BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS.
ONE had hoped that, as one result of God’s tremendous judgments upon this and other countries of Europe since August, 1914, the Churches of Scotland would henceforth esteem abettors of the infidel modern Biblical criticism, a criticism due largely to German culture, at a discount. So far as the United Free Church of Scotland is concerned, one had hoped that an utterance, which found expression in a certain number of the Monthly Record of that denomination towards the end of last year, in the sense that the Churches of this country should now bid farewell to German Rationalism and turn to the simple gospel, was symptomatic of a general revision of values going on within that denomination. But, if we may judge from the type of men the United Free Church still delights to honour, we must needs conclude that, in the sentiment of the Monthly Record, to which we have made allusion, the editor was speaking merely for himself—that the editor’s utterances were not symptomatic of a general change of attitude for the better.
The death of the late Rev. Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the United Free Church College, Glasgow, and Professor of Church History in the same institution, brought it about that the U.F. General Assembly had to make two new appointments for their Glasgow College. For the Principalship, the Rev. James Denney, D.D., Professor of N. T. Exegesis in the Glasgow College, had no rival, either in Presbytery, or Synod, or Assembly. Dr. Denney is a distinguished scholar, and apparently a very capable administrator, and thus, from the point of view of natural endowments, had the highest claims upon his Church. But, if we should say that he deserved well of his Church because of his having quitted himself as a man, standing fast in the faith (1 Cor. xvi. 13), we should utter what could not stand the light of day. As far back as 1892, the writer heard Dr. Denney, by way of challenge, declare, on the floor of the General Assembly, that the only sense in which he allowed the Bible to be infallible amounted to this, “That the Bible would infallibly save as many as committed themselves to its teaching.” His principal productions in the interval, as “Studies in Theology” and “Jesus and the Gospel,” are written as by one who takes up his principium in that diminished or weakened sense.
A good illustration, of what the inspiration of the Scriptures means to Dr. Denney, may be taken from his treatment of that live subject, “The man of sin,” in a commentary, on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, which he contributed to what is known as “The Expositor’s Bible.” Dr. Denney is satisfied that, when the Apostle Paul speaks of the man of sin, he must mean not a system, nor a series of persons, but an individual human person. He is equally satisfied that the temple of God in which this man was to sit meant literally the temple in Jerusalem, which was still standing when 2 Thessalonians was written. In a word, according to Dr. Denney, the Apostle Paul anticipated that whilst the temple in Jerusalem was still standing, a certain man, the very incarnation of evil, should take up his place in the temple, and so defile it; and that when this took place the end of the world should have come. Of course, the Apostle Paul’s anticipations were not realised. But what of that? “Some,” writes Dr. Denney, “will think that objection final, and some will think it futile; I agree with the last.” In sober fact, I would say that if the Apostle Paul could lead his readers astray in that way, we could have little more confidence in him as a revealer of the future, than we can have in Pastor Russell as an interpreter of prophecy after his miscalculations respecting the end of the world, which was to have taken place in October last year.
What leaves one the more astonished that Dr. Denney should have taken the man of sin, and the temple of God, in a sense which makes the Apostle Paul a false prophet, is the circumstance that Dr. Denney has intelligence and sanity enough to say further on: “There have been Popes who could have sat for Paul’s picture of the man of sin better than any characters known to history. . . . And individuals apart . . . the hierarchical system of the Papacy, with the monarchical priest at its head, incarnates and fosters that very spiritual pride of which the man of sin is the final embodiment.”
But I am not taking up this part of Dr. Denney’s Commentary for an adequate criticism, I am using it simply as illustrating well the irreverent liberties which the new Principal of the U.F. Church, Glasgow College, takes with the word of God. The same Assembly that made Dr. Denney Principal, made the Rev. James Moffatt, D.D., Professor of Church History.
Now, in comparison with Dr. Moffatt, Dr. Denney is almost orthodox. Nothing, at a greater remove from the common faith of the Church of God, concerning the canon and inspiration of the Scriptures, than Dr. Moffatt’s “Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament,” ever appeared from the pen of a Scottish minister. Shortly after that volume of his appeared, the present writer drew attention to the extreme Philistinism of Dr. Moffatt’s attitude towards the canon and inspiration of the New Testament Scriptures. I shall not now repeat what readers may verify by a reference to the Free Presbyterian Magazine, October, 1911, save, in a word to say, by way of a reminder, that, according to Dr. Moffatt, the Church has no reason to feel satisfied that, in the writings ascribed to Peter, John, James, Matthew, Mark, we have a testimony for the truth of the Gospel, borne by persons who had been privileged with the fellowship and companionship of Jesus Christ in the days of His flesh; nor even, in the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, have we the testimony of one who had spoken to those who accompanied our Lord on this earth, I mean of Luke the Physician.
Shortly after Dr. Moffatt published his “Introduction,” he got an appointment as Theological Professor, connected with the Congregational Church, in Oxford, and we are free to say that our love to our native land caused us to rejoice on account of what we could not regard but as a good riddance. And now to think, at a time when God’s providence is confirming the truth of His word in a way more solemn than our fathers or grandfathers had experience of, that he should be called back to fill a Professoriate in a Presbyterian Church in Scotland—it is too sad. As already said, I am not to review Dr. Moffatt’s “Introduction” over again, but I would now like to point out that the evil effects of Dr. Moffatt’s teaching are making themselves felt in quarters where one would not readily expect to meet with such bad effects. The Established Church of Scotland honoured the Rev. William Malcolm MacGregor, D.D., of St. Andrews United Free Church, Edinburgh, making him, in 1913, the first non-Established minister to lecture on the Baird Foundation. Now, Dr. MacGregor was brought up in an evangelical home, his father, as I take it, being the late worthy Rev. Duncan Macgregor, Dundee. But what of the son? Judging from his Baird Lectures, one would say that he has thoroughly imbibed Dr. Moffatt’s extremely Philistinish view touching the canon and inspiration of Holy Scripture. Dr. MacGregor’s Baird Lectures, so far as one can understand them, seem to be written from the point of view of what commonly passes as Mysticism, rather than from that of a robust Evangelicalism, and, naturally enough, result in what I, at least, cannot distinguish from a theoretical Antinomianism—the one evil “ism,” the one only heresy, as Dr. John Duncan has put it. Dr. MacGregor finds the legal element in any form so intolerable, that a rule of faith, in the sense in which the Disruption Fathers held the Bible, seems unbearable to him. It is not strange, therefore, that he should make Dr. Moffatt’s standpoint his own. Practically all the New Testament writings that Dr. MacGregor will admit to have actually been written by the men whose name the writings bear, is but a few letters by the Apostle Paul—just the point of view of the old discredited Tubingen school. In what other light, for example, could one understand the opening sentence of the first paragraph on page 172 of Dr. MacGregor’s Baird Lectures?—”It is not easy,” says he, “with certainty, to ascertain the mind of the Church at this time, for the writings which exist under the names of Peter and John are so largely coloured by the influence of Paul’s teaching that they do not take us far.” Similarly Dr. MacGregor, like Dr. Moffatt, is not sure that the Apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians, although all the mss. of that Epistle in existence bear as part of the text of the Epistle that Paul was the author.
But again I have to say that I have not taken up the Baird Lectures of 1913 for a criticism in the general sense, but merely to point out how true it is that evil communications corrupt good manners; and to show how, because the United Free Church did not deal with Dr. Moffatt in 1911 as they ought to have done, the canker of infidelity is destroying their faith, as of former years in the divine authorship of the Old Testament Scriptures, so, now, in the divine authorship of the New Testament Scriptures.
I should like to obviate two erroneous impressions which some seem to have taken on. Some, on the one hand, are ready to think that if a Free Presbyterian points out the unsatisfactoriness, from the evangelical standpoint, of the teaching of United Free Church ministers and professors, it is because it gives us some satisfaction to be able to point to the unsoundness of the faith of men from whom we have separated. But the imputation of such motives, as influencing us, we regard as a slander; for we can honestly say that nothing would please us more than tokens shewing that these denominations that had forsaken the standpoint of our Lord and His Apostles towards the sacred Scriptures were retracing their steps. We should hail such a phenomenon with delight. It follows that, when the indications are all the other way, we are filled with sadness, and all the more so when we think of the way in which unwillingness to walk in the steps of our Lord and His Apostles has brought such sore judgments upon the earth; as at the present hour.
Again, others not so ready to impute to us unworthy motives, may be inclined to think that for all how sad it may seem, there is no escape for it; that, really, it is because men like Dr. Moffatt and Dr. MacGregor are more learned and more true to the facts, as known, that they must express themselves in a way so disconcerting to traditional orthodoxy. But that is sheer nonsense. It is not so much a matter of head as of heart. Men as learned as they, are as sound in the faith as regards the cause and inspiration of the Bible as, it will generally be allowed, Dr. John Owen was, in the accepted and ordinary sense. And to persons thinking that scholarship must mean looseness as regards the authenticity and truthfulness of the New Testament Scriptures, one would like to recommend a reading of Sir W. M. Ramsay’s latest work: “The Bearing of recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament.” It is a fine tonic, coming as it does in these days, wherein spurious culture abounds, from one of whom we may be humbly proud as a fine instance of true Scottish culture—one who thinks years of arduous and very exacting labours well spent, since these labours have resulted in a firmer conviction of the genuineness in every sense of the New Testament writings.
We regret that, owing to pressure on our space, we must hold over the Diary of Dugald Buchanan and other articles till next month.