CANON LIDDON AND "LUX MUNDT."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Canon Liddon replies to my letter with his unfailing courtesy and candour. He objects, however, to being treated as an advocate of a mechanical and literal theory of inspira- tion, which he considers obsolete, and claims to belong to the dynamical school. The matter is too serious for verbal distinctions.
As I understood his argument, he urged that Christ, being. incapable of error, could not quote what is not true in sub- stance, nor could he quote from a work containing errors of fact ; and that, consequently, his quotations from the Old Testament give it an authority beyond its own witness to- itself. I can quite understand a scholar holding this view, and also maintaining that the quotations made by Christ are- paraphrastic rather than literal, and that, although they do- not follow the words exactly, they do follow the sense and substance, and hence claiming to belong to a dynamical school of interpretation.
My contention is, and has been, that this theory will not meet the facts, and is therefore untenable and dangerous,— quite as untenable and dangerous as the theory of plenary inspiration, once widely defended.
When quotations are made from two versions of a book which differ inter se, not only verbally but as to matters of fact, how can it be said that the quotations attest the absolute- verity and give the character of inspiration to both or either version ? Are we to understand that in the attitude he has. adopted, Canon Liddon limits his test of inspiration to the few passages actually quoted by Christ in which the Septuagint. agrees with the Hebrew version? If this be so, it surely carries us a very short way indeed. I was certainly under the. impression that, like others who have taken the same side, he treated Christ's quotations not merely as attesting the truth of the words quoted, that is, of the sample, but of the whole,—as. establishing, for instance, the authority of the Books of Daniel and Jonah, and not merely of two verses quoted from those- books. This view seems to me to be answered completely by showing that there are, in fact, two Old Testaments whose- statements are irreconcilable, and both of which are quoted from ; and to be further answered by the fact that the vast majority of the quotations are from a translation which can be shown to contain numerous errors.
Christ's purpose in making his quotations was homiletic. He- was putting a new creed before men, and exhorting them to a higher moral and ethical ideal. To illustrate his argument,. he 'quoted from what was recognised by his hearers as a work of the first authority, which they, and he no doubt held, con- tained " The Truth." It was the lesson to be drawn from the facts, rather than the facts themselves, which was alone im- portant to him ; hence it signified not that he should have called a certain prophet "Zacharias, the son of Barachias " (Matt. xxiii., 35), when referring to a passage in Chronicles. (II. Chron. xiv., 20), in which he is named the son of Jehoida_ He did not profess (nor have we any warrant for believing- that it was his aim) to give to the whole library of books, or different origins and values, which we call the Old Testament,. a larger authority than it already possessed ; and it seems t& me we are burdening men's faith with an intolerable yoke if we make Christ responsible for attesting the truth of irrecon- cilable and contradictory statements, because he quotes illus- trations and lessons for his homilies from a priceless book containing so many human elements. It is because, with many other people, I value the high authority of Canon Liddon as a teacher very greatly, that I feel how supremely- important it is that a great Master in Israel should not nail an indefensible banner to the mast, and induce a large number of anxious men, who have the responsibility of teaching others, and who lean upon his judgment, to commit themselves to a. position which neither logic nor history supports.
If the position he has taken up cannot be supported by more cogent reasons than those produced, it would seem to be a duty for one of the most honest of men, to whose character the Bishop of Durham so recently applied such well-deserved compliments, to allow that, in his anxiety to defend "the Ark," he may have stretched his hand too far. Canon Liddell.
is surely the last man who should be found echoing the retro- grade step taken by the Genevan Reformers, who, in their determination to set up the Bible against the Church as the Ruler of Faith, proceeded to tie up in strict definition what is so hard, perhaps so impossible, to define as Inspiration.
In conclusion, I must apologise to Mr. Hobson for a stupid lapsus calami, by which I described his letter as anonymous.
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