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The Christian Life written by Thomas Arnold

T >> Thomas Arnold >> The Christian Life




But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help, to our
own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted Scripture truly; but
you tell us that the Scripture itself is not inspired in every part; you
tell us that there are in it chronological and historical difficulties,
if not errors; that there are possibly some interpolations; that even
the apostles may have been in some things mistaken, as in their belief
that the end of the world was at hand. Where shall we find a rest for
our feet, if you first take away from us our infallible interpreter, and
now tell us, that even if we can ourselves interpret it aright, yet that
we cannot be sure that the very Scripture itself is infallibly true?

It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures is not
in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred years
nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology, and
criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which now
present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of the case
arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice gradually:
first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness: then as men
began to read more critically, differences in the several Scripture
narratives of the same thing awakened attention; more lately, the
greater knowledge which has been gained of history, and of language, and
in all respects the more careful inquiry to which all ancient records
have been submitted, have brought other difficulties to light, and some
sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has
made use of those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the
doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians[19] in defence of
transubstantiation. The Romanists said,--"Here are all these
inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet you
believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the plenary
inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in spite of all the
difficulties which beset it, they may as well believe his doctrine of
the priesthood; and many, if I mistake not, alarmed by this
representation, have actually embraced his opinions.

[Footnote 19: On this proceeding of the Romanists, Stillingfleet
observes, "Methinks for the sake of our common Christianity you should
no more venture upon such bold and unreasonable comparisons. Do you in
earnest think it is all one whether men do believe a God, or providence,
or heaven, or hell, or the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they
do not believe transubstantiation? We have heard much of late about old
and new popery: but if this be the way of representing new popery, by
exposing the common articles of faith, it will set the minds of all good
Christians farther from it than ever. For upon the very same grounds we
may expect another parallel between the belief of a God and
transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of all
religion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of
proceeding; but our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I hope
hath fully appeared by this discourse."--_Doctrine of the Trinity and
Transubstantiation compared_, at the end.]

It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the Scripture
have been generally treated as objections to the truth of Christianity;
as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as such Christian
writers have replied to them. But then they become of such tremendous
interest, that it is scarcely possible to examine them fairly. If my
faith in God and my hope of eternal life is to depend on the accuracy of
a date or of some minute historical particular, who can wonder that I
should listen to any sophistry that may be used in defence of them, or
that I should force my mind to do any sort of violence to itself, when
life and death seem to hang on the issue of its decision?

Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyrenius's
government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind man as he
was going into Jericho or as he was leaving it; or whether Judas bought
himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the high priests: what
connexion can there be between such questions, and the truth of God's
love to man in the redemption, and of the resurrection of our Lord? Do
we give to any narrative in the world, to any statement, verbal or
written, no other alternative than that it must be either infallible or
unworthy of belief? Is not such an alternative so extravagant as to be a
complete reductio ad absurdum? And yet such is the alternative which men
seem generally to have admitted in considering the Scripture narratives:
if a single error can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the
credibility of the whole.

This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word
"inspiration," and by a still more unwarranted inference. An inspired
work is supposed to mean a work to which God has communicated his own
perfections; so that the slightest error or defect of any kind in it is
inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect in all points cannot
be inspired. This is the unwarranted interpretation of the word
"inspiration." But then follows the still more unwarranted
inference,--"If all the Scripture is not inspired, Christianity cannot
be true," an inference which is absolutely entitled to no other
consideration than what it may seem to derive from the number of those
who have either openly or tacitly maintained it.

Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired; the proofs of
their inspiration rise continually with the study of them. The
scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are
themselves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot conceive my
conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet I must
acknowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration
for themselves; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in
it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax the
Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be unfounded;
their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the most
important facts would remain untouched; the gospel of St. John would
still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucydides, which no
sane man has ever disbelieved.

So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture histories
are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation cannot be
maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted interpretation of the term
"inspiration," to suppose that it is equivalent to a communication of
the Divine perfections. Surely, many of our words and many of our
actions are spoken and done by the inspiration of God's Spirit, without
whom we can do nothing acceptable to God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so
inspire us as to communicate to us His own perfections? Are our best
words or works utterly free from error or from sin? All inspiration does
not then destroy the human and fallible part in the nature which it
inspires; it does not change man into God.

In one man, indeed, it was otherwise; but He was both God and man. To
Him the Spirit was given without measure; and as his life was without
sin, so his words were without error. But to all others the Spirit has
been given by measure; in almost infinitely different measure it is
true: the difference between the inspiration of the common and perhaps
unworthy Christian who merely said that "Jesus was the Lord," and that
of Moses, or St. Paul, and St. John, is almost to our eyes beyond
measuring. Still the position remains, that the highest degree of
inspiration given to man has still suffered to exist along with it a
portion of human fallibility and corruption.

Now, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, who
had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may suppose did any
merely human being enjoy a larger share of it. Endowed with the Spirit
as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more largely, as he became
more and more ripe for glory; endowed with the Spirit's extraordinary
gifts most eminently; favoured also with an abundance of revelations,
disclosing to him things ineffable and inconceivable,--are not his
writings to be most truly called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he
has told us of things not seen, or not seen as yet,--of Him who
pre-existed in the form of God before he was manifested in the form of
man,--of that great day, when we shall arise incorruptible, and meet our
Lord in the air, and be joined to him for ever,--can any reasonable mind
doubt, that in speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard from
God; that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to
disbelieve God?

Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an end in
the generation then existing. When he wrote to the Thessalonians some
years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he warned them, no doubt,
against expecting the end immediately: but he appears still to have
supposed that it would come in the lifetime of men then living. At a
later period, when writing to the Corinthians, his dissuasion of
marriage seems to rest mainly upon this impression; it is good not to
marry, "on account of the distress which is close at hand;" ([Greek:
dia taen enestosan anankaen]; compare 2 Thess. ii. 2, [Greek: hos hoti
enestaeken hae haemera tou Kyriou].) "The time is short," he adds; "the
fashion of this world is passing away." And again, when speaking of the
resurrection, he says emphatically, "the dead shall rise incorruptible,
and _we_ shall be changed;" where the pronoun being expressed in the
original, [Greek: chai haemeis allagaesometha], shows that by the term
"_we_," he does not mean the dead, but those who were to be alive at
Christ's coming. So again, still later, when writing from Rome to the
Philippians, he tells them "the Lord is at hand;" and later still, even
in his first epistle to Timothy, he charges Timothy "to keep his
commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord
Jesus Christ." These and other passages cannot without violence be
interpreted even singly in any other sense; but taking them together,
their meaning seems absolutely certain. Shall we say, then, that St.
Paul entertained and expressed a belief which the event did not verify?
We may say so, safely and reverently, in this instance; for here he was
most certainly speaking as a man, and not by revelation; as it has been
providentially ordered that our Lord's express words on this point have
been recorded--"Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels
in heaven." Or again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised the
Corinthians not to marry, chiefly on this ground; and that this throws a
suspicion over his directions in other points? But again it has been
ordered, that in this very place, and no where else in all his writing,
St. Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his judgment as a
Christian, and not speaking with divine authority;--the concluding words
of the chapter, [Greek: doko de kago pneuma theou echein] do not
signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that I have the
Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judgment by an
assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of common
Christians; but the words say, "And I think that I too have the Spirit
of God," "I too as well as others whom you might consult, so that my
judgment is no less worthy of attention than theirs." But it is his
Christian judgment only that he is giving, as he expressly declares, and
not his apostolical command or revelation; a distinction which he never
makes elsewhere, and which is in itself so striking, that we seem to
recognise in it God's especial mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's
general declarations of divine truth might not be shaken, because in one
particular point he was permitted to speak as a man, giving express
notice at the same time that he was doing so.

Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in which
the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be discerned in
St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by God's fondness to
prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St. Paul's divine authority
generally. And so in whatever points any error may be discoverable in
Scripture, we shall find either that the errors are of a kind wholly
unconnected with the revelation of what God has done to us, and of what
we are to do towards Him; and therefore are perfectly consistent with
the inspiration of the writer, unless we take that unwarranted notion of
inspiration which considers it as equivalent to a communication of God's
attributes perfectly; (and of this kind are any errors that may exist
either in points of physical science, or of chronology, or of history;)
or if there be any thing else which appears inconsistent with
inspiration, in the sense in which we really may and do apply it to the
Scriptures, namely, that they are a perfect guide and rule in all
matters concerning our relations with God, then we shall find that God
has made some special provision for the case, to remove what it
otherwise might have had of real difficulty.

This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to one
point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually
insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in
some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old
Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of the
Israelites; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion under the
law did not condemn; observe the actions recorded of persons who are
declared to have been eminently good, and to have received God's
especial blessing; and it is manifest that had not our Lord himself
vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened--either that
we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament
altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have
impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution
I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on
less authority than our Lord's. But his express declaration, that some
things in the law itself were permitted, because nothing higher could
then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points
what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not
so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old
Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect
to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole
question, and enables us to recognize the divinity of the Old Testament
and the holiness of its characters, without lying against our
consciences and our more perfect revelation, by justifying the actions
of those characters as right, essentially and abstractedly, although
they were excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to
the standard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law.

After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as well as
in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel that we may
safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any such there be, and
that he will not permit our faith either in him or in his holy word to
be shaken, because we do not attempt to close our eyes against truth,
nor seek to support our faith by sophistry and falsehood. Feeling what
the Scriptures are, I would not give unnecessary pain to any one by an
enumeration of those points in which the literal historical statement of
an inspired writer has been vainly defended. Some instances will
probably occur to most readers; others are perhaps not known, and never
will be known to many, nor is it at all needful or desirable that they
should know them. But if ever they are brought before them, let them not
try to put them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will injure our
faith. Let us not do evil that evil may be escaped from; and it is an
evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to do violence to
our understanding or to our reason in their own appointed fields; to
maintain falsehood in their despite, and reject the truth which they
sanction. If writers of Mr. Newman's school will persist in displaying
the difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not
been before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be
conjured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their
sense of truth,--to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods
which they are called upon to worship; sure that after all that can be
said, that system will remain false to the end; and their Christian
faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful
means, will stand no less unshaken.

In conclusion, Christian faith rests upon Scripture; and as it is in
itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the
Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate
conclusions of the understanding; nor is any "mortal leap" necessary at
any part of the process: nor any rejection of one truth, in order to
retain our hold on another. And if it should happen, as in all
probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some
respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views
different from those of our fathers, we should consider that our
fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances; that the
knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their opinions,
was a knowledge which they had not. Till this knowledge comes to us, let
us hold our fathers' opinions as they held them; but when it does come,
it will come by God's will, and to do his work: and that work will,
assuredly, not be our separation from our father's faith; but if we
follow God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, clinging to God the while
in personal devotion and obedience, we may be made aware of what to them
would have been an inexplicable difficulty, and which was, therefore,
hidden from their knowledge; and yet, "through the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved even as they."


THE END.