In Defence of the Faith
IL—The Modern Attitude to the Bible (Canon Vernon Storr of Westminster, is a leader of the Evan- gelical Group Movethent and a distinguished Biblical scholar.] M ANY factors have gone to produce the modern jrl attitude to the Bible, but of these the most important is the application to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures of the Historical Method, that potent instru- ment of research developed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Lessing, Herder, Savigny and Niebuhr. Niebuhr's History of Rome had a marked influence in the field of Biblical studies. He suggested that in early Roman history we had a prose version of btill earlier national ballad poetry. Might not the same e true of the early narratives of the Bible ? Might Pot elements of myth, legend and floating tradition be present in Hebrew national literature ? Should not the Bible be investigated by the same methods of research which are applied to other literatures ?
The broad result of the application to the Bible of the Historical Method has been to remove it from its isolation and to bring it into line with general history and literature. Until modern scholarship began its work upon the Scriptures the Bible had been regarded as standing apart. Here was a book which was not to be treated by the ordinary methods of investigation. It parrated a history which was only in part subject to the forces and laws operating in secular fields. In this sacred enclosure the strangest things could happen. It was a record penned, if not by God Himself, yet by writers who were so much under divine control that they -ere kept from making mistakes. Even so learned a divine as Van Mildert, Bishop of Durham, could write in his Bampton Lectures in 1814 that in the Bible " it is impossible even to imagine .a failure, either in judgment Or in integrity " ; and could assert that the confusion of tongues at Babel was intended to prevent believers from mixing with atheists and idolaters.
To-day the modern mind takes a different view of the Bible. (1) It treats the Bible as a literature, as a " divine library," rather than as a single book. This literature consists of writings of varied style, date and value. It took shape gradually, and one of the great achievements of scholarship has been to trace out its growth. (2) In all other national literatures are found myth, legend, ballad, traditions coming down from a distant past, which, though they may have a core of history in them, cannot be taken as strictly historical. These same forms of writing occur in the Bible. (3) There is a large human element in the Bible, against which the divine element stands out all the more clearly. It was written by men who gave their message in their own way. Their ordinary faculties were not suspended. Inspiration, whatever it may mean, does not mean dictation, or the supersession of the writer's ordinary powers. Just because there is this human clement, it is a mistake to suppose that the Bible is free from error, or that we should look in it for information on subjects which God has left us to discover by our own powers. The science of the Bible is the science of the times at which it was written. The Bible does not set out to teach science, but religion. (4) The modern student comes to the study of the Bible with his mind as free as may be from preconceptions as to the nature of inspiration, or the manner in which God must give a revelation. He proceeds inductively. He studies the Bible to discover what it is, and from the results of his enquiry goes on to frame his theory of inspiration and revelation. (5) There are in the Bible thought-forms which we to-day have outgrown. We no longer think of heaven as above our heads, or of God as seated on a throne above the sky ; nor do we believe in a visible Second Coming of Christ in clouds of glory. We find it hard to accept the angelology and demonology of the Scriptures. Our whole modern outlook, which is the result of our vastly extended knowledge, is very different from that of the Biblical writers.
It was inevitable that so revolutionary a change in our way of regarding the Bible should produce perplexity and disquiet in the popular mind. Criticism appeared to be wholly destructive. Men felt that they were being robbed of their dearest treasure. We have passed out from that period of alarm, and there are many indica- tions that the constructive results of criticism are being more generally appreciated. It is being seen that, whatever loss is involved in the abandonment of the older view is more than compensated by the gains brought by the newer.
Consider the helpfulness of the idea of Progressive Revelation, which may be called the master-thought of the modern view of the Bible. Before the Hebrews became the subjects of a divine educative process they possessed an ethnic religion, traces of which abound in the Old Testament. It included sacrifice, worship by sacred trees and stone pillars ; it included also the belief in Sheol, or the gloomy underworld of departed spirits. Gradually and progressively a new content was put into these ancient forms of worship, which themselves gave way to higher forms. We trace the emergence of a loftier thought of God, until in the prophets He is conceived as a God of character, requiring from His "worshippers moral conduct and the worship of the heart and will. The ethical monotheism of the prophets is the basis of all our modern theism. From lowly beginnings has come this magnificent ending. And the end casts light upon the beginning. We, reading the process as a whole, see that the beginnings were prophetic. From the first there was that in Hebrew religion which pointed forward. We must not, however, interpret too rigidly the idea of pro- gressive revelation. The progress is' there, but it is " radiative " rather than unilinear; and, like evolution in biology, admitted of decline as well as advance. A spiritual genius like Moses may have had a higher thought of God than he could impress upon his Contemporaries.
The idea of progressive revelation helps us to see as one organic whole the Old and New Testaments. The revelation recorded In the Old Testament points forward to its completion in Christianity. Here scholarship has done splendid work by giving us a richer view of prophecy, and by enabling us to date with fair accuracy the prophetic writings. We Fan now view the movement of prophecy as a whole, and appreciate better what we may call the immanent teleology of its Messianic core. Prophecy trembles on the edge of a riper fulfilment than the prophets themselves could foresee. They saw the dawn broadening in the sky ; the noontide splendour comes with Christ, who, while He fulfilled the past, started new lines of development for the future. Once again, the idea of a gradual revelation removes the difficulties which have been felt about the approval given i n the Old Testament to lower ethical standards which the Christian conscience condemns. God could teach the truth about Himself only gradually. Imperfect con- ceptions of His moral character were natural in the early stages of Israel's education. The point is that' these conceptions were outgrown as revelation advanced.
Coleridge in an oft-quoted sentence said that " the Bible finds me." Scholarship has done nothing to deprive the message of the Bible of its compelling spiritual power. The penitential message of Psalm li. remains the same, whoeVer wrote it. The patriarchal stories are still mines of moral and religious instruction,' even though we are unable to regard them as strict history. If Jesus could teach through parable and allegory. why should not God have used the same method in Old Testament times ? If the science of the Creation narratives is wrong, shall we ever outgrow their religious significance ? We call the writers of the Bible inspired because of the spiritual value of their message. And the modern mind has still to answer the question : why was it that this one nation alone reached such a high level of religious insight`? Are we not compelled to give the answer, which the Biblical -writers themselves give, that they were the recipients of a revelation ? VERNON F. STORR.
[In our Christmas Number last week we published in this series " The Modern Outlook in Theology," by the Bishop of Gloucester. Next week we shall publish " Provi- dence and Free Will," by the Rev. F. Brabant.]
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