CHAPTER VII

AUTHORITY AS A GROUND OF FAITH-continued

In this lecture I wish to consider further the relations of Faith and Authority. We have considered the theory of an infallible authority vested in the Church, and have shown how, just as in the Roman Empire authority became more and more centralised until the emperor became a sultan, so in the Roman Church authority has come to be vested in one man. When this one man says, 'I am tradition,' the last restrictions on autocracy have been removed, for the 'living voice of the Church' is independent of the past. Thus the principle of authority, in completing its evolution, turns against and destroys itself. At the same time, the regula fidei, in the hands of some bold reformers, has become independent of existential fact. The only authority is the course of history, and the Church is a Proteus who justifies each metamorphosis in turn by the plea Il faut vivre. These two developments may be said to constitute a reductio ad absurdum of Church authority as an independent ground of Faith.

We have now to consider the Protestant alternative to the infallible Church-the infallible Book. 'The Bible,' said Chillingworth, ' is the religion of Protestants.'1

Plato long ago exposed the necessary limitations of the written word as a guide. 'When they are once written down,' he says, words are tumbled about anywhere

1 The words are written on his tombstone, but they do not deserve to be perpetuated, for they are false. Protestantism is the democracy of religion. Not the Bible, but belief in the inspiration of the individual is the religion of Protestants.

among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not; and if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.'1 There is another kind of writing, he goes on, graven on the tablets of the mind, of which the written word is no more than an image. This kind is alive; it has a soul; and it can defend itself. The wisdom of these utterances has been amply proved by the history of the doctrine of Inspiration in the Christian Church.2

It was not till long after the Captivity that the religion of Israel became the religion of a Book. While prophetism flourished, the living word of the prophet was more than the written scroll; but no sooner had the fount of prophecy began to run dry than rigid and mechanical views of inspiration began to be applied to the sacred literature. The canonisation of the Law, which began in 621, was accomplished for all time in 444 B.C. The historical books, called the former prophets,' obtained nearly their final form during the exile, but the text was not inviolable till long afterwards. The list of prophetical books, the latter prophets,' was closed about 200 B.C., according to Cornill. The third section of the Canon contains second century writings, but they were all supposed to be much earlier. The Canon was practically settled more than a century before the birth of our Lord.4 It excluded certain books, like Ecclesiasticus, which revealed their late origin, while admitting the pseudonymous Daniel and Ecclesiastes. The Book of

1 Plato, Phaedrus, p. 275.

2 There is a remarkable echo of this passage in Milton (Christian Doctrine i. p. 30). It is difficult to conjecture the purpose of Providence in committing the writings of the New Testament to such uncertain and varying guardianship, unless it were to teach us that the Spirit which is given to us is a more certain guide than Scripture, whom therefore it is our duty to follow.'

3 Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, p. 476. Cf. also Encyclopædia Biblica, p. 665.

4 So Bishop Ryle thinks; but no certainty has been arrived at.

Wisdom can have been excluded only because it was written in Greek. The scribes seem to have acted on the belief that the age of inspired prophecy was now past, and not to have purposely admitted any recent work. The grandson of the son of Sirach does not dare to claim for his grandfather's book so much inspiration as the latter clearly believed himself to have possessed. The Canon was being closed.

But the rigid doctrine of inspiration was not formulated at once, as is shown by the state of the text of the LXX.1 Only by degrees were the other Scriptures raised to the same position as the Law.

Meanwhile, the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture was at once making the written word more august, and removing objections to belief in its divine character. Hatch has shown that this method is Greek in its origin, and goes back as far as the fifth century B.C.2 Plato deprecates it. 'It would take a long and laborious and not very happy lifetime,' says Socrates, to find the allegorical value of all the old myths. It was, however, pursued by apologists for the Pagan legends; and when the Alexandrian Jews adopted Greek culture, they found the same method serviceable in meeting objections to their own sacred literature. Philo is our great instance of this, which he calls the method of the Greek mysteries.' In his hands 'every living figure who passes across the stage of Scripture ceases for all practical purposes to be himself, and becomes a dim personification. Moses is intelligence; Aaron is speech; Enoch is repentance; Noah righteousness. Abraham is virtue acquired by learning; Isaac is innate virtue; Jacob is virtue obtained by struggle; Lot is sensuality; Ishmael is sophistry; Esau is rude disobedience; Leah is patient virtue; Rachel innocence.' 3 Thus the whole Bible becomes an insipid

1 Sanday, Inspiration, p. 262.

2 Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 59.

2 Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 145.

ethical and metaphysical romance, the interpretation of which is either an arbitrary fancy or a learned science.

The Apostolic Fathers are almost equally absurd in their exegesis; but they propound no theory of inspiration. Justin Martyr is the first to use the figure of a man playing on a harp, which he says, is like the manner in which the Divine Spirit uses righteous men, to make what sound he will.1 The use of allegory was first elaborated (with reference to Christian literature) by the Gnostics, and is opposed by Tertullian. But it took firm root in Alexandria; and this was one of the most characteristic differences between the Alexandrian school and that of Antioch which discouraged allegorism. Irenaeus advocates the most mechanical view of inspiration; Tertullian lays more stress on the character of the medium chosen.2 Origen's principles of exegesis permit him to acknowledge many discrepancies in the New Testament. There are many incidents in the Gospel, he says plainly, which are not literally true. As the evolution of Catholicism proceeded, the authority of the Church, and of the tradition' guarded by the Church, grew steadily at the expense of the Bible. The authority of the latter was not disputed, but it was ignored; the majority had small opportunities of even knowing what the Scriptures contained. The Schoolmen improved upon Origen's allegorism by finding a fourfold sense in Holy Scripture—literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical. Their subservience to Patristic exegesis is quite Talmudic. Alcuin says that he has written 'cautissimo stylo providens ne quid contrarium Patrum sensibus ponerem.'

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So matters stood when the Reformation came. By the Reformers allegorism was attacked at once, especially in England. Tyndale writes very sensibly: 'We may

1 Athenagoras, Leg. 9, uses the same figure. Hippolytus, too, retains it, but guards it against the error that the prophet loses his senses while under inspiration.

2 Cf. Bethune Baker, Christian Doctrine, p. 46.

borrow similitudes or allegories from the Scriptures, and apply them to our purposes; which allegories are no sense of the Scriptures, but free things besides the Scriptures altogether in the liberty of the Spirit. Such allegory proveth nothing; it is a mere simile. God is a Spirit, and all His words are spiritual, and His literal sense is spiritual.' So Colet says: The New Testament has for the most part the sense that appears on the surface; nor is one thing said and another meant, but the very thing is meant which is said, and the sense is wholly literal.'

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In Germany, Luther also pronounced against allegorism, and with his habitual intemperance of language described allegory as mere 'monkey-tricks,'' dirt' or 'scum.' We may follow St. Paul's example, he says, and occasionally use allegories as spangles and pretty ornaments, but that is all.

This return to sane methods of interpretation was dearly purchased. The allegorical method had become very futile in the hands of the schoolmen; but for Origen it was a means of accommodation by which moral and other difficulties in Holy Scripture could be set aside. The theory of verbal inspiration was far less difficult under medieval Catholicism than for a modern Protestant, for the literal sense could be disregarded in favour of some fanciful, but edifying interpretation. The combination of the literal sense with verbal inspiration first appeared at the Reformation; 2 and it has been the great weakness of Protestantism ever since. Of course, the system could not be consistently applied. Luther himself, very naturally but very inconsistently, introduced a new allegorism. His six rules of hermeneutics are:-(1) necessity of grammatical knowledge; (2) importance of taking into consideration times and

1 Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 300.

Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. vii. p. 247.