tradition of the Church than to the hypotheses of individual scholars," he writes in his introduction. Of the missions of St Paul and his companions: it is a story that is only explicable in the light of the supernatural power with which they were endowed." Theologians have an inclination — which some would call a preoccupation — towards arranging the meaning of Scriptural texts so that they become the vehicles of their own contemporary interests. Social radicals see a Christ who, whilst not actually in itiating a programme of welfare benefits, was at least declaring a sort of divine collectivism; conservatives sometimes depict the Lord as so overcoming the World as to leave the ordinary condition of human life unattended; the apologists of 'situational ethics' describe a Saviour who ennunciated a hedonistic calculus whose centre is defined by human needs rather than God's requirements. And to the sentimental, and to others, Jesus is a youth in football shorts who was nearly as tragi-comic as Charlie Chaplin; beloved by the hordes of middle-aged women who resort in charabancs to see Godspell — a musical which the Dean of St Paul's (in Radio Times) said was like "something of the honeydew of paradise." Amid such a confusion of tongues, how good it is to have the sanity of Mr Neil. "There seems," he writes "to be such a thing as inherent bias towards conservatism or radicalism which makes it possible for two scholars to examine the same evidence and come to diametrically opposite conclusions." Would that all other theologians began their labours in such perspective.
Dr Neil reviews the swings of opinion among scholars about the Acts of the Apostles. It is not often that one sees theological relativism chronicled so frankly. His account, however, is incomplete in one respect. It was not the German theologians of the Tubingen school who were the first to question the historical value of the Acts. In 1823 Jeremy Bentham published a work of four hundred pages entitled Not Paul but Jesus, whose leading thesis was that St Paul's "enterprise was a scheme of personal ambition and nothing more." His method was to criticise the Scriptural texts "in the same manner and on the same principles as any profane history." It is true to say that Bentham's account of St Paul was, at the very least, highly prejudiced; and his chief conclusion — that St Paul was out for personal gain — unproved. But in his book there are to be found most of the questions later raised in more sheepish and more solemn language by a century and a half of theological writers. Bentham dismissed the accounts of miracles as mere fables. So did they. He highlighted rivalries among the first Christians. So did they. He overemphasised the extent to which St Paul reinterpreted the religion of Jesus. They did this too. He ransacked the Acts and the Epistles to catalogue the inconsistencies. They were not wanting here either. But Bentham was an unbeliever, although he hid behind the shield of Deism (in order to escape persecution under the anti-blasphemy legislation). The theologians, unhappily, believe only too much: not of the spiritual truths which the words of the New Testament convey — sometimes in language whose ambiguity comes to us in the husks of historical accidents, and sometimes full of symbolism and of expectations appropriate to another age — but they believe in all the intellectual fashions of this, and of some previous, generations.
From this world of endeavour Dr Neil's edition of Acts delivers us. It is a work which
breathes devotion and respect for Scripture whilst at the same time applying critical scholarship critically. When Hensley Henson read Kirsopp Lake's work on St Paul in 1934 he wrote," he has parted company with every recognizable version of Christianity." Those who read Dr Neil will discover a return. He believes that it is reasonably certain that St Luke composed Acts; that he was both theologian and historian (a 'creative historian') — that the historical value of the text cannot seriously be denied. He declares these positions carefully and with a studied balance of judgement. He does, in fact, what a theologian ought to do: he helps men to see the truths of Christianity which the Bible, as a series of testimonies in some measure conditioned by circumstance, convey in a language and a style which are not always ours.
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