ALEXANDER'S BIBLICAL THEOLOGY.* Tie is work consists of lectures delivered
by the late Dr. Lindsay Alexander to the students in the Theological Hall of the Congregational Churches in Scotland. They represent the latest and best thoughts of the author. For twenty-nine years he held the post of Theological Professor, but he was in the habit of subjecting his lectures to constant revision, and those which are now published were for the most part actually rewritten by him during the closing years of his long and useful life. Every page bears witness to the wide reading and careful scholarship of Dr. Alexander, and it is scarcely too much to say that in his own peculiar province he stood by himself. For, unlike the great majority of modern Con- gregationalist divines, he was a Calvinist of the old orthodox type : unlike most Calvinists of the present day, he had a minute acquaintance with nearly every phase of theological criticism and speculation. He proves himself throughout a sound Greek and Hebrew scholar, thoroughly at home in the criticism of the sacred text and in the progress of philological inquiry up to the very year of his death. With this he combined not only an extensive knowledge of Calvinist literature, but also a genuine comprehension of patristic and scholastic teaching on the one hand, and a respectable acquaintance with "the destructive criticism" of Germany on the other. We may well rejoice that a generation of young ministers came under the influence of such a man, and may have carried away something of that love of learning which ought to be a stay and comfort in the midst of pastoral cares. In another respect it seems to us that these lectures have a monumental value ; for we cannot think that such a phenomenon as Dr. Alexander is ever likely to recur, a man who united the tenets of a past generation with the knowledge of the present, a Calvinism as rigid as that of Mr. Spurgeon with a learning to which Mr. Spurgeon is altogether a stranger. Here is a man who must have devoted serious study to the Biblical criticism of the Germans, and yet did not allow one of his views to be touched or modified by it. The present Bishop of Durham speaks of his obligations to the Tubingen school, in spite of his fundamental opposition to their opinions ; but Dr. Alexander needed to make no such acknowledgment. He had not the slightest deference for the new methods of Biblical theology, and it is amusing to remember that the same publishers have issued the Biblical Theologies of Ewald and Dr. Alexander in the same year. The very essence of the modern method, which has been current in Germany for a hundred years, consists in this,—that each Biblical writer is interpreted first of all by himself, and then by his contem- poraries and predecessors, and that the orderly evolution of ideas is traced from one Biblical writer to another. Dr. Alexander did not dream of striking into a path like this, and at the very outset he lays down this axiomatic principle. "It is assumed," he says, "in theology, that as all the phenomena of Nature are alike authoritative, so all the statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting to us the mind of God." Late in the second volume, we have a formal statement of the system on which the whole book is built. After admitting that truth in Scrip- ture is not, as a rule, "presented dogmatically," and is only "reached by a process of comparison and deduction," Dr. Alexander continues,—" That men writing thus should never- theless teach essentially the same truth, so that when their different utterances are pieced together, a consistent whole is obtained, is of itself evidence sufficient of their being under divine superintendence while they wrote ; for only on this supposition can we understand how innumerable partial statements of doctrine by different persons and at different times should be resolvable into one harmonious whole, and how thoughts uttered accidentally and casually, as it were, should yet in no case be found to clash with each other, but all fall into one great scheme of doctrine." For our part, we believe that the study of Scripture in its historical connection serves infinitely higher ends than the establishment of any
• A System of Biblical Theology. By the late W. Lindsay Alexander, D D., LL.D., Principal of the Theological Hall of the Congregational Churches in Scotlatd, etc. 2 vo's. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. Mg.
"scheme of doctrine ;" but a better statement of the old Calvinist, let us add of the old Catholic, the old Lutheran, the old Socinian mode of treatment, could not be desired.
Strange to say, there are signs that Dr. Alexander himself, had he been a younger man, would have broken loose from the traces in which he had been content to run so long. It was with great surprise that we lighted on the following passages, after toiling painfully through a great part of the book :—" We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research has shown to be the scientific truth,—i.e., we find in them statements which modern science proves to be erroneous." "Not seldom they give utterance to feelings which are wholly human, and not always such as are to be commended, as, e.g., in some of the Psalms where the language is that of angry invective and bitter vindictiveness."
In some of the historical books of the Old Testament we come upon statements which are almost contradicted by state- ments in other of these books ; and in the narrative of our Lord's life as given by the four evangelists there are differences of statement which it is impossible to reconcile." Unhappily, these admissions in no way affect the treatment of doctrine, a treatment which is radically unhistorical, and therefore radically unscientific.
Even this is not the worst. Under each head of doctrine we have an elaborate account of post-Biblical theological theories, and the question asked in effect is always much the same,—viz.: Which of these theories, or which modification of any one of them, can be best proved by a collection of passages from the sacred text P Take, for example, the specially Calvinist doctrine of election. We get much information, useful and even interesting in its way, about "the scheme" "held by the Socinians and Lower Arminia.ns," "by the High Calvinists," "by the Evangelical Arminians," "by the Moderate Calvinists," and the unfortunate reader is warned that there "are other and minor shades of diversity to be considered as we proceed." Then we are invited to "examine the various passages of Scripture bearing upon this subject." If Dr. Alexander could only have remembered that the Bible is composed not of " passages," but of books, if only he could have let the writers of these books speak for themselves, he would have risen superior to the bondage of " schemes " and "systems." He would have found himself in another element, face to face with questions utterly different from those which Calvinist and Arminian theologians set before themselves. Thus, early Hebrew writers describe the divine call which came to Abraham (Genesis xii., 1) and to Moses : Isaiah (vi.) and Ezekiel (i., 1; iii., 21) describe their own election to the prophetic office ; while Jeremiah (i., 5), carrying his vision yet further hack, knows that he was destined before his birth to the work which awaited him,—" Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee: and before thou earnest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee : a prophet among the nations I appointed thee," words which re-echoed six centuries later in the heart of St. Paul (Galatians i., 15). And just when Israel was scattered among the nations, the great prophet of the Exile gave a wider meaning to this doctrine of election, and assigned it a place for ever in the familiar circle of religious thought. With keen Insight, he perceived that the true Israel was elected by God to be his servant among the nations, separated for a special work in that divine kingdom which embraced the whole earth. "I will say to the North, give forth, and to the South, hold not back : bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the end of the earth. All them that are called by my name, and for my glory have I created them : I have formed, yea„ I have made them." (Isaiah xliii., 6.) He gives, moreover, in chap. lv., an elaborate description of the character and form this divine election must needs assume. It is plain enough, from the Gospel records, that these prophecies blended with the awirations and hopes of the people when Christ appeared ; but it was in the Apostolic age that the little company of believers directly applied them to their own case, and naturally and rightly looked upon themselves, and those who were to be gathered into the same fold, as the remnant "whom the Lord should call." St. Paul, as everybody knows, constantly dwells on this idea of election, and in a great section of his greatest Epistle develops it, we will not say into a " scheme " or "'system," but into a divine philosophy of history. It may seem strange that Dr. Alexander gives no connected account of the Pauline teaching on the subject, for, after all, Calvinism, as Mr. Jowett remarks, has taken its favourite weapons from this Epistle, and particularly from that part of it which extends from the ninth to the eleventh chapter. Yet we cannot help thinking that a learned Calvinist is well advised when he leaves alone the general exhibition of doctrine in these chapters, and contents himself with selected texts. For, in reality, nothing can be more unlike any system of Calvinism, whether " high " or "moderate." True, the Apostle begins by an absolute assertion of God's power, since he compares God to the potter who can make from the clay such vessels as he will, whether to honour or to dishonour. But, so far from merely acquiescing in this "absolute decree," as the Calvinists have called it, St. Paul declares that he would fain be anathema in his own person for his brethren according to the flesh. Nor is God's election arbitrary ; it is the true and spiritual Israel which has been chosen. Further, the divine election has its motive in a purpose of mercy. Did Israel," the Apostle asks, "stumble in order that they might fall ?" And he answers,—" God forbid, but by their stumbling salvation
came to the Gentiles." Nay, more, God has not really cast off his people "whom he foreknew." They are to be "provoked
to jealousy" by the salvation of the Gentiles ; and once let the fullness of the Gentiles be gathered in, then the glorious con- summation is inevitable, and "so all Israel will be saved."
The final issue of election corresponds to its intention at the beginning. God "has concluded all under sin that he might have mercy upon all." Is it possible to imagine anything less unlike a Calvinistic " scheme " We may, no doubt, connect the divine rejection with the idea of condemnation to torment in which the hope of repentance is wholly and absolutely excluded ; but to do so is to put thoughts into St. Paul's Epistles which are not to be found there. We are, of course, aware that St. Paul's reasoning is in many respects strange to modern ears, though whether we accept it or not, we can scarcely fail, with sufficient pains, to understand it. But what we would insist upon is this,—that whereas Calvinism repels by the mercilessness which it attributes to God, St. Paul almost seems to magnify the mercy of God at the expense of free- will, and to forget the awful power which the latter has of persisting in sin. But the boldest criticism of St. Paul leaves him at an immeasurable height above those who have twisted and tortured his words, and turned the glowing poetry of his religion into the arid prose of their scholastic dogmatism. They have elaborated the systems of a day ; he has given an inspired expression to the truths which stand fast for ever.
There are many other points on which we should like to have said something, had space permitted. We may note in passing that Dr. Alexander bases the belief in God entirely upon the evidence of external nature, and has left untouched that far stronger argument from conscience which Cardinal Newman has handled with characteristic power, We may also note that while Dr. Alexander thoroughly accepts the doctrine of the Trinity, he uses his freedom as a Congre- gationalist to reject Athanasian deductions from the doctrine, such as the eternal generation of the Son and the Procession of the Holy Ghost. He is wrong, by-the-way, in his assertion that the word " Trinity " does not occur "till the beginning of the fourth century." As a matter of fact, it is used by Theophilus of Antioch (" Ad Autol.," ii., 15) about 180 B.C. It is only fair to add that the lectures contain marvellously few slips of this kind, though they abound in complete misunder- standings of critical and theological theories with which the writer has scant sympathy. We cannot conceive how so able and honest a man could so misrepresent the argument for diversity of documents in the Hexateuch from the use of the divine names ; or, to take a very different illustration, the clear teaching of Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, on the nature of the Atonement. After Calvinist divines, it is with the medimval schoolmen with whom Dr. Alexander is most at home. The reason is not far to seek, for while his conclusions are sometimes widely different, his spirit and method are often singularly similar to theirs.
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