literary culture and the power of the secular and religious press these and other like elements of advantage over the former times are of incalculable value for the full equipment of the biblical theologian. The illuminating Spirit of God may be expected to work with increased efficiency by means of the superior knowledge and culture now possible to man. And so the student in any department of theological research ought to profit by the various appliances of learning and science, confident that the Spirit of truth is ever operating through such aids to the discovery of new beauty and treasure in the ancient revelations. Our heavenly Father worketh hitherto, and how shall we be partakers of his Spirit if we neglect any light arising through the advance of human research? Our aim shall be to "combine spiritual things with spiritual words" (1 Cor. ii, 13), and thus conserve and enhance the old eternal truths by a manner of statement somewhat new, but, it is hoped, clearly self-consistent and intelligible.

CHAPTER II

SOURCES OF BIBLICAL DOGMATICS

1. The Bible a Priceless Treasury. The main sources of biblical doctrine are the canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The writers of these remarkable books were all of them offspring of Abraham, who was of old time called out from his far Eastern country and kindred to become a great nation and a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. xii, 1-3). These people and their sacred writings hold a unique place in the history of mankind. In the more ancient times the sons of Abraham were called Hebrews; later they were also called Israelites; and after their restoration from Babylonian captivity they were more commonly called Jews, because most of the survivors of that exile were of the tribe and kingdom of Judah. There came unto them time and again the assurance that they were to be a peculiar possession of God above all other peoples of the earth, "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation," destined to be a light among the nations to make known the salvation of God to the ends of the earth (Exod. xix, 6; Deut. vii, 6; Isa. xlix, 6). According to Jesus, in John iv, 22, "the salvation is from the Jews," and Paul's conception of the chief advantage of the Jews was in the fact that "they were intrusted with the oracles of God" (Rom. iii. 2). If there be any truth in the common saying that the Romans have been preeminent in teaching the world its highest ideals of government and law, and that the Greeks have excelled in art and philosophy, it may as surely be maintained that the Hebrew nation has been the recipient and custodian of the purest religion and the most profitable scriptures known among men. We accordingly accept the canonical books of the two Testaments as a priceless deposit of religious truth, exceedingly profitable and altogether sufficient for doctrine and for instruction in the revelations of God.

2. Trammels of Old Tradition. But the precious truths of these scriptures have been largely obscured and deprived of their real force and authority by the traditions of men. The early Christian Church inherited from the Jewish synagogue a vast accumulation of conjectures touching the origin of the sacred books, and the nature of their inspiration; and this harmful leaven of erroneous

and misleading conceptions has been working through all the Christian centuries. The rabbinical exegesis ran into a cabalistic juggling with the text of Scripture, and was speedily followed by the almost equally fantastic allegorical methods of the Alexandrian school of biblical interpreters, from Philo the Jew to Origen the learned Christian father. In spite of the wholesome reaction of the school of Antioch the mischievous assumptions and the mystic methods of the allegorical treatment of Scripture have persisted until quite modern times, and may be found in some places even to this day. Along with the old rabbinic and allegorical exegesis there was also begotten a theory of biblical inspiration, which in course of time has taken to itself such qualifying terms as verbal, inerrant, and infallible. It has affirmed that the sacred writers were impassive instruments in the hands of God, and that every word and letter of the Bible were supernaturally dictated by the omniscient Spirit. This strange fiction of mistaken reverence for the letter of Scripture has tended to a materialistic and sentimental bibliolatry, and has fostered the most absurd mental aberrations. The extravagant claims of the old Jewish rabbis, and the mystic vagaries of medieval cabalists, were paralleled by the declaration of the Helvetic creed of 1675 that "the Hebrew original of the Old Testament is inspired of God not only in its consonants, but in its vowels and the vowel points." The allegorical interpretation itself was in part an effort to get rid of the obvious difficulties of inerrant verbal inspiration, and also to account for the recorded immoralities of the patriarchs which such a strained view of Scripture seemed to sanction.

3. Reaction and Changes of View. The common sense and intelligence of men have for long time been revolting from this distorted handling of the Scriptures. The author of 2 Peter (iii, 16) speaks of Paul's epistles, and also the other scriptures, as having been stretched on the rack and twisted over a windlass (OTOεßhovou) by the ignorant errorists of his time. Such a torturing of a multifarious body of religious literature is sure, sooner or later, to provoke reaction, and such intellectual reactions have too generally been led by men of a rationalistic and iconoclastic spirit. We naturally feel that this ought not so to be; and yet history has often shown that iconoclasts may indirectly serve

1 Thus Quenstedt, in 1685, declared that "all things which were to be written were suggested by the Holy Spirit to the sacred writers in the very act of writing, and were dictated to their intellect as if unto a pen (quasi in calamum), so that they could be written in no other circumstances, in this and no other mode or order" (Theologia Didact., iv, 2). Carpzov, in 1728, declared that the divine Power "impelled the will" of the biblical writers, and "directed their hand that they might write infallibly" (Critica Sacra Vet. Test., p. 43). Similar statements might be cited by the hundred from writers both earlier and later than these.

the cause of truth. If they but stimulate men to a remonstrance against aged abuses, to an exposure of unsound and misleading methods, and to the adoption of more tenable beliefs, their very extravagances may help the infirmities of less bold reformers. But changes of opinion on a wide scale and modification of old beliefs are not made suddenly. They usually require several generations to make the necessary discoveries and adjust the results of faithful investigation.

4. Other Sacred Bibles. One of the most important discoveries of the last century is the number of other collections of literature held sacred by the adherents of divers ethnic religions of the world. The Chinese classics, as revised and enlarged by the wisdom of Confucius, have an authority in the civilization and worship of the millions of Eastern Asia that is notably comparable with that of the Hebrew scriptures among the Jewish people. The Kojiki of the old Shinto cult in Japan presents another example that is worthy of comparison. The ancient Vedas of India command a reverence among millions of the Hindus as great as any Jew or Christian ever evinced for the Bible of his faith. The Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Avesta of the ancient Mazdeans and the modern Parsees, the Koran of the Mohammedans, and sundry other collections of sacred literature hold a similar high place in the estimation of other religionists. For in several of these ethnic books claims of miraculous inspiration are made even more extravagant than those of verbal dictation and literal inerrancy. Among some of the Mohammedans it is held that the Koran is not a human production, but existed from eternity in the essence of God; and some Brahmans put forth similar declarations respecting their ancient Vedas. Acquaintance with these other bibles of the world, and with the remarkable claims put forth in their honor, have admonished us to be more cautious in making assertions about our Holy Bible which are not clearly demonstrable.

5. Limits of the Biblical Canon. Another fact which scientific research has compelled us to acknowledge is the uncertainty of the limits of our canonical scriptures. Faithful historical inquiry nowhere finds that God himself, or Jesus Christ, or any duly accredited person or company of men, has ever settled once for all the exact extent of either the Old Testament or the New. Some of the New Testament writers quote from apocryphal writings with as much respect as they do from Moses and the prophets, and many of the early Christian fathers not only do the same thing but they also call those apocryphal books "holy Scripture." The Greek and Roman Catholic Churches accept the Old Testa

ment Apocrypha as an integral part of the inspired canon. The lists of canonical books found in the writings of Melito, Origen, and other early Christian writers, and those indorsed by the Councils of Laodicea and Hippo, vary in details, and they represent at most only the opinions of men of fallible judgment, no more competent to determine such a question than the painstaking historical students of our day. There is little room to doubt, however, that the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, as they are now everywhere acknowledged, were accepted as Holy Scriptures by the Jews at the beginning of the Christian era. Josephus specifies them as five books of Moses, thirteen books of the Prophets, and four others containing hymns to God and prescribed rules of life for men.' These make in all twenty-two books, according to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet; but Josephus nowhere names all the books, or gives us to understand how he condensed our present thirty-nine into twenty-two. It is also a fact not to be overlooked that in the first century of our era the Jewish rabbis were yet discussing the canonicity of Ecclesiastes, Esther, and the Song of Songs. So little weight had these Talmudic discussions of the rabbinic schools of Palestine with the Alexandrian Jews that they freely admitted into their collection of scriptures the books which we now call Apocrypha. The early Christian fathers appear to have accepted the Alexandrian rather than the Palestinian canon, and, as we have said, the Greek and Roman Churches have followed their example in spite of the lists of more limited collections approved by various Church councils. But even could it be shown that the limits of the Old Testament were fixed by Ezra or by Christ and his apostles, where shall we find equal authority for the several books of the New Testament? It is matter of ancient record that the epistles of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, the Apocalypse of John, and the epistle to the Hebrews were in the early times regarded by some as spurious, and were long disputed.' But while these facts disclose the uncertainty of the limits of the canon, as fixed by any unquestionable authority, it must also be observed that over the

1 Contra Apion, book i, 8.

It is remarkable how a vague tradition, destitute of any trustworthy authority, and notably inconsistent with certain demonstrable facts, may be taken up by bold writer and affirmed as the end of all controversy on a most important question. Thus J. H. Hottinger, about the middle of the seventeenth century, declared: "Hitherto it has been an unquestioned axiom both among Jews and Christians (who have not a fungus for brains) that the canon of the Old Testament was fixed once for all, with divine authority, by Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue" (Thesaurus Philologicus, i, 2). This statement is without any proof, but has been repeated by scores of theologians, who seem never to have clearly comprehended the difference between demonstrable facts and bold assertions.

3

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book iii, chap. xxv; book ii, chap. xxiii.