BY J. M. JOHNSTON, M.B.
THE Bible in our day has departed from its precedence among books, being swamped by the countless thousands of secular works, which in their worldliness are more palatable to our generation than the inflexible decrees of the Law of God, and more intelligible than the mystery of godliness made manifest in the flesh. It is with great regret, therefore, not unmixed with indignation, that one reads a leaflet issued by the Social Problems Committee of the United Free Church, written by Dr A. Herbert Gray, which obviously was intended to bring the recalcitrant multitudes back to their Bibles. In our humble judgment, this brochure contains statements and conveys impressions which will produce a diametrically opposite effect. From the human standpoint it is a strange mixture of platitudes and literary criticism; for a “publicity article”—if we may use the phrase—it is an apology for its theme, the Bible, instead of an arresting panegyric. Theologically, it is rankly rationalistic and seething with Higher Criticism. Its most ardent partisan must admit it lacks fire; its most critical judge, the Scriptures, condemn it as derogatory to the Word of God. Suffice it to say, that through the agency of five questions with replies, the author expresses, with admirable frankness, enough concerning his beliefs toward the Bible to have placed himself in the category of those who regard it as “childish,” “contradictory and incredible in some places.” As the subject matter of the leaflet merely expatiates on this framework, it is well to re-state them here in their entirety, as given in the leaflet:—
- Do we hold that every word in the Bible is true?—No, we do not.
- Do we accept the views of the Bible on scientific questions?—No, we do not.
- Do we approve all the moral sentiments expressed in the Bible?—No, certainly not.
- Do we regard the Bible as infallible history?—No.
- Do we agree with all the opinions of St Paul?—No, we do not.*
* These are quoted from this notorious leaflet—”How Do We Regard the Bible,” by A. H. Gray. Attention was called to this leaflet in the United Free Church Assembly of 1921 by the Rev. Dr Maclellan, Edinburgh, but on Dr Maclellan being induced to withdraw his motion, the matter was departed from.
—Editor.
An effectual criticism of the leaflet would require a treatise on the Infallibility of the Scriptures—a subject dealt with by competent men in many books. A few points, however, may be quoted here as remarks upon the answers and their enlargement in the body of the leaflet, and these, we believe, should be considered by every individual reader of Dr Gray’s dissertation.
Question (1) is really the whole issue conveying all the others in its wake.
Q. (1) and (4).—These answers announce to the world Dr Gray’s denial to such Divine Inspiration that the Bible is the Word of God, the whole Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God. He does not “depend for our spiritual food upon the letter of any writing. Our lives and religion are based upon a person who revealed God, and not really upon a mere written page.” How then, pray, are we to avoid dependence upon a mere written page in order to obtain knowledge of this Person? Are we to depend upon a supernatural revelation as our authority for faith, or are we to believe Scripture that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. x. 17); not by the words of men? With but a few reservations, Dr Gray would consign the Old Testament to the flames as a mass of inaccuracies and tedious history concerning “the wars and dynasties and customs of ancient Semitic peoples,” were it not for the fact that it enables him to trace the progress of men “up to the loftiest heights of spiritual perception which the race has yet attained.” We would now mark the views of that Person who revealed God, and ask should not the views of our Churches and our ministers be consistent with those of their avowed Lord and Master, in whose days on this earth, in the flesh, the Scriptures comprised the Old Testament? Are we to believe that the Holy Prophet would take one word from a book containing inaccuracies, “many of whose earlier conceptions stand condemned by the later teaching of the Bible itself”? Behold, how trenchantly He quoted the Scriptures, magnified, expounded, and defended them! His eternal voice proclaims above all the subtle philosophy of men, “The Scriptures cannot be broken” (John x. 35). It was the resurrected Christ, who, on the way to Emmaus, “beginning at Moses and the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke xxiv. 27)—the very Scriptures (the Old Testament), which according to our leaflet “we don’t virtually need!” “Many good Christians scarcely ever open it,” and yet the Lord preached Himself from it with His own mouth! Let whosoever confesses Christ follow him to the Scriptures—those who pick and choose their own Bible by selections of holy writ according to their own judgment, rejecting the rest, Christ hath already denounced—“If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead” (Luke xvi. 31). Dr Gray would have it that He who is the Word Incarnate “fed His soul on the great passages of the Old Testament, and it helps us to think with Him to read what He read.” This statement is frankly Socinian in doctrine, well-nigh blasphemy, by ignoring the Divine knowledge and power of Christ, and by presuming that sinful, corrupt creatures as we are can actually think in the same plane and spiritual mind as Himself. This boasting and puffing up of ourselves, talking glibly of “we Christians love our Bible,” “we do this and that,” is the cause of much of the doctrinal degeneration and unbelief in our day. It is veritably the fulfilment to us of Satan’s prediction in the garden, “Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. iii. 5) that we find a godly love of Christ and God’s Word at the crofter’s stool, and rampant unbelief and ignorance in the professor’s chair. We are amazed that anyone set apart and trained for the preaching of the Word could express such views upon the people of Moses, David, and Isaiah as described to us. Such a libel against the Israelites concerning “pagan ideas about God” is unprecedented, false, and futile. The whole of the ceremonial law, civil, religious, and political, was not of human agency, but “these are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab” (Deut. xxix. 1).
Q. (2).—This may briefly be dismissed. It is correct to say that the Bible is not a scientific text-book, but to state that “when we want scientific truth we go elsewhere,” is tantamount to saying that the Bible contains untruth, a truly terrible innuendo. If our ministers had been instant in season and out of season, preaching Law and Gospel, revealing the whole counsel of God, leaving science to be expounded by those competent to do so, the pews of their churches would not be empty to-day, and the name of science would not be dragged in the mud of unbelief. Real science is quite in accordance with God’s Word, can be explained by the Word, and is a means used by Him to show the marvels of His handiwork of creation.
Q. (3)—gives food for thought concerning the mental outlook of those “we Christians” who disapprove of some of the moral sentiments of the Bible. The leaflet, referring to Paul, states that “he is not the last word about Christian morality.” Evidently he is not to such people, but, praise God, there are still a few sinners who pray and comport themselves like the poor publican, and who do not lay to the charge of the Bible that its morality is not of the best. Let our author and his confrères read Romans i. and Galatians v., and proclaim, if they dare, that such a code of morals is not the last word in Christian morality, or any other kind of morality deserving of the name. May the critic, at this juncture, draw the attention of readers to a very concise moral law — God’s Moral Law — morality “summo in parvo,” the best in the smallest space. We wonder how many “Christians” in Scotland to-day, office-bearers and laymen, are prepared to give their assent, moral and religious, to these commandments both in profession and practice? We boldly assert that nine-tenths may be indicted under the first four commandments, especially during a Communion season in our large towns, where their programme results in something like the following:—Friday evening, a poorly attended “preparatory” service; Saturday, the football matches or pictures; Sabbath, “Sunday” newspapers and the Lord’s Table; Monday, theatre or dance, or even social gatherings in the church hall. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me!”
Q. (5).—This is a new feature among Bible doubters. We have been accustomed to read condemnations of the Old Testament, but here we have Higher Criticism, having flayed the skin off its victim, plunging the knife into its bowels; the next stroke will probably cut out the heart, i.e., the four Gospels. Obviously the prime question now for the people is whether they are to believe Paul or A. Herbert Gray—no other alternative is possible. The former in all his writings is extremely careful in proclaiming the authority by which he speaks, “A servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God” (Rom. i. 1). Paul asserts “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable,” etc. (II. Tim. iii. 16): (pasa graphe)—literally: “all that is written” in the Word of God is under and by God’s inspiration, including Paul’s own epistles. Dr Gray affirms that “the Bible is really not a book,” later, with a strange contradiction, he states, “The best description of the Bible is that it is a book about Christ.” He accuses Paul of doing “more than testify concerning Christ. He writes theology sometimes . . . and where he does not simply interpret Christ we feel we need not follow him.” To this, Peter, against whom the leaflet makes no specific objection, replies in one of his writings concerning the epistles “of our beloved brother Paul . . . according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you” (II. Pet. iii. 15, 16), that in them “are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.” If Simon Peter, one of the twelve, taught of the Holy Spirit, had such discernment regarding the truth and inspiration of Paul’s writings, it will be well for all of us to-day to follow him in the faith, and to condemn such teaching presented to us by A. Herbert Gray.
We would now ask our author and all Higher Critics, “If you hold that the Bible contains the Word of God admixed with human trash, will you be so good to bring your modern education, progress, and thought to bear upon it, and extract for us what you hold to be the Word of God?” We are safe in saying that our learned friends would not dare to do such a thing, lest their poor, misguided following would have the scales removed from their eyes and see the naked corruption of Higher Criticism. It is an aggravation of the heinousness of the leaflet we have discussed that it has been issued by the Social Problems Committee of the United Free Church, a Committee appointed by the highest court in that Church, publishing such statements regarding what is termed the Holy Bible! Unless the responsible Court of the U.F. Church repudiates the statements of that leaflet, we are quite at liberty to take it as declaratory of their doctrine and principles. If the people are taught that the Bible is as unstable a foundation as their worldly pleasures, they will most certainly take their fill of the whirligig of amusements and leave the ministers to play with such an uncertainty as they say the Scriptures are. The Bible will be despised so long as it is described as a text-book of theology or moral philosophy, but as surely as the sun rises in the east, so surely will the Bible be the Statute Book when the last trump shall sound. Let us take heed in our day lest the Lord speak to us as He did to Israel—”O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts . . . they have seduced my people, saying, Peace, and there was no peace” (Ezek. xiii. 5, etc.). “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away! But the Word of the Lord endureth for ever” (I. Pet. i. 24).