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Understanding the Scriptures

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Still another may declare that the Scriptures are valuable because they
abound in hints which make for practical success--shrewd moral maxims
which aid all classes of men in avoiding pitfalls, axioms for daily
conduct which ought to be accepted by everybody, even by those who care
not for the religion of the Bible. All this, again, is true, but hardly
sufficient to explain the grip of the Bible on mankind. So far as the
more conventional morality goes, men are likely to be ruled by the
sentiment of the community in which they move. They adapt themselves to
the demands of the situation at a particular time rather than to a set
of precepts.

Still others maintain that the human ideal itself which we sketched in a
previous chapter is the determining factor in giving the Bible power.
The greatest study of mankind is man. The erection of such an ideal as
that of the Scriptures for man cannot fail to secure for the Book mighty
power through all the ages. And yet it must be replied that if we take
the Bible merely as portraying a human ideal without reference to the
idea of God involved in the same process of revelation, we cut asunder
two things which properly belong together. We must not forget that in
the history of Israel the prophets grasped at every new insight
concerning human character as at the same time a new insight concerning
the character of God. Attributing a profoundly moral trait to God made
it of more consequence forthwith for man, and thus the conceptions of
man and God went along together reenforcing each the other. To separate
the ideal of God from the ideal of man leaves everything at loose ends
for the human ideal. It is true that there are individuals here and
there of intense intelligence and of immense wealth of moral endowment
who do not seem to require any ideal of God to sustain and strengthen
their ideal of man; but for the most of us the ideal of man cannot grow
to any considerable size without growth of our notion as to the
character of God. What man is now depends somewhat on our thought of
where man came from, and what his place in the universe essentially is.
One of our deepest yearnings is to know whether our exalted belief about
man has any validity before the larger ranges of the activity of the
universe itself. It is very common, for example, for those who go forth
to social tasks with a passion for humanity to lose that passion if they
do not keep alive a passion for God. Disappointment with some phases of
human nature itself and despair over the failures of men are apt to be
so trying that the passion for humanity dies down unless familiarity
with actual human life is reenforced by communion with an ideal which
reaches up toward the Divine. We would ourselves insist that the
loftiest human ideal in all literature is that of the Scriptures, but we
must insist also that this ideal lacks driving force if it does not keep
back of it the biblical doctrine of God.

From the very outset the Hebrew Scriptures deal with God. "In the
beginning God," at the end God, and God at every step of the journey
from the beginning to the end. There are other scriptures besides the
Hebrew Scriptures that deal with God, but the kind of God set before us
in the Hebrew revelation gives the Bible its supreme merit.

Since we often hear that there are other sources for the idea of God
than the Scriptures, it may be well for us to appraise the contributions
from some of those sources before we look at the kind of God drawn for
us in the biblical writings. After allowing as high excellence as is
possible to the theologies obtained outside the Scriptures, the moral
and spiritual superiority of the scriptural ideal shines forth
unmistakably.

Many a scientist tells us that we do not further need the biblical idea
of God in view of the vast suggestions concerning the Divine which
science places before us. The world in which we live has broadened
immeasurably since the days of the Hebrew prophets and seers. The idea
of God, broadening to correspond, has to expand so overwhelmingly that
we ought no longer pay heed to the imaginations of the biblical writers.
Large numbers of scientists to-day avow themselves devout theists.
Materialism is decidedly out of fashion, and agnosticism is less in
vogue than a decade or two ago. The reverent scientist affirms that he
believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every particle of
matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions of miles, a
God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces whose sweep and
fineness seen through the telescope and microscope astonish us.
Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that the entire
material system is moving on and up from lower to higher forms. "It doth
not yet appear what we shall be," but we shall clearly be something
great and glorious.

Now, far be it from us to belittle the splendor of this scientific
vision. Modern scientific searchers are, indeed, finding innumerable
illustrations of the greatness of God. There is every reason why the
scientific investigator should rejoice in a calling which enables him to
think God's thoughts after him; but when a scientist will have it that
his belief in God arises only from his technical investigations, we must
declare our suspicion that he is employing his findings to confirm a
faith already held, though that faith may be part of his unconscious
spiritual possessions. Many times the scientist is determined that the
scientific discoveries shall look in theistic directions just to satisfy
the imperious though unconscious demands of his own soul. Some
scientists are theists just because they are bound to be so, for the
close contemplation of the entire situation in the material realm does
not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to believe
that the nice adjustments of matter and force occur without the
governance of a supervising intelligence. There are too many facts which
suggest skill to make it easy to believe that the natural world is just
the outcome of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Science itself very
likely establishes a presumption in favor of a governing mind, _but
the deeper question is as to the character of that mind_. Is it a
moral mind? At this point the hopeful evolutionist will break out that
the progress is so definitely from lower to higher that no one ought to
doubt the benevolence of the Power moving upward through all things.
Evolution is, indeed, full of promises to one who already trusts in the
goodness of God; but the progress from lower to higher is not always
unmistakable. Often the survival of the fittest is just a survival of
those fittest to survive, and not the survival of those who ought to
survive. There are too many things which survive which ought to be
killed off. Simple good can give way to complex evil without at all
violating the requirements of the evolutionistic formula. But even if we
concede all that the scientist claims for his conception of God; if we
grant that terms like "omnipresence" and "omniscience" and "progress"
clothe themselves with new force in the Copernican and Newtonian and
Darwinian terminology, we must nevertheless insist that none of this
rises to the moral height of the biblical teaching. Nor are we willing
to admit that the biblical doctrine is to be discounted because it grew
up amid small theories of the material universe. The old Hebrew views of
the physical system, outdated as they are now, are nevertheless full of
sublimity on their own account. But even if they were infinitesimal as
compared with the vast stretches of modern scientific measurements, the
moral grandeur of the idea of God of which they were the framework
stands forth unmistakably. We must not permit the quantitative bigness
of modern scientific notions to obscure the qualitative fineness of the
biblical ideal of God. Modern philosophy comes also and announces that
it has a better God than that of the Scriptures. The most imposing
modern philosophical systems are those which proclaim some form of
idealism. The gist of the idealistic argument always is that the world
itself is nothing apart from thought; that thought-relationships rule in
and through all things; that there are no things-in-themselves; that
there can be no hard-and-fast stuff standing apart from God. Things must
come within the range of thought or go out of existence. There is no
alternative. Now, thought implies a thinker, and this implication
carries us at once to God. Here, again, we have no desire to question
the cogency of the argument. We are ready to admit that this is the
strongest theistic argument that has thus far been built. To be sure,
there are some questions that inevitably suggest themselves: What is the
thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some have maintained? Is it just
the sum of all forms of consciousness--our consciousnesses being organs
or phases of the Supreme Consciousness? Or is the thinker strictly
personal, carrying on a thought-world by the power of his will and
calling into existence finite thinkers in his own image? Assuming that
the world is the expression of the thought of a Personal Thinker who
acts in the forces of nature and creates men in his own image, the
further question arises as to the character of that Thinker. While
returning the heartiest thanks to the idealist for his argument--full as
it is of aid for the Christian system--we have to protest that the
argument does not lift us to the full height of the ideal of God
inculcated in the Scriptures. And if this is true of the majestic
systems of idealism, how much more is it true of the other and less
convincing systems which are just now having their day! We have already
spoken of pragmatism as possessing validity as a method, but pragmatism
can hardly cherish pretension of being itself a system of religious
philosophy.

Some very strenuous searchers after divine treasures have professed to
discover value in various non-Christian religions. They have patiently
studied the great Indian world-views, for example, which are admittedly
the most important religious creations outside of Christianity. These
students come back to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of ethical
wisdom, traces of sublimity from the Indian sacred books. It would be
foolhardy not to receive any genuine treasures, no matter what the mine
from which they have been quarried. We are all eager to admit the
immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental type of thinking for the
development of Christianity, but Oriental systems thus far have been
chiefly significant as indicating what stupendous religious powers can
do when they are off the track. The Indian systems of religion have run
loose in India. As a result, nowhere in the world has religion been
taken more seriously and more sincerely than by the Indian peoples. It
is simply impossible to bring the charge against the Indian races that
they have not made the most of their religion. The final indictment to
be passed upon the Indian systems is that while the Indian peoples have
made the most of those systems, the systems have made least of the
Indian peoples; and this because of the defects in the conception of the
Divine itself. It is doubtful whether the Indian could call his highest
gods personal. If he declares them personal, he can hardly make them
moral in the full sense; that is to say, in the sense of exerting their
force on the world in favor of justice and righteousness and love.

Now, it is just in the quality of moral force that the God of the
Scriptures shows his superiority. The entire revealing process can be
looked upon as one long story of the moralization of the idea of God.
Let it be granted that the biblical idea was at the beginning marked by
the naïve and the crude. Personally, we have never been able to see the
pertinency of the reasonings which make the Hebrew Jehovah as imperfect
as some students would have us believe. Nevertheless, for the sake of
the argument we will admit limitations in the early Hebrew conception of
God. Even with such concession, however, the outstanding characteristics
of that God were from the beginning moral. Suppose that Jehovah was at
the beginning just a tribal Deity. The difference between Jehovah and
other tribal deities was that the commandments which were conceived of
as coming from him looked in the direction of increasing moral life for
the people, and these moral demands upon the chosen people were
conceived of as arising out of the nature of Jehovah himself. To be
sure, the early narratives employ expressions like "the jealousy of
God," but even a slightly sympathetic reading of the Scriptures
indicates that the jealousy was directed against whatever would harm
human life. In the mighty pictures of the patriarchs the heroes speak to
their God as if the same moral obligations rested upon God as upon
themselves. There is nothing finer in the Old Testament than Abraham's
challenge, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

We are not specially interested in the growth of the ideas as to the
power of God, though we repeat that it is difficult for us to believe
that the early Hebrews thought of their Deity as so narrowly limited in
power as some modern students seek to prove. The conception of the might
of Jehovah grew through the centuries and followed upon the extension of
the knowledge of the Hebrews about the world in which they lived. If
tomorrow morning some revolutionary astronomical discovery should
convince us that the solar system is much vaster than we have ever
imagined, the theist would, of course, extend the thought of the sway of
God to all that solar system. If there were some method of becoming
aware that the bodies of the entire astronomical system are millions of
times more numerous than scientists ever have dreamed, the theist would,
of course, maintain that the righteous purpose of his God reaches to all
of these bodies. The growth of the Hebrew idea was somewhat parallel to
this. Even when the Hebrew thought of the outside peoples as having gods
of their own; he believed that as soon as his God came into conflict
with the other gods, he would shatter them with his might. By the time
the first chapters of Genesis were written the Hebrew conceived of God
as creator of all things, and thereafter the growth of the belief in the
power of God kept pace with the enlarging view of the world.

We repeat that we are not much concerned with the growth of the idea of
the power of God. We are, however, interested in the manifest teaching
or direct implication of the Scriptures that from the beginning the
Hebrews thought of God as under obligation to use his power for moral
ends. What the moral ends were depended upon the growth of the moral
ideal. At the very beginning it was believed that since God had chosen
the people of Israel to be his people, he must fight their battles for
them. It is from this point of view that we must deal with the early
idea of God as a God of battles. God was wielding his force for a moral
purpose. Moreover, if God had chosen a people to be the channel through
which he was to reveal himself to the world, he must be very patient
with that people. How sublime is the Old Testament belief in the
patience of God toward Israel! To use the phrase of our later days, God
accommodated himself to the progress which the people could make. When
the prophets called upon the people to walk with God, they implied a
willingness on God's part to walk with the people. If they must lengthen
their stride, he must shorten his; he must bear with them in their
inadequate notions; he must judge their efforts by the direction in
which they were tending rather than by any achievement in itself.

It is from the point of view of their growing apprehension of God as
moral that we can best understand the ferocity of the Israelite toward
the so-called heathen peoples. The boasting of the Israelites over the
slaughter of outsiders must be understood from the faith in the moral
destiny which the prophets conceived the God of Israel to hold in store
for his people. The reason assigned for cruelties and warfares upon
heathen peoples was the abominations practiced by those peoples. Of
course it is possible for a student obsessed with the modern doctrine of
the economic determinism of history to say that we have in the story of
the Hebrew development just the play of economic forces with moral aims
assigned as their formal justification. Assuming that the narratives of
the conquest of Canaan are true, what the Hebrews desired--these
economists tell us--was the milk and the honey. They made their
so-called advance in obedience to God an excuse for taking possession of
the milk and the honey. Now, he would be blind indeed who would deny
that economic values do play their part in wars of conquest; he would be
foolish who would deny that wars always do justify themselves by
appealing to lofty religious motives, but nevertheless the impact of the
Hebrew history upon the life of the world has been a moral impact, due
to the belief of the Hebrews that they were instruments in the hands of a
moral God. If we could behold the abominations in heathenism upon which
the old prophets looked, we would sympathize quite readily with an
impulse which might seem to call for outright destruction. A friend of
mine, a man of the most sensitive Christian feeling, once stood on the
banks of the Ganges and watched people by the hundreds and thousands
going through religious ceremonials, some of which were defiling and
others silly. In the midst of the reeking vileness of one scene in
particular he said that he felt for the moment an impulse like that of
the old prophets to cry out for the destruction of the entire mass. The
situation seemed so dreadful and so hopeless! All this passed in an
instant to the loftier feeling of compassion, but the stirring of the
more primitive impulse was really moral in its foundation. In any case,
the old Hebrew notion was of a God who would put a growing moral ideal
in the first place.

It is not necessary for us to attempt to trace the steps of the growth
of the moral ideal for God. As we have said, that ideal kept pace with
the growth of the ideal for man. We must call attention, however, to the
fact that the growth of the ideal was in the direction of increasing
emphasis upon the responsibilities that go with power. The Hebrew may
not have definitely phrased the responsibility, but he nevertheless
shows his increasing realization of the obligations resting upon God.
When we reach the later prophets we discern that his moral obligation
upon God himself becomes more and more a determining factor. There
appear glimpses of belief that God must not only fight for his people,
but that he must suffer in their sufferings. It is of little consequence
for our present purpose whether the suffering servant of Jehovah of the
later Israelitish Scriptures is a group of persons or an individual. The
implication is that the suffering is a revelation of Jehovah himself.
Moreover, there appears a widening stream of emphasis on the tenderness
of God's care for his people. The Hebrew writers comparatively early
broke away from the thought of God as merely philanthropically inclined
toward Israel. They did not think of him as bestowing gifts which were
without cost to himself. They show him as deeply involved in the life of
the nation and as caring for his people with an infinite compassion.
This enlarging revelation was made clear to the people through the
utterances of prophets, the decrees of lawgivers, the songs of
psalmists, the interpretations of historians, and the warnings of
statesmen. Slowly and surely, moreover, the people attained grasp on the
doctrine that the greatest revelation of God is the revelation in human
character itself. They began to look forward to the coming of one who
would in himself embody the noblest and best in the divine life, who
would gather up in himself all the ideals and purposes toward which the
law and the prophets had looked. New Testament revelation as such we
leave to the later chapters, but we have come far enough, we think, to
warrant us in saying that only he can understand the Scriptures who sees
that the chief fact about the Scriptures is the emphasis on the moral
nature of God. Other Scriptures besides that of the Hebrews--we might
say scientific, philosophical, extra-Christian Scriptures--have stood
for the existence of God; but none have stood for the existence of such
a God as the God of the Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its
thought of God.




CHAPTER V

THE BOOK OF CHRIST

It is of course the merest commonplace to say that the revelation of God
in the Scriptures comes to its climax in Christ. The revelation in
Christ gathers up all that is loftiest in the utterances of the Old
Testament and gives it embodiment in a human life. It is legitimate to
declare that there is little either in the teaching of Christ or in his
character that is not at least foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The
uniqueness of the Christ revelation consists in the manner in which the
separate streams of truth of the law and the prophets and the seers and
the poets are merged together in the Christ teaching, and in the fine
balance with which the ideal characteristics seen from afar by the
saints of the older day were realized in the living Christ. We might
justly say that a devout reader of the Old Testament could find rich
elements of the Christ revelation even if he should never see a page of
the New Testament. The virtue of the New Testament, however, is that all
the elements revealed throughout the course of the historic periods of
Israel's career are bound together in the life and character of Christ.
It is no mere epigram to say that if the greatest fact about the
Scriptures is God, the greatest fact about God is Christ. Any thorough
study of the Scriptures must revolve around Christ as its center. If the
Scriptures mean anything, they mean that in Christ we see God. Of course
it is open to the skeptic to reply that in all this the Scriptures are
completely mistaken; but he cannot maintain that this is not what the
Scriptures mean. The Book comes to its climax with an honest conviction
that Christ is the consummate revelation of God. The day when men could
charge any sort of manipulation of the material by Scripture writers for
unworthy doctrinal purposes is past. We have in another connection said
that each of the New Testament books was, indeed, written with a
definite aim, but this does not mean that facts and teachings were
twisted out of their legitimate significance. That Christ is the supreme
gift of God to men is so thoroughly built into the biblical revelation
that there is no digging that idea out without wrecking the entire
revelation itself. To maintain anything else would be to do violence to
the entire scriptural teaching. The burden of the entire New Testament
is that God is like Christ.

This may seem to some to be a reversal of present-day approach to the
study of the Christ. We may appear to be attacking the problem from the
divine angle rather than from the human. Why not ask what Christ was
rather than what God is? It is indeed far from our purpose to minimize
the rich significance of the humanity of Jesus, but we are trying now to
get the scriptural focus. We do not believe that we can secure that
focus by looking upon the character of Christ as a merely human ideal.
The might of the scriptural emphasis is that Christ is the revelation of
God. We are well aware that ordinary theological debate has centered on
the question as to the extent to which Christ is like God. The Bible is
colored with the belief that God is like Christ. This may seem at first
glimpse to be a very fine discrimination, but the importance of that
discrimination appears when we reflect that mankind is more eager to
learn the character of God than to learn how far a man can climb toward
divinity. In all such discussions as this we proceed at peril of being
misunderstood, but we must repeatedly affirm that important as is the
problem as to the human ideal set forth in Christ, the divine ideal set
forth in him is more significant as explaining the hold of the Bible on
men. Is it not sufficient for us to behold a lofty human ideal in the
portrait of Christ without such emphasis on this ideal as also a
revelation of the divine character? The answer depends upon what we are
most interested in. If we care most for a perfect and symmetrical human
life, we reply that we find that perfection and symmetry in Christ. In
our second chapter we laid such stress upon the importance of the
enlarging human ideal that we have committed ourselves to the importance
of the Christ ideal as a revelation of the possibilities of human life.
But if we take that ideal in itself without any reference to the
character of God, how much enlargement does it bring us? As members of
the human race we can indeed be proud that a human being has climbed to
such moral stature as did Jesus, but what promise does that give that
any other human being can attain to his stature? As a member of the
human race I can be profoundly thankful for a philosopher like Kant. I
can, indeed, dedicate myself to the study of the Kantian philosophy with
some hope of mastering it. I can seek to reproduce in my life all the
conditions that surrounded the life of the great metaphysician, but I
cannot hope to make myself a Kant. Strive as I may, such transformation
is out of the question. I may attain great merit by my struggle, but I
cannot make myself a Kant. The more intensely I might struggle, the more
convinced I would become of the futility of my quest, and the genius of
the philosopher might tower up at the end as itself a grim mockery of my
ambition. So it is with the Christ if he is not a revelation of the God
life at the same time that he is an idealization of the human life.
Viewed as a revelation of God's character the Christ life is the hope of
all the ages. Viewed only as a masterpiece of human life it might well
be the despair of mankind.

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