Sermons and Essays

From the Works of B. B. Warfield

Table of Contents

Annihilationism

Apologetics

Atonement

Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity, The

Biblical Idea of Revelation, The

Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith, A

Calvin as a Theologian

Calvin's Doctrine of God

Calvin's Doctrine of the Creation

Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity

Calvinism

Calvinism Today

Charles Darwin's Religious Life: A Sketch in Spiritual Biography

Children in the Hands of the Arminians, The

Christ Our Sacrifice

Christ that Paul Preached, The

Christian Baptism

Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation, The

Divine Origin of the Bible, The

Edwards and the New England Theology

Election

Foresight of Jesus, The

Formation of the Canon of the New Testament, The

Glorified Christ, The

God

God Our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

God's Immeasurable Love

God-Inspired Scripture

Gospel of Paul, The

Gospel of the Covenant, The

Idea and Theories of Revelation, The

Idea of Systematic Theology, The

Imitating the Incarnation

Imputation

Incarnate Truth

Inspiration

Inspiration and Criticism

Inspiration of the Bible, The

Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy

It Says: Scripture Says: God Says

Jesus Mission, According to His Own Testimony

Jesus Only

John Calvin: The Man and His Work

Lamb of God, The

Latest Phase of Historical Rationalism, The

Making of the Westminster Confession, The

Millennium and the Apocalypse, The

Modern Theories of the Atonement

Mysticism and Christianity

New Testament Terminology of Redemption, The

Ninety-Five Theses in Their Theological Significance, The

On Faith in Its Psychological Aspects

On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race

On the Biblical Notion of Renewal

Person of Christ, The

Plan of Salvation, The

Polemics of Infant Baptism, The

Power of God unto Salvation, The

Predestination

Predestination in the Reformed Confessions

Prodigal Son, The

Prophesies of St. Paul, The

Real Problem of Inspiration, The

Redeemer and Redemption

Review of Lewis Sperry Chafer's He That Is Spiritual, A

Right of Systematic Theology, The

Risen Jesus, The

Some Thoughts on Predestination

Spirit of God in the Old Testament, The

Task and Method of Systematic Theology, The

The Archæology of the Mode of Baptism

The Twentieth-Century Christ

Theology of John Calvin, The

Theology of the Reformation, The

Westminster Assembly and Its Work, The

Annihilationism

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., i. pp. 183-186 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1908).

I. DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION OF THEORIES 

A term designating broadly a large body of theories which unite in contending that human beings pass, or are put, out of existence altogether. These theories fall logically into three classes, according as they hold that all souls, being mortal, actually cease to exist at death; or that, souls being naturally mortal, only those persist in life to which immortality is given by God; or that, though souls are naturally immortal and persist in existence unless destroyed by a force working upon them from without, wicked souls are actually thus destroyed. These three classes of theories may be conveniently called respectively, (1) pure mortalism, (2) conditional immortality, and (3) annihilationism proper. 

II. PURE MORTALISM 

The common contention of the theories which form the first of these classes is that human life is bound up with the organism, and that therefore the entire man passes out of being with the dissolution of the organism. The usual basis of this contention is either materialistic or pantheistic or at least pantheizing (e.g. realistic); the soul being conceived in the former case as but a function of organized matter and necessarily ceasing to exist with the dissolution of the organism, in the latter case as but the individualized manifestation of a much more extensive entity, back into which it sinks with the dissolution of the organism in connection with which the individualization takes place. Rarely, however, the contention in question is based on the notion that the soul, although a spiritual entity distinct from the material body, is incapable of maintaining its existence separate from the body. The promise of eternal life is too essential an element of Christianity for theories like these to thrive in a Christian atmosphere. It is even admitted now by Stade, Oort, Schwally, and others that the Old Testament, even in its oldest strata, presupposes the persistence of life after death - which used to be very commonly denied. Nevertheless, the materialists (e.g. Feuerbach, Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, Häckel) and pantheists (Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Strauss; cf. S. Davidson, "The Doctrine of Last Things," London, 1882, pp. 132-133) still deny the possibility of immortality; and in exceedingly wide circles, even among those who would not wholly break with Christianity, men permit themselves to cherish nothing more than a "hope" of it (S. Hoekstra, "De Hoop der Onsterfelijkheid," Amsterdam, 1867; L. W. E. Rauwenhoff, " Wijsbegeerte van den Godsdienst," Leiden, 1887, p. 811; cf. the "Ingersoll Lectures"). 

III. CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY 

The class of theories to which the designation of "conditional immortality" is most properly applicable, agree with the theories of pure mortalism in teaching the natural mortality of man in his entirety, but separate from them in maintaining that this mortal may, and in many cases does, put on immortality. Immortality in their view is a gift of God, conferred on those who have entered into living communion with Him. Many theorists of this class adopt frankly the materialistic doctrine of the soul, and deny that it is a distinct entity; they therefore teach that the soul necessarily dies with the body, and identify life beyond death with the resurrection, conceived as essentially a recreation of the entire man. Whether all men are subjects of this recreative resurrection is a mooted question among themselves. Some deny it, and affirm therefore that the wicked perish finally at death, the children of God alone attaining to resurrection. The greater part, however, teach a resurrection for all, and a "second death," which is annihilation, for the wicked (e.g. Jacob Blain, "Death not Life," Buffalo, 1857, pp. 39-42; Aaron Ellis and Thomas Read, "Bible versus Tradition," New York, 1853, pp. 13-121; George Storrs, "Six Sermons," New York, 1856, pp. 29 ft.; Zenas Campbell, "The Age of Gospel Light," Hartford, 1854). There are many, on the other hand, who recognize that the soul is a spiritual entity, disparate to, though conjoined in personal union with, the body. In their view, however, ordinarily at least, the soul requires the body either for its existence, or certainly for its activity. C. F. Hudson, for example ("Debt and Grace," New York, 1861, pp. 263-264), teaches that the soul lies unconscious, or at least inactive, from death to the resurrection; then the just rise to an ecstasy of bliss; the unjust, however, start up at the voice of God to become extinct in the very act. Most, perhaps, prolong the second life of the wicked for the purpose of the infliction of their merited punishment; and some make their extinction a protracted process (e.g. H. L. Hastings, "Retribution or the Doom of the Ungodly," Providence, 1861, pp. 77, 153; cf. Horace Bushnell, "Forgiveness and Law," New York, 1874, p. 147, notes 5 and 6; James Martineau, "A Study of Religion," Oxford, 11888, p. 114). For further discussion of the theory of conditional immortality, see "Immortality." 

IV. ANNIHILATIONISM PROPER 

Already, however, in speaking of extinction we are passing beyond the limits of "conditionalism" pure and simple and entering the region of annihilationism proper. Whether we think of this extinction as the result of the punishment or as the gradual dying out of the personality under the enfeebling effects of sin, we are no longer looking at the soul as naturally mortal and requiring a new gift of grace to keep it in existence, but as naturally immortal and suffering destruction at the hands of an inimical power. And this becomes even more apparent when the assumed mortalism of the soul is grounded not in its nature but in its sinfulness; so that the theory deals not with souls as such, but with sinful souls, and it is a question of salvation by a gift of grace to everlasting life or of being left to the disintegrating effects of sin. The point of distinction between theories of this class and "conditionalism" is that these theories with more or less consistency or heartiness recognize what is called the "natural immortality of the soul," and are not tempted therefore to think of the soul as by nature passing out of being at death (or at any time), and yet teach that the actual punishment inflicted upon or suffered by the wicked results in extinction of being. They may differ among themselves, as to the time when this extinction takes place - whether at death, or at the general judgment - or as to the more or less extended or intense punishment accorded to the varying guilt of each soul. They may differ also as to the means by which the annihilation of the wicked soul is accomplished - whether by a mere act of divine power, cutting off the sinful life, or by the destructive fury of the punishment inflicted, or by the gradual enervating and sapping working of sin itself on the personality. They retain their common character as theories of annihilation proper so long as they conceive the extinction of the soul as an effect wrought on it to which it succumbs, rather than as the natural exit of the soul from a life which could be continued to it only by some operation upon it raising it to a higher than its natural potency. 

V. MINGLING OF THEORIES 

It must be borne in mind that the adherents of these two classes of theories are not very careful to keep strictly within the logical limits of one of the classes. Convenient as it is to approach their study with a definite schematization in hand, it is not always easy to assign individual writers with definiteness to one or the other of them. It has become usual, therefore, to speak of them all as annihilationists or of them all as conditionalists; annihilationists because they all agree that the souls of the wicked cease to exist; conditionalists because they all agree that therefore persistence in life is conditioned on a right relation to God. Perhaps the majority of those who call themselves conditionalists allow that the mortality of the soul, which is the prime postulate of the conditionalist theory, is in one way or another connected with sin; that the souls of the wicked persist in existence after death and even after the judgment, in order to receive the punishment due their sin; and that this punishment, whether it be conceived as infliction from without or as the simple consequence of sin, has much to do with their extinction. When so held, conditionalism certainly falls little short of annihilationism proper. 

VI. EARLY HISTORY OF ANNIHILATIONISTIC THEORIES 

Some confusion has arisen, in tracing the history of the annihilationist theories, from confounding with them enunciations by the earlier Church Fathers of the essential Christian doctrine that the soul is not self-existent, but owes, as its existence, so its continuance in being, to the will of God. The earliest appearance of a genuinely annihilationist theory in extant Christian literature is to be found apparently in the African apologist Arnobius, at the opening of the fourth century (cf. Salmond, "The Christian Doctrine of Immortality," Edinburgh, 1901, pp. 473--474; Falke, "Die Lehre von der ewigen Verdammnis," Eisenach, 1892, pp. 27-28). It seemed to him impossible that beings such as men could either owe their being directly to God or persist in being without a special gift of God; the unrighteous must therefore be gradually consumed in the fires of Gehenna. A somewhat similar idea was announced by the Socinians in the sixteenth century (O. Fock, "Der Socinianismus," Kiel, 1847, pp. 714 ff.). On the positive side, Faustus Socinus himself thought that man is mortal by nature and attains immortality only by grace. On the negative side, his followers (Crell, Schwaltz, and especially Ernst Sohner) taught explicitly that the second death consists in annihilation, which takes place, however, only after the general resurrection, at the final judgment. From the Socinians this general view passed over to England where it was adopted, not merely, as might have been anticipated, by men like Locke ("Reasonableness of Christianity," § 1), Hobbes ("Leviathan"), and Whiston, but also by Churchmen like Hammond and Warburton, and was at least played with by non-conformist leaders like Isaac Watts. The most remarkable example of its utilization in this age, however, is supplied by the non-juror Henry Dodwell (1706). Insisting that the "soul is a principle naturally mortal," Dodwell refused to allow the benefit of this mortality to any but those who lived and died without the limits of the proclamation of the gospel; no "adult person whatever," he insisted, "living where Christianity is professed, and the motives of its credibility are sufficiently proposed, can hope for the benefit of actual mortality." Those living in Christian lands are therefore all immortalized, but in two classes: some "by the pleasure of God to punishment," some "to reward by their union with the divine baptismal Spirit." It was part of his contention that "none have the power of giving this divine immortalizing Spirit since the apostles but the bishops only," so that his book was rather a blast against the antiprelatists than a plea for annihilationism; and it was replied to as such by Samuel Clarke (1706), Richard Baxter (1707), and Daniel Whitby (1707). During the eighteenth century the theory was advocated also on the continent of Europe (e.g. E. J. K. Walter, "Prüfung wichtiger Lehren theologischen und philosophischen Inhalts," Berlin, 1782), and almost found a martyr in the Neuchâtel pastor, Ferdinand Olivier Petitpierre, commonly spoken of by the nickname of "No Eternity" (cf. C. Berthoud, "Les quatre Petitpierres," Neuchâtel, 1875). In the first half of the nineteenth century also it found sporadic adherents, as e.g. C. H. Weisse in Germany (Theoloqische Studien und Kritiken, ix. 1836, pp. 271-340) and H. H. Dobney in England ("Notes of Lectures on Future Punishment," London, 1844; new edition, "On the Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment," 1846). 

VII. NINETEENTH CENTURY THEORIES 

The real extension of the theory belongs, however, only to the second half of the nineteenth century. During this period it attained, chiefly through the able advocacy of it by C. F. Hudson and E. White, something like a popular vogue in English-speaking lands. In French-speaking countries, while never becoming really popular, it has commanded the attention of an influential circle of theologians and philosophers (as J. Rognon, "L'Immortalité native et l'enseignement biblique," Montauban, 1894, p. 7; but cf. A. Gretillat, "Exposé de théologie systématique," Paris, iv. 1890, p. 602). In Germany, on the other hand, it has met with less acceptance, although it is precisely there that it has been most scientifically developed, and has received the adherence of the most outstanding names. Before the opening of this half century, in fact, it had gained the great support of Richard Rothe's advocacy ("Theologische Ethik," 3 vols., Wittenberg, 1845-1848; ed. 2, 5 vols., 1867-1871, §§ 470-472; "Dogmatik," Heidelberg, II. ii. 1870, §§ 47-48, especially p. 158), and never since has it ceased to find adherents of mark, who base their acceptance of it sometimes on general grounds, but increasingly on the view that the Scriptures teach, not a doctrine of the immortality of the soul, but a reanimation by resurrection of God's people. The chief names in this series are C. H. Weisse ("Philosophische Dogmatik," Leipzig, 1855-1862, § 970); Hermann Schultz ("Voraussetzungen der christlichen Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit," Göttingen, 1861, p. 155; cf. "Grundriss der evangelischen Dogmatik," 1892, p. 154: "This condemnation of the second death may in itself, according to the Bible, be thought of as existence in torment, or as painful cessation of existence. Dogmatics without venturing to decide, will find the second conception the more probable, biblically and dogmatically"); H. Plitt ("Evangelische Glaubenslehre," Gotha, 1863); F. Brandes (Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1872, pp. 545, 550); A. Schäffer ("Auf der Neige des Lebens," Gotha, 1884; "Was ist Glück?" 1891, pp. 290-294); G. Runze ("Unsterblichkeit und Auferstehung," Berlin, i. 1894, pp. 167, 204: "Christian Eschatology teaches not a natural immortality for the soul, but a reanimation by God's almighty power. . . . The Christian hope of reanimation makes the actualization of a future blessed existence depend entirely on faith in God"); L. Lemme ("Endlosigkeit der Verdammnis," Berlin, 1899, pp. 31-32,60-61); cf. R. Kabisch ("Die Eschatologie des Paulus," Göttingen, 1893). 

The same general standpoint has been occupied in Holland, for example, by Jonker (Theologische Studiën, i.). The first advocate of conditionalism in French was the Swiss pastor, E. Pétavel-Olliff, whose first book, "La Fin du mal," appeared in 1872 (Paris), followed by many articles in the French theological journals and by "Le Problème de l'immortalité" (1891; E. T. London, 1892), and "The Extinction of Evil" (E. T. 1889). In 1880 C. Byse issued a translation of E. White's chief book. The theory not only had already been presented by A. Bost ("Le Sort des méchants," 1861), but had been taken up by philosophers of such standing as C. Lambert ("Le Système du monde moral," 1862), P. Janet (Revue des deux mondes, 1863), and C. Renouvier ("La Critique philosophique," 1878) ; and soon afterward Charles Secretan and C. Ribot (Revue theoloqique, 1885, No. 1) expressed their general adherence to it. Perhaps the more distinguished advocacy of it on French ground has come, however, from the two professors Sabatier, Auguste and Armand, the one from the point of view of exegetical, the other from that of natural science. Says the one ("L'Origine du péché dans le système théologique de Paul," Paris, 1887, p. 38): "The impenitent sinner never emerges from the fleshly state, and consequently remains subject to the law of corruption and destruction, which rules fleshly beings; they perish and are as if they had never been." Says the other ("Essai sur l'immortalité au point de vue du naturalisme évolutioniste," ed. 2, Paris, 1895, pp. 198, 229): "The immortality of man is not universal and necessary; it is subject to certain conditions, it is conditional, to use an established expression." "Ultraterrestrial immortality will be the exclusive lot of souls which have arrived at a sufficient degree of integrity and cohesion to escape absorption or disintegration." 

VIII. ENGLISH ADVOCATES 

The chief English advocate of conditional immortality has undoubtedly been Edward White whose "Life in Christ" was published first in 1846 (London), rewritten in 1875 (ed. 3, 1878). His labors were seconded, however, not only by older works of similar tendency such as George Storrs's "Are the Wicked Immortal?" (ed. 21, New York, 1852), but by later teaching from men of the standing of Archbishop Whately ("Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State," ed. 8, London, 1859), Bishop Hampden, J. B. Heard ("The Tripartite Nature of Man," ed. 4, Edinburgh, 1875), Prebendary Constable ("The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment," London, 1868), Prebendary Row ("Future Retribution," London, 1887), J. M. Denniston ("The Perishing Soul," ed. 2, London, 1874), S. Minton ("The Glory of Christ," London, 1868), J. W. Barlow ("Eternal Punishment," Cambridge, 1865), and T. Davis ("Endless Suffering not the Doctrine of Scripture," London, 1866). Less decisive but not less influential advocacy has been given to the theory also by men like Joseph Parker, R. W. Dale, and J. A. Beet ("The Last Things," London, 1897). Mr. Beet (who quotes Clemance, "Future Punishment," London, 1880, as much of his way of thinking) occupies essentially the position of Schultz. "he sacred writers," he says, "while apparently inclining sometimes to one and sometimes to the other, do not pronounce decisive judgment" between eternal punishment and annihilation (p. 216), while annihilation is free from speculative objections. In America C. F. Hudson's initial efforts ("Debt and Grace," Boston, 1857, ed. 5, 1859; "Christ Our Life," 1860) were ably seconded by W. R. Huntington ("Conditional Immortality," New York, 1878) and J. H. Pettingell ("The Life Everlasting," Philadelphia, 1882, combining two previously published tractates; "The Unspeakable Gift," Yarmouth, Me., 1884). Views of much the same character have been expressed also by Horace Bushnell, L. W. Bacon, L. C. Baker, Lyman Abbott, and without much insistence on them by Henry C. Sheldon ("System of Christian Doctrine," Cincinnati, 1903, pp. 573 ff.). 

IX. MODIFICATIONS OF THE THEORY 

There is a particular form of conditionalism requiring special mention which seeks to avoid the difficulties of annihilationism, by teaching, not the total extinction of the souls of the wicked, but rather, as it is commonly phrased, their "transformation" into impersonal beings incapable of moral action, or indeed of any feeling. This is the form of conditionalism which is suggested by James Martineau ("A Study of Religion," Oxford, ii. 1888, p. 114) and by Horace Bushnell ("Forgiveness and Law," New York, 1874, p. 147, notes 5 and 6). It is also hinted by Henry Drummond ("Natural Law in the Spiritual World," London, 1884), when he supposes the lost soul to lose not salvation merely but the capacity for it and for God; so that what is left is no longer fit to be called a soul, but is a shrunken, useless organ ready to fall away like a rotten twig. The Alsatian theologian A. Schaffer ("Was ist Glück?" Gotha, 1891, pp. 290-294) similarly speaks of the wicked soul losing the light from heaven, the divine spark which gave it its value, and the human personality thereby becoming obliterated. "The forces out of which it arises break up and become at last again impersonal. They do not pass away, but they are transformed." One sees the conception here put forward at its highest level in such a view as that presented by Professor O. A. Curtis ("The Christian Faith," New York, 1905, p. 467), which thinks of the lost not, to be sure, as "crushed into mere thinghood" but as sunk into a condition "below the possibility of any moral action, or moral concern . . . like persons in this life when personality is entirely overwhelmed by the base sense of what we call physical fear." There is no annihilation in Professor Curtis' view; not even relief for the lost from suffering; but it may perhaps be looked at as marking the point where the theories of annihilationism reach up to and melt at last into the doctrine of eternal punishment. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: An exhaustive bibliography of the subject up to 1862 is given in Ezra Abbot's Appendix to W. R. Alger's "Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," also published separately, New York, 1871; consult also W. Reid, "Everlasting Punishment and Modern Speculation," Edinburgh, 1874, pp. 311-313. Special works on annihilationism are J. C. Killam, "Annihilationism Examined," Syracuse, 1859; I. P. Warren, "The Wicked not Annihilated," New York, 1867; N. D. George, "Annihilationism not of the Bible," Boston, 1870; J. B. Brown, "The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love," London, 1875; S. C. Bartlett, "Life and Death Eternal: A Refutation of the Theory of Annihilation," Boston, 1878. The subject is treated in S. D. F. Salmond, "The Christian Doctrine of Immortality," Edinburgh, 1901, pp. 473-499; R. W. Landis, "The Immortality of the Soul," New York, 1868, pp. 422 ff.; A. Hovey, "The State of the Impenitent Dead," Boston, 1859, pp. 93 ff.; C. M. Mead, "The Soul Here and Hereafter," Boston, 1879; G. Godet, in Chrétien évangélique, 1881-1882; F. Godet, in Revue théologique, 1886; J. Fyfe, "The Hereafter," Edinburgh, 1890; R. Falke, "Die Lehre von der ewigen Verdammnis," Eisenach, 1892, pp. 25-38. On conditional immortality, consult W. R. Huntington, "Conditional Immortality," New York, 1878; J. H. Pettingell, "The Theological Tri-lemma," New York, 1878; idem, "The Life Everlasting: What is it? Whence is it? Whose is it? A Symposium," Philadelphia, 1882; E. White, "Life and Death: A Reply to J. B. Brown's Lectures on Conditional Immortality," London, 1877; idem, "Life in Christ: A Study of the Scripture Doctrine on ... the Conditions of Human Immortality," London, 1878. Further discussions may be found in the appropriate sections of most works on systematic theology and also in works on eschatology and future punishment. See, besides the works mentioned in the text, the literature under "Immortality."

Apologetics

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[Reprinted from "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,"
edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., i. pp. 232-238 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1908).]

I. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TERM

Since Planck (1794) and Schleiermacher (1811), "apologetics" has been the accepted name of one of the theological disciplines or departments of theological science. The term is derived from the Greek apologeisthai, which embodies as its central notion the idea of "defense." In its present application, however, it has somewhat shifted its meaning, and we speak accordingly of apologetics and apologies in contrast with each other. The relation between these two is not that of theory and practice (so e.g. Düsterdieck), nor yet that of genus and species (so e.g. Kübel). That is to say, apologetics is not a formal science in which the principles exemplified in apologies are investigated, as the principles of sermonizing are investigated in homiletics. Nor is it merely the sum of all existing or all possible apologies, or their quintessence, or their scientific exhibition, as dogmatics is the scientific statement of dogmas. Apologies are defenses of Christianity, in its entirety, in its essence, or in some one or other of its elements or presuppositions, as against either all assailants, actual or conceivable, or some particular form or instance of attack; though, of course, as good defenses they may rise above mere defenses and become vindications. Apologetics undertakes not the defense, not even the vindication, but the establishment, not, strictly speaking, of Christianity, but rather of that knowledge of God which Christianity professes to embody and seeks to make efficient in the world, and which it is the business of theology scientifically to explicate. It may, of course, enter into defense and vindication when in the prosecution of its task it meets with opposing points of view and requires to establish its own standpoint or conclusions. Apologies may, therefore, be embraced in apologetics, and form ancillary portions of its structure, as they may also do in the case of every other theological discipline. It is, moreover, inevitable that this or that element or aspect of apologetics will be more or less emphasized and cultivated, as the need of it is from time to time more or less felt. But apologetics does not derive its contents or take its form or borrow its value from the prevailing opposition; but preserves through all varying circumstances its essential character as a positive and constructive science which has to do with opposition only - like any other constructive science - as the refutation of opposing views becomes from time to time incident to construction. So little is defense or vindication of the essence of apologetics that there would be the same reason for its existence and the same necessity for its work, were there no opposition in the world to be encountered and no contradiction to be overcome. It finds its deepest ground, in other words, not in the accidents which accompany the efforts of true religion to plant, sustain, and propagate itself in this world; not even in that most pervasive and most portentous of all these accidents, the accident of sin; but in the fundamental needs of the human spirit. If it is incumbent on the believer to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is impossible for him to be a believer without a reason for the faith that is in him; and it is the task of apologetics to bring this reason clearly out in his consciousness, and make its validity plain. It is, in other words, the function of apologetics to investigate, explicate, and establish the grounds on which a theology - a science, or systematized knowledge of God - is possible; and on the basis of which every science which has God for its object must rest, if it be a true science with claims to a place within the circle of the sciences. It necessarily takes its place, therefore, at the head of the departments of theological science and finds its task in the establishment of the validity of that knowledge of God which forms the subject-matter of these departments; that we may then proceed through the succeeding departments of exegetical, historical, systematic, and practical theology, to explicate, appreciate, systematize, and propagate it in the world.

II. PLACE AMONG THE THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINES

It must be admitted that considerable confusion has reigned with respect to the conception and function of apologetics, and its place among the theological disciplines. Nearly every writer has a definition of his own, and describes the task of the discipline in a fashion more or less peculiar to himself; and there is scarcely a corner in the theological encyclopedia into which it has not been thrust. Planck gave it a place among the exegetical disciplines; others contend that its essence is historical; most wish to assign it either to systematic or practical theology. Nösselt denies it all right of existence; Palmer confesses inability to classify it; Räbiger casts it formally out of the encyclopedia, but reintroduces it under the different name of "theory of religion." Tholuck proposed that it should be apportioned through the several departments; and Cave actually distributes its material through three separate departments. Much of this confusion is due to a persistent confusion of apologetics with apologies. If apologetics is the theory of apology, and its function is to teach men how to defend Christianity, its place is, of course, alongside of homiletics, catechetics, and poimenics in practical theology. If it is simply, by way of eminence, the apology of Christianity, the systematically organized vindication of Christianity in all its elements and details, against all opposition - or in its essential core against the only destructive opposition - it of course presupposes the complete development of Christianity through the exegetical, historical, and systematic disciplines, and must take its place either as the culminating department of systematic theology, or as the intellectualistic side of practical theology, or as an independent discipline between the two. In this case it can be only artificially separated from polemic theology and other similar disciplines - if the analysis is pushed so far as to create these, as is done by F. Duilhé de Saint-Projet who distinguishes between apologetical, controversial, and polemic theology, directed respectively against unbelievers, heretics, and fellow believers, and by A. Kuyper who distinguishes between polemics, elenctics, and apologetics, opposing respectively heterodoxy, paganism, and false philosophy. It will not be strange, then, if, though separated from these kindred disciplines it, or some of it, should be again united with them, or some of them, to form a larger whole to which is given the same encyclopedic position. This is done for example by Kuyper who joins polemics, elenctics, and apologetics together to form his "antithetic dogmatological" group of disciplines; and by F. L. Patton who, after having distributed the material of apologetics into the two separate disciplines of rational or philosophical theology, to which as a thetic discipline a place is given at the outset of the system, and apologetics, joins the latter with polemics to constitute the antithetical disciplines, while systematic theology succeeds both as part of the synthetic disciplines.

III. SOURCE OF DIVERGENT VIEWS

Much of the diversity in question is due also, however, to varying views of the thing which apologetics undertakes to establish; whether it be, for example, the truth of the Christian religion, or the validity of that knowledge of God which theology presents in systematized form. And more of it still is due to profoundly differing conceptions of the nature and subject-matter of that "theology," a department of which apologetics is. If we think of apologetics as undertaking the defense or the vindication or even the justification of the "Christian religion," that is one thing; if we think of it as undertaking the establishment of the validity of that knowledge of God, which "theology" systematizes, that may be a very different thing. And even if agreement exists upon the latter conception, there remain the deeply cutting divergences which beset the definition of "theology" itself. Shall it be defined as the "science of faith"? or as the "science of religion"? or as the "science of the Christian religion"? or as the "science of God"? In other words, shall it be regarded as a branch of psychology, or as a branch of history, or as a branch of science? Manifestly those who differ thus widely as to what theology is, cannot be expected to agree as to the nature and function of any one of its disciplines. If "theology" is the science of faith or of religion, its subject-matter is the subjective experiences of the human heart; and the function of apologetics is to inquire whether these subjective experiences have any objective validity. Of course, therefore, it follows upon the systematic elucidation of these subjective experiences and constitutes the culminating discipline of "theology." Similarly, if "theology" is the science of the Christian religion, it investigates the purely historical question of what those who are called Christians believe; and of course the function of apologetics is to follow this investigation with an inquiry whether Christians are justified in believing these things. But if theology is the science of God, it deals not with a mass of subjective experiences, nor with a section of the history of thought, but with a body of objective facts; and it is absurd to say that these facts must be assumed and developed unto their utmost implications before we stop to ask whether they are facts. So soon as it is agreed that theology is a scientific discipline and has as its subject-matter the knowledge of God, we must recognize that it must begin by establishing the reality as objective facts of the data upon which it is based. One may indeed call the department of theology to which this task is committed by any name which appears to him appropriate: it may be called "general theology," or "fundamental theology," or "principial theology," or "philosophical theology," or "rational theology," or "natural theology," or any other of the innumerable names which have been used to describe it. Apologetics is the name which most naturally suggests itself, and it is the name which, with more or less accuracy of view as to the nature and compass of the discipline, has been consecrated to this purpose by a large number of writers from Schleiermacher down (e.g. Pelt, Twesten, Baumstark, Swetz, Ottiger, Knoll, Maissoneuve). It powerfully commends itself as plainly indicating the nature of the discipline, while equally applicable to it whatever may be the scope of the theology which it undertakes to plant on a secure basis. Whether this theology recognizes no other knowledge of God than that given in the constitution and course of nature, or derives its data from the full revelation of God as documented in the Christian Scriptures, apologetics offers itself with equal readiness to designate the discipline by which the validity of the knowledge of God set forth is established. It need imply no more than natural theology requires for its basis; when the theology which it serves is, however, the complete theology of the Christian revelation, it guards its unity and protects from the fatally dualistic conception which sets natural and revealed theology over against each other as separable entities, each with its own separate presuppositions requiring establishment - by which apologetics would be split into two quite diverse disciplines, given very different places in the theological encyclopedia.

IV. THE TRUE TASK OF APOLOGETICS

It will already have appeared how far apologetics may be defined, in accordance with a very prevalent custom (e.g. Sack, Lechler, Ebrard, Kübel, Lemme) as "the science which establishes the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion." Apologetics certainly does establish the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion. But the question of importance here is how it does this. It certainly is not the business of apologetics to take up each tenet of Christianity in turn and seek to establish its truth by a direct appeal to reason. Any attempt to do this, no matter on what philosophical basis the work of demonstration be begun or by what methods it be pursued, would transfer us at once into the atmosphere and betray us into the devious devices of the old vulgar rationalism, the primary fault of which was that it asked for a direct rational demonstration of the truth of each Christian teaching in turn. The business of apologetics is to establish the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion directly only as a whole, and in its details only indirectly. That is to say, we are not to begin by developing Christianity into all its details, and only after this task has been performed, tardily ask whether there is any truth in all this. We are to begin by establishing the truth of Christianity as a whole, and only then proceed to explicate it into its details, each of which, if soundly explicated, has its truth guaranteed by its place as a detail in an entity already established in its entirety. Thus we are delivered from what is perhaps the most distracting question which has vexed the whole history of the discipline. In establishing the truth of Christianity, it has been perennially asked, are we to deal with all its details (e.g. H. B. Smith), or merely with the essence of Christianity (e.g. Kübel). The true answer is, neither. Apologetics does not presuppose either the development of Christianity into its details, or the extraction from it of its essence. The details of Christianity are all contained in Christianity: the minimum of Christianity is just Christianity itself. What apologetics undertakes to establish is just this Christianity itself - including all its "details" and involving its "essence" - in its unexplicated and uncompressed entirety, as the absolute religion. It has for its object the laying of the foundations on which the temple of theology is built, and by which the whole structure of theology is determined. It is the department of theology which establishes the constitutive and regulative principles of theology as a science; and in establishing these it establishes all the details which are derived from them by the succeeding departments, in their sound explication and systematization. Thus it establishes the whole, though it establishes the whole in the mass, so to speak, and not in its details, but yet in its entirety and not in some single element deemed by us its core, its essence, or its minimum expression.

V. DIVISION OF APOLOGETICS

The subject-matter of apologetics being determined, its distribution into its parts becomes very much a matter of course. Having defined apologetics as the proof of the truth of the Christian religion, many writers naturally confine it to what is commonly known somewhat loosely as the "evidences of Christianity." Others, defining it as "fundamental theology," equally naturally confine it to the primary principles of religion in general. Others more justly combine the two conceptions and thus obtain at least two main divisions. Thus Hermann Schultz makes it prove "the right of the religious conception of the world, as over against the tendencies to the denial of religion, and the right of Christianity as the absolutely perfect manifestation of religion, as over against the opponents of its permanent significance." He then divides it into two great sections with a third interposed between them: the first, "the apology of the religious conception of the world"; the last, "the apology of Christianity"; while between the two stands "the philosophy of religion, religion in its historical manifestation." Somewhat less satisfactorily, because with a less firm hold upon the idea of the discipline, Henry B. Smith, viewing apologetics as "historico-philosophical dogmatics," charged with the defense of "the whole contents and substance of the Christian faith," divided the material to much the same effect into what he calls fundamental, historical, and philosophical apologetics. The first of these undertakes to demonstrate the being and nature of God; the second, the divine origin and authority of Christianity; and the third, somewhat lamely as a conclusion to so high an argument, the superiority of Christianity to all other systems. Quite similarly Francis R. Beattie divided into (1) fundamental or philosophical apologetics, which deals with the problem of God and religion; (2) Christian or historical apologetics, which deals with the problem of revelation and the Scriptures; and (3) applied or practical apologetics, which deals with the practical efficiency of Christianity in the world. The fundamental truth of these schematizations lies in the perception that the subject-matter of apologetics embraces the two great facts of God and Christianity. There is some failure in unity of conception, however, arising apparently from a deficient grasp of the peculiarity of apologetics as a department of theological science, and a consequent inability to permit it as such to determine its own contents and the natural order of its constituent parts.

VI. THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

If theology be a science at all, there is involved in that fact, as in the case of all other sciences, at least these three things: the reality of its subject-matter, the capacity of the human mind to receive into itself and rationally to reflect this subjectmatter, the existence of media of communication between the subject-matter and the percipient and understanding mind. There could be no psychology were there not a mind to be investigated, a mind to investigate, and a self-consciousness by means of which the mind as an object can be brought under the inspection of the mind as subject. There could be no astronomy were there no heavenly bodies to be investigated, no mind capable of comprehending the laws of their existence and movements, or no means of observing their structure and motion. Similarly there can be no theology, conceived according to its very name as the science of God, unless there is a God to form its subject-matter, a capacity in the human mind to apprehend and so far to comprehend God, and some media by which God is made known to man. That a theology, as the science of God, may exist, therefore, it must begin by establishing the existence of God, the capacity of the human mind to know Him, and the accessibility of knowledge concerning Him. In other words, the very idea of theology as the science of God gives these three great topics which must be dealt with in its fundamental department, by which the foundations for the whole structure are laid - God, religion, revelation. With these three facts established, a theology as the science of God becomes possible; with them, therefore, an apologetic might be complete. But that, only provided that in these three topics all the underlying presuppositions of the science of God actually built up in our theology are established; for example, provided that all the accessible sources and means of knowing God are exhausted. No science can arbitrarily limit the data lying within its sphere to which it will attend. On pain of ceasing to be the science it professes to be, it must exhaust the means of information open to it, and reduce to a unitary system the entire body of knowledge in its sphere. No science can represent itself as, astronomy, for example, which arbitrarily confines itself to the information concerning the heavenly bodies obtainable by the unaided eye, or which discards, without sound ground duly adduced, the aid of, say, the spectroscope. In the presence of Christianity in the world making claim to present a revelation of God adapted to the condition and needs of sinners, and documented in Scriptures, theology cannot proceed a step until it has examined this claim; and if the claim be substantiated, this substantiation must form a part of the fundamental department of theology in which are laid the foundations for the systematization of the knowledge of God. In that case, two new topics are added to the subject-matter with which apologetics must constructively deal, Christianity - and the Bible. It thus lies in the very nature of apologetics as the fundamental department of theology, conceived as the science of God, that it should find its task in establishing the existence of a God who is capable of being known by man and who has made Himself known, not only in nature but in revelations of His grace to lost sinners, documented in the Christian Scriptures. When apologetics has placed these great facts in our hands - God, religion, revelation, Christianity, the Bible - and not till then are we prepared to go on and explicate the knowledge of God thus brought to us, trace the history of its workings in the world, systematize it, and propagate it in the world.

VII. THE FIVE SUBDIVISIONS OF APOLOGETICS

The primary subdivisions of apologetics are therefore five, unless for convenience of treatment it is preferred to sink the third into its most closely related fellow. (1) The first, which may perhaps be called philosophical apologetics, undertakes the establishment of the being of God, as a personal spirit, the creator, preserver, and governor of all things. To it belongs the great problem of theism, with the involved discussion of the antitheistic theories. (2) The second, which may perhaps be called psychological apologetics, undertakes the establishment of the religious nature of man and the validity of his religious sense. It involves the discussion alike of the psychology, the philosophy, and the phenomenology of religion, and therefore includes what is loosely called "comparative religion" or the "history of religions." (3) To the third falls the establishment of the reality of the supernatural factor in history, with the involved determination of the actual relations in which God stands to His world, and the method of His government of His rational creatures, and especially His mode of making Himself known to them. It issues in the establishment of the fact of revelation as the condition of all knowledge of God, who as a personal Spirit can be known only so far as He expresses Himself; so that theology differs from all other sciences in that in it the object is not at the disposal of the subject, but vice versa. (4) The fourth, which may be called historical apologetics, undertakes to establish the divine origin of Christianity as the religion of revelation in the special sense of that word. It discusses all the topics which naturally fall under the popular caption of the "evidences of Christianity." (5) The fifth, which may be called bibliological apologetics, undertakes to establish the trustworthiness of the Christian Scriptures as the documentation of the revelation of God for the redemption of sinners. It is engaged especially with such topics as the divine origin of the Scriptures; the methods of the divine operation in their origination; their place in the series of redemptive acts of God, and in the process of revelation; the nature, mode, and effect of inspiration; and the like.

VIII. THE VALUE OF APOLOGETICS

The estimate which is put upon apologetics by scholars naturally varies with the conception which is entertained of its nature and function. In the wake of the subjectivism introduced by Schleiermacher, it has become very common to speak of such an apologetic as has just been outlined with no little scorn. It is an evil inheritance, we are told, from the old supranaturalismus vulgaris, which "took its standpoint not in the Scriptures but above the Scriptures, and imagined it could, with formal conceptions, develop a 'ground for the divine authority of Christianity' (Heubner), and therefore offered proofs for the divine origin of Christianity, the necessity of revelation, and the credibility of the Scriptures" (Lemme). To recognize that we can take our standpoint in the Scriptures only after we have Scriptures, authenticated as such, to take our standpoint in, is, it seems, an outworn prejudice. The subjective experience of faith is conceived to be the ultimate fact; and the only legitimate apologetic, just the self-justification of this faith itself. For faith, it seems, after Kant, can no longer be looked upon as a matter of reasoning and does not rest on rational grounds, but is an affair of the heart, and manifests itself most powerfully when it has no reason out of itself (Brunetiere). If repetition had probative force, it would long ago have been established that faith, religion, theology, lie wholly outside of the realm of reason, proof, and demonstration.

It is, however, from the point of view of rationalism and mysticism that the value of apologetics is most decried. Wherever rationalistic preconceptions have penetrated, there, of course, the validity of the apologetic proofs has been in more or less of their extent questioned. Wherever mystical sentiment has seeped in, there the validity of apologetics has been with more or less emphasis doubted. At the present moment, the rationalistic tendency is most active, perhaps, in the form given it by Albrecht Ritschl. In this form it strikes at the very roots of apologetics, by the distinction it erects between theoretical and religious knowledge. Religious knowledge is not the knowledge of fact, but a perception of utility; and therefore positive religion, while it may be historically conditioned, has no theoretical basis, and is accordingly not the object of rational proof. In significant parallelism with this, the mystical tendency is manifesting itself at the present day most distinctly in a widespread inclination to set aside apologetics in favor of the "witness of the Spirit." The convictions of the Christian man, we are told, are not the product of reason addressed to the intellect, but the immediate creation of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Therefore, it is intimated, we may do very well without these reasons, if indeed they are not positively noxious, because tending to substitute a barren intellectualism for a vital faith. It seems to be forgotten that though faith be a moral act and the gift of God, it is yet formally conviction passing into confidence; and that all forms of convictions must rest on evidence as their ground, and it is not faith but reason which investigates the nature and validity of this ground. "He who believes," says Thomas Aquinas, in words which have become current as an axiom, "would not believe unless he saw that what he believes is worthy of belief." Though faith is the gift of God, it does not in the least follow that the faith which God gives is an irrational faith, that is, a faith without cognizable ground in right reason. We believe in Christ because it is rational to believe in Him, not even though it be irrational. Of course mere reasoning cannot make a Christian; but that is not because faith is not the result of evidence, but because a dead soul cannot respond to evidence. The action of the Holy Spirit in giving faith is not apart from evidence, but along with evidence; and in the first instance consists in preparing the soul for the reception of the evidence.

IX. RELATION OF APOLOGETICS TO CHRISTIAN FAITH

This is not to argue that it is by apologetics that men are made Christians, but that apologetics supplies to Christian men the systematically organized basis on which the faith of Christian men must rest. All that apologetics explicates in the forms of systematic proof is implicit in every act of Christian faith. Whenever a sinner accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour, there is implicated in that act a living conviction that there is a God, knowable to man, who has made Himself known in a revelation of Himself for redemption in Jesus Christ, as is set down in the Scriptures. It is not necessary for his act of faith that all the grounds of this conviction should be drawn into full consciousness and given the explicit assent of his understanding, though it is necessary for his faith that sufficient ground for his conviction be actively present and working in his spirit. But it is necessary for the vindication of his faith to reason in the form of scientific judgment, that the grounds on which it rests be explicated and established. Theology as a science, though it includes in its culminating discipline, that of practical theology, an exposition of how that knowledge of God with which it deals objectively may best be made the subjective possession of man, is not itself the instrument of propaganda; what it undertakes to do is systematically to set forth this knowledge of God as the object of rational contemplation. And as it has to set it forth as knowledge, it must of course begin by establishing its right to rank as such. Did it not do so, the whole of its work would hang in the air, and theology would present the odd spectacle among the sciences of claiming a place among a series of systems of knowledge for an elaboration of pure assumptions.

X. THE EARLIEST APOLOGETICS

Seeing that it thus supplies an insistent need of the human spirit, the world has, of course, never been without its apologetics. Whenever men have thought at all they have thought about God and the supernatural order; and whenever they have thought of God and the supernatural order, there has been present to their minds a variety of more or less solid reasons for believing in their reality. The enucleation of these reasons into a systematically organized body of proofs waited of course upon advancing culture. But the advent of apologetics did not wait for the advent of Christianity; nor are traces of this department of thought discoverable only in the regions lit up by special revelation. The philosophical systems of antiquity, especially those which derive from Plato, are far from empty of apologetical elements; and when in the later stages of its development, classical philosophy became peculiarly religious, express apologetical material became almost predominant. With the coming of Christianity into the world, however, as the contents of the theology to be stated became richer, so the efforts to substantiate it became more fertile in apologetical elements. We must not confuse the apologies of the early Christian ages with formal apologetics. Like the sermons of the day, they contributed to apologetics without being it. The apologetic material developed by what one may call the more philosophical of the apologists (Aristides, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hermias, Tertullian) was already considerable; it was largely supplemented by the theological labors of their successors. In the first instance Christianity, plunged into a polytheistic environment and called upon to contend with systems of thought grounded in pantheistic or dualistic assumptions, required to establish its theistic standpoint; and as over against the bitterness of the Jews and the mockery of the heathen (e.g. Tacitus, Fronto, Crescens, Lucian), to evince its own divine origin as a gift of grace to sinful man. Along with Tertullian, the great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, are the richest depositaries of the apologetic thought of the first period. The greatest apologists of the patristic age were, however, Eusebius of Caesarea amd Augustine. The former was the most learned and the latter the most profound of all the defenders of Christianity among the Fathers. And Augustine, in particular, not merely in his "City of God" but in his controversial writings, accumulated a vast mass of apologetical material which is far from having lost its significance even yet.

XI. THE LATER APOLOGETICS

It was not, however, until the scholastic age that apologetics came to its rights as a constructive science. The whole theological activity of the Middle Ages was so far ancillary to apologetics, that its primary effort was the justification of faith to reason. It was not only rich in apologists (Agobard, Abelard, Raymund Martini), but every theologian was in a sense an apologist. Anselm at its beginning, Aquinas at its culmination, are types of the whole series; types in which all its excellencies are summed up. The Renaissance, with its repristination of heathenism, naturally called out a series of new apologists (Savonarola, Marsilius Ficinus, Ludovicus Vives), but the Reformation forced polemics into the foreground and drove apologetics out of sight, although, of course, the great theologians of the Reformation era brought their rich contribution to the accumulating apologetical material. When, in the exhaustion of the seventeenth century, irreligion began to spread among the people and indifferentism ripening into naturalism among the leaders of thought, the stream of apologetical thought was once more started flowing, to swell into a great flood as the prevalent unbelief intensified and spread. With a forerunner in Philippe de Mornay (1581), Hugo Grotius (1627) became the typical apologist of the earlier portion of this period, while its middle portion was illuminated by the genius of Pascal (d. 1662) and the unexampled richness of apologetical labor in its later years culminated in Butler's great "Analogy" (1736) and Paley's plain but powerful argumentation. As the assault against Christianity shifted its basis from the English deism of the early half of the eighteenth century through the German rationalism of its later half, the idealism which dominated the first half of the nineteenth century, and thence to the materialism of its later years, period after period was marked in the history of apology, and the particular elements of apologetics which were especially cultivated changed with the changing thought. But no epoch was marked in the history of apologetics itself, until under the guidance of Schleiermacher's attempt to trace the organism of the departments of theology, K. H. Sack essayed to set forth a scientifically organized "Christian Apologetics" (Hamburg, 1829; ed. 2, 1841). Since then an unbroken series of scientific systems of apologetics has flowed from the press. These differ from one another in almost every conceivable way; in their conception of the nature, task, compass, and encyclopedic place of the science; in their methods of dealing with its material; in their conception of Christianity itself; and of religion and of God and of the nature of the evidence on which belief in one or the other must rest. But they agree in the fundamental point that apologetics is conceived by all alike as a special department of theological science, capable of and demanding separate treatment. In this sense apologetics has come at last, in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century, to its rights. The significant names in its development are such as, perhaps, among the Germans, Sack, Steudel, Delitzsch, Ebrard, Baumstark, Tölle, Kratz, Kübel, Steude, Frank, Kaftan, Vogel, Schultz, Kähler; to whom may be added such Romanists as Drey, Dieringer, Staudenmeyer, Hettinger, Schanz, and such English-speaking writers as Hetherington, H. B. Smith, Bruce, Rishell, and Beattie.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lists of literature will be found in F. R. Beattie's "Apologetics, or the Rational Vindication of Christianity," Richmond, 1903; in A. Cave, "Introduction to Theology," Edinburgh, ed. 2, 1896; in G. R. Crooks and J. F. Hurst, "Theological Encyclopaedia and Methodology," New York, 1884, pp. 411-413; in P. Schaff, "Theological Propædeutic," 2 parts, New York, 1892-1893. Consult F. L. Patton, in Princeton Theological Review, ii. 1904, pp. 110 ff.; Presbyterian and Reformed Review, vii. 1896, pp. 243 ff. (or pp. 49 ff. of this volume). On the history of apologetics and apologetic method: H. G. Tzschirner, "Geschichte der Apologetiek," Leipzig, 1805; G. H. van Senden, "Geschichte der Apologetiek," 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1846; K. Werner, "Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur," 5 vols., Schaffhausen, 1861-1867 (Roman Catholic); W. Haan, "Geschichte der Vertheidigung des Christenthums," Frankenberg, 1882 (popular). For early Christian apologies consult "Ante-Nicene Fathers" and "Nicene and PostNicene Fathers"; for discussions of these, F. Watson, "The AnteNicene Apologies: their Character and Value," Cambridge, 1870 (Hulsean essay) ; W. J. Bolton, "The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the . . . Apologists down to Augustine," Cambridge, 1853 (Hulsean essay) ; F. R. Wynne, "The Literature of the Second Century," London, 1891 (popular but scholarly) ; A. Seitz, "Die Apologie des Christentums bei den Griechen des IV. und V. Jahrhunderts," Würzburg, 1895. On special phases in the history of apologetics: L. Noack, "Die Freidenker in der Religion, oder die Repräsentanten der religiösen Aufklärung in. England, Frankreich und Deutschland," 3 vols., Bern, 1853-1855; A. S. Farrar, "Critical History of Free Thought," New York, 1863; K. R. Hagenbach, "German Rationalism, in its Rise, Progress, and Decline," Edinburgh, 1865; A. Viguie, "Histoire de l'apologetique dans l'eglise reformee française," Geneva, 1858; H. B. Smith, "Apologetics," New York, 1882 (appendix contains sketches of German apologetic works) ; J. F. Hurst, "History of Rationalism," New York, 1902; A. H. Huizinga, "Some Recent Phases of Christian Apologetics," in Presbyterian and Reformed Review, vii. 1896, pp. 34 ff. Apologetical literature: F. R. Beattie, "Apologetics, or the Rational Vindication of Christianity," Richmond, 1903; W. M. Hetherington, "Apologetics of the Christian Faith," Edinburgh, 1867; J. H. A. Ebrard, "Apologetik," Gütersloh, ed. 2, 1878-1880, English translation, "Apologetics: or the Scientific Vindication of Christianity," 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1886-1887; A. Mair, "Studies in the Christian Evidences," Edinburgh, 1883; G. F. Wright, "Logic of Christian Evidences," Andover, 1880; F. H. R. Frank, "System der christlichen Gewissheit," Erlangen, 1870-1873 (ed. 2, 1884), E.T. (of ed. 2), "System of the Christian Certainty," Edinburgh, 1886; P. Schanz, "Apologie des Christentums," 3 vols., Freiburg, 1887-1888, E.T. "Christian Apology," 3 vols., New York and Cincinnati, ed. 2, 1896 (Roman Catholic); L. F. Stearns, "The Evidence of Christian Experience," New York, 1890 (the best book on the subject); A. B. Bruce, "Apologetics; or, Christianity Defensively Stated," Edinburgh, 1892; H. Wace, "Students' Manual of the Evidences of Christianity," London, 1892; J. Kaftan, "Die Wahrheit der christlichen Religion," Basel, 1888, E.T. 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1894; C. W. Rishell, "Foundations of the Christian Faith," New York, 1899; W. Devivier, "Cours d'apologetique chretienne," Paris, 1889, E. T. "Christian Apologetics," 2 vols., New York, 1903; A. Harnack, "What is Christianity?" London, 1901; J. T. Bergen, "Evidences of Christianity," Holland, Mich., 1902; A. M. Randolph, "Reason, Faith and Authority in Christianity," New York, 1902; the Boyle and Bampton lecture series deal exclusively with subjects in apologetics; see also under "Agnosticism"; "Antitrinitarianism"; and "Atheism."

Atonement

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., i. pp. 349-356 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1908).

I. SIGNIFICANCE AND HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE

The replacement of the term "satisfaction" (q.v.), to designate, according to its nature, the work of Christ in saving sinners, by "atonement," the term more usual at present, is somewhat unfortunate. "Satisfaction" is at once the more comprehensive, the more expressive, the less ambiguous, and the more exact term. The word "atonement" occurs but once in the English New Testament (Rom. v. 11, A. V., but not R. V.) and on this occasion it bears its archaic sense of "reconciliation," and as such translates the Greek term katallagē. In the English Old Testament, however, it is found quite often as the stated rendering of the Hebrew terms kipper, kippurim, in the sense of "propitiation," "expiation." It is in this latter sense that it has become current, and has been applied to the work of Christ, which it accordingly describes as, in its essential nature, an expiatory offering, propitiating an offended Deity and reconciling Him with man. 

1. THE NEW TESTAMENT PRESENTATION

In thus characterizing the work of Christ, it does no injustice to the New Testament representation. The writers of the New Testament employ many other modes of describing the work of Christ, which, taken together, set it forth as much more than a provision, in His death, for canceling the guilt of man. To mention nothing else at the moment, they set it forth equally as a provision, in His righteousness, for fulfilling the demands of the divine law upon the conduct of men. But it is undeniable that they enshrine at the center of this work its efficacy as a piacular sacrifice, securing the forgiveness of sins; that is to say, relieving its beneficiaries of "the penal consequences which otherwise the curse of the broken law inevitably entails." The Lord Himself fastens attention upon this aspect of His work (Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 28); and it is embedded in every important type of New Testament teaching - as well in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii. 17), and the Epistles of Peter (I. iii. 18) and John (I. ii. 2), as currently in those of Paul (Rom, viii. 3; I Cor. v. 7; Eph. v. 2) to whom, obviously, "the sacrifice of Christ had the significance of the death of an innocent victim in the room of the guilty" and who therefore "freely employs the category of substitution, involving the conception of imputation or transference" of legal standing (W. P. Paterson, article "Sacrifice" in Hastings, "Dictionary of the Bible," iv. 1909, pp. 343-345). Looking out from this point of view as from a center, the New Testament writers ascribe the saving efficacy of Christ's work specifically to His death, or His blood, or His cross (Rom. iii. 25; v. 9; I Cor. x. 16; Eph. i. 7; ii. 13; Col. i. 20; Heb. ix. 12, 14; I Pet. i. 2, 19; I John i. 7; v. 6-8; Rev. i. 5), and this with such predilection and emphasis that the place given to the death of Christ in the several theories which have been framed of the nature of our Lord's work, may not unfairly be taken as a test of their Scripturalness. All else that Christ does for us in the breadth of His redeeming work is, in their view, conditioned upon His bearing our sins in His own body on the tree; so that "the fundamental characteristic of the New Testament conception of redemption is that deliverance from guilt stands first; emancipation from the power of sin follows upon it; and removal of all the ills of life constitutes its final issue" (O. Kirn, article "Erlösung" in Hauck-Herzog, "Realencyklopadie," v. p. 464; see "Redemption"). 

2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE 

The exact nature of Christ's work in redemption was not made the subject of scientific investigation in the early Church. This was due partly, no doubt, just to the clearness of the New Testament representation of it as a piacular sacrifice; but in part also to the engrossment of the minds of the first teachers of Christianity with more immediately pressing problems, such as the adjustment of the essential elements of the Christian doctrines of God and of the person of Christ, and the establishment of man's helplessness in sin and absolute dependence on the grace of God for salvation. Meanwhile Christians were content to speak of the work of Christ in simple Scriptural or in general language, or to develop, rather by way of illustration than of explanation, certain aspects of it, chiefly its efficacy as a sacrifice, but also, very prominently, its working as a ransom in delivering us from bondage to Satan. Thus it was not until the end of the eleventh century that the nature of the Atonement received at the hands of Anselm (d. 1109) its first thorough discussion. Representing it, in terms derived from the Roman law, as in its essence a "satisfaction" to the divine justice, Anselm set it once for all in its true relations to the inherent necessities of the divine nature, and to the magnitude of human guilt; and thus determined the outlines of the doctrine for all subsequent thought. Contemporaries like Bernard and Abelard, no doubt, and perhaps not unnaturally, found difficulty in assimilating at once the newly framed doctrine; the former ignored it in the interests of the old notion of a ransom offered to Satan; the latter rejected it in the interests of a theory of moral influence upon man. But it gradually made its way. The Victorines, Hugo and Richard, united with it other elements, the effect of which was to cure its onesidedness; and the great doctors of the age of developed scholasticism manifest its victory by differing from one another chiefly in their individual ways of stating and defending it. Bonaventura develops it; Aquinas enriches it with his subtle distinctions; Thomist and Scotist alike start from it, and diverge only in the question whether the "satisfaction" offered by Christ was intrinsically equivalent to the requirements of the divine justice or availed for this purpose only through the gracious acceptance of God. It was not, however, until the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith threw its light back upon the "satisfaction" which provided its basis, that that doctrine came fully to its rights. No one before Luther had spoken with the clarity, depth, or breadth which characterize his references to Christ as our deliverer, first from the guilt of sin, and then, because from the guilt of sin, also from all that is evil, since all that is evil springs from sin (cf. T. Harnack, "Luthers Theologie," Erlangen, ii. 1886, chaps. 16-19, and Kirn, ut sup., p. 467). These vital religious conceptions were reduced to scientific statement by the Protestant scholastics, by whom it was that the complete doctrine of "satisfaction" was formulated with a thoroughness and comprehensiveness of grasp which has made it the permanent possession of the Church. In this, its developed form, it represents our Lord as making satisfaction for us "by His blood and righteousness"; on the one hand, to the justice of God, outraged by human sin, in bearing the penalty due to our guilt in His own sacrificial death; and, on the other hand, to the demands of the law of God requiring perfect obedience, in fulfilling in His immaculate life on earth as the second Adam the probation which Adam failed to keep; bringing to bear on men at the same time and by means of the same double work every conceivable influence adapted to deter them from sin and to win them back to good and to God - by the highest imaginable demonstration of God's righteousness and hatred of sin and the supreme manifestation of God's love and eagerness to save; by a gracious proclamation of full forgiveness of sin in the blood of Christ; by a winning revelation of the spiritual order and the spiritual world; and by the moving example of His own perfect life in the conditions of this world; but, above all, by the purchase of the gift of the Holy Spirit for His people as a power not themselves making for righteousness dwelling within them, and supernaturally regenerating their hearts and conforming their lives to His image, and so preparing them for their permanent place in the new order of things which, flowing from this redeeming work, shall ultimately be established as the eternal form of the Kingdom of God. 

3. VARIOUS THEORIES

Of course, this great comprehensive doctrine of "the satisfaction of Christ" has not been permitted to hold the field without controversy. Many "theories of the atonement" have been constructed, each throwing into emphasis a fragment of the truth, to the neglect or denial of the complementary elements, including ordinarily the central matter of the expiation of guilt itself (cf. T. J. Crawford, "The Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the Atonement," Edinburgh, 1888, pp. 395-401; A. B. Bruce, "The Humiliation of Christ," Edinburgh, 1881, lecture 7; A. A. Hodge, "The Atonement," Philadelphia, 1867, pp. 17 ff.). Each main form of these theories, in some method of statement or other, has at one time or another seemed on the point of becoming the common doctrine of the churches. In the patristic age men spoke with such predilection of the work of Christ as issuing in our deliverance from the power of Satan that the false impression is very readily obtained from a cursory survey of the teaching of the Fathers that they predominantly conceived it as directed to that sole end. The so-called "mystical" view, which had representatives among the Greek Fathers and has always had advocates in the Church, appeared about the middle of the last century almost ready to become dominant in at least Continental Protestantism through the immense influence of Schleiermacher. The "rectoral or governmental theory," invented by Grotius early in the seventeenth century in the effort to save something from the assault of the Socinians, has ever since provided a half-way house for those who, while touched by the chilling breath of rationalism, have yet not been ready to surrender every semblance of an "objective atonement," and has therefore come very prominently forward in every era of decaying faith. The "moral influence" theory, which in the person of perhaps the acutest of all the scholastic reasoners, Peter Abelard, confronted the doctrine of "satisfaction" at its formulation, in its vigorous promulgation by the Socinians and again by the lower class of rationalists obtained the widest currency; and again in our own day its enthusiastic advocates, by perhaps a not unnatural illusion, are tempted to claim for it the final victory (so e.g. G. B. Stevens, "The Christian Doctrine of Salvation," New York, 1905; but cf. per contra, of the same school, T. V. Tymms, "The Christian Idea of Atonement," London, 1904, p. 8). But no one of these theories, however attractively they may be presented, or however wide an acceptance each may from time to time have found in academic circles, has ever been able to supplant the doctrine of "satisfaction," either in the formal creeds of the churches, or in the hearts of simple believers. Despite the fluidity of much recent thinking on the subject, the doctrine of "satisfaction" remains to-day the established doctrine of the churches as to the nature of Christ's work of redemption, and is apparently immovably entrenched in the hearts of the Christian body (cf. J. B. Remensnyder, "The Atonement and Modern Thought," Philadelphia, 1905, p. xvi.). 

II. THE FIVE CHIEF THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT 

A survey of the various theories of the Atonement which have been broached, may be made from many points of view (cf. especially the survey in T. G. Crawford, ut sup., pp. 285-401; Bruce, ut sup., lecture 7; and for recent German views, F. A. B. Nitzsch, "Lehrbuch der evangelischen Dogmatik," Freiburg, 1892, part 2, §§ 43-46; O. Bensow, "Die Lehre von der Versöhnung," Gütersloh, 1904, pp. 7-153; G. A. F. Ecklin, "Erlösung und Versöhnung," Basel, 1903, part 4). Perhaps as good a method as any other is to arrange them according to the conception each entertains of the person or persons on whom the work of Christ terminates. When so arranged they fall naturally into five classes which may be enumerated here in the ascending order. 

1. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating upon Satan, so affecting him as to secure the release of the souls held in bondage by him. These theories, which have been described as emphasizing the "triumphantorial" aspect of Christ's work (Ecklin, ut sup., p. 113) had very considerable vogue in the patristic age (e.g. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil, the two Gregories, Cyril of Alexandria, down to and including John of Damascus and Nicholas of Methone; Hilary, Rufinus, Jerome, Augustine, Leo the Great, and even so late as Bernard). They passed out of view only gradually as the doctrine of "satisfaction" became more widely known. Not only does the thought of a Bernard still run in this channel, but even Luther utilized the conception. The idea runs through many forms - speaking in some of them of buying off, in some of overcoming, in some even of outwitting (so e.g. Origen) the devil. But it would be unfair to suppose that such theories represent in any of their forms the whole thought as to the work of Christ of those who made use of them, or were considered by them a scientific statement of the work of Christ. They rather embody only their author's profound sense of the bondage in which men are held to sin and death, and vividly set forth the rescue they conceive Christ has wrought for us in overcoming him who has the power of death. 

2. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating physically on man, so affecting him as to bring him by an interior and hidden working upon him into participation with the one life of Christ; the so-called "mystical theories." The fundamental characteristic of these theories is their discovery of the saving fact not in anything which Christ taught or did, but in what He was. It is upon the Incarnation, rather than upon Christ's teaching or His work that they throw stress, attributing the saving power of Christ not to what He does for us but to what He does in us. Tendencies to this type of theory are already traceable in the Platonizing Fathers; and with the entrance of the more developed Neoplatonism into the stream of Christian thinking, through the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius naturalized in the West by Johannes Scotus Erigena, a constant tradition of mystical teaching began which never died out. In the Reformation age this type of thought was represented by men like Osiander, Schwenckfeld, Franck, Weigel, Boehme. In the modern Church a new impulse was given to essentially the same mode of conception by Schleiermacher and his followers (e.g. C. I. Nitzsch, Rothe, Schöberlein, Lange, Martensen), among whom what is known as the "Mercersburg School" (see "Mercersburg Theology") will be particularly interesting to Americans (e.g. J. W. Nevin, "The Mystical Presence," Philadelphia, 1846). A very influential writer among English theologians of the same general class was F. D. Maurice (1805-1872), although he added to his fundamental mystical conception of the work of Christ the further notions that Christ fully identified Himself with us and, thus partaking of our sufferings, set us a perfect example of sacrifice of self to God (cf. especially "Theological Essays," London, 1853; "The Doctrine of Sacrifice," Cambridge, 1854; new edition, London, 1879). Here, too, must be classed the theory suggested in the writings of the late B. F. Westcott ("The Victory of the Cross," London, 1888), which was based on a hypothesis of the efficacy of Christ's blood, borrowed apparently directly from William Milligan (cf. "The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord," London, 1892), though it goes back ultimately to the Socinians, to the effect that Christ's offering of Himself is not to be identified with His sufferings and death, but rather with the presentation of His life (which is in His blood, set free by death for this purpose) in heaven. "Taking that Blood as efficacious by virtue of the vitality which it contains, he [Dr. Westcott] holds that it was set free from Christ's Body that it might vitalize ours, as it were by transfusion" (C. H. Waller, in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, iii. 1892, p. 656). Somewhat similarly H. Clay Trumbull ("The Blood Covenant," New York, 1885) looks upon sacrifices as only a form of blood covenanting, that is, of instituting blood-brotherhood between man and God by transfusion of blood; and explains the sacrifice of Christ as representing communing in blood, that is, in the principle of life, between God and man, both of whom Christ represents. The theory which has been called "salvation by sample," or salvation "by gradually extirpated depravity," also has its affinities here. Something like it is as old as Felix of Urgel (d. 818; see "Adoptionism"), and it has been taught in its full development by Dippel (1673-1734), Swedenborg (1688-1772), Menken (1768-1831), and especially by Edward Irving (1792-1834), and, of course, by the modern followers of Swedenborg (e.g. B. F. Barrett). The essence of this theory is that what was assumed by our Lord was human nature as He found it, that is, as fallen; and that this human nature, as assumed by Him, was by the power of His divine nature (or of the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him beyond measure) not only kept from sinning, but purified from sin and presented perfect before God as the first-fruits of a saved humanity; men being saved as they become partakers (by faith) of this purified humanity, as they become leavened by this new leaven. Certain of the elements which the great German theologian J. C. K. von Hofmann built into his complicated and not altogether stable theory - a theory which was the occasion of much discussion about the middle of the nineteenth century - reproduce some of the characteristic language of the theory of "salvation by sample." 

3. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating on man, in the way of bringing to bear on him inducements to action; so affecting man as to lead him to a better knowledge of God, or to a more lively sense of his real relation to God, or to a revolutionary change of heart and life with reference to God; the so-called "moral influence theories." The essence of all these theories is that they transfer the atoning fact from the work of Christ to the response of the human soul to the influences or appeals proceeding from the work of Christ. The work of Christ takes immediate effect not on God but on man, leading him to a state of mind and heart which will be acceptable to God, through the medium of which alone can the work of Christ be said to affect God. At its highest level, this will mean that the work of Christ is directed to leading man to repentance and faith, which repentance and faith secure God's favor, an effect which can be attributed to Christ's work only mediately, that is, through the medium of the repentance and faith it produces in man. Accordingly, it has become quite common to say, in this school, that "it is faith and repentance which change the face of God"; and advocates of this class of theories sometimes say with entire frankness, "There is no atonement other than repentance" (Auguste Sabatier, "La Doctrine de l'expiation et son evolution historique," Paris, 1901, E.T. London, 1904, p. 127). 

Theories of this general type differ from one another, according as, among the instrumentalities by means of which Christ affects the minds and hearts and actions of men, the stress is laid upon His teaching, or His example, or the impression made by His life of faith, or the manifestation of the infinite love of God afforded by His total mission. The most powerful presentation of the first of these conceptions ever made was probably that of the Socinians (followed later by the rationalists, both earlier and later, - Töllner, Bahrdt, Steinbart, Eberhard, Löffler, Henke, Wegscheider). They looked upon the work of Christ as summed up in the proclamation of the willingness of God to forgive sin, on the sole condition of its abandonment; and explained His sufferings and death as merely those of a martyr in the cause of righteousness or in some other non-essential way. The theories which lay the stress of Christ's work on the example He has set us of a high and faithful life, or of a life of self-sacrificing love, have found popular representatives not only in the subtle theory with which F. D. Maurice pieced out his mystical view, and in the somewhat amorphous ideas with which the great preacher F. W. Robertson clothed his conception of Christ's life as simply a long (and hopeless) battle against the evil of the world to which it at last succumbed; but more lately in writers like Auguste Sabatier, who does not stop short of transmuting Christianity into bald altruism, and making it into what he calls the religion of "universal redemption by love," that is to say, anybody's love, not specifically Christ's love - for every one who loves takes his position by Christ's side as, if not equally, yet as truly, a saviour as He ("The Doctrine of the Atonement in its Historical Evolution," ut sup., pp. 131-134; so also Otto Pfleiderer, "Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung," Berlin, 1903, E.T. London, 1905, pp. 164-165; cf. Horace Bushnell, "Vicarious Sacrifice," New York, 1865, p. 107: "Vicarious sacrifice was in no way peculiar"). In this same general category belongs also the theory which Albrecht Ritschl has given such wide influence. According to it, the work of Christ consists in the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the world, that is, in the revelation of God's love to men and His gracious purposes for men. Thus Jesus becomes the first object of this love and as such its mediator to others; His sufferings and death being, on the one side, a test of His steadfastness, and, on the other, the crowning proof of His obedience ("Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung," iii. §§ 41-61, ed. 3, Bonn, 1888, E.T. Edinburgh, 1900). Similarly also, though with many modifications, which are in some instances not insignificant, such writers as W. Herrmann ("Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott," Stuttgart, 1886, p. 93, E.T. London, 1895), J. Kaftan ("Dogmatik," Tübingen, 1901, pp. 454 ff.), F. A. B. Nitzsch ("Lehrbuch der evangelischen Dogmatik," Freiburg, 1892, pp. 504-513), T. Häring (in his "Ueber das Bleibende im Glauben an Christus," Stuttgart, 1880, where he sought to complete Ritschl's view by the addition of the idea that Christ offered to God a perfect sorrow for the world's sin, which supplements our imperfect repentance; in his later writings, "Zu Ritschl's Versöhnungslehre," Zurich, 1888, "Zur Versöhnungslehre," Göttingen, 1893, he assimilates to the Grotian theory), E. Kühl ("Die Heilsbedeutung des Todes Christi," Berlin, 1890), G. A. F. Ecklin (" Der Heilswert des Todes Jesu," Gütersloh, 1888; "Christus unser Bürge," Basel, 1901; and especially "Erlösung und Versöhnung," Basel, 1903, which is an elaborate history of the doctrine from the point of view of what Ecklin calls in antagonism to the "substitutional-expiatory" conception, the "solidaric-reparatory" conception of the Atonement - the conception, that is, that Christ comes to save men not primarily from the guilt, but from the power of sin, and that "the sole satisfaction God demands for His outraged honor is the restoration of obedience," p. 648). The most popular form of the "moral influence" theories has always been that in which the stress is laid on the manifestation made in the total mission and work of Christ of the ineffable and searching love of God for sinners, which, being perceived, breaks down our opposition to God, melts our hearts, and brings us as prodigals home to the Father's arms. It is in this form that the theory was advocated (but with the suggestion that there is another side to it), for example, by S. T. Coleridge ("Aids to Reflection"), and that it was commended to English-speaking readers of the last generation with the highest ability by John Young of Edinburgh ("The Life and Light of Men," London, 1866), and with the greatest literary attractiveness by Horace Bushnell ("Vicarious Sacrifice," New York, 1865; see below, § 7; see also article "Bushnell, Horace"); and has been more recently set forth in elaborate and vigorously polemic form by W. N. Clarke ("An Outline of Christian Theology," New York, 1898, pp. 340-368), T. Vincent Tymms ("The Christian Idea of Atonement," London, 1904), G. B. Stevens ("The Christian Doctrine of Salvation," New York, 1905), and C. M. Mead ("Irenic Theology," New York, 1905). 

In a volume of essays published first in the Andover Review (iv. 1885, pp. 56 ff.) and afterward gathered into a volume under the title of "Progressive Orthodoxy" (Boston, 1886), the professors in Andover Seminary made an attempt (the writer here being, as was understood, George Harris) to enrich the "moral influence" theory of the Atonement after a fashion quite common in Germany (cf. e.g. Häring, ut sup.) with elements derived from other well-known forms of teaching. In this construction, Christ's work is made to consist primarily in bringing to bear on man a revelation of God's hatred of sin, and love for souls, by which He makes man capable of repentance and leads him to repent revolutionarily; by this repentance, then, together with Christ's own sympathetic expression of repentance God is rendered propitious. Here Christ's work is supposed to have at least some (though a secondary) effect upon God; and a work of propitiation of God by Christ may be spoken of, although it is accomplished by a "sympathetic repentance." It has accordingly become usual with those who have adopted this mode of representation to say that there was in this atoning work, not indeed "a substitution of a sinless Christ for a sinful race," but a "substitution of humanity plus Christ for humanity minus Christ." By such curiously compacted theories the transition is made to the next class. 

4. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating on both man and God, but on man primarily and on God only secondarily. The outstanding instance of this class of theories is supplied by the so-called "rectoral or governmental theories." These suppose that the work of Christ so affects man by the spectacle of the sufferings borne by Him as to deter men from sin; and by thus deterring men from sin enables God to forgive sin with safety to His moral government of the world. In these theories the sufferings and death of Christ become, for the first time in this conspectus of theories, of cardinal importance, constituting indeed the very essence of the work of Christ. But the atoning fact here too, no less than in the "moral influence" theories, is man's own reformation, though this reformation is supposed in the rectoral view to be wrought not primarily by breaking down man's opposition to God by a moving manifestation of the love of God in Christ, but by inducing in man a horror of sin, through the spectacle of God's hatred of sin afforded by the sufferings of Christ - through which, no doubt, the contemplation of man is led on to God's love to sinners as exhibited in His willingness to inflict all these sufferings on His own Son, that He might be enabled, with justice to His moral government, to forgive sins.

This theory was worked out by the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius ("Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi," Leyden, 1617; modern edition, Oxford, 1856; E.T. with notes and introduction by F. H. Foster, Andover, 1889) as an attempt to save what was salvable of the established doctrine of satisfaction from disintegration under the attacks of the Socinian advocates of the "moral influence" theories (see "Grotius, Hugo"). It was at once adopted by those Arminians who had been most affected by the Socinian reasoning; and in the next age became the especial property of the better class of the so-called supranaturalists (Michaelis, Storr, Morus, Knapp, Steudel, Reinhard, Muntinghe, Vinke, Egeling). It has remained on the continent of Europe to this day, the refuge of most of those, who, influenced by the modern spirit, yet wish to preserve some form of "objective," that is, of God-ward atonement. A great variety of representations have grown up under this influence, combining elements of the satisfaction and rectoral views. To name but a single typical instance, the commentator F. Godet, both in his commentaries (especially that on Romans) and in a more recent essay (published in "The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought," by various writers, London, 1900, pp. 331 ff.), teaches (certainly in a very high form) the rectoral theory distinctly (and is corrected therefor by his colleague at Neuchatel, Professor Gretillat, who wishes an "ontological" rather than a merely "demonstrative" necessity for atonement to be recognized). Its history has run on similar lines in English-speaking countries. In Great Britain and America alike it has become practically the orthodoxy of the Independents. It has, for example, been taught as such in the former country by Joseph Gilbert ("The Christian Atonement," London, 1836), and in especially wellworked-out forms by R. W. Dale ("The Atonement," London, 1876) and Alfred Cave ("The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice," Edinburgh, 1877; new edition with title, "The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice and Atonement," 1890; and in "The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought," ut sup., pp. 250 ff.). When the Calvinism of the New England Puritans began to break down, one of the symptoms of its decay was the gradual substitution of the rectoral for the satisfaction view of the Atonement. The process may be traced in the writings of Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), John Smalley (1734-1820), Stephen West (1735-1819), Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801), Nathanael Emmons (1745-1840); and Edwards A. Park was able, accordingly, in the middle of the nineteenth century to set the rectoral theory forth as the "traditional orthodox doctrine" of the American Congregationalists ("The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxcy, Emmons, Griffin, Burge, and Weeks, with an Introductory Essay by Edwards A. Park," Boston, 1859; cf. Daniel T. Fisk, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, xviii. 1861, pp. 284 ff., and further N. S. S. Beman, "Four Sermons on the Doctrine of the Atonement," Troy, 1825, new edition with title "Christ, the only Sacrifice: or the Atonement in its Relations to God and Man," New York, 1844; N.W. Taylor, "Lectures on the Moral Government of God," New York, 1859; Albert Barnes, "The Atonement, in its Relations to Law and Moral Government," Philadelphia, 1859; Frank H. Foster, "Christian Life and Theology," New York, 1900; Lewis F. Stearns, "Present Day Theology," New York, 1893). The early Wesleyans also gravitated toward the rectoral theory, though not without some hesitation, a hesitation which has sustained itself among British Wesleyans until to-day (cf. e.g. W. B. Pope, "Compendium of Christian Theology," London, 1875; Marshall Randles, "Substitution: a Treatise on the Atonement," London, 1877; T. O. Summers, "Systematic Theology," 2 vols., Nashville, Tenn., 1888; J. J. Tigert, in the Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1884), although many among them have taught the rectoral theory with great distinctness and decision (e.g. Joseph Agar Beet, in the Expositor, Fourth Series, vi. 1892, pp. 343-355; "Through Christ to God," London, 1893). On the other hand, the rectoral theory has been the regnant one among American Methodists and has received some of its best statements from their hands (cf. especially John Miley, "The Atonement in Christ," New York, 1879; "Systematic Theology," New York, ii. 1894, pp. 65-240), although there are voices raised of late in denial of its claim to be considered distinctively the doctrine of the Methodist Church (J. J. Tigert, ut sup.; H. C. Sheldon, in The American Journal of Theology, x. 1906, pp. 41-42). 

The final form which Horace Bushnell gave his version of the "moral influence" theory, in his "Forgiveness and Law" (New York, 1874; made the second volume to his revised "Vicarious Sacrifice," 1877), stands in no relation to the rectoral theories; but it requires to be mentioned here by their side, because it supposes like them that the work of Christ has a secondary effect on God, although its primary effect is on man. In this presentation, Bushnell represents Christ's work as consisting in a profound identification of Himself with man, the effect of which is, on the one side, to manifest God's love to man and so to conquer man to Him, and, on the other, as he expresses it, "to make cost" on God's part for man, and so, by breaking down God's resentment to man, to prepare God's heart to receive man back when he comes. The underlying idea is that whenever we do anything for those who have injured us, and in proportion as it costs us something to do it, our natural resentment of the injury we have suffered is undermined, and we are prepared to forgive the injury when forgiveness is sought. By this theory the transition is naturally made to the next class. 

5. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating primarily on God and secondarily on man. The lowest form in which this ultimate position can be said to be fairly taken, is doubtless that set forth in his remarkably attractive way by John McLeod Campbell ("The Nature of the Atonement and its Relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life," London, 1856; ed. 4, 1873), and lately argued out afresh with even more than Campbell's winningness and far more than his cogency, depth, and richness, by the late R. C. Moberly ("Atonement and Personality," London, 1901). This theory supposes that our Lord, by sympathetically entering into our condition (an idea independently suggested by Schleiermacher, and emphasized by many Continental thinkers, as, for example, to name only a pair with little else in common, by Gess and Häring), so keenly felt our sins as His own, that He could confess and adequately repent of them before God; and this is all the expiation justice asks. Here "sympathetic identification" replaces the conception of substitution; "sodality," of race-unity; and "repentance," of expiation. Nevertheless, the theory rises immeasurably above the mass of those already enumerated, in looking upon Christ as really a Saviour, who performs a really saving work, terminating immediately on God. Despite its insufficiencies, therefore, which have caused writers like Edwards A. Park, and A. B. Bruce ("The Humiliation of Christ," ut sup., pp. 317-318) to speak of it with a tinge of contempt, it has exercised a very wide influence and elements of it are discoverable in many constructions which stand far removed from its fundamental presuppositions. 

The so-called "middle theory" of the Atonement, which owes its name to its supposed intermediate position between the "moral influence" theories and the doctrine of "satisfaction," seems to have offered attractions to the latitudinarian writers of the closing eighteenth and opening nineteenth centuries. At that time it was taught in John Balguy's "Essay on Redemption" (London, 1741), Henry Taylor's "Apology of Ben Mordecai" (London, 1784), and Richard Price's "Sermons on Christian Doctrine" (London, 1787; cf. Hill's "Lectures in Divinity," ed. 1851, pp. 422 ff.). Basing on the conception of sacrifices which looks upon them as merely gifts designed to secure the good-will of the King, the advocates of this theory regard the work of Christ as consisting in the offering to God of Christ's perfect obedience even to death, and by it purchasing God's favor and the right to do as He would with those whom God gave Him as a reward. By the side of this theory may be placed the ordinary Remonstrant theory of acceptilatio, which, reviving this Scotist conception, is willing to allow that the work of Christ was of the nature of an expiatory sacrifice, but is unwilling to allow that His blood any more than that of "bulls and goats" had intrinsic value equivalent to the fault for which it was graciously accepted by God as an atonement. This theory may be found expounded, for example, in Limborch ("Theologia Christiana," ed. 4, Amsterdam, 1715, iii. chaps. xviii.-xxiii.). Such theories, while preserving the sacrificial form of the Biblical doctrine, and, with it, its inseparable implication that the work of Christ has as its primary end to affect God and secure from Him favorable regard for man (for it is always to God that sacrifices are offered), yet fall so far short of the Biblical doctrine of the nature and effect of Christ's sacrifice as to seem little less than travesties of it. 

The Biblical doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ finds full recognition in no other construction than that of the established church-doctrine of satisfaction. According to it, our Lord's redeeming work is at its core a true and perfect sacrifice offered to God, of intrinsic value ample for the expiation of our guilt; and at the same time is a true and perfect righteousness offered to God in fulfillment of the demands of His law; both the one and the other being offered in behalf of His people, and, on being accepted by God, accruing to their benefit; so that by this satisfaction they are relieved at once from the curse of their guilt as breakers of the law, and from the burden of the law as a condition of life; and this by a work of such kind and performed in such a manner, as to carry home to the hearts of men a profound sense of the indefectible righteousness of God and to make to them a perfect revelation of His love; so that, by this one and indivisible work, both God is reconciled to us, and we, under the quickening influence of the Spirit bought for us by it, are reconciled to God, so making peace - external peace between an angry God and sinful men, and internal peace in the response of the human conscience to the restored smile of God. This doctrine, which has been incorporated in more or less fullness of statement in the creedal declarations of all the great branches of the Church, Greek, Latin, Lutheran, and Reformed, and which has been expounded with more or less insight and power by the leading doctors of the churches for the last eight hundred years, was first given scientific statement by Anselm (q.v.) in his "Cur Deus homo" (1098); but reached its complete development only at the hands of the so-called Protestant Scholastics of the seventeenth century (cf. e.g. Turretin, "The Atonement of Christ," E.T. by J. R. Willson, New York, 1859; John Owen, "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ" (1648), Edinburgh, 1845). Among the numerous modern presentations of the doctrine the following may perhaps be most profitably consulted. Of Continental writers: August Tholuck, "Die Lehre von der Sünde und vom Versöhner," Hamburg, 1823; F. A. Philippi, "Kirchliche Glaubenslehre" (Stuttgart and Gütersloh, 1854-1882), IV. ii. 1863, pp. 24 ff.; G. Thomasius, "Christi Person und Werk," ed. 3, Erlangen, 1886-1888, vol. ii.; E. Böhl, "Dogmatik," Amsterdam, 1887, pp. 361 ff.; J. F. Bula, "Die Versöhnung des Menschen mit Gott durch Christum," Basel, 1874; W. Kolling, "Die Satisfactio vicaria," 2 vols., Gütersloh, 1897-1899; Merle d'Aubigné, "L'Expiation de la croix," Geneva, 1867; A. Gretillat, "Exposé de théologie systématique" (Paris, 1885-1892), iv. 1890, pp. 278 ff.; A. Kuyper, "E Voto Dordraceno," Amsterdam, i. 1892, pp. 79 ff., 388 ff.; H. Bavinck, "Gereformeerde Dogmatick," Kampen, iii. 1898, pp. 302-424. Of writers in English: The appropriate sections of the treatises on dogmatics by C. Hodge, A. H. Strong, W. G. T. Shedd, R. L. Dabney; and the following separate treatises: W. Symington, "On the Atonement and Intercession of Jesus Christ," New York, 1853 (defective, as excluding the "active obedience" of Christ); R. S. Candlish, "The Atonement: its Efficacy and Extent," Edinburgh, 1867; A. A. Hodge, "The Atonement," Philadelphia, 1867, new edition, 1877; George Smeaton, "The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught by Christ Himself," Edinburgh, 1868, ed. 2, 1871; idem, "The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught by the Apostles," 1870; T. J. Crawford, "The Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the Atonement," Edinburgh, 1871, ed. 5, 1888; Hugh Martin, "The Atonement: in its Relations to the Covenant, the Priesthood, the Intercession of our Lord," London, 1870. See " Satisfaction." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The more important treatises on the Atonement have been named in the body of the article. The history of the doctrine has been written with a fair degree of objectivity by Ferdinand Christian Baur, "Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung," Tübingen, 1838; and with more subjectivity by Albrecht Ritschl in the first volume of his "Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung," ed. 3, Bonn, 1889, E.T. from the first edition, 1870, "A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation," Edinburgh; 1872. Excellent historical sketches are given by G. Thomasius, in the second volume of his "Christi Person und Werk," pp. 113 ff., ed. 3, Erlangen, 1888, from the confessional, and by F. A. B. Nitzsch, in his "Lehrbuch der evangelischen Dogmatik," pp. 457 ff., Freiburg, 1892, from the moral influence standpoint. More recently the history has been somewhat sketchily written from the general confessional standpoint by Oscar Bensow as the first part of his "Die Lehre von der Versöhnung," Gütersloh, 1904, and with more fullness from the moral influence standpoint by G. A. F. Ecklin, in his "Erlösung und Versöhnung," Basel, 1903. Consult also E. Ménégoz, "La Mort de Jésus et le dogme de l'expiation," Paris, 1905. The English student of the history of the doctrine has at his disposal not only the sections in the general histories of doctrine (e.g. Hagenbach, Cunningham, Shedd, Harnack) and the comprehensive treatise of Ritschl mentioned above, but also interesting sketches in the appendices of G. Smeaton's "The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught by the Apostles," Edinburgh, 1870, and J. S. Lidgett's "The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement," London, 1897, from the confessional standpoint, as well as H. N. Oxenham's "The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement," London, 1865, ed. 3, 1881, from the Roman Catholic standpoint. Consult also: J. B. Remensnyder, "The Atonement and Modern Thought," Philadelphia, 1905; D. W. Simon, "The Redemption of Man," Edinburgh, 1889; C. A. Dinsmore, "Atonement in Literature and Life," Boston, 1906; L. Pullan, "The Atonement," London, 1906. An interesting episode is treated by Andrew Robertson, "History of the Atonement Controversy in the Secession Church," Edinburgh, 1846.

The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity

Benjamin B. Warfield

The term "Trinity" is not a Biblical term, and we are not using Biblical language when we define what is expressed by it as the doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence. A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the definition of a Biblical doctrine in such unBiblical language can be justified only on the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words of Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity lies in Scripture in solution; when it is crystallized from its solvent it does not cease to be Scriptural, but only comes into clearer view. Or, to speak without figure, the doctrine of the Trinity is given to us in Scripture, not in formulated definition, but in fragmentary allusions; when we assembled the disjecta membra into their organic unity, we are not passing from Scripture, but entering more thoroughly into the meaning of Scripture. We may state the doctrine in technical terms, supplied by philosophical reflection; but the doctrine stated is a genuinely Scriptural doctrine.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a truth which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Triads of divinities, no doubt, occur in nearly all polytheistic religions, formed under very various influences. Sometimes as in the Egyptian triad of Osiris, Isis and Horus, it is the analogy of the human family with its father, mother and son which lies at their basis. Sometimes they are the effect of mere syncretism, three deities worshipped in different localities being brought together in the common worship of all. Sometimes, as in the Hindu triad of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, they represent the cyclic movement of a pantheistic evolution, and symbolize the three stages of Being, Becoming and Dissolution. Sometimes they are the result apparently of nothing more than an odd human tendency to think in threes, which has given the number three widespread standing as a sacred number (so H. Usener). It is no more than was to be anticipated, that one or another of these triads should now and again be pointed to as the replica (or even the original) of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Gladstone found the Trinity in the Homeric mythology, the trident of Poseidon being its symbol. Hegel very naturally found it in the Hindu Trimurti, which indeed is very like his pantheizing notion of what the Trinity is. Others have perceived it in the Buddhist Triratna (Soderblom); or (despite their crass dualism) in some speculations of Parseeism; or, more frequently, in the notional triad of Platonism (e. g., Knapp); while Jules Martin is quite sure that it is present in Philo's neo-Stoical doctrine of the "powers," especially when applied to the explanation of Abraham's three visitors. Of late years, eyes have been turned rather to Babylonia; and H. Zimmern finds a possible forerunner of the Trinity in a Father, Son, and Intercessor, which he discovers in its mythology. It should be needless to say that none of these triads has the slightest resemblance to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity embodies much more than the notion of "threeness," and beyond their "threeness" these triads have nothing in common with it.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him. Many attempts have, nevertheless, been made to construct a rational proof of the Trinity of the Godhead. Among these there are two which are particularly attractive, and have therefore been put forward again and again by speculative thinkers through all the Christian ages. These are derived from the implications, in the one case, of self-consciousness; in the other, of love. Both self-consciousness and love, it is said, demand for their very existence an object over against which the self stands as subject. If we conceive of God as self-conscious and loving, therefore, we cannot help conceiving of Him as embracing in His unity some form of plurality. From this general position both arguments have been elaborated, however, by various thinkers in very varied forms.

The former of them, for example, is developed by a great seventeenth century theologian -- Bartholomew Keckermann (1614) -- as follows: God is self-conscious thought: and God's thought must have a perfect object, existing eternally before it; this object to be perfect must be itself God; and as God is one, this object which is God must be the God that is one. It is essentially the same argument which is popularized in a famous paragraph (73) of Lessing's "The Education of the Human Race." Must not God have an absolutely perfect representation of Himself - that is, a representation in which everything that is in Him is found? And would everything that is in God be found in this representation if His necessary reality were not found in it? If everything, everything without exception, that is in God is to be found in this representation, it cannot, therefore, remain a mere empty image, but must be an actual duplication of God. It is obvious that arguments like this prove too much. If God's representation of Himself, to be perfect, must possess the same kind of reality that He Himself possesses, it does not seem easy to deny that His representations of everything else must possess objective reality. And this would be as much as to say that the eternal objective co-existence of all that God can conceive is given in the very idea of God; and that is open pantheism. The logical flaw lies in including in the perfection of a representation qualities which are not proper to representations, however perfect. A perfect representation must, of course, have all the reality proper to a representation; but objective reality is so little proper to a representation that a representation acquiring it would cease to be a representation. This fatal flaw is not transcended, but only covered up, when the argument is compressed, as it is in most of its modern presentations, in effect to the mere assertion that the condition of self-consciousness is a real distinction between the thinking subject and the thought object, which, in God's case, would be between the subject ego and the object ego. Why, however, we should deny to God the power of self-contemplation enjoyed by every finite spirit, save at the cost of the distinct hypostatizing of the contemplant and the contemplated self, it is hard to understand. Nor is it always clear that what we get is a distinct hypostatization rather than a distinct substantializing of the contemplant and contemplated ego: not two persons in the Godhead so much as two Gods. The discovery of the third hypostasis - the Holy Spirit -remains meanwhile, to all these attempts rationally to construct a Trinity in the Divine Being, a standing puzzle which finds only a very artificial solution.

The case is much the same with the argument derived from the nature of love. Our sympathies go out to that old Valentinian writer - possibly it was Valentinus himself - who reasoned - perhaps he was the first so to reason - that "God is all love," "but love is not love unless there be an object of love." And they go out more richly still to Augustine, when, seeking a basis, not for a theory of emanations, but for the doctrine of the Trinity, he analyzes this love which God is into the triple implication of "the lover," "the loved" and "the love itself," and sees in this trinary of love an analogue of the Triune God. It requires, however, only that the argument thus broadly suggested should be developed into its details for its artificiality to become apparent. Richard of St. Victor works it out as follows: It belongs to the nature of amor that it should turn to another as caritas. This other, in God's case, cannot be the world; since such love of the world would be inordinate. It can only be a person; and a person who is God's equal in eternity, power and wisdom. Since, however, there cannot be two Divine substances, these two Divine persons must form one and the same substance. The best love cannot, however, con-fine itself to these two persons; it must become condilectio by the desire that a third should be equally loved as they love one another. Thus love, when perfectly conceived, leads necessarily to the Trinity, and since God is all He can be, this Trinity must be real. Modern writers (Sartorius, Schoberlein, J. Muller, Liebner, most lately R. H. Griutzmacher) do not seem to have essentially improved upon such a statement as this. And after all is said, it does not appear clear that God's own all-perfect Being could not supply a satisfying object of His all-perfect love. To say that in its very nature love is self-communicative, and therefore implies an object other than self, seems an abuse of figurative language.

Perhaps the ontological proof of the Trinity is nowhere more attractively put than by Jonathan Edwards. The peculiarity of his presentation of it lies in an attempt to add plausibility to it by a doctrine of the nature of spiritual ideas or ideas of spiritual things, such as thought, love, fear, in general. Ideas of such things, he urges, are just repetitions of them, so that he who has an idea of any act of love, fear, anger or any other act or motion of the mind, simply so far repeats the motion in question; and if the idea be perfect and complete, the original motion of the mind is absolutely reduplicated. Edwards presses this so far that he is ready to contend that if a man could have an absolutely perfect idea of all that was in his mind at any past moment, he would really, to all intents and purposes, be over again what he was at that moment. And if he could perfectly contemplate all that is in his mind at any given moment, as it is and at the same time that it is there in its first and direct existence, he would really be two at that time, he would be twice at once: "The idea he has of himself would be himself again." This now is the case with the Divine Being. "God's idea of Himself is absolutely perfect, and therefore is an express and perfect image of Him, exactly like Him in every respect. . . . But that which is the express, perfect image of God and in every respect like Him is God, to all intents and purposes, because there is nothing wanting: there is nothing in the Deity that renders it the Deity but what has something exactly answering to it in this image, which will therefore also render that the Deity." The Second Person of the Trinity being thus attained, the argument advances. "The Godhead being thus begotten of God's loving [having?] an idea of Himself and showing forth in a distinct Subsistence or Person in that idea, there proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and sacred energy arises between the Father and the Son in mutually loving and delighting in each other.;. . . The Deity becomes all act, the Divine essence itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of Subsistence, and there proceeds the Third Person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz., the Deity in act, for there is no other act but the act of the will." The inconclusiveness of the reasoning lies on the surface. The mind does not consist in its states, and the repetition of its states would not, therefore, duplicate or triplicate it. If it did, we should have a plurality of Beings, not of Persons in one Being. Neither God's perfect idea of Himself nor His perfect love of Himself reproduces Himself. He differs from His idea and His love of Himself precisely by that which distinguishes His Being from His acts. When it is said, then, that there 15 nothing in the Deity which renders it the Deity but what has something answering to it in its image of itself, it is enough to respond - except the Deity itself. What is wanting to the image to make it a second Deity is just objective reality.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known truth, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity. Accordingly, I. A. Dorner, for example, reasons thus: "If, however - and this is the faith of universal Christendom - a living idea of God must be thought in some way after a Trinitarian fashion, it must be antecedently probable that traces of the Trinity cannot be lacking in the Old Testament, since its idea of God is a living or historical one." Whether there really exist traces of the idea of the Trinity in the Old Testament, however, is a nice question. Certainly we cannot speak broadly of the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament. It is a plain matter of fact that none who have depended on the revelation embodied in the Old Testament alone have ever attained to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is another question, however, whether there may not exist in the pages of the Old Testament turns of expression or. records of occurrences in which one already acquainted with the doctrine of the Trinity may fairly see indications of an underlying implication of it. The older writers discovered intimations of the Trinity in such phenomena as the plural form of the Divine name Elohim, the occasional employment with reference to God of plural pronouns ("Let us make man in our image," Gen. i. 26; iii. 22; xi. 7; Isa. vi. 8), or of plural verbs (Gen. xx. 13; xxxv. 7), certain repetitions of the name of God which seem to distinguish between God and God (Ps. xlv. 6, 7; cx. 1; Hos. i. 7), threefold liturgical formulas Num. vi. 24, 26; Isa. vi. 3), a certain tendency to hypostatize the conception of Wisdom (Prov. viii.), and especially the remarkable phenomena connected with the appearances of the Angel of Jehovah (Gen. xvi. 2-13, xxii. 11. 16; xxxi. 11,13; xlviii. 15,16; Ex. iii. 2, 4, 5; Jgs. xiii. 20-22). The tendency of more recent authors is to appeal, not so much to specific texts of the Old Testament, as to the very "organism of revelation" in the Old Testament in which there is perceived an underlying suggestion "that all things owe their existence and persistence to a threefold cause," both with reference to the first creation, and, more plainly, with reference to the second creation. Passages like Ps. xxxiii. 6; Isa. lxi. 1; lxiii. 9-12 Hag. ii. 5, 6, in which God and His Word and His Spirit are brought together, co-causes of effects, are adduced. A tendency is pointed out to hypostatize the Word of God on the one hand (e.g., Gen. i. 3; Ps. xxxiii. 6; cvii. 20; cxlvii. 15-18 Isa. lv. 11); and, especially in Ezek. and the later Prophets, the Spirit of God, on the other (e. g., Gen. i. 2; Isa. xlviii. 16; lxiii. 10; Ezek. ii. 2; viii. 3; Zec. vii. 12). Suggestions - in Isa. for instance (vii. 14; ix. 6) - of the Deity of the Messiah are appealed to. And if the occasional occurrence of plural verbs and pronouns referring to God, and the plural form of the name Elohim are not insisted upon as in themselves evidence of a multiplicity in the Godhead, yet a certain weight is lent them as witnesses that "the God of revelation is no abstract unity, but the living, true God who in the fullness of His life embraces the highest variety" (Bavinek). The upshot of it all is that it is very generally felt that, somehow, in the Old Testament development of the idea of God there is a suggestion that the Deity is not a simple monad, and that thus a preparation is made for the revelation of the Trinity yet to come. It would seem clear that we must recognize in the Old Testament doctrine of the relation of God to His revelation by the creative Word and the Spirit, at least the germ of the distinctions in the Godhead afterward fully made known in the Christian revelation. And we can scarcely stop there. After all is said, in the light of the later revelation, the Trinitarian interpretation remains the most natural one of the phenomena which the older writers frankly interpreted as intimations of the Trinity; especially of those connected with the descriptions of the Angel of Jehovah no doubt, but also even of such a form of expression as meets us in the "Let us make man in our image" of Gen. i. 26--- for surely verse 27: "And God created man in his own image," does not encourage us to take the preceding verse as announcing that man was to be created in the image of the angels. This is not an illegitimate reading of New Testament ideas back into the text of the Old Testament; it is only reading the text of the Old Testament under the illumination of the New Testament revelation. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended and enlarged.

It is an old saying that what becomes patent in the New Testament was latent in the Old Testament. And it is important that the continuity of the revelation of God contained in the two Testaments should not be overlooked or obscured. If we find some difficulty in perceiving for ourselves, in the Old Testament, definite points of attachment for the revelation of the Trinity, we cannot help perceiving with great clearness in the New Testament abundant evidence that its writers felt no incongruity whatever between their doctrine of the Trinity and the Old Testament conception of God. The New Testament writers certainly were not conscious of being "setters forth of strange gods." To their own apprehension they worshipped and proclaimed just the God of Israel; and they laid no less stress than the Old Testament itself upon His unity (Jn. xvii. 3; I Cor. viii. 4; I Tim. ii. 5). They do not, then, place two new gods by the side of Jehovah as alike with Him to be served and worshipped; they conceive Jehovah as Himself at once Father, Son and Spirit. In presenting this one Jehovah as Father, Son and Spirit, they do not even betray any lurking feeling that they are making innovations. Without apparent misgiving they take over Old Testament passages and apply them to Father, Son and Spirit indifferently. Obviously they understand themselves, and wish to be understood, as setting forth in the Father, Son and Spirit just the one God that the God of the Old Testament revelation is; and they are as far as possible from recognizing any breach between themselves and the Fathers in presenting their enlarged conception of the Divine Being. This may not amount to saying that they saw the doctrine of the Trinity everywhere taught in the Old Testament. It certainly amounts to saying that they saw the Triune God whom they worshipped in the God of the Old Testament revelation, and felt no incongruity in speaking of their Triune God in the terms of the Old Testament revelation. The God of the Old Testament was their God, and their God was a Trinity, and their sense of the identity of the two was so complete that no question as to it was raised in their minds.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian truths." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

We cannot speak of the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, if we study exactness of speech, as revealed in the New Testament, any more than we can speak of it as revealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written before its revelation; the New Testament after it. The revelation itself was made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the Son, and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two Testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it, and in the other that of product of it. The revelation itself is embodied just in Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is as much as to say that the revelation of the Trinity was incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of redemption. It was in the coming of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin; and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, that the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead was once for all revealed to men. Those who knew God the Father, who loved them and gave His own Son to die for them; and the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved them and delivered Himself up an offering and sacrifice for them; and the Spirit of Grace, who loved them and dwelt within them a power not themselves, making for righteousness, knew the Triune God and could not think or speak of God otherwise than as triune. The doctrine of the Trinity, in other words, is simply the modification wrought in the conception of the one only God by His complete revelation of Himself in the redemptive process. It necessarily waited, therefore, upon the completion of the redemptive process for its revelation, and its revelation, as necessarily, lay complete in the redemptive process.

From this central fact we may understand more fully several circumstances connected with the revelation of the Trinity to which allusion has been made. We may from it understand, for example, why the Trinity was not revealed in the Old Testament. It may carry us a little way to remark, as it has been customary to remark since the time of Gregory of Nazianzus, that it was the task of the Old Testament revelation to fix firmly in the minds and hearts of the people of God the great fundamental truth of the unity of the Godhead; and it would have been dangerous to speak to them of the plurality within this unity until this task had been fully accomplished. The real reason for the delay in the revelation of the Trinity, however, is grounded in the secular development of the redemptive purpose of God: the times were not ripe for the revelation of the Trinity in the unity of the Godhead until the fullness of the time had come for God to send forth His Son unto redemption, and His Spirit unto sanctification. The revelation in word must needs wait upon the revelation in fact, to which it brings its necessary explanation, no doubt, but from which also it derives its own entire significance and value. The revelation of a Trinity in the Divine unity as a mere abstract truth without relation to manifested fact, and without significance to the development of the kingdom of God, would have been foreign to the whole method of the Divine procedure as it lies exposed to us in the pages of Scripture. Here the working-out of the Divine purpose supplies the fundamental principle to which all else, even the progressive stages of revelation itself, is subsidiary; and advances in revelation are ever closely connected with the advancing accomplishment of the redemptive purpose. We may understand also, however, from the same central fact, why it is that the doctrine of the Trinity lies in the New Testament rather in the form of allusions than in express teaching, why it is rather everywhere presupposed, coming only here and there into incidental expression, than formally inculcated. It is because the revelation, having been made in the actual occurrences of redemption, was already the common property of all Christian hearts. In speaking and writing to one another, Christians, therefore, rather spoke out of their common Trinitarian consciousness, and reminded one another of their common fund of belief, than instructed one another in what was already the common property of all. We are to look for, and we shall find, in the New Testament allusions to the Trinity, rather evidence of how the Trinity, believed in by all, was conceived by the authoritative teachers of the church, than formal attempts, on their part, by authoritative declarations, to bring the church into the understanding that God is a Trinity.

The fundamental proof that God is a Trinity is supplied thus by the fundamental revelation of the Trinity in fact: that is to say, in the incarnation of God the Son and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. In a word, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are the fundamental proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. This is as much as to say that all the evidence of whatever kind, and from whatever source derived, that Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh, and that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, is just so much evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity; and that when we go to the New Testament for evidence of the Trinity we are to seek it; not merely in the scattered allusions to the Trinity as such, numerous and instructive as they are, but primarily in the whole mass of evidence which the New Testament provides of the Deity of Christ and the Divine personality of the Holy Spirit. When we have said this, we have said in effect that the whole mass of the New Testament is evidence for the Trinity. For the New Testament is saturated with evidence of the Deity of Christ and the Divine personality of the Holy Spirit. Precisely what the New Testament is, is the documentation of the religion of the incarnate Son and of the outpourcd Spirit, that is to say, of the religion of the Trinity, and what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity is nothing but the formulation in exact language of the conception of God presupposed in the religion of the incarnate Son and outpoured Spirit. We may analyze this conception and adduce proof for every constituent element of it from the New Testament declarations. We may show that the New Testament everywhere insists on the unity of the Godhead; that it constantly recognizes the Father as God, the Son as God and the Spirit as God; and that it cursorily presents these three to us as distinct Persons. It is not necessary, however, to enlarge here on facts so obvious. We may content ourselves with simply observing that to the New Testament there is but one only living and true God; but that to it Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are each God in the fullest sense of the term; and yet Father, Son and Spirit stand over against each other as I, and Thou, and He. In this composite fact the New Testament gives us the doctrine of the Trinity. For the doctrine of the Trinity is but the statement in well guarded language of this composite fact. Throughout the whole course of the many efforts to formulate the doctrine exactly, which have followed one another during the entire history of the church, indeed, the principle which has ever determined the result has always been determination to do justice in conceiving the relations of God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit, on the one hand to the unity of God, and, on the other, to the true Deity of the Son and Spirit and their distinct personalities. When we have said these three things, then - that there is but one God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person - we have enunciated the doctrine of the Trinity in its completeness.

That this doctrine underlies the whole New Testament as its constant presupposition and determines everywhere its forms of expression is the primary fact to be noted. We must not omit explicitly to note, however, that it now and again also, as occasion arises for its incidental enunciation, comes itself to expression in more or less completeness of statement. The passages in which the three Persons of the Trinity are brought together are much more numerous than, perhaps, is generally supposed; but it should be recognized that the for- mal collocation of the elements of the doctrine naturally is relatively rare in writings which are occasional in their origin and practical rather than doctrinal in their immediate purpose. The three Persons already come into view as Divine Persons in the annunciation of the birth of Our Lord: 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,' said the angel to Mary, 'and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is to be born shall be called the Son of God; (Lk. i. 35 m; cf. Mt. i. 18 ff.). Here the Holy Ghost is the active agent in the production of an effect which is also ascribed to the power of the Most High, and the child thus brought into the world is given the great designation of "Son of God." The three Persons are just as clearly brought before us in the account of Mt. (i. 18 ff.), though the allusions to them are dispersed through a longer stretch of narrative, in the course of which the Deity of the child is twice intimated (ver. 21: 'It is He that shall save His people from their sins'; ver. 23: 'They shall call His name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God-with-us'). In the baptismal scene which finds record by all the evangelists at the opening of Jesus' ministry (Mt. iii. 16, 17; Mk. i. 10, 11; Lk. iii. 21, 22; Jn. i. 32-34), the three Persons are thrown up to sight in a dramatic picture in which the Deity of each is strongly emphasized. From the open heavens the Spirit descends in visible form, and 'a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.' Thus care seems to have been taken to make the advent of the Son of God into the world the revelation also of the Triune God, that the minds of men might as smoothly as possible adjust themselves to the preconditions of the Divine redemption which was in process of being wrought out.

With this as a starting-point, the teaching of Jesus is Trinitarianly conditioned throughout. He has much to say of God His Father, from whom as His Son He is in some true sense distinct, and with whom He is in some equally true sense one. And He has much to say of the Spirit, who represents Him as He represents the Father, and by whom He works as the Father works by Him. It is not merely in the Gospel of John that such representations occur in the teaching of Jesus. In the Synoptics, too, Jesus claims a Sonship to God which is unique (Mt. xi. 27; xxiv. 36; Mk. xiii. 32; Lk. x. 22; in the following passages the title of "Son of God" is attributed to Him and accepted by Him: Mt. iv. 6; viii. 29; xiv. 33; xxvii. 40, 43, 54; Mk. iii. 11; xv. 39; Lk. iv. 41; xxii. 70; cf. Jn. i. 34, 49; ix. 35; xi. 27), and which involves an absolute community between the two in knowledge, say, and power: both Mt. (xi. 27) and Lk. (x. 22) record His great declaration that He knows the Father and the Father knows Him with perfect mutual knowledge: "No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son." In the Synoptics, too, Jesus speaks of employing the Spirit of God Himself for the performance of His works, as if the activities of God were at His disposal: "I by the Spirit of God" --- or as Luke has it, "by the finger of God" - "cast out demons" (Mt. xii. 28; Lk. xi. 20; cf. the promise of the Spirit in Mk. xiii. 11; Lk. xii. 12).

It is in the discourses recorded in John, however, that Jesus most copiously refers to the unity of Himself, as the Son, with the Father, and to the mission of the Spirit from Himself as the dispenser of the Divine activities. Here He not only with great directness declares that He and the Father are one (x. 30; cf. xvii. 11, 21, 22, 25) with a unity of interpenetration ("The Father is in me, and I in the Father," x. 38; cf. xvi. 10, 11), so that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (xiv. 9; cf. xv. 21); but He removes all doubt as to the essential nature of His oneness with the Father by explicitly asserting His eternity ("Before Abraham was born, I am," Jn. viii. 58), His co-eternity with God ("had with thee before the world was," xvii. 5; cf. xvii. 18; vi. 62), His eternal participation in the Divine glory itself ("the glory which I had with thee," in fellowship, community with Thee "before the world was," xvii. 5). So clear is it that in speaking currently of Himself as God's Son (v.25; ix. 35; xi. 4; cf. x. 36), He meant, in accordance with the underlying significance of the idea of sonship in Semitic speech (founded on the natural implication that whatever the father is that the son is also; cf. xvi. 15; xvii. 10), to make Himself, as the Jews with exact appreciation of His meaning perceived, "equal with God" (v.18), or, to put it brusquely, just "God" (x. 33). How He, being thus equal or rather identical with God, was in the world, He explains as involving a coming forth on His part, not merely from the presence of God (xvi. 30; cf. xiii. 3) or from fellowship with God (xvi. 27; xvii. 8), but from out of God Himself (viii. 42; xvi. 28). And in the very act of thus asserting that His eternal home is in the depths of the Divine Being, He throws up, into as strong an emphasis as stressed pronouns can convey, His personal distinctness from the Father. 'If God were your Father,' says He (viii. 42), 'ye would love me: for I came forth and am come out of God; for neither have I come of myself, but it was He that sent me.' Again, He says (xvi. 26, 27):' In that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you that I will make request of the Father for you; for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that it was from fellowship with the Father that I came forth; I came from out of the Father, and have come into the world.' Less pointedly, but still distinctly, He says again (xvii. 8): ' They know of a truth that it was from fellowship with Thee that I came forth, and they believed that it was Thou that didst send me.' It is not necessary to illustrate more at large a form of expression so characteristic of the discourses of Our Lord recorded by John that it meets us on every page: a form of expression which combines a clear implication of a unity of Father and Son which is identity of Being, and an equally clear implication of a distinction of Person between them such as allows not merely for the play of emotions between them, as, for instance, of love (xvii. 24; cf. xv. 9 [iii. 35]; xiv. 31), but also of an action and reaction upon one another which argues a high measure, if not of exteriority, yet certainly of exteriorization. Thus, to instance only one of the most outstanding facts of Our Lord's discourses (not indeed confined to those in John's Gospel, but found also in His sayings recorded in the Synoptists, as e.g., Lk. iv. 43 [cf. j Mk. i. 38]; ix. 48; x. 16; iv. 34; v.32; vii. 19; xix. 10), He continually represents Himself as on the one hand sent by God, and as, on the other, having come forth from the Father (e. g., Jn. viii. 42; x. 36; xvii. 3; v.23).

It is more important to point out that these phenomena of interrelationship are not confined to the Father and Son, but are extended also to the Spirit. Thus, for example, in a context in which Our Lord had emphasized in the strongest manner His own essential unity and continued interpenetration with the Father ("If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also"; "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; . ,, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me ; "The Father abiding in me doeth his works," Jn. xiv. 7, 9, 10), we read as follows (Jn. xiv. 16-26): 'And I will make request of the Father, and He shall give you another [thus sharply distinguished from Our Lord as a distinct Person] Advocate, that He may be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth . . . He abideth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I come unto you. . . In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him and we [that is, both Father and Son] will come unto him and make our abode with him. . . . These things have I spoken unto you while abiding with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.' It would be impossible to speak more distinctly of three who were yet one. The Father, Son and Spirit are constantly distinguished from one another --- the Son makes request of the Father, and the Father in response to this request gives an Advocate, "another" than the Son, who is sent in the Son's name. And yet the oneness of these three is so kept in sight that the coming of this "another Advocate" is spoken of without embarrassment as the coming of the Son Himself (vs. 18, 19, 20, 21), and indeed as the coming of the Father and the Son (ver. 23). There is a sense, then, in which, when Christ goes away, the Spirit comes in His stead; there is also a sense in which, when the Spirit comes, Christ comes in Him; and with Christ's coming the Father comes too. There is a distinction between the Persons brought into view; and with it an identity among them; for both of which allowance must be made. The same phenomena meet us in other passages. Thus, we read again (xv. 26):' But when there is come the Advocate whom I will send unto you from [fellowship with] the Father, the Spirit of Truth, which goeth forth from [fellowship with] the Father, He shall bear witness of me.' In the compass of this single verse, it is intimated that the Spirit is personally distinct from the Son, and yet, like Him, has His eternal home (in fellowship) with the Father, from whom He, like the Son, comes forth for His saving work, being sent thereunto, however, not in this instance by the Father, but by the Son.

This last feature is even more strongly emphasized in yet another passage in which the work of the Spirit in relation to the Son is presented as closely parallel with the work of the Son in relation to the Father (xvi. 5 ff.) . 'But now I go unto Him that sent me. . . . Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away the Advocate will not come unto you; but if I go I will send Him unto you. And He, after He is come, will convict the world . . . of righteousness because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more. . . . I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, He shall speak, and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I that He taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you.' Here the Spirit is sent by the Son, and comes in order to complete and apply the Son's work, receiving His whole commission from the Son - not, however, in derogation of the Father, because when we speak of the things of the Son, that is to speak of the things of the Father.

It is not to be said, of course, that the doctrine of the Trinity is formulated in passages like these, with which the whole mass of Our Lord's discourses in John are strewn; but it certainly is presupposed in them, and that is, considered from the point of view of their probative force, even better. As we read we are kept in continual contact with three Persons who act, each as a distinct person, and yet who are in a deep, under lying sense, one. There is but one God - there is never any question of that - and yet this Son who has been sent into the world by God not only represents God but is God, and this Spirit whom the Son has in turn sent unto the world is also Himself God. Nothing could be clearer than that the Son and Spirit are distinct Persons, unless indeed it be that the Son of God is just God the Son and the Spirit of God just God the Spirit.

Meanwhile, the nearest approach to a formal announcement of the doctrine of the Trinity which is recorded from Our Lord's lips, or, perhaps we may say, which is to be found in the whole compass of the New Testament, has been preserved for us, not by John, but by one of the synoptists. It too, however, is only incidentally introduced, and has for its main object something very different from formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. It is embodied in the great commission which the resurrected Lord gave His disciples to be their "marching orders" "even unto the end of the world": "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. xxviii. 19). In seeking to estimate the significance of this great declaration, we must bear in mind the high solemnity of the utterance, by which we are required to give its full value to every word of it. Its phrasing is in any event, however, remarkable. It does not say, "In the names [plural] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost"; nor yet (what might be taken to be equivalent to that),"In the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Ghost," as if we had to deal with three separate Beings. Nor, on the other hand, does it say, "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost," as if "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" might be taken as merely three designations of a single person. With stately impressiveness it asserts the unity of the three by combining them all within the bounds of the single Name; and then throws up into emphasis the distinctness of each by introducing them in turn with the repeated article: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost "(Authorized Version). These three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, each stand in some clear sense over against the others in distinct personality: these three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, all unite in some profound sense in the common participation of the one Name. Fully to comprehend the implication of this mode of statement, we must bear in mind, further, the significance of the term, "the name," and the associations laden with which it came to the recipients of this commission. For the Hebrew did not think of the name, as we are accustomed to do, as a mere external symbol; but rather as the adequate expression of the innermost being of its bearer. In His name the Being of God finds expression; and the Name of God - "this glorious and fearful name, Jehovah thy God" (Deut. xxviii. 58) - was accordingly a most sacred thing, being indeed virtually equivalent to God Himself. It is no solecism, therefore, when we read (Isa. xxx. 27), "Behold, the name of Jehovah cometh"; and the parallelisms are most instructive when we read (Isa. lix. 19):' So shall they fear the Name of Jehovah from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; for He shall come as a stream pent in which the Spirit of Jehovah driveth.' So pregnant was the implication of the Name, that it was possible for the term to stand absolutely, without adjunction of the name itself, as the sufficient representative of the majesty of Jehovah: it was a terrible thing to 'blaspheme the Name' (Lev. xxiv. 11). All those over whom Jehovah's Name was called were His, His possession to whom He owed protection. It is for His Name's sake, therefore, that afflicted Judah cries to the Hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble: '0 Jehovah, Thou art in the midst of us, and Thy Name is called upon us; leave us not' (Jer. xiv. 9); and His people find the appropriate expression of their deepest shame in the lament, 'We have become as they over whom Thou never barest rule; as they upon whom Thy Name was not called' (Isa. lxiii. 19); while the height of joy is attained in the cry, 'Thy Name, Jehovah, G6d of Hosts, is called upon me' (Jer. xv. 16; cf. II Chron. vii. 14; Dan. ix. 18, 19). When, therefore, Our Lord commanded His disciples to baptize those whom they brought to His obedience "into the name of . . . ," He was using language charged to them with high meaning. He could not have been understood otherwise than as substituting for the Name of Jehovah this other Name "of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"; and this could not possibly have meant to His disciples anything else than that Jehovah was now to be known to them by the new Name, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The only alternative would have been that, for the community which He was founding, Jesus was supplanting Jehovah by a new God; and this alternative is no less than monstrous. There is no alternative, therefore, to understanding Jesus here to be giving for His community a new Name to Jehovah and that new Name to be the threefold Name of "the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Nor is there room for doubt that by "the Son "in this threefold Name, He meant just Himself with all the implications of distinct personality which this carries with it; and, of course, that further carries with it the equally distinct personality of "the Father" and "the Holy Ghost," with whom "the Son" is here associated, and from whom alike "the Son" is here distinguished. This is a direct ascription to Jehovah the God of Israel, of a threefold personality, and is therewith the direct enunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity. We are not witnessing here the birth of the doctrine of the Trinity; that is presupposed. What we are witnessing is the authoritative announcement of the Trinity as the God of Christianity by its Founder, in one of the most solemn of His recorded declarations. Israel had worshipped the one only true God under the Name of Jehovah; Christians are to worship the same one only and true God under the Name of "the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." This is the distinguishing characteristic of Christians; and that is as much as to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is, according to Our Lord's own apprehension of it, the distinctive mark of the religion which He founded.

A passage of such range of implication has, of course, not escaped criticism and challenge. An attempt which cannot be characterized as other than frivolous has even been made to dismiss it from the text of Matthew's Gospel. Against this, the whole body of external evidence cries out; and the internal evidence is of itself not less decisive to the same effect. When the "universalism," "ecclesiasticism," and "high theology" of the passage are pleaded against its genuineness, it is forgotten that to the Jesus of Matthew there are attributed not only such parables as those of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed, but such declarations as those contained in viii. 11,12; xxi. 43; xxiv. 14; that in this Gospel alone is Jesus recorded as speaking familiarly about His church (xvi. 18; xviii. 17); and that, after the great declaration of xi. 27 ff., nothing remained in lofty attribution to be assigned to Him. When these same objections are urged against recognizing the passage as an authentic saying of Jesus' own, it is quite obvious that the Jesus of the evangelists cannot be in mind. The declaration here recorded is quite in character with the Jesus of Matthew's Gospel, as has just been intimated; and no less with the Jesus of the whole New Testament transmission. It will scarcely do, first to construct a priori a Jesus to our own liking, and then to discard as "unhistorical" all in the New Testament transmission which would be unnatural to such a Jesus. It is not these discarded passages but our a priori Jesus which is unhistorical. In the present instance, moreover, the historicity of the assailed saying is protected by an important historical relation in which it stands. It is not merely Jesus who speaks out of a Trinitarian consciousness, but all the New Testament writers as well. The universal possession by His followers of so firm a hold on such a doctrine requires the assumption that some such teaching as is here attributed to Him was actually contained in Jesus' instructions to His followers. Even had it not been attributed to Him in so many words by the record, we should have had to assume that some such declaration had been, made by Him. In these circumstances, there can be no good reason to doubt that it was made by Him, when it is expressly attributed to Him by the record.

When we turn from the discourses of Jesus to the writings of His followers with a view to observing how the assumption of the doctrine of the Trinity underlies their whole fabric also, we naturally go first of all to the letters of Paul. Their very mass is impressive; and the definiteness with which their composition within a generation of the death of Jesus may be fixed adds importance to them as historical witnesses. Certainly they leave nothing to be desired in the richness of their testimony to the Trinitarian conception of God which underlies them. Throughout the whole series, from I Thess., which comes from about 52 A.D., to II Tim., which was written about 68 A.D., the redemption, which it is their one business to proclaim and commend, and all the blessings which enter into it or accompany it are referred consistently to a threefold Divine causation. Everywhere, throughout their pages, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit appear as the joint objects of all religious adoration, and the conjunct source of all Divine operations. In the freedom of the allusions which are made to them, now and again one alone of the three is thrown up into prominent view; but more often two of them are conjoined in thanksgiving or prayer; and not infrequently all three are brought together as the apostle strives to give some adequate expression to his sense of indebtedness to the Divine source of all good for blessings received, or to his longing on behalf of himself or of his readers for further communion with the God of grace. It is regular for him to begin his Epistles with a prayer for "grace and peace" for his readers, "from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ," as the joint source of these Divine blessings by way of eminence (Rom. i. 7; I Cor. i. 3; II Cor. i. 2; Gal. i. 3; Eph. i. 2; Phil. i. 2;II Thess. i. 2;I Tim. i. 2;II Tim. i. 2; Philem. ver. 3; cf. I Thess. i. 1). It is obviously no departure from this habit in the essence of the matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, when in the opening words of the Epistle to the Colossians the clause "and the Lord Jesus Christ" is omitted, and we read merely: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father." So also it would have been no departure from it in the essence of the matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, if in any instance the name of the Holy Spirit had chanced to be adjoined to the other two, as in the single instance of II Cor. xiii. 14 it is adjoined to them in the closing prayer for grace with which Paul ends his letters, and which ordinarily takes the simple form of, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you" (Rom. xvi. 20; I Cor. xvi. 23; Gal. vi. 18; Phil. iv, 23; I Thess. v.28; II Thess. iii. 18; Philem. ver. 25; more expanded form, Eph. vi. 23, 24; more compressed, Col. iv. 18; I Tim. vi. 21; II Tim. iv. 22; Tit. iii. 15). Between these opening and closing passages the allusions to God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are constant and most intricately interlaced. Paul's monotheism is intense: the first premise of all his thought on Divine things is the unity of God (Rom. iii. 30; I Cor. viii. 4; Gal iii. 20; Eph. iv. 6;I Tim. ii. 5; cf. Rom. xvi. 22; I Tim. i. 17). Yet to him God the Father is no more God than the Lord Jesus Christ is God, or the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit of God is to him related to God as the spirit of man is to man (I Cor. ii. 11), and therefore if the Spirit of God dwells in us, that is God dwelling in us (Rom. viii. 10 ff.), and we are by that fact constituted temples of God (I Cor. iii. 16). And no expression is too strong for him to use in order to assert the Godhead of Christ: He is "our great God" (Tit. ii. 13); He is "God over all" (Rom. ix. 5); and indeed it is expressly declared of Him that the "fullness of the Godhead," that is, everything that enters into Godhead and constitutes it Godhead, dwells in Him. In the very act of asserting his monotheism Paul takes Our Lord up into this unique Godhead. "There is no God but one," he roundly asserts, and then illustrates and proves this assertion by remarking that the heathen may have "gods many, and lords many," but "to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (I Cor. viii. 6). Obviously, this "one God, the Father," and "one Lord, Jesus Christ," are embraced together in the one God who alone is. Paul's conception of the one God, whom alone he worships, includes, in other words, a recognition that within the unity of His Being, there exists such a distinction of Persons as is given us in the "one God, the Father" and the "one Lord, Jesus Christ."

In numerous passages scattered through Paul's Epistles, from the earliest of them (I Thess. i. 2-5; II Thess. ii. 13, 14) to the latest (Tit. iii. 4-6; II Tim. i. 3, 13,14), all three Persons, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are brought together, in the most incidental manner, as co-sources of all the saving blessings which come to believers in Christ. A typical series of such passages may be found in Eph. ii. 18; iii. 2-5,14, 17; iv. 4-6; v.18-20. But the most interesting instances are offered to us perhaps by the Epistles to the Corinthians. In I Cor. xii. 4-6 Paul presents the abounding spiritual gifts with which the church was blessed in a threefold aspect, and connects these aspects with the three Divine Persons. "Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all." It may be thought that there is a measure of what might almost be called artificiality in assigning the endowments of the church, as they are graces to the Spirit, as they are services to Christ, and as they are energizings to God. But thus there is only the more strikingly revealed the underlying Trinitarian conception as dominating the structure of the clauses: Paul clearly so writes, not because "gifts," "workings," "operations" stand out in his thought as greatly diverse things, but because God, the Lord, and the Spirit lie in the back of his mind constantly suggesting a threefold causality behind every manifestation of grace. The Trinity is alluded to rather than asserted; but it is so alluded to as to show that it constitutes the determining basis of all Paul's thought of the God of redemption. Even more instructive is II Cor. xiii. 14, which has passed into general liturgical use in the churches as a benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Here the three highest redemptive blessings are brought together, and attached distributively to the three Persons of the Triune God. There is again no formal teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity; there is only another instance of natural speaking out of a Trinitarian consciousness. Paul is simply thinking of the Divine source of these great blessings; but he habitually thinks of this Divine source of redemptive blessings after a trinal fashion. He therefore does not say, as he might just as well have said, "The grace and love and communion of God be with you all," but "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Thus he bears, almost unconsciously but most richly, witness to the trinal composition of the Godhead as conceived by Him.

The phenomena of Paul's Epistles are repeated in the other writings of the New Testament. In these other writings also it is everywhere assumed that the redemptive activities of God rest on a threefold source in God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and these three Persons repeatedly come forward together in the expressions of Christian hope or the aspirations of Christian devotion (e. g., Heb. ii. 3, 4; vi. 4-6; x. 29-31; 1 Pet. i. 2;ii. 3-12; iv. 13-19; I Jn. v.4-8; Jude vs. 20, 21; Rev. i. 4-6). Perhaps as typical instances as any are supplied by the two following: "According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (I Pet. i. 2); "Praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life" (Jude vs. 20, 21). To these may be added the highly symbolical instance from the Apocalypse: 'Grace to you and peace from Him which is and was and which is to come; and from the Seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth' (Rev. i. 4, 5). Clearly these writers, too, write out of a fixed Trinitarian consciousness and bear their testimony to the universal understanding current in apostolical circles. Everywhere and by all it was fully understood that the one God whom Christians worshipped and from whom alone they expected redemption and all that redemption brought with it, included within His undiminished unity the three: God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, whose activities relatively to one another are conceived as distinctly personal. This is the uniform and pervasive testimony of the New Testament, and it is the more impressive that it is given with such unstudied naturalness and simplicity, with no effort to distinguish between what have come to be called the ontological and the economical aspects of the Trinitarian distinctions, and indeed without apparent consciousness of the existence of such a distinction of aspects. Whether God is thought of in Himself or in His operations, the underlying conception runs unaffectedly into trinal forms.

It will not have escaped observation that the Trinitarian terminology of Paul and the other writers of the New Testament is not precisely identical with that of Our Lord as recorded for us in His discourses. Paul, for example - and the same is true of the other New Testament writers (except John) - does not speak, as Our Lord is recorded as speaking, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so much as of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. This difference of terminology finds its account in large measure in the different relations in which the speakers stand to the Trinity. Our Lord could not naturally speak of Himself, as one of the Trinitarian Persons, by the designation of "the Lord," while the designation of "the Son," expressing as it does His consciousness of close relation, and indeed of exact similarity, to God, came naturally to His lips. But He was Paul's Lord; and Paul naturally thought and spoke of Him as such. In point of fact, "Lord" is one of Paul's favorite designations of Christ, and indeed has become with him practically a proper name for Christ, and in point of fact, his Divine Name for Christ. It is naturally, therefore, his Trinitarian name for Christ. Because when he thinks of Christ as Divine he calls Him "Lord," he naturally, when he thinks of the three Persons together as the Triune God, sets Him as "Lord" by the side of God - Paul's constant name for "the Father" - and the Holy Spirit. Question may no doubt be raised whether it would have been possible for Paul to have done this, especially with the constancy with which he has done it, if, in his conception of it, the very essence of the Trinity were enshrined in the terms "Father" and "Son." Paul is thinking of the Trinity, to be sure, from the point of view of a worshipper, rather than from that of a systematizer. He designates the Persons of the Trinity therefore rather from his relations to them than from their relations to one another. He sees in the Trinity his God, his Lord, and the Holy Spirit who dwells in him; and naturally he so speaks currently of the three Persons. It remains remarkable, nevertheless, if the very essence of the Trinity were thought of by him as resident in the terms "Father," "Son," that in his numerous allusions to the Trinity in the Godhead, he never betrays any sense of this. It is noticeable also that in their allusions to the Trinity, there is preserved, neither in Paul nor in the other writers of the New Testament, the order of the names as they stand in Our Lord's great declaration (Mt. xxviii. 19). The reverse order occurs, indeed, occasionally, as, for example, in I Cor. xii. 4-6 (cf. Eph. iv. 4-6); and this may be understood as a climactic arrangement and so far a testimony to the order of Mt. xxviii. 19. But the order is very variable; and in the most formal enumeration of the three Persons, that of II Cor. xiii. 14, it stands thus: Lord, God, Spirit. The question naturally suggests itself whether the order Father, Son, Spirit was especially significant to Paul and his fellow-writers of the New Testament. If in their conviction the very essence of the doctrine of the Trinity was embodied in this order, should we not anticipate that there should appear in their numerous allusions to the Trinity some suggestion of this conviction?

Such facts as these have a bearing upon the testimony of the New Testament to the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity. To the fact of the Trinity - to the fact, that is, that in the unity of the Godhead there subsist three Persons, each of whom has his particular part in the working out of salvation - the New Testament testimony is clear, consistent, pervasive and conclusive. There is included in this testimony constant and decisive witness to the complete and undiminished Deity of each of these Persons; no language is too exalted to apply to each of them in turn in the effort to give expression to the writer's sense of His Deity: the name that is given to each is fully understood to be "the name that is above every name." When we attempt to press the inquiry behind the broad fact, however, with a view to ascertaining exactly how the New Testament writers conceive the three Persons to be related, the one to the other, we meet with great difficulties. Nothing could seem more natural, for example, than to assume that the mutual relations of the Persons of the Trinity are revealed in the designations, "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," which are given them by Our Lord in the solemn formula of Mt. xxviii. 19. Our confidence in this assumption is somewhat shaken, however, when we observe, as we have just observed, that these designations are not carefully preserved in their allusions to the Trinity by the writers of the New Testament at large, but are characteristic only of Our Lord's allusions and those of John, whose modes of speech in general very closely resemble those of Our Lord. Our confidence is still further shaken when we observe that the implications with respect to the mutual relations of the Trinitarian Persons, which are ordinarily derived from these designations, do not so certainly lie in them as is commonly supposed.

It may be very natural to see in the designation "Son" an intimation of subordination and derivation of Being, and it may not be difficult to ascribe a similar connotation to the term "Spirit." But it is quite certain that this was not the denotation of either term in the Semitic consciousness, which underlies the phraseology of Scripture; and it may even be thought doubtful whether it was included even in their remoter suggestions. What underlies the conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just "likeness"; whatever the father is that the son is also. The emphatic application of the term "Son" to one of the Trinitarian Persons, accordingly, asserts rather His equality with the Father than His subordination to the Father; and if there is any implication of derivation in it, it would appear to be very distant. The adjunction of the adjective "only begotten" (Jn. i. 14; iii. 16-18; I Jn. iv. 9) need add only the idea of uniqueness, not of derivation (Ps. xxii. 20; xxv. 16; xxxv. 17; Wisd. vii. 22 m.); and even such a phrase as "God only begotten" (Jn. i. 18 m.) may contain no implication of derivation, but only of absolutely unique consubstantiality; as also such a phrase as "the first-begotten of all creation" (Col. i. 15) may convey no intimation of coming into being, but merely assert priority of existence. In like manner, the designation "Spirit of God" or "Spirit of Jehovah," which meets us frequently in the Old Testament, certainly does not convey the idea there either of derivation or of subordination, but is just the executive name of God --- the designation of God from the point of view of His activity - and imports accordingly identity with God; and there is no reason to suppose that, in passing from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the term has taken on an essentially different meaning. It happens, oddly enough, moreover, that we have in the New Testament itself what amounts almost to formal definitions of the two terms "Son" and "Spirit," and in both cases the stress is laid on the notion of equality or sameness. In Jn. v.18 we read: 'On this account, therefore, the Jews sought the more to kill him, because, not only did he break the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.' The point lies, of course, in the adjective "own." Jesus was, rightly, understood to call God "his own Father," that is, to use the terms "Father" and "Son" not in a merely figurative sense, as when Israel was called God's son, but in the real sense. And this was understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be the Son of God in any sense was to be like God in that sense; to be God's own Son was to be exactly like God, to be "equal with God." Similarly, we read in I Cor. ii. 10,11:' For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who of men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.' Here the Spirit appears as the substrate of the Divine self-consciousness, the principle of God's knowledge of Himself: He is, in a word, just God Himself in the innermost essence of His Being. As the spirit of man is the seat of human life, the very life of man itself, so the Spirit of God is His very life-element. How can He be supposed, then, to be subordinate to God, or to derive His Being from God? If, however, the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father in modes of subsistence and their derivation from the Father are not implicates of tbeir designation as Son and Spirit, it will be hard to find in the New Testament compelling evidence of their subordination and derivation.

There is, of course, no question that in "modes of operation," as it is technically called - that is to say, in the functions ascribed to the several Persons of the Trinity in the redemptive process, and, more broadly, in the entire dealing of God with the world - the principle of subordination is clearly expressed. The Father is first, the Son is second, and the Spirit is third, in the operations of God as revealed to us in general, and very especially in those operations by which redemption is accomplished. Whatever the Father does, He does through the Son (Rom. ii. 16; iii. 22;v. 1,11, 17, 21; Eph. i.5; I Thess. v.9; Tit. iii. v) by the Spirit. The Son is sent by the Father and does His Father's will (Jn. vi. 38); the Spirit is sent by the Son and does not speak from Himself, but only takes of Christ's and shows it unto His people (Jn. xvii. 7 ff.); and we have Our Lord's own word for it that 'one that is sent is not greater than he that sent him' (Jn. xiii. 16). In crisp decisiveness, Our Lord even declares, indeed: 'My Father is greater than I' (Jn. xiv. 28); and Paul tells us that Christ is God's, even as we are Christ's (I Cor. iii. 23), and that as Christ is "the head of every man," so God is "the head of Christ" (I Cor. xi. 3). But it is not so clear that the principle of subordination rules also in "modes of subsistence," as it is technically phrased; that is to say, in the necessary relation of the Persons of the Trinity to one another. The very richness and variety of the expression of their subordination, the one to the other, in modes of operation, create a difficulty in attaining certainty whether they are represented as also subordinate the one to the other in modes of subsistence. Question is raised in each ease of apparent intimation of subordination in modes of subsistence, whether it may not, after all, be explicable as only another expression of subordination in modes of operation. It may be natural to assume that a subordination in modes of operation rests on a subordination in modes of subsistence; that the reason why it is the Father that sends the Son and the Son that sends the Spirit is that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. But we are bound to bear in mind that these relations of subordination in modes of operation may just as well be due to a convention, an agreement, between the Persons of the Trinity - a "Covenant" as it is technically called - by virtue of which a distinct function in the work of redemption is voluntarily assumed by each. It is eminently desirable, therefore, at the least, that some definite evidence of subordination in modes of subsistence should be discoverable before it is assumed. In the case of the relation of the Son to the Father, there is the added difficulty of the incarnation, in which the Son, by the assumption of a creaturely nature into union with Himself, enters into new relations with the Father of a definitely subordinate character. Question has even been raised whether the very designations of Father and Son may not be expressive of these new relations, and therefore without significance with respect to the eternal relations of the Persons so designated. This question must certainly be answered in the negative. Although, no doubt, in many of the instances in which the terms "Father" and "Son" occur, it would be possible to take them of merely economical relations, there ever remain some which are intractable to this treatment, and we may be sure that "Father" and "Son" are applied to their eternal and necessary relations. But these terms, as we have seen, do not appear to imply relations of first and second, superiority and subordination, in modes of subsistence; and the fact of the humiliation of the Son of God for His earthly work does introduce a factor into the interpretation of the passages which import His subordination to the Father, which throws doubt upon the inference from them of an eternal relation of subordination in the Trinity itself. It must at least be said that in the presence of the great New Testament doctrines of the Covenant of Redemption on the one hand, and of the Humiliation of the Son of God for His work's sake and of the Two Natures in the constitution of His Person as incarnated, on the other, the difficulty of interpreting subordinationist passages of eternal relations between the Father and Son becomes extreme. The question continually obtrudes itself, whether they do not rather find their full explanation in the facts embodied in the doctrines of the Covenant, the Humiliation of Christ, and the Two Natures of His incarnated Person. Certainly in such circumstances it were thoroughly illegitimate to press such passages to suggest any subordination for the Son or the Spirit which would in any manner impair that complete identity with the Father in Being and that complete equality with the Father in powers which are constantly presupposed, and frequently emphatically, though only incidentally, asserted for them throughout the whole fabric of the New Testament.

The Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead, shown in the incarnation and the redemptive work of God the Son, and the descent and saving work of God the Spirit, is thus everywhere assumed in the New Testament, and comes to repeated fragmentary but none the less emphatic and illuminating expression in its pages. As the roots of its revelation are set in the threefold Divine causality of the saving process, it naturally finds an echo also in the consciousness of everyone who has experienced this salvation. Every redeemed soul, knowing himself reconciled with God through His Son, and quickened into newness of life by His Spirit, turns alike to Father, Son and Spirit with the exclamation of reverent gratitude upon his lips, "My Lord and my God!" If he could not construct the doctrine of the Trinity out of his consciousness of salvation, yet the elements of his consciousness of salvation are interpreted to him and reduced to order only by the doctrine of the Trinity which he finds underlying and giving their significance and consistency to the teaching of the Scriptures as to the processes of salvation. By means of this doctrine he is able to think clearly and consequently of his threefold relation to the saving God, experienced by Him as Fatherly love sending a Redeemer, as redeeming love executing redemption, as saving love applying redemption: all manifestations in distinct methods and by distinct agencies of the one seeking and saving love of God. Without the doctrine of the Trinity, his conscious Christian life would be thrown into confusion and left in disorganization if not, indeed, given an air of unreality; with the doctrine of the Trinity, order, significance and reality are brought to every element of it. Accordingly, the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of redemption, historically, stand or fall together. A Unitarian theology is commonly associated with a Pelagian anthropology and a Socinian soteriology. It is a striking testimony which is borne by F. E. Koenig ("Offenbarungsbegriff des AT," 1882, 1,125):: J have learned that many cast off the whole history of redemption for no other reason than because they have not attained to a conception of the Triune God." It is in this intimacy of relation between the doctrines of the Trinity and redemption that the ultimate reason lies why the Christian church could not rest until it had attained a definite and well-compacted doctrine of the Trinity. Nothing else could be accepted as an adequate foundation for the experience of the Christian salvation. Neither the Sabellian nor the Arian construction could meet and satisfy the data of the consciousness of salvation, any more than either could meet and satisfy the data of the Scriptural revelation. The data of the Scriptural revelation might, to be sure, have been left unsatisfied: men might have found a modus vivendi with neglected, or even with perverted Scriptural teaching. But perverted or neglected elements of Christian experience are more clamant in their demands for attention and correction. The dissatisfied Christian consciousness necessarily searched the Scriptures, on the emergence of every new attempt to state the doctrine of the nature and relations of God, to see whether these things were true, and never reached contentment until the Scriptural data were given their consistent formulation in a valid doctrine of the Trinity. Here too the heart of man was restless until it found its rest in the Triune God, the author, procurer and applier of salvation.

The determining impulse to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the church was the church's profound conviction of the absolute Deity of Christ, on which as on a pivot the whole Christian conception of God from the first origins of Christianity turned. The guiding principle in the formulation of the doctrine was supplied by the Baptismal Formula announced by Jesus (Mt. xxviii. 19), from which was derived the ground-plan of the baptismal confessions and "rules of faith" which very soon began to be framed all over the church. It was by these two fundamental principia --- the true Deity of Christ and the Baptismal Formula --- that all attempts to formulate the Christian doctrine of God were tested, and by their molding power that the church at length found itself in possession of a form of statement which did full justice to the data of the redemptive revelation as reflected in the New Testament and the demands of the Christian heart under the experience of salvation.

In the nature of the case the formulated doctrine was of slow attainment. The influence of inherited conceptions and of current philosophies inevitably showed itself in the efforts to construe to the intellect the immanent faith of Christians. In the second century the dominant neo-Stoic and neo-Platonic ideas deflected Christian thought into subordinationist channels, and produced what is known as the Logos-Christology, which looks upon the Son as a prolation of Deity reduced to such dimensions as comported with relations with a world of time and space; meanwhile, to a great extent, the Spirit was neglected altogether. A reaction which, under the name of Monarchianism, identified the Father, Son, and Spirit so completely that they were thought of only as different aspects or different moments in the life of the one Divine Person, called now Father, now Son, now Spirit, as His several activities came successively into view, almost succeeded in establishing itself in the third century as the doctrine of the church at large. In the conflict between these two opposite tendencies the church gradually found its way, under the guidance of the Baptismal Formula elaborated into a "Rule of Faith," to a better and more well-balanced conception, until a real doctrine of the Trinity at length came to expression, particularly in the West, through the brilliant dialectic of Tertullian. It was thus ready at hand, when, in the early years of the fourth century, the Logos-Christology, in opposition to dominant Sabellian tendencies, ran to seed in what is known as Arianism, to which the Son was a creature, though exalted above all other creatures as their Creator and Lord; and the church was thus prepared to assert its settled faith in a Triune God, one in being, but in whose unity there subsisted three consubstantial Persons. Under the leadership of Athanasius this doctrine was proclaimed as the faith of the church at the Council of Nice in 325 A.D., and by his strenuous labors and those of "the three great Cappadocians," the two Gregories and Basil, it gradually won its way to the actual acceptance of the entire church. It was at the hands of Augustine, however, a century later, that the doctrine thus become the church doctrine in fact as well as in theory, received its most complete elaboration and most carefully grounded statement. In the form which he gave it, and which is embodied in that "battle-hymn of the early church," the so-called Athanasian Creed, it has retained its place as the fit expression of the faith of the church as to the nature of its God until today. The language in which it is couched, even in this final declaration, still retains elements of speech which owe their origin to the modes of thought characteristic of the Logos Christology of the second century, fixed in the nomenclature of the church by the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D., though carefully guarded there against the subordinationism inherent in the Logos-Christology, and made the vehicle rather of the Nicene doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit, with the consequent subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father in modes of subsistence as well as of operation. In the Athanasian Creed, however, the principle of the equalization of the three Persons, which was already the dominant motive of the Nicene Creed - the homoousia - is so strongly emphasized as practically to push out of sight, if not quite out of existence, these remanent suggestions of derivation and subordination. It has been found necessary, nevertheless, from time to time, vigorously to reassert the principle of equalization, over against a tendency unduly to emphasize the elements of subordinationism which still hold a place thus in the traditional language in which the church states its doctrine of the Trinity. In particular, it fell to Calvin, in the interests of the true Deity of Christ - the constant motive of the whole body of Trinitarian thought - to reassert and make good the attribute of self-existence (autotheotos) for the Son. Thus Calvin takes his place, alongside of Tertullian, Athanasius and Augustine, as one of the chief contributors to the exact and vital statement of the Christian doctrine of the Triune God.

The Biblical Idea of Revelation

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[Article "Revelation," from The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,
James Orr, General Editor, v. 4, pp. 2573-2582. Pub. Chicago, 1915, by the Howard-Severance Co.]

I. THE NATURE OF REVELATION

THE religion of the Bible is a frankly supernatural religion. By this is not meant merely that, according to it, all men, as creatures, live, move and have their being in God. It is meant that, according to it, God has intervened extraordinarily, in the course of the sinful world's development, for the salvation of men otherwise lost. In Eden the Lord God had been present with sinless man in such a sense as to form a distinct element in his social environment (Gen. iii. 8). This intimate association was broken up by the Fall. But God did not therefore withdraw Himself from concernment with men. Rather, He began at once a series of interventions in human history by means of which man might be rescued from his sin and, despite it, brought to the end destined for him. These interventions involved the segregation of a people for Himself, by whom God should be known, and whose distinction should be that God should be "nigh unto them" as He was not to other nations (Deut. iv. 7; Ps. cxlv. 18). But this people was not permitted to imagine that it owed its segregation to anything in itself fitted to attract or determine the Divine preference; no consciousness was more poignant in Israel than that Jehovah had chosen it, not it Him, and that Jehovah's choice of it rested solely on His gracious will. Nor was this people permitted to imagine that it was for its own sake alone that it had been singled out to be the sole recipient of the knowledge of Jehovah; it was made clear from the beginning that God's mysteriously gracious dealing with it had as its ultimate end the blessing of the whole world (Gen. xii. 2.3; xvii. 4.5.6.16; xviii. 18; xxii. 18; cf Rom. iv. 13), the bringing together again of the divided families of the earth under the glorious reign of Jehovah, and the reversal of the curse under which the whole world lay for its sin (Gen. xii. 3). Meanwhile, however, Jehovah was known only in Israel. To Israel God showed His word and made known His statutes and judgments, and after this fashion He dealt with no other nation; and therefore none other knew His judgments (Ps. cxlvii. 19 f.). Accordingly, when the hope of Israel (who was also the desire of all nations) came, His own lips unhesitatingly declared that the salvation He brought, though of universal application, was "from the Jews" On. iv. 221). And the nations to which this salvation had not been made known are declared by the chief agent in its proclamation to them to be, meanwhile, "far off," "having no hope" and "without God in the world" (Eph. ii. 12), because they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of the promise.

The religion of the Bible thus announces itself, not as the product of men's search after God, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him, but as the creation in men of the gracious God, forming a people for Himself, that they may show forth His praise. In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion. Or rather, to speak more exactly, it announces itself as the revealed religion, as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions, which are represented as all products, in a sense in which it is not, of the art and device of man.

It is not, however, implied in this exclusive claim to revelation -which is made by the religion of the Bible in all the stages of its history -that the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that in them is, has left Himself without witness among the peoples of the world (Acts xiv. 17). It is asserted indeed, that in the process of His redemptive work, God suffered for a season all the nations to walk in their own ways; but it is added that to none of them has He failed to do good, and to give from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. And not only is He represented as thus constantly showing Himself in His providence not far from any one of them, thus wooing them to seek Him if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts xvii. 27), but as from the foundation of the world openly manifesting Himself to them in the works of His hands, in which His everlasting power and Divinity are clearly seen (Rom. i. 20). That men at large have not retained Him in their knowledge, or served Him as they ought, is not due therefore to failure on His part to keep open the way to knowledge of Him, but to the darkening of their senseless hearts by sin and to the vanity of their sin-deflected reasonings (Rom. i. 21 ff.), by means of which they have supplanted the truth of God by a lie and have come to worship and serve the creature rather than the ever-blessed Creator. It is, indeed, precisely because in their sin they have thus held down the truth in unrighteousness and have refused to have God in their knowledge (so it is intimated) ; and because, moreover, in their sin, the revelation God gives of Himself in His works of creation and providence no longer suffices for men's needs, that God has intervened supernaturally in the course of history to form a people for Himself, through whom at length all the world should be blessed.

It is quite obvious that there are brought before us in these several representations two species or stages of revelation, which should be discriminated to avoid confusion. There is the revelation which God continuously makes to all men: by it His power and Divinity are made known. And there is the revelation which He makes exclusively to His chosen people: through it His saving grace is made known. Both species or stages of revelation are insisted upon throughout the Scriptures. They are, for example, brought significantly together in such a declaration as we find in Ps. xix : "The heavens declare the glory of God . . . their line is gone out through all the earth" (vers. 1.4) ; "The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul" (ver. 7). The Psalmist takes his beginning here from the praise of the glory of God, the Creator of all that is, which has been written upon the very heavens, that none may fail to see it. From this he rises, however, quickly to the more full-throated praise of the mercy of Jehovah, the covenant God, who has visited His people with saving instruction. Upon this higher revelation there is finally based a prayer for salvation from sin, which ends in a great threefold acclamation, instinct with adoring gratitude: "O Jehovah, my rock, and my redeemer " (ver, 14). "The heavens," comments Lord Bacon, "indeed tell of the glory of God, but not of His will according to which the poet prays to be pardoned and sanctified." In so commenting, Lord Bacon touches the exact point of distinction between the two species or stages of revelation. The one is adapted to man as man; the other to man as sinner; and since man, on becoming sinner, has not ceased to be man, but has only acquired new needs requiring additional provisions to bring him to the end of his existence, so the revelation directed to man as sinner does not supersede that given to man as man, but supplements it with these new provisions for his attainment, in his new condition of blindness, helplessness and guilt induced by sin, of the end of his being.

These two species or stages of revelation have been commonly distinguished from one another by the distinctive names of natural and supernatural revelation, or general and special revelation, or natural and soteriological revelation. Each of these modes of discriminating them has its particular fitness and describes a real difference between the two in nature, reach or purpose. The one is communicated through the media of natural phenomena, occurring in the course of Nature or of history; the other implies an intervention in the natural course of things and is not merely in source but in mode supernatural. The one is addressed generally to all intelligent creatures, and is therefore accessible to all men; the other is addressed to a special class of sinners, to whom God would make known His salvation. The one has in view to meet and supply the natural need of creatures for knowledge of their God; the other to rescue broken and deformed sinners from their sin and its consequences. But, though thus distinguished from one another, it is important that the two species or stages of revelation should not be set in opposition to one another, or the closeness of their mutual relations or the constancy of their interaction be obscured. They constitute together a unitary whole, and each is incomplete without the other. In its most general idea, revelation is rooted in creation and the relations with His intelligent creatures into which God has brought Himself by giving them being. Its object is to realize the end of man's creation, to be attained only through knowledge of God and perfect and unbroken communion with Him. On the entrance of sin into the world, destroying this communion with God and obscuring the knowledge of Him derived from Nature, another mode of revelation was necessitated, having also another content, adapted to the new relation to God and the new conditions of intellect, heart and will brought about by sin. It must not be supposed, however, that this new mode of revelation was an ex post facto expedient, introduced to meet an unforeseen contingency. The actual course of human development was in the nature of the case the expected and the intended course of human development, for which man was created; and revelation, therefore, in its double form was the Divine purpose for man from the beginning, and constitutes a unitary provision for the realization of the end of his creation in the actual circumstances in which he exists. We may distinguish in this unitary revelation the two elements by the cooperation of which the effect is produced; but we should bear in mind that only by their cooperation is the effect produced. Without special revelation, general revelation would be for sinful men incomplete and ineffective, and could issue, as in point of fact it has issued wherever it alone has been accessible, only in leaving them without excuse (Rom. i. 20). Without general revelation, special revelation would lack that basis in the fundamental knowledge of God as the mighty and wise, righteous and good, maker and ruler of all things, apart from which the further revelation of this great God's interventions in the world for the salvation of sinners could not be either intelligible, credible or operative.

Only in Eden has general revelation been adequate to the needs of man. Not being a sinner, man in Eden had no need of that grace of God itself by which sinners are restored to communion with Him, or of the special revelation of this grace of God to sinners to enable them to live with God. And not being a sinner, man in Eden, as he contemplated the works of God, saw God in the unclouded mirror of his mind with a clarity of vision, and lived with Him in the untroubled depths of his heart with a trustful intimacy of association, inconceivable to sinners. Nevertheless, the revelation of God in Eden was not merely "natural." Not only does the prohibition of the forbidden fruit involve a positive commandment (Gen. ii. 16), but the whole history implies an immediacy of intercourse with God which cannot easily be set to the credit of the picturesque art of the narrative, or be fully accounted for by the vividness of the perception of God in His works proper to sinless creatures. The impression is strong that what is meant to be conveyed to us is that man dwelt with God in Eden, and enjoyed with Him immediate and not merely mediate communion. In that case, we may understand that if man had not fallen, he would have continued to enjoy immediate intercourse with God, and that the cessation of this immediate intercourse is due to sin. It is not then the supernaturalness of special revelation which is rooted in sin, but, if we may be allowed the expression, the specialness of supernatural revelation. Had man not fallen, heaven would have continued to lie about him through all his history, as it lay about his infancy; every man would have enjoyed direct vision of God and immediate speech with Him. Man having fallen, the cherubim and the flame of a sword, turning every way, keep the path: and God breaks His way in a round-about fashion into man's darkened heart to reveal there His redemptive love. By slow steps and gradual stages He at once works out His saving purpose and molds the world for its reception, choosing a people for Himself and training it through long and weary ages, until at last when the fulness of time has come, He bares His arm and sends out the proclamation of His great salvation to all the earth.

Certainly, from the gate of Eden onward, God's general revelation ceased to be, in the strict sense, supernatural. It is, of course, not meant that God deserted His world and left it to fester in its iniquity. His providence still ruled over all, leading steadily onward to the goal for which man had been created, and of the attainment of which in God's own good time and way the very continuance of men's existence, under God's providential government, was a pledge. And His Spirit still everywhere wrought upon the hearts of men, stirring up all their powers (though created in the image of God, marred and impaired by sin) to their best activities, and to such splendid effect in every department of human achievement as to command the admiration of all ages, and in the highest region of all, that of conduct, to call out from an apostle the encomium that though they had no law they did by nature (observe the word "nature") the things of the law. All this, however, remains within the limits of Nature, that is to say, within the sphere of operation of Divinely directed and assisted second causes. It illustrates merely the heights to which the powers of man may attain under the guidance of providence and the influences of what we have learned to call God's "common grace." Nowhere, throughout the whole ethnic domain, are the conceptions of God and His ways put within the reach of man, through God's revelation of Himself in the works of creation and providence, transcended; nowhere is the slightest knowledge betrayed of anything concerning God and His purposes, which could be known only by its being supernaturally told to men. Of the entire body of "saving truth," for example, which is the burden of what we call "special revelation," the whole heathen world remained in total ignorance. And even its hold on the general truths of religion, not being vitalized by supernatural enforcements, grew weak, and its knowledge of the very nature of God decayed, until it ran out to the dreadful issue which Paul sketches for us in that inspired philosophy of religion which he incorporates in the latter part of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

Behind even the ethnic development, there lay, of course, the supernatural intercourse of man with God which had obtained before the entrance of sin into the world, and the supernatural revelations at the gate of Eden (Gen. iii. 8), and at the second origin of the human race, the Flood (Gen. viii. 21,22; ix. 1-17 ). How long the tradition of this primitive revelation lingered in nooks and corners of the heathen world, conditioning and vitalizing the natural revelation of God always accessible, we have no means of estimating. Neither is it easy to measure the effect of God's special revelation of Himself to His people upon men outside the bounds of, indeed, but coming into contact with, this chosen people, or sharing with them a common natural inheritance. Lot and Ishmael and Esau can scarcely have been wholly ignorant of the word of God which came to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; nor could the Egyptians from whose hands God wrested His people with a mighty arm fail to learn something of Jehovah, any more than the mixed multitudes who witnessed the ministry of Christ could fail to infer something from His gracious walk and mighty works. It is natural to infer that no nation which was intimately associated with Israel's life could remain entirely unaffected by Israel's revelation. But whatever impressions were thus conveyed reached apparently individuals only: the heathen which surrounded Israel, even those most closely affiliated with Israel, remained heathen; they had no revelation. In the sporadic instances when God visited an alien with a supernatural communication - such as the dreams sent to Abimelech (Gen. xx.) and to Pharaoh (Gen. xl. xli.) and to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan, ii. 1 ff.) and to the soldier in the camp of the Midian (Jgs. vii. 13) - it was in the interests, not of the heathen world, but of the chosen people that they were sent; and these instances derive their significance wholly from this fact. There remain, no doubt, the mysterious figure of Melchizedek, perhaps also of Jethro, and the strange apparition of Balaam, who also, however, appear in the sacred narrative only in connection with the history of God's dealings with His people and in their interest. Their unexplained appearance cannot in any event avail to modify the general fact that the life of the heathen peoples lay outside the supernatural revelation of God. The heathen were suffered to walk in their own ways (Acts xiv. 16).

II. THE PROCESS OF REVELATION

Meanwhile, however, God had not forgotten them, but was preparing salvation for them also through the supernatural revelation of His grace that He was making to His people. According to the Biblical representation, in the midst of and working confluently with the revelation which He has always been giving of Himself on the plane of Nature, God was making also from the very fall of man a further revelation of Himself on the plane of grace. In contrast with His general, natural revelation, in which all men by virtue of their very nature as men share, this special, supernatural revelation was granted at first only to individuals, then progressively to a family, a tribe, a nation, a race, until, when the fulness of time was come, it was made the possession of the whole world. It may be difficult to obtain from Scripture a clear account of why God chose thus to give this revelation of His grace only progressively; or, to be more explicit, through the process of a historical development. Such is, however, the ordinary mode of the Divine working: it is so that God made the worlds, it is so that He creates the human race itself, the recipient of this revelation, it is so that He builds up His kingdom in the world and in the individual soul, which only gradually comes whether to the knowledge of God or to the fruition of His salvation. As to the fact, the Scriptures are explicit, tracing for us, or rather embodying in their own growth, the record of the steady advance of this gracious revelation through definite stages from its first faint beginnings to its glorious completion in Jesus Christ.

So express is its relation to the development of the kingdom of God itself, or rather to that great series of Divine operations which are directed to the building up of the kingdom of God in the world, that it is sometimes confounded with them, or thought of as simply their reflection in the contemplating mind of man. Thus it is not infrequently said that revelation, meaning this special redemptive revelation, has been communicated in deeds, not in words; and it is occasionally elaborately argued that the sole manner in which God has revealed Himself as the Saviour of sinners is just by performing those mighty acts by which sinners are saved. This is not, however, the Biblical representation. Revelation is, of course, often made through the instrumentality of deeds; and the series of His great redemptive acts by which He saves the world constitutes the preeminent revelation of the grace of God - so far as these redemptive acts are open to observation and are perceived in their significance. But revelation, after all, is the correlate of understanding and has as its proximate end just the production of knowledge, though not, of course, knowledge for its own sake, but for the sake of salvation. The series of the redemptive acts of God, accordingly, can properly be designated "revelation" only when and so far as they are contemplated as adapted and designed to produce knowledge of God and His purpose and methods of grace. No bare series of unexplained acts can be thought, however, adapted to produce knowledge, especially if these acts be, as in this case, of a highly transcendental character. Nor can this particular series of acts be thought to have as its main design the production of knowledge; its main design is rather to save man. No doubt the production of knowledge of the Divine grace is one of the means by which this main design of the redemptive acts of God is attained. But this only renders it the more necessary that the proximate result of producing knowledge should not fail; and it is doubtless for this reason that the series of redemptive acts of God has not been left to explain itself, but the explanatory word has been added to it. Revelation thus appears, however, not as the mere reflection of the redeeming acts of God in the minds of men, but as a factor in the redeeming work of God, a component part of the series of His redeeming acts, without which that series would be incomplete and so far inoperative for its main end. Thus the Scriptures represent it, not confounding revelation with the series of the redemptive acts of God, but placing it among the redemptive acts of God and giving it a function as a substantive element in the operations by which the merciful God saves sinful men. It is therefore not made even a mere constant accompaniment of the redemptive acts of God, giving their explanation that they may be understood. It occupies a far more independent place among them than this, and as frequently precedes them to prepare their way as it accompanies or follows them to interpret their meaning. It is, in one word, itself a redemptive act of God and by no means the least important in the series of His redemptive acts.

This might, indeed, have been inferred from its very nature, and from the nature of the salvation which was being wrought out by these redemptive acts of God. One of the most grievous of the effects of sin is the deformation of the image of God reflected in the human mind, and there can be no recovery from sin which does not bring with it the correction of this deformation and the reflection in the soul of man of the whole glory of the Lord God Almighty. Man is an intelligent being; his superiority over the brute is found, among other things, precisely in the direction of all his life by his intelligence; and his blessedness is rooted in the true knowledge of his God - for this is life eternal, that we should know the only true God and Him whom He has sent. Dealing with man as an intelligent being, God the Lord has saved him by means of a revelation, by which he has been brought into an ever more and more adequate knowledge of God, and been led ever more and more to do his part in working out his own salvation with fear and trembling as he perceived with ever more and more clearness how God is working it out for him through mighty deeds of grace.

This is not the place to trace, even in outline, from the material point of view, the development of God's redemptive revelation from its first beginnings, in the promise given to Abraham - or rather in what has been called the Protevangelium at the gate of Eden - to its completion in the accent and work of Christ and the teaching of His apostles; a steadily advancing development, which, as it lies spread out to view in the pages of Scripture, takes to those who look at it from the consummation backward, the appearance of the shadow cast athwart preceding ages by the great figure of Christ. Even from the formal point of view, however, there has been pointed out a progressive advance in the method of revelation, consonant with its advance in content, or rather with the advancing stages of the building up of the kingdom of God, to subserve which is the whole object of revelation. Three distinct steps in revelation have been discriminated from this point of view. They are distinguished precisely by the increasing independence of revelation of the deeds constituting the series of the redemptive acts of God, in which, nevertheless, all revelation is a substantial element. Discriminations like this must not be taken too absolutely; and in the present instance the chronological sequence cannot be pressed. But, with much interlacing, three generally successive stages of revelation may be recognized, producing periods at least characteristically of what we may somewhat conventionally call theophany, prophecy and inspiration. What may be somewhat indefinitely marked off as the Patriarchal age is characteristically "the period of Outward Manifestations, and Symbols, and Theophanies": during it "God spoke to men through their senses, in physical phenomena, as the burning bush, the cloudy pillar, or in sensuous forms, as men, angels, etc. . . . In the Prophetic age, on the contrary, the prevailing mode of revelation was by means of inward prophetic inspiration": God spoke to men characteristically by the movements of the Holy Spirit in their hearts." Prevailingly, at any rate from Samuel downwards, the supernatural revelation was a revelation in the hearts of the foremost thinkers of the people, or, as we call it, prophetic inspiration, without the aid of external sensuous symbols of God" (A. B. Davidson, OT Prophecy, 1903, p. 148; cf. pp. 12-14, 145 ff.). This internal method of revelation reaches its culmination in the New Testament period, which is preeminently the age of the Spirit. What is especially characteristic of this age is revelation through the medium of the written word, what may be called apostolic as distinguished from prophetic inspiration. The revealing Spirit speaks through chosen men as His organs, but through these organs in such a fashion that the most intimate processes of their souls become the instruments by means of which He speaks His mind. Thus at all events there are brought clearly before us three well-marked modes of revelation, which we may perhaps designate respectively, not with perfect discrimination, it is true, but not misleadingly, (1) external manifestations, (2) internal suggestion, and (3) concursive operation.

III. MODES OF REVELATION

Theophany may be taken as the typical form of "external manifestation"; but by its side may be ranged all of those mighty works by which God makes Himself known, including express miracles, no doubt, but along with them every supernatural intervention in the affairs of men, by means of which a better understanding is communicated of what God is or what, are His purposes of grace to a sinful race. Under "internal suggestion" may be subsumed all the characteristic phenomena of what is most. properly spoken of as "prophecy": visions and dreams, which, according to a fundamental passage (Num. xii. 6), constitute the typical forms of prophecy, and with them the whole "prophetic word," which shares its essential characteristic with visions and dreams, since it comes not by the will of man but from God. By "concursive operation" may be meant that form of revelation illustrated in an inspired psalm or epistle or history, in which no human activity - not even the control of the will - is superseded, but the Holy Spirit works in, with and through them all in such a manner as to communicate to the product qualities distinctly superhuman. There is no age in the history of the religion of the Bible, from that of Moses to that of Christ and His apostles, in which all these modes of revelation do not find place. One or another may seem particularly characteristic of this age or of that; but they all occur in every age. And they occur side by side, broadly speaking, on the same level. No discrimination is drawn between them in point of worthiness as modes of revelation, and much less in point of purity in the revelations communicated through them. The circumstance that God spoke to Moses, not by dream or vision but mouth to mouth, is, indeed, adverted to (Num. xii. 8) as a proof of the peculiar favor shown to Moses and even of the superior dignity of Moses above other organs of revelation: God admitted him to an intimacy of intercourse which He did not accord to others. But though Moses was thus distinguished above all others in the dealings of God with him, no distinction is drawn between the revelations given through him and those given through other organs of revelation in point either of Divinity or of authority. And beyond this we have no Scriptural warrant to go on in contrasting one mode of revelation with another. Dreams may seem to us little fitted to serve as vehicles of Divine communications. But there is no suggestion in Scripture that revelations through dreams stand on a lower plane than any others; and we should not fail to remember that the essential characteristics of revelations through dreams are shared by all forms of revelation in which (whether we should call them visions or not) the images or ideas which fill, or pass in procession through, the consciousness are determined by some other power than the recipient's own will. It may seem natural to suppose that revelations rise in rank in proportion to the fulness of the engagement of the mental activity of the recipient in their reception. But we should bear in mind that the intellectual or spiritual quality of a revelation is not derived from the recipient but from its Divine Giver. The fundamental fact in all revelation is that it is from God. This is what gives unity to the whole process of revelation, given though it may be-in divers portions and in divers manners and distributed though it may be through the ages in accordance with the mere will of God, or as it may have suited His developing purpose- this and its unitary end, which is ever the building up of the kingdom of God. In whatever diversity of forms, by means of whatever variety of modes, in whatever distinguishable stages it is given, it is ever the revelation of the One God, and it is ever the one consistently developing redemptive revelation of God.

On a prima facie view it may indeed seem likely that a difference in the quality of their supernaturalness would inevitably obtain between revelations given through such divergent modes. The completely supernatural character of revelations given in theophanies is obvious. He who will not allow that God speaks to man, to make known His gracious purposes toward him, has no other recourse here than to pronounce the stories legendary. The objectivity of the mode of communication which is adopted is intense, and it is thrown up to observation with the greatest emphasis. Into the natural life of man God intrudes in a purely supernatural manner, bearing a purely supernatural communication. In these communications we are given accordingly just a series of "naked messages of God." But not even in the Patriarchal age were all revelations given in theophanies or objective appearances. There were dreams, and visions, and revelations without explicit intimation in the narrative of how they were communicated. And when we pass on in the history, we do not, indeed, leave behind us theophanies and objective appearances. It is not only made the very characteristic of Moses, the greatest figure in the whole history of revelation except only that of Christ, that he knew God face to face (Deut. xxxiv. 10), and God spoke to him mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches (Num. xii. 8); but throughout the whole history of revelation down to the appearance of Jesus to Paul on the road to Damascus, God has shown Himself visibly to His servants whenever it has seemed good to Him to do so and has spoken with them in objective speech. Nevertheless, it is expressly made the characteristic of the Prophetic age that God makes Himself known to His Servants "in a vision," "in a dream" (Num. xii. 6). And although, throughout its entire duration, God, in fulfilment of His promise (Deut. xviii. 18), put His words in the mouths of His prophets and gave them His commandments to speak, yet it would seem inherent in the very employment of men as instruments of revelation that the words of God given through them are spoken by human mouths; and the purity of their supernaturalness may seem so far obscured. And when it is not merely the mouths of men with which God thus serves Himself in the delivery of His messages, but their minds and hearts as well - the play of their religious feelings, or the processes of their logical reasoning, or the tenacity of their memories, as, say, in a psalm or in an epistle, or a history -the supernatural element in the communication may easily seem to retire still farther into the background. It can scarcely be a matter of surprise, therefore, that question has been raised as to the relation of the natural and the supernatural in such revelations, and, in many current manners of thinking and speaking of them, the completeness of their supernaturalness has been limited and curtailed in the interests of the natural instrumentalities employed. The plausibility of such reasoning renders it the more necessary that we should observe the unvarying emphasis which the Scriptures place upon the absolute supernaturalness of revelation in all its modes alike. In the view of the Scriptures, the completely supernatural character of revelation is in no way lessened by the circumstance that it has been given through the instrumentality of men. They affirm, indeed, with the greatest possible emphasis that the Divine word delivered through men is the pure word of God, diluted with no human admixture whatever.

We have already been led to note that even on the occasion when -Moses is exalted above all other organs of revelation (Num. xii. 6 ff.), in point of dignity and favor, no suggestion whatever is made of any inferiority, in either the directness or the purity of their supernaturalness, attaching to other organs of revelation. There might never afterward arise a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face (Deut. xxxiv. 10). But each of the whole series of prophets raised up by Jehovah that the people might always know His will was to be like Moses in speaking to the people only what Jehovah commanded them (Deut. xviii. 15,18,20). In this great promise, securing to Israel the succession of prophets, there is also included a declaration of precisely how Jehovah would communicate His messages not so much to them as through them. "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee," we read (Deut. xviii. 18), "and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." The process of revelation through the prophets was a process by which Jehovah put His words in the mouths of the prophets, and the prophets spoke precisely these words and no others. So the prophets themselves ever asserted. "Then Jehovah put forth his hand, and touched my mouth," explains Jeremiah in his account of how he received his prophecies, "and Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth" (Jer. i. 9; cf. v. 14; Isa. li. 16; lix. 21; Num. xxii. 35; xxiii. 5,12,16). Accordingly, the words "with which" they spoke were not their own but the Lord's: "And he said unto me," records Ezekiel, "Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them " (Ezk. iii. 4). It is a process of nothing other than "dictation" which is thus described (2 S. xiv. 3,19), though, of course, the question may remain open of the exact processes by which this dictation is accomplished. The fundamental passage which brings the central fact before us in the most vivid manner is, no doubt, the account of the commissioning of Moses and Aaron given in Ex. iv. 10-17; vii. 1-7. Here, in the most express words, Jehovah declares that He who made the mouth can be with it to teach it what to speak, and announces the precise function of a prophet to be that he is "a mouth of God," who speaks not his own but God's words. Accordingly, the Hebrew name for "prophet" ( nābhī' ), whatever may be its etymology, means throughout the Scriptures just "spokesman," though not "spokesman" in general, but spokesman by way of eminence, that is, God's spokesman; and the characteristic formula by which a prophetic declaration is announced is: "The word of Jehovah came to me," or the brief "saith Jehovah" ( hwhy man, ne'um Yahweh). In no case does a prophet put his words forward as his own words. That he is a prophet at all is due not to choice on his own part, but to a call of God, obeyed often with reluctance; and he prophesies or forbears to prophesy, not according to his own will but as the Lord opens and shuts his mouth (Ezk, iii. 26 f.) and creates for him the fruit of the lips (Isa. lvii. 19; cf. vi. 7; l. 4). In contrast with the false prophets, he strenuously asserts that he does not speak out of his own heart ("heart" in Biblical language includes the whole inner man), but all that he proclaims is the pure word of Jehovah.

The fundamental passage does not quite leave the matter, however, with this general declaration. It describes the characteristic manner in which Jehovah communicates His messages to His prophets as through the medium of visions and dreams. Neither visions in the technical sense of that word, nor dreams, appear, however, to have been the customary mode of revelation to the prophets, the record of whose revelations has come down to us. But, on the other hand, there are numerous indications in the record that the universal mode of revelation to them was one which was in some sense a vision, and can be classed only in the category distinctively so called.

The whole nomenclature of prophecy presupposes, indeed, its vision-form. Prophecy is distinctively a word, and what is delivered by the prophets is proclaimed as the "word of Jehovah.” That it should be announced by the formula, "Thus saith the Lord," is, therefore, only what we expect; and we are prepared for such a description of its process as: "The Lord Jehovah . . . wakeneth mine ear to hear." He "hath opened mine ear" (Isa. l. 4.5). But this is not the way of speaking of their messages which is most usual in the prophets. Rather is the whole body of prophecy cursorily presented as a thing seen. Isaiah places at the head of his book: "The vision of Isaiah . . . which he saw" (cf. Isa. xxix. 10,11; Ob. ver. 1); and then proceeds to set at the head of subordinate sections the remarkable words, "The word that Isaiah . . . saw" (ii. 1) ; "the burden [margin "oracle"] . . . which Isaiah . . . did see" (xiii. 1). Similarly there stand at the head of other prophecies: "the words of Amos . . . which he saw" (Am. i. 1); "the word of Jehovah that came to Micah . . . which he saw" (Mic. i. 1) ; "the oracle which Habakkuk the prophet did see" (Hab. i. 1 margin); and elsewhere such language occurs as this: "the word that Jehovah hath showed me" (Jer. xxxviii. 21); "the prophets have seen . . . oracles" (Lam. ii. 14); "the word of Jehovah came . . . and I looked, and, behold" (Ezk, i. 3,4); "Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing" (Ezk. xiii. 3); "I . . . will look forth to see what he will speak with me, . . . Jehovah . . . said, Write the vision" (Hab. ii. 1 f.). It is an inadequate explanation of such language to suppose it merely a relic of a time when vision was more predominantly the, form of revelation. There is no proof that vision in the technical sense ever was more predominantly the form of revelation than in the days of the great writing prophets; and such language; is we have quoted too obviously represents the living point of view of the prophets to admit of the supposition that it was merely conventional on their lips. The prophets, in a word, represent the Divine communications which they received as given to them in some sense in visions.

It is possible, no doubt, to exaggerate the significance of this. It is an exaggeration, for example, to insist that therefore all the Divine communications made to the prophets must have come to them in external appearances and objective speech, addressed to and received by means of the bodily eye and ear. This would be to break down the distinction between manifestation and revelation, and to assimilate the mode of prophetic revelation to that granted to Moses, though these are expressly distinguished (Num. xii. 6-8). It is also an exaggeration to insist that therefore the prophetic state must be conceived as that of strict ecstasy, involving, the complete abeyance of all mental life on the part of the prophet (amentia), and possibly also accompanying physical effects. It is quite clear from the records which the prophets themselves give us of their revelations that their intelligence was alert in all stages of their reception of them. The purpose of both these extreme views is the good one of doing full justice to the objectivity of the revelations vouchsafed to the prophets. If these revelations took place entirely externally to the prophet, who merely stood off and contemplated them, or if they were implanted in the prophets by a process so violent as not only to supersede their mental activity but, for the time being, to annihilate it, it would be quite clear that they came from a source other than the prophets' own minds. It is undoubtedly the fundamental contention of the prophets that the revelations given through them are not their own but wholly God's. The significant language we have just quoted from Ezk. xiii. 3: "Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing," is a typical utterance of their sense of the complete objectivity of their messages. What distinguishes the false prophets is precisely that they "prophesy out of their own heart" (Ezk. xiii. 2-17), or, to draw the antithesis sharply, that "they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of Jehovah" (Jer. xxiii. 16.26; xiv. 14 ). But these extreme views fail to do justice, the one to the equally important fact that the word of God, given through the prophets, comes as the pure and unmixed word of God not merely to, but from, the prophets; and the other to the equally obvious fact that the intelligence of the prophets is alert throughout the whole process of the reception and delivery of the revelation made through them.

That which gives to prophecy as a mode of revelation its place in the category of visions, strictly so called, and dreams, is that it shares with them the distinguishing characteristic which determines the class. In them all alike the movements of the mind are determined by something extraneous to the subject's will, or rather, since we are speaking of supernaturally given dreams and visions, extraneous to the totality of the subject's own psychoses. A power not himself takes possession of his consciousness and determines it according to its will. That power, in the case of the prophets, was fully recognized and energetically asserted to be Jehovah Himself or, to be more specific, the Spirit of Jehovah (1S. x. 6.10; Neh. ix. 30; Zec. vii. 12; Joel ii. 28.20). The prophets were therefore ‘men of the Spirit’ (Hos. ix. 7). What constituted them prophets was that the Spirit was put upon them (Isa. xlii. 1 ) or poured out on them (Joel ii. 28,29), and they were consequently filled with the Spirit (Mic. iii. 8), or, in another but equivalent locution, that "the hand" of the Lord, or "the power of the hand" of the Lord, was upon them (2K. iii. 15; Ezk. i. 3; iii. 14.22; xxxiii. 22; xxxvii. 1; xl. 1), that is to say, they were under the divine control. This control is represented as complete and compelling, so that, under it, the prophet becomes not the "mover," but the "moved" in the formation of his message. The apostle Peter very purely reflects the prophetic consciousness in his well-known declaration: ‘No prophecy of scripture comes of private interpretation; for prophecy was never brought by the will of man; but it was as borne by the Holy Spirit that men spoke from God' (2 Pet. i. 20.21).

What this language of Peter emphasizes - and what is emphasized in the whole account which the prophets give of their own consciousness - is, to speak plainly, the passivity of the prophets with respect to the revelation given through them. This is the significance of the phrase: ‘it was as borne by the Holy Spirit that men spoke from God.' To be "borne" ( fe,rein, phérein) is not the same as to be led (a;gein, ágein), much less to be guided or directed (o`dhgei/n, hodēgeín) : he that is " borne " contributes nothing, to the movement induced, but is the object to he moved. The term " passivity " is, perhaps, however, liable to some misapprehension, and should not be overstrained. It is not intended to deny that the intelligence of the prophets was active in the reception of their message; it was by means of their active intelligence that their message was received: their intelligence was the instrument of revelation. It is intended to deny only that their intelligence was active in the production of their message: that it was creatively as distinguished from receptively active. For reception itself is a kind of activity. What the prophets are solicitous that their readers shall understand is that they are in no sense co-authors with God of their messages. Their messages are given them, given them entire, and given them precisely as they are given out by them. God speaks through them: they are not merely His messengers, but "His mouth." But at the same time their intelligence is active in the reception, retention and announcing of their messages, contributing nothing to them but presenting fit instruments for the communication of them - instruments capable of understanding, responding profoundly to and zealously proclaiming them.

There is, no doubt, a not unnatural hesitancy abroad in thinking of the prophets as exhibiting only such merely receptive activities. In the interests of their personalities, we are asked not to represent God as dealing mechanically with them, pouring His revelations into their souls to be simply received as in so many buckets, or violently wresting their minds from their own proper action that He may do His own thinking with them. Must we not rather suppose, we are asked, that all revelations must he "psychologically mediated," must be given "after the mode of moral mediation," and must be made first of all their recipients' "own spiritual possession"? And is not, in point of fact, the personality of each prophet clearly traceable in his message, and that to such an extent as to compel us to recognize him as in a true sense its real author? The plausibility of such questionings should not be permitted to obscure the fact that the mode of the communication of the prophetic messages which is suggested by them is directly contradicted by the prophets' own representations of then relations to the revealing Spirit. In the prophets' own view they were just instruments through whom God gave revelations which came, from them, not as their own product, but as the pure word of Jehovah. Neither should the plausibility of such questionings blind us to their speciousness. They exploit subordinate considerations, which are not without their validity in their own place and under their own limiting conditions, as if they were the determining or even the sole considerations in the case, and in neglect of the really determining considerations. God is Himself the author of the instruments He employs for the communication of His messages to men and has framed them into precisely the instruments He desired for the exact communication of His message. There is just ground for the expectation that He will use all the instruments He employs according to their natures; intelligent beings therefore as intelligent beings, moral agents as moral agents. But there is no just ground for, asserting that God is incapable of employing the intelligent beings He has Himself created and formed to His will, to proclaim His messages purely as He gives them to them; or of making truly the possession of rational minds conceptions which they have. themselves had no part in creating. And there is no ground for imagining that God is unable to frame His own message in the language of the organs of His revelation without its thereby ceasing to be, because expressed in a fashion natural to these organs, therefore purely His message. One would suppose it to lie in the very nature of the case that if the Lord makes any revelation to men, He would do it in the language of men; or, to individualize more explicitly, in the language of the man He employs as the organ of His revelation; and that naturally means, not the language of his nation or circle merely, but his own particular language, inclusive of all that gives individuality to his self-expression. We may speak of this, if we will, as "the accommodation of the revealing God to the several prophetic individualities." But we should avoid thinking of it. externally and therefore mechanically, as if the revealing Spirit artificially phrased the message which He gives through each prophet in the particular forms of speech proper to the individuality of each, so as to create the illusion that the message comes out of the heart of the prophet himself. Precisely what the prophets affirm is that their messages do not come out of their own hearts and do not represent the workings of their own spirits. Nor is there any illusion in the phenomenon we are contemplating; and it is a much more intimate, and, we may add, a much more interesting phenomenon than an external "accommodation" of speech to individual habitudes. It includes, on the one hand, the "accommodation" of the prophet, through his total preparation, to the speech in which the revelation to be given through him is to be clothed; and on the other involves little more than the consistent carrying into detail of the broad principle that God uses the instruments He employs in accordance with their natures.

No doubt, on adequate occasion, the very stones might cry out by the power of God, and dumb beasts speak, and mysterious voices sound forth from the void; and there have not been lacking instances in which men have been compelled by the same power to speak what they would not, and in languages whose very sounds were strange to their ears. But ordinarily when God the Lord would speak to men He avails Himself of the services of a human tongue with which to speak, and He employs this tongue according to its nature as a tongue and according to the particular nature of the tongue which He employs. It is vain to say that the message delivered through the instrumentality of this tongue is conditioned at least in its form by the tongue by which it is spoken, if not, indeed, limited, curtailed, in some degree determined even in its matter, by it. Not only was it God the Lord who made the tongue, and who made this particular tongue with all its peculiarities, not without regard to the message He would deliver through it; but His control of it is perfect and complete, and it is as absurd to say that He cannot. speak His message by it purely without that message suffering change from the peculiarities of its tone and modes of enunciation, as it would be to say that no new truth can be announced in any language because the elements of speech by the combination of which the truth in question is announced are already in existence with their fixed range of connotation. The marks of the several individualities imprinted on the messages of the prophets, in other words, are only a part of the general fact that these messages are couched in human language, and in no way beyond that general fact affect their purity as direct communications from God.

A new set of problems is raised by the mode of revelation which we have called "concursive operation." This mode of revelation differs from prophecy, properly so called, precisely by the employment in it, as is not done in prophecy, of the total personality of the organ of revelation, as a factor. It has been common to speak of the mode of the Spirit's action in this form of revelation, therefore, as an assistance, a superintendence, a direction, a control, the meaning being that the effect aimed at - the discovery and enunciation of Divine truth - is attained through the action of the human powers-historical research, logical reasoning, ethical thought, religious aspiration - acting not by themselves, however, but under the prevailing assistance, superintendence, direction, control of the Divine Spirit. This manner of speaking has the advantage of setting this mode of revelation sharply in contrast with prophetic revelation, as involving merely a determining, and not, as in prophetic revelation, a supercessive action of the revealing Spirit. We are warned, however, against pressing this discrimination too far by the inclusion of the whole body of Scripture in such passages as 2 Pet. i. 20 f. in the category of prophecy, and the assignment of their origin not to a mere "leading" but to the "bearing" of the Holy Spirit. In any event such terms as assistance, superintendence, direction, control, inadequately express the nature of the Spirit's action in revelation by "concursive operation." The Spirit is not to be conceived as standing outside of the human powers employed for the effect in view, ready to supplement any inadequacies they may show and to supply any defects they may manifest, but as working confluently in, with and by them, elevating them, directing them, controlling them, energizing them, so that, as His instruments, they rise above themselves and under His inspiration do His work and reach His aim. The product, therefore, which is attained by their means is His product through them. It is this fact which gives to the process the right to be called actively, and to the product the right to be called passively, a revelation. Although the circumstance that what is done is done by and through the action of human powers keeps the product in form and quality in a true sense human, yet the confluent operation of the Holy Spirit throughout the whole process raises the result above what could by any possibility be achieved by mere human powers and constitutes it expressly a supernatural product. The human traits are traceable throughout its whole extent, but at bottom it is a Divine gift, and the language of Paul is the most proper mode of speech that could be applied to it: "Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth" (1 Cor. ii. 13); "The things which I write unto you . . . are the commandment of the Lord" (1 Cor. xiv. 37).

It is supposed that all the forms of special or redemptive revelation which underlie and give its content to the religion of the Bible may without violence be subsumed under one or another of these three modes - external manifestation, internal suggestion, and concursive operation. All, that is, except the culminating revelation, not through, but in, Jesus Christ. As in His person, in which dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, He rises above all classification and is sui generis; so the revelation accumulated in Him stands outside all the divers portions and divers manners in which otherwise revelation has been given and stuns up in itself all that has been or can be made known of God and of His redemption. He does not so much make a revelation of God as Himself is the revelation of God; He does not merely disclose God's purpose of redemption, He is unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. The theophanies are but faint shadows in comparison with His manifestation of God in the flesh. The prophets could prophesy only as the Spirit of Christ which was in them testified, revealing to them as to servants one or another of the secrets of the Lord Jehovah; from Him as His Son, Jehovah has no secrets, but whatsoever the Father knows that the Son knows also. Whatever truth men have been made partakers of by the Spirit of truth is His (for all things whatsoever the Father hath are His) and is taken by the Spirit of truth and declared to men that He may be glorified. Nevertheless, though all revelation is thus summed up in Him, we should not fail to note very carefully that it would also be all sealed up in Him - so little is revelation conveyed by fact alone, without the word - had it not been thus taken by the Spirit of truth and declared unto men. The entirety of the New Testament is but the explanatory word accompanying and giving its effect to the fact of Christ. And when this fact was in all its meaning made the possession of men, revelation was completed and in that sense ceased. Jesus Christ is no less the end of revelation than He is the end of the law.

IV. BIBLICAL TERMINOLOGY

There is not much additional to be learned concerning the nature and processes of revelation, from the terms currently employed in Scripture to express the idea. These terns are ordinarily the common words for disclosing, making known, making manifest, applied with more or less heightened significance to supernatural acts or effects in kind. In the English Bible (AV) the verb "reveal" occurs about fifty-one times, of which twenty-two are in the Old Testament and twenty-nine in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the word is always the rendering of a Hebrew term hl'G', gālāh, or its Aramaic equivalent hl'G>, gelāh, the root meaning of which appears to be "nakedness." When applied to revelation, it seems to hint at the removal of obstacles to perception or the uncovering of objects to perception. In the New Testament the word "reveal" is always (with the single exception of Lk. ii. 35) the rendering of a Greek term avpokalu,ptw, apokalúptō (but in 2 Thess. i. 7; 1 Pet. iv. 13 the corresponding noun avpoka,luyij, apokálupsis), which has a very similar basal significance with its Hebrew parallel. As this Hebrew word formed no substantive in this sense, the noun "revelation" does not occur in the English Old Testament, the idea being expressed, however, by other Hebrew terms variously rendered. It occurs in the English New Testament, on the other hand, about a dozen times, and always as the rendering of the substantive corresponding to the verb rendered "reveal" (apokálupsis). On the face of the English Bible, the terms "reveal," "revelation" bear therefore uniformly the general sense of "disclose," "disclosure." The idea is found in the Bible, however, much more frequently than the terms " reveal," " revelation " in English versions. Indeed, the, Hebrew and Greek terms exclusively so rendered occur more frequently in this sense than in this rendering in the English Bible. And by their side there stand various other terms which express in one way or another the general conception.

In the New Testament the verb fanero,w, phaneróō, with the general sense of making manifest, manifesting, is the most common of these. It differs from apokalúptō the more general and external term from the more special and inward. Other terms also are occasionally used: evpifa,neia, epipháneia, "manifestation" (2 Thess. ii. 8; 1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. i. 10; iv. 1; Tit. ii. 13; cf. evpifai,nw, epiphaínō, Tit. ii. 11; iii. 4); deiknu,w, deiknúō (Rev, i. 1; xvii. 1; xxii. 1.6.8; cf. Acts ix. 16; 1 Tim, iv. 15); evxhge,omai, exēgéomai (Jn. i. 18), of which, however, only one perhaps - crhmati,zw, chrēmatízō (Mt. ii. 12.22; Lk. ii. 26; Acts x. 22; Heb. viii. 5; xi. 7; xii. 25); crhmatismo,j, chrēmatismós (Rom. xi. 4) - calls for particular notice as in a special way, according to its usage, expressing the idea of a Divine communication.

In the Old Testament, the common Hebrew verb for "seeing" (ha'r', rā'āh) is used in as appropriate stems, with God as the subject, for "appearing." "showing": "the Lord appeared unto . . ."; "the word which the Lord showed me." And from this verb not only is an active substantive formed which supplied the more ancient designation of the official organ or revelation: haero, rō'eh, "seer"; but also objective substantives, ha'r>m;, mar'āh, and ha<r>m;, mar'eh which were used to designate the thing seen in a revelation - the "vision." By the side of these terms there were others in use, derived from a root which supplies to the Aramaic its common word for "seeing," but in Hebrew has a somewhat more pregnant meaning, hw'x', ḥāzāh. Its active derivative, hw,xo, ḥōzeh, was a designation of a prophet which remained in occasional use, alternating with the more customary aybin', nābhī, long after ha'ro, rō'eh, had become practically obsolete; and its passive derivatives ḥāzōn, ḥizzāyōn, ḥāzūth, maḥăzeh provided the ordinary terms for the substance of the revelation or "vision." The distinction between the two sets of terms, derived respectively from rā'āh and ḥāzāh, while not to be unduly pressed, seems to lie in the direction that the former suggests external manifestations and the latter internal revelations. The rō'eh is he to whom Divine manifestations, the ḥōzeh he to whom Divine communications, have been vouchsafed; the mar'eh is an appearance, the hāzōn and its companions a vision. It may be of interest to observe that mar'āh is the term employed in Num. xii. 6, while it is ḥāzōn which commonly occurs in the headings of the written prophecies to indicate their revelatory character. From this it may possibly be inferred that in the former passage it is the mode, in the latter the contents of the revelation that is emphasized. Perhaps a like distinction may be traced between the ḥāzōn of Dan. viii. 15 and the mar'eh of the next verse. The ordinary verb for "knowing," [d;y", yādha', expressing in its causative stems the idea of making known, informing, is also very naturally employed, with God as its subject, in the sense of revealing, and that, in accordance with the natural sense of the word, with a tendency to pregnancy of implication, of revealing effectively, of not merely uncovering to observation, but making to know. Accordingly, it is paralleled not merely with hl'G", gālāh (Ps. xcviii. 2: 'The Lord hath made known his salvation; his righteousness hath he displayed in the sight of the nation'), but also with such terms as dm;l', lāmadh (Ps. xxv. 4: 'Make known to me thy ways, O Lord: teach me thy paths'). This verb yādha' forms no substantive in the sense of " revelation " (cf. t[;D;, da'ath, Num. xxiv. 16; Ps. xix, 3).

The most common vehicles of the idea of "revelation" in the Old Testament are, however, two expressions which are yet to be mentioned. These are the phrase, "word of Jehovah." and the term commonly but inadequately rendered in the English versions by "law." The former (debhar Yahweh varied to debhar 'Ělōhīm or debhar hā-'Ělōhīm; cf. ne'um Yahweh, massa, Yahweh) occurs scores of times and is at once the simplest and the most colorless designation of a Divine communication. By the latter (tōrāh), the proper meaning of which is "instruction," a strong implication of authoritativeness is conveyed; and, in this sense, it becomes what may be called the technical designation of a specifically Divine communication. The two are not infrequently brought together, as in Isa. i. 10: "Hear the word of Jehovah, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law [margin "teaching"] of our God, ye people of Gomorrah"; or Isa. ii. 3; Mic. iv. 2; "For out of Zion shall go forth the law [margin "instruction"], and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem." Both terms are used for any Divine communication of whatever extent; and both came to be employed to express the entire body of Divine revelation, conceived as a unitary whole. In this comprehensive usage, the emphasis of the one came to fall more on the graciousness, and of the other more on the authoritativeness of this body of Divine revelation; and both passed into the New Testament with these implications. "The word of God," or simply "the word," comes thus to mean in the New Testament just the gospel, “the word of the proclamation of redemption, that is, all that which God has to say to man, and causes to be said" looking to his salvation. It expresses, in a word, precisely what we technically speak of as God's redemptive revelation. "The law," on the other hand, means in this New Testament use, just the whole body of the authoritative instruction which God has given men. It expresses, in other words, what we commonly speak of as God's supernatural revelation. The two things, of course, are the same: God's authoritative revelation is His gracious revelation; God's redemptive revelation is His supernatural revelation. The two terms merely look at the one aggregate of revelation from two aspects, and each emphasizes its own aspect of this one aggregated revelation.

Now, this aggregated revelation lay before the men of the New Testament in a written form, and it was impossible to speak freely of it without consciousness of and at least occasional reference to its written form. Accordingly we hear of a Word of God that is written (Jn. xv. 25; 1 Cor. xv. 54), and the Divine Word is naturally contrasted with mere tradition, as if its written form were of its very idea (Mk. vii. 10); indeed, the written body of revelation - with an emphasis on its written form - is designated expressly ‘the prophetic word' (2 Pet. i. 19). More distinctly still, "the Law" comes to be thought of as a written, not exactly, code, but body of Divinely authoritative instructions. The phrase, "It is written in your law" (Jn. x. 34; xv. 25; Rom. iii. 19; 1 Cor. xiv. 21), acquires the precise sense of, "It is set forth in your authoritative Scriptures, all the content of which is ‘law,' that is, Divine instruction." Thus "the Word of God," "the Law," came to mean just the written body of revelation, what we call, and what the New Testament writers called, in the same high sense which we give the term, "the Scriptures." These "Scriptures" are thus identified with the revelation of God, conceived as a well-defined corpus, and two conceptions rise before us which have had a determining part to play in the history of Christianity - the conception of an authoritative Canon of Scripture, and the conception of this Canon of Scripture as just the Word of God written. The former conception was thrown into prominence in opposition to the gnostic heresies in the earliest age of the church, and gave rise to a richly varied mode of speech concerning the Scriptures, emphasizing their authority in legal language, which goes back to and rests on the Biblical usage of "Law." The latter it was left to the Reformation to do justice to in its struggle against, on the one side, the Romish depression of the Scriptures in favor of the traditions of the church, and on the other side the Enthusiasts' supercession of them in the interests of the "inner Word." When Tertullian, on the one hand, speaks of the Scriptures as an "Instrument," a legal document, his terminology has an express warrant in the Scriptures' own usage of tōrāh, "law," to designate their entire content. And when John Gerhard argues that "between the Word of God and Sacred Scripture, taken in a material sense, there is no real difference," he is only declaring plainly what is definitely implied in the New Testament use of "the Word of God" with the written revelation in mind. What is important to recognize is that the Scriptures themselves represent the Scriptures as not merely containing here and there the record of revelations - "words of God," tōrōth - given by God, but as themselves, in all their extent, a revelation, an authoritative body of gracious instructions from God; or, since they alone, of all the revelations which God may have given, are extant - rather as the Revelation, the only "Word of God" accessible to men, in all their parts "law." that is, authoritative instruction from God.

LITERATURE - Herman Witsius, "De Prophetis et Prophetia" in Miscell. Sacr., I, Leiden, 1736. 1-318; G. F. Oehler, Theology of the OT, ET, Edinburgh, 1874, I, part I (and the appropriate sections in other Bib. Theologies); H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dognzatiek2, I, Kampen, 1906, 290-406 (and the appropriate sections in other dogmatic treatises); H. Voigt, Fundamentaldogmatik, Gotha, 1874, 173 ff; A. Kuyper, Encyclopaedia of Sacred Theology, ET, New York, 1898, div. III, ch. 11; A. E. Krauss, Die Lehre von der Offenbarung, Gotha, 1868; C. F. Fritzsche, De revelationis notione biblica, Leipzig, 1828; E. W. Hengstenberg, The Christology of the OT, ET2, Edinburgh, 1868, IV, Appendix 6, pp. 396-444; E. König, Der Offenbarungsbegriff des AT, Leipzig, 1882; A. B. Davidson, OT Prophecy, 1903; W. J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise, New York, 1905; James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, 1893, as per Index, "Revelation," and Revelation and Inspiration, London and New York, 1910. Also: T. Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, ET, New York, 1874; G. P. Fisher, The Nature and Method of Revelation, New York, 1890; C. M. Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 1889; J. Quirmbach, Die Lehre des h. Paulus von der naturlichen, Gotteserkenntnis, etc., Freiburg, 1906.

A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith

by Benjamin B. Warfield

1. I believe that my one aim in life and death should be to glorify God and enjoy him forever; and that God teaches me how to glorify him in his holy Word, that is, the Bible, which he had given by the infallible inspiration of this Holy Spirit in order that I may certainly know what I am to believe concerning him and what duty he requires of me.

2. I believe that God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and incomparable in all that he is; one God but three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, my Creator, my Redeemer, and my Sanctifier; in whose power and wisdom, righteousness, goodness and truth I may safely put my trust.

3. I believe that the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, are the work of God hands; and that all that he has made he directs and governs in all their actions; so that they fulfill the end for which they were created, and I who trust in him shall not be put to shame but may rest securely in the protection of his almighty love.

4. I believe that God created man after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, and entered into a covenant of life with him upon the sole condition of the obedience that was his due; so that it was by willfully sinning against God that man fell into the sin and misery in which I have been born.

5. I believe, that, being fallen in Adam, my first father, I am by nature a child of wrath, under the condemnation of God and corrupted in body and soul, prone to evil and liable to eternal death; from which dreadful state I cannot be delivered save through the unmerited grace of God my Savior.

6. I believe that God has not left the world to perish in its sin, but out of the great love wherewith he has loved it, has from all eternity graciously chosen unto himself a multitude which no man can number, to deliver them out of their sin and misery, and of them to build up again in the world his kingdom of righteousness; in which kingdom I may be assured I have my part, if I hold fast to Christ the Lord.

7. I believe that God has redeemed his people unto himself through Jesus Christ our Lord; who, though he was and ever continues to be the eternal Son of God, yet was born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that are under the law: I believe that he bore the penalty due to my sins in his own body on the tree, and fulfilled in his own person the obedience I owe to the righteousness of God, and now presents me to his Father as his purchased possession, to the praise of the glory of his grace forever; wherefore renouncing all merit of my own, I put all my trust only in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ my redeemer.

8. I believe that Jesus Christ my redeemer, who died for my offences was raised again for my justification, and ascended into the heavens, where he sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty, continually making intercession for his people, and governing the whole world as head over all things for his Church; so that I need fear no evil and may surely know that nothing can snatch me out of his hands and nothing can separate me from his love.

9. I believe that the redemption wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ is effectually applied to all his people by the Holy Spirit, who works faith in me and thereby unites me to Christ, renews me in the whole man after the image of God, and enables me more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness; until, this gracious work having been completed in me, I shall be received into glory; in which great hope abiding, I must ever strive to perfect holiness in the fear of God.

10. I believe that God requires of me, under the gospel, first of all, that , out of a true sense of my sin and misery and apprehension of his mercy in Christ, I should turn with grief and hatred away from sin and receive and rest upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation; that, so being united to him, I may receive pardon for my sins and be accepted as righteous in God's sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to me and received by faith alone; and thus and thus only do I believe I may be received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.

11. I believe that, having been pardoned and accepted for Christ's sake , it is further required of me that I walk in the Spirit whom he has purchased for me, and by whom love is shed abroad in my heart; fulfilling the obedience I owe to Christ my King; faithfully performing all the duties laid upon me by the holy law of God my heavenly Father; and ever reflecting in my life and conduct, the perfect example that has been set me by Christ Jesus my Leader, who has died for me and granted to me his Holy Spirit just that I may do the good works which God has afore prepared that I should walk in them.

12. I believe that God has established his Church in the world and endowed it with the ministry of the Word and the holy ordinances of Baptism, the Lord's Supper and Prayer; in order that through these as means, the riches of his grace in the gospel may be made known to the world, and, by the blessing of Christ and the working of his Spirit in them that by faith receive them, the benefits of redemption may be communicated to his people; wherefore also it is required of me that I attend on these means of grace with diligence, preparation, and prayer, so that through them I may be instructed and strengthened in faith, and in holiness of life and in love; and that I use my best endeavors to carry this gospel and convey these means of grace to the whole world.

13. I believe that as Jesus Christ has once come in grace, so also is he to come a second time in glory, to judge the world in righteousness and assign to each his eternal award; an I believe that if I die in Christ, my soul shall be at death made perfect in holiness and go home to the Lord; and when he shall return to his majesty I shall be raised in glory and made perfectly blesses in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity: encouraged by which blessed hope it is required of me willingly to take my part in suffering hardship here as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, being assured that if I die with him I shall also live with him, if I endure, I shall also reign with him. And to Him, my Redeemer, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, Three Persons, one God, be glory forever, world without end, Amen, and Amen.

Calvin as a Theologian

by Benjamin B. Warfield

THE subject of this address is “John Calvin the Theologian,” and I take it that what will be expected of me is to convey some idea of what manner of theologian John Calvin was, and of his quality as a theological thinker.

I am afraid I shall have to ask you at the outset to disabuse your minds of a very common impression, namely, that Calvin’s chief characteristics as a theologian were on the one hand, audacity—perhaps I might even say effrontery—of speculation; and on the other hand, pitilessness of logical development, cold and heartless scholasticism. We have been told, for example, that he reasons on the attributes of God precisely as he would reason on the properties of a triangle. No misconception could be more gross. The speculative theologian of the Reformation was Zwingli, not Calvin. The scholastic theologian among the early Reformers was Peter Martyr, not Calvin. This was thoroughly understood by their contemporaries. “The two most excellent theologians of our times,” remarks Joseph Scaliger, “are John Calvin and Peter Martyr, the former of whom has dealt with the Holy Scriptures as they ought to be dealt with—with sincerity, I mean, and purity and simplicity, without any scholastic subtleties. . . Peter Martyr, because it seemed to fall to him to engage the Sophists, has overcome them sophistically, and struck them down with their own weapons.”

It is not to be denied, of course, that Calvin was a speculative genius of the first order, and in the cogency of his logical analysis he possessed a weapon which made him terrible to his adversaries. But it was not on these gifts that he depended in forming and developing his theological ideas. His theological method was persistently, rigorously, some may even say exaggeratedly, a posteriori. All a priori reasoning here he not only eschewed but vigorously repelled. His instrument of research was not logical amplification, but exegetical investigation. In one word, he was distinctly a Biblical theologian, or, let us say it frankly, by way of eminence the Biblical theologian of his age. Whither the Bible took him, thither he went: where scriptural declarations failed him, there he stopped short.

It is this which imparts to Calvin’s theological teaching the quality which is its prime characteristic and its real offence in the eyes of his critics—I mean its positiveness. There is no mistaking the note of confidence in his teaching, and it is perhaps not surprising that this note of confidence irritates his critics. They resent the air of finality he gives to his declarations, not staying to consider that he gives them this air of finality because he presents them, not as his teachings, but as the teachings of the Holy Spirit in His inspired Word. Calvin’s positiveness of tone is thus the mark not of extravagance but of sobriety and restraint. He even speaks with impatience of speculative, and what we may call inferential theology, and he is accordingly himself spoken of with impatience by modern historians of thought as a “merely Biblical theologian,” who is, therefore, without any real doctrine of God, such as Zwingli has. The reproach, if it be a reproach, is just. Calvin refused to go beyond “what is written”—written plainly in the book of nature or in the book of revelation. He insisted that we can know nothing of God, for example, except what He has chosen to make known to us in His works and Word; all beyond this is but empty fancy, which merely “flutters” in the brain. And it was just because he refused to go one step beyond what is written that he felt so sure of his steps. He could not present the dictates of the Holy Ghost as a series of debatable propositions.

Such an attitude towards the Scriptures might conceivably consist with a thoroughgoing intellectualism, and Calvin certainly is very widely thought of as an intellectualist à outrance. But this again is an entire misapprehension. The positiveness of Calvin’s teaching has a far deeper root than merely the conviction of his understanding. When Ernest Renan characterized him as the most Christian man of his generation he did not mean it for very high praise, but he made a truer and much more profound remark than he intended. The fundamental trait of Calvin’s nature was precisely—religion. It is not merely that all his thinking is coloured by a deep religious sentiment; it is that the whole substance of his thinking is determined by the religious motive. Thus his theology, if ever there was a theology of the heart, was distinctively a theology of the heart, and in him the maxim that “It is the heart that makes the theologian” finds perhaps its most eminent illustration.

His active and powerful intelligence, of course, penetrated to the depths of every subject which he touched, but he was incapable of dealing with any religious subject after a fashion which would minister only to what would seem to him the idle curiosity of the mind. It was not that he restrained himself from such merely intellectual exercises upon the themes of religion, the force of his religious interest itself instinctively inhibited them.

Calvin marked an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of all great theologians who have occupied themselves with this soaring topic, none has been more determined than he not to lose themselves in the intellectual subtleties to which it invites the inquiring mind; and he marked an epoch in the development of the doctrine precisely because his interest in it was vital and not merely or mainly speculative. Or take the great doctrine of predestination which has become identified with his name, and with respect to which he is perhaps, most commonly of all things, supposed to have given the reins to speculative construction and to have pushed logical development to unwarrantable extremes. Calvin, of course, in the pellucid clearness and incorruptible honesty of his thought and in the faithfulness of his reflection of the biblical teaching, fully grasped and strongly held the doctrine of the will of God as the prima causa rerum, and this too was a religious conception with him and was constantly affirmed just because it was a religious conception—yes, in a high and true sense, the most fundamental of all religious conceptions. But even so, it was not to this cosmical predestination that Calvin’s thought most persistently turned, but rather to that soteriological predestination on which, as a helpless sinner needing salvation from the free grace of God, he must rest. And therefore Ebrard is so far quite right when he says that predestination appears in Calvin’s system not as the decretum Dei but as the electio Dei.

It is not merely controversial skill which leads Calvin to pass predestination by when he is speaking of the doctrine of God and providence, and to reserve it for the point where he is speaking of salvation. This is where his deepest interest lay. What was suffusing his heart and flowing in full flood into all the chambers of his soul was a profound sense of his indebtedness as a lost sinner to the free grace of God his Saviour. His zeal in asserting the doctrine of two-fold predestination is grounded in the clearness with which he perceived—as was indeed perceived with him by all the Reformers—that only so can the evil leaven of “synergism” be eliminated and the free grace of God be preserved in its purity in the saving process. The roots of his zeal are planted, in a word, in his consciousness of absolute dependence as a sinner on the free mercy of a saving God. The sovereignty of God in grace was an essential constituent of his deepest religious consciousness. Like his great master, Augustine—like Luther, Zwingli, and Bucer, and all the rest of those high spirits who brought about that great revival of religion which we call the Reformation—he could not endure that the grace of God should not receive all the glory of the glory of the rescue of sinners from the destruction in which they are involved, and from which, just because they are involved in it, they are unable to do anything towards their own recovery.

The fundamental interest of Calvin as a theologian lay, it is clear, in the region broadly designated soteriological. Perhaps we may go further and add that, within this broad field, his interest was most intense in the application to the sinful soul of the salvation wrought out by Christ,—in a word, in what is technically known as the ordo salutis. This has even been made his reproach in some quarters, and we have been told that the main fault of the Institutes as a treatise in theological science, lies in its too subjective character. Its effect, at all events, has been to constitute Calvin pre-eminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

Calvin has made contributions of the first importance to other departments of theological thought. It has already been observed that he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. He also marks an epoch in the mode of presenting the work of Christ. The presentation of Christ’s work under the rubrics of the three-fold office of Prophet, Priest and King was introduced by him: and from him it was taken over by the entirety of Christendom, not always, it is true, in his spirit or with his completeness of development, but yet with large advantage. In Christian ethics, too, his impulse proved epoch-making, and this great science was for a generation cultivated only by his followers.

It is probable, however, that Calvin’s greatest contribution to theological science lies in the rich development which he gives—and which he was the first to give—to the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit. No doubt, from the origin of Christianity, everyone who has been even slightly imbued with the Christian spirit has believed in the Holy Spirit as the author and giver of life, and has attributed all that is good in the world, and particularly in himself, to His holy offices. And, of course, in treating of grace, Augustine worked out the doctrine of salvation as a subjective experience with great vividness and in great detail, and the whole course of this salvation was fully understood, no doubt, to be the work of the Holy Spirit. But in the same sense in which we may say that the doctrine of sin and grace dates from Augustine, the doctrine of satisfaction from Anselm, the doctrine of justification by faith from Luther,—we must say that the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit is a gift from Calvin to the Church. It was he who first related the whole experience of salvation specifically to the working of the Holy Spirit, worked it out into its details, and contemplated its several steps and stages in orderly progress as the product of the Holy Spirit’s specific work in applying salvation to the soul. Thus he gave systematic and adequate expression to the whole doctrine of the Holy Spirit and made it the assured possession of the Church of God.

It has been common to say that Calvin’s entire theological work may be summed up in this—that he emancipated the soul from the tyranny of human authority and delivered it from the uncertainties of human intermediation in religious things: that he brought the soul into the immediate presence of God and cast it for its spiritual health upon the free grace of God alone. Where the Romanist placed the Church, it is said, Calvin set the Deity. The saying is true, and perhaps, when rightly understood and filled with its appropriate content, it may sufficiently characterize the effect of his theological teaching. But it is expressed too generally to be adequate. What Calvin did was, specifically, to replace the doctrine of the Church as sole source of assured knowledge of God and sole institute of salvation, by the Holy Spirit. Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will.

The Institutes is, accordingly, just a treatise on the work of God the Holy Spirit in making God savingly known to sinful man, and bringing sinful man into holy communion with God. Therefore it opens with the great doctrine of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti—another of the fruitful doctrines which the Church owes to Calvin—in which he teaches that the only vital and vitalizing knowledge of God which a sinner can attain, is communicated to him through the inner working of the Spirit of God in his heart, without which there is spread in vain before his eyes the revelation of God’s glory in the heavens, and the revelation of His grace in the perspicuous pages of the Word. And therefore, it centres in the great doctrine of Regeneration,—the term is broad enough in Calvin to cover the whole process of the subjective recovery of man to God— in which he teaches that the only power which can ever awake in a sinful heart the motions of a living faith, is the power of this same Spirit of God moving with a truly creative operation on the deadened soul. When these great ideas are developed in their full expression—with explication of all their presuppositions in the love of God and the redemption of Christ, and of all their relations and consequents—we have Calvin’s theology.

Now of course, a theology which commits everything to the operations of that Spirit of God who “worketh when and where and how He pleases,” hangs everything on the sovereign good-pleasure of God. Calvin’s theology is therefore, predestination to the core, and he does not fail, in faithfulness to the teachings of Scripture and with clear-eyed systematizing genius, to develop its predestinarianism with fullness and with emphasis; to see in all that comes to pass the will of God fulfilling itself, and to vindicate to God the glory that is His due as the Lord and disposer of all things. But this is not the peculiarity of his theology. Augustine had taught all this a thousand years before him. Luther and Zwingli and Martin Bucer, his own teacher in these high mysteries, were teaching it all while he was learning it. The whole body of the leaders of the Reformation movement were teaching it along with him. What is special to himself is the clearness and emphasis of his reference of all that God brings to pass, especially in the processes of the new creation, to God the Holy Spirit, and the development from this point of view of a rich and full doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Here then is probably Calvin’s greatest contribution to theological development. In his hands, for the first time in the history of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit comes to its rights. Into the heart of none more than into his did the vision of the glory of God shine, and no one has been more determined than he not to give the glory of God to another. Who has been more devoted than he to the Saviour, by whose blood he has been bought? But, above everything else, it is the sense of the sovereign working of salvation by the almighty power of the Holy Spirit which characterizes all Calvin’s thought of God. And above everything else he deserves, therefore, the great name of the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

Calvin's Doctrine of God¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Having expounded in the opening chapters of the "Institutes" the sources and means of the knowledge of God, Calvin naturally proceeds in the next series of chapters (I. x. xi. xii. xiii.) to set forth the nature of the God who, by the revelation of Himself in His Word and by the prevalent internal operation of His Spirit, frames the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of His people. He who expects to find in these chapters, however, an orderly discussion of the several topics which make up the locus de Deo in our formal dogmatics, will meet with disappointment. Calvin is not writing out of an abstract scientific impulse, but with the needs of souls, and, indeed, also with the special demands of the day in mind. And as his purpose is distinctively religious, so his method is literary rather than scholastic. In the freedom of his literary manner, he had permitted himself in the preceding chapters repeated excursions into regions which, in an exact arrangement of the material, might well have been reserved for exploration at this later point. To take up these topics again, now, for fuller and more orderly exposition, would involve much repetition without substantially advancing the practical purpose for which the "Institutes" were written. Calvin was not a man to confound formal correctness of arrangement with substantial completeness of treatment; nor was he at a loss for new topics of pressing importance for discussion. He skillfully interposes at this point, therefore, a short chapter (chap. x.) in which under the form of pointing out the complete harmony with the revelation of God in nature of the revelation of God in the Scriptures - the divine authority of which in the communication of the knowledge of God he had just demonstrated - he reminds his readers of all that he had formerly said of the nature and attributes of God on the basis of natural revelation, and takes occasion to say what it remained necessary to say of the same topics on the basis of supernatural revelation. Thus he briefly but effectively brings together under the reader's eye the whole body of his exposition of these topics and frees his hands to give himself, under the guidance of his practical bent and purpose, to the two topics falling under the rubric of the doctrine of God which were at the moment of the most pressing importance. His actual formal treatment of the doctrine of God thus divides itself into two parts, the former of which (chaps. xi. xii.), in strong Anti-Romish polemic is devoted to the uprooting of every refuge of idolatry, while the latter (chap. xiii.), in equally strong polemic against the Anti-trinitarianism of the day, develops with theological acumen and vital faith the doctrine of Trinity in Unity. 

It is quite true, then, as has often been remarked, that the "Institutes" contain no systematic discussion of the existence, the nature, and the attributes of God.² And the lack of formal, systematic discussion of these fundamental topics, may, no doubt, be accounted a flaw, if we are to conceive the "Institutes" as a formal treatise in systematic theology. But it is not at all true that the "Institutes" contain no sufficient indication of Calvin's conceptions on these subjects: nor is it possible to refer the absence of formal discussion of them either to indifference to them on Calvin's part or to any peculiarity of his dogmatic standpoint,³ or even of his theological method.⁴ The omission belongs rather to the peculiarity of this treatise as a literary product. Calvin does not pass over all systematic discussion of the existence, nature, and attributes of God because from his theological standpoint there was nothing to say upon these topics, nor because, in his theological method, they were insignificant for his system; but simply because he had been led already to say informally about them all that was necessary for the religious, practical purpose he had in view in writing this treatise. For here as elsewhere the key to the understanding of the "Institutes" lies in recognizing their fundamental purpose to have been religious, and their whole, not coloring merely, but substance, to be profoundly religious - in this only reflecting indeed the most determinative trait of Calvin's character. 

It is important to emphasize this, for there seems to be still an impression abroad that Calvin's nature was at bottom cold and hard and dry, and his life-manifestation but a piece of incarnated logic: while the "Institutes" themselves are frequently represented, or rather misrepresented - it is difficult to believe that those who so speak of them can have read them - as a body of purely formal reasoning by which intolerable conclusions are remorselessly deduced from a set of metaphysical assumptions.⁵ Perhaps M. Ferdinand Brunetière may be looked upon as a not unfair representative of the class of writers who are wont so to speak of the "Institutes."6 According to him, Calvin has "intellectualized" religion and reduced it to a form which can appeal only to the "reasonable," or rather to the "reasoning" man. "In that oratorical work which he called The Institutes," M. Brunetière says, "if there is any movement . . . it is not one which comes from the heart . . . and - I am speaking here only of the writer or the religious theorizer, not of the man - the insensibility of Calvin is equalled only by the rigor of his reasoning. . . ." The religion Calvin sets forth is "a religion which consists essentially, almost exclusively, in the adhesion of the intellect to truths all but demonstrated," and commends itself by nothing "except by the literalness of its agreement with a text - which is a matter of pure philology - and by the solidity of its logical edifice - which is nothing but a matter of pure reasoning." To Calvin, he adds, "religious truth attests itself in no other manner and by no other means than mathematical truth. As he would reason on the properties of a triangle, or of a sphere, so Calvin reasons on the attributes of God. All that will not adjust itself to the exigencies of his dialectic, he contests or he rejects . . . Cartesian before Descartes, rational evidence, logical incontradiction are for him the test or the proof of truth. He would not believe if faith did not stay itself on a formal syllogism. . . . From a 'matter of the heart,' if I may so say, Calvin transformed religion into an 'affair of the intellect.' " 

We must not fail to observe, in passing, that even M. Brunetière refrains from attributing to Calvin's person the hard insensibility which he represents as the characteristic of his religious writings - a tribute, we may suppose, to the religious impression which is made by Calvin's personality upon all who come into his presence, and which led even M. Ernest Renan, who otherwise shares very largely M. Brunetiere's estimate of him, to declare him "the most Christian man of his age."7 Nor can we help suspecting that the violence of the invectives launched against the remorseless logic of the "Institutes" and of Calvin's religious reasoning in general, is but the index of the difficulty felt by M. Brunetière and those who share his point of view, in sustaining themselves against the force of Calvin's argumentative presentation of his religious conceptions. It is surely no discredit to a religious reasoner that his presentation commends his system irresistibly to all "reasonable," or let us even say "reasoning" men. A religious system which cannot sustain itself in the presence of "reasonable" or "reasoning" men, is not likely to remain permanently in existence, or at least in power among reasonable or reasoning men; and one would think that the logical irresistibility of a system of religious truth would be distinctly a count in its favor. The bite of M. Brunetière's assault is found, therefore, purely in its negative side. He would condemn Calvin's system of religion as nothing but a system of logic; and the "Institutes," the most systematic presentation of it, as in essence nothing but a congeries of syllogisms, issuing in nothing but a set of logical propositions, with no religious quality or uplift in them. In this, however, he worst of all misses the mark; and we must add he was peculiarly unfortunate in fixing, in illustration of his meaning, on the two matters of the "attributes of God" as the point of departure for Calvin's dialectic and of the intellectualizing of "faith" as the height of his offending. 

In Calvin's treatment of faith there is nothing more striking than his determination to make it clear that it is a matter not of the understanding but of the heart; and he reproaches the Romish conception of faith precisely because it magnifies the intellectual side to the neglect of the fiducial. "We must not suppose," it is said in the Confession of Faith drawn up for the Genevan Church,⁸ either by himself or by his colleagues under his eye, "that Christian faith is a naked and mere knowledge of God or understanding of the Scriptures, which floats in the brain without touching the heart. . . . It is a firm and solid confidence of the heart." Or, as he repeats this elsewhere,⁹ "It is an error to suppose that faith is a naked and cold knowledge.¹⁰ . . . Faith is not a naked knowledge,¹¹ which floats in the brain, but draws with it a living affection of the heart."12 "True Christian faith," he expounds in the second edition of the "Institutes,"13 . . . "is not content with a simple historical knowledge, but takes its seat in the heart of man." "It does not suffice that the understanding should be illuminated by the Spirit of God if the heart be not strengthened by His power. In this matter the theologians of the Sorbonne very grossly err, - thinking that faith is a simple consent to the Word of God, which consists in understanding, and leaving out the confidence and assurance of the heart." "What the understanding has received must be planted in the heart. For if the Word of God floats in the head only, it has not yet been received by faith; it has its true reception only when it has taken root in the depths of the heart." Again, to cite a couple of passages in which the less pungent statement of the earlier editions has been given new point and force in the final edition of the "Institutes": "It must here be again observed," says he,¹⁴ "that we are invited to the knowledge of God - not a knowledge which, content with empty speculation, floats only in the brain, but one which shall be solid and fruitful, if rightly received by us, and rooted in the heart." "The assent we give to God," he says again,¹⁵ " as I have already indicated and shall show more largely later - is rather of the heart than of the brain, and rather of the affections than of the understanding."16 It is quite clear, then, that Calvin did not consciously address himself merely to the securing of an intellectual assent to his teaching, but sought to move men's hearts. His whole conception of religion turned, indeed, on this: religion, he explained, to be pleasing to God, must be a matter of the heart,¹⁷ and God requires in His worshippers precisely heart and affection.¹⁸ All the arguments in the world, he insists, if unaccompanied by the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart, will fail to produce the faith which piety requires." 

This scarcely sounds like a man to whom religion was simply a matter of logical proof. 

And so far is he from making the attributes of God, metaphysically determined, the starting-point of a body of teaching deduced from them by quasi-mathematical reasoning - as one would deduce the properties of a triangle from its nature as a triangle - that it has been made his reproach that he has so little to say of the divine nature and attributes, and in this little confines himself so strictly to the manifest indicia of God in His works and the direct teaching of Scripture, refusing utterly to follow "the high priori" road either in determining the divine attributes or from them determining the divine activities. Thus, his doctrine of God is, it is said, no doubt notably sober and restrained, but also, when compared with Zwingli's, for example - equally notably unimportant.²⁰ It is confessed, however, that it is at least thoroughly religious; and in this is found, indeed, its fundamental characteristic. Precisely where Calvin's doctrine differs from Zwingli's markedly is that he constantly contemplated God religiously, while Zwingli contemplated him philosophically - that to him God was above and before all things the object of religious reverence, while to Zwingli he was predominatingly the First Cause, from whom all things proceed.²¹ "It is not with the doctrine of God," says the historian whose representations we have been summarizing, "but with the worship of God that Calvin's first concern was engaged. Even in his doctrine of God - as we may perceive from his remarks upon it - religion stands ever in the foreground (I. ii. 1). Before everything else Calvin is a religious personality. The Reformation confronts Catholicism with a zeal to live for God. With striking justice Calvin remarked that 'all alike engaged in the worship of God, but few really reverenced Him, - that there was everywhere great ostentation in ceremonies but sincerity of heart was rare' (I. ii. 2). Reverence for God was the great thing for Calvin. If we lose sight of this a personality like Calvin cannot be understood; and it is only by recognizing the religious principle by which he was governed, that a just judgment can be formed of his work as a dogmatician. . . ."22 Again, Calvin "considers the knowledge of the nature and of the attributes of God more a matter of the heart than of the understanding; and such a knowledge, he says, must not only arouse us to 'the service of God, but must also awake in us the hope of a future life' (I. v. 10). In his extreme practicality - as the last remark shows us - Calvin rejected the philosophical treatment of the question. The Scriptures, for him the source of the knowledge of God, he takes as his guide in his remarks on the attributes. . . ."23 Still again, "Already more than once have we had occasion to note that when Calvin treats of God, he does this as a believer, for whom the existence of God stands as a fixed fact; and what he says of God, he draws from the Scriptures as his fundamental source, finding his pride in remaining a Biblical theologian, and whenever he can, taking the field against the philosophico more interpretari of the Scriptural texts (see e.g. I. xvi. 3). His doctrine of God has the practical end of serving the needs of his fellow-believers. It is also noteworthy that he closes every stage of the consideration with an exhortation to the adoration of God or to the surrender of the heart to Him. Of the doctrine of the Trinity he declares that he will hold himself ever truly to the Scriptures, because he desires to do nothing more than to make what the Scriptures teach accessible to our conceptions planioribus verbis, and this will apply equally to the whole of his doctrine of God."24 In a word, nothing can be clearer than that in his specific doctrine of God as well as in his general attitude to religious truth Calvin is as far as possible from being satisfied with a merely logical effect. When we listen to him on these high themes we are listening less to the play of his dialectic than to the throbbing of his heart. 

It was due to this his controlling religious purpose, and to his dominating religious interest, that Calvin was able to leave the great topics of the existence, the nature, and the attributes of God, without formal and detailed discussion in his "Institutes." It is only a matter, we must reiterate, of the omission of formal and detailed discussion; for it involves not merely a gross exaggeration but a grave misapprehension to represent him as leaving these topics wholly to one side, and much more to seek to account for this assumed fact from some equally assumed peculiarity of Calvin's theological point of view or method. Under the impulse of his governing religious interest, he was able to content himself with such an exposition of the nature and attributes of God, in matter and form, as served his ends of religious impression, and was under no compulsion to expand this into such details and order it into such a methodical mode of presentation as would satisfy the demands of scholastic treatment. But to omit what would be for his purpose adequate treatment of these fundamental elements of a complete doctrine of God would have been impossible, we do not say merely to a thinker of his systematic genius, but to a religious teacher of his earnestness of spirit. In point of fact, we do not find lacking to the "Institutes" such a fundamental treatment of these great topics as would be appropriate in such a treatise. We only find their formal and separate treatment lacking. All that it is needful for the Christian man to know on these great themes is here present. Only, it is present so to speak in solution, rather than in precipitate: distributed through the general discussion of the knowledge of God rather than gathered together into one place and apportioned to formal rubrics. It is communicated moreover in a literary and concrete rather than in an abstract and scholastic manner. 

It will repay us to gather out from their matrix in the flowing discourse the elements of Calvin's doctrine of God, that we may form some fair estimate of the precise nature and amount of actual instruction he gives regarding it. We shall attempt this by considering in turn Calvin's doctrine of the existence, knowableness, nature, and attributes of God. 

We do not read far into the "Institutes" before we find Calvin presenting proofs of the existence of God. It is quite true that this book, being written by a Christian for Christians, rather assumes the divine existence than undertakes to prove it, and concerns itself with the so-called proofs of the divine existence as means through which we rather obtain knowledge of what God is, than merely attain to knowledge that God is. But this only renders it the more significant of Calvin's attitude towards these so-called proofs that he repeatedly lapses in his discussion from their use for the former into their use for the latter and logically prior purpose. That he thus actually presents these proofs as evidences specifically of the existence of God can admit of no doubt.²⁵

If, for example, he adduces that sensus deitatis with which all men, he asserts, are natively endowed, primarily as the germ which may be developed into a profound knowledge of God, he yet does not fail explicitly to appeal to it also as the source of an ineradicable conviction, embedded in the very structure of human nature and therefore present in all men alike, of the existence of God. He tells us expressly that because of this sensus divinitatis, present in the human mind by natural instinct, all men without exception (ad unum omnes) know (intelligant, perceive, understand) "that God exists" (Deum esse), and are therefore without excuse if they do not worship Him and willingly consecrate their lives to Him (I. iii. 1). It is to buttress this assertion that he cites with approval Cicero's declaration²⁶ that "there is no nation so barbarous, no tribe so savage, that there is not stamped on it the conviction that there is a God."27 Thus he adduces the argument of the consensus gentium - the so-called "historical" argument - with exact appreciation of its true bearing, not directly as a proof of the existence of God, but directly as a proof that the conviction of the divine existence is a native endowment of human nature, and only through that indirectly as a proof of the existence of God. This position is developed in the succeeding paragraph into a distinct anti-atheistic argument. The existence of religion, he says, presupposes, and cannot be accounted for except by, the presence in man of this "constant persuasion of God" from which as a seed the propensity to religion proceeds: men may deny "that God exists,"28 "but will they, nill they, what they wish not to know they continually are aware of."29 It is a persuasion ingenerated naturally into all, that "some God exists"30 (I. iii. 3), and therefore this does not need to be inculcated in the schools, but every man is from the womb his own master in this learning, and cannot by any means forget it. It is therefore mere detestable madness to deny that "God exists" (I. iv. 2).³¹ In all these passages Calvin is dealing explicitly, not with the knowledge of what God is, but with the knowledge that God is. It is quite incontrovertible, therefore, that he grounds an argument - or rather the argument - for the existence of God in the very constitution of man. The existence of God is, in other words, with him an "intuition," and he makes this quite as plain as if he had devoted a separate section to its exposition. 

Similarly, although he writes at the head of the chapter in which he expounds the revelation which God makes of Himself in His works and deeds: "That the knowledge of God is manifested in the making of the world and its continuous government" (chap. v.), he is not able to carry through his exposition without occasional lapses into an appeal to the patefaction of God in His works as a proof of His existence, rather than as a revelation of His nature. The most notable of these lapses occurs in the course of his development of the manifestation of God made by the nature of man himself (I. v. 4), where once more he gives us an express anti-atheistic argument. "Yea," he cries, "the earth is supporting to-day many monstrous beings, who without hesitation employ the very seed of divinity which has been sown in human nature for eclipsing of the name of God. How detestable, I protest, is this insanity, that a man, discovering God a hundred times in his body and soul, should on this very pretext of excellence deny that God exists!³² They will not say that it is by chance that they are different from brute beasts; they only draw over God the veil of 'nature,' which they declare the maker of all things, and thus abolish (subducunt) Him. They perceive the most exquisite workmanship in all their members, from their countenances and eyes to their very finger nails. Here, too, they substitute 'nature' in the place of God. But above all how agile are the movements of the soul, how noble its faculties, how rare its gifts, discovering a divinity which does not easily permit itself to be concealed: unless the Epicureans, from this eminence, should like the Cyclops audaciously make war against God. Is it true that all the treasures of heavenly wisdom concur for the government of a worm five feet long, and the universe lacks this prerogative? To establish the existence of a kind of machinery in the soul, correspondent to each several part of the body, makes so little to the obscuring of the glory of God that it rather illustrates it. Let Epicurus tell what concourse of atoms in the preparation of food and drink distributes part to the excrements, part to the blood, and brings it about that the several members perform their offices with as much diligence as if so many souls by common consent were governing one body." "The manifold agility of the soul," he eloquently adds (I. v. 5, med.), "by which it surveys the heavens and the earth, joins the past to the future, retains in memory what it once has heard, figures to itself whatever it chooses; its ingenuity, too, by which it excogitates incredible things and which is the mother of so many wonderful arts; are certain insignia in man of divinity. . . . Now what reason exists that man should be of divine origin and not acknowledge the Creator? Shall we, forsooth, discriminate between right and wrong by a judgment which has been given to us, and yet there be no Judge in heaven? . . . Shall we be thought the inventors of so many useful arts, that we may defraud God of His praise - although experience sufficiently teaches us that all that we have is distributed to us severally from elsewhere? . . ." Calvin, of course, knows that he is digressing in a passage like this - that "his present business is not with that sty of swine," as he calls the Epicureans. But digression or not, the passage is distinctly an employment of the so-called physico-theological proof for the existence of God, and advises us that Calvin held that argument sound and would certainly employ it whenever it became his business to develop the arguments for the existence of God. 

The proofs for the existence of God on which we perceive Calvin thus to rely had been traditional in the Church from its first age. It was precisely upon these two lines of argument that the earliest Fathers rested. "He who knows himself," says Clement of Alexandria, quite in Calvin's manner, "will know God."33 "The knowledge of God," exclaims Tertullian, "is the dowry of the soul."34 " If you say, 'Show me thy God,"' Theophilus retorts to the heathen challenge, "I reply, 'Show me your man and I will show you my God."'35 The God who cannot be seen by human eyes, declares Theophilus,³⁶ "is beheld and perceived through His providence and works": we can no more surely infer a pilot for the ship we see making straight for the harbor, than we can infer a divine governor for the universe tending straight on its course. "Those who deny that this furniture of the whole world was perfected by the divine reason," argues the Octavius of Minucius Felix,³⁷ "and assert that it was heaped together by certain fragments casually adhering to each other, seem to me to have neither mind, nor sense, nor, in fact, even sight itself." "Whence comes it," asks Dionysius of Alexandria, criticizing the atomic theory quite in Calvin's manner,³⁸ that the starry hosts - "this multitude of fellow-travellers, all unmarshalled by any captain, all ungifted with any determination of will, and all unendowed with any knowledge of each other, have nevertheless held their course in perfect harmony?" Like these early Fathers, Calvin adduces only these two lines of evidence: the existence of God is already given in our knowledge of self, and it is solidly attested by His works and deeds. Whether, had we from him a professed instead of a merely incidental treatment of the topic, the metaphysical arguments would have remained lacking in his case as in theirs,³⁹ we can only conjecture; but it seems very possible that as foreign to his a posteriori method (cf. I. v. 9) they lay outside of his scheme of proofs. Meanwhile, he has in point of fact adverted, in the course of this discussion, only to the two arguments on which the Church teachers at large had depended from the beginning of Christianity. He states these with his accustomed clearness and force, and he illuminates them with his genius for exposition and illustration; but he gives them only incidental treatment after all. In richness as well as in fulness of presentation he is surpassed here by Zwingli,⁴⁰ and it is to Melanchthon that we shall have to go to find among the Reformers a formal enumeration of the proofs for the divine existence.⁴¹ 

That this God, the conviction of whose existence is part of the very constitution of the human mind and is justified by abundant manifestations of Himself in His works and deeds, is knowable by man, lies on the face of Calvin's entire discussion. The whole argument of the opening chapters of the "Institutes" is directed precisely to the establishment of this knowledge of God on an irrefragable basis: and the emphasis with which the reality and trustworthiness of our knowledge of God is asserted is equalled only by the skill with which the development of our native instinct to know God into an actual knowledge of Him is traced (in chap. i.), and the richness with which His revelation of Himself in His works and deeds is illustrated by well-chosen and strikingly elaborated instances (in chap. v.). Of course, Calvin does not teach that sinful man can of himself attain to the knowledge of God. The noetic effects of sin he takes very seriously, and he teaches without ambiguity that all men have grossly degenerated from the true knowledge of God (chap. iv.). But this is not a doctrine of the unknowableness of God, but rather of the incapacitating effects of sin. Accordingly he teaches that the inadequateness of the knowledge of God to which alone sinners can attain is itself a sin. Men's natures prepare them to serve God, God's revelations of Himself display Him before men's eyes: if men do not know God they are without excuse and cannot plead their inculpating sinfulness as exculpation. God remains, then, knowable to normal man: it is natural to man to know Him. And if in point of fact He cannot be known save by a supernatural action of the Holy Spirit on the heart, this is because man is not in his normal state and it requires this supernatural action of the Spirit on his heart to restore him to his proper natural powers as man. The "testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart" does not communicate to man any new powers, powers alien to him as man: it is restorative in its nature and in principle merely recovers his powers from their deadness induced by sin. The knowledge of God to which man attains through the testimony of the Spirit is therefore the knowledge which belongs to him as normal man: although now secured by him only in a supernatural manner, it is in kind, and, so far as it is the product of his innate sensus deitatis and the revelation of God in His works and deeds, it is in mode also, natural knowledge of God. Calvin's doctrine of the noetic effects of sin and their removal by the "testimony of the Spirit," that is to say, by what we call "regeneration," must not then be taken as a doctrine of the unknowableness of God. On the contrary it is a doctrine of the knowableness of God, and supplies only an account of why men in their present condition fail to know Him, and an exposition of how and in what conditions the knowableness of God may manifest itself in man as now constituted in an actually known God. When the Spirit of God enters the heart with recreative power, he says, then even sinful man, his blurred eyes opened, may see God, not merely that there is a God, but what kind of being this God is (I. i. 1; ii. 1; v. 1). 

Of course, Calvin does not mean that God can be known to perfection, whether by renewed man, or by sinless man with all his native powers uninjured by sin. In the depths of His being God is to him past finding out; the human intelligence has no plumbet to sound those profound deeps. "His essence" (essentia), he says, "is incomprehensible (incomprehensibilis); so that His divinity (numen) wholly escapes all human senses" (I. v. 1, cf. I. xi. 3); and though His works and the signs by which He manifests Himself may "admonish men of His incomprehensible essence" (I. xi. 3), yet, being men, we are not capax Dei; as Augustine says somewhere, we stand disheartened before His greatness and are unable to take Him in (I. v. 9).⁴² We can know then only God's glory (I. v. 1), that is to say, His manifested perfections (I. v. 9), by which what He is to us is revealed to us (I. x. 2). What He is in Himself, we cannot know, and all attempts to penetrate into His essence are but cold and frigid speculations which can lead to no useful knowledge. "They are merely toying with frigid speculations," he says (I. ii. 2), "whose mind is set on the question of what God is (quid sit Deus), when what it really concerns us to know is rather what kind of a person He is (qualis sit) and what is appropriate to His nature (natura)" (I. ii. 2).⁴³ We are to seek God, therefore, "not with audacious inquisitiveness by attempting to search into His essence (essentia), which is rather to be adored than curiously investigated; but by contemplating Him in His works, in which He brings Himself near to us and makes Himself familiar and in some measure communicates Himself to us" (I. v. 9). For if we seek to know what He is in Himself (quis sit apud se) rather than what kind of a person He is to us (qualis erga nos) - which is revealed to us in His attributes (virtutes) - we simply lose ourselves in empty and meteoric speculation (I. x. 2). 

The distinction which Calvin is here drawing between the knowledge of the quid and the knowledge of the qualis of God; the knowledge of what He is in Himself and the knowledge of what He is to us, is the ordinary scholastic one and fairly repeats what Thomas Aquinas contends for ("Summa Theol.," i. qu. 12, art. 12), when he tells us that there is no knowledge of God per essentiam, no knowledge of His nature, of His quidditas per speciem propriam; but we know only habitudinem ipsius ad creaturas. There is no implication of nominalism here; nothing, for example, similar to Occam's declaration that we can know neither the divine essence, nor the divine quiddity, nor anything intrinsic to God, nor anything that God is realiter. When Calvin says that the Divine attributes describe not what God is apud se, but what kind of a person He is erga nos,⁴⁴ he is not intending to deny that His attributes are true determinations of the divine nature and truly reveal to us the kind of a person He is; he is only refusing to speculate on what God is apart from His attributes by which He reveals Himself to us, and insisting that it is only in these attributes that we know Him at all. He is refusing all a priori methods of determining the nature of God and requiring of us to form our knowledge of Him a posteriori from the revelation He gives us of Himself in His activities. This He insists is the only knowledge we can have of God, and this the only way we can attain to any knowledge of Him at all. Of what value is it to us, he asks (I. v. 9), to imagine a God of whose working we have had no experience? Such a knowledge only floats in the brain as an empty speculation. It is by His attributes (virtutes) that God is manifested; it is only through them that we can acquire a solid and fruitful knowledge of Him. The only right way and suitable method of seeking Him, accordingly, is through His works, in which He draws near to us and familiarizes Himself to us and in some degree communicates Himself to us. Here is not an assertion that we learn nothing of God through His attributes, which represent only determinations of our own. On the contrary, here is an assertion that we obtain through the attributes a solid and fruitful knowledge of God. Only it is not pretended that the attributes of God as revealed in His activities tell us all that God is, or anything that He is in Himself: they only tell us, in the nature of the case, what He is to us. Fortunately, says Calvin, this is what we need to know concerning God, and we may well eschew all speculation concerning His intrinsic nature and content ourselves with knowing what He is in His relation to His creatures. His object is, not to deny that God is what He seems - that His attributes revealed in His dealings with His creatures represent true determination of His nature. His object is to affirm that these determinations of His nature, revealed in His dealings with His creatures, constitute the sum of our real knowledge of God; and that apart from them speculation will lead to no solid results. He is calling us back, not from a fancied knowledge of God through His activities to the recognition that we know nothing of Him, that what we call His attributes are only effects in us: but from an a priori construction of an imaginary deity to an a posteriori knowledge of the Deity which really is and really acts. This much we know, he says, that God is what His works and acts reveal Him to be; though it must be admitted that His works and acts reveal not His metaphysical Being but His personal relations - not what He is apud se, but what He is quoad nos. 

Of the nature of God in the abstract sense, thus - the quiddity of God, in scholastic phrase - Calvin has little to say.⁴⁵ But his refusal to go behind the attributes which are revealed to us in God's works and deeds, affords no justification to us for going behind them for him and attributing to him against his protest developed conceptions of the nature of the divine essence, which he vigorously repudiates. Calvin has suffered more than most men from such gratuitous attributions to him of doctrines which he emphatically disclaims. Thus, not only has it been persistently asserted that he reduced God, after the manner of the Scotists, to the bare notion of arbitrary Will, without ethical content or determination,⁴⁶ but the contradictory conceptions of a virtual Deism⁴⁷ and a developed Pantheism⁴⁸have with equal confidence been attributed to him. To instance but a single example, Principal A. M. Fairbairn permits himself to say that "Calvin was as pure, though not as conscious and consistent a Pantheist as Spinoza."49 Astonishing as such a declaration is in itself, it becomes more astonishing still when we observe the ground on which it is based. This consists essentially in the discovery that the fundamental conception of Calvinism is that "God's is the only efficient will in the universe, and so He is the one ultimate causal reality"50 - upon which the certainly very true remark is made that "the universalized Divine will is an even more decisive and comprehensive Pantheism than the universalized Divine substance."51 The logical process by which the Calvinistic conception of the sovereign will of God as the prima causa rerum - where the very term prima implies the existence and reality of "second causes" - is transmuted into the Pantheising notion that the will of God is the sole efficient cause operative in the universe; or by which the Calvinistic conception of God as the sovereign ruler of the universe whose "will is the necessity of things" is transmuted into the reduction of God, Hegelian-wise, into pure and naked will⁵² - although it has apparently appealed to many, is certainly very obscure. In point of fact, when the Calvinist spoke of God as the prima causa rerum (the phrase is cited from William Ames⁵³) he meant by it only that all that takes place takes place in accordance with the divine will, not that the divine will is the only efficient cause in the universe; and when Calvin quotes approvingly from Augustine - for the words are Augustine's⁵⁴ - that "the will of God is the necessity of things," so little is either he or Augustine making use of the words in a Pantheistic sense that he hastens to explain that what he means is only that whatever God has willed will certainly come to pass, although it comes to pass in "such a manner that the cause and matter of it are found in "the second causes (ut causa et materia in ipsis reperiatur).⁵⁵ 

Calvin beyond all question did cherish a very robust faith in the immanence of God. "Our very existence," he says, "is subsistence in God alone" (I. i. 1). He even allows, as Dr. Fairbairn does not fail to inform us, that it may be said with a pious meaning - so only it be the expression of a pious mind - that "nature is God" (I. v. 5, end).⁵⁶ But Dr. Fairbairn neglects to mention that Calvin adds at once, that the expression is "crude and unsuitable" (dura et impropria), since "nature is rather the order prescribed by God"; and, moreover, noxious, because tending to "involve God confusedly with the inferior course of His works." He neglects also to mention that the statement occurs at the end of a long discussion, in which, after rebuking those who throw an obscuring veil over God, retire Him behind nature, and so substitute nature for Him - Calvin inveighs against the "babble about some sort of hidden inspiration which actuates the whole world," as not only "weak" but "altogether profane," and brands the speculation of a universal mind animating and actuating the world as simply jejune (I. v. 4 and 5). Even his beloved Seneca is reproved for "imagining a divinity transfused through all parts of the world" so that God is all that we see and all that we do not see as well (I. xiii. 1), while the Pantheistic scheme of Servetus is made the object of an extended refutation (II. xiv. 5-8). To ascribe an essentially Pantheistic conception of God to Calvin in the face of such frequent and energetic repudiations of it on his own part⁵⁷ is obviously to miss his meaning altogether. If he "may be said to have anticipated Spinoza in his notion of God as causa immanens," and "Spinoza may be said . . . to have perfected and reduced to philosophical consistency the Calvinistic conception of Deity"58 - this can mean nothing more than that Calvin was not a Deist. And in point of fact he repudiated Deism with a vehemence equal to that which he displays against Pantheism. To rob God of the active exercise of His judgment and providence, shutting Him up as an idler (otiosum) in heaven, he characterizes as nothing less than "detestable frenzy," since, says he, "nothing could less comport with God than to commit to fortune the abandoned government of the world, shut His eyes to the iniquities of men and let them wanton with impunity" (I. iv. 2).⁵⁹ 

Calvin's conception of God is that of a pure and clear Theism, in which stress is laid at once on His transcendence and His immanence, and emphasis is thrown on His righteous government of the world. "Let us bear in mind, then," he says as he passes from his repudiation of Pantheism, "that there is one God, who governs all natures" (I. v. 6, ad init.), "and wishes us to look to Him, - to put our trust in Him, to worship and call upon Him" (I. v. 6); to whom we can look up as to a Father from whom we expect and receive tokens of love (I. v. 3). So little is he inclined to reduce this divine Father to bare will, that he takes repeated occasion expressly to denounce this Scotist conception. The will of God, he says, is to us indeed the unique rule of righteousness and the supremely just cause of all things; but we are not like the sophists to prate about some sort of "absolute will" of God, "profanely separating His righteousness from His power," but rather to adore the governing providence which presides over all things and from which nothing can proceed which is not right, though the reasons for it may be hidden from us (I. xvii. 2, end). "Nevertheless," he remarks in another place, after having exhorted his readers to find in the will of God a sufficient account of things - "nevertheless, we do not betake ourselves to the fiction of absolute power, which, as it is profane, so ought to be deservedly detestable to us; we do not imagine that the God who is a law to Himself is exlegem, . . . the will of God is not only pure from all fault, but is the supreme rule of perfection, even the law of all laws" (III. xxiii. 2, end).⁶⁰ In a word, the will of God is to Calvin the supreme rule for us, because it is the perfect expression of the divine perfections.⁶¹

Calvin thus refuses to be classified as either Deist, Pantheist, or Scotist; and those who would fain make him one or the other of these have nothing to go upon except that on the one hand he does proclaim the transcendence of God and speaks with contempt of men who imagine that divinity is transfused into every part of the world, and that there is a portion of God not only in us but even in wood and stone (I. xiii. 1, 22); and on the other he does proclaim the immanence of God and invites us to look upon His works or to descend within ourselves to find Him who "everywhere diffuses, sustains, animates and quickens all things in heaven and in earth," who, "circumscribed by no boundaries, by transfusing His own vigor into all things, breathes into them being, life and motion" (I, xiii. 14); while still again he does proclaim the will of God to be inscrutable by such creatures as we are and to constitute to us the law of righteousness, to be accepted as such without murmurings or questionings. In point of fact, all these charges are but several modes of expressing the dislike their authors feel for Calvin's doctrine of the sovereignty of the divine will, which, following Augustine, he declares to be "the necessity of things": they would fain brand this hated conception with some name of opprobrium, and, therefore, seek to represent Calvin now as hiding God deistically behind His own law, and now as reducing Him to a mere stream of causality, or at least to mere naked will.⁶² By thus declining alternately to contradictories they show sufficiently clearly that in reality Calvin's doctrine of God coincides with none of these characterizations. 

The peculiarity of Calvin's conception of God, we perceive, is not indefiniteness, but reverential sobriety. Clearing his skirts of all Pantheistic, Deistic, Scotist notions - and turning aside even to repudiate Manichaeism and Anthropomorphism (I. xiii. 1) - he teaches a pure Theism which he looks upon as native to men (I. x. 3). The nature of this one God, he conceives, can be known to us only as He manifests it in His works (I. v. 9); that is to say, only in His perfections. What we call the attributes of God thus become to Calvin the sum of our knowledge of Him. In these manifestations of His character we see not indeed what He is in Himself, but what He is to us (I. x. 2); but what we see Him to be thus to us, He truly is, and this is all we can know about Him. We might expect to find in the "Institutes," therefore, a comprehensive formal discussion of the attributes, by means of which what God is to us should be fully set before us. This, however, as we have already seen, we do not get.⁶³ And much less do we get any metaphysical discussion of the nature of the attributes of God, their relation to one another, or to the divine essence of which they are determinations. We must not therefore suppose, however, that we get little or nothing of them, or little or nothing to the point. On the contrary, besides incidental allusions to them throughout the discussion, from which we may glean much of Calvin's conceptions of them, they are made the main subject of two whole chapters, the one of which discusses in considerable detail the revelation of the divine perfections in His works and deeds, the other the revelation made of them in His Word. We have already remarked upon the skill with which Calvin, at the opening of his discussion of the doctrine of God (chap. x.), manages, under color of pointing out the harmony of the description of God given in the Scriptures with the conception of Him we may draw from His works, to bring all he had to say of the divine attributes at once before the reader's eye. The Scriptures, says he, are in essence here merely a plainer (I. x. 1) republication of the general revelation given of God in His works and deeds: they "contain nothing" in their descriptions of God, "but what may be known from the contemplation of the creatures" (I. x. 2, med.). And he illustrates this remark by quoting from Moses (Ex. xxxiv. 6), the Psalms (cxlv.) and the prophets (Jer. ix. 24), passages in which God is richly described, and remarking on the harmony of the perfections enumerated with those which he had in the earlier chapter (v.) pointed out as illustrated in the, divine works and deeds. This comparison involves a tolerably full enumeration and some discussion of the several attributes, here on the basis of Scripture, as formerly (chap. v.) on the basis of nature. He does not, therefore, neglect the attributes so much as deal with them in a somewhat indirect manner. And, we may add, in a highly practical way: for here too his zeal is to avoid "airy and vain speculations" of what God is in Himself and to focus attention upon what He is to us, that our knowledge of Him may be of the nature of a lively perception and religious reaction (I. x. 2, ad init. et ad fin.). 

In a number of passages Calvin brings together a plurality of the attributes - his name for them is "virtues"64 - and even hints at a certain classification of them. One of the most beautiful of these passages formed the opening words of the first draft of the "Institutes," but fell out in the subsequent revisions - to the regret of some, who consider it, on the whole, the most comprehensive description of God Calvin has given us.⁶⁵ It runs as follows: "The sum of holy doctrine consists of just these two points, - the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. These, now, are the things which we must keep in mind concerning God. First, we should hold fixed in firm faith that He is infinite wisdom, righteousness, goodness, mercy, truth, power (virtus), and life, so that there exists no other wisdom, righteousness, goodness, mercy, truth, power, and life (Baruch iii.; James i.), and wheresoever any of these things is seen, it is from Him (Prov. xvi.). Secondly, that all that is in heaven or on earth has been created for His glory (Ps. cxlviii.; Dan. iii.; and it is justly due to Him that everything, according to its own nature, should serve Him, acknowledge His authority, seek His glory, and obediently accept Him as Lord and King (Rom. i.). Thirdly, that He is Himself a just judge, and will therefore be severely avenged on those who depart from His commandments, and are not in all things subject to His will; who in thought, word, and deed have not sought His glory (Ps. vii.; Rom. ii.). In the fourth place that He is merciful and long-suffering, and will receive into His kingdom, the miserable and despised who take refuge in His clemency and trust in His faithfulness; and is ready to spare and forgive those who ask His favor, to succor and help those who seek His aid, and desirous of saving those who put their trust in Him (Ps. ciii.; Is. Iv.; Ps. xxv., ixxxv.)." In the first clause of this striking paragraph we have a formal enumeration of God's ethical attributes, which is apparently meant to be generically complete - although in the course of the paragraph other specific forms of attributes here enumerated occur; and all of them are declared to exist in God in an infinite mode. The list contains seven items: wisdom; righteousness; goodness (clemency); mercy (long-sufferingness); truth; power; life.⁶⁶ If we compare this list with the enumeration in the famous definition of God in the Westminster "Shorter Catechism" (Q. 4),⁶⁷ we shall see that it is practically the same: the only difference being that Calvin adds to the general term "goodness" the more specific "mercy," affixes "life" at the end, and omits "holiness," doubtless considering it to be covered by the general term "righteousness." 

If just this enumeration does not recur in the "Institutes" as finally revised, something very like it evidently underlies more passages than one. Even in the first section of the first chapter, which has taken its place, we have an enumeration of the "good things" (bona) in God which stand opposed to our "evil things" (mala), that brings together wisdom, power, goodness, and righteousness: for in God alone, we are told, can be found "the true light of wisdom, solid power (virtus), a perfect affluence of all good things, and the purity of righteousness" (I. i. 1). In the opening section of the next chapter we have two enumerations of the divine perfections, obviously rhetorical, and yet betraying an underlying basis of systematic arrangement: the later and fuller of these brings together power, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, justice, mercy - closing with a reference to God's powerful "protection." God, we are told, "sustains this world by His immense power (immensa potentia), governs it by His wisdom, preserves it by His goodness, rules over the human race especially by His righteousness and justice (iudicium), bears with it in His mercy, defends it by His protection (praesidium)." The most complete enumerations of all, however, are given, when, leaving the intimations of nature, Calvin analyses some Scriptural passages with a view to drawing out their descriptions of the divine perfections. His analysis of Exod. xxxiv. 6 is particularly full (I. x. 2). He finds the divine eternity and self-existence embodied in the name Jehovah; the divine strength and power (virtus et potentia) expressed in the name Elohim; and in the description itself an enumeration of those virtues which describe God not indeed as He is apud se, but as He is erga nos - to wit, His clemency, goodness, mercy, righteousness, justice, truth. The strongest claim which this passage has on our interest, however, is the suggestion it bears of a classification of the attributes. The predication to God of eternity and self-existence (auvtousi,a) evidently is for Calvin something specifically different from the ascription to Him of those virtues by which are described not what He is apud se, but what He shows Himself to be erga nos. They in a word belong rather to the quiddity of God than to His qualitas. In a subsequent passage (xiii. 1) we have a plainer hint to the same effect. There we are given "two epithets" which we are told are applied by Scripture to the very "essence" of God, in its rare speech concerning His essence - immensity and spirituality.⁶⁸ It seems quite clear, then, that Calvin was accustomed to distinguish in his thought between such epithets, describing what God is apud se, and those virtues by which He is manifested to us in His relations erga nos. That is to say, he distinguishes between what are sometimes called His physical or metaphysical and His ethical attributes: that is to say, between the fundamental modes of the Divine Being and the constitutive qualities of the Divine Person.⁶⁹ 

If we profit by this hint and then collect the attributes of the two classes as Calvin occasionally mentions them, we shall in effect reconstruct Calvin's definition of God.⁷⁰ This would run somewhat as follows: There is but one only true God,⁷¹ a self-existent,⁷² simple,⁷³ invisible,⁷⁴ incomprehensible⁷⁵ Spirit,⁷⁶ infinite,⁷⁷ immense,⁷⁸ eternal,⁷⁹ perfect,⁸⁰ in His Being, power,⁸¹ knowledge,⁸² wisdom,⁸³ righteousness,⁸⁴ justice,⁸⁵ holiness,⁸⁶ goodness,⁸⁷ and truth.⁸⁸ In addition to these more general designations, Calvin employs a considerable number of more specific terms, by which he more precisely expresses his thought and more fully explicates the contents of the several attributes. Thus, for example, he is fond of the term "severity"89 when he is endeavoring to give expression to God's attitude as a just judge to the wicked; and he is fond of setting in contrast with it the corresponding term "clemency"90 to express His attitude towards the repentant sinner. It is especially the idea of "goodness" which he thus draws out into its several particular manifestations. Beside the term "clemency" he sets the still greater word "mercy," or "pity,"91 and by the side of this again he sets the even greater word "grace,"92 while the more general idea of "goodness" he develops by the aid of such synonyms as "beneficence"93 and "benignity,"94 and almost exhausts the capacity of the language to give expression to his sense of the richness of the Divine goodness.⁹⁵ God is "good and merciful" (ii. 2), "benign and beneficent" (v. 7), "the fount and source of all good" (ii. 2), their fecund "author" (ii. 2), whose "will is prone to beneficence" (x. 1), and in whom dwells a "perfect affluence," nothing less than an "infinity," of good things. And therefore he looks upwards to this God not only as our Lord (ii. 1) the Creator (ii. 1), Sustainer (ii. 1), and Governor (ii. 1) of the world - and more particularly its moral governor (ii. 2), its "just judge" (ii. 2) - but more especially as our " defender and protector,"96 our Father⁹⁷ who is also our Lord, in whose "fatherly indulgence"98 we may trust. 

There is in the "Institutes" little specific exposition of the manner in which we arrive at the knowledge of these attributes. The works of God, we are told, illustrate particularly His wisdom (v. 2) and His power (v. 6). But His power, we are further told, leads us on to think of His eternity and His self-existence, "because it is necessary that He from whom everything derives its origin, should Himself be eternal and have the ground of His being in Himself":99 while we must posit His goodness to account for His will to create and preserve the world.¹⁰⁰ By the works of providence God manifests primarily His benignity and beneficence; and in His dealing with the pious, His clemency, with the wicked His severity¹⁰¹ - which are but the two sides of His righteousness: although, of course, "His power and wisdom are equally conspicuous."102 It is precisely the same body of attributes which are ascribed to God in the Scriptures,¹⁰³ and that not merely in such a passage as Ex. xxxiv. 6, to which we have already alluded, but everywhere throughout their course (x. 1, ad fin.). Psalm cxlv., for example, so exactly enumerates the whole list of God's perfections that scarcely one is lacking. Jeremiah ix. 24, while not so full, is to the same effect. Certainly the three perfections there mentioned are the most necessary of all for us to know - the divine "mercy in which alone consists all our salvation; His justice, which is exercised on the wicked every day, and awaits them more grievously still in eternal destruction; His righteousness, by which the faithful are preserved and most lovingly supported." Nor, adds Calvin, is there any real omission here of the other perfections - "either of His truth, or power, or holiness, or goodness." "For how could we be assured, as is here required, of His righteousness, mercy and justice, unless we were supported by His inflexible veracity? And how could we believe that He governs the world in justice and righteousness unless we acknowledged His power? And whence proceeds His mercy but from His goodness? And if all His ways are justice, mercy, righteousness, certainly holiness also is conspicuous in them." The divine power, righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness, mercy, and truth are here brought together and concatenated one with the others, with some indication of their mutual relations, and with a clear intimation that God is not properly conceived unless He is conceived in all His perfections. Any description of Him which omits more or fewer of these perfections, it is intimated, is justly chargeable with defect. Similarly when dealing with those more fundamental "epithets" by which His essence is described (xiii. 1), he makes it plain that not to embrace them all in our thought of God, and that in their integrity, is to invade His majesty: the fault of the Manichaeans was that they broke up the unity of God and restricted His immensity.¹⁰⁴ 

There is no lack in Calvin's treatment of the attributes, then, of a just sense of their variety or of the necessity of holding them all together in a single composite conception that we may do justice in our thought to God. He obviously has in mind the whole series of the divine perfections in clear and just discrimination, and he accurately conceives them as falling apart into two classes, the one qualities of the divine essence, the other characteristics of the divine person - in a word, essential and personal attributes: and he fully realizes the relation of these two classes to each other, and as well the necessity of embracing each of the attributes in its integrity in our conception of God, if we are to do any justice whatever to that conception. 

What seems to be lacking in Calvin's treatment of the attributes is detailed discussion of the notion imbedded in each several attribute and elaboration of this notion as a necessary element in our conception of God. Calvin employs the terms unity, simplicity, self-existence, incomprehensibility, spirituality, infinity, immensity, eternity, immutability, perfection, power, wisdom, righteousness, justice, holiness, goodness, benignity, beneficence, clemency, mercy, grace,¹⁰⁵ as current terms bearing well-understood meanings, and does not stop to develop their significance except by incidental remarks.¹⁰⁶ The confidence which he places in their conveyance of their meaning seems to be justified by the event; although, no doubt, much of the effect of their mere enumeration is due to the remarkable lucidity of Calvin's thought and style: he uses his terms with such consistency and exactness, that they become self-defining in their context. We are far, then, from saying that his method of dealing with the attributes, by mere allusion as we might almost call it, is inadequate for the practical religious purpose for which he was writing: and certainly it is far more consonant with the literary rather than scholastic form he gives his treatise. When we suggest, then, that from the scholastic point of view it seems that it is precisely at this point that Calvin's treatment of the attributes falls somewhat short of what we might desire, we must not permit to slip out of our memory that Calvin expressly repudiates the scholastic point of view and is of set purpose simple and practical.¹⁰⁷ He does not seek to obtain for himself or to recommend to others such a knowledge of God as merely "raises idle speculation in the brain"; but such as "shall be firm and fruitful" and have its seat in the heart. He purposely rejects, therefore, the philosophical mode of dealing with the attributes and devotes himself to awakening in the hearts of his readers a practical knowledge of God, a knowledge which functions first in the fear (timor) of God and then in trust (fiducia) in Him. 

And here we must pause to take note of this two-fold characterization of the religious emotion, corresponding, as it does in Calvin's conception, to the double aspect in which God is contemplated by those who know Him. God is our Lord, in whose presence awe and reverence become us; God is our Father, to whom we owe trust and love. Fear and love - both must be present where true piety is: for, says Calvin, what "I call piety (pietas) is that reverence combined with love of God, which a knowledge of His benefits produces" (I. ii. 1). In the form he has given this statement the element of reverence (reverentia) appears to be made the formative element: piety is reverence, although it is not reverence without love. But if it is not reverence in and of itself but only the reverence which is informed by love, love after all may be held to become the determining element of true piety. And Calvin does not hesitate to declare with the greatest emphasis that the apprehension of God as deserving of our worship and adoration - in a word as our Lord - simpliciter, does not suffice to produce true piety: that is not born, he says, until "we are persuaded that God is the fountain of all that is good and cease to seek for good elsewhere than in Him" (ibid.); that is to say, until we apprehend Him as our Father as well as our Lord. "For," adds he, "until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by His paternal care, that He is the author to them of all good things and nothing is to be sought out of Him, they will never subject themselves to Him in willing obedience (observantia, reverent obedience); or rather I should say, unless they establish for themselves a solid happiness in Him they will never devote themselves to Him without reserve truly and heartily (vere et ex animo totos)." And then he proceeds (I. ii. 2) to expound at length how the knowledge of God should first inspire us with fear and reverence and then lead us to look to Him for good. The first thought of Him awakes us to our dependence on Him as our Lord: any clear view of Him begets in us a sense of Him as the fountain and origin of all that is good - such as in anyone not depraved by sin must inevitably arouse a desire to adhere to Him and put his trust (fiducia) in Him - because he must recognize in Him a guardian and protector worthy of complete confidence (fides). "Because he perceives Him to be the author of all good, in trial or in need," he proceeds, still expounding the state of mind of the truly pious man, "he at once commits himself to His protection, expectant of His help; because he is convinced that He is good and merciful, he rests on Him in assured trust (fiducia), never doubting that a remedy is prepared in His clemency for all his ills; because he recognizes Him as Lord and Father, he is sure that he ought to regard His government in all things, revere His majesty, seek His glory, and obey His behests; because he perceives Him to be a just judge, armed with severity for punishing iniquities, he keeps His tribunal always in view, and in fear restrains and checks himself from provoking His wrath. And yet, he is not so terrified by the sense of His justice, that he wishes to escape from it, even if flight were possible: rather he embraces Him not less as the avenger of the wicked than as the benefactor of the pious, since he perceives it to belong to His glory not less that there should be meted out by Him punishment to the impious and iniquitous, than the reward of eternal life to the righteous. Moreover, he restrains himself from sinning not merely from fear of punishment, but because he loves and reverences God as a father (loco patris) and honors and worships Him as Lord (loco domini), and even though there were no hell he would quake to offend Him." 

We have quoted this eloquent passage at length because it throws into prominence, as few others do, Calvin's deep sense not merely of reverence but of love towards God. To him true religion always involves the recognition of God not only as Lord but also as Father. And this double conception of God is present whether this religion be conceived as natural or as revealed. "The knowledge of God," says he (I. x. 2, ad fin.), "which is proposed to us in the Scriptures is directed to no other end than that which is manifested to us in the creation: to wit, it invites us first to the fear of God, then to trust in Him; so that we may learn both to serve Him in perfect innocence of life and sincere obedience, and as well to rest wholly in His goodness." That is, in a word, the sense of the divine Fatherhood is as fundamental to Calvin's conception of God as the sense of His sovereignty. Of course, he throws the strongest conceivable emphasis on God's Lordship: the sovereignty of God is the hinge of His thought of God. But this sovereignty is ever conceived by him as the sovereignty of God our Father. The distinguishing feature of Calvin's doctrine of God is, in a word, precisely the prevailing stress he casts on this aspect of the conception of God. It is a Lutheran theologian who takes the trouble to make this plain to us. "The chief elements which are dealt with by Calvin in the matter of the religious relation," he says, "are summed up in the proposition: God is our Lord, who has made us, and our Father from whom all good comes; we owe Him, therefore, honor and glory, love and trust. We must, so we are told in the exposition of the Decalogue in the first edition of the Institutes, just as we are told in Luther's Catechism - we must 'fear and love' God. . . . [But] we find in the Institutes, and, indeed, particularly in the final edition, expressions in which the second of these elements is given the preference. . . . We may find, indeed, in Luther and the Lutherans, the element of fear in piety still more emphasized than in Calvin. . . ."108 In a word, with all his emphasis on the sovereignty of God, Calvin throws an even stronger emphasis on His love: and his doctrine of God is preeminent among the doctrines of God given expression in the Reformation age in the commanding place it gives to the Divine Fatherhood. "Lord and Father" - fatherly Sovereign, or sovereign Father - that is how Calvin conceived God. 

It was precisely because Calvin conceived of God not only as Lord, but also as Father, and gave Him not merely his obedience but his love, that he burned with such jealousy for His honor. Everything that tended to rob God of the honor due Him was accordingly peculiarly abhorrent to him. We cannot feel surprised, therefore, that he devotes so large a portion of his discussion of the doctrine of God to repelling that invasion of the divine rights which was wrought by giving the worship due to Him alone to others, and particularly to idols, the work of man's own hand. His soul filled with the vision of the majesty of a God who will not give His glory to another, and his heart aflame with a sense of the Fatherly love he was receiving from this great God, the Lord of heaven and earth, he turned with passionate hatred from the idolatrous rites into which the worship of the old Church had so largely degenerated, and felt nothing so pressingly his duty as to trace out the fallacies in the subtle pleas by which men sought to justify them to themselves, and so far as lay within him to rescue those who looked to him for guidance from such dreadful profanation of the divine majesty. As a practical man, with his mind on the practical religious needs of the time, this "brutal stupidity" of men, desiring visible figures of God - who is an invisible Spirit - corrupting the divine glory by fabricating for themselves gods out of wood, or stone, or gold, or silver, or any other dead stuff, seemed to him to call for rebuke as little else could. The principle on which he proceeds in his rebuke of idolatry is expressed by himself in the words, that to attribute to anything else than to the one true God, anything that is proper to divinity is "to despoil God of His honor and to violate His worship."109 So deeply rooted is the jealousy for the divine honor given expression in this principle not only in Calvin's thought, but in that of the whole tendency of thought which he represents, that it may well be looked upon as a determinative trait of the Reformed attitude - which has therefore been described as characterized by a determined protest against all that is pagan in life and worship."110

Certainly the zeal of Calvin burned warmly against the dishonor he felt was done to God by the methods of worshipping Him prevalent in the old Church. God has revealed Himself not only in His Word, but also in His works, as the one only true God. But the vanity of man has ever tended to corrupt the knowledge of God and to invent gods many and lords many, and not content with that, has sunk even to the degradation of idolatry - fabricating gods of wood or stone, gold or silver, or some other dead stuff. It is, of course, not idolatry in general, but the idolatry of the Church of Rome that Calvin has his eye particularly upon, as became him as a practical man, absorbed in the real problems of his time. He therefore particularly animadverts upon the more refined forms of idolatry, ruthlessly reducing them to the same level in principle with the grossest. God does not compare idols with idols, he says, as if one were better and another worse: He repudiates all without exception - all images, pictures, or any other kind of tokens by which superstitious people have imagined He could be brought near to them (I. xi. 1, end). He embraces all forms of idolatry, however, in his comprehensive refutation; he even expressly adverts to the "foolish subterfuge" (inepta cautio) of the Greeks, who allow painted but not graven images (I. xi. 4, end). Or rather he broadens his condemnation until it covers even the false conceptions of God which we frame in our imaginations (I. xi. 4, ad init.), substituting them for the revelations He makes of Himself: for the "mind of man," he says, "is, if I may be allowed the expression, a perpetual factory of idols" (I. xi. 8). Thus he returns to "the Puritan conception" which we have seen him already announcing in former chapters, and proclaims as his governing principle (I. xi. 4, med.) that "all modes of worship which men excogitate from themselves are detestable."111 

He does not content himself, however, with proclaiming and establishing this principle. He follows the argument for the use of images in worship into its details and refutes it item by item. To the plea that "images are the books of the illiterate" and by banishing them he is depriving the people of their best means of instruction, he replies that no doubt they do teach something, but what they teach is falsehood: God is not as they represent Him (§§ 5-7). To the caveat that no one worships the idols, but the deity through the idols, that they are never called "gods" and that what is offered them is doulei,a, not latrei,a - he replies that all this is distinction without difference; the Jews in their idolatry reasoned in a similar manner, and it is easy to erect a distinction between words, but somewhat more difficult to establish a real difference in fact (§§ 9-11). To the reproach that he is exhibiting a fanaticism against the representative arts, he rejoins that such is far from the case; he is only seeking to protect these arts from abusive application to wrong purposes (§§ 12, 13). And finally to the appeal to the decisions of the Council of Nice of 786-787 favorable to image-worship, he replies by an exposure of the "disgusting insipidities" and "portentous impiety" of the image-worshipping Fathers at that Council (§§ 14 sq.). The discussion is then closed (chap. xii.), with a chapter in which he urges that God alone is to be worshipped and only in the way of His own appointment; and above all that His glory is not to be given to another. Thus the ever-present danger of idolatry, as evidenced in the gross practices of Rome, is itself invoked to curb speculation on the nature of the Godhead and to throw men back on the simple and vitalizing revelation of the word of a God like us in that He is a spiritual person, but unlike us in that He is clothed in inconceivable majesty. These two epithets - immensity and spirituality - thus stand out as expressing the fundamental characteristics of the divine essence to Calvin's thinking: His immensity driving us away in terror from any attempt to measure Him by our sense; His spirituality prohibiting the entertainment of any earthly or carnal speculation concerning Him (I. xiii. 1). 

In the course of this discussion there are three matters on which Calvin somewhat incidentally touches which seem too interesting to be passed over unremarked. These are what we may call his philosophy of idolatry, his praise of preaching, and his recommendation of art. 

His philosophy of idolatry (I. xi. 8, 9) takes the form of a psychological theory of its origin. While allowing an important place in the fostering and spread of idolatry to the ancient customs of honoring the dead and superstitiously respecting their memory, he considers idolatry more ancient than these customs, and the product of debased thoughts of God. He enumerates four stages in its evolution. First, the mind of man, filled with pride and rashness, dares to imagine a god after its own notion;¹¹² and laboring in its dullness and sunk in the crassest ignorance, naturally conceives a vain and empty spectre for God. Next, man attempts to give an outward form to the god he has thus inwardly excogitated; so that the hand brings forth the idol which the mind begets. Worship follows hard on this figment; for, when they suppose they see God in the images, men naturally worship Him in them. Finally, their minds and eyes alike being fixed upon the images, men begin to become more imbruted, and stand amazed and lost in wonder before the images, as if there were something of divinity inherent in them. Thus easy Calvin supposes to be the descent from false notions of deity to the superstitious adoration of stocks and stones, and thus clearly and reiteratedly he discovers the roots of idolatry in false conceptions of God and proclaims its presence in principle wherever men permit themselves to think of God otherwise, in any particular, than He has revealed Himself in His works and Word. 

As we read Calvin's energetic arraignments of the sinfulness of our deflected conceptions of God - the essential idolatry of the imaginary images we form of Him - and our duty diligently to conform our ideas of God to the revelations of Himself He has graciously given us, we are reminded of an eloquent picture which the late Professor A. Sabatier once drew¹¹³ of a concourse of professing Christians coming together to worship in common a God whom each conceives after his own fashion. Anthropomorphists, Deists, Agnostics, Pantheists - all bow alike before God and worship, says Prof. Sabatier; and the worship of one and all is acceptable, equally acceptable, to God. Not so, rejoins M. Bois:114 and there is not a less admirable spectacle in the world than this. Calvin was of M. Bois's opinion. To his thinking we have before us in such a concourse only a company of idolaters - each worshipping not the God that is but the god who in the pride of his heart he has made himself. And to each and all Calvin sends out the cry of, Repent! turn from the god you have made yourself and serve the God that is! 

It is in the midst of his response to the specious plea that images are the books of the illiterate and the only means of instruction available for them that Calvin breaks out into a notable eulogy on preaching as God's ordained means of instructing His people (I. xi. 7). Even though images, he remarks, were so framed that they bore to the people a message which might be properly called divine - which too frequently is very far from the case - their childish suggestions (naeniae) are little adapted to convey the special teaching which God wishes to be taught His people in their solemn congregations, and has made the common burden of His Word and Sacraments - from which it is to be feared, however, the minds of the people are fatally distracted as their eyes roam around to gaze on their idols. Do you say the people are too rude and ignorant to profit by the heavenly message and can be reached only by means of the images? Yet these are those whom the Lord receives as His own disciples, honors with the revelation of His celestial philosophy, and has commanded to be instructed in the saving mysteries of His kingdom! If they have fallen so low as not to be able to do without such "books" as images supply, is not that only because they have been defrauded of the teaching which they required? The invention of images, in a word, is an expedient demanded not by the rudeness of the people so much as by the dumbness of the priests. It is in the true preaching of the Gospel that Christ is really depicted - crucified before our eyes openly, as Paul testifies: and there can be no reason to crowd the churches with crucifixes of wood and stone and silver and gold, if Christ is faithfully preached as dying on the cross to bear our curse, expiating our sins by the sacrifice of His body, cleansing us by His blood and reconciling us to God the Father. From this simple proclamation more may be learned than from a thousand crosses. Thus Calvin vindicates to the people of God their dignity as God's children taught by His Spirit, their right to the Gospel of grace, their capacity under the instruction of the Spirit to receive the divine message, and the central place of the preaching of the atonement of Christ in the ordinances of the sanctuary. 

It seems the more needful that we should pause upon Calvin's remarks on art in this discussion long enough to take in their full significance, that this is one of the matters on which he has been made the object of persistent misrepresentation. It has been made the reproach of the Reformation in general and of Calvinism in particular that they have morosely set themselves in opposition to all artistic development, while Calvin himself has been inveighed against as the declared enemy of all that is beautiful in life. Thus, for example, Voltaire in his biting verse has explained that the only art which flourished at Geneva (where men cyphered but could not laugh) was that of the money-reckoners: and that nothing was sung there but the antique concerts of "the good David" in the belief "that God liked bad verses." Even professed students of the subject have passionately assailed Calvin as insensible to the charms of art and inimical to all forms of artistic expression. Thus, M. D. Courtois, the historian of sacred music among the French Reformed, permits himself, quite contrary to the facts in the sphere of his own especial form of art, to say that Calvin "nourished a holy horror for all that could resemble an intrusion of art into the religious domain"; and M. E. Müntz, who writes on "Protestantism and Art," exclaims that "in Calvin's eyes beauty is tantamount to idolatry"; while M. O. Douen, the biographer of Clement Marot, brands Calvin as "anti-liberal, anti-artistic, anti-human, anti-Christian." The subject is too wide to be entered upon here in its general aspects. Professor E. Doumergue and Dr. A. Kuyper have made all lovers of truth their debtors by exposing to the full the grossness of such calumnies.¹¹⁵

In point of fact Calvin was a lover and fosterer of the arts, counting them all divine gifts which should be cherished, and expressly declaring even of those which minister only to pleasure that they are by no means to be reckoned superfluous and are certainly not to be condemned as if forsooth they were inimical to piety. Even in the heat of this arraignment of the misuse of art-representations in idolatry which is at present before us, we observe that he turns aside to guard himself against being misunderstood as condemning art-representations in general (§ 12). The notion that all representative images are to be avoided he brands as superstition and declares of the products both of the pictorial and of the sculptural arts that they are the gifts of God granted to us for His own glory and our good. "I am not held," he says, "in that superstition, which considers that no images at all are to be endured. I only require that since sculptures and pictures are gifts of God, the use of them should be pure and legitimate; lest what has been conferred on us by God for His own glory and for our good, should not only be polluted by preposterous abuse, but even turned to our injury." Here is no fanatical suspicion of beauty: no harsh assault upon art. Here is rather the noblest possible estimate of art as conducive in its right employment to the profit of man and the glory of the God who gives it. Here is only an anxiety manifested to protect such a noble gift of God from abuse to wrong ends. Accordingly in the "Table or brief summary of the principal matters contained in this Institution of the Christian religion," which was affixed to the French edition of 1560, the contents of this section are described as follows: "That when idolatry is condemned, this is not to abolish the arts of painting and sculpture, but to require that the use of both shall be pure and legitimate; and we are not to amuse ourselves by representing God by some visible figure, but only such things as may be objects of sight."116 Calvin, then, does not at all condemn art, but only pleads for a pure and reverent employment of art as a high gift of God, to be used like all others of God's gifts so as to profit man and glorify the Great Giver. 

If we inquire more closely what he held to be a legitimate use of the pictorial arts, we must note first of all that he utterly forbids all representations of God in visible figures.¹¹⁷ This prohibition he rests on two grounds: first, God Himself forbids it; and secondly, "it cannot be done without some deformation of His glory," - in which we catch again the note of zeal against everything which detracts from the honor of God. To attempt the portraiture of God is, thus, to Calvin, not merely to disobey God's express command, but also to dishonor Him by an unworthy representation of Him, which is essential idolatry. Highly as he esteemed the pictorial arts, as worthy of all admiration in their true sphere, he condemned utterly pressing them beyond their mark, lest even they should become procurers to the Lords of Hell. We note secondly that he dissuaded from the ornamentation of the churches with the products of the representative arts (I. xi. 13); but this on the ground not of the express commandment of God or of an inherent incapacity of art to serve the purposes contemplated, but of simple expediency.¹¹⁸ Experience teaches us, he says, that to set up images in the churches is tantamount to raising the standard of idolatry, because the folly of man is so great that it immediately falls to offering them superstitious worship. And a deeper reason lies behind, which would determine his judgment even if this peril were not so great. The Lord has Himself ordained living and expressive images of His grace for His temples, by which our eyes should be caught and held - such ceremonies as Baptism and the Lord's Supper - and we cannot require others fabricated by human ingenuity; and it seems unworthy of the sanctity of the place to intrude them. There is, of course, an echo here of Calvin's fundamental "Puritan principle" with reference to the worship of God: his constant and unhesitating contention that only that worship which is ordained by Himself is acceptable to God. Had God desired the aid of pictorial representations to quicken the devotions of His people He would have ordained them: to employ them is in principle to despise the provisions He has made and to invent others - and we may be sure inadequate if not misleading ones - for ourselves. 

This is not the place to inquire into Calvin's positive theory of art-representation. It is worth while, however, as illustrating the wide interests of the man, to note that he has such a theory and betrays the fact that he has it and somewhat of the lines on which it runs, in incidental remarks, even in such a discussion as this. It emerges, for example, that he would confine the sphere of the representative arts to the depicting of objects of sight (ea sola quorum sint capaces oculi) - of such things as the eye sees. Of these, however, he discovers two classes - "histories and transactions" on the one side, "images and forms of bodies" on the other.¹¹⁹ The former may be made useful for purposes of instruction or admonition, he thinks; the latter, so far as he sees, serve only the ends of delectation. Both are, however, alike legitimate, if only they be kept to their proper places and used for their proper ends; for the delectation of man is as really a human need as his instruction. So little does Calvin then set himself with stern moroseness against all art-representation, that he is found actually forming a comprehensive theory of art-representation and pleading for its use, not only for the profit, but also for the pleasure of man. 

It remains to speak of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity. 

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, vii 1909, pp. 381-436. 

Cf. Köstlin, "Calvin's Institutio," etc., in Studien und Kritiken, 1868, i. pp. 61-2: "On the other hand - and this is for us the most important matter, - there is not given there any comprehensive exposition of the attributes, especially not of the ethical attributes of God, nor is any such afterwards attempted." Again, iii. p. 423: "We cannot present and follow out the doctrine of the Institutio on the divine nature and the divine attributes, and their relations, as a whole, as we can its doctrine of the Trinity, because Calvin himself, as we have mentioned already, has nowhere presented them as a whole." Cf. also P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 11: "Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are there offered proofs of the existence of God" (cf. p. 18). Again, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 26: "A doctrine of the nature of God as such we do not find in Calvin." Ibid., p. 38: "We find nowhere in Calvin a special section which is devoted particularly to the treatment of God's attributes"; "since he gives no formal doctrine of the attributes, we find in him also no classification of the attributes."

As Köstlin, for example, has suggested, as cited, p. 423, followed by P. J. Muller in his earlier work, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 10, 46. 

So P. J. Muller expresses himself in his later volume - "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 46 - modifying his earlier view: "Köstlin asks if it does not belong to Calvin's dogmatic standpoint that he does not venture to seek after a bond between the several elements which come forward in God's many-sided relation to men. This question can undoubtedly be answered in the affirmative, although we should rather speak here of the peculiarity of Calvin's method." That is to say, Muller here prefers to refer the phenomenon in question to Calvin's a posteriori method rather than to his theological standpoint. 

Andre Duran, "Le Mysticisme de Calvin," 1900, p. 8, justly says: "The Institutes are remarkable precisely for this: the absence of speculation. It is especially with the heart that Calvin studies God in His relations with men; and it is by the heart that he attains to complete union of man with God." For a satisfactory discussion of the "heart in Calvin's theology" see E. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," etc., iii. 1905, pp. 560-563. Compare also the third address in Doumergue's " L'Art et le sentiment dans l'oeuvre de Calvin," Geneva, 1902. 

"Discours de combat," 1903, pp. 135-140. 

"Études d'histoire religieuse," ed. 7, 1864, p. 342: "l'homme le plus chrétien de son siècle." It must be borne in mind that this is not very high praise on M. Renan's lips; and was indeed intended by him to be depreciatory. We need not put an excessive estimate on Calvin's greatness, he says in effect; he lived in an age of reaction towards Christianity and he was the most Christian man of his age: his preeminence is thus accounted for. 

"Instruction et confession de foy dont on use en l'eglise de Genève" (Opp. xxii. 47). The Strasburg editors assign it to Calvin's colleagues; Doumergue ("Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, pp. 236-251) to Calvin. 

"Vera Christianae pacificationis et ecclesiae reformandae ratio," 1549 (Opp. vii. 598-M). 

nudam frigidamque notitiam. 

nudam notitiam. 

vivum affectum qui cordi insideat. 

Ed. of 1539: the quotations are made from the French version of 1541, pp. 189, 202, 204. See Opp. iii. 15, 53, 57. 

I. v. 9. 

III. ii. 8. 

Cordis esse magis quam cerebri, et affectus magis quam intelligentiae. 

fidem et veritatem cordis. 

cor et animum (Opp. vi. 477, 479). 

I. vii. 4. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 111: "A theologian like Calvin, Zwingli was not; but still in the history of the doctrine of God the pages devoted to Zwingli are more important than those devoted to Calvin. The loci de Trinitate, de Creatione, and de Lapso apart, Zwingli's system is undeniably more coherent than that of Calvin, in which we miss the bond by which the several parts are joined. On the other hand, however, we miss in Zwingli's doctrine of God precisely what constitutes the value of a doctrine of God for the theologian, that is to say, its religious character. We do not find in Zwingli as in Calvin a recoil from the consequences of his own reasoning, which leads necessarily to the ascription to God of the origination of evil, or sin, just because God is not with him as with Calvin conceived above everything as the object of religious reverence, but rather as the object of speculative thought." 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 6: "If the doctrine of God for the theologian is determined by its religious character, the contemplation of God as the object of religious reverence will take a higher place with him than the merely philosophical contemplation of God as the ultimate cause. Since it is not to be denied - as the following exposition will show - that with Zwingli God is speculatively contemplated much more as the ultimate cause than as the object of religious reverence, we may conclude that - so far as religious value is concerned - Zwingli's doctrine of God must be ranked below Calvin's." Again (p. 21): "In the nature of the case Calvin's conceptions of the nature of God must be very sober. For to him, God was very predominantly the object of religious reverence, and he could not therefore do otherwise than disapprove of the attempt to penetrate into the nature of the Godhead (I. v. 9). With Zwingli, on the contrary, in whose system God is preeminently conceived as the ultimate cause, the doctrine of the nature of God must form one of the most important sections of the doctrine of God." Once more (p. 23): "Calvin, whose pride it was to be a 'Biblical theologian,' does not follow the method of the philosophers, - the aprioristic method. He is therefore sober in his conceptions of the nature of God, since he had noted that in the Scriptures God speaks little of His nature, that He may teach us sobriety" - quoting I. xiii. 1: ut nos in sobrietate contineat, parce de sua essentia [Deus] disserit. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 117. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 46, 47. The author of the anonymous Introduction to the edition of the "Institutes" in French, published by Meyrueis et Cie, Paris, 1859, p. xii., says similarly: "Of a mind positive, grave, practical, removed from all need of speculation, very circumspect, not expressing its thought until its conviction had attained maturity, taking the fact of a divine revelation seriously, Calvin learned his faith at the feet of the Holy Scriptures . . ." 

P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 103-104. 

P. J. Muller's view is different, as may be seen from the following extracts: "Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are there offered proofs of the existence of God, although there are particular passages in their writings which seem to recall them. The proposition 'That God exists' needed neither for themselves nor for their fellow-believers, nor even against Rome, any proof. It has been thought indeed that the so-called cosmological argument is found in Zwingli, the physico-theological argument in Calvin (Lipsius, Lehrb. der ev. prot. Dogmatik, ed. 2, 1879, p. 213). But it would not be difficult to show that in the case of neither have we to do with a philosophical deduction, but only with an aid for attaining a complete knowledge of God" ("De Godsleer van Z. en C.," 1883, p. 11, cf. p. 14). In a note Prof. Muller adverts to the possible use by Calvin, I. iii. 1, of "the so-called historical argument." "If Zwingli gives us no proof of God's existence, the same is true of Calvin. It is true that the physico-theological argument has been discovered in the Institutes. Yet as he wrote over the fifth chapter of the first book, 'That the knowledge of God is manifested in the making and continuous government of the world,' - it is already evident from this that he did not intend to argue from the teleology of the world to the existence of God as its Creator, Sustainer, and Governor, but that he wished merely to point to the world as to 'a beautiful book,'-to speak in the words of our [Netherlandish] Confession (Art. ii.), - 'in which all creatures, small and great, serve as letters to declare to us the invisible things of God.' Here, too, we have accordingly to do simply with a means for a rise to a fuller knowledge of God" (Do., p. 16). "The Scholastics may indeed - although answering the inquiry affirmatively - begin with the question, Is there a God? Such a question cannot rise with Calvin. The Reformer, assured of his personal salvation, the ground of which lay in God Himself, could also for his co-believers leave this question to one side. Practical value attached only to the inquiry how men can come to know God, of whose existence Calvin entertained no doubt" ("De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 11). 

ut ethnicus ille ait (the allusion is to Cicero, "De natura deorum," i. 16). 

Deum esse. 

qui Deum esse negent. 

velint tamen nolint, quod nescire cupiunt, subinde sentiscunt. 

imo et naturaliter ingenitam esse omnibus hanc persuasionem, esse aliquem Deum. 

negantes Deum esse. 

Deum esse neget. 

"Paed.," III. i. ed. Stählin, i. 1905, p. 235; cf. E. T. in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library": "Clement of Alexandria," i. 1867, p. 273. Cf. "Strom.," V. xiii. ; "Protrep.," vi. 

"Adv. Marc.," i. 10: E. T. "The Ante-Nicene Fathers," iii. 1903, p. 278. Cf. "De test. animae," vi.: E. T. op. cit., p. 179. 

"Ad Autol.," i. 2: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," ii. 1903, p. 89. 

Do., i. 5: E. T. op. cit., p. 90. 

Chap. xvii.: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," iv. 1902, p. 182. 

"Adv. Epic.," iii.: E. T. "Ante-Nicene Fathers," vi. 1899, p. 88. 

H. C. Sheldon, "History of Christian Doctrine," i. 1886, p. 56: "Metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, such as those adduced by Augustine, Anselm, and Descartes, were quite foreign to the theology of the first three centuries." But in the next age they had already come in; cf. Sheldon, p. 187: "We find a new class of arguments, something more in the line of the metaphysical than anything which the previous centuries brought forward. Three writers in particular aspired to this order of proofs; viz., Diodorus of Tarsus, Augustine, and Boëthius." Augustine is the real father of the ontological argument: but Augustine only chronologically belonged to the old world; as Siebeck puts it, he was "the first modern man." 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 11-16, where a very interesting account is given of Zwingli's handling of the theistic proofs-though Prof. Muller thinks that Zwingli employs them not to establish the existence of God but to increase our knowledge of God. With Zwingli all knowledge of God rests at bottom on Revelation, which is his way of saying what Calvin means by his universal sensus deitatis. Zwingli says, on his part, that "a certain seed of knowledge of God is sown [by God] also among the Gentiles" (iii. 158). But he argues with great force and in very striking language, that all creation proclaims its maker. Cf. A. Baur, "Zwinglis Theologie," i. 1885, pp. 382-383: "In the doctrine of God, Zwingli distinguishes two questions: first that of the nature, and secondly that of the existence of God. The answer to the first question surpasses the powers of the human mind; that of the second, does not." That the knowledge of the existence of God, which "may be justified before the understanding " (Muller, p. 13), does not involve a knowledge of His nature, Zwingli holds, is proved by the wide fact of polytheism on the one hand and the accompanying fact, on the other, that natural theism is always purely theoretical (Baur, p. 383). 

In the earliest "Loci Communes" (1521) there was no locus de Deo at all. In the second form (1535-1541) there was a locus de Deo, but it was not to it but to the locus de Creatione that Melanchthon appended some arguments for the existence of God, remarking ("Corp. Ref.," xxi. 369): "After the mind has been confirmed in the true and right opinion of God and of Creation by the Word of God itself, it is then both useful and pleasant to seek out also the vestiges of God in nature and to collect the arguments (rationes) which testify that there is a God." These remarks are expanded in the final form (1542+) and reduced to a formal order, for the benefit of "good morals." The list ("Corp. Ref.," xxi. 641-643) consists of nine "demonstrations, the consideration of which is useful for discipline and for confirming honest opinions in minds." "The first is drawn from the order of nature itself, that is from the effects arguing a maker. . . . The second, from the nature of the human mind. A brute thing is not the cause of an intelligent nature. . . . The third, from the distinction between good and evil . . . and the sense of order and number. . . . Fourthly: natural ideas are true: that there is a God, all confess naturally: therefore this idea is true. . . . The fifth is taken, in Xenophanes, from the terrors of conscience. . . . The sixth from political society. . . . The seventh is . . . drawn from the series of efficient causes. There cannot be an infinite recession of efficient causes. . . . The eighth from final causes.... The ninth from prediction of future events." "These arguments," he adds, "not only testify that there is a God, but are also indicia of providence.... They are perspicuous and always affect good minds. Many others also could certainly be collected; but because they are more obscure, I leave off." . . . G. H. Lamers, "Geschiedenis der Leer aangande God," 1897, p. 179 (6871, remarks: "It should be noted that Melanchthon always when speaking of God, whether as Spirit or as Love, wishes everywhere to ascribe the highest value to God's ethical characteristics. Even the particulars, nine in number, to which he (Doedes, Inleiding tot de Leer van God, p. 191) points as proofs that God's existence must be recognized, show that ethical considerations especially attract him." More justly Herrlinger, "Die Theologie Melanchthons," 1879, comments on Melanchthon's use of the "proofs" as follows: "The natural knowledge of God, resting on an innate idea and awakened especially by teleological contemplation of the world, Melanchthon makes in his philosophical writings, particularly in his physics, the object of consideration, so that we may speak of the elements of a natural theology in him" (p. 168). Melanchthon heaps up these arguments, enumerating nine of them, in the conviction that they will mutually strengthen one another. Herrlinger thinks that, as they occur in much the same order in more of Melanchthon's writings than one, they may be arranged on some principle - possibly beginning with particulars in nature and man, proceeding to human association, and rising to the entirety of nature (p. 392). He continues (p. 393): "Clearly enough it is the teleological argument which in all these proofs is the real nerve of the proof. Melanchthon accords with Kant, as in the high place he gives this proof, so also in perceiving that all these proofs find their strength in the ontological argument, in the innate idea of God, which is the most direct witness for God's existence. 15. 564; 'The mind reasons of God from a multitude of vestiges. But this reasoning would not be made if there were not infused (insita) into the mind a certain knowledge (notitia) or pro,lhyij of God.' Similarly, De Anima, 13. 144, 169." The relation of the proofs to the innate sensus deitatis here indicated, holds good also for Calvin. 

"In Psalmos," 144: illum non possumus capere, velut sub eius magnitudine deficientes. 

We cannot know the quiddity of God: we can only know His quality: that is, to say what His essence is, is beyond our comprehension, but we may know Him in His attributes. 

Cf. the passage in ed. 2 and other middle editions in which, refuting the Sabellians, he says that such attributes as strength, goodness, wisdom, mercy, are "epithets" which "show qualis erga nos sit Deus," while the personal names, Father, Son, Spirit, are "names" which "declare qualis apud semetipsum vere sit" (Opp. i. 491). 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godaleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 26: "A doctrine of the nature of God as such we do not find in Calvin." To teach us modesty, Calvin says, God says little of His nature in Scripture, but to teach us what we ought to know of Him he gives us two epithets - immensity and spirituality (p. 29). Again, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 30-31: "The little that Calvin gives us on this subject (the Divine Essence) limits itself to the remark that God's essence is 'immense and spiritual' (I. xiii. 1), 'incomprehensible to us' (I. v. 1)." Again, p. 38: "If the aprioristic method [as employed by Zwingli] is thus not favorable to the development of a doctrine of the Trinity, Calvin's aposterioristic method is on the other hand the reason that his conceptions of the nature of God - apart from the Trinity - are of less significance than Zwingli's. Since our understanding, according to Calvin, is incapable of grasping what God is, it is folly to seek with arrogant curiosity to investigate God's nature, 'which is much rather to be adored than anxiously to be inquired into' (On Romans, i. 19: 'They are mad who seek to discover what God is'; Institutes, I. ii. 2: 'The essence of God is rather to be adored than inquired into'). If we nevertheless wish to solve the problem up to a certain point, let this be done only by means of the Scriptures in which God has revealed His nature to us so far as it is needful for us to know it. The warning he gives us is therefore certainly fully comprehensible, - that 'those who devote themselves to the solving of the problem of what God is should hold their speculations within bounds; since it is of much more importance for us to know what kind of a being God is' (I. ii. 2). How can a man who cannot understand his own nature be able to comprehend God's nature? 'Let us then leave to God the knowledge of Himself: and' - so Calvin says - 'we leave it to Him when we conceive Him as He has revealed Himself to us, and when we seek to inquire with reference to Him nowhere else than in His Word' (I. xiii. 21). . . ."

This is fast becoming the popular representation. Cf. e.g. Williston Walker, "John Calvin," 1906, p. 149: "Thus he owed to Scotus, doubtless without realizing the obligation, the thought of God as almighty will, for motives behind whose choice it is as absurd as it is impious to inquire." Again, p. 418: "Whether this Scotist doctrine of the rightfulness of all that God wills by the mere fact of His willing it, leaves God a moral character, it is perhaps useless to inquire." But Calvin does not borrow unconsciously from Scotus: he openly repudiates Scotus. And Calvin is so far from representing the will of God to be independent of His moral character, that he makes it merely the expression of His moral character, and only inscrutable to us. Cf. also C. H. Irwin, "John Calvin," 1909, p. 179: "Holding as he did the theory of Duns Scotus, that a thing is right by the mere fact of God willing it, he never questioned whether a course was or was not in harmony with the Divine character, if he was once convinced that it was a course attributed to God in Scripture." But Calvin did not hold that a thing is made right by the mere fact that God wills it but that the fact that God wills it (which fact Scripture may witness to us) is proof enough to us that it is right. The vogue of this remarkable misrepresentation of Calvin's doctrine of God is doubtless due to its enunciation (though in a somewhat more guarded form) by Ritschl (Jahrbb. für deutsche Theologie, 1868, xiii. pp. 104 sq.). Ritschl's fundamental contention is that the Nominalistic conception of God, crowded out of the Roman Church by Thomism, yet survived in Luther's doctrine of the enslaved will and Calvin's doctrine of twofold predestination (p. 68), which presuppose the idea of "the groundless arbitrariness of God" in His actions. Calvin was far from adopting this principle in theory or applying it consistently. He is aware of and seeks to guard against its dangers (p. 106); but his doctrine of a double predestination (in Ritschl's opinion) proceeds on its assumption: "In spite of Calvin's reluctance, we must judge that the idea of God which governs this doctrine comes to the same thing as the Nominalistic potentia absoluta" (p. 107). The same line of reasoning may be read also in Seeberg, "Text-Book of the History of Doctrines," §79, 4 (E. T. ii. 1905, p. 397), who also is compelled to admit that this conception of God is both repudiated by Calvin and is destructive of his "logical structure"! For a sufficient refutation of this whole notion see Max Scheibe's "Calvin's Prädestinationslehre," 1897, pp. 113 sq. "Calvin," says Scheibe, "could therefore very properly repudiate the charge of proceeding on the Scoto-nominalistic idea of the potentia absoluta of God. . . . With Calvin, on the contrary, the conception of the will of God as the highest causality has the particular meaning that God is not determined in His actions by anything lying outside of Himself, . . . while it is distinctly not excluded that God acts by virtue of an inner necessity, accordant with His nature." 

Cf. e.g. A. V. G. Allen, "The Continuity of Christian Thought," 1884, p. 299: "The God who is thus revealed is a being outside the framework of the universe, who called the world into existence by the power of His will. Calvin positively rejected the doctrine of the divine immanence. When he spoke of that 'dog of a Lucretius' who mingles God and nature, he may have also had Zwingli in his mind. In order to separate more completely between God and man, he interposed ranks of mediators. . . ." Also, p. 302: "In some respects the system of Calvin not merely repeats but exaggerates the leading ideas of Latin Christianity. In no Latin, writer is found such a determined purpose to reject the immanence of Deity and assert His transcendence and His isolation from the world. In his conception of God, as absolute arbitrary will, he surpasses Duns Scotus. . . . The separation between God and humanity is emphasized as it has never been before, for Calvin insists, dogmatically and formally, upon that which had been, to a large extent, hitherto, an unconscious though controlling sentiment." Prof. Allen had already represented the Augustinian theology as "resting upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle," -which he explains as a "tacit assumption" of Deism (pp. 3, 171). 

Cf. Principal D. W. Simon, "Reconciliation by Incarnation," 1898, p. 282, where he speaks of "the Pantheism . . . with which Calvin is logically chargeable - strongly as he might resent the imputation - when he says: 'Nothing happens but what He has knowingly and willingly decreed'; 'All the changes which take place in the world are produced by the secret agency of the hand of God'; 'Not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which He has destined.'" To Dr. Simon providential government of the world implies pantheism!

"The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," 1893, p. 164. Even H. M. Gwatkin, "The Knowledge of God," etc., 1906, ii. p. 226, having spoken of Calvin as "taking over from the Scotists" his conception of God as "sovereign and inscrutable will," adds that he needed only to suppose further that "the divine will" is "necessitated as well as inscrutable" to have taught a Pantheistic system. But as he thus allows Calvin did not suppose this, and had just pointed out that Calvin explains that God is not an "absolute and arbitrary power," we probably need not look upon this language as other than rhetorical: it certainly is not true to the facts in either of its members. 

P. 164, Cf. p. 430. It is Amesius to whom Dr. Fairbairn appeals to justify this statement: but he misinterprets Amesius. 

P. 168. 

Cf. Baur, "Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit," iii. 1843, pp. 35 sq. 

"Medulla," I. vii. 38: "Hence the will of God is the first cause of things. 'By thy will they are and were created' (Apoc. iv. 11). But the will of God, as He wills to operate ad extra, does not presuppose the goodness of the object, but by willing posits and makes it good." 

The phrase is quoted by Dr. Fairbairn (p. 164) as Calvin's, to support the assertion that he was "as pure . . . a pantheist as Spinoza." But it is cited by Calvin (III. xxiii. 8) from Augustine. The matter in immediate discussion is the perdition of the reprobate. 

III. xxiii. 8. 

Cf. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 28: "Accordingly also Pliny was right - according to Zwingli (De Provid. Dei Anamnema, iv. 90) - in calling what he calls God, nature, since the learned cannot adjust themselves to the conceptions of God of the ununderatanding multitude; inasmuch as by nature he meant the power which moves and holds together all things, and that is nothing else but God." Again, on the general question of the charge of Pantheism brought against Zwingli, pp. 26-28: "As is well known, it has been supposed that there is a pantheistic element in Zwingli's Anamnema. It cannot be denied that there are some expressions which sound Spinozistic; and for those who see Pantheism in every controversion of fortuitism, Zwingli must of necessity be a Pantheist. Yet if we are to discover Spinozism in Zwingli, we can with little difficulty point to traces of Spinoziam also in Paul. Such a passage as the following, for example, would certainly have been subscribed by Paul: 'If anything comes to pass by its own power or counsel, then the wisdom and power of our Deity would be superfluous there. And if that were true, then the wisdom of the Deity would not be supreme, because it would not comprehend and take in all things; and his power would not be omnipotent, because then there would exist power independent of God's power, and in that case there would be another power which would not be the power of the Deity' (Opp. vi. 85). In any case, Zwingli cannot be given the blame of standing apart from the other Reformers on this point. Calvin certainly recognizes (Inst. I. v. 5) that - so it occurs, simply - 'it may be said out of a pious mind that nature is God'; (cf. Zwingli, vi. a. 619: 'Call God Himself Nature, with the philosophers, the principle from which all things take their origin, from which the soul begins to be'); although he adds the warning that in matters of such importance 'no expressions should be employed likely to cause confusion.' Danaeus (Lib. i. 11 of his Ethices Christ. lib. tres) marvels that those who would fain bear the name of Christians, should conceive of God and nature as two different hypostases, since even the heathen philosophers (and like Zwingli, he names Seneca) more truly taught that 'the nature by which we have been brought forth is nothing else than God.... "' 

Cf. instances in addition at I. xiv. 1, I. xv. 5. 

Fairbairn, op. cit., pp. 165-166. 

Cf. I. xvi. 1: "To make God a momentaneous creator, who entirely finished all His work at once, were frigid and jejune," etc. Also the Genevan Catechism of 1545 (Opp. vi. 15-18): The particularization of God's creatorship in the creed is not to be taken as indicating that God so created His works at once that afterwards He rejects the care of them. It is rather so to be held that the world as it was made by Him at once, so now is conserved by Him; and He is to remain their supreme governor, etc. 

It is not uncommon for historians of doctrine who are inclined to represent Calvin as enunciating the Scotist principle, therefore, to suggest that he is scarcely consistent with himself. Thus, e.g., H. C. Sheldon, "History of Christian Doctrine," 1888, ii. pp. 93-94: "Some, who were inclined to extreme views of the divine sovereignty, asserted the Scotist maxim that the will of God is the absolute rule of right. Luther's words are quite as explicit as those of Scotus. . . . 'The will of God,' says Calvin . . . (Inst. III. xxiii. 2). . . . Calvin, however, notwithstanding this strong statement, suggests after all that he meant not so much that God's will is absolutely the highest rule of right, as that it is one which we cannot transcend, and must regard as binding on our own judgment; for he adds, 'We represent not God as lawless, who is a law to Himself."' Cf. Victor Monod, "Le problème de Dieu," 1910, p. 44: "Calvin was assuredly not himself a Scotist; but his disciples were." Again: "It was in the Calvinistic logic to place God above the moral law itself, and Calvin was not always able to resist this tendency." 

"The goodness of God," says Calvin ("Institutes," II. iii. 5), "is so united with His divinity that it is as much a necessity to Him to be good as to be God." Again (Opp. viii. 361): "It would be easier to separate the light of the sun from its heat, or its heat from its fire, than to separate the power of God from His righteousness." Cf. Bavinck, "Geref. Dogmatiek," ii. 1897, p. 226, who, after remarking on Calvin's rejection of the Scotist notion of potentia absoluta, as a "profane invention" - adducing "Institutes," III. xxiii. 1, 5; I. xvi. 3; II. vii. 5; IV. xvii. 24; "Comm. in Jes.," xxiii. 9, "in Luk.," i. 18, adds: "The Romanists on this account charge Calvin with limiting and therefore denying God's omnipotence (Bellarmine, De gratia et lib. arbitrio, iii. chap. 15). But Calvin is not denying that God can do more than He actually does, but only opposing such a potentia absoluta as is not connected with His Being or Virtues, and can therefore do all kinds of inconsistent things." 

A flagrant example may be found in the long argument of F. C. Baur, "Die christl. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit," iii. 1843, pp. 35 ff., where he represents the Calvinistic doctrine of election and reprobation as postulating in God a schism between mercy and justice which can be reduced only by thinking of Him as wholly indifferent to good and evil, and indeed of good and evil as a non-existent opposition. If justice is an equally absolute attribute with God as grace, he argues, then evil and good are at one, in that reality cannot be given to the attribute in which the absolute being of God consists without evil. Evil has the same relation to the absolute being of God as good; and "God is in the same sense the principle of evil as of good"; and "as God's justice cannot be without its object, God must provide this object" (pp. 37-38). "But if evil as well as the good is from God, then on that very account evil is good: thus good and evil are entirely indifferent with respect to each other, and the absolute Dualism is resolved into the same absolute arbitrariness (Willkür) in which Duns Scotus had placed the absolute Being of God" (p. 38). This, however, is not represented as Calvin's view, but as the consequence of Calvin's view - as drawn out in the Hegelianizing dialectic of Baur. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 40: "Neither in Zwingli nor in Calvin do we meet with a formal 'doctrine of the attributes' or with a classification of the attributes. No doubt it happens that both occasionally name a number of attributes together; and have something to say of each attribute in particular." 

Virtutes Dei, I. ii. 1; v. 7, 9, 10; x. 2. In xiii. 4, med., he uses the term attributa. In xiii. 1, speaking of the divine spirituality and immensity, he used epitheta. 

Köstlin, as cited, pp. 61-62: "On the other hand, - and this is the most important for us, - there is not given in the Institutes any comprehensive presentation of the attributes, especially of the ethical attributes of God, nor is any such attempted anywhere afterwards; the first edition, which began with some comprehensive propositions about God as infinite wisdom, righteousness, mercy, etc., rather raises an expectation of something more in the later, more thoroughly worked out editions of the work: but these propositions fell out of the first edition and were never afterward developed." In the intermediate editions (1543-1550) this paragraph has taken the form of: "Nearly the whole sum of our wisdom - and this certainly should be esteemed true and solid wisdom - consists in two facts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. The one, now, not only shows that there is one God whom all ought to worship and adore, but at the same time teaches also that this one God is the source of all truth, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, justice, mercy, power, holiness, so that we are taught that we ought to expect and seek all these things from Him, and when we receive them to refer them to Him with praise and gratitude. The other, however, by manifesting to us our weakness, misery, vanity and foulness, first brings us into serious humility, dejection, diffidence and hatred of ourselves, and then kindles a longing in us to seek God, in whom is to be found every good thing of which we discover ourselves to be so empty and lacking." 

In the list which takes the place of this in the middle editions of the "Institutes," the order is different (and scarcely so regular), and "life" is omitted, while "justice" is added to "righteousness," and "sanctity" appended at the end, and "potentia" substituted for "virtus": "truth; wisdom; goodness; righteousness; justice; mercy; (power) ; holiness." 

"Wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." 

Quod de immensa et spirituali Dei essentia traditur in Scripturis ... parce de sua essentia disserit, duobus tamen illis quae dixi epithetis.. . . 

See the distinction very luminously drawn out by J. H. Thornwell, "Works," i. 1871, pp. 168-169. 

Perhaps as near as Calvin ever came to framing an exact definition of God apud se, is the description of God in the middle edd. of the "Institutes," vi. 7 (Opp. i. 480), summed up in the opening words: "That there is one God of eternal, infinite and spiritual essence, the Scriptures currently declare with plainness." The essence of God then is eternal, infinite and spiritual. Cf. "Adv. P. Caroli Calumnias " (Opp. vii. 312): "The one God which the Scriptures preach to us we believe in and adore, and we think of Him as He is described to us by them, to wit, as of eternal, infinite and spiritual essence, who also alone has in Himself the power of existence from Himself and bestows it upon His creatures." 

unicus et verus Deus, I. ii. 2; unicus Deus, xii. 1; xiii. 2; xiv. 2; unus Deus, ii. 1; v. 6 ; x. 3 ; xii. 1; verus Deus, x. 3 ; xiii. 2 ; unitas Dei, xiii. 1, etc. 

a se ipso principium habens, v. 6; auvtousi,a, x. 2; auvtousi,a, id est a se ipso existentia, xiv. 3. 

simplex Dei essentia, xiii. 2; simplex et individua essentia Dei, xiii. 2; una simplexque Deitas, "Adv. Val. Gent." (Opp. ix. 365). 

invisibilis Deus, I. v. 1; II. vi. 4 (made visible in Christ, so also II. ix. 1) ; invisibilis I. xi. 3 (of Holy Spirit). 

incomprehensibilis, v. 1; xi. 3 (in xiii. 1 apparently used for immensa). 

spiritualis Dei essentia, xiii. 1; spiritualis natura, xiii. 1. 

in Deo residet bonorum infinitas, i. 1 (cf. ed. 1, i. ad init. [p. 42], infinitsa). 

eius immensitas, xiii. 1; immensitas, xiii. 1; immensa Dei essentia, xiii. 1. 

aeternitas, v. 6; x. 2; xiii. 18; xiv. 3; aeternus [Deus], v. 6. 

exacta iusticiae, sapientiae, virtutis eius perfectio, i. 2. 

potentia, ii. 1; v. 3, 6, 8; x. 2; immensa potentia, ii. 1; omnipotentia, xvi. 3; omnipotens, xvi. 3; virtus, i. 1, 3; v. 1, 6, 10; x. 2; virtus et potentia, x. 2. 

notitia, III. xxi. 5; praescientia, III. xxi. 5. 

sapientia, i. 1, 3; ii. 1; v. 1, 2, 3, S, 10; mirifica sapientia, v. 2. 

iustitia, ii. 1; v. 10; x. 2; xv. 1; III. xxiii. 4; iustitiae puritas, i. 1; iustitia iudiciumque, ii. 1. 

iudicium, ii. 2; x. 2; iustitia iudiciumque, ii. 1; iustus iudex, ii. 2. 

sanctitas, x. 2; puritas, i. 3; divina puritas, i. 2. 

bonitas, ii. 1; v. 3, 6, 9, 10; x. 1, 2; xv. 1; bonus, ii. 2. 

veritas, x. 2; Deus verax, III. xx. 26. 

severitas, ii. 2; v. 7, 10; xvii. 1. 

clementia, v. 7, 8, 10; x. 2. 

misericordia, ii. 1; x. 2; misericors, ii. 2 (bonus et misericora). 

gratia, v. 3. 

beneficus, v. 7; voluntas ad beneficentiam proclivis, x. 1; Dei favor et beneficentia, xvii. 1. 

benignitas, v. 7; benignus et beneficus, v..7. 

bonus et misericors, ii. 2; benignus et beneficus, v. 7; bonorum omnium fons et origo, ii. 2; bonorum omnium autor, ii. 2; voluntas ad beneficentiam proclivis, x. 1; bonorum omnium perfecta affuentia, i. 1; in Deo residet bonorum infinitas, i. 1. 

tutor et protector, ii. 2. 

Dominus et Pater, ii. 2. 

paterna indulgentia, v. 7. 

v. 6: iam ipsa potentia nos ad cogitandam eius aeternitatem deducit; quia aeternum esse, et a se ipso principium habere necesse est unde omnium trahunt originem. 

Do. 

v.7. 

v. 8.

x. 2. 

I. xiii. 1: Certe hoc fuit et Dei unitatem abrumpere, et restringere immensitatem. 

These are fairly brought together by P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 39-44. The third section of the "Instruction" (French, 1537) or "Catechism" (Latin, 1538) is almost a complete treatise in brief on the attributes. As in the "Institutes," on which this "Catechism" is based, the attributes derived from the study of the Divine Works are first enumerated and then those derived from the Word. As to the former, Calvin says: "For we contemplate in this universe of things, the immortality of our God, from which has proceeded the commencement and origin of all things; His power (potentia) which has both made and now sustains so great a structure (moles, machine); His wisdom, which has composed and perpetually governs so great and confused a variety in an order so distinct; His goodness, which has been the cause to itself that all these things were created and now exist; His justice, which wonderfully manifests itself in the defense of the good and the punishment of the wicked; His mercy, which, that we may be called to repentance, endures our wickedness with so great a clemency " (Opp. v. 324-325). 

Observe the admirable discussion of the omnipotence of God after this incidental fashion in "Institutes," I. xvi. 3. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 45: "No doubt we should expect a doctrine of the attributes, when we hear him say that God has revealed Himself in His virtutes, but we should bear in mind that Calvin (although not always free himself from philosophical influences) renounces philosophical treatment of theological questions, and is extremely practical, so that it is to him, for example, less important to seek a connection between the several attributes, than to point out what we may learn from them not so much of God, as for ourselves and our lives." - So, also, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 46-47: "Calvin does not recommend such a 'knowledge of God' as merely 'raises an idle speculation in the brain,' but such an one 'as should be firm and fruitful also in consequences, which can be expected only of the knowledge which has its seat in the heart' (I. v. 9). He considers the knowledge of the nature and of the attributes of God more a matter of the heart than of the understanding; and such knowledge not only must arouse us to 'the service of God, but must also plant in us the hope of a future life' (I. v. 10). In his extreme practicality - as the last remark shows us - Calvin rejected the philosophical treatment of the question. The Scriptures, for him the fountain of the knowledge of God, he takes as his guide in his remarks on the attributes." Compare what Lobstein says in his "Études sur la doctrine Chrétienne de Dieu," 1907, p. 113: "The passages of Calvin's Institutes devoted to the idea of the divine omnipotence are inspired and dominated by the living interest of piety, which gives to their discussions a restrained emotion and a warmth to which no reader can remain insensible." 

Köstlin, as cited, pp. 424-425. 

I, xii. 1: Quod autem priore loco posui, tenendum est, nisi in uno Deo resideat quidquid proprium est divinitatis, honore suo ipsum spoliari, violarique eius cultum. 

Cf. Schweizer, "Glaubenslehre d. rf. Kirche," i. 1844, p. 16: "Only an essentially complete survey of the particular Reformed dogmas can lead to the fundamental tendency to which they all belong. This can be represented as a dominating protest against all that is pagan." P. 25: "Protestation against the deification of the creature is therefore everywhere the dominating, all-determining impulse of Reformed Protestantism." (Cf. pp. 40, 59, and the exposition there of how this principle worked to prevent all half-measures and inconsequences in the development of Reformed thought.) Cf. also Scholten, "De Leer der Hervormde Kerk," 1870, ii. pp. 12, 13: "Schweizer finds the characteristic of the Reformed doctrine in the Biblical principle of man's entire dependence on God, together with protestation on the ground of original Christianity against any heathenish elements which had seeped into the Church and its teaching. That in the opposition of the Reformed to Rome, such an aversion to all that is heathenish exhibited itself, history tells us, and cannot be denied." P. 17: "The maintenance of the sovereignty of God is the point from which, with the Reformed, everything proceeds. Hence as well their protest against the pagan element in the Romish worship. . . ." Pp. 150-151: "What led Luther to repudiate the intercession and adoration of Mary and the saints was primarily the conviction that the saints are sinners and their intercession and merits, therefore, cannot avail us, cannot cover our sins before God. Zwingli and Calvin take their starting point here, from the conception of God and deny that the love of God can be dependent on any intercession, and reject the worship of Mary and the honoring of the saints as a deification of creatures, and an injury to the sovereignty of God" (cf. also pp. 139-140; 16 sq.). 

Ut hoc fixum sit, detestabiles esse omnes cultus quos a se ipsis homines excogitant. 

pro captu suo. 

In his "Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion," 1897, pp. 303-304. The chapter of which this is a part was published separately in a slightly different form in 1888, with the title: "La vie intime dea dogmes et leur puissance d'évolution." 

H. Bois : " De la connaissance religieuse," 1894, p. 36. 

See: A. Kuyper, "Calvinisme en de Kunst," 1888; "Calvinism," Stone Lectures for 1898-1899, Lecture v.; E. Doumergue, "L'Art et le sentiment dans l'oeuvre de Calvin," 1902 (the second "Conference" is on "Painting in the Work of Calvin") ; "Jean Calvin," etc., ii. 1902, pp. 479-1187; "Calvin et l'art" in Foi et Vie, 16 March, 1900. Cf. also H. Bavinck, "De Algemeene Genade," 1894; also article "Calvin and Common Grace" in The Princeton Theological Review, 1909, vii. pp. 437-465. 

Opp. iv. 1195. Cf. the parallel remark in the "Genevan Catechism" of 1545 (Opp. vi. 55): "It is not to be understood then; that all sculpture and painting are forbidden, in general; but only all images which are made for divine service or for honoring Him in things visible, or in any way abusing them in idolatry. . . ." 

Deum effingi visibile specie nefas esse putamus. 

expediat. 

A. Bossert, "Calvin," 1906, pp. 203-204, after quoting this statement of Calvin's adds: "It is the program of Dutch painting," in this repeating what E. Doumergue in his "Conference" on "Painting in the Work of Calvin" (as cited, pp. 36-51) had fully set forth.

Calvin's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The first chapters of Calvin's "Institutes" are taken up with a comprehensive exposition of the sources and guarantee of the knowledge of God and divine things (Book I. chs. i.-ix.). A systematic treatise on the knowledge of God must needs begin with such an exposition; and we require no account of the circumstance that Calvin's treatise begins with it, beyond the systematic character of his mind and the clearness and comprehensiveness of his view. This exposition therefore makes its appearance in the earliest edition of the "Institutes," which attempted "to give a summary of religion in all its parts," redacted in orderly sequence; that is to say, which was intended as a textbook in theology. This was the second edition, published in 1539, which was considered by Calvin to be the first which at all corresponded to its title. In this edition this exposition already stands practically complete. Large insertions were made into it subsequently, by which it was greatly enriched as a detailed exposition and validation of the sources of our knowledge of God; but no modifications were made in its fundamental teaching by these additions, and the ground plan of the exposition as laid down in 1539 was retained unaltered throughout the subsequent development of the treatise. 

We may observe in the controversies in which Calvin had been engaged between 1536 and 1539 a certain preparation for writing this comprehensive and admirably balanced statement, with its equal repudiation of Romish and Anabaptist error and its high note of assurance in the face of the scepticism of the average man of the world. We may trace in it the fruits of his eager and exhaustive studies prosecuted in the interval, as pastor, professor, and Protestant statesman; and especially of his own ripening thought as he worked more and more into detail his systematic view of the body of truth. But we can attribute to nothing but his theological genius the feat by which he set a compressed apologetical treatise in the forefront of his little book - for the "Institutes" were still in 1539 a little book, although already expanded to more than double the size of their original form (edition of 1536). Thus he not only for the first time supplied the constructive basis for the Reformation movement, but even for the first time in the history of Christian theology drew in outline the plan of a complete structure of Christian Apologetics. For this is the significance in the history of thought of Calvin's exposition of the sources and guarantee of the knowledge of God, which forms the opening topic of his "Institutes." "Thus," says Julius Köstlin, after cursorily surveying the course of the exposition, "there already rises with him an edifice of Christian Apologetics, in its outlines complete (fertig). With it, he stands, already in 1539, unique (einzig) among the Reformers, and among Christian theologians in general up to his day. Only as isolated building-stones can appear in comparison with this, even what Melanchthon, for example, offered in the last elaboration of the Loci with reference to the proofs for the existence of God."2 In point of fact, in Augustine alone among his predecessors do we find anything like the same grasp of the elements of the problem as Calvin here exhibits; and nowhere among his predecessors do we find these elements brought together in a constructive statement of anything like the completeness and systematic balance which he gave to it. 

At once on its publication, however, Calvin's apologetical construction became the property of universal Christian thought, and it has entered so vitally into Protestant, and especially Reformed, thinking as to appear now-a-days very much a matter of course. It is difficult for us to appreciate its novelty in him or to realize that it is not as native to every Christian mind as it now seems to us the inevitable adjustment of the elements of the problems raised by the Christian revelation. Familiar as it seems, therefore, it is important that we should apprehend it, at least in its outlines, as it lies in its primary statement in Calvin's pages. So only can we appreciate Calvin's genius or estimate what we owe to him. A very brief abstract will probably suffice, however, to bring before us in the first instance the elements of Calvin's thought. These include the postulation of an innate knowledge of God in man, quickened and developed by a very rich manifestation of God in nature and providence, which, however, fails of its proper effect because of man's corruption in sin; so that an objective revelation of God, embodied in the Scriptures, was rendered necessary, and, as well, a subjective operation of the Spirit of God on the heart enabling sinful man to receive this revelation - by which conjoint divine action, objective and subjective, a true knowledge of God is communicated to the human soul. 

Drawn out a little more into detail, this teaching is as follows. The knowledge of God is given in the very same act by which we know self. For when we know self, we must know it as it is: and that means we must know it as dependent, derived, imperfect, and responsible being. To know self implies, therefore, the co-knowledge with self of that on which it is dependent, from which it derives, by the standard of which its imperfection is revealed, to which it is responsible. Of course, such a knowledge of self postulates a knowledge of God, in contrast with whom alone do we ever truly know self: but this only the more emphasises the fact that we know God in knowing self, and the relative priority of our knowledge of two objects of knowledge which we are conscious only of knowing together may for the moment be left undetermined. Meanwhile, it is clear than man has an instinctive and ineradicable knowledge of God, which, moreover, must produce appropriate reactions in his thought, feeling, and will, whence arises what we call religion. But these reactions are conditioned by the state of the soul which reacts. Although, then, man cannot avoid possessing a knowledge of God, and this innate knowledge of God is quickened and developed by the richest manifestations of God in nature and providence, which no man can escape either perceiving or so far apprehending, yet the actual knowledge of God which is framed in the human soul is affected by the subjective condition of the soul. The soul, being corrupted by sin, is dulled in its instinctive apprehension of God; and God's manifestation in nature and history is deflected in it. Accordingly the testimony of nature to God is insufficient that sinful man should know Him aright, and God has therefore supernaturally revealed Himself to His people and deposited this revelation of Himself in written Scriptures. In these Scriptures alone, therefore, do we possess an adequate revelation of God; and this revelation is attested as such by irresistible external evidence and attests itself as such by such marks of inherent divinity that no normal mind can resist them. But the sin-darkened minds to which it appeals are not normal minds, but disordered with the awful disease of sin. What is to give subjective effect in a sin-blinded mind to even a direct revelation from God? The revelation of God is its own credential. It needs no other light to be thrown upon it but that which emanates from itself: and no other light can produce the effect which its own splendor as a revelation of God should effect. But all fails when the receptivity is destroyed by sin. For sinners, therefore, there is requisite a repairing operation upon their souls before the light of the Word itself can accredit itself to them as light. This repairing operation on the souls of sinful men by which they are enabled to perceive light is called the testimony of the Holy Ghost: which is therefore just the subjective action of the Spirit of God on the heart, by virtue of which it is opened for the perception and reception of the objective revelation of God. The testimony of the Spirit cannot, then, take the place of the objective revelation of the Word: it is no revelation in this strict sense. It presupposes the objective revelation and only prepares the heart to respond to and embrace it. But the objective revelation can take no effect on the unprepared heart. What the operation of the Spirit on the heart does, then, is to implant, or rather to restore, a spiritual sense in the soul by which God is recognized in His Word. When this spiritual sense has been produced the necessity of external proofs that the Scriptures are the Word of God is superseded: the Word of God is as immediately perceived as such as light is perceived as light, sweetness as sweetness - as immediately and as inamissibly. The Christian's knowledge of God, therefore, rests no doubt on an instinctive perception of God native to man as man, developed in the light of a patefaction of God which pervades all nature and history; but particularly on an objective revelation of God deposited in Scriptures which bear in themselves their own evidence of their divine origin, to which every spiritual man responds with the same strength of conviction with which he recognizes light as light. This is the basis which Calvin in his " Institutes " places beneath his systematic exposition of the knowledge of God. 

The elements of Calvin's thought here, it will readily be seen, reduce themselves to a few great fundamental principles. These embrace particularly the following doctrines: the doctrine of the innate knowledge of God; the doctrine of the general revelation of God in nature and history; the doctrine of the special revelation of God and its embodiment in Scriptures; the doctrine of the noetic effects of sin; the doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. That we may do justice to his thought we must look in some detail at his treatment of each of these doctrines and of the subordinate topics which are necessarily connected with them. 

I. NATURAL REVELATION 

That the knowledge of God is innate (I. iii. 3), naturally engraved on the hearts of men (I. iv. 4), and so a part of their very constitution as men (I. iii. 1), that it is a matter of instinct (I. iii. 1, I. iv. 2), and every man is self-taught it from his birth (I. iii. 3), Calvin is thoroughly assured. He lays it down as incontrovertible fact that "the human mind, by natural instinct itself, possesses some sense of a deity" (I. iii. 1, ad init. et ad fin.; 3 - sensus divinitatis or deitatis),³ and defends the corollaries which flow from this fact, that the knowledge of God is universal and indelible. All men know there is a God, who has made them, and to whom they are responsible. No savage is sunk so low as to have lost this sense of deity, which is wrought into his very constitution: and the degradation of men's worship is a proof of its ineradicableness - since even such dehumanization as this worship manifests has not obliterated it (I. iii. 1). It is the precondition of all religion, without which no religion would ever have arisen; and it forms the silent assumption of all attempts to expound the origin of religion in fraud or political artifice, as it does also of all corruptions of religion, which find their nerve in men's incurable religious propensities (I. iii. 1). The very atheists testify to its persistence in their ill-concealed dread of the deity they profess to despise (I. iv. 2); and the wicked, strive they ever so hard to banish from their consciousness the sense of an accusing deity, are not permitted by nature to forget it (I. iii. 3). Thus the cases alike of the savages, the atheists, and the wicked are made contributory to the establishment of the fact, and the discussion concludes with the declaration that it is by this innate knowledge of God that men are discriminated from the brutes, so that for men to lose it would be to fall away from the very law of their creation (I. iii. 3, ad fin.).⁴ 

If the knowledge of God enters thus into the very idea of humanity and constitutes a law of its being, it follows that it is given in the same act of knowledge by which we know ourselves. This position is developed at length in the opening chapter. The discussion begins with a remark which reminds us of Augustine's familiar contention that the proper concern of mankind is the knowledge of God and the soul; to which it is added at once that these two knowledges are so interrelated that it is impossible to assign the priority to either. The knowledge of self involves the knowledge of God and also profits by the knowledge of God: the better we know ourselves the better we shall know God, but also, we shall never know ourselves as we really are save in contrast with God, by whom is supplied the only standard for the formation of an accurate judgment upon ourselves (I. i. 2). In his analysis of the mode of the implication of the knowledge of God in the knowledge of self, Calvin lays the stress upon our nature as dependent, derived, imperfect, and responsible beings, which if known at all must be known as such, and to be known as such must be known as over against that Being on whom we are dependent, to whom we owe our being, over against whom our imperfection is manifest, and to whom we are responsible (I. i. 1). As we are not self-existent, we must recognize ourselves as "living and moving" in Another. We recognize ourselves as products, and in knowing the product know the cause; thus our very endowments, seeing that they distil to us by drops from heaven, form so many streams up which our minds must needs travel to their Fountainhead. The perception of our imperfections is at the same time the perception of His perfection; so that our very poverty displays to us His infinite fulness. Our sense of dissatisfaction with ourselves directs our eyes to Him whose righteous judgment we can but anticipate; and when in the presence of His majesty we realize our meanness and in the presence of His righteousness we realize our sin, our perception of God passes into consternation as we recognize in Him our just Judge. 

The emphasis which Calvin places in this analysis upon the sense of sin and the part it plays in our knowledge of God, at once attracts attention. It is perhaps above everything the "miserable ruin" in which we find ourselves, which compels us, according to him, to raise our eyes towards heaven, spurred on not merely by a sense of lack but by a sense of dread: it is only, he declares, when we have begun to be displeased with ourselves that we energetically turn our thoughts Godward. This is already an indication of the engrossment of Calvin in this treatise with practical rather than merely theoretical problems. He is less concerned to show how man as man attains to a knowledge of God, than how man as he actually exists upon the earth attains to it. In the very act of declaring that this knowledge is instinctive and belongs to the very constitution of man as such, therefore, he so orders the exposition of the mode of its actual rise in the mind as to throw the emphasis on a quality which does not belong to man as such, but only to man as actually existing in the world - in that "miserable ruin into which we have been plunged by the defection of the first man" (I. i. 1). Man as unfallen, by the very necessity of his nature would have known God, the sphere of his being, the author of his existence, the standard of his excellences; but for man as fallen, Calvin seems to say, the strongest force compelling him to look upwards to the God above him, streams from his sense of sin, filling him with a fearful looking forward to judgment. 

It is quite obvious that such a knowledge of God as Calvin here postulates as the unavoidable and ineradicable possession of man, is far from a mere empty conviction that such a being as God exists. The knowledge of God which is given in our knowledge of self is not a bare perception, it is a conception: it has content. "The knowledge of ourselves, therefore," says Calvin (I. i. 1, ad fin.), " is not only an incitement to seek after God, but becomes a considerable assistance towards finding God." The knowledge of God with which we are natively endowed is therefore more than a bare conviction that God is: it involves, more or less explicated, some understanding of what God is. Such a knowledge of God can never be otiose and inert; but must produce an effect in human souls, in the way of thinking, feeling, willing. In other words, our native endowment is not merely a sensus deitatis, but also a semen religionis (I. iii. 1, 2; iv. 1, 4; v. 1). For what we call religion is just the reaction of the human soul to what it perceives God to be. Calvin is, therefore, just as insistent that religion is universal as that the knowledge of God is universal. "The seeds of religion," he insists, "are sown in every heart " (I. iv. 1; cf. v. 1); men are propense to religion (I. iii. 2, med.); and always and everywhere frame to themselves a religion, consonant with their conceptions of God. 

Calvin's ideas of the origin and nature of religion are set forth, if succinctly, yet with eminent clearness, in his second chapter. Wherever any knowledge of God exists, he tells us, there religion exists. He is not speaking here of a competent knowledge of God such as redeemed sinners have in Christ. But much less is he speaking of that mere notion that there is such a being as God which is sometimes called a knowledge of God. It may be possible to speculate on "the essence" of God without being moved by it. But certainly it is impossible to form any vital conception of God without some movement of intellect, feeling, and will towards Him; and any real knowledge of God is inseparable from movements of piety towards Him. Piety means reverence and love to God; and the knowledge of God tends therefore to produce in us, first, sentiments of fear and reverence; and, secondly, an attitude of receptivity and praise to Him as the fountain of all blessing. If man were not a sinner, indeed, such would be the result: men, knowing God, would turn to Him in confidence and commit themselves without reserve to His care - not so much fearing His judgments, as making them in sympathetic loyalty their own (I. ii. 2). And herein we see what pure and genuine religion is: "it consists in faith, united with a serious fear of God, comprehending a voluntary reverence, and producing legitimate worship agreeable to the injunctions of the law " (I. ii. 2, ad fin.).⁵

The definition of religion to which Calvin thus attains is exceedingly interesting, and that not merely because of its vital relation to the fundamental thought of these opening chapters, but also because of its careful adjustment to the state of the controversy in which he was engaged as a leader of the Reformation. In the first of these aspects, as we have already pointed out, religion is with him the vital effect of the knowledge of God in the human soul; so that inevitably religions will differ as the conceptions of God determining our thought and feeling and directing our life differ. In the estate of purity, the knowledge of God produces reverence and trust: and the religion of sinless man will therefore exhibit no other traits but trust and love. In sinful man, the same knowledge of God must produce, rather, a reaction of fear and hate - until the grace of God intervenes with a message of mercy. Sinful man cannot be trusted, therefore, to form his own religion for himself, but must in all his religious functioning place himself unreservedly under the direction of God in His gracious revelation. In its second aspect, then, we perceive Calvin carefully framing his definition so as to exclude all "will-worship" and to prepare the way for the condemnation of the "formal worship" and "ostentation in ceremonies" which had become prevalent in the old Church. The position he takes up here is essentially that which has come down to us under the name of "the Puritan principle." Religion consists, of course, not in the externalities of worship, but in faith, united with a serious fear of God, and a willing reverence. But its external expression in worship is not therefore unimportant, but is to be strictly confined to what is prescribed by God: to "legitimate worship, agreeable to the injunctions of the law" (I. ii. 2, ad fin.). This declaration is returned to and expounded in a striking section of the fourth chapter (I. iv. 3; cf. I. v. 13), where Calvin insists that "the divine will is the perpetual rule to which true religion is to be conformed," and asserts of newly invented modes of worshipping God, that they are tantamount to idolatry. God cannot be pleased by showing contempt for what He commands and substituting other things which He condemns; and none would dare to trifle in such a manner with Him unless they had already transformed Him in their minds into another and different Being: and in that case it is of little importance whether you worship one god or many.⁶

From this digression for the sake of asserting the "Puritan," that is, the "Reformed," principle with reference to acceptable worship, it is already apparent that Calvin did not suppose that men have been left to the notitia Dei insita for the framing of their religion, although he is insistent that therefrom proceeds a propensity to religion which already secures that all men shall have a religion (I. ii. 2). On the contrary, he teaches that to the ineradicable revelation of Himself which He has imprinted on human nature, God has added an equally clear and abundant revelation of Himself externally to us. As we cannot know ourselves without knowing God, so neither can we look abroad on nature or contemplate the course of events without seeing Him in His works and deeds (I. v.). Calvin is exceedingly emphatic as to the clearness, universality, and convincingness of this natural revelation of God. The whole world is but a theatre for the display of the divine glory (I. v. 5); God manifests Himself in every part of it, and, turn our eyes whichever way we will, we cannot avoid seeing Him; for there is no atom of the world in which some sparks of His glory do not shine (I. v. 1). So pervasive is God in nature, indeed, that it may even be said by a pious mind that nature is God (I. v. 5) - though the expression is too readily misapprehended in a Pantheistic (I. v. 5) or Materialistic (I. v. 4) sense to justify its use. Accordingly, no man can escape this manifestation of God; we cannot open our eyes without seeing it, and the language in which it is delivered to us penetrates through even the densest stupidity and ignorance (I. v. 1). To every individual on earth, therefore, with the exclusion of none (I. v. 7), God abundantly manifests Himself (I. v. 2). Each of the works of God invites the whole human race to the knowledge of Him; while their contemplation in the mass offers an even more prevalent exhibition of Him (I. v. 10). And so clear are His footsteps in His providence, that even what are commonly called accidents are only so many proofs of His activity (I. v. 8). 

In developing this statement of the external natural revelation of God, Calvin presents first His patefaction in creation (I. v. 1-6) and then His patefaction in providence (I. v. 7-9), and under each head lays the primary stress on the manifestations of the divine wisdom and power (I. v. 2-5, wisdom; 6, power; 8, wisdom and power). But the other attributes which enter into His glory are not neglected. Thus, under the former caption, he points out that the perception of the divine power in creation "leads us to the consideration of His eternity; because He from whom all things derive their origin must necessarily be eternal and self-existent," while we must postulate goodness and mercy as the motives of His creation and providence (I. v. 6). Under the second caption, he is particularly copious in drawing out the manifestations of the divine benignity and beneficence - of His clemency - though he does not scruple also to point to the signs of His severity (I. v. 7, cf. 10). From the particular contemplation of the divine clemency and severity in their peculiar distribution here, indeed, he pauses to draw an argument for a future life when apparent irregularities will be adjusted (I. v. 10). 

The vigor and enthusiasm with which Calvin prosecutes his exposition of the patefaction of God in nature and history is worth emphasising further. He even turns aside (I. v. 9) to express his special confidence in it, in contrast to a priori reasoning, as the "right way and the best method of seeking God." A speculative inquiry into the essence of God, he suggests, merely fatigues the mind and flutters in the brain. If we would know God vitally, in our hearts, let us rather contemplate Him in His works. These, we shall find, as the Psalmist points out, declare His greatness and conduce to His praise. Once more, we may observe here the concreteness of Calvin's mind and method, and are reminded of the practical end he keeps continually in view.⁷ So far is he from losing himself in merely speculative elaborations or prosecuting his inquiries under the spur of "presumptuous curiosity," that the practical religious motive is always present, dominating his thought. His special interest in the theistic argument is, accordingly, due less to the consideration that it rounds out his systematic view of truth than to the fact that it helps us to the vital knowledge of God. And therefore he is no more anxious to set it forth in its full force than he is to point out the limitations which affect its practical value.⁸ In and of itself, indeed, it has no limitations; Calvin is fully assured of its validity and analyses its data with entire confidence; to him nothing is more certain than that in the mirror of His works God gives us clear manifestations both of Himself and of His everlasting dominion (I. v. 11). But Calvin cannot content himself with an intellectualistic contemplation of the objective validity of the theistic argument. So dominated is he by practical interests that he actually attaches to the chapter in which he argues this objective validity a series of sections in which he equally strongly argues the subjective inability of man to receive its testimony. Objectively valid as the theistic proofs are, they are ineffective to produce a just knowledge of God in the sinful heart. The insertion of these sections here is the more striking in that they almost seem unnecessary in view of the clear exposition of the noetic effects of sin which had been made in the preceding chapter (ch. iv.) - although, of course, there the immediate reference was to the notitia Dei insita, while here it is to the notitia Dei acquisita. 

Thus, however, our attention is drawn very pointedly to Calvin's doctrine of the disabilities with reference to the knowledge of God which are induced in the human mind by sin. He has, as has just been noted, adverted formally to them twice in these opening chapters of his treatise - on the earlier occasion (ch. iv.) with especial reference to the revelation of God made in the constitution of human nature, and on the later occasion (ch. v. §§ 11-15) with especial reference to the revelation of God made in His works and deeds. Were man in his normal state, he could not under this double revelation, internal and external, fail to know God as God would wish to be known. If he actually comes short of an adequate knowledge of God, therefore, this cannot be attributed to any shortcomings in the revelation of God. Calvin is perfectly clear as to the objective adequacy of the general revelation of God. Men, however, do come short of an adequate knowledge of God; and that not merely some men, but all men: the failure of the general revelation of God to produce in men an adequate knowledge of Him is as universal as is the revelation itself. The explanation is to be found in the corruption of men's hearts by sin, by which not merely are they rendered incapable of reading off the revelation of God which is displayed in His works and deeds, but their very instinctive knowledge of God, embedded in their constitution as men, is dulled and almost obliterated. The energy with which Calvin asserts this is almost startling, and matches in its emphasis that which he had placed on the reality and objective validity of the revelation of God. Though the seeds of religion are sown by God in every heart, yet not one man in a hundred has preserved even these seeds sound, and in no one at all have they grown to their legitimate harvest. All have degenerated from the true knowledge of God, and genuine piety has perished from the earth (I. iv. 1). The light which God has kindled in the breasts of men has been smothered and all but extinguished by their iniquity (I. iv. 4). The manifestation which God has given of Himself in the structure and organization of the world is lost on our stupidity (I. v. 11). The rays of God's glory are diffused all around us, but do not illuminate the darkness of our mind (I. v. 14). So that in point of fact, "men who are taught only by nature, have no certain, sound or distinct knowledge, but are confined to confused principles; they worship accordingly an unknown God " (I. v. 12, fin.): "no man can have the least knowledge of true and sound doctrine without having been a disciple of the Scriptures" (I. vi. 2, ad fin.): "the human mind is through its imbecility unable to attain any knowledge of God without the assistance of the Sacred Word" (I. vi. 4, ad fin.). 

Calvin therefore teaches with great emphasis the bankruptcy of the natural knowledge of God. We must keep fully in mind, however, that this is not due in his view to any inadequacy or ineffectiveness of natural revelation, considered objectively.⁹ He continues to insist that the seeds of religion are sown in every heart (I. v. l, ad init.) ; that through all man's corruption the instincts of nature still suggest the memory of God to his mind (I. v. 2); that it is impossible to eradicate that sense of the deity which is naturally engraved on all hearts (I. iv. 4, ad fin.); that the structure and organization of the world, and the things that daily happen out of the ordinary course of nature, that is under the providential government of God, bear a witness to God which the dullest ear cannot fail to hear (I. v. 1, 3, 7, esp. II. vi. 1); and that the light that shines from creation, while it may be smothered, cannot be so extinguished but that some rays of it find their way into the most darkened soul (I. v. 14). God has therefore never left Himself without a witness; but, "with various and most abundant benignity sweetly allures men to a knowledge of Him, though they persist in following their own ways, their pernicious and fatal errors" (I. v. 14). The sole cause of the failure of the natural revelation is to be found, therefore, in the corruption of the human heart. Two results flow from this fact. First, it is not a question of the extinction of the knowledge of God, but of the corruption of the knowledge of God. And secondly, men are without excuse for their corruption of the knowledge of God. On both points Calvin is insistent. 

He does not teach that all religion has perished out of the earth, but only that no "genuine piety" remains (I. iv. 1, ad init.): he does not teach that men retain no knowledge of God, but no "certain, sound or distinct knowledge" (I. v. 12, ad fin.). The seed of religion remains their inalienable possession, "but it is so corrupted as to produce only the worst fruits" (I. iv. 4, ad fin.). Here we see Calvin's judgment on natural religion. Its reality he is quick to assert: but equally quickly its inadequacy - and that because not merely of a negative incompleteness but also of a positive corruption. Men have corrupted the knowledge of God; and perhaps Calvin might even subscribe the declaration of a modern writer that men's religions are their worst crimes.¹⁰ Certainly Calvin paints in dark colors the processes by which men form for themselves conceptions of God under the light of nature, or rather, in the darkness of their minds, from which the light of nature is as far as lies in their power excluded. "Their conceptions of God are formed, not according to the representations He gives of Himself, but by the invention of their own presumptuous imaginations" (I. iv. 1, med.). They set Him far off from themselves and make Him a mere idler in heaven (I. iv. 2); they invent all sorts of vague and confused notions concerning Him, until they involve themselves in such a vast accumulation of errors as almost to extinguish the light that is within them (I. iv. 4); they confuse Him with His works, until even a Plato loses himself in the round globe (I. v. 11); they even endeavor to deny His very existence (I. v. 12), and substitute demons in His place (I. v. 13). Certainly it is not surprising, then, that the Holy Spirit, speaking in Scripture, "condemns as false and lying whatever was formerly worshipped as divine among the Gentiles," nay, "rejects as false every form of worship which is of human contrivance," and "leaves no Deity but in Mount Zion" (I. v. 13). The religions of men differ, doubtless, among themselves: some are more, some less evil; but all are evil and the evil of none is trivial. 

Are men to be excused for this, their corruption of the knowledge of God? Are we to listen with sympathy to the plea that light has been lacking? It is not a case of insufficient light, but of an evil heart. Excuses are vain, for this heart-darkness is criminal. If we speak of ignorance here, we must remember it is a guilty ignorance; an ignorance which rests on pride and vanity and contumacy (I. iv. 1), an ignorance which our own consciences will not excuse (I. v. 15). What! shall we plead that we lack ears to hear what even mute creatures proclaim? that we have no eyes to see what it needs no eyes to see? that we are mentally too weak to learn what mindless creatures teach? (I. v. 15). We are ignorant of what all things conspire to inform us of, only because we sinfully corrupt their message; their insufficiency has its roots in us, not in them; wherefore we are without excuse (I. iv. 1; v. 14-15). Our "folly is inexcusable, seeing that it originates not only in a vain curiosity, but in false confidence, and an immoderate desire to exceed the limits of human knowledge" (I. iv. 1, fin.). "Whatever deficiency of natural ability prevents us from attaining the pure and clear knowledge of God, yet, since that deficiency arises from our own fault, we are left without any excuse " (I. v. 15, ad init.). 

The natural revelation of God failing thus to produce its legitimate effects of a sound knowledge of God, because of the corruption of men's hearts, we are thrown back for any adequate knowledge of God upon supernatural activities of God communicating His truth to men. It is accordingly in an assertion and validation of these supernatural revelatory operations of God that Calvin's discussion reaches its true center. To this extent his whole discussion of natural revelation - in its inception in the implantation in man of a sensus deitatis, in its culmination in the patefaction of God in His works and deeds, and in its failure through the sin-bred blindness of humanity - may be said to be merely introductory to and intended to prepare the way for his discussion of the supernatural operations of God by which He meets this otherwise hopeless condition of humanity sunk in its corrupt notions of God. These operations obviously must meet a twofold need. A clearer and fuller revelation of God must be brought to men than that which is afforded by nature. And the darkened minds of men must be illuminated for its reception. In other words, what is needed, is a special supernatural revelation on the one hand, and a special supernatural illumination on the other. It is to the validation of this twofold supernatural operation of God in communicating the knowledge of Himself that Calvin accordingly next addresses himself (chs. vi.-ix.). 

One or two peculiarities of his treatment of them attract our notice at the outset, and seem to invite attention, before we enter into a detailed exposition of the doctrine he presents. It is noticeable that Calvin does not pretend that this supernatural provision of knowledge of God to meet men's sin-born ignorance is as universal in its reach as the natural revelation which it supplements and, so far as efficiency is concerned, supersedes. On the contrary, he draws it expressly into a narrower circle. That general revelation "presented itself to all eyes" and "is more than sufficient to deprive the ingratitude of men of every excuse, since," in it, "God, in order to involve all mankind in the same guilt, sets an exhibition of His majesty, delineated in the creatures, before them all without exception" (I. vi. 1, init.). But His supernatural revelation He grants only "to those whom He intends to unite in a more close and familiar connection with Himself" (ibid.); "to those to whom He has determined to make His instructions effectual" (I. vi. 3); in a word, to "the elect" (I. vi. 1; vii. 5 near end). In dealing with the supernatural revelation of God, therefore, Calvin is conscious of dealing with a special operation of the divine grace by means of which God is communicating to those He is choosing to be His people the saving knowledge of Himself. It is observable also that, in speaking of this supernatural revelation, he identifies it from the outset distinctly with the Scriptures (ch. vi.). This is in accordance with the practical end and engrossment which, as we have already had occasion to note, dominate his whole discussion. He was not unaware that the special revelation of God antedates the Scriptures: on occasion he speaks discriminatingly enough of this revelation in itself and the Scriptures in which it is embodied. But his mind is less on the abstract truth than on the concrete conditions which surrounded him in his work. Whatever may have been true ages gone, to-day the special revelation of God coalesces with the Scriptures, and he does not occupy himself formally with it except as it presents itself to the men of his own time. The task which he undertakes, therefore, is distinctly to show that men have in the Scriptures a special revelation of God supplementing and so far superseding the general revelation of God in nature; and that God so operates with this His special revelation of Himself as to overcome the sin-bred disabilities of man. 

In this state of the case we may perhaps be justified in leaving at this point the logical development of his construction and expounding Calvin's teaching more formally under the heads of his doctrine of Holy Scripture and his doctrine of the Testimony of the Holy Spirit. 

II. HOLY SCRIPTURE 

First, then, what was Calvin's doctrine of Holy Scripture? 

Under the designation of "Scripture" or "the Scriptures" Calvin understood that body of writings which have been transmitted to us as the divinely given rule of faith and life. In this body of writings, that is to say, in "the Canon of Scripture," he included all the books of the Old Covenant which were recognized by the Jewish Church as of divine gift, and as such handed down to the Christian Church; and all the books of the New Covenant which have been given the Church by the Apostles as its authoritative law-code. Calvin's attitude towards the canon was thus somewhat more conservative than, say, Luther's. He knew of no such distinction as that between Canonical and Deutero-Canonical Books, whether in the Old or the New Testament. The so-called "Apocryphal Books" of the Old Testament, included within the canon by the decrees of Trent, he rejected out of hand: the so-called "Antilegomena" of the New Testament he accepted without exception.¹¹

The representations which are sometimes made, to the effect that he felt doubts of the canonicity of some of the canonical books or even was convinced of their uncanonicity,¹² rest on a fundamental misconception of his attitude, and are wrecked on his express assertions. No doubt he has not left us commentaries on all the Biblical Books, and no doubt his omission to write or lecture on certain books is not to be explained merely by lack of time, but involves an act of selection on his part, which was not unaffected by his estimate of the relative importance of the several books or by his own spiritual sympathies.¹³ He has also occasionally employed a current expression, such as, for example, "the Canonical Epistle of John,"14 when speaking of I John, which, if strictly interpreted, might be thought to imply denial of the genuineness of certain books of the canon - such as II and III John - and not merely the momentary or habitual neglect of them; just as the common use of the term "the Apostle" of Paul might be said, if similarly strictly pressed, to imply that there was no other Apostle but he. It is also true that he expresses himself with moderation when adducing the evidence for the canonicity of this book or that, and in his modes of statement quite clearly betrays his recognition that the evidence is more copious or more weighty in some cases than in others. But he represents the evidence as sufficient in all cases and declares with confidence his conclusion in favor of the canonicity of the whole body of books which make up our Bible, and in all his writings and controversies acts firmly on this presupposition. How, for example, is it possible to contend that some grave reason connected with doubts on his part of their canonical authority underlies the failure of Calvin to comment on "the three books attributed to Solomon, particularly the Song of Songs,"15 in the face of the judgment of the ministers of Geneva with regard to Castellion, which is thus reported by Calvin himself over his signature.¹⁶ "We unanimously judged him one who might be appointed to the functions of the pastor, except for a single obstacle which opposed it. When we asked him, according to custom, whether he was in accord with us on all points of doctrine, he replied that there were two on which he could not share our views: one of them . . . being our inscribing the Song of Solomon in the number of sacred books. . . . We conjured him first of all, not to permit himself the levity of treating as of no account the constant witness of the universal Church; we reminded him that there is no book the authenticity of which is doubtful, about which some discussion has not been raised; that even those to which we now attach an undisputed authenticity were not admitted from the beginning without controversy; that precisely this one is one which has never been openly repudiated. We also exhorted him against trusting unreasonably in his own judgment, especially where nothing was toward which all the world had not been aware of before he was born. . . . All these arguments having no effect on him, we thought it necessary to consider among ourselves what we ought to do. Our unanimous opinion was that it would be dangerous and would set a bad precedent to admit him to the ministry in these circumstances. . . . We should thus condemn ourselves for the future to raise no objection to another, should one present himself and wish similarly to repudiate Ecclesiastes or Proverbs or any other book of the Bible, without being dragged into a debate as to what is and what is not worthy of the Holy Spirit."17 Not merely the firmness with which Calvin held to the canoncity of all the books of our Bible, but the importance he attached to the acceptance of the canonical Scriptures in their integrity, is made perfectly clear by such an incident; and indeed so also are the grounds on which he accepted these books as canonical. 

These grounds, to speak briefly, were historico-critical. Calvin, we must bear in mind, was a Humanist before he was a Reformer,¹⁸ and was familiar with the whole process of determining the authenticity of ancient documents. If then he received the Scriptures from the hands of the Church, not indulging himself in the levity of treating the constant witness of the universal Church as of no account, he was nevertheless not disposed to take "tradition" uncritically at its face value. His acceptance of the canon of the Church was therefore not a blind but a critically mediated acceptance. Therefore he discarded the Aprocrypha: and if he accepted the Antilegomena it was because they commended themselves to his historico-critical judgment as holding of right a place in the canon. The organon of his critical investigation of the canon was in effect twofold. He inquired into the history of the books in question. He inquired into their internal characteristics. Have they come down to us from the Apostolic Church, commanding either unbrokenly or on the whole the suffrages of those best informed or best qualified to judge of their canonical claims? Are they in themselves conformable to the claims made for them of apostolic, which is as much as to say, divine origin? It was by the application of this twofold test that he excluded the Apocrypha of the Old Testament from the canon. They had in all ages been discriminated from the canonical books, and differ from them as the writing of an individual differs from an instrument which has passed under the eye of a notary and been sealed to be received of all.¹⁹ Some Fathers, it is true, deemed them canonical; even Augustine was of that way of thinking, although he had to allow that opinions differed widely upon the matter. Others, however, could admit them to no higher rank than that of "ecclesiastical books," which inight be useful to read but could not supply a foundation for doctrine; among such were Jerome and Rufinus.²⁰ And, when we observe their contents, no sane mind will fail to pass judgment against them.²¹ Rome may, indeed, find her interest in defending them, for she may discover support in them for some of her false teachings. But this very fact is their condemnation. "I beg you to observe," he says of the closing words of II Maccabees, where the writer sets his hope in his own works: "I beg you to observe how far this confession falls away from the majesty of the Holy Spirit"22 - that is to say, from the constant teaching of Holy Scripture. 

And it was by the application of the same two-fold test that he accredited the Antilegomena of the New Testament as integral parts of the canon. In the Preface which he has prefixed to II Peter, for example, he notes that Eusebius speaks of some who rejected it. "If it is a question," he adds, "of yielding to the simple authority of men, since he [Eusebius] does not name those who brought the matter into doubt, no necessity seems to be laid on us to credit these unknown people. And, moreover, he adds that afterwards it was generally received without contradiction. . . . It is a matter agreed upon by all, of common accord, that there is nothing in this Epistle unworthy of Saint Peter, but that, on the contrary, from one end of it to the other, there are apparent the force, vehemence and grace of the Spirit with which the Apostles were endowed. . . . Since, then, in all parts of the Epistle the majesty of the Spirit of Christ is clearly manifest, I cannot reject it entirely, although I do not recognize in it the true and natural phrase of Saint Peter."23 To meet the difficulty arising from the difference of the style from that of I Peter, he therefore supposed that the Epistle is indeed certainly Peter's, since otherwise it would be a forgery, a thing inconceivable in a book of its high character,²⁴ but was dictated in his old age to some one of his disciples, to whom it owes its peculiarities of diction. Here we have an argument conducted on the two grounds of the external witness of the Church and the internal testimony of the contents of the book: and these are the two grounds on which he everywhere depends. Of the Epistle of Jude he says:25 "Because the reading of it is very useful, and it contains nothing that is not in accord with the purity of the Apostolic doctrine; because also it has long been held to be authentic by all the best men, for my part, I willingly place it in the number of the other epistles." In other cases the external evidence of the Church is not explicitly mentioned and the stress of the argument is laid on the Apostolic character of the writing as witnessed by its contents. He receives Hebrews among the Apostolic Epistles without difficulty, because nowhere else is the sacrifice of Christ more clearly or simply declared and other evangelical doctrines taught: surely it must have been due to the wiles of Satan that the Western Church so long doubted its canonicity.²⁶ James seems to him to contain nothing unworthy of an Apostle of Christ, but to be on the contrary full of good teaching, valuable for all departments of Christian living.²⁷ For the application of this argument he of course takes his start from the Homologoumena, which gave him the norm of Apostolic teaching which he used for testing the other books. It must not be supposed that he received even these books, however, without critico-historical inquiry: but only that the uniform witness of the Church to their authority weighed with him above all grounds of doubt. It was, in a word, on the ground of a purely scientific investigation that Calvin accredited to himself the canon. It had come down to him through the ages, accredited as such by the constant testimony of its proper witnesses: and it accredited itself to critical scrutiny by its contents.²⁸ 

The same scientific spirit attended Calvin in his dealing with the text of Scripture. As a Humanist he was familiar with the processes employed in settling the texts of classical authors; and naturally he used the same methods in his determination of the text of the Biblical books. His practice here is marked by a combination of freedom and sobriety; and his decisions, though often wrong, as they could not but be in the state of the knowledge of the transmission of the New Testament text at the time, always manifest good sense, balance, and trained judgment. In his remarks on the pericope of the adulteress (John viii. 1-11), we meet the same circle of ideas with which we are familiar from his remarks on the Antilegomena: "because it has always been received by the Latin Churches and is found in many of the Greek copies and old writers, and contains nothing which would be unworthy of an apostolical spirit, there is no reason why we should refuse to take our profit from it."29 He accepts the three-witness passage of I John v. 7. "Since the Greek codices do not agree with themselves," he says, "I scarcely dare reach a conclusion. Yet, as the context flows most smoothly if this clause is added, and I see that it stands in the best codices and those of the most approved credit, I also willingly adopt it."30 When puzzled by difficulties, he, quite like the Humanist dealing with a classical text, feels free to suggest that there may be a "mendum in voce." This he does, for example, in Mat. xxiii. 35, where he adduces this possibility among others; and still more instructively in Mat. xxvii. 9, where he just as simply assumes "Jeremiah" to be a corrupt reading³¹ as his own editors assume that the "Apius" which occurs in the French version of the "Institutes" in connection with Josephus is due to a slip of his translators, not of his own - remarking: "It is evident that it cannot be Calvin who translated this passage."32 His assurance that it cannot be the Biblical writer who stumbles leads him similarly to attribute what seems to him a manifest error to the copyists. It is only, however, in such passages as these that he engages formally in textual emendation. Ordinarily he simply follows the current text, although he is, of course, not without an intelligent ground for his confidence in it.³³ As we cursorily read his commentaries we feel ourselves in the hands of one who is sanely and sagely scrutinizing the text with which he is dealing from the point of view of a scholar accustomed to deal with ancient texts, whose confidence in its general integrity represents the well-grounded conclusion of a trained judgment. His occasional remarks on the text, and his rare suggestion of a corruption, are indicia of the alertness of his general scrutiny of the text and serve to assure us that his acceptance of it as a whole as sound is not merely inert acquiescence in tradition, but represents the calm judgment of an instructed intelligence. 

INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 

Now, these sixty-six books of canonical Scriptures handed down to us, in the singular providence of God,³⁴ in a sound text which meets the test of critical scrutiny, Calvin held to be the very Word of God. This assertion he intended in its simplest and most literal sense. He was far from overlooking the fact that the Scriptures were written by human hands: he expressly declares that, though we have received them from God's own mouth, we have nevertheless received them "through the ministry of men."35 But he was equally far from conceiving that the relation of their human authors to their divine author resembled in any degree that of free intermediaries, who, after receiving the divine word, could do with it what they listed.³⁶ On the contrary, he thought of them rather as notaries (IV. viii. 9), who set down in authentic registers (I. vi. 3) what was dictated to them (Argumentum in Ev. Joh.).³⁷ They wrote, therefore, merely as the organs of the Holy Ghost, and did not speak ex suo sensu, not humano impulsu, not sponte sua, not arbitrio suo, but set out only quae coelitus mandata fuerant.³⁸ The diversity of the human authors thus disappears for Calvin before the unity of the Spirit, the sole responsible author of Scripture, which is to him therefore not the verba Dei, but emphatically the verbum Dei.³⁹ It is a Deo ("Institutes," I. vii. 5); it has "come down to us from the very mouth of God " (I. vii. 5);⁴⁰ it has " come down from heaven as if the living words of God themselves were heard in it" (I. vii. 1);⁴¹ and "we owe it therefore the same reverence which we owe to God Himself, since it has proceeded from Him alone, and there is nothing human mixed with it" (Com. on II Tim. iii. 16).⁴² According to this declaration the Scriptures are altogether divine, and in them, as he puts it energetically in another place, "it is God who speaks with us and not mortal men " (Com. on II Pet. i. 20).⁴³ Accordingly, he cites Scripture everywhere not as the word of man but as the pure word of God. His "holy word" is "the scepter of God"; every statement in which is "a heavenly oracle" which "cannot fail" (Dedicatory Epistle to the "Institutes," Opp. ii. 12): in it God "opens His own sacred mouth" to add His direct word to the voice of His mute creatures (I. vi. 1). To say "Scripture says" and to say "the Holy Ghost says" is all one. We contradict the Holy Spirit, says Calvin - meaning the Scriptures - when we deny to Christ the name of Jehovah or anything which belongs to the majesty of Jehovah (I. xiii. 23). "The Holy Spirit pronounces," says he, . . . "Paul declares . . . the Scripture condemns . . . wherefore it is not surprising if the Holy Spirit reject" - all in one running context, meaning ever the same thing (I. v. 13): just as in another context he uses interchangeably the "commandments of Christ" and the "authority of Scripture" of the same thing (Dedicatory Letter). 

It may be that Calvin has nowhere given us a detailed discussion of the mode of the divine operation in giving the Scriptures. He is sure that they owe their origin to the divine gift (I. vi. 1, 2, 3) and that God has so given them that they are emphatically His word, as truly as if we were listening to His living voice speaking from heaven (I. vii. 1): and, as we have seen, he is somewhat addicted to the use of language which, strictly taken, would imply that the mode of their gift was "dictation." The Scriptures are "public records" (I. vi. 2), their human authors have acted as "notaries" (IV. viii. 9), who have set down nothing of their own, but only what has been dictated to them, so that there appears no admixture of what is human in their product (on II Tim. iii. 16).⁴⁴ It is not unfair to urge, however, that this language is figurative; and that what Calvin has in mind is not to insist that the mode of inspiration was dictation, but that the result of inspiration is as if it were by dictation, viz., the production of a pure word of God free from all human admixtures. The term "dictation" was no doubt in current use at the time to express rather the effects than the mode of inspiration.⁴⁵ This being allowed, it is all the more unfair to urge that, Calvin's language being in this sense figurative, he is not to be understood as teaching that the effect of inspiration was the production of a pure word of God, free from all admixture of human error. This, on the contrary, is precisely what Calvin does teach, and that with the greatest strenuousness. He everywhere asserts that the effects of inspiration are such that God alone is the responsible author of the inspired product, that we owe the same reverence to it as to Him Himself, and should esteem the words as purely His as if we heard them proclaimed with His living voice from heaven; and that there is nothing human mixed with them. And he everywhere deals with them on that assumption. It is true that men have sought to discover in Calvin, particularly in his "Harmony of the Gospels," acknowledgments of the presence of human errors in the fabric of Scripture.⁴⁶ But these attempts rest on very crass misapprehensions of Calvin's efforts precisely to show that there are no such errors in the fabric of Scripture. When he explains, for example, that the purpose "of the Evangelists"- or "of the Holy Spirit," for he significantly uses these designations as synonyms - was not to write a chronologically exact record, but to present the general essence of things, this is not to allow that the Scriptures err humanly in their record of the sequences of time, but to assert that they intend to give no sequences of time and therefore cannot err in this regard. When again he suggests that an "error" has found its way into the text of Mat. xxvii. 9 or possibly into Mat. xxiii. 35, he is not speaking of the original, but of the transmitted text;⁴⁷ and it would be hard if he were not permitted to make such excursions into the region of textual criticism without laying himself open to the charge of denying his most assured conviction that nothing human is mixed with Scripture. In point of fact, Calvin not only asserts the freedom of Scripture as given by God from all error, but never in his detailed dealing with Scripture allows that such errors exist in it.⁴⁸ 

If we ask for the ground on which he asserts this high doctrine of inspiration, we do not see that any other reply can be given than that it was on the ground of the teaching of Scripture itself. The Scriptures were understood by Calvin to claim to be in this high sense the word of God; and a critical scrutiny of their contents brought to him nothing which seemed to him to negative this claim. There were other grounds on which he might and did base a firm confidence in the divine origin of the Scriptures and the trustworthiness of their teaching as a revelation from God. But there were no other grounds on which he could or did rest his conviction that these Scriptures are so from God that there is nothing human mixed with them, and their every affirmation is to be received with the deference which is due to the living voice of God speaking from heaven. On these other grounds Calvin was led to trust the teaching of the Scriptures as a divine revelation: and he therefore naturally trusted their teaching as to their own nature and inspiration. 

Such, then, are the Scriptures as conceived by Calvin: sixty-six sacred books, "dictated" by God to His "notaries" that they might, in this "public record," stand as a perpetual special revelation of Himself to His people, to supplement or to supersede in their case the general revelation which He gives of Himself in His works and deeds, but which is rendered ineffective by the sin-bred disabilities of the human soul. For this, according to Calvin, is the account to give of the origin of Scripture, and this the account to give of the function it serves in the world. It was because man in his sinful imbecility was unable to profit by the general revelation which God has spread before all eyes, so that they are all without excuse (I. vi. 1), that God in His goodness gave to "those whom He intended to unite in a more close and familiar connection with Himself," a special revelation in open speech (I. vi. 1). And it was because of the mutability of the human mind, prone to errors of all kinds, corrupting the truth, that He committed this His special revelation to writing, that it might never be inaccessible to "those to whom He determined to make His instructions effectual" (I. vi. 3). In Calvin's view, therefore, the Scriptures are a documentation of God's special revelation of Himself unto salvation (I. vi. 1, ad init.); but a documentation cared for by God Himself, so that they are, in fine, themselves the special revelation of God unto salvation in documentary form (I. vi. 2, 3). The necessity for the revelation documented in them arises from the blindness of men in their sin: the necessity for the documentation of this revelation arises from the instability of men, even when taught of God. We must conceive of special revelation, and of the Scriptures as just its documentation, therefore, as not precisely a cure, but rather an assistance to man dulled in his sight so as not to be able to perceive God in His general revelation. "For," says Calvin, "as persons who are old, or whose eyes have somehow become dim, if you show them the most beautiful book, though they perceive that something is written there, can scarcely read two words together, yet by the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly - so the Scripture . . ." etc. (I. vi. 1). The function of Scripture thus, as special revelation documented, is to serve as spiritual spectacles to enable those of dulled spiritual sight to see God. 

Of course, the Scriptures do more than this. They not only reveal the God of Nature more brightly to the sin-darkened eye; they reveal also the God of Grace, who may not be found in nature. Calvin does not overlook this wider revelation embodied in them: he particularly adverts to it (I. vi. 1). But he turns from it for the moment as less directly germane to his present object, which is to show that without the "spectacles" of Scripture, sinful man would not be able to attain to a sound knowledge of even God the Creator. It is on this, therefore, that he now insists. It was only because God revealed Himself in this special, supernatural way to them, that our first fathers - "Adam, Noah, Abraham and the rest of the patriarchs" - were able to retain Him in their knowledge (I. vi. 1). It was only through this special revelation, whether renewed to them by God, or handed down in tradition, "by the ministry of men," that their posterity continued in the knowledge of God (I. vi. 2). "At length, that the truth might remain in the world in a continual course of instruction to all ages, God determined that the same oracles which He deposited with the patriarchs, should be committed to public records" - first the Law, then the Prophets, and then the books of the New Covenant (I. vi. 2). It is now, therefore, only through these Scriptures that man can attain to a true knowledge of God. The revelation of God in His works is not useless: it makes all men without excuse; it provides an additional though lower and less certain revelation of God to His people - to a consideration of which all should seriously apply themselves, though they should principally attend to the Word (I. vi. 2). But experience shows that without the Word the sinful human mind is too weak to reach a sound knowledge of God, and therefore without it men wander in vanity and error. Calvin seems to speak sometimes almost as if the Scriptures, that is special revelation, wholly superseded general revelation (I. v. 12, ad fin.; vi. 2, ad fin.; 4, ad fin.). More closely scrutinized, it becomes evident, however, that he means only that in the absence of Scripture, that is of special revelation, the general revelation of God is ineffective to preserve any sound knowledge of Him in the world: but in the presence of Scripture, general revelation is not set aside, but rather brought back to its proper validity. The real relation between general and special revelation, as the matter lay in Calvin's mind, thus proves to be, not that the one supersedes the other, but that special revelation supplements general revelation indeed, but in the first instance rather repeats and by repeating vivifies and vitalizes general revelation, and flows confluently in with it to the one end of both, the knowledge of God (I. vi. 2). What special revelation is, therefore - and the Scriptures as its documentation - is very precisely represented by the figure of the spectacles. It is aid to the dulled vision of sinful man, to enable it to see God. 

The question forcibly presents itself, however, whether "spectacles" will serve the purpose here. Has not Calvin painted the sin-bred blindness of men too blackly to encourage us to think it can be corrected by such an aid to any remainders of natural vision which may be accredited to them? The answer must be in the affirmative. But this only opens the way to point out that Calvin does not present special revelation, or the Scriptures as special revelation documented, as the entire cure, but places by the side of it the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. Special revelation, or Scripture as its documented form, provides in point of fact, in the view of Calvin, only the objective side of the cure he finds has been provided by God. The subjective side is provided by the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. The spectacles are provided by the Scriptures: the eyes are opened that they may see even through these spectacles, only by the witness of the Spirit in the heart. We perceive, then, that in Calvin's view the figure of the spectacles is a perfectly just one. He means to intimate that special revelation alone will not produce a knowledge of God in the human soul: that something more than external aid is needed before it can see: and to leave the way open to proceed to point out what further is required that sinful man may see God. Sinful man, we say again: for the whole crux lies there. Had there been no sin, there would have been no need of even special revelation. In the light of the splendid revelation of Himself which God has displayed in the theatre of nature, man with his native endowment of instinctive knowledge of God would have bloomed out into a full and sound knowledge of Him. But with sinful man, the matter is wholly different. He needs more light and he needs something more than light - he needs the power of sight.⁴⁹ That we may apprehend Calvin's thought, therefore, we must turn to the consideration of his doctrine of the Testimony of the Spirit. 

III. THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT 

What is Calvin's doctrine of the Testimony of the Spirit? 

The particular question which Calvin addresses himself to when he turns to the consideration of what he calls the testimony of the Spirit concerns the accrediting of Scripture, not the assimilation of its revelatory contents. The reader cannot fail to experience some disappontment at this. The whole development of the discussion hitherto undoubtedly fosters the expectation, not, indeed, of an exclusive treatment of the assimilation of special revelation by sinful man - for both problems are raised by it and the two problems are at bottom one and their solution one - but certainly of some formal treatment of it, and indeed of such a treatment of the double problem that the stress should be laid on this. Calvin, however, is preoccupied with the problem of the accrediting of Scripture. This is due in part, doubtless, to its logical priority: as he himself remarks, we cannot be "established in the belief of the doctrine, till we are indubitably persuaded that God is its Author" (I. vii. 4, ad init.). But it was rendered almost inevitable by the state of the controversy with Rome, who intrenched herself in the position that the Protestant appeal to Scripture as over against the Church was inoperative, seeing that it is only by the Church that the Scriptures can be established in authority: for who but the Church can assure us that these Scriptures are from God, or indeed what books enter into the fabric of Scripture, or whether they have come down to us uncorrupted? As a practical man writing to practical men for a practical purpose, Calvin could not fail, perhaps, to give his primary attention to the aspect of the problem he had raised which was most immediately pressing. But this scarcely prepares us for the almost total neglect of its other aspect, with the effect that the construction of his general doctrine is left with a certain appearance of incompleteness. Not really incomplete; for the solution of the one problem is, as we have already suggested, the solution of the other also; and even the cursory reader - or perhaps we may say especially the cursory reader - may well be trusted to feel this as he is led on through the discussion, particularly as there are not lacking repeated suggestions of it, and the discussion closes with a direct reference to it and a formal postponement of the particular discussion of the other aspect of the double problem to a later portion of the treatise. "I pass over many things for the present," says Calvin, "because this subject will present itself for discussion in another place. Only, let it be known here that that alone is true faith which the Spirit of God seals in our hearts. And with this one reason every reader of docility and modesty will be satisfied" (I. vii. 5, near the end). That is as much as to say, This whole subject is only one application of the general doctrine of faith; and as the general doctrine of faith is fully discussed at another place in this treatise, we may content ourselves here with the somewhat incomplete remarks we have made upon this special application of that doctrine; we only need to remind the reader that there is no true faith except that which is begotten in the soul by the Holy Spirit. 

We can scarcely wonder that Calvin contents himself with this simple reference of the topic now engaging his attention, as a specific case, to the generic doctrine of faith, when we pause to realize how nearly this simple reference of it, as a species to its genus, comes to a sufficient exposition of it. We shall stop now to signalize only two points which are involved in this reference, the noting of which will greatly facilitate our apprehension of Calvin's precise meaning in his doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to the divinity of Scripture. This doctrine is no isolated doctrine with Calvin, standing out of relation with the other doctrines of his system: it is but one application of his general doctrine of faith; or to be more specific, one application of his general doctrine of the function of the Holy Spirit in the production of faith. Given Calvin's general doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit in applying salvation, and his specific doctrine of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti in the attestation of Scripture, and in the applying of its doctrine as well, was inevitable. It is but one application of the general doctrine that there is no true faith except that which the Spirit of God seals in our hearts. For Calvin in this doctrine - and this is the second point we wish to signalize - has in mind specifically "true faith." He is not asking here how the Scriptures may be proved to be from God. If that had been the question he was asking, he would not have hesitated to say that the testimony of the Church is conclusive of the fact. He does say so. "The universal judgment of the Church" (I. vii. 3, fin.) he represents as a very useful argument, "the consent of the Church" (I. viii. 12, init.) as a very important consideration, in establishing the divine origin of the Scriptures: although, of course, he does not conceive the Church as lending her authority to Scripture "when she receives and seals it with her suffrage," but rather as performing a duty of piety to herself in recognizing what is true apart from her authentication, and treating it with due veneration (I. vii. 2, ad fin.). For what is more her duty than "obediently to embrace what is from God as the sheep hear the voice of the shepherd"?⁵⁰ Were it a matter of proving the Scriptures to be the Word of God, Calvin would, again, have been at no loss for rational arguments which he was ready to pronounce irresistible. He does adduce such arguments and he does pronounce them irresistible. He devotes a whole chapter "to the adduction of these arguments (ch. viii.) - such arguments as these: the dignity of the subject-matter of Scripture - the heavenliness of its doctrine and the consent of all its parts - (§ 1), the majesty of its style (§ 2), the antiquity of its teaching (§ 3), the sincerity of its narrative (§ 4), its miraculous accompaniment, circumstantially confirmed (§§ 5, 6), its predictive contents authenticated by fulfilment (§§ 7, 8), its continuous use through so many ages (§§9-12), its sealing by martyr blood (§ 13): and these arguments he is so far from considering weak and inconclusive (I. viii. 13, med.) that he represents them rather as capable of completely vindicating the Scriptures against all the subtleties of their calumniators (ibid.). Nay, he declares that the proofs of the divine origin of the Scriptures are so cogent, as "certainly to evince, if there is a God in heaven, that He is the author of the Law, and the Prophecies, and the Gospel" (I. vii. 4, near the beginning); as to extort with certainty from all who are not wholly lost to shame, the confession of the divine gift of the Scriptures (ibid.).⁵¹ "Though I am far from possessing any peculiar dexterity" in argument "or eloquence," he says, "yet were I to contend with the most subtle despisers of God, who are ambitious to display their wit and their skill in weakening the authority of Scripture, I trust I should be able without difficulty to silence their obstreperous clamor" (ibid.). But objective proofs - whether the conclusive testimony of witnesses, or the overwhelming evidence of rational considerations - be they never so cogent,⁵² he does not consider of themselves capable of producing "true faith." And it is "true faith," we repeat, that Calvin has in mind in his doctrine of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti. If it seemed to him a small matter that man should know that God is if he did not know what God is, it equally seemed to him a small matter that man should know what God is, in the paradigms of the intellect, if he did not really know this God in the intimacy of communion which that phrase imports. And equally it seemed to him utterly unimportant that a man should be convinced by stress of rational evidence that the Scriptures are the Word of God, unless he practically embraced these Scriptures as the Word of God and stayed his soul upon them. The knowledge of God which Calvin has in mind in this whole discussion is, thus, a vital and vitalizing knowledge of God, and the attestation of Scripture which he is seeking is not an attestation merely to the intelligence of men, compelling from them perhaps a reluctant judgment of the intellect alone (since those convinced against their will, as the proverb has it, are very apt to remain of the same opinion still), but such an attestation as takes hold of the whole man in the roots of his activities and controls all the movements of his soul. 

This is so important a consideration for the exact apprehension of Calvin's doctrine that it may become us to pause and assure ourselves of the simple matter of fact from the language which Calvin employs of it in the course of the discussion. We shall recall that from the introduction of the topic of special revelation he has in mind and keeps before his readers' mind its destination for the people of God alone. The provisions for producing a knowledge of God, consequent on the inefficiency of natural revelation, Calvin is careful to explain, are not for all men, but for "the elect" (I. vi. 1), or, as they are more fully described, "those whom God intends to unite in a more close and familiar connection with Himself" (ibid.), "those to whom He determines to make His instructions effectual" (I. vi. 3). From the first provisions of His supernatural dealings, therefore, He "intends to make His instructions effectual." More pointedly still he speaks of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti as an act in which "God deigns to confer a singular power on His elect, whom He distinguishes from the rest of mankind" (I. vii. 5).⁵³ This singular power, now, is nothing else but "saving faith," and Calvin speaks of it in all the synonymy of "saving faith." He calls it "true faith" (I. vii. 5), "sound faith" (I. vii. 4), "firm faith" (I. viii. 13), "the faith of the pious" (I. vii. 3), "the certainty of the pious" (I. vii. 3), "that assurance which is essential to true piety" (I. vii. 4), "saving knowledge" (I. viii. 13), "a solid assurance of eternal life" (I. vii. 1). It is the thing which is naturally described by this synonymy which Calvin declares is not produced in the soul except by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. This obviously is nothing more than to declare that that faith which lays hold of Christ unto eternal life is the product of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and that it is one of the exercises of this faith to lay hold of the revelation of this Christ in the Scriptures with assured confidence, so that it is only he who is led by the Spirit who embraces these Scriptures with "sound faith," that is, "with that assurance which is essential to true piety" (I. vii. 4). What Calvin has in mind, in a word, is simply an extended comment on Paul's words: "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God . . . but he that is spiritual judgeth all things" (I Cor. ii. 14, 15).⁵⁴  

Calvin does not leave us, however, to gather from general remarks referring it to its class or to infer from its general effects, what he means by the testimony of the Spirit of God to the divinity of Scripture, but describes for us its nature and indicates the mode of its operation and specific effects with great exactitude.⁵⁵ He tells us that it is a "secret" (I. vii. 4), "internal" (I. vii. 4; viii. 13), "inward" (I. vii. 5) action of the Holy Spirit on the soul, by which the soul is "illuminated" (I. vii. 3, 4, 5), so as to perceive their true quality in the Scriptures as a divine book. We may call this "an inward teaching" of the Spirit which produces "entire acquiescence in the Scriptures," so that they are self-authenticating to the mind and heart (I. vii. 5); or we may call it a "secret testimony of the Spirit," by which our minds and hearts are convinced with a firmness superior to all reason that the Scriptures are from God (I. vii. 4). In both instances we are using figurative language. Precisely what is produced by the hidden internal operation of the Spirit on the soul is a new spiritual sense (sensus, I. vii. 5, med.), by which the divinity of Scripture is perceived as by an intuitive perception. "For the Scripture exhibits as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black things do of their color, and sweet and bitter things of their taste" (I. vii. 2, end) ; and we need only a sense to discern its divine quality to be convinced of it with the same immediacy and finality as we are convinced by their mere perception of light or darkness, of whiteness or blackness, of sweetness or bitterness (ibid.). No conclusions based on "reasoning" or "proofs" or founded on human judgment can compare in clearness or force with such a conviction, which is instinctive and immediate, and finds its ultimate ground and sanction in the Holy Spirit who has wrought in the heart this spiritual sense which so functions in recognizing the divine quality of Scripture. Illuminated by the Spirit of God, we believe, therefore, not on the ground of our own judgment, or on the ground of the judgment of others, but with a certainty above all human judgment, by a spiritual intuition.⁵⁶ With the utmost explicitness Calvin so describes this instinctive conviction in a passage of great vigor: "It is, therefore," says he, "such a persuasion as requires no reasons; such a knowledge as is supported by the highest reason and in which the mind rests with greater security and constancy than in any reasons; in fine, such a sense as cannot be produced but by a revelation from heaven" (I. vii. 5).⁵⁷ Here we are told that it is a persuasio, or rather a notitia, or rather a sensus. It is a persuasion which does not require reasons - that is to say, it is a state of conviction not induced by arguments, but by direct perception: it is, that is to say, a knowledge, a direct perception in accord with the highest reason, in which the mind rests, with an assurance not attainable by reasoning; or to be more explicit still, it is a sense which comes only from divine gift. As we have implanted in us by nature a sense which distinguishes between light and darkness, a sense which distinguishes between sweet and bitter, and the verdict of these senses is immediate and final; so we have planted in us by the creative action of the Holy Spirit a sense for the divine, and its verdict, too, is immediate and final: the spiritual man discerneth all things. Such, in briefest outline, is Calvin's famous doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit. 

MODE OF THIS TESTIMONY 

Certain further elucidations of its real meaning and bearing appear, however, to be necessary, to guard against misapprehension of it. When we speak of an internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, it is evident that we must conceive it as presenting itself in one of three ways. It may be conceived as of the nature of an immediate revelation to each man to whom it is given. It may be conceived as of the nature of a blind conviction produced in the minds of its recipients. It may be conceived as of the nature of a grounded conviction, formed in their minds by the Spirit, by an act which rather terminates immediately on the faculties, enabling and effectively persuading them to reach a conviction on grounds presented to them, than produces the conviction itself, apart from or without grounds. In which of these ways did Calvin conceive the testimony of the Spirit as presenting itself? As revelation, or as ungrounded faith, or as grounded faith? 

Certainly not the first. The testimony of the Spirit was not to Calvin of the nature of a propositional "revelation" to its recipients. Of this he speaks perfectly explicitly, and indeed in his polemic against Anabaptist mysticism insistently. He does indeed connect the term "revelation" with the testimony of the Spirit, declaring it, for example, such a sense (sensus) as can be produced by nothing short of "a revelation from heaven" (I. vii. 5, med.). But his purpose in the employment of this language is not to describe it according to its nature, but to claim for it with emphasis a heavenly source: he means merely to assert that it is not earth-born, but God-wrought, while at the same time he intimates that in its nature it is not a propositional revelation, but an instinctive "sense." That he did not conceive of it as a propositional revelation is made perfectly clear by his explicit assertions at the opening of the discussion (I. vii. 1, init.), that we "are not favored with daily oracles from heaven," and that the Scriptures constitute the sole body of extant revelations from God. It is not to supersede nor yet to supplement these recorded revelations that the testimony of the Spirit is given us, he insists, but to confirm them (I. ix. 3): or, as he puts it in his polemic against the Anabaptists, "The office of the Spirit which is promised us is not to feign new and unheard-of revelations, or to coin a new system of doctrine, which would seduce us from the received doctrine of the Gospel, but to seal to our minds the same doctrine which the Gospel delivers" (I. ix. 1, fin.). 

In this polemic against the Anabaptists (ch. ix.) he gives us an especially well-balanced account of the relations which in his view obtain between the revelation of God and the witness of the Spirit. If he holds that the revelation of God is ineffective without the testimony of the Spirit, he holds equally that the testimony of the Spirit is inconceivable without the revelation of God embodied in the Word. He even declares that the Spirit is no more the agent by which the Word is impressed on the heart than the Word is the means by which the illumination of the Spirit takes effect. "If apart from the Spirit of God" we "are utterly destitute of the light of truth," he says (I. ix. 3, ad fin.), equally "the Word is the instrument by which the Lord dispenses to believers the illumination of the Spirit." So far as the knowledge of the truth is concerned, we are as helpless, then, without the Word as we are without the Spirit, for the whole function of the Spirit with respect to the truth is, not to reveal to us the truth anew, much less to reveal to us new truth, but efficaciously to confirm the Word, revealed in the Scriptures, to us, and efficaciously to impress it on our hearts (I. ix. 3). This Calvin makes superabundantly plain by an illustration and a didactic statement of great clearness. The illustration (I. ix. 3) is drawn from our Lord's dealings with His two disciples with whom after His rising He walked to Emmaus. "He opened their understandings," Calvin explains, "not that rejecting the Scriptures they might be wise of themselves, but that they might understand the Scriptures." Such also, he says, is the testimony of the Spirit to-day: for what is it - and this is the didactic statement to which we have referred - but an enabling of us by the light of the Spirit to behold the divine countenance in the Scriptures that so our minds may be filled with a solid reverence for the Word (I. ix. 3)? Here we have the nature of the testimony of the Spirit, and its manner of working and its effects, announced to us in a single clause. It is an illumination of our minds, by which we are enabled to see God in the Scriptures, so that we may reverence them as from Him. 

Other effect than this Calvin explicitly denies to the testimony of the Spirit, and he defends his denial from the charge of inconsistency with the stress he has previously laid upon the necessity of this testimony (I. ix. 3). It is not to deny the necessity of this work of the Spirit, he argues, to confine it to the express confirmation of the Word and of the revelation contained therein. Nor is it derogatory to the Spirit to confine His operations now to the confirmation of the revealed Word. While on the other hand to attribute to Him repeated or new revelations to each of the children of God, as the mystics do, is derogatory to the Word, which is His inspired product. To lay claim to the possession of such a Spirit as this, he declares, is to lay claim to the possession of a different Spirit from that which dwelt in Christ and the Apostles - for their Spirit honored the Word - and a different Spirit from that which was promised by Christ to His disciples - for this Spirit was "not to speak of Himself." It is to lay claim to a Spirit for whose divine mission and character, moreover, we lack all criterion - for how can we know that the Spirit that speaks in us is from God, save as He honors the Word of God (I. ix. 1 and 2)? From all which it is perfectly plain not only that Calvin did not conceive the testimony of the Spirit as taking effect in the form of propositional revelations, but that he did conceive it as an operation of God the Holy Spirit in the heart of man which is so connected with the revelation of God in His Word, that it manifests itself only in conjunction with that revelation. 

Calvin's formula here is, The Word and Spirit.⁵⁸ Only in the conjunction of the two can an effective revelation be made to the sin-darkened mind of man.⁵⁹ The Word supplies the objective factor; the Spirit the subjective factor; and only in the union of the objective and subjective factors is the result accomplished. The whole objective revelation of God lies, thus, in the Word. But the whole subjective capacitating for the reception of this revelation lies in the will of the Spirit. Either, by itself, is wholly ineffective to the result aimed at - the production of knowledge in the human mind. But when they unite, knowledge is not only rendered possible to man: it is rendered certain. And therefore it is that Calvin represents the provision for the knowledge of God both in the objective revelation in the Word and in the subjective testimony of the Spirit as destined by God not for men at large, but specifically for His people, His elect, those "to whom He determined to make His instructions effectual" (I. vi. 3). The Calvinism of Calvin's doctrine of religious knowledge comes to clear manifestation here; and that not merely because of its implication of the doctrine of election, but also because of its implication of Calvin's specific doctrine of the means of grace. Already in his doctrine of religious knowledge, we find Calvin teaching that God is known not by those who choose to know Him, but by those by whom He chooses to be known: and this simply because the knowledge of God is God-given, and is therefore given to whom He will. Men do not wring the knowledge of God from a Deity reluctant to be known: God imparts the knowledge of Himself to men reluctant to know Him: and therefore none know Him save those to whom He efficaciously imparts, by His Word and Spirit, the knowledge of Himself. "By His Word and Spirit " - therein is expressed already the fundamental formula of the Calvinistic doctrine of the "means of grace." In that doctrine the Spirit is not, with the Lutherans, conceived as in the Word, conveyed and applied where-ever the Word goes: nor is the Word, with the mystics, conceived as in the Spirit always essentially present wherever He is present in His power as a Spirit of revelation and truth. The two are severally contemplated, as separable factors, in the one work of God in producing the knowledge of Himself which is eternal life in the souls of His people; separable factors which must both, however, be present if this knowledge of God is to be produced. For it is the function of the Word to set before the soul the object to be believed; and it is the function of the Spirit to quicken in the soul belief in this object: and neither performs the work of the other or its own work apart from the other. 

It still remains, however, to inquire precisely how Calvin conceived the Spirit to operate in bringing the soul to a hearty faith in the Word as a revelation from God. Are we to understand him as teaching that the Holy Spirit by His almighty power creates, in the souls of those whom God has set upon to bring to a knowledge of Him, an entirely ungrounded faith in the divinity of the Scriptures and the truth of their contents, so that the soul embraces them and their contents with firm confidence as a revelation from God wholly apart from and in the absence of all indicia of their divinity or of the truth of their contents? So it has come to be very widely believed; and indeed it may even be said that it has become the prevalent representation that Calvin taught that believers have within themselves a witness of the Spirit by which they are assured of the divinity of Scripture and the truth of its contents quite apart from all other evidence. The very term, "the testimony of the Spirit," is adduced in support of this representation, as setting a divine witness to the divinity of Scripture over against other sources of evidence, and of course superseding them: and appeal is made along with this to Calvin's strong assertions of the uselessness and even folly of plying men with "the proofs" of the divine origin of Scripture, seeing that, it is said, in the absence of the testimony of the Spirit such "proofs" must needs be ineffective, and in the presence of that effective testimony they cannot but be adjudged unnecessary. What can he mean, then, it is asked, but that the testimony of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to assure us of the divinity of Scripture apart from all indicia, and does its work entirely independently of them? 

The sufficient answer to this question is that he can mean - and in point of fact does mean - that the indicia are wholly insufficient to assure us of the divinity of Scripture apart from the testimony of the Spirit; and effect no result independently of it. This is quite a different proposition and gives rise to quite a different series of corollaries. Calvin's dealing with the indicia of the divinity of Scripture has already attracted our attention in one of its aspects, and it is quite worthy of renewed scrutiny. We have seen that he devotes a whole chapter to their exposition (chap. viii.) and strongly asserts their objective conclusiveness to the fact of the divine origin of Scripture (I. vii. 4). Nor does he doubt their usefulness whether to the believer or the unbeliever. The fulness and force of his exposition of them is the index to his sense of their value to the believer: for he adduces them distinctly as confirmations of believers in their faith in the Scriptures (I. viii. 1, 13), and betrays in every line of their treatment the high significance he attaches to them as such. And he explicitly declares that they not only maintain in the minds of the pious the native dignity and authority of Scripture, but completely vindicate it against all the subtleties of calumniators (I. viii. 13). No man of sound mind can fail to confess on their basis that it is God who speaks in Scripture and that its doctrine is divine (I. vii. 4). It is a complete misapprehension of Calvin's meaning, then, when it is suggested that he represents the indicia of the divinity of Scripture as inconclusive or even as ineffective.⁶⁰ Their conclusiveness could not be asserted with more energy than he asserts it: nor indeed could their effectiveness - their effectiveness in extorting from the unbeliever the confession of the divinity of Scripture and in rendering him without excuse in refusing the homage of his mind and heart to it - in a word, will he, nill he, convincing his intellect of its divinity; their effectiveness also in confirming the believer in his faith and maintaining his confidence intact. This prevalent misapprehension of Calvin's meaning is due to neglect to observe the precise thing for which he affirms the indicia to be ineffective and the precise reason he assigns for this ineffectiveness. There is only one thing which he says they cannot do: that is to produce "sound faith" (I. vii. 4), "firm faith" (I. viii. 13) - that assurance which is essential to "true piety" (I. vii. 4). And their failure to produce "sound faith" is due solely to the subjective condition of man, which is such that a creative operation of the Holy Spirit on the soul is requisite before he can exercise "sound faith " (I. vii. 4; I. viii. 13). It is the attempt to produce this "sound faith" in the heart of man, not renewed for believing by the creative operation of the Holy Spirit, which Calvin pronounces preposterous and foolish. "It is acting a preposterous part," he says, "to endeavor to produce sound faith in the Scriptures by disputations": objections may be silenced by such disputations, "but this will not fix in men's hearts that assurance which is essential to true piety"; for religion is not a matter of mere opinion, but a fundamental change of attitude towards God (I. vii. 4). It betrays, therefore, great folly to wish to demonstrate to infidels that the Scriptures are the Word of God, he repeats in another place, obviously with no other meaning, "since this cannot be known without faith," that is, as the context shows, without the internal working of the Spirit of God (I. viii. 13, end). 

That Calvin should thus teach that the indicia are incapable of producing "firm faith" in the human heart, disabled by sin, is a matter of course: and therefore it is a matter of course that he should teach that the indicia are ineffective for the production of "sound faith" apart from the internal operation of the Spirit correcting the sin-bred disabilities of man, that is to say, apart from the testimony of the Spirit. But what about the indicia in conjunction with the testimony of the Spirit? It would seem to be evident that, on Calvin's ground, they would have their full part to play here, and that we must say that, when the soul is renewed by the Holy Spirit to a sense for the divinity of Scripture, it is through the indicia of that divinity that it is brought into its proper confidence in the divinity of Scripture. In treating of the indicia, Calvin does not, however, declare this in so many words. He sometimes even appears to speak of them rather as if they lay side by side with the testimony of the Spirit than acted along with it as co-factors in the production of the supreme effect. He speaks of their ineffectiveness in producing sound faith in the unbeliever: and of their value as corroboratives to the believer: and his language would sometimes seem to suggest that therefore it were just as well not to employ them until after faith had formed itself under the testimony of the Spirit (I. viii. 1, 13). Of their part in forming faith under the operation of the testimony of the Spirit he does not appear explicitly to speak.⁶¹

Nevertheless, there are not lacking convincing hints that there was lying in his mind all the time the implicit understanding that it is through these indicia of the divinity of Scripture that the soul, under the operation of the testimony of the Spirit, reaches its sound faith in Scripture, and that he has been withheld from more explicitly stating this only by the warmth of his zeal for the necessity of the testimony of the Spirit which has led him to a constant contrasting of this divine with those human "testimonies." Thus we find him repeatedly affirming that these indicia will produce no fruit until they be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit (I. vii. 4, 5; viii. 1, 13): "Our reverence may be conciliated by its internal majesty [the Scripture's], but it never seriously affects us, till it is confirmed by the Spirit in our hearts" (I. vii. 5). "Without this certainty, . . . in vain will the authority of Scripture be either defended by arguments or established by the consent of the Church, or of any other supports: since, unless the foundation be laid, it remains in perpetual suspense" (I. viii. 1). The indicia "are alone not sufficient to produce firm faith in it [the Scriptures], till the heavenly Father, discovering His own power therein, places its authority above all controversy " (I. viii. 13). It is, however, in his general teaching as to the formation of sound faith in the divinity of Scripture that we find the surest indication that he thought of the indicia as co-working with the testimony of the Spirit to this result. This is already given, indeed, in his strenuous insistence that the work of the Spirit is not of the nature of a revelation, but of a confirmation of the revelation deposited in the Scriptures, especially when this is taken in connection with his teaching that Scripture is self-authenticating. What the Spirit of God imparts to us, he says, is a sense of divinity: such a sense discovers divinity only where divinity is and only by a perception of it - a perception which of course rests on its proper indicia. It is because Scripture "exhibits the plainest evidence that it is God who speaks in it" that the newly awakened sense of divinity, quickened in the soul, recognizes it as divine (I. vii. 4). The senses do not distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter - to use Calvin's own illustration (I. vii. 2) - save by the mediation of those indicia of light and darkness, whiteness and blackness, sweetness and bitterness, by which these qualities manifest themselves to the natural senses; and by parity of reasoning we must accredit Calvin as thinking of the newly implanted spiritual sense discerning the divinity of Scripture only through the mediation of the indicia of divinity manifested in Scripture. To taste and see that the Scriptures are divine is to recognize a divinity actually present in Scripture; and of course recognition implies perception of indicia, not attribution of a divinity not recognized as inherent. Meanwhile it must be admitted that Calvin has not at this point developed this side of his subject with the fulness which might be wished, but has left it to the general implications of the argument. 

OBJECT TESTIFIED TO 

Closely connected with the question of the mode in which Calvin conceived the testimony of the Spirit to be delivered, is the further question of the matters for which he conceived that testimony to be available. On the face of it it would seem that he conceived it directly available solely for the divinity of the Scriptures and therefore for the revelatory character of their contents. So he seems to imply throughout the discussion, and, indeed, to assert repeatedly. Nevertheless, there is a widespread impression abroad that he appealed to it to determine the canon of Scripture too,⁶² and indeed also to establish the integrity of its text. This impression is generally, though not always, connected with the view that Calvin conceived the mode of delivery of the testimony of the Spirit to be the creation in the soul of a blind faith, unmotived by reasons and without rooting in grounds; and it has been much exploited of late years in the interests of a so-called "free" attitude towards Scripture, which announces itself as following Calvin when it refuses to acknowledge as authoritative Scripture any portion of or element in the traditionally transmitted Scriptures which does not spontaneously commend itself to the immediate religious judgment as divine. Undoubtedly this is to reverse the attitude of Calvin towards the traditionally transmitted Scriptures, and it is difficult to believe that two such diametrically contradictory attitudes towards the Scriptures can be outgrowths of the same principal root. In point of fact, moreover, as we have already seen, not only does Calvin not conceive the mode of the delivery of the testimony of the Spirit to be by the creation of a blind and unmotived faith, but, to come at once to the matter more particularly in hand, he does not depend on the testimony of the Spirit for the determination of canonicity or for the establishment of the integrity of the text of Scripture. So far from discarding the via rationalis here, he determines the limits of the canon and establishes the integrity of the transmission of Scripture distinctly on scientific, that is to say, historico-critical grounds. In no case of his frequent discussion of such subjects does he appeal to the testimony of the Spirit and set aside the employment of rational and historical argumentation as invalid or inconclusive; always, on the contrary, he adduces the evidence of valid tradition and apostolicity of contents as conclusive of the fact. It is hard to believe that such a consequent mind could have lived unconsciously in such an inconsistent attitude towards a question so vital to him and his cause.⁶³ 

So far as support for the impression that Calvin looked to the testimony of the Spirit to determine for him the canon of Scripture and to assure him of its integrity is derived from his writings, it rests on a manifest misapprehension of a single passage in the "Institutes," and what seems to be a misassignment to him of a passage in the old French Confession of Faith. 

The passage in the "Institutes" is a portion of the paragraphs which are devoted to repelling the Romish contention that "the Scriptures have only so much weight as is conceded to them by the suffrages of the Church; as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended on the arbitrary will of men" (I. vii. 1). "For thus," Calvin says - and this is the passage which is appealed to - "For thus, dealing with the Holy Spirit as a mere laughing stock (ludibrio), they ask, Who shall give us confidence that these [Scriptures] have come from God, - who assure us that they have reached our time safe and intact, - who persuade us that one book should be received reverently, another expunged from the number (numero) - if the Church should not prescribe a certain rule for all these things? It depends, therefore, they say, on the Church, both what reverence is due to Scripture, and what books should be inscribed (censendi sint) in its catalogue (in eius catalogo)" (I. vii. 1). This passage certainly shows that the Romish controversialists in endeavoring to prove that the authority of Scripture is dependent on the Church's suffrage, argued that it is only by the Church that we can be assured even of the contents of Scripture and of its integrity - that its very canon and text rest on the Church's determination. But how can it be inferred that Calvin's response to this argument would take the form: No, of these things we can be assured by the immediate testimony of the Spirit? In point of fact, he says nothing of the kind, and the inference does not lie in the argument. What he says is that the Romish method of arguing is as absurd as it is blasphemous, a mere cavil (I. vii. 2), as well as derogatory to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, he says, assures us that in the Scriptures God speaks to us. To bid us pause on the ground that it is only the Church who can assure us that this or that book belongs to the body of the Scriptures, that the text has been preserved to us intact and the like, is to interpose frivolous objections, and can have no other end than to glorify the Church at the expense of souls. Accordingly, he remarks that these objectors are without concern what logical difficulties they may cast themselves into: they wish only to prevent men taking their comfort out of the direct assurance by the Spirit of the divinity of the Scriptures. He repudiates, in a word, the entire Romish argument: but we can scarcely infer from this, that his response to it would be that the immediate witness of the Spirit provides us with direct answers to their carping questions. It is at least equally likely from the mere fact that he speaks of these objections as cavils (I. vii. 2) and girds at the logic of the Romish controversialists as absurd, that his response would be that the testimony of the Spirit for which he was contending had no direct concernment with questions of canon and text. 

The passage in the Confession of La Rochelle, on the other hand, does certainly attribute the discrimination of the canonical books in some sense - in what sense may admit of debate - to the testimony of the Spirit. In the third article of this Confession there is given a list of the canonical books.⁶⁴ The fourth article, then, runs as follows: "We recognize these books to be canonical and the very certain rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church, as by the inward witness and persuasion of the Holy Spirit, who makes us distinguish them from the other ecclesiastical books, upon which, though they may be useful, no article of faith can be founded." This article, however, was not the composition of Calvin, but was among those added by the Synod of Paris to the draft submitted by Calvin.⁶⁵ Calvin's own article "On the Books of Holy Scripture," which was expanded by the Synod into several, reads only: "This doctrine does not derive its authority from men, nor from angels, but from God alone; we believe, too (seeing that it is a thing surpassing all human sense to discern that it is God who speaks), that He Himself gives the certitude of it to His elect, and seals it in their hearts by His Spirit."66 In this fine statement we find the very essence of the teaching of the "Institutes" on this subject; the ideas and even the phraseology of which are reproduced. 

We may learn, therefore, at most, from the Confession of La Rochelle, not that Calvin, but that some of his immediate followers attributed in some sense the discrimination of the canonical books to the witness of the Spirit. Other evidences of this fact are not lacking. The Belgian Confession, for example, much like that of La Rochelle, declares of the Scriptural books, just enumerated (Art. v.): "We receive all these books alone, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation and establishment of our faith, and we fully believe all that they contain, not so much because the Church receives and approves them, but principally because the Spirit gives witness to them in our hearts that they are from God, and also because they are approved by themselves; for the very blind can perceive that the things come to pass which they predict." Perhaps, however, we may find a more instructive instance still in the words of one of the Protestant disputants in a conference held at Paris in 1566 between two Protestant ministers and two doctors of the Sorbonne.⁶⁷ To the inquiry, How do you know that some books are canonical and others Apocryphal, the Protestant disputant (M. Lespine) answers: "By the Spirit of God which is a Spirit of discrimination, by whom all those to whom He is communicated are illuminated, so as to be made capable of judging and discerning spiritual things and of recognizing (cognoistre) and apprehending the truth (when it is proposed to them), by the witness and assurance which He gives to them in their hearts. And as we discriminate light and darkness by the faculty of sight which is in the eye; so, we can easily separate and recognize (recognoistre) truth from falsehood, and from all things in general which can be false, absurd, doubtful or indifferent, when we are invested with the Spirit of God and guided by the light which He lights in our hearts." M. Lespine had evidently read his Calvin; though there is a certain lack of crisp exactness in his language which may raise doubt whether he has necessarily reproduced him with precision. Clearly his idea is that the Spirit of God in His creative operation on the hearts of Christ's people has implanted in them - or quickened in them - a spiritual sense, which recognizes the stamp of divinity upon the books which God has given to the Church, and so separates them out from all others and thus constitutes the canon. This is to attribute the discrimination of the canonical books to the witness of the Spirit not directly but indirectly, namely, through the intermediation of the determination of the books which are of divine origin, which, then, being gathered together, constitute the canon, or divinely given rule of our faith and life. This conception of the movement of the mind in this matter became very common, and was given very clear expression, for example, by Jurieu, in a context which bears as evident marks of reminiscences of Calvin as do M. Lespine's remarks. "That grace which produces faith in a soul," says he,⁶⁸ "does not begin . . . by persuading it that a given book is canonical. This persuasion comes only afterwards and as a consequence. It gives to the consciousness a taste for the truth: it applies this truth to the mind and heart; it proceeds from this subsequently that the believer believes that a given book is canonical, because the truths which 'find' him are found in it. In a word, we do not believe that which is contained in a book to be divine because this book is canonical. But we believe that a given book is canonical because we have perceived that what it contains is divine. And we have perceived this as we perceive the light when we look on the fire, sweetness and bitterness when we eat." Whether we are to attribute this movement of thought, however, to Calvin, is another question.⁶⁹ There is no hint of it in his writings. 

It is not even obvious that this precise movement of thought is the conception which lay in the mind of the authors of the additional articles in the Confession of La Rochelle and of the similar statement in the Belgian Confession. The interpretation of these articles is particularly interesting, as they both undoubtedly came under the eye of Calvin and their doctrine was never disavowed by him. It is not, however, altogether easy, because of a certain ambiguity in the use of the term "canonical." It is on account of the ambiguity which attends the use of this term that in speaking of their teaching we have guardedly said that they appear to suspend the canonicity of the Scriptural books in some sense directly on the testimony of the Spirit. This ambiguity may be brought sharply before us by placing in juxtaposition two sentences from Quenstedt in which the term "canonical" is employed, obviously, in two differing senses. "We deny," says he, "that the catalogue of canonical books is an article of faith, superadded to the others [articles of faith] contained in Scripture. Many have faith and may attain salvation who do not hold the number of canonical books. If the word 'canon' be understood of the number of the books, we concede that such a catalogue is not contained in Scripture." "These are two different questions," says he again, "whether the Gospel of Matthew is canonical, and whether it was written by Matthew. The former belongs to saving faith; the latter to historical knowledge. For if the Gospel which has come down to us under the name of Matthew had been written by Philip or Bartholomew, it would make no difference to saving faith." In the former extract the question of canonicity is removed from the category of articles of faith; in the latter it is made an integral element of saving faith. The contradiction is glaring - unless there be an undistributed middle. And this is what there really is. In the former passage, where Quenstedt is engaged in repelling the contention that there are articles of faith that must be accepted by all, which are not contained in Scripture - in defending, in a word, the Protestant doctrine of the sufficiency or perfection of Scripture - he uses the terms "canon," "canonical" in the purely technical sense of the extent of Scripture. In the latter passage, where he is insisting that the authority of Scripture as the Word of God hangs on its divine, not on its human, author, he uses the term "canonical" in the sense of "divinely given." The term "canonical" was current, then, in the two senses of "belonging to the list of authoritative Scriptures," "entering into the body of the Scriptures," and "God-given," "divine." In which of these two senses is it used in the Gallican and Belgian Confessions? If in the former, then these Confessions teach that the testimony of the Spirit is available directly for the determination of the canon: if in the latter, then they teach no such thing, but only that it is on the testimony of the Spirit that we are assured of the divine origin and character of these books. 

That the Gallican Confession employs the term in the latter of these senses, seems at least possible when once attention is called to it, although regard for the last clause of the statement, "who makes us distinguish them from the other ecclesiastical books," etc., prevents the representation of this interpretation as certain. Its declaration, succeeding the catalogue of the books given in the third section, is obviously intended to affirm something that is true of them already as a definite body of books before the mind. "We recognize these books," it says, "to be canonical and the very certain rule of our faith." That is to say, to this body of books we ascribe the quality of canonicity and recognize their regulative character. What would seem, then, to be in question is a quality belonging to a list of books already determined and in the mind of the framer of the statement as a whole. The same may be said of the Belgian Confession. It, too, has already given a list of the canonical books, and now proceeds to affirm something that is true of "all of these books and them only." The thing affirmed is that they are "holy and canonical," where the collocation suggests that "canonical" expresses a quality which ranges with "holy." We cannot help, suspecting, then, that these early confessions use the term "canonical" not quantitatively but qualitatively, not extensively but intensively; and in that sense it is the equivalent of "divine."70 Even the inference back from them to Calvin that he may have supposed that the testimony of the Spirit is available to determine the canon becomes therefore doubtful: and no other reason exists why we should attribute this view to him. We cannot affirm that the movement of his thought was never from the divinity of Scripture, assured to us by the testimony of the Spirit, to the determination of the limits of the canon: but we have no reason to ascribe this movement of thought to him except that it was adopted by some of his successors. 

On the other hand, Calvin constantly speaks as if the only thing which the testimony of the Spirit assures us of in the case of the Scriptures is the divinity of their origin and contents: and he always treats Scripture when so speaking of it as a definite entity, held before his mind as a whole.⁷¹ In these circumstances his own practice in dealing with the question of canonicity and text, makes it sufficiently clear that he held their settlement to depend on scientific investigation, and appealed to the testimony of the Spirit only to accredit the divine origin of the concrete volume thus put into his hands. The movement of his thought was therefore along this course: first, the ascertainment, on scientific grounds, of the body of books handed down from the Apostles as the rule of faith and practice; secondly, the vindication, on the same class of grounds, of the integrity of their transmission; thirdly, the accrediting of them as divine on the testimony of the Spirit. It is not involved in this that he is to be considered to have supposed that a man must be a scholar before he can be a Christian. He supposed we become Christians not by scholarship but by the testimony of the Spirit in the heart, and he had no inclination to demand scholarship as the basis of our Christianity. It is only involved in the position we ascribe to him that he must be credited with recognizing that questions of scholarship are for scholars and questions of religion only for Christians as such. He would have said - he does say - that he in whose heart the Spirit bears His testimony will recognize the Scriptures whenever presented to his contemplation as divine, will depend on them with sound trust and will embrace with true faith all that they propound to him. He would doubtless have said that this act of faith logically implicates the determination of the "canon." But he would also have said - he does in effect say - that this determination of the canon is a separable act and is to be prosecuted on its own appropriate grounds of scientific evidence. It involves indeed a fundamental misapprehension of Calvin's whole attitude to attribute to him the view that the testimony of the Spirit determines immediately such scientific questions as those of the canon and text of Scripture. The testimony of the Spirit was to him emphatically an operation of the Spirit of God on the heart, which produced distinctively a spiritual effect: it was directed to making men Christians,⁷² not to making them theologians. The testimony of the Spirit was, in effect, in his view, just what we in modern times have learned to call "regeneration" considered in its noetic effects. That "regeneration" has noetic effects he is explicit and iterative in affirming: but that these noetic effects of "regeneration" could supersede the necessity of scientific investigation in questions which rest for their determination on matters of fact - Calvin would be the last to imagine. He who recognized that the conviction of the divinity of Scripture wrought by the testimony of the Spirit rests as its ground on the indicia of the divinity of Scripture spiritually discerned in their true weight, could not imagine that the determination of the canon of Scripture or the establishment of its text could be wholly separated from their proper basis in evidence and grounded solely in a blind testimony of the Spirit alone: which indeed in that case would be fundamentally indistinguishable from that "revelation" which he rebuked the Anabaptists for claiming to be the recipients of. 

THE TESTIMONY AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

When we clearly apprehend the essence of Calvin's doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to the divinity of Scripture to be the noetic effects of "regeneration" we shall know what estimate to place upon the criticism which is sometimes passed upon him that he has insufficiently correlated his doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit with the inner⁷³ religious life of the Christian, has given too separate a place to the Spirit's witness to Scripture, and thus has overestimated the formal principle of Protestantism in comparison with the material principle,⁷⁴ with the effect of giving a hard, dry, and legalistic aspect to Christianity as expounded by him. With Luther, it is said, everything is made of Justification and the liberty of the Christian man fills the horizon of thought; and this is because his mind is set on the "faith" out of which all good things flow and by which everything - Scripture itself - is dominated. With Calvin, on the other hand, with his primary emphasis on the authority of Scripture, accredited to us by a distinct act of the Holy Spirit, the watchword becomes obedience; and the horizon of thought is filled with a sense of obligation and legalistic anxiety as to conduct. 

How Calvin could have failed to correlate sufficiently closely the testimony of the Spirit with the inner Christian life, or could have emphasized the formal principle of Protestantism at the expense of the material, when he conceived of the witness of the Spirit as just one of the effects of "regeneration," it is difficult to see. So to conceive the testimony of the Spirit is on the contrary to make the formal principle of Protestantism just an outgrowth of the material. It is only because our spirits have been renewed by the Holy Spirit that we see with convincing clearness the indicia of God in Scripture, that is, have the Scriptures sealed to us by the Spirit as divine. It is quite possible that Calvin may have particularly emphasized the obligations which grow out of our renewal by the Holy Spirit and the implantation in us of the Spirit of Adoption whereby we become the sons of God - obligations to comport ourselves as the sons of God and to govern ourselves by the law of God's house as given us in His Word; while Luther may have emphasized more the liberty of the Christian man who is emancipated from the law as a condition of salvation and is ushered into the freedom of life which belongs to the children of God. And it is quite possible that in this difference we may find a fundamental distinction between the two types of Protestantism - Lutheran and Reformed - by virtue of which the Reformed have always been characterized by a strong ethical tendency - in thought and in practice. But it is misleading to represent this as due to an insufficient correlation on Calvin's part of the testimony of the Spirit to the divinity of Scripture with the inner Christian life. It would be more exact to say that Calvin in this correlation thinks especially of what in our modern nomenclature we call "regeneration," while the mind of his Lutheran critics is set more upon justification and that "faith" which is connected with justification. With Calvin, at all events, the recognition of the Scriptures as divine and the hearty adoption of them as the divine rule of our faith and life is just one of the effects of the gracious operation of the Spirit of God on the heart, renewing it into spiritual life, or, what comes to the same thing, one of the gracious activities into which the newly implanted spiritual life effloresces. 

Whether we should say also that it was with him the first effect of the creative operation of the Spirit on the heart, the first act of the newly renewed soul, requires some discrimination. If we mean logically first, there is a sense in which we should probably answer this question also in the affirmative. Calvin would doubtless have said that it is in the Scriptures that Christ is proposed to our faith, or, to put it more broadly, that Christ is the very substance of the special revelation documented in the Scriptures, and that the laying hold of Christ by faith presupposes therefore confidence in the revelation the substance of which He is - which is as much as to say the embracing of the Scriptures in firm faith as a revelation from God. If the Word is the vehicle through which the knowledge of Christ is brought to the soul, it follows of itself that it is only when our minds are filled with a solid reverence for the Word, when by the light of the Spirit we are enabled and prevalently led to see Christ therein, that we can embrace Christ with a sound faith: so that it may truly be said that no man can have the least true and sound knowledge of Christ without learning from Scripture (cf. I. ix. 3; I. vi. 2). In this sense Calvin would certainly have said that our faith in Christ presupposes faith in the Scriptures, rather than that we believe in the Scriptures for Christ's sake. But if our minds are set on chronological sequences, the response to the question which is raised is more doubtful. Faith in the revelation the substance of which is Christ and faith in Christ the substance of this revelation are logical implicates which involve one another: and we should probably be nearest to Calvin's thought if, without raising questions of chronological succession, we should recognize them as arising together in the soul. The real difference between Calvin's and the ordinary Lutheran conception at this point lies in the greater profundity of Calvin's insight and the greater exactness of his analysis. The Lutheran is prone to begin with faith, which is naturally conceived at its apex, as faith in Jesus Christ our Redeemer; and to make everything else flow from this faith as its ultimate root. For what comes before faith, out of which faith itself flows, he has little impulse accurately to inquire. Calvin penetrates behind faith to the creative action of the Holy Spirit on the heart and the new creature which results therefrom, whose act faith is; and is therefore compelled by an impulse derived from the matter itself to consider the relations in which the several activities of this new creature stand to one another and to analyse the faith itself which holds the primacy among them (for trust is the essence of religion, chap. ii.), into its several movements. The effect of this is that "efficacious grace" - what we call in modern speech "regeneration" - takes the place of fundamental principle in Calvin's soteriology and he becomes preeminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit. In point of fact it is from him accordingly that the effective study of the work of the Holy Spirit takes its rise, and it is only in the channels cut by him and at the hands of thinkers taught by him that the theology of the Holy Spirit has been richly developed.⁷⁵

It is his profound sense of the supernatural origin of all that is good in the manifestations of human life which constitutes the characteristic mark of Calvin's thinking: and it is this which lies at the bottom of and determines his doctrine of the witness of the Holy Spirit. He did not doubt that the act of faith by which the child of God embraces the Scriptures as a revelation of God is his own act and the expression of his innermost consciousness. But neither did he doubt that this consciousness is itself the expression of a creative act of the Spirit of God. And it was on this account that he represented to himself the act of faith performed as resting ultimately on "the testimony of the Spirit." Its supernatural origin was to him the most certain thing about it. That language very much resembling his own might be employed in a naturalistic sense was, no doubt, made startlingly plain in his own day by the teaching of Castellion. Out of his pantheising rationalism Castellion found it possible to speak almost in Calvin's words. "It is evident," says he, "that the intention and secret counsels of God, hidden in the Scriptures, are revealed only to believers, the humble, the pious, who fear God and have the Spirit of God." If the wicked have sometimes spoken like prophets, they have nevertheless not really understood what they said, but are like magpies in a cage going through the forms of speech without inner apprehension of its meaning.⁷⁶ But Castellion meant by this nothing more than that sympathy is requisite to understanding. Since his day multitudes more have employed Calvin's language to express little more than this; and have even represented Calvin's own meaning as nothing more than that the human consciousness acquires by association with God in Christ the power of discriminating the truth of God from falsehood. Nothing could more fundamentally subvert Calvin's whole teaching. The very nerve of his thought is, that the confidence of the Christian in the divine origin and authority of Scripture and the revelatory nature of its contents is of distinctively supernatural origin, is God-wrought. The testimony of the Spirit may be delivered through the forms of our consciousness, but it remains distinctively the testimony of God the Holy Spirit and is not to be confused with the testimony of our consciousness.⁷⁷ Resting on the language of Rom. viii. 16, from which the term "testimony of the Spirit" was derived, he conceived it as a co-witness along with the witness of our spirit indeed, but on that very account distinguishable from the witness of our spirit. This particular point is nowhere discussed by him at large, but Calvin's general sense is perfectly plain. That there is a double testimony he is entirely sure - the testimony of our own spirit and that of the Holy Spirit: that these are though distinguishable yet inseparable, he is equally clear: his conception is therefore that this double testimony runs confluently together into one. This is only as much as to say afresh that the testimony of the Holy Spirit is not delivered to us in a propositional revelation, nor by the creating in us of a blind conviction, but along the lines of our own consciousness. In its essence, the act of the Spirit in delivering His testimony, terminates on our nature, or faculties, quickening them so that we feel, judge, and act differently from what we otherwise should. In this sense, the testimony of the Spirit coalesces with our consciousness. We cannot separate it out as a factor in our conclusions, judgments; feelings, actions, consciously experienced as coming from without. But we function differently from before: we recognize God where before we did not perceive Him; we trust and love Him where before we feared and hated Him; we firmly embrace Him in His Word where before we turned indifferently away. This change needs accounting for. We account for it by the action of the Holy Spirit on our hearts; and we call this His "testimony." But we cannot separate His action from our recognition of God, our turning in trust and love to Him and the like. For this is the very form in which the testimony of the Spirit takes effect, into which it flows, by which it is recognized. We are profoundly conscious that of ourselves we never would have seen thus, and that our seeing thus can never find its account in anything in us by nature. We are sure, therefore, that there has come upon us a revolutionary influence from without; and we are sure that this is the act of God. Calvin would certainly have cried as one of his most eloquent disciples cries to-day: "The Holy Spirit is God, and not we ourselves. What we are speaking of is a Spirit which illuminates our spirit, which purifies our spirit, which strives against our spirit, which triumphs over our spirit. And you say this Spirit is nothing but our spirit? By no means. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God - this is God coming into us, not coming from us."78 It is with equal energy that Calvin declares the supernaturalness of the testimony of the Spirit and repels every attempt to confound it with the human consciousness through which it works. To him this testimony is just God Himself in His intimate working in the human heart, opening it to the light of the truth, that by this illumination it may see things as they really are and so recognize God in the Scriptures with the same directness and surety as men recognize sweetness in what is sweet and brightness in what is bright. Here indeed lies the very hinge of his doctrine.⁷⁹

It has seemed desirable to enter into some detail with respect to Calvin's doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit, not only because of its intrinsic interest, but also because of its importance for understanding Calvin's doctrine of the knowledge of God and indeed his whole system of truth, and for a proper estimate of his place in the history of thought. His doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit is the keystone of his doctrine of the knowledge of God. Men endowed by nature with an ineradicable sensus deitatis, which is quickened into action and informed by a rich revelation of God spread upon His works and embodied in His deeds, are yet held back from attaining a sound knowledge of God by the corruption of their hearts, which dulls their instinctive sense of God and blinds them to His revelation in works and deeds. That His people may know Him, therefore, God lovingly intervenes by an objective revelation of Himself in His Word, and a subjective correction of their sin-bred dullness of apprehension of Him through the operation of His Spirit in their hearts, which Calvin calls the Testimony of the Holy Spirit. Obviously it is only through this testimony of the Holy Spirit that the revelation of God, whether in works or Word, is given efficacy: it is God, then, who, through His Spirit, reveals Himself to His people, and they know Him only as taught by Himself. But also on this very account the knowledge they have of Him is trustworthy in its character and complete for its purpose; being God-given, it is safeguarded to us by the dreadful sanction of deity itself. This being made clear, Calvin has laid a foundation for the theological structure - the scientific statement and elaboration of the knowledge of God - than which nothing could be conceived more firm. There remained nothing more for him to do before proceeding at once to draw out the elements of the knowledge of God as they lie in the revelation so assured to us, except to elucidate the indicia by which the Christian under the influence of the testimony of the Spirit is strengthened in his confidence that the Scriptures are the very Word of God, and to repudiate the tendency to neglect these Scriptures so authenticated to us in favor of fancied continuous revelations of the Spirit. The former he does in a chapter (chap. viii.) of considerable length and great eloquence, which constitutes one of the fullest and most powerful expositions of the evidence for the divine origin of the Scriptures which have come down to us from the Reformation age. The latter he does in a briefer chapter (chap. ix.), of crisp polemic quality, the upshot of which is to leave it strongly impressed on the reader's mind that the whole knowledge of God available to us, as the whole knowledge of God needful for us, lies objectively displayed in the pages of Scripture, which, therefore, becomes the sole source of a sound exposition of the knowledge of God. 

This strong statement is not intended, however, to imply that the Spirit-led man can learn nothing from the more general revelation of God in His works and deeds. Calvin is so far from denying the possibility of a "Natural Theology," in this sense of the word, that he devotes a whole chapter (chap. v.) to vindicating the rich revelation of God made in His works and deeds: though, of course, he does deny that any theology worthy of the name can be derived from this natural revelation by the "natural man," that is, by the man the eyes of whose mind and heart are not opened by the Spirit of God - who is not under the influence of the testimony of the Spirit; and in this sense he denies the possibility of a "Natural Theology." What the strong statement in question is intended to convey is that there is nothing to be derived from natural revelation which is not also to be found in Scripture, whether as necessary presupposition, involved implication or clear statement; and that beside that documented in Scripture there is no supernatural revelation accessible to men. The work of the Spirit of God is not to supplement the revelation made in Scripture, far less to supersede it, but distinctively to authenticate it. It remains true, then, that the whole matter of a sound theology lies objectively revealed to us in the pages of Scripture; and this is the main result to which his whole discussion tends. But side by side with it requires to be placed as a result of his discussion secondary only to this, this further conclusion, directly given in his doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit - that only a Christian man can profitably theologize. It is in the union of these two great principles that we find Calvin's view of the bases of a true theology. This he conceives as the product of the systematic investigation and logical elaboration of the contents of Scripture by a mind quickened to the apprehension of these contents through the inward operations of the Spirit of God. It is on this basis and in this spirit that Calvin undertakes his task as a theologian; and what he professes to give us in his "Institutes" is thus, to put it simply, just a Christian man's reading of the Scriptures of God. 

The Protestantism of this conception of the task of the theologian is apparent on the face of it. It is probably, however, still worth while to point out that its Protestantism does not lie solely or chiefly in the postulate that the Scriptures are the sole authoritative source of the knowledge of God - "formal principle" of the Reformation though that postulate be, and true, therefore, as Chillingworth's famous declaration that "the Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants" would be, if only Chillingworth had kept it to this sense. It lies more fundamentally still in the postulate that these Scriptures are accredited to us as the revelation of God solely by the testimony of the Holy Spirit - that without this testimony they lie before us inert and without effect on our hearts and minds, while with it they become not merely the power of God unto salvation, but also the vitalizing source of all our knowledge of God. There is embodied in this the true Protestant principle, superior to both the so-called formal and the so-called material principles - both of which are in point of fact but corollaries of it. For it takes the soul completely and forcibly out of the hands of the Church and from under its domination, and casts it wholly upon the grace of God. In its formulation Calvin gave to Protestantism for the first time, accordingly, logical stability and an inward sense of security. Men were no more puzzled by the polemics of Rome when they were asked, You rest on Scripture alone, you say: but on what does your Scripture rest? Calvin's development of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit provided them with their sufficient answer: "On the testimony of the Spirit of God in the heart." Here we see the historical importance of Calvin's formulation of this doctrine. And here we see the explanation of the two great facts which reveal its historical importance, the facts, to wit, that Calvin had no predecessors in the formulation of the doctrine, and that at once upon his formulation of it it became the common doctrine of universal Protestantism. 

IV. HISTORICAL RELATIONS 

The search for anticipations of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit among the Fathers and Scholastics⁸⁰ reveals only such sporadic assertions of the dependence of man on the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit for the knowledge or the saving knowledge of God as could not fail in the speech of a series of Christian men who had read their Bibles. A sentence of this kind from Justin Martyr,⁸¹ another from Chrysostom,⁸² two or three from Hilary of Poitiers,⁸³ almost exhaust what the first age yields. It is different with Augustine. With his profound sense of dependence on God and his vital conviction of the necessity of grace for all that is good in man, in the whole circle of his activities, he could not fail to work out a general doctrine of the knowledge of God in all essentials the same as Calvin's. In point of fact, as we have already pointed out, he did so. There remain, however, some very interesting and some very significant differences between the two.⁸⁴ It is interesting to note, for instance, that where Calvin speaks of an innate sensus deitatis in man, as lying at the root of all his knowledge of God, Augustine, with a more profound ontology of this knowledge, as at least made explicit in the statement, speaks of a continuous reflection of a knowledge of Himself by God in the human mind.⁸⁵ There is here, however, probably only a difference in fulness of statement, or at most only of emphasized aspect. On the other hand, it is highly significant that, instead of Calvin's doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit, Augustine, in conformity with the stress he laid upon the "Church" and the "means of grace" in the conference of grace, speaks of the knowledge of God as attainable only "in the Church."86 Accordingly, in him also and his successors there are to be found only such anticipations specifically of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit as are afforded by the increased frequency of their references to the dependence of man for all knowledge of God and divine things on grace and the inward teaching of the heavenly Instructor. The voice of men may assail our ears, says Augustine, for instance, but those remain untaught "to whom that inward unction does not speak, whom the Holy Spirit does not inwardly teach": for "He who teaches the heart has His seat in heaven."87 Moses himself, yea, even if he spoke to us not in Hebrew but in our own tongue, could convey to us only the knowledge of what he said: of the truth of what he said, only the Truth Himself, speaking within us, in the secret chamber of our thought, can assure us though He speaks neither in Hebrew nor in Greek nor in Latin, nor yet in any tongue of the barbarians, but without organs of voice or tongue and with no least syllabic sound.⁸⁸ Further than this men did not get before the Reformation:89 nor did the first Reformers themselves get further. No doubt they discerned the voice of the Spirit in the Scriptures, as the Fathers did before them; and in a single sentence, written, however, after the "Institutes" of 1539 (viz., in 1555), Melanchthon notes with the Fathers that the mind is "aided in giving its assent" to divine things "by the Holy Spirit."90 Zwingli here stands on the same plane with his brethren. He strongly repels the Romish establishment of confidence in the Scriptures on the ipse dixit of the Church, indeed: and asserts that those who sincerely search the Scriptures are taught by God, and even that none acquire faith in the Word except as drawn by the Father, admonished by the Spirit, taught by the unction - as, says he, all pious men have found.⁹¹ But such occasional remarks as this could not fail wherever the Augustinian conception of grace was vitally felt; and show only that the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit was always implicit in that doctrine.⁹²

The same remark applies to the first edition of Calvin's "Institutes" (1536) also, though with a difference. This difference - that, if we cannot say that the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit to the divinity of the Scriptures is found there already in germ⁹³ any more than we can say the same of the Augustinian Fathers, and the criticism passed⁹⁴ on the adduction of Melanchthon's single sentence in this reference to the effect that he speaks rather "of the action of the Holy Spirit with reference to the object of faith, that is to say, to the contents of the Word of God" than "with reference to the divinity of the Scriptures themselves," is valid also for Calvin's first edition; yet it is certainly true that the general doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit comes much more prominently forward in even the first edition of the "Institutes" than in any preceding treatise of the sort - that much more is made in it than in any of its predecessors of the poverty of the human spirit and the need and actuality of the prevalent influence of the Spirit of God that man may have - whether in knowledge or act - any good thing. We shall have to go back to Augustine to find anything comparable to the conviction and insight with which even in this his earliest work Calvin urges these things. Calvin's whole thought is already dominated by the conception of the powerlessness of the human soul in its sin in all that belongs to the knowledge of God which is salvation, and its entire dependence on the sovereign operations of the Holy Spirit: and in this sense it may be said that the chapters in the new "Institutes" of 1539 in which he develops this doctrine of the noetic effects of sin and their cure by objective revelation, documented in Scripture, and subjective illumination wrought by the Holy Spirit, lay implicitly in his doctrine of man's need and its cure by the indwelling Spirit which pervades the "Institutes" of 1536. There he already teaches that the written law was required by the decay of our consciousness of the law written on the heart; that to know God and His will we have need to surpass ourselves; that it is the Spirit dwelling in us that is the source of all our right knowledge of God; and that it is due to the power of the Spirit alone" that we hear the word of the Holy Gospel, that we accept it by faith, and that we abide in this faith " (p. 137, or Opp. i. 72). With eminent directness and simplicity he already there tells us that "our Lord first teaches and instructs us by His Word; secondarily confirms us by His Sacraments; and thirdly by the light of His Holy Spirit illuminates our understandings and gives entrance into our hearts both to the Word and to the Sacraments, which otherwise would only beat upon our ears and stand before our eyes, without penetrating or operating beneath them" (p. 206, or Opp. i. 104). There is, in other words, very rich teaching in the "Institutes" of 1536 of the entire dependence of sinful man on the Spirit of God for every sound religious movement of the soul: but there is no development of the precise doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the divinity of the Scriptures. It is not merely that the term testimonium Spiritus Sancti does not occur in this early draft, or occurs only once, and then not in this sense:95 it is that the thing is not explicated and is present only as implicated in the general doctrine of grace, which is very purely conceived. 

It was left, then, to the edition of 1539 to create the whole doctrine at, as it were, a single stroke.⁹⁶ For, as we have already had occasion to note, Calvin's whole exposition of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to the divinity of Scripture appears all at once in its completeness in the second edition of the "Institutes," the first edition which he issued as a textbook on theology, that of 1539. This exposition was reproduced without curtailment or alteration in all subsequent editions, and is thereby given the great endorsement of Calvin's permanent approval: while the additions which are made to it in the progressive expansion of the treatise, while large in amount, are devoted to guarding it from the misapprehension that the necessity it asserted for the testimony of the Spirit in any way detracted from the objective value of the indicia of the divinity of Scripture, rather than to modifying the positive doctrine expounded. The additions within the limits of chapter vii. consist essentially of the insertion of the discussion of Augustine's doctrine in § 3 and of the caveat with reference to the underestimation of the indicia in § 4, while practically the whole of chapter viii. - all except the opening sentence - is of later origin. If we will omit the first sentence of chapter vii., the whole of §§ 3 and 4, with the exception of the sentence near the beginning of the latter, which begins: "Now if we wish to consult the true intent of our conscience" - and the beginning and end of § 5, retaining only the central passage beginning: "For though it conciliate our reverence . . ." down to the words: "Superior to the power of any human will or knowledge," and also the two striking sentences, beginning with: "It is such a persuasion" and ending with "a just explication of the subject" - we shall have substantially the text of the edition of 1539, needing only to add the two opening sentences of chapter viii. and the major part of chapter ix. It will at once be seen that the edition of 1539 contains the entire positive exposition of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit as retained by Calvin to the end. 

The formulation of this principle of the testimony of the Spirit by Calvin in 1539 had an extraordinary effect both immediate and permanent.⁹⁷ Universal Protestantism perceived in it at sight the pure expression of the Protestant principle and the sheet-anchor of its position. The Lutherans as well as the Reformed adopted it at once and made it the basis not only of their reasoned defence of Protestantism, but also of their structure of Christian doctrine and of their confidence in Christian living.⁹⁸ To it they both continued to cling so long and so far as they continued faithful to the Protestant principle itself. It has given way only as the structure of Protestantism has itself given way in reaction to the Romish position, or, more widely, as the structure of Christian thought has given way in rationalizing disintegration. No doubt it has undergone at the hands of its various expounders, from time to time, more or less modification, and in its journeyings to the ends of the earth, has suffered now and again some sea-change - sometimes through sheer misapprehension, sometimes through sheer misrepresentation, sometimes through more or less admixture of both. A spurious revival of the doctrine was, for example, set on foot by Schleiermacher in his strong revulsion from the cold rationalism which had so long reigned in Germany to a more vital religious faith; and sentences may be quoted from his writings which, when removed out of the context of his system of thought, almost give expression to it.⁹⁹ But after all, his revival of it was rather the revival of subjectivity in religion than of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit as the basis of all faith: and it has borne bitter fruit in a widespread subjectivism, the mark of which is that it discards (as "external") the authority of those very Scriptures to which the testimony of the Spirit is borne. Not in such circles is the continued influence of the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to be sought or its continued advocacy to be found. If we would see it in its purity in the modern Church we must look for it in the hands of true successors of Calvin - in the writings, to name only men of our own time, of William Cunningham¹⁰⁰ and Charles Hodge¹⁰¹ and Abraham Kuyper¹⁰² and Herman Bavinck.¹⁰³ 

As we have already had occasion to note, the principle of the testimony of the Spirit as the true basis of our confidence in the Scriptures as the Word of God was almost from the hands of Calvin himself incorporated into the Reformed Creeds. We have already pointed out the sharpness and strength of its expression in the Gallican (1557-1571) and Belgian (1501-1571) Confessions, and it finds at least the expression of suggestion in the Second Helvetic Confession (1562). It was not, however, merely into the Confessions of the Reformation age that it was incorporated. It is given an expression as clear as it is prudent, as decided as it is comprehensive, in that confession of their faith which the persecuted Waldenses issued after the massacres of 1655;104 and it is incorporated into the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) in perhaps the best and most balanced statement it has ever received - the phraseology of which is obviously derived in large part from Calvin, either directly or through the intermediation of George Gillespie,¹⁰⁵ but the substance of which was but the expression of the firmly held faith of the whole body of the framers of that culminating Confession of the Reformed Churches. 

"We recognize the divinity of these sacred books," says the Waldensian Confession (chap. iv.), "not only through the testimony of the Church, but principally through the eternal and indubitable truth of the doctrine which is contained in them, through the excellence, sublimity, and majesty of the pure divinity (du tout divine) which are apparent in them, and through the operation of the Holy Spirit which makes us receive with deference the testimony which the Church gives to them, which opens our eyes to receive the rays of the celestial light which shines in the Scriptures, and so corrects our taste that we discern this food by the divine savor which it possesses." The dependence of this fine statement on Calvin's exposition is evident; but what is most striking about it is the clarity with which it conceives and the fulness with which it expounds the exact mode of working of the testimony of the Spirit and its relation to the indicia of divinity in Scripture, through which, and not apart from or in opposition to which, it performs its work. So far from supposing that the witness of the Spirit is of the nature of a new and independent revelation from heaven or works only a blind faith in us, setting thus aside all evidences of the divinity of Scripture, external and internal alike, this careful statement particularly explains that our faith in the divinity of Scripture rests, under the testimony of the Spirit, on these evidences as its ground, but not on these evidences by themselves, but on them as apprehended by a Spirit-led mind and heart - the work of the Spirit consisting in so dealing with our spirit that these evidences are, under His influence, perceived and felt in their real bearing and full strength. 

An even more notable statement of the whole doctrine is that incorporated into the Westminster Confession (i. 4, 5), and in a more compressed form into the Larger Catechism (Q. 4). "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed," says the Confession, "dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture; and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our heart." In the Larger Catechism this is reduced to the form: "The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation; but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very Word of God." The fundamental excellence of this remarkable statement (for the full understanding of which what is said of "faith" in chapter xiv. of the Confession and Question 72 of the Catechism should be compared with it - just as Calvin referred his readers to his later discussion of "faith" for further information on the topic of the testimony of the Spirit) is the care with which the several grounds on which we recognize the Scriptures to be from God are noted and their value appraised, and that yet the supreme importance of the witness of the Spirit is safe-guarded.¹⁰⁶ The external testimony of the Church is noted and its value pointed out: it moves and induces us to a high and reverent esteem for Scripture. The internal testimony of the characteristics of the Scriptures themselves is noted and its higher value pointed out: they "abundantly evidence" or "manifest" the Scriptures "to be the Word of God." The need and place of the testimony of the Spirit is then pointed out in the presence of this "abundant evidencing" or "manifesting": it is not to add new evidence - which is not needed - but to secure deeper conviction - which is needed; and not independently of the Word with its evidencing characteristics, but "by and with the Word" or "the Scriptures." What this evidence of the Spirit does is "fully to persuade us" that "the Scriptures are the very Word of God," - to work in us "full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority" of the Word of God. It is a matter of completeness of conviction, not of grounds of conviction; and the testimony of the Spirit works, therefore, not by adding additional grounds of conviction, but by an inward work on the heart, enabling it to react upon the already "abundant evidence" with a really "full persuasion and assurance." Here we have the very essence of Calvin's doctrine, almost in his own words, and with even more than his own eloquence and precision of statement. 

What Calvin has given to the Reformed Churches, therefore, in his formulation of the doctrine of the Testimony of the Spirit is a fundamental doctrine, which has been as such expounded by the whole body of their theologians, and incorporated into the fabric of their public Confessions, so that it has been made and continues to be until to-day the officially declared faith of the Reformed Churches in France and Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Scotland, and America, wherever the fundamental Reformed Creeds are still professed.

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, vii. 1909, pp. 219-325. 

Article on "Calvin's Institutio, nach Form und Inhalt, in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung," printed in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for 1868, p. 39. Köstlin's whole account of the origin of these sections in the edition of 1539 is worth reading (pp. 38-39). 

"Institutes," I. iii. 1: Quemdam inesse humanae menti, et quidem naturali instinctu, divinitatis sensum, extra controversiam ponimus; iii. 3, ad init.: "This indeed with all rightly judging men will always be assured, that there is engraved on the minds of men divinitatis sensum, qui delera numquam potest"; iii. 3, med.: vigere tamen ac subinde emergere quem maxime extinctum cuperent, deitatis sensum; iv. 4, ad fin.: naturaliter insculptum esae deitatis sensum humanis cordibus; iv. 4, ad fin.: manet tamen semen illud quod revelli a radice nullo modo potest, aliquam esse divinitatem. The phraseology by which Calvin designates this "natural instinct" (naturalis instanctus; iii. 1, ad init.) varies from sensus divinitatis or sensus deitatis to such synonyms as: numinis intelligentia, dei notio, dei notitia. It is the basis on the one hand of whatever cognitio dei man attains to and on the other of whatever religio he reaches; whence it is called the semen religionis. 

That the knowledge of God is innate was the common property of the Reformed teachers. Peter Martyr, "Loci Communes," 1576, praef., declares that Dei cognitio omnium animis naturaliter innata [est]. It was thrown into great prominence in the Socinian debate, as the Socinians contended that the human mind is natively a tabula rasa and all knowledge is acquired. But in defending the innate knowledge of God, the Reformed doctors were very careful that it should not be exaggerated. Thus Leonh. Riissen, "F. Turretini Compendium ... auctum et illustratum," 1695, i. 8, remarks: "Some recent writers explain the natural sense of deity (numinis) as an idea of God impressed on our minds. If this idea is understood as an innate faculty for knowing God after some fashion, it should not be denied; but if it expresses an actual and adequate representation of God from our birth, it is to be entirely rejected." (Heppe, "Die Dogmatik der evangelischrcformirten Kirche," 1861, p. 4.) 

En quid sit pura germanaque religio, nempe fides, cum serio Dei timore coniuncta; ut timor et voluntariam reverentiam in se contineat, et secum trahat ligitimum cultum, qualis in Lege praescribitur. 

The significance and relations of "the Puritan principle" of absolute dependence on the Word of God as the source of knowledge of His will, and exclusive limitation to its prescriptions of doctrine, life, and even form of Church government and worship, are suggested by J. A. Dorner, "Hist. of Protest. Theol.," 1871, i. p. 390, who criticizes it sharply from his "freer" Lutheran standpoint. But even Luther knew how, on occasion, to invoke "the Puritan principle." Writing to Bartime von Sternberg, Sept. 1, 1523, he says: "For a Christian must do nothing that God has not commanded, and there is no command as to such masses and vigils, but it is solely their own invention, which brings in money, without helping either living or dead" ("The Letters of Martin Luther" (selected and translated) by Margaret A. Currie, 1908, p. 115). 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 8: "If Zwingli follows more the a priori, Calvin follows the a posteriori method"; and E. Rabaud, "Hist. de la doctrine de l'inspiration, etc.," 1883, p. 58: "his lucid and, above everything, practical genius." 

It is this distribution of Calvin's interest which leads to the impression that he lays little stress on "the theistic proofs." On the contrary, he asserts their validity most strenuously: only he does not believe that any proofs can work true faith apart from "the testimony of the Spirit," and he is more interested in their value for developing the knowledge of God than for merely establishing His existence. Hence P. J. Muller is wrong when he denies the one to affirm the other, as, e.g., in his "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 11: "Neither by Zwingli nor by Calvin are proofs offered for the existence of God, although some passages in their writings seem to contain suggestions of them. The proposition, 'God exists,' needed no proof either for themselves, or for their coreligionists, or even against Rome. The so-called cosmological argument has no doubt been found by some in Zwingli (Zeller, Das theolog. Syst. Zwingli's extracted from the Theol. Jahrbücher, Tübingen, 1853, p. 33; [or p. 126 in the Th. Jahrb.] ), and the physico-theological in Calvin (Lipsius, Lehrbuch der ev. Prot. Dogmatik, ed. 2, 1879, p. 213) ; but it would not be difficult to show that we have to do in neither case with a philosophical deduction, but only with a means for attaining the complete knowledge of God." Though Calvin (also Zwingli) makes use of the theistic proofs to develop the knowledge of God, it does not follow that he (or Zwingli) did not value them as proofs of the existence of God. And we do not think Muller is successful (pp. 12 sq.) in explaining away the implication of the latter in Zwingli's use of these theistic arguments, or in Calvin's (p. 16). Schweizer, "Glaubenslehre der ev.-ref. Kirche," 1844, i. p. 250, finds in Calvin's citation of Cicero's declaration that there is no nation so barbarous, no tribe so degraded, that it is not persuaded that a God exists, an appeal to the so-called historical argument for the divine existence (cf. the use of it by Zwingli, "Opera," Schuler und Schultess ed., 1832, iii. p. 156): but Calvin's real attitude to the theistic argument is rather to be sought in the implications of the notably eloquent ch. v. 

P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 18 sq., does not seem to bear this in mind, although he had clearly stated it in his "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 13-25. 

Cf. F. C. Baur, "Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, etc.," iii. 1843, p. 41: "From this point of view" - he is expounding Calvin's doctrine - "the several manifestations in the history of religions are conceived not as stages in the gradually advancing evolution of the religious consciousness, but as inexcusable, sinful aberrations, as wilful perversions and defacements of the inborn idea of God." 

Cf. J. Cramer, Nieuwe Bijdragen op het gebied van Godgeleerdheid en Wijsbegeerte, iii. 1881, p. 102: "By the Scripture or the Scriptures he [Calvin] understood the books of the Old and New Testaments which have been transmitted to us by the Church as canonical, as the rule of faith and life. The Apocrypha of the O. T. as they were determined by the Council of Trent, he excludes. They are to him indeed libri ecclesiastici, in many respects good and useful to be read; but they are not libri canonici 'ad fidem dogmatum faciendam' (Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto, 1547)." In a later article, "De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestantsche Schriftbeschouwing," 1883, p. 36, Cramer declares that by the Scriptures, Calvin means "nothing else than the canon, established by the Synods of Hippo and Carthage, and transmitted by the Catholic Church, with the exception of the so-called Apocrypha of the O. T.," etc. Cf. Leipoldt, "Geschichte des N. T. Kanons," ii. 1908, p. 149: "We obtain the impression that it is only for form's sake that Calvin undertakes to test whether the disputed books are canonical or not. In reality it is already a settled matter with him that they are. Calvin feels himself therefore in the matter of the N. T. canon bound to the mediæval tradition." Cf. also Otto Ritschl, "Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus," i. 1908, pp. 70, 71, to the same effect. 

Cf. e.g. J. Pannier, "Le témoignage du Saint-Esprit," 1893, pp. 112 sq.: "One fact strikes us at first sight: not only did Calvin not comment on the Aprochryphal books, for which he wrote a very short preface, which was ever more and more abridged in the successive editions, but he did not comment on all the Canonical books. And if lack of time may explain the passing over of some of the less important historical books of the Old Testament, it was undoubtedly for a graver reason that he left to one side the three books attributed to Solomon, notably the Song of Songs. 'In the New Testament there is ordinarily mentioned only the Apocalypse, neglected by Calvin undoubtedly for critical or theological motives analogous to those which determined the most of his contemporaries, but it is necessary to note that the two lesser epistles of John are also lacking, and that in speaking of the large epistle Calvin always expresses himself as if it were the only existing one' (Reuss, Revue de Theologie de Strasbourg, vi. 1853, p. 229). In effect, at the very time when he was defending particularly the authority of the Scriptures against the Council of Trent, when he was dedicating to Edward VI, the King of England, his Commentaries on the 'Epistles which are accustomed to be called Canonical' (1551), he included in the Canon only the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, James and, at the very end, the Second Epistle of Peter and Jude." - Reuss, however, in his "History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Church" (1863, E. T. 1884), greatly modifies the opinion here quoted from him: "Some have believed it possible to affirm that he [Calvin] rejected the Apocalypse because it was the only book of the N. T., except the two short Epistles of John, on which he wrote no commentary. But that conclusion is too hasty. In the Institutes, the Apocalypse is sometimes quoted like the other Apostolic writings, and even under John's name. If there was no commentary, it was simply that the illustrious exegete, wiser in this respect than several of his contemporaries and many of his successors, understood that his vocation called him elsewhere" (p. 318). He adds, indeed, of II and III John: "It might be said with more probability that Calvin did not acknowledge the canonicity of these two writings. He never quotes them, and he quotes the First Epistle of John in a way to exclude them: Joannes in sua canonica, Instit. iii. 2. 21; 3. 23 (Opp. ii. 415, 453)." But this opinion requires revision, just as that on the Apocalypse did, as we shall see below. Cf. further, in the meantime: Reuss, "Hist. of the Sacred Scriptures of the N. T.," 1884, ii. p. 347, and S. Berger, "La Bible au seizieme siecle," 1879, p. 120, who expresses himself most positively: "Calvin expresses no judgment on the lesser Epistles of St. John. But we remark that he never cites them and that he mentions the First in these terms: 'As John says in his canonical.' This word excludes, in the thought of the author, the two other Epistles attributed to this Apostle." 

This may have been the case with the Apocalypse, which not only Reuss, as we have seen, but Scaliger thought him wise not to have entered upon; and which he is - perhaps credibly - reported to have said in conversation he did not understand (cf. Leipoldt's "Geschichte des N. T. Kanons," ii. 1908, p. 148, note). But how impossible it is to imagine that this implies any doubt of the canonicity or authority of the book will be quickly evident to anyone who will note his frequent citation of it in the same fashion with other Scripture and alongside of other Scripture (e.g. Opp. i. 736 = ii. 500; i. 953 - ii. 957; i. 1033 = ii. 1063; i. 1148; ii. 88, 859; v. 191, 196, 532; vi. 176; vii.  29, 118, 333; xxxi. 650, sometimes mentioning it by name (vii. 469; i. 733 = ii. 497), sometimes by the name of John (i. 715 = ii. 492, viii. 338 [along with I John] ), sometimes by the name of both "John" and "the Apocalypse" (ii. 124, vii. 116, xxx. 651, xlviii. 122), and always with reverence and confidence as a Scriptural book. He even expressly cites it under the name of Scripture and explicitly as the dictation of the Spirit: vii. 559, "Fear, not, says the Scripture (Eccles. xviii. 22).... Again (Rev. xxii. 11) . . . and (John xv. 2)"; i. 624: "Elsewhere also the Spirit testifies . . ." (along with Daniel and Paul). Cf. also such passages as ii. 734, "Nor does the Apocalypse which they quote afford them any support . . "; xlviii. 238: "I should like to ask the Papists if they think John was so stupid that . . . etc. (Rev. xxii. 8)"; also vi. 369; v. 198. 

We use the simple expression "the Epistle of John"; the apparently, but only apparently, stronger and more exclusive, "the Canonical Epistle of John," which Calvin employs, although it would be misleading in our associations, is its exact synonym. Those somewhat numerous writers who have quoted the form "the Canonical Epistle of John " as if its use implied the denial of the canonicity of the other epistles of John forget that this was the ordinary designation in the West of the Catholic Epistles - "the Seven Canonical Epistles" - and that they are all currently cited by this title by Western writers. The matter has been set right by A. Lang: "Die Bekehrung Johannis Calvins" (II. i. of Bonwetsch and Seeberg's "Studien zür Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche," 1897, pp. 2Cr29). On the title "Canonical Epistles" for the Catholic Epistles, see Lücke, SK. 1836, iii. pp. 643-650; Bleek, "Introd. to the N. T.," § 202 at end (vol. ii. 1874, p. 135); Hilgenfeld, "Einleitung in d. N. T.," 1875, p. 153; Westcott, "Epp. of St. John," 1883, p. xxix.; Salmond, Hastings' BD. i. 1898, p. 360. In 1551, Calvin published his "Commentarii in Epistolas Canonicas" - that is on the Catholic Epistles; also his "Commentaire sur l'Épistre Canonique de St. Jean," i.e. on "the Epistle of John"; also his "Commentaire sur l'Épistre Canonique de St. Jude." Calvin does not seem ever to have happened to quote from II and III John. The reference given in the Index printed in Opp. xxii., viz., III John 9, Opp. xb. 81, occurs in a letter, not by Calvin but by Christof Libertetus to Farel. Cf. J. Leipoldt, "Geschichte des N. T. Kanons" (2nd Part, Leipzig, 1908), p. 148, note 1: "The smaller Johannine Epistles Calvin seems never to have cited. He cites I John in Inst. III. ii. 21 by the formula: dicit Johannes in sua canonica. Nevertheless it is very questionable whether inferences can be drawn from this formula as to Calvin's attitude to II and III John." He adds a reference to Lang as above. 

Pannier, as cited, p. 113. 

Opera, xi. 674-676: cf. Buisson, "Castellion," 1892, i, pp. 198-199. Buisson discusses the whole incident and quotes from the minutes of the Council before which Castellion brought the matter: the point of dispute is there briefly expressed thus: "Mossr Calvin recognizes as holy, and the said Bastian repudiates" (p. 197) the book in question. 

Calvin employs all these "three books attributed to Solomon" freely as Scripture and deals with them precisely as he does with other Scriptures. As was to be expected, he cites Proverbs most frequently, Canticles least: but he cites them all as Solomon's and as authoritative Scripture. "'I have washed my feet' says the believing soul in Solomon . . " is the way he cites Canticles (Opp. i. 778, ii. 589). "They make a buckler of a sentence of Solomon's, which is as contrary to them as is no other that is in the Scriptures" (vii. 130) is the way he cites Ecclesiastes. He indeed expressly contrasts Ecclesiastes as genuine Scripture with the Apocryphal books: "As the soul has an origin apart, it has also another preeminence, and this is what Solomon means when he says that at death the body returns to the earth from which it was taken and the soul returns to God who gave it (Eccl. xii. 7). For this reason it is said in the Book of Wisdom (ii. 23) that man is immortal, seeing that he was created in the image of God. This is not an authentic book of Holy Scripture, but it is not improper to avail ourselves of its testimony as of an ancient teacher (Docteur ancien) - although the single reason ought to be enough for us that the image of God, as it has been placed in man, can reside only in an immortal soul, etc." (vii. 112, written in 1544). 

Cf. A. Bossert, "Calvin," 1906, p. 6: "Humanist himself as well as profound theologian . . ."; Charles Borgeaud, "Histoire de l'Universite de Geneve," 1900, p. 21: "Before he was a theologian, Calvin was a Humanist..."

Cf. the Preface he prefixed to the Apocryphal Books (for the history of which, see Opera, ix. 827, note) : "These books which are called Apocryphal have in all ages been discriminated from those which are without difficulty shown to be of the Sacred Scriptures. For the ancients, wishing to anticipate the danger that any profane books should be mixed with those which certainly proceeded from the Holy Spirit, made a roll of these latter which they called 'Canon'; meaning by this word that all that was comprehended under it was the assured rule to which we should attach ourselves. Upon the others they imposed the name of Apocrypha; denoting that they were to be held as private writings and not authenticated, like public documents. Accordingly the difference between the former and latter is the same as that between an instrument, passed before a notary, and sealed to be received by all, and the writing of some particular man. It is true they are not to be despised, seeing that they contain good and useful doctrine. Nevertheless it is only right that what we have been given by the Holy Spirit should have preëminence above all that has come from men." Cf., in his earliest theological treatise, the "Psychopannychia" of 1534-1542 (Opp. v. 182), where, after quoting Ecclus. xvii. 1 and Wisd. ii. 23 as "two sacred writers," he adds: "I would not urge the authority of these writers strongly on our adversaries, did they not oppose them to us. They may be allowed, however, some weight, if not as canonical, yet certainly as ancient, as pious, and as received by the suffrages of many. But let us omit them and let us retain . . ." etc. In the "Psychopannychia" his dealing with Baruch on the other hand is more wavering. On one occasion (p. 205) it is quoted with the formula, "sic enim loquitur propheta," and on another (p. 227), "in prophetia Baruch" corrected in 1542. In the "Institutes" of 1536 he quotes it as Scripture: "alter vero propheta scribit" (Opp. i. 82) - referring back to Daniel. This is already corrected in 1539 (i. 906; cf. ii. 632). In 1534-1536, then, he considered Baruch canonical: afterwards not so. His dealing with it in v. 271 (1537), vi. 560 (1545), vi. 638 (1546) is ad hominem. 

"Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto " (1547), Opp. vii. 365-506. 

"Vera ecclesiae reformandae ratio," Opp. vii. 613: quae divinitus non esse prodita, sani omnes, saltem ubi moniti fuerint, iudicabunt. 

"Acta Synodi Tridentinae, cum antidoto," Opp. vii. 413: Quantum, obsecro, a Spiritus Sancti maiestati aliena est haec confessio!

This is translated from the French version, ed. Meyrueis, iv. 1855, p. 743. The Latin is the same, though somewhat more concise: nihil habet Petro indignum, ut vim spiritus apostolici et gratiam ubique exprimat ... eam prorsus repudiare mihi religio est. 

Haec sutem fictio indigna esset ministro Christi, obtendere alienam personam. 

Ed. Meyrueis, iv. p. 780. 

Ibid., iv. p. 362. 

Ibid., iv. p. 694. Latin: mihi ad epistolam hanc recipiendam satis est, quod nihil continet Christi apostolo indignum. 

Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, p. 126: "It was thus, in the first place, as the result of scientific investigations that Calvin fixed the limits of the canon . . . not a priori, but a posteriori, that he came to the recognition of the canonicity of the Biblical books." But especially see the excellently conceived passage on pp. 155-6, to the following effect: "What great importance Calvin attaches to the question whether a Biblical book is apostolic! If it is not apostolic, he does not recognize it as canonical. To determine its apostolicity, he appeals not merely to the ecclesiastical tradition of its origin, but also and principally to its contents. This is what he does in the case of all the antilegomena. The touchstone for this is found in the homologoumena. That he undertakes no investigation of the apostolic origin of these latter is a matter of course. This, for him and for all his contemporaries, stood irreversibly settled. The touchstone employed by Calvin is a scientific one. The testimonium Spiritus Sancti no doubt made its influence felt. But without the help of the scientific investigation, this internal testimony would not have the power to elevate the book into a canonical book. That Calvin was treading here in the footprints of the ancient Church will be understood. The complaint sometimes brought against the Christians of the earliest centuries is unfounded, that they held all writings canonical in which they found their own dogmatics. No doubt they attached in their criticism great weight to this. But not less to the question whether the origin of the books was traceable back to the apostolical age, and their contents accorded with apostolic doctrine, as it might be learned from the indubitably apostolic writings. So far as science had been developed in their day, they employed it in the formation of the canon. . . ." In a later article Cramer says: "In the determination of the compass of Scripture, he [Calvin], like Luther, took his start from the writings which more than the others communicated the knowledge of Christ in His kingdom and had been recognized always by the Church as genuine and trustworthy. Even if the results of his criticism were more in harmony than was the case with those of the German reformer with the ecclesiastical tradition, he yet walked in the self-same critical pathway. He took over the canon of the Church just as little as its version and its exegesis without scrutiny" ("De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestansche Schriftbeschouwing," 1883, pp. 31-32). Cramer considers this critical procedure on Calvin's part inconsistent with his doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit, but (p. 38) he recognizes that we cannot speak of it as the nodding of Homer: "It is not here and there, but throughout; not in his exegetical writings alone, but in his dogmatic ones, too, that he walks in this critical path. We never find the faintest trace of hesitation." 

Comment on John viii. 1 (Meyrueis' ed. of the Commentaries, ii. 1854, p. 169). 

Comment on I John v. 7 (Meyrueis' ed. of the Commentaries, iv. 1855, p. 682). 

Quomodo Jeremiae nomen obrepserit, me nescire fateor, nee anxie laboro; certe Jeremiae nomen errore positum esse pro Zacharia rea ipsa ostendit; quia nihil tale apud Jeremiam legitur (Opera, xlv. 749). 

Opera, iii. 100, note 3. 

Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, pp. l1f-117: "Calvin does not largely busy himself with textual criticism. He follows the text which was generally received in his day. It deserves notice only that he exercises a free and independent judgment and recognizes the rights of science." Cramer adduces his treatment of I John v. 7 and proceeds: "He comes forward on scientific grounds against the Vulgate. The decree of Trent that this version must be followed as 'authentical,' he finds silly; and reverence for it as if it had fallen down from heaven, ludicrous. 'How can anyone dispute the right to appeal to the original text? And what a bad version this is! There are scarcely three verses in any page well rendered' (Acta Synod. Trident., etc., pp. 414-116)." 

"Institutes," I. viii. 10. Cf. I. vi. 2-3. 

I. vii. 5, ad init.: " We have received it from God's own mouth by the ministry of men" 

It is quite common to represent Calvin as without a theory, at least an expressed theory, of the relation of the divine and human authors of Scripture. Thus J. Cramer, as cited, p. 103, says: "How we are to understand the relation of the divine and human activities through which the Scriptures were produced is not exactly defined by Calvin. A precise theory of inspiration such as we meet with in the later dogmaticians is not found in him." Cramer is only sure that Calvin did not hold to the theory which later Protestants upheld: "It is true that Calvin gave the impulse [from which the later dogmatic view of Scripture grew up], more than any other of the Reformers. But we must not forget that here we can speak of nothing more than the impulse. We nowhere find in Calvin such a magical conception of the Bible as we find in the later dogmaticians. It is true he used the term 'dictare' and other expressions which he employs under the influence of the terminology of his day, but on the other hand - in how many respects does he recognize the human factor in the Scriptures!" (p. 142). Similarly Pannier, as cited, p. 200: "In any case Calvin has not written a single word which can be appealed to in favor of literal inspiration. What is divine for him, if there is anything specifically divine beyond the contents, the brightness of which is reflected upon the container, is the sense of each book, or at most of each phrase, - never the employment of each word. Calvin would have deplored the petty dogmatics of the Consensus Helveticus, which declares the vowel points of the Hebrew text inspired, and the exaggerations of the theopneusty of the nineteenth century." Yet nothing is more certain than that Calvin held both to "verbal inspiration" and to "the inerrancy of Scripture," however he may have conceived the action of God which secured these things. 

Cf. Otto Ritschl, "Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus," 1908, i. p. 63: "If we may still entertain doubts whether Bullinger really defended the stricter doctrine of inspiration, it certainly is found in Calvin after 1543. He may have merely taken over from Butzer the expression Spiritus Sancti amanuenses; but it is peculiar to him that he conceives both the books of the Old Testament inclusively as contained in the historical enumerations, and those of the New Testament, as arising out of a verbal dictation of the Holy Spirit." 

These phrases are brought together by J. Cramer (as cited, pp. 102-3) from the Comments on II Tim. iii. 16 and II Pet. i. 20. 

Cf. Pannier, as cited, p. 203: "The Word of God is for him one, verbum Dei, and not verba Dei. The diversity of authors disappears before the unity of the Spirit." 

Ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse. 

E coelo fluxisse acsi vivae ipsae Dei voces illic exaudirentur. 

Hoc prius est membrum, eandem scripturae reverentiam deberi quam Deo deferimus, quia ad eo solo manavit, nee quidquam humani habet admistum. 

Justa reverentia inde nascitur, quum statuimus, Deum nobiscum loqui, non homines mortales. 

The account of Calvin's doctrine of inspiration given by E. Rabaud, "Histoire de la doctrine de l'inspiration . . . dans les pays de langue française," 1883, pp. 52 sq., is worth comparing. Calvin's thought on this subject, he tells us, was more precise and compact than that of the other Reformers, although even his conception of inspiration was far from possessing perfectly firm contours or supplying the elements of a really systematic view (p. 52). He was the first, nevertheless, to give the subject of Sacred Scripture a fundamental, theoretic treatment, led thereto not by the pressure of controversy, but by the logic of his systematic thought: for his doctrine of inspiration (not yet distinguished from revelation) is one of the essential bases, if not the very point of departure of his dogmatics (p. 55). To him "the Bible is manifestly the word of God, in which He reveals Himself to men," and as such "proceeds from God." "But " (pp. 56 sq.) "the action of God does not, in Calvin's view, transform the sacred authors into machines. Jewish verbalism, Scriptural materialism, may be present in germ in the ideas of the Institutes - and the cold intellects of certain doctors of the Protestant scholasticism of the next century developed them - but they are very remote from the thought of the Reformer. Chosen and ordained by God, the Biblical writers were subject to a higher impulse; they received a divine illumination which increased the energy of their natural faculties; they understood the Revelation better and transmitted it more faithfully. It was scarcely requisite for this, however, that they should be passive instruments, simple secretaries, pens moved by the Holy Spirit. Appointed but intelligent organs of the divine thought, far from being subject to a dictation, in complete obedience to the immediate will of God, they acted under the impulsion of a personal faith which God communicated to them. 'Now, whether God was manifested to men by visions or oracles, what is called celestial witnesses, or ordained men as His ministers who taught their successors by tradition, it is in every case certain that He impressed on their hearts such a certitude of the doctrine, that they were persuaded and convinced that what had been revealed and preached to them proceeded from the true God: for He always ratified His word so as to secure for it a credit above all human opinion. Finally, that the truth might uninterruptedly remain continually in vigor from age to age, and be known in the world, He willed that the revelations which He had committed to the hands of the Fathers as a deposit, should be put on record: and it was with this design that He had the Law published, to which He afterwards added the Prophets as its expositors' (Institutes, I. vi. 2). These few lines resume in summary form the very substance of Calvin's doctrine of inspiration. We may conclude from it that he did not give himself to the elaboration of this dogma, with the tenacity and logical rigor which his clear and above all practical genius employed in the study and systematization of other points of the new doctrine. We shall seek in vain a precise declaration on the mode of revelation, on the extent and intensity of inspiration, on the relation of the book and the doctrine. None of these questions, as we have already had occasion to remark, had as yet been raised: the doctors gave themselves to what was urgent and did not undertake to prove or discuss what was not yet either under discussion or attacked. The principle which was laid down sufficed them. God had spoken - this was the faith which every consciousness of the time received without repugnance, and against which no mind raised an objection. To search out how He did it was wholly useless: to undertake to prove it, no less so" (p. 58). There is evident in this passage a desire to minimize Calvin's view of the divinity of Scripture; the use of the passage from I. vi. 2 as the basis of an exposition of his doctrine of inspiration is indicative of this - whereas it obviously is a very admirable account of how God has made known His will to man and preserved the knowledge of it through time. The double currents of desire to be true to Calvin's own exposition of his doctrine and yet to withhold his imprimatur from what the author believes to be an overstrained doctrine, produces some strange confusion in his further exposition. 

Cf. J. Cramer, as cited, p. 114: "How Calvin conceives of this dictare by the Holy Ghost it is difficult to say. He borrowed it from the current ecclesiastical usage, which employed it of the auctor primarius of Scripture, as indeed also of tradition. Thus the Council of Trent uses the expression dictante Spiritu Sancto of the unwritten tradition inspired by the Holy Spirit." Otto Ritschl, "Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus," i. 1908, p. 59, argues for taking the term strictly in Calvin. It is employed, it is true, in contemporary usage in the figurative sense, of the deliverances of the natural conscience, for example; and some Reformed writers use it of the internal testimony of the Spirit. Calvin also himself speaks as if he employed it of Scripture only figuratively - e.g. Opp. i. 632: verba quodammodo dictante Christi Spiritu. Nevertheless, on the whole Ritachl thinks he meant it in the literal sense. 

Cf., e.g., J. Cramer, as cited, pp. 114-116, whose instances are followed in the remarks which succeed. Cf. also p. 125. How widespread this effort to discover in Calvin some acknowledgment of errors in Scripture has become may be seen by consulting the citations made by Dunlop Moore, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1893, p. 60: he cites Cremer, van Oosterzee, Farrar. Cf. even A. H. Strong, "Syst. Theol.," ed. 1907, vol. i. p. 217, whose list of "theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching" requires drastic revision. Leipoldt ("Geschichte des N. T. Kanons," ii. 1908, p. 149) says: "Fundamentally Calvin holds fast to the old doctrine of verbal inspiration. His sound historical sense leads him, here and there, it is true, to break through the bonds of this doctrine. In his harmony of the Gospels (Commentarii in harmoniam ex Mat., Mk., et Lk. compositam, 1555), e.g., Calvin shows that the letters are not sacred to him; he moves much more freely here than Martin Chemnitz. But in other cases again Calvin draws strict consequences from the doctrine of verbal inspiration. He ascribes, e.g., to all four Gospels precisely similar authority, although he (with Luther and Zwingli) considers John's Gospel the most beautiful of them all." 

This is solidly shown, e.g., by Dunlop Moore, as cited, pp. 61-62: also for Acts vii. 16. 

Despite his tendency to lower Calvin's doctrine of inspiration with respect to its effects, J. Cramer in the following passage (as cited, pp. 120-121) gives in general a very fair statement of it: "we have seen that Calvin, although he has not given us a completed theory of inspiration, yet firmly believed in the inspiration of the entirety of Scripture. It is true we do not find in him the crass expressions of the later Reformed, as well as Lutheran, theologians. But the foundation on which they subsequently built - though somewhat onesidedly - is here. We cannot infer much from such expressions as 'from God,' 'came from God,' 'flowed from God.' Just as in Zwingli, these expressions were sometimes in Calvin synonyms of 'true.' Thus, at Titus ii. 12, he says he cannot understand why so many are unwilling to draw upon profane writers, - 'for, since all truth is from God (a Deo), if anything has been said well and truly by profane men, it ought not to be rejected, for it has come from God (a Deo est profectum).' More significant are such expressions as, 'nothing human is mixed with Scripture,' 'we owe to them the same reverence as to God,' God 'is the author of Scripture' and as such has 'dictated' (dictavit) all that the Apostles and Prophets have written, so that we 'must not depart from the word of God in even the smallest particular,' etc. All this applies not only to the Scriptures as a whole, not merely to their fundamental ideas and chief contents, but to all the sixty-six books severally. In contra-distinction from the Apocrypha, they have been given by the Holy Spirit (Préface mise en tête des livres apocryphes de l'Ancien Test.: Opp. ix. 827). The book of Acts 'beyond question is the product of the Holy Spirit Himself,' Mark 'wrote nothing but what the Holy Spirit gave him to write,' etc. To think here merely of a providential direction by God, in the sense that God took care that His people should lack nothing of a Scriptural record of His revelation - is impossible. For, however often Calvin may have directed attention to such a 'singularis providentiae cura' (Inst., I. vi. 2, cf. I. viii. 10; Argumentum in Ev. Joh.) with respect to Scripture, he yet saw something over and above this in the production of the sacred books. He looked upon them as the writings of God Himself, who, through an extraordinary operation of His Spirit, guarded His amanuenses from all error as well when they transmitted histories as when they propounded the doctrine of Christ. Thus to him Scripture (naturally in its original text) was a complete work of God, to which nothing could be added and from which nothing could be taken away." 

In I. v. 14 Calvin says that the Apostle in Heb. xi. 3, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God" wishes to intimate that "the invisible divinity was represented indeed by such displays of His power, but that we have no eyes to perceive it unless they are illuminated through faith by the inner revelation of God" (Invisibilem divinitatem repraesentari quidem talibua spectaculis, sed ad illam perspiciendam non esse nobis oculos, nisi interiore Dei revelatione per fidem illuminentur). Here he distinguishes between the external, objective representation, and the internal, subjective preparation to perceive this representation. God is objectively revealed in His works: man in his sins is blind to this revelation: the interior operation of God is an opening of man's eyes: man then sees. The operation of God is therefore a palingenesis. This passage is already in ed. 1539 (i. 291); the last clause (nisi ... ) is not, however, reproduced in the French versions of either 1541 or 1560 (iii. 60). 

In his response to the Augsburg Interim ("Vera Ecclesiae reformandae ratio," 1549, Opp. vii. 591-674) he allows it to be the proprium ecclesiae officium to scripturas veras a suppositiis discernere; but only that obedienter amplectitur, quicquid Dei est, as the sheep hear the voice of the shepherd. It is nevertheless sacrilega impietas ecclesiae judicio submittere sacrosancta Dei oracula. See J. Cramer, as cited, p. 104, note 3. Cramer remarks in expounding Calvin's view: "By the approbation she gives to them" - the books of Scripture - "the Church does not make them authentic, but only yields her homage to the truth of God."

It would require that we should be wholly hardened (nisi ad perditam impudentiam obduruerint) that we should not perceive that the doctrine of Scripture is heavenly, that we should not have the confession wrung from us that there are manifest signs in Scripture that it is God who speaks in and through it (extorquebitur illia haec confessio, manifests, signa loquentia Dei conspici in Scriptura ex quibus pateat coelestem esse eius doctrinam) - I. vii. 4. 

The exact relations of the "proofs" to the divinity of Scripture, which Calvin teaches, was sufficiently clear to be caught by his successors. It is admirably stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, i. 5. And we may add that the same conception is stated also very precisely by Quenstedt: "These motives, as well internal as external, by which we are led to the knowledge of the authority of Scripture, make the theopneusty of Sacred Scripture probable, and produce a certitude which is not merely conjectural but moral ... they do not make the divinity of Scripture infallible and altogether indubitable." ("Theologia didactico-polemica, sive Systema theologicum," Lipsiae, 1715, Pars prima, pp. 141-2.) That is to say, they are not of the nature of demonstration, but nevertheless give moral certitude: the testimony of the Spirit is equivalent to demonstration - as is the deliverance of any simply acting sense. 

Cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 207-8: "we see that this understanding of the Scriptures, this capacity to receive the testimony of the Spirit, is not, according to Calvin, possible for all; and that, less and less . . . He continually emphasises more and more the incapacity of man to persuade another of it, without the aid of God; but he emphasises still more progressively the impossibility of obtaining this aid if God does not accord it first. 1550 (I. viii. at end): 'Those who wish to prove to unbelievers by arguments that the Scriptures are from God are inconsiderate; for this is known only to faith.' 1559 (I. vii. in fine): The mysteries of God are not understood, except by those to whom it is given.... It is quite certain that the witness of the Spirit does not make itself felt except to believers, and is not in itself an apologetic means with respect to unbelievers. . . . The natural man receiveth not spiritual things." 

Cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 195-6: "First let us recall this, - for Calvin this testimony of the Holy Spirit is only one act of the great drama which is enacted in the entire soul of the religious man, and in which the Holy Spirit holds always the principal role. While the later dogmatists make the Holy Spirit, so to speak, function mechanically, at a given moment, in the pen of the prophets or in the brain of the readers, Calvin sees the Holy Spirit constantly active in the man whom He wishes to sanctify, and the fact that He leads him to recognize the divinity and the canonicity of the sacred books is only one manifestation, - a very important one, no doubt, but only a particular one, - of His general work." It is only, of course, the Lutheran and Rationalizing dogmatists who, constructively, subject the action of the Spirit to the direction of man - whether by making it rest on the application of the "means of grace" or on the action of the human will. Calvin and his followers - the Reformed - make the act of man depend on the free and sovereign action of the Spirit. 

J. Cramer, as cited, pp. 122-3, somewhat understates this, but in the main catches Calvin's meaning: "Calvin does not, it is true, tell us in so many words precisely what this testimonium Sp. S. is, but it is easy to gather it from the whole discussion. He is thinking of the Holy Spirit, who, as the spirit of our adoption as children, leads us to say Amen to the Word which the Father speaks in the Holy Scriptures to His children. He even says expressly in Inst. I. vii. 4: 'As if the Spirit was not called "seal" and "earnest" just because He confers faith on the pious.' But more plainly still, and indeed so that no doubt can remain, we find it in Beza, the most beloved and talented pupil of Calvin, who assuredly also in his conception of Scripture was the most thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his teacher. In his reply to Castellion, Beza says: 'The testimony of the Spirit of adoption does not lie properly in this, that we believe to be true what the Scriptures testify (for this is known also to the devils and to many of the lost), but rather in this, that each applies to himself the promise of salvation in Christ of which Paul speaks in Rom. viii. 15, 16.' Accordingly a few lines further down he speaks of a 'testimony of adoption and free justification in Christ.' In the essence of the matter Calvin will have meant just this by his testimony of the Holy Spirit. . . ." Beza's words are in his "Ad defensiones et reprehensiones Seb. Castellionis" ("Th. Bezae Vezelii Opera," i. Geneva, 1582, p. 503): Testimonium Spiritus adoptionis non in eo proprie positum est ut credamus verum esse quod Scriptura testatur (nam hoc ipsum quoque sciunt diaboli et reprobi multi), sed in eo potius ut quisque sibi salutis in Christo promissionem applicet, de qua re agit Paulus, Rom. viii. 15, 16.... That it was generally understood in the first age that this was the precise nature of the witness of the Spirit is shown by its definition in this sense not only by the Reformed, but by the Lutherans. For example, Hollaz defines thus: "The testimony of the Holy Spirit is the supernatural act (actus supernaturalis) of the Holy Spirit by means of the Word of God attentively read or heard (His own divine power having been communicated to the Scriptures) by which the heart of man is moved, opened, illuminated, turned to the obedience of faith, so that the illuminated man out of these internal spiritual movements truly perceives the Word which is propounded to him to have proceeded from God, and gives it therefore his unwavering assent." ("Examinis theologici acroamatici univers. theologiam thet. polem.," Holmiae et Lipsiae, 1741, p. 125.) The Lutheranism of this definition resides in the clauses: "By means of the Word of God" . . . "His own divine power having been communicated to the Scriptures" . . . which make the action of the Holy Spirit to be from out of the Word, in which He dwells intrinsicus. But the nature of the testimony of the Spirit is purely conceived as an act of the Holy Spirit by which the heart of man is renewed to spiritual perception, in the employment of which he perceives the divine quality of Scripture. 

Supra humanum iudicium, certo certius constituimus (non secus ac si ipsius Dei numen illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad noa fluxisse (I. vii. 5). 

Talis ergo est persuasio quse rationes non requirat; talis notitia, cui optima ratio constet: nempe in qua securius constantiusque mens quiescit quam in ullis rationibus; talis denique sensus, qui nisi ex coelesti revelatione nasci nequeat (I. vii. 5). 

Köstlin, as cited, pp. 412-13, especially 413, note a, adverts to this with a reference to Dorner, "Gesch. d. protest. Theologie," p. 377, who makes it characteristic of Calvin in distinction from Zwingli to draw the outer and inner Word more closely together. The justice of Dorner's view, which would seem to assign to Calvin in his doctrine of the Word as a means of grace a position somewhere between Zwingli and Luther, may well be doubted. According to Dorner, Calvin "modified the looser connection between the outward and inward Word held by Zwingli and connected the two sides more closely together." "In reference, therefore, to the principle of the Reformation," he continues, "with its two aides, Calvin is still more than Zwingli, of one mind and spirit with the German Lutheran Reformation" (E. T. i. 1871, p. 387). Again (i. p. 390): "The double form of the Verbum Dei externum and internum, held by Zwingli, gives place indeed in Calvin to a more inward connecting of the two sides; the Scriptures are according to him not merely the sign of an absent thing, but have in themselves divine matter and breath, which makes itself actively felt." We do not find that Calvin and Zwingli differ in this matter appreciably. 

Cf. his response to Sadolet (1539), Opp. v. 393: tuo igitur experimento disce non minus importunum esse spiritum iactare sine verbo, quam futurum sit insulsum, sine spiritu verbum ipsum obtendere. 

There is a certain misapprehension involved, also, in speaking of Calvin subordinating the indicia to the witness of the Spirit, as if he conceived them on the same plane, but occupying relatively lower and higher positions on this plane. The witness of the Spirit and the indicia move in different orbits. We find Köstlin, as cited, p. 413, accordingly speaking not quite to the point, when he says: "He subordinated to the power of this one, immediate, divine testimony, all those several criteria by the pious and thoughtful consideration of which our faith in the Scriptures and their contents may and should be further mediated. Even miracles, as Niedner has rightly remarked (Philosophie- und Theologiegeschichte, p. 341, note 2), take among the evidences for the divinity of the Biblical revelation, 'nothing more than a coordinate' place: we add in passing that Calvin introduces them here only in the edition of 1550, and then enlarges the section which treats of them in the edition of 1559. He does not, however, put a low estimate on such criteria; he would trust himself - as he says in an addition made in the edition of 1559 (xxx. 59) - to silence with them even stiff-necked opponents; but this certainty which faith should have, can never be attained, says he, by disputation, but can be wrought only by the testimony of the Spirit." The question between the testimony of the Spirit and the indicia is not a question of which gives the strongest evidence; it is a question of what each is fitted to do. The indicia are supreme in their sphere; they and they alone give objective evidence. But objective evidence is inoperative when the subjective condition is such that it cannot penetrate and affect the mind. All objective evidence is in this sense subordinate to the subjective change wrought by the Spirit: but considered as objective evidence it is supreme in its own sphere. The term "subordinate" is accordingly misleading here. For the rest, it is true that Calvin places the miracles by which the giving of Scripture was accompanied rather among the objective evidences of their divinity than at their apex: but this is due not to an underestimation of the value of miracles as evidence, but to the very high estimate he placed on the internal criteria of divinity, by which the Scriptures evidence themselves to be divine. And above all we must not be misled into supposing that he places miracles below the testimony of the Spirit in importance. Such a comparison is outside his argument: miracles are part of the objective evidence of the deity of Scripture; the testimony of the Spirit is the subjective preparation of the heart to receive the objective evidence in a sympathetic embrace. He would have said, of course - he does say - that no miracle, and no body of miracles, could or can produce "true faith": the internal creative operation of the Spirit is necessary for that. And in that sense the evidence of miracles is subordinated to the testimony of the Spirit. But this is not because of any depreciation of the evidential value of miracles; but because of the full appreciation of the deadness of the human soul in sin. The evidential value of miracles, and their place in the objective evidences of the divine origin of the Scriptures, are wholly unaffected by the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit; and the strongest assertions of their valuelessness in the production of faith, apart from the testimony of the Spirit, do not in the least affect the estimate we put on them, as objective evidences. 

Cf. Köstlin, as cited, pp. 413-415: "We find in Calvin the aforementioned several criteria set alongside of this witness of the Spirit, and indeed especially those which are internal to the Scriptures themselves, such as their elevation above all merely human products, which cannot fail to impress every reader, etc. It would certainly be desirable to trace an inner connection between this impression made by the character, by the style of speech, by the contents of Scripture, and that supreme immediate testimony of the Spirit for it. Assuredly God Himself, the Author of Scripture, works upon us also in such impressions, which we analyse in our reflecting human consideration, and in our debates strive to set before opponents; and we feel, on the other side, a need to analyse, as far as is possible for us, even the supreme witness of the Spirit, in spite of its immediacy, and to relate it with our other experiences and observations with respect to Scripture, so as to become conscious of the course by which God passes from one to the other. Calvin, however, does not enter into this; he sets the two side by side and over against one another: 'Although (Scripture) conciliates reverence to itself by its own supreme majesty, it does not seriously affect us, until it is sealed to our hearts by the Spirit' (XXIX. 295; XXX. 60; ed. 3, I. vii. 5): he does not show the inner relation of one to the other. He does not do this even in the edition of 1559, where he with great eloquence speaks more fully of the power with which the Word of the New Testament witnesses manifests its divine majesty. The witness of the Spirit comes forward with Calvin thus somewhat abruptly. By means of it the Spirit works true faith, which the Scripture, even through its internal criteria, cannot establish in divine certainty; and indeed He does not work it in the case of all those - and has no intention of working it in the case of all those - to whom the Scripture is conveyed with its criteria, but, as the section on Predestination further shows, only in the case of those who have been elected thereto from all eternity. Here we are already passing over into the relation of the Calvinistic conception of the Formal Principle or the Authority of Scripture, to its conception of the means of grace. In this matter the Lutheran doctrine stands in conflict with it. But with reference to what we have been discussing, we do not find that the Lutheran dogmaticians, when they come to occupy themselves more particularly with the testimonium Spiritus Sancti to the Scriptures, dealt more vitally with its relation to the operation of these criteria on the human spirit. No doubt, in Luther's own conception this was more the case: but he gave no scientific elaboration of it." 

Cf. Köstlin, as cited, p. 417: "The certainty that the Scriptures really possess such authority, rests for us not on the authority of the Church, but just on this testimony of the Spirit. Calvin's reference here is even to the several books of Scripture: he is aware that the opponents ask how, without a decree of the Church, we are to be convinced what book should be received with reverence, what should be excluded from the canon; he himself adduces in opposition to this, even here, nothing else except the testimonium Spiritus: the entirety of Scripture seems to him to be equally, so to say, en bloc, divinely legitimated by this." So also Pannier, as cited, p. 202: "The question of canonicity never presented itself to the thought of Calvin, except in the second place as a corollary of the problem of the divinity (I. vii. 1). If the Holy Spirit attests to us that a given book is divine, He in that very act attests that it forms a part of the rule of faith, that it is canonical. Nowhere has Calvin permitted, as his successors have done, a primary place to be taken by a theological doctrine which became less capable of resisting the assaults of adversaries when isolated from the practical question. Perhaps, moreover, he did not render as exact an account as we are able to render after the lapse of two centuries, of the wholly new situation in which the Reformation found itself with respect to the canon, or of the new way in which he personally resolved the question." Accordingly, at an earlier point Pannier says: "It is true that the faculty of recognizing the Word of God under the human forms included for Calvin, and especially according to the Confession of Faith of 1559, the faculty of determining the canonicity of the books. This is a consequence secondary but natural, and so long as they maintained the principle, the Reformed doctors placed themselves in a false position when they showed themselves disposed to abandon the consequences to the criticisms of their opponents" (p. 164). Cf. J. Cramer, Nieuwe Bijdragen, iii. p. 140: "But you must not think . . . of an immediate witness of the Spirit to the particular parts of the Holy Scriptures. The old theologians did not think of that. They conceived the matter thus: The testimonium Spiritus Sancti gives witness directly to the religio-moral contents of Scripture only. Since, however, the religio-moral contents must necessarily have a particular form, and the dogmatic content is closely bound up with the historical, neither the chronological nor the topographical element can be separated out, etc. - therefore the testimonium Spiritus Sancti gives to the total content of Scripture witness that it is from God." This, after all, then, is not to appeal to the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, directly to authenticate the canon; but to construct a canon on the basis of a testimony of the Spirit given solely to the divinity of Scripture, the movement of thought being this: All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable; this Scripture is given by inspiration of God; accordingly this Scripture belongs to the category of profitable Scripture, that is to the canon. 

Reuss, in the sixteenth chapter of his "History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures," E. T. 1884, expounds Calvin, with his usual learning and persuasiveness, as basing the determination of the canon solely on the testimony of the Spirit. But the exposition falls into two confusions: a confusion of the authority of Scripture with its canonicity, and a confusion of the divine with the apostolic origin of Scripture. Of course, Calvin repelled the Romish conception that the authority of Scripture rests on its authentication by the Church and its tradition (p. 294), but that did not deter him from seeking by a historical investigation to discover what especial books had been committed by the apostles to the Church as authoritative. Of course, he founded the sure conviction of the divine origin of the Scriptures on the witness of the Spirit of God by and with them in the heart, but that did not prevent his appealing to history to determine what these Scriptures which were so witnessed were in their compass. Accordingly even Reuss has to admit that it is exceedingly difficult to carry through his theory of Calvin's theoretical procedure consistently with Calvin's observed practice. In point of fact, the Reformers, and Calvin among them, did not separate the Apocrypha from the Old Testament on the sole basis of the testimony of the Spirit: they appealed to the evidence of the Jewish Church (p. 312). Nor did they determine the question of the New Testament antilegomena on this principle: this, too, was with them "a simple question of historical criticism" (p. 316) - although Reuss here (p. 318) confuses Calvin's appeal to the internal evidence of apostolicity with appeal to "religious intuition." In a word, Reuss's exposition of Calvin's procedure in determining the canon rests on a fundamental misconception of that procedure. 

"All this Holy Scripture is comprised in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, the number (le nombre) of which is as follows" ... the list ensuing. See Opp. ix. 741.

Opp. ix., prolg., pp. lvii.-lx.: cf. Dieterlen, "Le Synode general de Paris," 1873, pp. 77, 89; Pannier, as cited, pp. 126-7; and for a brief précis, Müller, "Bekenntnisschriften der reform. Kirche," 1903, p. xxxiii. 

Opp. ix. 741. 

"Actes de la dispute et conference tenue à Paris ès mois de juillet et aoust 1566" (Strasbourg, 1566), printed in the Biblioth. de la Soc. de l'Hist. du Prot. franc. We draw from the account of it in Pannier, as cited, pp. 141 sq. 

"Le vray systeme de l'Eglise et la veritable analyse de la foy," 1686, III. ii. 453. Pannier, as cited, quotes this, pp. 167-168. 

As we have seen, it is attributed to Calvin by both Pannier and Cramer. Pannier (p. 203) remarks that "if Calvin was not able to appreciate in all its purity" the new situation with regard to the canon into which the Reformation brought men, "it was even less incumbent on him to render account of the personal attitude which he himself took up with reference to it." "It is his successors only who, in adopting his conclusions (except that they apply them more or less), have asked themselves how they reached them, and have reconstructed the reasoning which no doubt Calvin himself had unconsciously followed." Is not this a confession that after all the view in question was not Calvin's own view? At least not consciously to himself? But Pannier would say, no doubt, either this was Calvin's view or he appealed to the testimony of the Spirit directly to authenticate the canon. 

The following is the account of the treatment of the question of the canon in these creeds, given by J. Cramer ("De Roomsch-Katholieke en de Oud-protestantache Schriftbeschouwing," 1883, pp. 48 sq.) : "And on what now, does that authority rest? This question, too, is amply discussed in the Reformed Confessions, and that, as concerns the principal matter, wholly in the spirit of Calvin. Only, more value is ascribed to the testimony of the Church. No doubt the authority of the Scriptures is not made to rest on it; but it is permitted an important voice in the question of the canon. When it is said that 'all that is said in the Holy Scriptures is to be believed not so much because the Church receives them and holds them as canonical, but especially because the Holy Spirit bears witness to them in our heart that they are from God,' a certain weight is attributed to the judgment of the Church. This appears particularly from the way in which the canonical books are spoken of in distinction from the Apocryphal books. In enumerating the Bible books, the Belgian Confession prefixes the words: 'Against which nothing can be said' (Art. iv.). By this apparently is meant, that against the canonicity of these books, from a historical standpoint, with the eye on the witness of the Church, nothing can be alleged (a thing not to be said of the Apocrypha). In the same spirit the Anglican Articles, when speaking of the books of the Old and New Testaments, says that 'Of their authority there has never been any doubt in the Church.' I will not raise the question here how that can be affirmed with the eye on the Antilegomena. It shows, however, certainly that much importance is attached to the ecclesiastical tradition. The fundamental ground, however, why the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are to be held to be the Word of God is sought in the Scriptures themselves, and, assuredly, in the testimony which the Holy Spirit bears to their divinity in the hearts of believers. Like Calvin, the Confessions suppose that thus they have given an immovable foundation to the divine authority of the Scriptures, and have taken an impregnable position over against Rome, which appealed to the witness of the Catholic Church. . . ." Calvin, however, allowed as much to the testimony of the Church - external evidence - as is here allowed, and the very adduction of its testimony shows that sole dependence was not placed on the testimony of the Spirit for the canonicity of a book: what it is appealed to for is the divinity of the canonical books. 

So even Köstlin perceives, as cited, p. 417: "The entirety of Scripture appeared to him divinely legitimated by the testimonium Spiritus, altogether, so to say, en bloc. . . . The declarations of Calvin as to the Word spoken by the prophets and apostles, which they rightly asserted to be God's Word, pass without hesitation over into declarations as to the Holy Scriptures, as such, and that in their entirety; with the proposition 'the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel have emanated from God' is interchanged the proposition 'the Scripture is from God,' - and the witness of the Spirit assures us of it." So also Pannier (pp. 203-204): "Everything goes back to his considering things not in detail but en bloc. The Word of God is for him one, verbum Dei, not verba Dei. The diversity of the authors disappears before the unity of the Spirit. The same reasoning applies to each single book as to the whole collection. All the verses hold together; and if one introduces us to the knowledge of salvation we may conclude that the book is canonical. Given the collection, it is enough in practice, since all the parts are of a sort, to establish the value of one of them to guarantee the value of all the others. It is certain that the critical theologian and the simple believer even yet proceed somewhat differently in this matter; the simplest and surest method is that of the humble saint, and Calvin was very right not to range himself among the theologians at this point. 'The just shall live by faith.' This affirmation seemed to him a revealed truth: he concluded from it that the whole epistle to the Romans is inspired; some remarks of this kind in other passages of the Epistles, of the Gospels, and the canonicity of the New Testament is established. The same for the Old Testament. The Second Epistle of Peter and the Song of Songs thus go with the rest. The human testimonies, internal and external criteria, useful for confirming the other parts of a book of which a passage has been recognized as inspired, are insufficient to expel from the canon a book which the witness of the Spirit has not recognized as opposed to the doctrine of salvation." We quote the whole passage to give Pannier's whole thought: but what we adduce it for is at present merely to signalize the admission it contains that Calvin dealt with the Scriptures in the matter of the testimony of the Spirit, so to speak, "in the lump" - as a whole. Pannier cites apparently as similar to Calvin's view, Gaussen, "Canon," ii. p. 10: "This testimony, which every Christian has recognized when he has read his Bible with vital efficacy, may be recognized by him only in a single page; but this page is enough to spread over the book which contains it an incomparable brightness." That is, Calvin, like the simple believer, has a definite book - the Bible - in his hands and treats it as all of a piece - of course, in Calvin's case, not without reasonable grounds for treating it as all of a piece: in other words, the canon was already determined for him before he appealed to the testimony of the Spirit to attest its divinity. Cf. Cramer (p. 140) as quoted above. Cramer is quite right so far, therefore, when he says (pp. 156-157): "Although we determine securely by means of the historical-critical method what must be carried back to the apostolical age and what accords with the apostolical doctrine, we have not yet proved the divine authority of these writings. This hangs on this, - whether the Holy Spirit gives us His witness to them. On this witness alone rests our assurance of faith, not on the force of a historical-critical demonstration." This, so far as appears, was Calvin's method. 

Calvin would certainly have subscribed to these words of Pannier, as cited, p. 164: The most of the Catholics "have always strangely misapprehended the illumination which, according to the Reformed, the least of believers is capable of receiving and of applying to the reading of the Bible. It is a question, not as they suppose, of becoming theologians, but of becoming believers, of having not the plenitude of knowledge, but the certitude of faith." 

Cf. Köstlin, as cited, pp. 415-416. After raising the question of the relation of the witness of the Spirit to the inner experience of the Christian, and the relative priority of the two - and remarking that in case the vital process is conceived as preceding the witness of the Spirit to the divinity of the Scriptures, it will be hard not to allow to the Christianized heart the right and duty of criticism of the Scriptures (where the fault in reasoning lies in the term process), Köstlin continues: "We touch here on the relation between the formal and material sides of the fundamental evangelical principle. And we think at once of the relation in which they stood to one another in Luther's representation, by which his well-known critical attitude, with respect, say, to the Epistle of James, was rendered possible. Calvin, too, now has no wish to speak of a witness of the Spirit merely with reference to the Scriptures, and is far from desiring to isolate that witness of the Spirit for the Scriptures. He comes back to it subsequently, when speaking of faith in the saving content of the Gospel, declaring that the Spirit seals the contents of the Word in our hearts (1539, XXIX. 456 sq., 468 sq.; further in 1559, III. 2 [In Köstlin's pagination, given here, XXIX. refers to the "Corpus Ref." as a whole; III. 2 stands for "Institutes," Book III. chap. ii., or XXX. 397 sq.]). He also inserted in the section on the Holy Scriptures and the witness of the Spirit to them, in 1550, an additional special sentence, in which he expressly refers to his intention to speak further on such a witness of the Spirit in a later portion of the treatise, and declares of faith in general, that there belongs to it a sealing of the divine Spirit (XXIX. 296 [1559, I. vii. 5, near end]). In any event he must have recurred to such a Spiritual testimony for the assurance of individual Christians of their personal election. But in the first instance - and this again is precisely what is characteristic for Calvin - he nevertheless treats of the doctrine of the divine origin and the divine authority of the Scriptures, and of the witness of the Spirit for them, wholly apart. The presentation proceeds with him in such a manner, that the Spirit first of all fully produces faith in this character of the Scriptures, and only then the Bible-believing Christian has to receive from the Scriptures its contents, in all its several parts, as divinely true, - though, no doubt, this reception and this faith in the several elements of the truth are by no means matters of human thought, but are rather to be performed under the progressive illumination and the progressive sealing of these contents in the heart by the Holy Spirit. Even though he, meanwhile, calls that the 'truth' of the Scriptures, which we come to feel in the power of the Spirit, he means by this in the section before us, an absolute truth-character, which must from the start be attributed to the Scriptures as a whole, and will be experienced in and with the divinity of the Scriptures in general. So the matter already stands in the edition of 1539 ... (XXIX. 292 sq.)." Accordingly Calvin teaches that the Scriptures in all their parts are of indefectible authority, and should be met in all their prescriptions with unlimited obedience (p. 418), because it is just God who speaks in them. Then: "With Dorner (Geschichte der protest. Theologie, p. 380) - and even more decisively than he does it - we must remark on all this: 'The formal aide of the protestant principle remains with Calvin an over-emphasis, in comparison with the material, and with this is connected that he sees in the Holy Scriptures above all else the revelation of the will of God which he has dictated to man through the sacred writers.' And this tendency came ever more strongly forward with him in the successive revisions of the Institutes. His conception of the formal principle thus left no room for such a criticism as Luther employed on the several parts of the canon." Later Lutheranism, however, Köstlin concludes by saying, adopted Calvin's point of view here and even exaggerated it. 

"The formal side of the Protestant principle retains with Calvin the ascendency over the material; and with this is connected the fact that he sees in the Holy Scriptures chiefly the revelation of the will of God, which he has prescribed to men through the sacred writers." - Dorner, "Hist. of Protest. Theology," i. 1871, p. 390. Cf. p. 387: "The formal principle is, according to him, the norm and source of dogma, whilst he does not treat faith, in the same way as Luther, as a source of knowledge for the dogmatical structure, that is to say, as the mediative principle of knowledge." Hence Dorner complains (p. 390) of the more restricted freedom which Calvin left "for the free productions of the faith of the Church in legislation and dogma," and instances his treatment of "the Apostolic Age as normative for all times, even for questions of Church constitution," and the little room he left for destructive Biblical criticism. Cf. what is said above of Calvin's adoption of "the Puritan principle" (pp. 38 sq.). 

Cf. the Introduction to the English Translation of Kuyper's "The Work of the Holy Spirit," 1900, especially pp. xxxiii.-iv. Cf. what Pannier, pp. 102-104, says of Calvin's general doctrine of the work of the Spirit and the relation borne to it by his particular doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit to Scripture. "If we pass beyond the two particular chapters whose contents we have been analysing and seek in the Institutes from 1536 to 1560 for other passages relating to the Holy Spirit, we shall see Calvin insisting ever more and more and on all occasions - as in the Commentaries - upon these diverse manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and presenting them all more or less as testimonies. He constantly recurs to the natural incapacity of man and the necessity of divine illumination in his mind, and especially in his heart, for the act of faith. It is from this point of view that he brings together the ideas of the Spirit and the Word of God in the definition of faith: 'It is a firm and certain knowledge of the good will of God towards us: which, being grounded in the free promise given in Jesus Christ, is revealed to our heart by the Holy Spirit.' He introduces the same ideas in his introductory remarks on the Apostles' Creed, and they lie at the basis of the explication he gives of the Third Article in all its forms, . . . e.g., in the ed. of 1580: 'In sum, He is set before us as the sole fountain from which all the celestial riches flow down to us.... For it is by His inspiration that we are regenerated into celestial life, so as no longer to govern or guide ourselves, but to be ruled by His movement and operation; so that if there is any good in us, it is only the fruit of His grace. . . . But since faith is His prime master-piece, the most of what we read in the Scriptures of His virtue and operation relates itself to this faith, by which He brings us to the brightness of the Gospel, in a manner which justifies calling Him the King by whom the treasures of the kingdom of heaven are offered to us, and His illumination may be called the longing of our souls.' From these quotations it is made plain that the witness of the Holy Spirit which at the opening of the Institutes in 1539 appeared as the means of knowledge, was thenceforward nevertheless considered, in the progress of the work, as the means of grace, and that taking his start from this point of view, Calvin discovered ever more widely extending horizons, so as at the end to speak particularly of the Holy Spirit in at least four different connections, but always - even in the first - in direct and constant relation to faith, with respect to its origin, and with respect to its consequences; and by no means almost exclusively with respect to assurance of the authority of the Scriptures." The progress which Pannier supposes he traces in Calvin's doctrine of the work of the Spirit seems illusory: the general doctrine of the work of the Spirit is already pretty fully outlined in 1536. But the relating of the testimony of the Spirit to Scripture to Calvin's general doctrine of faith as the product of the Spirit is exact and important for the understanding of his teaching. From beginning to end, Calvin conceived the confidence of the Christian in Scripture, wrought by the Holy Spirit, as one of the exercises of saving faith. Calvin is ever insistent that all that is good in man comes from the Spirit - whether in the sphere of thought, feeling, or act. "It is a notion of the natural man," he says on John xiv. 17 (1553: xlvii. 329-330), "to despise all that the Sacred Scriptures say of the Holy Spirit, depending rather on his own reason, and to reject the celestial illumination. . . . For ourselves, feeling our penury, we know that all we have of sound knowledge comes from no other fountain. Nevertheless the words of the Lord Jesus show clearly that nothing can be known of what concerns the Holy Spirit by human sense, but He is known only by the experience of faith." "No one," says he again ("Institutes" of 1543, i. 330), "should hesitate to confess that he attains the knowledge of the mysteries of God only so far as he has been illuminated by God's grace. He that attributes more knowledge to himself is only the more blind that he does not recognize his blindness." 

Opp. xiv. 727-733 (Pannier, as cited, p. 120). 

The classical instance of this confusion is supplied by the teaching of Claude Pajon (1626-1685), who, in accordance with his general doctrine that "without any other grace than that of the Word, God changes the whole man, from his intellect to his passions," explained the "testimony of the Spirit" as nothing else than the effect of the indicia of divinity in Scripture on the mind. The effect of these "marks" is a divine effect, because it is wrought in prearranged circumstances prepared for this effect: facit per alium facit per se. The conception is essentially deistic. It is no small testimony to the cardinal place which the doctrine of "the testimony of the Spirit" held in the Reformed system of the seventeenth century that Pajon still taught it; and it is no small testimony to its current conception as just "regeneration" that Pajon too identified it with regeneration, explained, of course, in accordance with his fundamental principle that all that God works He works through means. See on the whole matter Jurieu, "Traitté de la Nature et de la Grace," 1688, pp. 25, 26, who quotes alike from Pajon and his followers. 

Doumergue, "Le probleme protestant," 1892, p. 46 (Pannier, as cited, p. 192). 

Pannier, as cited, pp. 188 sq., is quite right in insisting on this. After quoting D. H. Meyer ("De la place et du rôle de l'apologetique dana la théologie protestante," in the Revue de théologie et des quest. relig., Jan., 1893, p. 1) to the effect that "the witness of the Holy Spirit in the heart of Christians is not a subjective phenomenon . . . it is an objective thing and comes from God," - he continues: "Now this objective character of the witness of the Holy Spirit is precisely what appears to make it 'incomprehensible' to our modern theologians (so A. E. Martin, La Polemique de R. Simon et de J. Le Clerc, 1880, p. 29: 'This intervention of the Holy Spirit distinct from the individual consciousness appears to us incomprehensible'). We are not speaking of those who venture to pretend that Calvin identifies the witness of the Holy Spirit with 'the intimate feeling' of each Christian. When one takes his place by the side of Castellion he may lawfully say, For me as for him 'the inspiration of the Holy Ghost confounds itself with consciousness; these revelations made to the humble are nothing more than the intuitions of a moral and religious sense fortified by meditation' (Buiason, Castellion, i. p. 304, cf. p. 201: 'Castellion placed above the tradition of the universal Church his own sense, his own reason, or rather, let us say it all at once, for it is the foundation of the debate, his consciousness'). But when one invokes the real fathers of the real Reformation, ah, please do not take for theirs the very opinions they combat. To make of the testimony of the Holy Spirit the equivalent of the testimony of the human spirit, of the individual consciousness, is to deny the real existence and the distinct role of the Holy Spirit, is to show that we have nothing in common with the faith expounded by Calvin so clearly, and defended through a century against the attacks of the Catholics as one of the essential bases of the Reformed theology and piety." Again, Pannier is quite right in his declaration (p. 214): "What we deny is that our reason - moral consciousness, religious consciousness, the term is of no importance - can, of itself, make us see the divinity of the Scriptures. It is this which sees it; but it is the Holy Spirit which makes us see it. He is not the inner eye for seeing the truth which is outside of us, but the supernatural hand which comes to open the eye of our consciousness - an eye which is, no doubt, divine in the sense that it too was created by God, but which has been blinded by the consequences of sin." 

See especially P. Du Moulin, "Du Iuge dea controverses traitté," 1838, pp. 294 sq., and cf. Pannier, as cited, pp. 64-88. 

"Dialogue with Trypho," vii. ("Opera," ed. Otto. I. ii. 32) : ouv ga.r sunopta. ouvde. sunnohta. pa/sin evstin( eiv mh, tw| qeo.j do|/ sunie,nai( kai. o` Cristo.j autou/: "these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have given it to understand them." 

"In Cap. v. et vi. Genes. homil. xxi." (Migne, liii. 175): Dia,toi tou/to prosh,kei h`ma/j u`po. th/j a;nwqen ca,ritoj o`dhgoume>nouj( kai. th.n para. tou/ a`gi,ou Pneu,matoj e;llamyin dexame,nouj ou;twj evpie,nai ta. qei/a lo,gia) Ouvde. ga.r sofi,aj avnqrwpi,nhj dei/tai h` qei,a Grafh. pro.j th.n katano,hsin tw/n gegramme,nwn( avlla. th/j tou/ Pneu,matoj avpokalu,yewj . . . . "For we must be led by the grace from above, and must receive the illumination of the Holy Spirit, to approach the divine oracles; for it is not human wisdom but the revelation of the Holy Spirit that is needed for understanding the Holy Scriptures." It will be perceived that it is more distinctly the understanding of the Scriptures than the reception of them as from God which is in question with both Justin and Chrysostom. 

"De Trinitate," ii. 34: Animus humanus, nisi per fidem donum Spiritus hauserit, habebit quidem naturam Deum intelligendi, sed lumen acientiae non habebit; iii. 24: non enim concipiunt imperfecta perfectum, neque quod ex alio subsistit, absolute vel auctoris sui potest intelligentiam obtinere, vel propriam; v. 21: neque enim nobis ea natura est, ut se in coelestem cognitionem suis viribus efferat. A Deo discendum est quid de Deo intelligendum sit; quia non nisi se auctore cognoscitur. . . . Loquendum ergo non aliter de Deo est, quam ut ipse ad intelligentiam nostram de se locutus est. (For these citations see Migne, "Patro. Lat.," x. 74-75; x. 92; x. 143.) Hilary certainly teaches that for such creatures as men there can be no knowledge of God except it be God-taught: but it is not so clear that he teaches that for sinful creatures there must be a special illapse of the Spirit that such as they may know God-may perceive Him in His Word and so recognize that Word as from Him and derive a true knowledge of Him from it. It is this soteriological doctrine which is Calvin's doctrine of the Holy Spirit's testimony: not that ontological one. 

Cf. article: "Augustine's Doctrine of Knowledge and Authority," in The Princeton Theological Review for July and October, 1907. 

Ibid., pp. 360 sq. 

Ibid., pp. 571 sq. 

"Tract. iii. in Ep. Joan. ad Parthos," ii. 13 (Migne, xxxv. 2004). Again: "There is, then, I say, a Master within that teacheth: Christ teacheth; His inspiration teacheth. Where His inspiration and His unction are not, in vain do words make a noise from without." 

"Confessions," xi. 3 (Migne, xxxii. 811). Cf. vi. 5 (Migne, xxxii. 723). 

Pannier, loc. cit., says: "The whole of the testimony of the Holy Spirit is not yet here. Only once is the Holy Spirit Himself named [in these passages from Augustine] in a formal way. But Augustine has the intuition of a mysterious work wrought in the soul of the Christian, of an understanding of the Bible which comes not from man but from a power exterior and superior to him; and he sets forth the role which this direct correspondence between the book and the reader may play in the foundation of Christian certitude. In this, as in so many other points, Augustine was the precursor of the Reformation, and a precursor without immediate followers: for except a couple of very vague and isolated hints in Salvianus (De Provid., iii. 1) and Gregory the Great († 604, Homil. in Ezek., I. x.), nothing further is found on this subject through ten centuries: it comes into view again at the approach of the new age, when thought aspired to free itself from the Scholastic ruts, with Biel († 1495, Lib. iii. Sent. dist. 25, dub. 3) and Cajetan († 1534, Opera, II. i. 1)." 

"Loci," ed. 1555 ("Corpus Ref.," xxi. 605). 

"De vera et falsa religione": Cum constet verbo nusquam fidem haberi quam ubi Pater traxit, Spiritus monuit, unctio docuit ... hanc rem solae piae mentea norunt. Neque enim ab hominum disceptatione pendet, sed in animis hominum tenacissime sedet. Experientia est, nam pii omnes eam experti sunt. "Articles of 1523" (Niemeyer, "Collectio confessionum in eccles. ref. publ.," 1840, p. 5): Art. xiii. Verbo Dei quum auscultant homines pure et sinceriter voluntatem Dei discunt. Deinde per Spiritum Dei in Deum trahuntur et veluti transformantur. "Von Klarheit und Gewusse des Worts Gottes" ("Werke," Schuler und Schulthess, 1828, i. 81; or "Werke" in "Corp. Ref.," i. 382): "The Scriptures . . . came from God, not from man; ... and the God who has shined into them will Himself give you to understand that their speech comes from God." Cf. the interesting biographical account of how he came to depend on the Scriptures only, on p. 79 (or " Corp. Ref.," i. 379). 

E. Rabaud, "Hist. de la doctr. de l'inspiration," etc., 1883, pp. 32-33, 42-43, 47 sq., 50, expounds the earlier Reformers as in principle standing on the doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit. With respect to the interpretation of Scripture he remarks: "The hermeneutical principle of the witness of the Holy Spirit (if we may speak of it as a principle) is common to all the Reformers. Luther only, without being ignorant of it, makes no use of it. Besides responding to the polemic needs, it responded to the aspirations of the faith and of the piety of simple men, better than rational demonstrations" (p. 50, note 4). "In a general way," he remarks, pp. 32-33, "Luther considered the Bible as the sole incontestable and absolute authority. Here is the solid foundation of the edifice, the impregnable citadel in which he shut himself in order to repel victoriously all attacks. It is for him, in truth, a religious axiom, a postulate of faith, and not a dogma or a theory; it is revealed to his believing soul independently of all intellectual activity. Thus Luther, trusting in the action of the Holy Spirit, operating through the Scriptures, does not pause to prove its authority, nor to establish it dialectically: it imposes itself; a systematic treatment is not needed. More and more as circumstances demanded it, he gave reasons for his faith and his submission. Poor arguments to modern thinking, but in his times, and commended by his vibrant eloquence and powerful personality, possessing a power of persuasion very impressive. . . . It seemed idle to Luther, we may say, to enter into an argument to establish what was evident to him. He did not attempt, therefore, to prove the authority of the Bible - he asserted it repeatedly in warm words, . . . in passionate declarations, but rarely if ever proceeds by a formal demonstration." Raising the question of Zwingli's doctrine of the mode and extent of inspiration (p. 47), he remarks: "No more than the others does Zwingli respond to these questions, which had not yet been raised. God has spoken: the Bible contains His word: that is enough. The divinity of  the Bible is once more a fact, an axiom, so much so that he does not dream of establishing it dialectically or of defending it."

So Pannier, as cited, p. 83: "Like all the other essential parts of the Reformed Dogmatics, the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is found in germ in the first edition of the Institutes, although still with out any development. It is almost possible to deny that it exists there, as has been done with predestination. Nevertheless, if the doctrine is not yet scientifically formulated, it may yet be perceived to preexist necessarily as an essential member of the complete body of doctrine which is slowly to grow up." When Pannier comes, however (pp. 72-77), to expound in detail the germs of the doctrine as they lie in the edition of 1536, it turns out that there is not only no full development of the doctrine in that edition, but also no explicit mention of it, as it is applied to the conviction which the Christian has of the divinity of Scripture; so that it preexists in this edition only as implicit in its general doctrine of the Spirit and His work. 

By Pannier, p. 69. 

Pannier, as cited, p. 77, notes that "the words: testimonio Spiritus Sancti occur only a single time, at the end, and in the old sense of - 'by the divinely inspired Scriptures."' He refers to the ed. of 1536, p. 470, that is, Opp. i. 228: and notes that this passage was dropped in the edition of 1559 (Opp. iv. 796, note 5). The passage runs: "Thus Hezekiah is praised by the testimony of the Holy Spirit" - that is, obviously, "by the inspired Scriptures" - "for having broken up the brazen serpent which Moses had made by Divine command." 

Köstlin, as cited, p. 411, strongly states these facts. The whole of the discussion on the sources and norms of religious truth "is altogether lacking in the original form" of the "Institutes": "Calvin worked out this section for the first time for the edition of 1539": but it is found here already thoroughly done, "in all its fundamental traits already complete and mature." He adds that the Lutheran dogmatists (as well as the Reformed) at once, however, took up the construction of Calvin and made it their own. 

The history of the doctrine among the Reformed is touched on by A. Schweiser, "Glaubenslehre," i. § 32; among the old Lutherans by Klaiber, "Die Lehre der altprotestantischen Dogmatiker von dem test. Sp. Sancti" in the Jahrbucher für d. Theologie, 1857, pp. 1-54. Its history among French theologians is traced by Pannier, as cited, Part iii. pp. 139-181, cf. 188-193: his notes on the history outside of France (pp. 181-185) are very slight. On pp. 161-163 Pannier essays to gather together, chiefly, as it appears, from the scattered citations in the Protestant controversialists of the seventeenth century (p. 162, note 2), the hints which appear in the Romish writers, mainly Jesuits of the early seventeenth century, of recognition of the internal work of the Holy Spirit illuminating the soul. These bear more or less resemblance to the Protestant doctrine of the testimony of the Spirit. Some of the passages he cites are quite striking, but do not go beyond the common boundaries of universal Christian supernaturalism. 

In his brief remarks on the subject in his "Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus," i. 1908, pp. 178 sq., Otto Ritschl seeks to discriminate between the Reformed and Lutherans in their conception of the testimony of the Spirit; but his discrimination touches rather the application than the essence of the matter. 

Some of them are cited, e.g., by Schweizer, op. cit., followed, e.g., by Pannier, as cited (p. 186, note 1) - such as: "Faith is already presupposed when a peculiar authority is conceded to Scripture," - "The recognition of what is canonical comes into existence only gradually and progressively, since the sense for the truly Apostolic is a gracious gift which grows up only gradually in the Church," - "Faith cannot be established in unbelievers by the Scriptures, so that their divine authority is in the first instance proved from merely rational considerations." - There is much that is true and well said in such remarks, and they enrich the writings of Schleiermacher and his followers with a truly spiritual element. But at bottom the central position occupied is vitiated by the use of "faith" as an "undistributed middle," and the remarks of writers of this type do not so much tend to exalt the place of saving faith as to depress the authority of Scripture, by practically denying the existence or validity of fides humana. That attitude towards the Scriptures which gladly and heartily recognizes them as the Word of the Living God, and with all delight in them as such, seeks to subject all thought and feeling and action to their direction, certainly is, if not exactly a product of "true faith," yet (as the Westminster Confession defines it) an exercise of true faith, and a product of that inward creative operation of the Holy Spirit from which all true faith comes: that keen taste for the divine which is the outgrowth of the spiritual gift of discrimination - the "distinguishing of things that differ" which Paul gives a place among Christian graces - is assuredly a "gift of grace" which may grow more and more strong as the Christian life effloresces; and such a taste for the divine cannot be awakened in unbelievers by the natural action of the Scriptures or any rational arguments whatever, but requires for its production the work of the Spirit of God ab extra accidens. But it is a totally different question whether the peculiarity of Scripture as a divine revelation can call out no intellectual recognition in the minds of inquiring men, but must remain wholly hidden and produce no mental reaction conformable to its nature, until true faith has already been born in the heart: whether there are no valid tests of what is apostolical except a spiritual sense for the truly apostolical which can only gradually grow up in the Church; whether the unbeliever may not be given a well-grounded intellectual conviction of the apostolic origin, the canonical authority, and the divine character of Scripture by the presentation to him of rational evidence which, however unwillingly on his part, will compel his assent. The question here is not whether this fides humana is of any great use in the spiritual life: the question is whether it is possible and actual. We may argue, if we will, that it is not worth while to awake it - though opinions may differ there: but how can we argue that it is a thing inherently impossible? To say this is not merely to say that reason cannot save, which is what Calvin said and all his followers: it is to say that salvation is intrinsically unreasonable - which neither Calvin nor any of his true followers could for a moment allow. Sin may harden the heart so that it will not admit, weigh, or yield to evidence: but sin, which affects only the heart subjectively, and not the process of reasoning objectively, cannot alter the relations of evidence to conclusions. Sin does not in the least degree affect the cogency of any rightly constructed syllogism. No man, no doubt, was ever reasoned into the kingdom of heaven: it is the Holy Spirit alone who can translate us into the kingdom of God's dear Son. But there are excellent reasons why every man should enter the kingdom of heaven; and these reasons are valid in the forum of every rational mind, and their validity can and should be made manifest to all. 

"Theological Lectures," etc., New York, 1878, pp. 317, 320 sq. 

"The Way of Life," 1841; also "Systematic Theology," as per Index. 

"Encyclopædie, etc.," ii. 1894, pp. 505 sqq. 

"Gereformeerde Dogmatiek," ed. 1, i. pp. 142-145, 420-422, 490-491. 

Written, no doubt, by Léger, moderator at the time of "the Table," and preserved for us in his "Histoire générale des églises évangéliques des vallées de Piédmont," 1669, i. p. 112 (cf. p. 92). See Pannier, as cited, p. 133. 

Dr. A. F. Mitchell ("The Westminster Assembly, its History and Standards," the Baird Lecture for 1882, ed. 2, 1897, p. 441, note), following Prof. J. S. Candlish (Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., 1877, p. 173), is "very sure" that Gilleapie has here "left his mark on the Confession." The "Miscellany Questions," in the xxi. of which occurs the passage from Gillespie from which the Confession is supposed to have drawn, was a posthumous work, published in 1649; but a number of the papers of which it is made up have the appearance of being briefs drawn up by Gillespie for his own satisfaction, or as preparations for speeches, or possibly even as papers handed in to committees, during the discussions of the Westminster Assembly. The language in question, however, whether in Gillespie or in the Confession, is so strongly reminiscent of Calvin, that the possibility seems to remain open that the resemblance between Gillespie and the Confession is due to their common relation to Calvin. Here is the passage in Gillespie ("Presbyterian Armoury" ed., vol. ii. pp. 105-106): "The Scripture is known to be indeed the Word of God by the beams of divine authority it hath in itself, and by certain distinguishing characters, which do infallibly prove it to be the Word of God; such as the heavenliness of the matter; the majesty of the style; the irresistible power over the conscience; the general scope, to abase man and to exalt God; nothing driven at but God's glory and man's salvation; the extraordinary holiness of the penmen of the Holy Ghost, without respect to any particular interests of their own, or of others of their nearest relations (which is manifest by their writings); the supernatural mysteries revealed therein, which could never have entered into the reason of men; the marvellous consent of all parts and passages (though written by divers and several penmen), even where there is some appearance of difference; the fulfilling of prophecies; the miracles wrought by Christ, by the prophets and apostles; the conservation of the Scriptures against the malice of Satan and fury of persecutors; - these and the like are characters and marks which evidence the Scriptures to be the Word of God; yet all these cannot beget in the soul a full persuasion of faith that the Scriptures are the Word of God; this persuasion is from the Holy Ghost in our hearts. And it hath been the common resolution of sound Protestant writers (though now called in question by the sceptics of this age [the allusion being to "Mr. J. Godwin in his Hagiomastix"]) that these arguments and infallible characters in the Scripture itself, which most certainly prove it to be the Word of God, cannot produce a certainty of persuasion in our hearts, but this is done by the Spirit of God within us, according to these Scriptures, I Cor. ii. 10-15; I Thes. i. 5; I John ii. 27; v. 6-8, 10; John vi. 45." - Whatever may be the immediate source of the Confessional statement, Calvin is clearly the real source of Gillespie's statement. - For the essence of the matter Gillespie's discussion is notably clear and exact, particularly with reference to the relation of the indicia to the testimony of the Spirit, a matter which he strangely declares had not to his knowledge been discussed before. The clarity of his determinations here is doubtless due to the specific topic which he is in this Question investigating, viz., the validity of the argument from marks and fruits of sanctification to our interest in Christ: a parallel question in the broader soteriological sphere to the place of indicia in our conviction of the divinity of Scripture, which he therefore uses illustratively for his main problem. "It may be asked," he remarks, "and it is a question worthy to be looked into (though I must confess I have not read it, nor heard it, handled before), How doth this assurance by marks agree with or differ from assurance by the testimony of the Holy Spirit? May the soul have assurance either way, or must there be a concurrence of both (for I suppose they are not one and the same thing) to make up the assurance?" (p. 105). He proves that they are "not one and the same thing"; and then shows solidly that for assurance there "must be a concurrence of both." "To make no trial by marks," he says, "and to trust an inward testimony, under the notion of the Holy Ghost's testimony, when it is without the least evidence of any true gracious marks, this way (of its own nature, and intrinsically, or in itself) is a deluding and ensnaring of the conscience" (p. 105). That is to say, a blind confidence and conviction, without cognizable grounds in evidence cannot be trusted. Again and very clearly: "So that, in the business of assurance and full persuasion, the evidences of graces and the testimony of the Spirit, are two concurrent causes or helps, both of them necessary. Without the evidence of graces, it is not a safe nor a wellgrounded assurance" (p. 106). It remains only to add that while arguing this out in the wider soteriological sphere, Gillespie appears to take it as a matter of course in the accrediting of the Scriptures as divine-giving that case, in the course of his argument, as an illustration to aid in determining his conclusion. 

For the meaning of the Confession's statement, supported by illustrative excerpts from its authors, see The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, iv. 1893, pp. 624-32; and cf. W. Cunningham, "Theological Lectures," New York, 1878, pp. 320 sq., and The Presbyterian Quarterly, January, 1894, pp. 19 sq. 

Calvin's Doctrine of the Creation¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

In developing his system, Calvin proceeds at once from the doctrine of God to an exposition of His works of creation and providence (I. xiv.-xv. and xvi.-xviii.). That he passes over the divine Purpose or Decree at this point, though it would logically claim attention before its execution in creation and providence, is only another indication of the intensely practical spirit of Calvin and the simplicity of his method in this work. He carries his readers at once over from what God is to what God does, reserving the abstruser discussions of the relation of His will to occurrences for a later point in the treatise, when the reader's mind, by a contemplation of the divine works, will be better prepared to read off the underlying purpose from the actual event. The practical end which has determined this sequence of topics governs also the manner in which the subject of creation, now taken up (chaps. xiv.-xv.), is dealt with. There is no discussion of it from a formal point of view: the treatment is wholly material and is devoted rather to the nature of the created universe than to the mode of the Divine activity in creating it. Even in dealing with the created universe, there is no attempt at completeness of treatment. The spiritual universe is permitted to absorb the attention; and what is said about the lower creation is reduced to a mere hint or two introduced chiefly, it appears, to recommend the contemplation of it as a means of quickening in the heart a sense of God's greatness and goodness (xiv. §§ 20-22). 

It is quite obvious, in fact, from the beginning, that Calvin's mind is set in this whole discussion of creation primarily on expounding the nature of man as a creature of God; and all else that he incorporates into it is subsidiary to this. He is writing for men and bends all he is writing to what he conceives to be their practical interests. He does not reach the actual discussion of man as creature, to be sure (chap. xv.), until after he has interposed a long exposition of the nature of angels and demons (xiv. 3-12, and 13-19). But this whole exposition is cast in a form which shows that angels and demons are interesting to Calvin only because of the high estimate he places upon the topic for the practical life of man; and it is introduced by a remark which betrays that his thought was already on man as the real subject of his exposition and all he had to say about other spiritual creatures was conceived as only preliminary to that more direct object of interest. "But before I begin to speak more fully concerning the nature of man," he says quite gratuitously at the opening of the discussion (xiv. 3, ad init.), "something should be inserted (inserere) about angels." What he actually says about angels, good and bad, in the amount of space occupied by it, is more than what he says about man; but it stood before his mind, we observe, as only "something," and as something, be it noted, "inserted," before the real subject of his discourse was reached. In his own consciousness what Calvin undertakes in these chapters is to make man aware of his own nature as a creature of God, and to place him as a creature of God in his environment, the most important elements of which he conceives to be the rest of the intelligent creation. 

It is not to be inferred, of course, from the lightness with which Calvin passes over the doctrine of creation itself in this discussion that he took little interest in it or deemed it a matter of no great significance. That he does not dwell more fully on it is due, as we have said, to the practical nature of his undertaking, and was rendered possible by the circumstance that this doctrine was not in dispute.² All men in the circles which he was addressing were of one mind on it, and there were sources of information within the reach of all which rendered it unnecessary for him to enlarge on it.³ That he had a clear and firm conception of the nature of the creative act and attributed importance to its proper apprehension is made abundantly plain; and is emphasized by his consecration of the few remarks he gives professedly to the topic to repelling assaults upon its credibility drawn from the nature of the Divine Being (xiv. 1-2). 

In his conception of creation Calvin definitely separated himself from all dualistic,⁴ and especially from all pantheistic⁵ elements of thought by sharply asserting that all substantial existence outside of God owes its being to God, that it was created by God out of nothing, and that it came from God's hand very good. His crispest definition of creation he lets fall incidentally in repelling the pantheistic notion that, as he scornfully describes it, "the essence of the Creator is rent into fragments that each may have a part of it." "Creation," he says, "is not the transfusion, but the origination out of nothing, of essence."6 "God," says he again, "by the power of His Word and Spirit created out of nothing, the heavens and the earth," that is to say, all that exists, whether celestial or terrestial.⁷ Firmly stated as this doctrine of creation is, however, so as to leave us in no doubt as to Calvin's conception,⁸ the elements of it are little elaborated. There is no attempt for example to validate the doctrine of creation ex nihilo whether on Biblical⁹ or on such rational grounds as we find appealed to by Zwingli, who argues that creation ex materia implies an infinite series whether the material out of which the creation is made be conceived as like or unlike in kind to that which is made from it.¹⁰ As we have seen, Calvin does argue, however, (like Zwingli), that creation in its very nature is "origination of essence," so that he would have subscribed Zwingli's declaration: "This is the definition of creation: to be out of nothing."11 He does not even dwell upon the part which the Son takes in the creating, although he does not leave this important matter unmentioned, but declares that "the worlds were created by the Son" (I. xiii. 7), and that God created the heavens and earth "by the power of His Word and Spirit" (I. xiv. 20), thus setting the act of creation in its Trinitarian relation. It is, however, rather in the preceding chapter where he adduces the share they took in creation in proof of the deity of the Son and the Spirit that Calvin develops this fact. There he urges that "the power to create and the authority to command were common to the Father, Son, and Spirit," as is shown, he says, by the words "Let us make man in our image" of Genesis i. 26; and he argues at length from the creation-narrative of Genesis and the Wisdom passage in Proverbs, no less than from Heb. i. 2, 3, that it was through the Son that God made the worlds.¹² On one thing, however, he manages to insist despite the sketchiness with which he treats the whole subject. This is that whatever came from the divine hands came from them good. " It is monstrous," he declares,¹³ "to ascribe to the good God the creation of any evil thing," and we may not admit that there is in the whole world anything evil in its nature,¹⁴ but must perceive that in all that He has made God has displayed His wisdom and justice. Wherever evil has appeared, then, whether in man or devil, it is not ex natura, but ex naturae corruptione (I. xiv. 3), not ex creatione but ex depravatione (I. xiv. 16, ad init.). We must beware, therefore, lest in speaking of evil as natural to man, we should seem to refer it to the author of nature, whether we more coarsely conceive it as in some measure proceeding from God Himself, or, with more appearance of piety, ascribe it only to "nature." We cannot attribute to God what is in the most absolute sense alien to His very nature, and it is equally dishonoring to Him to ascribe any intrinsic depravity to the "nature" which comes from His hands.¹⁵

Calvin expressly disclaims the intention of expounding in detail the story of the creation of the world,¹⁶ and judges it sufficient to refer his readers to the account given by Moses, along with the comments perhaps of Basil and Ambrose, for instruction in the particulars of its history (I. xiv. 20, ad init.; cf. I. xiv. 1). He lets fall, however, a few remarks by the way, which enable us to perceive his attitude towards the narrative of Genesis. Needless to say he takes it just as he finds it written. The six days he, naturally, understands as six literal days; and, accepting the prima facie chronology of the Biblical narrative, he dates the creation of the world something less than six thousand years in the past. He does not suppose, however, that Moses has included in his story anything like an exhaustive account of all that was created. The instance of angels, of whose origin Moses gives no history, is conclusive to the contrary. Moses, writing to meet the needs of men at large, accommodated himself to their grade of intellectual preparation, and confines himself to what meets their eyes.¹⁷ On the other hand Calvin will not admit that the created universe can be properly spoken of as infinite. God alone is infinite; and, "however wide the circuit of the heavens may be, it nevertheless has some dimension."18 He frankly conceives of the created universe as geocentric,¹⁹ or more properly as anthropocentric. "God Himself," he declares, "has demonstrated by the very order of creation, that He made all things for the sake of man."20 For, before making man, "He prepared everything which He foresaw would be useful or salutary for him" (I. xiv. 22). It was "for human use that He disposed the motions of the sun and stars, that He filled the earth, the waters, the air with living creatures, that He produced an abundance of all kinds of fruits which might be sufficient for food - thus acting the part of a provident and sedulous father of a family and showing His wonderful goodness towards us" (I, xiv. 2). 

Two difficulties which arise out of the consideration of the infinitude of God in connection with His creative work, Calvin finds sufficiently important to pause even in so rapid a sketch to deal with. These concern the relation of the idea of creation to that of eternity on the one hand, and the description of the creation as a process on the other. Both of these also, however, he treats rather from a practical than a theoretical point of view. 

He does not even hint at the metaphysical difficulty which has been perennially derived from the Divine eternity and immutability, that a definite creation implies a change in God - the difficulty which Wollebius so neatly turns by the remark that "creation is not the creator's but the creature's passage from potentiality to actuality."21 The difficulty to which he addresses himself is the purely popular one, which, with a view to rendering the idea of a definite act of creation on God's part incredible, asks what God was doing all those ages before He created the world (I. xiv. 1). His response proceeds in general on the principle of answering a fool according to his folly, although it is directed to the serious purpose of recalling men's minds, from fruitless attempts to fathom the mysteries of infinity, to a profitable use of the creation-narrative as a mirror in which is exhibited a lively image of God.²² The gist of this response seems to be summed up in a sentence which occurs in the Argument to his Commentary on the first chapter of Genesis - which runs very much parallel to the discussion here. "God," he says, "being wholly sufficient for Himself, did not create a world of which He had no need, until it pleased Him to do so." He does not disdain, however, before closing, to advert, under the leading of Augustine,²³ even to the metaphysical consideration that there is no place for a question of "time when" in our thought of that act of God by which time began to be. We might as well inquire, Augustine had reasoned, why God created the world where He did, as why He created it only when He did. We may puzzle ourselves with the notion that there is room in infinite space for an infinite number of finite universes as readily as with the parallel notion that there was opportunity in eternal time for the creation of an infinite series of worlds before ours was reached. The truth is, of course, that, as there is no space outside of that material world the dimensions of which when abstractly considered constitute what we call "space"; so there is no time outside that world of mutable existence from which we abstract the notion of succession and call it "time." "If they say," reasons Augustine, " that the thoughts of men are idle, when they conceive of infinite places, since there is no place beside the world, we reply that, by the same showing, it is vain to conceive of past times of God's rest, since there is no time before the world." Utilizing Augustine's remarks Calvin warns his readers against vainly striving to press "outside of the world" (extra mundum) by "the boundaries of which we are circumscribed," and exhorts them to seek in "the ample circumference of heaven and earth" and the certainly sufficient space of "six thousand years" material for meditating on the glory of God who has made them all. The primary matter for us to observe in this discussion is the persistence with which Calvin clings to the practical purpose of his treatise, so as even in connection with such abstruse subjects to confine himself to the "practical use" of them. But it is not illegitimate to observe also the hints the discussion supplies of his metaphysical opinions. His doctrines of "space" and "time" are here suggested to us. Clearly, he holds that what we call "space" is only an abstraction from the concrete dimensions of extended substance; and what we call "time," an abstraction from the concrete successions of mutable being. "Space" and "time," therefore, were to him qualities of finite being, and have come into existence and will pass out of existence with finite being. To speak of "infinite" space or "infinite" time contains accordingly a contradictio in adjecto. 

Perhaps it may not be improper to pause here a moment to observe in passing the employment of humor by Calvin in his discussions. It is rather a mordant bit of humor which appears here, it is true - this story of the "pious old man" who when a "scoffer" demanded of him what God had been doing before He created the world, replied, "Making hell for inquisitive people" (fabricasse inferos curiosis); and moreover it is borrowed - ultimately - from Augustine.²⁴ But though borrowing a story of Augustine's, Calvin does not follow Augustine in his attitude towards it. Augustine declines to commend such a response, because, says he, he would shrink from making a laughing-stock of anyone who brings forward a profound question; while Calvin approves it as a fit answer to a scoffer who raises frivolous objections.²⁵ And mordant though it is, it provides an instance of that use of humor in argument which was a marked trait of Calvin's manner - and which reveals to us an element of his character not always fully recognized. As this humor manifests itself in his writings - which are predominantly controversial in tone - it is sufficiently pungent. The instance before us is a fair sample of it; and we have already had occasion to note another characteristic instance - his rallying of Caroli in the matter of the ancient creeds.²⁶ His "Very useful Notice of the great profit which would accrue to Christianity if there should be made an inventory of all the holy bodies and relics which are to be found in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and other kingdoms and nations" (1543) might almost be said to reek with similar instances. He became quickly famous for his biting pen and was solemnly reproved by Sebastian Castellion for employing such weapons and encouraging others in the use of them. He not only, however, approved Beza's and Viret's satirical polemics and heartily enjoyed them - commending them to his friends as full of delightfulness - but he even develops a theory of the use of humor in instruction, and of the nature of true facetiousness. "Many - or perhaps we may say, most - men," he says, "are much more readily helped when they are instructed in a joyous and pleasant manner than otherwise. . . . Those who have the gift to teach in such a manner as to delight their readers, and to induce them to profit by the pleasure they give them, are doubly to be praised." "He who wishes to use humor," he adds, however, "ought to guard himself from two faults," - he must neither be forced in his wit, nor must he descend to scurrility. 

But his cutting satire was only one manifestation of a special talent for pleasantry which characterized all his intercourse. Laughter, he taught, is the gift of God: and he held it the right, or rather the duty, of the Christian man to practise it in its due season. He is constantly joking with his friends in his letters,²⁷ and he eagerly joins with them in all the joys of life. "I wish I were with you for half a day," he writes to one of them, "to laugh with you."28 In a word, contrary to a general impression, Calvin was a man of a great freshness and jocundness of spirit; and so little was he inclined to suppress the expression of the gayer side of life that he rather sedulously cultivated it in himself and looked with pleasure on its manifestation in others. He enjoyed a joke hugely,²⁹ with that open-mouthed laugh which, as one of his biographers phrases it,³⁰ belonged to the men of the sixteenth century. And he knew even how to smile at human folly - wishing that the people might not be deprived of their pleasures³¹ and might even be dealt with indulgently in their faults. When his students misbehaved, for example, he simply said he thought they ought to have some indulgence and should be accorded the right to be sometimes foolish.³² 

That the work of creation should be thought to occupy time was as much a matter of scoffing from the evil-disposed as that it should take place in time. Why should the omnipotent God take six days to make the world? Did He perhaps find it too hard a task for a single effort?³³ This cavil, too, Calvin deals with purely from the practical point of view, not so much undertaking to refute it as recalling men's minds from it to dwell on the condescension of God in distributing His work into six days that our finite intelligence might not be overwhelmed with its contemplation; and on the goodness of God in thus leading our thoughts up to the consideration of the rest of the seventh day; and above all on the paternal care of God in so ordering the work of bringing the world into being as to prepare it for man before He introduced him into it. In drawing the mind thus away from the cavil, Calvin does not, however, fail to meet the difficulty itself, which was adduced. His response to it, is, in effect, to acknowledge that God perfected the world by process (progressus, I. xiv. 2); but to assert that this method of performing His work was not for His own sake, but for ours; so that, so far is this progressive method of producing the world from being unworthy of God, because "alien from His power,"34 that it rather illustrates His higher attributes - His paternal love, for example, which would not create man until He had enriched the world with all things necessary for his happiness. Considered in Himself, "it would have been no more difficult" for God "to complete at once the whole work in all its items in a single moment, than to arrive at its completion gradually by a process of this kind."35 

It should be observed that in this and similar discussions founded on the progressive completion of the world, Calvin does not intend to attribute what we may speak strictly of as progressive creation to God. With Calvin, while the perfecting of the world - as its subsequent government - is a process, creation, strictly conceived, tended to be thought of as an act. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": after that it was not "creation" strictly so called, but "formation," gradual modelling into form, which took place. Not, of course, as if Calvin conceived creation deistically; as if he thought of God as having created the world-stuff and then left it to itself to work out its own destiny under the laws impressed on it in its creation. A "momentary Creator, who has once for all done His work," was inconceivable to him: and he therefore taught that it is only when we contemplate God in providence that we can form any true conception of Him as Creator.³⁶ But he was inclined to draw a sharp distinction in kind between the primal act of creation of the heavens and the earth out of nothing, and the subsequent acts of moulding this created material into the forms it was destined to take; and to confine the term "creation," strictly conceived, to the former. Hence in perhaps the fullest statement of his doctrine of creation given us in these chapters (I. xiv. 20), he expresses himself carefully thus: "God, by the power of His Word and Spirit created out of nothing (creasse ex nihilo) the heavens and the earth; thence produced (produxisse) every kind of animate and inanimate thing, distinguished by a wonderful gradation the innumerable variety of things, endowed each kind with its own nature, assigned its offices, appointed its place and station to it, and, since all things are subject to corruption, provided, nevertheless, that each kind should be preserved safe to the last day." "Thus," he adds, "He marvellously adorned heaven and earth with the utmost possible abundance, variety and beauty of all things, like a great and splendid house, most richly and abundantly constructed and furnished; and then at last by forming (formando) man and distinguishing him with such noble beauty, and with so many and such high gifts, he exhibited in him the noblest specimen of His works."37 It is God who has made all things what they are, he teaches: but, in doing so, God has acted in the specific mode properly called creation only at the initial step of the process, and the result owes its right to be called a creation to that initial act by which the material of which all things consist was called into being from non-being. "Indigested mass" as it was, yet in that world-stuff was "the seed of the whole world," and out of it that world as we now see it (for "the world was not perfected at its very beginning, in the manner it is now seen"38) has been evoked by progressive acts of God: and it is therefore that this world, because evoked from it, has the right to be called a creation. 

The distinction which Calvin here draws, it is to be observed, is not that which has been commonly made by Reformed divines under the terms, First and Second Creation, or in less exact language Immediate and Mediate Creation. This distinction posits a sequence of truly creative acts of God throughout the six days, and therefore defines creation, so as to meet the whole case, as that act "by which God produced the world and all that is in it, partly ex nihilo, partly ex materia naturaliter inhabili, for the manifestation of the glory of His power, wisdom and goodness";³⁹ or more fully, as that "first external work of God, by which in the beginning of time, without suffering any change, by His own free will, He produced by His sole omnipotent command immediate per se things which before were not, from simple non-being to being - and that, either ex nihilo, or ex materia which had afore been made e nihilo, but is naturaliter inhabili for receiving the form which, created out of nothing, the Creator induces into it."40 It is precisely this sequence of truly creative acts which Calvin disallows; and he so expresses himself, indeed, as to give it a direct contradiction. Perhaps as distinct a statement of his view as any is found in his comment on Genesis i. 21, where the term "create" is employed to designate the divine production of the animals of the sea and air, which, according to verse 20, had been brought forth by the waters at the command of God. "A question arises here," remarks Calvin, "about the word 'created.' For we have before contended that the world was made of nothing because it was 'created': but now Moses says the things formed from other matter were 'created.' Those who assert that the fishes were truly and properly 'created' because the waters were in no way suitable (idoneae) or adapted (aptae) to their production, only resort to a subterfuge; for the fact would remain, meanwhile, that the material of which they were made existed before, which, in strict propriety, the word does not admit. I therefore do not restrict 'creation' [here] to the work of the fifth day, but rather say it[s use] refers to (hangs from, pendet) that shapeless and confused mass which was, as it were, the fountain of the whole world. God, then, is said to have 'created' the seamonsters and other fishes, because the beginning of their 'creation' is not to be reckoned from the moment in which they received their form, but they are comprehended in the universal matter (corpus, corpore) which was made out of nothing. So that with respect to their kind, form only was then added to them; 'creation' is nevertheless a term used truly with respect to the whole and the parts." 

Calvin's motive in thus repudiating the notion of "Mediate Creation" is not at all chariness on his part with respect to the supernatural. It is not the supernaturalness of the production of the creatures which the waters and earth brought forth which he disallows; but only the applicability to their production of the term "creation." On verse 24, he comments thus: "There is in this respect a miracle as great as if God had begun to create out of nothing these things which He commanded to proceed from the earth." Calvin's sole motive seems to be to preserve to the great word "create" the precise significance of to "make out of nothing," and he will not admit that it can be applied to any production in which preëxistent material is employed.⁴¹ This might appear to involve the view that after the creation of the world-stuff recorded in Genesis i. 1, there was never anything specifically new produced by the divine power. And this might be expressed by saying that, from that point on, the divine works were purely works of providence, since the very differentia of a providential work is that it is the product proximately of second causes. Probably this would press Calvin's contention, however, a little too far: he would scarcely say there was no immediacy in the divine action in the productions of the five days of "creation," or indeed in the working of miracles. But we must bear in mind that his view of providence was a very high one, and he was particularly insistent that God acted through means, when He did act through means, through no necessity but purely at His own volition. Second causes, in his view, are nothing more than "instruments into which God infuses as much of efficiency as He wishes," and which He employs or not at His will (I. xvi. 2). "The power of no created thing," says Calvin, "is more wonderful or evident than that of the sun. . . . But the Lord . . . willed that light should exist . . . before the sun was created. A pious man will not make the sun, then, either the principal or the necessary cause of the things which existed before the sun was created, but only an instrument which God uses because He wishes to; since He could without any difficulty at all do without the sun and act of Himself."42 The facility with which Calvin sets aside the notion of "mediate creation" is then due in no sense to desire to remove the productions of the five days of "creation" out of the category of divine products, but is itself mediated by the height of his doctrine of providence.⁴³ 

It is important further that we should not suppose that Calvin removed the production of the human soul out of the category of immediate creation, in the strictest sense of that term. When he insists that the works of the days subsequent to the first, when "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," were not strictly speaking "creations," because they were not productions ex nihilo, he is thinking only of the lower creation, inclusive, no doubt, of the human body; all this is made out of that primal "indigested mass" which sprang into being at the initial command of God. The soul is a different matter; and not only in the first instance, but in every succeeding instance, throughout the whole course of human propagation, is an immediate creation ex nihilo. Moses, he tells us, perfectly understood that the soul was created from nothing;⁴⁴ and he announces with emphasis ("Institutes," I. xv. 5), that it is certain that the souls of men are "no less created than the angels," adding the decisive definition: "now, creation is the origination of essence ex nihilo." It is thus with the lower creation alone in his mind that Calvin insists that all that can justly be called by the high name of "creation" was wrought by God on the first day, in that one act by which He created, that is called into being out of nothing, the heavens and the earth. 

It should scarcely be passed without remark that Calvin's doctrine of creation is, if we have understood it aright, for all except the souls of men, an evolutionary one. The "indigested mass," including the "promise and potency" of all that was yet to be, was called into being by the simple fiat of God. But all that has come into being since - except the souls of men alone - has arisen as a modification of this original world-stuff by means of the interaction of its intrinsic forces. Not these forces apart from God, of course: Calvin is a high theist, that is, supernaturalist, in his ontology of the universe and in his conception of the whole movement of the universe. To him God is the prima causa omnium and that not merely in the sense that all things ultimately - in the world-stuff - owe their existence to God; but in the sense that all the modifications of the world-stuff have taken place under the directly upholding and governing hand of God, and find their account ultimately in His will. But they find their account proximately in "second causes"; and this is not only evolutionism but pure evolutionism. What account we give of these second causes is a matter of ontology; how we account for their existence, their persistence, their action - the relation we conceive them to stand in to God, the upholder and director as well as creator of them. Calvin's ontology of second causes was, briefly stated, a very pure and complete doctrine of concursus, by virtue of which he ascribed all that comes to pass to God's purpose and directive government. But that does not concern us here. What concerns us here is that he ascribed the entire series of modifications by which the primal "indigested mass," called "heaven and earth," has passed into the form of the ordered world which we see, including the origination of all forms of life, vegetable and animal alike, inclusive doubtless of the bodily form of man, to second causes as their proximate account. And this, we say, is a very pure evolutionary scheme. He does not discuss, of course, the factors of the evolutionary process, nor does he attempt to trace the course of the evolutionary advance, nor even expound the nature of the secondary causes by which it was wrought. It is enough for him to say that God said, "Let the waters bring forth. . . . Let the earth bring forth," and they brought forth. Of the interaction of forces by which the actual production of forms was accomplished, he had doubtless no conception: he certainly ventures no assertions in this field. How he pictured the process in his imagination (if he pictured it in his imagination) we do not know. But these are subordinate matters. Calvin doubtless had no theory whatever of evolution; but he teaches a doctrine of evolution. He has no object in so teaching except to preserve to the creative act, properly so called, its purity as an immediate production out of nothing. All that is not immediately produced out of nothing is therefore not created - but evolved. Accordingly his doctrine of evolution is entirely unfruitful. The whole process takes place in the limits of six natural days. That the doctrine should be of use as an explanation of the mode of production of the ordered world, it was requisite that these six days should be lengthened out into six periods - six ages of the growth of the world. Had that been done Calvin would have been a precursor of the modern evolutionary theorists. As it is, he only forms a point of departure for them to this extent - that he teaches, as they teach, the modification of the original world-stuff into the varied forms which constitute the ordered world, by the instrumentality of second causes - or as a modern would put it, of its intrinsic forces. This is his account of the origin of the entire lower creation.⁴⁵ 

Of this lower creation he has, however, as has already been pointed out, very little to say in the discussion of the creature which he has incorporated in the "Institutes" (I. xiv. 20-22). And what he does say is chiefly devoted to the practical end of quickening in our hearts a sense of the glory and perfections of its Maker, whose wisdom, power, justice and goodness are illustrated by it, and of raising our hearts in gratitude to Him for His benefits to us. These are the two things, he says, which a contemplation of what is meant by God being the Creator of heaven and earth should work in us: an apprehension of His greatness as the Creator (§ 21) and an appreciation of His care for us His creatures, in the manner in which He has created us (§ 22). More than to suggest this, the scope of his treatise does not appear to him to demand of him; as it does not permit him to dwell on the details of the history of creation - for which he therefore contents himself with referring his readers to the narrative of Genesis, with the comments of Basil and Ambrose. He pauses, therefore, only to insert the comprehensive statement of the elements of the matter which has already been cited, and which asserts that "God by the power of His Word and Spirit created out of nothing the heavens and the earth" and afterwards moulded this created material into the ordered world we see around us, which also He sustains and governs; in which, then, He has placed man, up to whom all the rest has tended and in whom He has afforded the culminating manifestation of His creative power (§ 20). The main items of his teaching as to the physical universe may therefore be summed up in the propositions that it owes its existence absolutely to the Divine power;⁴⁶ that it was created out of nothing; that it was perfected through a process of formation which extended through six days; that it was made and adorned for the sake of man, and has been subjected to him; and that it illustrates in its structure and in all its movements the perfections of its Maker. 

It is to the spiritual universe that Calvin turns with predilection, and the greater portion of the fourteenth chapter is devoted accordingly to a thoroughly Biblical account of angelic beings, good and bad (§§ 3-19). The careful Scripturalness of this account deserves emphasis. Calvin himself emphasizes it, and even permits himself to fall into a digression here, in order to expound at some length the proper attitude of the theological teacher to Scripture (I. xiv. 4). His design is to transmit plainly and clearly what the Scriptures teach,⁴⁷ and not to pass beyond the simple doctrine of Scripture in anything.⁴⁸ He therefore warns his readers against speculations as to "the orders" of angels, asking them to consider carefully the meagreness of the Scriptural foundation these have;⁴⁹ and holds the Pseudo-Dionysius up as a terrible example of misplaced subtlety and acuteness in such matters (I. xiv. 4). Whereas Paul, who was actually rapt beyond the third heavens sealed his lips and declared it not lawful for a man to speak of the hidden things which he saw, Dionysius who never had such an experience writes with a fulness and confidence of detail which could be justified only if he had come down from heaven and was recounting what he had had the privilege of observing carefully with his own eyes. Such prating of things of which we can really know nothing is unworthy of a theologian, says Calvin; "for it is the part of the theologian not to amuse the ear with empty words, but to confirm the conscience by teaching what is true, certain, profitable."50 And, "since the teaching of the Spirit is invariably profitable (utiliter), but in matters which are of less moment for edification, either He is altogether silent or touches on them only lightly and cursorily, it is our business cheerfully to remain ignorant of what is of no advantage to us."51 There are two rules therefore which the modest and sober man will certainly bear in mind in the whole business of teaching religion. One is, in obscure matters, neither to speak nor to think, nor even to desire to know, anything more than what has been given us in the Word of God. The other is, in reading Scripture, to tarry for prolonged investigation and meditation only on what conduces to edification, and not to indulge curiosity or fondness for useless things.⁵² Practising what he preaches, Calvin endeavors therefore in all he has to say of angels to hold to the limit which the rule of piety prescribes, lest by indulging in speculation beyond measure he should lead the reader astray from the simplicity of the faith (I. xiv. 3, end). There are many things about angels, indeed, which it may be a matter of regret to some that the Scriptures have not told us (I. xiv. 16). But surely we ought to be content with the knowledge which the Lord has given us, especially as, passing by frivolous questions, His wish has been to instruct us in what conduces to solid piety, the fear of His name, true confidence and the duties of holiness (I. xiv. 4). If we are not ashamed to be His disciples, how can we be ashamed to follow the method He has prescribed (§ 4)? Nay, will we not even abhor those unprofitable speculations from which He recalls us, and rest in comfort in the simple Scriptural teaching, which with respect to good angels consoles us and confirms our faith by making us see in them the dispensers and administrators of the Divine goodness towards us, guarding our safety, assuring our defence, directing our ways, and protecting us by their care from evil (§ 6, ad init.) - with respect to evil angels, warns us against their artifices and contrivances and provides us with firm and strong weapons to repel their attacks (§ 13, ad init.)? 

In accordance with these views of our relation to Scripture as a source of and guide to knowledge, Calvin's whole discussion of angels is not only kept close to Scripture, but is marked by the strongest practical tendency. Perhaps what strikes the reader most forcibly upon the surface of the discussion is the completeness of the faith which it exhibits in the real existence of angelic beings and the concernment of man with them. We will recall the vividness of Luther's similar faith. Perhaps we may say that the supernaturalistic tone of the conceptions of the Reformers is in nothing more visible than in their vital sense of the spiritual environment in which human life is cast. To them angels and demons were actual factors in men's lives, to be counted upon and considered in our arrangement and adjustments as truly as our fellow men.⁵³ Denial of their reality as substantial existences was indeed prevalent enough to require notice and refutation. Calvin's refutation of it is, of course, derived entirely, however, from Scripture, and he recognizes that, therefore, it can have no force for those who do not believe in the Scriptures. He does not consider that it is on that account useless. He designs it to fortify pious minds against such madness and to call back the slothful and incautious to a more sober and better regulated mode of life. For those who believe in the Scriptural revelation, it must be confessed that his argument is complete and final, adducing as it does in the clearest way the chief Biblical evidence for the actual existence and activity of these superhuman intelligences (I. xiv. 9 and 19). 

Calvin, then, teaches in accordance with Scripture, that angels are not "qualities or inspirations without substance, but real spirits."54 He calls them "spirits," "minds," and as such defines them as beings whose characterizing qualities are "perception and intelligence."55 His intention is to represent them as purely spiritual beings; and therefore he incidentally remarks that "it is certain" that they "have no form."56 As "celestial spirits" (I. xiv. 5), they are of higher powers than man, and receive in Scripture designations by which their dignity is indicated: Hosts, Powers, Principalities, Dominions, Thrones, even "Gods" - not of course as if they were really "Gods" or ought to be worshipped, but "because in their ministry, as in a glass, they represent in some degree divinity to us."57 "The preëminence (praestantia) of the angelic nature has," to be sure, "so impressed the minds of many" that they have felt it would be an injury to angels to degrade them, as it were, under the control of the One only God; and thus there has been invented for them a certain kind of divinity (I. xiv. 3). They are of course like God: for they were made in the image of God.⁵⁸ They are, however, just creatures of God, His servants who execute His commands.⁵⁹ Moses, it is true, in the history of creation, does not give any account of their creation: but that history does not pretend to be complete, but limits itself to the visible creation, and it is easy to collect from his subsequent introduction of angels as God's ministers that He is their maker.⁶⁰ So a matter of course does this seem to Calvin, that he does not stop here to adduce specific Scriptural assertions of the origination of angels by creation. These however he emphasizes elsewhere. Thus for example, in his commentary on the passage, he expounds Col. i. 16 as follows: "Because Paul wished to make this assertion" - that all things were created in the Son - "particularly of angels, he now mentions the invisible things: not only, then, the heavenly creatures visible to our eyes, but also the spiritual ones (spirituales) have been made (conditae) by the Son of God." The inferiority of angels to Christ, he proceeds to remark (in his commentary on the next verse), is manifested in the four points: First, "because they were created (creati) by Him; secondly, because their creation (creatio) is referred to Him as its legitimate end; thirdly, because He always existed before they were created (crearentur); fourthly, because it is He who sustains them by His power and conserves them in their condition."61 Creation in and of itself means with Calvin, as we have seen, absolute origination of essence, and he therefore teaches that the angels have been, like all other creatures, created out of nothing. It is to be held, he says, as a thing certain that the souls of men and angels alike "have been created" - adding at once: "Now creation is not transfusion but the origination out of nothing of essence."62 

The questions of when they were created and how their creation is to be related to Moses' narrative Calvin puts aside as frivolous. Moses narrates that the earth was perfected, and the heavens were perfected with all their hosts (Gen. ii. 1): that is certainly broad enough to cover the fact of their creation - why make anxious inquisition as to the day, in which besides the stars and planets, these other more hidden (reconditi) celestial hosts began to be?⁶³ The very language in which he repels the question, however, as it certainly suggests that Calvin conceived of the entire creation, inclusive of the angelic hosts, as a systematized whole, seems also to hint that he himself thought of the creation of this unitary whole as taking place at the one creative epoch, if such language can be pardoned. If so, then in his instinctive thought on this subjecton which, however, he laid no stress - he followed the scholastic opinion, as expounded, say, by Thomas Aquinas rather than that of the Greek Fathers, who interposed an immense interval between the creation of the spiritual and the subsequent creation of the corporeal universe.⁶⁴ It is doubtless, however, a mistake to press his language to imply that he thought of the creation of the angels as taking place on the same day with the stars and planets, that is to say, on the fourth day. More probably he thought of them as produced as part of the general creation of the "heavens and earth," that is to say on the first day,⁶⁵ and this became the traditional view in the Reformed Churches. "When were the angels created?" asks Bucanus, and answers, "Not before the ages, for the Son of God alone was existent before the ages: whence it follows that they were made in the beginning of all things. On what day, however, cannot certainly be defined, though it may be gathered with probability from the history of Moses that they were created on the first day, in which the heavens, the inhabitants of which they are, were created; wherefrom they are called the 'angels of heaven.'"66 "The first day of the creation," says Wollebius,⁶⁷ "is illustrious for three works," the first of which is "the creation of the angels with the highest heaven (the heaven called that of the blessed)"; for, he argues, "the creation of the angels can be referred to no better time than the first day, because when God laid the foundations of the earth, it was already celebrated by them (Job xxxviii. 7)" - an argument which is repeated by others, as for example by Van Mastricht,⁶⁸ who reasons in general that "it is certain that they were not created before the first day of creation since before that there was nothing but eternity, . . . and it is equally certain that they were not created after man, whom they seduced."69 Doubtless some such reasoning as this was before Calvin's mind also, although it is clear that he did not take it so seriously. 

On another matter of speculative construction, however, he was not so much inclined to an attitude of indifference. This concerned the distribution of angels into ranks and orders. We have already had occasion to note his reprobation of the Pseudo-Dionysius for his empty speculations on the "celestial hierarchy" (I. xiv. 4). He returns to the general matter later (I. xiv. 8) to express the opinion that data are lacking in Scripture to justify an attempt "to determine degrees of honor among angels, to distinguish the respective classes by their insignia, or to assign its place and station to each." His positive attitude here is due, of course, to the comparison instituted by the Romanists between the celestial and the ecclesiastical hierarchies,⁷⁰ which he wishes to discredit. Here too he set the fashion for the Reformed theology. Quite in this sense Van Mastricht 71 remarks that "the Reformed recognize, indeed, that there is some order among the angels, not only because God their Maker is a God of order . . . but because the various names of the angels seem to suggest an order to us (Col. i. 16, Eph. iii. 10, cf. Ezek. ix. 3, Is. vi. 2, I Thes. iv. 16, Gen. iii. 24, Jude 9) while the disjunctive particle, ei;te qro,noi( ei;te kurio,thtej (Col. i. 16), seems especially to confirm some order among angels, to say nothing of the existence of some order among the evil spirits themselves (Mat. xii. 24). But they believe it is not possible for men in this imperfection to determine what the order among the angels is." If this seems to allow a little more than Calvin does, it is to go a little further than he does in denial on the other hand, to contend with Hyperius that there are no permanent distinctions among angels "by virtue of which some angels are always preëminent, others always subordinate," or even with Bucanus, that there are no distinctions in nature among the angels but only differences in office. Surely these determinations are open to Calvin's rebuke of pretensions to knowledge which we do not possess, and contrast sharply with the sobriety with which Calvin abides by the simple statements of Scripture, allowing that there are some hints in Scripture of ranks among angels (I. xiv. 8; cf. 14) and contending only that these hints are insufficient to enable us to develop a complete theory of their organization. 

In holding back from the temptation to speculate on the organization of the angelic hosts, however, Calvin betrays no tendency to minify their numbers, and he of course recognizes the great distinction between good and bad angels. The numbers of both are very great. Of the good angels, he tells us, "we hear from the mouth of Christ of many legions (Mat. xxvi. 53), from Daniel of many myriads (Dan. vii. 10); Elisha's servant saw numerous chariots; and when it is said that they encamp around about those that fear God (Ps. xxxiv. 8), a great multitude is suggested" (I. xiv. 8). When he comes to speak of evil angels his language takes on an even increased energy. He speaks of "great crowds" (magnas copias) of them, and even with the exaggerating emphasis of deep conviction of the "infinite multitude" of them (I. xiv. 14). Though these two hosts stand now arrayed against each other they are in origin and nature one; for the evil spirits are just good spirits gone wrong. The fundamental facts which Calvin most insists upon with respect to what he calls "devils" (diaboli) are that they are creatures of God and were therefore once good - "for it is impious (nefas) to ascribe to the good God the creation of any evil thing"72 - and that they have become evil by corrupting the good nature with which God endowed them.⁷³ Their evil, says he crisply, is "not from creation but from depravation."74 "At their original creation they were angels of God, but they destroyed themselves through degeneration."75 To ascribe to God, their Creator, the evil they have acquired by their defection and lapse, would be to ascribe to Him what above all things is most alien from Him;⁷⁶ and thus far the Manichaeans are right - for the good God cannot have created any evil thing (I. xiv. 3, as above). The Scriptural evidence of the fall of the "devils" Calvin states with great brevity but with sufficient point. He adduces II Peter ii. and Jude 6 as a clear statement: and I Timothy v. 21 as a tacit implication; and he argues that when our Lord (Jno. viii. 44) declares that when Satan "speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own," and adds as a reason "because he abode not in the truth," He implies that he had once been in the truth and issued from it by an act of his own (I, xiv. 16). In his other writings he returns repeatedly to these conceptions and always with the greatest directness and force of statement. "The devils," says he, " have been angels of God but they did not retain the condition in which they were created but have fallen by a horrible fall, so as to become the examples of perdition."77 "The devils were created by God as well as the angels, but not as they now are. We must always reserve this, - that the evil which is in the devils proceeds from themselves. . . ."78 "For we know that the devil is evil not by nature, nor from his original creation (creationis origine), but by the fault of his own defection."79 

It is worth while to dwell on these deliverances, because they contain not merely Calvin's doctrine of devils, but also, so far, his doctrine of the origin of evil. This includes, we already perceive, a vigorous repudiation of the notion that God can be in any way the author of evil. The Augustinian doctrine that omne esse est bonum is explicitly reaffirmed. God is good and it is impious to suppose that He may have created anything evil (malum). But as God is the author of all that is, everything that has come into being is in its nature good. There is, therefore, no such thing in the universe as an evil nature (mala natura). All that is evil arises (I. xiv. 3) not from nature (ex natura) but from corruption of nature (ex naturae corruptione). This corruption has been introduced by the free action of the creature: it is (I. xiv. 16) not "of creation" but "of depravation," - a depravation of which the creature itself is the cause (cuius ipse sibi causa). To put it all in a nutshell, - evil according to Calvin has its source not in the creative act of God but in the deflected action of the creaturely will. Such an assertion takes us, of course, only a little way towards a theodicy: but it is important that as we pass we should note as a first step in Calvin's theodicy that he very energetically repudiates the notion that God, who is good, can be, as Creator, the author of any evil thing. All that comes from His hands is "very good." 

As the angels owe their existence to God, so of course they subsist in Him. They were not brought into being to stand, deistically, over against God, sufficient to themselves: like all the rest of His creatures their dependence on God is absolute. Nothing can be ascribed to them as if it belonged to them apart from Him. They are, indeed, immortal: but this is so far from meaning that it is beyond the power of God to destroy them, that it rather means merely that it is the will of God to sustain them in endless being. In themselves considered, like all other creaturely existences, they are mortal.⁸⁰ "We know," remarks Calvin,⁸¹ "that angels are immortal spirits, for God has created them for this condition, that they shall never be destroyed any more than the souls of men shall perish. . . . The angels are immortal because they are sustained by power from on high, and God maintains them - He who is immortal by nature and the fountain of life is in Him, as says the Psalmist (xxxvi. 10). . . . The angels are not stable save as God holds their hand. They are no doubt called Mights and Powers; but this is because God executes His power by them and guides them. Briefly, the angels have nothing in themselves by reason of which they may glory in themselves. For all that they have of power and stability they possess from God. . . ." In all their activities, accordingly, angels are but the instruments of God, although, to be sure, they are "the instruments in which God especially (specialiter) exhibits the presence of His divinity (numinis)" (I. xiv. 5). We must not think of them, then, as interposed between us and God, so as to obscure His glory; nor must we transfer to them what belongs to God and Christ alone (I. xiv. 10) - worshipping them, perchance,⁸² or at least attributing to them independent activities. The splendor of the divine majesty is indeed reflected in them;⁸³ but the glory by which they shine is a derived glory, and it would be preposterous to allow their borrowed brightness to blind us to its source. In all their varied activities they must be considered merely "the hands of God, which move themselves to no work except under His direction." 84 

Some question may arise as to the wideness of the sphere of activity in which angels are employed as "the hands of God." There is at least a prima facie appearance that Calvin thought of them as the instruments through which the entirety of God's providential work is administered. He dwells especially, to be sure, on their employment as "the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence" towards His people (I. xiv. 6); but he appears to look upon this as only the culminating instance of a universal activity. When he says that they are "God's ministers ordained for the execution of His laws,"85 we may indeed hesitate to press the language. But three several spheres of activity of increasing comprehensiveness seem to be distinguished, when he tells us God "uses their service for the protection of His people, and by means of them both dispenses His benefits among men and executes also the rest of His works."86 And the whole seems summed up in a phrase when he tells us again that God "exercises and administers His government in the world through them."87 The universal reach of their activities appears to be explicitly asserted in the comprehensive statement that God "uses their ministry and service for executing all that He has decreed."88 It certainly would appear from such broad statements that Calvin looked upon the angels as agents through which God carries on His entire providential government. 

The question is not unnaturally raised whether by this conception Calvin does not remove God too far from His works, interposing between Him and His operations a body of intermediaries by which He is separated from the universe after the fashion of a false transcendenceism.⁸⁹ It is quite plain that Calvin did not so conceive the matter. So far from supposing that the execution of the works of providence through the medium of angels involves the absence of God from these works, he insists that they are only the channels of the presence of God. "How preposterous it is," he exclaims, "that we should be separated from God by the angels when they have been constituted for the express purpose of testifying the completer presence of His aid to us" (I. xiv. 12). Are we separated from the works of our hands because it is by our hands that they are wrought? And the angels, if rightly conceived, must be thought of just as the hands of God - the appropriate instruments, not which work instead of Him, but by which He works (I. xiv. 12). He, therefore, once for all dismisses "that Platonic philosophy" which interposes angels between God and His world, and even asks us to seek access to God through the angels, as if we had not immediacy of access to Him. "For this is the reason they are called Angels of Power or Powers," he remarks in another place;⁹⁰ "not that God, resigning His power to them, sits idle in heaven, but because, by acting powerfully in them, He magnificently manifests His power to us. They therefore act ill and perversely who assign anything to angels as of themselves, or who so make them intermediaries between us and God that they obscure the glory of God as if it were removed to a distance; since rather it manifests itself as present in them. Accordingly the mad speculations of Plato are to be shunned as instituting too great a distance between us and God. . . ." In his view, therefore, the angels do not stand between God and the world to hold them apart but to draw them together as channels of operation through which God's power flows into His works. 

If he were asked whether he does not, by this interposition of angels between God and His works, infringe on the conception of the Divine immanence and raise doubt as to God's immanent activity, Calvin would doubtless reply that he does not "interpose" the angels between God and His works, but conceives them as just "the hands of God" working; and that he, of course, conceives God as immanent in the angels themselves, so that their working is just His working through them, as His instruments. We must not confuse the question of the method of God's immanent activity with that of the fact of that activity. The suggestion that God carries on His providential government through the agency of angels is only a suggestion of the method of His immanent working and can raise doubt of the reality of His immanent working only on the supposition that these angels stand so over against God in their independence as to break - so to speak - His contact with His works. This is Deism, and is therefore of course inconsistent with the Divine immanence; but it has nothing to do with the question whether He employs angels in which He is immanent in His operations. In any event God executes His works of providence through the intermediation of second causes; for this is the very definition of a work of providence. The discovery that among these second causes there are always personal as well as impersonal agencies to be taken into account, can raise no question as between immanence and transcendence in God's modes of action - unless personal agents are conceived to be, as such, so independent of God as to exclude in all that is performed by their agency the conception of His immanent working. And in that case what shall we say of the Divine immanence in the sphere of human life and activity? In a word, Calvin's conception that all the works of God's providence are wrought through the intermediation of angels excludes the immanence of God in His world as little as the recognition of human activities excludes the immanence of God in history. 

The real interest of his conception does not lie, therefore, in any bearing it may be supposed to have on his view of the relation of God to the universe - it leaves his view on that point unaffected - but in the insight it gives us into Calvin's pneumatology. We have already had occasion to note the vividness of his sense of the spiritual environment in which our life is cast. We see here that he conceived the universe as in all its operations moving on under the guiding hand of these superhuman intelligences. This is as much as to say that there was no dualism in his conception of the universe: he did not set the spiritual and physical worlds, or the earthly and supramundane worlds, over against one another as separate and unrelated entities. He conceived them as all working together in one unitary system, acting and interacting on one another. And he accustomed himself to perceive beneath the events of human history - whether corporate or individual - and beneath the very operations of physical nature - not merely the hand of God, upholding and governing; but the activities of those "hands of God" who hearken to His voice and fulfil His word, and whom He not only charges with the care of His "little ones," and the direction of the movements of the peoples, but makes even "winds" and a "flaming fire." 

To the question why God thus universally operates through the instrumentality of subordinate intelligences, Calvin has no answer, in its general aspects, except a negative one. It cannot be that God needs their aid or is unable to accomplish without them what He actually does through them. If He employs them, "He certainly does not do this from necessity, as if He were unable to do without them; for whenever He pleases, He passes them by and accomplishes His work by nothing but His mere will; so far are they from relieving Him of any difficulty by their aid" (I. xiv. 11). These words have their application to the whole sphere of angelical activities, as indeed they have to the entire body of second causes (I. xvi. 2), but they are spoken directly only of the employment of angels as ministers to the heirs of salvation. It is characteristic of Calvin that he confines his discussion of the subject to this highest function of angelic service, as that which was of special religious value to his readers, and that to which as a practical man seeking practical ends it behooved him particularly to address himself. In this highest sphere of angelic operation he is not without even a positive response to the query why God uses angels to perform His will. It is not for His sake but for the sake of His people; it is, in fact, a concession to their weakness. God is able, certainly, to protect His people by the mere nod of His power; and surely it ought to be enough for them and more than enough that God declares Himself their protector.⁹¹ To look around for further aid after we have received the promise of God that He will protect us, is undeniably wrong in us.⁹² Is not the simple promise of the great God of heaven and earth sufficient safeguard against all dangers? But we are weak;⁹³ and God is good - full of leniency and indulgence⁹⁴ - and He wishes to give us not only His protection but the sense of His protection. Dealing with us as we are, not as we ought to be, He is willing to appeal to our imagination and to comfort us in our feeling of danger or despair by enabling us to apprehend, in our own way, the presence of His grace. He, therefore, has added to His promise that He will Himself care for us, the further one that "we shall have innumerable escorts to whom He has given charge to secure our safety" (§ 11). Like Elisha, then, who, when he was oppressed by the numerous army of the Syrians, was shown the multitude of the angels sent to guard him, we, when terrified by the thought of the multitude of our enemies, may find refuge in that discovery of Elisha's: "There are more for us than against us." 

In insisting upon this particular function of angels above all others, Calvin feels himself to be, as a Biblical theologian, simply following the lead of Scripture. For, intent especially on what may most make for our consolation and the confirmation of our faith, the Scripture lays its stress, he tells us, on angels as the dispensers and administrators of the Divine beneficence towards God's people; and " reminds us that they guard our safety, undertake our defence, direct our ways, and exercise solicitude that no harm shall befall us" (I. xiv. 6). These great provisions are universal, he tells us, and belong "to all believers" without exception. Every follower of Christ has, therefore, pledged to his protection the whole host of the angels of God. In the interests of the greatness of this pledge, Calvin enters the lists against the idea of "guardian angels," which had become the settled doctrine of the old Church (I. xiv. 7), not indeed with the sharpness and decision which afterwards obtained in the Reformed Churches,⁹⁵ but yet with an obvious feeling that this notion lacks Scriptural basis and offers less than what the Scriptures provide for the consolation and support of God's people. If it is to be accepted at all, Calvin wishes it to be accepted not instead of, but alongside of, what he feels to be the much greater assurance that the whole body of angels is concerned with the protection and salvation of everyone of the saints. "Of this indeed," he remarks, "we may be sure - that the case of each one of us is not committed to one angel alone, but that all of them with one consent watch over our salvation" (I. xiv. 7). This being a settled fact, he does not consider the question of "guardian angels" worth considering: if "all the orders of the celestial army stand guard over our salvation," he asks, what difference does it make to us whether one particular angel is also told off to act as our particular guardian or not? But if any one wishes to restrict the protection granted us by God to this one angel - why that is a different matter: that would be to do a great injury to himself and to all the members of the Church, by depriving them of the encouragement they receive from the divine assurance that they are compassed about and defended on all sides in their conflict by the forces of heaven.⁹⁶ 

What Calvin has to say about the evil spirits - the "devils" as he calls them - is determined by the same practical purpose which dominates his discussion of the good angels. He begins, therefore, with the remark that "almost everything which Scripture transmits concerning devils, has as its end that we should be solicitous to guard against their snares and machinations, and may provide ourselves with such arms as are firm and strong enough to repel the most powerful enemies" (§ 13, ad init.). He proceeds by laying stress on the numbers, the malice, and the subtlety of these devils; and by striving in every way to awaken the reader to a realizing sense of the desperation of the conflict in which he is engaged with them (§§ 13-15). The effect is to paint a very vivid picture of the world of evil, set over against the world of good as in some sense its counterfeit,⁹⁷ determined upon overturning the good, and to that end waging a perpetual war against God and His people.⁹⁸ He then points out that the evil of these dreadful beings is of themselves, not of God - coming not from creation but from corruption (§ 16) - and closes with two sections upon the relation they sustain to God's providential government. To these closing sections (§§ 17 and 18), it will repay us to devote careful attention. In them Calvin resolves the dualism which is introduced into the universe by the intrusion of evil into it, by showing that this evil itself is held under the control of God and is employed for His divine purposes; and he does this in such a manner that we scarcely know whether to admire most the justice of the conceptions or the precision and clearness of the language in which they are given expression.⁹⁹

The first of these sections asserts the completeness of the control which God exercises over the devils. It is true that Satan is at discord and strife with God:100 he is by nature - that is, acquired nature - wicked (improbus) and every propension of his will is to contumacy and rebellion; of his own accord he does nothing, therefore, which he does not mean to be in opposition to God (§ 17). But he is, after all, but a creature of God's and God holds him in with the bridle of His power and controls his every act. Although, therefore, every impulse of his will is in conflict with God, he can do nothing except by God's will and approval.¹⁰¹ So it is uniformly represented in Scripture. Thus we read that Satan could not assault Job until he had obtained permission so to do;¹⁰² that the lying spirit by which Ahab was deceived was commissioned from the Lord;¹⁰³ that the evil spirit which punished Saul for his sins was from the Lord;¹⁰⁴ that the plagues of Egypt, sent by God as they were, were wrought, nevertheless, by evil angels.¹⁰⁵ And thus Paul, generalizing, speaks of the blinding of unbelievers both as the "work of God" and the "operation of Satan," meaning of course that Satan does it only under the government of God.¹⁰⁶ "It stands fast, therefore," Calvin concludes, "that Satan is under God's power, and is so governed by God's will (nutu) that he is compelled to render God obedience. We may say certainly that Satan resists God, and his works are contrary to God's works; but we at the same time assert that this repugnancy and this strife are dependent on God's permission. I am not now speaking of his will (voluntate), nor yet of his efforts (conatu), but only of the results (effectu). For the devil is wicked by nature and has not the least propension towards obedience to the divine will, but is wholly bent on contumacy and rebellion. What he has from his own iniquity, therefore, is that he desires and purposes to oppose God: by this depravity he is stimulated to try to do those things which he thinks in the highest degree inimical to God. But God holds him bound and curbed by the bridle of His power, so that he can carry out only those things which are divinely permitted to him, and thus, will he nill he, he obeys his Creator, seeing that he is compelled to perform whatever service God impels him to" (§ 17, end). 

This important passage appears first in the edition of the "Institutes" published in 1543; but its entire substance was in Calvin's mind from the beginning. It is given expression, first, in the course of the broader discussion of the relation of God's providence to the evil acts of men and devils incorporated into the second chapter (De Fide) of the first edition of the "Institutes" (1536).¹⁰⁷ "Thus, the affliction of Job," Calvin there declares, "was the work of God and of the devil; and yet the wickedness of the devil must be distinguished from the righteousness of God; for the devil was endeavoring to destroy Job, God was testing him (Job i. and ii.). So Assur was the rod of the Lord's anger, Sennacherib the axe in His hand (Is. x.); all called, raised up, impelled by Him, in a word His ministers. But how? While they were obeying their unbridled lust, they were unconsciously serving the righteousness of God (Jer. xxvii.). Behold God and them, the authors of the same work, but in the same work the righteousness of God and their iniquity manifested!" The same line of thought is much more completely worked out, and very fully illustrated from the instance of Job, as a part of the discussion of man's sinfulness in the presence of the machinations of evil and the providence of God, which was incorporated into the second edition of the "Institutes" (1539) and retained from it throughout all the subsequent editions - in the final edition forming the opening sections of the discussion of "How God works in the hearts of men" (II. iv. 1-2).¹⁰⁸ 

Much the same line of thought is developed again in the full discussion of the providence of God which appears in the tract against the Libertines, which was published in 1545. Speaking here of the particular providence of God, Calvin proceeds as follows:109 "It is furthermore to be noted that not only does God serve Himself thus with the insensible creatures, to work and execute His will through them; but also with men and even with devils. So that Satan and the wicked are executors of His will. Thus He used the Egyptians to afflict His people, and subsequently raised up the Assyrians to chastise them, when they had sinned; and others in like manner. As for the devil, we see that he was employed to torment Saul (I Sam. xvi. 14, xviii. 10), to deceive Ahab (I Kings xxii. 22), and to execute judgment upon all the wicked whenever they require it (Ps. lxxviii. 49); and on the other hand to test the constancy of God's people, as we see in the case of Job. The Libertines, now, meeting with these passages, are dumfounded by them and without due consideration conclude that, therefore, the creatures do nothing at all. Thus they fall into a terrible error. For not only do they confound heaven and earth together but God and the devil. This comes from not observing two limitations which are very necessary. The first is that Satan and wicked men are not such instruments of God that they do not act also of their own accord. For we must not imagine that God makes use of a wicked man precisely as He does of a stone or of a piece of wood. He employs him rather as a reasonable creature according to the quality of the nature He has given him. When, then, we say that God works by means of the wicked, this does not forbid that the wicked work also on their own account. This Scripture shows us with even remarkable clearness. For while, on the one hand, it declares that God shall hiss (Is. v. 26), and as it were sound the drum to call the infidels to arms and shall harden or inflame their hearts - yet, on the other, it does not leave out of account their own thought and will, and attributes to them the work they do by the appointment of God. The second limitation which these unhappy men disregard is that there is a very real distinction between the work of God and that of a wicked man when he serves as the instrument of God. For it is by his own avarice, or his own ambition, or his own jealousy, or his own cruelty, that a wicked man is incited to do what he does; and he has no regard to any other end. And it is according to the root, which is the affection of the heart, and to the end which it seeks, that the work is qualified; and so it is rightly accounted wicked. But God has an entirely contrary purpose. It is to execute His righteousness, to save and conserve the good, to employ His goodness and grace towards the faithful, to chastise the ill-deserving. Here, then, lies the necessity of distinguishing between God and men, so as to contemplate in the same work God's righteousness, goodness, judgment, and, on the other side, the malice of the devil or of the wicked. Let us take a good and clear mirror in which to see all that I am saying. When Job heard the news of the loss of his goods, of the death of his children, of the many calamities which had fallen on him, he recognized that it was God who was visiting him, and said, 'The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away.' And, in truth, it was so. But was it not also the devil who had brewed this pottage? Was it not the Chaldeans who had spoiled his goods? Did he commend the thieves and brigands, and excuse the devil, because his affliction had come to him from God? Certainly not. He well knew there was an important distinction to be observed here. And so he condemns the evil, and says 'Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Similarly David, when he was persecuted by Shimei, no doubt said that he had received this from the Lord (II Sam. xvi. 11), and saw that this wretch was a rod by which God was chastising him. But while he praised God, he did not omit to condemn Shimei (I Kings ii. 9). We shall return to this at another place. For the present let it suffice to hear this: that God so uses His creatures and makes them serve His providence, that the instrument which He employs may often be bad; that His turning the malice of Satan or of bad men to good does not in the least excuse their evil or make their work other than bad and to be condemned, seeing that every work receives its quality from the intention with which it is done. . . . On the contrary, we must needs observe that the creatures do their works here in their own degree, and these are to be estimated as good or bad according as they are done in obedience to God or to offend Him. All the time, God is above, directing everything to a good end, and turning the evil into good, or, at least, drawing good out of what is evil, acting according to His nature, that is in righteousness and equity; and making use of the devil in such a manner as in no way to mix Himself with him so as to have anything in common with him, or to entangle Himself in any evil association, or to efface the nature of what is evil by His righteousness. It is just like the sun which, shining on a piece of carrion and causing putrefaction in it, contracts no taint whatever from the corruption, and does not by its purity destroy the foulness and infection of the carrion. So God deals in such a manner with the deeds of the wicked that the holiness which is in Him does not justify the infection which is in them, nor is contaminated by it." 

We have thought it desirable to quote at some length one of the more extended passages in which Calvin develops the doctrine announced in the section before us, although it leads us somewhat away from the single point here to be emphasized, into the mysteries of the divine providence. This broader view once before us, however, we may return to emphasize the single point which now concerns us - Calvin's teaching of the absolute control of the evil spirits by God. This seemed to Calvin to lie so close to the center of Christian hope and life that he endlessly repeats it in his occasional writings, and has even incorporated an assertion of it in his Catechism (1545).¹¹⁰ "But what shall we think of the wicked and of devils," he there asks - "are they, too, subject to God?" And he answers: "Although God does not lead them by His Spirit, He nevertheless holds them in check as with a bridle, so that they cannot move save as He permits them. And He even makes them ministers of His will, so that He compels them to execute unwillingly and against their determination what seems good to Him." The recognition of this fact seemed to him essential even to an intelligent theism, which, he urges, certainly requires that God should be conceived not less as Governor than as Creator of all things - as, indeed, the two things go together. "If, then, we imagine," he writes,¹¹¹ "that God does not govern all, but that some things come about by fortune, it follows that this fortune is a goddess who has created part of the world, and that the praise is not due to God alone. And it is an execrable blasphemy if we think that the devil can do anything without the permission of God: that is all one with making him creator of the world in part." "Now Satan," says he again,¹¹² "is also subject to God, so that we are not to imagine that Satan has any principality except what is given him by God; and there is good reason why he should be subject to Him since he proceeds from Him. The devils were created by God as well as the angels, but not such as they are. It is necessary that we always reserve this, - that the evil which is in the devils proceeds from themselves."113 

Calvin was not the man, however, to insist on the control of the devils by God without consideration of the ends for which this control was exercised. He therefore follows up his assertion of this control (§ 17) with a discussion of the use God makes of "unclean spirits" (immundi spiritus) (§ 18). This use, he tells us, is twofold. They are employed to test, try, exercise and develop the faithful. And they are employed to punish the wicked. On the latter of these he dwells as little as its faithful presentation permitted. Those whom God "does not design to enroll in His own flock," he tells us, He delivers over to the control of Satan as the minister of the divine vengeance; and he pictures in a few burning words the terribleness of their fate. On the employment of Satan and his angels for the profit of God's people he dwells more at length and with evident reminiscence of his own Christian experience. "They exercise the faithful with fighting," he tells us, "they assail them with snares, harass them with assaults, push them in combat, even fatigue them often, confuse, terrify, and sometimes wound them." Yet they never, he adds, "conquer or overcome them." God's children may often be filled with consternation, but they are never so disheartened that they cannot recover themselves; they may be struck down by the violence of the blows they receive, but they always rise again; they may be wounded, but they cannot be slain; they may be made to labor through their whole lives, but in the end they obtain the victory. 

There are several things that are thrown out into a high light in this discussion which it will repay us to take notice of. We observe, first of all, Calvin's view of the Christian life as a conflict with the powers of evil. "This exercise," he says, or we might perhaps almost translate it "this drill" (exercitium) - it is the word for military training - "is common to all the children of God." We observe, next, his absolute confidence in the victory of God's children. The promise that the seed of the woman shall crush the head of Satan belongs not only to Christ, but to all His members; and, therefore, he can categorically deny that it is possible for the faithful ever to be conquered or overcome of evil. The dominion of Satan is over the wicked alone, and shall never be extended to the soul of a single one of the faithful. We observe again that Calvin conceives the victory as therefore complete already in principle for every one who is in Christ. "In our Head indeed," he declares, "this victory has always been full and complete (ad plenum exstitit); because the prince of the world had nothing in Him." And we observe, finally, that he holds with clear conviction that it will never be complete for any of us in this life. We labor here throughout the whole course of life (toto vitae curriculo) and obtain the victory only in the end (in fine). The fulfilment of the promise of crushing the head of Satan is only "begun in this life," the characteristic of which is that it is the period of conflict (ubi luctandum est): it is only after this period of conflict is over (post luctam) that it shall be completely fulfilled. It is only in our Head that the victory is now complete: in us who are members, it appears as yet only in part: and it is only when we put off our flesh, according to which we are liable to infirmity, that we shall be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. In these several considerations we have outlined for us very vividly Calvin's conception of the life which we now live in the flesh, a life of faith and hope, not of full attainment: a life filled with conflict, but with the sure promise of victory. 

The preoccupation of Calvin's mind with man throughout his whole discussion of creation is very strikingly illustrated by his absorption, even while discussing angels and devils, with human relations and human problems. What he is apparently chiefly concerned about is that men shall understand and take their comfort out of the assurance that angelic hosts encamp about them for their protection, and angelic messengers are busied continually with their direction; that men shall understand and take their admonition from the certainty that numerous most subtle and malignant unseen foes lie in wait continually for their souls. We have pointed out that Calvin's conception of the universe was frankly anthropocentric. We see that this anthropocentrism of thought embraced in it the spiritual as well as the physical universe. He does not say, indeed, that these higher spiritual existences exist purely for man: he only says that for our consolation and the confirmation of our faith the Scriptures insist principally on their employment for the dispensing and administering of God's kindness to His people. Here is no speculative investigation into the final cause of angels. Here is only a practical reference to those functions of angels which it most concerns us to know. But he does teach of course (on the basis of Col. i. 16) that the very creation of angels is referred to Christ as its end: and it might be contended that in this declaration there lie the beginnings of a "gospel of creation" by which all things without exception which have been brought into being are set forth as ancillary to the great end of the redemption of the human race. A certain amount of confirmation may be found for this contention in the unitary conception which, as has been pointed out, Calvin cherished of the universe as a systematized whole. Meanwhile we have no formal discussion from him of the final cause of angels, and not even (at this place, at all events) any guiding hints of how he would resolve such a question. Least of all have we here any such discussion as meets us in many of his followers of the final cause of the devil,¹¹⁴ although the elements of such a discussion are involved in any theodicy, and cannot escape suggestion in any attempt to deal seriously with the great problem of evil. Calvin, therefore, has not failed to suggest them; but not directly in our present context, where he contents himself with assuming the existence of evil in the spiritual world, declaring its origination by the creature and asserting the divine control of it and utilization of it in God's government of the world.¹¹⁵ For what may penetrate into the problem more deeply than this, we shall have to go elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, having expounded at some length the nature of the spiritual, and more briefly the nature of the physical, environment of man, Calvin is now able to turn definitely to the subject which had really been occupying his thoughts throughout the entire discussion of creation - man, considered as a creature of God. The ruin which has been wrought in man by sin, he postpones for a later discussion; here he concerns himself only with the nature of man as such. Not of course as if he were inviting an idle contemplation of something which no longer exists and therefore cannot deeply concern us. But with a twofold practical object in view. In the first place, that we may not attribute to God, the author of our nature, those natural evils which we perceive in ourselves, in our present condition. And next, that we may properly estimate the lamentable ruin into which we have fallen, by seeing it as it really is - as a corruption and deformity of our proper nature. With these ends in view he invites us to attend to a descriptio integrae naturae, that is to an account of the constitution and nature of man as such (I. xv. 1). 

Man, in his view, owes his origin, of course, to the productive energy of God (I. xv. 5) and is spoken of by Calvin as among all the works of God, "the most noble and supremely admirable example of the Divine righteousness and wisdom and goodness."116 His peculiarity among the creatures of God is that he is of a duplex nature. For that man consists of two disparate elements - soul and body - ought, in Calvin's opinion, to be beyond controversy.¹¹⁷ On the one side, then, man takes hold of lower nature - "he was taken from earth and clay";¹¹⁸ and this surely ought to be a curb to our pride. On the other side - which is "the nobler part" of man¹¹⁹ - he is an immortal spirit dwelling in this earthly vessel as a domicile; and in this he may justly glory as a mark of the great goodness of his Maker.¹²⁰ Calvin, we perceive then, is a dichotomist, and that not merely inadvertently but with an express rejection of the trichotomistic schematization. He recognizes some plausibility in the arguments advanced to distinguish between the sensitive and rational souls in man; but he finds that there is really no substance in them and advises that we draw off from such questions as frivolous and useless.¹²¹ 

Of the bodily nature of man, Calvin has (here at least) little to say. He is not insensible to the dignity of the human form and carriage, celebrating it in a familiar classical quotation;¹²² and he admits that by as much as it distinguishes and separates us from brute animals by that much it brings us nearer to God.¹²³ Though he insists that the image of God is properly spiritual,¹²⁴ and that even though it may be discerned sparkling in these external things it is only as they are informed by the spirit;¹²⁵ he yet in this very statement seems in some sense to allow that it does "sparkle" at least in these external things, and indeed says plainly that "there is no part of man including the body itself, in which there is not some luminous spark of the divine image."126 What he objected to in Osiander's view accordingly was not. that he allowed to the body some share in the divine image but that he placed the image of God "promiscuously" and "equally" in the soul and body.¹²⁷ Calvin might allow it to extend even to the body, but certainly he would not admit that it had its seat there in equal measure as in the soul. The only proper seat of the image of God was to him indeed precisely the soul itself,¹²⁸ from which only it might shine into the body.¹²⁹ 

He even, indeed, permits himself to speak of the body as a "prison" from which the soul is liberated at death;¹³⁰ though this is doubtless merely a classical manner of speech, adhered to without intentional implication of its corollaries,¹³¹ whenever at least his mind is not consciously on "the body of this death," that is, specifically, the sinful body. In contrast with the soul, he never tires indeed of pouring contempt upon the body as a mere lump of clay, which is sustained and moved and impelled solely by the soul which dwells in it.¹³² Dust in its origin, it shall in accordance with its nature, in obedience to the curse of God, return to dust,¹³³ although of course afterwards it shall be raised again in virtue of Christ's redemption; but here we are speaking again of the body, not as it is in itself, but as it is under sin, subject on the one hand to the death from which it was wholly free in the state of integrity¹³⁴ and to the redemption by which it is recovered from the death incurred by sin. Though then our bodies are in themselves, under sin, mere carcasses, yet as "members of Christ" they cannot "sink into putrefaction without hope of resurrection" (III. xxv. 7). They may be "wretched corpses," but they do not cease to be "temples of the Holy Ghost," and God "wishes to be adored in them." "We are the altars at which He is worshipped, in our bodies and in our souls."135 Hence, as well as for other reasons, Calvin has much to say of the duty of a proper care of the body - of its health and even of its cleanliness. If God deigns to dwell in us we should endeavor to walk in purity of body as well as of soul, to keep our bodies in decency, not to afflict them with austerities, or to neglect them in disease, but so to regulate our lives that we shall be able to serve God, and be in suitable condition to do good.¹³⁶

Even the body, it must be borne in mind, was not according to Calvin created to be the prey of death. In his commentary on Gen. ii. 16 he tells us that had man not sinned, his earthly life indeed would have ceased but only to give way to a heavenly life for the whole man.¹³⁷ That man dies is due therefore entirely to sin. Without sin the body itself would have been immortal. Its exinanitio is as much due to sin as the maledictio which falls on the soul.¹³⁸ By Adam's sin death entered into the world¹³⁹ and thus alienation from God for the soul, and return to dust for the body. And therefore by the redemption in Christ there is purchased for the soul restoration to communion with God and for the body return from the dust, in order that the whole man, soul and body, may live forever in the enjoyment of the Divine favor. The body is not in and of itself therefore, although the lower part of man and uniting him with the lower creation, an unworthy element of human nature. All that is unworthy in it comes from sin.¹⁴⁰ 

The "nobler part"141 of man, the "soul," or as it is alternatively called, the "spirit,"142 differs from the body not merely in nature but in origin. In its nature, Calvin conceives it as distinctively percipient substance: whose "very nature, without which it cannot by any means exist, is movement, feeling, activity, understanding."143 From the metaphysical point of view Calvin defines it as "an immortal, yet created essence,"144 and he is at considerable pains to justify each element of this definition. 

In opposition to the notion that the soul is but a breath (flatus) or power (vis) divinely infused into bodies, but itself lacking essence (quae tamen essentia careat),¹⁴⁵ he affirms that it is a substantial entity distinct from the body, incorporeal in its own nature (substantia incorporea),¹⁴⁶ and therefore incapable of occupying space, and yet inhabiting the body as its domicile "not only that it may quicken all its parts,¹⁴⁷ and render its organs fit (apta) and useful for their activities, but also that it may hold the primacy (primatum) in the government of the life of man," whether in concerns of this life or in those of the life to come (§ 6). The substantiality of the soul as an essence distinct from the body he considers to be clear on its own account, and on the testimony of Scripture as well.¹⁴⁸ The powers with which the soul is endowed, he urges, transcend the capacities of physical substance, and themselves afford therefore ample proof that there is "hidden in man something which is distinct from the body."149 Here is conscience, for example, which, discriminating between good and evil, responds to the judgment of God. "How shall an affection without essence¹⁵⁰ penetrate to the tribunal of God and strike terror into itself from its guilt"; or fear of a purely spiritual punishment afflict the body? Here is the knowledge of God itself. How should an evanescent activity (evanidus vigor) rise to the fountain of life? Here is the marvelous agility of the human mind, traversing heaven and earth, and all the secret places of nature; here are the intellect and memory gathering into themselves all the ages, arranging everything in proper order and even forecasting the future from the past; here is the intellect, conceiving the invisible God and the angels, which have nothing in common with the body, apprehending what is right, and just, and honest, things to which no bodily sense is related: must there not be something essentially distinct. from the body which is the seat of such intelligence (§ 2)? It is upon the Scriptural argument for the distinctness of the soul, however, that Calvin especially dwells; and he has, of course, no difficulty in making it perfectly plain that from beginning to end the Scriptures go on the assumption of the distinctness and even the separability of the soul from the body (§ 2, ad fin.). 

This whole argument was inserted into the "Institutes" for the first time in the preparation of the last edition (1559). But it is old ground for Calvin. It was already traversed by him with great fulness in his youthful tract against the advocates of Soul-Sleep (1534), the main contention of which is that the soul "is a substance and lives after the death of the body, endowed with sense and intelligence."151 Ten years later (1544) it was gone over again somewhat more concisely in his "Brief Instructions to arm all good Christians against the errors of the common sect of the Anabaptists," among whose errors was the contention that "souls, departed from the body, do not live until the resurrection," whether because the soul was conceived, not as "a substance or as a creation having essence, but only as the power which man has to breathe, move and perform the other acts of life, while he is living," or because, while it was conceived as "an essential creature," it was thought to sleep "without feeling or knowledge" until the judgment day. As over against the former and extremer type of Anabaptism he undertakes to demonstrate that "souls have an essence of their own"152 "given to them by God."153 The richness of the Scriptural material at Calvin's disposal is fairly illustrated by the fact that in these three Scriptural arguments, although some of it is employed more than once, yet much of it is in each case drawn from different passages. 

It is interesting to observe that Calvin conceives himself to establish the immortality of the soul in establishing its distinct substantiality. In the argument in the "Institutes," the two topics of the essentiality and the immortality of the soul are treated so completely as one, that the reader is apt to be a little confused by what seems their confusion (I. xv. 2). Calvin's idea seems to be that if it be clear that there is "something in man essentially distinct from the body," the subject of all these great powers of intellect, sensibility and will, it will go of itself that this wonderful somewhat will survive death. This point of view is perhaps already present to his mind in the "Psychopannychia," although there he more clearly distinguishes between the proof "that the soul or spirit of man is a substance distinct from the body," and the proof that the soul remains in existence after the death of the body, representing the latter specifically as the question of the immortality of the soul¹⁵⁴ - although it does not seem obvious that even the question of the survival of the crisis of death is quite the same question as that of immortality. His method seems in point of fact to be the result of a more fundamental conception. This fundamental conception which underlies his whole point of view seems to be that a spiritual substance is, as uncompounded, naturally immortal. On that presupposition the proof that there is a spiritual substance in man is the proof of his immortality. Of course this assumption is not to be understood to mean that Calvin imagined that any creatures of God whether men or angels are so immortal in and of themselves, that God cannot destroy them or that they exist otherwise than "in Him," and by virtue not only of His purpose in constituting them as He has constituted them, but of His constant upholding power.¹⁵⁵ It means only that Calvin supposed that in constituting them spirits God has constituted them for immortality and given them natures adapted for and implicating their endless existence. The proof that there is an uncompounded spirit in man, therefore, is in his view already a proof of immortality. 

It must not be inferred, however, that Calvin always relies solely on this indirect proof of the immortality of the soul. More direct proofs are found elsewhere in the "Institutes" as for example, in the chapter on the witness of the works and deeds of God to Him (I. v. 10), where a digression is made to point out that the apparent inequality of the moral government of the world suggests the hypothesis of a further life for its rectification. But the simplicity with which he as a Biblical theologian relies on the Scriptures precluded the development by Calvin of an extended or a complete argument for immortality on general considerations. On his view of the disabilities of the human mind induced by sin, he would not look for such an argument among the heathen. The heathen philosophers, he tells us accordingly, having no knowledge of the Scriptures, scarcely attained to a knowledge of immortality. Almost no one of them, except Plato, roundly asserts the soul to be an immortal essence. Certain other Socratics reach out towards such a conception indeed; but they are all in more or less doubt and cannot teach clearly what they only half believe. Nevertheless Calvin is persuaded that there is ineradicably imprinted on the heart of man a desire for the celestial life, and also some knowledge of it (I. xv. 6). No man can escape then from some intimations of immortality. And after the heart has been quickened by grace and the intellect illuminated by the workings of the Spirit, proofs of it will abundantly suggest themselves.¹⁵⁶ 

Now, this immortal substance, alternately called soul and spirit, which constitutes the animating or governing principle in the human constitution, Calvin is insistent, is an immediate creation of God. He insists upon this, not merely in opposition to the notion that it is no thing at all, but a mere "breath" or "power," but with equal strenuousness in opposition to that "diabolical error" which considers the soul a derivative (traducem) of the substance of God - seeing that this would make "the divine nature not only subject to change and passions, but to ignorance also, to depraved desires, to weakness and every kind of vice" (I. xv. 5) . . . "rending the essence of the Creator that every one may possess a part of it." No, says he, "it is to be held as certain that souls are created" and "creation is not transfusion of essence, but the origination of it from nothing" (§ 5). This "origination of the soul out of nothing," which alone can be called "creation," he insists on, again, not merely with reference to the origin of the first soul,¹⁵⁷ but also with reference to every soul which has come into existence since. It is horrible, says he, that it should be thrown into doubt by men who call themselves Christians, whether the souls of men are a true created substance.¹⁵⁸ Calvin's doctrine of the creation of the soul is thrown up into contrast, therefore, on the one side with his view that all else which was brought into being during the creative week, after the primal creation of the indigested mass of the world-stuff on the first day, was proximately the product of second causes; and on the other side, with his belief in the production of the body by ordinary generation in the case of all the descendants of Adam. The soul of the first man stands out as an exception in the midst of mediately produced effects, as the one product of God's direct creative power in the process of the perfecting of the creative scheme. And the souls of the descendants of this first man stand out in contrast with their bodily forms, as in every case also products of God's direct creative activity. In creating souls (in creandis animabus), he says, "God does not use the instrumentality of man (non adhibet hominum operam)."159 "There is no need," he says again, "to resort to that old figment of some (figmentum), that souls come into being (oriantur) ex traduce."160 "We have not come of the race of Adam," he says yet again, "except as regards the body."161 And not only does he thus over and over again through his writings sharply assert creationism as over against traducianism, but he devotes a whole section of the "Institutes" to the question and formally rejects the whole traducian conception.¹⁶² 

In its nature, as we have seen, this "immortal and yet created essence" which vitalizes and governs the human frame, is defined by Calvin as percipient substance, whose very nature it is to move, feel, act, understand; which is, in a word, characteristically sensibility.¹⁶³ When we attend to Calvin's conception of the soul from this point of view we are in effect observing his psychology: and, of course, he develops his psychology with his eye primarily upon the nature of man in his state of integrity - or rather, let us say, in his uncorrupted condition (I. xv. 1). "When definitions are to be given," he remarks in another place,¹⁶⁴ "the nature of the soul is accustomed to be considered in its integrity." He develops it also, however, under the influence of a strong desire to be clear and simple. Subtleties in such matters he gladly leaves to the philosophers, whose speculations he has no desire to gainsay as to either their truth or their usefulness; for his purposes, however, which look to building up piety, a simple definition will suffice.¹⁶⁵ It is naturally upon the questions which cluster around the Will that Calvin's chief psychological interest focuses. We must, however, leave the whole matter of Calvin's psychology and his doctrine of the Will to another occasion. We must postpone also an exposition of his doctrine of the image of God. A survey of these two topics remains in order to complete our exposition of his doctrine of the creature. 

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theologial Review, xiii. 1915, pp. 190-255, continuing the series of articles published in the Review during 1909 (pp. 27-284 of this volume). 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, pp. 50-51: "Although the importance of the doctrine of creation is felt by the two reformers, yet we seek in vain in Zwingli as well as in Calvin for a definite theory of creation.... The reason why the doctrine of creation was not developed by them in the same degree as that of providence, must no doubt be sought in the fact that this dogma did not at the time give occasion to any polemic." Also, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 51: "We cannot think it strange that Calvin, as a Biblical theologian, will know nothing of any other theory of creation than that which is given us in the Scriptures." 

I. xiv. 20: He refers his readers to Moses, as expounded particularly by Basil and Ambrose, "since it is not my design to treat at large of the creation of the world." 

Cf. I. xiv. 3, where he inveighs against "Manichaeus and his sect," who attributed to God the origin of good things only, but referred evil natures to the devil. The sole foundation of this heresy, he remarks, is that it is nefarious to ascribe to the good God the creation of any evil thing: but this is inoperative as "there is nothing in the universe which has an evil nature," - "since neither the pravity nor the malice of either man or devil, or the sins that are born from them, are of nature, but rather of corruption of nature." 

Cf. I. xv. 5 : "To rend the essence of the Creator so that everything should possess a part, is the extremity of madness." 

I. xv. 5, med.: creatio autem non transfusio est, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium. 

I. xiv. 20: Deum verbi ac Spiritua sui potentia ex nihilo creasse coelum et terram. Cf. Genevan Catechism, 1545, Opp. vi. 15, 16: Per coelum et terram an non quidquid praeterea creaturarum exatat, intelligis? Imo vero; sed his duobus nominibus continentur omnes, quod aut coelestes sint omnes aut terrenae. 

Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, p. 53: "Calvin's doctrine of creation is in brief, this: God created the world out of nothing in six days through His Word, i.e. through His Son." 

In his Commentary on Gen. i. 1, however, he does argue that the Bible teaches that creation is ex nihilo, the weight of the argument being made to rest on the use of arb, which he sharply discriminates from rcy. Cf. Baumgartner, "Calvin Hebraïsant," 1889, pp. 50, 51: "Richard Simon has pointed, as a proof that Calvin was not strong in Hebrew, to the fact that he understands the ar'B' of Gen. i. 1 in the sense of 'creation ex nihilo.' But here again R. Simon has been misled by his party-spirit, for the modern lexicographers are far from pronouncing Calvin's interpretation wrong  (e.g. Gesenius, "Thesaurus," i. p. 236). The most recent view will scarcely allow that the specific idea of creation ex nihilo is expressed in arb but recognizes that the ideas of novelty, extraordinariness, effortlessness are expressed in it, and that thus it may be said to lay a basis for the doctrine in question: cf. Franz Bohl, "Alttestamentliche Studien Rudolf Kittel zum 60. Geburtatag dargebracht," 1913, pp. 42-60, and Skinner, "Genesis," 1910, pp. 14, 15. Calvin does not understand Heb. xi. 3 of creation ex nihilo, but interprets it as the manifestation of the Invisible God in the visible works of His hands, "that we have in this visible world a conspicuous image of God"; "thus the same truth is taught here as in Rom. i. 20, where it is said that the invisible things of God are made known to us by the creation of the world, they being seen by His works." This is the burden of the Argument to the Commentary on Gen. i. and its echoes are heard in "Institutes," I. xiv. 1. 

"Opera" (Schuler u. Schulthess), iv. pp. 86 sq.: Zwingli argues that, if the preëxisting stuff is the same in kind as the thing created, we have an infinite series of worlds: if of a different kind, we have an infinite series of materials. Hence the world is not ex materia, but ex causa, which is as much as to say ex nihilo. 

Ibid., iv. p. 87: he defines creation as "esse e nihilo; vel: esse quod prius non fuit; attamen non ex alio tamquam ex materia." 

I. xiii. 24; I. xiii. 7; cf. Commentary on Heb. i. 2: "By Him ... the world was created, since He is the eternal Wisdom of God, which was the director of all His works from the beginning. Hence too we gather that Christ is eternal, for He must needs be before the world has been made by Him." Cf. also Commentary on Gen. i. 3: "Since He is the Word of God, all things have been created by Him." And see especially the passage in the first edition of the "Institutes" (1536), at the beginning of the comment on the "second part of the Symbol" (Opp. i. 64), where, after declaring on the basis of Heb. i. that "since God the Son is the same God with the Father" He is "the creator of the heavens and the earth," he proceeds to explain that the habit of alluding to the Father nevertheless peculiarly as the "creator of the heavens and the earth" is due to "that distinction of properties, already stated, by which there is referred to the Father the principium agendi, so that He Himself is indeed properly said to act (agere), yet through His Word and Wisdom - yet in His Power." "But," he adds, "that the action in the creation of the world was common to the three Persons is made clear by that word (Gen. i.): 'Let us make man in our image and likeness' by which there is not expressed a deliberation with angels, nor a colloquy with Himself, but a summoning of His Wisdom and Power." Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Calvijn," 1881, pp. 51-52; "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 53. 

I. xiv. 3, med.: nefas esse adscribi bono Deo ullius rei malae creationem. 

Do.: aliquam esse in mundi universitate malam naturam. 

I. xiv. 16 and I. xv. 1: Quidquid damnabile ... est a Deo alienissimum: Cuius in contumeliam recideret, si quid vitii inesse naturae probaretur. 

I. xiv. 20, ad fin.: creationem enarrare. 

I. xiv. 3, ad init.: vulgi ruditati se accommodans ... populariter loquens. 

I. xiv. 1: certe quantumvis late pateat coelorum circuitus, est tamen aliqua eius dimensio. 

Cf. the Argt. to the Commentary on Gen. i.: "The circle of the heavens is finite, and the earth, like a little globe, is placed in the center." 

I. xiv. 22: omnia se hominis causa condere. Cf. Commentary on Gen. iii. 1: "the whole world which had been created for the sake of man." 

"Compendium Theologiae Christ.," Oxford, 1657, p. 36 (I. v.). 

This point is very fully elaborated in the Argument to the Commentary on Gen. i. and in the comment on Heb. xi. 3. 

"City of God," xi. 5. 

"Confessions," XI. xii. 14: "Behold, I answer to him who asks 'What was God doing before He made heaven and earth' - I answer not, as a certain person is reported to have done facetiously (avoiding the pressure of the question), 'He was preparing hell,' saith he, 'for those who pry into mysteries.' It is one thing to perceive, another to laugh-these things I answer not. Far more willingly would I have answered, 'I know not what I know not', than that I should make him a laughing-stock who asks deep things, and gain praise as one who answers false things." The Argument to the Commentary on Genesis i. runs parallel to the opening paragraphs of this chapter in the "Institutes"; and we are there told that Calvin borrows this anecdote immediately, not from Augustine, but from "The Tripartite History," - that is to say, the "Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome," Cassiodorus' revision of the translation made at his instance of the histories of Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret by Epiphanius Scholasticus (for whom see Smith and Wace, "Dict. of Christ. Biography," ii. 1880, p. 159). This book supplied the mediaeval Church with its knowledge of post-Eusebian church history. 

Ac scite pius ille senex quum protervus quispiam ... per ludibrium quaeriret. 

See above, p. 210. 

E.g., xi. 321 (iocari quam serio conqueri). 

xii. 578. 

In his youthful work as a humanist  -the Commentary on Seneca's "De clementia" - he betrays the readiness of his laughter by his comments on the amusing matters that come before him. In the comment on I. vii. (Opp. v. 62) he expresses his sense of the ridiculousness of the soothsayer's solemn mummery and quotes Cato's remark "that it was wonderful that every soothsayer did not laugh whenever he met a fellow soothsayer." On I. x. (Opp. v. 84), speaking of the apotheoses of the Roman emperors, he adds: "The rites and ceremonies by which the emperors were consecrated are set forth by Herodianus in his iv. Book; and I am never able to refrain from laughter when I read that passage. The religion of the Romans was as ridiculous as this . . ." Calvin enjoyed his reading and responded to the matter he read with an emotional movement. 

Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," iii. 1905, pp. 535-540, where the whole subject is admirably illustrated. See also Doumergue, " L'art et le sentiment dans l'oeuvre de Calvin," Geneva, 1902, the third Conference, pp. 61-67. On Calvin's use of satire, see C. Lenient, "La Satire en France, ou la Littérature militante au XVIe siècle," 1877, i. pp. 107 sq., especially pp. 175 sq. Cf. also the first article in this volume, pp. 11 sqq. 

xii. 348: non posse negari omnia oblectamenta. 

Opp. xb. 441. 

I. xiv. 2: Hic etiam obstrepit humana ratio, quasi a Dei potentia alieni fuerint tales progressus. 

I. xiv. 2: a Dei potentia alieni. 

I. xiv. 22: quum nihilo difficilius esset, uno momento totum opus simul omnibus numeris complere, quam eiusmodi progressione sensim ad complementum pervenire. 

I. xvi. 1. Cf. the Genevan Catechism of 1545 (Opp. vi. 15-16, 1718) where the question is asked why God is called in the Creed only Creator of heaven and earth, when "tueri conservareque in suo statu creaturas," is "multo praestantius" than just to have once created them. The answer is that by this particularizing of creation, it is not intended to imply that "God so created His works at one time (semel) that He afterwards rejects the care of them." On the contrary, He upholds and governs all He made; and this is included in the idea of His creation of them all. Cf. also the "Confession des Escholiers" of 1559 (Opp. ix. 721-722) where we read: "I confess that God created the world at once (semel), in such a manner as to be its perpetual governor. . . ." 

It is worth while to observe here how Calvin betrays his sensibility to the glory and beauty of nature (cf. also I. v. 6; Opp. xxix. 300). See the remarks of E. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," iv. 1910, p. 105. 

These phrases occur in the Commentary on Genesis i. 

Joannes Wollebius, op. cit., p. 35. 

Amand. Polanus, "Syntagma theologiae christianae," Hanov., 1525, v. 2. Cf. Gisb. Voetius, "Disp.," i. 1648, p. 554: "Creation may be distinguished ... into first and second. The first is the production of a thing ex nihilo, and in this manner were produced the heavens, the elements, light; and every day there are so produced human souls, so far as they are spiritual in essence. The second is the production of the essential or accidental form, in praesubjecta sed indisposita plane materia, and that by the immediate operation of the divine power; and in this manner were produced the works of the five days as also many miraculous works in the order of nature as now constituted." 

See above, note 9. 

I. xvi. 2; cf. also the Commentary on Gen. i. 3.

Cf. Köstlin, TSK, 1868, p. 427: "In the section of edition 2b (vol. xxix. 510) on God as the Almighty Creator there should be particularly noted the emphasis with which Calvin maintains, in spite of the mediation of the divine activity through creaturely instruments, yet the dependence of these instruments, and the absolute independence of God with respect to them. And in ed. 3 (vol. xxx. 145 sq., 150; Lib. I. c. xvi. §§ 2, 7) there are given still stronger expositions of this. God, says Calvin, bestows on the instruments powers purely in accordance with His own will, and governs them; and God could work what He works through them, say through the sun, just as easily without them, purely by Himself. God, he says, in ed. 3, lets us be nourished ordinarily by bread; and yet according to Scripture, man does not live by bread alone, for it is not the abundance of food but the divine blessing which nourishes us; and on the other hand (Isaiah iii. 1) He threatens to break the staff of bread." "We have here already," adds Köstlin, "the general premises for the special use which God, according to Calvin, makes of the Word and of the Sacraments for His saving work." Would anybody but a Lutheran have ever thought of the "means of Grace" in this connection? Nevertheless it is not bad to be reminded that the Reformed doctrine of the "means of Grace" has its analogue in the Reformed doctrine of providence: it is a corollary of the fundamental notion of God as the Independent One. 

Commentary on Malachi i. 2-6 (Opp. xliv. 401). 

H. Bavinck in the first of his Stone Lectures ("The Philosophy of Revelation," 1909, pp. 9-10) remarks: "The idea of development is not a production of modern times. It was already familiar to Greek philosophy. More particularly Aristotle raised it to the rank of the leading principle of his entire system by his significant distinction between potentia and actus. . . . This idea of development aroused no objection whatever in Christian theology and philosophy. On the contrary, it received extension and enrichment by being linked with the principle of theism." Calvin accordingly very naturally thought along the lines of a theistic evolutionism. 

Commenting on Ps. cxlviii. 5 (Opp. xxxii. 434), he remarks: "The pronoun He is therefore emphatic, as if the prophet would say that the world is not eternal as profane men dream, nor is produced by some concurring atoms, but this beautiful order which we see suddenly stood forth (exstitisse) on the mandate of God." Cf. also Opp. xxxi. 327. 

I. xiv. 3: diserte et explicate . . . tradamus quae . . . docet scriptura. 

I. xiv. 4, end: ex simplici scripturae doctrina. 

I. xiv. 8, ad init.: viderint quale habeant fundamentum. 

I, xiv. 4: Theologo autem non garriendo aurea oblectare, sed vera, certa, utilia docendo, conscientias confirmare propositum est. 

I. xiv. 3: Et certe, quum utiliter semper nos doceat Spiritus, in quibus vero parum est momenti ad aedificationem, vel subticeat prorsus, vel leviter tantum et cursim attingat: nostri quoque officii est, libenter ignorare quae non conducunt. 

I. xiv. 4: Ne longior sim, meminerimus hic, ut in tota religionis doctrina, tenendam esse unam modestiae et sobrietatis regulam, ne de rebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamua quam quod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum. Alterum, ut in lectione acripturae, iis continenter quaerendis ac meditandis immoremur quae ad aedificationem pertinent, non curiositati aut rerum inutilium studio indulgeamus. 

Zwingli seems to have been an exception, and to have looked upon the ascription of all events to the action of angels and especially to that of devils as inconsistent with the doctrine of providence: he twits Luther with ascribing everything to "the poor devil" and asks what then becomes of universal providence ("Opera," Schuler u. Schulthess, iib. p. 27). Cf. P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn, 1883, p. 77, note. But Luther, remarks Muller, could believe in the determining providence of God, "und wenn die welt voll teufel wär." How it strikes a modern of the moderns may be learned from William Wrede's remark ("Paul," E. T. 1907, p. 95): "Angels, in our time, belong to children and to poets; to Paul and his age they were a real and serious quantity." 

I. xiv. 9: ex quibus [Scripturis] clarissime evincitur re vera esse spiritus naturae subsistentis; . . . non qualitates aut inspirationes sine substantia sed veros spiritus. Note also § 19: non motiones aut affectiones mentium, sed magis revera, quod dicuntur, mentes, vel spiritus sensu et intelligentia praeditos. Cf. Opp. xlv. 271. 

I. xiv, 19: sensu et intelligentia praeditos. 

I. xiv. 8: forma spiritus carere certum est. Cf. Opp. xl. 659: quoniam angeli carent corporibus. 

I. xiv. 5. Cf. Opp. xlii. 455; Iii. 86. 

I. xv. 3, end: "Neither is it to be denied angelos ad Dei similitudinem creatos esse, since our highest perfection, as Christ testifies (Mat. xxii. 30), will be to become like them." 

I. xiv. 3; [Moses] angelos Dei ministros inducit, colligere facile licet eorum esse conditorem, cui suam operam et officia impendunt. Cf. 4: angelos sane, quum Dei sint ministri ad iussa eius exsequenda ordinati, esse quoque illius creaturas, extra controversiam esse debet. Again 16: quum a Deo conditus sit diabolus. Cf. Opp. xxxiii. 206; lv. 334. 

I. xiv. 3: eorum conditor. Cf. Opp. xxxv. 466, to the same effect. 

Opp. Iii. 85--86. The assertion of Psalm cxlviii. 5 (Opp. xxxii. 434) he apparently confines to "creaturia sensu carentibus": but on the first verse he incidentally remarks of the angels that "they were created (conditi sunt)." Cf. the assertions of the creation of the angels, good and bad, Opp. xxx. 316; xxxiii. 206. In the exposition of the Symbol, in the "Institutes," of 1543, he comments on the words "Creator of heaven and earth" thus (chap. vi. $§28 and 29): "Under the names of heaven and earth all celestial and terrestial things are comprehended, as if God were said to be the Creator of all things without exception. This is found more clearly expressed in the Nicene Creed, where He is called the Maker of all things visible and invisible. That was done probably on account of the Manichees, who imagined two principles, God and the Devil; and attributed to God the creation of good things, indeed, but referred evil natures to the Devil as their author," - and so on as in the "Institutes" of 1559, I. xiv. 3. Then in § 29: "God then is in the first place said to have created the heavens and all that is contained in the heavens. But in that order are the celestial spirits, as well those who have persisted by obedience in their integrity, as those who by defection have fallen into ruin," etc.-explaining that the fact that Moses does not mention this in the history of creation in no respect throws it into doubt. Cf. the "Confession des Escholiers," 1559 (Opp. ix. 721-722): "I confess that God created not only the visible world, that is the heaven and the earth, and whatever is contained in them, but also the invisible spirits, some of whom have persisted in obedience to God, and some by their own sin have been precipitated into destruction." 

I. xv. 5: animas ergo ... creatas esse non minus quam angelos, certo statuendum est. Creatio autem non transfusio eat, sed essentiae ex nihilo exordium. 

I. xiv. 4: terram esse perfectam, et coelos perfectos cum omni exercitu eorum, narrat Moses (Gen. ii. 1). Quid attinet anxie precontari quoto die, praeter astra et planetas, alii quoque magis reconditi coelestes exercitus esse coeperint? 

Aquinas, "Summa," Pars I. qu. lxi. art. 3, argues: "Angels are a part of the universe. For they do not constitute in themselves a universe; but unite along with the corporeal creation in a universe. This appears from the relation of one creature to another. For the mutual relation of things is the good of the universe. But no part is perfect, when separated off into a whole by itself. It is not therefore probable that God, 'whose works are perfect,' as is said in Deut. xxxii, created the angelic creation off to itself before the other creatures." Jerome, on the other hand, following the Greeks, exclaims on the multitudinous ages which intervened between the creation of the angels and that of man. It is interesting to observe Dante following Aquinas and making the creation of the angels simultaneous with that of the universe at large, the fall of the evil angels being delayed but twenty seconds after their creation (cf. Maria Rossetti's "Shadow of Dante," 1886, pp. 14, 15), and Milton following Jerome and putting the creation of angels aeons before that of man. 

So he seems to say explicitly in the middle editions of the "Institutes" (first in 1543), vi. § 29 (Opp. i. 497): "First then God is said to have created the heavens and all that the heavens contain. But in this order are the celestial spirits, whether those who by obedience remained in their integrity, or those who by defection fell into ruin." 

"Instit. Theolog.," Geneva, 1625, Loc. vi. 4, p. 61. 

"Compend. Theolog. Christ.," ed. Oxford, 1657, p. 36. 

"Theoretico-practica theol.," Amstel., 1724, III. vii. 4, p. 340. 

Heppe, "Dog. d. ev.-ref. Kirche," 1861, p. 149, adds that this is also the teaching of the Leiden Synopsis, Riissen, Wendelinus and of the Reformed in general. Cocceius ("Summa Theol.," xvi. 12) thought of the day when the waters above and below the firmament were separated. 

Cf. a similar rejection of the efforts to determine the numbers and orders of angels in Opp. li. 158. 

As cited, III. vii. 30 (p. 348). 

I. xiv. 3: nefas esse adscribi bono Deo ullius rei malae creationem. 

I. xiv. 3: "The orthodox faith ... does not admit that any evil nature exists in the universe of the world; since neither the pravity and malice whether of man or devil or the sins which proceed from them, came from nature but from the corruption of nature; nor has anything at all come into being from the beginning in which God has not given a specimen of His wisdom and righteousness."

I. xiv. 16: quum a Deo conditus sit diabolus, bane malitiam quam eius naturae tribuimus, non ex creatione sed ex depravatione esse meminerimus. 

Do.: contenti simus hoc breviter habere de diabolorum natura: fuisse prima creatione angelos Dei, sed degenerando se perdidisse et aliis factos esse instrumenta perditionis. 

I. xiv. 16: quod est ab eo alienissimum. 

Sermon xvi. on Job iv. (Opp. xxxiii. 206). 

Sermon iv. on Job i. (Opp. xxxiii. 60). 

Commentary on I Jno. iii. 8 (Opp. Iv. 334). Cf. farther Opp. xxx. 316 ("Hom. 71 on I Sam. xix."): "Just as when we call the good angels spirits of God, not because they have the same essence with God, but because they were formed and created (formati et creati sunt) by Him, so also it is to be thought of devils whose origin was the same with the good angels. For they were not created evil as we see them today, and with that evil with which the Scriptures depict them, but they were corrupted and alienated from God by their departure from their original state; just as, we know, man too fell away from his purity into his present misery." 

Opp. xlviii. 594: "As they have not always existed, so they are capable of reaching their end." Cf. Opp. xxxiii. 365, and xxxviii. 152. 

Opp. xxxiii. 206-207 (Sermon xvi. on Job iv.). Cf. Opp. xxxiii. 365, and liii. 92. 

I. xiv. 10: the cult of angels in the Church of Rome led Calvin to be particularly insistent against their worship. Cf. Opp. vi. 83, vii. 653. 

I. xiv. 10: in eis fulgor divini numinis refulgeat. 

I. xiv. 12: si non ut eius manus a nobis considerantur, quae nullum ad opus nisi ipso dirigente se moveant. 

I. xiv. 4: Dei ministri ad iussa eius exsequenda ordinati. 

I. xiv. 9: quorum obsequio utitur Deus ad suorum protectionem, et per quos turn sua beneficia inter homines dispensat, tum reliqua etiam opera exsequitur. 

I. xiv. 5: imperium suum in mundo. 

I. xiv. 5, ad init.: ad exsequenda omnia quae decrevit. Cf. Heidegger's threefold distribution of angelic functions: in praeconio laudum eius, necnon in regimine mundi, ecclesiae imprimis ministrant (as cited by Heppe: "Dogmat. d. ev.-ref. Kirche," 1861, p. 146). 

"It deserves remark," says P. J. Muller ("De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 77), "that Calvin answers the question why God makes use of angels, after a fashion which more or less affects the immanence of God. He points to the multiplicity of our dangers, to our weakness, and to our liability to trepidatio and desperatio. Now God not merely promises us His care; but He even appoints an 'innumerable multitude of protectors, whom He has commissioned to keep watch over us'; so that we may 'feel ourselves without danger, no matter what evil threatens, so long as we are under this protection and care' (I. xiv. 11), - a mode of conception to which he does not, however, hold, since he looks upon all things and man as well rather as immediately dependent on God Himself and on His care alone." Muller quotes Zwingli ("Opera," iib. p. 27) as complaining of Luther's attribution of all evils to the devil as if there were no such thing as the providence of God. "How is it," asks Zwingli, "that to you the poor devil must have done everything, as no man can do in my house? I thought the devil was already overcome and judged. If the devil is now a powerful lord in the world, as you have just said, how can it be that all things shall be worked out through God's providence?" In both Zwingli's and Muller's cases the antithesis is not exact. All things can be worked out by God's providence and yet the Devil be the author of all that is evil; because the Devil himself may be - and is - an instrument of God's providence. God's use of angels  in His providence is no injury to His immanent working, because they are the instruments of His immanent working; and Calvin does not depart from the one notion while emphasizing the other, because they are not mutually exclusive notions but two sides of one idea. 

Commentary on Jno. v. 4 (Opp. xlvii. 105-106). 

I. xiv. 11: illud quidem unum satis superque esse deberet, quod Dominus asserit se nostrum esse protectorem. 

Do.: perperam id quidem fieri a nobis fateor, quod post illam simplicem promissionem de unius Dei protectione, adhuc circumspectamus unde veniat nobis suxilium. 

Do.: imbecilitas, mollities, fragilitas, vitium. 

Do.: pro immensa sua clementia et facilitate. 

Cf. Voetius, "Disput.," i. 1648, p. 900, who remarks that most of the Reformed (including himself) deny the existence of guardian angels, adding: "We embrace the opinion of Calvin in Instit. I. xiv. 7, and Com. on Psalms (91) and on Matthew (18), and of the other Reformers, who reject this opinion as vain and curious, and we think that something in this matter has adhered to the ancient fathers from the Platonic theology and the mythological theology of the Gentiles."

This last sentence is new to the latest edition of the "Institutes." We may note in passing that Calvin both in the "Institutes" and in his commentary on the passage, understands Mat. xviii. 10 of "the angels of little children" (cf. "Institutes," I. xiv. 7, 9), which seems certainly wrong. Cf. art. "Little Ones" in Hastings' "Dict. of Christ and the Gospels." 

I. xiv. 14, end: "For just as the Church and the Society of the Saints have Christ as head, so the faction of the impious and impiety itself is depicted to us with its prince, who holds there supreme dominion." Cf. Opp. xxxv. 35; liii. 339. 

I. xiv. 15, beginning: Hoc quoque ad perpetuum cum diabolo certamen accendere nos debet, quod adversarius Dei et noster ubique dicitur. Cf. the whole paragraph and especially its closing words. 

Cf. the definition given of demons by Voetius, "Disp.," i. 1648, p. 911, summing up what is more broadly taught by Calvin in the brevity of a definition. A demon, says he, "is an angel, created in integrity, who, subjected on account of his own defection to endless evil and misery, serves, even though unwillingly, the providence and glory of God." 

I. xiv. 17: discordia et pugna cum Deo. 

nisi volente et annuente Deo, nihil facere posse. 

nisi impetrata facultate. 

a Domino amandatus. 

spiritus Domini malus.  

per angelos malos.

opus Dei - operatio Satanae.

Opp. i. 61. 

Opp. i, 351; ii. 225. 

Opp. vii. 188-190. 

Opp. vi. 17, 18; cf. vii. 188 sq. 

Opp. xxxv. 152 (Sermon cxxx. on Job xxxiv.). 

Opp. xxxiii. 60 (Sermon iv. on Job i.). 

Cf. also Opp. xxx. 178; xxxvi. 338; xl. 309; xlv. 269; xlviii. 594, where it is the ascended Christ who is affirmed (as God of providence) to hold the devils in check so that they do nothing save by His will. Also the statement in the "Confession des Escholiers" of 1559 (Opp. ix. 723-724): "And although Satan and the reprobate endeavor to throw everything into confusion to such an extent that the faithful themselves doubt the right order of their sins, I recognize nevertheless that God; as the Supreme Prince and Lord of All, turns the evil into good, and governs all things by a certain secret curb, and moderates them in a wonderful way, which we ought with all submission of mind to adore, since we are not able to comprehend it." 

Few of them, however, have been able to say so much so well in such few words as Voetius, "Disp.," i. 1648, p. 922: "Final causes of the devil as such ought not to be assigned, because evil has no end. But although the opus (as we say) in and of itself has no end, the opcrans Deus has - who has made everything for Himself (propter seipsum, Prov. xvi. 4). For to a fixed end He both created him in the state of integrity, and permitted his fall, and left him in his fallen state, and ordained his malice to multiplex good. His ultimate end is therefore the glory of God; the subordinate use of the devil is as an instrument of divine providence, in this life for plaguing men, the pious for their discipline only, the impious for their punishment and undoing; after this life, for torturing the impious. Thus God in both raises a trophy to the honor of His blameless glory." 

A brief statement of how Calvin habitually thought of devils may be found in his tract against the Libertines (xii.: Opp. vii. 181-182): "The Scriptures teach us that the devils are evil spirits who continually make war on us, to draw us to perdition. And as they are destined to eternal damnation, they continually strive to involve us in the same ruin. Likewise that they are instruments of the wrath of God, and executioners for the punishment of unbelievers and rebels, blinding them and tyrannizing over them, to incite them to evil (Job i. 6, 12; ii. 1, 7; Zech. iii. 1; Mat. iv. 1; Lk. viii. 29, xxii. 31; Acts vii. 51, xxvi. 18; II Cor. ii. 11; I Thes. ii. 18; Jno. viii. 44; xiii. 2; I Jno. iii. 8)." 

I. xv. 1, ad init.: inter omnia Dei opera nobilissimum ac maxime speotabile est iustitiae eius, et sapientiae, et bonitatis specimen. Cf. Commentary on Gen. i. 26: "If you rightly weigh all circumstances man is among other creatures a certain preëminent specimen of divine wisdom, justice and goodness, so that he is deservedly called by the ancients mikro>kosmov, 'a world in minature."' Calvin seems to be speaking with regard only to the other visible creatures. 

I. xv. 2, ad init.: porro hominem constare anima et corpore, extra controversiam esse debet. Cf. Opp. vii. 113-114 (1544): "We hold then, in conformity with the whole teaching of God that man is composed and consists of two parts: that is to say of body and soul." 

I. xv. 1, end: ex terra et luto sumptus fuit. 

I. xv. 2: quae nobilior eius pars est. 

I. xv. 1, end: fictoris sui. 

I. xv. 6: qui plures volunt esse animas in homine, hoc est sensitivam et rationalem, . . . repudiandi nobis sunt. 

From Ovid, "Metam.," Lib. i. 

I, xv. 3. Cf. Commentary on Genesis ii. 7 where he finds in the very way in which man was formed, gradually and not by a simple fiat, a mark of his excellence above the brutes. "Three stages," he says, "are to be noted in the creation of man: that his dead body was formed out of the dust of the earth; that it was endued with a soul whence it should receive vital motion; and that on this soul God engraved His own image, to which immortality is annexed." 

In accordance with Augustine's declaration ("De Trinitate," xii. 7 [12]): Non secundum formam corporis homo factus est ad imaginem Dei, sed secundum rationalem mentem. (Cf. "De Gen. ad lit.," vi. 27 (38): imaginem [Dei] in spiritu mentis impressam. . . .) 

I. xv. 3: modo fixum illum maneat, imaginem Dei, quae in his externis notis conspicitur vel emicat, spiritualem esse. 

"Institutes," I. xv. 3. Cf. A. S. E. Talma, "De Anthropologie van Calvijn," 1882, who thinks Calvin speaks somewhat waveringly about the body. 

Promiscue tam ad corpus quam ad animam. 

So he says in the "Psychopannychia" (Opp. v. 180) that in the body, mirabile opus Dei, prae caeteris corporibus creatis, apparet, nulla tamen eius imago (in eo) effulget, and reasons out the matter at length in Opp. vii. 112 (1544): "Now where will it be that we shall find this image of God, if there is no spiritual essence in man on which it may be impressed? For as to man's body it is not there that the image of God resides. It is true that Moses afterwards adds (Gen. ii. 7) that man was made a living soul, - a thing said also of beasts. But to denote a special excellence, he says that God inspired the power of life into the body He had formed of dust. Thus, though the human soul has some qualities common to those of beasts, nevertheless as it bears the image and likeness of God it is certainly of a different kind. As it has an origin apart, it has also another preeminence and this is what Solomon means when he says that at death the body returns to the dust from which it is taken, and the soul returns to God who gave it (Eccl. xii. 7). For this reason it is said in the Book of Wisdom (ii. 23) that man is immortal, seeing that he was created in the image of God. This is not an authentic book of Holy Scripture but it is not improper to avail ourselves of its testimony as of an ancient teacher (Docteur ancien) - although the single reason ought to be enough for us that the image of God, as it has been placed in man, can reside only in an immortal soul, if we understand its contents as Paul expounds it, that is to say, that we are like God in righteousness and true holiness." 

Sermons on Daniel, Opp. xli. 459. 

I, xv. 2: ubi soluta est a carnis ergastulo anima; nisi animae corporum ergastulis solutae manerent superstites. In his early tract (1534) against soul-sleeping, he rings the changes on this idea: ex hoc corporis ergastulo ; corpus animae est career; terrena habitatio compedes sunt; post dissolutam compagem corporis; exuta his vinculis, etc. (Opp. v. 195-196). 

This is clearly the case in his early tract, "Psychopannychia," 1534, Opp. v. 195-196, where the body is "a lump of clay," "a weight of earth, which presses us down and so separates us as by a wall from God": and it is only when the load of the body is put off that "the soul set free from impurities is truly spiritual (vere spiritualis) so as to consent to the will of God and no longer to yield to the tyranny of the flesh rebelling against Him." 

Opp. v. 195: tanta est vis animae, in massa terrae sustinenda, movenda, impellenda; the soul is on the contrary by nature agile (natura agilis). 

Opp. v. 204: Is vero pulvis est, qui formatus est de limo terrae: ille in pulverem revertitur, non spiritus, quem aliunde quam e terra acceptum Deus homini dedit. 

Commentary on Gen. ii. 17: "He was wholly free from death; his earthly life no doubt would have been only for a time; yet he would have passed into heaven without death." On Gen. iii. 19: "When he had been raised to so great a dignity that the glory of the divine image shone in him, the earthly origin of the body was almost obliterated. Now however, despoiled of his divine and heavenly excellence, what remains but that by his very departure out of life, he should recognize himself to be earth? Hence it is that we dread death, because dissolution, which is contrary to nature, cannot naturally be desired. The first man, to be sure, would have passed to a better life had he remained upright; but there would have been no separation of the soul from the body, no corruption, no kind of destruction, in short, no violent change." 

Sermons on Deuteronomy, Opp. xxvii. 19, 20. 

Sermons on Deut., Opp. xxviii. 101; Sermons on I Tim., Opp. liii. 533-536. Cf. in general on Calvin's doctrine of the body, E. Doumergue, Princeton Theological Review, Jan., 1909 (vii. 1), pp. 93-96, where he brings out the salient points in opposition to the representations of Martin Schulze's "Meditatio Futurae Vitae, ihr Begriff und ihre herrschende Stellung im System Calvins," 1901, pp. 7 sq. In his address on "Calvin le prédicateur de Genève," delivered at the celebration at Geneva of the 400th anniversary of Calvin's birth (July 2, 1909), Doumergue briefly sums up his contentions here: "Oh! no doubt the body is a tent, a prison and worse still in the vehement language of our preacher. But at the same time, 'there is no part of the body in which some sparkle of the divine image is not to be found shining.' It is the 'temple of the Holy Spirit,' 'the altar' on which God would be adored.... And it is in a sort of canticle that Calvin celebrates its resurrection.... 'What madness it would be to reduce this body to dust without hope. No, the body of St. Paul, which has borne the marks of Jesus Christ, which has magnificently glorified Him, will not be deprived of the reward of the crown.' - Accordingly what care we should take of this body! Care for the health is a religious duty: 'God does not wish that men should kill themselves,' and to abstain from the remedies which are offered is a 'diabolical pride.' - Health and cleanliness: here is the whole of modern hygiene, which is to be nowhere more scrupulous or splendid than with the peoples which have been most strictly taught in the school of the preacher of Geneva, - the Scotch and Dutch " (p. 21). 

terrena quidem vita illi fuisset tempoialis; but, in coelum tamen sine interitu et illaesus migrasset. 

Nunc mors ideo horrori nobis est: primum quia quaedam est exinanitio, quoad corpus: deinde quia Dei maledictionem sentit anima. 

On Rom. v. 12. 

Cf. Talma, as cited, pp. 37-40. 

I. xv. 2: nobilior pars: praecipua pars. 

Anima ... interdum spiritus vocatur (I. xv. 2, ad init.). He repeatedly investigates in his occasional works the Biblical usage of the terms "soul" and "spirit." E.g. in his early work, "Psychopannychia," ad init. (Opp. v. 178 sq.), and towards the end of the tract against the Anabaptists (Opp. vii. 111). Cf. Talma, as cited, p. 34. 

"Psychopannychia," Opp. v. 184: "If any confess that the soul lives, and deprive it at the same time of all sensation (sensu), they just imagine a soul with nothing of soul about it; or they tear away the soul from itself; quum eius natura, sine qua consistere ullo modo nequit, sit moveri, sentire, vigere, intelligere; and (as Tertullian says) animae anima, sensus sit." 

I. xv. 2, ad init.: animae nomine essentiam immortalem, creatam tamen intelligo, quae nobilior eius pars est. 

I. xv. 2. 

I. xv. 6. 

Cf. "Psychopannychia," Opp. v. 180: essentiam immortalem, quae in homine vitae causa est. 

I. xv. 2: et res ipsa et tota scriptura ostendit. 

I. xv. 2: clare demonstrat latere in homine aliquid a corpore separatum. 

I. xv. 2: motus sine essentia - the expression is just in view of modern phenomenalistic psychology. 

Opp. v. 177. 

Opp. vii. 111-112: que les ames ont une essense propre. 

Opp. vii. 112: l'ame humaine a une essense propre qui luy soit donnée de Dieu.

Opp. v. 184. 

Accordingly Calvin in his "Psychopannychia" (Opp. v. 222) says plainly: "when we say that the spirit of man is immortal we do not affirm that it is able to stand against the hand of God or to subsist apart from His power." In his Commentary on I Tim. vi. 16 he explains the declaration that God alone has immortality to refer not to His having immortality a seipso but to His having it in potestate: accordingly, he says, immortality does not belong to creatures save as it is planted in them by the inspiration of God: nam si vim Dei quae indita est hominis animae tollas, statim evanescet: naturae immortalitas does not belong to souls or angels. Similarly in his "Responsio contra Pighium de Libero Arbitrio" (Opp. vi. 361) he denies that the soul of man is in this sense per se immortal: nam et eo modo neque animam per se immortalem esse concedimus. The exception however proves the rule, and the use of this as an argument against Pighius ex concessu, suggests that there is a sense in which otherwise than eo modo, the soul is per se immortal. Pighius had asserted that "mortality and corruption are ex conditione, non vitio naturae." "What is his proof?" asks Calvin, and supplies it thus: "Since the body is thus from its principia out of which it is compounded and from the nature of composition." "But by that argument," rejoins Calvin, "it might be proved that the body would be obnoxious to death even after the resurrection; and that the soul is now mortal. For from what principium has the soul sprung except nothing?" "No doubt," he adds, "if we should say that that perfection which God conferred on man from the beginning did not so belong to nature that he had it per se and ex se, I would freely accept this opinion. For not even do we concede that the soul is after that fashion per se immortal. And this is what Paul teaches when he attributes immortality to God alone (I Tim. vi. 16). Nevertheless we do not on that account confess the soul to be mortal: for we do not estimate its nature from the first power (virtute) of the essence, but from the perpetual condition which God has imparted to His creatures." Cf. the tract against the Libertines (Opp. vii. 180): "St. Paul, they say, calls God alone immortal (I Tim. vi. 16). I fully agree with St. Paul. But he means that God alone has this privilege of Himself and of His own nature, so that He is the source of immortality. But what He has of Himself He communicated to our souls by His grace, when He formed them in His image." 

Cf. the remarks of Talma, as cited, p. 35: "But still all men, according to Calvin too, have a certain sense of their immortality. By their alienation from the Father of lights, the light in men is not so wholly extinguished that they are incapable of this sense. . . " Talma sums up: "It is very certain that Calvin has not fully and finally proved the existence and immortality of the human soul. But this is not his purpose. His object was not so much to refute the error of those who denied these two things, as to strengthen his believing readers in their faith. And for this end the popular presentation of the grounds on which the two things rest was sufficient." On the difference between the human soul and the souls of animals according to Calvin, see Talma, p. 36. 

Cf. e.g. Commentary on Mal. i. 2-6 (Opp. xliv. 401): "Moses understands that man's soul was created from nothing. We are born by generation, and yet our origin is clay, and the chief thing in us, the soul, is created from nothing." 

Opp. vii. 180. 

On Heb. xii. 9. 

On Gen. iii. 6 (Opp. xxiii. 62). 

Sermon on Job xiv. 4 (Opp. xxxiii. 660). 

II, i. 7. Two subordinate points in Calvin's doctrine of creation may be worth noting here. He remarks in passing while commenting on Numbers xvi. 22 (Opp. xxv. 222) that it may be collected from that passage that each man has his separate soul: and that by this "is refuted the prodigious delusion of the Manichaeans that all souls are so infused ex traduce by the Spirit of God that there should still be one spirit." He returns often to this. Commenting on Job iii. 16 (Opp. xxxiii. 162) he teaches that God breathes the soul into the creature at the moment when it is conceived in its mother's womb. 

Opp. v, 184: sensus. 

"Responsio contra Pighium de Libero Arbitrio" (Opp. vi. 285): "It is sufficiently clear that [in Basil's remarks here under consideration] the nature of the soul is considered in its integrity; as it is accustomed to be in giving definitions." 

Talma, as cited, p. 43, remarks: "The whole manner in which Calvin deals here (Inst., I. xv. 6) with the ... faculties of the soul is remarkable. The style loses the liveliness, the progress of thought its regularity; and the whole makes the impression that Calvin did not feel fully at home in this field. . . ." Talma notes that the discussion of the faculties of the soul is not found in the "Institutes" of 1536, but is already very full in the edition of 1539. (Cf. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," iv. 1910, p. 109, for Calvin's psychology.)

Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

When Calvin turns, in his discussion of the doctrine of God, from the Divine Being in general to the Trinity (chap. xiii.), he makes the transition most skillfully by a paragraph (§ 1) which doubtless has the design, as it certainly has the effect, of quickening in his readers a sense of the mystery of the divine mode of existence.² The Scriptures, he tells us, speak sparingly of the divine essence. Yet by two "epithets" which they apply to it, they effectually rebuke not only the follies of the vulgar but also the subtleties of the learned in their thought of God. These epithets are "immensity" and "spirituality"; and they alone suffice at once to check the crass and to curb the audacious imaginations of men. How dare we invade in our speculations concerning Him either the spirituality or the immensity of this infinite Spirit, conceiving Him like the Pantheists as an impersonal diffused force, or like the Manichaeans limiting His immensity or dividing His unity? Or how can we think of the infinite Spirit as altogether like ourselves? Do we not see that when the Scriptures speak of Him under human forms they are merely employing the artless art of nurses as they speak to children? All that we can either say or think concerning God descends equally below His real altitude. Calvin thus prepares us to expect depths in the Divine Being beyond our sounding, and then turns at once to speak of the divine tripersonality, which he represents as a mysterious characteristic of the divine mode of existence by which God is marked off from all else that is. "But" - this is the way he puts it (xiii. 2, ad init.) - "He points Himself out by another special note also, by which He may be more particularly defined: for He so predicates unity of Himself that He propones Himself to be considered distinctively in three Persons; and unless we hold to these there is nothing but a bare and empty name of God, by no means (sine) the true God, floating in our brain." 

That we may catch the full significance of this remarkable sentence we should attend to several of its elements. We must observe, for example, that it ranges the tripersonality of God alongside of His immensity and spirituality as another special "note" by which He is more exactly defined. The words are: "But He designates Himself also by another special note, by which He may be more particularly distinguished," - the another referring back to the "epithets" of immensity and spirituality.³ The tripersonality of God is conceived by Calvin, therefore, not as something added to the complete idea of God, or as something into which God develops in the process of His existing, but as something which enters into the very idea of God, without which He cannot be conceived in the truth of His being. This is rendered clearer and more emphatic by an additional statement which he adjoins - surely for no other purpose than to strengthen this implication - to the effect that "if we do not hold to these [the three Persons in the divine unity], we have nothing but a naked and empty name of God, by no means the true God, floating in our brain." According to Calvin, then, it would seem, there can be no such thing as a monadistic God; the idea of multiformity enters into the very notion of God.⁴ The alternative is to suppose that he is speaking here purely a posteriori and with his mind absorbed in the simple fact that the only true God is actually a Trinity: so that he means only to say that since the only God that is, is, in point of fact, a Trinity, when we think of a divine monad we are, as a mere matter of fact, thinking of a God which has no existence - which is a mere naked and empty name, and not the true God at all. The simplicity of Calvin's speech favors this supposition; and the stress he has laid in the preceding discussion upon the necessity of conceiving God only as He reveals Himself, on pain of the idolatry of inventing unreal gods for ourselves, adds weight to it. But it scarcely seems to satisfy the whole emphasis of the statement. The vigor of the assertion appears rather to invite us to understand that in Calvin's view a divine monad would be less conceivable than a divine Trinity, and certainly suggests to us that to him the conception of the Trinity gave vitality to the idea of God.⁵

This suggestion acquires importance from the circumstance that the Reformers in general and Calvin in particular have been sometimes represented as feeling little or no interest in such doctrines as that of the Trinity. Such doctrines, we are told, they merely took over by tradition from the old Church, if indeed they did not by the transference of their interest to a principle of doctrinal crystallization to which such doctrines were matters of more or less indifference, positively prepare for their ultimate discarding. Ferdinand Christian Baur, for example, points out that the distinctive mark of the Reformation, in contrast with Scholasticism with its prevailing dialectic or intellectualistic tendency, was that it was a deeply religious movement, in which the heart came to its rights and everything was therefore viewed from the standpoint of the great doctrines of sin and grace.⁶ He then seeks to apply this observation as follows: "The more decisively Protestantism set the central point of its dogmatic consciousness in this portion of the system, the more natural was the consequence that even such doctrines as that of the Trinity were no longer able to maintain the preponderating significance which they possessed in the old system; and although men were not at once clearly conscious of the altered relation - as, in point of fact, they were not and could not be - it is nevertheless the fact that the doctrines which belong to this category attracted the interest of the Reformers only in a subordinate degree; and, without giving themselves an exact account of why it was so, men merely retained with reference to them the traditional modes of teaching - abiding by these all the more willingly that they could not conceal from themselves the greatness of the difference which existed between them and their opponents in so many essential points."7 They no doubt set themselves in opposition to the more radical spirits of their time who, taking their starting point from the same general principles, were led by their peculiarities of individuality and relations, of standpoint and tendency, to discard the doctrine of the Trinity altogether. But they could not stem the natural drift of things. "How could the Protestant principle work so thoroughgoing an alteration in one part of the system, and leave the rest of it unaffected?"8 And what was to be expected except that the polemic attitude with reference to the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity, which was at first confined to small parties outside the limits of recognized Protestantism, should ultimately become a part of Protestantism itself?⁹ 

In accordance with this schematization, Baur represents Melanchthon as, in the first freshness of his Reformation-consciousness, passing over in his "Loci" such doctrines as that of the Trinity altogether as incomprehensible mysteries of God which call rather for adoration than scrutiny;¹⁰ and, though he returned to them subsequently, doing so with a difference, a difference which emphasized their subordinate and indeed largely formal place in his system of thought.¹¹ While as regards Calvin, he sees in him the beginnings of a radical transformation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin does, indeed, like Melanchthon, present the doctrine as the teaching of Scripture, and attaches himself to the ecclesiastical definitions of it as merely a republication of the Scriptural doctrine in clearer words. "We perceive, however, that he does not know how to bring the doctrine itself out of its transcendental remoteness into closer relations with his religious and dogmatic consciousness. Instead, therefore, of speculatively developing the Trinitarian relation as the objective content of the idea of God, out of itself, he rather repels the whole conception as a superfluity which leads to empty speculation (Inst., I. xiii. 19 and 20), or else where he enters most precisely into it, inclines to a mode of apprehending it in which the ecclesiastical homoousia is transmuted into a rational relation of subordination."12 "The intention was to retain the old orthodox doctrine unchanged; but it was internally, in the new consciousness of the times, already undermined, since there was no longer felt for it the same religious and dogmatic interest, as may be seen from the whole manner in which it is dealt with in these oldest Protestant theologians. Men could no longer find their way in the old, abstract form of the dogma. A new motive impulse must first proceed from the central point of the Protestant consciousness. The first beginnings of a transformation of the dogma are already discoverable in Calvin, when he locates the chief element of the doctrine of the Trinity in the practical consciousness of the operations in which the Son and Spirit make themselves known as the peculiar principles of the divine life (I. xiii. 13, 14), and finds the assurance of the election in which the finite subject has the consciousness of his unity with God solely in the relation in which the individual stands to Christ."13 That is to say, if we understand Baur aright, the new construction of the Trinity already foreshadowed in Calvin was to revolve around Christ; but around Christ as God-man conceived as the mediating principle between God and man, the unity of the finite and infinite, bearing to us the assurance that what God is in Himself that also He must be for the finite consciousness - in which mode of statement we see, however, a great deal more of Baur's Hegelianism than of Calvin's Protestantism. 

So far as this representation implies that Calvin's interest in the doctrine of the Trinity was remote and purely traditional, it is already contradicted, as we have seen, by the first five lines of his discussion of the subject (I. xiii. 2, ad init.) - if, that is, as we have seen some reason to believe, he really declares there that vitality is given to the idea of God only by the Trinitarian conception of Him. It is indeed contradicted by itself. For the real meaning of the constitutive place given in Calvin's thought of the Trinity to "the practical consciousness of the operations in which the Son and Spirit make themselves known as the peculiar principles of the divine life," is that the doctrine of the Trinity did not for him stand out of relation to his religious consciousness but was a postulate of his profoundest religious emotions; was given, indeed, in his experience of salvation itself.¹⁴ For him, thus, certainly in no less measure than it had been from the beginning of Christianity, the nerve of the doctrine was its implication in the experience of salvation, in the Christian's certainty that the Redeeming Christ and Sanctifying Spirit are each Divine Persons. Nor did he differ in this from the other Reformers. The Reformation movement was, of course, at bottom a great revival of religion. But this does not mean that its revolt from Scholasticism was from the doctrines "of God, of His unity and His trinity, of the mystery of creation, of the mode of the incarnation"15 themselves, but from the formalism and intellectualism of the treatment of these doctrines at the hands of the Scholastic theologians. When Melanchthon demands whether, when Paul set down a compendium of Christian doctrine in his Epistle to the Romans, he gave himself over to philosophical disquisitions (philosophabatur) "on the mysteries of the Trinity, on the mode of the incarnation, on active and passive creation," and the like, we must not neglect the emphasis on the term "philosophical disquisitions."16 Melanchthon was as far as possible from wishing to throw doubt upon either the truth or the importance of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Creation. He only wished to recall men from useless speculations upon the mysterious features of these doctrines and to focus their attention no doubt on the great central doctrines of sin and grace, but also on the vital relations of such doctrines as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Creation to human needs and the divine provision for meeting them. The demand of the Reformers, in a word, was not that men should turn away from these doctrines, but that they should accord their deepest interest to those elements and aspects of them which minister to edification rather than to curious questions that furnish exercise only to intellectual subtlety. Any apparent neglect of these doctrines which may seem to be traceable in the earliest writings of the Reformers was, moreover, due not merely to their absorption in the proclamation of the doctrine of grace, but also to the broad fact that these doctrines were not in dispute in their great controversy with Rome, and therefore did not require insisting upon in the stress of their primary conflict. So soon as they were brought into dispute by the radicals of the age, we find the Reformers reverting to them and reasserting them with vigor: and that is the real account to be given of the increased attention given to them in the later writings of the Reformers, which seems to those historians who have misinterpreted the relatively small amount of discussion devoted to them in the earlier years of the movement, symptomatic of a lapse from the purity of their first love and of a reentanglement in the Scholastic intellectualism from which the Reformation, as a religious movement, was a revolt. In point of fact, it marks only the abiding faith of the Reformers in doctrines essential to the Christian system, but not hitherto largely asserted and defended by them because, shortly, there was not hitherto occasion for extended assertion and defense of them. 

In no one is the general attitude of the Reformers to the doctrine of the Trinity more clearly illustrated than in Calvin. The historian of Protestant Dogmatics, Wilhelm Gass, tells us that "Calvin's exposition of the Trinity is certainly the best and most circumspect which the writings of the Reformers give us: surveying as it does the whole compass of the dogma and without any loss to the thing itself wisely avoiding all stickling for words."17 That this judgment is quoted by subsequent expounders of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity,¹⁸ surprises us only in so far as so obvious a fact seems not to need the authority of Gass to support it. Apart, however, from the superiority of Calvin's theological insight, by which his treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity is made not only "the best and most circumspect which the writings of the Reformers have given us," but even one of the epoch-making discussions of this great theme, Calvin's whole dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity supplies an exceptionally perfect reflection of the attitude of the Reformers at large to it. At one with them in his general point of view, the circumstances of his life forced him into a fulness and emphasis in the exposition of this doctrine to which they were not compelled. The more comprehensive character of the work, even in its earliest form, coöperated with the comparative lateness of the time of its publication¹⁹ and his higher systematic genius, to secure the incorporation into even the first edition of Calvin's "Institutes" (1536) not only of a Biblical proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, argued with exceptional originality and force, but also of a strongly worded assertion and defense of the correctness and indispensableness of the current ecclesiastical formulation of it. No more than the earlier Reformers, however, was Calvin inclined to confound the essence of the doctrine with a particular mode of stating it; nor was he willing to confuse the minds of infantile Christians with the subtleties of its logical exposition. The main thing was, he insisted, that men should heartily believe that there is but one God, whom only they should serve; but also that Jesus Christ our Redeemer and the Holy Spirit our Sanctifier is each no less this one God than God the Father to whom we owe our being; while yet these three are distinct personal objects of our love and adoration.²⁰ He was wholly agreed with his colleagues at Geneva in holding that "in the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel," it conduced more to edification and readiness of comprehension to refrain from the explanation of the mysteries of the Trinity, and even from the constant employment of those technical terms in which these mysteries are best expressed, and to be content with declaring clearly the divinity of Christ in all its fulness, and with giving some simple exposition of the true distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.²¹ He acted on this principle in drawing up the formularies of faith with which he provided the Church at Geneva immediately after his settlement there, and he vigorously defended this procedure when it was called in question by that "theological adventurer," as he has been not unjustly called,²² Peter Caroli. This, of course, does not mean that he was under any illusions as to the indispensableness to the Christian faith of a clear as well as a firm belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, or as to the value for the protection of that doctrine of the technical terms which had been wrought out for its more exact expression and defense in the controversies of the past. He was already committed to an opposite opinion by his strong assertions in the first edition of his "Institutes" (1536), which he retained unaltered through all the subsequent editions; and the controversies in which he was contemporaneously embroiled - with Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, "theological quacks" - were well calculated to fix in his mind a very profound sense of the importance of stating this doctrine exactly and defending it with vigor. He was only asserting, as strongly as he knew how, the right of a Christian teacher, holding the truth, to avoid strife about words and to use his best endeavors to "handle aright the word of truth." He never for one moment doubted, we do not say the truth merely, but also the importance for the Christian system, of the doctrine of the Trinity. He held this doctrine with a purity and high austerity of apprehension singular among its most devoted adherents. As we have seen, he conceived it not only as the essential foundation of the whole doctrine of redemption, but as indispensable even to a vital and vitalizing conception of the Being of God itself. He did not question even the importance of the technical phraseology which had been invented for the expression and defense of this doctrine, in order to protect it from fatal misrepresentation. He freely confessed that by this phraseology alone could the subtleties of heresy aiming at its disintegration be adequately met. But he asserted and tenaciously maintained the liberty of the Christian teacher, holding this doctrine in its integrity, to use it in his wisdom as he saw was most profitable for the instruction of his flock - not with a view to withdrawing it in its entirety or in part from their contemplation or to minimizing its importance in their sight or to corrupting their apprehension of it, but with a view to making it a vital element in their faith; first perhaps more or less implicitly - as implied in the very core of their creed - and then more or less explicitly, as they were able to apprehend it; but never as a mere set of more or less uncomprehended traditional phrases. To him it was a great and inspiring reality: and as such he taught it to the babes of the flock in its most essential and vital elements, and defended it against gainsayers in its most complete and strict formulation. 

The illusion into which it is perhaps possible to fall in the case of the earlier Reformers, by which this double treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity is supposed to represent consecutive states of mind, is impossible in the case of Calvin. Circumstances compelled him to deal with the doctrine after both fashions contemporaneously. None can say of him, as Baur says of Melanchthon - in our belief wrongly interpreting the phenomena - that he first passed by the doctrine of the Trinity unconcernedly and afterwards reverted to the Scholastic statement of it. At the very moment that Calvin was insisting on teaching the doctrine vitally rather than scholastically, he was equally insisting that it must be held in its entirety as it had been brought into exact expression by the ecclesiastical writers. 

Calvin began his work at Geneva on the fifth day of September, 1536, and among the other fundamental tasks with which he engaged himself during the winter of 1536 and 1537 was the drawing up of his first catechism, the "Instruction used in the Church at Geneva," as it is called in its French form, which was published in 1537, or the "Catechismus sive Christianae Religionis Institutio," as it is called in the Latin form, which was published early (March) in 1538. Along with this Catechism, there had been prepared in both languages also a briefer "Confession of Faith," written, possibly, not by Calvin himself, but by his colleagues in the Genevan ministry, or, to be more specific, by Farel,²³ but certainly in essence Calvin's, and related to the Catechism very much as the Catechism was related to the "Institutes" of 1536; that is to say, it is a free condensation of the Catechism. In this Confession of Faith, although it was the fundamental documentation of the faith of the Genevan Church to which all citizens were required to subscribe, there is no formal exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity at all: the unity of God alone is asserted (§ 2), and it is left to the mere recitation of the Apostles' Creed, which is incorporated into it (§ 6), supported only by a rare (§ 15) reference to Jesus as God's Son, to suggest the Trinity. Even in the Catechism²⁴ the statement of the doctrine, although explicit and precise, and supported by equally explicit assertions of the uniqueness of our Lord's Sonship ("He is called Son of God, not like believers, by adoption and grace, but true and natural and therefore sole and unique, so as to be distinguished from the others," p. 53, cf. pp. 45-46, 53, 60, 62), and of His true divinity ("His divinity, which He had from all eternity with the Father," p. 53), is far from elaborate. It is confined indeed very much to the assertion of the fact of the Trinity - although even here it is suggested that it enters by necessity into our conception of God; and even this assertion is made apparently only because it seemed to be needed for the understanding of the Apostles' Creed. In the general remarks on this Creed, before the exposition of its several clauses is taken up (p. 52), we read as follows: "But in order that this our confession of faith in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit may trouble no one, it is necessary first of all to say a little about it. When we name the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we by no means imagine three Gods; but the Scriptures and pious experience itself show us in the absolutely simple (tres-simple) essence of God, the Father, His Son and His Spirit. So that our intelligence is not able to conceive the Father without at the same time comprehending the Son in whom His living image is repeated, and the Spirit, in whom His power and virtue are manifested. Accordingly, we adhere with the whole thought of our heart to one sole God; but we contemplate nevertheless the Father with the Son and His Spirit." There is certainly here a clear and firm assertion of the fact of the Trinity; we may even admire the force with which, in so few words, the substance of the doctrine is proclaimed, and it is also suggested that it has its roots planted not only in Scripture but in Christian experience, and indeed is involved in a vital conception of God. Calvin assuredly was justified in pointing to it, when the calumnies raised by Caroli were spread abroad and men were acquiring a suspicion that his "opinion concerning the personal distinctions in the one God dissented somewhat (non nihil) from the orthodox consent of the Church," as a proof that he had from the first taught the Church at Geneva "a trinity of persons in the one essence of God."25 But it is perhaps not strange that this should seem to some very little to say on the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity in a statement of fundamental doctrines which extends to some forty-two pages in length.²⁶ In its brevity it may perhaps illustrate almost as strikingly as the entire omission of all statement of the doctrine from the accompanying Confession (except as implied in the repetition of the Apostles' Creed) the feeling of Calvin and his colleagues that the elaboration of this doctrine belongs rather to the later stages of Christian instruction, while for babes in Christ it were better to leave it implicit in their general religious standpoint (seeing that it is implicated in the experience of piety itself) than to clog the unformed Christian mind with subtle disputations about it. Meanwhile, at the very moment when Calvin and his colleagues were preparing these primary statements of faith, in which no or so small a space was given to the doctrine of the Trinity, they were also vigorously engaged in confuting and excluding from the Genevan Church impugners of that doctrine. For from the very beginning of his work at Geneva Calvin was brought into conflict with that anti-trinitarian radicalism the confutation of which was to draw so heavily upon his strength in the future. There were already in the early spring of 1537 Anabaptists to confute and banish, among whom was that John Stordeur whose widow was afterwards to become Calvin's wife.²⁷ And there was to deal with just before their appearance that poor half-crazy fanatic Claude Aliodi - once Farel's colleague at Neuchâtel - who had as early as 1534 been denying the preëxistence of Christ, and was in the spring of 1537 at Geneva, teaching his anti-trinitarian heresies.²⁸ 

Calvin's exact attitude on the doctrine of the Trinity and its teaching was, moreover, just at this time forced into great publicity by the assaults made upon the Genevan pastors by one of the most frivolous characters brought to the surface by the upheaval of the Reformation.²⁹ It was precisely at this time (January, 1537) that Peter Caroli, who was at the moment giving himself the airs of a bishop as "first pastor" at Lausanne, conceived the idea of avenging himself upon the pastors of Geneva for what he thought personal injuries by bringing against them the charge of virtual Arianism. That the charge received an attention which it did not deserve was, no doubt, due in part to an old suspicion which had been aroused against Farel by the calumnies of Claude Aliodi.³⁰ These were founded on the circumstance that in his "Sommaire" (1524-1525), Farel - with a purely paedagogical intent, as he explained in a preface prefixed to the edition of 1537-1538, because he believed the doctrine of the Trinity too difficult a topic for babes in faith - had passed over the doctrine of the Trinity, just as the Genevan pastors did again in their Confession of 1537.31 It is difficult for us, in any event, however, at this late date, to understand the hearing which a man like Caroli obtained for his calumnies. The whole Protestant world was filled with suspicions of the orthodoxy of the Genevan pastors. It was whispered from one to another - at Bern, Basle, Zurich, Strasburg, Wittenberg - that they were strangely chary of using the terms "Trinity," "Person," - that they were even "heady" in their refusal to employ them in their popular formularies. It was widely reported that they were beginning to fall into Arianism, or rather into that worst of all errors (pessimus error) which Servetus the Spaniard was spreading abroad. Not only was a local crisis thus created, which entailed personal controversies and synods and decisions, but a widely spread atmosphere of distrust was produced, which demanded the most careful and prompt attention. All the spring and summer Calvin was occupied in writing letters hither and thither, correcting the harmful rumors which had, as he said, been set going by "a mere nobody" (homo nihili), urged on by "futile vanity."32 And after the conferences and synods and letters, there came at length treatises. The result is that all excuse is taken away for any misapprehension of Calvin's precise position. 

Throughout the whole controversy - in which Calvin was ever the chief spokesman, coming forward loyally to the defense of his colleagues, who, rather than he, were primarily struck at - two currents run, as they run through all his writings on the Trinity, and not least through his chapter (I. xiii.) on that subject in the "Institutes." There is everywhere manifested not only a clear and firm grasp of the doctrine, but also a very deep insight into it, accompanied by a determination to assert it at its height. Along with this there is also manifest an equally constant and firm determination to preserve full liberty to deal with the doctrine free from all dictation from without or even prescription of traditional modes of statement. There is nothing inconsistent in these two positions. Rather are they outgrowths of the same fundamental conviction: but the obverse and reverse of the same mental attitude. At the root of all lies Calvin's profound persuasion that this is a subject too high for human speculation and his consequent fixed resolve to eschew all theoretical constructions upon it, and to confine himself strictly to the revelations of Scripture. On the one hand, therefore, because he appealed to Scripture only, he refused to be coerced in his expression of the doctrine by present authority or even the formularies of the past; on the other, because he trusted Scripture wholly, he was insistent in giving full validity to all that he found there. It was the purity of his Protestantism, in other words, which governed Calvin's dealing with this doctrine; giving it an independence which is not yet always understood and has afforded occasion once and again for comment upon his attitude which betrays a somewhat surprising inability to enter into his mind.³³ 

For the matter, which has been thus vexed, was perfectly simple. Calvin refused to subscribe the ancient creeds at Caroli's dictation, not in the least because he did not find himself in accord with their teaching, but solely because he was determined to preserve for himself and his colleagues the liberties belonging to Christian men, subject in matters of faith to no other authority than that of God speaking in the Scriptures. He tells us himself that it was never his purpose to reject these creeds or to detract from their credit;³⁴ and he points out that he was not misunderstood even by Caroli to be repudiating their teaching; but Caroli conceded that what he did was - in Caroli's bad Latin, or as Calvin facetiously calls it, "his Sorbonnic elegance" - "neither to credit nor to discredit them."35 He considered it intolerable that the Christian teacher's faith should be subjected to the authority of any traditional modes of statement, however venerable, or however true; and he refused to be the instrument of creating a precedent for such tyranny in the Reformed Churches by seeming to allow that a teacher might be justly treated as a heretic until he cleared himself by subscribing ancient symbols thrust before him by this or that disturber of the peace. There were his writings, and there was his public teaching, and he was ready to declare plainly what he believed: let him be judged by these expressions of his faith in accordance with the Word of God alone as the standard of truth. Accordingly, when he first confronted Caroli in behalf of the Genevan ministers, he read the passage on the Trinity from the new Catechism as the suitable expression of their belief. And when Caroli cried out, "Away with these new Confessions; and let us sign the three ancient Creeds," Calvin, not without some show of pride, refused, on the ground that he accorded authority in divine things to the Word of God alone.³⁶ "We have professed faith in God alone," he said, "not in Athanasius, whose Creed has not been approved by any properly constituted Church."37 His meaning is that he refused to treat any human composition as an authoritative determination of doctrine, from which we may decline only on pain of heresy: that belongs to the Word of God alone. At the subsequent Council of Lausanne he took up precisely the same position, and addressing himself more, as he says,³⁸ ad hominem than ad rem, turned the demand that he should express his faith in the exact words of former formularies into ridicule. He was, he tells us, in what he said about the Creeds just "gibing"39 Caroli. Caroli had attempted to recite the Creeds and had broken down at the fourth clause of the Athanasian Symbol.⁴⁰ You assert, Calvin said, that we cannot acceptably confess our faith except in the exact words of these ancient symbols. You have just pronounced these words from the Athanasian Creed: "Which faith whosoever doth not hold cannot be saved." You do not yourself hold this faith: and if you did, you could not express it in the exact words of the Creed. Try to repeat those words: you will infallibly again stick fast before you get through the fourth clause. Now what would you do, if you should suddenly come to die and the Devil should demand that you go to the eternal destruction which you confess awaits those who do not hold this faith whole and entire, meaning unless you express this your faith in these exact terms? And as for the Nicene Creed - is it so very certain it was composed by that Council? One would surely suppose those holy Fathers would study conciseness in so serious a matter as a creed. But see the battology here: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God." Why this repetition - which adds neither to the emphasis nor to the expressiveness of the document? Don't you see that this is a song, more suitable for singing than to serve as a formula of confession?⁴¹ We may or may not think Calvin's pleasantry happy. But we certainly cannot fail to marvel when we read in even recent writers that Calvin refused to sign the Athanasian Creed because of its damnatory clauses, "which are unjust and uncharitable," and that he "depreciated the Nicene Creed."42 According to his own testimony, he did nothing of the kind: he "never had any intention of depreciating (abiicere) these creeds or of derogating from their credit."43 His sole design was to make it apparent that Caroli's insistence that only in the words of these creeds could faith in the Trinity be fitly expressed was ridiculous. 

Calvin's refusal to be confined to the very words of the old formulas in his expression of the doctrine of the Trinity did not carry with it, therefore, any unwillingness to employ in his definition of the doctrine the terms which had been beaten out in the Trinitarian controversies of the past. These terms he considered rather the best expressions for stating and defending the doctrine. That they were unwilling to employ them had indeed been made the substance of one of the charges brought by Caroli against the Genevan pastors. But the refutation of this calumny, so far as Calvin himself was concerned, was easy. He had only to point to the first edition of the "Institutes " (1536), in which he had not only freely used the terms in question, but had defended at large the right and asserted the duty of employing them, as the technical language by which alone the doctrine of the Trinity can be so expressed as to confound heretical misconstructions. When, then, Caroli expressed his wonder at "the pertinacity with which Calvin refused the terms 'Person,' 'Trinity,'" Calvin replied flatly that neither he nor Farel nor Viret ever had the smallest objection to these terms. "The writings of Calvin," he adds, " testify to the whole world that he always employed them freely, and even reprehended the superstition of those who either disliked or avoided them."44 That the Genevan pastors passed them by in their Confession, and refused to employ them when this was violently demanded of them, he explains, was due to two reasons. They were unwilling to consent to such tyranny as that when a matter has been sufficiently and more than sufficiently established, credit should be bound to words and syllables. But their more particular reason was, he adds, that they might "deprive that madman of the boast he had insolently made." "For Caroli's purpose was to cast suspicion on the entire doctrine of men of piety and to destroy their influence."45 Though they felt to the full, therefore, the value of these terms, not only for confounding heresy, but also for consolidating churches in a common confession, when their use was contentiously demanded of them they followed a high example and refused to give place, in the way of subjection, even for an hour. 

Calvin's attitude to the employment of this technical language is sufficiently interesting in itself to repay a pause to observe it. As we have intimated, it is fully set forth already in the first edition of the "Institutes" (1536) in a very interesting passage, which is retained without substantial alteration throughout all the subsequent editions. The position of this passage in the discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, however, is changed in the final edition from its end (as in all the earlier editions) to its beginning. In the final edition, therefore, it appears as a preface to the discussion of the substance of the doctrine (I. xiii. 3-5), and it is strengthened in this edition by an introductory paragraph (§ 2), in which an attempt is made to vindicate for one of these technical terms direct Biblical authority. Calvin finds the term "Person" in the u`po,stasij of Heb. i. 3; and insists, therefore, that it, at least, is not of human invention (humanitus inventa). The argument in which he does this is too characteristic of him and too instructive, not only as to his attitude towards the terms in question, but also as to his doctrine of the Trinity and his exegetical methods, to be passed over in silence. We must permit ourselves so much of a digression, therefore, as will enable us to attend to it. 

What Calvin does, in this argument, is in essence to subject the statement of Heb. i. 3 that the Son is "the very image of the hypostasis of God" - the carakth.r th/j u`posta,sewj auvtou/ - to a strict logical analysis. The term u`po,stasij, he argues, must designate something the Son is not: for He could scarcely be said to be the image of something He is. When we say image, we postulate two distinct things: the thing imaged and the thing imaging it. If the Son is the image of God's hypostasis, then, the hypostasis of God must be something which the Son does not share; it must be rather something which He is like. The Son shares the Divine essence: hence hypostasis here cannot mean essence. It must be taken then in its alternative sense of "person": and what the author of the Epistle says, therefore, is that the Son is exactly like the Father in person; His double, so to speak. This Epistle, therefore, expressly speaks here of two Persons in the Godhead, one Person which is imaged, another which precisely images it. And the same reasoning may be applied to the Holy Spirit. There is Biblical warrant, therefore, for teaching that there are three hypostases in the one essence of God - "therefore, if we will give credit to the Apostle's testimony, there are in God three hypostases," - and since the Latin "person" is but the translation of the Greek "hypostasis," it is mere fastidiousness to balk at the term "person." If anyone prefers the term "subsistence" as a more literal rendering, why, let him use it: or even "substance," if it be taken in the same sense. The point is not the vocable but the meaning, and we do not change the meaning by varying the synonyms. Even the Greeks use "person" (pro,swpon) interchangeably with "subsistence" (u`po,stasij) in this connection. 

It is not likely that this piece of exegesis will commend itself to us. Nor indeed is it likely that we shall feel perfect satisfaction in the logical analysis, even as a piece of logical analysis. After all, the Son is not the image of the Father in His Personality - if we are, like Calvin, to take the Personality here in strict distinction from the Essence. What the Son differs from the Father in is, rather, just in His "Personality," in this sense: as Person He is the Son, the Father the Father, and what we sum up under this "Fatherhood" and "Sonship" is just the distinguishing "properties" by which the two are differentiated from each other. That concrete Person we call the Son is exactly like that concrete Person we call the Father; but the likeness is due to the fact that each is sharer in the identical essence. After all, therefore, the reason why the Son is the express image of the Father is because, sharing the divine essence, He is in His essence all that the Father is. He is the repetition of the Father: but the repetition in such a sense that the one essence in which the likeness consists is common to the two, and not merely of like character in the two. The fundamental trouble with Calvin's argument is that it seeks a direct proof for the Trinitarian constitution of the Godhead from a passage which was intended as a direct proof only of the essential deity of the Son. What the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind was not to reveal the relation of the Son to the Father in the Trinity - as a distinct hypostasis in the unity of the essence; but to set forth the absolute deity of the Son, to declare that He is all that God is, the perfect reflection of God, giving back to God when set over against Him His consummate image. The term "hypostasis" is not indeed to be taken here, in the narrow sense, as "essence": but neither is it to be taken, in the abstract sense, as "person." It means the concrete person, that is to say, the whole substantial entity we call God; which whole substantial entity is said to be in the Son exactly what it is in the Father. Nothing is said directly as to the relation of the Son to the Father, as distinct persons in the Trinity; the whole direct significance of the declaration is exhausted in the assertion that this "Son" differs in no single particular from "God": He is God in the full height of the conception of God. 

It is not, however, the success or lack of success of Calvin's exegesis which most interests us at present. It is rather two facts which his exegetical argument brings before us with peculiar force. The one of them is that the developed doctrine of the Trinity lay so firmly entrenched in his mind that he makes it, almost or perhaps quite unconsciously, the major premise of his argument. And the other is that he was so little averse to designating the distinctions in the Godhead by the term "persons" that that term was rather held by him to have definite Biblical warrant. His argument that u`po,stasij in this passage cannot mean "essence," but must mean "person," turns on this precise hinge - that the Father and Son are numerically one in essence, and can be represented as distinct only in person: "For since the essence of God is simple and indivisible (simplex et individua) Him - who contains in Himself the whole of it, not in apportionment or in deflection, but in unbroken perfection (integra perf ectione) - it would be improper or rather inept to call its image." In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity in its complete formulation is the postulate of his argument. And the outcome of the argument is that the Epistle to the Hebrews distinctly sets the Father and Son over against each other as distinguishable "Persons," employing this precise term, u`po,stasij, to designate them in their distinction. "Accordingly," says Calvin, "if the testimony of the Apostle obtains credit, it follows that there are in God three hypostases." This term as the expression of the nature of the distinctions in the Godhead is therefore not a "human invention" (humanitus inventa) to Calvin, but a divine revelation. 

Since, then, the Bible had obtained credit with Calvin, he could not object to the use of the term "person" to express the distinctions in the Trinity. But he nevertheless takes over from the earlier editions, in which the discovery of the term in Heb. i. 3 is not yet to be found, a defense of the use of this term on the assumption that it is not Biblical. And this defense is in essence the assertion of the right and the exposition of a theory of interpretation. There are men, says Calvin, who cry out against every term framed according to human judgment (hominum arbitrio confictum nomen) and demand that our words as well as our thoughts concerning divine things shall be kept within the limits of Scripture example. If we use only the words of Scripture we shall, say they, avoid many dissensions and disputes, and preserve the charity so frequently broken in strifes over "exotic words." Certainly, responds Calvin, we ought to speak of God with not less religion than we think of Him. But why should we be required to confine ourselves to the exact words of Scripture if we give the exact sense of Scripture? To condemn as "exotic" every word not found in so many syllables in Scripture, is at once to put under a ban all interpretation which is not a mere stringing together of Scriptural phrases. There are some things in Scripture which are to our apprehension intricate and difficult. What forbids our explaining them in simpler terms - if these terms are held religiously and faithfully to the true sense of Scripture, and are used carefully and modestly and not without occasion? Is it not an improbity to reprobate words which express nothing but what is testified and recorded by the Scriptures? And when these words are a necessity, if the truth is to be plainly and unambiguously expressed - may we not suspect that the real quarrel of those who object to their use is with the truth they express; and that what they are offended by is that by their use the truth has been made clear and unmistakable (plana et dilucida)? As to the terms in which the mystery of the Trinity is expressed - the term Trinity itself, the term Person, and those other terms which the tergiversations of heretics have compelled believers to frame and employ that the truth may be asserted and guarded - such as homoousios, for example - no one would care to draw sword for them as mere naked words. Calvin himself would be altogether pleased to see them buried wholly out of sight - if only all men would heartily receive the simple faith, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God and yet neither is the Son the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but they are each distinguished by a certain property (I. xiii. 5). But that is just the trouble. Men will not accept the simple faith, but palter in a double sense. Arius was loud enough in declaring Christ to be God - but wished to teach also that He is a creature and has had a beginning: he was willing to say Christ is one with the Father, if he were permitted to add that His oneness is the same in kind as our own oneness with God. Say, however, the one word o`moou,sioj - "consubstantial" - and the mask is torn from the face of dissimulation and yet nothing whatever is added to the Scriptures. Sabellius was in no way loath to admit that there are in the Godhead these three - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but he really distinguished them only as attributes are distinguished. Say simply that in "the unity of God a trinity of persons subsists," and you have at once quenched his inane loquacity. Now, if anyone who does not like the words will ingenuously⁴⁶ confess the things the words stand for - cadit quaestio: we shall not worry over the words. "But," adds Calvin significantly, "I have long since learned by experience, and that over and over again, that those who contend thus pertinaciously about terms, are really cherishing a secret poison; so that it is much better to bear their resentment than to consent to use less precise and clear language for their behoof" (I. xiii. 5, ad fin.). Golden words! How often since Calvin has the Church had bitter cause to repeat them! When we read, for example, William Chillingworth's subtle pleas for the use of Scriptural language only in matters of faith; his eloquent asseverations - "The Bible, I say, the Bible only is the religion of Protestants"; his loud railing at "the vain conceit, that we can speak of the things of God better than in the words of God," "thus deifying our own interpretations and tyrannously enforcing them upon others" - we know what it all means: that under this cloak of charity are to lie hidden a multitude of sins. When we hear Calvin refusing to swear in the words of another, we must not confuse his defense of personal right with a latitudinarianism like Chillingworth's. If he said, It is the Word of God, not the word of Athanasius, to which I submit my judgment, he said equally, The sense of Scripture, not its words, is Scripture. No ambiguous meanings should be permitted to hide behind a mere repetition of the simple words of Scripture, but all that the Scripture teaches shall be clearly and without equivocation brought out and given expression in the least indeterminate language.⁴⁷ 

Calvin's interest was, in other words, distinctly in the substance of the doctrine of the Trinity rather than in any particular mode of formulating it. It rested on the terms in which it was formulated only because, and so far as, they seemed essential to the precise expression and effective guarding of the doctrine. This was consistently his attitude from the beginning. Already in the "Institutes" of 1536, as we have seen, he had given this attitude an expression so satisfactory to himself that he retained the sections devoted to it until the end. It is indeed astonishing how complete a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity itself was already incorporated into this earliest edition of the "Institutes," and how clearly in that statement all the characteristic features of Calvin's treatment of the doctrine already appear. The discussion was no doubt greatly expanded in its passage from the first to the last edition. In the first edition (1536) it occupies only five columns in the Strasburg edition; these have grown to fifteen and a half columns in the middle editions and to twenty-seven and a half (of which eleven and a half are retained from the earlier editions and sixteen are new) in the final edition of 1559. That is to say, its original compass was tripled in the middle editions and almost doubled again in the final edition, where it has become between five and six times as long as in the first draft.⁴⁸ And in this process of expansion it has not only gathered increment but has suffered change. This change is not, however, in the substance of the doctrine taught or even in the mode of its formulation or the language in which it is couched or in the general tone which informs it. It is only in the range and the governing aim of the discussion. 

The statement in the first edition is dominated by a simple desire to give guidance to docile believers, and therefore declines formal controversy and seeks merely to set down briefly what is to be followed, what is to be avoided on this great subject. Positing, therefore, at the outset that the Scriptures teach one God, not many, but yet not obscurely assert that the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God; Calvin here at once develops, by combining Eph. iv. 5 and Mat. xxviii. 19, a Biblical proof of the Trinity which in its strenuous logic reminds us of the analytical examination of Heb. i. 3 which we have already noted. Paul, he says, connects together one baptism, one faith and one God; but in Matthew we read that we are to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit - and what is that but to say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are together the one God of which Paul speaks?⁴⁹ This is supported by Jeremiah's (xxiii. 33) designation of the Son by "that name which the Jews call ineffable"50 and other Scriptural evidence that our Lord is one God with the Father and the Spirit. He has in mind to prove both elements in the doctrine of the Trinity, the unity of God and the true distinction of persons, and therefore introduces these citations with the words: "There are extant also other clear (luculenta) testimonies, which assert, in part, the one divinity of the three, and in part their personal distinctions."51 Then comes the defense of the technical words by which the truth of the Trinity is expressed and protected, of which we have already spoken. The enlarged and readjusted treatment of the topic for the second edition of 1539 seems to have been composed under the influence of the controversy with Caroli. It is marked at least by the incorporation of a thorough proof of the Godhead of the Father, Son and Spirit, of the unity of their essence, and of the distinction between them, and a coloring apparently derived from this controversy is thrown over the whole discussion, in which liberty to formulate the doctrine in our own words and the value of the technical terms already in use are equally vigorously asserted. The material of 1539 remains intact throughout the middle editions (1543, 1550), although some short quotations from Augustine (§ § 16, 20) and from Jerome and Hilary (§ 24) were introduced in 1543. But it is very freely dealt with in the final edition (1559). Only some two-thirds of it (eleven and a half columns out of fifteen and a half) is preserved in that edition, while sixteen new columns are added: about three-fifths of the whole is thus new.⁵² Moreover, whole sections are omitted (§§ 10 and 15), a new order of arrangement is adopted, and much minor alteration is introduced. In this recasting and expansion of the discussion the chief place in the formative forces determining its form and tone is taken by the attack of the radical Antitrinitarians. The existence of these Antitrinitarian scoffers is recognized, indeed, from the first: they are explicitly adverted to already in the edition of 1536 as "certain impious men, who wish to tear our faith up by the roots": it is quite clear, indeed, that Servetus' teachings were already before his mind at this date. But it is only for the final edition (1559) that their assault assumes the determining position at the basis of the whole treatment: and it is only in this edition that Servetus, for example, is named. Now, Calvin not only arrays against them the testimony of Scripture in a developed polemic, but adjusts the whole positive exposition of the doctrine to its new purpose, shaping and phrasing its statements and modifying them by added sentences and clauses. The result is a polemic the edge of which is turned no longer against those who may have doubted Calvin's orthodoxy, as was the case in 1539, but rather against those who have essayed to bring into doubt or even openly to deny the mysteries which enter into the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The sharp anti-scholastic sentences which are permitted to remain, serve to give a singular balance to the discussion, and to make it clear that the polemic against the Antitrinitarians has in view vital interests and not mere matters of phraseology. 

The disposition of the material in this its final form follows the lines of its new dominant interest. The discussion opens, as we have seen, with a paragraph designed to bear in on the mind a sense of the mystery which must characterize the divine mode of existence (§ 1). This is immediately followed by an announcement of the Trinitarian fact and a defense of the technical terms used to express and protect it (§§ 2-5). After this introduction the subject itself is taken up (§ 6, ad init.) and treated in two great divisions, by way first of positive statement and proof (§§ 6-20) and by way secondly of polemic defense (§§ 21 to end). The positive portion opens with a careful definition of what is meant by the "Trinity" (§ 6) and is prosecuted by an exhibition of the Scriptural proof of the doctrine in three sections: first the proof of the complete deity of the Son (§§ 7-13), then the proof of the deity of the Spirit (§§ 14-15), and then the proof of the Trinitarian distinctions, which includes a dissertation on the nature of these distinctions on the basis of Scripture (§§ 16-20). The polemic phase of the discussion begins with some introductory remarks (§ 21) and then defends in turn the true personality of the Son against Servetus (§ 22) and His complete deity against its modern impugners, Valentinus Gentilis being chiefly in mind (§§ 23-29). 

This comprehensive outline is richly filled in with details, all of which are treated, however, with a circumspection and moderation which illustrate Calvin's determination to eschew human speculations upon this high theme and to confine himself to the revelations of Scripture, only so far explicated in human language as is necessary for their pure expression and protection.⁵³ We observe, for example, that he introduces no proofs or illustrations of the Trinity derived from metaphysical reasoning or natural analogies. From the example of Augustine it had been the habit throughout the Middle Ages to make much of these proofs or illustrations, and the habit had passed over into the Protestant usage. Melanchthon, for example, gave new currency alike to the old ontological speculations which under the forms of subject and object sought to conceive the Logos as the image of Himself which the thinking Father set over against Himself, and to the human analogies by which the Trinitarian distinctions were fancied to be illustrated, such, for example, as the distinctions between the intellect, sensibility and will in man. Calvin held himself aloof from all such reasoning, doubting, as he says (§ 18), "the value of similitudes from human things for expressing the force of the Trinitarian distinction," and fearing that their employment might afford only occasion to those evil disposed for calumny and to those little instructed for error.⁵⁴ What he desired was a plain proof from Scripture itself of the elements of the doctrine, freed from all additions from human speculation. This proof he attempted, in outline at least, to set down in his pages. It is interesting to observe how he conducts it. 

He begins, as we have already pointed out, with a plain statement of what he means by the Trinity (§ 6). Such a "short and easy definition" (brevis et facilis definitio) had been his object from the outset (§ 2, ad init.), and it was in fact in order to obtain it that he entered upon the defense, which fills the first sections, of the term and conception of "Person" as applied to the distinctions in the Godhead. Reverting to it after this defense, he carefully defines (§ 6) what he means by "Person" in this connection, viz., "a subsistence in the Divine essence, which, related to the others, is yet distinguished by an incommunicable property." What he has to prove, therefore, he conceives to be that in the unity of the Godhead there is such a distinction of persons; or, as he phrases it, in a statement derived from Tertullian, that "there is in God a certain disposition or economy, which makes no difference, however, to the unity of the essence"; or, as he puts it himself a little later on (§ 20, ad init.), that "there is understood under the name of God, a unitary and simple essence, in which we comprise three persons or hypostases." In order to prove this doctrine, it would be necessary to prove that while God is one, there are three persons who are God, and Calvin undertakes the proof on that understanding. He does not pause here, however, to argue the unity of God at length, taking that for the moment for granted, though he reverts to it in the sequel to show that the distinction of persons which he conceives himself to have established in no respect infringes on it (§ 19), and indeed in his polemic against Valentinus Gentilis very fully vindicates it from the objections of the Arianisers and Tritheists (§§ 23 sq.). His proof resolves itself, therefore, into the establishment of the distinctions in the Godhead; and in order to do this he undertakes to prove first that the Son and the Holy Spirit are each God, and then to show that the Scriptures explicitly recognize that there is such a distinction in the Godhead as their divinity (taken in connection with the Divine unity) implies. 

The proof of the deity of the Son is very comprehensive and detailed, and is drawn from each Testament alike. The Word of God, by which, as God "spake," He made the worlds, it is argued, must be understood of the substantial Word, which is also called in Proverbs, Wisdom (§ 7); and must accordingly be understood as eternal. In connection with this, the whole scheme of temporal prolation as applied to the Son is sharply assaulted. It is impious to suppose that anything new can ever have happened to God in Himself (in se ipso), and there is "nothing less tolerable than to invent a beginning for that Word, who both was always God and afterwards became the maker of the world " (§ 8). To this more general argument is brought the support of a number of Old Testament passages, which, it is contended, advert to the Son with declarations of His deity: such as the Forty-fifth Psalm, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever "; Is. ix. 6, "His Name shall be called Mighty God, Father of Eternity"; Jer. xxiii. 6, "The Branch of David shall be called Jehovah our Righteousness" (§ 9). And then the phenomena connected with the manifestations of the Angel of Jehovah are adduced in corroboration (§ 10). The New Testament evidence is marshalled under two heads: the divine names are applied to Christ by the New Testament writers (§ 11), and divine works and functions are assigned to Him (§§ 12-13). Not only are Old Testament passages which speak of Jehovah applied to Christ in the New Testament (Is. viii. 14, Rom. ix. 33; Is. xlv. 23, Rom. xiv. 10, 11; Ps. lxviii. 18, Eph. iv. 8; Is. vi. l, Jno. xii. 41), but these writers themselves employ the term "God" in speaking of Christ (Jno. i. 1, 14; Rom. ix. 5; I Tim. iii. 16; I Jno. v. 20; Acts xx. 28; Jno. xx. 28), and the like. And what divine work do not the New Testament writers credit Him with, either from His own lips or theirs? They represent Him as having been coworker with God from all eternity (Jno. v. 17), as the upholder and governor of the world (Heb. i. 3), as the forgiver of iniquities (Mat. ix. 6) and the searcher of hearts (Mat. ix. 4). They not only accredit Him with mighty works, but distinguish Him from others who have wrought miracles, precisely by this - these others wrought them by the power of God, He by His own power (§ 13a). They represent Him as the dispenser of salvation, the source of eternal life and the fountain of all that is good: they present Him as the proper object of saving faith and trust, and even of worship and prayer (§ 13b). 

The deity of the Spirit is similarly argued on the ground of certain Old Testament passages (Genesis i. 2; Is. xlviii. 16) where the Spirit of God seems to be hypostatized; of the divine works attributed to Him, such as ubiquitous activity, regeneration, and the searching of the deep things of God on the one hand and the bestowing of wisdom, speech and all other blessings on men on the other; and finally of the application of the name God to Him in the New Testament writings (e.g., I Cor. iii. 16, vi. 19; II Cor. vi. 16; Acts v. 3; xxviii. 25; Mat. xii. 31). Having thus established the deity of the Son and the Spirit, Calvin turns to the passages which elucidate their deity to us by presenting to us the doctrine of the Trinity. These are all in the New Testament, as was natural (suggests Calvin), because the advent of Christ involved a clearer revelation of God and therefore a fuller knowledge of the personal distinctions in His being (§ 16). The stress of the argument here is laid upon Eph. iv. 5 in connection with Mat. xxviii. 19, which were already expounded at length, as we have seen, in the first edition of the "Institutes," and are here only strengthened and clarified by a better statement. As we are initiated by baptism into faith in the one God and yet baptism is in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, argues Calvin, it is "solidly clear" that the Father, Son and Spirit are this one God; whence it is perfectly obvious that "there reside (residere) in the essence of God three Persons, in whom the one God is cognized" (cognoscitur); and "since it remains fixed that God is one not many, we can only conclude that the Word and the Spirit are nothing other than the essence of God itself." The Scriptures, however, he proceeds (§ 17), no more thus identify the Son and Spirit with God than they distinguish them - distinguish, not divide them. He appeals to such passages as Jno. v. 32, viii. 16, 18, xiv. 16, "another";⁵⁵ xv. 26, viii. 16, "proceeding," "being sent": but this part of the subject is lightly passed over on the ground that the passages already adduced themselves sufficiently show that the Son possesses a "distinct property" by which He is not the Father - for, says he, "the Word could not have been with God unless He had been another than the Father, neither could He have had His glory with the Father, unless He was distinct from Him": the distinction noted in which passages it is plain, further, is not one which could have begun at the incarnation, but must date from whatever point He may be thought to have begun to be "in the bosom of the Father" (Jno. i. 18). The determination that there is a personal distinction between Father and Son and Holy Spirit leads Calvin to inquire what this distinction carries with it. He finds it to be Scriptural to say that "to the Father is attributed the principium agendi, as fountain and source of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel and the actual dispensation of things to be done; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficiency (virtus et efficacia) of the action" - that is to say, if we may be permitted to reduce the definitions to single words, the Father is conceived as the Source, the Son as the Director, the Spirit as the Executor of all the divine activities; the Father as the Fountain, the Son as the Wisdom emerging from Him, the Spirit as the Power by which the wise counsels of God are effectuated (§ 18).⁵⁶ Only now when this argument is finished and his conclusion drawn (§ 19) does Calvin pause formally to point out that "this distinction in no way impedes the absolutely simple unity of God" - since the conception is that the "whole nature (natura) is in each hypostasis," while "each has its own propriety." "The Father," he adds, "is totus in the Son, and the Son totus in the Father" - as Christ Himself teaches in Jno. xiv. 10. We are here, however, obviously passing beyond the proof to the exposition of the Trinity - a topic which occupies some later sections (§§ 19 and 20). 

It will have already become apparent from the citations incidentally adduced that in his doctrine of the Trinity Calvin departed in nothing from the doctrine which had been handed down from the orthodox Fathers. If distinctions must be drawn, he is unmistakably Western rather than Eastern in his conception of the doctrine, an Augustinian rather than an Athanasian.⁵⁷ That is to say, the principle of his construction of the Trinitarian distinctions is equalization rather than subordination. He does, indeed, still speak in the old language of refined subordinationism which had been fixed in the Church by the Nicene formularies; and he expressly allows an "order" of first, second and third in the Trinitarian relations. But he conceives more clearly and applies more purely than had ever previously been done the principle of equalization in his thought of the relation of the Persons to one another, and thereby, as we have already hinted, marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. That he was enabled to do this was a result, no doubt, at least in part, of his determination to preserve the highest attainable simplicity in his thought of the Trinity. Sweeping his mind free from subtleties in minor matters, he perceived with unwonted lucidity the main things, and thus was led to insist upon them with a force and clearness of exposition which throw them out into unmistakable emphasis. If we look for the prime characteristics of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, accordingly, we shall undoubtedly fix first upon its simplicity, then upon it consequent lucidity, and finally upon its elimination of the last remnants of subordinationism, so as to do full justice to the deity of Christ. Simplification, clarification, equalization - these three terms are the notes of Calvin's conception of the Trinity. And, of course, it is the last of these notes which gives above all else its character to his construction.⁵⁸

The note of simplification is struck at the outset of the discussion when Calvin announces it as his intention to seek "a short and easy definition which shall preserve us from all error" (I. xiii. 2, ad init.). What the short and easy definition which he had in mind included is suggested when he tells us later (20) that "when we profess to believe in one God, under the name of God is to be understood the single and simple essence in which we comprehend three persons or hypostases." He accordingly expresses pleasure in the definition of Tertullian, when properly understood, that "there is in God a certain disposition or economy, which in no respect derogates from the unity of the essence" (6, ad fin.); and frankly declares that for him the whole substance of the doctrine is included in the simple statement "that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one God; and yet neither is the Son the Father nor the Spirit the Son, but they are distinct by a certain property" (5). Similar simple forms of statement are thickly scattered through the discussion. "God so predicates Himself to be one," he says at its outset, "that He propones Himself to be distinctly considered in three Persons" (2, ad init.). "There truly subsist in the one God, or what is the same thing, in the unity of God," he says again, "a trinity of Persons" (4, ad fin.). "There are three proprietates in God " (ibid.). "In the one essence of God, there is a Trinity of Persons," and these are "consubstantial" (5, ad fin.). "In the divine essence there exist three Persons, in whom the one God is cognized" (16). "There is a Trinity of Persons contained in the one God, not a trinity of Gods" (25). It is quite clear, not only from the frequency with which he lapses into such brief formulas, but also from the distinctness with which he declares that they contain all that is essential to the doctrine of the Trinity (e.g., § 5), that in Calvin's habitual thought of the Trinity it lay summed up in his mind in these simple facts: there is but one God; the Father, the Son, the Spirit is each this one God, the entire divine essence being in each; these three are three Persons, distinguished one from another by an incommunicable property.⁵⁹ 

Calvin's main interest among the elements of this simple doctrine of the Trinity obviously lay in his profound sense of the consubstantiality of the Persons. Whatever the Father is as God, that the Son and the Spirit are also. The Son - and, of course, also the Spirit - contains in Himself the whole essence of God, not part of it only nor by deflection, but in complete perfection (§ 2). What the Father is, reappears therefore in its totality (se totum) in the Son and in the Spirit. This is a mere corollary of their community in the numerically one essence. If the "entire nature" (tota natura, § 19) is included in each, it necessarily carries with it all the qualities by which it is made this particular nature which we call divine. Calvin is accordingly never weary of asserting that every divine attribute, in the height of its meaning, is manifested as fully in the Son - and, of course, also in the Spirit - as in the Father. In this indeed lay for him the very nerve of the doctrine of the Trinity. And in it, consistently carried out, lies the contribution which he made to the clear apprehension and formulation of that doctrine. For, strange as it may seem, theologians at large had been accustomed to apply the principle of consubstantiality to the Persons of the Trinity up to Calvin's vigorous assertion of it, with some at least apparent reserves. And when he applied it without reserve it struck many as a startling novelty if not a heretical pravity. The reason why the consubstantiality of the Persons of the Trinity, despite its establishment in the Arian controversy and its incorporation in the Nicene formulary as the very hinge of orthodoxy, was so long in coming fully to its rights in the general apprehension was no doubt that Nicene orthodoxy preserved in its modes of stating the doctrine of the Trinity some remnants of the conceptions and phraseology proper to the older prolationism of the Logos Christology, and these, although rendered innocuous by the explanations of the Nicene Fathers and practically antiquated since Augustine, still held their place formally and more or less conditioned the thought of men - especially those who held the doctrine of the Trinity in a more or less traditional manner. The consequence was that when Calvin taught the doctrine in its purity and free from the leaven of subordinationism which still found a lurking place in current thought and speech, he seemed violently revolutionary to men trained in the old forms of speech and imbued with the old modes of conception, and called out reprobation in the most unexpected quarters. 

Particular occasion of offense was given by Calvin's ascription of "self-existence" (aseity, auvtoousi,a) to the Son, and the consequent designation of Him by the term auvto,qeoj. This term, which became famous in later controversy as designating Calvin's doctrine of Christ, seems, however, to have come forward only in the latest years of his life, in the dispute with Valentinus Gentilis (1558, 1561); and indeed to be rather Gentilis' word than Calvin's. Calvin, indeed, does not appear to have himself employed it, but only to have reclaimed it for Christ (and the Spirit) when Gentilis asserted that it was exclusively God the Father who could be so designated. "The Father alone," said Gentilis, "is auvto,qeoj, that is, essentiated by no superior divinity; but is God a se ipso"; "the lo,goj of God is not that one auvto,qeoj whose lo,goj it is; neither is the Spirit of God that immense and eternal Spirit whose Spirit it is."60 Such assertions, declares Calvin, are against all Scripture, which makes Christ very God: for "what is more proper to God than to exist (vivere), and what else is auvtoousi,a than this?"61 But the thing represented by the term - "self-existence" - Calvin asserts of Christ from the beginning of his activity as a Christian teacher. It does not seem to be explicitly declared of Christ that He is self-existent, indeed, in the first edition of the "Institutes" (1536), although it is already implied there too, not only in the general vigor with which the absolute deity of Christ is asserted with all its implications, but also in the identification of Christ with Jehovah, which was to Calvin the especial vehicle of his representation of Him as the self-existent God. "That name which the Jews call ineffable is attributed to the Son in Jeremiah" (Jer. xxiii. 33),⁶² he already here tells us. In the spring of the following year,"63 however, at the councils held within a few days of one another respectively at Lausanne and Bern, our Lord's self-existence was fairly enunciated in so many words in the statement of his faith which Calvin made in rebuttal of the charges of Caroli. He begins with a very clear exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity, and then comes to speak of what peculiarly concerns Christ, adverting especially to His two natures. "For," he continues, "before He assumed flesh He was the eternal Word itself, begotten by the Father before the ages, very God, of one essence, power, majesty with the Father, and indeed Jehovah Himself, who has always had it of Himself that He should be and has inspired the power of subsisting in others."64 Caroli at once seized upon this declaration, and complained that therein "Christ was set forth as Jehovah, as if He had His essence of Himself (a se ipso)."65 From this beginning rose the controversy. For in this one of his "calumnies" Caroli found some following, and Calvin was worried by petty attacks upon this element of his teaching through a series of years.⁶⁶

Calvin apparently was somewhat astonished by the pother which was raised over an assertion which seemed to him not only a very natural one to make, but also a very necessary one to make if the true deity of our Lord is to be defended. He calls this particular one of Caroli's assaults the "most atrocious" of all his calumnies, and he betrays some irritation at the repetition of it by others. One effect of it was, however, to make him see that, although it might seem to him a matter of course to speak of Christ as the self-existent God, it was not a matter which could be taken for granted, but needed assertion and defense. He inserted, therefore, in the "Institutes" of 1539 (second edition) a clear declaration on the subject, which, with only the adduction of some additional support chiefly drawn from Augustine (inserted in 1543 and 1559), was retained throughout the subsequent editions. " oreover," says he in this passage, "the absolutely simple unity of God is so far from being impeded by this distinction, that it rather affords a proof that the Son is one God with the Father, because He possesses one and the same Spirit with Him: while the Spirit is not another Being diverse from the Father and the Son, because He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. For in each hypostasis the whole nature is understood, along with that which is present to each one as His propriety. The Father is as a whole (totus) in the Son, the Son as a whole in the Father, as He Himself also asserts: 'I in the Father and the Father in me'; and that one is not separated from another by any difference of essence is conceded by the ecclesiastical writers.⁶⁷ By this understanding the opinions of the fathers are to be conciliated, which otherwise would seem altogether at odds with one another. For they teach now that the Father is the principium of the Son; and now they assert that the Son has from Himself (a se ipso) both divinity and essence.⁶⁸ When, however, the Sabellians raise a cavil that God is called now Father, now Son, now Spirit, in no way differently from His being named both strong and good and wise and merciful, they may easily be refuted from this, - that these manifestly are epithets which show what God is with respect to us, while the others are names which declare what He is really with respect to Himself. Neither ought anyone to be moved to confound the Spirit with the Father and the Son, because God announces Himself as a whole to be a Spirit (Jno. iv. 24). For there is no reason why the whole essence of God should not be spiritual, and in that essence the Father, Son and Spirit be comprehended. And this very thing is made clear by the Scriptures. For as we hear God called a Spirit in them, so also we hear the Holy Spirit spoken of, and that both as God's Spirit and as from God."69 

Calvin was not permitted, however, to content himself with this brief positive declaration. A running fire was kept up upon his assertion of self-existence for Christ by two pastors of Neuchâtel and its neighboring country, Jean Chaponneau (Capunculus) and Jean Courtois (Cortesius) - the latter of whom had married the daughter of Chaponneau's wife.⁷⁰ Calvin was disposed at first to treat their criticism lightly, but was ultimately driven to give it serious attention. Writing to the Neuchâtel ministers regarding certain articles which Courtois had drawn up - with the help, as was understood, of Chaponneau - Calvin remarks that he sees no reason for supposing them directed as a whole against him. One of them, however, he recognizes as having him in view - that one in which, "as from a tripod," the writer pronounces heretics those who say that "Christ, as He is God, is a se ipso." "The answer," he declares, "is easy. First let him tell me whether Christ is true and perfect God. Unless he wishes to parcel out the essence of God, he must confess that the whole of it is in Christ. And Paul's words are express: that 'in Him dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead.' Again I ask, 'Is that fulness of the Godhead from Himself or from some other source?' But he will object that the Son is of the Father. Who denies it? That I, for one, have not only always acknowledged, but even proclaimed. But this is where these donkeys deceive themselves: because they do not consider that the name of Son is spoken of the Person, and therefore is included in the predicament of relation, which relation has no place where we are speaking simply (simpliciter) of the divinity of Christ."71 In support of this distinction he then quotes Augustine, and proceeds to cite Cyril on the main point at issue - passages to which we shall revert in the sequel. This letter was written at the end of May, 1543, and later in the year we find Calvin holding a conference with Courtois, the course of which he reports to the Neuchâtel ministers in a letter written in November.⁷² Courtois went away, however, still unconvinced, and Calvin found himself compelled not many months later (opening of 1545) to write to the Neuchâtel pastors again at length on the subject, under considerable irritation.⁷³ "This," he here declares, "is the state of the controversy (status controversiae): Whether it may be truly predicated of Christ, that He is, as He is God, a se ipso? This Capunculus denies. Why? Because the name of Christ designates the Second Person in the Godhead, who stands in relation to the Father. I confess that if respect be had to the Person, we ought not so to speak. But I say we are not speaking of the Person but of the essence. I hold that the Holy Spirit is the real (idoneum = proper) author of this manner of speaking, since He refers to Christ all the declarations in which auvtoousi,a is predicated of God, as in other passages, so in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . He [Capunculus] contends that Christ, because He is of the substance of the Father, is not a se ipso, since He has a principium from another. This I allow to him of the Person. What more does he want? . . . I confess that the Son of God is of the Father. Accordingly, since the Person has a cause (ratio), I confess that He is not a se ipso. But when we are speaking, apart from consideration of the Person, of His divinity or simply of the essence, which is the same thing, I say that it is rightly predicated of Him that He is a se ipso. For who, heretofore, has denied that under the name of Jehovah, there is included the declaration of auvtoousi,a? . . ." 

It was, however, in his "Defense Against the Calumnies of Peter Caroli," which was sent out in 1545 in reply to a new "libel" put forth by Caroli early that year,⁷⁴ that Calvin speaks most at large on this subject, gathering up into this one defense, indeed, all the modes of statement and forms of argument he had hitherto worked out. He regards Caroli's strictures upon his assertion of Christ's self-existence as the most atrocious of all his calumnies, and prefixes to his discussion of them a citation of his own explanation of the matter, which he calls a "brief and naked explication." This runs as follows: "When we are speaking of the divinity of Christ all that is proper to God is rightly ascribed to Him, because respect is there had to the Divine essence and no question is raised as to the distinction which exists between the Father and the Son. In this sense it is true to say that Christ is the One and Eternal God, existing of Himself (a se ipso existentem). Nor can it be objected to this statement - what certainly is also taught by the ecclesiastical writers - that the Word or Son of God is of the Father (a Patre), even with respect to His eternal essence; since there is a notation of Persons, when there is commemorated a distinction of the Son from the Father. But what I have been speaking of is the divinity, in which is embraced not less the Father and the Spirit than the Son. So Cyril, who is often wont to call the Father the principium of the Son, holds it in the highest degree absurd for the Son not to be believed to have life and immortality of Himself (a se ipso). He also teaches that if it is proper to the ineffable nature to be self-existent (a se ipsa), this is rightly ascribed to the Son. And moreover in the tenth book of his Thesaurus, he argues that the Father has nothing of Himself (a se ipso) which the Son does not have of Himself (a se ipso)."75 From this beginning, he proceeds to elucidate the whole subject, drawing freely upon all that he had previously written upon it. The note of the discussion is given in the words: "I assert both truths - both that Christ is of the Father as He is the second Person, and that He is of Himself (a se ipso) if we have respect to the Divine essence simpliciter"76 - a declaration which he supports from the Fathers, particularly Augustine, thus: "Similarly Augustine (Sermo 38 'de tempore'): 'Those names which signify the substance . . . or essence of God, or whatever God is said to be in Himself (ad se), belong equally to all the Persons. There is not, therefore, any name of nature which can so belong to the Father that it may not belong also to the Son, or Holy Spirit.'" The whole is brought to a conclusion by a passage the substance of which we have already had before us, but which seems worth quoting again that its force may be appreciated in its new setting: "I confess that if respect be had to the Person we ought not so to speak, but I say we are not speaking of the Person but of the essence. I hold that the Holy Spirit is the real author of this manner of speaking, since He refers to Christ all the declarations in which auvtoousi,a is predicated of God, as well in other passages, as in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . They contend that Christ, because He is of (ex) the substance of the Father, is not of Himself (a se ipso), since He has His principium from another. This I allow to them of the Person. What more do they ask? I acknowledge, then, that the Son of God is of the Father, and when we are speaking of the Person I acknowledge that He is not of Himself. But when, apart from consideration of the Person, we are speaking of His divinity, or which is the same thing simpliciter of the essence, I say that it is truly predicated of it that it is a se ipso. For who hitherto has denied of the name Jehovah, that it includes the declaration of auvtoousi,a? When, then, they object that the Son is of the Father, that I not only willingly acknowledge, but have even continually proclaimed. But here is where these donkeys are in error - that they do not consider that the name of Son is spoken of the Person, and is therefore contained in the predication of relation; which relation has no place when we are talking of Christ's divinity simpliciter. And Augustine discourses eloquently on this matter " . . . quoting the passages from Augustine to which we have already made reference.⁷⁷ 

That Calvin let the paragraph he had prepared on this subject for the second edition of his "Institutes" (1539) stand practically unchanged - strengthened only by a couple of passages cited from Augustine - in the editions of 1543 and 1550, may be taken as indication that he supposed that what he had brought together in his "Defense Against the Calumnies of Caroli" (1545), incorporating as it does the essence of former expositions and defenses, was a sufficient exposition of the subject and defense of his point of view. In the meantime, however, the troubles in the Italian church in Geneva had broken out, culminating after a while in the controversies with Valentinus Gentilis (1558), in which new occasion was given for asserting the self-existence of Christ, and this brought it about that something more on this subject was incorporated into the "Institutes" of 1559. The positive statement was left, indeed, much as it had been given form in the "Institutes" of 1539 (§ 19): but in the long defense of the doctrine of the Trinity against Gentilis and his congeners with which the discussion of the doctrine closes in this edition much more is added on the self-existence of Christ. As over against these opponents the especial point in the doctrine of the Trinity which required defense was the true deity of the second and third Persons. On this defense Calvin entered con amore, for he ever showed himself, as he had himself expressed it, a "detester as sacrilegious of all who have sought to overturn or to minimise or to obscure the truth of the divine majesty which is in Christ."78 The God whom Isaiah saw in the Temple (vi. 1), he says, John (xii. 41) declares to have been Christ; the God whom the same Isaiah declares shall be a rock of offense to the Jews (viii. 14) Paul pronounces to be Christ (Rom. ix. 33); the God to whom the same Isaiah asserts every knee shall bow (xlv. 23), Paul tells us is Christ (Rom. xiv. 11); the God whom the Psalmist proclaims as laying the foundations of the earth and whom all angels shall worship (Ps. cii. 25, xcvii. 7) the Epistle to the Hebrews identifies with Christ (i. 6, 10). Now, continues Calvin, in every one of these passages it is the name "Jehovah" which is used, and that carries with it the self-existence of Christ with respect to His deity.⁷⁹ "For if He is Jehovah, it cannot be denied that He is the same God who elsewhere cries through Isaiah (xliv. 6), 'I, I am, and besides me there is no God.' We must also weigh," he adds, "that declaration of Jeremiah (x. 11): 'the gods which have not made the heaven and the earth shall perish from the earth which is under heaven'; while on the other hand it must be acknowledged that it is the Son of God whose deity is often proved by Isaiah from the creation of the world. But how shall the Creator who gives being to all things not be self-existent (ex se ipso) but derive His essence from another? For whoever says the Son is essentiated by the Father, denies that He is of Himself (a se ipso). But the Holy Spirit cries out against this by naming Him Jehovah." "The deity, therefore, we affirm," he says a little later,⁸⁰ "to be absolutely self-existent (ex se ipsa). Whence we acknowledge the Son, too, as He is God, to be self-existent (ex se ipso), when reference to His Person is not present: while, as He is Son, we say He is of the Father. Thus the essence is without principium; but the principium of the Person is God Himself." 

It does not seem necessary, however, to multiply citations. Enough have already been adduced, doubtless, to illustrate the clearness, iterance and emphasis with which Calvin asserted the self-existence of Christ as essential to His complete deity; and at least to suggest his mode of conceiving the Trinity in accordance with this emphasis on the absolute equality, or rather, let us say, identity of the three Persons of the Godhead in their deity. His conception involved, of course, a strongly emphasized distinction between the essence and the Personality. In essence the three Persons are numerically one: the whole essence belongs to each Person:81 the whole essence, of course, with all its properties, which are only its peculiarities as an essence and are inseparable from it just because they are not other substances but only qualities. In person, however, the three Persons are numerically three, and are as distinct from one another as the distinguishing qualities by which one is the Father, another the Son and the third the Spirit. In these facts Calvin found the essence of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in accordance with his professed purpose to find a brief and easy definition of the Trinity we may say that in these facts are summed up all he held to be necessary to a doctrine of the Trinity. 

Nevertheless Calvin's conception of the Trinity, if we cannot exactly say necessarily included, yet in point of fact included, more than this. It included the postulation of an "order" in the Persons of the Trinity, by which the Father is first, the Son second, and the Spirit third. And it included a doctrine of generation and procession by virtue of which the Son as Son derives from the Father, and the Spirit as Spirit derives from the Father and the Son. Perhaps this aspect of his conception of the Trinity is nowhere more succinctly expressed than in a passage in the eighteenth section of this chapter (xiii.). Here he explicitly declares that "although the eternity of the Father is the eternity of the Son and Spirit also, since God could never be without His Wisdom and Power, - and in eternity there is no question of first and last - it is nevertheless not vain or superfluous to observe an order [in the three Persons], since the Father is enumerated as the first, next the Son ex eo, and afterwards the Spirit ex utroque. For everyone's mind instinctively inclines to consider God first, then the Wisdom emerging from Him, and finally the Power by which He executes the decrees of His counsel. For this reason the Son is said to come forth (exsistere) from the Father (a Patre), the Spirit alike from the Father and the Son." The intimations which are here brought together are often repeated. Thus, for example: "For since the properties in the Persons bear an order, so that in the Father is the principium et origo . . . the ratio ordinis is held, which, however, in no respect derogates from the deity of the Son and Spirit" (§ 20). Again: "But from the Scriptures we teach that essentialiter there is but one God, and therefore the essence as well of the Son as of the Spirit is unbegotten (ingenitam). Yet inasmuch as (quatenus) the Father is first in order and has begotten His own Wisdom ex se, He is justly (as we have just said) considered the principium et fons of the whole divinity" (§ 25). Again, although he "pronounces it a detestable figment that the essence is the property of the Father alone as if He were the deificator of the Son," he yet "acknowledges that ratione ordinis et gradus, the principium divinitatis is in the Father" (§ 24). "The Father is the fountain of the deity, not with respect of the essence, but the order " (§ 26). And because the Father is thus the fons et principium deitatis (§ 23) from whom (ex eo, § 18) there have come forth (exsistere, § 18) the Son and afterwards from the Son along with the Father the Spirit (§ 18, ex utroque), there is involved here a doctrine of an eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit. Both are repeatedly asserted. Of the Son, for example, we read: "It is necessary to understand that the Word was begotten of the Father (genitum ex Patre) before time (ante saecula)" (§ 7); "we conclude again, therefore, that the Word, before the beginning of time, was conceived (conceptum) by God" (§ 8); "He is the Son of God, because He is the Word begotten of the Father (genitus a Patre) before the ages (saecula)" (§ 23); "He is called the Son of God, . . . inasmuch as He was begotten of the Father (genitus ex Patre) before the ages (saecula)" (§ 24).⁸² 

Although such passages, however - and they are very numerous, or we may perhaps better say, pervasive, in Calvin's discussion of the Trinity - make it perfectly plain that he taught a doctrine of order and grade in the Persons of the Trinity, involving a doctrine of the derivation - and that, of course, before all time - of the second and third Persons from the first as the fountain and origin of deity, it is important for a correct understanding of his conception that we should attend to the distinctions by which he guarded his meaning. Of course, he did not teach that the essence of the Son or of the Spirit is the product of their generation or procession. It had been traditional in the Church from the beginning of the Trinitarian controversies to explain that generation and procession concerned only the Persons of the Son and Spirit;⁸³ and Calvin availed himself of this traditional understanding. "The essence, as well of the Son as of the Spirit, is unbegotten (ingenitam)" (§ 25). "The essence of the Son has no principium, but God Himself is the principium of His Person" (§ 25). The matter does not require elaboration here, both because this is obviously the natural view for Calvin to present and hence goes without saying, and because his mode of presenting and arguing it has been sufficiently illustrated in passages already cited.⁸⁴ There is another distinction he appears to have made, however, which is not so clear. Although he taught that the Son was begotten of the Father, and of course begotten before all time, or as we say from all eternity, he seems to have drawn back from the doctrine of "eternal generation" as it was expounded by the Nicene Fathers. They were accustomed to explain "eternal generation" (in accordance with its very nature as "eternal "), not as something which has occurred once for all at some point of time in the past - however far back in the past - but as something which is always occurring, a perpetual movement of the divine essence from the first Person to the second, always complete, never completed.⁸⁵ Calvin seems to have found this conception difficult, if not meaningless. In the closing words of the discussion of the Trinity in the "Institutes" (I, xiii. 29, ad fin.) he classes it among the speculations which impose unnecessary burdens on the mind. "For what is the profit," he asks, "of disputing whether the Father always generates (semper generet), seeing that it is fatuous to imagine a continuous act of generating (continuus actus generandi) when it is evident that three Persons have subsisted in God from eternity?" His meaning appears to be that the act of generation must have been completed from all eternity, since its product has existed complete from all eternity, and therefore it is meaningless to speak of it as continually proceeding. If this is the meaning of his remark, it is a definite rejection of the Nicene speculation of "eternal generation." But this is very far from saying that it is a rejection of the Nicene Creed - or even of the assertion in this Creed to the effect that the Son is "God of God." We have just seen that Calvin explicitly teaches the "eternal generation" of the Son, in the sense that He was begotten by the Father before all time. It manifestly was a matter of fixed belief with him. He does indeed refuse to find proof texts for it in many of the passages which it had been the custom to cite in evidence of it.⁸⁶ But he does not therefore feel that he lacks adequate proof of it. There is one argument for it, he tells us, which seems to him worth a thousand distorted texts. "It is certain that God is not a Father to men except through the intercession of that only begotten Son, who alone rightly vindicates to Himself this prerogative, and by whose beneficence it derives to us. But God always wished to be called upon by His people by His name of Father: whence it follows that there was already then in existence the Son through whom that relationship was established."87 That the Son is "God of God" he is therefore as fully convinced as the Nicene Fathers themselves. When, then, he criticises the formulas of the Nicene Creed, "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," as repetitious, this is a criticism of the form, not of the content of this statement.⁸⁸ And when he speaks of the "Deus de Deo" of the Creed as a "hard saying" (dura locutio), he by no means denies that it is "true and useful," in the sense its framers put on it, in the sense, that is, that the Son has His principium merely as Son in the Father, but only means that the form of the statement is inexact - the term "Deus" requiring to be taken in each case of its occurrence in a non-natural personal sense - and that, being inexact, it is liable to be misused in the interests of a created God, in the sense of Gentilis, and must therefore be carefully explained.⁸⁹ His position is, in a word, that of one who affirms the eternal generation of the Son, but who rejects the speculations of the Nicene Fathers respecting the nature of the act which they called "eternal generation." It is enough, he says in effect, to believe that the Son derives from the Father, the Spirit from the Father and the Son, without encumbering ourselves with a speculation upon the nature of the eternally generating act to which these hypostases are referred. It is interesting to observe that Calvin's attitude upon these matters is precisely repeated by Dr. Charles Hodge in his discussion in his "Systematic Theology."90 It seems to be exactly Calvin's point of view to which Dr. Hodge gives expression when he writes: "A distinction must be made between the Nicene Creed (as amplified in that of Constantinople) and the doctrine of the Nicene Fathers. The creeds are nothing more than the well-ordered arrangement of the facts of Scripture which concern the doctrine of the Trinity. They assert the distinct personality of the Father, Son and Spirit; their mutual relation as expressed by these terms; their absolute unity as to substance or essence, and their consequent perfect equality; and the subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, as to the mode of subsistence and operation. These are Scriptural facts, to which the creeds in question add nothing; and it is in this sense that they have been accepted by the Church Universal. But the Nicene Fathers did undertake in a greater or less degree to explain these facts. These explanations relate principally to the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, and to what is meant by generation, or the relation between the Father and the Son. . . . As in reference to the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, as asserted in the ancient creeds, it is not to the fact that exception is taken, but to the explanation of that fact, as given by the Nicene Fathers, the same is true with regard to the doctrine of Eternal Generation." 

The circumstance that Dr. Charles Hodge, writing three centuries afterwards (1559-1871), reproduces precisely Calvin's position may intimate to us something of the historical significance of Calvin's discussion of the Trinity. Clearly Calvin's position did not seem a matter of course, when he first enunciated it. It roused opposition and created a party. But it did create a party: and that party was shortly the Reformed Churches, of which it became characteristic that they held and taught the self-existence of Christ as God and defended therefore the application to Him of the term auvto,qeoj; that is to say, in the doctrine of the Trinity they laid the stress upon the equality of the Persons sharing in the same essence, and thus set themselves with more or less absoluteness against all subordinationism in the explanation of the relations of the Persons to one another. When Calvin asserted, with the emphasis which he threw upon it, the self-existence of Christ, he unavoidably did three things. First and foremost, he declared the full and perfect deity of our Lord, in terms which could not be mistaken and could not be explained away. The term auvto,qeoj served the same purpose in this regard that the term o`moou,sioj had served against the Arians and the term u`po,stasij against the Sabellians. No minimizing conception of the deity of Christ could live in the face of the assertion of aseity or auvtoqeo,thj of Him. This was Calvin's purpose in asserting aseity of Christ and it completely fulfilled itself in the event. In thus fulfilling itself, however, two further effects were unavoidably wrought by it. The inexpugnable opposition of subordinationists of all types was incurred: all who were for any reason or in any degree unable or unwilling to allow to Christ a deity in every respect equal to that of the Father were necessarily offended by the vindication to Him of the ultimate Divine quality of self-existence. And all those who, while prepared to allow true deity to Christ, yet were accustomed to think of the Trinitarian relations along the lines of the traditional Nicene orthodoxy, with its assertion of a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, at least in mode of subsistence, were thrown into more or less confusion of mind and compelled to resort to nice distinctions in order to reconcile the two apparently contradictory confessions of auvtoqeo,thj and of qeo.j evk qeou/ of our Lord. It is not surprising, then, that the controversy roused by Caroli and carried on by Chaponneau and Courtois did not die out with their refutation; but prolonged itself through the years and has indeed come down even to our own day. Calvin's so-called innovation with regard to the Trinity has, in point of fact, been made the object of attack through three centuries, not only by Unitarians of all types, nor only by professed Subordinationists, but also by Athanasians, puzzled to adjust their confession of Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God" to the at least verbally contradictory assertion that in respect of His deity He is not of another but of Himself. 

The attack has been especially sharp naturally where the assailants were predisposed to criticism of Calvin on other grounds, as was the case, for example, with Romanists, Lutherans and afterward with Arminians. As was to be expected, it is found in its most decisive form among the Romanists, and we are afraid we must say with Gomarus that with them it seems to have been urged in the first instance, rather because of a desire to disparage Calvin and the Calvinists than in any distinct doctrinal interest.⁹¹ The beginning of the assault seems to have been made by Genebrardus, who "in the first book of his treatise on the Trinity, refutes what he calls the heresy of those denominated Autotheanites, that is of those who say that Christ is God of Himself (a se ipso), not of the Father, attributing this heresy to Calvin and Beza and in the Preface to his work [mistakenly] surmising that Francis Stancarus was the originator of it."92 The way thus opened, however, was largely followed by the whole crowd of Romish controversialists, the most notable of whom in the first age were probably Anthony Possevinus, Alphonsus Salmeron, William Lindanus, Peter Canisius, Dionysius Petavius,⁹³ all of whom exhaust the resources of dialectics in the endeavor to fix upon Calvin and his followers a stigma of heresy in the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. A more honorable course was pursued by probably the two greatest Romish theologians of the time, Gregory of Valentia and Robert Bellarmine. Although in no way disinclined to find error in the teaching of Calvin and the Calvinists, these more cautious writers feel compelled to allow that Calvin in his zeal to do full justice to the deity of Christ has not passed beyond Catholic truth, and blame him therefore only for inaccuracy of phrase. Gregory of Valentia, whom Gomarus calls "the Coryphaeus of Papal theologians," speaking of the error of the Autotheanites, remarks: "Genebrardus has attributed this error to Calvin (Inst., I. xiii), but, in point of fact, if he be read attentively, it will be seen that he [Calvin] meant merely that the Son, as He is indeed essentially God, is ex se, and is ex Patre only as He is a Person: and that is true. For although the Fathers and Councils assert that He is Deus ex Deo most truly, by taking the term [God] personally, so that it signifies the Person itself at once of the Father and of the Son;⁹⁴ nevertheless the Son, as He is essentially God, that is, as He is that one, most simple Being which is God, is not from another, because as such He is an absolute somewhat. If this were all that were meant by the other heretics who are called 'Autotheanites,' there would be no occasion for contending with them. For it was in this sense that Epiphanius, Haer. 69, seems to have called the Son auvtoqeo,j."95 Bellarmine's candor scarcely stretches so far as Gregory's. While he too feels compelled to allow that Calvin's meaning is catholic, he yet very strongly reprobates his mode of stating that meaning and declares that it gives fair occasion for the strictures which have been passed upon him. "When," says he, "I narrowly look into the matter itself, and carefully consider Calvin's opinions, I find it difficult to declare that he was in this error. For he teaches that the Son is of Himself (a se), in respect of essence, not in respect of Person, and seems to wish to say that the Person is begotten by the Father [but] the essence is not begotten or produced, but is of itself (a se ipsa); so that if you abstract from the Person of the Son the relation to the Father, the essence alone remains, and that is of itself (a se ipsa)." But on the other hand Bellarmine thinks "that Calvin has undoubtedly erred in his manner of expressing himself, and given occasion to be spoken of as he has been spoken of by our [the Romish] writers." This judgment is supported by the following specifications: "For he [Calvin] says, Inst., I. xiii. 19: 'The ecclesiastical writers now teach that the Father is the principium of the Son, now assert that the Son has both divinity and essence of Himself (a se ipso).' And below this: 'Accordingly, when we speak of the Son simpliciter without respect to the Father, we may well and properly assert that He is of Himself (a se).' And in the twenty-third section, speaking of the Son, 'How,' he asks, 'shall the creator who gives being to all things not be of Himself (a se ipso), but derive His essence from another?' And in his letter to the Poles and in his work against Gentilis, Calvin frequently asserts that the Son is auvto,qeoj, that is, God of Himself (a se ipso), and [declares] the expression in the Creed 'God of God, Light of Light' an improper and hard saying."96 

The gravamen of Bellarmine's charges we see from a later passage (p. 334b, near bottom) turns on Calvin's assertion that "the Son has [His] essence from Himself (a se)." This, Bellarmine declares, is to be "repudiated simpliciter," as he undertakes to demonstrate, on the grounds that it is repugnant to Scripture, the definitions of the Councils, the teaching of the Fathers, and reason itself, and as well to Calvin's own opinions; and is not established by the arguments which Calvin adduces in its behalf. In Bellarmine's view, however, in so speaking Calvin merely expressed himself badly: he really meant nothing more than that the Son with respect to His essence, which is His as truly as it is the Father's, is of Himself (a se ipso). He thinks this is proved by the fact that Calvin elsewhere speaks in terms which infer his orthodoxy in the point at issue. He speaks of the Son, for example, as begotten of the Father, which would be meaningless, if He does not receive His nature, or essence, from the Father, since "it is not a mere relation which is called the Son, but a real somewhat subsisting in the divine nature," and the Son is "not a mere propriety but an integra hypostasis." He even plainly says in so many words (I. xiii. 28) that the essence is communicated from the Father to the Son: "If the difference is in the essence, let them reply whether He has not shared it (communicaverit) with the Son. . . . It follows that it is wholly and altogether (tota et in solidum) common to the Father and Son." And he does not embrace the errors which would flow from ascribing to the Son His essence of Himself: for example, he ascribes but a single essence to the Persons of the Trinity, and he does not distinguish the essence from the Persons realiter but only ratione. 

Petavius does not find it possible to follow Bellarmine in this exculpating judgment. For his part, he willingly admits that Calvin sometimes speaks inconsistently with himself, but he cannot doubt that he means what he says, when he declares that the Son has His essence not from the Father but from Himself - and this is a thing which, says he, is not only false, but impious to say, and cannot be affirmed by any Catholic. For it stands to reason, he argues, that everyone "has his essence from him by whom he is begotten; since generation is just the communication of the nature, - whether, as in created things, in kind, or, as in the divine production of the Word, in number. It is indeed impossible to form any conception of generation without the nature, and some communication of the essence, occurring to the mind."97 The whole question of Calvin's orthodoxy, between these writers, it will be seen, turns on their judgment as to his attitude towards the doctrine of "eternal generation." Bellarmine judges that, on the whole, though he has sometimes expressed himself inconsistently with regard to it, Calvin soundly believes in the doctrine of "eternal generation"; and therefore he pronounces him orthodox. Petavius judges that, though he sometimes expresses himself in the terms of the doctrine of "eternal generation," Calvin does not really believe in it; and therefore he pronounces him heretical. To both authors alike the test of orthodoxy lies in conformity of thought to the Nicene speculation, and they cannot conceive of a sound doctrine of the Trinity apart from this speculation and all the nice discriminations and adjustments which result from it.⁹⁸ And it can scarcely be denied that Calvin laid himself open to suspicion from this point of view. The principle of his doctrine of the Trinity was not the conception he formed of the relation of the Son to the Father and of the Spirit to the Father and Son, expressed respectively by the two terms "generation" and "procession": but the force of his conviction of the absolute equality of the Persons. The point of view which adjusted everything to the conception of " generation " and " procession " as worked out by the Nicene Fathers was entirely alien to him. The conception itself he found difficult, if not unthinkable; and although he admitted the facts of " generation " and " procession," he treated them as bare facts, and refused to make them constitutive of the doctrine of the Trinity. He rather adjusted everything to the absolute divinity of each Person, their community in the one only true Deity; and to this we cannot doubt that he was ready not only to subordinate, but even to sacrifice, if need be, the entire body of Nicene speculations. Moreover, it would seem at least very doubtful if Calvin, while he retained the conception of "generation" and "procession," strongly asserting that the Father is the principium divinitatis, that the Son was "begotten" by Him before all ages and that the Spirit "proceeded" from the Father and Son before time began, thought of this begetting and procession as involving any communication of essence. His conception was that, because it is the Person of the Father which begets the Person of the Son, and the Person of the Spirit which proceeds from the Persons of the Father and Son, it is precisely the distinguishing property of the Son which is the thing begotten, not the essence common to Father and Son, and the distinguishing property of the Spirit which is the product of the procession, not the essence which is common to all three persons. Of course, he did not hold, as Bellarmine phrases it, that "the Son is a mere relation," "a mere property": the Son was to him too, as a matter of course, "aliquid subsistens in natura divina," "integra hypostasis." But he did hold that Sonship is a relation and that the Son differs from the Father only by this property of Sonship which is expressed as a relation (I. xiii. 6); and it looks very much as if his thought was that it is only in what is expressed by the term Sonship that the second Person of the Trinity is the Son of the Father, or, what comes to the same thing, has been begotten of the Father. His idea seems to be that the Father, Son and Spirit are one in essence, and differ from one another only in that property peculiar to each, which, added to the common essence, constitutes them respectively Father, Son and Spirit; and that the Father is Father only as Father, the Son, Son only as Son, or what comes to the same thing, the Father begets the Son only as Son, or produces by the act of generation only that by virtue of which He is the Son, which is, of course, what constitutes just His Sonship. 

The evidence on which Bellarmine relies for his view that Calvin taught a communication of essence from Father to Son is certainly somewhat slender. If we put to one side Bellarmine's inability to conceive that Calvin could really believe in a true generation of the Son by the Father without holding that the Son receives His essence from the Father, and his natural presumption that Calvin's associates and pupils accurately reproduced the teaching of their master - for there is no doubt that Beza and Simler, for example, understood by generation a communication of essence - the evidence which Bellarmine relies on reduces to a single passage in the "Institutes" (I. xiii. 23). Calvin there, arguing with Gentilis, opposes to the notion that the Father and Son differ in essence, the declaration that the Father "shares" the essence together with the Son, so that it is common, tota et in solidum, to the Father and the Son. It may be possible to take the verb "communicate" here in the sense of "impart" rather than in that of "have in common," but it certainly is not necessary and it seems scarcely natural; and there is little elsewhere in Calvin's discussion to require it of us. Petavius points out that the sentence is repeated in the tract against Gentilis - but that carries us but a little way. It is quite true that there is nothing absolutely clear to be found to the opposite effect either. But there are several passages which may be thought to suggest a denial that the Son derives His essence from the Father. Precisely what is meant, for example, when we are told that the Son "contains in Himself the simple and indivisible essence of God in integral perfection, not portione aut deflexu," is no doubt not clear: but by deflexu it seems possible that Calvin meant to deny that the Son possessed the divine essence by impartation from another (I. xiii. 2). It is perhaps equally questionable what weight should be placed on the form of the statement (§ 20) that the order among the Persons by which the principium and origo is in the Father, is produced (fero) by the "proprieties"; or on the suggestion that the more exact way of speaking of the Son is to call Him "the Son of the Person" (§ 23) - the Father being meant - the term God in the phrase "Son of God" requiring to be taken of the Person of the Father. When it is argued that "whoever asserts that the Son is essentiated by the Father denies that He is selfexistent" (§ 23), and "makes His divinity a something abstracted from the essence of God, or a derivation of a part from the whole," the reference to Gentilis' peculiar views of the essentiation of the Son by the Father, i.e., His creation by the Father, seems to preclude a confident use of the phrase in the present connection. Nor does the exposition of the unbegottenness of the essence of the Son and Spirit as well as of the Father, so that it is only as respects His Person that the Son is of the Father (§ 25) lend itself any more certainly to our use. A survey of the material in the "Institutes" leads to the impression thus that there is singularly little to bring us to a confident decision whether Calvin conceived the essence of God to be communicated from the Father to the Son in "generation" and from the Father and Son to the Spirit in "procession." And outside the "Institutes" the same ambiguity seems to follow us. If we read that Christ has "the fulness of the Godhead" of Himself (Opp. xi. 560), we read equally that the Fathers taught that the Son is "of the Father even with respect to His eternal essence" (vii. 322), and is of the substance of the Father (vii. 324). In this state of the case opinions may lawfully differ. But on the whole we are inclined to think that Calvin, although perhaps not always speaking perfectly consistently, seeks to avoid speaking of generation and procession as importing the communication of the Divine essence; so that Petavius appears to be right in contending that Calvin meant what he says when he represents the Son as "having from Himself both divinity and essence" (I. xiii. 19). 

We have thought it worth while to dwell with some fulness on this matter, because, as we have suggested already, it is precisely in this peculiarity of Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity that the explanation is found of the widespread offense which was taken at it. Men whose whole thought of the Trinity lived, moved and had its being in the ideas of generation and procession, that is, in the notion of a perpetual communication of the Divine essence from the Father as the fons deitatis to the Son, who is thereby constituted the Son, and from the Father and Son to the Spirit, who is thereby constituted the Spirit, could not but feel that the Trinity they had known and confessed was taken away when this conception was conspicuous only by its absence, or was at best but remotely suggested, and all the stress was laid on the absolute equality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Such a conception of the Trinity would inevitably appear to them to savor of Sabellianism or of Tritheism, according as their minds dwelt more on the emphasis which was laid upon the numerical unity of the essence common to all the Persons or on that which was laid upon the distinctness of the Persons. Dissatisfaction with Calvin's Trinitarian teaching was therefore not confined to Romish controversialists seeking ground of complaint against him, but was repeated in all whose thought had run strictly in the moulds of Nicene speculation. Despite an occasional defender like Meisner or Tarnov,⁹⁹ the Lutheran theologians, for example, generally condemned it. Many, like Tilemann Heshusius and Aegidius Hunnius and, later, Stechmannus, hotly assailed it, and the best that could be hoped for at Lutheran hands was some such firm though moderately worded refusal of it as is found, for example, in John Gerhard's "Loci Theologici." "The Greek doctors," he tells us,¹⁰⁰ "call only the Father auvto,qeoj kai. auvtoou,sioj, not because there is a greater perfection of essence in the Father than in the Son, but because He is avge,nhtoj and a se ipso and does not have deity through generation or spiration. Bucanus, Loc. i, De Deo, p. 6, responds thus: 'The Son is a se ipso as He is God; from the Father as He is Son.' This he got from Calvin, who, Book I, c. xiii, § 25, writes: 'The Son as He is God we confess is ex se ipso, considered apart from His Person, but as He is Son we say that He is of the Father; thus His essence is without principium, but of His Person God is Himself the principium.' We are not able, however, to approve these words, but confess rather with the Nicene Creed that 'the Son is begotten of the Father, God of God, Light of Light,' and follow the saying of Christ, Jno. v. 26 . . . Prov. viii. 24. . . . Zacharias Ursinus¹⁰¹ therefore is right to separate from his preceptor here, writing in Catech., p. II. q. 25, p. 179: 'The Son is begotten of the Father; that is, He has the Divine Essence in an ineffable manner communicated to Him from the Father.' D. Lobechius, disp. 3 in Auqustinum Conf. th. 26, says: 'The essence should be considered in a two-fold way, either with respect to itself or with respect to its own being, or else with respect to its communication: it has no principium with respect to its own being; but with respect to its communication we say that the essence has as its principium, to be from the Father in the Son, for it has been communicated from the Father to the Son.'" Nevertheless, Gerhard, of course, does not deny that, when properly explained, the Son may fitly be called auvto,qeoj; since that would be tantamount to denying His true divinity. Accordingly he writes elsewhere:102 "The term is ambiguous: for it is either opposed to communication of the divine essence and in that sense we deny that Christ is auvto,qeoj, because He receives the essence by eternal generation from the Father; or it is opposed to the inequality of the Divine essence, and in that sense we concede that Christ is auvto,qeoj. Gregory of Valentia, De Trinitate, i. 22: 'The Son as He is a Person is from another; as the most simple being, is not from another.' Christ is verily and in Himself God (vere et se ipso Deus), but He is not of Himself (a se ipso) God." One would think Gerhard was skating on very thin ice to agree with Gregory of Valentia - who agrees with Calvin and uses his very mode of statement - and yet not agree with Calvin.

The subordinationism¹⁰³ of the Arminians was of quite a different quality from that of the Lutherans. The dominant note which the Lutheran Christology sounded was the majesty of Christ; nothing that tended to exalt Christ could be without its appeal to Lutherans; they drew back from Calvin's assertion of His auvtoqeo,thj only in the interests of the traditional Nicene construction of the Trinity. The Arminians had, on the other hand, a distinct tendency to the proper subordinationism of the Origenists; and in the later members of the school, indeed, there was present a strong influence from the Socinians. To them, of course, the Father alone could be thought of as auvto,qeoj and the Son was conceived as in His very nature, because God only by derivation, less than the Father. As in his whole theological outlook, Arminius himself was here better than his successors. He fairly saves his orthodoxy, indeed; but he emphatically denies the auvtoqeo,thj of the Son. The Son may just as well be called Father, he intimates, as be represented as "having His essence a se ipso or a nullo"; and the employment of such language cannot be justified by saying that to affirm that the Son of God, as God, has His essence a se ipso, is only to say that the divine essence is not ab aliquo: there can, in fact, be no reason for calling the Son auvto,qeoj.¹⁰⁴ On the other hand, nevertheless, he recognizes that the word auvto,qeoj may be taken in two senses. It may describe the one to whom it is applied either merely as vere et se ipso God, or else as God a se. In the former usage it is as applied to the Son tolerable; in the latter not.¹⁰⁵ He argues that we must distinguish between saying that the essence which the Son has is from none, and that the Son which has this essence is from none: "for," says he, "the Son is the name of a person, which has a relation to the Father, and therefore cannot be defined or contemplated apart from this relation; while the essence, on the other hand, is an absolute somewhat."106 "To contend," he urges, "that to say 'He is God' and 'He has His essence from none' are equivalent statements, is to say either that the Father alone is God, or else that there are three collateral Gods." He cheerfully allows that neither of these assertions expresses the meaning of Calvin or Beza: but he contends that they use misleading language when they call Christ auvto,qeoj and he appeals to Beza's admission, when excusing Calvin, that "Calvin had not strictly observed the discrimination between the particles a se and per se." 

The gravitation of Arminianism was, however, downward; and we find already taught by Episcopius, no longer a certain subordination in order among the Persons of the Trinity in the interests of the Nicene doctrine of "eternal generation " and "procession," but rather a generation and procession in the interests of a subordination in nature among the Persons of the Trinity. "It is certain" from Scripture, says he, "that this divinity and the divine perfections are to be attributed to these three persons, not collaterally and coordinately, but subordinately." "This subordination," he adds, "should be carefully attended to, because of its extremely great usefulness, since by it not only is there fundamentally overthrown the triqeo,thj which collateralism almost necessarily involves, but also the Father's glory is preserved to Him unimpaired." Wherefore, he continues, "they fall into perilous error who contend that the Son is auvto,qeoj, in such a manner that as He is God He is of Himself, as He is Son of the Father; because from this point of view, the true subordination between the Father and the Son is taken away."107 It is scarcely necessary to pause to point out with Triglandius¹⁰⁸ that to say that the Son and Spirit are not collaterally or coordinally divine with the Father is to say they are not equally divine with Him, and to say that it is injurious to the Father's glory to call the Son auvto,qeoj, even as He is God, is to say that He is inferior to the Father even in His essence. No doubt Episcopius says in the same breath that "one and the same divine nature" is to be attributed to the three Persons. But this is not easy to conciliate with his argument, except on the supposition that in saying "one and the same nature," his thought wavered somewhat between numerical oneness and specific oneness,¹⁰⁹ or else that he conceived the relation of the several Persons to this one nature to differ among themselves - one possessing it of Himself, the others by derivation from - shall we even suggest, by favor of? - another. 

The path thus opened by Episcopius was eagerly walked in by his successors. All that may be thought to be latent in Episcopius came to light in Curcellaeus. We will, however, permit another hand to describe to us his teaching with regard to the Trinity. "If you take his own account," writes Robert Nelson, in his "Life of Dr. George Bull,"110 there would be no man more orthodox and catholic" than Curcellaeus is "in the doctrine of the Trinity, as also in that of the Incarnation of Christ. And he insisted, that both from the pulpit and from the chair, he had always taught and vindicated that faith, into which he had been baptized, and which he had publicly professed in the congregation, according to the form generally received; and did even teach and vindicate the same at that very time, when the charge of Anti-trinitarianism was brought against him. Yea, he expressed so great a zeal for the orthodox doctrine in this great fundamental, as he would seem forward to seal the truth thereof, even with his blood; if, as he said, God would vouchsafe him this honor. Notwithstanding all this, it is notoriously known, and that from his own very Apology, that he was no less an enemy to the Council of Nice than his master before him, if not more than he; that he was no friend at all to the use of the word 'Trinity'; that he so explained himself concerning that mystery as to assert no more than a 'specifical unity' in the divine Persons; that he defended the cause of Valentinus Gentilis, beheaded at Bern in Switzerland for Tritheism, maintaining his doctrine to have been the same with that of the primitive Fathers, particularly of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Clemens Alexandrinus; that he impeached the common (which he called the Modern and Scholastic) doctrine of the Trinity for approaching so very near Sabellianism, as hardly to be distinguished from it, and charged it to be a thousand years younger than that which was taught by Christ and His apostles; that he exploded the notion of consubstantiality, in the sense in which it is now generally taken, when applied to the Father and Son; that he was very much afraid to have his mind perplexed with the 'divine relations,' or with the manner of 'generation' and 'procession' in the Deity, or with modes of 'subsistence' and 'personalities,' or with 'mutual consciousness,' and the like; and therefore was for discarding at once all such terms and phrases as are not 'expressly legitimated' by the sacred writers; that he fully believed the Godhead of the Father to be more excellent than that of the Son, or of the Holy Ghost, even so far as to look upon this superiority as a thing unquestionable, and to appeal to the consentient testimony of the primitive Church for evidence; and lastly that he took care to recommend Petavius, and the author of Irenicum Irenicorum,¹¹¹ a learned physician of Dantzick . . . to the perusal of his readers, for the sake of that collection of testimonies which is to be found in them, as wherein they might easily find 'an account of the primitive faith' concerning these great articles." A subordinationism like this, of course, could not endure Calvin's Trinitarianism, of which the cornerstone was the equality of the Persons in the Trinity - which equality it was that was safeguarded by the ascription of auvtoqeo,thj to Christ. 

Indeed, this ascription was equally unacceptable to a subordinationism of far less extreme a type than that of Curcellaeus and his Remonstrant successors. It is the biographer of George Bull to whom we have appealed to bring Curcellaeus' trinitarian teaching before us: and George Bull is perhaps the best example of that less extreme, convinced, no doubt, but well-guarded, subordinationism which we have now in mind - the subordinationism which entrenched itself in the Nicene definitions and the explanations of the Nicene Fathers, interpreted, however, rather from the tentative and inadequate constructions out of which they were advancing to a sounder and truer trinitarianism, than from this sounder and truer trinitarianism of which they were the expression. It can scarcely be doubted that Bull's subordinationism owed much to the Arminian movement, from the extremes of which, on this point at least, he drew back. The Arminianism flowing in from the continent had been a powerful co-factor in the production of that Catholic reaction of seventeenth century England of which Bull was, in its post-Restoration days of triumph, one of the representatives and ornaments. It is interesting to note that the "Theological Institutes" of Episcopius, at the time that Bull was contemplating writing his "Defence of the Nicene Creed," was "generally in the hands of students of divinity in both universities, as the best system of Divinity that had appeared,"112 and that Bull himself speaks of Episcopius with high respect in all except his attitude towards the Nicene Fathers.¹¹³ Indeed, when he comes to state the subordinationism which he professes to defend as commended by Catholic antiquity, he avails himself of Episcopius' precise phrase, declaring that all "the Catholic Doctors, those that lived before and those that lived after the Council of Nice," "with one consent have taught that the divine Nature and Perfections do agree to the Father and Son, not collaterally or coordinately, but subordinately."114 But the particular form which Bull's subordinationism took was determined, naturally, by that special appeal which the neo-Catholic party to which he belonged made to primitive antiquity, by which he was led - with some insular exaggeration of the importance of his own position - to suppose that the design of Petavius in his exposition of the unformed trinitarianism of the ante-Nicene Fathers was to help "the cause of the Pope  by showing that "there is very little regard to be had to the Fathers of the three first ages, to whom the Reformed Catholics" - that is to say, the Catholizing party of the Church of England - "generally do appeal."115 Whatever may be said of this conjecture, it cannot be doubted that Bull's design was to show that the appeal to the "first three ages" yielded in the matter of the Trinity the self-same doctrine which the Nicene Fathers formulated. In order to do this, however, he was compelled to saddle upon the Nicene doctrine a subordinationism which, of the very essence of the Logos Christology of the second and third centuries, was in the Nicene construction happily in the act of being transcended. In the interests of this subordinationism Calvin's equalization of the Son with the Father through the ascription to Him of auvtoqeo,thj was necessarily distasteful to Bull. That the Son is "very God" and in that sense may fitly be called auvto,qeoj he is, indeed, frank to allow, for he is himself, with all the Fathers, a true and firm believer in the Godhead of Christ: but that the Son is auvto,qeoj, "God of Himself," he repudiates with decision as inconsistent with "catholic consent" which pronounces Him rather qeo.j evk qeou/. For, depending here on Petavius, he will not allow that it is possible to say "that the Son is from God the Father, as He is Son, and not as He is God; that He received His Person, not His essence, or Divine Nature, from the Father"; on the ground that begetting means just communication of essence.¹¹⁶ It is a little amusing to see Bull, from his Anglican tripod, as Calvin would himself have said, patronizing Calvin. He graciously allows that Calvin has deserved well of us "for the good service which he rendered in purging the Church of Christ from the superstition of popery"; but he "earnestly exhorts pious and studious youths to beware of a spirit from which have proceeded such thing " as Calvin's unreverential allusions to the Nicene Creed, which he had dared to speak of as containing harsh expressions and "vain repetitions."117 "Even the zeal of Mr. Bull" thus, as his admiring biographer tells us, "hath not here hindered him from treating with esteem the author of so dangerous an opinion" as that Christ is God of Himself, the self-existent God, "while at the same time he is confuting it, for the sake of some laudable qualifications which he discerned in him, and was endeavoring to excuse him as well as the matter could bear, against the insults of the most learned writer of his whole order, so famous for learning"118 - by which we suppose Nelson means to intimate that Bull defended Calvin against injurious imputations of Petavius; though we have failed to observe this feature of Bull's discussion. 

In England, too, however, the downward movement fulfilled itself. After Bull came Samuel Clarke and his fellow Arians in the established Church, matched by the Socinian drift among the dissenters. To these, naturally, Calvin's auvto,qeoj was as far beyond the range of practical consideration as it was to Crell¹¹⁹ or Schlichting,¹²⁰ who did him the honor to express their dissent from it. Clarke, however, may claim from us a moment's notice, not so much on his own account, as for the sake of a distinction which Waterland was led to make in refuting him. Clarke was willing to admit that the Son may have been begotten of the essence of the Father, though he wished it to be allowed that it was equally possible that He may have been made out of nothing. "Both are worthy of censure," he said,¹²¹ "who on the one hand affirm that the Son was made out of nothing, or on the other affirm that He is self-existent substance." In his response, Waterland exhibits afresh the difficulties which lie in wait for those who take their startingpoint from even the measure of subordinationism which is embalmed in the language of the Nicene formularies, when they seek to do justice to the full deity of Christ. In the interests of the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation, he proposes to distinguish between necessary existence and self-existence, and, denying the latter, to claim only the former for the Son. The Second Person of the Godhead, he says, participates in the one substance of the Godhead, and is therefore necessarily existent; but He participates in it by communication from the Father, not of Himself, and therefore He is not self-existent. "We say," he explains,¹²² "the Son is not self-existent, meaning He is not unoriginate. You" - that is, Clarke - "not only say the same, but contend for it, meaning not necessarily existing." "Self-existence as distinct from necessary existence, is expressive only of the order and manner in which the perfections are in the Father, and not of any distinct perfection."123 That is to say, in Waterland's view, the Son is all that the Father is, but not in the same manner: the Father is all that He is in this manner, viz., that He is it of Himself; the Son, in this manner, viz., that He is it of the Father. Both are necessarily all that they are, and therefore both are necessarily existent: but only the Father is all that He is of Himself, and therefore self-existence can be predicated of Him alone. What is really declared here is obviously only that the generation of the Son is a necessary and not a voluntary movement in the divine nature: and all that is affirmed is therefore merely that the existence of the Son is not dependent on the divine will. Is this all that need be affirmed, however, in order to vindicate to the Son true deity? We must bear in mind that it is not impossible to conceive creation itself as necessary: the history of theology has not been a stranger to the idea that the world is the eternal and necessary product of the divine activity. In order to vindicate true deity to the Son it is not sufficient, therefore, to affirm that He is equally with the Father "necessary in respect of existence."124 That might be true of Him even were He a creature. What must be affirmed of Him if we would recognize His true deity is not merely that He could not but exist, but that the ground of His existence is in Himself. It is self-existence, not necessary existence, in other words, which really imports deity, and it is a degradation of this great and fundamental attribute to attempt to reduce it to a mere synonym of "ingenerate." It is rather the synonym of necessary existence as applied to deity, describing this necessary existence in its deeper significance and implications. The artificial distinction which Waterland wishes to make between the two as applied to the Son, seems thus merely an invention to "save the face" of the Nicene doctrine of "generation." Let us admit, says he, in effect, that the Son is equally with the Father "necessary in respect of existence." That is, of course, "self-existent" according to the proper significance of the term in its application to a Divine Being. But let us agree to say that we will not use the term "self-existence" but "necessarily existing" in this sense, and will reserve "self-existence" for another sense, distinct from "necessary existence." Now, "as distinct from necessary existence," "self-existence" can express only "the order and manner in which the perfections are in the Father" and not "any distinct perfection." Granted. If we are to use the term "self-existence" to express some other idea than self-existence - then it may express something which the self-existing, i.e., necessarily existing God who is the Son is not. But then it remains true that this necessarily existing God who is the Son is at this very moment confessed to be the self-existent God - under its synonym of "necessarily existent." In a word, if we will agree to use the term "selfexistent" in the sense of "ingenerate" - which it does not in the least mean - we may, of course, deny that the Son who is "generate" is "self-existent": but if we employ that term in the sense of "necessarily existent," - which is just what it means in the full reach of that term as applied to God - why, then we must say that the Son is "self-existent." To put the thing in a nutshell: the Nicene doctrine that the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are necessary movements in the divine essence and not voluntary acts of God the Father, carries with it the ascription of necessary existence, in the sense of that term applicable to God, that is of "selfexistence," to the Son and Spirit and requires that each be spoken of as auvto,qeoj. To deny to them the quality of auvtoqeo,thj is thus logically to make them creatures of the Father's power, if not of His will; by which their true deity is destroyed. Thus the tendency among the so-called strict Nicenists to deny to our Lord that He is, as God, a se ipso betrays a lurking leaven of subordinationism in their thought. It indicates a tendency to treat the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation, not, as it was intended by its framers, as the safeguard of the absolute equality of the Son with the Father, but rather as the proclamation of the inferiority of the Son to the Father: the Son because generate must differ from the ingenerate Father - must differ in this, that He cannot be, as is the Father, self-existent God, which is, of course, all one with saying that He is not God at all, since the very idea of God includes the idea of self-existence.¹²⁵

It was, therefore, a very great service to Christian theology which Calvin rendered when he firmly asserted for the second and third persons of the Trinity their auvtoqeo,thj. It has never since been possible for men to escape facing the question whether they really do justice to the true and complete deity of the Son and Spirit in their thought of the Trinitarian distinctions. It has not even been possible since for men who heartily believe in the deity of the Son and Spirit to refuse to them the designation of auvtoqeo,j. They may have distinguished, indeed, between auvto,qeoj and auvtoqeo,j - Self-Existent God and Very God - and allowed the latter to the second and third Persons while withholding the former.¹²⁶ But in the very act of drawing such a distinction, they have emphasized the true deity of the second and third Persons, and have been deterred from ascribing auvtoqeo,thj to them in the sense of self-existence only by confusing it with "ingeneration." It is, however, a part of the heritage, particularly of the Reformed Churches, that they have learned from Calvin to claim for Christ the great epithet of auvto,qeoj:127 and their characteristic mark has therefore become the strength of the emphasis which they throw on the complete deity of the Lord. Whatever differences may have existed among them have not concerned the true deity of Christ, but rather the attitude taken by their teachers towards the Nicene speculation of "eternal generation." Concerning this speculation differences early manifested themselves. Immediate successors of Calvin, such as Theodore Beza and Josiah Simler, were as firm and exact in their adhesion to it as Calvin was dubious with reference to it. "The Son," says Beza, "is of the Father by an ineffable communication from eternity of the whole nature."128 "We deny not," says Simler, "that the Son has His essence from God the Father; what we deny is a begotten essence."129 And no less or less prejudiced an authority than Bellarmine pronounces these declarations "Catholic."130 Indeed, despite the influence of Calvin, the great body of the Reformed teachers remained good Nicenists. But they were none the less, as they were fully entitled to be, good "Autotheanites" also. They saw clearly that a relation within the Godhead between Persons to each of whom the entire Godhead belongs, cannot deprive any of these Persons of any essential quality of the Godhead common to them all.¹³¹ And they were determined to assert the full and complete Godhead of them all. Of course, there have been others, on the other hand, who have followed Calvin in sitting rather loosely to the Nicene tradition. Examples of this class are furnished by Trelcatius, Keckermann, Maccovius.¹³² Keckermann, for example, while not denying that many have preferred to say that "the Son has His essence communicated from the Father," yet considers that this can be said only in a modified sense and must be accompanied by certain important explanations - for, says he, "it is false if spoken of the essence considered absolutely, since the Son (as also the Holy Spirit) has this a se ipso." For himself he prefers, therefore, to say that "the second mode of existence in the Trinity, which is called the Son, . . . is communicated from the Father."133 This is, as we have seen, apparently Calvin's own view, while the more advanced position still which rejects, or at least neglects, the conception of "communication" altogether, whether of essence or of mode of existence,¹³⁴ although  it cannot find an example in Calvin, may yet be said to have had its way prepared for it by him. The direct Scriptural proof which had been customarily relied upon for its establishment he destroyed, refusing to rest a doctrinal determination on "distorted texts." He left, therefore, little Biblical basis for the doctrine of "eternal generation" except what might be inferred from the mere terms "Father," "Son" and "Spirit," and the general consideration that our own adoption into the relation of sons of God in Christ implies for Him a Sonship of a higher and more immanent character, which is His by nature and into participation in the relation of which we are admitted only by grace.¹³⁵ Certainly other explanations of these facts are possible;¹³⁶ and the possibility - or preferability - of other explanations was certain sooner or later to commend itself to some. Nothing, meanwhile, could illustrate more strikingly the vitality of the ecclesiastical tradition than that in such a state of the case the Nicene construction of the Trinity held its ground: held its ground with Calvin himself in its substantial core, and with the majority of his followers in its complete speculative elaboration. We are astonished at the persistence of so large an infusion of the Nicene phraseology in the expositions of Augustine, after that phraseology had really been antiquated by his fundamental principle of equalization in his construction of the Trinitarian relations: we are more astonished at the effort which Calvin made to adduce Nicene support for his own conceptions: and we are more astonished still at the tenacity with which his followers cling to all the old speculations.¹³⁷ 

The repeated appeals which he makes to the Fathers is, as we have just hinted, a notable feature of Calvin's discussion of the Trinity and especially of his defense of his construction of the Trinitarian relationships. The citations he drew from the Fathers for this purpose were naturally much striven over. One instance seems worth scrutinizing, as on it was founded an accusation that Calvin did not know the difference between the two Latin prepositions "ad" and "a.," or else chose to "play to the gallery," which he counted upon not to know it. That the best Latinist of his day, whose Latin style is rather classical than mediaeval, could fail to feel the force of the common prepositions of that language is, of course, absurd: that a reasoner conspicuous for his fair-mindedness in his argumentation could have juggled with ambiguous phrases is even more impossible. An attentive reading of the passages in question will, as was to be expected, quickly make it clear that it is not Calvin but his critics who are at fault. Bellarmine, arguing that the reasons which Calvin assigns for calling our Lord auvto,qeoj are not valid, adduces his appeal to the passages in which Augustine remarks that our Lord "is called Son, with reference to the Father (ad patrem) and God with reference to Himself (ad seipsum)." "But," he adds, in rebuttal, "it is not the same thing to say that the Son is God ad se, and that He is God a se." "For," he somewhat superfluously argues, "the first signifies that the name of God is not relative and yet belongs to the Son: and this Augustine says and says truly, for although the Son is a relative, it is nevertheless a relative which exists, is divine, and accordingly includes the essence which is absolute. But [to say] that the Son is God a se signifies that the Son of God is not the Son of God, but is unbegotten, which Augustine never said, but Calvin falsely attributes to him."138 "It is either," writes Petavius,¹³⁹ improving even on Bellarmine, "a remarkable piece of chicanery or else a remarkable hallucination in Calvin, when he seems to take as equivalents these two terms ad se and a se: as also these two, ad alium and ab alio, which" [i.e., ad se and ad alium] "Augustine makes free use of in explaining the mystery of the Trinity." Then, after quoting Calvin's citation of Augustine, he concludes: "Unless Calvin had supposed ad se to be the same as a se, and ad alium to be the same as ab alio, he would not have employed these passages from Augustine."140 In point of fact, however, Calvin does not confuse "ad" and "a" and he does not cite Augustine's use of the one as if he had employed the other. His citations are not intended to show that Augustine taught that the Son is not of the Father but of Himself: but only to show that we may - or rather must - speak in a twofold way of the Son, absolutely, to wit, as He is in Himself and relatively, as He is with reference to the Father. It is his own statement, not Augustine's, when he proceeds to say that when we thus speak of our Lord absolutely as He is in Himself, we are to say that He is a se, and only when we speak of Him relatively as He is with reference to the Father are we to speak of Him as a Patre. It is marvellous that anyone could confuse this perfectly clear argument: more marvellous still that, on the ground of such a confusion, anyone should venture to charge Calvin with gross ignorance of the meaning of the simplest Latin words or else of "remarkable chicanery" in his use of Latin texts. Here is what Calvin actually says: "By these appellations, which denote distinction, says Augustine, that is signified by which they are mutually related to one another: not the substance itself by which they are one. By which explanation, the sentiments of the ancients which otherwise might seem contradictory may be reconciled with one another. For now they teach that the Father is the principium of the Son; and now they assert that the Son has His divinity and essence alike of Himself, and is therefore one principium with the Father. The cause of this diversity is elsewhere well and perspicuously explained by Augustine when he speaks as follows: Christ is called God with respect to Himself, He is called Son with respect to the Father. And again, the Father is called God with respect to Himself, with respect to the Son He is called Father. What is called Father with respect to the Son is not the Son; what is called Son with respect to the Father is not the Father: what is called Father with respect to Himself and Son with respect to Himself is God. When, then, we speak of the Son, simply, without respect to the Father, we rightly and properly assert that He is of Himself; and we therefore call Him the sole (unicum) principium; but when we are noting the relation in which He stands to the Father, we justly make the Father the principium of the Son."141 A simple reading of the passage is enough to refute the suggestion that Calvin makes Augustine assert that Christ is "of Himself" when he is merely asserting that Christ is God when considered with respect to Himself and not relatively to the Father. If a matter so clear in itself, however, can be made clearer by further evidence, it is easy enough to adduce direct evidence. For Calvin has incorporated into the "Institutes" here material he uses often elsewhere. And in more than one of these instances of its use elsewhere, he distinctly tells us that he did not understand Augustine in these passages to be asserting the aseity of the Son. We may take, for example, a letter to the Neuchâtel pastors, written in November, 1543, with respect to Cortesius, with whom he had been having a discussion on our Lord's aseity - or as Calvin puts it, peri. auvtoousi,aj Christi. In the course of the discussion, he says, "we came to that difficulty that he did not think he could speak of the essence of Christ without mention of the person. I opposed to this first the authority of Augustine, who testifies that we can speak in a twofold way (bifariam) of Christ, as He is God - according to relation, that is, and simply (simpliciter). And that the discussion might not be prolonged, I adduced certain passages of Cyril, where in so many words (dissertis verbis) he pronounces on what we were discussing."142 That is to say, the passages of Augustine were appealed to not as direct witness to the auvtoousi,a of Christ, but only to prove the subordinate point that we can speak of our Lord in a twofold way: the passages from Cyril alone "expressly" declare on the point at issue. The declaration that Cyril was adduced as pronouncing on the point itself in so many words, is a declaration that Augustine was not so adduced. 

In his assertion of the auvtoqeo,thj of the Son Calvin, then, was so far from supposing that he was enunciating a novelty that he was able to quote the Nicene Fathers themselves as asserting it " in so many words." And yet in his assertion of it he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Not that men had not before believed in the self-existence of the Son as He is God: but that the current modes of stating the doctrine of the Trinity left a door open for the entrance of defective modes of conceiving the deity of the Son, to close which there was needed some such sharp assertion of His absolute deity as was supplied by the assertion of His auvtoqeo,thj. If we will glance over the history of the efforts of the Church to work out for itself an acceptable statement of the great mystery of the Trinity, we shall perceive that it is dominated from the beginning to the end by a single motive - to do full justice to the absolute deity of Christ. And we shall perceive that among the multitudes of great thinkers who under the pressure of this motive have labored upon the problem, and to whom the Church looks back with gratitude for great services, in the better formulation of the doctrine or the better commendation of it to the people, three names stand out in high relief, as marking epochs in the advance towards the end in view. These three names are those of Tertullian, Augustine and Calvin. It is into this narrow circle of elect spirits that Calvin enters by the contribution he made to the right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. That contribution is summed up in his clear, firm and unwavering assertion of the auvtoqeo,thj of the Son. By this assertion the o`moousio,thj of the Nicene Fathers at last came to its full right, and became in its fullest sense the hinge of the doctrine.

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, vii. 1909, pp. 553-652.

Something like Calvin's mode of transition here is repeated by Triglandius when he arrives at this topic in his "Antapologia" (c. v.). "That God is most simple in His essence," writes Triglandius, "eternal, infinite, and therefore of infinite knowledge and power, has been sufficiently demonstrated in the preceding chapter. Whence it is clear that He is one and unique. But Scripture sets before us here a great mystery, namely that in the one unique essence of God, there subsist three hypostases, the first of which is called the Father, the second the Son, the third the Holy Spirit. An arduous mystery indeed, and one simply incomprehensible to the human intellect; one, therefore, not to be measured by human reason, nor to be investigated by reasons drawn from human wisdom, but to be accredited solely from the Word of God; by going forward as far as it leads us, and stopping where it stops. Whenever this rule is neglected the human reason wanders in a labyrinth and cannot discern either end or exit" (in "Refutatio Apologiae Remonstrantium," p. 76).

We must not fancy, however, that Calvin conceived the personal distinctions in the Godhead as mere "epithets," that is, that he conceived the Trinity Sabellianwise as merely three classes of attributes or modes of manifestation of God. He does not say that the tripersonality of God is another "epithet" but another "note" along with His immensity and spirituality - that is to say, another characteristic fact defining God as differing from all other beings. He explicitly denies that the personal distinctions are analogous in kind to the qualities of the divine essence. He says: "Yet in that one essence of God we acknowledge the Father, with His eternal Word and Spirit. In using this distinction, however, we do not imagine three Gods, as if the Father were some other entity (aliud quiddam) than the Word, nor yet do we understand them to be mere epithets (nuda epitheta) by which God is variously designated, according to His operations; but, in common with the ecclesiastical writers, we perceive in the simple unity of God these three hypostases, that is, subsistences, which, although they coexist in one essence, are not to be confused with one another. Accordingly, though the Father is one God with His Word and Spirit, the Father is not the Word, nor the Word the Spirit." - "Adveraus P. Caroli Calumnias," Opp. vii. 312. And again in refuting the Sabellians he expressly draws the distinction: "The Sabellians do indeed raise the cavil that God is called now Father, now Son, now Spirit in no other sense than He is spoken of as both strong and good, and wise and merciful; but they are easily refuted by this, - that it is clear that these latter are epithets which manifest what God is erga nos, while the others are names which declare what God really is apud semetipsum." - "Institutes," ed. 2, and other middle edd., Opp. i. 491. 

The idea of "multiformity," not of "multiplicity" - which would imply composition. Hence Calvin, I. xiii. 2, ad fin., declares that it is impious to represent the essence of God as "multiplex"; and at the beginning of that section he warns against vainly dreaming of "a triplex God," and defines that as meaning the division of the simple essence of God among three Persons. The same warning had been given by Augustine, "De Trinitate," VI. vii. 9: "Neither, because He is a Trinity, is He to be therefore thought to be triplex; otherwise the Father alone, or the Son alone, would be less than the Father and Son together, - although it is hard to see how we can say, either the Father alone, or the Son alone, since both the Father is with the Son and the Son with the Father always inseparably." That is to say, God is not a compound of three deities, but a single deity which is essentially trinal. This mode of statement became traditional. Thus Hollaz says: "That is triune which, one in essence, has three modes of subsistence; that is triplex which is compounded of three. We say God is triune; but we are forbidden by the Christian religion to say He is triplex " (in "Examinis Theol. Acroam.," 1741, p. 297). Again: "We may speak of the trinal, but not of the triple deity." Note also Hase's "Hutterus Redivivus," 1848, pp. 166-167; and Keckermann, "Syst. S. S. Theol.," 1615, p. 21.

So in his "Instruction" or "Catechism" of 1537 and 1538 (Opp. v. 337 or xxii. 52), Calvin says: "The Scriptures, and pious experience itself, show us in the absolutely simple essence of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; so that our intelligence is not able to conceive the Father without at the same time comprehending the Son in whom His living image is repeated, and the Spirit in whom His power and virtue are manifested." Cf. the Commentary on Gen. i. 26: "I acknowledge that there is something in man which refers to the Father and the Son and the Spirit" - the exact meaning of which, however, is not apparent (see below, note 54, p. 225). 

"Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit," iii. 1843, pp. 6-7. 

Pp. 9-10. 

Pp. 10-11. 

P. 10. 

P. 20. 

Pp. 24 sq. 

Pp. 42-43. 

Pp. 44-45. 

In the "Catechism" of 1537, 1538 (Opp. v. 337 or xxii. 52) he says: "Scripture and pious experience itself show us in the absolutely simple essence of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

This is Melanchthon's enumeration of the doctrines which he will not enter into largely in his "Loci" Cf. Augusti's ed. of 1821, p. 8, as quoted by Baur, p. 20: "Proinde non est, cur multum operae ponamus in locis supremis de Deo, de unitate, de trinitate Dei, de mysterio creationis, de modo incarnationis." How little Melanchthon was intending to manifest indifference to these doctrines is already apparent from the word supremis here. Baur's comment is: "It is precisely with these doctrines which the dialectic spirit of speculation of the Scholastics regarded as its peculiar object, and on which it expended itself with the greatest subtlety and thoroughness, - with the doctrines of God, of His unity and trinity, of creation, incarnation, etc., - that Melanchthon would have so little to do, that he did not even make a place for them in his Loci, and that not on the ground that it did not belong to the plan of that first sketch of Protestant dogmatics to cover the whole system, but on the ground of the objective character of those doctrines, as they appeared to him from the standpoint determined by the Reformation" (p. 20). Even so, however, there is not involved any real underestimate of the importance of these doctrines, but only a reference of them to a place in the system less immediately related to the experience of salvation. Nor must we forget the origin of the "Loci" in an exposition of the Epistle to the Romans and its consequent lack of all systematic form, or completeness. 

"Loci," as above, p. 9, quoted by Baur, p. 21. The point of Melanchthon's remark is that Paul did not give himself over to philosophical disquisition on abstruse topics, but devoted himself single-heartedly to applying the salvation of Christ to sinning souls. 

"Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik," i. 1854, p. 105. 

Köstlin, Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1868, p. 420; Muller, "De Godsleer van Zwingli en Calvijn," 1883, p. 31. 

For example, Servetus' "De Trinitatis erroribus" appeared in 1531, and his "Dialogi de Trinitate" in 1532. 

"Institutes," I. xiii. 5, ad init.: "I could wish that they [the technical terms by which the Trinity is expressed and guarded] were buried, indeed, if only this faith stood fast among all: that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one God; and yet neither is the Son the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but they are distinct by a certain property." 

Cf. their defense of themselves, Opp. xi. 6. 

Philip Schaff, "History of the Christian Church," vii. 1892, p. 351: "A more serious trouble was created by Peter Caroli, a doctor of the Sorbonne, an unprincipled, vain, and quarrelsome theological adventurer and turncoat.... He [Caroli] raised the charge of Arianism against Farel and Calvin at a synod in Lausanne, May, 1537, because they avoided in the Confession the metaphysical terms Trinity and Person, (though Calvin did use them in his Institutio and his Catechism) and because they refused, at Caroli's dictation, to sign the Athanasian Creed with its damnatory clauses, which are unjust and uncharitable." See also Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1881, p. 27, note 1: "Calvin, who had a very high opinion of the Apostles' Creed, depreciates the Nicene Creed, as a 'carmen cantillando magis aptum, quam confessionis formula' (De Reform. Eccles.)." It would not, however, be easy to crowd more erroneous suggestions into so few words than Dr. Schaff manages to do here. Calvin did not have difficulty with the metaphysical terminology of the doctrine of the Trinity; he did not object to the damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed; he did not depreciate the Nicene Creed. Nor is the passage in which he speaks of the Nicene Creed as more suitable for a song than a creed to be found in the tract, "De vera, ecclesiae reformatione."

So the Strasburg editors and also A. Lang ("Die Heidelberger Katechismus," 1907, pp. xxxv.-xxxvi.; "Johannes Calvin," 1909, pp. 38 and 208). Doumergue ("Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, pp. 236-251) agrees with Rilliet ("Le Cat, fran. de Calvin, publie en 1537," 1878, pp. lii.-lvii) in assigning it to Calvin himself. 

Opp. xxii. 33-74. The Latin edition of this Catechism (Opp. v. 317-354) was not printed until 1538, but it must have been prepared contemporaneously with the French, since it was quoted by Calvin in the debate with Caroli as early as February, 1537 (see Bahler, "Petrus Caroli und Johannes Calvin," in the Jahrbuch für schweizerische Geschichte, xxix. 1904, p. 64, note). 

Preface to the Latin Translation, which was issued, in fact, precisely to meet these calumnies, which had obtained an incredible vogue (Opp. v. 318). 

We may compare, however, the brevity with which the doctrine of the Trinity is dealt with in the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism. 

So Colladon tells us, Opp. Calvini, xxi. 59; the registers of the Council of Geneva read the name, "Jehan Tordeur." See N. Weiss, Bulletin de la société de l'histoire du protestantisme français, lvi. 1907, pp. 228-229. 

Cf. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, pp. 241-242. Herminjard, "Correspondance," etc., ed. 2, iii. 1878, Index (note especially pp. 172-175, notes 1, 5, 7). Cf. also the clear brief account of E. Bähler, "Petrus Caroli und Johannes Calvin" (in the Jahrbuch für schweizerische Geschichte, xxix. 1904), pp. 73 sq. 

The Strasburg editors (Calvini Opera, vii. p. xxx.) characterize Caroli as "vir vana ambitione agitatus, opinionibus inconstans, moribus levis." Doumergue's judgment upon him is embodied in these words: "Unhappily his character was not as high as his intelligence, and if the new ideas attracted him they did not transform him" (ii. 1902, p. 252). He quotes Douen's characterization of him as "a bold and adventurous spirit badly balanced, and more distinguished by talents than by rectitude of conduct" (p. 253, note 2). Kampschulte ("Johann Calvin," i. 1869, p. 162) contents himself with calling him "a man of restless spirit and changeable principles" - who (p. 295) was not above playing on occasion a dishonorable part. A. Lang's ("Johannes Calvin," 1909, p. 40) characterization runs: "Acute but also weak in character and self-seeking." The inevitable rehabilitation of Caroli has been undertaken by Eduard Bähler, Pastor at Thierachern in Switzerland, in a long article entitled "Petrus Caroli und Johannes Calvin: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Kultur der Reformationszeit," published in the twenty-ninth volume of the Jahrbuch für schweizerische Geschichte (1904, pp. 39188). Bähler's thesis is that Caroli belonged really to that large semi-Protestant party in the French Church which found its inspiration in Faber Stapulensis and its spiritual head in William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux; occupying thus a middle ground he could rest content neither in the Roman nor in the Protestant camp - and from this ambiguous position is to be explained all his vacillations and treacheries. Granting the general contention and its explanatory value up to a certain point, it supplies no defense of Caroli's character and conduct, which Bähler's rehabilitation leaves where it found them. Cf. A. Lang's estimate of Bähler's lack of success: "There remains clinging to Caroli enough of wretched frivolity and of the most deplorable inconstancy. How great over against him stands out particularly Farel!" ("Johannes Calvin," 1909, p. 209). On Caroli the historians of the Protestant movement in Metz should be consulted, e.g., Dietsch, "Die evang. Kirche von Metz," pp. 68-77, and Winkelmann, "Der Anteil der deutschen Protestanten an den kirchlichen Reformbestrebungen in Metz bis 1543," in the Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für lothringische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, ix. 1897, pp. 229 sq. 

Cf. Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, p. 258, note; and Bähler, "Petrus Caroli und Johannes Calvin," p. 73. 

Cf. Bähler, as cited, p. 71. 

Doumergue, ii. 1902, pp. 266-268. 

An old instance is supplied by Bellarmine, who, on Caroli's testimony, seeks to intimate that Calvin's refusal at the Council of Lausanne to sign the Creeds resembled the conduct of the Arians at the Council of Aquileia ("Controversia de Christo," ii. 19, near middle, in "Opp. Omnia," Paris, i. 1870, p. 335). "Calvin," he says, "is not unlike the Arians in this: for at the Council of Aquileia, St. Ambrose never could extort from the two Arian heretics that they should say that the Son is very God of very God; for they always responded that the Son is the very Only-begotten, Son of the very God, and the like, but never that He is very God of very God, although they were asked perhaps a hundred times. And that from Calvin at the Council of Lausanne, it could never be extorted that he should confess that the Son is God of God, Petrus Caroli, who was present, reports in his letter to the Cardinal of Lorraine." Bellarmine is blind to the fact that Calvin was ready to confess all that the Creeds contained to the exaltation of the Son and more, while the Arians would not confess so much. Even F. W. Kampschulte ("Johann Calvin," u. s. w., ii. 1899, p. 171) permits himself to say that Calvin "in the controversy with Caroli expresses himself on the Athanasian symbol in a very dubious way (in sehr bedenklichem Masse)," and adds in a note: "It was not groundlessly that he was upbraided with this by his later opponents. 'Calvin waxes angry and employs the same taunts as the anti-trinitarians against the Symbol of Athanasius and the Council of Nice, when his opinion touching the Trinity is brought under discussion.' Cf. F. Claude de Saintes, Declaration d'aucuns atheismes de la doctrine de Calvin, Paris, 1568, p. 108." Cf. on Kampschulte, Doumergue, "Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, p. 266. We have already had occasion to point out the uncomprehending way in which Dr. Schaff speaks of the matter (above, p. 199, note 22), in which, however, he is only the type of a great crowd of writers. 

"Adv. P. Caroli calumnias," Opp. vii. 315: Calvino quidem et aliis propositum nequaque erat symbols, abiicere aut illis derogare fidem. Compare what he writes on Oct. 8, 1539, to Farel of the discussion at Strasburg: Quamquam id quoque diluere promtum erat, nos non respuisse, multo minus improbasse, sed ideo tantum detrectasse subscriptionem, ne ille, quod captaverat, de ministerio nostro triumpharet (Herminjard, vi. 1883, p. 53). 

"Adv. P. Caroli calumnias," Opp. vii. 316: ego neque credo neque discredo. So Calvin tells Farel that Caroli had reported at Straaburg not that Calvin and his colleagues had denied the teaching of the three Symbols, but: nos vero non tantum detrectasse [subscriptionem], sed vexasse multis cachinnis symbola, illa. quae perpetua bonorum consensione authoritatem firmam in Ecclesia semper habuerunt (Herminjard, vi. 1883, p. 52). And, when writing to the Pope, what Caroli charges the Protestant preachers with doing is "ridiculing, satirizing, defaming" the symbols and denying not their truth but their authority: eoque devenisse ut concilii Niceni et divi Athanasii symbols, maiori ex parte riderent, proacinderent, proculcarent, et ab ecclesia legitima umquam fuisae recepta negarent (Herminjard, iv. ed. 2, 1878, p. 249). Compare below, note 37, p. 209. 

Cf. A. Lang ("Johannes Calvin," 1909, p. 41): "There shows itself here Calvin's self-reliance and independence as over against every kind of ecclesiastical tradition.... Thus, in the Confession which he adduced at Lausanne in his and his colleagues' names, he explains: 'We cannot seek God's majesty anywhere except in His Word; nor can we think anything about Him except with His Word, or say anything of Him except through His Word.' . . . 'A religious Confession is nothing but a witness to the faith which abides in us; ... therefore it must be drawn only from the pure fountain of Scripture."' 

Opp. xb. 83-84 (Herminjard, iv. ed. 2, 1878, pp. 185-186): "Ad haec Calvinus, nos in Dei unius fidem iurasse respondit, non Athanasii cuius Symbolum nulla unquam legitima ecclesia approbasset," Doumergue ("Jean Calvin," ii. 1902, p. 256) renders correctly: "Nous avons jure la foi en un seul Dieu, et non en Athanase, dont le symbole n'a été approuvé par aucune Église légitime." Williston Walker ("John Calvin," 1906, p. 197), missing the construction, renders misleadingly: "We swear in the faith of the one God, not of Athanasius, whose creed no true church would ever have approved." So also A. Lang ("Johannes Calvin," 1909, p. 40): "Wir haben den Glauben an den einen Gott beschworen, aber nicht an Athanasius, dessen Symbol eine wahre Kirche nie gebilligt haben würde." Perhaps worst of all, James Orr, "The Christian View of God and the World," 1893, p. 309, note: "We have sworn to the belief in One God, and not to the creed of Athanasius, whose symbol a true Church would never have had admitted." Calvin is not declaring the Athanasian Creed unworthy of the approbation of any true church; he is recalling the fact that it is a private document authorized by no valid ecclesiastical enactment. For Caroli's account of what Calvin said, see above, note 35, end. Nevertheless, the Athanasian Creed had attained throughout the Western Church a position of the highest reverence (for the extent of its "reception and use" see Ommaney, "A Critical Dissertation on the Athanasian Creed," 1897, pp. 420 sq.), and was soon to be "approbated" by the Protestant Churches at large. Zwingli in the "Fidei Ratio" (1530) and Luther in the Smalcald Articles (1537) had already placed it among the Symbols of the Churches, whose authority they recognized: and the "Formula Concordiae" and many Reformed Confessions, beginning with the Gallican, were soon formally to accord it a place of authority in the Protestant Churches. See Loofs, "Athanasianum," in Herzog, "Realencyklopadie," ed. 3, ii. p. 179; Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," ed. 1, i. p. 40; E. F. Karl Miller, "Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche," Index sub voc., "Athanasianum"; Ménégoz, as cited in note 42. Calvin found at Strasburg that the manner in which he had spoken of the Creeds was offensive to his colleagues there. He writes to Farel (Herminjard, vi. 1883, p. 53): "It was somewhat harder to purge ourselves in the matter of the Symbols: for this was what was offensive (odiosum), that we repudiated them, though they ought to be beyond controversy, since they were received by the suffrages of the whole Church. It was easy to explain that we did not disapprove, much less reject them, but only declined to subscribe them that he [Caroli] might not enjoy the triumph over our ministry which he longed for. Some odium, however, always remained." 

Opp. vii. 316: non tam ad rem quam ad hominem. 

iocatus est (ibid., p. 315). 

"When he had recited three clauses of the Athanasian Symbol, he was not able to recite the fourth . . ." (ibid., p. 311, top). 

Ibid., pp. 315-316. This manner of speaking of the Nicene Creed also impressed the Strasburg theologians unfavorably. Calvin writes to Farel Oct. 8, 1539 (Herminjard, vi. 1883, p. 54): "I had to give satisfaction about the battologies. I could not by any effort convince them that there is any battology there. I admitted, however, that I should not have so spoken if I had not been compelled by that man's wickedness." 

Schaff: see p. 199 above, note 22. E. Ménégoz is therefore in the essentials of the matter right, when he expresses his wonder that men can suppose that the circumstances that Calvin "once refused to obey an injunction to sign the Symbol," or "pronounced a judgment unfavorable to the literary form of this document" - M. Ménégoz is confusing for the moment the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds - prove that "in the depths of his heart he held these anathemas in aversion" ("Publications diverses sur le Fidéisme," 1900, pp. 276-277). He adds with equal justice: "It is an infelicitous idea to appeal to Calvin as a witness that Protestantism, though receiving the Catholic Symbols, had no intention of approving their anathemas. And it is a historical error to imagine that the Reformers would have accepted these Symbols, if they had not firmly believed them, if they had felt any scruples, or cherished any mental reservations regarding the damnatory clauses. There was no paltering in a double sense in that age. There was no practice of 'economy.' . . . If the Protestants had felt any hesitation about the anathemas, they would have said so without ambiguity, and they would have purely and simply discarded the Symbols. Nothing would have been easier." 

Opp. vii. 315. 

Opp. vii. 318. 

"Adv. P. Caroli calumnias": Opp. vii. 318. 

non fraudulenter. 

Dorner's account of Calvin's attitude to these questions is not quite exact either in the motive suggested, or in the precise action ascribed to him, though it recognizes Calvin's contribution to a better understanding of the doctrine ("Doctrine of the Person of Christ," E. T. II. ii. 1862, p. 158, note 1): "Even Calvin, about the time of his dispute with Caroli, asserted the necessity of a developing revision of the doctrine of the Trinity. On this ground he declined pledging himself to the Athanasian Creed, and wished to cast aside the terms 'persona,' 'Trinitas,' as scholastic expressions. At the same time he was so far from being inclined towards the Antitrinitarians, that he wished to carry out the doctrine of the Trinity still more completely. He saw clearly that in the traditional form of the doctrine, the Son had not full deity, because aseity (aseitas) was reserved to the Father alone, who thus received a preponderance over the Son, and was identified with the Monas, or the Divine essence. The Antitrinitarians, with whom he had to struggle, usually directed their attacks on this weak point of the dogma, and deduced therefrom the Antitrinitarian conclusions." 

The "Institutes" as a whole were about doubled in length from the first edition (1536) to the second (1539), and again about doubled in the last edition (1559), so that the last edition (1559) is about four times as long as the first (1536). The treatment of the Trinity was, therefore, a little more expanded than the volume as a whole. 

This argument is retained in the later editions and appears in its final form in the ed. of 1559, I. xiii. 16. In its earliest statement it runs thus (1536, pp. 107-108: Strasburg ed., p. 58): "Paul so connects these three things, God, faith and baptism, that he reasons from one to the other (Eph. 4). So that, because there is one faith, thence he demonstrates that there is one God; because there is one baptism, thence he shows that there is one faith. For since faith ought not to be looking about hither and thither, neither wandering through various things, but should direct its view towards the one God, be fixed on Him and adhere to Him; it may be easily proved from these premises that if there be many faiths there should be many Gods. Again because baptism is the sacrament of faith, it confirms to us His unity, seeing that it is one. But no one can profess faith except in the one God. Therefore as we are baptized into the one faith, so our faith believes in the one God. Both that therefore is one and this is one, because each is of one God. Hence also it follows that it is not lawful to be baptized except into the one God, because we are baptized into faith in Him, in whose name we are baptized. Now, the Scriptures have wished (Mat. at end) that we should be baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, at the same time that it wishes all to believe with one faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. What is that, truly, except a plain testimony that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God? For if we are baptized in their name, we are baptized into faith in them. They are therefore one God, if they are worshipped in one faith." 

Opp, i, 58. This awkward periphrasis suggests that, when the "Institutes" were written - in 1534-1535 - Calvin had no convenient expression at hand for the Tetragrammaton. This conjecture is supported by the circumstance that "Jehovah" does not seem to occur in the first edition; it is lacking even in the Preface to the First Commandment, where the customary Dominus takes its place. Already in the spring of 1537, however (Opp. vii. 314; ix. 704, 708, 709; xb. 107, 121) it is used familiarly; and thenceforward throughout Calvin's life. During his sojourn at Basle (1535) Calvin had studied Hebrew with Sebastian Munster (Baumgartner, "Calvin Hébraïsant," 1889, p. 18), and it was doubtless from him that he acquired the pronunciation "Jehovah" (see Munster on Ex. vi. 3 in "Critici Sacri," Amsterdam ed., 1698, i. 107, 108; Frankfort ed., i. 447; cf. 32). From his own comment on Ex. vi. 3 we may learn the clearness of Calvin's conviction that "Jehovah" is the right pronunciation: "It would be tedious to enumerate all the opinions on the name 'Jehovah.' It is certainly a foul superstition of the Jews that they dare not either pronounce or write it, but substitute 'Adonai' for it. It is no more probable that, as many teach, it is unpronounceable because it is not written according to grammatical rule. . . . Nor do I assent to the grammarians who will not have it pronounced because its inflection is irregular. . . ." How fixed the pronunciation "Jehovah" had become at Geneva by 1570 is revealed by an incident which occurred at the "Promotions" at the Academy that year. The Hebrew Professor, Corneille Bertram, having declared in response to an inquiry that "Adonai" not "Jehovah" was to be read, was rebuked therefor and compelled to apologize: "This M. de Bèze and all the Company found ill-said, and remonstrated with him for agitating this curious and idle question, and for affirming an opinion which very many great men of this age, of good knowledge, piety, and judgment, have held to be absurd, superstitious and merely Rabbinic" (Reg. Comp., 31 May, 1570, cited by Charles Borgeaud, "Histoire de l'Universite de Geneve," 1900, p. 228). - The history of the pronunciation "Jehovah" has not been adequately investigated. See, however, G. F. Moore, "Notes on the Name hyhy," A. J. T., 1908, xii. pp. 34-52; A. J. S. L., 1909, xxv. pp. 312-318; 1911, xxviii. pp. 56-62. It has become the scholastic tradition to say that it was introduced by Peter Galatin, confessor of Leo X, and first appears in his "De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis," ii. 10 (the first of two chapters so numbered) which was first published in 1516 (cf. Buhl's "Gesenius' Lexicon," ed. 13, 1899, p. 311, "about 1520 "; Brown, Driver, Briggs, "Hebrew and English Lexicon," 1906, p. 218a, 1520; Kittel, "Herzog," 3 viii. pp. 530-531, 1518; Davidson, Hastings' B. D., art. "God," 1520; A. J. Maclean, Hastings' One Vol. B. D., 1909, p. 300a, 1518; A. H. McNeile, "Westminster Commentary on Exodus," 1908, p. 23, 1518; Oxford English Dictionary, sub voc., 1516; and Moore, op. cit., 1518: cf. the very strong statement of Dillmann, "Alttest. Theologie," 1895, p. 215). But this tradition is simply reported from mouth to mouth, from Drusius' tract on the Tetragrammaton ("Critici Sacri," Amsterdam ed., vol. I. part ii. pp. 322 sq.: also in Reland, "Decas. Exercitationum ... de vera pronuntiatione nominis Jehova," 1707). Since Drusius no one seems to have made any independent effort to ascertain the facts, except F. Böttcher, "Ausführliches Lehrbuch der Hebräischen Sprache," i. 1866, § 88 (p. 49, note 2). In copying Drusius the scholars have failed to note that he himself points out in a later note, inserted on p. 355, that the form "Jehovah" (Porchetus' form is Johova, not Jehova) occurs already in Porchetus, A.D. 1303: and it has been pointed out also that it occurs in Raimund Martini's "Pugio Fidei," which was written about 1270 (Böttcher's suggestion that it may be an interpolation in the "Pugio Fidei" does not seem convincing, although Moore agrees with him here, op. cit.). It is not unlikely that Galatin, who draws heavily on Martini either directly or through Porchetti, may have derived it from him: and in any event he uses it not as a novel invention of his own, but as a well-known form. The origin and age of the pronunciation are accordingly yet to seek. The words of Dr. F. Chance (The Athenæum, No. 2119, June 6, 1868, p. 796) are here in point: "There is no doubt, I think, that the letters jhvh were from the very introduction of the Hebrew points pointed as they now are . . . and if so, surely anybody that read what he had before him must have read Jehovah. If the word were never so written before the sixteenth century, it was probably because up to that time Hebrew was studied by very few people, except by Jews who could not write this holiest of God's names, and by Gentiles who, having learned their Hebrew from Jews, followed their example in substituting for it in reading and writing, Adonai, the Lord, etc." - No doubt the vogue of the form in the middle of the sixteenth century is due, not to its accidental occurrences in Galatin's book, but to the progress of Hebrew scholarship in sequence to the revival of letters, which looked upon the Jewish refusal to pronounce the name as mere superstition and attached an exaggerated importance to the Massoretic pointing. The debate about the proper pronunciation of the name is, in any event, a Humanistic phenomenon, and the form "Jehovah" is found in use everywhere where Hebrew scholarship penetrated, until it was corrected by this scholarship itself. Reuchlin indeed appears not to have used it; nor Melanchthon. But it is used by Luther (1526-1527 and 1543, though not in his Bible), and by Matthew Tyndale in his Pentateuch of 1530, and so prevailingly by Protestant scholars that Romish controversialists were tempted to represent it as an impiety (so Genebrardus) of the "Calviniani et Bezani" following the example of Sanctes Pagninus (who, according to MS. but not printed copies did indeed use it). 

Opp. i. 58. 

The most notable additions are the argument on u`po,stasij in Heb. i. 3 (§ 2) ; the definition of "person" (§ 6); and the whole polemic against Servetus and Gentilia (§§ 22 to end). These sections contain nine of the sixteen new columns. 

Cf. Köstlin, Studien und Kritiken, 1868, p. 419, who speaks of "the circumspect, cautious moderation with which Calvin confines himself to the simplest principles of the Church conception and refuses to pass beyond the simple declarations of Scripture to a dogmatic formulation, much more to scholastic questions and answers, one step farther than seemed to him to be demanded for the protection of the Godhead of the Redeemer and of the Holy Spirit from the assaults of old and new enemies." 

Cf. I. xv. 4, ad fin. Cf. Commentary on Genesis, i. 26, where, speaking of the human faculties, he remarks: "But Augustine, beyond all others, speculates with excessive refinement for the purpose of fabricating a trinity in man. For in laying hold of the three faculties of the soul enumerated by Aristotle, the intellect, the memory and the will, he afterwards out of one trinity derives many. If any reader, having leisure, wishes to enjoy such speculations, let him read the tenth and fourteenth books of The Trinity, also the eleventh book of The City of God. I acknowledge indeed that there is something in man which refers to the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit; and I have no difficulty in admitting the above distribution of the faculties, ... but a definition of the image of God ought to rest on a firmer basis than such subtleties." For the later Reformed attitude, see Heppe, "Die Dogmatik der ev.-ref. Kirche," 1861, pp. 85 sqq. 

In ed. 1 (1536) he remarks (Opp. i. 59) that "that the Holy Spirit is 'another' than Christ is proved by more than ten passages from the Gospel of John (John xiv. xv.)."

This passage is already found in ed. 1 (1536) (Opp. i. 62): "The Persons are so distinguished by the Scriptures that they assign to the Father the principium agendi, and the fountain and origin of all things; to the Son the wisdom and consilium agendi; to the Spirit the virtus et efficacia actionis; whence also the Son is called the Word of God, not such as men speak or think, but eternal and unchangeable, as emerging in an ineffable manner from the Father."

Cf. L. L. Paine, "The Evolution of Trinitarianism," 1900, p. 95: "It is a remarkable fact that the Protestant Reformation only increased the prestige of Augustine. . . . The question of the Trinity was not a subject of controversy and the Augustinian form of trinitarian doctrine became a fixed tradition. The Nicene Creed, as interpreted by the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed, was accepted on all sides and passed into all the Protestant Confessions. It is to be noted that Calvin insisted on the use of the term 'person' as the only word that would unmask Sabellianism. He also held to numerical unity of essence. This would seem to indicate that Calvin believed that God was one Being in three real persons, and, if so, he must have allowed that in God nature and person are not coincident. Yet he nowhere raises the question, and I am inclined to think he was not conscious of any departure from the views of Augustine." Calvin does, however, repeatedly raise the question whether "nature" and "person" are coincident and repeatedly decides that they are, in the sense that the person is the whole nature in a personal distinction. "The whole nature (tota natura)" is affirmed to be "in each hypostasis (in unaquaque hypostasi)," though there is present to each one its own propriety (I. xiii. 19). Hence there is no such thing as "a triplex God," as "the simple essence of God being divided among the three Persons" (xiii. 2); the essence is not multiplex, and the Son contains the whole of it in Himself (totam in se), etc. (ibid.). 

It is the same thing that is meant by G. A. Meier, "Lehre von der Trinität, etc.," 1844, ii. pp. 58-59, where, after remarking that the Reformed were prone to emphasize especially the unity of God (which involves what we have called "equalization"), he proceeds: "External circumstances early led to the sharp emergence of this peculiarity. In the controversy with Gentilis, who maintained that the essential being of the Son was from the Father, Calvin was compelled to contend that in His Godhead and in His nature, the Son is of Himself, and without principium, and only in His personal subsistence, has His principium in the Father.1 Catholic theologians, especially Petau, have charged him with heresy for this, though he was only enunciating with increased sharpness the conviction of the Church, and rightly recalling that otherwise a plurality of Gods would be introduced.2" At the points indicated the following notes are added. "1. 'Since the name Jehovah is used in the passages cited above, it follows that the Son of God is with respect to His deity solely of Himself.' Val. Gentilis impietatum brevis explic. (Calv. Opp., Amstel. 1667, viii. p. 572). 'The essence of the Son has no principium, but the principium of the Person is God Himself' (loc. cit., p. 573). 'We concede that the Son takes origin from the Father, so far as He is Son, but it is an origin not of time, nor of essence.... but of order only' (l. c., p. 580)." "2. 'Unless moreover the Son is God along with the Father, a plurality of Gods will necessarily be brought in' (Ep. ad Fratres Polonos, p. 591). Accordingly Calvin called the "Deus de Deo" a "hard saying." Against him see Petau, De theol. dogm., II. lib. iii. c. 3, §§ 2, 3. On the other hand, Bellarmine acknowledges that in the maintenance of the auvtoqeo,thj of the Son there is no real departure from the doctrine of the Church." 

Cf. "Adv. P. Caroli calumnias" (Opp. vii. 312): "Yet in that one essence of God we acknowledge the Father with His eternal Word and Spirit. In using this distinction, however, we do not imagine three Gods, as if the Father were some other thing than the Son, nor yet do we understand them to be naked epithets, by which God is variously designated from His actions; but, along with the ecclesiastical writers, we perceive in the simple unity of God these three hypostases, that is subsistences, which although they coexist in one essence are not to be confused with each other. Accordingly, though the Father is one God with His Word and Spirit, the Father is not the Word, nor the Word the Spirit." 

"Expositio impietatis Valentini Gentilis," 1561 (Opp. ix. 374, 380). 

Ibid., Preface, p. 368. Cf. Beza in his Life of Calvin, who speaks of Gentilis under the year 1558 and describes him as wishing to make the Father alone auvto,qeoj (Opp. xxi. 154). These four references (ix. 368, 374, 380; xxi. 154) are all that are given in the Index to the Strasburg ed. (xxii. 493 - this word does not occur in the Index of xxiii. sq.) of Calvin's works under the word auvto,qeoj. 

Opp. i. 58, at bottom of column. 

May 14 and 31, 1537. 

Opp. vii. 314: qui a se ipso semper habuit ut esset, et aliis subsistendi virtutem inspiravit. Cf. ix. 707; xb. 107, 121. Cf. Ruchat, "Histoire de la reformation de la Suisse," 1835 sq., v. pp. 27-28; Bähler, as cited, p. 78; and also Merle D'Aubigné, "History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin," E. T. vi. 1877, p. 316. 

Ibid., p. 315. 

Ibid., p. 322: "But the most atrocious calumny of all is where he impugns this statement: that Christ always had it of Himself that He should be; in which he has been followed by some others, men of no account, who, however, worry good men with their improbity; in the number of whom is a certain rogue (furcifer) very like himself (Caroli), who calls himself Cortesius." 

References to Augustine and Cyril are given in the margin: and in 1543 the following is inserted here in the text: "'By these appellations which denote distinctions,' says Augustine, 'what is signified is a reciprocal relation; not the substance itself which is one."' 

In 1543 there was added: "and therefore is one principium with the Father. The cause of this diversity, Augustine explains well and perspicuously in another place, speaking as follows: 'Christ with reference to Himself (ad se) is called God; with reference to the Father (ad patrem) is called Son.' And again 'The Father ad se is called God, ad filium is called Father. What is called Father ad filium is not the Son; what is called Son ad patrem is not the Father: what is called Father ad se, and Son ad se is the same God.' When therefore we speak simpliciter of the Son without respect to the Father, we well and properly assert Him to be a se, and therefore call Him the unique principium. When, however, we are noting the relation in which He stands to the Father, we properly make the Father the principium of the Son." To this there is further added in 1559: "To the explication of this matter the fifth book of Augustine's De Trinitate, is wholly devoted. It is far safer to rest in that relation which he teaches, than by more subtly penetrating into the divine mystery to wander through many vain speculations." And with these words the paragraph closes in 1559. 

Opp., i. 490-491. 

See Haag, "La France protestante," sub nom., "Chaponneau," ed. 2, iii. p. 1084: "Shortly afterwards Chaponneau married; he married a widow whose daughter soon became the wife in turn of the Pastor John Courtois, known by some disputes that he had with Calvin. Chaponneau no more than his son-in-law hesitated to enter the lists with Calvin. The quarrel had its rise from a question relating to the person of Jesus. . . ." 

Opp. xi. 560, Letter 474. 

Opp. xi. 652, Letter 521. 

Opp. xii. 16, Letter 607; cf. the letter of Capunculus, Opp. xi. 781, Letter 590. 

The "Defensio" was pseudonymously published under the name of Nicholas des Gallars, Calvin's secretary. Bähler, as cited, pp. 153 sq., judges it very unfavorably and sharply criticises the advantage taken of its pseudonymity and its inaccuracies, as well as its harshness of tone. "The number of Calvin's polemical writings," says he, "is great, and they are all masterworks of their order. No other, however, surpasses the Defensio in harshness and bitterness. It is all in all, scarcely a happy creation of Calvin's.... From the standpoint of literary history the Defensio indisputably deserves unrestricted praise. The elegant, crisp style, the skill with which the author not only morally annihilates his opponent, but puts upon him the stamp of an impertinent person not to be taken seriously, and permeates all with the most sovereign scorn, makes the reading of this book, now nearly four hundred years old, an aesthetic enjoyment, which obscures the protest of righteous indignation at the startling injustices and glaring untruths which the author has permitted himself against Caroli. No doubt Calvin's conduct, if it cannot be excused, may yet to a certain degree be understood, when we reflect that Caroli, through almost ten years, had brought to the Reformer of Geneva incessant annoyances and the most bitter mortification, and by his accusations had imperilled his life-work as perhaps no other antagonist had been able to do" (p. 159). Compare the more measured censure of A. Lang ("Johannes Calvin," 1909, p. 42) of the harshness of tone and opprobrious language used towards Caroli, in contrast with the high praise given the three Reformers - "when, although it was questionless written by Calvin himself, it was published in the name of his amanuensis, Nicholas des Gallars." 

Opp. vii. 322. 

Opp. vii. 323. 

Opp. vii. 323-324. 

Opp. vii. 314. 

Opp. ii. 110; "Institutes," 1559, I. xiii. 23: nam quum ubique ponatur nomen Iehovae, sequitur deitatis respectu ex se ipso esse. 

P. 113: I. xiii. 25. 

Cf. I. xiii. 2: The Son contains in Himself the whole essence of God: not a part of it only, nor by deflection only, but in integra perfectione. 

Already in the first edition of the "Institutes" this phraseology is fixed; Opp. i. 64: "By which we confess that we believe in Jesus Christ, who, we are convinced, is the unique Son of God the Father, not like believers by adoption and grace only, but naturally as begotten from eternity by the Father." So p. 62: "The Word of the Father - not such as men speak or think, but eternal and unchangeable, as emerging in an ineffable manner from the Father." 

Cf. De Moor, "In Marckii Compend.," i. 1761, p. 775: "The Nicene fathers had reference to nothing but the personal order of subsistence when they said the Son is 'God of God, Light of Light'; while, considered absolutely and essentially, the Son is the same God with the Father." This is expressed by Dr. Shedd with his wonted clearness and emphasis as follows ("A History of Christian Doctrine," 1873, i. pp. 339 sq.): "The Nicene Trinitarians rigorously confined the ideas of 'Sonship' and 'generation' to the hypostatical character. It is not the essence of the Deity that is generated, but a distinction in that essence. And, in like manner, the term 'procession' applied to the Holy Spirit pertains exclusively to the third hypostasis, and has no application to the substance of the Godhead. The term 'begotten' in the Nicene trinitarianism is descriptive only of that which is peculiar to the second Person, and confined to Him. The Son is generated with respect only to His Sonship, or, so to speak, His individuality (ivdio,thj), but is not generated with respect to His essence or nature.... The same mutatis mutandis is true of the term 'procession.' . . . Thus, from first to last, in the Nicene construction of the doctrine of the Trinity, the terms 'beget,' 'begotten,' and 'proceed,' are confined to the hypostatical distinctions, and have no legitimate or technical meaning, when applied to the Trinity as a whole, or, in other words, to the Essence in distinction from the hypostasis." . . . Calvin was fully entitled to avail himself of this distinction, as he fully did so. 

His later Trinitarian controversies with Gentilis and his companions brought out many strong assertions precisely in point. For example, in the discussion in the "Institutes" (I. xiii. 23 sq.), he defines the precise thing he wishes to refute as the representation of the Father as "the sole essentiator" who "in forming the Son and the Spirit has transfused His own deity into them" (§ 23); to whom therefore alone the "essence of God belongs" and to whom as "essentiator" the Son and Spirit owe their essence. In opposition to this he declares that "although we confess that in point of order and degree the principium divinitatis is in the Father, we nevertheless pronounce it a detestable figment that the essence is the property of the Father alone, as if He were the deificator of the Son; because in this way either the essence would be multiplex or the Son would be called God only in a titular and imaginary sense. If they allow that the Son is God but second from the Father, then the essence will be in Him genita et formata, which is in the Father ingenita et informis" (§24, near end). "we teach from the Scriptures," he explains (§ 25, beginning) "that there is one God in point of essence (essentialiter), and therefore the essence of both Son and Spirit is ingenita. But inasmuch as the Father is first in order and has begotten from Himself (genuit ex se) His own wisdom, He is rightly considered, as I have just said, the principium et fons totius divinitatis. Thus God indefinitely is ingentitus; and the Father with regard to His Person also is ingenitus." Calvin's weapon against the tritheists, therefore, was precisely that the essence of God, whether in the first, second or third Person, is not generated: that it is only the Person which is generated, and that, strictly speaking, only the Person of the Son - the Person of the Father being ingenerate, and it being more proper to speak of the Person of the Spirit as "proceeding." This is merely, however, the traditional representation, utilized by Calvin, not a new view of his own. 

Cf. Sheldon, "History of Christian Doctrine," 1886, i. p. 202: "Like Origen, the Nicene fathers seem to have conceived of the generation, not as something accomplished once for all, but as something parallel with the eternal life of the Son, ever complete and ever continued." Also, Shedd, "A History of Christian Doctrine," i. 1864, p. 317: "Eternal generation is an immanent perpetual activity in an ever existing essence." 

Of this Scholten, "De Leer der Hervormde Kerk," ed. 4, ii. p. 237 (cf. i. p. 24, ii. p. 229) makes great capital. In the middle edd. of the "Institutes," i. 483, however, Calvin in the very act of discarding these texts as proof asserts his firm belief in the fact of the Divine Sonship of our Lord, as is immediately to be shown. On Calvin's clear-sightedness and critical honesty in dealing with such texts Baumgartner has some good remarks ("Calvin Hébraïsant," 1889, pp. 37, 38). He illustrates the scandal it created at the time among those accustomed to rely on these texts by citing Aegidius Hunnius' book with the portentous title: Calvinus judaizans, hoc est: Judaicae glossae et corruptelae quibus Johannes Calvinus illustrissima Scripturae sacrae loca et testimonia de gloriosa trinitate, deitate Christi et Spiritus Sancti, cumprimis autem vaticinia prophetarum de adventu Messiae, nativitate ejus passione et resurrectione, ascensione in coelos et sessione ad dextram Dei, detestandum in modum corrumpere non exhorruit. Addita est corruptelarum confutatio (Wittemberg: 1593). 

Middle edd. of "Institutes," Opp. i. 483. 

Opp. vii. 315, where it is explicitly declared that he had no intention of derogating from the symbol: cf. p. 316. 

Preface to the "Expositio impietatis Valen. Gentilis," 1561 (Opp. ix. 368): "But the words of the Council of Nice run: Deum esse de Deo. A hard saying (dura locutio), I confess; but for removing its ambiguity no one can be a more suitable interpreter than Athanasius, who dictated it. And certainly the design of the fathers was none other than to maintain the origin which the Son draws from the Father in respect of Person, without in any way opposing the sameness of the essence and deity in the two, so that as to essence the Word is God absque principio, while in Person the Son has His principium from the Father." Petavius' criticism is therefore wide of the mark when ("De Trinitate," III. iii. 2, ed. Paris, 1865, pt. ii. p. 523; cf. also Bellarmine, "De Christo," Preface of his "Opera," i. p. 244) he declares that Calvin "speaks rashly and altogether untheologically (temere et prorus avqeologh,twj) when he calls this locution 'hard,' because he supposes that Christ, as He is God is a se ipso, i.e., auvto,qeoj." But Calvin (who certainly does believe that Christ is self-existent God and therefore may properly be called auvto,qeoj), does not find the locution Deus de (or ex) Deo "hard" (dura) on that account: he thoroughly believes both in the qeo,j evk qeou/ of the Creed and in the auvtoqeo,thj of Christ, and found no difficulty whatever in harmonizing them. When he pronounces this locution "harsh" his mind is on the possibility of its misuse by the Antitrinitarians as if it meant that the Son was made God by the Father. When, therefore, Petavius adds (§ 3, p. 524): "So then, the locution, God is from God, is not only true but useful (proba) and consentaneous to Christian teaching; not as the Autotheani and Calvinists ignorantly babble, hard" - he says no more for the substance of it than Calvin had himself said in the very passage in which he called the locution "harsh," - that is to say, that it expresses an important truth, this, to wit, that the Son draws His origin, with respect to His Person, from the Father. No doubt Calvin may also suggest that there might wisely have been chosen a less ambiguous way of saying this than the "harsh" locution Deus de Deo - which certainly is capable of being misunderstood as teaching that the Son owes His divinity to the Father - as Gentilis taught. See below, note 94. 

"Systematic Theology," i. 1874, pp. 462 sq. On pp. 466, 467 he gives a very clear statement of Calvin's position, of which he expresses full approval. 

"Diatribe de Christo auvtoqew|/," printed by Voetius, in "Selectae Disputationes Theologicae," Part i. 1648, p. 445: calumniandi potius libidine quam erroris cum Arianis societate. 

We are quoting from Bellarmine, "De Christo," II. cap. xix. ad init. (his "Opera," i. p. 333). Cf. the opening words of Petavius' discussion, "De Trinitate," VI. xi. 5 (his "Opera," iii. p. 251): "With respect to more recent writers, there exists a far from small altercation of the Catholics with heretics, especially with Calvin, Beza and their crew (asseclis). For Genebrardus in the first book of his "De Trinitate" very sharply upbraids (insectatur) them and gives them the name autotheanites, because they say the Son has His divinity and essence of Himself; an error mentioned also by William Lindanus." 

Voetius, "Dispt.," i. pp. 453, 454, gives an account of the opponents of the Reformed ascription of auvtoqeo,thj to Christ. There are three classes: Romanists, Lutherans, and Arminians, to which he adds as fourth and fifth classes Peter Caroli, and the Antitrinitarians (Crell and Schlichting). The Romanists he subdivides into two classes, those who find that Calvin taught heresy and those who object to his language only. The latter sub-class includes only Bellarmine and Gregory of Valentia. Under the former, however, he enumerates a long list of writers with exact references. Cf. also De Moor, "In Marck. Comp.," i. 1761, pp. 773-774 (V. x.). 

That is to say, the phrase "God of God" is interpreted to mean "God the Son, of God the Father" - God in the first instance meaning (not the essence but) the Person of the Son, and in the second instance (not the essence but) the Person of the Father. Only on this supposition, as Gregory allows, can the phrase "God of God" be applied to Christ in exactness of speech. That is to say, Gregory finds the phrase as inexact as Calvin does when he calls it a dura locutio. 

We repeat the passage from Gomarus' citation in Voetius' "Disputat.," i. 1648, p. 448. Gomarus cites Gregory, "Ad summae Thomae," part i. disp. 2, quaest. 1, punct. 1, p. 718. The passage is found also, however, in Gregory's treatise "De Trinitate," ii. 1 (to which Voetius refers us, p. 454, adding appropriate references also to i. 22 and ii. 17). See Gregorii de Valentia ". . . de rebus fidei hoc tempore controversis Libri," Paris, 1610, p. 205, first column, B and C. 

Op. cit., p. 334a. 

Op. cit., p. 252a. 

It is interesting to observe how constantly the argument hangs formally on the suppressed premise of the Nicene doctrine of generation. Thus Bellarmine argues (p. 334b) that "those who assert that the Son has His essense a se ipso err because they are compelled either (1) to make the Son ingenerate and the same person with the Father, or (2) to multiply the essences, or at least (3) to distinguish the essence from the person realiter and so introduce a quaternity." As Calvin does none of these things, he is pronounced orthodox in meaning. But the point now to be illustrated lies in the assumption under (1) that to make the Son ingenerate is to make Him the same person with the Father. It does not occur to Bellarmine as possible that one should deny the Son to be generated and yet not make Him the same person with the Father, while holding free from (2) and (3). Similarly, when replying to Danaeus, who asks: "If He is not God a se, how is He God?" Petavius (p. 256) declares that so to speak is perfidious and ignorant - "for," says he, "it either robs the Son of His deity or denies that He is God begotten of the Father." The one seems to him as intolerable as the other. Neither Bellarmine nor Petavius seems fairly to have faced the possibility of a doctrine of a true Trinity of Persons in one essence which did not hang on the doctrine of "eternal generation," which seemed to them, thus, equipollent with the doctrine of the Trinity. 

It is to be hoped that modern Lutherans in general will subscribe the excellent remarks of Prof. Milton Valentine, "Christian Theology," 1906, i. 309: "Emphasis must . . . be laid on the attribute of aseity as belonging to the whole Godhead, to the divine Being as such. . . . It cannot therefore be allowable to think of God as originating the Trinality of the Godhead, as though there was a time when He was not Tripersonal in His Being. . . ." Accordingly he ascribes self-existence to the Son (pp. 321-322). A. Ritschl, "Justification and Reconciliation," iii. E. T. 1900, p. 470, represents " theological tradition," which at least includes Lutheran tradition, as "expressly excluding aseity" in its representations of the Deity of Christ. 

Ed. Cotta, i. Tubingen, 1762, pp, 291-292 (Loc. IV. pars ii. cap. v. § 179). 

It must not be supposed, however, that Ursinus separated himself from Calvin as to the self-existence of the Son as He is God: his language is: "the Son is begotten of the Father, of the essence of the Father, but the essence of the Son is not begotten, but, existent of itself (a se ipsa existens), is communicated to the Son at His begetting (nascenti) by (a) the Father." "And what is said concerning the generation of the Son," he adds, "is to be understood also of the procession of the Spirit" ("Loci," p. 542). 

iii. Tubingen, 1764, p. 395 (Locus IV. cap. v. § 67). 

Cf. H. Bavinck, "Geref. Dogmatiek," ed. 1, ii. p. 263. Remarking that the tendency which finds its typical form in Arianism, has manifested itself in various forms in the Church for centuries: "First of all in the form of Subordinationism: the Son is to be sure eternal, generated out of the essence of the Father, no creature, and not made of nothing; but He is nevertheless inferior to or subordinated to the Father. The Father alone is o` qeo,j( phgh, qeo,thtoj, the Son is qeo,j, receives His nature by communication from the Father. This was the teaching of Justin, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, etc., also of the Semi-Arians, Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, who placed the Son evkto.j tou/ patro,j and declared Him o`moioou,siouj with the Father; and later of the Remonstrants (Conf. Art. 3; Arminus Op. theol. 1629, pp. 232 sq.; Episcopius, Instit. theol. IV. sect. ii. c. 32; Limborch, Theol. Christ. II. c. xvii. §25), of the Supranaturalists (Bretschneider, Dogm., i9 pp. 602 sq.; Knapp, Glaubenslehre, i. p. 260; Muntinghe, Theol. Christ. pars theor. § 134 sq., etc.), and of very many theologians of recent times (Frank, Syst. d. chr. Wahr., i. pp. 207 sq.; Beck, Chr. Gl. ii. pp. 123 sq.; Twesten, ii. p. 254; Kahnis, i. pp. 353, 398; van Oosterzee, ii. § 52; Doedes, Ned. Gel. 71 sq.)." Cf. also H. C. Sheldon, "History of Christian Doctrine," ii. 1886, p. 97: "The Arminians, while they held to the doctrine of three Divine Persons in the Godhead, diverged from the current teaching on the subject by an express emphasis upon the subordination of the Son and the Spirit. Arminius was not specially related to this development, and contented himself with denying, in opposition to Calvin's phraseology, the propriety of attributing self-existence to the Son. But Episcopius, Curcellaeus, and Limborch were very pronounced in the opinion that a certain preeminence must be assigned to the Father over the Son and the Spirit."

"Declaratio sententiae suae ad ordines Holl. et Westfr.," in "Opera Theol.," 1635, pp. 100-101. See E. T. "Works," translated by James Nichols, London, i. 1825, pp. 627-631. 

"Resp, ad xxxi. Articulos," in "Opera," p. 131 (E. T. "Works," ii. 1828, pp. 29-32). 

Ibid., p. 132. 

Cf. Episcopius' theologial works, printed at Amsterdam, 1650-1665; espec. his "Instit. Theolog.," lib. iv. § 11, de Deo, capp. 32-36. But we cite from Triglandius. 

Triglandius, "Antapologia," cap. v. pp. 77 sq. 

Cf. Triglandius, pp. 579, 580. 

London, 1713, pp. 290 sq. 

Daniel Zwicker. See "Allgem. deuteche Biog.," xlv. 1900, p. 533. 

Nelson, as cited, p. 301. 

"Defence," Proem., §5. Ralph Cudworth was at the moment teaching a doctrine of the Trinity indistinguishable from that of Episcopius and his followers. 

Nelson, p. 315, Bull, Sect. iv. cap. i. § 1 (E. T. Oxford, 1852, p. 557, in the "Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology"). 

Nelson, p. 287: Bull, Proem, § 8. 

"Defence of the Nicene Faith," IV. i. 7 sq. 

Ibid., § 8. 

Nelson, pp. 319 sq. 

"Tract. de uno Deo Patre," Book I. sect. ii. cap. 2. 

"Contra Meisnerum." 

"On the Trinity," 1712, Part ii. § 14, p. 276. Cf. ii. § 5. An interesting account of Clarke may be found in Nelson, as cited, pp. 322 sq. 

"Vindication," etc., Q. xiii. (Cambridge, 1721, p. 207). 

"Second Defense," Q. iii. (London, 1723, p. 172). 

Ibid. 

De Moor, "In Marck. Compend.," i. 1761, p. 772, seems to prefer the word "independence" for the expression of the aseity of God and of the Son as God: "By parity of reasoning, it is certain that if the Son be true God, He is independent God; for independence is easily first among the attributes of God, and is inseparable from the essence of God. . . . And this being true, the title auvto,qeoj or auvtoqeo,j (for the theologians accent it differently) cannot be denied to the Son, nor to the Spirit, as if this title were suitable to the Father only." . . . "By independence," he continues, "God is, as we have seen at chap. iv. § 20, a se in the negative sense, not in the sense of a proper causality of Himself, and it is this that the title auvtoqeo,j expresses. 1. If then the Son is the supreme and independent God He is auvtoqeo,j. 2. And since the reality of the Divine essence cannot exist without independence, the Son would not be true God unless He was at the same time auvtoqeo,j. 3. If the Father be acknowledged to be auvtoqeo,j, the Son must also be such, unless the Son be denied to be the same God with the Father and a plurality of Gods is erected, a numerical plurality of divine essences. For the same God and the same Divine essence cannot at the same time be a se ipso and not a se ipso. The Son is not, of course, auvtoui`o,j, Son a se ipso; but He certainly is auvtoqeo,j, God a se ipso. He is of the Father relatively to His being Son, but He is a se considered absolutely as He is God: as He has the Divine essence existing a se, and not divided or produced by another essence; but not as if having that essence a se ipso. He is 'God a se'; not, 'He is a se, God,' or, what is the same thing, He is not Son a se." 

The debate on the auvtoqeo,thj of the Son caused the theologians to enter into long disquisitions on the force of auvto,j in composition and the proper sense or senses of auvto,qeoj. Voetius, for example (pp. 449-451) argues that auvto,j in composition has five senses. It either (1) emphasises singularity; or (2) distinguishes as kat v evxoch,n; or (3) means a se; or (4) per se, intrinsically, essentially; or (5) per se and operating with a proper and sufficient principial force, producing somewhat. Accordingly it is improper to assume that theologians always mean the third sense, when they employ the term auvto,qeoj. Any one of five senses may be intended: (1) God kat v ejxoch,n; (2) The only, sole God; (3) God essentially, not by participation, per se and not per accidens, in se and essentially, not in some external respect or denomination; (4) God a se and not ab alio, a;narcoj, that is to say, kai. avnai,tioj; (5) God, the primus agens, primus motor, dependent on none, but the first cause. 

Voetius, "Diap.," i. 1648, p. 460, gives a characteristic list of Reformed doctors who previous to himself (1648) had taught that Christ is properly to be called auvto,qeoj - lest anyone should think that the auvtoqeo,thj of Christ had been proclaimed only by one here and there, zealous for their own notion or loving novelty, rather than by all in the necessary defense of the common truth. His list includes, besides Calvin, Beza, Simler, the whole mass of representative Reformed teachers: Danaeus, Perkins, Keckermann, Trelcatius, Tilenus, Polanus, Wollebius, Scalcobrigius, Altingius, Grynaeus, Schriverius, Zanchius, Chamierus, Zadeel, Lectius, Pareus, Mortonus, Whittaker, Junius, Vorstius, Amesius, Rivetus. Heppe, "Dogmat. d. ev: ref. Kirche," 1861, p. 84, records: "And moreover the Son is as such not created or made by God, or adopted out of favor or on account of desert, but He is according to His nature God the Son, and is therefore like the Father and the Holy Spirit veritably auvtoqeo,j." 

"Axiomat. de Trinitate," Axiom 14. 

"Epist. ad Polon." or " Lib. de Filio Dei." 

Op. cit., p. 334b. 

Cf. the remark of De Moor, "In Marck. Compend.," i. 1761, p. 775: "Distinctions in mode of subsistence, and the personal order which flows from this, cannot affect the equality of essence; and inferiority and inequality cannot consist with numerical oneness of essence."

Cf. Voetius, as cited, p. 465: "Trelcatius, Loc. Com., and Keckermann, Syst. Theol., seem to deny the communication of the essence: and Maccovius, in his Metaphysica, c. 8, follows them, when, against Arminius, he determines that not the essence, but the personality, is communicated from the Father." "Strictly speaking, however, we must say," adds Voetius, "that the Person is begotten by the communication of the essence: though these authors are to be excused because they took the word 'communication' too physically and had Valentinus Gentilis in view." Voetius' own view is expressed in the "maxims" (p. 461) that: "The essence in divinis neither begets nor is begotten, but the person of the Father begets in, de and ex His essence which is the same with the essence of the Son": "the essence may therefore be said to be communicated, given, by the Father, and received, and had, by the Son from that communication or gift. Briefly, the Person of the Father begets the Person of the Son by the communication of the essence." 

"Systema SS. Theologiae," Hanoviae, 1615, p. 54. 

This position was taken by Herman Alexander Roëll, professor at Franeker, at the end of the seventeenth century. The idea of "eternal generation" he held to be wholly unscriptural and at war with the perfect nature of God - whether as Father or as Son. The designation of the Second Person of the Trinity as Son he at first found to rest on His consubstantiality with the Father ("By the words 'Son' and 'Generation' is signified, in emphasis, that the Second Person has the same essence and nature with the First, and has coexisted with Him from eternity," - "De Generatione Filii," 1689, p. 5), but afterwards to be expressive rather of His divine mission, and the clear relation existing between God the Sender and God the Sent. A good account is given of his views by Ypeij and Dermout, "Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk," ii. 1822, pp. 544 sq. The idea of Herman Muntinghe, professor at Hardewijk and later at Groningen, at the end of the next century (see Ypeij and Dermout, iv. 1827, pp. 271 sq.) was similar. Much the same notions were introduced into the Congregational churches of New England by Nathaniel Emmons. "We feel constrained to reject the eternal generation of the Son, and the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost, as such mysteries as cannot be distinguished from real absurdities, and as such doctrines as strike at the foundation of the true doctrine of three equally divine persons in one God" ("Works," iv. 1842, p. 114). "The Scripture teaches us that each of the divine persons takes His peculiar name from the peculiar office which He sustain's in the economy of redemption.... The first person assumes the name of Father, because He is by office the Creator or Author of all things, and especially of the human nature of Christ. The second person assumes the name of Son and Word, by virtue of His incarnation and mediatorial conduct. ... The third person in the Trinity is called the Holy Ghost on account of His peculiar office as Sanctifier" (p. 109). This view became thereafter the common view among the New England churches, finding its complete expression in Moses Stuart (" Letters on the Eternal Generation of the Son," 1822) and Horace Bushnell ("God in Christ," 1849). Cf. George P. Fisher, "Discussions in History and Theology," 1880, p. 273: "Hopkins was the last to hold to the Nicene doctrine of the primacy of the Father and the eternal Sonship of Christ. The whole philosophy of the Trinity, as that doctrine was conceived by its great defenders in the age of Athanasius, when the doctrine was formulated, had been set aside. It was even derided; and this chiefly for the reason that it was not studied. Professor Stuart had no sympathy with or just appreciation of the Nicene doctrine of the generation of the Son." It should be noted, however, that the "eternal primacy" of the Father and the "eternal generation" of the Son do not necessarily go together. Neither Roëll nor Emmons, for example, while decidedly denying the "eternal generation" of the Son, doubted that the Father is first in the Trinity, not only in office but also in order - as Emmons (p. 137) expresses it, is "the head of the sacred Trinity." They do deny, however, that the Father is superior to the Son in nature; and they take their starting point from the absolute deity of the Son, in the interests of which it is largely that they deny the doctrine of " eternal generation." When Dr. Fisher (p. 273) says, "The eternal fatherhood of God, the precedence of the Father, is as much a part of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as is the divinity of the Son," by the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity he means the doctrine as it was formulated by "the Nicene Fathers who framed the orthodox creed." The rejoinder lies ready at hand that the Nicene Fathers overdid the matter from the point of view of "the precedence of the Father," and left the way open for doing less than justice to "the divinity of the Son" - which therefore requires reassertion and better guarding. In point of fact, it is around these two foci - "the precedence of the Father," which in its exaggeration becomes Arianism, and "the divinity of the Son," which in its exaggeration becomes Sabellianism - that the Trinitarian constructions have revolved. The Trinitarian problem is, to find a mode of statement that does full justice to both. To do this it must of course be carefully ascertained from Scripture in what sense "the Father" has "precedence" of the Son; and in what sense the Son is God. Roëll and Emmons deny that the Scriptures accord such "precedence" to the Father as is expressed by the phrase "God of God": they affirm that the Scriptures ascribe absolute deity to the Son. On the New England doctrine of the Trinity from Emmons down see L. L. Paine, "The Evolution of Trinitarianism," 1900, pp. 104 sq. 

Cf. the striking passage, already alluded to in part, which is found in the middle editions of the "Institutes," at the opening of the discussion (Opp. i. 482-483): "But since everything follows from the proof of the divinity [of the Son], we shall lay our chief stress on the assertion of that. The Ancients, whose idea was that the Son existed (exstitisse) by eternal generation from the Father, endeavored to prove it by the testimony of Isaiah (Is. liii. 8), 'Who shall declare His generation?' But it is clear that they were under an illusion in citing this text. For the prophet does not speak there of how the Father generated the Son but by how numerous a posterity His kingdom should be increased (so 1539: but 1550 sq.: "but through how long a period His kingdom should endure "]. Neither is there much force in what they take from the Psalms: 'from the womb before the morning star have I begotten Thee'; for that version is by no means consonant with the Hebrew, which runs thus (Ps. ex. 3): 'From the womb of the morning is to thee the dew of thy nativity.' The argument, then, which seems to have special plausibility, is taken from the words of the Apostle in which it is taught that the worlds were made by the Son; for unless there had already been a Son, His power could not have been put forth. But little weight can attach to this argument either, as appears from similar formulas. For none of us would be affected if anybody sought to take the word 'Christ' back to that time, in which Paul says that 'Christ' was tempted by the Jews (I Cor. x. 9) [where Calvin evidently reads "Christ"]. For its particular application belongs properly to the humanity [of Christ]. Similarly, because it is said (Heb. xiii. 8) that 'Jesus Christ' was yesterday, is to-day, and shall be forever, if anybody should contend that the name of 'Christ' belonged to Him always, he has accomplished nothing. What do we do but expose the holy and orthodox doctrines of religion to the cavils of heretics, when we contort texts after this fashion, which, when taken in their proper sense, serve our cause either not at all or very little? To me, however, this one argument is worth a thousand for confirming my faith in the eternity of the Son of God. For it is certain that God is not a Father to men, except through the intercession of that only begotten Son, who alone rightly vindicates this prerogative to Himself, and by whose favor it comes to us. But God always wished to be worshipped by His people under the name of Father; from which it follows that already then [i.e., semper] He was Son, through whom that relationship is established." Similarly in his Commentaries he explains Micah v. 1, 2 of the eternal decree of God, not of the eternity of the generation of Christ: and on Ps. ii. 7 prefers to follow Paul (Acts xiii. 33) to referring it to the eternal generation of Christ by "subtly philosophizing on the word 'to-day.'" In the New Testament he follows the rule (with few exceptions) "that the writers of the New Testament, and especially Jesus Himself, speak of Christ not as the absolute Logos but as the God-man.... Especially in the Gospel of John, the declarations of Jesus concerning Himself are expounded not out of an absolute logos-consciousness but out of the theanthropic consciousness of Jesus, so that after John i. 14 there is no further reference to the Logos a;sarkoj or to the nuda divinitas Christi except only in Jno. viii. 58 and xvii. 5 " (Scholten, "De Leer der Hervormde Kerk," ed. 4, ii. p. 231; cf. p. 229 and i. p. 24). Similarly of the Holy Spirit (p. 236) he refuses to get proof for His trinitarian relation either from Jno. xiv. 16 or I Cor. ii. 10. 

As, for example, that the terms "Son," "Spirit" are not expressive of "derivation" (by "generation" or "spiration") but just of "consubstantiality." The Son is the repetition of the Father; the Spirit is the expression of God. So Roëll in his first view; and even Stuart remarks, justly: "The Hebrew idiom calls him the son of any person or thing, who exhibits a resemblance in disposition or character" (op. cit., p. 105). More broadly, W. Robertson Smith ("The O. T. in the Jewish Church," ed. 1, p. 427) remarks: "Among all Semites membership in a guild is figured as sonship." That is to say, in the Semitic view, sonship denotes broadly oneness of kind, class; more specifically likeness; at the height of its meaning, consubstantiality; and does not suggest derivation. As the son of a man is a man, the Son of God is God. It is the Indo-European consciousness which imparts to the terms Son, Spirit the idea of derivation. 

When during the first weeks of its sessions, the Westminster Assembly was engaged on the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, and Article viii. on the Three Creeds came up for discussion, objection was made to the evk qeou/ clauses. It does not appear that there was any pleading for the subordinationist position: the advocates for retaining the Creeds rather expended their strength in voiding the credal statement of any subordinationist implications. Thus Dr. Featley's reply to the current objection was that "although Christ is God of God, it doth not therefore follow that the deity of the Son is from the deity of the Father, . . . as it does not follow quia Deus passus est ergo Deitas passa est, or quia Maria mater Dei, ergo est Maria mater deitatis" (see his speech printed in his "Dippers Dipt," London, 1651, pp. 187-189). Were this taken literally it would explain the Sonship of our Lord wholly from the side of His humiliation and identify His filiation with the incarnation. 

Op. cit., p. 335. 

Op. cit., p. 252. 

We suppose Arminius scarcely intended to repeat Bellarmine's and Petavius' accusation of confusion between a se and ad se when (" Works," E. T. ii. 1828, p. 32) he remarks on the modified manner in which auvtoqeo,j is used when applied to Christ, and adds: "But their explanation does not agree with the phraseology they employ. For this reason Beza excuses Calvin, and openly confesses 'that he had not with sufficient strictness observed the difference between these particles a se and per se.'" The remark of Beza is referred to his "Praef. in Dialog. Athanasii." We have not access to Beza's edition of this Pseudo-Athanasian tractate and cannot assure ourselves of his meaning. We assume that he was not criticizing Calvin's philological equipment but his doctrinal construction; and we suspect that what he says is that Calvin in insisting that Christ is God a se ipso was not sufficiently carefully disguishing between saying He is God per se - in and of Himself, and that He is God a se - from Himself. In that likely case Beza is only explaining the differences between himself and Calvin which are expressed in Calvin's denial that the Son has His essence from the Father and Beza's affirmation that He has His essence from the Father. Calvin here, he says, is not sufficiently considering the difference between being God a se and being God per se. In this case Beza's distinction is much like Waterland's between self-existent and necessarily-existent God and makes auvtoqeo,thj mean merely ingenerateness; and we note that if our conjecture is right, there is involved a testimony from Beza that Calvin's real thought of the Trinity denied the communication of essence from Father to Son. In his letter to Prince Radziwil on "The Unity of the Divine Essence and the three Persons subsisting in it," against the Polish Unitarians, Beza declares ("Tractat. Theolog.," 1582, i. p. 647) that it is inept to say that "the Father alone is auvto,qeoj, that is, as they interpret it, has His Being a se ipso and therefore can be called God," - and gives his reason: "For to be a se and ab alio, do not constitute different kinds of nature; and therefore the Father cannot on that ground be said to be the sole and unique God, nor ought He to be, but rather the sole and unique Father, as the Son is sole and unique because 'only-begotten.'" Can we really say that "to be a se and ab alio do not constitute different kinds of nature (aliam naturae speciem)? If the contrast is that of self-existing and derived Being it can scarcely be said. But if the contrast is between ingenerate and generate Being - it is true enough. Every father and son are consubstantial, and the very point of the usage of Father and Son in this connection seems to be to assert their consubstantiality. Beza has this latter contrast in view and only means to say that the ascription of auvtoqeo,thj to the Son is in no way interfered with by the fact that He is "generate" - for the generate and the generator are ever the same in kind. 

"Institutes," I. xiii. 19. 

Opp. xi. 653. 

Calvinism

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

From "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., ii. pp. 359-364 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1908).

1. MEANING AND USES OF THE TERM 

CALVINISM is an ambiguous term in so far as it is currently employed in two or three senses, closely related indeed, and passing insensibly into one another, but of varying latitudes of connotation. Sometimes it designates merely the individual teaching of John Calvin. Sometimes it designates, more broadly, the doctrinal system confessed by that body of Protestant Churches known historically, in distinction from the Lutheran Churches, as "the Reformed Churches" (see "Protestantism"); but also quite commonly called "the Calvinistic Churches" because the greatest scientific exposition of their faith in the Reformation age, and perhaps the most influential of any age, was given by John Calvin. Sometimes it designates, more broadly still, the entire body of conceptions, theological, ethical, philosophical, social, political, which, under the influence of the master mind of John Calvin, raised itself to dominance in the Protestant lands of the post-Reformation age, and has left a permanent mark not only upon the thought of mankind, but upon the life-history of men, the social order of civilized peoples, and even the political organization of states. In the present article, the term will be taken, for obvious reasons, in the second of these senses. Fortunately this is also its central sense; and there is little danger that its other connotations will fall out of mind while attention is concentrated upon this. 

On the one hand, John Calvin, though always looked upon by the Reformed Churches as an exponent rather than as the creator of their doctrinal system, has nevertheless been both reverenced as one of their founders, and deferred to as that particular one of their founders to whose formative hand and systematizing talent their doctrinal system has perhaps owed most. In any exposition of the Reformed theology, therefore, the teaching of John Calvin must always take a high, and, indeed, determinative place. On the other hand, although Calvinism has dug a channel through which not merely flows a stream of theologial thought, but also surges a great wave of human life-filling the heart with fresh ideals and conceptions which have revolutionized the conditions of existence - yet its fountain-head lies in its theological system; or rather, to be perfectly exact, one step behind even that, in its religious consciousness. For the roots of Calvinism are planted in a specific religious attitude, out of which is unfolded first a particular theology, from which springs on the one hand a special church organization, and on the other a social order, involving a given political arrangement. The whole outworking of Calvinism in life is thus but the efflorescence of its fundamental religious consciousness, which finds its scientific statement in its theological system. 

2. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

The exact formulation of the fundamental principle of Calvinism has indeed taxed the acumen of a long series of thinkers for the last hundred years (e.g., Ullmann, Semisch, Hagenbach, Ebrard, Herzog, Schweizer, Baur, Schneckenburger, Güder, Schenkel, Schöberlein, Stahl, Hundeshagen; for a discussion of the several views cf. H. Voigt, "Fundamental-dogmatik," Gotha, 1874, pp. 397-480; W. Hastie, "The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles," Edinburgh, 1904, pp. 129-177). Perhaps the simplest statement of it is the best: that it lies in a profound apprehension of God in His majesty, with the inevitably accompanying poignant realization of the exact nature of the relation sustained to Him by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature. He who believes in God without reserve, and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling, willing - in the entire compass of his life-activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual, throughout all his individual, social, religious relations - is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist. In Calvinism, then, objectively speaking, theism comes to its rights; subjectively speaking, the religious relation attains its purity; soteriologically speaking, evangelical religion finds at length its full expression and its secure stability. Theism comes to its rights only in a teleological conception of the universe, which perceives in the entire course of events the orderly outworking of the plan of God, who is the author, preserver, and governor of all things, whose will is consequently the ultimate cause of all. The religious relation attains its purity only when an attitude of absolute dependence on God is not merely temporarily assumed in the act, say, of prayer, but is sustained through all the activities of life, intellectual, emotional, executive. And evangelical religion reaches stability only when the sinful soul rests in humble, self-emptying trust purely on the God of grace as the immediate and sole source of all the efficiency which enters into its salvation. And these things are the formative principles of Calvinism. 

3. RELATION TO OTHER SYSTEMS 

The difference between Calvinism and other forms of theistic thought, religious experience, evangelical theology is a difference not of kind but of degree. Calvinism is not a specific variety of theism, religion, evangelicalism, set over against other specific varieties, which along with it constitute these several genera, and which possess equal rights of existence with it and make similar claims to perfection, each after its own kind. It differs from them not as one species differs from other species; but as a perfectly developed representative differs from an imperfectly developed representative of the same species. There are not many kinds of theism, religion, evangelicalism, among which men are at liberty to choose to suit at will their individual taste or meet their special need, all of which may be presumed to serve each its own specific uses equally worthily. There is but one kind of theism, religion, evangelicalism; and the several constructions laying claim to these names differ from each other not as correlative species of a broader class, but as more or less perfect, or more or less defective, exemplifications of a single species. Calvinism conceives of itself as simply the more pure theism, religion, evangelicalism, superseding as such the less pure. It has no difficulty, therefore, in recognizing the theistic character of all truly theistic thought, the religious note in all actual religious activity, the evangelical quality of all really evangelical faith. It refuses to be set antagonistically over against any of these things, wherever or in whatever degree of imperfection they may be manifested; it claims them in every instance of their emergence as its own, and essays only to point out the way in which they may be given their just place in thought and life. Whoever believes in God; whoever recognizes in the recesses of his soul his utter dependence on God; whoever in all his thought of salvation hears in his heart of hearts the echo of the soli Deo gloria of the evangelical profession - by whatever name he may call himself, or by whatever intellectual puzzles his logical understanding may be confused - Calvinism recognizes as implicitly a Calvinist, and as only requiring to permit these fundamental principles - which underlie and give its body to all true religion - to work themselves freely and fully out in thought and feeling and action, to become explicitly a Calvinist. 

4. CALVINISM AND LUTHERANISM 

It is unfortunate that a great body of the scientific discussion which, since Max Goebel ("Die religiöse Eigenthümlichkeit der lutherischen und der reformirten Kirchen," Bonn, 1837) first clearly posited the problem, has been carried on somewhat vigorously with a view to determining the fundamental principle of Calvinism, has sought particularly to bring out its contrast with some other theological tendency, commonly with the sister Protestant tendency of Lutheranism. Undoubtedly somewhat different spirits inform Calvinism and Lutheranism. And undoubtedly the distinguishing spirit of Calvinism is rooted not in some extraneous circumstance of its antecedents or origin - as, for example, Zwingli's tendency to intellectualism, or the superior humanistic culture and predilections of Zwingli and Calvin, or the democratic instincts of the Swiss, or the radical rationalism of the Reformed leaders as distinguished from the merely modified traditionalism of the Lutherans - but in its formative principle. But it is misleading to find the formative principle of either type of Protestantism in its difference from the other; they have infinitely more in common than in distinction. And certainly nothing could be more misleading than to represent them (as is often done) as owing their differences to their more pure embodiment respectively of the principle of predestination and that of justification by faith. The doctrine of predestination is not the formative principle of Calvinism, the root from which it springs. It is one of its logical consequences, one of the branches which it has inevitably thrown out. It has been firmly embraced and consistently proclaimed by Calvinists because it is an implicate of theism, is directly given in the religious consciousness, and is an absolutely essential element in evangelical religion, without which its central truth of complete dependence upon the free mercy of a saving God can not be maintained. And so little is it a peculiarity of the Reformed theology, that it underlay and gave its form and power to the whole Reformation movement; which was, as from the spiritual point of view, a great revival of religion, so, from the doctrinal point of view, a great revival of Augustinianism. There was accordingly no difference among the Reformers on this point: Luther and Melanchthon and the compromising Butzer were no less jealous for absolute predestination than Zwingli and Calvin. Even Zwingli could not surpass Luther in sharp and unqualified assertion of it: and it was not Calvin but Melanchthon who gave it a formal place in his primary scientific statement of the elements of the Protestant faith (cf. Schaff, "Creeds," i. 1877, p. 451; E. F. Karl Miller, "Symbolik," Erlangen and Leipzig, 1896, p. 75; C. J. Niemijer, "De Strijd over de Leer der Praedestinatie in de IXde Eeuw," Groningen, 1889, p. 21; H. Voigt, "Fundamentaldogmatik," Gotha, 1874, pp. 469-470). Just as little can the doctrine of justification by faith be represented as specifically Lutheran. Not merely has it from the beginning been a substantial element in the Reformed faith, but it is only among the Reformed that it has retained or can retain its purity, free from the tendency to become a doctrine of justification on account of faith (cf. E. Böhl, "Von der Rechtfertigung durch den Glauben," Leipzig, 1890). Here, too, the difference between the two types of Protestantism is one of degree, not of kind (cf. C. P. Krauth, "The Conservative Reformation and its Theology," Philadelphia, 1872). Lutheranism, the product of a poignant sense of sin, born from the throes of a guilt-burdened soul which can not be stilled until it finds peace in God's decree of justification, is apt to rest in this peace; while Calvinism, the product of an overwhelming vision of God, born from the reflection in the heart of man of the majesty of a God who will not give His glory to another, can not pause until it places the scheme of salvation itself in relation to a complete world-view, in which it becomes subsidiary to the glory of the Lord God Almighty. Calvinism asks with Lutheranism, indeed, that most poignant of all questions, What shall I do to be saved? and answers it as Lutheranism answers it. But the great question which presses upon it is, How shall God be glorified? It is the contemplation of God and zeal for His honor which in it draws out the emotions and absorbs endeavor; and the end of human as of all other existence, of salvation as of all other attainment, is to it the glory of the Lord of all. Full justice is done in it to the scheme of redemption and the experience of salvation, because full justice is done in it to religion itself which underlies these elements of it. It begins, it centers, it ends with the vision of God in His glory: and it sets itself before all things to render to God His rights in every sphere of life-activity. 

5. SOTERIOLOGY OF CALVINISM 

One of the consequences flowing from this fundamental attitude of Calvinistic feeling and thought is the high supernaturalism which informs alike its religious consciousness and its doctrinal construction. Calvinism would not be badly defined, indeed, as the tendency which is determined to do justice to the immediately supernatural, as in the first, so also in the second creation. The strength and purity of its belief in the supernatural Fact (which is God) saves it from all embarrassment in the face of the supernatural act (which is miracle). In everything which enters into the process of redemption it is impelled by the force of its first principle to place the initiative in God. A supernatural revelation, in which God makes known to man His will and His purposes of grace; a supernatural record of this revelation in a supernaturally given book, in which God gives His revelation permanency and extension - such things are to the Calvinist almost matters of course. And, above all, he can but insist with the utmost strenuousness on the immediate supernaturalness of the actual work of redemption itself, and that no less in its application than in its impetration. Thus it comes about that the doctrine of monergistic regeneration - or as it was phrased by the older theologians, of "irresistible grace" or "effectual calling" - is the hinge of the Calvinistic soteriology, and lies much more deeply embedded in the system than the doctrine of predestination itself which is popularly looked upon as its hall-mark. Indeed, the soteriological significance of predestination to the Calvinist consists in the safeguard it affords to monergistic regeneration - to purely supernatural salvation. What lies at the heart of his soteriology is the absolute exclusion of the creaturely element in the initiation of the saving process, that so the pure grace of God may be magnified. Only so could he express his sense of man's complete dependence as sinner on the free mercy of a saving God; or extrude the evil leaven of Synergism (q.v.) by which, as he clearly sees, God is robbed of His glory and man is encouraged to think that he owes to some power, some act of choice, some initiative of his own, his participation in that salvation which is in reality all of grace. There is accordingly nothing against which Calvinism sets its face with more firmness than every form and degree of autosoterism. Above everything else, it is determined that God, in His Son Jesus Christ, acting through the Holy Spirit whom He has sent, shall be recognized as our veritable Saviour. To it sinful man stands in need not of inducements or assistance to save himself, but of actual saving; and Jesus Christ has come not to advise, or urge, or induce, or aid him to save himself, but to save him. This is the root of Calvinistic soteriology; and it is because this deep sense of human helplessness and this profound consciousness of indebtedness for all that enters into salvation to the free grace of God is the root of its soteriology that to it the doctrine of election becomes the cor cordis of the Gospel. He who knows that it is God who has chosen him and not he who has chosen God, and that he owes his entire salvation in all its processes and in every one of its stages to this choice of God, would be an ingrate indeed if he gave not the glory of his salvation solely to the inexplicable elective love of God. 

6. CONSISTENT DEVELOPMENT OF CALVINISM 

Historically the Reformed theology finds its origin in the reforming movement begun in Switzerland under the leadership of Zwingli (1516). Its fundamental principles are already present in Zwingli's teaching, though it was not until Calvin's profound and penetrating genius was called to their exposition that they took their ultimate form or received systematic development. From Switzerland Calvinism spread outward to France, and along the Rhine through Germany to Holland, eastward to Bohemia and Hungary, and westward, across the Channel, to Great Britain. In this broad expansion through so many lands its voice was raised in a multitude of confessions; and in the course of the four hundred years which have elapsed since its first formulation, it has been expounded in a vast body of dogmatic treatises. Its development has naturally been much richer and far more many-sided than that of the sister system of Lutheranism in its more confined and homogeneous environment; and yet it has retained its distinctive character and preserved its fundamental features with marvelous consistency throughout its entire history. It may be possible to distinguish among the Reformed confessions, between those which bear more and those which bear less strongly the stamp of Calvin's personal influence; and they part into two broad classes, according as they were composed before or after the Arminian defection (ca. 1618) and demanded sharper definitions on the points of controversy raised by that movement (see "Arminius, Jacobus, and Arminianism"; "Remonstrants"). A few of them written on German soil also bear traces of the influence of Lutheran conceptions. And, of course, no more among the Reformed than elsewhere have all the professed expounders of the system of doctrine been true to the faith they professed to expound. Nevertheless, it is precisely the same system of truth which is embodied in all the great historic Reformed confessions; it matters not whether the document emanates from Zurich or Bern or Basel or Geneva, whether it sums up the Swiss development as in the second Helvetic Confession, or publishes the faith of the National Reformed Churches of France, or Scotland, or Holland, or the Palatinate, or Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, or England; or republishes the established Reformed doctrine in opposition to new contradictions, as in the Canons of Dort (in which the entire Reformed world concurred), or the Westminster Confession (to which the whole of Puritan Britain gave its assent), or the Swiss Form of Consent (which represents the mature judgment of Switzerland upon the recently proposed novelties of doctrine). And despite the inevitable variety of individual points of view, as well as the unavoidable differences in ability, learning, grasp, in the multitude of writers who have sought to expound the Reformed faith through these four centuries - and the grave departures from that faith made here and there among them - the great stream of Reformed dogmatics has flowed essentially unsullied, straight from its origin in Zwingli and Calvin to its debouchure, say, in Chalmers and Cunningham and Crawford, in Hodge and Thornwell and Shedd. 

7. VARIETIES OF CALVINISM 

It is true an attempt has been made to distinguish two types of Reformed teaching from the beginning; a more radical type developed under the influence of the peculiar teachings of Calvin, and a (so-called) more moderate type, chiefly propagating itself in Germany, which exhibits rather the influence, as was at first said (Hofstede de Groot, Ebrard, Heppe), of Melanchthon, or, in its more recent statement (Gooszen), of Bullinger. In all that concerns the essence of Calvinism, however, there was no difference between Bullinger and Calvin, German and Swiss: the Heidelberg Catechism is no doubt a catechism and not a confession, but in its presuppositions and inculcations it is as purely Calvinistic as the Genevan Catechism or the catechisms of the Westminster Assembly. Nor was the substance of doctrine touched by the peculiarities of method which marked such schools as the so-called Scholastics (showing themselves already in Zanchius, d. 1590, and culminating in theologians like Alsted, d. 1638, and Voetius, d. 1676); or by the special modes of statement which were developed by such schools as the so-called Federalists (e.g., Cocceius, d. 1669, Burman, d. 1679, Wittsius, d. 1708; cf. Diestel, "Studien zur Föderaltheologie," in Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, x. 1865, pp. 209-276; G. Vos, "De Verbondsleer in de Gereformeerde Theologie," Grand Rapids, 1891; W. Hastie, "The Theology of the Reformed Church," Edinburgh, 1904, pp. 189-210). The first serious defection from the fundamental conceptions of the Reformed system came with the rise of Arminianism in the early years of the seventeenth century (Arminius, Uytenbogaert, Episcopius, Limborch, Curcellæus); and the Arminian party was quickly sloughed off under the condemnation of the whole Reformed world. The five points of its "Remonstrance" against the Calvinistic system (see "Remonstrants") were met by the reassertion of the fundamental doctrines of absolute predestination, particular redemption, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints (Canons of the Synod of Dort). The first important modification of the Calvinistic system which has retained a position within its limits was made in the middle of the seventeenth century by the professors of the French school at Saumur, and is hence called Salmurianism; otherwise Amyraldism, or hypothetical universalism (Cameron, d. 1625, Amyraut, d. 1664, Placæus, d. 1655, Testardus, d. ca. 1650; see "Amyraut, Moise"). This modification also received the condemnation of the contemporary Reformed world, which reasserted with emphasis the importance of the doctrine that Christ actually saves by His spirit all for whom He offers the sacrifice of His blood (e.g., Westminster Confession, Swiss Form of Consent). 

8. SUPRALAPSARIANISM AND INFRALAPSARIANISM 

If "varieties of Calvinism" are to be spoken of with reference to anything more than details, of importance in themselves no doubt, but of little significance for the systematic development of the type of doctrine, there seem not more than three which require mention: supralapsarianism, infralapsarianism, and what may perhaps be called in this reference, postredemptionism; all of which (as indeed their very names import) take their start from a fundamental agreement in the principles which govern the system. The difference between these various tendencies of thought within the limits of the system turns on the place given by each to the decree of election, in the logical ordering of the "decrees of God." The supralapsarians suppose that election underlies the decree of the fall itself; and conceive the decree of the fall as a means for carrying out the decree of election. The infralapsarians, on the other hand, consider that election presupposes the decree of the fall, and hold, therefore, that in electing some to life God has mankind as a massa perditionis in mind. The extent of the difference between these parties is often, indeed usually, grossly exaggerated: and even historians of repute are found representing infralapsarianism as involving, or at least permitting, denial that the fall has a place in the decree of God at all: as if election could be postposited in the ordo decretorum to the decree of the fall, while it was doubted whether there were any decree of the fall; or as if indeed God could be held to conceive men, in His electing decree, as fallen, without by that very act fixing the presupposed fall in His eternal decree. In point of fact there is and can be no difference among Calvinists as to the inclusion of the fall in the decree of God: to doubt this inclusion is to place oneself at once at variance with the fundamental Calvinistic principle which conceives all that comes to pass teleologically and ascribes everything that actually occurs ultimately to the will of God. 

9. POSTREDEMPTIONISM

Accordingly even the postredemptionists (that is to say the Salmurians or Amyraldians) find no difficulty at this point. Their peculiarity consists in insisting that election succeeds, in the order of thought, not merely the decree of the fall but that of redemption as well, taking the term redemption here in the narrower sense of the impetration of redemption by Christ. They thus suppose that in His electing decree God conceived man not merely as fallen but as already redeemed. This involves a modified doctrine of the atonement from which the party has received the name of Hypothetical Universalism, holding as it does that Christ died to make satisfaction for the sins of all men without exception if - if, that is, they believe: but that, foreseeing that none would believe, God elected some to be granted faith through the effectual operation of the Holy Spirit. The indifferent standing of the postredemptionists in historical Calvinism is indicated by the treatment accorded it in the historical confessions. It alone of the "varieties of Calvinism" here mentioned has been made the object of formal confessional condemnation; and it received condemnation in every important Reformed confession written after its development. There are, it is true, no supralapsarian confessions: many, however, leave the questions which divide supralapsarian and infralapsarian wholly to one side and thus avoid pronouncing for either; and none is polemically directed against supralapsarianism. On the other hand, not only does no confession close the door to infralapsarianism, but a considerable number explicitly teach infralapsarianism which thus emerges as the typical form of Calvinism. That, despite its confessional condemnation, postredemptionism has remained a recognized form of Calvinism and has worked out a history for itself in the Calvinistic Churches (especially in America) may be taken as evidence that its advocates, while departing, in some important particulars, from typical Calvinism, have nevertheless remained, in the main, true to the fundamental postulates of the system. There is another variety of postredemptionism, however, of which this can scarcely be said. This variety, which became dominant among the New England Congregationalist churches about the second third of the nineteenth century (e.g., N. W. Taylor, d. 1858; C. G. Finney, d. 1875; E. A. Park, d. 1900; see "New England Theology"), attempted, much after the manner of the "Congruists" of the Church of Rome, to unite a Pelagian doctrine of the will with the Calvinistic doctrine of absolute predestination. The result was, of course, to destroy the Calvinistic doctrine of "irresistible grace," and as the Calvinistic doctrine of the "satisfaction of Christ" was also set aside in favor of the Grotian or governmental theory of atonement, little was left of Calvinism except the bare doctrine of predestination. Perhaps it is not strange, therefore, that this "improved Calvinism" has crumbled away and given place to newer and explicitly anti-Calvinistic constructions of doctrine (cf. Williston Walker, in AJT, April, 1906, pp. 204 sqq.). 

10. PRESENT FORTUNES OF CALVINISM 

It must be confessed that the fortunes of Calvinism in general are not at present at their flood. In America, to be sure, the controversies of the earlier half of the nineteenth century compacted a body of Calvinistic thought which gives way but slowly: and the influence of the great theologians who adorned the Churches during that period is still felt (especially Charles Hodge, 1797-1878, Robert J. Breckinridge, 1800-1871, James H. Thornwell, 1812-1862, Henry B. Smith, 1815-1877, W. G. T. Shedd, 1820-1894, Robert L. Dabney, 1820-1898, Archibald Alexander Hodge, 1823-1886). And in Holland recent years have seen a notable revival of the Reformed consciousness, especially among the adherents of the Free Churches, which has been felt as widely as Dutch influence extends, and which is at present represented in Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, by a theologian of genius and a theologian of erudition worthy of the best Reformed traditions. But it is probable that few "Calvinists without reserve" exist at the moment in French-speaking lands: and those who exist in lands of German speech and Eastern Europe appear to owe their inspiration directly to the teaching of Kohlbrügge. Even in Scotland there has been a remarkable decline in strictness of construction ever since the days of William Cunningham and Thomas J. Crawford (cf. W. Hastie, "The Theology of the Reformed Church," Edinburgh, 1904, p. 228). Nevertheless, it may be contended that the future, as the past, of Christianity itself is bound up with the fortunes of Calvinism. The system of doctrine founded on the idea of God which has been explicated by Calvinism, strikingly remarks W. Hastie ("Theology as Science," Glasgow, 1899, pp. 97-98), "is the only system in which the whole order of the world is brought into a rational unity with the doctrine of grace. . . . It is only with such a universal conception of God, established in a living way, that we can face, with hope of complete conquest, all the spiritual dangers and terrors of our time. . . . But it is deep enough and large enough and divine enough, rightly understood, to confront them and do battle with them all in vindication of the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the world, and of the Justice and Love of the Divine Personality." See " Five Points of Calvinism." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Reformed Confessions have often been collected; the fullest collection is E. F. K. Miiller, "Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche," Leipzig, 1903. For English readers the most convenient is Schaff, "Creeds," iii. (i. contains a history of creeds). An older collection is H. A. Niemeyer, "Collectio Confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum," Leipzig, 1840. Consult also: M. Schneckenburger, "Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformirten Lehrbegriffs," Stuttgart, 1855; G. B. Winer, "Comparative Darstellung des Lehrbegriffs der verschiedenen christlichen Kirchenparteien," Leipzig, 1837 (ed. 2) and 1882 (ed. 4), English translation, Edinburgh, 1873; and the various works on Symbolics, especially E. F. K. Muller, "Symbolik," Erlangen and Leipzig, 1896. Attempts more or less successful have been made to present the Reformed system from the writings of its representative theologians. For examples of these consult: A. Schweizer, "Die Glaubenslehre der evangelischreformirten Kirche," 2 vols., Zurich, 1844-1847; J. H. Scholten, "De Leer der Hervormde Kerk in hare Grondbeginselen," 2 vols., Leiden, ed. 4, 1870; H. Heppe, "Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche," Elberfeld, 1861; cf. B. de Moor, "Commentarius perpetuus in Johannis Marckii compendium theologiae christianae," 7 vols., Leyden, 1761-1774. 

For the "principle" of Calvinism consult: H. Voigt, "Fundamentaldogmatik," pp. 397-480, Gotha, 1874; W. Hastie, "The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles," Edinburgh, 1904; cf. Scholten and Schneckenburger, ut sup., where lists of the literature are given. A good history of the Reformed theology is still a desideratum. Sketches have been given in: W. Gass, "Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik," Berlin, 1854-1867; G. Frank, "Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie," 3 vols., Leipzig, 1862-1875; J. A. Dorner, "Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie," Munich, 1867, English translation, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1871. Contributions have been made by: C. M. Pfaff, "Introductio in historiam theologiae literariam," i. pp. 258 sqq., 368 Tübingen, 1724; B. Pictet, "Theologia christiana," 2 parts, Leiden, 1733-1734; J. G. Walch, "Bibliotheca theologica selecta," i. 211 sqq., Jena, 1757-1768; A. Toplady, "Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England," 2 vols., London, 1774; A. Ypey (Ijpeij), "Beknopte letterkundige Geschiedenis der System. Godgeleerd." (Utrecht?), 1793-1798; A. Schweizer, "Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformirten Kirche," Zurich, 1854; J. H. Scholten, ut sup., i. 67 sqq.; H. Heppe, "Die confessionelle Entwicklung der altprotestantischen Kirche Deutschlands," Marburg, 1854; idem, "Dogmatik des deutschen Protestantismus im sechzehnten Jahrhundert," Gotha, 1857; W. Cunningham, "The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation," Edinburgh, ed. 2, 1866; idem, "Historical Theology," 2 vols., Edinburgh, ed. 2, 1864; J. H. A. Ebrard, "Christliche Dogmatik," i. 44, Königsberg, 1862; J. Walker, "The Theology and Theologians of Scotland," Edinburgh, 1872; C. Sepp, "Het Godgeleerd Onderwijs in Nederland . . . 16e en 17e eeuw," Leiden, 1873-1874; A. Milroy, in "The Church of Scotland, Past and Present," ed. R. H. Story, London, n.d.; idem, "Scottish Theologians and Preachers, 1610-1638," Edinburgh and London, 1891. Consult also on the general subject: A. Kuyper, "Calvinism," New York, 1898 (an admirable statement, summing up a series of brochures in Dutch); J. A. Froude, "Calvinism," New York, 1871, and in "Short Studies on Great Subjects," second series, New York, 1871; J. L. Girardeau, "Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism," Columbia, 1890; B. B. Warfield, "The Significance of the Westminster Standards as a Creed," New York, 1898; E. W. Smith, "The Creed of Presbyterians," New York, 1901. Some of the chief Calvinistic dogmatists find mention in the text; a list of the more important is given in Heppe and Schweizer, ut sup., at the beginning. The series may be fairly represented by the following names: Calvin, Ursinus, Zanchius, Polanus, Alsted, Voetius, Burman, Turretin, Heidegger, Van Mastricht. The brief compends of Bucanus ("Institutiones theologicae," Geneva, 1609), Wollebius ("Compendium theologiae," Amsterdam, 1648), Ames ("Medulla theologica," Amsterdam, 1656, English translation, London, 1642), and Marck ("Compendium theologiae," Amsterdam, 1705) present the system in briefest form. The more recent theologians are indicated in the text.

Calvinism Today

by Benjamin B. Warfield

THE subject of this address involves the determination of a matter of fact, about which it is not easy to feel fully assured. What is the present-day attitude towards Calvinism? The answer to this question is apt to vary with the point of sight of the observer, or rather with the horizon which his eye surveys.

Our learning today is “made in Germany”, our culture comes to us largely from England. And the German learning of the day has a sadly rationalistic tendency; which is superimposed, moreover, on a Lutheran foundation that has an odd way of cropping up and protruding itself in unexpected places. Similarly, English culture is not merely shot through. but stained through and through with an Anglican colouring. Lutheranism was ever intolerant of Calvinism. Anglicanism was certainly never patient of it. Naturalism is its precise contradictory. He who breathes the atmosphere of books, therefore—whether books of erudition or books of pure literature—is apt to find it stifling to his Calvinism.

There is, of course, another side to the matter. There may very likely be more Calvinists in the world today than ever before, and even relatively, the professedly Calvinistic churches are no doubt holding their own. There are important tendencies of modern thought which play into the hands of this or that Calvinistic conception. Above all, there are to be found everywhere humble souls, who, in the quiet of retired lives, have caught a vision of God in His glory and are cherishing in their hearts that vital flame of complete dependence on Him which is the very essence of Calvinism.

On the whole, however, I think we must allow, especially when we are contemplating the trend of current thought, that the fortunes of Calvinism are certainly not at their flood. Those whose heritage it was, have in large numbers drifted away from it. Those who still formally profess it do not always illustrate it in life or proclaim it in word.

There remains, however, undoubtedly a remnant according to the election of grace. But the condition of a remnant, while it may well be a healthful one—bearing in it, as a fruitful seed, the promise and potency of future expansion—is little Likely to be a happy one. Unfriendly faces meet it on every side; if doubt and hesitation are not engendered, as least an apologetical attitude is fostered, and an apologetical attitude is not becoming in Calvinists, whose trust is in the Lord God Almighty. In such a situation, Calvinism seems shorn of its strength and is tempted to stand fearful and half-ashamed in the marts of men. I have no wish to paint the situation in too dark colours; I fully believe that Calvinism, as it has supplied the sinew of evangelical Christianity in the past, so is it its strength in the present and its hope for the future. Meanwhile, does it not seem, in large circles at all events, to be thrown very much on the defensive? In the measure in which you feel this to be the case, in that measure you will be prepared to ask with me for the causes and significance of this state of things.

We should begin, I think, by recalling precisely what Calvinism is. It may be fairly summed up in these three propositions. Calvinism is (1) Theism come to its rights. Calvinism is (2) Religion at the height of its conception. Calvinism is (3) Evangelicalism in its purest and most stable expression.

(1) Calvinism, I say, is Theism come to its rights. For in what does Theism come to its rights but in a telelogical view of the universe? For, though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth—as there are gods many and lords conceived by men—yet to the Theist there can be but one God, of whom are all things and unto whom are all things. You see, we have already slipped into the Calvinistic formula, “The will of God is the cause of things.” I do not say, you will observe, that Theism and Calvinism have points of affinity, lie close to one another; I say they are identical. 1 say that the Theism which is truly Theism, consistently Theism, all that Theism to be really Theism must be, is already in principle Calvinism; that Calvinism in its cosmological aspect is nothing more than Theism in its purity. To fall away from Calvinism is to fall away, by just so much, from a truly theistic conception of the universe. Of course then, to fall away in any degree from a pure Theism in our conception of things is just by that much to fall away from Calvinism. Wherever in our view of the world an imperfect Theism has crept in, there Calvinism has become impossible.

(2) Calvinism, I have said, is religion at the height of its conception,for, whatever else may enter into the conscious religious relation,—a vague feeling of mystery, a struggling reaching out towards the infinite, a deep sentiment of reverence and awe, a keen recognition or dull apprehension of responsibility,—certainly its substance lies in a sense of absolute dependence upon a Supreme Being. I do not say, you will observe, an absolute feeling of dependence, which, in the Schleiermacherian meaning at least of a feeling without intellectual content, were an absurdity. What I say is, that religion in its substance is a sense of absolute dependence on God and reaches the height of its conception only when this sense of absolute dependence is complete and all-pervasive, in the thought and feeling and life. But when this stage is reached we have just Calvinism.

For what is Calvinism but the theistical expression of religion, conceived as absolute dependence on God? Wherever we find religion in its purity, therefore, there Calvinism is implicit. I do not say, observe again, that an approach to Calvinism is traceable there, in less or greater measure. I say, there Calvinism is—implicit indeed, but really present. Religion in its purity is Calvinism in life, and you can fall away from Calvinism only by just in that measure falling away from religion; and you do fall away from Calvinism just in proportion as you fall away from religion in its purity. It is, however, dreadfully easy to fall away from religion at the height of its conception. We may assume the truly religious attitude of heart and mind for a moment; it is hard to maintain it and give it unbroken dominance in our thought, feeling, and action. Our soul’s attitude in prayer—that is the religious attitude at its height. But do we preserve the attitude we assume in prayer towards God, when we rise from our knees? Or does our Amen! cut it off at once, and do we go on about our affairs in an entirely different mood? Now, Calvinism means just the preservation, in all our thinking and feeling and action, of the attitude of utter dependence on God which we assume in prayer. It is the mood of religion made determinative of all our thinking and feeling and willing. It is therefore conterminous with religion in the height of its conception. Wherever religion in any measure loses hold of the reins of life and our immanent thought has slipped away from its control,—there Calvinism has become impossible.

(3) I have said too, that Calvinism is evangelicalism in its pure and only stable expression. When we say evangelicalism we say sin and salvation. Evangelicalism is a soteriological conception, it implies sin, and salvation from sin. There may be religion without evangelicalism. We may go further: religion might conceivably exist at the height of its conception and evangelicalism be lacking. But not in sinners. Evangelicalism is religion at the height of its conception as it forms itself in the hearts of sinners. It means utter dependence on God for salvation. It implies, therefore, need of salvation and a profound sense of this need, along with an equally profound sense of helplessness in the presence of this need, and utter dependence on God for its satisfaction. Its type is found in the publican who smote his breast and cried, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” No question there of saving himself, or of helping God to save him, or of opening the way to God to save him. No question of anything but, “I am a sinner, and all my hope is in God my Saviour!” Now this is Calvinism; not, note once more, something like Calvinism or an approach to Calvinism, but just Calvinism in its vital manifestation. Wherever this attitude of heart is found and is given expression in direct and unambiguous terms, there is Calvinism. Wherever this attitude of mind and heart is fallen away from, in however small a measure, there Calvinism has become impossible.

For Calvinism, in this soteriological aspect of it, is just the perception and expression and defence of the utter dependence of the soul on the free grace of God for salvation. All its so-called hard features—its doctrine of original sin, yes, speak it right out, its doctrine of total depravity and the entire inability of the sinful will to good; its doctrine of election, or, to put it in the words everywhere spoken against, its doctrine of predestination and preterition, of reprobation itself—mean just this and nothing more. Calvinism will not play fast and loose with the free grace of God. It is set upon giving to God, and to God alone, the glory and all the glory of salvation. There are others than Calvinists, no doubt, who would fain make the same great confession. But they make it with reserves, or they painfully justify the making of it by some tenuous theory which confuses nature and grace. They leave logical pitfalls on this side or that, and the difference between logical pitfalls and other pitfalls is that the wayfarer may fall into the others, but the plain man, just because his is a simple mind, must fall into those. Calvinism will leave no logical pitfalls and will make no reserves. It will have nothing to do with theories whose function it is to explain away facts. It confesses, with a heart full of adoring gratitude, that to God, and to God alone, belongs salvation and the whole of salvation; that He it is, and He alone, who works salvation in its whole reach. Any falling away in the slightest measure from this great confession is to fall away from Calvinism. Any intrusion of any human merit, or act, or disposition, or power, as ground or cause or occasion, into the process of divine salvation,—whether in the way of power to resist or of ability to improve grace, of the opening of the soul to the reception of grace, or of the employment of grace already received—is a breach with Calvinism.

Calvinism is the casting of the soul wholly on the free grace of God alone, to whom alone belongs salvation. And, such being the nature of Calvinism, it seems scarcely necessary to inquire why its fortunes appear from time to time, and now again in our own time, to suffer some depression. It can no more perish out of the earth than the sense of sin can pass out of the heart of sinful humanity—than the sense of God can fade out of the minds of dependent creatures—than God Himself can perish out of the heavens. Its fortunes are bound up with the fortunes of Theism, religion, evangelicalism; for it is just Theism, religion, evangelicalism in the purity of their conception and manifestation. In the purity of their conception and manifestation—there is the seat of the difficulty. It is proverbially hard to retain, much more to maintain, perfection. And how can precisely these things be maintained at their height? Consider the currents of thought flowing up and down in the world, tending—I do not now say to obliterate the perception of the God of all; atheistic naturalism, materialistic or pantheistic evolutionism—but to blunt or obscure our perception of the divine hand in the sequence of events and the issues of things. Consider the pride of man, his assertion of freedom, his boast of power, his refusal to acknowledge the sway of another’s will. Consider the ingrained confidence of the sinner in his own fundamentally good nature and his full ability to perform all that can be justly demanded of him.

Is it strange that in this world, in this particular age of this world, it should prove difficult to preserve not only active, but vivid and dominant, the perception of the everywhere determining hand of God, the sense of absolute dependence on Him, the conviction of utter inability to do even the least thing to rescue ourselves from sin—at the height of their conceptions? Is it not enough to account for whatever depression Calvinism may be suffering in the world today, to point to the natural difficulty—in this materialistic age, conscious of its newly realized powers over against the forces of nature and filled with the pride of achievement and of material well-being—of guarding our perception of the governing hand of God in all things, in its perfection; of maintaining our sense of dependence on a higher power in full force; of preserving our feeling of sin, unworthiness, and helplessness in its profundity? Is not the depression of Calvinism, so far as it is real, significant merely of this, that to our age the vision of God has become somewhat obscured in the midst of abounding material triumphs, that the religious emotion has in some measure ceased to be the determining force in life, and that the evangelical attitude of complete dependence on God for salvation does not readily commend itself to men who are accustomed to lay forceful hands on everything else they wish, and who do not quite see why they may not take heaven also by storm?

Such suggestions may seem to you rather general, perhaps even somewhat indefinite. They nevertheless appear to me to embody the true, and the whole, account of whatever depression of fortunes Calvinism may be suffering today. In our current philosophies, whether monistic evolutionism or pluralistic pragmatism, Theism is far from coming to its rights. In the strenuous activities of our materialized life, religion has little opportunity to assert itself in its purity. In our restless assertion of our personal power and worth, evangelicalism easily falls back into the background. In an atmosphere created by such a state of things, how could Calvinism thrive?

We may, of course, press on to a more specific account of its depressed fortunes. But in attempting to be more specific, what can we do but single out particular aspects of the general situation for special remark? It is possible, indeed, that the singling out of one of these aspects may give clearness and point to the general fact, and it may be worth-while, therefore, to attend to one of these special aspects for a moment.

Let us observe then, that Calvinism is only another name for consistent supernaturalism in religion. The central fact of Calvinism is the vision of God. Its determining principle is zeal for the divine honour. What it sets itself to do is to render to God His rights in every sphere of life-activity. In this it begins, and centres, and ends. It is this that is said, when it is said that it is Theism come to its rights, since in that case everything that comes to pass is viewed as the direct outworking of the divine purpose—when it is said that it is religion at the height of its conception, since in that case God is consciously felt as Him in whom we live and move and have our being—when it is said that it is evangelicalism in its purity, since in that case we cast ourselves as sinners, without reserve, wholly on the mercy of the divine grace. It is this sense of God, of God’s presence, of God’s power, of God’s all-pervading activity—most of all in the process of salvation—which constitutes Calvinism. When the Calvinist gazes into the mirror of the world, whether the world of nature or the, world of events, his attention is held not by the mirror itself (with. the cunning construction of which scientific investigations may no doubt very properly busy themselves), but by the Face of God which he sees reflected therein. When the Calvinist contemplates the religious life, he is less concerned with the psychological nature and relations of the emotions which surge through the soul (with which the votaries of the new science of the psychology of religion are perhaps not quite unfruitfully engaging themselves), than with the divine Source from which they spring, the divine Object on which they take hold. When the Calvinist considers the state of his soul and the possibility of its rescue from death and sin, he may not indeed be blind to the responses which it may by the grace of God be enabled to make to the divine grace, but he absorbs himself not in them but in it, and sees in every step of his recovery to good and to God the almighty working of God’s grace.

The Calvinist, in a word, is the man who sees God. He has caught sight of the ineffable Vision, and he will not let it fade for a moment from his eyes—God in nature, God in history, God in grace. Everywhere he sees God in His mighty stepping, everywhere he feels the working of His mighty arm, the throbbing of His mighty heart. The Calvinist is therefore, by way of eminence, the supernaturalist in the world of thought. The world itself is to him a supernatural product. not merely in the sense that somewhere, away back before all time, God made it, but that God is making it now, and in every event that falls out. In every modification of what is, that takes place, His hand is visible, as through all occurrences His “one increasing purpose runs”. Man himself is His— created for His glory, and having as the one supreme end of his existence to glorify his Maker, and haply also to enjoy Him for ever. And salvation, in every step and stage of it, is of God. Conceived in God’s love, wrought out by God’s own Son in a supernatural life and death in this world of sin, and applied by God’s Spirit in a series of acts as supernatural as the virgin birth and the resurrection of the Son of God themselves—it is a supernatural work through and through. To the Calvinist, thus, the Church of God is as direct a creation of God as the first creation itself. In this supernaturalism, the whole thought and feeling and life of the Calvinist is steeped. Without it there can be no Calvinism, for it is just this that is Calvinism.

Now the age in which we live is anything but supernaturalistic; it is distinctly hostile to supernaturalism. Its most striking characteristic is precisely its deeply rooted and widereaching rationalism of thought and sentiment. We know the origin of this modern naturalism; we can trace its history. What it is of more importance to observe, however, is that we cannot escape its influence. On its rise in the latter part of the seventeenth century a new era began, an era in which men have had little thought for the rights of God in their absorption in the rights of man. English Deism, French Encyclopaedism, German Illuminism—these are some of the fruits it has borne in the progress of its development. And now it has at length run to seed in our own day in what arrogates to itself the name of the New Protestantism—that New Protestantism which repudiates Luther and all his fervid ways, and turns rather for its spiritual parentage to the religious indifferentism of Erasmus. It has invaded with its solvent every form of thought and every activity of life. It has given us a naturalistic philosophy (in which all “being” is evaporated into “becoming”), a naturalistic science (the single-minded zeal of which is to eliminate design from the universe); a naturalistic politics (whose first fruits was the French Revolution, and whose last may well be an atheistic socialism); a naturalistic history (which can scarcely find place for even human personality among the causes of events); and a naturalistic religion, which says, “Hands off” to God— if indeed it troubles itself to consider whether there be a God, if there be a God, whether He be a person, or if He be a person, whether He can or will concern Himself with men.

You, who are ministers of the gospel, have been greatly clogged by this naturalism of current thought in the prosecution of your calling. How many of those to whom you would carry the message of grace do you find preoccupied with a naturalistic prejudice? Who of your acquaintance really posits God as a factor in the development of the world? How often have you been exhorted to seek a “natural” progress for the course of events in history? Yes, even for the history of redemption. So, even in the region of your own theological science a new Bible has been given to you—not offered to you merely, but violently thrust upon you, as the only Bible a rational man can receive—a new Bible reconstructed on the principle of natural development, torn to pieces and rearranged under the overmastering impulse to find a “natural” order of sequence for its books, and a “natural” course of development for the religion whose records it preserves. But why stop with the Bible? Your divine Redeemer Himself has been reconstructed, on the same naturalistic lines. For a century and a half now—from Reimarus to Wrede—all of the resolves of an age pre-eminent for scholarship have been bent to the task of giving you a “natural” Jesus. Why talk here of the miracles of the Old Testament or of the New? It is the Miracle of the Old Testament and of the New which is really brought into the question. Why dispute as to the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus? It is the elimination of Jesus Himself, as aught but a simple man of His day—in nothing, except perhaps an unusually vivid religious experience, differentiated from other Galilean peasants of His time—that the naturalistic frenzy of our age is set upon. And so furiously has the task been driven on, that the choice that is set before us at the end of the day is, practically, between no Jesus at all or a fanatic, not to say a paranoiac Jesus.

In this anti-supernaturalistic atmosphere, is it strange that men find the pure supernaturalism of the Calvinistic confession difficult—that they waver in their firm confidence that it is God who reigns in heaven and on earth, that in Him we all live and move and have our being—that it is He, and not ourselves, who creates in us every impulse to good—and that it is His almighty arm alone that can rescue us from sin and bring to our helpless souls salvation? Is it strange that here, too, men travel the broad road beaten smooth by many feet—that the Calvinistic gate seems narrow so that few there be that find it, and the Calvinistic way so straitened that few there be who go in thereat?

But let us make no mistake here. For here, too, Calvinism is just Christianity. The supernaturalism for which Calvinism stands is the very breath of the nostrils of Christianity; without it Christianity cannot exist. And let us not imagine that we can pick and choose with respect to the aspects of this supernaturalism which we acknowledge—that we may, for example, retain supernaturalism in the origination of Christianity. and forego the supernaturalism with which Calvinism is more immediately concerned, the supernaturalism of the application of Christianity. Men will not believe that a religion, the actual working of which in the world is natural, can have required to be ushered into the world with supernatural pomp and display. These supernaturals stand or fall together.

A supernatural Redeemer is not needed for a natural salvation. If we can, and do, save ourselves; it were grossly incongruous that God should come down from heaven `to save us, trailing clouds of glory with Him as He came. The logic of the Socinian system gave us at once a human Christ and an auto-soteric religion.. The same logic will work today, and, `every day till the end of time. It is only for a truly supernatural salvation that a truly supernatural redemption, or a truly supernatural Redeemer, is demanded,—or can be believed in. And this reveals to us the real place which Calvinism holds in the controversies of today, and the service it is to render in the preservation of Christianity for the future. Only the Calvinist is the consistent supernaturalist, and only consistent supernaturalism can save supernatural religion for the world.

The supernatural fact, which is God; the supernatural act, which is miracle; the supernatural work, which is the revealed will of God; the supernatural redemption, which is the divine deed of the divine Christ; the supernatural salvation which is the divine work of the divine Spirit,—these things form a system, and you cannot draw one item out without shaking the whole. What Calvinism particularly asserts is the supernaturalism of salvation, as the immediate work of God the Holy Spirit in the soul, by virtue of which we are made new creatures in Christ our Redeemer, and framed into the sons of God the Father. And it is only he who heartily believes in the supernaturalism of salvation who is not fatally handicapped in meeting the assaults of that anti-supernaturalistic worldview which flaunts itself so triumphantly about us. Conceal it from ourselves as we may, defeat here lies athwart the path of all half-hearted schemes and compromising constructions. This is what was meant by the late Dr. H. Boynton Smith, when he declared roundly: “One thing is certain,—that Infidel Science will rout everything excepting thoroughgoing Christian orthodoxy. . . . The fight will be between a stiff thoroughgoing orthodoxy and a stiff thoroughgoing infidelity. It will be, for example, Augustine or Comte, Athanasius or Hegel, Luther or Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill or John Calvin.” This witness is true.

We cannot be supernaturalistic in patches of our thinking and naturalistic in substance. We cannot be supernaturalistic with regard to the remote facts of history, and naturalistic with regard to the intimate events of experience. We cannot be supernaturalistic with regard to what occurred two thousand years ago in Palestine, and simply naturalistic with regard to what occurs today in our hearts. No form of Christian supernaturalism can be ultimately maintained in any department of life or thought, except it carry with it the supernaturalism of salvation. And a consistent supernaturalism of salvation is only another name for Calvinism.

Calvinism thus emerges to our sight as nothing more or less than the hope of the world.

Charles Darwin's Religious Life: A Sketch in Spiritual Biography¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

There was a great deal of discussion in the newspapers, about the time of Mr. Darwin's death, concerning his religious opinions, provoked, in part, by the publication of a letter written by him in 1879 to a Jena student, in reply to inquiries as to his views with reference to a revelation and a future life;² in part by a report published by Drs. Aveling and Büchner of an interview which they had had with him during the last year of his life.³ Of course the appearance of the elaborate "Life and Letters" by his son⁴ has now put an end to all possible doubt as to so simple a matter. Mr. Darwin describes himself as living generally, and more and more as he grew older, in a state of mind which, with much fluctuation of judgment from a cold theism down the scale, never reaching, however, a dogmatic atheism, would be best described as agnosticism.⁵ But the "Life and Letters" does far more for us than merely determine this fact. "In the three huge volumes which are put forth to embalm the philosopher's name," as Blackwood somewhat flippantly expresses it, "he is observed like one of his own specimens under the microscope, and every peculiarity recorded, for all the world as if a philosopher were as important as a mollusc, though we can scarcely hope that a son of Darwin's would commit himself to such a revolutionary view."6 The result of this excessively minute description, and all the more because it is so lacking in proportion and perspective, is that we are put in possession of abundant material for tracing the evolution of his life and opinions with an accuracy and fullness of detail seldom equaled in the literature of biography. For example, although the book was not written in order to depict Mr. Darwin's "inward life," it is quite possible to arrange out of the facts it gives a fairly complete history of his spiritual changes. And this proves unexpectedly interesting. Such men as Bunyan and Augustine and St. Paul himself have opened to us their spiritual growth from darkness into light, and made us familiar with every phase of the struggle by which a spirit moves upward to the hope of glory. Such a writer as Rousseau lifts for us a corner of the veil that hides from view the depths of an essentially evil nature. But we have lacked any complete record of the experiences of an essentially noble soul about which the shades of doubt are slowly gathering. This it is that Mr. Darwin's "Life" gives us. 

No one who reads the "Life and Letters" will think of doubting the unusual sweetness of Mr. Darwin's character. In his school-days he is painted by his fellow students as "cheerful, good-tempered, and communicative."7 At college, we see him, through his companions' eyes, as "the most genial, warmhearted, generous, and affectionate of friends," with sympathies alive for "all that was good and true," and "a cordial hatred for everything false, or vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonorable" - in a word, as one "pre-eminently good, and just, and lovable."8 A co-laborer with him in the high studies of his mature life sums up his impressions of his whole character in equally striking words: "Those who knew Charles Darwin," he says, "most intimately are unanimous in their appreciation of the unsurpassed nobility and beauty of his whole character. In him there was no 'other side.' Not only was he the Philosopher who has wrought a greater revolution in human thought within a quarter of a century than any man of our time - or perhaps of any time -. . . but as a Man he exemplified in his own life that true religion, which is deeper, wider, and loftier than any Theology. For this not only inspired him with the devotion to Truth which was the master-passion of his great nature; but made him the most admirable husband, brother, and father; the kindest friend, neighbour, and master; the genuine lover, not only of his fellow-man, but of every creature."9 Mr. Darwin himself doubted whether the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in him,¹⁰ but this opinion was written in his later years, and the context shows that there is an emphasis upon the word "sentiment." There was, on the other hand, a truly religious coloring thrown over all his earlier years, and the fruits of religion never left his life. But, nevertheless, there gradually faded out from his thought all purely religious concepts, and there gradually died out of his heart all the higher religious sentiments, together with all the accompanying consolations, hopes, and aspirations. On the quiet stage of this amiable life there is played out before our eyes the tragedy of the death of religion out of a human soul. The spectacle is none the less instructive that it is offered in the case of one before whom we gladly doff our hats in true and admiring reverence. 

The first clear glimpse which we get of the future philosopher, as a child, is a very attractive one. He seems to have been sweet-tempered, simple-hearted, conscientious, not without his childish faults, but with a full supply of childish virtues. Here is a pretty picture. Being sent, at about the age of nine years, to Mr. Butler's school, situated about a mile from his home, he often ran home "in the longer intervals between the callings over and before locking up at night. . . . I remember in the early part of my school life," he writes, "that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided."11 Thus, heaven lay about him in his infancy. But he does not seem to have been a diligent student, and his school-life was not altogether profitable; his subsequent stay at Edinburgh was no more so; and before he reached the age of twenty it seemed clear that his heart was not in the profession of medicine to which he had been destined. In these circumstances, his father, who was a nominal member of the Church of England, took a step which seemed from his point of view, no doubt, quite natural; and proposed that his son should become a clergyman.¹² "He was very properly vehement," the son writes, "against my turning into an idle sporting man" - as if this was a sufficient reason for the contemplated step. The son himself was, however, more conscientious. "I asked for some time to consider," he writes, "as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible,¹³ I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted."14

This step led to residence at Cambridge, where, however, again the time was mostly wasted. The influences under which he there fell, moreover, were not altogether calculated to quicken his reverence for the high calling to which he had devoted himself. "The way in which the service was conducted in chapel shows that the dean, at least, was not over zealous. I have heard my father tell [it is Mr. Francis Darwin who is writing] how at evening chapel the Dean used to read alternate verses of the Psalms, without making even a pretence of waiting for the congregation to take their share. And when the Lesson was a lengthy one, he would rise and go on with the Canticles after the scholar had read fifteen or twenty verses."15 Nor were his associates at Cambridge always all that could be desired: from his passion for sport he "got into a sporting set, including some dissipated low-minded young men," with whom he spent days and evenings of which (he says) he should have felt ashamed.¹⁶ Fortunately, he had other companions also, of a higher stamp,¹⁷ and among them preeminently Professor Henslow, who united in his own person the widest scientific learning and the deepest piety, and with whom he happily became quite intimate, gaining from him, as he says, "more than I can express."18 Best of all, Henslow was accustomed to let his light shine, and talked freely "on all subjects, including his deep sense of religion."19 Accordingly, as we are not surprised to learn, it was with him that Mr. Darwin wished to read divinity.²⁰ Not that he was even now ready to enter with spirit upon his preparation for his future work. A touching letter to his friend Fox, written in 1829, on the occasion of the death of the latter's sister, shows that his heart at this time knew somewhat of the consolations of Christianity. "I feel most sincerely and deeply for you," he writes, "and all your family; but at the same time, as far as any one can, by his own good principles and religion, be supported under such a misfortune, you, I am assured, will know where to look for such support. And after so pure and holy a comfort as the Bible affords, I am equally assured how useless the sympathy of all friends must appear, although it be as heartfelt and sincere, as I hope you believe me capable of feeling."21 But he still had conscientious scruples about taking Orders. A fellow student writes (1829): "We had an earnest conversation about going into Holy Orders; and I remember his asking me, with reference to the question put by the Bishop in the ordination service, 'Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit, etc.,' whether I could answer in the affirmative, and on my saying I could not, he said, 'Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take Orders."'22 And certainly the lines of his intellectual interest were cast elsewhere. Only under the pressure of his approaching examinations was he led to anything like professional study. On such occasions, however, he showed that his mind was open to impression. "In order to pass the B.A. examination," he writes, "it was also necessary to get up Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy.' This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation."23 Despite such occasional pleasure in his work, when, on leaving Cambridge, the offer of a place in the Beagle expedition came, and his father objected to his taking it that his proper clerical studies would be interrupted, Josiah Wedgwood was able to argue: "If I saw Charles now absorbed in professional studies, I should probably think it would not be advisable to interrupt them; but this is not, and, I think, will not be the case with him. His present pursuit of knowledge is in the same track as he would have to follow in the expedition."24 By this representation, his father's consent was obtained, although, with that long-sighted wisdom which his son always regarded as his distinguishing characteristic, he "considered it as again changing his profession."25 And so, indeed, it proved. Mr. Darwin's estimate of the sacredness of a clergyman's office improved somewhat above what it was when he was ready to undertake it, if he could sign the Creed, because the life of a country clergyman offered advantages in a sporting way.²⁶ He writes in 1835 to his friend Fox, almost sadly: "I dare hardly look forward to the future, for I do not know what will become of me. Your situation is above envy: I do not venture even to frame such happy visions. To a person fit to take the office, the life of a clergyman is a type of all that is respectable and happy."27 But though, perhaps because, his feeling toward the clerical office had grown to be so high, he no longer thought of entering it. He writes in his Autobiography that this intention was never "formally given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the Beagle as naturalist."28 

The letter to Fox which has just been quoted is a sufficient indication that it was not his Christian faith, but only his intention of taking Orders that was dying out during the course of his five years' cruise. Other like indications are not lacking.²⁹ We are, therefore, not surprised to read: "Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by some of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality."30 Nevertheless, his defection from Christianity was during these years silently and, as it were, negatively preparing in the ever increasing completeness of his absorption in scientific pursuits, by which he was left little time for or interest in other things. And on his return to England, the working up of the immense mass of material which he had collected during his voyage claimed his attention even more exclusively than its collection had done. Thus he was given occasion to occupy himself so wholly with science that there was not only no time left to think of his former intention of entering the ministry - there was little time left to remember that there was a soul within him or a future life beyond the grave. Readers of the sad account which Mr. Darwin appended at the very end of his life³¹ (1881) to his autobiographical notes, of how at about the age of thirty or thereabouts his higher aesthetic tastes began to show atrophy, so that he lost his love for poetry, art, music, and his mind more and more began to take upon it the character of a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, will not be able to resist the suspicion that this exclusive direction to one type of thinking was really, as he himself believed, injurious to his intellect as well as enfeebling to his emotional nature, and lay at the root of his subsequent drift away from religion. 

It was an ominous conjunction, that simultaneously with the early progress of this "curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes," a more positive influence was entering his mind which was destined most seriously to modify his thought on divine things. "In July [1837]," he tells us, "I opened my first note-book for facts in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected."32 The change that was passing over his views as to the manner in which species originate is illustrated by his biographer by the quotation of a passage from his manuscript "Journal," written in 1834, in which he freely speaks of "creation," which was omitted from the printed "Journal," the proofs of which were completed in 1837 - a fact which "harmonizes with the change we know to have been proceeding in his views."33 We raise no question as to the compatibility of the Darwinian form of the hypothesis of evolution with Christianity; Mr. Darwin himself says that "science" (and in speaking of "science" he has "evolution" in mind) "has nothing to do with Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence."34 But if we confine ourselves to Mr. Darwin's own personal religious history, it is very clear that, whether on account of a peculiarity of constitution or by an illogical train of reasoning or otherwise, as he wrought out his theory of evolution, he gave up his Christian faith - nay, that his doctrine of evolution directly expelled his Christian belief. How it operated in so doing it is not difficult dimly to trace. He was thoroughly persuaded (like Mr. Huxley³⁵) that, in its plain meaning, Genesis teaches creation by immediate, separate, and sudden fiats of God for each several species. And as he more and more convinced himself that species, on the contrary, originated according to natural law, and through a long course of gradual modification, he felt ever more and more that Genesis "must go." But Genesis is an integral part of the Old Testament, and with the truth and authority of the Old Testament the truth and authority of Christianity itself is inseparably bound up. Thus, the doctrine of evolution once heartily adopted by him gradually undermined his faith, until he cast off the whole of Christianity as an unproved delusion. The process was neither rapid nor unopposed. He speaks of his unwillingness to give up his belief and of the slow rate at which unbelief crept over him, although it became at last complete.³⁶ Drs. Büchner and Aveling report him as assigning the age of forty years (1849) as the date of the completion of the process.³⁷ Of course, other arguments came gradually to the support of the original disturbing cause, to strengthen him in his new position, until his former acceptance of Christianity became almost incredible to him. A deeply interesting account is given of the whole process in the Autobiography.³⁸ "During these two years," he says - meaning the years when his theory of evolution was taking shape in his mind - "I was led to think much about religion. . . . I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished, - is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me to be utterly incredible." Here is the root of the whole matter. His doctrine of evolution had antiquated for him the Old Testament record; but Christianity is too intimately connected with the Old Testament to stand as divine if the Old Testament be fabulous. Certainly, if the premises are sound, the conclusion is inevitable. Only both conclusion and premises must shatter themselves against the fact of the supernatural origin of Christianity. Once the conclusion was reached, however, bolstering arguments, pressing directly against Christianity, did not fail to make their appearance: the difficulty of proving miracles, their antecedent incredibility, the credulity of the age in which they profess to have been wrought, the unhistorical character of the Gospels, their discrepancies, man's proneness to religious enthusiasm³⁹ - arguments, all of them, drawn from a sphere in which Mr. Darwin was not a master, and all of them, in reality, afterthoughts called in to support the doubts which were already dominating him. How impervious to evidence he at last became is naively illustrated by the words with which he closes his account of how he lost his faith. He says he feels sure that he gave up his belief unwillingly: "For I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me."40 When a man has reached a stage in which no conceivable historical evidence could convince him of the actual occurrence of a historical fact, we may cease to wonder that the almost inconceivable richness of the actual historical evidence of Christianity was insufficient to retain his conviction. He ceases to be a judge of the value of evidence; and that he has resisted it is no proof that it is resistible; it is only an evidence of such induration of believing tissue on his part that it is no longer capable of responding to the strongest reagents. 

Here, then, approximately at the age of forty, we have reached the end of one great stage of Mr. Darwin's spiritual development. He was no longer a Christian; he no longer believed in a revelation. We see the effect in the changed tone of his speech. Mr. J. Brodie Innis reports him as saying that he did not attack Moses, and that he could not remember that he had ever published a word directly⁴¹ against religion or the clergy.⁴² But in his private letters of this later period he certainly speaks with scant respect of Genesis⁴³ and the clergy,⁴⁴ if not also of religion,⁴⁵ and he even gradually grew somewhat irreverent in his use of the name of God. We see the effect still more sadly in his loss of the consolations of religion. It is painful to compare his touching, if somewhat formal and shallow, letter of condolence to his friend Fox, written in 1829, which we have already quoted, with the hopeless grief of later letters of similar origin. He lost a daughter whom he tenderly loved in 1851, and his "only consolation" was "that she passed a short, though joyous life."46 When Fox lost a child in 1853, his only appeal is to the softening influence of the passage of time. "As you must know," he writes him, "from your own most painful experience, time softens and deadens, in a manner truly wonderful, one's feelings and regrets. At first it is indeed bitter. I can only hope that your health and that of poor Mrs. Fox may be preserved, and that time may do its work softly, and bring you all together, once again, as the happy family, which, as I can well believe, you so lately formed."47 What a contrast with "the pure and holy comfort afforded by the Bible"! Already he was learning the grief of those who "sorrow as the rest who have no hope." Whether his habitual neglect of the Sunday rest and of the ordinances of religion was another effect of the same change it is impossible to say, in our ignorance of his habits previous to the loss of his Christian faith. But throughout the whole period of his life at Down, we are told, "week-days and Sundays passed by alike, each with their stated intervals of work and rest," while his visits to the church were confined to a few rare occasions of weddings and funerals.⁴⁸

But the loss of Christianity did not necessarily mean the loss of religion, and, as a matter of fact, in yielding up revealed, Mr. Darwin retained a strong hold upon natural religion. There were yet God, the soul, the future life. The theory which he had elaborated as a sufficient account of the differences that exist between the several kinds of organic beings, including man, was, however, destined to work havoc in his mind with even the simplest tenets of natural religion. Again we raise no question as to whether this drift was inevitable; it is enough for our present purpose that in Mr. Darwin's case it was actual.⁴⁹ To understand how this was so, it is only necessary for us to remember that he had laid hold upon "natural selection" as the vera causa and sufficient account of all organic forms. His conception was that every form may vary indefinitely in all directions, and that every variation which is a gain to it in adaptation to its surroundings is necessarily preserved by that very fact through the simple reaction of the surroundings upon the struggle for existence. Any divine guidance of the direction of the variation seemed to him as much opposed to the one premise of the theory as any divine interference with the working of natural selection seemed to be opposed to the other; and he included all organic phenomena, as well mental and moral as physical, in the scope of this natural process. Thus to him God became an increasingly unnecessary and therefore an increasingly incredible hypothecation. 

The seriousness of this drift of thought makes it worth while to illustrate it somewhat in detail. During the whole time occupied in collecting material for and in writing the "Origin of Species" Mr. Darwin was a theist,⁵⁰ or, as he expressed it on one occasion: "Many years ago, when I was collecting facts for the 'Origin,' my belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself."51 The rate at which this firm belief passed away was slow enough for the process to occupy several years. He tells us that his thought on such subjects was never profound or long-continued.⁵² This was certainly not the fault, however, of his friends, for from the first publication of his development hypothesis they plied him with problems that forced him to face the great questions of the relation of his views to belief in God and His modes of activity. We get the first glimpse of this in his correspondence with Sir Charles Lyell. That great geologist had suggested that we must "assume a primeval creative power" acting throughout the whole course of development, though not uniformly, in order to account for the supervening, say, of man at the end of the series. To this Mr. Darwin replies with a decided negative. "We must, under present knowledge," he wrote, "assume the creation of one or of a few forms in the same manner as philosophers assume the existence of a power of attraction without any explanation. But I entirely reject, as in my judgment quite unnecessary, any subsequent addition 'of new powers and attributes and forces,' or of any 'principle of improvement,' except in so far as every character which is naturally selected or preserved is in some way an advantage or improvement; otherwise it would not have been selected. If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish. . . . If I understand you, the turning-point in our difference must be, that you think it impossible that the intellectual powers of a species should be much improved by the continued natural selection of the most intellectual individuals. To show how minds graduate, just reflect how impossible every one has yet found it, to define the difference in mind of man and the lower animals; the latter seem to have the very same attributes in a much lower stage of perfection than the lowest savage. I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent. I think Embryology, Homology, Classification, etc., show us that all vertebrata have descended from one parent; how that parent appeared we know not. If you admit in ever so little a degree, the explanation which I have given of Embryology, Homology and Classification, you will find it difficult to say: thus far the explanation holds good, but no further; here we must call in 'the addition of new creative forces.'"53 A few days later he wrote again: "I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the necessity of continued intervention of creative power. I cannot see this necessity; and its admission, I think, would make the theory of Natural Selection valueless. Grant a simple Archetypal creature, like the Mudfish or Lepidosiren, with the five senses and some vestige of mind, and I believe natural selection will account for the production of every vertebrate animal."54 

Let us weigh well the meaning to Mr. Darwin's own thought of these strong assertions of the competency of natural selection to "account" for every distinguishing characteristic of living forms. It meant to him, first, the assimilation of the human mind, in its essence, with the intelligence of the brutes; and this meant the elimination of what we ordinarily mean by "the soul." He only needed to have given "the five senses and some vestige of mind," such as exists, for instance, in the mud-fish, to enable him by natural selection alone, with the exclusion of all "new powers and attributes and forces," to account for the mental power of Newton, the high imaginings of Milton, the devout aspirations of a Bernard. How early he consciously formulated the extreme form of this conclusion it is difficult to say; but we find him in 1871 thanking Mr. Tylor for giving him new standing ground for it: "It is wonderful how you trace animism from the lower races up to the religious belief of the highest races. It will make me for the future look at religion - a belief in the soul, etc. - from a new point of view."55 Accordingly, the new view was incorporated in the "Descent of Man," published that same year.⁵⁶ And Dr. Robert Lewins seems quite accurately to sum up the ultimate opinion which he attained on this subject in the following words: 

Before concluding I may, without violation of any confidence, mention that, both viva voce and in writing, Mr. Darwin was much less reticent to myself than in this letter to Jena. For, in an answer to the direct question I felt myself justified, some years since, in addressing to that immortal expert in Biology, as to the bearing of his researches on the existence of an "Anima," or "Soul" in Man, he distinctly stated that, in his opinion, a vital or "spiritual" principle, apart from inherent somatic energy, had no more locus standi in the human than in the other races of the Animal Kingdom - a conclusion that seems a mere corollary of, or indeed a position tantamount with, his essential doctrine of human and bestial identity of Nature and genesis.⁵⁷ 

It was but a corollary to loss of belief in a soul, secondly, to lose belief also in immortality. If we are one with the brutes in origin, why not also in destiny? Mr. Darwin thought it "base" in his opponents to "drag in immortality," in objection to his theories;⁵⁸ but in his own mind he was allowing his theories to push immortality out. His final position as to the future of man he gives in an interesting passage in the autobiographical notes, written in 1876. He speaks there of immortality as a "strong and almost instinctive belief," but also of the "intolerableness" of the thought that the more perfect race of the future years shall be annihilated by the gradual cooling of the sun, pathetically adding: "To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful."59 Accordingly, when writing to the Jena student in 1879, after saying that he did not believe that "there ever had been any revelation," he adds: "As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."60 Thirdly, his settled conviction of the sufficiency of natural selection to account for all differentiations in organic forms deeply affected Mr. Darwin's idea of God and of His relation to the world. His notion at this time (1859), while theistic, appears to have been somewhat crassly deistic. He seems never to have been able fully to grasp the conception of divine immanence; but from the opening of his first notebook on Species⁶¹ to the end of his days he gives ever repeated reason to the reader to fear that the sole conceptions of God in His relation to the universe which were possible to him were either that God should do all things without second causes, or, having ordained second causes, should sit outside and beyond them and leave them to do all things without Him. Beginning with this deistic conception, which pushed God out of His works, it is perhaps not strange that he could never be sure that he saw Him in His works; and when he could trace effects to a "natural cause" or group a body of phenomena under a "natural law," this seemed to him equivalent to disproving the connection of God with them.⁶² The result was that the theistic proofs gradually grew more and more meaningless to him, until, at last, no one of them carried conviction to his mind. Sir Charles Lyell was not left alone in his efforts to clarify Mr. Darwin's thinking on such subjects; soon Dr. Asa Gray took his place by his side and became at once the chief force in the endeavor. Nevertheless, Mr. Darwin outlines already in a letter to Lyell in 1860⁶³ the arguments by which he stood unto the end. "I must say one more word," he writes, "about our quasi-theological controversy about natural selection. . . . Do you consider that the successive variations in the size of the crop of the Pouter Pigeon, which man has accumulated to please his caprice, have been due to 'the creative and sustaining powers of Brahma?' In the sense that an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must order and know everything, this must be admitted; yet, in honest truth, I can hardly admit it. It seems preposterous that a maker of a universe should care about the crop of a pigeon solely⁶⁴ to please man's silly fancies. But if you agree with me in thinking such an interposition of the Deity uncalled for, I can see no reason whatever for believing in such interpositions in the case of natural beings, in which strange and admirable peculiarities have been naturally selected for the creature's own benefit. Imagine a Pouter in a state of nature wading into the water, and then, being buoyed up by its inflated crop, sailing about in search of food. What admiration this would have excited - adaptation to the laws of hydrostatic pressure, etc. For the life of me I cannot see any difficulty in natural selection producing the most exquisite structure, if such structure can be arrived at by gradation, and I know from experience how hard it is to name any structure towards which at least some gradations are not known. . . . P. S. - The conclusion at which I have come, as I have told Asa Gray, is that such a question, as is touched on in this note, is beyond the human intellect, like 'predestination and free will,' or the 'origin of evil.'" There is much confused thought in this letter; but it concerns us now only to note that Mr. Darwin's difficulty arises on the one side from his inability to conceive of God as immanent in the universe and his consequent total misapprehension of the nature of divine providence, and on the other from a very crude notion of final cause which posits a single extrinsic end as the sole purpose of the Creator. No one would hold to a doctrine of divine "interpositions" such as appears to him here as the only alternative to divine absence. And no one would hold to a teleology of the raw sort which he here has in mind - a teleology which finds the end for which a thing exists in the misuse or abuse of it by an outside selecting agent. Mr. Darwin himself felt a natural mental inability for dealing with such themes, and accordingly wavered long as to the attitude he ought to assume toward the evidences of God's hand in nature. Thus he wrote in May, 1860, to Dr. Gray: "With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by the action of even more complex laws, and I can see no reason why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws, and that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become; as indeed I have probably shown by this letter."65 The reasoning of this extract, which supposes that the fact that a result is secured by appropriate conditions furnishes ground for regarding it as undesigned, is less suitable to a grave thinker than to a redoubtable champion like Mr. Allan Quartermain, who actually makes use of it. "At last he was dragged forth uninjured, though in a very pious and prayerful frame of mind," he is made to say of a negro whom he had saved by killing an attacking buffalo; "his 'spirit had certainly looked that way,' he said, or he would now have been dead. As I never like to interfere with true piety, I did not venture to suggest that his spirit had deigned to make use of my eight-bore in his interest."66 Dr. Gray appears to have rallied his correspondent in his reply, on his notion of an omniscient and omnipotent Creator, foreseeing all future events and consequences, and yet not responsible for the results of the laws which He ordains. At all events, Mr. Darwin writes him again in July of the same year: "One word more on 'designed laws' and 'undesigned results.' I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it - I do this designedly. An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most people do believe this; I can't and don't. If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed."67 We read such words with almost as much bewilderment as Mr. Darwin says he wrote them with. It is almost incredible that he should have so inextricably confused the two senses of the word "design" - so as to confound the question of intentional action with that of the evidences of contrivance, the question of the existence of a general plan in God's mind, in accordance with which all things come to pass, with that of the existence of marks of His hand in creation arising from intelligent adaptation of means to ends. It is equally incredible that he should present the case of a particular swallow snapping up a particular gnat at a particular time as (to use his own words) "a poser," when he could scarcely have already forgotten that all Christians, at least, have long since learned to understand that the care of God extends as easily to the infinitely little as to the infinitely great; that the very hairs of our head are numbered, and not one sparrow falls to the ground unnoted by our Heavenly Father. Yet this seems to him so self-evidently unbelievable, that he rests his case against God's direction of the line of development - for this is really what he is arguing against here - on its obvious incredibility. 

And he found it impossible to shake himself free from his confusion. In November of the same year he wrote again to Dr. Gray: "I grieve to say that I cannot honestly go as far as you do about Design. I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design. To take a crucial example, you lead me to infer . . . that you believe 'that variation has been led along certain beneficent lines.' I cannot believe this; and I think you would have to believe, that the tail of the Fantail was led to vary in the number and direction of its feathers in order to gratify the caprice of a few men. Yet if the Fantail had been a wild bird, and had used its abnormal tail for some special end, as to sail before the wind, unlike other birds, every one would have said, 'What a beautiful and designed adaptation.' Again, I say I am, and shall ever remain, in a hopeless muddle."68 The reader is apt to ask in wonder if we would not be right in thinking the fantail's tail a "beautiful and designed adaptation," under the circumstances supposed. Mr. Darwin actually falls here into the incredible confusion of adducing a perversion by man of the laws of nature, by which an animal is unfitted for its environment, as an argument against the designed usefulness of these laws in fitting animals to their environment. We might as well argue that Jael's nail was not designedly made because it was capable of being adapted to so fearful a use; that the styles of Caesar's assassins could not have been manufactured with a useful intention. Nevertheless, in June, 1861, Mr. Darwin writes again to Dr. Gray: "I have been led to think more on this subject of late, and grieve to say that I come to differ more from you. It is not that designed variation makes, as it seems to me, my deity of 'Natural Selection' superfluous, but rather from studying, lately, domestic variation, and seeing what an enormous field of undesigned variability there is ready for natural selection to appropriate for any purpose useful to each creature."69 And a month later he writes to Miss Julia Wedgwood: "Owing to several correspondents I have been led lately to think, or rather to try to think over some of the chief points discussed by you. But the result has been with me a maze - something like thinking on the origin of evil, to which you allude. The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed; yet, where one would most expect design, viz. in the structure of a sentient being, the more I think on the subject, the less I can see proof of design. Asa Gray and some others look at each variation, or at least at each beneficial variation (which A. Gray would compare with the rain-drops⁷⁰ which do not fall on the sea, but on to the land to fertilize it) as having been providentially designed. Yet when I ask him whether he looks at each variation of the rock-pigeon, by which man has made by accumulation a pouter or fantail pigeon, as providentially designed for man's amusement, he does not know what to answer; and if he, or anyone, admits [that] these variations are accidental, as far as purpose is concerned (of course not accidental as to their cause or origin), then I can see no reason why he should rank the accumulated variations by which the beautifully adapted woodpecker has been formed, as providentially designed. For it would be easy to imagine the large crop of the pouter, or tail of the fantail, as of some use to birds, in a state of nature, having peculiar habits of life. These are the considerations which perplex me about design; but whether you will care to hear them, I know not."71 The most careless reader of this letter cannot fail renewedly to feel that while what was on trial before Mr. Darwin's thought was not the argument "from design" so much as general providence, yet he falls here again into the confusion of confining his view of God's possible purpose in directing any course of events to the most proximate result, as if it were the indications of design in a given organism which he was investigating. If, however, it is the existence of a general and all-comprehending plan in God's mind, for the working out of which He directs and governs all things, that we are inquiring into, the ever recurring argument from the pouter and fantail pigeons is irrelevant, proceeding as it does on the unexpressed premise that God's direction of their variations can be vindicated only if these variations can be shown to be beneficial to the pigeons themselves and that in a state of nature. It is apparently an unthought thought with Mr. Darwin that the abundance of variations capable of misdirection on man's part for his pleasure or profit, while of absolutely no use to the bird in a state of nature, and liable to abuse for the bird and for man in the artificial state of domestication, may yet be a link in a great chain which in all its links is preordained for good ends - whether morally, mentally, or even physically, whether in this world or in the next. This narrowness of view, which confined his outlook to the immediate proximate result, played so into the hands of his confusion of thought about the word "design" as from the outset fatally to handicap his progress to a reasoned conclusion. 

The history of his yielding up Christianity, because, as he said, "it is not supported by evidence"72 - that is, because its appropriate evidence, being historical, is of a kind which lay outside of his knowledge or powers of estimation - was therefore paralleled by his gradual yielding up of his reasoned belief in God, because all the evidences of His activities are not capable of being looked at in the process of a dissection under the simple microscope. We have seen him at last reaching a position in which no evidence which he could even imagine would suffice to prove the historical truth of Christianity to him. He was fast drifting into a similar position about design. He writes to Dr. Gray, apparently in September, 1861: "Your question what would convince me of Design is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing him that I was not mad, I should believe in design. If I could be convinced thoroughly that life and mind was in an unknown way a function of other imponderable force, I should be convinced. If man was made of brass or iron and no way connected with any other organism which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced. But this is childish writing."73 I And so indeed it is, and in a sense in which Mr. Darwin scarcely intended. But such words teach us very clearly where the real difficulty lay in his own mind. Life and mind with him were functions of matter; and he could not see that any other concause in bringing new births into the world, could be witnessed to by the nature of the results, than the natural forces employed in the natural process of reproduction. He believed firmly that indiscriminate variation, reacted upon through natural laws by the struggle for existence, was the sufficient account of every discrimination in organic nature - was the vera causa of all forms which life took; and believing this, he could see no need of God's additional activity to produce the very same effects, and could allow no evidence of its working. "I have lately," he continues in the letter to Dr. Gray just quoted, "been corresponding with Lyell, who, I think, adopts your idea of the stream of variation having been led or designed. I have asked him (and he says he will hereafter reflect and answer me) whether he believes that the shape of my nose was designed. If he does I have nothing more to say. If not, seeing what Fanciers have done by selecting individual differences in the nasal bones of pigeons, I must think that it is illogical to suppose that the variations, which natural selection preserves for the good of any being, have been designed. But I know that I am in the same sort of muddle (as I have said before) as all the world seems to be in with respect to free will, yet with everything supposed to have been foreseen or pre-ordained."74 And again, a few months later, still laboring under the same confusion, he writes to the same correspondent: "If anything is designed, certainly man must be: one's 'inner consciousness' (though a false guide) tells one so; yet I cannot admit that men's rudimentary mammae . . . were designed. If I was to say I believed this, I should believe it in the same incredible manner as the orthodox believe the Trinity in Unity. You say that you are in a haze; I am in thick mud; . . . yet I cannot keep out of the question."75 One wonders whether Mr. Darwin, in examining a door-knocker carved in the shape of a face, would say that he believed the handle was "designed," but could not admit that the carved face was "designed." Nevertheless, an incised outline on a bit of old bone, though without obvious use, or a careless chip on the edge of a flint, though without possible use, would at once be judged by him to be "designed" - that is, to be evidence, if not of obvious contrivance, yet certainly of intentional activity. Why he could not make a similar distinction in natural products remains a standing matter of surprise. 

The years ran on, however, and his eyes were still holden; he never advanced beyond even the illustrations he had grasped at from the first to support his position. In 1867 his "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication" appeared, and on February 8th of that year he wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker: "I finish my book . . . by a single paragraph, answering, or rather throwing doubt, in so far as so little space permits, on Asa Gray's doctrine that each variation has been specially ordered or led along a beneficial line. It is foolish to touch such subjects, but there have been so many allusions to what I think about the part which God has played in the formation of organic beings, that I thought it shabby to evade the question."76 In writing his Autobiography in 1876, he looks back upon this "argument" with pride, as one which "has never, as far as I can see, been answered."77 It has a claim, therefore, to be considered something like a classic in the present discussion, and although it does not advance one step either in force or form beyond the earlier letters to Dr. Gray and Sir Lyell, we feel constrained to transcribe it here in full: "An Omniscient Creator," it runs, "must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him. But can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in the ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it with any greater probability be maintained that He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants; - many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case - if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed - no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief 'that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines,' like a stream 'along definite and useful lines of irrigation.' If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, the plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination."78 We read with an amazement which is akin to amusement the string of queries with which Mr. Darwin here plies his readers, as if no answer were possible to conception but the one which would drive "the omnipotent and omniscient Creator" into impotency and ignorance, if not into non-existence. An argument which has never been answered! Why should it be answered? Is it not competent to any man to string like questions together ad infinitum with an air of victory? "Did the omnipotent and omniscient Creator intentionally order that beetles should vary to so extreme an extent in form and coloration solely in order that Mr. Darwin might in his enthusiastic youth arrange them artistically in his cabinet? Did he cause the blackthorn to grow of such strong and close fiber in order that Pat might cut his shillalah from it and break his neighbor's head? Did Mr. Darwin himself write and print these words in order that his fellows might wonder why and how he was in such a muddle?" But there is really no end to it, unless we are ready to confess that an object may be put to a use which was not "the end of its being"; that there may be intentions possible beyond the obvious proximate one; and that there is a distinction between an intentional action and a contrivance. The fallacy of Mr. Darwin's reasoning here ought not to have been hidden from him, as he tells us repeatedly that he early learned the danger of reasoning by exclusion; and yet that is exactly the process employed here. 

Dr. Gray did not delay long to point out some of the confusion under which his friend was laboring.⁷⁹ And Mr. Wallace shortly afterward showed that there was no more difficulty in tracing the divine hand in natural production, through the agency of natural selection, than there is in tracing the hand of man in the formation of the races of domesticated animals, through artificial selection. In neither case does there confront the outward eye other than a series of forms produced by natural law; and in the one case as little as the other is the selecting concause of the outside agent excluded by the unbroken traceableness of the process of descent.⁸⁰ But Mr. Darwin was immovable. One of the odd circumstances of the case was that he still felt able to express pleasure in being spoken of as one whose great service to natural science lay "in bringing back to it Teleology."81 Yet this did not mean that he himself believed in teleology; and in his Autobiography written in 1876 he sets aside the whole teleological argument as invalid.⁸² 

Nor was the setting aside of teleology merely the discrediting of one theistic proof in order to clear the way for others. The strong acid of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of man ate into the very heart of the other proofs as surely, though not by the same channel, as it had eaten into the fabric of the argument from design. We have already seen him speaking of the demand of the mind for a sufficient cause for the universe and its contents as possessing great weight with him; and he realized the argumentative value of the human conviction, arising from the feelings of dependence and responsibility, that there is One above us on whom we depend and to whom we are responsible. But both these arguments were, in his judgment, directly affected by his view of the origin of man's mental and moral nature, as a development, by means of the interworking of natural laws alone, from the germ of intelligence found in brutes. We have seen how uncompromisingly he denied to Lyell the need or propriety of postulating any additional powers or any directing energy for the production of man's mental and moral nature. In the same spirit he writes complainingly to Mr. Wallace in 1869: "I can see no necessity for calling in an additional and proximate cause in regard to man."83 This being so, he felt that he could scarcely trust man's intuitions or convictions. And thus he was able at the end of his life (1881) to acknowledge his "inward conviction . . . that the Universe is not the result of chance," and at once to add: "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"84 It is illustrative of Mr. Darwin's strange confusion of thought on metaphysical subjects that he does not appear to perceive that this doubt, if valid at all, ought to affect not only the religious convictions of men, but all their convictions; and that it, therefore, undermines the very theory of man's origin, because of which it arises within him. There is not a whit more reason to believe that the processes of physical research and the logical laws by means of which inferences are drawn and inductions attained are trustworthy, than that these higher convictions, based on the same mental laws, are trustworthy; and the origin of man's mind from a brutish source, if fatal to trust in one mental process, is fatal to trust in all the others, throwing us, as the result of such a plea, into sheer intellectual suicide. 

In discussing these human convictions Mr. Darwin draws a sharp distinction between those which appeared to him to rest on feeling and that which springs from the instinctive causal judgment and demands a sufficient cause for the universe, and which, as he judged it to be "connected with reason and not with the feelings," "impressed him as having much more weight." To the argument from our Godward emotions he allows but little value, although he looks back with regret upon the time when the grandeur of a Brazilian forest stirred his heart with feelings not only of wonder and admiration but also of devotion, and filled and elevated his mind.⁸⁵ He sadly confesses that the grandest scenes would no longer awaken such convictions and feelings within him, and acknowledges that he is become like a man who is color-blind and whose failure to see is of no value as evidence against the universal belief of men. But he makes this remark only immediately to endeavor to rob it of its force. He urges that all men of all races do not have this inward conviction "of the existence of one God";⁸⁶ and then attempts to confound the conviction which accompanies the emotions which he has described, or more properly which quickens them, and to the reality and abidingness of which they are undying witnesses, with the emotions themselves, as if all "the moving experiences of the soul in the presence of the sublimer aspects of nature" were resolvable "into moods of feelings."87 He does more; he attempts to resolve all such moods of feeling essentially into the one "sense of sublimity"; and then assumes that this sense must be itself resolvable into still simpler constituents, by which it may be proved to be a composite of bestial elements; and to witness to nothing beyond our brutish origin.⁸⁸ "The state of mind," he writes, "which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music."89 Here is reasoning! Is it then a fair conclusion that because the "sense of sublimity" no more than other similar feelings is itself a proof of divine existence, therefore the firm conviction of the existence of God, which is "intimately connected with" a feeling similar to sublimity, is also without evidential value? It is as if one should reason that because the sense of resentment which is intimately connected with the slap that I feel tingling upon my cheek does not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of indignation, which does not any more than other like feelings always imply the existence of human objects, therefore the tingling slap is no evidence that a man to give it really exists! How strong a hold this odd illusion of reasoning had upon Mr. Darwin's mind is illustrated by an almost contemporary letter to Mr. E. Gurney, discussing the origin of capacity for enjoyment of music, which he closes with the following words: "Your simile of architecture seems to me particularly good; for in this case the appreciation almost must be individual, though possibly the sense of sublimity excited by a grand cathedral may have some connection with the vague feelings of terror and superstition in our savage ancestors, when they entered a great cavern or gloomy forest. I wish," he adds, semi-pathetically, "some one could analyse the feeling of sublimity."90 He seems to think that to analyze this feeling would be tantamount to letting our conviction of God's existence escape in a vapor. 

He ascribed much more weight to the conviction of the existence of God, which arises from our causal judgment, and it was chiefly under pressure of this instinct of the human mind, by which we are forced to assign a competent cause for all becoming, that he was continually being compelled "to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man," and so "to deserve to be called a Theist." But as often "the horrid doubt . . . arises whether the convictions of man's mind," any more than those of a monkey's mind from something similar to which it has been developed, "are of any value or at all trustworthy."91 The growth of such doubts in his mind is not traceable in full detail; but some record of it is left in the letters that have been preserved for us. For example, in 1860 he wrote to Dr. Gray: "I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force."92 Again, "I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance."93 Again, in 1861, he writes to Miss Wedgwood: "The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed."94 At this time he deserved to be called a theist. In 1873 he writes, in reply to a query by a Dutch student: "I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of a God"; but immediately adds: "But whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide."95 And in 1876, after speaking of "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity," he immediately adds: "But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?"96 Nearly the same words, as we have seen, were repeated in 1881.97 And he appears to have had this branch of the subject in his mind rather than teleology, when, in 1882, he shook his head vaguely when the Duke of Argyll urged that it was impossible to look upon the contrivances of nature without seeing that they were the effect and expression of mind; and looking hard at him, said: "Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times it seems to go away."98 

What, then, became of his instinctive causal judgment amid these crowding doubts? It was scarcely eradicated. He could write to Mr. Graham as late as 1881: "You have expressed my inward conviction . . . that the Universe is not the result of chance."99 But "inward conviction" with Mr. Darwin did not mean "reasoned opinion" which is to be held and defended, but "natural and instinctive feeling" which is to be corrected. And he certainly allowed his causal judgment gradually to fall more and more into abeyance. In his letter to the Dutch student, in 1873, he knew how to add to his avowal that he felt the impossibility of conceiving of this grand universe as causeless, the further avowal, "I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came, and how it arose,"100 and thus to do what he could to throw doubt on the theistic inference. And he also knew how to speak as if the agnostic inference were reasonable and philosophical, everywhere maintaining his right to assume living forms to begin with, as a philosopher assumes gravitation,¹⁰¹ by which, as he is careful to explain, he does not mean that these forms (or this form) have been "created" in the usual sense of that word, but "only that we know nothing as yet [of] how life originates";¹⁰² and writing as late as 1878: "As to the eternity of matter, I have never troubled myself about such insoluble questions."103 Nevertheless, it is perfectly certain that neither Mr. Darwin nor anyone else can reject both creation and non-creation, both a first cause and the eternity of matter. As Professor Flint truly points out, "we may believe either in a self-existent God or in a self-existent world, and must believe in one or the other; we cannot believe in an infinite regress of causes."104 When Mr. Darwin threw doubt on the philosophical consistency of the assumption of a first cause, he was bound to investigate the hypothesis of the eternity of matter; and until this latter task was completed he was bound to keep silence on a subject on which he had so little right to speak. Where his predilection would carry him is plain from the pleasure with which he read of Dr. Bastian's Archebiosis in 1872, wishing that he could "live to see" it "proved true."105 We are regretfully forced to recognize in his whole course of argument a desire to eliminate the proofs of God's activity in the world; "he did not like to retain God in his knowledge." 

Further evidence of this trend may be observed in the tone of the addition to the autobiographical notes which he made, with especial reference to his religious beliefs, in 1876, and in which he, somewhat strangely, included a full antitheistic argument, developed in so orderly a manner that it may stand for us as a complete exhibit of his attitude toward the problem of divine existence. In this remarkable document¹⁰⁶ he first discusses the argument from design, concluding that the "old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive,"fails" now that the law of natural selection has been discovered." He adds that "there seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows," and refers the reader to the "argument" given at the end of "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," as one which has never been answered. Having set this more detailed teleology aside, he next examines the broader form of the argument from design, which rests on the general beneficent arrangement of the world, and concludes that the great fact of suffering is opposed to the theistic inference, while the prevailing happiness, in conjunction with "the presence of much suffering, agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection." Next he discusses the "most usual argument" of the present day "for the existence of an intelligent God," that "drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons." He speaks sadly of his own former firm conviction of the existence of God, and describes how feelings of devotion welled up within him in the presence of grand scenery; but he sets the argument summarily aside as invalid. Finally, he adduces the demands of the causal judgment, in a passage which has already been quoted, but discards it, too, with an expression of doubt as to the trustworthiness of such grand conclusions when drawn by a brute-bred mind like man's. His conclusion is formulated helplessness: "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." It was out of such a reasoned position that he wrote in 1879: "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."107 Nor can we help carrying over the light thus gained to aid us in explaining the words written to Jena the same year: Mr. Darwin "considers that the theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God."108 It would be an interesting question what conception Mr. Darwin, who began with a deistic conception, had come to when he reached the agnostic stage and spoke familiarly of "what is called a personal God."109 

By such stages as these did this great man drift from his early trust into an inextinguishable doubt whether such a mind as man's can be trusted in its grand conclusions; and by such reasoning as this did he support his suicidal results. No more painful spectacle can be found in all biographical literature; no more startling discovery of the process by which even great and good men can come gradually to a state of mind in which, despite their more noble instincts, they can but 

Judge all nature from her feet of clay,
Without the will to lift their eyes to see
Her Godlike head, crowned with spiritual fire,
And touching other worlds. 

The process that we have been observing, as has¹¹⁰ been truly said, is not that of an ejectment of reverence and faith from the system (as, say, in the case of Mr. Froude), or of an encysting of them (as, say, with Mr. J. S. Mill), but simply of an atrophy of them, as they dissolve painlessly away. In Mr. Darwin's case this atrophy was accompanied by a similar deadening of his higher emotional nature, by which he lost his power of enjoying poetry, music, and to a large extent scenery, and stood like some great tree of the forest with broad-reaching boughs, beneath which men may rest and refresh themselves, but with decay already marking it as its own, as evidenced by the deadness of its upper branches. He was a man dead at the top. 

It is more difficult to trace the course of his personal religious life during this long-continued atrophying of his religious conceptions. He was not permitted to enter upon this development without a word of faithful admonition. When the "Origin of Species" was published in 1859, his old friend and preceptor, Professor A. Sedgwick, appears to have foreseen the possible driftage of his thought, and wrote him the following touching words: "I have been lecturing three days a week (formerly I gave six a week) without much fatigue, but I find by the loss of activity and memory, and of all productive powers, that my bodily frame is sinking slowly towards the earth. But I have visions of the future. They are as much a part of myself as my stomach and my heart, and these visions are to have their antitype in solid fruition of what is best and greatest. But on one condition only - that I humbly accept God's revelation of Himself both in His works and in His word, and do my best to act in conformity with that knowledge which He only can give me, and He only can sustain me in doing. If you and I do all this, we shall meet in heaven."111 The appeal had come too late to aid his old pupil to conserve his Christian faith; it was already long since he had believed that God had ever spoken in word and he was fast drifting to a position from which he could with difficulty believe that He had spoken in His works. It is not a pleasant letter that he wrote to Mrs. Boole in 1866, in reply to some very respectfully framed inquiries as to the relation of his theory to the possibility of belief in inspiration and a personal and good God who exercises moral influence on man, to which he is free to yield. The way in which he avoids replying to these questions almost seems to be irritable,¹¹² and is possibly an index to his feelings toward the matters involved. Nevertheless, his sympathy with suffering and his willingness to lend his help toward the elevation of his fellow men remained; he even aided the work of Christian missions by contributions in money,¹¹³ although he no longer shared the hopes by which those were nerved who carried the civilizing message to their degraded fellow beings. Why, indeed, he should have trusted the noble impulses of his conscience, and been willing to act upon them, when he judged that the brutish origin of man's whole mental nature vitiated all its grand conclusions, it might puzzle a better metaphysician than he laid claim to be satisfactorily to explain; but his higher life seems to have taken this direction, and it is characteristic of him to close the letter to the Dutch student, written in 1873, with such words as these: "The safest conclusion seems to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty."114 But when there is no one to show us any truth, who is there to show us duty? If our conscience is but the chance growth of the brute mind, hemmed in by its environment and squeezed into a new form by the pressure of a fierce and unmoral struggle for existence, what moral imperative has it such as deserves the high name of "duty"?¹¹⁵ Certainly the argument is as valid here as there. But by the power of so divine an inconsistency, Mr. Darwin was enabled as citizen, friend, husband, and father to do his duty. He had no sharp sense of sin;¹¹⁶ but so far as duty lay before him he retained a tender conscience. And thus, as he approached the end of his long and laborious life, he felt able to say: "I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures";¹¹⁷ and again, as the end came on, we learn that "he seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said, 'I am not the least afraid to die."'118 And thus he went out into the dark without God in all his thoughts; with no hope for immortality; and with no keenness of regret for all the high and noble aspirations and all the elevating imaginings which he had lost out of life. 

That we may appreciate how sad a sight we have before us, let us look back from the end to the beginning. We stand at the deathbed of a man whom, in common with all the world, we most deeply honor. He has made himself a name which will live through many generations; and withal has made himself beloved by all who came into close contact with him. True, tender-hearted, and sympathetic, he has in the retirement of invalidism lived a life which has moved the world. But is his death just the death we should expect from one who had once given himself to be an ambassador of the Lord? When we turn from what he has done to what he has become, can we say that, in the very quintessence of living, he has fulfilled the promise of that long-ago ingenuous youth who suffered something like remorse when he beat a puppy, and as he ran to school "prayed earnestly to God to help him"? Let us look upon him in the light of a contrast. There was another Charles, living in the world with him, but a few years his senior, whose childhood, too, was blessed with a vivid sense of the nearness of heaven. He, too, has left us some equally simple-hearted and touching autobiographical notes; and from them we learn that his, too, was a praying childhood. "As far back as I can remember," he writes, "I had the habit of thanking God for everything I received, and asking Him for everything I wanted. If I lost a book, or any of my playthings, I prayed that I might find it. I prayed walking along the streets, in school and out of school, whether playing or studying. I did not do this in obedience to any prescribed rule. It seemed natural. I thought of God as an everywhere-present Being, full of kindness and love, who would not be offended if children talked to Him. I knew He cared for sparrows."119 Thus Charles Hodge and Charles Darwin began their lives on a somewhat similar plane. And both write in their old age of their childhood's prayers with something like a smile. But how different the quality of these smiles! Charles Darwin's smile is almost a sneer: "When in doubt," he writes, "I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided."120 Charles Hodge's smile is the pleasant smile of one who looks back on small beginnings from a well-won height. "There was little more in my prayers and praises," he writes, "than in the worship rendered by the fowls of the air. This mild form of natural religion did not amount to much."121 His praying childhood was Charles Darwin's highest religious attainment; his praying childhood was to Charles Hodge but the inconsiderable seed out of which were marvelously to unfold all the graces of a truly devout life. Starting from a common center, these two great men, with much of natural endowment in common, trod opposite paths; and when the shades of death gathered around them, one could but face the depths of darkness in his greatness of soul without fear, and yield like a man to the inevitable lot of all; the other, bathed in a light not of the earth, rose in spirit upon his dead self to higher things, repeating to his loved ones about him the comforting words of a sublime hope: "Why should you grieve? To be absent from the body is to be with the Lord, to be with the Lord is to see the Lord, to see the Lord is to be like Him."122 The one conceived that he had reached the end of life, and looked back upon the little space that had been allotted to him without remorse, indeed, but not without a sense of its incompleteness; the other contemplated all that he had been enabled to do through the many years of rich fruitage which had fallen to him, as but childhood's preparation for the true life which in death was but dawning upon him.¹²³  

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Presbyterian Review, ix. 1888, pp. 569-601. 

First published in the Deutsche Rundschau, then in the Separat-Ausgabe of Professor Haeckel's paper: "Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck," p. 60, note 17. Afterward also in English journals: see The Academy, Nos. 545, 546, 547, 548 (xxii. 1882).

The National Reformer for October 29th, 1882.

"The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter." Edited by his son, Francis Darwin. In three volumes. London: John Murray, 1888. Seventh thousand, revised. All references in the present paper are to this edition. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 304: written in 1879. 

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, cxliii. 1888, p. 105. 

Rev. John Yardley, in the Modern Review, July, 1882, p. 504. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 166.

Dr. W. B. Carpenter, in the Modern Review, July, 1882, pp. 523, 524.

"Life and Letters," i. p. 311 (1876). 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 31. 

Ibid., i. p. 45. 

An interesting indication that in Mr. Darwin's mature judgment the Bible does teach the doctrines of the Creed. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 45.

Ibid., i. p. 165. 

Ibid., i. p. 48. 

Ibid., i. p. 49. 

Ibid., i. p. 188. 

Ibid., i. p. 188. 

Ibid., i. pp. 171. 

Ibid., i. p. 177f. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 171. 

Ibid., i. p. 47.

Ibid., i. p. 199. 

Ibid., i. p. 197.

Ibid., i. p. 45. 

Ibid., i. p. 262. 

Ibid., i. p. 45. 

Cf. his words of appreciation of missionary work, ibid., i. p. 264. See also i. p. 246. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 307 f. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 100ff. 

Ibid., i. p. 68. 

Ibid., ii. p. 1. 

Ibid., i. p. 307.

Ibid., ii. p. 181. 

Ibid., i. pp. 308 f. 

National Reformer, xl. 1882, p. 292. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 307-309. 

See them in full, "Life and Letters," i. p. 308. It is interesting to observe that they all circle around miracles, evincing that Mr. Darwin found difficulty in persuading himself that these miracles did not take place. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 308, 309.

Note the word "directly." 

"Life and Letters," ii. pp. 288 f. 

Ibid., ii. p. 152. 

Ibid., i. p. 340. 

Ibid., ii. p. 143. 

Ibid., i. p. 380. 

Ibid., i. p. 388; cf. iii, p. 39, note $, written in 1863. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 127, 128. 

In the case of many others it has not proved inevitable, as e.g. in the case of Dr. W. B. Carpenter, whose opinion is worth quoting here, because his general conception of the relation of God to the universe seems to be very similar to what Mr. Darwin's originally was. "To myself," he writes, in an interesting paper on "The Doctrine of Evolution in its Relations to Theism" (Modern Review, October, 1882, p. 685), "the conception of a continuity of action which required no departure to meet special contingencies, because the plan was all-perfect in the beginning, is a fat higher and nobler one than that of a succession of interruptions.... And in describing the process of evolution in the ordinary language of Science, as due to 'secondary causes,' we no more dispense with a First Cause, than we do when we speak of those Physical Forces, which, from the Theistic point of view, are so many diverse modes of manifestation of one and the same Power. Nor do we in the least set aside the idea of an original Design, when we regard these adaptations which are commonly attributed to special exertions of contriving power and wisdom, as the outcome of an all-comprehensive Intelligence which foresaw that the product would be 'good,' before calling into existence the germ from which it would be evolved."

"Life and Letters," i. p. 313.

Ibid., iii. p. 236 (1878).

See e.g. i. pp. 305, 306 (1871). 

Ibid., ii. pp. 210 f., written October 11th, 1859. 

Ibid., ii. p. 174.

Ibid., iii. p. 151. 

"The Descent of Man," i. pp. 62 ff. 

Journal of Science, xix. 1882, pp. 751 f. 

"Life and Letters," ii. p. 228. 

Ibid., i. p. 312.

Ibid., i. p. 307.  

Ibid., ii. p. 9 (1837).

We have seen that Dr. W. B. Carpenter refuses to be held in Mr. Darwin's logic, although with him holding to a somewhat deistic conception of the divine relation to the process of development. "Attach what weight we may to the physical causes which have brought about this Evolution," he insists, "I cannot see how it is possible to conceive of any but a Moral Cause for the endowments that made the primordial germ susceptible of their action" (loc. cit., p. 680). "And in the so-called laws of Organic Evolution, I see nothing but the orderly and continuous working-out of the original Intelligent Design" (p. 681). Dr. W. H. Dallinger also begins with a similar conception (comparing God's relation to the universe to the relation to his work of a machinist who constructs a calculating machine to throw numbers of one order for a given time and then introduce suddenly a new series, "by prevised and preordained arrangement"), and yet refuses the conclusion. "Evolution," he argues, "like gravitation, is only a method; and the self-adjustments demonstrated in the 'origin of species' only make it, to reason, the clearer, that variation and survival is a method that took its origin in mind. It is true that the egg of a moth, and the eye of a dog-fish, and the forearm of a tiger must be what they are to accomplish the end of their being. But that only shows, as we shade our mental eyes, and gaze back to the beginning, the magnificence of the design that was involved in nature's beginning, so as to be evolved, by the designed rhythm of nature's methods." See the whole passage in his eloquent Fernley lecture for 1887, on "The Creator, and what we may Know of the Method of Creation" (London: T. Woolmer, 1887), pp. 61 f. 

"Life and Letters," ii. pp. 303, 304. 

How much of the argument depends on this word!

"Life and Letters," ii. pp. 311, 312. 

Dr. Flint seriously refutes this strange reasoning, which he justly speaks of as "irrational," and only explicable in "sane minds" from the exigencies of foregone conclusions, in his "Theism," lecture vi. (ed. 3, pp. 189f.). 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 314, 315.

Ibid., ii. pp. 353, 354. 

"Life and Letters," ii. p. 373. 

Mr. Francis Darwin indicates in a note that Dr. Gray's metaphor occurs in the essay "Darwin and his Reviewers" ("Darwiniana," p. 157): "The whole animate life of a country depends absolutely upon the vegetation, the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture is furnished by the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from the ocean's surface, and is wafted inland by the winds. But what multitudes of rain-drops fall back into the ocean - are as much without a final cause as the incipient varieties which come to nothing! Does it therefore follow that the rains which are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and average regularity were not designed to support vegetable and animal life?"

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 313, 314. 

National Reformer, October 29th, 1882. 

"Life and Letters," ii. p. 377.

Ibid., ii. p. 378. 

Ibid., ii. p. 382. 

"Life and Letters," iii. p. 62. 

Ibid., i. p. 309.

"Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," authorized edition, ii. 1868, pp. 515 f. 

With reference to the first simile of the extract Dr. Gray pointedly urged: "But in Mr. Darwin's parallel, to meet the case of nature according to his own view of it, not only the fragments of rock (answering to variation) should fall, but the edifice (answering to natural selection) should rise, irrespective of will or choice! "Mr. Darwin ("Life and Letters," iii. p. 84) calls this "a good slap," but thinks it does not essentially meet the point. Mr. F. Darwin (loc. cit.) answers it lamely by observing that according to his father's parallel natural selection should be the architect, not the edifice. Do architects get along without "will or choice"?

"Life and Letters," iii. p. 116.

Ibid., iii. p. 189: "What you say about Teleology pleases me especially, and I do not think that any one else has ever noticed the part." This was written June 5th, 1874. See iii. p. 255, and ii. p. 201.

Ibid., i. pp. 309, 310.

Ibid., iii. p. 116. 

Ibid., i. p. 316. 

This paragraph is a report of what Mr. Darwin says, writing in his Autobiography in 1876: see "Life and Letters," i. pp. 311, 312.

Mr, Darwin writes more guardedly here than in his "Descent of Man," i. 1871, p. 63, where he declares, chiefly on Sir John Lubbock's authority, that there are "numerous races" who have no idea of "one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea." Professor Flint, in his "Antitheistic Theories," lecture vii., with its appropriate appendixes, has sifted this question of fact, with the result of showing the virtual universality of religion.

See this criticism properly pressed by Dr. Noah Porter, in New Englander and Yale Review, for March, 1888, p. 207.

The elements which in his view unite to form a religious emotion are enumerated for us in the "Descent of Man," i. p. 65: "The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements." How, in these circumstances, he can speak of his state of mind, involving "feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion" ("Life and Letters," i. p. 311), as one which "did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity," is somewhat mysterious. But we must remember that even this complex of emotions was, in Mr. Darwin's view, distantly approached by certain mental states of dogs and monkeys. Nevertheless, the whole drift of the passage in the "Descent of Man" is to credit the results of man's reasoning faculties as he progressed more and more in the power to use them; while the drift of the present passage is to discredit them. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 312. 

"Life and Letters," iii. p. 186, written July 8th, 1876. 

Ibid., i. p. 316: written in 1881. 

Ibid., ii. p. 312.

Ibid., ii. p. 353. 

Ibid., i. pp. 313 f.

Ibid., i. p. 306.

Ibid., i. pp. 312 f. 

Ibid., i. p. 316.  

Ibid., i. p. 316.  

Ibid., i. p. 316. 

"Life and Letters," i. pp. 306, 307. 

E.g. ii. p. 210. 

Ibid., ii. p. 251. 

Ibid., iii. p. 236. 

"Theism," ed. 3, p. 120. See also note xxii. p. 390: "Creation is the only theory of the origin of the universe. Evolution assumes either the creation or the self-existence of the universe. The evolutionist must choose between creation and non-creation. They are opposites. There is no intermediate term. The attempt to introduce one - the Unknowable - can lead to no result; for unless the Unknowable is capable of creating, it can account for the origin of nothing." The whole note should be read.

"Life and Letters," iii. p. 169. 

Ibid., i. pp. 307-313. 

"Life and Letters," i. p. 304.

Ibid., i. p. 307.

Ibid., iii. p. 236 (1878). 

F. W. H. Myers, in the Fortnightly Review, January, 1888, p. 103. 

"Life and Letters," ii. p. 250. 

"Life and Letters," iii. pp. 63, 64. 

Ibid., iii, pp. 127, 128. 

Ibid., i. p. 307. 

What Mr. Darwin actually taught as to the moral sense may be conveniently read in the third chapter of the "Descent of Man." "This sense," he says, "as Mackintosh remarks, 'has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action;' it is summed up in that short but imperious word ought, so full of high significance" (i. 1871, p. 67). But what gives this "imperious word ought" so rightful a supremacy? Mr. Darwin teaches that "the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instincts" (pp. 93f.), and that "the imperious word ought seems merely to employ the consciousness of the existence of a persistent instinct, either innate or partly acquired," so that "we hardly use the word ought in a metaphorical sense when we say hounds ought to hunt, pointers to point, and retrievers to retrieve their game" (p. 88). He has, indeed, "endeavored to show that the social instincts - the prime principle of man's moral constitution - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, 'As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise;' and this lies at the foundation of morality" (pp. 101, 102). But this is not because the golden rule is any more truly "moral" than any other rule. "Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man" (pp. 68, 69); but not necessarily "exactly the same moral sense as ours" (p. 70). For instance, bees so developing a moral sense would develop one which required it as a duty to murder their brothers and fertile daughters. Thus the moral law has no more sanction than arises from its being the best mode of conserving the common good, as it is known in present conditions; and its very opposite might be as moral and as imperious under changed conditions. Mr. Darwin's own tender conscience was thus, in his own eyes, nothing more than the dissatisfaction that arose from an unsatisfied inherited instinct (p. 69)!

How inevitable this was may be seen from the temperate discussion of the relation of naturalistic evolution to the sense of sin, in John Tulloch's "The Christian Doctrine of Sin," lecture i.

"Life and Letters," iii. p. 359 (1879).

Ibid., iii. p. 358. 

"The Life of Charles Hodge," by his son, A. A. Hodge, 1880, p. 13.

"Life and Letters," i. p. 31.

"Life," p. 13.

"Life," p. 582.

Since this paper was put into type a new letter of Mr. Darwin's on his religious views has come to light, which adds, indeed, nothing to what we already knew, but which is so characteristic as to deserve insertion here. It is dated March 11th, 1878, and runs as follows: "Dear Sir: I should have been very glad to have aided you in any degree if it had been in my power. But to answer your question would require an essay, and for this I have not strength, being much out of health. Nor, indeed, could I have answered it distinctly and satisfactorily with any amount of strength. The strongest argument for the existence of God, as it seems to me, is the instinct or intuition which we all (as I suppose) feel that there must have been an intelligent beginner of the Universe; but then comes the doubt and difficulty whether such intuitions are trustworthy. I have touched on one point of difficulty in the two last pages of my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' but I am forced to leave the problem insoluble. No man who does his duty has anything to fear, and may hope for whatever he earnestly desires. - Dear Sir, yours faithfully, Ch. Darwin." (See The British Weekly for August 3d, 1888.)

The Children in the Hands of the Arminians

by Rev. B. B. WARFIELD

Professor in the Theological Seminary at Princeton

[Originally published in vol. xvii of the Union Seminary Magazine, 1904]

Prof. Charles W. Rishell, of Boston University, has written a very interesting little book on the relation of little children to Christianity and to the Christian Church.* The object he has set before him is the very laudable one of pleading for the religious education of children. In order to give force to his pleading he argues the possibility of religion in children of the tenderest years. He insists on the importance for them of religious instruction and example. He demands of the church recognition of their church membership and provision for their care and development as children of God with the same right to the privileges of God's Church as other members. As he expresses it, he pleads with the Church "to count the children in, not out."

The significance of the book is that it emanates from Arminian circles and reasons from Arminian postulates. This is its significance; and this is its weakness. There is no other system of belief of widespread influence in the churches to which it is not a commonplace and mere matter of course that children are capable of religious life from their very earliest years, and ought to be recognized from their infancy as members of Christ's Church and brought up in its fold and under its fostering care. There is no other system of belief of widespread influence in the churches to which these principles are logically so unconformable. Professor Rishell has undertaken a most important task in pleading for them in Arminian circles. He has undertaken a task difficult to the verge of impossibility in pleading for them on Arminian principles.

The children certainly must be a source of gravest concern to a consistently Arminian reasoner. The fundamental principle of Arminianism is that salvation hangs upon a free, intelligent choice of the individual will; that salvation is, in fact, the result of the acceptance of God by man, rather than of the acceptance of man by God. The logic of this principle involves in hopeless ruin all who, by reason of tenderness of years, are incapable of making such a choice. On this teaching, all those who die in infancy should perish, while those who survive the years of immaturity might just as well be left to themselves until they arrive at the age of intelligent option. Let no one suppose that we are insinuating that our Arminian brethren live on these principles. They are far from doing this. They people heaven with infants who die in infancy; infants who are saved by the sovereign grace of God operating quite independently of co-operation on their own part. Infants dying in infancy certainly cannot "improve grace." And that is to say, those who die in infancy, if they are saved at all, must be saved on the Calvinistic principle of monergistic grace. And it is not to be believed that our Arminian brethren neglect the religious training of their children more than other Christians. It must be confessed, however, that Professor Rishell brings grievous charges against what, from his representations, may be a considerable party in his church. He charges that they prosecute the religious training of their children with some degree of listlessness, on wrong presuppositions, and, in wide circles, with no firmly-grounded expectation that it will bear particularly rich fruit.

This much, at least, must he allowed: that in no other than Arminian circles could such indifference to the religion of childhood, or to the recognition by the church of the membership of Children in it, as is here charged, intrench itself in the recognized principles of the system. The sacerdotalist holds that in baptism God has placed in his hands the instrument by which the child of the tenderest years may be incorporated into the church and into Christ. Failure to baptize any child to whom he could obtain proper access would be to him a crime against humanity and against the love of God. Failure to recognize all baptized children as members of the mystical body of Christ would be to him blasphemy against the holy ordinance and the power of the Spirit of God which works through it. The Reformed Christian, suspending salvation for all alike upon the sovereign grace of God alone, operating in accordance with God's covenanted purposes of mercy, points with confidence to the terms of the promise, "To you and to your children." He enjoins parents who trust in the covenanted mercy of God, therefore, to present their children, on the credit of this promise, to the Lord in baptism, and to bring them up in His nurture and admonition. And he enjoins the Church to recognize them by means of this holy ordinance as God's children, heirs of all the promises; and to take order for their training as such, that they may adorn in life and conduct the Gospel by which they are saved. Failure to recognize them as the children of God would be to him treason against that very covenant in whose terms he finds all his own warrant for hope and peace. The Arminian, on the other hand, strenuously contends that all that God has done, or does, looking to the salvation of man has been done with reference to the mass; and that the salvation of the individual absolutely depends, therefore, on his own improvement of the universal provision. He is under constant temptation, therefore, to look upon the individual as outside the Church - the company of God's people - until by his own act of choice of Christ as his portion he has incorporated himself into it. This means, of course, an inherent tendency in the logic of the system "to count the children out." If the incorporation of the individual into Christ and therefore into His Church depends on his own voluntary act of intelligent choice, how, indeed, can children as yet incapable of choice be "counted in"? One would think it tolerably clear that they would be "counted out" until they arrive at such years that they may intelligently and voluntarily "count themselves in."

Dr. Rishell's effort to correct this sad state of things among our Arminian brethren must, of course, meet with the deepest sympathy of every Christian heart. Only we cannot say that he goes about his task in a very hopeful way. Obviously, the root of the difficulty lies in the Arminian doctrine of the function of the human will in salvation. But Dr. Rishell does not attack the problem by seeking to correct this error. From all that appears he is himself firmly holden in it, and would think of nothing so little as commending to his brethren a frank abandonment of their fundamental postulate of autosoteric [Greek: self-saving] Christianity. He elects to approach the problem, therefore, from another angle, and seeks to meet the difficulty by bringing into prominence another doctrine of at least Evangelical Arminianism. This is a doctrine which, as Dr. Rishell suggests, has fallen somewhat into the background in the mind of the average Arminian - as well, indeed, it might, seeing that it clearly stands in direct contradiction to the fundamental Arminian postulate that in the salvation of the individual everything depends upon his exercise of his own power of free choice. This doctrine is that postulate by which the Wesleyans have sought to cure the pelagianizing tendencies of original Arminianism by declaring, to put it somewhat roughly, that all men come into the world already saved. That at least is the way the old Evangelical Arminianism put it, though no doubt a new Arminianism - which is much the same as the old Rationalism - may prefer to phrase it that all men come into the world "safe." This doctrine, it seems, has, in its more evangelical form, stood in the thought of Arminianism heretofore rather as a theoretical postulate saving its theoretical evangelicalism, than as a practical principle of thought and action. Dr. Rishell proposes to bring it out of its position of "innocuous desuetude." and to make it the basis of recognizing children as the children of God, demanding recognition and treatment appropriate to that condition.

The fundamental proposition of Dr. Rishell's book becomes thus the hitherto, as it seems, somewhat neglected Arminian doctrine that all children are born into the world in a state of salvation. His contention is that, this being the case, children are not to be looked upon as subjects who are to be saved. They must not be dealt with therefore as subjects who are to be trained for salvation. They are rather to be thought of as already saved; and are to be treated as needing to be trained only to preserve intact the salvation of which they are already possessors. He spares no emphasis or reiteration to make this fundamental proposition plain. And he omits no effort to give it validity - in his entire conception of the work of the parent and child in child-training. Children, having no guilt of original sin, need no forgiveness. Being already in a state of grace, they need no conversion. They are at least as free from corruption and as well-placed in every respect as adult converts (see e.g., pp.34, 37, 38, 41, 43, etc.). They ought not to be taught, therefore, that they require a Savior. They ought not to be told that they are to repent of their sins, and to rest on the Savior in faith, and faith only. They ought rather to be instructed that they are in a state of grace, and that they need only to preserve intact that good thing that has been committed to them.

As one reads on, from page to page, he is appalled by the extremity to which Dr. Rishell pushes these contentions. What he says, it is to be observed, is not that the children of believing parents are to be presumed, on the strength of the covenant promise, to be the children of God, and are to be treated accordingly. This is a Reformed doctrine; and we could only wish that Dr. Rishell and all our Arminian brethren were not only almost but altogether such as we are, in it. What he says, he says of all children that come into the world, without exception. He formally bases a doctrine of universal baptism of children upon this postulate. Since all children are born saved, they all without exception have an indefensible right to the temporal as well as to the eternal gifts of God to His people. Nor does he say that we should treat children as presumably the objects of God's mercy, present them to God in faith, and seek the gifts of grace for them. He says that they are already - all of them - the possessors of God's saving grace; that they have, all of them, already been born anew, as truly and as effectively as any adult convert; that they, all of them without exception, begin life on this high plane, and that their only concern is to preserve the salvation they already, all of them, enjoy, and to keep the grace they, all of them, possess.

One is dismayed as he thinks of the vigor of the doctrine of "falling from grace" which is here involved. Every mother's son of the children of the heathen throughout the world; the large majority of the children born in Christendom; even a considerable portion of the children of Christian parents - forthwith "fall from grace" on the first motions of conscious life! And so serious is this fall that, as Dr. Rishell tells us, only sixty per cent. of the "Christian children" who attend Sabbath school, for example, ever find their way even into the Church as an external organization, to say nothing now of finding their way to Christ! In this state of the facts, surely, whatever may be its theoretical value in evangelicalizing the Arminian system, the practical value of the postulate that all children are born in a state of grace is as nothing; and we cannot wonder that our Arminian brethren have neglected it and have diligently sought to save their children. Born saved or not, they are no longer saved when they come under our observation; and every Christian heart will be zealous to secure or recover, as we choose to call it, salvation for them. In recommending parents and the Church to reverse their methods, to cease to seek the salvation of their little ones, and to treat them consistently as all already by virtue of their very nature saved, or at least safe, we fear that Dr. Rishell has "pressed beyond the mark"; and if his teaching were universally adopted, we very greatly fear we should soon find that the quotation would need to be filled out to its bitter end. We shall not benefit the children by teaching them - or by teaching those who have their spiritual good in charge - that their part in salvation is so of nature that the "faithful saying" that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" has but a modified application to them.

There is much in Dr. Rishell's hook about the duty of Christian parents and of the Christian Church to their children which it is well to say, and which is well said. Perhaps the whole of it might be read with profit by an Arminian parent who is imbued with the terrible notion - Dr. Rishell is our authority for fearing it may exist among our Arminian brethren - that children must be left untrammeled to exercise their own free choice as to salvation when the choosing time comes. As against such a dreadful idea he rightly pleads the duty and profit of Christian nurture, and seeks to put on the hearts of his readers the Biblical precept, Train up a child in the way he should go. We have heard of a Mr. Rufus Hood, who sought to put this shocking principle into practice, and met with results which scarcely commended themselves even to his genial biographer. What would the world be if all were Constance Trescotts [popular 1904 novel by S. Weir Mitchell]? But the whole of Dr. Rishell's counsel is so vitiated by his fundamentally false postulate that its universal adoption would be as noxious as, perhaps more noxious than, the abuse which he seeks to correct. We have spoken of the postulate as finding its best expression in popular speech in the assumption that all children are born saved. But we have also spoken of it as, perhaps; more accurately expressed by declaring that they are all born safe. The difference of expression marks the difference between the Evangelical Arminian and the Pelagianizing, or, to use a more modern term, the Rationalizing Arminian. The difference is a purely theoretical one; it has no practical significance. In either case every child is presumed to come into the world in no need of saving. In either case the problem with the whole human race is not to save it, but to keep it from getting lost. So to state the problem is, to a believer in the Scriptural revelation, already to dismiss it. Surely the Bible does not think of the world as a saved world, which needs only to be kept saved; but as a lost world, which needs saving. To say that this lost estate in which the world is found is for every generation purely post-natal may be an easy rejoinder for those who are determined to support a theory and are careless of the props used. But it can convince nobody. Everybody knows in his heart of hearts that the world is by nature a lost world, and that he himself has been born a child of wrath, even as the others. To tell him that this is not true is to him the prime absurdity; and it will matter little whether he is told he is born saved or safe. The difference between the two answers is, in fact, a difference of tone rather than of principle. The one reveals a deeper sense of dependence on Christ for all the goods of this life and the next: the other reveals a stronger feeling of self-dependence. Arminianism and Rationalism - how close they lie together! The human soul is too much of a unit, and its "faculties" too little separable entities, for a strong feeling of autonomy in the one sphere of its operations to fail to work its way through all. Say that Arminianism is formally Thelematism [from the Greek for "will" - thelema] rather than Rationalism. It is certain that Thelematism will never escape the dangers of Emotionalism or of Rationalism, according as the temperament (or the temperature) of the individual opens this or the other channel for its extension. Professor Rishell's temperament appears to be that which is more inclined to the rationalistic side, and there is accordingly a very unpleasant tone of rationalism running through the whole volume. He makes visible efforts to keep true to current Methodist conceptions. The efforts are indeed too visible; too obviously needed. And the leaven of Rationalism is working throughout the whole discussion.

The very ideal of the Christian life as well as of Christian training suffers in consequence. Dr. Rishell sums up his appeal at the close of his volume, in some very beautiful words. "So to train a human being from infancy to maturity," he says, "as that he will never fall into the evils of an unbridled appetite; that he will lead a clean, pure, helpful life; that he will find in the service of God and the service of his fellow-man his chief joy; that he will gladly take his place by the side of Christ in the saving of other human beings - this is worth while." It certainly would be worth while. Can it be done? That is, not indeed the question, but a very important question. The question is whether, when it is done, all is done; or, indeed, in the deepest sense of the word, anything is done. We have been told of one for whom as nearly, probably, as in the case of any one who has lived on the earth, all this was done. The note of his character was expressed in the great declaration, "All these things" - all the things commanded by the law of God - "have I obeyed from my youth up." When he saw Jesus, with the natural impulse of one so trained and so richly endowed, he wished to take his place by His side: "Good Master," he called Him, and fell on his knees at His feet. "And Jesus, looking upon him, loved him." Surely here, if anywhere, may be found Dr. Rishell's well-trained youth. Was there nothing lacking in his case? According to the judgment of our Lord, everything was lacking. Seeing him, and seeing his lack, seeing how difficult it was for him to perceive what he lacked and how impossible for him to supply it, our Lord was moved to deliver His great discourse on the human impossibility of salvation. And by this example we may see that Dr. Rishell's program of training for youth lacks everything to this point.

What is lacking in it is the whole evangelical note. There is lacking all sense of the joy of redemption from sin. What will Dr. Rishell make of the great declaration, "Verily I say unto you, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance?" Where in his whole scheme is there place for the joy of believing? Where for the fervour of love? Where for the inextinguishable bliss of redemption? Worth while so to train a child that he will "never fall into the evils of unbridled appetite"? Worth while to teach a child to live a clean life? Worth while to train a child to zeal in religious and humanitarian activity? Of course it is worth while. But there are some things that are much more worth while than these, great things as these are. It is much more worth while to train a child to recognize the sinfulness of his heart and the amazing deceit and subtlety of its sinful movements. It is much more worth while to teach him to contemplate with ceaseless wonder the unspeakable love of God in the gift of his only begotten Son as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. It is much more worth while to lead him to this Savior's feet in humble trust in His blood and righteousness. It is much more worth while to implant within his soul a longing for the gift of the Spirit by whom, being born anew, he is led onward in the holy walk with God his Savior. Oh, certainly it is worth while to teach a child that he ought to be good; and to train him in good thoughts and good words and good deeds. But it is infinitely better worth while to teach him how he can become good. And no more now than at any other period of the world's life is there any other dynamic for goodness than just Jesus Christ. Now, too, as ever the great principle holds good, "Not out of works, but unto good works which God has afore-prepared that we should walk in them." "The frozen reason's colder part" - there may be some mild pleasure in that, surely; but "the joy of salvation" - nothing can take the place of that in any heart, young or old. Of course, if children do not need saving, there can be no need of bringing them to Jesus; or of teaching them to trust humbly in Jesus. Jesus in that case is not "Jesus" to them: for "they called His name Jesus because He should save His people from their sins." Only, we wonder then, why He took the little children in His arms and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." And, then, these little children grow up; and did any one ever see one who had grown up and had no need of Jesus - not as one to whose side he might come to help Him save the world, but as One to whose feet he might flee to receive from Him the salvation of the soul? It is a sad thing if there are any Christian parents anywhere who fail in their duty to give their children a full and rich religious training; we have to learn religion as we have to learn anything else It would be an infinitely sadder thing if any Christian parents anywhere should teach their children that they do not need salvation, and do not need to seek it diligently, and when they have found it to sell all that they have and purchase it.

*The Child as God's Child. By Rev. Charles W. Rishell, Ph. D., Professor of Historical Theology in Boston University School of Theology. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham (1904). p.181

Christ Our Sacrifice¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

"ACCORDING to the New Testament, primitive Christianity, when it used the words 'Jesus redeems us by His blood,' was thinking of the ritual sacrifice, and this conception is diffused throughout the whole New Testament; it is a fundamental idea, universal in primitive Christianity, with respect to the significance of Jesus' death." So remarks Paul Fiebig;² and W. P. Paterson, summarizing Albrecht Ritschl,³ emphasizes the assertion. "The interpretation of Christ's death as a sacrifice," says he,⁴ "is imbedded in every important type of New Testament teaching." By the limitation implied in the words, "every important type," he means only to allow for the failure of allusions to this interpretation in the two brief letters, James and Jude, the silence of which, he rightly explains, "raises no presumption against the idea being part of the common stock of Apostolic doctrine." It was already given expression by Jesus Himself (Mt. xxvi. 28, Mk. xiv. 24, I Cor. xi. 25, Mt. xx. 28, Mk. x. 45),⁵ and it is elaborated by the Apostles in a great variety of obviously spontaneous allusions. They not only expressly state that Christ was offered as a sacrifice.⁶ They work out the correspondence between His death and the different forms of Old Testament sacrifice.⁷ They show that the different acts of the Old Testament sacrificial ritual were repeated in Christ's experience.⁸ They ascribe the specific effects of sacrifice to his death.⁹ They dwell particularly, in truly sacrificial wise, on the saving efficacy of His out-poured blood.¹⁰ William Warburton did not speak a bit too strongly when he wrote, more than a hundred and fifty years ago: "One could hardly have thought it possible that any man who had read the Gospels with their best interpreters, the authors of the Epistles, should ever have entertained a doubt whether the death of Christ was a real sacrifice."11

It would be strange in these circumstances if, in attempting to determine the Biblical conception of the nature of the work of Christ, appeal were not made to the sacrificial system; and it were not argued that the nature of Christ's work is exhibited in the nature of the sacrificial act. Whatever a sacrifice is, that Christ's work is. It will be obvious, however, that we are liable to fall into a certain confusion here. Jesus Himself and the Apostles speak of Christ's work as sacrificial, and it is clear (as Paterson duly points out¹²) that this is on their lips no figure of speech or mere illustration, but is intended to declare the simple fact. It is quite plain, then, that His work was conceived by them to be of precisely that nature which a sacrifice was understood by them to be. But it is by no means so plain that they conceived His work to be of the nature which we may understand a sacrifice to be. Failure to regard this very simple distinction has brought untold confusion into the discussion. If we would comprehend the teaching of the writers of the New Testament when they call Christ a sacrifice, we must, of course, not assume out of hand that their idea of a sacrifice and ours are identical. The investigation of the previous question of the notion they attached to a sacrifice must form our starting-point. So little is this mode of procedure always adopted, however, that it is even customary for writers on the subject to go so far afield at this point as to introduce a discussion not of the idea of sacrifice held by the founders of the Christian religion, or even current in the Judaism of their day, or even embodied in the Levitical system; but of the idea of sacrifice in general, conceived as a world-wide mode of worship. The several theories of the fundamental conception which underlies sacrificial worship in the general sense are set forth; a choice is made among them; and this theory is announced as ruling the usage of the term when applied to Christ. Christ is undoubtedly our sacrifice, it is said: but a sacrifice is a rite by which communion with God is established and maintained, or by which a complete surrender to God is symbolized, or by which recognition is made of the homage we owe to Him as our God, or by which God's suffering love is manifested. As if the question of importance were what we mean by a sacrifice, and not what the New Testament writers mean by it. 

It is manifestly of the highest importance, therefore, that we should keep separate three very distinct questions, to each of which a great deal of interest attaches, although they have very different bearings on the determination of the nature of Christ's work. These three questions are: (1) What is the fundamental idea which underlies sacrificial worship as a world phenomenon? (2) What is the essential implication of sacrifice in the Levitical system? (3) What is the conception of sacrifice which lay in the minds of the writers of the New Testament, when they represented Jesus as a sacrifice and ascribed to His work a sacrificial character, in its mode, its nature and its effects? The distinctness of these questions is strikingly illustrated by the circumstance that not infrequently a different response is given to each of them by the same investigator. It may be said in general that few doubt that the conception of sacrifice at least dominant among the Jews of Christ's time was distinctly piacular: and, although it is more frequently questioned whether all the writers of the New Testament were in agreement with this conception, it is practically undoubted that some of them were, and generally admitted that all were. The majority of scholars agree also that the piacular conception informs sacrificial worship in the Levitical system. On the other hand speculation has as yet found no common ground with - respect to the fundamental conception which is supposed to underlie sacrificial worship in general, and in this field hypothesis still jostles with hypothesis in what seems an endless controversy. 

Question may even very legitimately be raised whether the assumption can be justified which is commonly (but of course not universally) made that a single fundamental idea underlies all sacrificial worship the world over. There seems no reason in the nature of things why a similar mode of worship may not have grown up in various races of men, living in very different circumstances, to express differing conceptions; and it certainly cannot be doubted that very diverse conceptions, in the long practice of the rite by these various races in their constantly changing circumstances, attached themselves, from time to time and from place to place, to the sacrificial mode of worship common to all. The Biblical narrative may lead us to suppose, to be sure, that sacrificial worship began very early in the history of the human race: it may seem to be carried back, indeed, to the very dawn of history, and to be definitely assigned in its origin to no later period than the second generation of men. But at the same time we seem to be advertized that at the very inception of sacrificial worship different conceptions were embodied in it by its several practitioners. It is difficult to believe at least that we are expected to understand that the whole difference in the acceptability to Jehovah of the two offerings of Cain and Abel hung on the different characters of the two offerers:13 we are told that Jehovah had respect not merely unto Abel and not unto Cain, but also to Abel's offering and not to Cain's. The different characters of the two men seem rather to be represented as expressing themselves in differing conceptions of man's actual relation to God and of the conditions of approval by Him and the proper means of seeking His favor. 

It can scarcely be reading too much between the lines to suppose that the narrative in the fourth chapter of Genesis is intended on the one hand to describe the origin of sacrificial worship, and on the other to distinguish between two conceptions of sacrifice and to indicate the preference of Jehovah for the one rather than the other. These two conceptions are briefly those which have come to be known respectively as the piacular theory and the symbolical, or perhaps we should rather call it the gift, theory. In this view we are not to suppose that Cain and Abel simply brought each a gift to the Lord from the increase which had been granted him, to acknowledge thereby the overlordship of Jehovah and to express subjection and obedience to Him: and that it is merely an accident that Cain's offering, as that of a husbandman, was of the fruit of the ground, while Abel's, as that of a shepherd, was of the firstlings of the flock. There is no reason apparent why Jehovah should prefer a lamb to a sheaf of wheat.¹⁴ The difference surely goes deeper, for it was "by faith" that Abel offered under God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain -which seems to suggest that the supreme excellence of his sacrifice is to be sought not in the mere nature of the thing offered, but in the attitude of the offerer.¹⁵ What seems to be implied is that Cain's offering was an act of mere homage; Abel's embodied a sense of sin, an act of contrition, a cry for succor, a plea for pardon. In a word, Cain came to the Lord with an offering in his hand and the Homage theory of sacrifice in his mind: Abel with an offering in his hand and the Piacular theory of sacrifice in his heart. And it was therefore, that Jehovah had respect to Abel's offering and not to Cain's. If so, while we may say that sacrifice was invented by man, we must also say that by this act piacular sacrifice was instituted by God.¹⁶ In other modes of conceiving it, sacrifice may represent the reaching out of man towards God: in its piacular conception it represents the stooping down of God to man. The fundamental difference is that in the one case sacrifice rests upon consciousness of sin and has its reference to the restoration of a guilty human being to the favor of a condemning God: in the other it stands outside of all relation to sin and has its reference only to the expression of the proper attitude of deference which a creature should preserve towards his Maker and Ruler.¹⁷ 

The appearance of two such sharply differentiated conceptions side by side in the earliest Hebrew tradition does not encourage us to embark on ambitious speculations which would seek the origin of all sacrificial doctrines in a single primitive idea out of which they have gradually unfolded in the progress of time and through many stages of increasing culture. We have been made familiar with such genetic constructions by the writings especially of E. B. Tylor, W. Robertson Smith, and Smith's follower and improver, J. G. Frazer.¹⁸ In Tylor's view the beginning of sacrifice is to be found in a gift made by a savage to some superior being from which he hoped to receive a benefit. The gods grew gradually greater and more distant; and the gift was correspondingly spiritualized, until it ended by becoming the gift of the worshipper's self. Thus out of the offer of a bribe there gradually evolved its opposite - an act of self-abnegation and renunciation. The start is taken, according to W. Robertson Smith, rather from a common meal in which the totem animal, which is also the god, is consumed with a view to the assimilation of it by the worshippers and their assimilation to it. When the animal eaten came to be thought of as provided by the worshipper, the idea of gift came in; as all totemistic meals had for their object the maintenance or renewal of the bond between the worshipper and the god, the conception of expiation lay near - for what is expiation but the restitution of a broken bond?¹⁹ H. Hubert and M. Mauss are certainly wise in eschewing this spurious geneticism, and contenting themselves with seeking merely to isolate the common element discoverable in all sacrificial acts. It must be confessed, however, that we are not much advanced even by their less ambitious labors. Sacrifices, they tell us, are, broadly, rites designed by the consecration of a victim, to modify the moral state, or, as they elsewhere express it, to affect the religious state, of the offerers.²⁰ This is assuredly the most formal of formal definitions. All that differentiates sacrifices from other religious acts, so far as appears from it, is that they, as the others do not, seek their common end "by the consecration of a victim." Nor are we carried much further, when, at the end of their essay, we are told²¹ that what binds together all the divers forms of sacrifice into a unity, is that it is always one process which is employed for their varied ends. "This process," it is then said, "consists in establishing a connection between the sacred world and the profane world by the intervention of a victim, that is to say, by something destroyed in the course of the ceremony." Sacrifice, we thus learn, is just - sacrifice. But what this sacrifice is, in its fundamental meaning, we seem not to be very clearly told. An impression is left on the mind that the word "sacrifice" embraces so great a variety of differing transactions that only a very formal definition can include them all. 

Our guides having left us thus in the lurch, perhaps we cannot do better than simply survey the chief theories which have been suggested as to the fundamental idea embodied in sacrificial worship, quite in the flat. In doing so, we may take a hint from the two forms of conception brought before us in the narrative of the sacrifices of Cain and Abel and derive from them our principle of division. The theories part into two broad classes, which look upon sacrifices respectively as designed and adapted to express the religious feelings of man conceived merely as creature, or as intended to meet the needs of man as sinner. The theories of the first class are by far the more numerous, and, nowadays at least, by far the more popular. Perhaps, thinking of sacrifices as a world-wide usage as at this point we are, we may say also that these theories are very likely to embody the true account of the meaning of much of the sacrificial worship, at least, which has overspread the globe. For man, even in the formation of his religious rites is doubtless no more ready to remember that he is a sinner craving pardon than that he is a creature claiming protection. Deep-rooted as the sense of sin is in every normal human conscience, and sure as it is sporadically to express itself and to color all serious religious observances, the pride of man is no less ready to find manifestation even in his religious practices. Let us look at the chief varieties of these two great classes of theories in a rapid enumeration. 

The chief theories of sacrifice which allow no place to sin in its essential implications, may perhaps be collected into three groups to which may be assigned the names of theories of Recognition, of Gift and of Communion. 

The theories to which we have given the name of theories of Recognition are also known as Homage or Symbolical theories. Their common characteristic is that they conceive sacrifices to be at bottom symbolical rites by means of which the worshipper gives expression to his religious feelings or aspirations or needs: "acts go before words." At their highest level these theories represent the worshipper as expressing thus his recognition of the deity, his own relation of dependence upon Him and subjection to Him, and his readiness to act in accordance with this relation and to render the homage and obedience due from him. The name of William Warburton is connected with these theories in this general form.²² A slightly different turn is given to the general conception by Albrecht Ritschl.²³ According to him, even in the case of the later sacrificial system of Israel, the sacrifices express (with no reference whatever to sin in the symbolism) only the awe and religious fear which the creature in his inadequacy feels in the presence of deity: man seeks "to cover" his weakness in the face of the destroying glory of God (Gen. xxxii. 31, Judges vi. 23, xiii. 22). There are others, to be sure, who are not so careful to exclude a reference to sin and, in speaking of the sacrifices of Israel at least, suppose that what is symbolized includes a hatred of sin, as well as self-surrender to God: in their hands the theory passes therefore upward into the other main class. On the other hand, in their lowest forms, theories of this group tend to pass downward into conceptions which look upon sacrifices as merely magical rites. The thing symbolized may be supposed to be not a spiritual attitude at all but a physical need. Primitive worshippers only exhibited before the deity the object they required, and this was supposed to operate upon the deity (something after the fashion of sympathetic magic) as a specimen, securing from Him the thing desired. Theorists of this order do not scruple to point to the "shew-bread" displayed in the temple of Israel and the offering of first-fruits as instances in point. 

The theories which look upon sacrifices as essentially gifts, presents, intended to please the deity,²⁴ and thus to gain favor with Him, part into two divisions according as the gifts are conceived more as bribes or more as fines, that is according as they are conceived as designed more to curry favor with the deity, or more to make amends for faults - or, from the point of view of the deity, as a sort of police regulation, to punish or check wrong doing. In either case the idea of sin may come into play and the theory pass upward into the other main class. The chief representative of this type of theory among the old writers is J. Spencer, who looks upon it as seli-evident that this was the primitive view of sacrifice.²⁵ The anthropologists (E. B. Tylor, Herbert Spencer) have given it great vogue in our day; and it is doubtless the most commonly held theory of the fundamental nature of sacrifice at present (e. g., H. Schultz, B. Stade, A. B. Davidson, G. F. Moore).²⁶ In one of the lower forms of this general theory the gifts are conceived as food supplied to the deity - who is supposed to share in the human need of being fed.²⁷ It is an advance on the crudest form of this conception when it is the savour or odor of the sacrifice which is supposed to be pleasing to the deity, and the food is thought to be conveyed to Him through the medium of burning. When the food is supposed to be shared between the offerer and the deity, an advance is made to the next group of theories. 

This group of theories looks upon sacrifices as essentially formal acts of communion with the deity - a common meal, say, partaken of by worshipper and worshipped, the fundamental motive being to gratify the deity by giving or sharing with Him a meal.²⁸ This general view is often improved upon by a reference to the custom of establishing covenants by common meals, and becomes thereby a "meal-covenant" or "tablebond" theory. In this form it was already suggested by A. A. Sykes who speaks of sacrifices as joint meals, which are, he says, " acts of engaging in covenants and leagues."29 It is a further addition to this theory to say that it was conceived that a physical union was induced between the deity and the worshipper, by the medium of the common meal.³⁰ And the notion has reached its height when the meal is thought of as essentially a feeding on the God Himself whether by symbol, or through the medium of a totem animal, or by magical influence.³¹ H. C. Trumbull actually utilizes this conception to explain the mode of action of the Lord's Supper.³² 

One of the things which strikes us very sharply as we review these three groups of theories is the little place given in them to the slaughter, or more broadly the destruction, of the victim, or, more broadly, the offering. This comes forward in them all as incidental to the rite, rather than as its essence. In the third group the sacrificial feast - which follows on the sacrifice itself - assumes the main place; in the second it is the oblation which is emphasized as of chief importance; even in the first the slaughter is not cardinal, - at the best it is a prerequisite that the blood may be obtained, which is represented as the valuable thing, to present to the deity. This cirsumstance alone is probably fatal to the validity of these theories as accounts whether of sacrifice in general or sacrifice in Israel; and very certainly as providing an explanation of the meaning of the New Testament writers when they speak of our Lord as a sacrifice. There is reason to believe that the slaughter of the victim or destruction of the offering constitutes the essential act of sacrifice; and certainly in the New Testament it is precisely in the blood of Christ or in His cross, symbols of His death, that the essence of His sacrificial character is found.³³ 

When we turn to the theories of sacrifice in which a reference to sin is made fundamental, we meet first with that form of the Symbolical theory in which the sacrifice is supposed to be the vehicle for the expression of the worshipper's "confession, his regret, his petition for forgiveness,"34 -- that is to say, in one word, his repentance and his engagement to give back his life to God. Influential advocates of this view are K. C. W. F. Bahr, G. F. Oehler and F. D. Maurice.³⁵ By its side we meet also that form of the Gift theory in which the sinning worshipper is supposed to approach his judge with (on the lower level) a bribe, or (on the higher level) the fine for his fault in his hand. The former view is appropriate only to lower stages of culture, in which justice is supposed to go by favor. Even in the higher heathen opinion, so to think of the gods was held to be degrading to them: "Even a good man," says Cicero, "will refuse to accept presents from the wicked."36 When the gift is thought of as amends for a fault, however, we have entered upon more distinctly ethical ground. It is, nevertheless, only in the Piacular or Expiatory view that theories of sacrifice reach their ethical culmination. In this view the offerer is supposed to come before God burdened with a sense of sin and seeking to expiate its guilt. The victim which he offers is looked upon as his substitute, to which is transferred the punishment which is his due; and the penalty having been thus vicariously borne, the offerer may receive forgiveness for his sin. Among the older writers W. Outram is usually looked upon as the type of this view: he explains the death of the victim as "some evil inflicted on one party in order to expiate the guilt of another in the sense of delivering the guilty from punishment and procuring the forgiveness of sin."37 The general view has been held not only by such writers as P. Fairbairn, J. H. Kurtz, E. W. Hengstenberg, but also by such others as W. Gesenius, W. M. L. de Wette and even Bruno Bauer. E. Westermarck himself defines "the original idea in sacrifice a piaculum, a substitute for the offerer."38 

A matter of importance which it may be well to observe in passing is that in no one of these theories are sacrifices supposed to terminate immediately upon the offerer and to have their direct effect upon him. The offerer offers them; but it is to the deity that he offers them; and their direct effect, whatever it may be, is naturally upon the deity. Of course the offerer seeks a benefit for himself by his offerings, and in this sense ultimately they terminate on him; and in some instances their operation upon him is conceived quite mechanically.³⁹ Nevertheless it is always through their effect on the deity that they are supposed to affect men, and their immediate effect is upon the deity himself. The nearest to an exception to this is provided by those theories in which the stress is laid on the sacrificial feast, or rather, among these, by those theories in which the worshipper is supposed to "eat the God" and thereby to become sharer in his divine qualities. Even this notion, however, is an outgrowth of the general conception which rules all sacrificial worship, that the purpose of the sacrifice is so to affect the deity as to secure its favorable regard for the worshipper or its favorable action in his behalf or upon him. This conception is no doubt extended in this special case to a great extreme, in representing the benefit hoped for, sought and obtained, to be the actual transfusion of the deity's powers into the worshipper's person. Even so, however, the fundamental idea of sacrifices is retained - the securing of something from the deity for the worshipper; and this is something very different from a transaction intended directly to call out action on the part of the worshipper himself. It is in effect subversive of the whole principle of sacrificial worship to imagine that sacrifices are offered directly to affect the worshippers and to secure action from them: their purpose is to affect the deity and to secure beneficial action on its part. "The purpose of sacrifice," says J. Jeremias justly,⁴⁰ "is invariably to influence the deity in favour of the sacrificer." Every time the writers of the New Testament speak of the work of Christ under the rubric of a sacrifice, therefore, they bear witness - under any theory of sacrifice current among scholars - that they conceive of His work as directed Godward and as intended directly to affect God, not man. 

It must be borne steadily in mind that the theories of sacrificial worship which we have been enumerating do not necessarily represent the judgment of their adherents on the nature and implications of sacrificial worship in the developed ritual of Israel, and much less in the decadence of Israelitish religion which is thought to have been in progress when the New Testament books were written. These theories are general theories and are put forward as attempts to determine the ideas which gave birth to and in this sense underlie all sacrificial worship. The adherents of these theories for the most part recognize that in the course of the history of sacrificial worship many changes of conception took place, here, there, and elsewhere; many new ideas were incorporated and many old ones lost. They are quite prepared to look for and to trace out in the history of sacrificial worship, therefore, at least a "development," and this "development" is not thought of as necessarily running on the same lines - certainly not pari passu - in every nation. Though these theorists are inclined, therefore, to conceive all sacrificial worship as rooting in one notion, they are ordinarily willing to recognize that the "development" of sacrificial worship may have taken, or actually did take, its own direction in each region of the earth and among each people, as the conditions of its existence and modifying influences may have varied from time to time or from place to place. The history of sacrificial worship in Israel becomes thus a special subject of investigation; and scholars engaged upon it have wrought out their schemes of "development," beginning, each, with his own theory of the origin and essential presuppositions of sacrificial worship, and leading up through the stages recognized by him to the culmination of Israelitish sacrificial worship in the Levitical system. When we say that the sacrificial worship of Israel culminated in the Levitical system, this has a special significance for the investigations in question, seeing that they ordinarily proceed more or less completely on the assumption of the schematization of the development of religion in Israel which has been worked out by the Graf-Wellhausen school. This places the Levitical system at the end of the long development, and looks upon it as the final outcome of the actual religious effort of Israel. From this point of view we are apt to have, therefore, successively, discussions of sacrificial worship in the primitive Semitic ages, in the early Israelitish times, in the prophetic period, and in the prescriptions of the Levitical law. Thus a long course of development is interposed between the origin of sacrifices and the enactments of the Levitical legislation; and the theorists are free from all embarrassment when they find sacrifices bearing a very different meaning and charged with very different implications in the Levitical system from what they had conceived their fundamental, that is, speaking historically, their primitive meaning and implication to be. It is not surprising, therefore, that in point of fact, the theorizers do ordinarily find the conceptions expressed in the Levitical system different from the fundamental ideas which they suppose to have been originally embodied in sacrificial worship. 

It is quite common for them to find this difference precisely in this, - that the Levitical system is the elaborate embodiment of the piacular idea, while in earlier times some one of the other conceptions of sacrifice prevailed. On this view it is customary to say that the idea of expiation is first elaborated in the post-exilic period, in which the sin-offering takes the first place among types of sacrifices, and that special expiatory sacrifices are mentioned first in Ezekiel (xl. 39, xlii. 13, xliii. 19). The assumptions in this construction, to be sure, are challenged on both sides. 

It is pointed out, on the one side, that the rise of special expiatory sacrifices is not the same thing as the rise of the conception of expiation in connection with sacrifices. A. Kuenen notes,⁴¹ for example, that the burnt-offering, which is thought the oldest of all sacrifices, was offered in earlier times in those cases for which, in the completed legislation, the expiatory sacrifices proper were required; and indeed it is clear that the whole burnt-offering can still be expiatory in the late document which is isolated as P (Lev. i. 4, xiv. 20, xvi. 24). And Robertson Smith does not hesitate to declare⁴² that "the atoning function of sacrifice is not confined to a particular class of oblation, but belongs to all sacrifices." Of course this declaration is made from his own point of view; but it is not valid merely from his point of view. For him all sacrifices go back to a primitive form in which the object is to maintain or to reinstate communion with the God. Expiation is in his view only the re-establishment of the broken bond: the original totemistic sacrifice had all the effects of an expiatory rite; and in all the developments which have followed, this element in their significance has never been lost. All trace of totemism is effaced; but the sense of expiation always abides and thus becomes the constant feature of sacrifices. Hubert and Mauss arrive at the same result along another pathway.⁴³ In all sacrifices there is a thing offered - the victim, we may call it for brevity's sake. This victim is an intermediary. When we say intermediary, however, we say representative. And when we say representative, we say broadly, substitute. "This is why the offerer inserts between the religious forces and himself intermediaries, the chief of which is the victim. If he went through this rite to the end himself, he would find in it death and not life. The victim takes his place. It alone enters into the dangerous region of the sacrifice, it succumbs there, and it is there in order to succumb. The offerer remains under cover; the gods take the victim instead of taking him. It ransoms him." "There is no sacrifice," they add emphatically, "in which there does not intervene some idea of ransom." We may take it to be sufficiently clear, then, that, whatever conceptions may have from time to time and from place to place dominated the minds of sacrificial worship, the one constant idea which has always been present in it is precisely that of piacular mediation. And it is very plain indeed that we cannot look upon the Levitical legislation as the introduction of the piacular conception into the sacrificial system of Israel. 

The criticism directed from the other side against the assumptions of the theory in question cannot be held to be so successful. The general contention of this criticism is that, while it is to be admitted that the drift in Israel was towards the piacular conception, yet that drift had not reached its goal in the Levitical system, which thus at best marks only a stage in the progress towards it. There are some indeed who will not grant even so much as this. They see very definitely expressed in the Levitical system too some quite different conception of sacrificial worship, the Homage conception, say, or the Communion conception, according to which respectively the sacrifices are thought of as analogous to prayers or to sacraments. Others find it more convenient simply to deny that any definite conception whatever informs the Levitical system. The framers of this legislation were not clear in their own minds what was the real nature of sacrificial worship, but were content to practice it as an ordinance of God and to leave the mode of its operation in that mystery which probably enhanced rather than curtailed its influence upon the awe-stricken consciousness of the worshipper.⁴⁴ This extreme view has obtained a very considerable vogue, but need scarcely be taken seriously. It is plain enough that the Levitical system is something more than a series of blind rites, the whole value of the performance of which lies in the manifestation of implicit obedience to God. And it is generally allowed that the sacrificial conception of Israel, one stage in the development of which is marked by the Levitical system, was moving towards the idea of expiation to which it ultimately attained. Rudolf Smend, for instance, who supposes that the earliest sacrificial ideas of Israel saw in the sacrifices only acts of homage, yet considers that these ideas were steadily modified in later ages until they had run through all the stages up to that of reparation of sin - although he thinks it doubtful if the Israelites ever attained to a truly substitutionary theory.⁴⁵ H. J. Holtzmann, while insisting that the penal interpretation is not that of the law, feels compelled to admit that it was nevertheless the popular doctrine of the Jews and that traces of it found their way into the code itself.⁴⁶ A. B. Davidson, who believes that the earliest idea connected with sacrifice in Israel was that of "a gift to placate God," considers that this idea still underlies the law, and yet "in later times the other side was more prominent, that the death of the creature was of the nature of penalty, by the exaction of which the righteousness of Jehovah was satisfied."47 "This idea," he adds, "seems certainly expressed in Isa. liii; at least these two points appear to be stated there, that the sins of the people, i.e., the penalties for them, were laid on the servant and borne by him; and secondly, that thus the people were relieved from the penalty, and their sins being borne were forgiven." That there was a substitution in the law itself is recognized, on the other hand, by A. Dillmann, although he insists that this was not a substitution in kind, but of something not itself sin-bearing.⁴⁸ 

W. Robertson Smith is well known as the powerful advocate of one of the lowest possible theories of the meaning of the primitive sacrifices of the Semites - that which sees the origin of sacrifice in a meal in which the worshipper was supposed to become physically imbued with the God on whom he fed in symbol. But he did not imagine that the Semitic peoples continued permanently to be sunk in this crass notion. Following Robertson Smith's guidance, W. P. Paterson adopts the common-meal conception of primitive sacrifice - "the fundamental motive was to gratify God by giving or sharing with Him a meal" - but fully recognizes that such changes had taken place in the progress of time that the Levitical system was just an elaborate embodiment of the piacular idea. In his view the whole system - in all its elements, and that not merely of animal but even of vegetable offerings - "contemplated the community as being in a state of guilt, and requiring to be reconciled to God." In it, in short, sacrifices "have in fact become - not excepting the Peace-offering in its later interpretation - piacular sacrifices which dispose God to mercy, procure the forgiveness of sin and avert punishment."49 Accordingly he expounds the matter thus:50 "The expiation of guilt is the leading purpose of the Levitical sacrifices. Their office is to cover or make atonement for sin. The word employed to describe this specific effect is rK,Ki. This efficacy is connected with all four kinds of principal offerings; the objects of the covering are persons and sins; the covering takes place before God, and it stands in a specially close relation to the sprinkling of the blood and the burning of the sacrificial flesh (Lev. i. 4, etc.)." It is not to be doubted, of course, that elements of adoration and of sacramental communion also enter into the sacrificial rites of the Levitical system: nothing could be clearer than that in the several sacrificial ordinances, a variety of religious motives find appropriate expression, and a variety of religious impressions are aimed at and produced. But it would seem quite impossible to erect these motives and impressions into the main, and certainly not into the sole, notion expressed or object sought in these ordinances. It may be confidently contended that, present as they undoubtedly are, they are present as subsidiary and ancillary to the fundamental function of the sacrifice, which is to propitiate the offended deity in behalf of sinful man. Any unbiased study of the Levitical system must issue, as it seems to us, in the conviction that this system is through and through, in its intention and effect, piacular. 

It is, naturally, quite possible to contend that it is not of the first importance for the interpretation of the New Testament writers, when they represent our Lord as a sacrifice, to determine what the conception of sacrifice was which underlay the Levitical legislation. It may be urged that the ideas of the writers of the New Testament were not influenced so much by the Levitical system, as by the notion of sacrifice current in the Jewish thought of their time. As we have seen, however, there are very few who doubt that the Jews in the time when the New Testament was in writing held the doctrine of substitutive expiation in connection with the sacrificial system. George F. Moore is one of these few.⁵¹ He is quite sure that the idea of poena vicaria is a pure importation into the Old Testament, the prevailing conception of sacrifice in which he conceives to be that of " gift." And he seems to imply that the later Jewish doctors were of a quite indefinite mind as to how the sacrifice operated in expiating sin. "The theory that the victim's life is put in place of the owner's," he remarks, " is nowhere hinted at"; and he adds that this is "perhaps because the Jewish doctors understood better than our theologians what sin-offerings and trespass offerings were, and what they were for." We must leave it to him to make clear to himself - he has not made it clear to us - how such offerings could have been understood to "atone" - to make expiation for sin and to propitiate the offended deity - by the interposition of a slain victim, without any idea of vicarious penalty creeping in. 

Even G. B. Stevens will not go the lengths of this. He apparently agrees with Moore, indeed, that the idea of the poena vicaria is absent from Old Testament sacrifices. But he seems to allow it even a determining place in the later Judaism. His prime contention at this point is, indeed, that it was from this later Judaism that Paul, for example, derived this conception. For he admits that in Paul, at least, "we have here the idea of satisfaction by substitution";⁵² and the precise thing on which he insists is that "this legalistic scheme which Paul wrought out of the materials of current Jewish thought."53 He never tires in fact of scoring this teaching of Paul's as a mere remnant of Phariseeism,⁵⁴ in which, therefore, Christians are not bound to follow him. He is clearly so far right in this that this conception was part of Pharisaic belief. There are two conceptions indeed which beyond question - and probably no one questions it - lay together in the minds of the men of the New Testament times, forming the presuppositions of their thought concerning sin and its forgiveness. The one is that atonement for sin was wrought by the sacrifices; the other that vicarious sufferings availed for atonement. The former conception is crisply expressed by Heinrich Weinel thus: "At that time almost the only thought connected with sacrifice was that of a propitiatory rite, accompanied by the shedding of blood."55 With respect to the latter H. H. Wendt points out the currency in the time of Jesus of "the idea of the expiatory significance of sufferings for guilt, and of the substitutionary significance of the excessive sufferings of the righteous for the sins of others."56 

Needless to say both facts thus expressed are fully recognized even by, say, G. F. Moore. He tells us that in the Palestinian schools of the first and second Christian centuries, "the effect of sacrifice is expressed as in the Pentateuch, by the verb kipper, 'make propitiation,' 'expiation,"' and that "the general principle is that all private sacrifices atone, except peace offerings (including thank offerings), with which no confession of sin is made."57 And he tells us as explicitly not only that an expiatory character was attributed to suffering, but that "the suffering and death of righteous men" were held "to atone for the sins of others."58 It would seem inconceivable that such relatable ideas could be kept apart in the mind which gave harborage to both: it is inhuman for us to imagine that men, merely because they lived a few hundred years ago, were incapable of putting even one and one together. And as we read over, say, the ceremonial for the Day of Atonement in the Mishnah tractate Yoma we can scarcely fail to see that this one and one were put together. Paul Fiebig occupies a general position very similar to that of G. F. Moore: he is eager to make it clear that the men of old time in their religious rites troubled themselves very little about ideas, and lived much more in usages and ceremonies carried out with painful exactness. Yet he cannot refuse to add:59 "This is not to say that the ritual of the Day of Atonement did not suggest a variety of ideas, - this idea for example: 'You, a sinner, have really deserved death, but this sacrificial animal now bears the punishment of your sin.' Or this: 'The sacrificial animal now bears the sin away into the wilderness; so soon as the goat which is sent to Azazel (cf. Lev. xvi.) into the wilderness is gone, the sins have also disappeared.' Ideas of substitution and reparation, of bearing the curse of sin, - and also of a gift by means of which the deity is to be propitiated - are suggested here. The sacrificial animal might also be thought of as a purchase price, as ransom-money, and the whole sacrifice be placed under the point of view of ransoming. All these ideas were suggested and were simply and easily to be read out of the ritual." We think it necessary to say, not merely that such ideas as these might be suggested by the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement, and - each in its own measure - by the several varieties of sacrifice which were in use; but that they were inevitably suggested by them and, in point of fact, formed the circle of ideas which make up in their entirety what we may justly think of as the sacrificial conception of the time.⁶⁰ 

Whether, then, we look to the Levitical system or to the conceptions current at the time when the New Testament was written as determining the sense of the writers of the New Testament when they spoke of Christ as a sacrifice, the most natural meaning that can be attached to the term on their lips is that of an expiatory offering propitiating God's favor and reconciling Him to guilty man. An attempt may be made, to be sure, to break the force of this finding by representing sacrificial worship to have fallen so much into the background in the time of our Lord that it no longer possessed importance for the religious thought of the day. Martin Briickner tells us that there is no exposition of the Jewish theory of sacrifice given in W. Bousset's book on the "Religion of Judaism" because "there wasn't any."61 Supposing, however, the fact to be as stated - that the doctrine of sacrifice played so small a part in the religion of the later Judaism that it may be treated as negligible in a summary of the religious conceptions of the time, - that would only add significance to the employment of it by the New Testament writers as a paradigm into which to run their conception of the work of Christ. The further they must be supposed to have gone afield to find this rubric, the more importance they must be supposed to have attached to it as a vehicle of their doctrine. We are not inquiring into the abstract likelihood of the New Testament writers making use of a rare rubric: their use of it is not in dispute.⁶² We are estimating the measure of significance which must be attributed to their use of a rubric which they actually employ. The less a mere matter-of-course their employment of it can be shown to be, the more it must be recognized that they had a distinct purpose in using it and the more weight must be assigned to its implications in their hands. Bruckner's remark, therefore, that sacrificial worship had become in the time of Christ "without importance" for Jewish theology reacts injuriously upon his main contention in the passage where it occurs - namely that it was without importance for Paul. 

It has become almost a fashion to speak minimizingly of Paul's employment of the category of sacrifice in his explanation of Christ's work, and it is interesting to observe how hard Nemesis treads on the heels of the attempt to do so. Bruckner's instance affords a very good example. What he wishes to do is to lower the importance of the conception of sacrifice in Paul's system of thought concerning the work of Christ. He seeks to do this by suggesting that the sacrificial language served with Paul little further purpose than to express the notion of sub stitution. "The idea of a sacrifice," he remarks, "came into consideration for Paul only as an illustration of a conception: the thing which he intended lies in the theory of substitution" - a substitution which, he proceeds to show, includes in it the idea of "a substitutive punishment." Paul, in other words, calls Christ a sacrifice only with a view to showing that Christ too offered Himself as a substitutive expiation of our sins. What more could he be supposed to have intended? The contrast between the minimizing tone adopted and the effect of the facts adduced to support it, is perhaps even more striking in the remarks of A. E. J. Rawlinson, writing in the collection of Oxford essays published under the title of "Foundations."63 With Paul, he tells us, Christ is spoken of as a sacrifice only by way of "an occasional illustration or a momentary point of comparison." He refers to Christ as "our Passover, sacrificed for us," as "making peace by his blood," as in some sense a "propitiation." "Apart from the three phrases quoted in the text," he adds in a note, "and the statement in Ephesians v. 2, 'Even as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odour of a sweet smell' -where the self-oblation of Christ is compared not to a sin-offering, but to a burnt-offering, - there do not appear to be any passages in St. Paul which interpret the work of Christ in sacrificial terms." Not Gal. iii. 13 (Deut. xxi. 23), since "sacrificial victims were never regarded as 'accursed."' Not in the idea of vicarious suffering - which is not a sacrificial idea - only the scapegoat being a sin-bearer (Lev. xvi.) and the scape-goat not being sacrificed. The reader will scarcely escape the impression that a great deal of unavailing trouble is being expended here in an effort to remove unwelcome facts out of the way. And it will not be strange if he wonders what advantage is supposed to be gained from insisting that Paul has made little use of the category of sacrifice for expounding his view of the nature of Christ's work, so long as it is recognized that he does employ it, and that therefore it must be understood to be a suitable expression of his view. "St. Paul does not appear to have made great use of Old Testament ideas of sacrifice," remarks J. K. Mozley:64 "Ritschl indeed in the second volume of his great work, lays stress on the importance of the sacrificial system for Paul's doctrine, but we can hardly go beyond the balanced statement of Dr. Stevens ("Christian Doctrine of Salvation," p. 63): 'While Paul has made a less frequent and explicit use of sacrificial ideas than we should have expected, it is clear that the system supplied one of the forms of thought by which he interpreted Christ's death."' That allowed, however, and all is allowed: agree that the rubric of sacrifice lent itself naturally to the expression of what Paul would convey concerning the death of Christ,⁶⁵ and we might as well say frankly with Paterson that to Paul, "the sacrifice of Christ had the significance of the death of an innocent victim in the room of the guilty," and add with him, with equal frankness: "It is vain to deny that St. Paul freely employs the category of substitution, involving the conception of the imputation or transference of moral qualities" - although it might perhaps be well to use some more exact phraseology in saying it than Paterson has managed to employ. 

There is one book of the New Testament of which it has proved impossible for even the hardiest to deny that Christ's death is presented in it as a sacrifice. We refer, of course, to the Epistle to the Hebrews. In it not only is Christ's death directly described as a sacrifice, but all the sacrificial language is gathered about it in the repeated allusions which are made to it as such.⁶⁶ Nor is it doubtful that it is distinctly of expiatory sacrifices that the author is thinking when he presents Christ as dying a sacrificial death. He even uses of it "that characteristic term inseparably associated in the Old Testament with these sacrifices" (i`la,skomai, ii. 17) the absence of which from the allusion to Christ's sacrifice in other parts of the New Testament has been made a matter of remark - although it is not really absent from them, but is present in its derivatives (i`lasth,rion, Rom. iii. 25; i`lasmo,j, I John ii. 2, iv. 10) justifying fully Paterson's remark⁶⁷ that "the idea of cancelling guilt, of which a vital moment is liability to punishment, is associated with Christ's sacrifice in Heb. ii. 17, I John ii. 2 (i`la,skesqai with avmarti,aj as object, and so 'to expiate')." The Epistle to the Hebrews does not, however, really stand apart from the rest of the New Testament in these things, as, indeed, we have just incidentally pointed out with reference to the Levitical term for sacrificial expiation, employed as it is by Paul and John as well as by this author. It only has its own points to make and distributes the emphasis to suit them. Even in such a peculiar matter as the ascription to Christ at once of the functions of priest and sacrifice, it may possibly have a parallel in Eph. v. 2.68 The fact is, as Paterson broadly asserts in words which were quoted from him at the opening of this discussion, that every important type of New Testament teaching, including the teaching of Christ Himself, concurs in representing Christ as a sacrifice, and in conceiving of the sacrifice which it represents Christ as being, as a substitutive expiation. We say, including Christ Himself; and we may say that with our eye exclusively on the Synoptic Gospels. The language of Mt. xx. 28, Mk. x. 45 is sacrificial language; and it is very distinctly substitutive language, - "In the place of many." That of Mt. xxvi. 28, Mk. xiv. 24, Lk. xxii. 20 (the critical questions which have been raised about these passages are negligible) is sacrificial language; and it is equally distinctly expiatory language - "Blood shed for many," "For the remission of sins."69 

The possibility of underrating the wealth and importance of the allusions of the writers of the New Testament to the death of Christ as sacrificial, in the sense of expiatory, appears to depend upon a tendency to recognize such allusions only when express references to sacrifices are made in connection with it, if we should not even say only when didactic expositions of it as a sacrifice are developed. Nothing can be more certain, for example, than that the references to the "blood" of Jesus are one and all ascriptions of a sacrificial character and effect to His death.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, we meet with attempts to explain these ascriptions away. Thus, for example, G. F. Moore writes as follows, having more particularly in mind Paul's usage:71 "Evidence of a more pervasive association of Christ's death with sacrifice has been sought in the references to his blood as the ground of the benefits conferred by his death (Rom. iii. 25, v. 9): the thought of sacrifice is so constantly associated with his death, it is said, that the one word suffices to suggest it. But in view of the infrequency, to say the least, of sacrificial metaphors in the greater epistles, it is doubtful whether ai[ma is not used merely in allusion to Jesus' violent death. Nor is the case clearer in Col. i. 20, Eph. i. 7, ii. 13; the really noteworthy thing is that the context contains no suggestion of sacrifice either in thought or phrase." Such argumentation seems to us merely perverse. The discovery of allusions to the sacrificial character of Christ's death in the reiterated mention of His blood is not a mere assumption deriving color only from the frequency of other references to His sacrificial death; it has its independent ground in the nature of these allusions themselves. In every instance mentioned, so far from the context containing no suggestion of sacrifice, it is steeped in sacrificial suggestions. Is there no sacrificial suggestion in such language as this: "Whom God set forth as a propitiation, through faith, in His blood"? Or in such language as this: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us: much more then having been now justified by His blood, we shall be saved by Him from the wrath"? Or as this: "And by Him to reconcile all things unto Him, having made peace through the blood of His cross"? Or as this: "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins"? Or as this: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been made nigh in the blood of Christ"? This is the very language of the altar: "propitiation," "reconciliation," "redemption," "forgiveness." It passes all comprehension how it could be suggested that the word "blood" could be employed in such connections "merely in allusion to Jesus' violent death." And that particularly when Jesus' death was not actually an especially bloody death. "Another remarkable thing," says Paul Fiebig.⁷² "is this: why is precisely the 'blood' of Jesus so often spoken of? Why is the redemption and the forgiveness of sins so often connected with the 'blood' of Jesus? This is remarkable; for the death on the cross was not so very bloody that it should be precisely the blood of Jesus which so impressed the eye-witnesses and the first Christians. The Evangelists moreover (except John xix. 35 f.) say nothing about it. This special emphasis on the blood cannot be explained therefore from the kind of death Jesus died." If we really wish to know what the New Testament writers had in mind when they spoke of the blood of Jesus we have only to permit them to tell us themselves. They always adduce it in the sacrificial sense. In his survey of the passages Fiebig begins⁷³ not unnaturally with I Pet. i. 17-19. "Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers: but with precious blood as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, Christ." His comment runs thus: "Here the clause 'as of a pure and unspotted lamb' makes quite clear what the popular and at that time wholly clear conception is which provides the key to the problem of the redemptive significance of the blood of Jesus. This conception is the sacrifice; and of course the sacrifice such as every Jew (and in corresponding fashion, every heathen) knew it from his daily life and from the festivals and duties of his religion." This is of course only one passage; but in this case the adage is true, ab uno disce omnes, - we may spare ourselves the survey of the whole series. 

The theology of the writers of the New Testament is very distinctly a "blood theology." But their reiterated reference of the salvation of men to the blood of Christ is not the only way in which they represent the work of Christ as in its essential character sacrificial. In numerous other forms of allusion they show that they conceived the idea of sacrifice to supply a suitable explanation of its nature and effect. We may avail ourselves of words of James Denney to sum up the matter briefly, - words which are in certain respects over-cautious, but which contain the essence of the matter. "We have every reason to believe," says he,⁷⁴ "that sacrificial blood universally, and not only in special cases, was associated with propitiatory power. 'The atoning function of sacrifice,' as Robertson Smith put it, speaking of primitive times, 'is not confined to a particular class of oblation, but belongs to all sacrifices.'75 Dr. Driver has expressed the same opinion with regard to the Levitical legislation. . . . Criticizing Ritschl's explanation of sacrifice and its effect, he says,⁷⁶ it seems better to suppose that though the burnt-, peace- and meat-offerings were not offered expressly, like the sin- and guilt-offerings, for the forgiveness of sin, they nevertheless (in so far as kipper is predicated of them) were regarded as 'covering' or neutralizing, the offerer's unworthiness to appear before God and so, though in a much less degree than the sin- or guilt-offering, as effectively Kappārā in the sense ordinarily attached to the word, viz. 'propitiation.' Instead of saying 'in a much less degree' I should prefer to say 'with a less specific reference or application,' but the point is not material. What it concerns us to note is that the New Testament, while it abstains from interpreting Christ's death by any special prescriptions of the Levitical law, constantly uses sacrificial language to describe that death, and in doing so unequivocally recognizes in it a propitiatory characterin other words, a reference to sin and its forgiveness." What this fundamentally means is that the New Testament writers, in employing this language to describe the death of Christ, intended to represent that death as performing the functions of an expiatory sacrifice; wished to be understood as so representing it; and could not but be so understood by their first readers who were wonted to sacrificial worship. 

An interesting proof that they were so understood is supplied by a remarkable fact emphasized in a striking passage by Adolf Harnack.⁷⁷ Wherever the Christian religion went, there blood-sacrifice ceased to be offered - just as the tapers go out when the sun rises. Christ's death was recognized everywhere where it became known as the reality of which they were the shadows. Having offered His own body once for all and by this one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified, it was well understood that there remained no more offering for sin. "The death of Christ," says Harnack - "of this there can be no doubt - made an end to blood-sacrifices in the history of religion." "The instinct which led to them found its satisfaction and therefore its end in the death of Christ." "His death had the value of a sacrificial death; for otherwise it would not have had the power to penetrate into that inner world out of which the blood-sacrifices proceeded," - and, penetrating into it, to meet, and to satisfy all the needs which blood-sacrifices had been invented to meet and satisfy. 

The whole world thus adds its testimony to the sacrificial character of Christ's death as it has received it, and as it rests upon it. As to the world's need of it, and as to the place it takes in the world, we shall let a sentence of C. Bigg's teach us. "The study of the great Greek and Roman moralists of the Empire," he tells us,⁷⁸ "leaves upon my own mind a strong conviction that the fundamental difference between heathenism of all shades and Christianity is to be discovered in the doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice, that is to say, in the Passion of our Lord." This is as much as to say that not only is the doctrine of the sacrificial death of Christ embodied in Christianity as an essential element of the system, but in a very real sense it constitutes Christianity. It is this which differentiates Christianity from other religions. Christianity did not come into the world to proclaim a new morality and, sweeping away all the supernatural props by which men were wont to support their trembling, guilt-stricken souls, to throw them back on their own strong right arms to conquer a standing before God for themselves. It came to proclaim the real sacrifice for sin which God had provided in order to supersede all the poor fumbling efforts which men had made and were making to provide a sacrifice for sin for themselves; and, planting men's feet on this, to bid them go forward. It was in this sign that Christianity conquered, and it is in this sign alone that it continues to conquer. We may think what we will of such a religion. What cannot be denied is that Christianity is such a religion.

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, v. xv, 1917, pp. 385-422.

"Jesu Blut ein Geheimnis? " 1906, p. 27.

"Die Christliche Lehre der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung3," 1889, v. ii, pp. 161 ff.

Hastings' " Dictionary of the Bible," v. iv, 1902, p. 343 b.

Fiebig, as cited, p. 19, remarks on the connection in the Jewish mind of the idea of purchasing, ransoming, with sacrifice, - referring to F. Weber, "Jüdische Theologie," etc3., 1897, pp. 313, 324.

E. g., prosfora,, Eph. v. 2, Heb. x. 10, 14 (for the meaning of prosfora, See Heb. x. 18), qusi,a, Eph. v. 2, Heb. ix. 26; cf. Rom. iii. 25, i`lasth,rion; viii. 3, peri. a`martiaj.

Paterson (from whom we are taking this summary), as cited, notes: "esp. the Sin-offering (Rom. viii. 3, Heb. xiii. 11, I Pet. iii. 18), the Covenant-sacrifice (Heb. ix. 15-22), the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement (Heb. ii. 17, ix. 12 ff.), and of the Passover (I Cor. v. 7)." Cf. Sanday-Headlam, "Romans1," p. 92.

Paterson enumerates: "the slaying of the immaculate victim (Rev. v. 6, xiii. 8), the sprinkling of the blood both in the sanctuary as in the Sin-offering (Heb. ix. 13 ff.), and on the people as in the Covenant-sacrifice (I Pet. i. 2), and the destruction of the victim, as in the Sin-offering, without the gate (Heb. xiii. 13) " - referring to Ritschl ii. 157 ff.; and Sanday-Headlam, " Romans," p. 91.

E. g.: "Expiation, or pardon of sin," says Paterson. Sanday-Headlam mention as examples of passages in which the death of Christ is directly connected with forgiveness of sin: Mt. xxvi. 28; Acts v. 30 f., apparently; I Cor. xv. 3; II Cor. v. 21; Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14 and 20; Tit. ii. 14; Heb. i. 3, ix. 28, x. 12, al.; I Pet. ii. 24, iii. 18; I John ii. 2, iv. 10; Rev. i. 5.

Paterson: "A saving efficacy is ascribed to the blood of the cross of Christ, and in these cases the thought clearly points to the forms of the altar (Rom. iii. 25, v. 9, I Cor. x. 16, Eph. i. 7, ii. 13, Col. i. 20, Heb. ix. 12, 14; I Pet. i. 2, 19; I John i. 7, v. 6, 8; Rev. i. 5)." Cf. Sanday-Headlam, "Romans," p. 91 f. The matter is very interestingly presented by Fiebig, as cited, pp. 11-27 under the title: "What, according to the New Testament, did primitive Christianity think in connection with the words, 'Jesus has redeemed us by His blood'?" He takes his start, for the survey of a conception which he says is diffused throughout the whole New Testament, from I Pet. i. 17-19, the only key to which he declares to be "sacrifice, and indeed sacrifice as it was known to every Jew (and in a corresponding way to every heathen) from his daily life and from the festivals and duties of his religion, that is ritual sacrifice." From this passage he then proceeds through the New Testament and shows that the blood of Christ is used throughout the volume in a sacrificial sense, so that whenever we meet with an allusion to the blood of Jesus we meet with a reference to His death as a sacrifice.

"The Divine Legation of Moses," Book ix, chapter ii, quoted in a note at the end of his excellent chapter on "The New Testament Description of the Atoning Work of Christ as Sacrificial," by Alfred Cave, "The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice and Atonement2, " 1890, pp. 274-289. Cave himself says (p. 289): "Not only portions but the whole New Testament - not only the New Testament teaching but any type of that teaching - must be cast aside unless the work of Christ be in some sense or other regarded as a sacrifice."

As cited: "Nor for the apostolic age was the description of Christ's death as a sacrifice of the nature of a mere illustration. The apostles held it to be a sacrifice in the most literal sense of the word." Paterson goes on to assign reasons. George F. Moore, "Encyclopaedia Biblica," v. iv. 1903, col. 4232 f. interposes a caveat: "To begin with, it is necessary to say that in describing the death of Christ as a sacrifice the New Testament writers are using figurative language. Some modern theologians, indeed, still affirm that 'the apostles held it to be a sacrifice in the most literal sense of the word'; but such writers do not expect us to take their 'literal' literally. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, regarded the death of Christ as the true sacrifice, because by it was really effected what the Old Testament sacrifices only prefigured; but he was too good an Alexandrian to identify 'true' with 'literal.'" What Moore maintains is that the death of Christ was not believed to be expiatory because it was known to be a sacrifice, but that it was spoken of as a sacrifice because it was recognized to be expiatory. He does not doubt that the death of Christ was believed actually to have wrought the expiation which the sacrifices were understood to figure. "The association of expiation with sacrifice in the law and in the common ideas of the time leads to the employment of sacrificial figures and terms in speaking of the work of Christ; and even in Hebrews, where the idea of the death of Christ as a sacrifice is most elaborately developed, it is plain that the premise of the whole is that Christ by His death made a real expiation for the sins of men, by which they are redeemed." We take it that it is just thisthat Paterson means by speaking of Christ's death as a "literal" sacrifice.

This nevertheless is the common view. Driver supposes that the different treatment of the sacrifices can hardly have had its ground in "anything except the different spirit and temper actuating the two brothers": but he recognizes (without comment) that there is "another view," namely, "that there underlies the story some early struggle between two theories of sacrifice, which ended by the triumph of the theory that the right offering to be made consisted in the life of an animal." Dillmann says: "The reason must therefore lie in the dispositions presupposed in the offerings"; but quotes Hofmann, "Schriftbeweis2," i, p. 585 for the view that "Abel had in mind the expiation of sin, while Cain had not" - "of which," says Dillmann, "there is no indication whatever." Similar ground is taken, for example, by Kaliach, Keil, Delitzsch ("New Commentary"), Lange, W. P. Pateraon (Articles "Abel" and "Cain" in Hastings' B.D.).

Gunkel thinks there is: Jehovah is the God of nomads. The old narrator, he says, would be surprised that anyone should wonder why Jahve had respect to Abel's offering and not to Cain's: he means just that Jahve loved the shepherd and flesh-offerings but would have nothing to do with the cultivator and fruit-offerings. Similarly Tuch: the story comes from nomads.

The allusion in Heb. xii. 24 is taken by some commentators as a reference to Abel's offering rather than to his death. Bleek (p. 954) says: "It may be mentioned merely in a historical interest that with the Erasmian reading (to.  ;Abel), by Hammond, Akersloot, and Snabel (Amoenitatt theologiae emblematicae et typicae, p. 109 ff.), the blood of Abel is understood of the blood of the sacrificial animal offered by him; and that the first, with the received reading (to.n  ;Abel), wishes to refer the to.n to the r`antismo.n in order to obtain the same sense." This interpretation has had great vogue in America, owing to its advocacy by the popular commentaries of Albert Barnes, 1843, F. S. Sampaon, 1856, George Junkin 1873. Its significance for the matter of the nature of Abel's sacrifice may be perceived from the comment of Joseph B. McCaul, 1871, p. 317 f., who combines the two views: "Abel, being dead, can speak only figuratively. He does so by his faith, manifested by his bringing a vicarious sacrifice according to the Divine will. He therefore speaks, not only by the blood of his martyrdom, but also by the blood of his sacrifice, which latter obtained testimony from God that it was acceptable and accepted. It was then that God openly expressed his Divine selection of blood, to the exclusion of all other means of ransom, for the redemption of the soul. In the term 'the blood of Abel,' therefore, may be included the blood of all vicarious victims afterwards offered, in accordance with God's appointment, until the sacrifice of the death of Christ superseded them."

Here perhaps is to be found the reply to the representation made for example by J. K. Mozley, "The Doctrine of the Atonement," 1916, p. 13, note 2, to the effect that writers of the school "which ignores or rejects modern criticism of the Old Testament" - represented by P. Fairbairn, "Typology of the Scriptures," w. L. Alexander, "Biblical Theology," A. Cave, "Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice" - had to explain how it is that the first sacrifices mentioned (those of Cain and Abel) "are not said to have been in any way ordered by God." The question of the origin of sacrifice, human or divine, Mozley says is no longer discussed. For a hint as to its literature see Cave, p. 41, note 2.

This explanation of the narrative of "the first sacrifices" is not popular with the critical commentators. Skinner (in accordance with the alternative view of the passage mentioned by Driver) thinks that "the whole manner of the narrative" suggests that we here have "the initiation of sacrifice," and that, if this be accepted, it follows "that the narrative proceeds on a theory of sacrifice; the idea, viz. that animal sacrifice alone is acceptable to Yahwe." Why this should be so, he does not say. Franz Delitzach, who in his "New Commentary on Genesis," will not look further for the reason of the difference in the treatment of the offerings than the different dispositions of the offerers, in his earlier "Commentary on Genesis," amid much inconsistent matter, has this to say: "The unbloody offering of Cain, as such, was only the expression of a grateful present, or, taken in its deepest significance, a consecrated offering of self: but man needs, before all things, the expiation of his death-deserving sins, and for this, the blood obtained through the slaying of the victim serves as a symbol." J. C. K. Hofmann, "Schriftbeweis2," i, pp. 584-585 remarks that the cultivation of the soil and the keeping of beasts were employments alike open to men: but he who adopted the one, dealing with a soil which was cursed, had to thank God for the yield it made despite sin, while he who adopted the other, in view of the provision God had made for hiding man's nakedness, had before him God's grace in hiding sin. If, now, Cain was satisfied to bring of the fruit of the earth to God, he was thanking God only for a prolongation of this present life, which he had gained by his own labor: while Abel, bringing the best beasts of his flock, gave Him thanks for the forgiveness of sin, the abiding symbol of which was the clothing given by God. "A grateful attitude such as Abel's had as its presupposition, however, the penitent faith in the word of God which saw in this divine clothing of human nakedness an approach to the forgiveness of sins which rests on the gracious will of God to man." Because Abel's sacrifice embodied this idea, it was acceptable to God and he received the witness that he was righteous. J. J. Murphy comments: "The fruit of the soil offered to God is an acknowledgment that the means of this earthly life are due to Him. This expresses the barren faith of Cain, not the living faith of Abel. The latter had entered deeply into the thought that life itself is forfeited to God by transgression, and that only by an act of mercy can the Author of life restore it to the penitent, trusting, submissive, loving heart." The remarks of "C. H. M." on the passage are very clear and pointed to the same effect. See them cited by A. H. Strong, " Syst. Theol.," ed. 1907, p. 727. J. C. Jones, "Primeval Revelation," 1897, p. 313 ff. gives a glowing popular expression to the same view. J. S. Candlish, "The Christian Salvation," 1899, p. 15, thinks that Abel's sacrifice plainly involves the confession of sin and compares his worship with that of the Publican in the parable, and Cain's to that of the Pharisee. T. J. Crawford, "Doctrine of Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonement2," 1875, p.280, says that Abel's faith may have had respect not to a revelation with regard to sacrificial worship, but with regard to a promised Redeemer; this sacrifice may have expressed that faith. If so, God's acceptance of it gave a divine warrant to future sacrifice.

We are abstracting in this account the illuminating survey by MM. Hubert and Mauss in the "L'Annee Sociologique," II, 1897-1898, pp. 29 ff. They tell us, that Robertson Smith has been followed by E. Sidney Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus," 1894-1896, and "with theological exaggeration" by F. B. Jevons, "Introduction to the History of Religion," 1896.

After threatening to become the dominant theory, this theory has recently lost ground, chiefly on account of the totemistic elements connected with it. See the criticisms by B. Stade, "Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments," v. i, pp. 156-159; and M. J. Lagrange, "Études sur les religions Semitiques," pp. 246 ff. The "gift" theory accordingly holds the field. W. R. Inge, "Christian Mysticism," 1899, p. 355, appears to prefer to suppose that neither conception is the source of the other: "There have always been two ideas of sacrifice, alike in savage and civilized cults, - the mystical in which it is a communion, the victim who is slain and eaten being himself the god, or a symbol of the god; and the commercial, in which something valuable is offered to the god in the hope of receiving some benefit in exchange." This is very likely true as a general proposition.

As cited, pp. 41 and 89.

P. 133.

Cf. "The Divine Legation of Moses," etc. iv. 4.

Cf. "Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung3," ii. 201-203.

J. Jeremias, "Encyclopaedia Biblica," v. iv. col. 4119 says, in a representative assertion: "Sacrifice rests ultimately on the idea that it gives pleasure to the deity (cf. Dillmann, "Leviticus," 376)." So A. Dillmann, "Exodus und Leviticus3," p. 416: "The characteristic of sacrifice is a gift; that which differentiates it from other gifts is that it is enjoyed by the divinity."

J. Spencer, " De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus," 1727, v. ii. p. 762.

Hubert and Mauss, as cited, p. 30, remark that "it is certain that sacrifices were generally in some degree gifts, conferring on the believer rights upon his God." They add in a note: "See a somewhat superficial brochure by Nitzsch, 'Idee und Stufen des Opferkultus,' Kiel, 1889"; and then, that "at bottom" this theory is held by Wilken, "Over eene Nieuwe Theorie des Offers" in "De Gids," 1891, pp. 535 ff. and by L. Marillier in the Revue d'Histoire des Religions, 1897-1898. Marillier connects sacrifices, however, with magical rites by which the deity is bent to the worshipper's will by the liberation of a magical force through the effusion of the victim's blood. The idea of "gift" grew out of this, through the medium of the cult of the dead.

E. G. Piepenbring, " Théologie de l'ancien Testament," p. 56.

W. P. Paterson, Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," iv. p. 331 b.

A. A. Sykes, "Essay on the Nature etc. of Sacrifices," 1748, p. 75.

J. Wellhausen, "Skizzen und Vorarbeiten," 1897; W. R. Smith, "Religion of the Semites2," 1894; as applied to Israel, H. Schultz, American Journal of Theology, 1900, p. 269.

J. G. Frazer, "The Golden Bough2," 1900.

"The Blood Covenant," 1888, at the end; see also his "The Covenant of Salt," 1899.

Hubert and Mauss, as cited, p. 74. On the usage of the Hebrew word Zebach as a generic term for sacrifice, see Cave, as cited, pp. 511ff.

H. Sehultz, American Journal of Theology, 1900, p. 310.

See Paterson (as cited, p. 341 a), who gives this form of the Symbolical Theory the not very satisfactory name of The Prayer Theory.

"De Leg.," ii. 16.

"De Sacrificiis libri duo," 1677 (E. T., "Two Dissertations on Sacrifices" . . . 1828) P. 248.

J. J. Reeve, in the "International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia," p. 2640 quoting from "The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas," 1906. For Westermarck'a notions as to expiating sacrifice at large, see v. i. pp. 61-72.

Hubert and Mauss, as cited, p. 41, seeking a comprehensive definition, fix on this: "Sacrifice is a religious act which, by the consecrating of a victim, modifies the state of the moral person who offers it or of certain objects in which that person is interested." The meaning of this is amplified in an earlier passage (p. 37): "In sacrifice on the contrary" - as distinguished, that is, from such acts, as, say, anointing - "the consecration extends beyond the thing consecrated; it extends among others, to the moral person who defrays the coat of the ceremony. The believer who has supplied the victim, the object consecrated, is not at the end of the operation what he was at its beginning. He has acquired a religious character which he did not have, or he is relieved from an unfavorable character by which he was afflicted: he is elevated to a state of grace, or he has issued from a state of sin. In either case he is religiously transformed." In a note on the same page, on the basis of certain Hindu texts, they add: "These benefits from the sacrifice are, in our view, necessary reactions (contrecoups) of the rite. They are not due to a free divine will which theology interpolates little by little between the religious act and its sequences." On this view sacrifices are assimilated to magical acts, and their effects are conceived somewhat on the analogy of what is known as the reflex action of prayer. But if the deity is thought of merely as the object from which the sacrifices rebound to the offerer, it is on it nevertheless that they must first strike that they may rebound.

"Encyclopaedia Biblica," col. 4120.

"The Religion of Israel," ii. p. 263.

"Religion of the Semites2," p. 237.

As cited, p. 134.

R. Smend, "Lehrb. d. A. T. Religionsgeschichte," p. 324, cf. G. F. Moore, "Encyclopaedia Biblica," col. 4226. Compare also A. B. Davidson, "Theology of the Old Testament," pp. 352-354, where he says that the author of Leviticus has contented himself with stating the fact that the offering of a life atones, suggesting no explanation of why or how it atones. But he proceeds to remark that we can scarcely agree with Riehm that the blood atones merely because it is ordained that it shall, but should no doubt assume that there was a reason for the ordination, understood or not by the worshipper but no doubt at least dimly felt.

As cited, p. 128.

"Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie'," 1897, v. i, pp. 67-68.

"Theology of the Old Testament," p. 355, cf. 353. The use made of Davidson by W. L. Walker, "The Gospel of Reconciliation," 1909, p. 21, seems scarcely justified.

"A. T. Theologie," pp. 488-489.

Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," v. iv, p. 338 b: "The Meat-offering also covered from sin and delivered from its consequences."

As cited, p. 339 a. Cf. p. 342 a, where he sums up: "More likely is it that the step deemed by Holtzmann inevitable at a later stage was already taken, and that the chaos of confused ideas resulting from the discredit of old views was averted by the assertion of the substitutionary idea - 'the most external indeed, but also the simplest, the most generally intelligible, and the readiest answer to the question as to the nature of expiation."'

"Encyclopaedia Biblica," v. iv, coll. 4223-4226.

"The Christian Doctrine of Salvation," p. 62, cf. p. 65.

As cited, p. 66.

As cited, pp. 73-75.

"Saint Paul," E. T., p. 302.

"Teaching of Jesus," E. T., v. ii, p. 243. He refers in support to F. Weber, "Jüdische Theologie2," 1897, §70, p. 326 ff. and to E. Schürer, "Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes," v. ii, p. 466 (E. T. Div. II. v. ii, p. 186).

As cited, col. 4223.

As cited, col. 4226, cf. col. 4232.

"Jesu Blut ein Geheimnis?" 1906, p. 33.

It is by a misapprehension that J. K. Mozley, "The Doctrine of Atonement," 1916, p. 20, supporting himself on G. B. Stevens, seems to deny the sacrificial character of the scape-goat: "As to the ritual of the Day of Atonement, here also the old opinion is not as firmly established as might appear at first sight. The culminating point is the sending away of the goat 'for Azazel,' but we must remember that 'the flesh of this goat was not burned; atonement was not made by its blood; it was not a sacrifice at all."' The quotation is from Stevens, as cited, p. 11. On the other hand Hugo Gressmann, "Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie," 1905, pp. 328-329 sees the sacrificial idea at its height represented in the scape-goat. He is speaking of the Ebed and adverting to the ascription of "a substitutive expiatory character" to his sufferings and death, and remarks: "The sacrificial idea stands in the background. We have materially an exact parallel in the goat of Azazel which was offered as an expiatory sacrifice on the great Day of Atonement. . . . The goat is burdened with the sin of the congregation and offered substitutionally for it. For the expulsion of the goat is only a specific form of sacrifice (Hubert et Mauss, "Essai sur la nature et Ia fonction du sacrifice" in L'Annee Sociologique Second quar., Paris, 1898, p. 75). The expiatory significance which is attached to the death of the Ebed fully corresponds with the expiatory character which is ascribed here to the goat." At the place cited, supplemented at pp. 78f. and 92, Hubert and Mauss assign the scape-goat to its right category and expound convincingly its character as an expiatory sacrifice, thus supplying a corrective to the exposition of W. R. Smith on which Stevens supports himself.

"Die Entstehung des paulinischen Chriatologie," 1903, p. 231.

Of course nothing is ever absolutely undisputed. Paterson, as cited, p. 343, b, very properly remarks: "It has been denied that Paul adopts the category (Schmidt, "Die paul. Christologie," p. 84) but the denial rests on dogmatic rather than on exegetical grounds (Ritschl, ii. p. 161)."

"Foundations," 1912, p. 194.

"The Doctrine of the Atonement," 1916, p. 79, note.

Is perhaps part of the difficulty which so many writers feel on this matter due to approaching it from a wrong angle, and thinking not so much of Paul's expressing his convictions concerning Christ's death in terms of sacrifice as of his imposing on the death of Christ mechanically ideas derived from the sacrifices? Paul's conviction that Christ had died for our sins, bearing them in His own body on the tree, is the primary thing: the sacrificial language he applies to it is one of his modes of stating this fundamental fact. He begins always with the great fact of the expiatory death of Christ. "Ménégoz has admirably remarked," says Orello Cone justly in a parallel matter, "that Paul's faith in the expiatory sacrifice of Christ was not the conclusion of a process of reasoning on the relation between the mercy and justice of God, but, on the contrary, the apostle's ideas on the justice and mercy of God were founded on his faith in the expiatory death of Christ."

B. F. Westcott, "Epistle to the Hebrews," p. 299, speaks of Christ's sacrifice as being presented in the Epistle to the Hebrews "in three distinct aspects," "(1) as a Sacrifice of Atonement (ix. 14, 15); (2) as a Covenant Sacrifice (ix. 15-17); and (3) as a Sacrifice which is the ground-work of a Feast (xiii. 10, 11)." This is true; but it is possible to press analysis over-far. The "Sacrifice which is the ground-work of a Feast" is the sacrifice of which we hear in the institution of the Lord's Supper, and this is distinctly a "Covenant Sacrifice." The "Covenant Sacrifice" (ix. 15, 17) is a sacrifice for sin (ix. 12, 26), and is therefore fundamentally piacular and atoning, as indeed its relation to the passover-lamb sufficiently intimates. In His sacrifice Christ fulfilled all the functions of sacrifice, and thus there are varied aspects in which His sacrifice may be looked upon. But above all else, He made expiation for the sins of His people by immolating Himself on the altar - thus putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

As cited, p. 344 a.

Cf. J. K. Mozley, "The Doctrine of the Atonement," 1916, p. 82, note 1: "Eph. 1, 7 also refutes Pfleiderer's statement (ii. 175) that in this Epistle Christ is not the expiatory sacrifice, but the sacrificing priest. The latter idea is certainly that of v. 2, but St. Paul may as easily have united the two conceptions as did the writer to the Hebrews."

Cf. the discussion of these passages by Mozley, as cited, chapter ii.

In general these references comprise: (1) certain general passages, Heb. ix. 14, 20, x. 29, xii. 24, I Pet. i. 19, I John i. 7; (2) certain eucharistic passages, Mt. xxvi. 28, Mk. xiv. 24, Luke xxii. 20, I Cor. xi. 25; John vi. 53, 54, 55, 56, I Cor. x. 16; (3) the formula, dia. th.j ai[matoj (or its equivalent), Acts xx. 28, Eph. i. 7, Col. i. 20, Heb. ix. 12, xiu. 12 (I John v. 6), Rev. xii. 11; and (4) the formula evn th/| ai[mati (or its equivalent) Rom. iii. 25, v. 9, I Cor. xi. 25 (27) Eph. ii. 13, Heb. x. 19 (xiii. 25), I John v. 6, Rev. i. 5, v. 9, vii. 14.

"Encyclopaedia Biblica," coll. 4229-4230.

As cited, p. 11.

P. 13.

"The Death of Christ," ed. 1903, pp. 53-54.

"Religion of the Semites," p. 219.

Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," s.v. "Propitiation," p. 132.

"Das Wesen des Christentums," ed. 1900, pp. 98-99: E. T., "What is Christianity?" 1901, pp. 157 ff.

"The Church's Task under the Roman Empire," pp. x.-xi.

The Christ that Paul Preached

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

From The Expositor, 8th ser., v. xv, 1918, pp. 90-110.

"THE monumental Introduction of the Epistle to the Romans" - it is thus that W. Bousset speaks of the seven opening verses of the Epistle - is, from the formal point of view, merely the Address of the Epistle. In primary purpose and fundamental structure it does not differ from the Addresses of Paul's other Epistles. But even in the Addresses of his Epistles Paul does not confine himself to the simple repetition of a formula. Here too he writes at his ease and shows himself very much the master of his form.

It is Paul's custom to expand one or another of the essential elements of the Address of his Epistles as circumstances suggested, and thus to impart to it in each several instance a specific character. The Address of the Epistle to the Romans is the extreme example of this expansion. Paul is approaching in it a church which he had not visited, and to which he apparently felt himself somewhat of a stranger. He naturally begins with some words adapted to justify his writing to it, especially as an authoritative teacher of Christian truth. In doing this he is led to describe briefly the Gospel which had been committed to him, and that particularly with regard to its contents.

There is very strikingly illustrated here a peculiarity of Paul's style, which has been called "going off at a word." His particular purpose is to represent himself as one authoritatively appointed to teach the Gospel of God. But he is more interested in the Gospel than he is in himself; and he no sooner mentions the Gospel than off he goes on a tangent to describe it. In describing it, he naturally tells us particularly what its contents are. Its contents, however, were for him summed up in Christ. No sooner does he mention Christ than off he goes again on a tangent to describe Christ. Thus it comes about that this passage, formally only the Address of the Epistle, becomes actually a great Christological deliverance, one of the chief sources of our knowledge of Paul's conception of Christ. It presents itself to our view like one of those nests of Chinese boxes; the outer encasement is the Address of the Epistle; within that fits neatly Paul's justification of his addressing the Romans as an authoritative teacher of the Gospel; within that a description of the Gospel committed to him; and within that a great declaration of who and what Jesus Christ is, as the contents of this Gospel.

The manner in which Paul approaches this great declaration concerning Christ lends it a very special interest. What we are given is not merely how Paul thought of Christ, but how Paul preached Christ. It is the content of "the Gospel of God," the Gospel to which he as "a called apostle" had been "separated," which he outlines in these pregnant words. This is how Paul preached Christ to the faith of men as he went up and down the world "serving God in his spirit in the Gospel of His Son." We have no abstract theologoumena here, categories of speculative thought appropriate only to the closet. We have the great facts about Jesus which made the Gospel that Paul preached the power of God unto salvation to every one that believed. Nowhere else do we get a more direct description of specifically the Christ that Paul preached.

The direct description of the Christ that Paul preached is given us, of course, in the third and fourth verses. But the wider setting in which these verses are embedded cannot be neglected in seeking to get at their significance. In this wider setting the particular aspect in which Christ is presented is that of "Lord." It is as "Lord" that Paul is thinking of Jesus when he describes himself in the opening words of the Address - in the very first item of his commendation of himself to the Romans - as "the slave of Christ Jesus." "Slave" is the correlate of "Lord," and the relation must be taken at its height. When Paul calls himself the slave of Christ Jesus, he is calling Christ Jesus his Lord in the most complete sense which can be ascribed to that word (cf. Rom. i. 1, Col. iii. 4). He is declaring that he recognises in Christ Jesus one over against whom he has no rights, whose property he is, body and soul, to be disposed of as He will. This is not because he abases himself. It is because he exalts Christ. It is because Christ is thought of by him as one whose right it is to rule, and to rule with no limit to His right.

How Paul thought of Christ as Lord comes out, however, with most startling clearness in the closing words of the Address. There he couples "the Lord Jesus Christ" with "God our Father" as the common source from which he seeks in prayer the divine gifts of grace and peace for the Romans. We must renounce, enervating glossing here too. Paul is not thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as only the channel through which grace and peace come from God our Father to men; nor is he thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as only the channel through which his prayer finds its way to God our Father. His prayer for these blessings for the Romans is offered up to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ together, as the conjoint object addressed in his petition. So far as this Bousset's remark is just: "Prayer to God in Christ is for Pauline Christianity, too, a false formula; adoration of the Kyrios stands in the Pauline communities side by side with adoration of God in unreconciled reality."

Only, we must go further. Paul couples God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in his prayer on a complete equality. They are, for the purposes of the prayer, for the purposes of the bestowment of grace and peace, one to him. Christ is so highly exalted in his sight that, looking up to Him through the immense stretches which separate Him from the plane of human life, "the forms of God and Christ," as Bousset puts it, "are brought to the eye of faith into close conjunction." He should have said that they completely coalesce. It is only half the truth - though it is half the truth - to say that, with Paul, "the object of religious faith, as of religious worship, presents itself in a singular, thoroughgoing dualism." The other half of the truth is that this dualism resolves itself into a complete unity. The two, God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, are steadily recognized as two, and are statedly spoken of by the distinguishing designations of "God" and "Lord." But they are equally steadily envisaged as one, and are statedly combined as the common object of every religious aspiration and the common source of every spiritual blessing. It is no accident that they are united in our present passage under the government of the single preposition, "from," - "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." This is normal with Paul. God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are not to him two objects of worship, two sources of blessing, but one object of worship, one source of blessing. Does he not tell us plainly that we who have one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ yet know perfectly well that there is no God but one (I Cor. viii. 4, 6)?

Paul is writing the Address of his Epistle to the Romans, then, with his mind fixed on the divine dignity of Christ. It is this divine Christ who, he must be understood to be telling his readers, constitutes the substance of his Gospel-proclamation. He does not leave us, however, merely to infer this. He openly declares it. The Gospel he preaches, he says, concerns precisely "the Son of God . . . Jesus Christ our Lord." He expressly says, then, that he presents Christ in his preaching as "our Lord." It was the divine Christ that he preached, the Christ that the eye of faith could not distinguish from God, who was addressed in common with God in prayer, and was looked to in common with God as the source of all spiritual blessings. Paul does not speak of Christ here, however, merely as "our Lord." He gives Him the two designations: " the Son of God . . . Jesus Christ our Lord." The second designation obviously is explanatory of the first. Not as if it were the more current or the more intelligible designation. It may, or it may not, have been both the one and the other; but that is not the point here. The point here is that it is the more intimate, the more appealing designation. It is the designation which tells what Christ is to us. He is our Lord, He to whom we go in prayer, He to whom we look for blessings, He to whom all our religious emotions turn, on whom all our hopes are set - for this life and for that to come. Paul tells the Romans that this is the Christ that he preaches, their and his Lord whom both they and he reverence and worship and love and trust in. This is, of course, what he mainly wishes to say to them; and it is up to this that all else that he says of the Christ that he preaches leads.

The other designation - "the Son of God" - which Paul prefixes to this in his fundamental declaration concerning the Christ that he preached, supplies the basis for this. It does not tell us what Christ is to us, but what Christ is in Himself. In Himself He is the Son of God; and it is only because He is the Son of God in Himself, that He can be and is our Lord. The Lordship of Christ is rooted by Paul, in other words, not in any adventitious circumstances connected with His historical manifestation; not in any powers or dignities conferred on Him or acquired by Him; but fundamentally in His metaphysical nature. The designation "Son of God" is a metaphysical designation and tells us what He is in His being of being. And what it tells us that Christ is in His being of being is that He is just what God is. It is undeniable - and Bousset, for example, does not deny it, - that, from the earliest days of Christianity on, (in Bousset's words) "Son of God was equivalent simply to equal with God" (Mark xiv. 61-63; John x. 31-39).

That Paul meant scarcely so much as this, Bousset to be sure would fain have us believe. He does not dream, of course, of supposing Paul to mean nothing more than that Jesus had been elevated into the relation of Sonship to God because of His moral uniqueness, or of His community of will with God. He is compelled to allow that " the Son of God appears in Paul as a supramundane Being standing in close metaphysical relation with God." But he would have us understand that, however close He stands to God, He is not, in Paul's view, quite equal with God. Paul, he suggests, has seized on this term to help him through the frightful problem of conceiving of this second Divine Being consistently with his monotheism. Christ is not quite God to him, but only the Son of God. Of such refinements, however, Paul knows nothing. With him too the maxim rules that whatever the father is, that the son is also: every father begets his son in his own likeness. The Son of God is necessarily to him just God, and he does not scruple to declare this Son of God all that God is (Phil. ii. 6; Col. ii. 9) and even to give him the supreme name of "God over all" (Rom. ix. 5).

This is fundamentally, then, how Paul preached Christ - as the Son of God in this supereminent sense, and therefore our divine Lord on whom we absolutely depend and to whom we owe absolute obedience. But this was not all that he was accustomed to preach concerning Christ. Paul preached the historical Jesus as well as the eternal Son of God. And between these two designations - Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ - he inserts two clauses which tell us how he preached the historical Jesus. All that he taught about Christ was thrown up against the background of His deity: He is the Son of God, our Lord. But who is this that is thus so fervently declared to be the Son of God and our Lord? It is in the two clauses which are now to occupy our attention that Paul tells us.

If we reduce what he tells us to its lowest terms it amounts just to this: Paul preached the historical Christ as the promised Messiah and as the very Son of God. But he declares Christ to be the promised Messiah and the very Son of God in language so pregnant, so packed with implications, as to carry us into the heart of the great problem of the two-natured person of Christ. The exact terms in which he describes Christ as the promised Messiah and the very Son of God are these: "Who became of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was marked out as the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead." This in brief is the account which Paul gives of the historical Christ whom he preached.

Of course there is a temporal succession suggested in the declarations of the two clauses. They so far give us not only a description of the historical Christ, but the life-history of the Christ that Paul preached. Jesus Christ became of the seed of David at His birth and by His birth. He was marked out as the Son of God in power only at His resurrection and by His resurrection. But it was not to indicate this temporal succession that Paul sets the two declarations side by side. It emerges merely as the incidental, or we may say even the accidental, result of their collocation. The relation in which Paul sets the two declarations to one another is a logical rather than a temporal one: it is the relation of climax. His purpose is to exalt Jesus Christ. He wishes to say the great things about Him. And the two greatest things he has to say about Him in His historical manifestation are these - that He became of the seed of David according to the flesh, that He was marked out as the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.

Both of these declarations, we say, are made for the purpose of extolling Christ: the former just as truly as the latter. That Christ came as the Messiah belongs to His glory: and the particular terms in which His Messiahship is intimated are chosen in order to enhance His glory. The word "came," "became" is correlated with the "promised afore" of the preceding verse. This is He, Paul says, whom all the prophets did before signify, and who at length came - even as they signified - of the seed of David. There is doubtless an intimation of the preexistence of Christ here also, as J. B. Lightfoot properly instructs us: He who was always the Son of God now "became" of the seed of David. But this lies somewhat apart from the main current of thought. The heart of the declaration resides in the great words, "Of the seed of David." For these are great words. In declaring the Messiahship of Jesus Paul adduces His royal dignity. And he adduces it because he is thinking of the majesty of the Messiahship. We must beware, then, of reading this clause depreciatingly, as if Paul were making a concession in it: "He came, no doubt, . . . He came, indeed, . . . of the seed of David, but . . ." Paul never for an instant thought of the Messiahship of Jesus as a thing to be apologised for. The relation of the second clause to the first is not that of opposition, but of climax; and it contains only so much of contrast as is intrinsic in a climax. The connection would be better expressed by an "and" than by a "but"; or, if by a "but," not by an "indeed . . . but," but by a "not only . . . but." Even the Messiahship, inexpressibly glorious as it is, does not exhaust the glory of Christ. He had a glory greater than even this. This was but the beginning of His glory. But it was the beginning of His glory. He came into the world as the promised Messiah, and He went out of the world as the demonstrated Son of God. In these two things is summed up the majesty of His historical manifestation.

It is not intended to say that when He went out of the world, He left His Messiahship behind Him. The relation of the second clause to the first is not that of supersession but that of superposition. Paul passes from one glory to another, but he is as far as possible from suggesting that the one glory extinguished the other. The resurrection of Christ had no tendency to abolish His Messiahship, and the exalted Christ remains "of the seed of David." There is no reason to doubt that Paul would have exhorted his readers when he wrote these words with all the fervour with which he did later to "remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David" (II Tim. ii. 8). "According to my Gospel," he adds there, as an intimation that it was as "of the seed of David" that he was accustomed to preach Jesus Christ, whether as on earth as here, or as in heaven as there. It is the exalted Jesus that proclaims Himself in the Apocalypse "the root and the offspring of David" (Rev. xxii. 16, v. 5), and in whose hands "the key of David" is found (iii. 7).

And as it is not intimated that Christ ceased to be "of the seed of David" when He rose from the dead, neither is it intimated that He then first became the Son of God. He was already the Son of God when and before He became of the seed of David: and He did not cease to be the Son of God on and by becoming of the seed of David. It was rather just because He was the Son of God that He became of the seed of David, to become which, in the great sense of the prophetic announcements and of His own accomplishment, He was qualified only by being the Son of God. Therefore Paul does not say He was made the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead. He says he was defined, marked out, as the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead. His resurrection from the dead was well adapted to mark Him out as the Son of God: scarcely to make Him the Son of God. Consider but what the Son of God in Paul's usage means; and precisely what the resurrection was and did. It was a thing which was quite appropriate to happen to the Son of God; and, happening, could bear strong witness to Him as such: but how could it make one the Son of God?

We might possibly say, no doubt, with a tolerable meaning, that Christ was installed, even constituted, "Son of God in power" by the resurrection of the dead - if we could see our way to construe the words "in power" thus directly with "the Son of God." That too would imply that He was already the Son of God before He rose from the dead, - only then in weakness; what He had been all along in weakness He now was constituted in power. This construction, however, though not impossible, is hardly natural. And it imposes a sense on the preceding clause of which it itself gives no suggestion, and which it is reluctant to receive. To say, "of the seed of David" is not to say weakness; it is to say majesty. It is quite certain, indeed, that the assertion "who was made of the seed of David" cannot be read concessively, preparing the way for the celebration of Christ's glory in the succeeding clause. It stands rather in parallelism with the clause that follows it, asserting with it the supreme glory of Christ.

In any case the two clauses do not express two essentially different modes of being through which Christ successively passed. We could think at most only of two successive stages of manifestation of the Son of God. At most we could see in it a declaration that He who always was and continues always to be the Son of God was manifested to men first as the Son of David, and then, after His resurrection, as also the exalted Lord. He always was in the essence of His being the Son of God; this Son of God became of the seed of David and was installed as - what He always was - the Son of God, though now in His proper power, by the resurrection of the dead. It is assuredly wrong, however, to press even so far the idea of temporal succession. Temporal succession was not what it was in Paul's mind to emphasize, and is not the ruling idea of his assertion. The ruling idea of his assertion is the celebration of the glory of Christ. We think of temporal succession only because of the mention of the resurrection, which, in point of fact, cuts our Lord's life-manifestation into two sections. But Paul is not adducing the resurrection because it cuts our Lord's life-manifestation into two sections; but because of the demonstration it brought of the dignity of His person. It is quite indifferent to his declaration when the resurrection took place. He is not adducing it as the producing cause of a change in our Lord's mode of being. In point of fact it did not produce a change in our Lord's mode of being, although it stood at the opening of a new stage of His life-history. What it did, and what Paul adduces it here as doing, was that it brought out into plain view who and what Christ really was. This, says Paul, is the Christ I preach - He who came of the seed of David, He who was marked out in power as the Son of God, by the resurrection of the dead. His thought of Christ runs in the two molds - His Messiahship, His resurrection. But he is not particularly concerned here with the temporal relations of these two facts.

Paul does not, however, say of Christ merely that He became of the seed of David and was marked out as the Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead. He introduces a qualifying phrase into each clause. He says that He became of the seed of David "according to the flesh," and that He was marked out as the Son of God in power "according to the Spirit of holiness" by the resurrection of the dead. What is the nature of the qualifications made by these phrases?

It is obvious at once that they are not temporal qualifications. Paul does not mean to say, in effect, that our Lord was Messiah only during His earthly manifestation, and became the Son of God only on and by means of His resurrection. It has already appeared that Paul did not think of the Messiahship of our Lord only in connection with His earthly manifestation, or of His Sonship to God only in connection with His post-resurrection existence. And the qualifying phrases themselves are ill-adapted to express this temporal distinction. Even if we could twist the phrase "according to the flesh" into meaning "according to His human manifestation" and violently make that do duty as a temporal definition, the parallel phrase "according to the Spirit of holiness" utterly refuses to yield to any treatment which could make it mean, "according to His heavenly manifestation." And nothing could be more monstrous than to represent precisely the resurrection as in the case of Christ the producing cause of - the source out of which proceeds - a condition of existence which could be properly characterised as distinctively "spiritual." Exactly what the resurrection did was to bring it about that His subsequent mode of existence should continue to be, like the precedent, "fleshly"; to assimilate His post-resurrection to His pre-resurrection mode of existence in the matter of the constitution of His person. And if we fall back on the ethical contrast of the terms, that could only mean that Christ should be supposed to be represented as imperfectly holy in His earthly stage of existence, and as only on His resurrection attaining to complete holiness (cf. I Cor. xv. 44, 46). It is very certain that Paul did not mean that (II Cor. v. 21).

It is clear enough, then, that Paul cannot by any possibility have intended to represent Christ as in His pre-resurrection and His post-resurrection modes of being differing in any way which can be naturally expressed by the contrasting terms "flesh" and "spirit." Least of all can he be supposed to have intended this distinction in the sense of the ethical contrast between these terms. But a further word may be pardoned as to this. That it is precisely this ethical contrast that Paul intends has been insisted on under cover of the adjunct "of holiness" attached here to "spirit." The contrast, it is said, is not between "flesh" and "spirit," but between "flesh" and "spirit of holiness"; and what is intended is to represent Christ, who on earth was merely "Christ according to the flesh" - the "flesh of sin" of course, it is added, that is "the flesh which was in the grasp of sin" - to have been, "after and in consequence of the resurrection," "set free from 'the likeness of (weak and sinful) flesh."' Through the resurrection, in other words, Christ has for the first time become the holy Son of God, free from entanglement with sin-cursed flesh; and, having thus saved Himself, is qualified, we suppose, now to save others, by bringing them through the same experience of resurrection to the same holiness. We have obviously wandered here sufficiently far from the declarations of the Apostle; and we have landed in a reductio ad absurdum of this whole system of interpretation. Paul is not here distinguishing times and contrasting two successive modes of our Lord's being. He is distinguishing elements in the constitution of our Lord's person, by virtue of which He is at one and the same time both the Messiah and the Son of God. He became of the seed of David with respect to the flesh, and by the resurrection of the dead was mightily proven to be also the Son of God with respect to the Spirit of holiness.

It ought to go without saying that by these two elements in the constitution of our Lord's person, the flesh and the spirit of holiness, by virtue of which He is at once of the seed of David and the Son of God, are not intended the two constituent elements, flesh and spirit, which go to make up common humanity. It is impossible that Paul should have represented our Lord as the Messiah only by virtue of His bodily nature; and it is absurd to suppose him to suggest that His Sonship to God was proved by His resurrection to reside in His mental nature or even in His ethical purity - to say nothing now of supposing him to assert that He was made by the resurrection into the Son of God, or into "the Son of God in power" with respect to His mental nature here described as holy. How the resurrection - which was in itself just the resumption of the body - of all things, could be thought of as constituting our Lord's mental nature the Son of God passes imagination; and if it be conceivable that it might at least prove that He was the Son of God, it remains hidden how it could be so emphatically asserted that it was only with reference to His mental nature, in sharp contrast with His bodily, thus recovered to Him, that this was proved concerning Him precisely by His resurrection. Is Paul's real purpose here to guard men from supposing that our Lord's bodily nature, though recovered to Him in this great act, the resurrection, entered into His Sonship to God? There is no reason discoverable in the context why this distinction between our Lord's bodily and mental natures should be so strongly stressed here. It is clearly an artificial distinction imposed on the passage.

When Paul tells us of the Christ which he preached that He was made of the seed of David "according to the flesh," he quite certainly has the whole of His humanity in mind. And in introducing this limitation, "according to the flesh," into his declaration that Christ was "made of the seed of David," he intimates not obscurely that there was another side - not aspect but element - of His being besides His humanity, in which He was not made of the seed of David, but was something other and higher. If he had said nothing more than just these words: "He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh," this intimation would still have been express; though we might have been left to speculation to determine what other element could have entered into His being, and what He must have been according to that element. He has not left us, however, to this speculation, but has plainly told us that the Christ he preached was not merely made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but was also marked out as the Son of God, in power, according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead. Since the "according to the flesh" includes all His humanity, the "according to the Spirit of holiness" which is set in contrast with it, and according to which He is declared to be the Son of God, must be sought outside of His humanity. What the nature of this element of His being in which He is superior to humanity is, is already clear from the fact that according to it He is the Son of God. "Son of God" is, as we have already seen, a metaphysical designation asserting equality with God. It is a divine name. To say that Christ is, according to the Spirit of holiness, the Son of God, is to say that the Spirit of holiness is a designation of His divine nature. Paul's whole assertion therefore amounts to saying that, in one element of His being, the Christ that he preached was man, in another God. Looked at from the point of view of His human nature He was the Messiah - "of the seed of David." Looked at from the point of view of His divine nature, He was the Son of God. Looked at in His composite personality, He was both the Messiah and the Son of God, because in Him were united both He that came of the seed of David according to the flesh and He who was marked out as the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.

We may be somewhat puzzled by the designation of the divine nature of Christ as "the Spirit of holiness." But not only is it plain from its relation to its contrast, "the flesh," and to its correlate, "the Son of God," that it is His divine nature which is so designated, but this is made superabundantly clear from the closely parallel passage, Rom. ix. 5. There, in enumerating the glories of Israel, the Apostle comes to his climax in this great declaration, - that from Israel Christ came. But there, no more than here, will he allow that it was the whole Christ who came - as said there from the stock of Israel, as said here from the seed of David. He adds there too at once the limitation, "as concerns the flesh," - just as he adds it here. Thus he intimates with emphasis that something more is to be said, if we are to give a complete account of Christ's being; there was something about Him in which He did not come from Israel, and in which He is more than "flesh." What this something is, Paul adds in the great words, "God over all." He who was from Israel according to the flesh is, on the other side of His being, in which He is not from Israel and not "flesh," nothing other than "God over all." In our present passage, the phrase, "Spirit of holiness" takes the place of "God over all" in the other. Clearly Paul means the same thing by them both.

This being very clear, what interests us most is the emphasis which Paul throws on holiness in his designation of the divine nature of Christ. The simple word "Spirit" might have been ambiguous: when "the Spirit of holiness" is spoken of, the divine nature is expressly named. No doubt, Paul might have used the adjective, "holy," instead of the genitive of the substantive, " of holiness"; and have said "the Holy Spirit." Had he done so, he would have as expressly intimated deity as in his actual phrase. But he would have left open the possibility of being misunderstood as speaking of that distinct Holy Spirit to which this designation is commonly applied. The relation in which the divine nature which he attributes to Christ stands to the Holy Spirit was in Paul's mind no doubt very close; as close as the relation between "God" and "Lord" whom he constantly treats as, though two, yet also one. Not only does he identify the activities of the two (e. g., Rom. viii. 9 ff.); but also, in some high sense, he identifies them themselves. He can make use, for example, of such a startling expression as "the Lord is the Spirit" (II Cor. iii. 17). Nevertheless it is perfectly clear that "the Lord" and "the Spirit" are not one person to Paul, and the distinguishing employment of the designations "the Spirit," "the Holy Spirit" is spread broadcast over his pages. Even in immediate connection with his declaration that "the Lord is the Spirit," he can speak with the utmost naturalness not only of "the Spirit of the Lord," but also of "the Lord of the Spirit" (II Cor. iii. 17 f.). What is of especial importance to note in our present connection is that he is not speaking of an endowment of Christ either from or with the Holy Spirit; although he would be the last to doubt that He who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh was plenarily endowed both from and with the Spirit. He is speaking of that divine Spirit which is the complement in the constitution of Christ's person of the human nature according to which He was the Messiah, and by virtue of which He was not merely the Messiah, but also the very Son of God. This Spirit he calls distinguishingly the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit the very characteristic of which is holiness. He is speaking not of an acquired holiness but of an intrinsic holiness; not, then, of a holiness which had been conferred at the time of or attained by means of the resurrection from the dead; but of a holiness which had always been the very quality of Christ's being. He is not representing Christ as having first been after a fleshly fashion the son of David and afterwards becoming by or at the resurrection from the dead, after a spiritual fashion, the holy Son of God. He is representing Him as being in his very nature essentially and therefore always and in every mode of His manifestation holy. Bousset is quite right when he declares that there is no reference in the phrase "Spirit of holiness" to the preservation of His holiness by Christ in His earthly manifestation, but that it is a metaphysical designation describing according to its intrinsic quality an element in the constitution of Christ's person from the beginning. This is the characteristic of the Christ Paul preached; as truly His characteristic as that He was the Messiah. Evidently in Paul's thought of deity holiness held a prominent place. When he wishes to distinguish Spirit from spirit, it is enough for him that he may designate Spirit as divine, to define it as that Spirit the fundamental characteristic of which is that it is holy.

It belongs to the very essence of the conception of Christ as Paul preached Him, therefore, that He was of two natures, human and divine. He could not preach Him at once as of the seed of David and as the Son of God without so preaching Him. It never entered Paul's mind that the Son of God could become a mere man, or that a mere man could become the Son of God. We may say that the conception of the two natures is unthinkable to us. That is our own concern. That a single nature could be at once or successively God and man, man and God, was what was unthinkable to Paul. In his view, when we say God and man we say two natures; when we put a hyphen between them and say God-man, we do not merge them one in the other but join the two together. That this was Paul's mode of thinking of Jesus, Bousset, for example, does not dream of denying. What Bousset is unwilling to admit is that the divine element in his two-natured Christ was conceived by Paul as completely divine. Two metaphysical entities, he says, combined themselves for Paul in the person of Christ: one of these was a human, the other a divine nature: and Paul, along with the whole Christian community of his day, worshipped this two-natured Christ, though he (not they) ranked Him in his thought of His higher nature below the God over all.

The trouble with this construction is that Paul himself gives a different account of the matter. The point of Paul's designation of Christ as the Son of God is, not to subordinate Him to God, as Bousset affirms, but to equalize Him with God. He knows no difference in dignity between his God and his Lord; to both alike, or rather to both in common, he offers his prayers; from both alike and both together he expects all spiritual blessings (Rom. i. 7). He roundly calls Christ, by virtue of His higher nature, by the supreme name of "God over all" (Rom. ix. 5). These things cannot be obscured by pointing to expressions in which he ascribes to the Divine-human Christ a relation of subordination to God in His saving work. Paul does not fail to distinguish between what Christ is in the higher element of His being, and what He became when, becoming poor that we might be made rich, He assumed for His work's sake the position of a servant in the world. Nor does he permit the one set of facts to crowd the other out of his mind. It is no accident that all that he says about the historical two-natured Christ in our present passage is inserted between His two divine designations of the Son of God and Lord; that the Christ that he preached he describes precisely as "the Son of God - who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was marked out as the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead - Jesus Christ our Lord." He who is defined as on the human side of David, on the divine side the Son of God, this two-natured person, is declared to be from the point of view of God, His own Son, and - as all sons are - like Him in essential nature; from the point of view of man, our supreme Lord, whose we are and whom we obey. Ascription of proper deity could not be made more complete; whether we look at Him from the point of view of God or from the point of view of man, He is God. But what Paul preached concerning this divine Being belonged to His earthly manifestation; He was made of the seed of David, He was marked out as God's Son. The conception of the two natures is not with Paul a negligible speculation attached to his Gospel. He preached Jesus. And he preached of Jesus that He was the Messiah. But the Messiah that he preached was no merely human Messiah. He was the Son of God who was made of the seed of David. And He was demonstrated to be what He really was by His resurrection from the dead.

This was the Jesus that Paul preached: this and none other.

Christian Baptism

by Benjamin B. Warfield

[from Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 1, Edited by John E. Meeter, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970. originally from a pamphlet of eight pages published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, 1920.]

No rite or ceremony enters into the essence of Christianity. There were some in Paul's day who thought that the blessings of salvation could be enjoyed only by those who performed certain ritual acts. But Paul defended with the utmost vigor the gospel of salvation by faith alone. He made it perfectly clear that he meant to exclude not merely moral but also religious acts. He took Abraham for his example. Abraham, he said, was justified by faith, by faith apart from all works all works of the moral law, of course, but also all works of religious ceremonial. God, of set purpose, gave Abraham the rite of circumcision not before but after his justification, for the precise purpose of making it plain that justification is by faith alone and is not secured or conditioned by the performance of any rite. Here is Paul's argument in one of its briefest expressions, Rom. iv. 9-12: "For we say, To Abraham his faith was reckoned for righteousness. How then was it reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision: and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might be reckoned unto them; and the father of circumcision to them who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had in uncircumcision." According to this all those that believe are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise given to him, whether they are circumcised or not. But not all those who are circumcised are his children and heirs, but only those among them that believe. In other words, it is not circumcision but faith which counts. For, as Paul wrote elsewhere, Gal. iii. 7, 9, with crisp exclusiveness, "they that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham," and are blessed with him.

From the fact that no rite or ceremony enters into the essence of Christianity, however, it does not follow that all rites and ceremonies may be safely neglected by the Christian, if not positively despised. Paul who set circumcision summarily aside as in no sense a condition or procuring cause of salvation, did not treat it as of no value. In the wider sweep of this same argument he found occasion to ask the question, "What is the profit of circumcision?" Rom. iii. 1. The answer was "Much every way." Precisely what the nature of this great and varied profit was Paul did not here state. But this is sufficiently intimated in the passage already considered. According to this passage circumcision had no function whatever in the procuring or reception of salvation, whether as a means of securing it, or as a condition of its gift, or as a channel of its bestowment. It did not precede salvation as, in one way or another, obtaining it or facilitating its reception; it followed upon it, as presupposing its existence already. Its actual function is declared in the two words, "sign" and "seal": "And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision." While yet uncircumcised, Abraham believed. Through this faith he received a righteousness bestowed on him by the God who "justifieth the ungodly." God in his grace gave him circumcision as a sign and a seal of this righteousness. The value of circumcision consisted therefore just in this: that it marked Abraham out, by a visible sign, as one who had received this righteousness from God and was henceforth to be the Lord's, and it sealed that righteousness to him under a covenant promise.

Baptism is the form that the circumcision which God gave Abraham in the old covenant takes in the new. The apostle therefore called it "the circumcision of Christ," Col. ii. 11, the circumcision, that is, which we have received in this new dispensation in which Christ is now Lord and Master. In the passage from the old covenant to the new the form of the rite was changed, not its substance. It remains a "sign" which God has given his people, marking them out as his, and a "seal" binding them indissolubly to him and pledging them his unbroken favor. Baptism, as circumcision, is a gift of God to his people, not of his people to God. Abraham did not bring circumcision to God; he "received" it from God. God gave it to him as a "sign" and a "seal," not to others but to himself. It is inadequate, therefore, to speak of baptism as "the badge of a Christian man's profession." By receiving it, we do make claim to be members of Christ, and our reception of it does mark us out to the observation of our fellowmen as his followers. But this is only an incidental effect. The witness of baptism is not to others but to ourselves; and it is not by us but by God that the witness is borne. We have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and God gives us this sign as a perpetual witness that this faith is acceptable to him, and as a seal, an abiding pledge, that he will always treat it as such. He who has been baptized bears in himself God's testimony and engagement to his salvation.

It is thus that Paul could write of God's people being buried and raised again with Christ in baptism. Col. ii. 12; Rom. vi. 4. This does not mean that they acquire an interest in Christ by subjecting themselves to baptism. It means that by receiving baptism they indicate that they are in Christ, participants in the benefits of his death and resurrection; and that these benefits are now sealed to them under the sanction of a covenant promise. We are now like documents to which the seals have been attached. We may think that a signet ring with the name of the Lord upon it has been impressed upon us to authenticate us as his forever. What has happened to us is that we are called by the "honorable name" (James ii. 7). The meaning of that is that we have been marked as the peculiar possession of our Lord, over whom he claims ownership, and to the protection and guidance of whom he pledges himself.

There is nothing in the whole history of the people of God which they value more highly, on which they more deeply felicitate themselves, on which they more securely depend, than that they are called by the name of the Lord. It was to this fact that they appealed when in their affliction they turned to the Hope of Israel, the Savior thereof in time of trouble: "Thou, 0 Jehovah, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name: leave us not" (Jer. xiv. 9). It was in this that their jubilation reached its height: "I am called by thy name, 0 Jehovah, God of hosts" (Jer. xv. 16). When our Lord commanded his disciples to baptize those whom in their world-wide mission they should draw to Christ "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," precisely what he bade them do was to call them by the name of the Triune God, that they might be marked out as his and sealed to him as an eternal possession.

Naturally, therefore, this sign and seal belongs only to those who are the Lord's. Or, to put it rather in the positive form. this sign and seal belongs to all those who are the Lord's. There are no distinctions of race or station, sex or age; there is but one prerequisite -- that we are the Lord's. What it means is just this and nothing else: that we are the Lord's. What it pledges is just this and nothing else: that the Lord will keep us as his own. We need not raise the question, then, whether infants are to be baptized. Of course they are, if infants, too, may be the Lord's. Naturally, as with adults, it is only the infants who are the Lord's who are to be baptized; but equally naturally as with adults, all infants that are the Lord's are to be baptized. Being the Lord's they have a right to the sign that they are the Lord's and to the pledge of the Lord's holy keeping. Circumcision, which held the place in the old covenant that baptism holds in the new, was to be given to all infants born within the covenant. Baptism must follow the same rule. This and this only can determine its conference: Is the recipient a child of the covenant, with a right therefore to the sign and seal of the covenant? We cannot withhold the sign and seal of the covenant from those who are of the covenant.

The baptism of infants, no doubt, presupposes that salvation is altogether of the Lord. No infant can be the Lord's unless it is the Lord who makes him such. If salvation waits on anything we can do, no infant can be saved; for there is nothing that an infant can do. In that case no infant can have a right to the sign and seal of salvation. But infants in this do not differ in any way from adults; of all alike it is true that it is only "of God" that they are in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul in arguing out the doctrine of signs and seals, was to show once for all from the typical case of Abraham that salvation is always a pure gratuity from God, and signs and seals do not precede it as its procuring cause or condition, but follow it as God's witness to its existence and promise to sustain it. Every time we baptize an infant we bear witness that salvation is from God, that we cannot do any good thing to secure it, that we receive it from his hands as a sheer gift of his grace, and that we all enter the Kingdom of heaven therefore as little children, who do not do, but are done for.

Surely it is only a curious question how exactly baptism is to be administered. Our concern is in its significance, not in the mode of its performance. The New Testament leaves us in no doubt as to its meaning. But we may search the New Testament in vain if we are seeking minute instructions how we are to perform it. It is, no doubt, not merely a sign and a seal, but also a symbol, and the symbolism it embodies cannot be a matter of indifference to us. It is a washing of the body with water to symbolize the absolute cleansing of the soul in the blood of Jesus Christ. We must not lose this symbolism. But it does not follow that in order to preserve it we must enact a complete bath in the manner in which we administer the rite. Complete cleansing may be symbolized by the washing of the feet only, John xiii. 10, or of the hands only, Mark vii. 2. It was God himself who declared, "I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean' (Ezek. xxxvi. 25). It is not the amount of water which we employ but the purpose for which we employ it that is of moment. In Jesus Christ we are washed clean of all our sins. He has given us a sign that our sins are washed away and a pledge that we shall be clean in him. Any application of water which will symbolize this cleansing will serve as such a sign and seal.

It is important that we should not narrow the symbolism of baptism. Baptism does not symbolize any section or part of salvation, but the whole of salvation. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, for instance, do not divide the field between them, each symbolizing one element in the broad process of salvation or one exercise in the complex enjoyment of salvation. They are two ways of symbolizing salvation as a whole. Salvation is cleansing, salvation is ransoming. Baptism represents it from the one point of view, the Lord's Supper from the other. Whichever sign and seal we are thinking of, it marks us out as sharers in all the benefits of Christ's redemption and pledges them to us. Baptism therefore symbolizes not merely the cleansing of our sins but our consequent walk in new obedience. This, let us never forget, is not only symbolized for us but sealed to us, for baptism is given to us by God as an engagement on his part to bring us safely through to the end. In receiving it, we receive upon our persons the seal of his covenant promise.

It is not only our duty, then, but our high privilege, to receive baptism. We not only obey God's command in receiving it, but lay hold of his covenant promise. Having his mark upon us, and resting upon his pledge, we may go forward in joy and sure expectation of his gracious keeping in this life and his acceptance of us into his glory hereafter. Under this encouragement we are daily and hourly and momently to work out the salvation thus sealed to us, in the blessed knowledge that it is God who, in fulfilment of his pledge, is working in us both the willing and the doing. Thus we shall, as our fathers expressed it, "improve our baptism." We improve it "by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein: by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short of, and walking contrary to, the grace of baptism and our engagements; by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament; by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom we are baptized, for the mortifying of sin, and quickening of grace; and by endeavoring to live by faith, to have our conversation in holiness and righteousness, as those that have therein given up their names to Christ, and to walk in brotherly love, as being baptized by the same Spirit into one body." Surely, he who does these things shall never stumble, but shall be fully girded for entrance into that eternal Kingdom for which we are marked and sealed in our baptism.

The Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The task which we set before us in this brief paper is not to unravel the history of opinion as to the salvation of infants dying in infancy, but the much more circumscribed one of tracing the development of doctrine on this subject. We hope to show that there has been a doctrine as to the salvation of infants common to all ages of the Church; but that there has also been in this, as in other doctrines, a progressive correction of crudities in its conception, by which the true meaning and relations of the common teaching have been freed from deforming accretions and its permanent core brought to purer expression. 

I. THE PATRISTIC DOCTRINE 

It is fundamental to the very conception of Christianity that it is a remedial scheme. Christ Jesus came to save sinners. The first Christians had no difficulty in understanding and confessing that Christ had come into a world lost in sin to establish a kingdom of righteousness, citizenship in which is the condition of salvation. That infants were admitted into this citizenship they did not question; Irenaeus, for example, finds it appropriate that Christ was born an infant and grew by natural stages into manhood, since "He came to save all by Himself - all, I say, who by Him are born again unto God, infants and children, and boys and young men, and old men," and accordingly passed through every age that He might sanctify all. Nor did they question that not the natural birth of the flesh, but the new birth of the Spirit was the sole gateway for infants too, into the kingdom; communion with God was lost for all alike, and to infants too it was restored only in Christ.² Less pure elements, however, entered almost inevitably into their thought. The ingrained externalism of both Jewish and heathen modes of conception, when brought into the Church wrought naturally toward the identification of the kingdom of Christ with the external Church, and of regeneration with baptism. Already in Justin and Irenaeus, the word "regeneration" means "baptism"; the Fathers uniformly understand John iii. 5 of baptism. The maxim of the Patristic age thus became extra ecclesiam nulla salus; baptism was held to be necessary to salvation with the necessity of means; and as a corollary, no unbaptized infant could be saved. How early this doctrine of the necessity of baptism became settled in the Church is difficult to trace in the paucity of very early witnesses. Tertullian already defends it from objection.³ The reply of Cyprian and his fellow bishops to Fidus on the duty of early baptism, presupposes it.⁴ After that, it was plainly the Church-doctrine; and although it was mitigated in the case of adults by the admission not only of the baptism of blood, but also that of intention,⁵ the latter mitigation was not allowed in the case of infants. The whole Patristic Church agreed that, martyrs excepted, no infant dying unbaptized could enter the kingdom of heaven. 

The fairest exponent of the thought of the age on this subject is Augustine, who was called upon to defend it against the Pelagian error that infants dying unbaptized, while failing of entrance into the kingdom, yet obtain eternal life. His constancy in this controversy has won for him the unenviable title of durus infantum pater - a designation doubly unjust, in that not only did he neither originate the obnoxious dogma nor teach it in its harshest form, but he was even preparing its destruction by the doctrines of grace, of which he was more truly the father.⁶ Augustine expressed the Church-doctrine moderately, teaching, of course, that infants dying unbaptized would be found on Christ's left hand and be condemned to eternal punishment, but also not forgetting to add that their punishment would be the mildest of all, and indeed that they were to be beaten with so few stripes that he could not say it would have been better for them not to be born.⁷ No doubt, others of the Fathers softened the doctrine even below this; some of the Greeks, for instance, like Gregory Nazianzen, thought that unbaptized infants are "neither glorified nor punished" - that is, of course, go into a middle state similar to that taught by Pelagius.⁸ But it is not to Augustine, but to Fulgentius (d. 533),⁹ or to Alcimus Avitus (d. 525),¹⁰ or to Gregory the Great (d. 604)¹¹ to whom we must go for the strongest expression of the woe of unbaptized infants. Probably only such anonymous objectors as those whom Tertullian confutes,¹² or such obscure and erratic individuals as Vincentius Victor whom Augustine convicts, in the whole Patristic age, doubted that the kingdom of heaven was closed to all infants departing this life without the sacrament of baptism. 

II. THE MEDIEVAL MITIGATION 

If the general consent of a whole age as expressed by its chief writers, including the leading bishops of Rome, and by its synodical decrees, is able to determine a doctrine, certainly the Patristic Church transmitted to the Middle Ages as de fide that infants dying unbaptized (with the exception only of those who suffer martyrdom) are not only excluded from heaven, but doomed to hell. Accordingly the medieval synods so define; the second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence declare that "the souls of those who pass away in mortal sin or in original sin alone descend immediately to hell, to be punished, however, with unequal penalties." On the maxim that gradus non mutant speciem we must adjudge Petavius' argument¹³ unanswerable, that this deliverance determines the punishment of unbaptized infants to be the same in kind (in the same hell) with that of adults in mortal sin: "So infants are tormented with unequal tortures of fire, but are tormented nevertheless." Nevertheless scholastic thought on the subject was characterized by a successful effort to mollify the harshness of the Church-doctrine, under the impulse of the prevalent semi-Pelagian conception of original sin. The whole troupe of schoolmen unite in distinguishing between pœna damni and pœna sensus, and in assigning to infants dying unbaptized only the former - that is, the loss of heaven and the beatific vision, and not the latter - that is, positive torment. They differ among themselves only as to whether this pœna damni, which alone is the lot of infants, is accompanied by a painful sense of the loss (as Lombard held), or is so negative as to involve no pain at all, either external or internal (as Aquinas argued). So complete a victory was won by this mollification that perhaps only a single theologian of eminence can be pointed to who ventured still to teach the doctrine of Augustine and Gregory - Gregory Ariminensis thence called tortor infantum; and Hurter reminds us that even he did not dare to teach it definitely, but submitted it to the judgment of his readers.¹⁴ Dante, whom Andrew Seth not unjustly calls "by far the greatest disciple of Aquinas," has enshrined in his immortal poem the leading conception of his day, when he pictures the "young children innocent, whom Death's sharp teeth have snatched ere yet they were freed from the sin with which our birth is blent," as imprisoned within the brink of hell, "where the first circle girds the abyss of dread," in a place where "there is no sharp agony" but "dark shadows only," and whence "no other plaint rises than that of sighs" which "from the sorrow without pain arise."15 The novel doctrine attained papal authority by a decree of Innocent III (ca. 1200), who determined "the penalty of original sin to be the lack of the vision of God, but the penalty of actual sin to be the torments of eternal hell." 

A more timid effort was also made in this period to modify the inherited doctrine by the application to it of a development of the baptism of intention. This tendency first appears in Hincmar of Rheims (d. 882), who, in a particularly hard case of interdict on a whole diocese, expresses the hope that "the faith and godly desire of the parents and godfathers" of the infants who had thus died unbaptized, "who in sincerity desired baptism for them but obtained it not, may profit them by the gift of Him whose spirit (which gives regeneration) breathes where it pleases." It is doubtful, however, whether he would have extended this lofty doctrine to any less stringent case.¹⁶ Certainly no similar teaching is met with in the Church, except with reference to the peculiarly hard case of still-born infants of Christian parents. The schoolmen (e.g. Alexander Hales and Thomas Aquinas) admitted a doubt whether God may not have ways of saving such unknown to us. John Gerson, in a sermon before the Council of Constance, presses the inference more boldly.¹⁷ God, he declared, has not so tied the mercy of His salvation to common laws and sacraments, but that without prejudice to His law He can sanctify children not yet born, by the baptism of His grace or the power of the Holy Ghost. Hence, he exhorts expectant parents to pray that if the infant is to die before attaining baptism, the Lord may sanctify it; and who knows but that the Lord may hear them? He adds, however, that he only intends to suggest that all hope is not taken away; for there is no certainty without a revelation. Gabriel Biel (d. 1495) followed in Gerson's footsteps,¹⁸ holding it to be accordant with God's mercy to seek out some remedy for such infants. This teaching remained, however, without effect on the Church-dogma, although something similar to it was, among men who served God in the way then called heresy, foreshadowing an even better to come. John Wycliffe (d. 1384) had already with like caution expressed his unwillingness to pronounce damned such infants as were intended for baptism by their parents, if they failed to receive it in fact; though he could not, on the other hand, assert that they were saved.¹⁹ His followers were less cautious, whether in England or Bohemia, and in this, too, approved themselves heralds of a brighter day. 

III. THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH OF ROME 

In the upheaval of the sixteenth century the Church of Rome found her task in harmonizing under the influence of the scholastic teaching, the inheritance which the somewhat inconsistent past had bequeathed her. Four varieties of opinion sought a place in her teaching. At the one extreme the earlier doctrine of Augustine and Gregory, that infants dying unbaptized suffer eternally the pains of sense, found again advocates, and that especially among the greatest of her scholars, such as Noris, Petau, Driedo, Conry, Berti. At the other extreme, a Pelagianizing doctrine that excluded unbaptized infants from the kingdom of heaven and the life promised to the blessed, and yet accorded to them eternal life and natural happiness in a place between heaven and hell, was advocated by such great leaders as Ambrosius Catharinus, Albertus Pighius, Molina, Sfondrati. The mass, however, followed the schoolmen in the middle path of pœna damni, and, like the schoolmen, only differed as to whether the punishment of loss involved sorrow (as Bellarmine held) or was purely negative.²⁰ The Council of Trent (1545) anathematized those who affirm that the "sacraments of the new law are not necessary to salvation, and that without them or an intention of them men obtain . . . the grace of justification"; or, again, that "baptism is free - that is, is not necessary to salvation." This is explained by the Tridentine Catechism to mean that "unless men be regenerated to God through the grace of baptism, they are born to everlasting misery and destruction, whether their parents be believers or unbelievers"; while, on the other hand, we are credibly informed²¹ that the Council was near anathematizing as a Lutheran heresy the proposition that the penalty for original sin is the fire of hell. The Council of Trent at least made renewedly de fide that infants dying unbaptized incurred damnation, though it left the way open for discussion as to the kind and amount of their punishment.²² 

The Tridentine deliverance, of course, does not exclude the baptism of blood as a substitute for baptism of water. Neither does it seem necessarily to exclude the application of a theory of baptism of intention to infants. Even after it, therefore, a twofold development seems to have been possible. The path already opened by Gerson and Biel might have been followed out, and a baptism of intention developed for infants as well as for adults. This might even have been pushed on logically, so as to cover the case of all infants dying in infancy. On the principle argued by Richard Hooker,²³ for example, that the unavoidable failure of baptism in the case of Christian children cannot lose them salvation, because of the presumed desire and purpose of baptism for them in their Christian parents and in the Church of God, reasoners might have proceeded only a single step further and have said that the desire and purpose of Mother Church to baptize all is intention of baptism enough for all dying in helpless infancy. Thus on Roman principles a salvation for all dying in infancy might be logically deduced, and infants, as more helpless and less guilty, be given the preference over adults. On the other hand, it might be argued that as baptism either in re or in voto must mediate salvation, and as infants by reason of their age are incapable of the intention, they cannot be saved unless they receive it in fact,²⁴ and thus infants be discriminated against in favor of adults. This second path is the one which has been actually followed by the theologians of the Church of Rome, with the ultimate result that not only are infants discriminated against in favor of adults, but the more recent theologians seem almost ready to discriminate against the infants of Christians as over against those of the heathen.²⁵ 

The application of the baptism of intention to infants was not abandoned, however, without some protest from the more tender-hearted. Cardinal Cajetan defended in the Council of Trent itself Gerson's proposition that the desire of godly parents might be taken in lieu of the actual baptism of children dying in the womb.²⁶ Cassander (1570) encouraged parents to hope and pray for children so dying.²⁷ Bianchi (1768) holds that such children may be saved per oblationem pueri quam Deo mater extrinsecus faciat.²⁸ Eusebius Amort (1758) teaches that God may be moved by prayer to grant justification to such extra-sacramentally.²⁹ Even somewhat bizarre efforts have been made to escape the sad conclusion proclaimed by the Church. Thus Klee holds that a lucid interval is accorded to infants in the article of death, so that they may conceive the wish for baptism.³⁰ An obscure French writer supposes that they may, "shut up in their mother's womb, know God, love Him, and have the baptism of desire."31 A more obscure German conceives that infants remain eternally in the same state of rational development in which they die, and hence enjoy all they are capable of; if they die in the womb they either fall back into the original force from which they were produced, or enjoy a happiness no greater than that of trees.³² These protests of the heart have awakened, however, no response in the Church,³³ which has preferred to hold fast to the dogma that the failure of baptism in infants, dying such, excludes ipso facto from heaven, and to seek its comfort in mitigating still further than the scholastics themselves the nature of that pœna damni which alone it allows as punishment of original sin. 

And if we may assume that such writers as Perrone, Hurter, Gousset, and Kendrick are typical of modern Roman theology throughout the world, certainly that theology may be said to have come, in this pathway of mitigation, as near to positing salvation for all infants dying unbaptized as the rather intractable deliverances of early popes and later councils permit to them. They all teach, of course (as the definitions of Florence and Trent require of them) - in the words of Perrone³⁴ - "that children of this kind descend into hell, or incur damnation"; but (as Hurter says³⁵), "although all Catholics agree that infants dying without baptism are excluded from the beatific vision and so suffer loss, are lost (pati damnum, damnari); they yet differ among themselves in their determination of the nature and condition of the state into which such infants pass." As the idea of "damnation" may thus be softened to a mere failure to attain, so the idea of "hell" may be elevated to that of a natural paradise. Hurter himself is inclined to a somewhat severer doctrine; but Perrone (supported by such great lights as Balmes, Berlage, Oswald, Lessius, and followed not afar off by Gousset and Kendrick) reverts to the Pelagianizing view of Catharinus and Molina and Sfondrati - which Petau called a "fabrication" championed indeed by Catharinus but originated "by Pelagius the heretic," and which Bellarmine contended was contra fidem - and teaches that unbaptized infants enter into a state deprived of all supernatural benefits, indeed, but endowed with all the happiness of which pure nature is capable. Their state is described as having the nature of penalty and of damnation when conceived of relatively to the supernatural happiness from which they are excluded by original sin; but when conceived of in itself and absolutely, it is a state of pure nature, and accordingly the words of Thomas Aquinas are applied to it: "They are joined to God by participation in natural goods, and so also can rejoice in natural knowledge and love."36 Thus, after so many ages, the Pelagian conception of the middle state for infants has obtained its revenge on the condemnation of the Church. No doubt it is not admitted that this is a return to Pelagianism; Perrone, for example, argues that Pelagius held the doctrine of a natural beatitude for infants as one unrelated to sin, while "Catholic theologians hold it with the death of sin; so that the exclusion from the beatific vision has the nature of penalty and of damnation proceeding from sin."37 Is there more than a verbal difference here? At all events, whatever difference exists is a difference not in the doctrine of the state of unbaptized infants after death, but in the doctrine of the fall. In deference to the language of fathers and councils and popes, this natural paradise is formally assigned to that portion of the other world designated "hell," but in its own nature it is precisely the Pelagian doctrine of the state of unbaptized infants after death. By what expedient such teaching is to be reconciled with the other doctrines of the Church of Rome, or with its former teaching on this same subject, or with its boast of semper eadem, is more interesting to its advocates within that communion than to us.³⁸ Our interest as historians of opinion is exhausted in simply noting the fact that the Pelagianizing process, begun in the Middle Ages by assigning to infants guilty only of original sin liability to pœna damni alone, culminates in our day in their assignment by the most representative theologians of modern Rome to a natural paradise.

IV. THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE 

It is, no doubt, as a protest against the harshness of the Romanist syllogism, "No man can attain salvation who is not a member of Christ; but no one becomes a member of Christ except by baptism, received either in re or in voto,"39 that this Pelagianizing drift is to be regarded. Its fault is that it impinges by way of mitigation and modification on the major premise, which, however, is the fundamental proposition of Christianity. Its roots are planted, in the last analysis, in a conception of men, not as fallen creatures, children of wrath, and deserving of a doom which can only be escaped by becoming members of Christ, but as creatures of God with claims on Him for natural happiness, but, of course, with no claims on Him for such additional supernatural benefits as He may yet lovingly confer on His creatures in Christ. On the other hand, that great religious movement which we call the Reformation, the constitutive principle of which was its revised doctrine of the Church, ranged itself properly against the fallacious minor premise, and easily broke its bonds with the sword of the word. Men are not constituted members of Christ through the Church, but members of the Church through Christ; they are not made the members of Christ by baptism which the Church gives, but by faith, the gift of God; and baptism is the Church's recognition of this inner fact. The full benefit of this better apprehension of the nature of that Church of God membership in which is the condition of salvation, was not reaped, however, by all Protestants in equal measure. It was the strength of the Lutheran movement that it worked out its positions not theoretically or all at once, but step by step, as it was forced on by the logic of events and experience. But it was an incidental evil that, being compelled to express its faith early, its first confession was framed before the full development of Protestant thought, and subsequently contracted the faith of Lutheranism into too narrow channels. The Augsburg Confession contains the true doctrine of the Church as the congregatio sanctorum; but it committed Lutheranism to the doctrine that baptism is necessary to salvation (art. ix.) in such a sense that children are not saved without baptism (art. ix.),⁴⁰ inasmuch as the condemnation and eternal death brought by original sin upon all are not removed except from those who are born again by baptism and the Holy Ghost (art. ii.) - that is, to the doctrine that the necessity of baptism is the necessity of means. In the direction of mollifying interpretation of this deliverance, the theologians urge: 1. That the necessity affirmed is not absolute but ordinary, and binds man and not God. 2. That as the assertion is directed against the Anabaptists, it is not the privation, but the contempt of baptism that is affirmed to be damning. 3. That the necessity of baptism is not intended to be equalized with that of the Holy Ghost. 4. That the affirmation is not that for original sin alone anyone is actually damned, but only that all are therefor damnable. There is force in these considerations. But they do not avail wholly to relieve the Augsburg Confession of limiting salvation to those who enjoy the means of grace, and as concerns infants, to those who receive the sacrament of baptism. 

It is not to be held, of course, that it asserts such an absolute necessity of baptism for infants dying such, as admits no exceptions. From Luther and Melanchthon down, Lutheran theologians have always taught what Hunnius expressed in the Saxon Visitation Articles: "Unless a person be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Cases of necessity are not intended, however, by this." Lutheran theology, in other words, takes its stand positively on the ground of baptism of intention as applied to infants, as over against its denial by the Church of Rome. " Luther," says Dorner,⁴¹ "holds fast, in general, to the necessity of baptism in order to salvation, but in reference to the children of Christians who have died unbaptized, he says: 'The holy and merciful God will think kindly upon them. What He will do with them, He has revealed to no one, that baptism may not be despised, but has reserved to His own mercy; God does wrong to no man.'"42 From the fact that Jewish children dying before circumcision were not lost, Luther argues that neither are Christian children dying before baptism;⁴³ and he comforts Christian mothers of still-born babes by declaring that they should understand that such infants are saved.⁴⁴ So Bugenhagen, under Luther's direction, teaches that Christians' children intended for baptism are not left to the hidden judgment of God if they fail of baptism, but have the promise of being received by Christ into His kingdom.⁴⁵ It is not necessary to quote later authors on a point on which all are unanimous; let it suffice to add only the clear statement of the developed Lutheranism of John Gerhard (1610-1622):46 "We walk in the middle way, teaching that baptism is, indeed, the ordinary sacrament of initiation and means of regeneration necessary to all, even to the children of believers, for regeneration and salvation; but yet that in the event of privation or impossibility the children of Christians are saved by an extraordinary and peculiar divine dispensation. For the necessity of baptism is not absolute, but ordinary; we on our part are obliged to the necessity of baptism, but there must be no denial of the extraordinary action of God in infants offered to Christ by pious parents and the Church in prayers, and dying before the opportunity of baptism can be given them, since God does not so bind His grace and saving efficacy to baptism as that, in the event of privation, He may not both wish and be able to act extraordinarily. We distinguish, then, between necessity on God's part and on our part; between the case of privation and the ordinary way; and also between infants born in the Church and out of the Church. Concerning infants born out of the Church, we say with the apostle (I Cor. v. 12, 13), 'For what have I to do with judging them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without God judgeth.' Wherefore, since there is no promise concerning them, we commit them to God's judgment; and yet we hold to no place intermediate between heaven and hell, concerning which there is utter silence in Scripture. But concerning infants born in the Church we have better hope. Pious parents properly bring their children as soon as possible to baptism as the ordinary means of regeneration, and offer them in baptism to Christ; and those who are negligent in this, so as through lack of care or wicked contempt for the sacrament to deprive their children of baptism, shall hereafter render a very heavy account to God, since they have 'despised the counsel of God' (Luke vii. 30). Yet neither can nor ought we rashly to condemn those infants which die in their mothers' wombs or by some sudden accident before they receive baptism, but may rather hold that the prayers of pious parents, or, if the parents are negligent of this, the prayers of the Church, poured out for these infants, are clemently heard and they are received by God into grace and life." 

From this passage, too, we may learn the historical attitude of Lutheranism toward the entirely different question of the fate of infants dying outside the pale of the Church and the reach of its ordinances, a multitude so vast that it is wholly unreasonable to suppose them simply (like Christians' children deprived of baptism) exceptions to the rule laid down in the Augsburg Confession. It is perfectly clear that the Lutheran Confessions extend no hope for them. It is doubtful whether it can even be said that they leave room for hope for them. Melanchthon in the "Apology" is no doubt arguing against the Anabaptists, and intends to prove only that children should be baptized; but his words in explanation of art. ix. deserve consideration in this connection also - where he argues that "the promise of salvation" "does not pertain to those who are without the Church of Christ, where there is neither the Word nor the Sacraments, because the kingdom of Christ exists only with the Word and the Sacraments."47 Luther's personal opinion as to the fate of heathen children dying in infancy is in doubt; now he expresses the hope that the good and gracious God may have something good in view for them;⁴⁸ and again, though leaving it to the future to decide, he only expects something milder for them than for the adults outside the Church;⁴⁹ and Bugenhagen, under his eye, contrasts the children of Turks and Jews with those of Christians, as not sharers in salvation because not in Christ.⁵⁰ From the very first the opinion of the theologians was divided on the subject. 1. Some held that all infants except those baptized in fact or intention are lost, and ascribed to them, of course - for this was the Protestant view of the desert of original sin - both privative and positive punishment. This party included such theologians as Quistorpius, Calovius, Fechtius, Zeibichius, Buddeus. 2. Others judged that we may cherish the best of hope for their salvation. Here belong Dannhauer, Hulsemann, Scherzer, J. A. Osiander, Wagner, Musæus, Cotta, and Spener. But the great body of Lutherans, including such names as Gerhard, Calixtus, Meisner, Baldwin, Bechmann, Hoffmann, Hunnius, held that nothing is clearly revealed as to the fate of such infants, and they must be left to the judgment of God. 3. Some of these, like Hunnius, were inclined to believe that they will be saved. 4. Others, with more (like Hoffmann) or less (like Gerhard) clearness, were rather inclined to believe they will be lost; but all alike held that the means for a certain decision are not in our hands.⁵¹ Thus Hunnius says:52 "That the infants of Gentiles, outside the Church, are saved, we cannot pronounce as certain, since there exists nothing definite in the Scriptures concerning the matter; so neither do I dare simply to assert that these children are indiscriminately damned. . . . Let us commit them, therefore, to the judgment of God." And Hoffmann says:53 "On the question whether the infants of the heathen nations are lost, most of our theologians prefer to suspend their judgment. To affirm as a certain thing that they are lost, could not be done without rashness." 

This cautious agnostic attitude has the best right to be called the historical Lutheran attitude. It is even the highest position thoroughly consistent with the genius of the Lutheran system and the stress which it lays on the means of grace. The drift in more modern times has, however, been decidedly in the direction of affirming the salvation of all that die in infancy, on grounds identical with those pleaded by this party from the beginning - the infinite mercy of God, the universality of the atonement, the inability of infants to resist grace, their guiltlessness of despising the ordinance, and the like.⁵⁴ Even so, however, careful modern Lutherans moderate their assertions. They affirm that "it is not the doctrine of our Confession that any human creature has ever been, or ever will be, lost purely on account of original sin";⁵⁵ but they speak of the matter as a "dark" or a "difficult question,"56 and suspend the salvation of such infants on an "extraordinary" and "uncovenanted" exercise of God's mercy.⁵⁷ We cannot rise to a conviction or a "faith" in the matter, but may attain to a "well-grounded hope," based on our apprehension of God's allembracing mercy.⁵⁸ In short, the Lutheran doctrine seems to lay no firm foundation for a conviction of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy; at the best it is held to leave open an uncontradicted hope. We are afraid we must say more; it seems to contradict this hope. For should this hope prove true, it would no longer be true that "baptism is necessary to salvation," even ordinarily; the exception would be the rule. Nor would the fundamental conception of the Lutheran theory of salvation - that grace is in the means of grace - be longer tenable. The logic of the Lutheran system leaves little room for the salvation of all infants dying in infancy, and if their salvation should prove to be a fact, the integrity of the system is endangered. 

V. ANGLICAN VIEWS 

A similar difficulty is experienced by all types of Protestant thought in which the older idea of the Church, as primarily an external body, has been incompletely reformed. This may be illustrated, for example, from the history of thought in the Church of England. The Thirty-nine Articles, in their final form, are thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. And many of the greatest English theologians, even among those not most closely affiliated with Geneva, from the very earliest days of the Reformation, have repudiated the "cruel judgment" of the Church of Rome as to the fate of infants dying unbaptized. But this repudiation was neither immediate, nor has it ever been universal. The second of the Ten Articles of Henry VIII (1536) not only declares that the promise of grace and eternal life is adjoined to baptism, but adds that infants "by the sacrament of baptism do also obtain remission of their sins, the grace and favor of God, and be made thereby the very sons and children of God; insomuch as infants and children dying in their infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not." The first liturgy embodied the same implication. The growing Protestant sentiment soon revised it out of these standards.⁵⁹ But there have never lacked those in the Church of England who still taught the necessity of baptism to salvation. If it can boast of a John Hooper, who speaks of the "ungodly opinion, that attributeth the salvation of men unto the receiving of an external sacrament," "as though the holy Spirit could not be carried by faith into the penitent and sorrowful conscience, except it rid always in a chariot and external sacrament," and who (probably first after Zwingli) taught that all infants dying in infancy, whether children of Christians or infidels, are saved;⁶⁰ it also has counted among its teachers many who held with Matthew Scrivener that Christ's "death and passion are not communicated unto any but by outward signs and sacraments," so that "either all children must be damned, dying unbaptized, or they must have baptism."61 The general position of the Church up to his day is thus conceived by Wall:62 "The Church of England have declared their Sense of the [that is, baptism's] Necessity, by reciting that Saying of our Saviour, John iii. 5, both in the Office of Baptism of Infants, and also in that for those of riper Years. . . . Concerning the everlasting State of an Infant that by Misfortune dies unbaptized, the Church of England has determined nothing, (it were fit that all Churches would leave such Things to God) save that they forbid the ordinary Office for Burial to be used for such an one: for that were to determin the Point, and acknowledge him for a Christian Brother. And tho' the most noted Men in the said Church from Time to Time since the Reformation of it to this Time, have expressed their Hopes that God will accept the Purpose of the Parent for the Deed; yet they have done it modestly, and much as Wickliff did, rather not determining the Negative, than absolutely determining the Positive, that such a Child shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." If this is all that can be said of the children of the faithful, lacking baptism, where will those of the infidel appear? Many other opinions - more Protestant or more Pelagian - have, of course, found a home for themselves in the bosom of this most inclusive communion, but they are no more characteristic of its teaching than that of Wall. It is only needful to remember that there are still many among the clergy of the Church of England who, retaining the old, unreformed view of the Church, still believe "that the relationship of sonship to God is imparted through baptism and is not imparted without it";⁶³ though, of course, many others, and we hope still a large majority, would repudiate this position as incredible. 

VI. THE REFORMED DOCTRINE 

It was among the Reformed alone that the newly recovered Scriptural apprehension of the Church to which the promises were given, as essentially not an externally organized body but the people of God, membership in which is mediated not by the external act of baptism but by the internal regeneration of the Holy Spirit, bore its full fruit in rectifying the doctrine of the application of redemption. This great truth was taught alike by both branches of Protestantism, but it was limited in its application in the one line of teaching by a very high doctrine of the means of grace, while in the other it became itself constitutive of the doctrine of the means of grace. Not a few Reformed theologians, even outside the Church of England, no doubt also held a high doctrine of the means; of whom Peter Jurieu may be taken as a type.⁶⁴ But this was not characteristic of the Reformed churches, the distinguishing doctrine of which rather by suspending salvation on membership in the invisible instead of in the visible Church, transformed baptism from a necessity into a duty, and left men dependent for salvation on nothing but the infinite love and free grace of God. In this view the absolutely free and loving election of God alone is determinative of the saved; so that how many and who they are is known absolutely to God alone, and to us only so far forth as it may be inferred from the marks and signs of election revealed to us in the Word. Faith and its fruits are the chief signs in the case of adults, and he that believes may know that he is of the elect. In the case of infants dying in infancy, birth within the bounds of the covenant is a sure sign, since the promise is "unto us and our children." But present unbelief is not a sure sign of reprobation in the case of adults, for who knows but that unbelief may yet give place to faith? Nor in the case of infants, dying such, is birth outside the covenant a trustworthy sign of reprobation, for the election of God is free. Accordingly there are many - adults and infants - of whose salvation we may be sure, but of reprobation we cannot be sure; such a judgment is necessarily unsafe even as to adults apparently living in sin, while as to infants who " die and give no sign," it is presumptuous and rash in the extreme. 

The above is practically an outline of the teaching of Zwingli. He himself worked it out in its logical completeness, and taught: 1. That all believers are elect and hence are saved, though we cannot know infallibly who are true believers except in our own case. 2. All children of believers dying in infancy are elect and hence are saved, for this rests on God's immutable promise. 3. It is probable, from the superabundance of the gift of grace over the offense, that all infants dying such are elect and saved; so that death in infancy is a sign of election; and although this must be left with God, it is certainly rash and even impious to affirm their damnation. 4. All who are saved, whether adult or infant, are saved only by the free grace of God's election and through the redemption of Christ.⁶⁵

The central principle of Zwingli's teaching is not only the common possession of all Calvinists, but the essential postulate of their system. They can differ among themselves only in their determination of what the signs of election and reprobation are, and in their interpretation of these signs. On these grounds Calvinists early divided into five classes: 1. From the beginning a few held with Zwingli that death in infancy is a sign of election, and hence that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into glory. After Zwingli, Bishop Hooper was probably the first⁶⁶ to embrace this view.⁶⁷ It has more lately become the ruling view, and we may select Augustus Toplady⁶⁸ and Robert S. Candlish as its types. The latter, for example, writes:69 "In many ways, I apprehend, it may be inferred from Scripture that all dying in infancy are elect, and are therefore saved. . . . The whole analogy of the plan of saving mercy seems to favour the same view. And now it may be seen, if I am not greatly mistaken, to be put beyond question by the bare fact that little children die. . . . The death of little children must be held to be one of the fruits of redemption. . . ." 2. At the opposite extreme a very few held that the only sure sign of election is faith with its fruits, and, therefore, we can have no real ground of knowledge concerning the fate of any infant; as, however, God certainly has His elect among them too, each man can cherish the hope that his children are of the elect. Peter Martyr approaches this sadly agnostic position (which was afterward condemned by the Synod of Dort), writing: "Neither am I to be thought to promise salvation to all the children of the faithful which depart without the sacrament, for if I should do so I might be counted rash; I leave them to be judged by the mercy of God, seeing I have no certainty concerning the secret election and predestination; but I only assert that those are truly saved to whom the divine election extends, although baptism does not intervene. . . . Just so, I hope well concerning infants of this kind, because I see them born from faithful parents; and this thing has promises that are uncommon; and although they may not be general, quoad omnes, . . . yet when I see nothing to the contrary it is right to hope well concerning the salvation of such infants."70 The great body of Calvinists, however, previous to the present century, took their position between these extremes. 3. Many held that faith and the promise are sure signs of election, and accordingly all believers and their children are certainly saved; but that the lack of faith and the promise is an equally sure sign of reprobation, so that all the children of unbelievers, dying such, are equally certainly lost. The younger Spanheim, for example, writes: "Confessedly, therefore, original sin is a most just cause of positive reprobation. Hence no one fails to see what we should think concerning the children of pagans dying in their childhood; for unless we acknowledge salvation outside of God's covenant and Church (like the Pelagians of old, and with them Tertullian, Epiphanius, Clement of Alexandria, of the ancients, and of the moderns, Andradius, Ludovicus Vives, Erasmus, and not a few others, against the whole Bible), and suppose that all the children of the heathen, dying in infancy, are saved, and that it would be a great blessing to them if they should be smothered by the midwives or strangled in the cradle, we should humbly believe that they are justly reprobated by God on account of the corruption (labes) and guilt (reatus) derived to them by natural propagation. Hence, too, Paul testifies (Rom. v. 14) that death has passed upon them which have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, and distinguishes and separates (I Cor. vii. 14) the children of the covenanted as holy from the impure children of unbelievers."71 4. More held that faith and the promise are certain signs of election, so that the salvation of believers' children is certain, while the lack of the promise only leaves us in ignorance of God's purpose; nevertheless that there is good ground for asserting that both election and reprobation have place in this unknown sphere. Accordingly they held that all the infants of believers, dying such, are saved, but that some of the infants of unbelievers, dying such, are lost. Probably no higher expression of this general view can be found than John Owen's. He argues that there are two ways in which God saves infants: "(1) by interesting them in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been believers. He is a God of them and of their seed, extending his mercy unto a thousand generations of them that fear him;⁷² (2) by his grace of election, which is most free, and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but God taketh many unto him in Christ whose parents never knew, or had been despisers of, the gospel."73 5. Most Calvinists of the past, however, have simply held that faith and the promise are marks by which we may know assuredly that all those who believe and their children, dying such, are elect and saved, while the absence of sure marks of either election or reprobation in infants, dying such outside the covenant, leaves us without ground for inference concerning them, and they must be left to the judgment of God, which, however hidden from us, is assuredly just and holy and good. This agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted infants has been held, of course, in conjunction with every degree of hope or the lack of hope concerning them, and thus in the hands of the several theologians it approaches each of the other views, except, of course, the second, which separates itself from the general Calvinistic attitude by allowing a place for reprobation even among believers' infants, dying such. Petrus de Witte may stand for one example. He says: "We must adore God's judgments and not curiously inquire into them. Of the children of believers it is not to be doubted but that they shall be saved, inasmuch as they belong unto the covenant. But because we have no promise of the children of unbelievers we leave them to the judgment of God."74 Matthew Henry⁷⁵ and our own Jonathan Dickinson⁷⁶ may also stand as types. It is this cautious, agnostic view which has the best historical right to be called the general Calvinistic one. Van Mastricht correctly says that while the Reformed hold that infants are liable to reprobation, yet "concerning believers' infants . . . they judge better things. But unbelievers' infants, because the Scriptures determine nothing clearly on the subject, they judge should be left to the divine discretion."77 

The Reformed Confessions with characteristic caution refrain from all definition of the negative side of the salvation of infants, dying such, and thus confine themselves to emphasizing the gracious doctrine common to the whole body of Reformed thought. The fundamental Reformed doctrine of the Church is nowhere more beautifully stated than in the sixteenth article of the Old Scotch Confession, while the polemical appendix of 1580, in its protest against the errors of "antichrist," specifically mentions "his cruell judgement againis infants departing without the sacrament: his absolute necessitie of baptisme." No synod probably ever met which labored under greater temptation to declare that some infants, dying in infancy, are reprobate, than the Synod of Dort. Possibly nearly every member of it held as his private opinion that there are such infants; and the certainly very shrewd but scarcely sincere methods of the Remonstrants in shifting the form in which this question came before the synod were very irritating. But the fathers of Dort, with truly Reformed loyalty to the positive declarations of Scripture, confined themselves to a clear testimony to the positive doctrine of infant salvation and a repudiation of the calumnies of the Remonstrants, without a word of negative inference. "Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word," they say, "which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace in which they together with their parents are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy" (art. xvii.). Accordingly they repel in the Conclusion the calumny that the Reformed teach "that many children of the faithful are torn guiltless from their mothers' breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell."78 It is easy to say that nothing is here said of the children of any but the "godly  and of the "faithful"; this is true; and therefore it is not implied (as is so often thoughtlessly asserted) that the contrary of what is here asserted is true of the children of the ungodly; but nothing is taught of them at all. It is more to the purpose to observe that it is asserted that the children of believers, dying such, are saved; and that this assertion is an inestimable advance on that of the Council of Trent and that of the Augsburg Confession that baptism is necessary to salvation. It is the confessional doctrine of the Reformed churches and of the Reformed churches alone, that all believers' infants, dying in infancy, are saved. 

What has been said of the Synod of Dort may be repeated of the Westminster Assembly. The Westminster divines were generally at one in the matter of infant salvation with the doctors of Dort, but, like them, they refrained from any deliverance as to its negative side. That death in infancy does not prejudice the salvation of God's elect they asserted in the chapter of their Confession which treats of the application of Christ's redemption to His people: "All those whom God hath predestined unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, . . . so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace. . . . Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth."79 With this declaration of their faith that such of God's elect as die in infancy are saved by His own mysterious working in their hearts, although incapable of the response of faith, they were content. Whether these elect comprehend all infants, dying such, or some only - whether there is such a class as non-elect infants, dying in infancy, their words neither say nor suggest. No Reformed confession enters into this question; no word is said by any one of them which either asserts or implies either that some infants are reprobated or that all are saved. What has been held in common by the whole body of Reformed theologians on this subject is asserted in these confessions; of what has been disputed among them the confessions are silent. And silence is as favorable to one type as to another. 

Although the cautious agnostic position as to the fate of uncovenanted infants dying in infancy may fairly claim to be the historical Calvinistic view, it is perfectly obvious that it is not per se any more Calvinistic than any of the others. The adherents of all types enumerated above are clearly within the limits of the system, and hold with the same firmness to the fundamental position that salvation is suspended on no earthly cause, but ultimately rests on God's electing grace alone, while our knowledge of who are saved depends on our view of what are the signs of election and of the clearness with which they may be interpreted. As these several types differ only in the replies they offer to the subordinate question, there is no "revolution" involved in passing from one to the other; and as in the lapse of time the balance between them swings this way or that, it can only be truly said that there is advance or retrogression, not in fundamental conception, but in the clearness with which details are read and with which the outline of the doctrine is filled up. In the course of time the agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted infants, dying such, has given place to an ever growing universality of conviction that these infants too are included in the election of grace; so that to-day few Calvinists can be found who do not hold with Toplady, and Doddridge, and Thomas Scott, and John Newton, and James P. Wilson, and Nathan L. Rice, and Robert J. Breckinridge, and Robert S. Candlish, and Charles Hodge, and the whole body of those of recent years whom the Calvinistic churches delight to honor, that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into His glory - not because original sin alone is not deserving of eternal punishment (for all are born children of wrath), nor because they are less guilty than others (for relative innocence would merit only relatively light punishment, not freedom from all punishment), nor because they die in infancy (for that they die in infancy is not the cause but the effect of God's mercy toward them), but simply because God in His infinite love has chosen them in Christ, before the foundation of the world, by a loving foreordination of them unto adoption as sons in Jesus Christ. Thus, as they hold, the Reformed theology has followed the light of the Word until its brightness has illuminated all its corners, and the darkness has fled away. 

VII. "ETHICAL" TENDENCIES 

The most serious peril which the orderly development of the Christian doctrine of the salvation of infants has had to encounter, as men strove, age after age, more purely and thoroughly to apprehend it, has arisen from the intrusion into Christian thought of what we may, without lack of charity, call the unchristian conception of man's natural innocence. For the task which was set to Christian thinking was to obtain a clear understanding of God's revealed purpose of mercy to the infants of a guilty and wrath-deserving race. And the Pelagianizing conception of the innocence of human infancy, in however subtle a form presented, put the solution of the problem in jeopardy by suggesting that it needed no solution. We have seen how some Greek Fathers cut the knot with the facile formula that infantile innocence, while not deserving of supernatural reward, was yet in no danger of being adjudged to punishment. We have seen how in the more active hands of Pelagius and his companions, as part of a great unchristian scheme, it menaced Christianity itself, and was repelled only by the vigor and greatness of an Augustine. We have seen how the same conception, creeping gradually into the Latin Church in the milder form of semi-Pelagianism, lulled her heart to sleep with suggestions of less and less ill-desert for original sin, until she neglected the problem of infant salvation altogether and comforted herself with a constantly attenuating doctrine of infant punishment. If infants are so well off without Christ, there is little impulse to consider whether they may not be in Christ. 

The Reformed churches could not hope to work out the problem free from menace from the perennial enemy. The crisis came in the form of the Remonstrant controversy. The anthropology of the Remonstrants was distinctly semi-Pelagian, and on that basis no solid advance was possible. Nor was the matter helped by their postulation of a universal atonement which lost in intention as much as it gained in extension. Infants may have very little to be saved from, but their salvation from even it cannot be wrought by an atonement which only purchases for them the opportunity for salvation - an opportunity of which they cannot avail themselves, however much the natural power of free choice is uninjured by the fall, for the simple reason that they die infants; while God cannot be held to make them, without their free choice, partakers of this atonement without an admission of that sovereign discrimination among men which it was the very object of the whole Remonstrant theory to exclude. It is not strange that the Remonstrants looked with some favor on the Romish theory of pœna damni. Though the doctrine of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy became one of their characteristic tenets, it had no logical basis in their scheme of faith, and their proclamation of it could have no direct effect in working out the problem. Indirectly it had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it retarded the true course of the development of doctrine, by leading those who held fast to Biblical teaching on original sin and particular election, to oppose the doctrine of the salvation of all dying in infancy, as if it were necessarily inconsistent with these teachings. Probably Calvinists were never so united in affirming that some infants, dying such, are reprobated, as in the height of the Remonstrant controversy. On the other hand, so far as the doctrine of the salvation of all infants, dying such, was accepted by the anti-Remonstrants, it tended to bring in with it, in more or less measure, the other tenets with which it was associated in their teaching, and thus to lead men away from the direct path along which alone the solution was to be found. Wesleyan Arminianism brought only an amelioration, not a thoroughgoing correction of the faults of Remonstrantism. The theoretical postulation of original sin and natural inability, corrected by the gift to all men of a gracious ability on the basis of universal atonement in Christ, was a great advance. But it left the salvation of infants dying in infancy logically as unaccounted for as original Remonstrantism. Ex hypothesi, the universal atonement could bring to these infants only what it brought to all others, and this was something short of salvation - viz., an ability to improve the grace given alike to all. But infants, dying such, cannot improve grace; and therefore, it would seem, cannot be saved, unless we suppose a special gift to them over and above what is given to other men - a supposition subversive at once of the whole Arminian contention. The assertion of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy, although a specially dear tenet of Wesleyan Arminianism, remains therefore, as with the earlier Remonstrants, unconformable to the system. The Arminian difficulty, indeed, lies one step further back; it does not make clear how any infant dying in infancy is to be saved.⁸⁰ 

The truth seems to be that there is but one logical outlet for any system of doctrine which suspends the determination of who are to be saved upon any action of man's own will, whether in the use of gracious or natural ability (that is, of course, if it is unwilling to declare infants, dying such, incapable of salvation); and that lies in the extension of "the day of grace" for such into the other world. Otherwise, there will inevitably be brought in covertly, in the salvation of infants, that very sovereignty of God, "irresistible" grace and passive receptivity, to deny which is the whole raison d'être of these schemes. There are indications that this is being increasingly felt among those who are most concerned; we have noted it most recently among the Cumberland Presbyterians,⁸¹ who, perhaps alone of Christian denominations, have embodied in their confession their conviction that all infants, dying such, are saved. The theory of a probation in the other world for such as have had in this no such probation as to secure from them a decisive choice has come to us from Germany, and bears accordingly a later Lutheran coloring. Its roots are, however, planted in the earliest Lutheran thinking,⁸² and are equally visible in the writings of the early Remonstrants; its seeds are present, in fact, wherever man's salvation is causally suspended on any act of his own. But the outcome offered by it certainly affords no good reason for affirming that all infants, dying such, are saved. It is not uncommon, indeed, for the advocates of this theory to suppose the present life to be a more favorable opportunity for moral renewal in Christ than the next.⁸³ Some, no doubt, think otherwise. But in either event what can assure us that all will be so renewed? We are ready to accept the subtle argument in Dr. Kedney's valuable work, "Christian Doctrine Harmonized,"84 as the best that can be said on the premises; for although Dr. Kedney denies the theory of "future probation" in general, he shares the general "ethical" view on which it is founded, and projects the salvation of infants dying in infancy into the next world on the express ground that they are incapable of choice here. He assures us that they will surely welcome the knowledge of God's love in Christ there. But we miss the grounds of assurance, on the fundamental postulates of the scheme. If the choice of these infants, while it remains free, can be made thus certain there, why not the same for all men here? And if their choice is thus made certain, is their destiny determined by their choice, or by God who makes that choice certain? Assuredly no thoroughfare is open along this path for a consistent doctrine of the salvation of all those that die in infancy. But this seems the only pathway that is consistently open to those, of whatever name, who make man's own undetermined act the determining factor in his salvation.⁸⁵ 

VIII. THE DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 

The drifts of doctrine which have come before us in this rapid sketch may be reduced to three generic views. 1. There is what may be called the ecclesiastical doctrine, according to which the Church, in the sense of an outwardly organized body, is set as the sole fountain of salvation in the midst of a lost world; the Spirit of God and eternal life are its peculiar endowments, of which none can partake save through communion with it. Accordingly, to all those departing this life in infancy, baptism, the gateway to the Church, is the condition of salvation. 2. There is what may be called the gracious doctrine, according to which the visible Church is not set in the world to determine by the gift of its ordinances who are to be saved, but as the harbor of refuge for the saints, to gather into its bosom those whom God Himself in His infinite love has selected in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world in whom to show the wonders of His grace. Men accordingly are not saved because they are baptized, but they are baptized because they are saved, and the failure of the ordinance does not argue the failure of the grace. Accordingly, to all those departing this life in infancy, inclusion in God's saving purpose alone is the condition of salvation; we may be able to infer this purpose from manifest signs, or we may not be able to infer it, but in any case it cannot fail. 3. There is what may be called the humanitarian doctrine, according to which the determining cause of man's salvation is his own free choice, under whatever variety of theories as to the source of his power to exercise this choice, or the manner in which it is exercised. Accordingly, whether one is saved or not is dependent not on baptism or on inclusion in God's hidden purpose, but on the decisive activity of the soul itself. 

The first of these doctrines is characteristic of the early, the medieval, and the Roman churches, not without echoes in those sections of Protestantism which love to think of themselves as "more historical" or less radically reformed than the rest. The second is the doctrine of the Reformed churches. These two are not opposed to one another in their most fundamental conception, but are related rather as an earlier misapprehension and a later correction of the same basal doctrine. The phrase extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the common property of both; they differ only in their understanding of the "ecclesia," whether of the visible or invisible Church. The third doctrine, on the other hand, has cropped out ever and again in every age of the Church, has dominated whole sections of it and whole ages, but has never, in its purity, found expression in any great historic confession or exclusively characterized any age. It is, in fact, not a section of Church doctrine at all, but an intrusion into Christian thought from without. In its purity it has always and in all communions been accounted heresy; and only as it has been more or less modified and concealed among distinctively Christian adjuncts has it ever made a position for itself in the Church. Its fundamental conception is the antipodes of that of the other doctrines. 

The first step in the development of the doctrine of infant salvation was taken when the Church laid the foundation which from the beginning has stood firm, Infants too are lost members of a lost race, and only those savingly united to Christ are saved. In its definition of what infants are thus savingly united to Christ the early Church missed the path. All that are brought to Him in baptism, was its answer. Long ages passed before the second step was taken in the correct definition. The way was prepared, indeed, by Augustine's doctrine of grace, by which salvation was made dependent on the dealings of God with the individual heart. But his eyes were holden that he should not see it. It was reserved to Zwingli to proclaim it clearly, All the elect children of God, who are regenerated by the Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth. The sole question that remains is, Who of those that die in infancy are the elect children of God? Tentative answers were given. The children of God's people, said some. The children of God's people, with such others as His love has set upon to call, said others. All those that die in infancy, said others still; and to this reply Reformed thinking and not Reformed thinking only, but in one way or another, logically or illogically, the thinking of the Christian world has been converging. Is it the Scriptural answer? It is as legitimate and as logical an answer as any, on Reformed postulates. It is legitimate on no other postulates. If it be really conformable to the Word of God it will stand; and the third step in the development of the doctrine of infant salvation is already taken. But if it stand, it can stand on no other theological basis than the Reformed. If all infants dying in infancy are saved, it is certain that they are not saved by or through the ordinances of the visible Church (for they have not received them), nor through their own improvement of a grace common to all men (for they are incapable of activity); it can only be through the almighty operation of the Holy Spirit who worketh when and where and how He pleaseth, through whose ineffable grace the Father gathers these little ones to the home He has prepared for them.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from the pamphlet of this title published by the Christian Literature Company of New York in 1891 (copyright now held by Charles Scribner's Sons). 

Irenæus, "Haer.," II. xxii. 4, and III. xviii. 7. 

"De bapt.," c. xii. 

Ep, lviii. (lxiv.). 

With what limitations may be conveniently read in Wall, "History of Infant Baptism," ed. 2, 1707, pp. 359 ff.

Cf. "The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," edited by Dr. Schaff, v. 1887 ("Augustin's Anti-Pelagian Writings"), pp. lxx. f.

Augustine's doctrine is most strongly expressed in "De verbis apostoli sermo xiv." (Sermo ccxciv., in "Opera," Paris, tom. v. pars ii. 1838, coll. 1738 ff.). In "De Peccat. Merit.," c. 21 (xvi.), and "Contra Julianum," v. 11, he speaks of the comparative mildness of the punishment.

Cf. Wall, op. cit., pp. 64 and 365. 

"De fide ad Petrum," c. 27. 

"Ad Fuscinam sororem."

"Expos. in Job," i. 16. 

"De bapt.," c. xii. 

Petavius, "Dogmata theologica," ed. Paris, ii. 1865, pp. 59 ff.

Hurter, "Theologiae dogmaticae compendium," iii. 1878, pp. 516 ff.: tract. x. cap. iii. § 729. Wycliffe must be added.

"Hell," iv. 23ff.; "Purgatory," vii. 25ff.; "Heaven," xxxii. 76ff. (Plumptre's translation).

Cf. Wall, op. cit., p. 371.

"Sermo de nativitate virg. Mariae," consid, ii. ("Opera," iii. 1728, p. 1350). 

In IV. dist. iv. q. 2: see Petavius, op. cit., p. 60. 

Cf. Wall, p. 372.

For this classification see Bellarmine, "De amissione gratise," lib. vi. c. 1 ("Opera," v. 1873, pp. 454f.); and cf. Gerhard, "Loci theologici," ed. Cotta, ix. 1769, p. 281; Chamier, "Panstratiae catholicae," iii. 1626, p. 159, or Spanheim, "Chamierus contractus," 1643, p. 797. 

So Father Paul, "History of the Council of Trent," lib. ii.

Perrone, "Prælectiones theologicæ ... in compendium redactæ," i. 1861, pp. 494 ff. 

"Ecclesiastical Polity," V. lx. 6, in "Works," ed. Keble, i. 1844, p. 413. 

Thus e.g. Dominicus de Soto expresses it ("De natura et gratia," ii. 10): "It is most firmly established in the Church that no infant apart from baptism in re - since he cannot have it in voto - enters the kingdom of heaven." 

This grows out of the development of the doctrines of ignorance and "invincible ignorance," the latter of which was authoritatively defined by Pope Pius IX in his Encyclical addressed to the Bishops of Italy, August 10, 1863. See an interesting statement concerning it in Newman's "A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," on the Infallibility of the Pope. Thus while an absolute necessity for baptism in re is posited for the infants of even Christian parents, even though they die in the womb, on the other hand, as the law of baptism is in force only where it is known, and even an ignorance morally invincible (as among sectaries) is counted true ignorance, not even an intention of baptism is demanded of the heathen or of certain sectaries. Gousset, "Théologie Dogmatique," ed. 10, Paris, 1866, i. pp. 548, 549, 551, ii. pp. 382f., may be profitably consulted in this connection. Among the heathen thus the old remedies for sin are still probably valid; St. Bernard says (quoted approvingly by Gousset), "Among the Gentiles as many as are found faithful, we believe that the adults are expiated by faith and the sacrifices; but the faith of the parents profits the children, nay, even suffices for them." If the fathers are saved, why not the children? Might not a Christian's infant dying in the womb be said to be "invincibly ignorant"? Why need the "law of baptism" be so inflexibly extended to it?

In 3 part. Thomae, q. 68, art. 2 et 11.

"De baptismo infantium."

"De remedio ... pro parvulis ... sine baptismo morientibus."

"Theolog. moralis," II. xi. 3.

"Katholische Dogmatik," iii. 1845, pp. 151 f. (cap. ii. zweiter Abschnitt, § 1).

De la Marne, "Traité métaphysique des dogmes de la Trinité," Paris, 1826.

Hermesius, Zeitschrift für Phil. und kath. Theologie, Bonn, 1832. 

Cf. Vasquez, in 3 P. s. Th. disp. cli. cap. 1; Hurter, op. cit., iii. 1878, pp. 516 ff.; Perrone, "Prælectiones theologicæ," vi. 1839, p. 55. 

"Prælectiones theologicæ ... in compendium redactæ," i. 1861, p. 494, No. 585.

Op. cit., p. 517, No. 729. 

Perrone, i. p. 495; cf. ii. 1861, p. 252.

Op. cit., i. p. 495, No. 590. 

See some of the difficulties very mildly stated in Hurter, loc. cit. 

The words are Aquinas' (p. 3, q. 68, art. 1) ; see them quoted and applied by Perrone, op. cit., ii. p. 253, No. 99. 

"Or outside the Church of Christ," as is added in ed. 1540.

"History of Protestant Theology" (E.T.), i. 1871, pp. 171f. 

"Werke," xxii. 872 (Dorner's quotation). 

"Com. in Gen.," c. 17: "Exegetica opera latina," Erlangen, iv. 1829, p. 78. 

"Christliches Bedenken." 

See for several such quotations brought together, Laurence, "Eight Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford," Bampton Lectures, 1804, ed. 1820, pp. 271 f. Also Gerhard as in next note. 

Ed. Cotta, ix. 1769, pp. 282 ff.

"Opera," in "Corpus reformatorum," xxvii. 1859, p. 533. 

Cf. Dorner, op. cit., i. p. 172. 

Cf. Laurence, op. cit., pp. 272 f. 

50 Ibid., p. 272. 426

This classification is taken from Cotta (Gerhard's "Loci," ix. p. 282). 

"Quæst. in cap. vii. Gen." 

See Krauth, "The Conservative Reformation and its Theology," 1872, p. 433.

Cf. the statements in Cotta, loc. cit., and Krauth, loc. cit. 

Krauth, op. cit., p. 429. 

Ibid., pp. 561-563. 

Ibid., pp. 430, 438. 

Krauth, "Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System," 1874, p. 22. 

For an outline of the history see Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, p. 642; cf. Laurence, 0p. cit., pp. 176 f. 

"Answer to the Bishop of Winchester's Book," 1547, in the Parker Society's "Early Writings of Bishop Hooper," 1843, pp. 129, 131. 

"Course of Divinity," London, 1674, p. 196.

"History of Infant Baptism," ed. 2, 1707, p. 377. 

"Tracts for the Times," by members of the University of Oxford, ii. 1839, No. 67. 

See his views quoted and discussed by Witsius, "De efficacia et utilitate baptismi," in "Miscellanea sacra," ii. 1736, pp. 513 ff. 

Zwingli's teaching may be conveniently worked out by the aid of August Baur's valuable "Zwinglis Theologie," especially vol. ii. (Halle, 1889). Zwingli's doctrine of original sin had practically no influence on this question.

The adverb is used advisedly. Calvin is often held to have believed that all infants dying such are saved. For a careful statement of this opinion see especially the full and learned paper of Dr. Charles W. Shields, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for October, 1890 (i. pp. 634-651). To us, however, Calvin seems, while speaking with admirable caution, to imply that he believed some infants dying such to be lost. See e.g. his comment on Rom. v. 17, and his treatises against Pighius, Servetus, and Castellio. Dr. Schaff repeatedly speaks of Bullinger as agreeing in this point with Zwingli - on what grounds we know not unless the note in "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, p. 642, note 3, is intended to direct us to the passages quoted by Laurence as such. But these passages do not seem to support that opinion; and in a diligent search in Bullinger's works we find nothing to favor it and much to negative it. 

See reference ante, p. 129. 

"Complete Works," new edition, 1857, pp. 645 f.

"The Atonement: its Efficacy and Extent," 1867, pp. 183, 184. 

"Loci communes," i. 1580, p. 439a (classis IV. loc. viii. § 16).

"Opera," iii. 1703, coll. 1173 f., § 22.

It is, perhaps, worth noting that this is the general Calvinistic view of what "children of believers" means. Cf. Calvin, "Tracts," iii. 1851, p. 351. 

"Works," ed. Goold, x. 1852, p. 81 (ed. Russell, v. 1826, p. 137). 

"Catechism," q. 37. 

"Miscellaneous Works," 1830, p. 940.

"Sermons and Tracts," 1793, p. 205.

"Theoretico-practica theologia," 1724, p. 308.

The language here used has a not uninteresting history. It is Calvin's challenge to Castellio: "Put forth now thy virulence against God, who hurls innocent babes torn from their mothers' breasts into eternal death" ("De occulta Dei providentia," in "Opera," ed. Amsterdam, viii. pp. 644-645). The underlying conception that God condemns infants to eternal death seems to be Calvin's; but the mode of expression is Calvin's reductio ad absurdum (or rather ad blasphemiam) of Castellio's opinions. Nevertheless the Remonstrants allowed themselves in their polemic zeal to apply the whole sentiment to the orthodox, and that, even in a still more sharpened form - viz., with reference to believers' children. This very gross calumny the Synod repels. Its deliverance is subjected to a very sharp and not very candid criticism by Episcopius ("Opera," I. i. p. 176, and specially II. p. 28). 

Westminster Confession of Faith, X. i. and iii. The opinion that a body of non-elect infants dying in infancy and not saved is implied in this passage, although often controversially asserted, is not only a wholly unreasonable opinion exegetically, but is absolutely negatived by the history of the formation of this clause in the Assembly as recorded in the "Minutes," and has never found favor among the expositors of the Confession. David Dickeon's (1684) treatment of the section shows that he understands it to be directed against the Anabaptists; and all careful students of the Confession understand it as above, including Shaw, Hodge, Macpherson, and Mitchell. The same is true of all schools of adherents to the Confession. See e.g. Lyman Beecher, in the Spirit of the Pilgrims, i. 1828, pp. 49, 81; cf. also Philip Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, p. 795. 

The prevailing view in the Methodist Episcopal Church is probably that infants are all born justified. The difficulties of this view are hinted by a not unfriendly hand in the Cumberland Presbyterian Review for January, 1890, p. 113. The best that can be said toward placing the dying infant "in the same essential condition as that into which the justified and regenerate adult is brought by voluntary faith," may be read from Dr. D. D. Whedon's pen in the Methodist Quarterly Review for 1853, p. 757. It is inconsequent; and its consequences are portentous to Arminianism - or shall we say that God does not determine who are to die in infancy? 

Cumberland Presbyterian Review, ii. 1890, p. 369; cf. p. 113.

Cf. e.g. Andreæ, "Actis Colloq. Montisbelligart," pp. 447, 448; and note Beza's crushing reply.

Cf. "Progressive Orthodoxy," 1886, p. 76.

Vol. ii. 1889, pp. 90 ff. 

The Rev. D. Fisk Harris, himself a Congregational minister ("Calvinism Contrary to God's Word and Man's Moral Nature," 1890, p. 107), tells us that a view not essentially differing from Dr. Kedney's "seems to be the prevailing view of Congregationalists." This he states thus: "All dying infants become moral agents after death. Exercising a holy choice they 'are saved on the ground of the atonement and by regeneration"'

The Divine Origin of the Bible

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Pub. 1882, by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia; Pa.

When the Christian asserts his faith in the divine origin of his Bible, he does not mean to deny that it was composed and written by men or that it was given by men to the world. He believes that the marks of its human origin are ineradicably stamped on every page of the whole volume. He means to state only that it is not merely human in its origin. If asked where and how the divine has entered this divine-human book, he must reply: "Everywhere, and in almost every way conceivable." Throughout the whole preparation of the material to be written and of the men to write it; throughout the whole process of the gathering and classification and use of the material by the writers; throughout the whole process of the actual writing, - he sees at work divine influences of the most varied kinds, extending all the way from simply providential superintendence and spiritual illumination to direct revelation and inspiration.

It is of great importance to distinguish between these various ways in which the divine has been active in originating the Scriptures, but it is of vastly greater importance to fix the previous fact that it is in the Scriptures at all and has entered them in any way. The present essay aims, therefore, without raising any of the many questions which concern the distinguishing of the various activities of God in originating his Scriptures, to busy itself with the one previous question: Is there reason to believe that God has been concerned at all in the origin of the Bible?

The question thus proposed is a very general one. And it is a very immense one - almost limitless. It is, of course, utterly impossible to do more than touch upon it in any reasonable space, and all that could be urged in a single paper or in any reasonably circumscribed series of papers would bear a very small proportion to all that might be urged - to the mighty case that could be made out. No attempt can be made, therefore, toward fullness of treatment. A series of propositions most baldly stated will only be laid down one after the other, and it will be left to the reader to develop and illustrate them and bring out their combined force, which will, however, it is hoped, be immediately partly evident from their simple statement. An effort will also be made, in the choice of the propositions and their ordering, to frame an argument of a kind which will demand, as of right, entrance into every mind; one, therefore, which will depend for its force on no original assumptions, but will begin rather with simple and patent facts - will simply put these facts together and then inquire what kind of facts they are and what they imply. Thus the reasoning will take the form of an inquiry rather than an argument - of an induction rather than a demonstration. The conclusions reached may not be so sharply and accurately defined as if reached by other methods, but they have the advantage of being obtained by a process to every step of which every man's mind ought to be open.

Our purpose is to look upon the Bible simply as one of the facts of the universe, of which every theory of the universe must take account, and for which, just as surely as for gravitation, it must make account or itself die, and then ask (and press the question): What kind of a cause must be assumed to account for it just as it is and just as it arose in the world? Thus we may inductively come to an answer to the query: "Must we assume superhuman activities at work in the genesis of this book?"

Without further introduction, we begin the inquiry at once.

I. THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE

1. The basal fact from which our inquiry takes its start is the very indisputable and patent one that in the world there is such a book as THE BIBLE. There is a definite volume, well known and always the same in contents, about which there need be no mistake, which goes under this name, and under this name is accessible to all. This very patent fact is the first that we need to notice.

2. It is another fact, hardly less patent than the last, that this book occupies a unique position in the world of civilized man. No other book stands to-day among men for what the Bible stands for. We are not asserting here that it has a right to the position it occupies or the power it exerts: we simply assert that it is undeniable that it holds that position and exercises that power.

The legislation of civilized nations is profoundly affected by its teaching; the social habits of cultured people are largely determined by its scheme of life; the governmental forms of powerful countries are built on its principles, and their functions are carried on under its sanctions. Rulers are entrusted with the exercise of their powers, witnesses are credited in the deposition of their testimony, only after oaths sworn upon or according to it. Everywhere it has percolated through the fabric of civilization, and modern society is built up upon the lines drawn by it.

Still further, where it most dominates, there is most life. It is the great Protestant nations - those who most rest upon this book - which are the most prominent nations, the most full of abounding life and enterprising energy, the most impressive on the destinies of man. It is even the pioneer of civilization; instead of following, it breaks the way for material advancement. Go where you will, if you find life, you will find also the Bible; and you will find it in the very midst of the organism. You will find it in the hall of legislation, and in the laws that are there framed; in the courts of justice, and in the justice that is there administered; in the colleges of learning, and in the learning that is there imparted; at the home-firesides, and in the moral training and homely virtues which are there inculcated. In a word, it is, as no other book has ever been to a single nation, bound up with all civilization and progress and culture.

3. It is worth our notice, still further, that this position of power and influence has been attained and held by the Bible through a most remarkable history. Confined for ages to a rough, isolated corner of the globe, in the keeping of a small and peculiar tribe of men, it almost without a moment's warning, like a great lake receiving a new accession of waters, immediately on completion, burst all boundaries and deluged the world. It came commended by no external pomp of appearance, attended with no force of arms. Alone and single-handed, in the face of stinging contempt and bloodthirsty cruelty, it opposed ancient prejudices, long-settled habits, customs and religions, every consideration of self-interest or indulgence or safety, and swept them away like so many straws. By its simple, despised presence among men it conquered. It mattered not where it went; human society in every stage of development, under every form of administration, and composed of every race of men, everywhere alike yielded itself to it.

We cannot overstate the case; it is even impossible for us to mentally realize the profundity of the change induced. Look only at the straws of external action which, veering suddenly around, advertise to us the change of wind beneath and behind. See the revolution in the sentiment which the sight of a cross kindled.

Who can estimate, again, the profound revolution which was necessary in men's very habits of thought, in their inmost consciousness, before sacrificial ordinances could fall into neglect. Just think of it. From the beginning of the world sacrifices had been universal. Men knew, and had from the beginning known, no other way to express the deepest facts of their consciences. The habit had been ground in upon the race not only for a lifetime, but for a world-time. Everybody everywhere spontaneously fled to this rite as the fit expression of the sense of sin and the hope of deliverance. And yet, in little more than fifty years after the introduction of Christianity into his province, Pliny complains that it had almost put a stop to sacrifices there. A world-habit, dominant from the beginning, thus rolled back upon itself in a single generation! We cannot possibly appreciate the greatness of this conquest. Sacrifices had been almost the whole life of the people: from childhood sacrifices had met each man in every form, in every quarter, in every act, in every duty of every day's business. Not only could he not engage in any of the graver duties of the citizen without being confronted with them everywhere; he could not rise from his bed in the morning, retire to it at night, partake of his necessary sustenance, without a recognition of a god or the performance of a rite at every step. And yet Christianity came, not undermining the principle which underlay sacrifices, but emphasizing it, and still they fled away from its presence.

Beneath such external changes, conceive, if you can, the immense revolution that was wrought. Not only was the whole practice of religion altered, but also the whole theory of religion; not only the whole practice of morals, but the whole theory of morals. Vices in former repute were suddenly raised to the highest pinnacle of virtues; virtues in former repute were thrust down to the lowest hell of vices. Everything was overturned.

Is it asked whether the human means employed in gaining this grand victory were not sufficient to account for it? Look at them. A dozen ignorant peasants proclaiming a crucified Jew as the founder of a new faith; bearing as the symbol of their worship an instrument which was the sign of ignominy, slavery and crime; preaching what must have seemed an absurd doctrine of humility, patient suffering and love to enemies - graces undreamed of before; demanding what must have seemed an absurd worship for one who had died like a malefactor and a slave, and making what must have seemed an absurd promise of everlasting life through one who had himself died, and that between two thieves.

Did their voices fall on willing or docile ears? This was the age of those princes of scoffers, Celsus and Lucian.

Did they prosecute their work in peace and quietude? They were thrown to the lions until the very beasts were satiated with their prey. Their blood seemed only to water the field of the Lord.

Thus, in the face of all discouragement and cruel persecution, the Bible found itself established with incredible rapidity in the hearts of an immense Christendom. In less than seventy years it was known over all the then known world; within little more than a single century it had won to itself "almost the greater part of the whole state."

Do you say that this, despite all appearances, must have been an exceptional age and an exceptional experience? We reply that it is the experience of the ages. When corruption had brought back an age of darkness and the Bible was once more lost from real life, it required but a Luther to tear off the veil for it to re-enact the same history and sow Europe with the blood of its votaries till a harvest could be reaped of equal victory. It cannot be necessary to repeat the story of the noble conflict. You know it well, and know that it was a Bible war and a Bible victory. The same history is even now working itself out about us. Madagascar, under our eyes, has repeated it. Every corner of the globe has felt the tingling of the mighty impulse. Even here, in America, we are living amid historical wonders, our eyes unopened to the sight. Rapidly as the population of the United States has grown since 1800, the proportionate increase of the votaries of the Bible has outstripped it. Yet so quietly has it all been done that we live utterly oblivious of it until, through painfully gathered statistics, the fact is made to look us squarely in the face.

How certain a fact, then, it is that the Bible has reached its present wonderful position and influence through a most remarkable history, and a history which it is still continuing on exactly the same lines!

4. It is important to note, next, that throughout all this history, and still to-day, this great influence which the Bible has exerted has been, and is still, purely and only beneficent. All its power has been exerted in the direction of the elevation of man and loving ministry to his needs. Of course we are in no danger of forgetting that the truth of this statement has been of late challenged in some quarters. But neither can we forget three other facts: 1. That it is not challenged by the well-informed and unprejudiced even among those who deny the divine origin of the Bible. 2. That the methods by which it is attempted to make the Bible appear in any other rôle than that of a cornucopia of good for man will (as Dr. Fisher has lately very clearly shown) avail equally to prove that love is a curse and the household fireside, with all its blessings, a very nest of corruption. Of course, it is not denied, either of love or of the Bible, that it sometimes has been the cause of pain; each has often ennobled man through the pain and self-sacrifice called out by it. Nor is it denied of either that it has been made at times the excuse of crime, but both have cried out upon the wickedness which would hide behind their sacred skirts. 3. That those who put forth the challenge have been led to do it only because the teaching of the Bible has so leavened society and the usages of modern life that it is almost impossible for men to believe that the world could ever have existed without the restraining and ennobling influences which now seem naturally to dominate us, and yet which really have their root in the Bible. A true picture of the boon which this book has really been to the world can be obtained only by an examination of two classes of facts - those belonging to the condition of society before it entered into its beneficent reign on the one hand, and on the other those belonging to the condition into which society lapses whenever the Bible in any degree loses its hold upon men. The shamelessness of Roman society under the early emperors will give us the norm of the one; the horrors of the Italian renascence and of the French Revolution will give us the norm of the other. It is not necessary to stop now to pollute these pages with the recital of the depths of degradation from which the Bible rescued man, and from which its potent influence (witness the Italian renascence and the Reign of Terror) alone keeps him rescued: they may be read in any accredited history of the times, and it is certainly justifiable to assume as fact what is recognized as fact by all competent historians.

Thus, then, the Bible is seen to tread the ages like the fabled goddess under whose beneficent footfall sprang beautiful flowers wherever she went. Hospitals and asylums and refuges for the sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. Woman, whose equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social disorganization, has been elevated; slavery has been driven from civilized ground; letters have been given by Christian missionaries, under the influence of the Bible and in order to its publication, to whole peoples and races. Who can estimate that boon? Thus Cyril and Methodius gave alphabet and written language to the vast hordes of the Sclaves; thus Ulphilas, to the whole race of Teutons; thus even Egypt, mother of letters, first received a manageable alphabet. Thus still to-day tribes and peoples sunk in barbarism are being lifted by the Bible to the ranks of literary nations. So the work goes on, and still to-day, as ever before, the Bible stands in all the world exercising everywhere its immense power in the restraining of all evil passions, in the advancement of all that is good and tender and elevating, in pouring out benefits unspeakable to the individual and the state.

5. All this immense influence for good which the Bible is exercising over the minds and hearts of men is due to a most deep-seated and steadfast conviction in their minds that it is from God and constitutes a law given from heaven for amending the lives and ameliorating the condition of men.

If this be a fanaticism, it is a most beneficent and a most remarkable fanaticism, far from easy to account for on the hypothesis that it is a fanaticism. Did men rush to embrace a delusion which had nothing to commend it to them amid the scoffs of Celsus and the ridicule of Lucian, against their every interest and against their every inclination, and that when the majesty of Rome was unsheathed to fright them back and the jaws of the lions yawned to engulf them? Men do not usually spring so to die for a delusion which offers so little and threatens so much. Then, too, how has the fanaticism so grown? How is it that it still holds captive so many millions of those whose intellect is of the clearest and whose culture is of the highest? How is it that it still embraces the civilized world? But, however it be attempted to account for it, here is the fact. The great influence which the Bible has ever exercised has been always, and still is accounted for by those who yield to it on their sincere conviction that this book, which differs so in power from all other volumes, differs from them equally in origin, being alone of books God's book, while all others are men's.

6. This conviction is traced by them not solely to the visible power and influence of the book, nor solely, conjoined with that, to the manifest grandeur and divinity of its contents and character, but also (continuing to dwell now on external particulars) to marvelous circumstances which attended the giving of this marvelous book to the world. Those who wrote its latter portion and sent the whole abroad asserted that they acted under commission from God and authenticated their mission by a series of astounding miracles. Thus the miracle of the book is appropriately believed to have sprung from the center of a God-endowed company.

We cannot pause now to prove that these miracles really occurred. All that can be said is that the testimony they rest on is irrefragable, and that they must be admitted to have occurred or the foundations of all history are swept away at a stroke. It is enough here to note how appropriately the wonderful history which has been wrought out by the Bible is made to spring from open miracles. All is here consistent and appropriate; and if those miracles which are asserted to have happened really happened, all is explained and constitutes a harmonious whole. Otherwise, we are landed in great difficulties and inconsistencies.

If we will ponder the facts which we have so baldly stated, it seems that we must conclude that the external history of this book is such as will so harmonize with a supernatural origin for it as to take away all strangeness from the assertion of such an origin. And what is that but saying that the history of the book suggests a supernatural origin for it - even raises a presumption in favor of such an origin for it? This book is certainly unique in the power it possesses: is it not unique in its source of power? It is certainly furnished with an influence possessed by no other book. Whence came it?

II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE

And now let us open the volume and see what kind of a book this is which has exerted such remarkable power through so long and so wonderful a history. We have all, doubtless, a notion of the kind of book a volume is likely to be which will exercise vast influence over men - a masterly argument, say, well ordered and set foursquare against all possible opposition, each part fitted with consummate skill to each other part, and the whole driven with relentless force and unswerving purpose straight to the intended goal; or a fervid appeal, say, based on the primal emotions of the heart, with burning and well-chosen words touching each string of that mystic harp, beating out from them all one burst of answering music. A consummate master of thought and speech may be thus conceived of as so catching the human heart as to hold it almost permanently. Yet his influence would be limited - notably, by this: the radius of the circle of his sympathies. Certainly no man has yet arisen able to frame a writing of universal and age-long influence, simply because no one has arisen yet wholly above the environment of the social customs and age-influence in which he was bred. And certainly it is inconceivable that a book should exert great influence over a wide expanse of territory and through long stretches of time which was not consciously framed for influence by an intelligent and competent mind. All this being true, it is assuredly worth our most serious attention that the Bible is the only book in existence which has any pretensions to being universal and lasting in its influence; and yet, if it be not of superhuman origin, it could not have been framed consciously for influence. Let us look into this fact somewhat more closely.

7. On first throwing open this wonderful volume we are struck immediately with the fact that it is not a book, but rather a congeries of books. No less than sixty-six separate books, one of which consists itself of one hundred and fifty separate compositions, immediately stare us in the face. These treatises come from the hands of at least thirty distinct writers, scattered over a period of some fifteen hundred years, and embrace specimens of nearly every kind of writing known among men. Histories, codes of law, ethical maxims, philosophical treatises, discourses, dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies, letters both official and personal, vaticinations, - every kind of composition known beneath heaven seems gathered here in one volume.

Their writers, too, were of like diverse kinds. The time of their labors stretches from the hoary past of Egypt to and beyond the bright splendor of Rome under Augustus. They appear to have been of every sort of temperament, of every degree of endowment, of every time of life, of every grade of attainment, of every condition in the social scale. Looked at from a purely external point of view, the volume is a rough bale of drift from the sea of Time, a conglomerate of débris brought down by the waters and cast in a heap together. Nay, not only are there heterogeneous, but seemingly positively conflicting, elements in it. One half is a mass of Hebrew writings held sacred by a race which cannot look with patience on the other half, which is a mass of Greek writings claiming to set aside the legislation of a large part of its fellow. Yet it is this congeries of volumes which has had, and still has, this immense influence. The Hebrew half never conquered the world until the Greek half was added to it; the Greek half did not conquer save by the aid of the Hebrew half. The whole mass, in all its divinity, has attained the kingship.

The question which will not down is, Can the miraculous power of this book be explained by the measure of power to which other books are able to attain? Where does this book, seemingly thus cast together by some whirlpool of time, get its influence? If influence is not natural to such a volume, must it not point to something supernatural in it? Whence came it?

8. We may look, however, on a still greater wonder. Let us once penetrate beneath all this primal diversity and observe the internal character of the volume, and a most striking unity is found to pervade the whole; so that, in spite of having been thus made up of such diverse parts, it forms but one organic whole. The parts are so linked together that the absence of any one book would introduce confusion and disorder. The same doctrine is taught from beginning to end, running like a golden thread through the whole and stringing book after book upon itself like so many pearls. Each book, indeed, adds something in clearness, definition, or even increment, to what the others proclaim; but the development is orderly and constantly progressive. One step leads naturally to the next; the pearls are certainly chosen in the order of stringing.

An unbroken historical continuity pervades the whole book. It is even astonishing how accurately the parts historically dovetail together, jag to jag, into one connected and consistent whole. Malachi ends with a finger-post pointing through the silent ages to a path clearly seen in the Gospels. The New Testament fits on to the Old silently and noiselessly, but exactly, just as one stone of the Jewish temple fitted its fellow prepared for it by exact measurement in the quarries; so that, on any careful consideration of the two coexisting phenomena - utter diversity in origin of these books, and yet utter nicety of combination of one with all - it is as impossible to doubt that they were meant each for the other, were consciously framed each for its place, as it is to doubt that the various parts of a complicated machine, when brought from the factory and set up in its place of future usefulness, were all carefully framed for one another.

But just see where this lands us. Unless we are prepared to allow to a man some fifteen hundred years of conscious existence and intellectual supervision of the work, we are shut up here to the admission of a superhuman origin for this book. It is difficult to see how this argument can be really escaped. It will be perceived that it is analogous to what is often urged from the phenomena of the natural universe to prove for it a divine origin. Indeed, all the arguments urged in the one sphere are also capable of being urged in the other. The gradual framing of the Bible through a period of fifteen hundred years excludes human supervision. Now, the Bible, as a whole, is a result or an effect in the universe, and it must have had, as such, an adequate cause, which, since the result is an intelligent one, must have been an intelligent cause: there is the ontological argument, and it proves a superhuman intelligent cause for the Bible. It consists of orderly arranged parts, of an orderly developed scheme: there is the cosmological argument, and again it proves the activity of an intelligent cause (and much else not now to be brought out) of at least fifteen hundred years' duration. It is itself a cause of marvelous effects in the world for the production of which it is most admirably designed, and its whole inner harmony and all its inner relations are most deeply graven with the marks of a design kept constantly before some intelligent mind for at least fifteen hundred years: there is the argument from design, attaining equally far-reaching and cogent conclusions as in the realm of nature. The analogy need not, however, be drawn out further. An atheist of the present day spoke only sober truth when he declared that the divine origin of the Bible and the divine origin of the world must stand or fall together. The arguments which will prove the one prove also the other. Butler proved this proposition long ago. It stands indubitable; so that absolute atheism or Christianity must be our only choice.

9. Another point in which the unity of the Bible is strikingly apparent needs our attention next: amid all the diversity of its subject-matter, it may yet be said that almost the whole book is taken up with the portraiture of one person. On its first page he comes for a moment before our astonished eyes; on the last he lingers still before their adoring gaze. And from that first word in Genesis which describes him as the "seed of the woman" and at the same time her deliverer - with occasional moments of absence, just as the principal character of a play is not always on the stage, and yet with constant development of character - to the end, where he is discovered sitting on the great white throne and judging the nations, the one consistent but gradually developed portraiture grows before our eyes. Not a false stroke is made. Every touch of the pencil is placed just where it ought to stand as part of the whole. There is nowhere the slightest trace of wavering or hesitancy of hand. The draughtsman is certainly a consummate artist. And, as the result of it all, the world is possessed of the strongest, most consistent, most noble literary portraiture to be found in all her literature.

Yet we are asked to believe that this grand result has been attained, not by the skilled limning of a Michelangelo, but by the disconnected dabblings of a score and a half of untrained forgers, who, moreover, were ever at cross-purposes with each other. Why, if the creation and successful dramatization, through a few short years, of such a character as Hamlet required the genius of a Shakespeare, what genius was required for this astoundingly successful creation and dramatization of such a character as that of the GOD-MAN through the ages of ages and aeons of aeons - from the time when at his Father's side he sat, coequal with him, before all worlds, to the time when these same worlds shall be swallowed up in the final fire! One should certainly rather risk his sanity in the assertion that the play of "Hamlet" had formed itself by the fortuitous concourse of the alphabetical signs and made its own portraiture of the subtle Dane, than on the assertion that this portraiture of the GOD-MAN had been attained apart from the constant supervision and active labor of a consummate mind. If we should thus consider this portraiture only as a fiction, it would demand for its author something more than has yet been seen in man. As it is undeniable now that it occupies the chiefest portion of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and binds the portions it occupies together as a consistent dramatization of itself, it is equally undeniable that these portions of the Bible, at any rate, owe their origin to a mind able to superintend their composition for at least fifteen hundred years with a genius hitherto unexampled among men.

10. One other bond of connection between the parts of the volume must needs be adverted to briefly - that formed by numerous predictions of coming events given in the earlier portions and accounts of the fulfillment of them in later portions, by which these later portions are proved to be but the intended outgrowth and conclusion of the former. These predictions run through an immense range both of time and of circumstance, and are made too precise and detailed in form, and too precise and detailed in the account of their fulfillment, for it to be possible to doubt, on the one hand, that they were real predictions, or, on the other, that they were really fulfilled. Thus the various books are drawn close together; and if the Bible, externally considered, may be likened to a bale of drift, these prophecies, given in one part and reaching their fulfillment in another, are the strong cords which bind the bale securely together and make it one whole. The unity induced by this means is, indeed, complete and most conclusive to its own divine origin.

11. Thus we are led to appeal to prophecy, and that not only to prove the unity of the plan of Scripture, but, independent of and far above that - by its very nature as prediction of things yet hidden in the future - as an irrefragable proof of the divine origin of the whole of the closely-knit volume in which it finds place. It is not a function of human intellect to read the secrets of unborn ages; and the existence in this book of accurate, detailed predictions of even unimportant and certainly incalculable events of the far future demonstrates its divine origin.

It is, of course, impossible in this brief essay to illustrate the character and convincingness of Scripture prophecy, or even to indicate instances of its unquestionable fulfillment in detail. Were there space, we might point to the immense number of independent predictions, seemingly opposite, or even contradictory, to one another, before their fulfillment, found on the coming of Christ to be harmoniously gathered up and fulfilled in his unique personality and work - predictions covering not only the great outlines of his work and the marked traits of his person, but publishing ages beforehand the very village in which he should first see the light, the homage on the one hand, and the abuse on the other, which he should receive, the life he should live and the death he should die, even to the most minute description of the pains he should suffer and the scoffs he should endure as he hung upon the tree - yea, even the exact price of his blood and fate of his betrayer. Or, again, we might point to that ever-living witness to the truth of prophecy in the Jewish race upon whom everything that has been prophesied has been and is being duly fulfilled; or, again, to an infinite multitude of minute details of predictions touching many races and nations which have with infinite might fulfilled themselves everywhere. Space would fail, however, for such an enumeration. And it is the less necessary, now that the feverish efforts, on the part of those who wish to escape from the power of the Bible, to assign later dates to the prophetical books than most cogent proof from many quarters will allow, amount to an admission that the prophetical element in them cannot be denied. In prophecy, therefore, we have a continual miracle set in the midst of the Bible, to stand in all ages as a sure proof that it comes from God. As each prediction is in turn fulfilled before the eyes of each age which witnesses it, a miracle performs itself (and attests itself in the act) which is as cogent and sufficient evidence of the divine origin of the Bible as if all the miracles of the apostolical age were rewrought in our presence to reaffirm its teaching. Thus we see, in perhaps a new light, the meaning of our Lord's pregnant saying: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead."

As, then, when we considered the external history of the Bible, we were driven back, step by step, through marvelous circumstances to open miracles of power proclaiming and demonstrating the divine origin of the book, so here, as soon as we look within it in even the most cursory way, we repeat the same process and move back from marvel to marvel, until we reach the open miracle of prophecy, again independently proving the divine origin of the book after a fashion which cannot be escaped or legitimately questioned.

III. THE TEACHING OF THE BIBLE

The same process is only again repeated, and cumulative evidence for the divine origin of the Bible obtained, when we look somewhat deeper into its contents and ask after the character and witness of its teaching - a subject broad as the earth itself and full of self-evidence, but upon which we have as yet not even cast a glance. The character and the nature of the contents of the Bible alone are enough to prove its divine origin. If men cannot have made the miracles of power by which its publication to the world was accompanied, nor the miracles of prophecy by which its progress through the world has been accompanied, no more can they have manufactured the miracles of teaching of which its contents consist. Independently of all other evidence, the miracle of the contents demands a divine origin. This, again, may be made plainer by some specifications, which again, however, must be presented in a very naked and fragmentary way.

12. Let us note, then, first of all, the unspeakable elevation and grandeur both of the teaching itself which this book presents and of the assumptions on which it bases that teaching.

The conception of God which is here presented - how unutterably divine is it! Apart from the Bible, man has never reached to such a conception. This element of it, and that element of it, has, indeed, through the voice of nature, separately dawned upon his soul; but the complete ideal is conveyed to him only by this book. Infinite and eternal spirit - pure and ineffable - unlimited by matter, or space or time, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in essence and attributes! And what a circle of attributes! Infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite justice, infinite holiness, infinite goodness, infinite mercy, infinite pity, infinite love! Verily, if this conception be not a true image of a really existent God, the human heart must say it ought to be. And this is the conception of God which the Bible holds up before us - more than that, which it dramatizes through an infinite series of infinitely varied actions through a period of millenniums of years in perfect consistency of character. Everywhere in its pages God appears as the all-powerful, all-wise, necessarily just and holy One; everywhere as the all-good, all-merciful, necessarily pitiful and loving One. Never is a single one of these ineffable perfections lost or hidden or veiled.

The Bible's conception of the nature of man is of like nobility. Framed in the image of God, he was made like him not only in the passive qualities, but also in his endowment of active capacities. Even freedom of action - unbound ability to choose his own future – were placed in his grasp. So, also, the Bible's teaching as to the duties that man, even after he has made his fatal choice, owes to God and his neighbor, all founded on the principle of love; its teaching as to the possibilities before man and the destiny in store for him, culminating in the possibility of his enthronement as co-ruler of the universe with his divine Redeemer; its teaching as to the relation of man to the physical and irrational universe as responsible head over it; its teaching as to the origin of this universe itself and its purpose and destiny, - all reach the acme of grandeur. These instances must serve us as specimens of the grandeur of its teaching.

13. We must note, still further, that both the general tenor of the Bible and its special assertions are all in precise accord "with what the profoundest learning shows to be the actual state of the universe, as well as what the deepest and largest experience establishes as the actual course of nature." And it is a very pertinent question how it happens that the Bible was able, alone of ancient books, to forestall the conclusions of the latest science of the nineteenth century. It has taken scientific thought up to to-day to bring its conceptions of the origin of the world to the point at which Moses stood some three millenniums ago. This, again, must serve us now as a specimen fact (among a multitude) proving that "whoever wrote this book knew more than we know, and knew it distinctly when we knew nothing."

Yet, although possessed of a knowledge thus unspeakably advanced beyond all of their time, the writers of this book do not seem to have been proud of their possession or anxious to display it; they do not even formally transmit their knowledge, but simply act and speak on its presupposition; so that when we reach an equal stage of advancement to theirs, without having been hitherto conscious of its presence, we suddenly find it there continually implied and constantly underlying every part. It is thus always most deeply felt by those most conversant with the progress of knowledge, and yet does not in any degree clog the understanding of the book for the purpose for which it was given by those who are as yet ignorant of the basis of physical or philosophical fact assumed.

14. Thus we are led to take note of another general characteristic of biblical teaching - the fact that all its great truths are universal truths; i.e., truths capable of reaching and making entrance into and taking a strong hold upon the heart of man as man, and of all men equally, independently of their race-affinities, intellectual advancement or social standing. That this should be so is undoubtedly a great wonder, and it is redoubled when we remember that it is correlated with great and remarkable knowledge. Usually, when the profound philosopher speaks, he needs philosophers for his audience; and yet here is a book which naturally and without effort betrays acquaintance with the deepest reaches of modern discovery, and yet in its every accent speaks home to the child as readily as to the sage.

In still another respect this same fact - namely, that the truths of the Bible "find us" - has probative force, since, herefrom, it is equally evident that the Bible is suited to man and that its asserted truths are instinctively recognized by man as actual truths. The Bible thus certainly comes with a message to man - one that is recognized by each man who needs its words as specially for him, and that is witnessed to instinctively by each as true. How does it happen that this book, alone among books, reaches the heart alike of the Bushman and of a Newton? of a savage lost in the horrors of savagery and of a Faraday sitting aloft on the calm and clear if somewhat chill heights of science? This universality of effect seems to prove a corresponding universality of intention. But who of men has ever been able to hold before him as recipients of his book all men of all ages? Who has been able to calculate upon the hearts and characters of men removed from him by such stretches of both time and circumstance? Who could have been able to adapt a message penned in a corner, ages agone, to the mental position of the nineteenth century and the hearts of a Newton and a Faraday? Yet we must assume for the Bible an author who was capable of this. Was Moses capable of it? Was an anonymous forger of his name?

15. We must, however, turn to note another general characteristic of Scripture - the remarkable simplicity of its manner and the transparent honesty of its tone; so that its words, even when describing the most utter marvels, possess that calm, quiet ring which stamps them with indubitable truthfulness. If we are asked why we trust a friend in whom we have every confidence, and credit his every statement, we may be somewhat at a loss for a definite answer. "We know him," we say. This same evidence is good also for a book. We may judge of the truthfulness of men's writings by all those little intangible characteristics which when united go toward making a very strong impression of actual proof, but which one by one are almost too small to adduce or even notice, just as we may judge of the trustiness of men's characters by all the innumerable looks, gestures, chance expressions, little circumstances which make their due impression on us. Combined, they are convincing, though each by itself might seem ambiguous or valueless. The conclusion in each case is, however, valid and rational, and the evidence is unmistakably good evidence. Now, for the Bible, this evidence is unusually strong; and thus it happens that men who do not know how to reason, and who are incapable of following a closely-reasoned argument, are accepting the Bible on all sides of us on truly rational and valid evidence, and accepting it on like evidence as divine. They are continually reading accounts of miracles so numerous and so striking that the witnesses of them could not be mistaken; so embedded in a narrative of such artlessness, gravity, honesty, intelligence, straightforwardness as palpably to be neither fraud nor fancy that they form part and parcel of it and are absolutely inseparable from it; so embedded in a narrative which approves itself by a thousand simple and inimitable hints and traits to be transparently truthful and trustworthy that they must stand or fall with it. Now, this is most rational evidence, and evidence so strong that it is as difficult for the honest mind to resist it as it is for us to express it.

16. It becomes surely, then, of sufficient importance to justify special notice that in the midst of this narrative, and scattered all through it, we find calm and simple, but frequent, constant, and steadfast, assertions of a divine origin for itself. So honest and transparently truthful a narrative, filled with marks everywhere of superhuman knowledge, naturally enough does not, in the pride of human nature, claim all this superhuman knowledge for its human authors, but ascribes it all to God; naturally enough empties its human authors of any credit for knowledge before the time of knowledge and plans beyond the reach of man and ascribes it all to God. And its very honesty and simplicity of statement, the transparent honesty of this statement, proves the assertion truthful and trustworthy. Here, then, once more, we reach through orderly steps, exhibiting at each stage marks of God's hand, the assertion of a divine origin; here, once more, after walking through the aisles and nave and choir of a grand cathedral filled all along with the marks of genius in its planning and execution, we reach again the wall, and, lo! on it the marks of the chisel and the superscription of the Architect that prove it was made by a competent mind and did not grow.

It is very difficult to see but that the argument, if fully drawn out and illustrated, is conclusive.

IV. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF' THE BIBLE

Another, and an even more cogent, argument might be presented from a consideration of some special characteristics either of the whole Bible or of some of its parts - an argument hitherto untouched. This argument would soon, however, grow much too vast to be included in this essay. We must content ourselves with only pointing at a distance to only one particular which might, were there space, be urged most convincingly.

17. We refer to the progressive character of the teaching included in this book, with the special cases which might be adduced under that head. It begins with first principles expressed in outward symbol, and advances gradually to the full system, working out its approaches in history before delivering it in dogma. We do not urge simply that this progressive scheme is consistent with a divine origin for it; we urge that this supremely wise method of delivering truth and training a people, taken in connection with the unity of the system throughout the whole, is consistent with nothing else. No doctrinaire made this Bible - see what kind of work they do in the history of Middle-Age Florence and Revolutionary France - but a most consummate statesman who knew what was in man and how to mould him to his purposes.

We would appeal, in this connection - progressiveness - specially to the practical and practicable character of Old-Testament legislation. And thus we are led to assert that those very passages concerning polygamy and kindred themes (which have been made an occasion of gibe against the Scriptures) are themselves a most cogent argument for their divine origin. We Americans ought to know by this time that the best way to secure polygamy unharmed and enshrine it unconquerably under the protection of a nation is to write on the statute-books inoperative laws against it. The Bible was framed by too wise a statesman to fall into that error, and we who enjoy Christian homes to-day have to thank God for it. The unspeakable wisdom of dealing at that age, and under those circumstances, with polygamy, divorce, slavery by regulative laws, which in regulating discouraged, and in discouraging destroyed them, makes strongly for a superhuman origin of the legislation.

So, again, growing out of this same progressive system, we could appeal most strongly to the ritualistic system of symbolical worship given to the Jews and by law secured from failure, by which object lessons - all schoolmasters to lead to something better and higher - were ineffaceably taught to a whole nation, which was thus prepared to receive the spiritual lesson meant for it.

Still again we should appeal to the wise method of New-Testament legislation through great principles rather than specific ordinances, thus securing absolute universality in connection with perfect definiteness; or again to the remarkable tenderness and beauty of this legislation, especially apparent in the cases of slaves, wives and children and temporal rulers - a phenomenon in the age when it was given enough of itself to suggest a divine origin for the one book which contains it; or still again to the wise silence of the same legislation on many subjects on which it must have been very tempting then to legislate, but legislation on which we can see now would have imperiled the success of the main purpose for which the book was given and obtained no corresponding gain.

On all these and like points, however, it is not now possible to touch. We pass on, therefore, to our last remark.

V. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ACCOUNTING FOR THE BIBLE

18. That the Bible, thus standing in the world, being of such sort, and having had such a history, has yet to be accounted for on the hypothesis that it had only a human origin. Here it stands, just such a fact in the universe, a substantive thing, tangible and that can be examined. The ingenuity of men has been feverishly busy with it these hundreds of years. Yet the world still awaits a theory which will render an adequate account of it on any other hypothesis than that it came from God. Theories have been attempted, but one after another they have broken down of their own weight or have had justice executed upon them by fellow-unbelieving hands amid the plaudits of all men of all parties. Thus it happens that up to to-day no hypothesis except that of superhuman interference has been able to stand a half century as an account of the origin of this book. What is this but the confession that without the assumption of superhuman interference this book cannot be accounted for? that these miraculous claims and these miraculous assertions cannot be rationally or satisfactorily explained away? Look for one moment at the efforts made to account on natural grounds for the miraculous element in the New Testament. First, a school arose which tried to work on the assumption that whenever a miracle is recorded the event described did really happen, indeed, but that it has been exaggeratedly and mistakenly described as miraculous, and not merely natural, by the New-Testament writers. The sick were healed, but by medicinal means; the dead were raised, but only from seeming, not real, death. That attempt to explain away the miraculous failed, as requiring as great a series of miracles of wonderful coincidences as it explained away. Another then arose which wished to account for it all as a series of myths, holding that there was a kernel of truth in each event described, but that this kernel had gathered much falsehood around it as it rolled through time, from mouth to mouth, before it got recorded in our Bible, just as a snowball grows almost unrecognizably greater as it rolls down a long slope. But this attempt was wrecked hopelessly on the lack of a soil for the myths to grow in (that is, of snow to frame the balls of) and of time for them to increase in (that is, of any hill for them to roll down). Then another rose on its ruins - an elaborate theory of party strifes and forgeries and re-forgeries of books in every conceivable interest; so that the same material was worked over and over again by false and designing men, to serve each new notion, until the final outcome was our New Testament. Again this theory was wrecked on the lack of time for all this elaborate process before the date at which adequate proof is in hand for the existence of the books. The whole elaborate scheme falls with the failure of the attempted rape of the second century. It cannot be true unless all history is false.

Time is lacking for the New Testament to have grown in, if considered a product of time; whence, then, came it? Soil is lacking for it to have developed in, if considered a human development; then, whence came it? All schemes which have hitherto been invented to account for its origin without God have pitiably failed, and there is no particular reason to look for anything more cogent to be advanced in the future. If, however, this book cannot be accounted for apart from God, we seem shut up to account for it as from him. Certainly, the only rational course is to accept it as from him until it is able to be rationally accounted for without his interference.

With this we may fitly close our inquiry. The query with which we started seems abundantly answered. A supernatural origin for the Bible appears cumulatively proven.

In closing, it would be well for us to take note of one or two facts in regard to the argument which has been offered. Let it be observed, then:

1. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between a superhuman and a divine origin for the Bible. This is not because the two are not separable, but only because they are, in our present argument, practically the same.

2. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between the divine origin of the system and that of the books recording that system. This, again, is not because the two are not separable, but only because, so far as the argument has been pressed - though not much farther - the two need not be practically separated.

3. That no question has been raised as to the extent of the divine in the Bible. This is due to three facts: Because this question need not be raised primarily for the establishment of the faith, but is necessarily a consequent one to be raised after the general divine origin of the book is admitted; because, again, the humble Christian often looks upon and draws life from the Bible without raising this question, simply accepting what he reads as divinely given to strengthen his faith; and because, again, it was impossible in one essay to treat both questions.

4. That, nevertheless, the facts and arguments which have been adduced in a general way to prove the general divine origin of the Bible not only prepare the way, but even, narrowly questioned, will raise a strong presumption, for the further conclusions that this book has been not only in a general way given by God, but also specifically inspired in the giving, that thus its every word is from him, and that it is worthy of our reverent and loving credence in its every particular.

Edwards and the New England Theology¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Jonathan Edwards, saint and metaphysician, revivalist and theologian, stands out as the one figure of real greatness in the intellectual life of colonial America. Born, bred, passing his whole life on the verge of civilization, he has made his voice heard wherever men have busied themselves with those two greatest topics which can engage human thought-God and the soul. A French philosopher of scant sympathy with Edwards' chief concernment writes:2 

There are few names of the eighteenth century which have obtained such celebrity as that of Jonathan Edwards. Critics and historians down to our own day have praised in dithyrambic terms the logical vigor and the constructive powers of a writer whom they hold (as is done by Mackintosh, Dugald Stewart, Robert Hall, even Fichte) to be the greatest metaphysician America has yet produced. Who knows, they have asked themselves, to what heights this original genius might have risen, if, instead of being born in a half-savage country, far from the traditions of philosophy and science, he had appeared rather in our old world, and there received the direct impulse of the modern mind. Perhaps he would have taken a place between Leibniz and Kant among the founders of immortal systems, instead of the work he has left reducing itself to a sublime and barbarous theology, which astonishes our reason and outrages our heart, the object of at once our horror and admiration. 

Edwards' greatness is not, however, thus merely conjectural. He was no "mute, inglorious Milton," but the most articulate of men. Nor is it as a metaphysician that he makes his largest claim upon our admiration, subtle metaphysician as he showed himself to be. His ontological speculations, on which his title to recognition as a metaphysician mainly rests, belong to his extreme youth, and had been definitely put behind him at an age when most men first begin to probe such problems. It was, as Lyon indeed suggests, to theology that he gave his mature years and his most prolonged and searching thought, especially to the problems of sin and salvation. And these problems were approached by him not as purely theoretical, but as intensely practical ones. Therefore he was a man of action as truly as a man of thought, and powerfully wrought on his age, setting at work energies which have not yet spent their force. He is much more accurately characterized, therefore, by a philosopher of our own, who is as little in sympathy, however, with his main interests as Lyon himself. F. J. E. Woodbridge says:3 

He was distinctly a great man. He did not merely express the thought of his time, or meet it simply in the spirit of his traditions. He stemmed it and moulded it. New England thought was already making toward that colorless theology which marked it later. That he checked. It was decidedly Arminian. He made it Calvinistic. . . . His time does not explain him. 

Edwards had a remarkable philosophical bent; but he had an even more remarkable sense and taste for divine things; and, therefore (so Woodbridge concludes, with at least relative justice), "we remember him, not as the greatest of American philosophers, but as the greatest of American Calvinists." 

I. THE PERIOD OF EDWARDS' PREPARATION 

It was a very decadent New England into which Edwards was born, on 5th October 1703. The religious fervor which the Puritan immigrants had brought with them into the New World had not been able to propagate itself unimpaired to the third and fourth generation. Already in 1678, Increase Mather had bewailed that "the body of the rising generation is a poor, perishing, unconverted, and (except the Lord pour down His Spirit) an undone generation."4 There were general influences operative throughout Christendom at this epoch, depressing to the life of the spirit, which were not unfelt in New England; and these were reinforced there by the hardness of the conditions of existence in a raw land. Everywhere thinking and living alike were moving on a lowered plane; not merely spirituality but plain morality was suffering some eclipse. The churches felt compelled to recede from the high ideals which had been their heritage, and were introducing into their membership and admitting to their mysteries men who, though decent in life, made no profession of a change of heart. If only they had been themselves baptized, they were encouraged to offer their children for baptism (under the so-called "Half-Way Covenant"), and to come themselves to the Table of the Lord (conceived as a "converting ordinance"). The household into which Edwards was born, however, not only protected him from much of the evil which was pervading the community, but powerfully stimulated his spiritual and intellectual life. He began the study of Latin at the age of six, and by thirteen had acquired a respectable knowledge of "the three learned languages" which at the time formed part of the curricula of the colleges - Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Before he had completed his thirteenth year (September 1716), he entered the "Collegiate School of Connecticut" (afterwards Yale College). During his second year at college he fell in with Locke's "Essay concerning Human Understanding," and had more satisfaction and pleasure in studying it, he tells us himself,⁵ "than the most greedy miser finds, when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered treasure." He graduated at the head of his class in 1720, when he was just short of seventeen years of age, but remained at college (as the custom of the time was) two years longer (to the summer of 1722) for the study of Divinity. In the summer of 1722 he was "approbated" to preach, and from August 1722 until April 1723 he supplied the pulpit of a little knot of Presbyterians in New York City.⁶ Returning home, he was appointed tutor at Yale in June 1724, and filled this post with distinguished ability, during a most trying period in the life of the college, for the next two years (until September 1726). His resignation of his tutorship was occasioned by an invitation to become the colleague and successor of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in the pastorate of the church at Northampton, Mass., where, accordingly, he was ordained and installed on 15th February 1727. 

By his installation at Northampton, Edwards' period of preparation was brought to a close. His preparation had been remarkable, both intensively and extensively. Born with a drop of ink in his veins, Edwards had almost from infancy held a pen in his hand. From his earliest youth he had been accustomed to trace out on paper to its last consequence every fertile thought which came to him. A number of the early products of his observation and reflection have been preserved, revealing a precocity which is almost beyond belief.⁷

It is in these youthful writings that Edwards propounds his spiritualistic metaphysics, and it is chiefly on the strength of them that he holds a place in our histories of philosophy. His whole system is already present in substance in the essay "Of Being," which was written before he was sixteen years of age. And, though there is no reason to believe that he ever renounced the opinions set forth in these youthful discussions - there are, on the contrary, occasional suggestions, even in his latest writings, that they still lurked at the back of his brain - he never formally reverts to them subsequently to his Yale period (up to 1727).⁸ His engagement with such topics belongs, therefore, distinctively to his formative period, before he became engrossed with the duties of the active ministry and the lines of thought more immediately called into exercise by them. In these early years, certainly independently of Berkeley,⁹ and apparently with no suggestion from outside beyond what might be derived from Newton's explanations of light and color, and Locke's treatment of sensation as the source of ideas, he worked out for himself a complete system of Idealism, which trembled indeed on the brink of mere phenomenalism, and might have betrayed him into Pantheism save for the intensity of his perception of the living God. "Speaking most strictly," he declares, "there is no proper substance but God Himself." The universe exists "nowhere but in the Divine mind." Whether this is true "with respect to bodies only," or of finite spirits as well, he seems at first to have wavered; ultimately he came to the more inclusive opinion.¹⁰ 

Edwards was not so absorbed in such speculations as to neglect the needs of his spirit. Throughout all these formative years he remained first of all a man of religion. He had been the subject of deep religious impressions from his earliest boyhood, and he gave himself, during this period of preparation, to the most assiduous and intense cultivation of his religious nature. "I made seeking my salvation," he himself tells us, "the main business of my life."11 But about the time of his graduation (1720) a change came over him, which relieved the strain of his inward distress. From his childhood, his mind had revolted against the sovereignty of God: "it used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me." Now all this passed unobservedly away; and gradually, by a process he could not trace, this very doctrine came to be not merely a matter of course to him but a matter of rejoicing: "The doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet; absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." One day he was reading I Tim. i. 17, "Now unto the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory, for ever and ever, Amen," and, as he read, "a sense of the glory of the Divine Being" took possession of him, "a new sense, quite different from anything" he "ever experienced before." He longed to be "rapt up to Him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in Him for ever."12 From that moment his understanding of divine things increased, and his enjoyment of God grew. There were, no doubt, intervals of depression. But, on the whole, his progress was steadily upwards and his consecration more and more complete. It was this devout young man, with the joy of the Lord in his heart, who turned his back in the early months of 1727 on his brilliant academic life and laid aside forever his philosophical speculations, to take up the work of a pastor at Northampton. 

II. EDWARDS THE PASTOR 

Edwards was ordained co-pastor with his grandfather on 15th February 1727, and on the latter's death, two years later, succeeded to the sole charge of the parish. Northampton was relatively a very important place. It was the county town, and nearly half of the area of the province lay within the county. It was, therefore, a sort of little local capital, and its people prided themselves on their culture, energy, and independence of mind. There was but the one church in the town, and it was probably the largest and most influential in the province, outside of Boston. It was not united in sentiment, being often torn with factional disputes. But, under the strong preaching of Solomon Stoddard, it had been repeatedly visited with revivals. These periods of awakening continued at intervals during Edwards' pastorate; the church became famous for them, and its membership was filled up by them. At one time the membership numbered six hundred and twenty, and included nearly the entire adult population of the town. Stoddard had been the protagonist for the laxer views of admission to Church-ordinances, and early in the century had introduced into the Northampton church the practice of opening the Lord's Supper to those who made no profession of conversion. In this practice Edwards at first acquiesced; but, becoming convinced that it was wrong, sought after a while to correct it, with disastrous consequences to himself. Meanwhile it had given to the membership of the church something of the character of a mixed multitude, which the circumstance that large numbers of them had been introduced in the religious excitement of revivals had tended to increase. 

To the pastoral care of this important congregation, Edwards gave himself with single-hearted devotion. Assiduous house-to-house visitation did not, it is true, form part of his plan of work; but this did not argue carelessness or neglect; it was in accordance with his deliberate judgment of his special gifts and fitnesses. And, if he did not go to his people in their homes, save at the call of illness or special need, he encouraged them to come freely to him, and grudged neither time nor labor in meeting their individual requirements. He remained, of course, also a student, spending ordinarily from thirteen to fourteen ours daily in is study. This work did not separate itself from, but was kept strictly subsidiary to, his pastoral service. Not only had he turned his back definitely on the purely academic speculations which had engaged him so deeply at Yale, but he produced no purely theological works during the whole of his twenty-three years' pastorate at Northampton. His publications during this period, besides sermons, consisted only of treatises in practical Divinity. They deal principally with problems raised by the great religious awakenings in which his preaching was fruitful.¹³

It was in his sermons that Edwards' studies bore their richest fruit. He did not spare himself in his public instruction. He not only faithfully filled the regular appointments of the church, but freely undertook special discourses and lectures, and during times of "attention to religion" went frequently to the aid of the neighboring churches. From the first he was recognized as a remarkable preacher, as arresting and awakening as he was instructive. Filled himself with the profoundest sense of the heinousness of sin, as an offense against the majesty of God and an outrage of His love, he set himself to arouse his hearers to some realization of the horror of their condition as objects of the divine displeasure, and of the incredible goodness of God in intervening for their salvation. Side by side with the most moving portrayal of God's love in Christ, and of the blessedness of communion with Him, he therefore set, with the most startling effect, equally vivid pictures of the dangers of unforgiven sin and the terrors of the lost estate. The effect of such preaching, delivered with the force of the sincerest conviction, was overwhelming. A great awakening began in the church at the end of 1735, in which more than three hundred converts were gathered in,¹⁴ and which extended throughout the churches of the Connecticut valley. In connection with a visit from Whitefield in 1740 another wave of religious fervor was started, which did not spend its force until it covered the whole land. No one could recognize more fully than Edwards the evil that mixes with the good in such seasons of religious excitement. He diligently sought to curb excesses, and earnestly endeavored to separate the chaff from the wheat. But no one could protest more strongly against casting out the wheat with the chaff. He subjected all the phenomena of the revivals in which he participated to the most searching analytical study; and, while sadly acknowledging that much self-deception was possible, and that the rein could only too readily be given to false "enthusiasm," he earnestly contended that a genuine work of grace might find expression in mental and even physical excitement. It was one of the incidental fruits of these revivals that, as we have seen, he gave to the world in a series of studies perhaps the most thorough examination of the phenomena of religious excitement it has yet received, and certainly, in his great treatise on the "Religious Affections," one of the most complete systems of what has been strikingly called "spiritual diagnostics" it possesses. 

For twenty-three years Edwards pursued his fruitful ministry at Northampton; under his guidance the church became a city set on a hill to which all eyes were turned. But in the reaction from the revival of 1740-1742 conditions arose which caused him great searchings of heart, and led ultimately to his separation from his congregation. In this revival, practically the whole adult population of the town was brought into the church; they were admitted under the excitement of the time and under a ruling introduced as long before as 1704 by Stoddard, which looked upon all the ordinances of the church, including the Lord's Supper, as "converting ordinances," not presupposing, but adapted to bring about, a change of heart. As time passed, it became evident enough that a considerable body of the existing membership of the church had not experienced that change of heart by which alone they could be constituted Christians, and indeed they made no claim to have done so. On giving serious study to the question for himself, Edwards became convinced that participation in the Lord's Supper could properly be allowed only to those professing real "conversion." It was his duty as pastor and guide of his people to guard the Lord's Table from profanation, and he was not a man to leave unperformed a duty clearly perceived. Two obvious measures presented themselves to him - unworthy members of the church must be exscinded by discipline, and greater care must be exercised in receiving new applicants for membership. No doubt discipline was among the functions which the Church claimed to exercise; but the practice of it had fallen much into decay as a sequence to the lowered conception which had come to be entertained of the requirements for church membership. The door of admission to the Lord's Supper, on the other hand, had been formally set wide open; and this loose policy had been persisted in for half a century, and had become traditional. What Edwards felt himself compelled to undertake, it will be seen, was a return in theory and practice to the original platform of the Congregational churches, which conceived the Church to be, in the strictest sense of the words, "a company of saints by calling," among whom there should be permitted to enter nothing that was not clean.¹⁵ This, which should have been his strength, and which ultimately gave the victory to the movement which he inaugurated throughout the churches of New England,¹⁶ was in his own personal case his weakness. It gave a radical appearance to the reforms which he advocated, which he himself was far from giving to them. It is not necessary to go into the details of the controversy regarding a case of discipline, which emerged in 1744, or the subsequent difficulties (1748-1749) regarding the conditions of admission to the Lord's Supper. The result was that, after a sharp contest running through two years, Edwards was dismissed from his pastorate on 22d June 1750. 

III. EDWARDS THE THEOLOGIAN 

By his dismissal from his church at Northampton, in his forty-seventh year, the second period of Edwards' life - the period of strenuous pastoral labor - was brought to an abrupt close. After a few months he removed to the little frontier hamlet (there were only twelve white families resident there) of Stockbridge, as missionary of the "Society in London for Propagating the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent" to the Housatonic Indians gathered there, and as pastor of the little church of white settlers. In this exile he hoped to find leisure to write, in defense of the Calvinistic system against the rampant "Arminianism" of the day, the works which he had long had in contemplation, and for which he had made large preparation. Peace and quiet he did not find; he was embroiled from the first in a trying struggle against the greed and corruption of the administrators of the funds designed for the benefit of the Indians. But he made, if he could not find, the requisite leisure. It was at Stockbridge that he wrote the treatises on which his fame as a theologian chiefly rests: the great works on the Will (written in 1753, published in 1754), and Original Sin (in the press when he died, 1758), the striking essays on "The End for which God created the World," and the "Nature of True Virtue" (published 1765, after his death), and the unfinished "History of Redemption" (published 1772). No doubt he utilized for these works material previously collected. He lived practically with his pen in his hand, and accumulated an immense amount of written matter - his "best thoughts," as it has been felicitously called. The work on the Will, indeed, had itself been long on the stocks. We find him making diligent studies for it already at the opening of 1747;17 and, though his work on it was repeatedly interrupted for long intervals,¹⁸ he tells us that before he left Northampton he "had made considerable preparation, and was deeply engaged in the prosecution of this design."19 The rapid completion of the book in the course of a few months in 1753 was not, therefore, so wonderful a feat as it might otherwise appear. Nevertheless, it is the seven years at Stockbridge which deserve to be called the fruitful years of Edwards' theological work. They were interrupted in the autumn of 1757 by an invitation to him to become the President of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, in succession to his son-in-law, Aaron Burr. It was with great reluctance that he accepted this call; it seemed to him to threaten the prevention of what he had thought to make his life-work - the preparation, to wit, of a series of volumes on all the several parts of the Arminian controversy.²⁰ But the college at Princeton, which had been founded and thus far carried on by men whose sympathies were with the warm-hearted, revivalistic piety to which his own life had been dedicated, had claims upon him which he could not disown. On the advice of a council of his friends,²¹ therefore, he accepted the call and removed to Princeton to take up his new duties, in January 1758. There he was inoculated for smallpox on 13th February, and died of this disease on 22d March in the fifty-fifth year of his age. 

The peculiarity of Edwards' theological work is due to the union in it of the richest religious sentiment with the highest intellectual powers. He was first of all a man of faith, and it is this that gives its character to his whole life and all its products; but his strong religious feeling had at its disposal a mental force and logical acuteness of the first order; he was at once deeply emotional, and, as Ezra Stiles called him, a "strong reasoner." His analytical subtlety has probably never been surpassed; but with it was combined a broad grasp of religious truth which enabled him to see it as a whole, and to deal with its several parts without exaggeration and with a sense of their relations in the system. The system to which he gave his sincere adhesion, and to the defense of which, against the tendencies which were in his day threatening to undermine it, he consecrated all his powers, was simply Calvinism. From this system as it had been expounded by its chief representatives he did not consciously depart in any of its constitutive elements. The breadth and particularity of his acquaintance with it in its classical expounders, and the completeness of his adoption of it in his own thought, are frequently underestimated. There is a true sense in which he was a man of thought rather than of learning. There were no great libraries accessible in Western Massachusetts in the middle of the eighteenth century. His native disposition to reason out for himself the subjects which were presented to his thought was reinforced by his habits of study; it was his custom to develop on paper, to its furthest logical consequences, every topic of importance to which his attention was directed. He lived in the "age of reason," and was in this respect a true child of his time.²² In the task which he undertook, furthermore, an appeal to authority would have been useless; it was uniquely to the court of reason that he could hale the adversaries of the Calvinistic system. Accordingly it is only in his more didactic - as distinguished from controversial - treatise on "Religious Affections," that Edwards cites with any frequency earlier writers in support of his positions. The reader must guard himself, however, from the illusion that Edwards was not himself conscious of the support of earlier writers beneath him.²³ His acquaintance with the masters of the system of thought he was defending, for example, was wide and minute. Amesius and Wollebius had been his textbooks at college. The well-selected library at Yale, we may be sure, had been thoroughly explored by him; at the close of his divinity studies, he speaks of the reading of "doctrinal books or books of controversy" as if it were part of his daily business.²⁴ As would have been expected, he fed himself on the great Puritan divines, and formed not merely his thought but his life upon them. We find him in his youth, for instance, diligently using Manton's "Sermons on the 119th Psalm" as a spiritual guide; and in his rare allusions to authorities in his works, he betrays familiarity with such writers as William Perkins, John Preston, Thomas Blake, Anthony Burgess, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, Theophilus Gale, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Shephard, Richard Sibbes, John Smith the Platonist, and Samuel Clark the Arian. Even his contemporaries he knew and estimated at their true values: Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge as a matter of course; and also Thomas Boston, the scheme of thought of whose "View of the Covenant of Grace" he confessed he did not understand, but whose "Fourfold State of Man" he "liked exceedingly well."25 His Calvin he certainly knew thoroughly, though he would not swear in his words;²⁶ and also his Turretin, whom he speaks of as "the great Turretine";²⁷ while van Mastricht he declares "much better" than even Turretin, "or," he adds with some fervor, "than any other book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion."28 The close agreement of his teaching with that of the best esteemed Calvinistic divines is, therefore, both conscious and deliberate; his omission to appeal to them does not argue either ignorance or contempt; it is incident to his habitual manner and to the special task he was prosecuting. In point of fact, what he teaches is just the "standard" Calvinism in its completeness.

As an independent thinker, he is, of course, not without his individualisms, and that in conception no less than in expression. His explanation of the identity of the human race with its Head, founded as it is on a doctrine of personal identity which reduces it to an "arbitrary constitution" of God, binding its successive moments together, is peculiar to himself.²⁹ In answering objections to the doctrine of Original Sin, he appeals at one point to Stapfer, and speaks, after him, in the language of that form of doctrine known as "mediate imputation."30 But this is only in order to illustrate his own view that all mankind are one as truly as and by the same kind of divine constitution that an individual life is one in its consecutive moments. Even in this immediate context he does not teach the doctrine of "mediate imputation," insisting rather that, Adam and his posterity being in the strictest sense one, in them no less than in him "the guilt arising from the first existing of a depraved disposition" cannot at all be distinguished from "the guilt of Adam's first sin"; and elsewhere throughout the treatise he speaks in the terms of the common Calvinistic doctrine. His most marked individualism, however, lay in the region of philosophy rather than of theology. In an essay on "The Nature of True Virtue," he develops, in opposition to the view that all virtue may be reduced ultimately to self-love, an eccentric theory of virtue as consisting in love to being in general. But of this again we hear nothing elsewhere in his works, though it became germinal for the New England theology of the next age. Such individualisms in any case are in no way characteristic of his teaching. He strove after no show of originality. An independent thinker he certainly claimed to be, and "utterly disclaimed a dependence," say, "on Calvin," in the sense of "believing the doctrines he held because Calvin believed and taught them."31 This very disclaimer is, however, a proclamation of agreement with Calvin, though not as if he "believed everything just as Calvin taught"; he is only solicitous that he should be understood to be not a blind follower of Calvin, but a convinced defender of Calvinism. His one concern was, accordingly, not to improve on the Calvinism of the great expounders of the system, but to place the main elements of the Calvinistic system, as commonly understood, beyond cavil. His marvelous invention was employed, therefore, only in the discovery and development of the fullest and most convincing possible array of arguments in their favor. This is true even of his great treatise on the Will. This is, in the common judgment, the greatest of all his treatises, and the common judgment here is right.³² But the doctrine of this treatise is precisely the doctrine of the Calvinistic schoolmen. "The novelty of the treatise," we have been well told long ago,³³ "lies not in the position it takes and defends, but in the multitude of proofs, the fecundity and urgency of the arguments by which he maintains it." Edwards' originality thus consists less in the content of his thought than in his manner of thinking. He enters into the great tradition which had come down to him, and "infuses it with his personality and makes it live," and "the vitality of his thought gives to its product the value of a unique creation."34 The effect of Edwards' labors was quite in the line of his purpose, and not disproportionate to his greatness. The movement against Calvinism which was overspreading the land was in a great measure checked, and the elimination of Calvinism as a determining factor in the thought of New England, which seemed to be imminent as he wrote, was postponed for more than a hundred years.³⁵ 

IV. THE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY

It was Edwards' misfortune that he gave his name to a party; and to a party which, never in perfect agreement with him in its doctrinal ideas, finished by becoming the earnest advocate of (as it has been sharply expressed³⁶) "a set of opinions which he gained his chief celebrity in demolishing." The affiliation of this party with Edwards was very direct. "Bellamy . . . and Hopkins," says G. P. Fisher,³⁷ tracing the descent, "were pupils of Edwards; from Hopkins, West derived his theology; Smalley studied with Bellamy, and Emmons with Smalley." But the inheritance of the party from Edwards showed itself much more strongly on the practical than on the doctrinal side. Its members were the heirs of his revivalist zeal and of his awakening preaching; they also imitated his attempt to purify the Church by discipline and strict guarding of the Lord's Table - in a word, to restore the Church to its Puritan ideal of a congregation of saints.³⁸ Pressing to extremes in both matters, as followers will, the "Edwardeans" or "New Divinity" men became a ferment in the churches of New England, and, creating discussion and disturbances everywhere, gradually won their way to dominance. Meanwhile their doctrinal teaching was continually suffering change. As Fisher (p. 7) puts it, "in the process of defending the established faith, they were led to recast it in new forms and to change its aspect." Only, it was not merely the form and aspect of their inherited faith, but its substance, that they were steadily transforming. Accordingly, Fisher proceeds to explain that what on this side constituted their common character was not so much a common doctrine as a common method: " the fact that their views were the result of independent reflection and were maintained on philosophical grounds." Here, too, they were followers of Edwards; but in - their exaggeration of his rational method, without his solid grounding in the history of thought, they lost continuity with the past and became the creators of a "New England theology" which it is only right frankly to describe as provincial.³⁹

It is a far cry from Jonathan Edwards the Calvinist, defending with all the force of his unsurpassed reasoning powers the doctrine of a determined will, and commending a theory of virtue which identified it with general benevolence, to Nathaniel W. Taylor the Pelagianizer, building his system upon the doctrine of the power to the contrary as its foundation stone, and reducing all virtue ultimately to self-love. Taylor's teaching, in point of fact, was in many respects the exact antipodes of Edwards', and very fairly reproduced the congeries of tendencies which the latter considered it his lifework to withstand. Yet Taylor looked upon himself as an "Edwardean," though in him the outcome of the long development received its first appropriate designation - the "New Haven Divinity." Its several successive phases were bound together by the no doubt external circumstance that they were taught in general by men who had received their training at New Haven. 

The growth of the New Divinity to that dominance in the theological thought of New England from which it derives its claim to be called "the New England Theology" was gradual, though somewhat rapid. Samuel Hopkins tells us that at the beginning - in 1756 - there were not more than four or five "who espoused the sentiments which since have been called 'Edwardean,' and 'New Divinity'; and since, after some improvement was made upon them, 'Hopkintonian,' or 'Hopkinsian' sentiments."40 The younger Edwards still spoke of them in 1777 as a small party.⁴¹ In 1787, Ezra Stiles, chafing under their growing influence and marking the increasing divergence of views among themselves, fancied he saw their end approaching.⁴² In this he was mistaken: the New Divinity, in the person of Timothy Dwight, succeeded him as President of Yale College, and through a long series of years was infused into generation after generation of students.⁴³ The "confusions" Stiles observed were, however, real; or, rather, the progressive giving way of the so-called Edwardeans to those tendencies of thought to which they were originally set in opposition.⁴⁴ The younger Edwards drew up a careful account of what he deemed the (ten) "Improvements in Theology made by President Edwards and those who have followed his course of thought."45 Three of the most cardinal of these he does not pretend were introduced by Edwards, attributing them simply to those whom he calls Edwards' "followers." These are the substitution of the Governmental (Grotian) for the Satisfaction doctrine of the Atonement, in the accomplishment of which he himself, with partial forerunners in Bellamy and West, was the chief agent; the discarding of the doctrine of the imputation of sin in favor of the view that men are condemned for their own personal sin only - a contention which was made in an extreme form by Nathaniel Emmons, who confined all moral quality to acts of volition, and afterwards became a leading element in Nathaniel W. Taylor's system; and the perversion of Edwards' distinction between "natural" and "moral" inability so as to ground on the "natural" ability of the unregenerate, after the fashion introduced by Samuel Hopkins⁴⁶ - a theory of the capacities and duties of men without the Spirit, which afterwards, in the hands of Nathaniel W. Taylor, became the core of a new Pelagianizing system. 

The external victory of the New Divinity in New England was marked doubtless by the election of Timothy Dwight to the Presidency of Yale College (1795); and certainly it could have found no one better fitted to commend it to moderate men; probably no written system of theology has ever enjoyed wider acceptance than Dwight's "Sermons."47 But after Dwight came Taylor, and in the teaching of the latter the downward movement of the New Divinity ran out into a system which turned, as on its hinge, upon the Pelagianizing doctrines of the native sinlessness of the race, the plenary ability of the sinner to renovate his own soul, and self-love or the desire for happiness as the spring of all voluntary action. From this extreme some reaction was inevitable, and the history of the so-called "New England Theology" closes with the moderate reaction of the teaching of Edwards A. Park. Park was of that line of theological descent which came through Hopkins, Emmons, and Woods; but he sought to incorporate into his system all that seemed to him to be the results of New England thinking for the century which preceded him, not excepting the extreme positions of Taylor himself. Reverting so far from Taylor as to return to perhaps a somewhat more deterministic doctrine of the will, he was able to rise above Taylor in his doctrines of election and regeneration, and to give to the general type of thought which he represented a lease of life for another generation. But, with the death of Park in 1900, the history of "New England Theology" seems to come to an end.⁴⁸

LITERATURE: A. A list of Edwards' works is given by Dwight, i. pp. 765 f.; S. Miller, 254 ff.; and Ridderbos, 327 ff. (opp. cit. infra). A brief bibliography will be found in Allen, op. cit. infra, pp. 391 ff. The first edition of Edwards' Works was in 8 vols., ed. S. Austin, Worcester, Mass., 1808-1809. This edition has been frequently reproduced in 4 vols.: New York, 1844, 1852, 1856, 1863, 1881. A new and enlarged edition in 10 vols., ed. S. E. Dwight, vol. i. being a Memoir, appeared at New York, 1829. An edition was published at London in 8 vols., 1837, to which 2 supplementary vols. were added, Edinburgh, 1847. Later British editions are: London, 1840, with Dwight's Memoir and an Essay by H. Rogers; London, 1865 (Bohn), in 2 vols. Additional writings of Edwards have been published: "Charity and its Fruits," ed. Tryon Edwards, London, 1852 (subsequently reissued under the title "Christian Love, as Manifested in the Heart and Life," ed. 6, Philadelphia, 1874); "Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards," edited with an introduction by A. B. Grosart, Edinburgh, 1865; "Observations concerning the Scripture Economy of the Trinity," edited with an introduction by Egbert C. Smyth, New York, 1880; "An Unpublished Essay of Edwards on the Trinity," edited with an introduction by George P. Fisher, New York, 1903; "Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards," edited with an introduction and notes by H. N. Gardiner, New York and London, 1904 (contains one new sermon). 

B. For life, etc., see S. Hopkins, "The Life and Character of the late Reverend . . . Mr. Jonathan Edwards," Boston, 1765, Northampton, 1804; S. E. Dwight, "Memoir," being vol. i. of his edition of the "Works" (see above), New York, 1829; S. Miller, "Life of Jonathan Edwards," Boston, 1837 and 1848 (vol. viii. of first series of Jared Sparks's "The Library of American Biography") ; A. V. G. Allen, "Jonathan Edwards," Boston and New York, 1889; Williston Walker, "Ten New England Leaders," Boston and New York, 1901, pp. 215-263; idem, "A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States," New York, 1894, chaps. vii. viii. ix.; Joseph Tracy, "The Great Awakening," Boston, 1842. 

C. The most comprehensive survey of Edwards' theological teaching is given by Jan Ridderbos, "De Theologie van Jonathan Edwards," The Hague, 1907; see also G. P. Fisher, "Discussions in History and Theology," New York, 1880, pp. 227-252; Noah Porter, "The Princeton Review ... and the Edwardean Theology," in The New Englander, xviii. 1860, pp. 737 ff.; H. N. Gardiner, "Jonathan Edwards: a Retrospect," Boston and New York, 1901; "Exercises Commemorating the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary," Andover, 1904. 

D. The New England Theology should be studied in the works of its chief exponents. Lives of many of them are also accessible. See also F. H. Foster, "A Genetic History of the New England Theology," Chicago, 1907; G. N. Boardman, "A History of New England Theology," New York, 1899; C. Hodge, "Princeton Essays," first series, 1846, pp. 285-307, second series, 1847, pp. 206-235, "Essays and Reviews," 1856, pp. 539-633; Lyman H. Atwater, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, xxvi. 1854, pp. 217-246, xxx. 1858, pp. 585-620, xxxi. 1859, pp. 489-538, xl. 1868, pp. 368398; Edwards A. Park, "The Atonement," Boston, 1859; G. P. Fisher, "Discussions in History and Theology," pp. 285-354; H. B. Smith, "Faith and Philosophy," New York, 1877, pp. 215-264.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from the "Encyclopwdia of Religion and Ethics," edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D., v. 1912, pp. 221-227. Used by permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons.

Georges Lyon, "L'Idéalisme en Angleterre au XVIIIe siècle," Paris, 1888, pp. 406f.

The Philosophical Review, xiii. 1904, p. 405.

H. M. Dexter, "Congregationalism ... in its Literature," New York, 1880, p. 476, note 36. 

Dwight's "Memoir," prefixed to his edition of Edwards' "Works," i. 1829, p. 30. 

See E. H. Gillett, "History of the Presbyterian Church," revised edition, Philadelphia, pp. 38f. 

On this ground, indeed, Lyon, for example, refuses to believe in their genuineness. It is futile to adduce the parallel of a Pascal, he declares; such a comparison is much too modest; the young Edwards united in himself many Pascals, and, by a double miracle, combined with them gifts by virtue of which he far surpassed a Galileo and a Newton; what we are asked to believe is not merely that as a boy in his teens he worked out independently a system of metaphysics closely similar to that of Berkeley, but that he anticipated most of the scientific discoveries which constitute the glory of the succeeding century.

It is well to recognize that Lyon has permitted himself some slight exaggeration in stating his case, for the renewed examination of the MSS. which he, and, following him, A. V. G. Allen asked for, has fully vindicated the youthful origin of these discussions. (See especially Egbert C. Smyth, "Some Early Writings of Jonathan Edwards, 1714-1726," in "Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society," New Series, x. 1896, pp. 212 ff.: 23d October, 1895; also The American Journal of Theology, i. 1897, p. 951; cf. H. N. Gardiner, "Jonathan Edwards: a Retrospect," 1901.) There is, for instance, a bantering letter on the immateriality of the soul, full of marks of immaturity, no doubt, but equally full of the signs of promise, which was written in 1714-1715, when Edwards was ten years old. There are some very acute observations on the behavior of spiders in spinning their webs which anticipate the results of modern investigation (on these observations, see Egbert C. Smyth, The Andover Review, xiii. 1890, pp. 1-19; and Henry C. McCook, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, i. 1890, pp. 393-402), and which cannot have been written later than his thirteenth year. There are, above all, metaphysical discussions of "Being," "Atoms," and "Prejudices of Imagination," written at least as early as his junior year at college, that is to say, his sixteenth year, in which the fundamental principles of his Idealistic philosophy are fully set out. And, besides numerous other discussions following out these views, there is a long series of notes on natural science, filled with acute suggestions, which must belong to his Yale period. It is all, no doubt, very remarkable. But this only shows that Edwards was a very remarkable youth. 

Cf. President T. D. woolsey, " Edwards Memorial," Boston, 1870, pp. 32-33; and E. C. Smyth, "Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society," as cited, p. 232; H. N. Gardiner, p. 117. 

So E. C. Smyth and H. N. Gardiner, locc. cit.; it is now known that he had not read Berkeley before 1730 (F. B. Dexter, "The Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards," Cambridge, 1901, p. 16). 

He could write of the rise of a new thought: "If we mean that there is some substance besides that thought, that brings that thought forth; if it be God, I acknowledge it; but if there be meant something else that has no properties, it seems to me absurd" (American Journal of Theology, i. 1897, p. 957). Of "all dependent existence whatsoever" he comes at last to affirm that it is "in a constant flux," "renewed every moment, as the colors of bodies are every moment renewed by the light that shines upon them; and all is constantly proceeding from God, as light from the sun" ("Original Sin": "Works," 4 vol. edition, New York, ii. 1856, p. 490). He did not mean by this, however, to sublimate the universe into "shadows." He was only attempting to declare that it has no other substrate but God: that its reality and persistence are grounded, not in some mysterious created "substance" underlying the properties, but in the " infinitely exact and precise Divine Idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise and stable Will, with respect to correspondent communications to Created Minds, and effects on their minds" (Dwight, i, p. 674). He is engaged, in other words, in a purely ontological investigation, and his contention is merely that God is the continuum of all finite existence. He is as far as possible from denying the reality or persistence of these finite existences; they are to him real "creations," because they represent a fixed purpose and an established constitution of God. (On Edwards' early Idealism, see especially Egbert C. Smyth, American Journal of Theology, i. 1897, pp. 959f.; G. P. Fisher, "Diacussions in History and Theology," New York, 1880, pp. 229 f.; H. N. Gardiner, op. cit., pp. 115-160; J. H. MacCracken, "The Sources of Jonathan Edwards's Idealism," in the Philosophical Review, xi. 1902, pp. 26 ff.; also G. Lyon, loc. cit.; and I. W. Riley, "American Philosophy: the Early Schools," New York, 1907.)

Dwight, i. p. 59. 

Ibid., p. 60. 

Such, for instance, are the "Narrative of Surprising Conversions," published in 1736, the "Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England in 1740," published in 1742, and that very searching study of the movements of the human soul under the excitement of religious motives called "A Treatise concerning Religious Affections," published in 1746. Then there is the "Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion," published in 1749, which belongs to the same class, and the brief "Account of the Life of the Rev. David Brainerd," published in the same year. There remains only the "Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, concerning the Qualifications requisite to a Complete Standing in Full Communion in the Visible Church of God," published in 1749, along with which should be mentioned the defense of its positions against Solomon Williams, entitled "Misrepresentations Corrected and Truth Vindicated," although this was not published until somewhat later (1752). No doubt there was much more than this written during these score or more of years, for Edwards was continually adding to the mass of his manuscript treasures; and some of these voluminous "observations" have since been put into print, although the greater part of them remain yet in the notebooks where he wrote them.

More than five hundred fifty members were added to the church at Northampton during Edwards' pastorate (see Solomon Clark, "Historical Catalogue of the Northampton First Church," 1891, pp. 40-67).

According to the organic law of the Congregational churches (the Cambridge Platform), "saints by calling" are "such as have not only attained the knowledge of the principles of religion, and are free from gross and open scandals, but also do, together with the profession of their faith and repentance, walk in blameless obedience to the word." 

Cf. H. N. Gardiner, "Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards," New York, 1904, p. xii. 

Letter to Joseph Bellamy, 15th January 1747, printed by F. B. Dexter, "The Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards" (reprinted from the "Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society," March 1901), p. 13; letter to John Erskine, 22d January 1747, reconstructed by Dwight, i. pp. 249-250, but since come to light ("Exercises Commemorating the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary, October 4 and 5, 1903," Andover, 1904, p. 63 of the Appendices). 

Dwight, i. pp. 251, 270, 411. 

Ibid., pp. 411, 507, 532, 537. 

Ibid., p. 569. 

Dwight (i. p. 576) was not able to ascertain all the facts concerning this council; Ezra Stiles, "Literary Diary," New York, iii. 1901, p. 4, supplies interesting details. 

Cf. the discussion of Edwards' "rationalism," by Jan Ridderbos, "De Theologie van Jonathan Edwards," 1907, pp. 310-313.

Hopkins tells us that "he had an enormous thirst for knowledge, in the pursuit of which he spared no cost or pains. He read all the books, especially books treating of theology, that he could procure, from which he could hope to derive any assistance in the discovery of truth." From his youth up, however, he disliked a display of learning. In his earliest maxims, by the side of "Let much modesty be seen in the style," he sets this other: "Let it not look as if I was much read, or was conversant with books, or with the learned world" (Dwight, i. pp. 41 f.). 

Dwight, i. p. 93.

Ibid., p. 242.

Preface to the treatise on the Will, Dwight, ii. 1829, p. 13.

"Works," 4 vol. edition, iii. 1856, p. 123, note. 

Letter to Joseph Bellamy, 15th January 1747, printed by F. B. Dexter, op. cit., p. 13.

"Works," 4 vol. edition, ii. 1856, pp. 489 ff.; Dwight, ii. pp. 555 f. 

"Works," 4 vol. edition, ii. pp. 483 f.; Dwight, ii. pp. 544 f.

Dwight, ii. p. 13.

Cf. F. J. E. Woodbridge, in The Philosophical Review, xiii. 1904, p. 396; and G. Lyon, op. cit., p. 412.

Lyman H. Atwater, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, xxx. 1858, p. 597.

H. N. Gardiner, "Selected Sermons," 1904, p. xviii. 

Cf. Williston Walker, "Ten New England Leaders," 1901, p. 232.

Lyman H. Atwater, p. 589; cf. J. Ridderbos, pp. 320 f. 

"A Discourse Commemorative of the History of the Church of Christ in Yale College during the First Century of its Existence," New Haven, 1858, p. 36.

On the "rigidity" of the New Divinity men in "Church administration" and "discipline," see the interesting details in Ezra Stiles's " Diary," iii. 1901, pp. 273 f., 343 f., 358 f.

Cf. Woodbridge, in The Philosophical Review, xiii. 1904, pp. 394 f. The men who worked out this theological transmutation were men of high character, great intellectual gifts, immense energy of thought, and what may almost be called fatal logical facility. Any people might be proud to have produced in the course of a century such a series of "strong reasoners" on religious themes as Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), Stephen West (1735-1819), John Smalley (1734-1820), Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801), Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1840), Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Eleazar T. Fitch (1791-1871), and Nathaniel W. Taylor (17861858) - all, with the single exception of the younger Edwards, graduates of Yale College; not to speak of yet others of equal powers, lying more off the line of direct development, like Leonard Woods (1774-1854), Bennet Tyler (1783-1858), Edward D. Griffin (1770-1837), Moses Stuart (1780-1852), Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), Leonard Bacon (18021881), Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), and Edwards A. Park (1808-1900). 

E. A. Park, "Memoir of the Life and Character of Samuel Hopkins, D.D.," Boston, 1854, p. 237; Fisher, "A Discourse," as cited, p. 80. 

Ezra Stiles, ii. 1901, p. 227; Fisher, loc. cit.

"It has been the Ton," he writes (Ezra Stiles, iii. pp. 273-275), "to direct Students in divinity these thirty years past or a generation to read the Bible, President Edwards', Dr. Bellamy's, and Mr. Hopkins' Writings - and this was a pretty good Sufficiency of Reading." But now, "the New Divinity Gentlemen are getting into Confusion and running into different sentiments." "The younger Class, but yet in full vigor, suppose they see further than these Oracles, and are disposed to become Oracles themselves and wish to write Theology and have their own Books come into Vogue." He thought these "confusions" the beginning of the end.

Young Theodore D. Woolsey in 1822 can speak of "Hopkinsianism" as "a sort of net which catches all but the Presbyterian eels who slip through." It had become, he says, "a general term which comprehends all who are not Arminians and disagree with Turretin on the atonement" (Yale Review, i. 1912 [January], p. 246).

We note Hopkins already conscious of divergence from Edwards' teaching - a divergence which he calls an "improvement." Ezra Stiles tells us (iii. pp. 273 f.) that in 1787 the New Divinity men were beginning to "deny a real vicarious Suffering in Christ's Atonement," and were "generally giving up the Doctrine of Imputation both in Original Sin and in Justification"; and some of them, "receding from disinterested Benevolence, are going into the Idea that all holy Motive operates as terminating in personal Happiness," - a very fair statement of the actual drift.

Published in Dwight, i. pp. 613 ff.

Cf. G. N. Boardman, "A History of New England Theology," New York, 1899, p. 50. 

Cf. G. P. Fisher, "A Discourse," as cited, p. 37: "No work on systematic divinity has had such currency and authority in Great Britain, at least outside the established Church of England, as the Sermons of Dr. Dwight. In that country they have passed through not less than forty editions."

Cf. F. H. Foster, "A Genetic History of the New England Theology," Chicago, 1907, pp. 543-553 ("Conclusion"), where the fact is fully recognized, though the reasons assigned for it are questionable.

Election

by Benjamin B. Warfield

"By grace have ye been saved," says Paul to the Ephesians (Eph. ii. 5, 8); and so important does it seem to him that his readers shall understand this and bear it on their hearts that he says it twice in the course of four verses. He says it in such a way, moreover, as to throw a tremendous emphasis on the word "grace," and therefore on the manner in which they had been saved, as distinguished from the salvation itself. He is not assuring the Ephesians that they had been saved. They knew that for themselves, and were rejoicing in this wonderful thing which had come to them. What he is eagerly repeating to them, intent on fixing it so firmly in their hearts that they cannot escape from it for a moment, is that it is just "by grace" that they have been saved.

He is engaged in this context in reminding his readers of the greatness of their salvation. They had been dead in their trespasses and their sins, children of wrath by nature, like the rest of men. But God is rich in mercy and has loved them mightily. Because of this his great love for them, he has come to them, lying helplessly dead in their sins, and has made them alive in Christ. Here the apostle breaks in on himself to cry, for the first time, "By grace have ye been saved"! God has raised them with Christ and seated them with him in the heavenly places, for no other reason than that he might show forth in the ages to come the surpassing riches of his grace, as manifested in this his kindness to them in Christ Jesus, for-the apostle now adds with iterant emphasis--"by grace have ye been saved."

We see that the apostle is most eager to impress on his readers this one fact, asserted and reasserted as the one thing needful for them to keep fully in mind, that it is by grace that they have been saved; that it is by grace, and nothing else than grace, that they have been saved. In this reiterated phrase we have in effect the heart of the heart of his gospel, to know which is our prime necessity if we are to know what that gospel is. The whole gospel turns as upon its hinge on this fact, that salvation is of pure grace.

There are, especially, three ideas which are conveyed by the word "grace," all of which must be given full validity if we are to understand what the apostle was impressing with such earnestness upon the Ephesians.

The first of them is the idea of power. Grace is power. And it is only because grace is power that it can save, save dead men, men dead in trespasses and sins. If men were not dead, possibly they might be saved by something else than power. By good advice, say; by pointing out to them something, some good thing, to do, by which they might inherit eternal life. That is what the law does. And that is why the law cannot save, cannot, that is, save dead men. The law tells us what we ought to do. Because the law is the law of God, perfect and holy and just and good, it tells us perfectly what we ought to do. But it is of no avail to tell dead men what they ought to do. Dead men cannot do anything. They need not instruction but life; not good counsel but power. That is the reason why Paul, when he is assuring the Romans that the salvation which had been begun in them should certainly be completed, hangs it all on the fact that they were not under law but under grace. "Sin shall not have dominion over you," he promises them-and what a great promise that is!--"sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). If they were under law, sin certainly would have dominion over them. Law can do nothing but tell us what is right and what is wrong; and after that there is nothing that it can do. It cannot enable us to do the right and refuse the wrong which it has made known to us. But grace is power. It does not instruct, it energizes; and what dead men need is energizing, such energizing as raises the dead. Only God's grace, which is almighty power, can do that. It is, says Paul (Eph. i. 19, 20), the same "working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead." This is the first idea which is conveyed by the word "grace," when we are told that it is by grace that we have been saved. Grace is power, and because it is God's grace, it is almighty power.

The second idea conveyed by it is the idea of love. Grace is power. But it is not bare power; "wild" power, as we say; power operating without direction, producing any variety of effects. It is power directed by love. That is the fundamental meaning of the word "grace"--favor, love, yearning desire. And that is what grace always means, when it is spoken of in the New Testament with reference to God. It always expresses the idea of good will, kindness, favor, love. Power, in itself considered, may blast as well as bless. The power that grace is, always blesses, because grace is love. The grace of God is the power of God, exerted in kindness; it is the love of God acting, according to its nature, in blessing. And therefore, in the passage from Ephesians which has been in our mind (Eph. ii. 1-10), it is because he is telling his readers that it was due only to the riches of God's mercy and "his great love wherewith he loved us" that we are saved, that Paul is led to interject suddenly in explanation of it all, "By grace have ye been saved." To be saved in the riches of God's mercy because of the greatness of his love-that is what it is to be saved by grace. For the same reason, when Paul comes to speak, a little later, of the manifestation of the exceeding riches of God's grace in our salvation, he explains that the precise thing in which these exceeding riches of God's grace are manifested, is "kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Grace is manifested in kindness: to deal kindly with us is to deal graciously with us. The second idea which is conveyed by the word "grace," when we are told that it is by grace that we are saved, then, is that we owe our salvation purely to the love of God. Grace is love; and because it is God's grace by which we are saved, our salvation is a pure product of the love of God.

The third idea conveyed by the word "grace" is the idea of gratuitousness. Grace is gratuitous just because it is love, that is, because it is the "love of benevolence," as we say, the love that is good will, kindness, favor. It is the very nature of the love that is good will, kindness, favor, that it is gratuitous. We might do something, perhaps, to attract to ourselves, to secure, to deserve the "love of complacency," that is to say, the kind of love that seeks and finds gratification for itself in its object, rather than is intent only on benefiting its object; that seeks its own pleasure in its object rather than purely seeking to do it good. But that is not the kind of love that grace is. Grace is the love that is good will, kindness, favor, and the love that is good will, kindness, favor is in the nature of the case gratuitous. At all events this is what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of the grace of God. Paul, for instance, is at great pains to make it clear that the grace of God is not earned by us, is not secured by us, is not obtained by us; but is just given to us, comes to us purely gratuitously. What is of grace, he tells us, is by that very fact not of works; if it be in any way, in the slightest measure, earned, by that very fact it ceases to be of grace (Rom. xi. 6). He carries the idea, indeed, to its extreme height. Grace, with him, is not only pure kindness, kindness which has not been earned (had it been earned, it would have ceased to be kindness), but kindness to the undeserving in the positive sense, kindness to the ill-deserving. Grace is very distinctly and very emphatically love to the ill-deserving. This is the third idea which is conveyed by the word "grace" when we are told that it is by grace that we have been saved. Our salvation is a pure gratuity from God. We have not earned it; we have not secured it; we have not obtained it. God has fixed upon us in the riches of his mercy and the greatness of his unconstrained love, pouring out upon us in the exceeding riches of his grace his pure kindness in Christ Jesus.

This is then what Paul means when he tells us with reiterated emphasis that it is by grace, by grace and nothing else than grace, that we have been saved. He means that we have not saved ourselves. It is God who has saved us, God and God alone. If we had saved ourselves, or supplied anything whatever which entered into our salvation as in any measure its procuring cause, it would not have been distinctively by grace that we have been saved; and Paul's strong emphasis on the assertion that it is "by grace," that it is by nothing else than grace, that we have been saved would be misplaced. We were in point of fact dead in our trespasses and sins and therefore utterly unable to move hand or foot to seek salvation. We were helplessly and hopelessly "lost." We owe our salvation wholly to God's kindness, to his undeserved love, to his "grace." It is all from him, in its beginning and middle and end: all from him. Just as Lazarus was called out of the grave by the sheer power of the God who raises the dead, we have been called out of our death in trespasses and sins by the sheer grace of God, the grace which is the power of God, working under the direction of his ineffable love, poured out in gratuitous kindness upon ill-deserving sinners. We have not made the first step in knowledge of the salvation of God until we have learned, and made the very center of our thought of it, this great fact: that it is by the pure grace of God, by that and that alone, that we are saved. That, as we have said, is the heart of the heart of the gospel.

Now, of course, no one will imagine that God, who saves us thus by his almighty grace, has saved us by the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, inadvertently, without meaning to do so. Of course he has meant to save us, just as he does save us, by his pure grace; and has meant thus to save us all along. It is this, his meaning to save us by his grace before he actually does so, which we call "election." Election, we thus see, is but the first moving of God's grace looking to our salvation; and therefore Paul calls it "the election of grace" (Rom. xi. 5), the election, that is, which has its origin in the grace of God toward us, which proceeds from it, comes out of it as its appropriate manifestation. It is the first step of God's love, as he prepares to save us by his grace, the setting of his love upon us, that in its own good time and way it may work its will on and in us. It is nothing, in other words, but God's purpose to save us, a purpose which he must, of course, form before he saves us, and a purpose which equally of course he fulfills in saving us. What God purposes he certainly performs, no purpose of his is idle or ineffective. This, his purpose of salvation, therefore becomes the sure beginning and pledge of our actual salvation and draws in its train all else that enters into our salvation.

Read Rom. viii. 29, 30, and see "the golden chain" which, as a fine old divine, John Arrowsmith, puts it, "God lets down from heaven that by it he may draw up his elect thither." "For whom he foreknew"--that is election, the setting upon his people with distinguishing preoccupation and love, according to the pregnant use of "know" in such a passage say, as Amos iii. 2, "You only have I known out of all the families of the earth" --"for whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son"-this is the high destiny prepared for us!--"that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Count these five golden links, all acts of God's own, working our salvation, and note how they are welded together in one unbreakable chain, so that all who are set upon in God's gracious distinguishing view are carried on by his grace, step by step, up to the great consummation of that glorification which realizes the promised conformity to the image of God's own Son. It is "election," you see, that does all this; for "whom he foreknew, . . . them he also glorified." That fine old divine to whom we have just referred tells us further that "election, having once pitched upon a man, will find him out and call him home, wherever he be. Zacchaeus out of cursed Jericho; Abraham out of idolatrous Ur of the Chaldeans; Nicodemus and Paul out of the college of the Pharisees, Christ's sworn enemies; Dionysius and Damaris, out of superstitious Athens. In whatever dunghill God's jewels be hid, election will both find them out there and fetch them out from thence." "Rejoice," our Savior cried (Luke x. 20), "rejoice in this- that your names are written in heaven," in, that is, the Lamb's book of life (Rev. xxi. 27), which the same fine old divine counsels us always to remember, is "a book of love-the writing of our names in which is the firstborn of all God's favors."

That God has set upon just us in this his electing grace, must ever be to us a matter of adoring wonder. Certain it is, that there was nothing in us, whether quality or deed, which could attract his favorable notice, much less make him partial to us, and, moreover, there is no respect of persons with God. We were dead, dead in trespasses and sins, even as others, and therefore the children of wrath even as they (Eph. ii. 1-3). "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. i. 18); and surely there has been enough ungodliness and unrighteousness in us. That God has chosen just us from among our fellows to be saved from this wrath, 1 Thess. v. 9, finds no explanation in us. We can only say, "Yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight" (Matt. xi. 26). It has all hung upon his mere good pleasure, and he has given us this unspeakable blessing for no other reason than that he has chosen to give it to us in the unsearchable counsels of his own gracious will. For, as our fine old divine reminds us, we are "predestinated after the counsel of his own will, not after the good inclinations of ours." We had no good inclinations of will; men dead in trespasses and sins have no good inclinations. All that is good in us, in the inclinations of our wills as in the conduct of our lives, is from him, the product of his electing grace, and cannot be its cause. It is only because God has set upon us in his inexplicable love, and has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his Son, that, through his calling, and justifying, and sanctifying grace -all in execution of his gracious election-any good is formed in us. It is not "of works," says Paul (Eph. ii. 9, 10), that we are saved but "for good works"; and he adds that, in order that we may do these good works, we have needed to be made over, and that by so profoundly revolutionary a change that we can be looked upon as nothing less than a new creation- "for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works," the good works which God has afore prepared that we should walk in them.

The very good works which we do, then, have been prepared for us by God in his electing grace, that we should walk in them. We are not chosen because we are good; we are chosen that we may be good. That is precisely what we are elected to-goodness, holiness. And that again is what is meant by the declaration that we have been predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son: we can become like him only as we become holy. Accordingly we are told with the richest fullness of expression (Eph. i. 3, 4), that God chose us "in Christ . . . before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him . . . having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace." It is all here--the rooting of all our goodness in the elective decree of God, and the rooting of that decree in God's mere good pleasure. Everything else hangs on election, election itself on God alone. But what is especially emphasized is that what God has chosen us to, in this electing decree, is that we should be holy.

It follows, therefore, that those whom God has set upon in his electing grace, certainly shall be holy. This is what he has chosen them to--that they shall be holy. And, having chosen them to be holy, he has not left them to themselves, but, in his infinite grace, has taken them in hand to make them holy. That is why he has predestinated them to be conformed to the image of his Son, and then in pursuance of this destination of them, called them and justified them and sanctified them, yea, and will glorify them. These are the several processes through which he frames them into the holiness to which he has chosen them. They are not shallow processes, moving only on the surface and depending on our independent cooperation to produce their effects, and therefore liable to fail because of our weaknesses and sins. In these processes God remakes us and therefore we emerge from them his workmanship, created unto the good works which he has "afore prepared that we should walk in them." It is wholly of God that we are in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 18); and being in Christ Jesus, we are new creatures (2 Cor. v. 17), the old things have passed away and all things have become new. As, under the molding hand of God, we are being thus renewed in the spirit of our minds, we put off more and more the old man and "put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth"

(Eph. iv. 24), we rejoice with trembling, because surely we see that the Lord is in this place. Full of joy, because we perceive the hand of God upon us, working in us both the willing and the doing, we "work out our own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. ii. 12)-that is to say, not with hesitation and doubt lest it may not be real, but with overmastering awe that it should be so with us, that God should be the impulsive cause of all of both our willing and doing.

It is precisely in this that we have the salvation of our God. For it is in this that the salvation to which we have been chosen consists: that we should be God's workmanship, created unto the good works which God has "afore prepared that we should walk in them"; that we should be holy; that we should be conformed to the image of God's Son. Of course, when we are like Christ we are saved men. Certainly we do not yet see all that is included in this high destiny. But we already know that when he shall be manifested, "we shall be like him" (1 John iii. 2). And having this hope in us, we purify ourselves, "even as he is pure" (1 John iii. 3). Our eyes are set on the goal; and we run with steadfastness the race that is set before us, "looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith" (Heb. xii. 1), looking unto him not only as he who has framed the faith in us by which we live in him, and who will perfect it to the end, but also as the model to which we shall be conformed. For what we shall attain to in this salvation is nothing less than "the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." The glory that he has shall be ours. And the way we shall attain to it is "in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." For this, says Paul (2 Thess. ii. 13), is what God chose us to from the beginning--"salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." And to this, he adds, God also called us--"to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." All that is contained in this glory which Christ possesses, and which we shall in him obtain, who can tell? No doubt we must cast our eyes forward to the world to come to see it all. When he shall be manifested, "we shall be like him." But when we obtain it all, it is still the salvation to which God chose us from the beginning, "in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." These are the means through which that is reached.

Clearly God has not chosen us to sloth. The salvation to which he has chosen us is a salvation "in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." We have not been chosen to any salvation which does not stand in sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. If we do not believe the truth, if we are not being sanctified by the Spirit, we have been chosen to no salvation. What we have been chosen to is that we should be holy and without blemish before God. We cannot profess to be chosen of God, then, unless we are becoming holy and without blemish before him. It is not possible that there should be an "elect race" which is not also a "holy nation"--a holy nation which shows forth the excellencies of him who has called us "out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter ii. 9). Seeing that predestination is conformity to the image of God's Son, we are not predestinated unless we are being conformed to the image of God's Son. Unless we are like Christ, we cannot share in his glory. It is idle then to dream, profanely, that, being elected to bliss, we may be careless of good works. Precisely what God has prepared for his elect is good works that they shall walk in them, whereunto, in his grace, he has created them. Precisely what he requires of them who believe his gracious assurances, is, therefore, that they "be careful to maintain good works," in order that they may give a good account of themselves in the world (Titus iii. 8). Faith and good works are the characteristics of God's elect, and where faith and good works are not, there are no elect.

There is no election, then, to the rewards of glory which does not include in itself, as the indispensable means to this end, election to the works of grace. We are not elected in order to dispense us from the necessity of being good. We are elected to make it possible for us to be good, yea, rather, to make it certain that we shall be good, not apart from but through our own efforts. We are not elected that we may not have to fight the good fight, but to secure that we shall fight it to the end, fight it successfully, and so finish the course; not that we may not require to keep the faith, but that we may, that we shall, keep it triumphantly and receive the crown. We are not released by our election from the duties and struggles and strifes, not even from the trials and sufferings, of life: we are elected to be sustained in them and carried safely through them all. Another good old divine, John Davenant, therefore wisely instructs us that "Whosoever understandeth this doctrine aright, understandeth withal that he was elected not straight to be carried unto heaven on a bed of down, but to become conformable to the Head of the elect, Christ Jesus, as well in the cross as in the crown, and first in the cross, after in the crown." Yea, he adds, "afflictions therefore do not only not tire the patience of the elect, but they beget within them a secret spiritual joy. For, being afflicted, they rejoice and, as Luther says, 'embrace their sufferings like relics consecrated by the touch of Christ.' "

Accordingly, Peter exhorts us (2 Peter i. 10), to make our "calling and election sure" precisely by diligence in good works. He does not mean that by good works we may secure from God a decree of election in our behalf. He means that by expanding the germ of spiritual life which we have received from God into its full efflorescence, by "working out" our salvation, of course not without Christ but in Christ, we can make ourselves sure that we have really received the election to which we make claim. The salvation of God, being a "salvation in sanctification of the Spirit," ought, when worked out, to manifest itself in such forms as faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly love, love. By working out the salvation which we have received into such a symphony of good works we make sure that it is the very salvation to which God has chosen his people. Good works become thus the mark and test of election, and, when taken in the comprehensive sense in which Peter is here thinking of them, they are the only marks and tests of election. We can never know that we are elected of God to eternal life except by manifesting in our lives the fruits of election -faith and virtue, knowledge and temperance, patience and godliness, love of the brethren, and that essential love which does not put limits to its object. He that gives diligence to cultivating such things in his life will not stumble in the way, for it is with such things in their hands that men enter the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is idle to seek assurance of election outside of holiness of life. Precisely what God chose his people to before the foundations of the world was that they should be holy. Holiness, because it is the necessary product, is therefore the sure sign of election. All holy people are the elect of God and are sure of eternal life.

It is folly, therefore, to fancy that a sincere lover of Jesus Christ who trusts in him as his Savior and lovingly obeys him as his Lord, can possibly lack the election of God. It is only because he is one of God's elect that he can believe in Christ for the salvation of his soul, and follow after Christ in the conduct of his life. This is precisely what election brings with it-the calling to Christ which cannot fail, justification which frees us from our guilt, and sanctification which conforms us to Christ, and all that that implies. It marks out those in the loving prevision of God whom his almighty grace shall raise out of their death in sin, to the powers of that new life in which and in which alone they embrace Jesus Christ as their all-sufficient Savior and live in and for him. It is impossible that a believer in Christ should not be elected of God, because it is only by the election of God that one becomes a believer in Christ. Election is nothing but the preparation of grace, and grace is nothing but the loving operation of God unto salvation. Wherever there is salvation, then, there is, of course, grace, since grace alone can save, and wherever there is grace there is of course election, since grace hangs on election. We need not, we must not, seek elsewhere for proof of our election: if we believe in Christ and obey him, we are his elect children.

Certainly it is equally true that where no election is, neither is there salvation. Since all the salvation there is, is of grace, and grace is of election, there is of course no salvation where there is no election. But this does not mean that election excludes from salvation. What election does and all that election does, is to bring into salvation. It is not where it is, but only where it is not, that salvation fails. Wherever it is, there salvation is -certain, sure, complete salvation. Salvation is its sole work. When Christ stood at the door of Lazarus' tomb and cried, "Lazarus, come forth!" only Lazarus, of all the dead that lay in the gloom of the grave that day in Palestine, or throughout the world, heard his mighty voice which raises the dead, and came forth. Shall we say that the election of Lazarus to be called forth from the tomb consigned all this immense multitude of the dead to hopeless, physical decay? It left them no doubt in the death in which they were holden and to all that comes out of this death. But it was not it which brought death upon them, or which kept them under its power. When God calls out of the human race, lying dead in their trespasses and sins, some here, some there, some everywhere, a great multitude which no man can number, to raise them by his almighty grace out of their death in sin and bring them to glory, his electing grace is glorified in the salvation it works. It has nothing to do with the death of the sinner, but only with the living again of the sinner whom it calls into life. The one and single work of election is salvation.

We may ask, no doubt, why God does not extend his saving grace to all; and why, if he sends it to some only, he sends it to just those some to whom he sends it rather than to others. These are not wise questions to ask. We might ask why Christ raised Lazarus only of all that lay dead that day in Palestine, or in the world. No doubt reasons may suggest themselves why he raised Lazarus. But why Lazarus only? If we threw the reins on the neck of imagination, we might possibly discover reasons enough why he might well have raised others, too, with Lazarus, perhaps many others, perhaps all the dead throughout the whole world. Doubtless he had his reasons for doing on that great day precisely what he did. No doubt God has his reasons, too, for doing just what he does with his electing grace. Perhaps we may divine some of them. No doubt there are others which we do not divine. Better leave it to him, and content ourselves, facing, in the depths of our ignorance and our sin-bred lack of comprehension, these tremendous realities, with the O altitudo of Paul: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!" Or may we not even rise to the great consenting "Yea!" which Christ has taught us: "Yea, Father, for so it was well- pleasing in thy sight!" After all, men are sinners and grace is wonderful. The marvel of marvels is not that God, in his infinite love, has not elected all of this guilty race to be saved, but that he has elected any. What really needs accounting for--though to account for it passes the powers of our extremes" flights of imagination--is how the holy God could get the consent of his nature to save a single sinner. If we know what sin is, and what holiness is, and what salvation from sin to holiness is, that is what we shall feel.

That is the reason why meditation on our eternal election produces such blessed fruits in our hearts and lives. That God has saved me, even me, sunk in my sin and misery, by the marvels of his grace, can only fill me with adoring praise. That he has set upon me from all eternity to save me, wretched sinner that I am--how can I express the holy joy that fills my heart at every remembrance of it! This is the foundation of all my comfort, the assurance of all my hope. "Sure I am," says John Arrowsmith movingly, just to the point, "Sure I am that our blessed Savior once said to his disciples, 'In this rejoice, that your names are written in heaven'; and that nothing cloth more inflame a Christian's love than a firm belief of his personal election from eternity, after he has been able to evidence the writing of his name in heaven by the experience he hath had of an heavenly calling and an heavenly conversation. When the Spirit of God hath written the law of life in a Christian's heart, and therewith enabled him to know assuredly that his name is written in the book of life, he cannot then but melt with flames of holy affection, according to the most emphatic speech of Bernard--'God deserveth love from such as he hath loved long before they could deserve it'; and, 'his love to God will be without end, who knoweth that God's love to him was without any beginning.'" For this is the beginning and middle and end of the whole matter: that the election of God is but the beginning of God's manifestation of love to lost sinners, a beginning which must go before all other manifestations of his love because the purpose must precede the execution, and which carries all other manifestations with it because God never repents of his purposes but executes them.

The Foresight of Jesus

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Article "Foresight" from A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ed. by James Hastings, D.D., v. i, pp. 608-615.
Pub. N. Y. 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

The interest of the student of the Gospels, and of the life of Jesus which forms their substance, in the topic of this article, is two-fold. Jesus is represented in the Gospels as at once the object and the subject of the most detailed foresight. The work which He came to do was a work ordained in the counsels of eternity, and in all its items prepared for beforehand with the most perfect prevision. In addressing Himself to the accomplishment of this work Jesus proceeded from the beginning in the fullest knowledge of the end, and with the most absolute adjustment of every step to its attainment. It is from this double view-point that each of the Evangelists depicts the course of our Lord's life on earth. They consentiently represent Him as having come to perform a specific task, all the elements of which were not only determined beforehand in the plan of God, but adumbrated, if somewhat sporadically, yet with sufficient fulness for the end in view, in the prophecies of the Old Testament. And they represent Him as coming to perform this task with a clear consciousness of its nature and a competent control of all the means for its discharge, so that His whole life was a conscientious fulfilment of a programme, and moved straight to its mark. The conception of foresight thus dominates the whole Evangelical narrative.

It is not necessary to dwell at length upon the Evangelists' conception of our Lord's life and work as the fulfilment of a plan Divinely predetermined for Him. It lies on the face of their narratives that the authors of the Gospels had no reservation with respect to the all-embracing predestination of God (cf. Hastings' DB iv. 54-56); and least of all could they exclude from it this life and work which was to them the hinge upon which all history turns. To them accordingly our Lord is by way of eminence 'the man of destiny,' and His whole life (Lk. ii. 49, iv. 43) was governed by 'the dei/ of the Divine counsel.' Every step of His pathway was a 'necessity' to Him, in the fulfilment of the mission for which He had 'come forth' (Mk. i. 38, cf. Swete), or as St. Luke (iv. 43) in quite Johannine wise (v. 23, 24, 30, 36, 38, vi. 29, 38, 39, 40 et passim) expresses it, 'was sent' (cf. Mt. x. 40, Mk. ix. 37, Lk. ix. 48, x. 16; Mt. xv. 24, xxi. 37, Mk. xii. 6, Lk. xx. 13, cf. Swete on Mk. ix. 37). Especially was all that concerned His departure, the accomplishment of which (Lk. ix. 31, cf. v. 51) was His particular task, under the government of this 'Divine necessity' (Mt. xvi. 21, xxvi. 54, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22, xvii. 25, xxii. 22, 37, xxiv. 7, 44, Jn. iii. 14, xx. 9, cf. Acts ii. 23, iii. 18, iv. 28, and Westcott on Jn. xx. 9). His final journey to Jerusalem (Mt. xvi. 21), His rejection by the rulers (Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22, xvii. 25), His betrayal (Lk. xxiv. 7), arrest (Mt. xxvi. 54), sufferings (Mt. xxvi. 54, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22, xvii. 25), and death (Mt. xvi. 21, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22) by crucifixion (Lk. xxiv. 7, Jn. iii. 14), His rising again (Jn. xx. 9) on the third day (Mt. xvi. 21, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22, xxiv. 7, 46) - each item alike is declared to have been ' a matter of necessity in pursuance of the Divine purpose' (Meyer, Mt. xxiv. 6), 'a necessary part of the destiny assigned our Lord' (Meyer, Mt. xxvi. 54). 'The death of our Lord' thus appears 'not as the accidental work of hostile caprice, but (cf. Acts ii. 23, iii. 18) the necessary result of the Divine predestination (Lk. xxii. 22), to which Divine dei/ (Lk. xxiv. 26) the personal free action of man had to serve as an instrument' (Meyer, Acts iv. 28).

How far the several events which entered into this life had been prophetically announced is obviously, in this view of it, a mere matter of detail. All of them lay open before the eyes of God; and the only limit to pre-announcement was the extent to which God had chosen to reveal what was to come to pass, through His servants the prophets. In some instances, however, the prophetic announcement is particularly adduced as the ground on which recognition of the necessity of occurrence rests. The fulfilment of Scripture thus becomes regulative of the life of Jesus. Whatever stood written of Him in the Law or the Prophets or the Psalms (Lk. xxiv. 44) must needs (dei/) be accomplished (Mt. xxvi. 54, Lk. xxii. 37, xxiv. 26, Jn. xx. 9). Or, in another form of statement, particularly frequent in Mt. (i. 22, ii. 15, 23, iv. 14, viii. 17, xii. 17, xiii. 35, xxi. 4, xxvi. 56) and Jn. (xii. 38, xiii. 18, xv. 25, xvii. 12, xix. 24, 36), but found also in the other Evangelists (Mk. xiv. 49, Lk. iv. 21), the several occurrences of His life fell out as they did, 'in order that what was spoken by the Lord' through the prophets or in Scripture, 'might be fulfilled' (cf. Mt. ii. 17, xxvi. 54, xxvii. 9, Lk. xxiv. 44; in Jn. xviii. 9, 32, Lk. xxiv. 44 declarations of Jesus are treated precisely similarly). That is to say, 'what was done stood . . . in the connexion of the Divine necessity, as an actual fact, by which prophecy was destined to be fulfilled. The Divine decree expressed in the latter must be accomplished, and to that end this . . . came to pass, and that, according to the whole of its contents' (Meyer, Mt. i. 22). The meaning is, not that there lies in the Old Testament Scriptures a complete predictive account of all the details of the life of Jesus, which those skilled in the interpretation of Scripture might read off from its pages at will. This programme in its detailed completeness lies only in the Divine purpose; and in Scripture only so far forth as God has chosen to place it there for the guidance or the assurance of His people. The meaning is rather that all that stands written of Jesus in the Old Testament Scriptures has its certain fulfilment in Him; and that enough stands written of Him there to assure His followers that in the course of His life, and in its, to them, strange and unexpected ending, He was not the prey of chance or the victim of the hatred of men, to the marring of His work or perhaps even the defeat of His mission, but was following step by step, straight to its goal, the predestined pathway marked out for Him in the counsels of eternity, and sufficiently revealed from of old in the Scriptures to enable all who were not 'foolish and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken,' to perceive that the Christ must needs have lived just this life and fulfilled just this destiny.

That the whole course of the life of Jesus, and especially its culmination in the death which He died, was foreseen and afore-prepared by God, enters, thus, into the very substance of the Evangelical narrative. It enters equally into its very substance that this life was from the beginning lived out by Jesus Himself in full view of its drift and its issue. The Evangelists are as far from representing Jesus as driven blindly onwards by a Divine destiny unknown to Himself, along courses not of His own choosing, to an unanticipated end, as they are from representing Him as thwarted in His purposes, or limited in His achievement, or determined or modified in His aims or methods, by the conditions which from time to time emerged in His way. The very essence of their representation is that Jesus came into the world with a definite mission to execute, of the nature of which He was perfectly aware, and according to which He ordered the whole course of His life as it advanced under His competent control unswervingly to its preconceived mark. In their view His life was lived out, not in ignorance of its issues, or in the form of a series of trials and corrections, least of all in a more or less unavailing effort to wring success out of failure; but in complete knowledge of the counsels of God for Him, in perfect acquiescence in them, and in careful and voluntary fulfilment of them. The 'Divine dei/' which governed His life is represented as fully recognized by Himself (Mt. xvi. 21, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. iv. 43, ix. 22, xvii. 25, xxiv. 7, Jn. iii. 14, xii. 34), and the fulfilment of the intimations of prophecy in His life as accepted by Him as a rule for His voluntary action (Mt. xxvi. 54, Lk. xxii. 37, xxiv. 26, 44, Jn. xx. 9, Mk. xiv. 49, Lk. iv. 21, Jn. xiii. 18, xv. 25, xvii. 12; cf. Mt. xiii. 14, xv. 7, xxiv. 15, xxvi. 56, Mk. vii. 6). Determining all things, determined by none, the life He actually lived, leading up to the death He actually died, is in their view precisely the life which from the beginning He intended to live, ending in precisely the death in which, from the beginning, He intended this life to issue, undeflected by so much as a hair's-breadth from the straight path He had from the start marked out for Himself in the fullest prevision and provision of all the so-called chances and changes which might befall Him. Not only were there no surprises in life for Jesus and no compulsions; there were not even 'influences,' as we speak of 'influences' in a merely human career. The mark of this life, as the Evangelists depict it, is its calm and quiet superiority to all circumstance and condition, and to all the varied forces which sway other lives; its prime characteristics are voluntariness and independence. Neither His mother, nor His brethren, nor His disciples, nor the people He came to serve, nor His enemies bent upon His destruction, nor Satan himself with his temptations, could move Him one step from His chosen path. When men seemed to prevail over Him they were but working His will; the great 'No one has taken my life away from me; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again' (Jn. x. 18), is but the enunciation for the supreme act, of the principle that governs all His movements. His own chosen pathway ever lay fully displayed before His feet; on it His feet fell quietly, but they found the way always unblocked. What He did, He came to do; and He carried out His programme with unwavering purpose and indefectible certitude. So at least the Evangelists represent Him. (Cf. the first half of a striking article on "Die Selbständigkeit Jesu," by Trott, in Luthardt's "Zeitschrift für kirchl. Wissenschaft u. kirchl. Leben," 1883, iv. 233-241; in its latter half the article falls away from its idea, and ends by making Jesus absolutely dependent on Scripture for His knowledge of God and Divine things: 'We have no right whatever to maintain that Jesus received revelations from the Father otherwise than through the medium of the sacred Scriptures; that is a part of His complete humanity' (p. 238).)

The signature of this supernatural life which the Evangelists depict Jesus as living, lies thus in the perfection of the foresight by which it was governed. Of the reality of this foresight they leave their readers in no doubt, nor yet of its completeness. They suggest it by the general picture they draw of the self-directed life which Jesus lived in view of His mission. They record repeated instances in which He mentions beforehand events yet to occur, or foreshadows the end from the beginning. They connect these manifestations of foresight with the possession by Him of knowledge in general, in comprehension and penetration alike far beyond what is native to man. It may perhaps be natural to surmise in the first instance that they intend to convey merely the conviction that in Jesus was manifested a prophet of supreme greatness, in whom, as the culminating example of prophecy (cf. Acts iii. 22, 23), resided beyond precedent the gifts proper to prophets. There can be no question that to the writers of the Gospels Jesus was 'the incarnate ideal of the prophet, who, as such, forms a class by Himself, and is more than a prophet' (this is what Schwartzkopff thinks Him, "The Prophecies of Jesus Christ," p. 7). They record with evident sympathy the impression made by Him at the outset of His ministry, that God had at last in Him visited His people (Mk, vi. 15, Lk. vii. 16, Jn. iv. 19, ix. 17); they trace the ripening of this impression into a well-settled belief in His prophetic character (Mt. xxi. 11, Lk. xxiv. 19, Mt. xxi. 46, Lk. vii. 39, Jn. vii. 40) ; and they remark upon the widespread suspicion which accompanied this belief, that He was something more than a prophet - possibly one of the old prophets returned, certainly a very special prophet charged with a very special mission for the introduction of the Messianic times (Mt. xvi. 14, Mk. vi. 15, viii. 28, Lk. ix. 8, 19, Jn. vi. 14, vii. 40). They represent Jesus as not only calling out and accepting this estimate of Him, but frankly assuming a prophet's place and title (Mt. xiii. 57, Mk. vi. 4, Lk. iv. 24, Jn. iv. 44, Lk. xiii. 33), exercising a prophet's functions, and delivering prophetic discourses, in which He unveils the future (Mt. xxiv. 21, Mk. xiii. 23, Jn. xiv. 29; cf. Mt. xxviii. 6, Lk. xxiv. 44, and such passages as Mt. xxvi. 32, 34, Mk. xvi. 7). Nevertheless it is very clear that in their allusions to the supernatural knowledge of Jesus, the Evangelists suppose themselves to be illustrating something very much greater than merely prophetic inspiration. The specific difference between Jesus and a prophet, in their view, was that while a prophet's human knowledge is increased by many things revealed to him by God (Amos. iii. 7), Jesus participated in all the fulness of the Divine knowledge (Mt. xi. 27, Lk. x. 22, Jn. xvi. 15, xviii. 4, xvi. 30, xxi. 17), so that all that is knowable lay open before Him (Jn. xvii. 10). The Evangelists, in a word, obviously intend to attribute Divine omniscience to Jesus, and in their adduction of instances of His supernatural knowledge, whether with respect to hidden things or to those yet buried in the future, are illustrating His possession of this Divine omniscience (cf. Muirhead, "The Eschatology of Jesus," p. 119, where, in partial correction of the more inadequate statement of p. 48, there is recognized in the Evangelists at least a 'tendency' to attribute to our Lord 'Divine dignity' and 'literal omniscience').

That this is the case with St. John's Gospel is very commonly recognized (for a plain statement of the evidence see Karl Müller, "Göttliches Wissen und göttliche Macht des johann. Christus," 1882, §4, pp. 29-47: "Zeugnisse des vierten Evangeliums fur Jesu göttliches Wissen"). It is not too much to say, indeed, that one of the chief objects which the author of that Gospel set before himself was to make clear to its readers the superhuman knowledge of Jesus, with especial reference, of course, to His own career. It therefore records direct ascriptions of omniscience to Jesus, and represents them as favourably received by Him (Jn. xvi. 30, xxi. 17; cf. Liddon, "The Divinity of our Lord," ed. 4, 1869, p. 466). It makes it almost the business of its opening chapters to exhibit this omniscience at work in the especially Divine form (Lk. xvi. 15, Acts i. 24, Heb. iv. 12, Ps. cxxxviii (cxxxix). 2, Jer. xvii. 10. xx. 12; cf. Swete on Mk. ii. 8) of immediate, universal, and complete knowledge of the thoughts and intents of the human heart (cf. Westcott on Jn. ii. 25), laying down the general thesis in ii. 24, 25 (cf. vi. 64, 70, xxi. 17), and illustrating it in detail in the cases of all with whom Jesus came into contact in the opening days of His ministry (cf. Westcott on Jn. i. 47), Peter (i. 42), Philip (i. 43), Nathanael (i. 47), Mary (ii. 4), Nicodemus (iii.), the woman of Samaria (iv.). In the especially striking case of the choice of Judas Iscariot as one of the Apostles, it expressly explains that this was due to no ignorance of Judas' character or of his future action (vi. 64, 70, xiii. 11), but was done as part of our Lord's voluntary execution of His own well-laid plans. It pictures Jesus with great explicitness as prosecuting His whole work in full knowledge of all the things that were coming upon Him (Jn. xviii. 4, cf. Westcott), and with a view to subjecting them all to His governing hand, so that His life from the beginning should run steadily onward on the lines of a thoroughly wrought-out plan (Jn. i. 47, ii. 19, 24, iii. 14, vi. 51, 64, 70, vii. 6, viii. 28, x. 15, 18, xii. 7, 23, xiii. 1, 11, 21, 38, xiv. 29, xvi. 5, 32, xviii. 4, 9).

It is difficult to see, however, why St. John's Gospel should be separated from its companions in this matter (Schenkel says frankly that it is only because there is no such passage in St. John's Gospel as Mk. xiii. 32, on which see below. Whatever else must be said of W. Wrede's "Das Messiasgeheimnis," etc., 1901, it must be admitted that it has broke down this artificial distinction between the Gospel of John and the Synoptics). If they do not, like St. John (xvi. 30, xxi. 17), record direct ascriptions of precise omniscience to Jesus by His followers, they do, like St. John, represent Him as Himself claiming to be the depository and distributer of the Father's knowledge (Mt. xi. 21-30, Lk. x. 22-24). Nor do they lag behind St. John in attributing to Jesus the Divine prerogative of reading the heart (Mt. ix. 4, Meyer; Mk. ii. 5, 8, viii. 17, xii. 15, 44, Swete, p. lxxxviii; Lk. v. 22, vii. 39) or the manifestation, in other forms, of God-like omniscience (Mt. xvii. 27, xxi. 2, Mk. xi. 2, xiv. 13, Lk. v. 4, xix. 30, xxii. 10; cf. O. Holtzmann, "War Jesus Ekstatiker?" p. 14 and p. 15, note). Least of all do they fall behind St. John in insisting upon the perfection of the foresight of Jesus in all matters connected with His own life and death (Mt. ix. 15, xii. 40, xvi. 21, xx. 18, 22, 28, xxvi. 2, 21, 34, 50, Mk. ii. 19, viii. 31, ix. 31, x. 33, 39, 45, xi. 2, xiv. 8, 13, 18, 30, Lk. v. 34, ix. 22, 44, 51, xii. 50, xiii. 35, xvii. 25, xviii. 31, xix. 30, xxii. 10, 21, 34, 37, xxiv. 44). Nothing could exceed the detailed precision of these announcements, - a characteristic which has been turned, of course, to their discredit as genuine utterances of Jesus by writers who find difficulty with detailed prediction. 'The form and contents of these texts,' remarks Wrede ("Messiasgeheimnis," etc. p. 88), 'speak a language which cannot be misunderstood. They are nothing but a short summary of the Passion history - "cast, of course, in the future tense."' "'The Passion-history,"' he proceeds, quoting Eichhorn, "'could certainly not be more exactly related in few words."' In very fact, it is perfectly clear - whether they did it by placing upon His lips predictions He never uttered and never could have uttered, is another question - that the Evangelists designed to represent Jesus as endowed with the absolute and unlimited foresight consonant with His Divine nature (see Liddon, "The Divinity of our Lord," ed. 4, p. 464 ff.; and cf. A. J. Mason, "The conditions of our Lord's Life on Earth," pp. 155-194).

The force of this representation cannot be broken, of course, by raising the question afresh whether the supernatural knowledge attributed by the Evangelists to our Lord may not, in many of its items at least, if not in its whole extent, find its analogues, after all, in human powers, or be explained as not different in kind from that of the prophets (cf. e. g., Westcott, "Additional Note on Jn. ii. 24"; A. J. Mason, "Conditions," etc. pp. 162-163). The question more immediately before us does not concern our own view of the nature and origin of this knowledge, but that of the Evangelists. If we will keep these two questions separate we shall scarcely be able to doubt that the Evangelists mean to present this knowledge as one of the marks of our Lord's Divine dignity. In interpreting them we are not entitled to parcel out the mass of the illustrations of His supernormal knowledge which they record to differing sources, as may fall in with our own conceptions of the inherent possibilities of each case; finding indications in some instances merely of His fine human instinct, in others of His prophetic inspiration, while reserving others - if such others are left to us in our analysis - as products of His Divine intuition. The Evangelists suggest no such lines of cleavage in the mass; and they must be interpreted from their own standpoint. This finds its centre in their expressed conviction that in Jesus Christ dwelt the fulness of the knowledge of God (Mt. xi. 27, Lk. x. 22, Jn. viii. 38, xvi. 15, xvii. 10). To them His knowledge of God and of Divine things, of Himself in His Person and mission, of the course of His life and the events which would befall Him in the prosecution of the work whereunto He had been sent, of the men around Him, - His followers and friends, the people and their rulers, - down to the most hidden depths of their natures and the most intimate processes of their secret thoughts, and of all the things forming the environment in which the drama He was enacting was cast, however widely that environment be conceived, or however minutely it be contemplated, - was but the manifestation, in the ever-widening circles of our human modes of conception, of the perfect apprehension and understanding that dwelt changelessly in His Divine intelligence. He who knew God perfectly, - it were little that He should know man and the world perfectly too; all that affected His own work and career, of course, and with it, equally of course, all that lay outside of this (cf. Mason, "Conditions," etc. p. 168) : in a word, unlimitedly, all things. Even if nothing but the Law of Parsimony stood in the way, it might well be understood that the Evangelists would be deterred from seeking, in the case of such a Being, other sources of information besides His Divine intelligence to account for all His far-reaching and varied knowledge. At all events, it is clearly their conviction that all He knew - the scope of which was unbounded and its depth unfathomed, though their record suggests rather than fully illustrates it - found its explanation in the dignity of His person as God manifest in the flesh.

Nor can the effect of their representation of Jesus as the subject of this all-embracing Divine knowledge be destroyed by the discovery in their narratives of another line of representation in which our Lord is set forth as living His life out under the conditions which belong naturally to the humanity He had assumed. These representations are certainly to be neglected as little as those others in which His Divine omniscience is suggested. They bring to our observation another side of the complex personality that is depicted, which, if it cannot be said to be as emphatically insisted upon by the Evangelists, is nevertheless, perhaps, equally pervasively illustrated. This is the true humanity of our Lord, within the scope of which He willed to live out His life upon earth, that He might accomplish the mission for which He had been sent. The suggestion that He might break over the bounds of His mission, in order that He might escape from the ruggedness of His chosen path, by the exercise whether of His almighty power (Mt. iv. 3 f., Lk. iv. 3 f.) or of His unerring foresight (Mt. xvi. 22 ||), He treated first and last as a temptation of the Evil One - for 'how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be' (Mt. xxvi. 54 ||)? It is very easy, to be sure, to exaggerate the indications in the Evangelists of the confinement of our Lord's activities within the limits of human powers. It is an exaggeration, for example, to speak as if the Evangelists represent Him as frequently surprised by the events which befell Him: they never predicate surprise of Him, and it is only by a very precarious inference from the events recorded that they can ever be supposed even to suggest or allow place for such an emotion in our Lord. It is an exaggeration again to adduce our Lord's questions as attempts to elicit information for His own guidance: His questions are often plainly dialectical or rhetorical, or, like some of His actions, solely for the benefit of those 'that stood around.' It is once more an exaggeration to adduce the employment in many cases of the term ginw,skw, when the Evangelists speak of our Lord's knowledge, as if it were thereby implied that this knowledge was freshly born in His mind: the assumed distinction, but faintly marked in Greek literature, cannot be traced in the usage of the terms gnw/nai and eivde,nai in their application to our Lord's knowledge; these terms even replace one another in parallel accounts of the same instance (Mt. xxii. 18||Mk. xii. 15; [Mt. ix. 4]||Mk. ii. 8, Lk. v. 22; cf. Mt. xii. 25, Lk. vi. 8, ix. 47, xi. 17, Jn. vi. 61); gnw/nai is used of the undoubted Divine knowledge of our Lord ([Mt. xi. 25] Lk. x. 22, Jn. x. 15, xvii. 25, Mt. vii. 23; cf. Jn. ii. 24, 25, v. 42, x. 14, 27) ; and indeed of the knowledge of God Himself (Lk. x. 22, xvi. 15, Jn. x. 15 [Mt. xi. 27]): and, in any event, there is a distinction which in such nice inquiries should not be neglected, between saying that the occurrence of an event, being perceived, was the occasion of an action, and saying that knowledge of the event, perceived as occurring, waited on its occurrence. Gravely vitiated by such exaggerations as most discussions of the subject are, enough remains, however, after all exaggeration is pruned away, to assure us, not indeed that our Lord's life on earth was, in the view of the Evangelists, an exclusively human one; or that, apart from the constant exercise of His will to make it such, it was controlled by the limitations of humanity; but certainly that it was, in their view, lived out, so far as was consistent with the fulfilment of the mission for which He came - and as an indispensable condition of the fulfilment of that mission - under the limitations belonging to a purely human life. The classical passages in this reference are those striking statements in the second chapter of Luke (ii. 40, 52) in which is summed up our Lord's growth from infancy to manhood, including, of course, His intellectual development and His own remarkable declaration recorded in Mt. xxiv. 36, Mk. xiii. 32, in which He affirms His ignorance of the day and hour of His return to earth. Supplemented by their general dramatization of His life within the range of the purely human, these passages are enough to assure us that in the view of the Evangelists there was in our Lord a purely human soul, which bore its own proper part in His life, and which, as human souls do, grew in knowledge as it grew in wisdom and grace, and remained to the end, as human souls must, ignorant of many things, - nay, which, because human souls are finite, must ever be ignorant of much embraced in the universal vision of the Divine Spirit. We may wonder why the 'day and hour' of His own return should remain among the things of which our Lord's human soul continued ignorant throughout His earthly life. But this is a matter about which surely we need not much concern ourselves. We can never do more than vaguely guess at the law which governs the inclusions and exclusions which characterize the knowledge-contents of any human mind, limited as human minds are not only qualitatively but quantitatively; and least of all could we hope to penetrate the principle of selection in the case of the perfect human intelligence of our Lord; nor have the Evangelists hinted their view of the matter. We must just be content to recognize that we are face to face here with the mystery of the Two Natures, which, although they do not, of course, formally enunciate the doctrine in so many words, the Evangelists yet effectively teach, since by it alone can consistency be induced between the two classes of facts which they present unhesitatingly in their narratives. Only, if we would do justice to their presentation, we must take clear note of two of its characteristics. They do not simply, in separated portions of their narratives, adduce the facts which manifest our Lord's Divine powers and His human characteristics, but interlace them inextricably in the same sections of the narratives. And they do not subject the Divine that is in Christ to the limitations of the human, but quite decisively present the Divine as dominating all, and as giving play to the human only by a constant, voluntary withholding of its full manifestation in the interests of the task undertaken. Observe the story, for example, in Jn. xi, which Dr. Mason ("Conditions," etc. p. 143) justly speaks of as 'indeed a marvellous weaving together of that which is natural and that which is above nature.' 'Jesus learns from others that Lazarus is sick, but knows without any further message that Lazarus is dead; He weeps and groans at the sight of the sorrow which surrounds Him, yet calmly gives thanks for the accomplishment of the miracle before it has been accomplished.' This conjunction of the two elements is typical of the whole Evangelical narrative. As portrayed in it our Lord's life is distinctly duplex; and can be consistently construed only by the help of the conception of the Two Natures. And just as distinctly is this life portrayed in these narratives as receiving its determination not from the human, but from the Divine side. If what John undertakes to depict is what was said and done by the incarnated Word, no less what the Synoptics essay is to present the Gospel (as Mark puts it) of Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is distinctly a supernatural life that He is represented by them all as living; and the human aspect of it is treated by each alike as an incident in something more exalted, by which it is permitted, rather than on which it imposes itself. Though passed as far as was befitting within the limits of humanity, this life remains at all times the life of God manifest in the flesh, and, as depicted by the Evangelists, never escapes beyond the boundaries set by what was suitable to it as such.

The actual instances of our Lord's foresight which are recorded by the Evangelists are not very numerous outside of those which concern the establishment of the Kingdom of God, with which alone, of course, their narratives are particularly engaged. Even the few instances of specific exhibitions of foreknowledge of what we may call trivial events owe their record to some connexion with this great work. Examples are afforded by the foresight that the casting of the nets at the exact time and place indicated by our Lord would secure a draught of fishes (Lk. v. 4, cf. Jn. xxi. 6); that the first fish that Peter would take when he threw his hook into the sea would be one which had swallowed a stater (Mt. xvii. 27) ; that on entering a given village the disciples should find an ass tied, and a colt with it, whose owners would be obedient to our Lord's request (Mt. xxi. 2 11) ; and that on entering Jerusalem to make ready for the final passover-feast they should meet a man bearing a pitcher, prepared to serve the Master's needs (Mk. xiv. 13). In instances like these the interlacing of prevision and provision is very intimate, and doubt arises whether they illustrate most distinctly our Lord's Divine foresight or His control of events. In other instances the element of foresight comes, perhaps, more purely forward: such are possibly the predictions of the offence of the disciples (Mt. xxvi. 31||), the denial of Peter (xxvi. 34||), and the treachery of Judas (xxvi. 21||). There may be added the whole series of utterances in which our Lord shows a comprehensive foresight of the career of those whom He called to His service (Mt. iv. 19, x. 17, 21, xx. 22, xxiv. 9 f., Jn. xvi. 1 f.) ; and also that other series in which He exhibits a like full foreknowledge of the entire history of the Kingdom of God in the world (cf. especially the parables of the Kingdom, and such passages as Mt. xvi. 18, xxiv. 5, 24, xxi. 43, xxiv. 14, xxvi. 13, Lk. xix. 11, Jn. xiv. 18, 19). It is, however, particularly with reference to His own work in establishing the Kingdom, and in regard to the nature of that work, that stress is particularly laid upon the completeness of His foreknowledge. His entire career, as we have seen, is represented by all the Evangelists as lying plainly before Him from the beginning, with every detail clearly marked and provided for. It is especially, however, with reference to the three great events in which His work in establishing His Kingdom is summed up - His death, His resurrection, His return - that the predictions become numerous, if we may not even say constant. Each of the Evangelists represents Him, for example, as foreseeing His death from the start (Jn. ii. 19, iii. 14, Mt. xii. 40, ix. 15, Mk. ii. 19, Lk. xii. 49, v. 34; cf. Meyer on Mt. ix. 15, xvi. 21; Weiss on Mk. viii. 31; Denney, "Death of Christ," p. 18; Wrede, "Messiasgeheimnis," p. 19, etc.), and as so ordering His life as to march steadfastly forward to it as its chosen climax (cf. e. g., Wrede, p. 84: 'It is accordingly the meaning of Mark that Jesus journeys to Jerusalem because it is His will to die there'). He is represented, therefore, as avoiding all that could lead up to it for a time, and then, when He was ready for it, as setting Himself steadfastly to bring it about as He would; as speaking of it only guardedly at first, and afterwards, when the time was ripe for it, as setting about assiduously to prepare His disciples for it. Similarly with respect to His resurrection, He is reported - as having it in mind, indeed, from the earliest days of His ministry (Jn. ii. 19, Mt. xii. 40, xvi. 21, Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22), but adverting to it with pædagogical care, so as to prepare rather than confuse the minds of His disciples. The same in substance may be said with reference to His return (Mt. x. 23, xvi. 27, Mk. viii. 38, ix. 1, Lk. ix. 26, 27).

A survey in chronological order of the passages in which He is reported as speaking of these three great events of the future, cannot fail to leave a distinct impression on the mind not only of the large space they occupy in the Evangelical narrative, but of the great place they take as foreseen, according to that narrative, in the life and work of our Lord. In the following list the passages in which He adverts to His death stand in the order given them in Robinson's "Harmony of the Gospels": Jn. ii. 19, iii. 14, Mt. xii. 40 (cf. xvi. 4, Lk. xi. 32), Lk. xii. 49, 50, Mt. ix. 15 (Mk. ii. 19, Lk. v. 34), Jn. vi. 51, vii. 6-8, Mt. xvi. 21 (Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22), Lk. ix. 31, Mt. xvii. 17 (Mk. ix. 12), Mt. xvii. 22, 23 (Mk. ix. 31, Lk. ix. 44), Lk. ix. 51, Jn. vii. 34, viii. 21, 25, ix. 5, x. 11, 15, Lk. xiii. 32, xvii. 25, Mt. xx. 18,19 (Mk. x. 33, Lk. xviii. 31), Jn. xii. 28, Mt. xx. 22 (Mk. x. 38), Mt. xx. 28 (Mk. x. 45), Mt. xxi. 39 (Mk. xii. 8, Lk. xx. 14), Jn. xii. 23, Mt. xxvi. 2, Jn. xiii. 1, 33, Mt. xxvi. 28 (Mk. xiv. 24, Lk. xxii. 20), Mt. xxvi. 31 (Mk. xiv. 27, Jn. xiv. 28), Jn. xv. 13, xvi. 5, xvi. 16, xviii. 11, Mt. xxvi. 54 (Jn. xviii. 11), Lk. xxiv. 26, 46.

The following allusions to His resurrection are in the same order: Jn. ii. 19, Mt. xii. 40 (Lk. xi. 30), Mt. xvi. 21 (Mk. viii. 31, Lk. ix. 22), Mt. xvii. 9 (Mk. ix. 9), Mt. xvii. 23 (Mk. ix. 31), Jn. x. 18 [xvi. 16], Mt. xx. 19 (Mk. x. 34, Lk. xviii. 33), Mt. xxvi. 32 (Mk. xiv. 28) [Mt. xxviii. 611 Lk. xxiv. 8], Lk. xxiv. 46.

The following are, in like order, the allusions to His return: Mt. x. 23, xvi. 27 (Mk. viii. 38, ix. 1, Lk. ix. 26, 27), Mk. x. 40, Lk. xvii. 22, Mt. xix. 28, xxiii. 39, xxiv. 3 (Mk. xiii. 4, Lk. xxi. 7), Mt. xxiv. 34-37 (Mk. xiii. 30, Lk. xxi. 32), Mt. xxiv. 44, xxv. 31, xxvi. 64 (Mk. xiv. 62, Lk. xxii. 69).

The most cursory examination of these series of passages in their setting, and especially in their distribution through the Evangelical narrative, will evince the cardinal place which the eschatological element takes in the life of the Lord as depicted in the Gospels. In particular, it will be impossible to escape the conviction that it is distinctly the teaching of the Evangelists that Jesus came into the world specifically to die, and ordered His whole life wittingly to that end. As Dr. Denney puts it (expounding Jn. x. 17, on which see also Westcott's note), 'Christ's death is not an incident of His life, it is the aim of it. The laying down of His life is not an accident in His career, it is His vocation; it is that in which the Divine purpose of His life is revealed.' 'If there was a period in His life during which He had other thoughts, it is antecedent to that at which we have any knowledge of Him' ("Death of Christ," pp. 259 and 18). Nothing could therefore be more at odds with the consentient and constant representations of the Evangelists than to speak of the 'shadow of the cross' as only somewhat late in His history beginning to fall athwart our Lord's pathway; of the idea that His earthly career should close in gloom as 'distinctly emerging in the teaching of Jesus only at a comparatively late period,' and as therefore presumably not earlier 'clear in His mind': unless, indeed, it be the accompanying more general judgment that 'there was nothing extraordinary or supernatural in Jesus' foreknowledge of His death,' and that 'His prophecy was but the expression of a mind which knew that it could not cease to be obedient while His enemies would not cease to be hostile' (A. M. Fairbairn, "The Expositor," 1897, i.; vol. iv. [1896] 283, 285). It is not less unwarranted to speak of Him as bowing to His fate only 'as the will of God, to which He yielded Himself up to the very end only with difficulty, and at best against His will' (Wernle, "Synopt. Frage," 200).

Such expressions as these, however, advise us that a very different conception from that presented by the Evangelists has found widespread acceptance among a class of modern scholars, whose efforts have been devoted to giving to our Lord's life on earth a character more normally human than it seems to possess as it lies on the pages of the Evangelists. The negative principle of the new constructions offered of the course and springs of our Lord's career being rejection of the account given by the Evangelists, these scholars are thrown back for guidance very much upon their own subjective estimate of probabilities. The Gospels are, however, the sole sources of information for the events of our Lord's life, and it is impossible to decline their aid altogether. Few, accordingly, have been able to discard entirely the general framework of the life of Christ they present (for those who are inclined to represent Jesus as making no claim even to be the Messiah, see H. J. Holtzmann, "Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie" i. 280, note; Meinhold as there referred to; and Wrede, "Das Messiasgeheimnis," especially Appendix vii.). Most have derived enough from the Gospels to assume that a crisis of some sort occurred at Caesarea Philippi, where the Evangelists represent our Lord as beginning formally and frankly to prepare His disciples for His death (Mt. xvi. 21||).

Great differences arise at once, however, over what this crisis was. Schenkel supposes that it was only at this point in His ministry that Jesus began to think Himself the Messiah; Strauss is willing to believe He suspected Himself to be the Messiah earlier, and supposes that He now first began to proclaim Himself such; P. W. Schmidt and Lobstein imagine that on this day He both put the Messianic crown upon His head and faced death looming in His path; Weizsäcker and Keim allow that He thought and proclaimed Himself the Messiah from the beginning, and suppose that what is new here is that only now did He come to see with clearness that His ministry would end in His death, - and as death for the Messiah means return, they add that here He begins His proclamation of His return in glory. To this Schenkel and Hase find difficulty in assenting, feeling it impossible that the Founder of a spiritual kingdom should look forward to its consummation in a physical one, and insisting, therefore, that though Jesus may well have predicted the destruction of His enemies, He can scarcely have foretold His own coming in glory. On the other hand, Strauss and Baur judge that a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem too closely resembles what actually occurred not to be post eventum, but see no reason why Jesus should not have dreamed of coming back on the clouds of heaven. As to His death, Strauss thinks He began to anticipate it only shortly before His last journey to Jerusalem; while Holsten cannot believe that He realized what was before Him until He actually arrived at Jerusalem, and even then did not acquiesce in it (so Spitta). That He went to Jerusalem for the purpose of dying, neither Weizsäcker, nor Brandt, nor H, Holtzmann, nor Schultzen will admit, though the two last named allow that He foresaw that the journey would end in His death; or at least that it possibly would, adds Punjer, since, of course, a possibility of success lay open to Him (cf. H. J. Holtzmann, "Lehrb. der neutestamentlichen Theologie," i, 285-286, note). As many men, so many opinions. As the positive principle of construction in all these schemes of life for Jesus is desupernaturalization, they differ, so far as the prophetic element in His teaching as reported by the Evangelists is concerned, chiefly in the measure in which they explain it as due more or less entirely to the Evangelists carrying their own ideas, or the ideas of the community in which they lived, back into Jesus' mouth; or allow it more or less fully to Jesus, indeed, but only in a form which can be thought of as not rising above the natural prognostications of a man in His position. A few deny to Jesus the entire series of predictions reported in the Gospels, and assign them in mass to the thought of the later community (e. g., Eichhorn, Wrede). A few, on the other hand, allow the whole, or nearly the whole, series to Jesus, and explain them all naturalistically. Most take an intermediate position, determined by the principle that all which seems to each critic incapable of naturalistic explanation as utterances of Jesus shall be assigned to later origin. Accordingly, the concrete details in the alleged predictions are quite generally denied to Jesus, and represented as easily explicable modifications, in accordance with the actual course of events, of what Jesus really said. The prediction of resurrection on the third day, for example, is held by many (e. g., Schwartzkopff) to be too precise a determination, and is therefore excluded from the prophecy, or explained as, only a periphrasis for an indefinite short time, after the analogy of Hos. vi. 2 (so even B. Weiss). To others a prediction of a resurrection at all seems incredible (Strauss, Schenkel, Weizsäcker, Keim, Brandt), and it is transmuted into, at most, a premonition of future victory. By yet others (as Holsten) even the anticipation of death is doubted, and nothing of forecast is left to Jesus except, possibly, a vague anticipation of difficulty and suffering; while with others even this gives way, and Jesus is represented as passing either the greater part of His life (Fairbairn), or the whole of it, in joyful expectation of more or less unbroken success, or at least, however thickly the clouds gathered over His head, in inextinguishable hope in God and His interposition in His behalf (cf. the brief general sketch of opinions in Wrede, "Messiasgeheimnis," p. 85).

Thus, over-against the 'dogmatic' view of the life of Christ, set forth in the Evangelists, according to which Jesus came into the world to die, and which is dominated, therefore, by foresight, is set, in polar opposition to it, a new view, calling itself 'historical,' the principle of which is the denial to Jesus of any foresight whatever beyond the most limited human forecast. No pretence is ordinarily made that this new view is given support by the Evangelical records; it is put forward on a priori or general grounds - as, for example, the only psychologically possible view (e. g., Schwartzkopff, "Prophecies of Christ," p. 28; cf. Denney, "Death of Christ," p. 11, and especially the just strictures of Wrede, "Messiasgeheimnis," pp. 2, 3). It professes to find it incredible that Jesus entered upon His ministry with any other expectation than success. Contact with men, however, it allows, brought gradually the discovery of the hopelessness of drawing them to His spiritual ideals; the growing enmity of the rulers opened before Him the prospect of disaster; and thus there came to Him the slow recognition, first of the possibility, and then of the certainty, of failure; or, at least, since failure was impossible for the mission He had come to perform, of the necessity of passing through suffering to the ultimate success. So slowly was the readjustment to this new point of view made, that even at the end - as the prayer at Gethsemane shows - there remained a lingering hope that the extremity of death might be avoided. So far as a general sketch can be made of a view presented by its several adherents with great variety of detail, this is the essential fabric of the new view (cf. the general statements of Kähler, "Zur Lehre von der Versöhnung," 159; Denney, "Death of Christ," 11; Wrede, "Messiasgeheimnis," 86). Only such parts of the predictive element of the teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels as are thought capable of naturalistic interpretation are incorporated into this new construction. By those who wish to bring in as much as possible, it is said, for example, that our Lord was too firmly persuaded of His Messianic appointment and function, and was too clear that this function centred in the establishment of the Kingdom, to accept death itself as failure. When He perceived death impending, that meant to Him, therefore, return; and return to bring in the Messianic glory meant resurrection. When He thought and spoke of death, therefore, He necessarily thought and spoke also of resurrection and return; the three went inevitably together; and if He anticipated the one, He must have anticipated the others also. Under this general scheme all sorts of opinions are held as to when, how, and under what impulses Jesus formed and taught this eschatological programme. As notable a construction as any holds that He first became certain of His Messiahship in an ecstatic vision which accompanied His baptism; that the Messiah must suffer was already borne in upon His conviction in the course of His temptation; but it was not until the scene at Caesarea Philippi that He attained the happy assurance that the Messianic glory lay behind the dreadful death impending over Him. This great conviction, attained in principle in the ecstasy of that moment, was, nevertheless, only gradually assimilated. When Jesus was labouring with His disciples, He was labouring also with Himself. In this particular construction (it is O. Holtzmann's) an element of 'ecstasy' is introduced; more commonly the advances Jesus is supposed to make in His anticipations are thought to rest on processes of formal reasoning. In either case, He is pictured as only slowly, under the stress of compelling circumstances, reaching convictions of what awaited Him in the future; and thus He is conceived distinctly as the victim rather than as the Lord of His destiny. So far from entering the world to die, and by His death to save the world, and in His own good time and way accomplishing this great mission, He enters life set upon living, and only yields step by step reluctantly to the hard fate which inexorably closes upon Him. That He clings through all to His conviction of His Messiahship, and adjusts His hope of accomplishing His Messianic mission to the overmastering pressure of circumstances, - is that not a pathetic trait of human nature? Do not all enthusiasts the like? Is it not precisely the mark of their fanaticism? The plain fact is, if we may express it in the brutal frankness of common speech, in this view of Jesus' career He miscalculated and failed; and then naturally sought (or His followers sought for Him) to save the failure (or the appearance of failure) by inventing a new dénouement for the career He had hoped for in vain, a new dénouement which - has it failed too? Most of our modern theorizers are impelled to recognize that it too has failed. When Jesus so painfully adjusted Himself to the hard destiny which more and more obtruded itself upon His recognition, He taught that death was but an incident in His career, and after death would come the victory. Can we believe that He foresaw that thousands of years would intervene between what He represented as but an apparent catastrophe and the glorious reversal to which He directed His own and His followers' eyes? On the contrary, He expected and He taught that He would come back soon - certainly before the generation which had witnessed His apparent defeat had passed away; and that He would then establish that Messianic Kingdom which from the beginning of His ministry He had unvaryingly taught was at hand. He did not do so. Is there any reason to believe that He ever will return? Can the 'foresight' which has repeatedly failed so miserably be trusted still, - for what we choose to separate out from the mass of His expectations as the core of the matter? On what grounds shall we adjust the discredited 'foresight' to the course of events, obviously unforeseen by Him, since His death? Where is the end of these 'adjustments'? Have we not already with 'adjustment' after 'adjustment' transformed beyond recognition the expectations of Jesus, even the latest and fullest to which He attained, and transmuted them into something fundamentally different, - passed, in a word, so far beyond Him, that we retain only an artificial connexion with Him and His real teaching, a connexion mediated by little more than a word?

That in this modern construction we have the precise contradictory of the conception of Jesus and of the course of His life on earth given us by the Evangelists, it needs no argument to establish. In the Gospel presentation, foresight is made the principle of our Lord's career. In the modern view He is credited with no foresight whatever. At best, He was possessed by a fixed conviction of His Messianic mission, whether gained in ecstatic vision (as, e. g., O. Holtzmann) or acquired in deep religious experiences (as, e. g., Schwartzkopff); and He felt an assurance, based on this ineradicable conviction, that in His own good time and way God would work that mission out for Him; and in this assurance He went faithfully onward fulfilling His daily task, bungling meanwhile egregiously in His reading of the scroll of destiny which was unrolling for Him. It is an intensely, even an exaggeratedly, human Christ which is here offered us: and He stands, therefore, in the strongest contrast with the frankly Divine Christ which the Gospels present to us. On what grounds can we be expected to substitute this for that? Certainly not on grounds of historical record. We have no historical record of the self-consciousness of Jesus except that embodied in the Gospel dramatization of His life and the Gospel report of His teaching; and that record expressly contradicts at every step this modern reconstruction of its contents and development. The very principle of the modern construction is reversal of the Gospel delineation. Its peculiarity is that, though it calls itself the 'historical' view, it has behind it no single scrap of historical testimony; the entirety of historical evidence contradicts it flatly. Are we to accept it, then; on the general grounds of inherent probability and rational construction? It is historically impossible that the great religious movement which we call Christianity could have taken its origin and derived its inspiration - an inspiration far from spent after two thousand years - from such a figure as this Jesus. The plain fact is that in these modern reconstructions we have nothing but a sustained attempt to construct a naturalistic Jesus; and their chief interest is that they bring before us with unwonted clearness the kind of being the man must have been who at that time and in those circumstances could have come forward making the claims which Jesus made without supernatural nature, endowment, or aid to sustain Him. The value of the speculation is that it makes superabundantly clear that no such being could have occupied the place which the historical Jesus occupied; could have made the impression on His followers which the historical Jesus made; could have become the source of the stream of religious influence which we call Christianity, as the historical Jesus became. The clear formulation of the naturalistic hypothesis, in the construction of a naturalistic Jesus, in other words, throws us violently back upon the Divine Jesus of the Evangelists as the only Jesus that is historically possible. From this point of view, the labours of the scholars who have with infinite pains built up this construction of Jesus' life and development have not been in vain.

What, then, is to be said of the predictions of Jesus, and especially of the three great series of prophecies of His death, resurrection, and return, with respect to their contents and fulfilment? This is not the place to discuss the eschatology of Jesus. But a few general remarks seem not uncalled for. The topic has received of late much renewed attention with very varied results, the number and variety of constructions proposed having been greatly increased above what the inherent difficulty of the subject will account for, by the freedom with which the Scripture data have been modified or set aside on socalled critical grounds by the several investigators. Nevertheless, most of the new interpretations also may be classified under the old categories of futuristic, preteristic, and spiritualistic.

The spiritualistic interpretation - whose method of dealing with our Lord's predictions readily falls in with a widespread theory that it is 'contrary to the spirit and manner of genuine prophecy to predict actual circumstances like a soothsayer' (Muirhead, "Eschatology of Jesus," p. 10; Schwartzkopff, "Prophecies of Jesus Christ," 78, 250, 258, 275, 312, etc.) - has received a new impulse through its attractive presentation by Erich Haupt ("Eschatolog. Aussagen Jesu," etc., 1895). Christ's eschatology, says Haupt, is infinitely simple, and all that He predicts is to be accomplished in a heavenly way which passes our comprehension; there is no soothsaying in His utterances - 'nowhere any predictions of external occurrences, everywhere only great moral religious laws which must operate everywhere and always, while nothing is said of the form in which they must act' (p. 157). A considerable stir has been created also by the revival (Schleiermacher, Weisse) by Weiffenbach ("Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu," 1873, "Die Frage der Wiederkunft Jesu," 1901) of the identification of the return of Christ with His resurrection, although this view has retained few adherents since its refutation by Schwartzkopff ("The Prophecies of Jesus Christ," 1895), whose own view is its exact contradictory, viz., that by His resurrection Jesus meant just His return. The general conception, however, that 'for Jesus the hope of resurrection and the thought of return fell together,' so that 'when Jesus spoke of His resurrection He was thinking of His return, and vice versa' (O. Holtzmann, "War Jesus Ekstatiker?" 67, note), is very widely held. The subsidiary hypothesis (first suggested by Colani) of the inclusion in the great eschatological discourse attributed by the Evangelists to our Lord of a 'little Apocalypse' of Jewish or Jewish Christian origin, by which Weiffenbach eased his task, has in more or less modified form received the widest acceptance (cf. H. J. Holtzmann, "Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie," i. 327, note), but rests on no solid grounds (cf. Weiss, Beyschlag, Haupt, Clemen). Most adherents of the modern school are clear that Jesus expected and asserted that He would return in Messianic glory for the consummation of the Kingdom; and most of them are equally clear that in this expectation and assertion, Jesus was mistaken (cf. H. J. Holtzmann, "Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie," i. 312 f.). 'In the expectation that the kingdom was soon to come,' says Oscar Holtzmann in a passage typical enough of this whole school of exposition ("War Jesus Ekstatiker?" p. 133), 'Jesus erred in a human way'; and in such passages as Mk. ix. 1, xiii. 30, Mt. x. 23 he considers that the error is obvious. He adds, 'That such an error on the part of Jesus concerning not a side-issue but a fundamental point of His faith, - His first proclamation began, according to Mk. i. 15, with the peplh,rwtai o` kairo.j kai. h;ggiken h` basilei,a tou/ qeou/,-does not facilitate faith in Jesus is self-evident; but this error of Jesus is for His Church a highly instructive and therefore highly valuable warning to distinguish between the temporary and the permanent in the work of Jesus.' Not every one even of this school can go, however, quite this length. Even Schwartzkopff, while allowing that Jesus erred in this matter, wishes on that very account to think of the mere definition of times and seasons as belonging to the form rather than to the essence of His teaching ("The Prophecies of Jesus Christ," 1895, Eng. tr. 1897, p. 319; "Konnte Jesus irren?" 1896, p. 3); and in that Baldensperger is in substantial agreement with him ("Selbstbewusstsein Jesu 1, p. 148, ed.2, p. 205). From the other side, E. Haupt ("Eschatolog. Aussagen Jesu," 1895, p. 138 f.) urges that Jesus must be supposed to have been able to avoid all errors, at least in the religious sphere, even if they concern nothing but the form; while Weiffenbach ("Die Frage," etc. p. 9) thinks we should hesitate to suppose Jesus could have erred in too close a definition of the time of His advent, when He expressly confesses that He was ignorant of its time (cf. Muirhead, "Eschat. of Jesus," 48-50, and especially 117). Probably Fritz Barth ("Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu," 1899, pp. 167-170) stands alone in cutting the knot by appealing to the conditionality of all prophecy. According to him, Jesus did, indeed, predict His return as coincident with the destruction of Jerusalem; but all genuine prophecy is conditioned upon the conduct of the human agents involved - 'between prediction and fulfilment the conduct of man intrudes as a codetermining factor on which the fulfilment depends.' Thus this prediction has not failed, but its fulfilment has only been postponed - in accordance, it must be confessed, not with the will of God, but with that of man. It is difficult to see how Jesus is thus shielded from the imputation of defective foresight; but at least Barth is able on this view still to look for a return of the Lord.

The difficulty which the passages in our Saviour's teaching under discussion present to the reverent expositor is, of course, not to be denied or minimized. But surely this difficulty would need to be much more hopeless than it is before it could compel or justify the assumption of error 'in One who has never been convicted of error in anything else' (Sanday in Hastings' DB ii. 635 - the whole passage should be read). The problem that faces us in this matter, it is apparent, in the meantime, is not one which can find its solution as a corollary to a speculative general view of our Lord's self-consciousness, its contents, and development. It is distinctly a problem of exegesis. We should be very sure that we know fully and precisely all that our Lord has declared about His return - its what and how and when - before we venture to suggest, even to our most intimate thought, that He has committed so gross an error as to its what and how and when as is so often assumed; especially as He has in the most solemn manner declared concerning precisely the words under consideration that heaven and earth shall pass away, but not His words. It would be sad if the passage of time has shown this declaration also to be mistaken. Meanwhile, the perfect foresight of our Lord, asserted and illustrated by all the Evangelists, certainly cannot be set aside by the facile assumption of an error on His part in a matter in which it is so difficult to demonstrate an error, and in which assumptions of all sorts are so little justified. For the detailed discussion of our Lord's eschatology, including the determination of His meaning in these utterances, reference must, however, be made to works treating expressly of this subject.

The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[Pub. 1892, by the American Sunday School Union, Philadelphia, Pa.]

In order to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when attention is once called to it. That is, that the Christian church did not require to form for itself the idea of a "canon," - or, as we should more commonly call it, of a "Bible," - that is, of a collection of books given of God to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the Jewish church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish Scriptures, or the "Canon of the Old Testament." The church did not grow up by natural law: it was founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth by Christ to found His church, carried with them, as their most precious possession, a body of divine Scriptures, which they imposed on the church that they founded as its code of law. No reader of the New Testament can need proof of this; on every page of that book is spread the evidence that from the very beginning the Old Testament was as cordially recognized as law by the Christian as by the Jew. The Christian church thus was never without a "Bible" or a "canon."

But the Old Testament books were not the only ones which the apostles (by Christ's own appointment the authoritative founders of the church) imposed upon the infant churches, as their authoritative rule of faith and practice. No more authority dwelt in the prophets of the old covenant than in themselves, the apostles, who had been "made sufficient as ministers of a new covenant"; for (as one of themselves argued) "if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory." Accordingly not only was the gospel they delivered, in their own estimation, itself a divine revelation, but it was also preached "in the Holy Ghost" (I Pet. i. 12); not merely the matter of it, but the very words in which it was clothed were "of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. ii. 13). Their own commands were, therefore, of divine authority (I Thess. iv. 2), and their writings were the depository of these commands (II Thess. ii. 15). "If any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle," says Paul to one church (II Thess. iii. 14), "note that man, that ye have no company with him." To another he makes it the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize that what he was writing to them was "the commandments of the Lord" (I Cor. xiv. 37). Inevitably, such writings, making so awful a claim on their acceptance, were received by the infant churches as of a quality equal to that of the old "Bible"; placed alongside of its older books as an additional part of the one law of God; and read as such in their meetings for worship - a practice which moreover was required by the apostles (I Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Rev. i. 3). In the apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the "Scriptures" were not a closed but an increasing "canon." Such they had been from the beginning, as they gradually grew in number from Moses to Malachi; and such they were to continue as long as there should remain among the churches "men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

We say that this immediate placing of the new books - given the church under the seal of apostolic authority - among the Scriptures already established as such, was inevitable. It is also historically evinced from the very beginning. Thus the apostle Peter, writing in A.D. 68, speaks of Paul's numerous letters not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the Scriptures and in contrast with "the other Scriptures" (II Pet. iii. 16) - that is, of course, those of the Old Testament. In like manner the apostle Paul combines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Luke under the common head of "Scripture" (I Tim. v. 18) : "For the Scripture saith, ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn' [Dent. xxv. 4]; and, ‘The laborer is worthy of his hire"' (Luke x. 7). The line of such quotations is never broken in Christian literature. Polycarp (c. 12) in A.D. 115 unites the Psalms and Ephesians in exactly similar manner: "In the sacred books, . . . as it is said in these Scriptures, ‘Be ye angry and sin not,' and ‘Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."' So, a few years later, the so-called second letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (ii. 4) : "And another Scripture, however, says, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners "' - quoting from Matthew, a book which Barnabas (circa 97-106 A.D.) had already adduced as Scripture. After this such quotations are common.

What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival "canon" of "new books" which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the "old books"; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally "Scripture" with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.

The earliest name given to this new section of Scripture was framed on the model of the name by which what we know as the Old Testament was then known. Just as it was called "The Law and the Prophets and the Psalms" (or "the Hagiographa"), or more briefly "The Law and the Prophets," or even more briefly still "The Law"; so the enlarged Bible was called "The Law and the Prophets, with the Gospels and the Apostles" (so Clement of Alexandria, "Strom." vi. 11, 88; Tertullian, "De Pres. Haer." 36), or most briefly "The Law and the Gospel" (so Claudius Apolinaris, Irenaeus); while the new books apart were called "The Gospel and the Apostles," or most briefly of all "The Gospel." This earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it involves as to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, is traceable as far back as Ignatius (A.D. 115), who makes use of it repeatedly (e. g., "ad Philad." 5; "ad Smyrn." 7). In one passage he gives us a hint of the controversies which the enlarged Bible of the Christians aroused among the Judaizers ("ad Philad." 6). "When I heard some saying," he writes, "‘Unless I find it in the Old [Books] I will not believe the Gospel,' on my saying, ‘It is written,' they answered, ‘That is the question.' To me, however, Jesus Christ is the Old [Books]; his cross and death and resurrection, and the faith which is by him, the undefiled Old [Books] - by which I wish, by your prayers, to be justified. The priests indeed are good, but the High Priest better," etc. Here Ignatius appeals to the "Gospel" as Scripture, and the Judaizers object, receiving from him the answer in effect which Augustine afterward formulated in the well-known saying that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is first made clear in the New. What we need now to observe, however, is that to Ignatius the New Testament was not a different book from the Old Testament, but part of the one body of Scripture with it; an accretion, so to speak, which had grown upon it.

This is the testimony of all the early witnesses - even those which speak for the distinctively Jewish-Christian church. For example, that curious Jewish-Christian writing, "The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs" (Benj. 11), tells us, under the cover of an ex post facto prophecy, that the "work and word" of Paul, i.e., confessedly the book of Acts and Paul's Epistles, "shall be written in the Holy Books," i. e., as is understood by all, made a part of the existent Bible. So even in the Talmud, in a scene intended to ridicule a "bishop" of the first century, he is represented as finding Galatians by "sinking himself deeper" into the same "Book" which contained the Law of Moses ("Babl. Shabbath," 116 a and b). The details cannot be entered into here. Let it suffice to say that, from the evidence of the fragments which alone have been preserved to us of the Christian writings of that very early time, it appears that from the beginning of the second century (and that is from the end of the apostolic age) a collection (Ignatius, II Clement) of "New Books" (Ignatius), called the "Gospel and Apostles" (Ignatius, Marcion), was already a part of the "Oracles" of God (Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or "Scriptures" (I Tim., II Pet., Barn., Polycarp, II Clement), or the "Holy Books" or "Bible" (Testt. XII. Patt.).

The number of books included in this added body of New Books, at the opening of the second century, cannot be satisfactorily determined by the evidence of these fragments alone. The section of it called the "Gospel" included Gospels written by "the apostles and their companions" (Justin), which beyond legitimate question were our four Gospels now received. The section called "the Apostles" contained the book of Acts (The Testt. XII. Patt.) and epistles of Paul, John, Peter and James. The evidence from various quarters is indeed enough to show that the collection in general use contained all the books which we at present receive, with the possible exceptions of Jude, II and III John and Philemon. And it is more natural to suppose that failure of very early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their insignificant size rather than to their non-acceptance.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent of the collection may have - and indeed is historically shown actually to have - varied in different localities. The Bible was circulated only in hand copies, slowly and painfully made; and an incomplete copy, obtained say at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would be likely to remain for many years the Bible of the church to which it was conveyed; and might indeed become the parent of other copies, incomplete like itself, and thus the means of providing a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the history of the New Testament Canon we need to distinguish such questions as these: (1) When was the New Testament Canon completed? (2) When did any one church acquire a completed canon? (3) When did the completed canon - the complete Bible - obtain universal circulation and acceptance? (4) On what ground and evidence did the churches with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when they were made known to them?

The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus, however, had a completed Canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached it with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for historical investigation here. Certainly the whole Canon was not universally received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin church of the second and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Irenaeus down, the church at large had the whole Canon as we now possess it. And though a section of the church may not yet have been satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book or of certain books; and though afterwards doubts may have arisen in sections of the church as to the apostolicity of certain books (as e. g. of Revelation) : yet in no case was it more than a respectable minority of the church which was slow in receiving, or which came afterward to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then as now constituted the Canon of the New Testament accepted by the church at large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity.

Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic authorship which in the estimation of the earliest churches, constituted a book a portion of the "canon." Apostolic authorship was, indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the West, and of James and Jude, apparently, which underlay the slowness of the inclusion of these books in the "canon" of certain churches. But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not apostolic authorship, but imposition by the apostles as "law." Hence Tertullian's name for the "canon" is "instrumentum"; and he speaks of the Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded - as their "Instrument," or "Law," or "Canon" - can be denied by none. And in imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical authority, they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is the Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul parallels in I Tim. v. 18 with Deuteronomy as equally "Scripture" with it, in the first extant quotation of a New Testament book as Scripture. The Gospels which constituted the first division of the New Books, - of "The Gospel and the Apostles," - Justin tells us, were "written by the apostles and their companions." The authority of the apostles, as by divine appointment founders of the church, was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the church as law, not merely in those they themselves had written.

The early churches, in short, received, as we receive, into their New Testament all the books historically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the historical evidences of the slow circulation and authentication of these books over the widely-extended church, for evidence of slowness of "canonization" of books by the authority or the taste of the church itself.

The Glorified Christ

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

Hebrews ii. 9:—But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.

THE words I have chosen as a text form a part of a great passage, the proximate purpose of which is to set in a clear light the surpassing glory of Jesus Christ. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews the unapproachable greatness of our Lord's person is exhibited. No mere "interpreter" of God He, like the prophets; no mere "messenger" of God, like the angels. The Jewish-Christian readers of this Epistle had been prepared by their traditional teaching to expect the coming of a culminating interpreter of God, of a final messenger from God, and they readily greeted Jesus Christ as such. Our author reminds them that, greeting Jesus Christ as such, they had found in Him something much more. No doubt they had found in Him the supreme interpreter of God, who, alone, having seen God, is in a position to "declare" Him,—or, as our author expresses it, who, being the very effulgence of God's glory and the very impress of His substance, can, alone, manifest all that God is. And they had found in Him the final messenger of God who had come to do a service, for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation, which no angel could do, or in His own words, who had come not to be ministered unto but to minister. But our author reminds his readers that they had found in Jesus something more glorious than even these great things, seeing that He had received by inheritance the much more exalted name of Son. The ineffable glory of Jesus Christ Hes, he tells us, in this,—that even the great functions of interpreter of God and messenger of God, great as these functions as exercised by Him are, are not the source and not the measure of His greatness. As the Son of God, the effulgence of God's glory, and the impress of God's substance, all the prophets are but His servants, and before His majesty the very angels veil their faces and do Him homage.

The greatness of His work, of course, he now goes on to remind them, corresponds with the greatness of His person. In the second chapter our author advances to exhibit this surpassing greatness of the work of the Son of God. The salvation He wrought is called with pointed directness "so great a salvation," and is contrasted by this epithet with all that even the divinely given law could accomplish. To exhibit its greatness it is set before us in the height of its idea on the positive side. That we are saved by it from sin is taken for granted, and alluded to as a matter well known to all. But the negative side of salvation is not treated as the measure of its greatness. We are asked to attend, not to what we are saved from, but to what we are saved to. And that is presented as nothing less than dominion over the universe. This dominion God has destined for man from the beginning. But man had failed of his destiny. How hopelessly, how dismally, he had failed, none knew better than those the author of this Epistle was addressing,—Jews, who had lost even their Jewish ideals, and were now doubting whether in Christianity they had not lost all. He points them to Jesus as one who had saved them out of this depth to that height. Lordship,—not over "this world," with its troubles and trials, its incompletenesses and make-believes, and after all done, the end of death,—but over the "world to be," was theirs. True, they had not entered as yet into their heritage: the "world to be," by that very token, is not yet. But Jesus had entered upon it; and in Him they held the reversion to it. "But now, not yet do we see all things subjected to man: but Him who has been made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death, Jesus, we behold crowned with glory and honour, in order that by the grace of God His tasting of death should be for every man." He is on the throne; and He is there not for Himself but for us. It was for us that He died, nay, that He took upon Himself mortality; and now He is on the throne that this dreadful experience of death might really avail for us.

Had He only died for us, perhaps salvation might have consisted solely in relief from this penalty of sin which He bore for us. That He ascended out of death to the throne, conquers the throne itself for us. Wlien we behold Jesus on the throne for us, we may see how great a salvation He has wrought for us. For on that throne we too shall sit, not merely in Him but with Him. It has always been the Father's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom; not apart from the Son but along with that Son who is not ashamed to call us brethren. And because this has always been and still is the Father's will, it behoved Him who orders all things for His own glory, in leading many sons into glory, to bring the leader of their salvation through sufferings to the full accomplishment of His great task.

The verse which we have chosen out of this noble context as our text is so remarkable, even in its form, that we must pause for a moment to observe some of its characteristics. The first thing that strikes us about it is the way in which it takes all the great Christian verities for granted,—not formally asserting them, as if it were instructing us as to their reality, but assuming them as things fully established, which could be counted upon to be fully understood, if only suggested. The Incarnation, the Atoning Death, the Session on the right hand of God, the Kingly rule of the exalted Christ,—all these are in this verse touched upon with clearness, confidence, emphasis. But no one of them is asserted, as if the purpose were to inform us of it. They are all assumed as the common conviction of writer and reader, and built upon as such for the conveyance of the special message of the passage.

Note the simplicity and effectiveness with which this is done. What the text wishes to do is, to put it briefly, to turn our eyes from ourselves to Jesus. But it does not speak of Jesus by His bare name, but designates Him by a descriptive phrase taken from the eighth Psalm which had just been quoted. What is this descriptive phrase? "Him that hath been made a little lower than angels": "But now, we see not yet all things subjected to him," i.e. to man: "but Him who hath been made a little lower than angels, we behold, Jesus." Now, how could this phrase be thus employed to describe Jesus as a man? You observe, it is not, properly speaking, a "quotation" from the Psalm. It is not employed here in the sense of the Psalm. As it stands in the Psalm, it is a proclamation of man's amazing greatness and dignity: God, it is declared, "made man but little lower than angels, and crowned him with glory and honour." Here, it is not a proclamation of dignity, but a recognition of humiliation: "Him that hath been made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death, we behold, Jesus." It is merely the application of certain words taken out of the Psalm in a new sense to designate Jesus according to a habitual mode of thinking of Him. The writer is making a quick transition, and he feels that when he says, "Him who has been made a little lower than angels," everybody will be struck at once with a little shock of pleased surprise at seeing the words of the Psalm suddenly given a new meaning and will anticipate him in saying to themselves. Why, it is Jesus he means: He was made a little lower than angels when he became man. In other words, the author counts confidently on the doctrine of the Incarnation as present to the thought of his readers, to which he can therefore allude, even in the most unexpected language, with the assurance that they will take his point.

Similarly, he says nothing directly about the Atoning work of Christ, but simply alludes to it in a word or two which in themselves might bear a less profound significance, but which he knows cannot but be taken in just this meaning by his readers: "Him," he says, "who hath been made a little lower than angels, for the suffering of death." He speaks only of death. Other men besides Jesus have suffered death: every other man, sooner or later, suffers death. In themselves the words, therefore, carry no suggestion of anything unusual in Jesus' case. But the writer knew that every Christian heart would respond, when he spoke of Jesus suffering death, and that with a turn of phrase which called attention to the suffering which He endured in His death, with a thrill of joyful recognition that this suffering of death was not merely the usual payment of the debt of nature, common to man, but was fraught with high significance. This indeed, he subtly suggests, by speaking of Jesus' becoming a little lower than angels for the suffering of death: it was for this purpose that He became man,—that He might endure this death. Other men do not become men to die: Jesus did—and in this he separated Himself from man. Death to Him is His voluntary act, and must be endured, not of necessity, but for an end. With such a suggestion embedded in it, our author can easily trust his bare mention of the death of Jesus to suggest forcibly to his readers all that a full reference to the atonement could convey.

The same is true of his allusion to the Ascension. Of the Ascension itself he says nothing, nor of the Resurrection which preceded it and forms its presupposition. He merely says, still in words borrowed from the description of man's high destiny in the eighth Psalm, that Jesus has been "crowned with glory and honour." With what sort of glory? With what kind of honour? Perhaps the glory and honour of the grateful memory of men? The inscription of His name on some monument, in some hall of fame? Or, possibly, on the hearts of His grateful followers? Does he mean that all history will ring with His praise, and, like the widow who cast in her mite at the treasury of the Temple, this that He did shall be remembered in His honour through all generations? Nothing of the kind. He means the actual session of Jesus upon the throne of the universe, that He may reign with a real rule over all principalities and powers and mights and dominions. But the words which he employs do not themselves say this. That he leaves to the natural understanding of his readers, whom he knows he can trust to read into his bare allusion to the crowning of Jesus with glory and honour the whole body of facts concerning His exaltation, including His resurrection and ascension and session at the right hand of God, thence expecting till He shall make His enemies His footstool.

You see how remarkable our text is for its confident dealing with this great circle of Christian doctrines by way of allusion. It is as plain as day that these things were not novelties to the writer or to his readers. They were not things about which he felt that he must instruct his readers; or even which they required to be reminded of in detail. They were things which stood to them and himself, alike, as the basis of their faith and hope. It is, therefore, also clear that these doctrines, thus suggested by way of allusion, do not constitute the specific teaching of our text. We do not deal with our main purpose in writing by way of allusion. The burden of the text is found, therefore, not in these great doctrines of the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Session at the right hand of God, which are brought before us in it, richly, powerfully, movingly, indeed, but, in point of mode of presentation, allusively. It is to be found in the final clause of the text, up to which they lead, and which describes the purpose, for which the incarnated Son of God, having become man and suffered death, has been crowned with glory and honour. This purpose was—I re-translate the words in an effort to bring out their true sense and relations—"in order that this. His bitter experience of death, may by the grace of God redound to the benefit of every man."

As it is in these words that the real message of the text is delivered to us, they demand our most careful scrutiny. To place them in their proper relation, let us observe in the first place that the clause goes back to the preceding words, "Because of the suffering of death"; and finds its true sense only when read in reference to them. Jesus Christ became man that He might die; and He has been crowned with glory and honour that this, His death, might by God's grace redound to the benefit of man. We are justified in rendering the strong Greek verb—"that He may taste of death"—by the strong English substantive—"that His bitter experience of death," on the general rule, which used to be so fertilely emphasized by Edward Thring, that it is the verb in the one language and the substantive in the other that is the strong word, and that our translations, if they are to be true to the stress of the original, must bear this in mind.

But perhaps it is worth while to pause to point out that the idea intended to be conveyed by the phrase "tasting of death" is a strong and not a weak one. Many, no doubt, when they read of our Lord's "tasting death," take it as implying that He merely "had a taste of death," as we say,—passed through it with the minimum of conscious experience of its terror. Precisely the contrary is what is really meant. What the phrase signifies is that He was not a merely passive subject of death, of whom it is merely to be said that He died, and that is all of it: but that He drained this bitter cup to its dregs. It is the horror and the pains of death that are thrown up boldly for our contemplation by this phrase; and therefore it is used to take up again the preceding phrase,—"the suffering of death," a phrase which by an unexpected turn of expression itself emphasizes the sufferings of death. Jesus became a man not merely that He might suffer death, but that He might endure the sufferings of death. He was not merely the object on which death wrought; He in dying suffered, had strong agonies to endure. And now, our present clause adds that this dreadful cup of death was drunk by Him, for a high end,—that by God's grace benefits might be secured for men.

Let us not pass on too rapidly to remind ourselves that in these words lies the emphasis not only of our text, but of this entire Epistle. For one of the great objects of this Epistle was to exhibit the glory of the death of Christ. To those old Jewish Christians for whom the Epistle was written, the offence of Jesus was—what the offence of Jesus has been ever since to all who, though not of Jewish blood, are of Jewish hearts—just the cross. Jesus as God's "interpreter," the supreme prophet, revealing by word and deed what God is and what God intends for man: Jesus as God's "messenger," the supernal agent in the divine work of gathering His people to Himself: these were ideas familiar to them, to which they gave immediate and glad hospitality. But Jesus, the bruised and broken sufferer hanging on the accursed tree,—it was hard for them to adjust themselves to that; and this it was which, first of all things, as the cruelties of their lot shook their courage and faith, they were in danger of drifting away from. This it was, therefore, which, first of all things, the author of this Epistle desired to fix in their hearts as too precious to lose hold of; as, indeed, the very centre and core of their Christianity, first spoken by the Lord Himself, and confirmed to them by those who heard Him, God bearing witness with them with signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, distributed according to His will. And therefore he gives his strength in the paragraph of which our text forms a part to carrying home to them these two great truths: that it became God—seeing that He it is to whom all things tend as their end and through whom all things come to pass as their director and governor,—without whom, therefore, as end and means, nothing takes place—to lead many sons to glory; and that it became Him equally to make the Leader in their salvation perfect—that is, to bring His saving work to the completion which is its accomplishment—through suffering. These are the two ideas, you will perceive at once, which, though they are announced in the form in which I have just stated them only in the next verse, yet already dominate our text. For precisely what our text seeks to emphasize is that Jesus passed through sufferings to glory; and that the reason why these sufferings were crowned with glory was in order that they might be made to inure to the benefit of every one.

There still remain two or three points which require elucidation before the precise message of the text may be grasped with clearness. Perhaps the first of these that will strike us is that the text does not directly announce the reason why Jesus suffered. As I have already pointed out, it does not say explicitly that Jesus suffered that many might enter into glory; but rather only that He has been crowned with honour and glory that His sufferings might inure to the good of every one. For all that is openly asserted in this verse by itself, it might be plausibly argued that the saving power of Jesus resided in His session at the right hand of God, rather than in His death; though no doubt we should be given pause in pushing this notion by observing that after all His kingly power is not represented as itself the saving force, but only as needed to secure its proper efficacy to His death: "That the bitterness of His death should inure to the good of every one." And the context speedily supplies all that may be thought wanting in the text itself. We are immediately told that it was becoming in our Lord as the Leader in our salvation to partake in all that belongs to those whom He would lead to glory, since only so could he open the way for them to this glory: He must through death bring to naught Him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Obviously it is sin that blocks the way to their ascent to glory, and soon we find it expressly declared that the reason why our Lord was made in all things like unto His brethren was that as a merciful and faithful high priest He might make propitiation for the sins of the people. We must not, therefore, infer from the absence of express mention of it in our text that the author of our Epistle did not look upon the sufferings and death of Christ as primarily and above all the expiation of sin: or imagine that this idea does not underlie and colour the language of the text and need not be held in mind by us as part of its presupposition. On the contrary, this is one of the main foundations, as of the whole argument of the Epistle, so of our text as well.

Meanwhile it is not thrown forward in our text, and the reason is, as has already been intimated, that the aspect of salvation which is for the moment engrossing the mind of the author is not that of deliverance from the curse of sin. He is looking at salvation at this point of his argument not on its negative, but on its positive side. His mind is not full at the moment of what man is saved from, but with what man is saved to. He cannot help speaking of the sufferings of Christ, and throwing these sufferings out in the highest relief: for it was in and through these sufferings that Christ saved us. But His eye is set, not on the depths out of which this salvation has raised us, but on the heights to which it promises to elevate us. This is what is swelling in his heart when he calls it "so great salvation." And the specific aspect of its greatness which is occupying his attention is the universal dominion which it brings to saved mankind. O the greatness of this salvation, which Jesus Christ has wrought for us, he seems to cry; by it we are elevated well-nigh to the throne of God itself, and all creation is placed beneath our feet!

It is especially important to note the completeness of the writer's preoccupation at this point with the positive side of salvation, and, indeed, with the particular aspect of the positive side of salvation which consists in the establishing of mankind in its destined dominion over the creation, in order that we may understand another peculiarity of his exposition. This is the apparent inclusion of Christ Himself among those who share in the salvation adverted to. Nothing could be further from our author's mind than that theory of the atonement, sometimes vividly called the theory of "salvation by sample," which conceives our Lord in His incarnation to have taken sinful flesh, and to have participated in His own work of saving humanity from sin. Our author is express in his assertion that our Lord was "without sin," although He was offered specifically to bear the sins of many; and He makes it a part of our Lord's superiority to the priest of the shadow-dispensation that He did not require as the priest did to offer sacrifice for Himself as well as for the people. Our author no more than the other writers of the New Testament imagined Jesus to participate in His own propitiation for sin. Yet, in this context, he speaks of Him as "the Leader in salvation," making use of a term variously rendered, "Author," "Captain," "Prince," of salvation, which may seem to imply that He leads in salvation because He is the first to take part in it, as well as the principal cause of it; as we may speak of a bad man as the leader in all the evil in which a coterie under his influence indulges; or, more appropriately in this connection, of a good man as the leader in all the good works his example inspires; or, even better still, of a great popular saviour like Washington as the leader of his people into freedom and power. And, indeed, our whole passage is cast in some such mould as this. For what does it do but bid us see in the exaltation of Jesus to the throne of the universe, the fulfilment in principle of the promise in the Psalm of universal dominion to man, which is here identified with the great salvation earned by Christ? The explanation of this apparent inclusion of Jesus Himself in His own saving work, is found in the engrossment of the writer with the positive aspect of salvation, and that as manifested in dominion over the creation, to the exclusion for the moment of contemplation of its whole negative side.

The negative aspect of salvation, no doubt, enters too deeply into the very essence of salvation ever to be wholly out of mind when the work of Christ is spoken of. And therefore, though the immediate interest of the writer, in our text, rests not so much on the relation of Christ's death to the guilt which it expiates, as on its relation to the glory which it purchases, yet he not only alludes to His death, but throws it into prominence as the basis of all that Jesus has obtained for men. And certainly there is no forget fulness apparent that it was for others, not for Himself, that all our Lord's work was done. The very purpose for which the whole passage was written is to emphasize the fact that it was not for Himself but for others that our Lord wrought: and that purpose is nowhere more emphatically asserted than in this very culminating clause of our text, the assertion of which is precisely that our Lord's bitter experience of death was on behalf of others: "In order that, thus, His tasting of death might by God's grace inure to the benefit of every man." The energy of this expression is so great, in fact, that we may possibly be misled by it into attaching a meaning to it which was certainly not intended by its author. By his use here of the term "every man"—"in order that He might taste of death for every man"—the author has no intention of asserting a universal salvation. As we are reminded by a recent commentator, he "nowhere expresses hope or expectation of universal redemption." His interest is not in asserting that each and every man who lives in the world, or has lived or will live in it, shall attain to the universal dominion promised through the Psalmist. He knows very well that this will not be the case; no one could be more earnest than he is in warning his readers against neglecting this great salvation and incurring the fate of thorns and thistles whose end is to be burned. And the refinement of a universal redemption which does not take universal effect, but hangs for its reahzation upon a condition to be fulfilled by the redeemed themselves, is foreign to his whole thought. He is speaking in our text moreover not of the intention with which Christ died, but of the realization of that intention through the power of the ascended Christ. His interest is absorbed in the contrast between Jesus' earning the promised dominion for Himself alone, and His earning it for others. What he asserts, and that with the highest energy, is that Jesus did not act for Himself in the great transaction which he speaks of as this "so great salvation," but for others: and that the result of it is not that by it He Himself attained to honour and glory, but that He by it led a multitude of sons of God into glory. And therefore the "every one" of this verse is immediately translated into the "many sons" of the next: "For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, to bring many sons into glory."

Certainly there is a sense in which this "every one" is the human race. Jesus' endurance of death for every one is set forth as the ground on which the fulfilment of the Psalmist's promise is based. And that promise was that to man should be give dominion over creation. The nerve of the assertion our author makes is that Christ's ascension to His glory is in order that His death, suffered on earth, should bring about this great consummation: "In order that by God's grace His endurance of death may be for every one,"—that is, may redound to the glorification, the establishment on its destined throne, not of Himself, but of the human race. The promise is to the human race; Christ is but the instrument of securing its fulfilment to the race. He enters His glory not for Himself, any more than He died for Himself; but that He might bring about the glorification of the race. "Every one" means here, thus, simply the race at large, and its peculiar form is not intended to distribute the race into its units, and to declare that the consummation shall fail for no one of these units; but with the greatest possible energy to assert the racial effect of our Lord's work. Not for Himself, but for man it was that He died; not for Himself, but for man it was that He has ascended into heaven and has seated Himself on the right hand of God; not for Himself, but for man is it that He has been crowned with glory and honour, that His death may not be of no effect, but by God's grace His endurance of death may inure to the benefit of mankind.

And now, perhaps, we are prepared tardily to throw into its proper relief the especial message of the text for us. What is it but this: The necessity of the exaltation of Christ for the completion of His saving work? We are accustomed to think of Christ dying for us. Let us remember that He not only died for us, but rose again for us: Paul says that He who was delivered up for our trespasses was raised for our justification. And let us remember that He was not only raised for us, but ascended into heaven for us and sits at the right hand of God for us. It was therefore that our Lord declared that it was expedient for us that He should go away, and that Paul exhorts us to remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David. What our author does when he declares that we behold Jesus, made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that His bitter experience of death may be for the benefit of every one, is to fix our eyes on the saving work of the exalted Jesus. If He died to expiate our sins. He reigns in heaven that He may apply the benefits accruing from that expiation to His people, and may thus bring them into the glory He has purchased for them. If, says Paul, while we were enemies, we were reconciled with God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. Christ no more died for us two thousand years ago at Calvary, than He now lives for us in heaven. 

An exhortation to fix our eyes on the exalted Saviour was eminently timely when this Epistle was written; and it is no less timely to-day after the passage of these two thousand years. Then, the Hebrew Christians, puzzled and distressed by the spectacle of a suffering Christ, needed to have their hearts cheered and their faith steadied by the great vision of the exalted Christ: they needed to be continually reminded that Jesus died, not for Himself but for man, and that His death cannot fail of its high purpose, seeing that He Himself, sitting on the throne of the universe, will see to it that the seed that was sown in sorrow shall produce a harvest which shall be reaped in joy: He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. And we to-day, in the special trials to faith which an age of critical doubt has brought to us, need to keep in constant remembrance that our trust is put not in a dead, but in a living Christ,—in a Christ who died, indeed, but whom the tomb could not retain, but lo! He is alive for evermore. The fashionable, I do not say unbelief, I say the fashionable belief, about us to-day, forgets or neglects, or openly turns its back upon the living Christ, and bids us seek inspiration for our lives and hope for our future, in a Jesus who lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago,—and that was all. Dimly seen through the ever-increasing obscurity of the gathering years, that great figure has still the power to attract the gaze and to quicken the pulses—yes, to dominate the lives—of men. This is, no doubt, much; but so little is it all, that it is the least of what we are to seek and to find in Jesus Christ. He is our inspiration; and, knowing Him better than these, our would-be guides, know Him, He is also our example. But He is so much more than our inspiration or even our example, that we need scarcely think of these things when we think of Him: He is our life. And He is our life not only because He has washed out in His blood the death-warrant that had been issued against us—giving, as He Himself phrased it. His life as a ransom for many—but also because, after He had purchased us to Himself  by His precious blood, He has become to us the living fountain and ever-flowing source of life and blessedness. Jesus on the cross is our Saviour; and it is our privilege to behold Him on His cross, an all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins. But Jesus on His throne is our Saviour too; and it is our privilege to-day, as we read the lofty words of this great declaration of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to behold Him on His throne, crowned with glory and honour, that His tasting of death may by God's grace be the actual salvation of our souls.

Let us fix our eyes and set our hearts to-day, then, on our exalted Saviour. Let us see Him on His throne made head over all things to His Church, with all the reins of government in His hands,—ruling over the world, and all the changes and chances of time, that all things may work together for good to those that love Him. Let us see Him through His spirit ruling over our hearts, governing all our thoughts, guiding all our feelings, directing all our wills, that, being His, saved by His blood, we may under His unceasing control steadily work out our salvation, as He works in us both the willing and the doing, in accordance with His good pleasure. As, in our unrighteousness, we know we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,—or, as our own Epistle puts it, a great High Priest who has entered within the veil and ever liveth to make intercession there for us: so let us know that in our weakness we have the protecting arm of the King of kings and Lord of lords about us, and He will not let us slip, but will lose none that the Father has given Him, but will raise them up at the last day. Having been tempted like as we are (though without sin), He is able to sympathize with us in our infirmities; having suffered as we do. He knows how to support us in our trials; and having opened a way in His own blood leading to life, He knows how to conduct our faltering steps that we may walk in it. Christ our Saviour is on the throne. The hands that were pierced with the nails of the cross wield the sceptre. How can our salvation fail?

Art thou afraid His power shall fail
When comes .thine evil day?
Or can an all-creating arm
Grow weary, or decay?

Supreme in wisdom as in power,
The Rock of Ages stands;
Though Him thou canst not see, nor trace
The workings of His hands.

What matters it if we cannot see? There is a firmer foundation for confidence here than sight. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us bless God to-day that we can behold Jesus, not only made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but, having suffered death for us, crowned with glory and honour, that by God's grace the bitter pains He suffered in our behalf may be efficacious for the saving of our souls.

Just one word, in closing, especially to you who have given yourselves to the service of Christ in the ministry of His grace. Remember that you serve a living, not a dead Christ. You are to trust in His blood. In it alone have you life. But you are to remember that He was not broken by death, but broke death; and having purchased you to Himself by His blood, now rules over your souls from His heavenly throne. He is your master whom you are to obey. He has given you commandment to bring all peoples to the knowledge of Him. And He has promised to be with you, even to the end of the world. Live with Him. Keep fast hold upon Him; be in complete touch with Him. Let your hearts dwell with Him in the heavenly places, that the arm of His strength may be with you in your earthly toil. Let this be that by which all men know you: that in good report and in bad, in life and in death, in the great and in the small affairs of life—in everything you do down to the minutest acts of your everyday affairs—you are the servants of the Lord Christ. So will you be truly His disciples, and so will He be your Saviour—unto the uttermost.

God

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from "A Dictionary of the Bible," edited by John D. Davis, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D., 1898, pp. 251-253.

The English word "God" is derived from a root meaning "to call," and indicates simply the object of worship, one whom men call upon or invoke. The Greek word which it translates in the pages of the New Testament, however, describes this object of worship as Spirit; and the Old Testament Hebrew word, which this word in turn represents, conveys, as its primary meaning, the idea of power. On Christian lips, therefore, the word "God" designates fundamentally the almighty Spirit who is worshiped and whose aid is invoked by men. This primary idea of God, in which is summed up what is known as theism, is the product of that general revelation which God makes of Himself to all men, on the plane of nature. The truths involved in it are continually reiterated, enriched, and deepened in the Scriptures; but they are not so much revealed by them as presupposed at the foundation of the special revelation with which the Scriptures busy themselves - the great revelation of the grace of God to sinners. On the plane of nature men can learn only what God necessarily is, and what, by virtue of His essential attributes, He must do; a special communication from Him is requisite to assure us what, in His infinite love, He will do for the recovery of sinners from their guilt and misery to the bliss of communion with Him. And for the full revelation of this, His grace in the redemption of sinners, there was requisite an even more profound unveiling of the mode of His existence, by which He has been ultimately disclosed as including in the unity of His being a distinction of persons, by virtue of which it is the same God from whom, through whom, and by whom are all things, who is at once the Father who provides, the Son who accomplishes, and the Spirit who applies, redemption. Only in the uncovering of this supernal mystery of the Trinity is the revelation of what God is completed. That there is no hint of the Trinity in the general revelation made on the plane of nature is due to the fact that nature has nothing to say of redemption, in the process of which alone are the depths of the divine nature made known. That it is explicitly revealed only in the New Testament is due to the fact that not until the New Testament stage of revelation was reached was the redemption, which was being prepared throughout the whole Old Testament economy, actually accomplished. That so ineffable a mystery was placed before the darkened mind of man at all is due to the necessities of the plan of redemption itself, which is rooted in the trinal distinction in the Godhead, and can be apprehended only on the basis of the Trinity in Unity. 

The nature of God has been made known to men, therefore, in three stages, corresponding to the three planes of revelation, and we will naturally come to know Him, first, as the infinite Spirit or the God of nature; then, as the Redeemer of sinners, or the God of grace; and lastly as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or the Triune God. 

I. GOD, THE INFINITE SPIRIT 

The conviction of the existence of God bears the marks of an intuitive truth in so far as it is the universal and unavoidable belief of men, and is given in the very same act with the idea of self, which is known at once as dependent and responsible and thus implies one on whom it depends and to whom it is responsible. This immediate perception of God is confirmed and the contents of the idea developed by a series of arguments known as the "theistic proofs." These are derived from the necessity we are under of believing in the real existence of the infinitely perfect Being, of a sufficient cause for the contingent universe, of an intelligent author of the order and of the manifold contrivances observable in nature, and of a lawgiver and judge for dependent moral beings, endowed with the sense of duty and an ineradicable feeling of responsibility, conscious of the moral contradictions of the world and craving a solution for them, and living under an intuitive perception of right which they do not see realized. The cogency of these proofs is currently recognized in the Scriptures, while they add to them the supernatural manifestations of God in a redemptive process, accompanied at every stage by miraculous attestation. From the theistic proofs, however, we learn not only that a God exists, but also necessarily, on the principle of a sufficient cause, very much of the nature of the God which they prove to exist. The idea is still further developed, on the principle of interpreting by the highest category within our reach, by our instinctive attribution to Him, in an eminent degree, of all that is the source of dignity and excellence in ourselves. Thus we come to know God as a personal Spirit, infinite, eternal, and illimitable alike in His being and in the intelligence, sensibility, and will which belong to Him as personal spirit. The attributes which are thus ascribed to Him, including self-existence, independence, unity, uniqueness, unchangeableness, omnipresence, infinite knowledge and wisdom, infinite freedom and power, infinite truth, righteousness, holiness and goodness, are not only recognized but richly illustrated in Scripture, which thus puts the seal of its special revelation upon all the details of the natural idea of God. 

II. GOD, THE REDEEMER OF SINNERS 

While reiterating the teaching of nature as to the existence and character of the personal Creator and Lord of all, the Scriptures lay their stress upon the grace or the undeserved love of God, as exhibited in His dealings with His sinful and wrath-deserving creatures. So little, however, is the consummate divine attribute of love advanced, in the Scriptural revelation, at the expense of the other moral attributes of God, that it is thrown into prominence only upon a background of the strongest assertion and fullest manifestation of its companion attributes, especially of the divine righteousness and holiness, and is exhibited as acting only along with and in entire harmony with them. God is not represented in the Scriptures as forgiving sin because He really cares very little about sin; nor yet because He is so exclusively or predominatingly the God of love, that all other attributes shrink into desuetude in the presence of His illimitable benevolence. He is rather represented as moved to deliver sinful man from his guilt and pollution because He pities the creatures of His hand, immeshed in sin, with an intensity which is born of the vehemence of His holy abhorrence of sin and His righteous determination to visit it with intolerable retribution; and by a mode which brings as complete satisfaction to His infinite justice and holiness as to His unbounded love itself. The Biblical presentation of the God of grace includes thus the richest development of all His moral attributes, and the God of the Bible is consequently set forth, in the completeness of that idea, as above everything else the ethical God. And that is as much as to say that there is ascribed to Him a moral sense so sensitive and true that it estimates with unfailing accuracy the exact moral character of every person or deed presented for its contemplation, and responds to it with the precisely appropriate degree of satisfaction or reprobation. The infinitude of His love is exhibited to us precisely in that while we were yet sinners He loved us, though with all the force of His infinite nature he reacted against our sin with illimitable abhorrence and indignation. The mystery of grace resides just in the impulse of a sin-hating God to show mercy to such guilty wretches; and the supreme revelation of God as the God of holy love is made in the disclosure of the mode of His procedure in redemption, by which alone He might remain just while justifying the ungodly. For in this procedure there was involved the mighty paradox of the infinitely just Judge Himself becoming the sinner's substitute before His own law and the infinitely blessed God receiving in His own person the penalty of sin.  

III. GOD, THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST 

The elements of the plan of salvation are rooted in the mysterious nature of the Godhead, in which there coexists a trinal distinction of persons with absolute unity of essence; and the revelation of the Trinity was accordingly incidental to the execution of this plan of salvation, in which the Father sent the Son to be the propitiation for sin, and the Son, when He returned to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, sent the Spirit to apply His redemption to men. The disclosure of this fundamental fact of the divine nature, therefore, lagged until the time had arrived for the actual working out of the long-promised redemption; and it was accomplished first of all in fact rather than in word, by the actual appearance of God the Son on earth and the subsequent manifestations of the Spirit, who was sent forth to act as His representative in His absence. At the very beginning of Christ's ministry the three persons are dramatically exhibited to our sight in the act of His baptism. And though there is no single passage in Scripture in which all the details of this great mystery are gathered up and expounded, there do not lack passages in which the three persons are brought together in a manner which exhibits at once their unity and distinctness. The most prominent of these are perhaps the formula of baptism in the triune name, put into the mouths of His followers by the resurrected Lord (Matt. xxviii. 19), and the apostolic benediction in which a divine blessing is invoked from each person in turn (II Cor. xiii. 14). The essential elements which enter into and together make up this great revelation of the Triune God are, however, most commonly separately insisted upon. The chief of these are the three constitutive facts: (1) that there is but one God (Deut. vi. 4; Isa. xliv. 6; I Cor. viii. 4; Jas. ii. 19); (2) that the Father is God (Matt. xi. 25; John vi. 27; viii. 41; Rom. xv. 6; I Cor. viii. 6; Gal. i. 1, 3, 4; Eph. iv. 6; vi. 23; I Thess. i. 1; Jas. i. 27; iii. 9; I Pet. i. 2; Jude 1); the Son is God (John i. 1, 18; xx. 28; Acts xx. 28; Rom. ix. 5; Heb. i. 8; Col. ii. 9; Phil. ii. 6; II Pet. i. 1); and the Spirit is God (Acts v. 3, 4; I Cor. ii. 10, 11; Eph. ii. 22); and (3) that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are personally distinct from one another, distinguished by personal pronouns, able to send and be sent by one another, to love and honor each the other, and the like (John xv. 26; xvi. 13, 14; xvii. 8, 18, 23; xvi. 14; xvii. 1). The doctrine of the Trinity is but the synthesis of these facts, and, adding nothing to them, simply recognizes in the unity of the Godhead such a Trinity of persons as is involved in the working out of the plan of redemption. In the prosecution of this work there is implicated a certain relative subordination in the modes of operation of the several persons, by which it is the Father that sends the Son and the Son who sends the Spirit; but the three persons are uniformly represented in Scripture as in their essential nature each alike God over all, blessed forever (Rom. ix. 5); and we are therefore to conceive the subordination as rather economical, that is, relative to the function of each in the work of redemption, than essential, that is, involving a difference in nature.

God Our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

From The Princeton Theological Review, v. xv, 1917, pp. 1-20.

In the opening sentence of the very first of Paul's letters which have come down to us - and that is as much as to say, in the very first sentence which, so far as we know, he ever wrote, - he makes use of a phrase in speaking of the Christians' God, which at once attracts our interested attention. According to the generous way he had of thinking and speaking of his readers at the height of their professions, he describes the church at Thessalonica as living and moving and having its being in God. But, as it was a Christian church which he was addressing, he does not content himself, in this description, with the simple term "God." He uses the compound phrase, "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The Thessalonians, he says, because they were Christians, lived and moved and had their being "in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

It is quite clear that this compound phrase was not new on Paul's lips, coined for this occasion. It bears on its face the evidence of a long and familiar use, by which it had been worn down to its bare bones. All the articles have been rubbed off, and with them all other accessories; and it stands out in its baldest elements as just "God Father and Lord Jesus Christ." Plainly we have here a mode of speaking of the Christians' God which was customary with Paul.

We are not surprised, therefore, to find this phrase repeated in precisely the same connection in the opening verses of the next letter which Paul wrote - II Thessalonians - with only the slight variation that an "our" is inserted with "God the Father," - "in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The significance of this variation is, probably, that, although it is a customary formula which is being employed, it has not hardened into a mechanically repeated series of mere words. It is used with lively consciousness of its full meaning, and with such slight variations of wording from time to time as the circumstances of each case, or perhaps the mere emotional movement of the moment, suggested.

This free handling of what is, nevertheless, clearly in essence a fixed formula, is sharply illustrated by a third instance of its occurrence. Paul uses it again in the opening sentence of the third letter which he wrote, - that to the Galatians. Here it is turned, however, end to end, while yet preserving all its essential elements; and is set in such a context as to throw its fundamental meaning into very strong emphasis. Paul was called upon to defend to the Galatians the validity of his apostleship, and he characteristically takes occasion to assert, in the very first words which he wrote to them, that he received it from no human source, - no, nor even through any human intermediation, - but directly from God. The way he does this is to announce himself as "an apostle not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father" - "who," he adds, "raised Him from the dead." The effect of the addition of these last words is to throw the whole emphasis of the clause on "Jesus Christ"; even "God the Father" is defined in relation to Him. Yet the whole purpose of the sentence is to assert the divine origin of Paul's apostleship in strong contrast with any possible human derivation of it. Clearly, the phrase "Jesus Christ and God the Father" denotes something purely Divine. It is in effect a Christian periphrasis for "God." And in this Christian periphrasis for "God" the name of Jesus Christ takes no subordinate place.

It will conduce to our better apprehension of the nature and implications of this Christian periphrasis for "God" which Paul employs in the opening words of each of the first three of his epistles, if we will set side by side the actual words in which it is phrased in these three instances.

I Thess. i. 1: evn qew|/ patri. kai. kuri,w|  vIhsou/ Cristw|/.
II Thess. i. 1: evn qew|/ patri. h`mw/n kai. kuri,w|  vIhsou/ Cristw|/. 
Gal. i. 1:  dia.  vIhsou/ Cristou/ kai. qeou/ patro.j tou/ evgei,rantoj auvto.n evk nekrw/n.

It is not, however, merely or chiefly in these three instances that Paul uses this Christian periphrasis for God. It is the apostle's custom to bring the address which he prefixes to each of his letters to a close in a formal prayer that the fundamental Christian blessings of grace and peace (or, in the letters to Timothy, grace, mercy and peace) may be granted to his readers. In this prayer he regularly employs this periphrasis to designate the Divine Being to whom the prayer is offered. It fails to appear in this opening prayer in two only of his thirteen letters; and its failure to appear in these two is useful in fixing its meaning in the other eleven. It is quite clear that Paul intends to say the same thing in all thirteen instances: they differ only in the fulness with which he expresses his identical meaning. When he says in I Thess. i. 1 only "Grace to you and peace," he is not expressing a mere wish; he is invoking the Divine Being in prayer; and his mind is as fully on Him as if he had formally named Him. And when he names this Divine Being whom he is invoking in this prayer, in Col. i. 2, "God our Father," -"Grace to you and peace from God our Father" - his meaning is precisely the same as when he names Him in the companion letter, Eph. i. 2, "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" - "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" - or in a similar prayer at the end of the same letter, Eph. vi. 23, "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" - "Peace to the brethren and love along with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." In every instance Paul is invoking the Divine Being and only the Divine Being. Once he leaves that to be understood from the nature of the case. Once he names this Being simply "God the Father." In the other eleven instances he gives Him the conjunct name, which ordinarily takes the form of "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ," - obviously employing a formula which had become habitual with him in such formal prayers.

That we may see at a glance how clear it is that Paul is making use here of a fixed formula in his designation of the Christians' God, and may observe at the same time the amount of freedom which he allows himself in repeating it in these very formal prayers, we bring together the series of these opening prayers, in the chronological order of the epistles in which they occur.

I Thess. i. 1: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh.
II Thess. i. 2: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Gal. i. 3: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
I Cor. i. 3: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
II Cor. i. 2: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. Qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Rom. i. 7: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Eph. i. 2: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou   vIhsou/ Cristou/.
[Eph. vi. 23: eivrh,nh toi/j avdelqoi/j kai. avga,ph meta. pi,stewj avpo. qeou/ patro.j kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.]
Col. i. 2: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou   vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Phile. 3: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou   vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Phil. i. 2: ca,rij u`mi/n kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou   vIhsou/ Cristou/.
I Tim. i. 2: ca,rij e;leoj eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j kai. Cristou/  vIhsou/ tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n.
Tit. i. 4: ca,rij kai. eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j kai. Cristou/   vIhsou/ tou/ swth/roj h`mw/n.
II Tim. i. 2: ca,rij e;leoj eivrh,nh avpo. qeou/ patro.j kai. Cristou/   vIhsou/ tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n.

Alfred Seeberg, seeking evidence of the survival of old Christian formulas in the literature of the New Testament, very naturally fixes on these passages, and argues that we have here a combination of the names of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer which Paul found already in use in the Christian community when he attached himself to it, and which he took over from it. It is a hard saying when Ernst von Dobschutz professes himself ready to concede that Paul received this combination of names from his predecessors, but sharply denies that he received it as a "fixed formula." One would have supposed it to lie on the face of Paul's use of it that he was repeating a formula; while it might be disputed whether it was a formula of his own making or he had adopted it from others. It goes to show that it was not invented by Paul, that it is found not only in other connections in Paul's writings, as we have seen, but also in other New Testament books besides his.

Jas. i. 1: qeou/ kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/ dou/loj.
II Pet. i. 2: evn evpignw,sei tou/ qeou/ kai.  vIhsou/ tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n.
II Jno. 3: e;stai meq v h`mw/n ca,rij e;leoj eivrh,nh para. qeou/ patro.j kai. para.  vIhsou/ Cristou/ tou/ ui`ou/ tou/ patro,j.

In the presence of these passages it is difficult to deny that we have in the closely knit conjunction of these two Divine names part of the established phraseology of primitive Christian religious speech.

It would not be easy to exaggerate the closeness with which the two names are knit together in this formula. The two persons brought together are not, to be sure, absolutely identified. They remain two persons, to each of whom severally there may be ascribed activities in which the other does not share. In Gal i. 1 we read of "Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead." In Gal. i. 3, we read of "God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins." The epithets by which they are described, moreover, are distinctive, - the Father, our Father, the Lord, our Lord, our Saviour. There is no obscuration, then, of the peculiarities of the personalities brought together. But their equalization is absolute. And short of thoroughgoing identification of persons the unity expressed by their conjunction seems to be complete.

How complete this unity is may be illustrated by another series of passages. J. B. Lightfoot has called attention to the symmetrical structure of the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. Each is divided into two parts ("the first part being chiefly narrative and explanatory, and the second hortatory"), and each of these parts closes with a prayer introduced by auvto.j de, followed by the Divine name, - a construction not found elsewhere in these epistles. Clearly there is formal art at work here; and it will repay us to bring together the opening words of the four prayers, including the designations by which God is invoked in each.

I Thess. iii. 11: auvto.j de, o` qeo.j kai. path.r h`mw/n kai. o` ku,rioj h`mw/n  vIhsou/j.
I Thess. v. 23: auvto.j de, o` qeo.j th/j eivrh,nhj.
II Thess. ii. 16: auvto.j de, o` ku,rioj h`mw/n  vIhsou/j Cristo.j kai. o` qeo.j o` path.r h`mw/n o` avgaph,saj h`ma/j kai. dou.j para,klhsin aivwni,an kai. evlpi,da avgaqh.n evn ca,riti.
II Thess. iii. 16: auvto.j de, o` ku,rioj th/j eivrh,nhj.

It is remarkable how illuminating the mere conjunction of these passages is. Taking I Thess. iii. 11 in isolation, we might wonder whether we ought to read it, "God Himself, even our Father and our Lord Jesus," or "Our God and Father Himself, and our Lord Jesus," or "Our God and Father and our Lord Jesus, Himself." So, taking it in isolation, we might hesitate whether we should construe II Thess. ii. 16, "Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father," or "Our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, Himself." The commentators accordingly divide themselves among these views, each urging reasons which scarcely seem convincing for his choice. But so soon as we bring the passages together it becomes clear that the auvto,j is to be construed with the whole subject following it in every case, and thus a solid foundation is put beneath the opinion arrived at on other grounds by Martin Dibelius, Ernst von Dobschütz and J. E. Frame, that in I Thess. iii. 11 and II Thess. ii. 16, the auvto,j binds together the two subjects, God and the Lord, as the conjunct object of Paul's prayer.

The four prayers are in every sense of the word parallel. The petition is substantially the same in all. It cannot be imagined that the Being to whom the several prayers are addressed was consciously envisaged as different. Paul is in every case simply bringing his heart's desire for his converts before his God. Yet, in describing the God before whom he lays his petition, he fairly exhausts the possibilities of variety of designation which the case affords. As a result, God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ could not be more indissolubly knit together as essentially one. Both are mentioned in two of the addresses, but the order in which they are mentioned is reversed from one to the other, and all the predicates in both instances are cast in the singular number. In the other two addresses only one is named, but it is a different one in each case, although an identical epithet is attributed to them both. We learn thus not only that Paul prays indifferently to God and to the Lord - in precisely the same way, for precisely the same things, and with precisely the same attitude of mind and heart, expressed in identical epithets, - but also that he prays thus indifferently to God or the Lord separately and to God and the Lord together. And when he prays to the two together, he does all that it is humanly possible to do to make it clear that he is thinking of them not as two but as one. Interchanging the names, so that they stand indifferently in the order "God and the Lord," or "the Lord and God," he binds them together in a single "self "; and then, proceeding with his prayer, he construes this double subject, thus bound together in a single "self," in both cases alike with a singular verb, - "Now our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father who loved us . . . Himself," he prays, "may He comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word." "Now our God and Father and our Lord Jesus, Himself," he prays again, "may He direct our way unto you": and then he proceeds immediately, continuing the prayer, but now with only one name, though obviously with no change in the Being addressed, - "and may the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all men." If it was with any difference of consciousness that Paul addressed God or the Lord, or God and the Lord together, in his prayers, he certainly has taken great pains to obscure that fact. If he had intended to show plainly that to him God and the Lord were so one that God and the Lord conjoined were still one to his consciousness, he could scarcely have found more effective means of doing so. There is probably no instance in all Paul's epistles where God and the Lord are mentioned together, that they are construed with a plural adjective or verb.

We should not pass without notice that it is in the passages from II Thessalonians that o` ku,rioj is given relative prominence. In the two passages from I Thessalonians o` qeo,j comes forward, while in those from II Thessalonians it is o` ku,rioj. That is in accordance with the general character of II Thessalonians, which is distinctively a  ku,rioj epistle. Proportionately to the lengths of the two epistles, while qeo,j occurs about equally often in each,  ku,rioj occurs about twice as often in the second as in the first. We do not pause to inquire into the causes of this superior prominence of  ku,rioj in II Thessalonians, although it may be worth remarking in passing that in both epistles it is relatively prominent in the hortatory portions. Whatever, however, may have been the particular causes which brought about the result in this case, the result is in itself one which could not have been brought about if qeo,j and  ku,rioj had not stood in the consciousness of Paul in virtual equality as designations of Deity. For the phenomenon amounts at its apex, - as we see in the four passages more particularly before us - to the simple replacement of qeo,j by  ku,rioj as the designation of Deity. And that means at bottom that Paul knows no difference between qeo,j and  ku,rioj in point of rank; they are both to him designations of Deity and the discrimination by which the one is applied to the Father and the other to Christ is (so far) merely a convention by which two that are God are supplied with differentiating appellations by means of which they may be intelligibly spoken of severally. With respect to the substance of the matter there seems no reason why the Father might not just as well be called  ku,rioj and Christ qeo,j.

Whether the convention by which the two appellations are assigned respectively to the Father as qeo,j and to Christ as ku,rioj is ever broken by Paul, is a question of little intrinsic importance, but nevertheless of some natural interest. It is probable that Paul never, - not only in these epistles to the Thessalonians, but throughout his epistles, - employs ku,rioj of the Father. The term seems to appear uniformly in his writings, except in a few (not all) quotations from the Old Testament, as a designation of Christ. Thus the Old Testament divine name ku,rioj (Jehovah) is appropriated exclusively to Christ; and that in repeated instances even when the language of the Old Testament is adduced, - which Paul carries over to and applies to Christ as the Lord there spoken of. The question whether Paul ever applies the term qeo,j to Christ is brought sharply before us by the form in which the formula, the use of which we are particularly investigating, occurs in II Thess. i. 12. There we read of Paul's constant prayer that "our God" should count his readers worthy of their calling and fulfil with reference to them every good pleasure of goodness and work of faith with power, to the end that "the name of our Lord Jesus" might be glorified in them, and they in Him, kata. th,n ca,rin tou/ qeou/ h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.

It will probably be allowed that in strictness of grammatical rule, rigidly applied, this should mean, "according to the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ," or, if we choose so to phrase it, "according to the grace of our God, even the Lord Jesus Christ." All sorts of reasons are advanced, however, why the strict grammatical rule should not be rigidly applied here. Most of them are ineffective enough and testify only to the reluctance of expositors to acknowledge that Paul can speak of Christ as "God." This reluctance is ordinarily given expression either in the simple empirical remark that it is not in accordance with the usage of Paul to call Christ God, or in the more far-reaching assertion that it is contrary to Paul's doctrinal system to represent Christ as God. Thus, for example, W. Bornemann comments briefly: "In themselves, these words might be so taken as to call Jesus here both God and Lord. That is, however, improbable, according to the Pauline usage elsewhere." This mild statement is particularly interesting as a recession from the strong ground taken by G. Lünemann, whose commentary on the Thessalonian epistles in the Meyer series Bornemann's superseded. Lünemann argues the question at some length and one might almost say with some heat. "According to Hofmann and Riggenbach," he writes, "Christ is here named both our God and our Lord, - an interpretation which, indeed, grammatically is no less allowable than the interpretation of the doxology o` w'n evpi. pa,ntwn qeo,j euvloghto.j eivj tou.j aivw/naj, Rom. ix. 5, as an apposition to Cristo,j; but is equally inadmissible as it would contain an un-Pauline thought: on account of which also Hilgenfeld, "Zeitschr.f.d. wiss. Theol.," Halle, 1862, p. 264, in the interest of the supposed spuriousness of the Epistle, has forthwith appropriated to himself this discovery of Hofmann." Ernst von Dobschütz, who has superseded Bornemann as Bornemann superseded Lünemann, is as sure as Lünemann that it is un-Pauline to call Christ God; but as he is equally sure that this passage does call Christ God, he has no alternative but to deny the passage to Paul, - though he prefers to deny to him only this passage and not, like Hilgenfeld, the whole Epistle. "But an entirely un-Pauline trait meets us here," he writes, "that to tou/ qeou/ h`mw/n there is added kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/. Not that the combination, God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, is not original-Pauline (see on I Thess. i. 1), but that what stands here must be translated, 'Of our God and Lord Jesus Christ' as Hofmann and Wohlenberg rightly maintain. This, however, is in very fact in the highest degree un-Pauline (Lünemann) in spite of Rom. ix. 5, and has its parallel only in Tit. ii. 13, 'Of our Great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus,' or II Pet. i. 1, 11, 'Of our God (Lord) and Saviour, Jesus Christ."' H. J. Holtzmann, as is his wont, sums up the whole contention crisply: "In the entire compass of the Pauline literature, only II Thess. i. 12 and Tit. ii. 13 supply two equally exegetically uncertain parallels" to Rom. ix. 5 "while, in Eph. iv. 6, God the Father is o1 evpi. pa,ntwn."

It is manifest that reasoning of this sort runs great risk of merely begging the question. The precise point under discussion is whether Paul does ever, or could ever, speak of Christ as God. This passage is offered in evidence that he both can and does. It is admitted that there are other passages which may be adduced in the same sense. There is Rom. ix. 5 which everybody allows to be Paul's own. There is Tit. ii. 13 which occurs in confessedly distinctively "Pauline literature." There is Acts xx. 28, credibly attributed to Paul by one of his pupils. There is II Pet. i. 1 to show that the usage was not unknown to other of the New Testament letter-writers. It is scarcely satisfactory to say that all these passages are as "exegetically uncertain" as II Thess. i. 12 itself. This "exegetical uncertainty" is in each case imposed upon the passage by reluctance to take it in the sense which it most naturally bears, and which is exegetically immediately given. It is as exegetically certain, for example, as any thing can be purely exegetically certain, that in Rom. ix. 5 Paul calls Christ roundly "God over all." It is scarcely to be doubted that this would be universally recognized if Romans could with any plausibility be denied to Paul, or even could be assigned to a date subsequent to that of, say, Colossians. The equivalent may be said of each of the other passages mutatis mutandis. The reasoning is distinctly circular which denies to each of these passages in turn its natural meaning on the ground of lack of supporting usage, when this lack of supporting usage is created by a similar denial on the same ground of its natural meaning to each of the other passages. The ground of the denial in each case is merely the denial in the other cases. Meanwhile the usage is there, and is not thus to be denied away. If it may be, any usage whatever may be destroyed in the same manner.

In these circumstances there seems no reason why the ordinary laws of grammar should not determine our understanding of II Thess. i. 12. We may set it down here, therefore, with its parallels in Tit. ii. 13 and II Pet. i. 1 in which the same general phrasing even more clearly carries this sense.

II Thess. i. 12: th.n ca,rin tou/ qeou/ h`mw/n kai. kuri,ou  vIhsou/ Cristou/.
Tit. ii. 13: kai. evpifa,neian th/j do,xhj tou/ mega,lou qeou/ kai. swth/roj h`mw/n Cristou/  vIhsou/.
II Pet. i. 1: pi,stin evn dikaiosu,nh| tou/ qeou/ h`mw/n kai. swth/roj  vIhsou/ Cristou/.

In these passages the conjunction, in which God and Christ are brought together in the general formula which we are investigating, reaches its culmination in an express identification of them. We have seen that the two are not only united in this formula on terms of complete equality, but are treated as in some sense one. Grammatically at least, they constitute one "self" (auvtoj); and they are presented in nearly every phraseology possible as the common source of Christian blessing and the unitary object of Christian prayer. Their formal identification would seem after this to be a matter of course, and we may be a little surprised that the recognition of it should be so strenuously resisted. The explanation is no doubt to be sought in the consideration that so long as this formal identification is not acknowledged to be expressly made, those who find difficulty in believing that Christ is included by Paul in the actual Godhead may feel the way more or less open to explain away by one expedient or another the identity of the two, manifoldly implied in the general representation indeed, but not formally announced.

Expositor after expositor, at any rate, may be observed introducing into his reproduction of Paul's simple equalization, or rather, unification, of God and the Lord, qualifying phrases of his own which tend to adjust them to his personal way of thinking of the relations subsisting between the two. C. J. Ellicott already found occasion to rebuke this practice in G. Lünemann and A. Koch. The former explains that Paul conjoins Christ with God in his prayers, because, according to Paul's conception - "see Usteri, "Lehrb." ii. 2. 4, p. 315" - Christ, as sitting at the right hand of God, has a part in the government of the world. The latter, going further, asserts that Paul brings the two together only because he regards Christ "as the wisdom and power of God." Few expositors entirely escape the temptation to go thus beyond what is written. It is most common, perhaps, to follow the path in which Lünemann walks, and to declare that Paul unites the two persons because Christ by His exaltation has been made for the time co-regnant with God over the universe, or perhaps only over the Church. Quite frequently, however, it is asserted, more like Koch, that the unity instituted between them amounts merely to a unity of will, or even only to a harmony of operation. At the best it is explained that our Lord is placed by the side of God only because it is through Him as intermediary that the blessings which have their source in God are received or are to be sought. An especially flagrant example of the substitution of quite alien phraseology for Paul's, in a professed restatement of his conception, is afforded by David Somerville in his Cunningham Lectures on "St. Paul's Conception of Christ." He tells us that Paul's "conjunction of God and Christ in his stated greetings to the churches indicated his belief that a co-partnership of Divine power and honor was included in the exaltation of Christ to be Lord." It obviously smacks, however, less of Paul than of Socinus to speak of the relation of Christ to God as a "co-partnership of Divine power and honor," and of this co-partnership of Divine power and honor between them as resulting from Christ becoming Lord by His exaltation.

Benjamin Jowett, with that fine condescension frequently exhibited by the "emancipated," remarks on Chrysostom's comment on Gal. i. 3: "This is the mind not of the Apostolic but of the Nicene age." He does not stay to consider that the mind of his own age and coterie may in such a matter be as much further removed than that of the Nicene age from the mind of the Apostolic age in substance as it is in time. Nevertheless it may be admitted that even the Nicene commentators were prone to read their own conceptions of the relations of Christ to God explanatorily into Paul's simple equalization of them. Athanasius appeals, - as he was thoroughly entitled to do, - to Paul's conjunction of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ as the common source of grace and the common object of prayer, against the Arian contention that the Father and the Son are concordant, indeed, in will but not one in being. In the eleventh section of the third of his Orations against the Arians he gives expression to this appeal thus: "Therefore also, as we said just now, when the Father gives grace and peace, the Son also gives it, as Paul signifies in every epistle, writing, 'Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' For one and the same grace is from the Father in the Son, as the light of the sun and of the radiance is one, and as the sun's illumination is effective through the radiance; and so, when he prays for the Thessalonians, in saying, 'Now God even the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, may He direct our way unto you,' he has guarded the unity of the Father and of the Son. For he has not said, 'May they direct,' as of a double grace given from two, from This and That, but, 'May he direct,' to show that the Father gives it through the Son." This is not to emphasize the unity of the Father and the Son more strongly than Paul does: it is only to repeat Paul's testimony to their unity. But Athanasius cannot repeat Paul's testimony to their unity without interpolating his own conception of the manner in which this unity is to be conceived. One and the same grace comes to us from the Father and the Son, he gives us to understand, because the grace of the Father comes to us in the Son; one and the same prayer is addressed to the Father and the Son, because whatever the Father gives He gives through the Son. This explanation is interpolated into Paul's language. Paul places God and the Lord absolutely side by side, as joint source of the blessings he seeks for his readers; addresses his prayers for benefits he desires for his readers to them in common; treats them, in a word, as one. Athanasius' explanations are, of course, not as gross interpolations into the text as Arius'; but they are no less real interpolations. The outstanding fact governing Paul's collocation of God and the Lord, is that he makes no discrimination between them whatever, but treats them as a unity.

This is well brought out in the remarks of Chrysostom on which Jowett had his eye when he accused him of intruding a Nicene meaning on the text. These remarks are on the prepositions in Gal. i. 1 and Rom. i. 7. Had Paul written in the former of these passages, says Chrysostom, either "through Jesus Christ," or "through God the Father," alone, the Arians would have had their explanation of his having done so, in the interests of some essential distinction between the Father and the Son. But Paul "leaves no opening for such a cavil, by mentioning at once both the Son and the Father, and making the language apply to both." "This he does," he adds, "not as referring the acts of the Son to the Father, but to show that the expression implies no distinction of essence." On Rom. i. 7 he remarks similarly on the use of "from" with both the Father and the Son. "For he did not say, 'Grace be unto you and peace, from God the Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ,' but 'from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."' There is no imposing of a Nicene sense on Paul's language here. There is a simple reflection, as in a clear mirror, of the exact sense of the texts in hand, with an emphasis on their underlying implication of oneness between God and our Lord.

We are constantly pointed to I Cor. viii. 6, to be sure, as in some way supplying a warrant for supposing an unexpressed subordinationism to be hidden beneath the surface of all of Paul's equalizations of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to see how this passage can be made to supply such a warrant. It lies open to the sight of all, of course, that in it the one God the Father and the one Lord Jesus Christ, - who are included in the one only God that, it is understood by all, alone exists, - are differentiated by the particular relations in which the first and the second creations alike are said to stand to them severally. All things are said to be "of" God the Father and "through" the Lord Jesus Christ; Christians are said to be "unto" the one and "by means of" the other. These characterizations are of course, not made at random; and it is right to seek diligently for their significance. It would doubtless be easy, however, to press such prepositional distinctions too far, as such passages as Rom. xi. 36 and Col. i. 16 may advise us. Perhaps it would not be wrong to say that they are to be taken rather eminently than exclusively. What it is at the moment especially important that we observe, however, is that they concern the relations of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ ad extra and say nothing whatever of their relations to one another. With respect to their relations to one another, what the passage tells us is that they are both embraced in that one God which, it is declared with great emphasis, alone exists. We must not permit to fall out of sight that the whole passage is dominated by the clear-cut assertion that "there is no God but one" (verse 4, at the end). Of this assertion the words now particularly before us (verse 6b) are the positive side of an explication and proof (verse 5, ga,r). And the thing for us distinctly to note is that Paul explicates the assertion that there is no God but one by declaring, as if that was quite ad rem, that Christians know but one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ. There meets us here again, we perceive, - as underlying and giving its force to this assertion, - the precise formula we have been having under consideration. And it meets us after a fashion which brings very strikingly to our attention once more that, when Paul says "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ," he has in mind not two Gods, much less two beings of unequal dignity, a God and a Demi-god, or a God and a mere creature, - but just one God. Though Christians have one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, they know but one only God.

The essential meaning of the passage is wholly unaffected by the question whether in the words, "There is no God but one" at the end of verse 4, we have Paul's own language or that of his Corinthian correspondents repeated by him. We may read the verse, if we choose, - perhaps we ought to, - "Concerning the meats offered to idols, then, we are perfectly well aware that, as you say, there is no idol in the world, and there is no God but one." Still, the assertion that there is no God but one rules the succeeding verses, which, introduced as its justification, become in effect a reiteration of it. "There is no God but one, for - for, although there are indeed so-called Gods, whether in heaven or on earth, - as there are Gods a-plenty and Lords a-plenty! - yet for us there is one God the Father . . . and one Lord Jesus Christ. . . ." Obviously this can mean nothing else than that the "one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ" of the Christians is just the one only God which exists. To attempt to make it mean anything else is to stultify the whole argument. You cannot prove that only one God exists by pointing out that you yourself have two.

We are referred, it is true, to the declaration that the heathen have not only many Gods, but also many Lords, and we are bidden to see in their one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ a parallel among the Christians to this state of affairs among the heathen. And then we are further instructed that it is only fair to suppose that Paul felt some difference in grade between the Gods and the Lords of the heathen and, in paralleling the two objects of Christian worship with them respectively, intended to intimate a discrimination in rank between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. On this ground, we are then asked to conclude that Paul does not range the Lord Jesus Christ here along with God the Father within the Godhead, but adjoins Him to God the Father as an additional and inferior object of reverence, placed distinctly as "Lord" outside the category of "God." This whole construction, however, is purely artificial and has no standing ground in the world of realities. There is no evidence that the heathen discriminated between the designations "God" and "Lord" in point of dignity to the disadvantage of the latter; this, at the end of the day, has to be admitted by both Johannes Weiss and W. Bousset, who yet urge that Paul must be supposed to presuppose such a distinction here. Paul, however, intimates in no way at all that he felt any such distinction on his part; on the contrary he includes the "Gods many" and "Lords many" of the heathen without question in their "so-called Gods" on equal terms. Least of all is it possible to separate off "one God the Father" from its fellow "one Lord Jesus Christ," linked to it immediately by the simple "and," and make the former alone refer back to the "There is no God but one." Paul obviously includes both "God the Father" and "the Lord Jesus Christ" within this one only God whom alone he and his readers alike recognize as existing. It would void his whole argument if Jesus Christ were conceived of as a second and inferior object of worship outside the limits of the one only God. The thing which above all others the passage says plainly, is that the acknowledgment by Christians of "one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ" accords with the fundamental postulate that " there is no God but one." And that can mean nothing else than that God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ together make but one God. So far from this passage throwing itself athwart the implications of the repeated employment by Paul, as by others of the writers of the New Testament, of the formula in which God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are conjoined as the one object of Christian prayer and source of Christian blessings, it brings a notable support to them. It supplies what is in effect an explicit assertion of the fact on which this formula implicitly proceeds. It declares that the one God of the Christians includes in His Being both "God the Father" and "the Lord Jesus Christ." Christians acknowledge but one God; and these are the one God which Christians acknowledge.

Something of the same thing that Paul expresses by this conjunction of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, John expresses in his own phraseology by the conjunction of the Father and the Son, - as in I Jno. ii. 24: "If what you heard from the beginning abide in you, you also shall abide in the Son and the Father"; or II Jno. 9, in the reverse order: "He that abideth in the teaching, the same hath the Father and the Son"; as well as in II Jno. 3, already quoted: "Grace, mercy, peace shall be with us, from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father." It is true, but not adequate, to say that John never thinks of Christ apart from God and never thinks of God apart from Christ. With him, to have the Son is to have the Father also, and to have the Father is to have the Son also. The two are as inseparable in fact as in thought. The terminology is different, but the idea is the same as that which underlies Paul's unification of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Clearly the suggestions of this formula carry us into the midst not only of Paul's Christology but of his conception of God - which obviously is not simple. Short of this, they bring us face to face with two matters of great preliminary importance to the correct apprehension of Paul's doctrines of Christ and of God, which have been much discussed of late, not always very illuminatingly. We mean the matters of the significance of the title "Lord" which is so richly applied to Christ in the New Testament writings, and of the meaning of the adoration of Christ which is everywhere reflected in these writings. We must deny ourselves the pleasure of following out these suggestions here. It must content us for the moment to have pointed out a line of approach to the correct understanding of these great matters which, surely, cannot be neglected in any earnest attempt to reach the truth concerning them, and which, if not neglected, will certainly conduct us to very high conclusions in regard to them.

God's Immeasurable Love

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

John iii. 16:—For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

To whom we owe this great declaration of the love of God, it is somewhat difficult to determine; whether to our Lord Himself, or to that disciple who had lain upon His bosom and had imbibed so much of His spirit that he thenceforth spoke with his Master's voice and in his Master's words. Happily it is a matter of no substantial importance. For what difference does it make to you and me whether the Lord speaks to us through His own lips, or through those of His servant, the Apostle, to whom He had promised, and to whom He had given. His Holy Spirit to teach him all the truth? What concerns us is not the instrumentality through which the message comes, but the message itself. And what a great message it is,—the message of the greatness of the love of God! Let us see to it that, as the words sound in our ears, it is this great revelation that fills our hearts, fills them so full as to flood all their being and wash into all their recesses. The greatness of the love of God, the immeasurable greatness of the love of God!

This exhortation is not altogether superfluous. Strange as it may sound, it is true, that many—perhaps the majority—of those who feed their souls on this great declaration, seem to have trained themselves to think, when it falls upon their ears, in the first instance at least, not so much of how great, how immeasurably great, God's love is, as rather of how great the world is. It is the world that God loves, they say,—the world: and forthwith they fall to thinking how great the world is, and how, nevertheless, God loves it all. Think, they cry, of the multitudes of men that swarm over the face of the earth; and have swarmed over it through all the countless generations from the beginning; and will swarm over it in ever-increasing numbers through perhaps even more countless generations yet to come, until the end: and God loves them all, each and every one of them, from the least to the greatest; so loves them that He has given His only begotten Son to die for them, for each and every one of them—and for each and every one of them with the same intent,—the intent, namely, that he may be saved. O how great the love of God must be to embrace in its compass these uncounted multitudes of men; and so to embrace them that every individual that enters as a constituent unit into the mass of mankind receives his full share of it, or rather is inundated by its undivided and undiminished flood!

Certainly this is a great conception. But it is just as certainly not a great enough conception to meet the requirements of our text. For, look you, will you measure the immeasurable greatness of God's love by the measure of man? All these multitudes of men that have lived, do live, or shall live, from the beginning to the end of the world's entire span,—what is their finite sum to the infinitude of God? Lo, the world, and all that is in the world,—and all that has ever been in the world or can ever be in the world, — lies as nothing in the sight of the Infinite One, floats as an evanescent particle in His eternal vision. How can we exalt our conception of the greatness of the divine love by thinking of it as great enough to embrace all this? Can we praise the blacksmith's brawn by declaring it capable of supporting a mustard-seed on an outstretched palm? This standard is too small: we cannot compute such masses in terms of it. Conceive the world as vastly as you may, it remains ever incommeasurable with the immeasurable love of God.

And what warrant does the text offer for conceiving so greatly of the world, or indeed for thinking of it at all under the category of extension, as if it were its size that was oppressing the imagination of the speaker, and its parts—down to the last analysis that were engaging his wondering attention? Evidently the text envisages the world, of which it speaks in the concrete, as a whole. This world is made up of parts, no doubt, and the differing destinies that await the individuals which compose it are adverted to. But the emphasis does not fall upon its component elements, as if their number, for example, could form the ground of the divine love, or explain the wonder of its greatness. Distribution of it into its elements and engagement with the individuals which compose it, is merely the result of the false start made when the mind falls away from contemplating the immensity of the love of God with which the text is freighted, to absorb itself rather in wonder over the greatness of the world which is loved.

And having begun with this false step it is not surprising if the wandering mind finds itself shortly lost in admiration not even of the greatness of the world, but rather of the greatness of the individual soul. These souls of men, each and every one of which God loves so deeply that He has given His Son to die for it,—what great, what noble, what glorious things they must be! what value each of us should place upon this precious soul of ours that God so highly esteemed as to give His Son to die for it! A great and inspiring thought, again, beyond all doubt: but, again, obviously not great enough to be the thought of the text. Clearly, what the text invites us to think of is the greatness of the love of God, not the greatness of the human soul.

And how can we fancy that we can measure the love of God by what He has done for each and every human soul? Persist in reading the text thus distributively, making "the world " mean each and every man that lives on the earth, and what, after all, does it declare that the love of God has done for them? Just open a way of salvation before men, give them an opportunity to save themselves. For, what, in that contingency, does the text assert? Just this: that "God so loved the world''—that is, each and every man that has lived, does live, or shall live in this world,—"that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." "Whosoever believeth on Him,"—those only. Is this, then, the measure of the immeasurable love of God—that He barely opens a pathway to salvation before sinful men, and stops right there; does nothing further for them—leaving it to their own unassisted initiation whether they will walk in it or not? Surely this cannot be the teaching of the text; and that, for many reasons,—primary among which is this: that we all know that the love of God has done much more than this for multitudes of the children of men, namely, has not merely opened a way of salvation before them, but has actually saved them. Nor is our text silent on this point. It is not in this mere opening of a way of salvation before each and every man that the love of God for the world is declared by it to issue, but in the actual saving of the world. We read the next verse and we discover it asserting that God sent His Son into the world for this specific end, that the world should be "saved by Him." God did not then only so love the world as to give it a bare chance of salvation: He so loved the world that He saved the world. And surely this is something far better: and provides a much higher standard by which to estimate the greatness of God's love.

We discover, then, that the distribution of the term "world" in our text into "each and every man" in the world not only begins with the obvious misstep of directing our attention at once rather to the greatness of the world than to the greatness of God's love and only infers the latter from the former; but ends by positively belittling the love of God, as if it could content itself with half-measures,—nay, in numerous instances, with what is practically no measure at all. For if it is satisfied with merely opening a way of salvation and leaving men to walk in this way or not as they list, the hard facts of life force us to add that it is satisfied with merely opening a way of salvation for multitudes to whom it should never be made known that a way of salvation lay open before them, although their sole hope lies in their walking in it. And why dwell on special cases? Shall we not recognize frankly that so meagre a provision would be operative in no case? For even when it is made known to men that a way of salvation is opened before them—can they, being sinners, walk in it? Let our passage itself tell us. Does it not explicitly declare that every one that doeth ill hateth the light and cometh not to the light? And who of us does not know that he, at least,—if not every man,—doeth ill? Does the love of God expend itself then in inoperative manifestations? Surely not so can be measured the love of God, of which the Scriptures tell us that its height and depth, and length and breadth pass knowledge: of which Paul declares that nothing can separate us from it, not death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature: of which he openly asserts, that if it avails to reconcile us with God, through the death of His Son, much more shall it avail to bring us into the fruition of salvation by His life.

Obviously, then, the distribution of the notion "world" in our text into "each and every man" in the world, does less than justice to the infinitude of the love of God which it is plainly the object of the text to exalt in our thought. Reacting from the ineptitudes of this interpretation, and determined at all costs to take the conception of the love of God at the height of its idea, men of deeper insight have therefore suggested that it is not the world at large that is in question in the text, but God's people, the chosen of God in the world. Surely, it is God's seeking, nay, God's finding love that is celebrated here, they argue; the love which goes out to its object with a vigour which no obstacle can withstand, and, despite every difficulty, brings it safely into the shelter of its arms. The "world" that God so loved that He gave His Son for it,—surely that is not the "world" that He loved so little as to leave it to take or leave the Son so given, as its own wayward heart might dictate; but the "world" that He loved enough, after giving His Son for it, prevalently to move upon with His quickening Spirit and graciously to lead into the offered salvation. The "world" of believers, in a word, as they are called in the following clause; or, as they are called elsewhere in Scripture, the "world" of God's elect. It was these whom God loved before the foundations of the world with a love beyond all expression great and strong, constant and prevailing, a love which was not and could not be defeated, just because it was love, the very characteristic of which, Paul tells us, is that it suffereth long, is not provoked, taketh no account of evil, beareth all things, endureth all things, yea, never faileth: and therefore was not and could not be satisfied until it had brought its objects home.

It is very clear that this interpretation has the inestimable advantage over the one formerly suggested, that it penetrates into the heart of the matter and refuses to evacuate the text of its manifest purport. The text is given to enhance in our hearts the conception of the love of God to sinners: to make us to know somewhat of the height and depth and length and breadth of it, though truly is passes knowledge. It will not do, then, as we read it to throw limitations around this love, as if it could not accomplish that whereto it is set. Beyond all question the love which is celebrated is the saving love of God; and the "world" which is declared to be the object of this love is a "world" that is—not merely given an opportunity of salvation—but actually saved. As none but believers—or if you choose to look at them sub specie æternitatis, none but the elect—attain salvation, so it seems but an identical proposition to say that it is just the world of believers, or the world of the elect, that is embraced in the love of God here celebrated. When the text declares, therefore, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for it, is not what is meant, and what must be meant, just the elect scattered throughout the world? It may seem strange to us, indeed, to speak of the elect as "the world." But is not that largely because, in the changed times in which we live, we do not sufficiently poignantly appreciate or deal seriously enough with the universalism of Christianity, in contrast with the nationalism of the old dispensation? In this universalistic and anti-Jewish Gospel of John, especially, what more natural than to find the "world" brought into contrast with Jewish exclusivism? In fine, is not the meaning of our text just this: that Jesus Christ came to make propitiation for the sins not of Jews only, but of the whole world, that is to say, not of course for each and every man that lives in the world, but in any event for men living throughout the world, heirs of the world's life and partakers in the world's fortunes? Certainly it is difficult for us to appreciate the greatness of the revolution wrought in the religious consciousness of men like John, bred in the exclusivism of Judaism and accustomed to think of the Messiah as the peculiar property of Israel, when the world-wide mission of Christianity was brought home to their minds and hearts. To John and men like John its universalism was no doubt well-nigh the most astonishing fact about Christianity. And the declaration that God so loved the world—not Israel merely, but the world—that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever—from every nation, not from the Jews merely—should believe on Him should have eternal life: this great declaration must have struck upon their hearts with a revelation of the wideness of God's mercy and the unfathomable profundities of His love, such as we can scarcely appreciate in our days of age-long familiarity with the great fact. Is not this, then, the real meaning of the immense declaration of the text: that Jesus Christ is the world-wide Saviour, that now the middle-wall of partition has been broken down and God has called to Himself a people out of all the nations of the earth, and has so loved this His people gathered thus from the whole world, that He has given His only begotten Son to die for them? And is not this a truth big with consequences, worthy of such a record as is given it in our text, and capable of awakening in our hearts a most profound response?

Assuredly no one will doubt the value and inspiration of such suggestions. The truth that lies in them, who can gainsay? But it is difficult to feel that they quite exhaust the meaning of the great words of the text. In their effort to do justice to the conception of the love of God, do they not do something less than justice to the conception embodied in the term "the world"? In identifying "the world" with believers, do they not neglect, if we may not quite say the contrast of the two things, yet at least the distinction between the two notions which the text seems to institute? "God so loved the world," we read, "that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Certainly here "the world" and "believers" do not seem to be quite equipollent terms: there seems, surely, something conveyed by the one which is not wholly taken up in the other. How, then, shall we say that "the world" means just "the world of believers," just those scattered through the world, who, being the elect of God, shall believe in His Son and so have eternal life? There is obviously much truth in this idea: and the main difficulty which it faces may, no doubt, be avoided by saying that what is taught is that God's love of the world is shown by His saving so great a multitude as He does save out of the world. The wicked world deserved at His hands only total destruction. But He saves out of it a multitude which no man can number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues. How much must, then, God love the world! This interpretation, beyond question, reproduces the fundamental meaning of the text. But does it completely satisfy all its suggestions? Does there not lie in the text some more subtle sequence of thought than is explicated by it? Is there not implied in it some profounder and yet more glorious truth than even the world-wide reach of God's love, manifested in the Great Commission, and issuing in the multitude of the saved, the voice of whose praise ascends to heaven as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunders?

Neither of the more common interpretations of the text, therefore, appears to bring out quite fully its real significance. The one fails to rise to the height of the conception of the love of God embodied in it; the other appears to do something less than full justice to the conception of the world which God is said by it to love. The difficulty in both cases, seems to arise from a certain unwillingness to go deeply enough: a surface meaning, possible to impose upon the text, seems to be seized upon, while its profundities are left unexplored. If we would make our own the great revelation of the love of God here given us, we must be more patient. Renouncing the easy imposition upon it of meanings of our own devising, we must just permit the text to speak its own language to our hearts. Its prime intention is to convey some conception of the immeasurable greatness of the love of God. The method it employs to do this is to declare the love of God for the world so great that He gave His Son to save it. The central affirmation obviously, then, is this,—and it is a sufficiently great one to absorb our entire attention—that God loved the world. "God," "loved," "the world"—we must deal seriously with this great assertion, and with every element of it. We must first of all, then, thoroughly enter into the meaning of the three great terms here brought together: "God," "loved," "the world."

We shall not make the slightest step forward in understanding our text, for instance, so long as we permit ourselves to treat the great term "God" merely as the subject of a sentence. We must endeavour rather to rise as nearly as may be to its fullest significance. When we pronounce the word we must see to it that our minds are flooded with some wondering sense of God's infinitude, of His majesty, of His ineffable exaltation; of His holiness, of His righteousness, of His flaming purity and stainless perfection. This is the Lord God Almighty whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, to whom the earth is less than the small dust on the balance. He has no need of aught, nor can His unsullied blessedness be in any way affected—whether by way of increase or decrease—by any act of the creatures of His hands. What we call infinite space is but a speck on the horizon of His contemplation: what we call infinite time is in His sight but as yesterday when it is past. Serene in His unapproachable glory, His will is the resistless law of all existences to which their every motion conforms. Apparelled in majesty and girded with strength, righteousness and judgment are the foundations of His throne. He sits in the heavens and does whatsoever He pleases. It is this God, a God of whom to say that He is the Lord of all the earth is to say so little that it is to say nothing at all, of whom our text speaks. And if we are ever to catch its meaning we must bear this fully in mind.

Now the text tells us of this God—of this God, remember,—that He loves. In itself, before we proceed a step further, this is a marvellous declaration. The metaphysicians have not yet plumbed it and still protest inability to construe the Absolute in terms of love. We shall not stop to dwell upon this somewhat abstract discussion. Enough for us that a God without emotional life would be a God without all that lends its highest dignity to personal spirit whose very being is movement; and that is as much as to say no God at all. And more than enough for us that our text assures us that God loves, nay, that He is Love. What it concerns us now to note, however, is not the mere fact that He loves, but what it is that He is declared to love. For therein lies the climax of the great proclamation. This is nothing other than "the world." For this is the unimaginable declaration of the text: "God so loved the world." It is just in this that lies the mystery of the greatness of His love.

For what is this "world" which we are so strangely told that God loves? We must not throw the reins on the neck of our fancy and seek a response that will suit our ideas of the right or the fitting. We must just let the Scriptures themselves tell us, and primarily that Apostle to whom we owe this great declaration. Nor does he fail to tell us; and that without the slightest ambiguity. The "world," he tells us, is just the synonym of all that is evil and noisome and disgusting. There is nothing in it that can attract God's love,—nay, that can justify the love of any good man. It is a thing not to be dallied with, or acquiesced in: they that are of it, are by that very fact not of God; and what the Christian has to do with it is just to overcome it; for everything that is begotten of God manifests that great fact precisely by this—that he overcomes the world. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world," is John's insistent exhortation. And the reason for it he states very pungently: because "if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." God and the world, then, are precise contradictions. "Nothing that is in the world is of the Father," we are told; or, as it is put elsewhere in direct positive form: "The whole world lieth in the evil one." "The world, the flesh and the devil"—this is the pregnant combination in which we have learned from Scripture to express the baleful forces that war against the soul: and the three terms are thus cast together because they are essentially synonyms. See, then, whither we are brought. When we are told that God loves the world, it is much as if we were told that He loves the flesh and the devil. And we may, indeed, take courage from our text and say it boldly: God does love the world and the flesh and the devil. Therein indeed is the ground of all our comfort and all our hope: for we—you and I—are of the world and of the flesh and of the devil. Only, we must punctually note it,—the love wherewith God loves the world, the flesh and the devil—therefore, us — is not a love of complacency, as if He the Holy One and the Good could take pleasure in what is worldly, fleshly, devilish: but that love of benevolence which would fain save us from our worldliness, fleshliness and devilishness.

That indeed is precisely what the text goes on at once to say: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." The world then was perishing: and it was to save it that God gave His Son. The text is, then, you see, in principle an account of the coming of the Son of God into the world. There were but two things for which He, being what He was as the Son of God, could come into the world, being what it was: to judge the world or to save the world. It was for the latter that He came. "For," the next verse runs on, "God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world through Him should be saved." Not wrath, then, though wrath were due, but love was the impelling cause of the coming of the Son of God into this wicked world of ours. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." The intensity of the love is what is emphasized: it was so intense that it was not deterred even by the sinfulness of its objects. You will perceive that what we have here then is, in effect, but the Johannean way of saying what Paul says when he tells us that "God commendeth His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The marvel, in other words, which the text brings before us is just that marvel above all other marvels in this marvellous world of ours—the marvel of God's love for sinners. And this is the measure by which we are invited to measure the greatness of the love of God. It is not that it is so great that it is able to extend over the whole of a big world: it is so great that it is able to prevail over the Holy God's hatred and abhorrence of sin. For herein is love, that God could love the world—the world that lies in the evil one: that God who is all holy and just and good, could so love this world that He gave His only begotten Son for it,—that He might not judge it, but that it might be saved.

The key to the passage lies, therefore, you see, in the significance of the term "world." It is not here a term of extension so much as a term of intensity. Its primary connotation is ethical, and the point of its employment is not to suggest that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it all, but that the world is so bad that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all, and much more to love it as God has loved it when He gave His Son for it. The whole debate as to whether the love here celebrated distributes itself to each and every man that enters into the composition of the world, or terminates on the elect alone chosen out of the world, lies thus outside the immediate scope of the passage and does not supply any key to its interpretation. The passage was not intended to teach, and certainly does not teach, that God loves all men alike and visits each and every one alike with the same manifestations of His love: and as little was it intended to teach or does it teach that His love is confined to a few especially chosen individuals selected out of the world. What it is intended to do is to arouse in our hearts a wondering sense of the marvel and the mystery of the love of God for the sinful world—conceived, here, not quantitatively but qualitatively as, in its very distinguishing characteristic, sinful. And search the universe through and through—in all its recesses and through all its historical development—and you will find no marvel so great, no mystery so unfathomable, as this, that the great and good God, whose perfect righteousness flames in indignation at the sight of every iniquity and whose absolute holiness recoils in abhorrence in the presence of every impurity, yet loves this sinful world,—yes, has so loved it that He has given His only begotten Son to die for it. It is this marvel and this mystery that our text would fain carry home to our hearts, and we would be wise if we would permit them to be absorbed in its contemplation.

At the same time, however, although we cannot permit the passage to be interpreted in the terms of the debate in question, it would not be quite true to say it has no bearing upon that debate.

One thing, for instance, which the passage tells us, and tells us with great emphasis, is that the love which it celebrates is a saving love; not a love which merely tends towards salvation, and may—perhaps easily—be defeated in its aim by, say, the unwillingness of its objects. The very point of the passage lies, on the one side, in the mightiness of the love of God; and on the other in the unwillingness not of some but of all its objects. The love here celebrated is, we must remember, the love of God—of the Lord God Almighty: and it is love to the world—which altogether "lies in the evil one." It is a love which is great, and powerful, and all-conquering; which attains its end, and will not stand helpless before any obstacle. It is the precise purpose of the passage to teach us this, to raise our hearts to some apprehension of the inconceivable greatness of the love of God, set as it is upon saving the wicked world. It would be possible to believe that such a love as this terminates equally and with the same intent upon each and every man who is in "the world," only if we may at the same time believe that it works out its end completely and with full effect on each and every man. But this the passage explicitly forbids us to believe, proceeding at once to divide the "world" into two classes, those that perish and those that have eternal life. The almighty, all-conquering love of God, therefore, certainly does not pour itself equally and with the same intent upon each and every man in the world. In the sovereignty that belongs of necessity to His love as to all love. He rather visits with it whom He will.

But neither will the text allow us to suppose that God grants this His immeasurable love only to a few, abstracted from the world, while the world itself He permits to fall away to its destruction. The declaration is, not that God has loved some out of the world, but that He has loved the world. And we must rise to the height of this divine universalism. It is the world that God has loved with His deathless love, this sinful world of ours: and it is the world, this sinful world of ours, that He has given His Son to die for: and it is the world that through the sacrifice of His dear Son, He has saved, this very sinful world of ours. "God sent not His Son into the world," we read, ''to judge the world, but that the world should be saved by Him": that is to say, God did not send His Son into the world for the purpose of judging the world, but for the purpose of saving the world: a declaration which could not be true if, despite His coming, the world were lost and only a select few saved out of it. The purposes of God do not fail.

You must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly by while the world, which He has created for Himself, hurtles hopelessly to destruction, and He is able only to snatch with difficulty here and there a brand from the universal burning. The world does not govern Him in a single one of His acts: He governs it and leads it steadily onward to the end which, from the beginning, or ever a beam of it had been laid. He had determined for it. As it was created for His glory, so shall it show forth His praise: and this human race on which He has impressed His image shall reflect that image in the beauty of the holiness which is its supreme trait. The elect—they are not the residuum of the great conflagration, the ashes, so to speak, of the burnt-up world, gathered sadly together by the Creator, after the catastrophe is over, that He may make a new and perhaps better beginning with them and build from them, perchance, a new structure, to replace that which has been lost. Nay, they are themselves "the world": not the world as it is in its sin, lying in the evil one; but the world in its promise and potency of renewed life. Through all the years one increasing purpose runs, one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become ever more and more the kingdom of our God and His Christ. The process may be slow; the progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag. But it is God who is building: and under His hands the structure rises as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone shall be set into its place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved world.

Meanwhile, we who live in the midst of the process see not yet the end. These are days of incompleteness, and it is only by faith that we can perceive the issue. The kingdom of God is as yet only in the making; and the "world" is not yet saved. So, there appear about us two classes: there are those that perish as well as those that have eternal life. With the absoluteness which characterizes the writer of this Gospel, these two classes are set before us in the text and in the paragraph of which it forms a part, in their intrinsic antagonism. They are believers and unbelievers in the Son of God: and they are believers and unbelievers in the Son of God, because they are in their essential natures good or bad, lovers of light or lovers of darkness. "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light and cometh not to the light; but he that doeth the truth cometh to the light." Throughout the whole process of the world's development, therefore, the Light that has come into the world draws to Itself those that are of the light: He, that is, who through love of the world came into the world to save the world,—yea, and who shall save the world—in the meantime attaches to Himself in every generation those who in their essential nature belong to Him. How they come to be His, and therefore to be attracted to Him, and therefore to enter into the life that is life indeed—to become portions no longer of the world that lies in the evil one, but of the reconstructed world that abides in Him—the paragraph in which our text is set leaves us much uninformed. Accordingly some rash expositors wish to insist that to it the division of men into the essentially good and the essentially bad is an ultimate fact. They speak therefore much of the ineradicable dualism of Jesus' conception, not staying to consider the confusion thus wrought in the whole paragraph. For in that case how could there be talk of the Son of God coming into the world to save the world? Obviously, to the text, those that belong to the Son themselves require saving; that is to say, no less than the lost themselves, they belong by nature to the "evil one," in whom the whole world—not a part of it only—we are told explicitly "lieth."

And if we will but attend to the context in which our paragraph is set, we will perceive that we are not left without guidance to its proper understanding. For we must remember that this paragraph is not an isolated document standing off to itself and complete in itself, but is a comment upon the discourse of our Lord to Nicodemus. It necessarily receives its colour and explanation, therefore, from that discourse of which it is either a substantive part or upon which it is at least a reflection. And what does that discourse teach us except this: that all that is born of flesh is flesh, and only what is reborn of Spirit is Spirit; that no man can enter the Kingdom of God, therefore, except he be born again of God; and that this birth is not at the command of men, but is the gift of a Spirit which is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, the sound whereof we hear though we know not whence it cometh and whither it goeth—but can say of it only, Lo, it is here! Here then is the explanation of the essential difference in men revealed in the varying reception they give to the Son of God. It is not due to accident of birth or to diversity of experience in the world, least of all to inherent qualities of goodness or badness belonging to each by nature. It is due solely to this,—whether or not they have been born again by the Spirit and so are of the light and come spontaneously to the light when it dawns upon their waiting eyes. The sequence in this great process of salvation, then, according to our passage, when taken in its context, is this: the gift of the Son of God to save the world; the preparation of the hearts of men to receive the Son of God in vital faith: the attraction of these "children of the light" to the Light of the world; and the gradual rebuilding of the fabric of the world along the lines of God's choosing into that kingdom of light which is thus progressively prepared for its perfect revelation at the last day. 

Thus, thus, then, it is that God is saving the world—the world, mind you, and not merely some individuals out of the world: by a process which involves not supplanting but reformation, recreation. We look for new heavens and a new earth, it is true; but these new heavens and new earth are not another heaven and another earth, but the old heaven and old earth renewed; or as the Scriptures phrase it "regenerated." For not the individual merely but the world-fabric itself is to be regenerated in that "regeneration when the Son of Man is to sit on the throne of His glory." During the process there may be much that is discarded: but when the process is completed, then also shall be completed the task which the Son of Man has taken upon Himself, and the "world" shall be saved—this wicked world of sinful men transformed into a world of righteousness.

Surely, we shall not wish to measure the saving work of God by what has been already accomplished in these unripe days in which our lot is cast. The sands of time have not yet run out. And before us stretch, not merely the reaches of the ages, but the infinitely resourceful reaches of the promise of God. Are not the saints to inherit the earth? Is not the recreated earth theirs? Are not the kingdoms of the world to become the Kingdom of God? Is not the knowledge of the glory of God to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Shall not the day dawn when no man need say to his neighbour, "Know the Lord," for all shall know Him from the least unto the greatest? raise your eyes, raise your eyes, I beseech you, to the far horizon: let them rest nowhere short of the extreme limit of the divine purpose of grace. And tell me what you see there. Is it not the supreme, the glorious, issue of that love of God which loved, not one here and there only in the world, but the world in its organic completeness; and gave His Son, not to judge the world, but that the world through Him should be saved? And He said unto me, "Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he . . . shewed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. . . . And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb, the lamp thereof. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night there): and they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie; but only they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." Only those written in the Lamb's book of life, and yet all the nations! It is the vision of the saved world. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." It is the vision of the consummated purpose of the immeasurable love of God.

God-Inspired Scripture¹

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The phrase, "Given by inspiration of God," or "Inspired of God," occurs, as is well-known, but once in the New Testament - in the classical passage, to wit, II Tim. iii. 16, which is rendered in the Authorized Version, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," and by the Revised Version, "Every Scripture inspired of God is, etc." The Greek word represented by it, and standing in this passage as an epithet or predicate of "Scripture" - qeo,pneustoj - though occurring here only in the New Testament and found nowhere earlier in all Greek literature, has nevertheless not hitherto seemed of doubtful interpretation. Its form, its subsequent usage, the implications of parallel terms and of the analogy of faith, have combined with the suggestions of the context to assign to it a meaning which has been constantly attributed to it from the first records of Christian interpretation until yesterday.

This unvarying understanding of the word is thus reported by the leading lexicographers: Schleusner "New Test. Lexicon." Glasgow reprint of fourth Leipzig edition, 1824: "

qeo,pneustoj, ou, o`, h`, afflatu divino actus, divino quodam spiritu afflatus, et partim de hominibus usurpatur, quorum sensus et sermones ad vim divinam referendi sunt, v. c. poëtis, faticidis, prophetis, auguribus, qui etiam qeodi,daktoi vocantur, partim de ipsis rebus, notionibus, sermonibus, et scriptis, a Deo suggestis, et divino instructu natis, ex qeo.j et pne,w spiro, quod, ut Latinum afflo, de diis speciatim usurpatur, quorum vi homines interdum ita agi existimabantur, ut notiones rerum, antea ignotarum, insolito quodam modo conciperent atque mente vehementius concitata in sermones sublimiores et elegantiores erumperent. Conf. Cic. pro Archia c. 14; Virgil. Aen. iii, 358, vi, 50. In N. T. semel legitur II Tim. iii. 16, pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj omnis Scriptura divinitus inspirata, seu, quæ est originis divinæ. coll. II Pet i. 21. Syrus . . . scriptura, quæ per spiritum scripta est. Conjunxit nempe actionem scribendi cum actione inspirandi. Apud Plutarchum T. ix. p. 583. ed. Reiske. qeo,pneustoi o;neiroi sunt somnia a diis immissa."

Robinson "Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament," new ed., New York, 1872:

"qeo,pneustoj( -ou, o`( h`, adj. (qeo,j( pne,w), God-inspired, inbreathed of God, II Tim. iii. 16 pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj. - Plut. de Placit. Philosoph. 5. 2, tou.j onvei,rouj tou.j qeopneu,stouj. Phocylid. 121 th/j de. qeopneu,stou sofi,hj lo,goj evsti.n a;ristoj. Comp. Jos. c. Ap. 1. 7 [ai` grafai. tw/n profhtw/n kata. th.n evpi,pnoian th.n avpo. tou/ qeou/ maqo,ntwn. Cic. pro Arch. 8, 'poetam . . . quasi divino quodam spiritu inflari."'

Thayer-Grimm "Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament," New York, 1887:

"qeo,pneustoj( -on, (qeo,j and pne,w), inspired by God: grafh,, i. e. the contents of Scripture, II Tim. iii. 16 [see pa/j I. 1 c.]; sofi,h, [pseudo-] Phocyl. 121; o;neiroi, Plut. de plac. phil. 5, 2, 3 p. 904f.; [Orac. Sibyll. 5, 406 (cf. 308); Nonn. paraphr. ev. Ioan. 1, 99]. (e;mpneustoj also is used passively, but a;pneustoj( eu;pneustoj( puri,pneustoj( [dusdia,pneustoj], actively [and dusana,pneustoj appar. either act. or pass.; cf. W. 96 (92) note].)"

Cremer "Biblico-Theological Lexicon of NewTestament Greek" ed. 2, E. T., Edinburgh, 1878:

"qeo,pnewstoj, prompted by God, divinely inspired. II Tim. iii. 16, pa/sa grafh. q. In profane Greek it occurs only in Plut. de placit. philos. v. 2, o;neiroi qeo,pneustoi (kat v avna,gkhn gi,nontai), opposed to fusikoi,. The formation of the word cannot be traced to the use of pne,w, but only of evmpne,w. Cf. Xen. Hell. vii. 4, 32, th.n avreth.n qeo.j me.n evmpneu,saj; Plat. Conv. 179 B, me,noj evmpneu/sai evni,oij tw/n h`rw,wn to.n qeo,n; Hom. Il. XX. 110; Od. xix. 138. The simple verb is never used of divine action. How much the word corresponds with the Scriptural view is evident from II Pet. i. 21."

And the commentators generally will be found to speak no otherwise.

The completeness of this lexical consent has recently, however, been broken, and that by no less an authority than Prof. Hermann Cremer himself, the second edition of whose great "Biblico-theological Lexicon" we have just adduced as in entire agreement with the current view. The date of issue of this edition, in its original German form, was 1872. The third edition was delayed until 1883. In the interval Dr. Cremer was called upon to write the article on "Inspiration" in the second edition of Herzog's "Realencyklopaedie" (Vol. vi, sub voc., pp. 746 seq.), which saw the light in 1880. In preparing this article he was led to take an entirely new view² of the meaning of qeo,pnewstoj, according to which it defines Scripture, in II Tim. iii. 16, not according to its origin, but according to its effect - not as "inspired of God," but as "inspiring its readers." The statement of his new view was transferred to the third edition of his "Lexicon" (1883; E. T. as " Supplement," 1886) very much in the form in which it appears in Herzog; and it has retained its place in the "Lexicon," with practically no alteration, ever since.³ As its expression in Herzog was the earliest, and therefore is historically the most important, and as the article in the "Lexicon" is easily accessible in both German and English, and moreover does not essentially differ from what is said in Herzog, we shall quote here Dr. Cremer's statement of the case in preference from Herzog. He says:

"In theological usage, Inspiration denotes especially the influence of the Holy Spirit in the origination of the sacred Scriptures, by means of which they become the expression to us of the will of God, or the Word of God. The term comes from the Vulgate, which renders II Tim. iii. 16 pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj, by omnis Scriptura divinitus inspirata. Whether the meaning of the Greek term is conveyed by this is at least questionable. It clearly belongs only to Hellenistic and Christian Greek. The notion that it was used also in classical Greek of poets and seers (Huther in his Commentary) and to express what Cicero says in his pro Archia, p. 8, nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit, is certainly wrong. For qeo,pneustoj does not occur at all in classical Greek or in profane Greek as a whole. In the unique passage, Plutarch, de placit. phil., 5, 2 (Mor. 904, 2): tou.j ovnei,rouj tou.j qeopneu,stouj kat v avna,gkhn gi,nesqai\ tou.j de. fusikou.j avneidwlopoioume,nhj yuch/j to. sumfe,ron auvth/| ktl), it is very probably to be ascribed to the copyist, and stands, as Wyttenbach conjectures, in the place of qeope,mptouj. Besides this it occurs in Pseudo-Phocylides, v. 121: th/j de. qeopneu,stou sofi,hj lo,goj evstin a;ristoj - unless the whole line is, with Bernays, to be deleted as disturbing to the sense - as well as in the fifth book of the "Sibyllines," v. 308: Ku,mh d v h` mwra. su.n na,masi toi/j qeopneu,stoij, and V. 406,  vAlla. me,gan geneth/ra qeo.n pa,ntwn qeopneu,stwn  vEn qusi,aij evge,rairon kai. a`gi,aj evkato,mbaj. The Pseudo-Phocylides was, however, a Hellenist, and the author of the fifth book of the "Sibyllines" was, most probably, an Egyptian Jew living in the time of Hadrian. On Christian ground we find it in II Tim. iii. 16, which is possibly the earliest written employment of it to which we can point. Wetstein, on this passage, adduces the sentence from the Vita Sabae 16 (in Cotelerii Monum.) : e;fqase th/| tou/ Cu ca,riti h` pa,ntwn qeopneu,stwn( pa,ntwn cristofo,rwn auvtou/ sunodi,a me,cri o` ovnoma,twn, as well as the designation of Marcus Eremita as o` qeo,pneustoj avnh,r. That the term has a passive meaning = 'gifted with God's Spirit,' 'divinely spirited,' (not 'inspired' as Ewald rightly distinguishes⁴) may be taken as indubitable from 'Sibyll.', v. 406 and the two passages last adduced. Nevertheless grafh. qeo,pneustoj does not seem easily capable of meaning 'inspired by God's Spirit' in the sense of the Vulgate; when connected with such conceptions as grafh, here, na/ma, 'fountain,' 'Sibyll.' v. 308, it would rather signify 'breathing a divine spirit,' in keeping with that ready transition of the passive into the active sense which we see in a;pneustoj( eu;pneustoj, 'ill- or well-breathed' = 'breathing ill or well.' Compare Nonnus, paraphr. ev Jo., i, 102: ou- podo.j a;krou avndrome,nhn pala,mhn ouvk a;xioj eivmi. pela,ssaj( lu/sai mou/non i`ma,nta qeopneu,stoio pedi,lou, with v. 129: bapti,zein avpu,roisi kai. ajpneu,stoisi loe,troij. In harmony with this, it might be understood also in Phocyl. 121; the explanation, 'Wisdom gifted with the Divine Spirit,' at all events has in its favor the fact that qeo,pneustoj is given the same sense as when it is connected with avnh,r( a;nqrwpoj. Certainly a transition to the sense, 'breathed by God' = 'inspired by God' seems difficult to account for, and it would fit, without forcing, only Phocyl. 121, while in II Tim. iii. 16, on the assumption of this sense, there would be required a not altogether easy metonyme. The sense 'breathing God's Spirit' is moreover in keeping with the context, especially with the wvfe,limoj pro.j didaskali,an ktl) and the ta. duna,mena, se sofi,sai, v. 15, as well as with the language employed elsewhere, e. g., in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where what the Scripture says is, as is well known, spoken of as the saying, the word of the Holy Ghost. Cf. also Acts xxviii. 25. Origen also, in Hom. 21 in Jerem., seems so to understand it: sacra volumina Spiritus plenitudinem spirant. Let it be added that the expression 'breathed by God, inspired by God,' though an outgrowth of the Biblical idea, certainly, so far as it is referred to the prophecy which does not arise out of the human will (II Pet. i. 21), yet can scarcely be applied to the whole of the rest of the sacred Scriptures - unless we are to find in II Tim. iii. 16 the expression of a conception of sacred Scripture similar to the Philonian. There is no doubt, however, that the Peshito understood it simply = 'inspired by God' - yet not differently than as in Matt. xxii. 43 we find: Daui.d evn pneu,mati lalei/. It translates ax'Wrb.K ryGe bt'K. luK bteK.t.a,, 'for every Scripture which is written evn pneu,mai v - certainly keeping prominently in the foreground the inspiration of the writer. Similarly the Æthiopic renders: 'And every Scripture is in the (by the) Spirit of the Lord and profits'; while the Arabic (deriving from the original text) reads: 'And every Scripture which is divinely of spiratio, divinam sapiens auram.' The rendering of the Peshito and the explanations of the Greek exegetes would certainly lend great weight to the divinitus inspirata, were not they explicable from the dominant idea of the time - for which, it was thought, a suitable term was found in II Tim. iii. 16, nowhere else used indeed and coined for the purpose - but which was itself more or less taken over from the Alexandrian Judaism, that is to say, from heathenism."

Here, we will perceive, is a carefully reasoned attempt to reverse the previous lexical consensus as to the meaning of this important word. We have not observed many traces of the influence of this new determination of its import. The present writer, after going over the ground under Prof. Cremer's guidance, too hastily adopted his conclusion in a paper on "Paul's Doctrine of the Old Testament" published in The Presbyterian Quarterly for July, 1899; and an adverse criticism of Dr. Cremer's reasoning, from the pen of Prof. Dr. L. Schulze, of Rostock, appeared in the Theologisches Literaturblatt for May 22, 1896 (xvii, 21, pp. 253, 254), in the course of a review of the eighth edition of the "Lexicon." But there has not met our eye as yet any really thorough reëxamination of the whole matter, such as a restatement of it like Dr. Cremer's might have been expected to provoke. The case surely warrants and indeed demands it. Dr. Cremer's statement is more than a statement - it is an argument; and his conclusion is revolutionary, not indeed as to doctrine - for that rests on a broader basis than a single text or an isolated word - but as to the meaning borne by an outstanding New Testament term. It would seem that there is, then, no apology needed for undertaking a somewhat minute examination of the facts in the case under the guidance of Dr. Cremer's very full and well-reasoned statement.

It may conduce, in the end, to clearness of presentation if we begin somewhat in medias res by raising the question of the width of the usage of the word. Is it broadly a Greek word, or distinctively a Hellenistic word, or even a purely Christian word?

So far as appears from the usage as ascertained,⁵ it would seem to be post-Christian. Whether we should also call it Christian, coined possibly by Paul and used only in Christian circles, depends, in the present state of our knowledge, on the determination of two rather nice questions. One of these concerns the genuineness of the reading qeopneu,stouj in the tract on "The Opinions of Philosophers" (v, 2, 3), which has come down to us among the works of Plutarch, as well as in its dependent document, the "History of Philosophy" (106), transmitted among the works of Galen. The other concerns the character, whether Jewish or Jewish-Christian, of certain portions of the fifth book of the "Sibylline Oracles" and of the "Poem of Admonition," once attributed to Phocylides but now long recognized to be the work of a late Alexandrian Jew,⁶ - in both of which the word occurs. Dr. Cremer considers the reading to be false in the Plutarchian tract, and thinks the fifth book of the "Sybillines" and the Pseudo-Phocylidian poem Jewish in origin. He therefore pronounces the word a Hellenistic one. These decisions, however, can scarcely be looked upon as certain; and they will bear scrutiny, especially as they are accompanied with some incidental errors of statement.

It would certainly require considerable boldness to decide with confidence upon the authorship of any given portion of the fifth book of the "Sibyllines." Friedlieb (whom Dr. Cremer follows) and Badt ascribe the whole book to a Jewish, but Alexandre, Reuss and Dechent to a Christian author; while others parcel it out variously between the two classes of sources - the most assigning the sections containing the word in question, however, to a Jewish author (Bleck, Lücke, Gfrörrer; Ewald, Hilgenfeld; Schürer). Schürer practically gives up in despair the problem of distributing the book to its several authors, and contents himself with saying that Jewish pieces preponderate and run in date from the first Christian century to Hadrian.⁷ In these circumstances surely a certain amount of doubt may fairly be thought to rest on the Jewish or Christian origin of our word in the Sibylline text. On the other hand, there seems to be pretty good positive reason for supposing the Pseudo-Phocylidian poem to be in its entirety a Christian production. Its Jewish origin was still strenuously maintained by Bernays,⁸ but its relation to the "Teaching of the Apostles" has caused the subject to be reopened, and we think has brought it to at least a probable settlement in favor of Scaliger's opinion that it is the work "avnwnu,mou Christiani."9 In the face of this probability the brilliant and attractive, but not always entirely convincing conjectures by which Bernays removed some of the Christian traits from the text may now be neglected: and among them that by which he discarded the line containing our word. So far then as its occurrence in the fifth book of the "Sibyllines" and in Pseudo-Phocylides is concerned, no compelling reason appears why the word may not be considered a distinctively Christian one: though it must at the same time be recognized that the sections in the fifth "Sibyl" in which it occurs are more probably Jewish than Christian.

With reference to the Plutarchian passage something more needs to be said. "In the unique passage, Plutarch de plac. phil. 5, 2 (904 F.): tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeopneu,stouj kat v( avna,gkhn gi,nesqai\ tou.j de. fusikou,j avneidwlopoioume,nhj yuch/j to. sumfe,ron auvth|/ ktl)" says Dr. Cremer, "it is with the greatest probability to be ascribed to the transcriber, in whose mind qeo,pneustoj lay in the sense of the Vulgate rendering, divinitus inspirata, and it stands, as Wyttenbach conjectures, for qeope,mptouj." The remark concerning Wyttenbach is erroneous - only one of a series of odd misstatements which have dogged the textual notes on this passage. Wyttenbach prints qeopneu,stouj in his text and accompanies it with this textual note:10 "qeope,mptouj reposuit editor Lips. ut ex Gal. et Mosc. At in neutro haec reperio. Sane non est quare compilatori elegantias obtrudamus." Qeope,mptouj is therefore not Wyttenbach's conjecture: Wyttenbach does not even accept it, and this has of late been made a reproach to him:11 he ascribes it to "the Leipzig editor," that is to Christian Daniel Beck, whose edition of this tract was published at Leipzig, in 1787. But Wyttenbach even more gravely misquotes Beck than he has himself been misquoted by Dr. Cremer. For Beck, who prints in his text: tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeopneu,stouj, annotates as follows: "Olim: tou/j ovnei,rouj tou.j qeopneu,stouj - Reddidi textis elegantiorem lectionem, quae in M. et G. est. qeopneu,stouj sapere Christianum librarium videtur pro qeope,mptouj."12 That is to say, Wyttenbach has transferred Beck's note on tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n to qeope,mptouj. It is this clause and not qeope,mptouj that Beck professes to have got out of the Moscow MS. and Galen: qeope,mptouj he presents merely as a pure conjecture founded on the one consideration that qeopneu,stouj has a flavor of Christian scribe about it; and he does not venture to put qeope,mptouj into the text. The odd thing is that Hutten follows Wyttenbach in his misrepresentation of Beck, writing in his note: "Beck. dedit qeope,mptouj ut elegantiorem lectionem e Mosq. et Gal. sumptam. In neutro se hoc reperisse W. notat, addens, non esse quare compilatori elegantias obtrudamus. Cors. e Gal. notat tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeopneu,stouj."13 Corsini does indeed so report, his note running: "Paullo aliter" (i. e., from the ordinary text which he reprints from Stephens) "Galenus, tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeopneu,stouj, somniorum ea quidem quae divinitus inspirata sint, etc."14 But this is exactly what Beck says, and nothing other, except that he adds that this form is also found in the Moscow MS. We must conclude that Hutten in looking at Beck's note was preoccupied with Wyttenbach's misreport of it. The upshot of the whole matter is that the reading qeope,mptouj was merely a conjecture of Beck's, founded solely on his notion that qeopneu,stouj was a purely Christian term, and possessing no diplomatic basis whatsoever. Accordingly it has not found its way into the printed text of Plutarch: all editions, with one exception, down to and including those of Dübner-Döhner (Didot's "Bibliotheca") of 1856 and Bernardakis (Teubner's series) of 1893 read qeopneu,stouj.

A new face has been put on the matter, however, by the publication in 1879 of Diels' "Doxographi Graeci," in which the whole class of ancient literature to which Plutarch's "De plac. philos." belongs is subjected to a searching study, with a view to tracing the mutual relations of the several pieces and the sources from which they are constructed.¹⁵ With this excursion into "higher criticism," into which there enters a highly speculative element, that, despite the scientific thoroughness and admirable acuteness which give the whole an unusually attractive aspect, leaves some doubts in the mind of the sober reader,¹⁶ we have now happily little to do. Suffice it to say that Diels looks upon the Plutarchian tract as an epitome of a hypothetical Aëtios, made about 150 A.D. and already used by Athenagoras (c. 177 A.D.):17 and on the Galenic tract as in its later portion an excerpt from the Plutarchian tract, made about A.D. 500.18 In the course of his work, he has framed and printed a careful recension of the text of both tracts,¹⁹ and in both of them he reads at the place of interest to us, qeope,mptouj.²⁰ Here for the first (and as yet only²¹) time qeope,mptouj makes its appearance in the text of what we may, in deference to Diels' findings and after the example of Gerke,²² call, at least, the "[Pseudo?-] Plutarch."23 The key to the situation, with Diels, lies in the reading of the PseudoGalen : for as an excerpt from the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch the Pseudo-Galen becomes a valuable witness to its text, and is treated in this case indeed as a determinative witness, inasmuch as the whole MS. transmission of [Pseudo?-] Plutarch, so far as known, reads here qeopneu,stouj. Editing qeope,mptouj in Pseudo-Galen, Diels edits it also, on that sole documentary ground, in [Pseudo?-] Plutarch, That we may form some estimate of the likelihood of the new reading, we must, therefore, form some estimate of its likelihood in the text of the Pseudo-Galen, as well as of the principles on which the text of the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch is to be framed.

The editions of Pseudo-Galen - including that of Kühn²⁴ - have hitherto read qeopneu,stouj at our place, and from this we may possibly infer, that this is the reading of the common run of the MSS.²⁵ Diels constructs his text for this portion of the treatise from two kindred MSS. only, and records the readings of no others: as no variation is given upon our word, we may infer that these two MSS. at least agree in reading qeope,mptouj. The former of them (Codex Laurentianus lxxiv, 3), of the twelfth or early thirteenth century, is described as transcribed "with incredible corruptness"; the latter (Codex Laurentianus lviii, 2), of the fifteenth century, as written more carefully: both represent a common very corrupt archetype.²⁶ This archetype is reconstructed from the consent of the two, and where they differ the preference is given to the former. The text thus framed is confessedly corrupt: "but though it must therefore be cautiously used, Diels considers it nevertheless a treasure house of the best readings for the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch.²⁸ Especially in the latter part of the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch, where the help of Eusebius and the other eclogæ fails, he thinks the case would often be desperate if we did not have the Pseudo-Galen. Three examples of the preservation of the right reading by it alone he gives us, one of them being our present passage, in which he follows, therefore, the reading of the Pseudo-Galen against the entire MS. transmission.

Diels considers the whole MS. transmission of the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch to take us back to an archetype of about A.D. 1000, and selects from it three codices as nearest to the archetype,²⁹ viz., A = Codex Mosquensis 339 (nunc 352) of saec. xi. or xii. (the same as the Mosq. quoted by Beck), collated by Matthaei and in places reëxamined for Diels by Voelkelius; B = Codex Marcianus 521 [xcii, 7], of saec. xiv, very closely related to A, collated by Diels himself; and C = Codex Parisinus 1672 of saec. xiii. ex. vel. xiv. in which is a copy of a corpus of Plutarch put together by Planudes or a contemporary. Through these three codices he reaches the original apograph which stands at the root of all the extant MSS., and from it, by the aid of the excerpts from the tract - in our passage the Pseudo-Galen's only - he attains his text.

His note on our reading runs thus: "qeope,mptouj G cf. Arist. de divinat. 2 p. 463b 13: qeopneu,stouj (A) B C, cf. Prol. p. 15.". The parenthesis in which A is enclosed means that A is here cited from the silence of Matthaei's collation.³⁰ The reference to the Prolegomena is to the passage already alluded to, in which the Galenic reading qeope,mptouj is cited as one of three chosen instances of excellent readings preserved by Galen alone. The note there runs thus: "alteri loco christiani librarii pius fraus nocuit. V. 2, 3,  `Hro,filoj tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeopneu,stouj kat v avna,gkhn gi,neqai. fuit scilicet qeope,mptouj, quod sero intellectum est a Wyttenbachio in indice Plutarcheo. si Galenum inspexisset, ipsum illud qeope,mptouj inventurus erat. simili fraude versus 121 Phocylideis a Byzantinis insertus est, ubi vox illa sacra [II Tim. iii. 16] I. Bernaysio interpolationis originem manifesto aperuit." That is to say, the reading of the Pseudo-Galen is preferred to that of the MSS., because the reading qeopneu,stouj explains itself as a pious fraud of a Christian scribe, giving a place in the text of Plutarch to "this sacred word" - another example of which procedure is to be found in Pseudo-Phoc. 121, extruded by Bernays from the text on this very ground. On this remark, as on a hinge, turns, it would seem, the decision of the whole question. The problem of the reading, indeed, may be set forth at this point in the form of this alternative: - Which is most likely, - that qeopneu,stouj in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch originated in the pious fraud of a Christian scribe? - or that qeope,mptouj in the text of Pseudo-Galen edited by Diels originated in the error of a careless scribe?

When we posit the problem in this definite form we cannot feel at all certain that Diels' solution is the right one. There is an a priori unlikelihood in its way: deliberate corruption of texts is relatively rare and not to be assumed without good reason. The parallel from the Pseudo-Phocylides fails, now that it seems probable that the whole poem is of Christian origin. There seems no motive for such a pious fraud as is charged: what gain could be had from intruding qeopneu,stouj into the Plutarchian text? and what special sanctity attached to this word? And if a sacrosanct character be attributed to the word, could it not be equally plausibly argued that it was therefore offensive to the Christian consciousness in this heathen connection, and was accordingly replaced by the less sacred qeope,mptouj, a word of heathen associations and indeed with a secondary sense not far from "extraordinary."31 Or if it be now said that it is not intended to charge conscious fraud, it is pertinent to ask what special associations Christians had with the word qeopneu,stouj in connection with dreams which would cause it to obtrude itself unconsciously in such a connection. One is almost equally at a loss to account for the intrusion of the word in the place of the simpler qeope,mptouj, whether the intrusion be looked upon as deliberate or unconscious. On the other hand, the substitution of qeope,mptouj for qeopneu,stouj in the text of Pseudo-Galen seems quite readily accountable, and that whether it be attributed to the original excerpter or to some later copyist of the tract. The term was associated with dreams in the minds of all acquainted with the literature of the subject. Diels himself refers us to a passage in Aristotle where the collocation occurs,³² and familiar passages from Philo³³ and the "Clementina"34 will suggest themselves to others. "Godsent dreams" must have almost had the rank of a "terminus technicus."35 Moreover the scribe had just written the word in the immediate context, and that not without close contiguity with the word ovnei,rouj,³⁶ and may be readily supposed to have had it still lingering in his memory when he came to write the succeeding section. In fine, the intrusion into the text of qeopneu,stouj, a rare word and one suggested to a dull or inattentive scribe by nothing, seems far less easy to account for than the intrusion of qeope,mptouj, a common word, an ordinary term in this connection, and a term suggested to the scribe by the immediate context. On transcriptional grounds certainly the former appears far more likely to be original - "proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua."

The decisive consideration against qeopneu,stouj in the mind of Diels - as it had been before him in the mind of Beck - seems to have been, indeed, nothing but the assumption that qeopneu,stouj, as a distinctively Christian word, must argue a Christian hand, wherever it is found. That, however, in our present study is precisely the matter under investigation; and we must specially guard against permitting to intrude decisively into our premises what we propose to arrive at only by way of conclusion. Whether the word be genuine in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch or not, is just one of the most important factors in deciding whether it be a peculiarly Christian word or not. An instructive parallel may be found in the treatment accorded by some great authorities to the cognate word qeo,pnooj when it turned up in an inscription which seems obviously heathen.³⁷ This inscription, inscribed (about the third century) on the face of a man-headed sphinx at Memphis, sings the praises of the sphinx's beauty - among the items mentioned being that evfu,per[q]e pro,swpon evcei to. q[e]o[pn]oun, while, below, the body is that of the lion, king of beasts. Boeckh comments on this: "Vs. 4, 5, recte legit Letronnius, qui qeo,pnoon monet Christianum quidam sonare." But why should Letronnius infer Christianity from the word qeo,pnoon, or Boeckh think it worth while to record the fact? Fortunately the heathen use of qeo,pnooj is beyond question.³⁸ It provides an excellent illustration, therefore, of the rashness of pronouncing words of this kind to be of Christian origin; and suggests the hesitancy with which we should extrude such a word from the text of [Pseudo?-] Plutarch on the sole ground that it "tastes of a Christian scribe." Surely if a heathen could invent and use the one word, he might equally well invent and use the other. And certainly it is a great mistake to look upon compounds with qe,oj of this kind as in any sense exclusively Christian. The long list of heathen terms of this character given by Dr. Cremer, indeed, is itself enough to indicate the heathen facility for their coinage. Many such words, we may well believe, were found by Christians ready made to their hand, and had only to be adapted to their richer usage. What is more distinctively Christian is the parallel list of words compounded with pneu/ma³⁹ or even cristo,j⁴⁰which were placed by their side, such as [pneumatiko,j], pneumatoki,nhtoj, pneumatofo,roj, pneumate,mforoj; cristo,grafoj, cristodi,dktoj, cristoki,nhtoj, cristo,lhptoj, cristofo,roj.

As the reasons which have been determining with Diels in framing his text do not appear to us able to bear the weight laid on them, we naturally cannot adopt his text with any confidence. We doubt whether qeope,mptouj was the original reading in the Pseudo-Galen; we doubt whether, if that were the case, we should on that ground edit it in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch. Our feeling is decided that the intrusion of qeope,mptouj into a text which originally read qeopneu,stouj would be far more easily accounted for than the reverse. One should be slow, of course, in rejecting a reading commended by such a scholarly tact as Diels'. But we may take courage from the fact that Bernardakis, with Diels' text before him, continues to read qeopneu,stouj even though recognizing qeope,mptouj as the reading of Galen. We think we must be permitted to hold the matter still at least sub judice and to profess our inability in the circumstances to look upon the word as a purely Christian term.⁴¹ It would be interesting to know what phraseology was used by Herophilus himself (born c. B.C. 300) in the passage which the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch excerpts. But this excerpt seems to be the only source of information we have in the matter,⁴² and it would perhaps be overbold to suppose that the compiler had preserved the very words of the great physician. Were such a presumption deemed plausible we should be forced to carry back the first known use of the word qeopneu,stouj to the third century before Christ, but not to a provenance other than that Alexandria where its earliest use is otherwise traceable. Perhaps if we cannot call it a purely Christian term nor yet, with Dr. Cremer, an exclusively Hellenistic one, we may venture to think of it, provisionally at least, as belonging to Alexandrian Greek. Whether we should also say to late Alexandrian usage will possibly depend on the degree of likelihood we ascribe to its representing in the text of the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch an actual usage of Herophilus.

Our interest in determining the reading in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch culminates, of course, in its bearing on the meaning of qeo,pneustoj. Prof. Schulze's remark⁴³ that no copyist would have substituted qeo,pneustoj here for qeo,pemptoj if linguistic usage had attached an active sense to the former, is no doubt quite just. This is admitted, indeed, by Dr. Cremer, who considers that the scribe to whom the substitution is thought to be due "had qeo,pneustoj in his mind in the sense of the Vulgate rendering, divinitus inspirata"; and only seeks to break the force of this admission by urging that the constant exegetical tradition which assigned this meaning to qeo,pneustoj, rests on a misunderstanding of the word and reads into it a sense derived from Alexandrian-Jewish conceptions of inspiration. This appeal from a fixed later to an assumed original sense of the word possesses force, no doubt, only in case that traces of such an assumed original sense can be adduced; and meanwhile the presence of qeo,pneustoj as a synonym of qeo,pemptoj, even in the vocabulary of somewhat late scribes, must rank as one item in the evidence by which its meaning is to be ascertained. The whole face of the matter is changed, however, if qeo,pneustoj be allowed to be probably or even possibly genuine in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch. In that case it could scarcely be thought to reflect the later Christian conception of inspiration, imposed on Paul's term by thinkers affected by Philo's doctrine of Scripture, but would stand as an independent bit of evidence as to the original meaning of the term. The clerical substitution of qeo,pemptoj for it under the influence of literary associations would indeed, in this case too, only witness to a synonymy in the mind of the later scribes, who may well be supposed Christians and sharers in the common conception that Christians read into qeo,pneustoj. But the implications of the passage itself would be valid testimony to the original import of the term here used. And it would seem quite clear that the implications of the passage itself assign to it a passive sense, and that a sense not very remote from qeo,pemptoj. "Herophilus says," we read, "that theopneustic dreams" ("dreams divinely inspired," Holland; "the dreams that are caused by divine instinct," Goodwin), "come by necessity; but natural ones" ("natural dreams," Holland; "dreams which have their origin from a natural cause," Goodwin), "from the soul's imagery of what is fitting to it and its consequences," etc.⁴⁴ The contrast here between dreams that are qeo,pneustoi and those that are fusikoi,, the former of which are imposed on the soul while the latter are its own production, would seem certainly to imply that qeo,pneustoj here imports something nearly akin to "God-given," though naturally with implications of its own as to the mode of the giving. It might be possible to read it as designating dreams that are breathed into by God, filled with His inspiration and thus made the vehicles of His message, if we otherwise knew that such is the implication of the term. But nothing so subtle as this is suggested by the language as it stands, which appears to convey merely the simple notion that theopneustic dreams differ from all natural ones, whether the latter belong to the higher or lower elements of our nature, in that they come from God and are therefore not necessarily agreeable to the soul's own image-making faculties or the product of its immanent desires, but take form and bear a meaning imposed on them from without.

There are few other instances of the occurrence of the word which have much chance of lying entirely outside the sphere of influence of its use in II Tim. iii. 16. In the first rank of these will certainly be placed the two instances in the fifth book of the "Sibyllines." The former of these occurs in a description of the city of Cyme, which is called the "foolish one," and described as cast down by wicked hands, "along with her theopneustic streams (na,masi qeopneu,stoij)" no longer to shout her boasts into the air but henceforth to remain "dead amid the Cymean streams."45 The description skillfully brings together all that we know of Cyme - adverts to her former greatness ("the largest and noblest of all the Æolian cities," Strabo tells us,⁴⁶ and with Lesbos, "the metropolis" of all the rest), her reputation for folly (also adverted to and quaintly explained by Strabo), her present decadence, and her situation by running waters (a trait indicated also by her coins which show that there was a stream near by called Xanthus). It has been customary to understand by "the theopneustic streams" mentioned, some streams or fountains in the neighborhood known for the presumptively oracular powers of their waters." But there does not seem to have been preserved any notice of the existence of such oracular waters belonging to Cyme, and it makes against this assumption that the Cymeans, like the rest of the Ionians and Æolians, were accustomed to resort for their oracles to the somewhat distant Branchidæ, in the south.⁴⁸ It appears much more likely, then, that the streams adverted to are natural streams and stand here only as part of the rather full and very exact description of the town - the reference being primarily to the Xanthus and to it as an element merely in the excellence of the situation. In that case "theopneustic," here too, would seem to mean something akin to "God-given," or perhaps more broadly still "divine," in the sense of specially excellent and desirable.

The second Sibylline passage is a portion of a lament over the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, wherein (we are told) gold, "deceiver of the world and souls," was not worshiped, but men "adored in sacrifices, with pure and noble hecatombs, the great Father-God of all theopneustic things."49 Here Alexandre translates, "Qui cælestis vitam pater omnibus afflat"; and Terry, "The God and mighty maker of all breathing things."50 And they seem supported in their general conception by the fact that we appear to have before us here only a slightly varied form of a formula met with elsewhere in the Sibyllines. Thus, as Rzach points out, we have at iii, 278⁵¹ a condemnation of those who "neither fear nor desire to honor the deathless Father-God of all men,"52 and at iii, 604, essentially the same phrase is repeated. We seem, in a word, to meet here only with the Sibylline equivalent of the Homeric "path.r avndrw/n te qew/n te." Accordingly qeopneu,stwn would seem to stand here in the stead of avnqrw,pwn in the parallel passages, and merely to designate men, doubtless with a reminiscence of Gen. ii. 7 - or perhaps, more widely, creatures, with a reminiscence of such a passage as Ps. civ. 30. In either event it is the creative power of God that is prominently in the mind of the writer as he writes down the word qeopneu,stwn, which is to him obviously the proper term for "creatures" in correlation with the gene,thj qeo,j.

By the side of these Sibylline passages it is perhaps natural to place the line from the Pseudo-Phocylides, which marks the culmination of his praise of "speech" as the greatest gift of God - a weapon, he says, sharper than steel and more to be desired than the swiftness of birds, or the speed of horses, or the strength of lions, or the horns of bulls or the stings of bees - "for best [of all] is the speech of theopneustic wisdom," so that the wise man is better than the strong one, and it is wisdom that rules alike in the field, the city and the sea. It is certainly simplest to understand "theopneustic wisdom" here shortly as "God-given wisdom." Undoubtedly it is itself the inspirer of the speech that manifests it, and we might manage to interpret the qeopneu,stou as so designating it - "God-inspiring, God-breathing wisdom." But this can scarcely be considered natural; and it equally undoubtedly lies more closely at hand to interpret it as designating the source of the wisdom itself as lying in God. Wisdom is conceived as theopneustic, in a word, because wisdom itself is thought of as coming from God, as being the product of the divine activity - here designated, as so frequently in the Old Testament, as operating as a breathing.

A passage that has come to light since Dr. Cremer's investigation for this word-study was made, is of not dissimilar implication. It is found in the recently published "Testament of Abraham,"53 a piece which in its original form, its editor, Prof. James, assigns to a second-century Egyptian Jewish-Christian, though it has suffered much mediævalization in the ninth or tenth century. It runs as follows: "And Michael the archangel came immediately with a multitude of angels, and they took his precious soul (th.n timi,an auvtou/ yuch,n) in their hands in a God-woven cloth (sindo,ni qeou?fantw/); and they prepared (evkh,deusan) the body of righteous Abraham unto the third day of his death with theopneustic ointments and herbs (muri,smasi qeopneu,stoij kai. avrw,masin), and they buried him in the land of promise." Here qeo,pneustoj can hardly mean "God-breathing," and "God-imbued" is not much better; and though we might be tempted to make it mean "divinely sweet" (a kind of derivative sense of "God-redolent ointment"; for pne,w means also "to smell," "to breathe of a thing"), it is doubtless better to take it simply, as the parallel with qeou?fantw|/ suggests, as importing something not far from "God-given." The cloth in which the soul was carried up to God and the unguents with which the body was prepared for burial were alike from God - were "God-provided"; the words to designate this being chosen in each case with nice reference to their specific application, but covering to their writer little more specific meaning than the simple adjective "divine" would have done.

It is surely in this same category also that we are to place the verse of Nonnus which Dr. Cremer adduces as showing distinctly that the word qeo,pneustoj "is not to be taken as equivalent to inspiratus, inspired by God, but as rather meaning filled with God's spirit and therefore radiating it." Nonnus is paraphrasing John i. 27 and makes the Baptist say: "And he that cometh after me stands to-day in your midst, the tip of whose foot I am not worthy to approach with human hand though only to loose the thongs of the theopneustic sandal."54 Here surely the meaning is not directly that our Lord's sandal "radiated divinity," though certainly that may be one of the implications of the epithet, but more simply that it partook of the divinity of the divine Person whose property it was and in contact with whom it had been. All about Christ was divine. We should not go far wrong, therefore, if we interpreted qeo,pneustoj here simply as "divine." What is "divine" is no doubt "redolent of Divinity," but it is so called not because of what it does, but because of what it is, and Nonnus' mind when he called the sandal theopneustic was occupied rather with the divine influence that made the sandal what it was, viz., something more than a mere sandal, because it had touched those divine feet, than with any influence which the sandal was now calculated to exert. The later line which Dr. Cremer asks us to compare is not well calculated to modify this decision. In it John i. 33 is being paraphrased and the Baptist is contrasting his mission with that of Christ who was to baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit (evn puri. bapti,zwn kai. pneu,mati). He, John, was sent, on the contrary, he says, to baptize the body of already regenerate men, and to do it in lavers that are destitute of both fire and the spirit - fireless and spiritless (avpu,roisi kai. avpneu,stoisi loetroi/j).⁵⁵ It may indeed be possible to interpret, "unburning and unspiritualizing"; but this does not seem the exact shade of thought the words are meant to express; though in any case the bearing of the phrase on the meaning of qeo,pneustoj in the former line is of the slightest.

Of the passages cited by Dr. Cremer there remain only the two he derives from Wetstein, in which qeo,pneustoj appears as an epithet of certain men. To these should be added an inscription found at Bostra, in which a certain ecclesiastic is designated an avrciereu.j qeo,pneustoj.⁵⁶ Dr. Cremer himself thinks it clear that in such passages we have a passive sense, but interprets it as divinely spirited, "endued with the divine spirit," rather than as "divinely inspired," - in accordance with a distinction drawn by Ewald. Certainly it is difficult to understand the word in this connection as expressing simple origination by God; it was something more than the mere fact that God made them that was intended to be affirmed by calling Marcus and Antipater theopneustic men. Nor does it seem very natural to suppose that the intention was to designate them as precisely what we ordinarily mean by God-inspired men. It lies very near to suppose, therefore, that what it was intended to say about them, is that they were God-pervaded men, men in whom God dwelt in an especial manner; and this supposition may be thought to be supported by the parallel, in the passage from the "Vita Sabae," with cristofo,roj. Of whom this "caravan of all theopneustics, of all his christophers," was composed, we have no means of determining, as Cotelerius' "Monumenta," from which Wetstein quoted the passage, is not accessible to us as we write. But the general sense of the word does not seem to be doubtful. Ignatius, ("ad Ephes." ix.) tells us that all Christians constitute such a caravan, of "God-bearers and shrine-bearers, Christ-bearers, holy-thing-bearers, completely clothed in the commandments of Christ"; and Zahn rightly comments that thus the Christians appear as the real "evniqeoi or evnqousia,zontej, since they carry Christ and God in themselves." Particularly distinguished Christians might therefore very properly be conceived in a supereminent sense as filled with God and bearers of Christ; and this might very appropriately be expressed by the double attribution of qeo,pneustoj and cristofo,roj. Only it would seem to be necessary to understand that thus a secondary and derived sense would be attributed to qeo,pneustoj, about which there should still cling a flavor of the idea of origination. The qeo,pneustoj avnh,r is God-filled by the act of God Himself, that is to say, he is a God-endowed man, one made what he is by God's own efficiency. No doubt in usage the sense might suffer still more attrition and come to suggest little more than "divine" - which is the epithet given to Marcus of Scetis⁵⁷ by Nicephorus Callistus, ("H. E.," xi, 35) - o` qei/oj Ma,rkoj - that is to say "Saint Mark," of which o` qeo,pneustoj Ma,rkoj is doubtless a very good synonym. The conception conveyed by qeo,pneustoj in this usage is thus something very distinct from that expressed by the Vulgate rendering, a Deo inspiratus, when taken strictly; that would seem to require, as Ewald suggests, some such form as qee,mpneustoj; the theopneustic man is not the man "breathed into by God." But it is equally distinct from that expressed by the phrase, "pervaded by God," used as an expression of the character of the man so described, without implication of the origin of this characteristic. What it would seem specifically to indicate is that he has been framed by God into something other than what he would have been without the divine action. The Christian as such is as much God-made as the man as such; and the distinguished Christian as such as much as the Christian at large; and the use of qeo,pneustoj to describe the one or the other would appear to rest ultimately on this conception. He is, in what he has become, the product of the divine energy - of the divine breath.

We cannot think it speaking too strongly, therefore, to say that there is discoverable in none of these passages the slightest trace of an active sense of qeo,pneustoj, by which it should express the idea, for example, of "breathing the divine spirit," or even such a quasi-active idea as that of "redolent of God." Everywhere the word appears as purely passive and expresses production by God. And if we proceed from these passages to those much more numerous ones, in which it is, as in II Tim. iii. 16, an epithet or predicate of Scripture, and where therefore its signification may have been affected by the way in which Christian antiquity understood that passage, the impression of the passive sense of the word grows, of course, ever stronger. Though these passages may not be placed in the first rank of material for the determination of the meaning of II Tim. iii. 16, by which they may have themselves been affected; it is manifestly improper to exclude them from consideration altogether. Even as part bearers of the exegetical tradition they are worthy of adduction: and it is scarcely conceivable that the term should have been entirely voided of its current sense, had it a different current sense, by the influence of a single employment of it by Paul - especially if we are to believe that its natural meaning as used by him differed from that assigned it by subsequent writers. The patristic use of the term in connection with Scripture has therefore its own weight, as evidence to the natural employment of the term by Greek-speaking Christian writers.

This use of it does not seem to occur in the very earliest patristic literature: but from the time of Clement of Alexandria the term qeo,pneustoj appears as one of the most common technical designations of Scripture. The following scattered instances, gathered at random, will serve to illustrate this use of it sufficiently for our purpose. Clement of Alexandria: "Strom.," vii. 16, §101 (Klotz, iii. 286; Potter, 894), "Accordingly those fall from their eminence who follow not God whither He leads; and He leads us in the inspired Scriptures (kata. ta.j qeopneu,stouj grafa,j)"; "Strom.," vii. 16, §103 (Klotz, iii. 287; Potter, 896), "But they crave glory, as many as willfully sophisticate the things wedded to inspired words (toi/j qeopneu,stoij lo,goij) handed down by the blessed apostles and teachers, by diverse arguments, opposing human teaching to the divine tradition for the sake of establishing the heresy"; "Protrept." 9, §87 (Klotz., i. 73, 74; Potter 71), "This teaching the apostle knows as truly divine (qei,an): 'Thou, O Timothy,' he says, 'from a child hast known the holy letters which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Jesus Christ'; for truly holy are those letters that sanctify and deify; and the writings or volumes that consist of these holy letters or syllables, the same apostle consequently calls 'inspired by God, seeing that they are profitable for doctrine,' etc." Origen: "De Principiis," iv, 8 (cf. also title to Book iv), "Having thus spoken briefly on the subject of the Divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (peri. tou/ qeopneu,stou th/j qei,aj grafh/j)"; Migne, (11, 1276), "The Jews and Christians agree as to the inspiration of the Holy Scripture (qei,w| gegra,fqai pneumati), but differ as to its interpretation"; (12, 1084), "Therefore the inspired books (qeo,pneusta bibli,a) are twenty-two"; (14, 1309), "The inspired Scripture"; (13, 664-5), "For we must seek the nourishment of the whole inspired Scripture (pa,shj th/j qeopneu,stou grafh/j); "Hom. xx. in Joshuam," 2 (Robinson's "Origen's Philocalia," p. 63), "Let us not then be stupefied by listening to Scriptures which we do not understand, but let it be to us according to our faith by which we believe that 'every Scripture, seeing that it is inspired (qeo,pneustoj), is profitable': for you must needs admit one of two things regarding these Scriptures, either that they are not inspired (qeo,pneustoi) because they are not profitable, as the unbeliever takes it, or, as a believer, you must admit that since they are inspired (qeo,pneustoi) they are profitable"; "Selecta in Psalmos," Ps. i, 3 (Migne XII, ii. 1080; De la Rue, 527), "Being about to begin the interpretation of the Psalms, we prefix a very excellent tradition handed down by the Hebrew⁵⁸ to us generally concerning the whole divine Scripture (kaqolikw/j peri. pa,shj qei,aj grafh/j); for he affirmed that the whole inspired Scripture (th.n o[lhn qeo,pneuston grafh,n). . . . But if 'the words of the Lord are pure words, fined silver, tried as the earth, purified seven times' (Ps. ii. 7) and the Holy Spirit has with all care dictated them accurately through the ministers of the word (meta. pa,shj avkribei,aj evxhtasme,nwj to. a[gion pneu/ma u`pobe,blhken auta. dia. tw/n u`phretw/n tou/ lo,gou), let the proportion never escape us, according to which the wisdom of God is first with respect to the whole theopneustic Scripture unto the last letter (kaq v h]n evpi. pa/san e;fqase grafh.n h` sofi,a tou/ qeou/ qeo,pneu,ston me,cri tou/ tuco,ntoj gra,mmatoj); and haply it was on this account that the Saviour said, 'One iota or one letter shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled': and it is just so that the divine art in the creation of the world, not only appeared in the heaven and sun and moon and stars, interpenetrating their whole bodies, but also on earth did the same in paltry matter, so that not even the bodies of the least animals are disdained by the artificer. . . . So we understand concerning all the things written by the inspiration (evx evpipnoi,aj) of the Holy Spirit . . . ." Athanasius (Migne, 27, 214): pa/sa grafh. h`mw/n tw/n cristianw/n qeo,pneusto,j evstin; (Migne, 25, 152): qeo,pneustoj ka,lei/tai; (Bened. Par., 1777, i. 767) : "Saying also myself, 'Since many have taken in hand to set forth to themselves the so-called apocrypha and to sing them with th/| qeopneu,stw| grafh|/ . . . ."' Cyrillus Hier., "Catechet.," iv. 33: "This is taught us by ai` qeo,pneustoi grafai, of both the Old and New Covenant." Basil, "On the Spirit," xxi (ad fin.): "How can he who calls Scripture 'God-inspired' because it was written through the inspiration of the Spirit (o` qeo,pneuston th.n grafh.n ovnoma,zwn( dia. th/j evpipnoi,aj tou/ a`gi,ou pneu,matoj suggrafei/san), use the language of one who insults and belittles Him?" "Letters," xvii. 3: "All bread is nutritious, but it may be injurious to the sick; just so, all Scripture is God-inspired (pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj) and profitable"; (Migne, xxx. 81): "The words of God-inspired Scripture (oi` th/j qeopneu,stou grafh/j lo,goi) shall stand on the tribune of Christ"; (Migne, 31, 744): "For every word or deed must be believed by the witness of the qeopneu,stou grafh/j, for the assurance of the good and the shame of the wicked"; (Migne, 31, 1080) : "Apart from the witness of the qeopneu,stwn grafw/n it is not possible, etc."; (Migne, 31, 1500): "From what sort of Scripture are we to dispute at this time? Pa,nta o`mo,tima( kai. pa,nta pneumatika,\ pa,nta qeo,pneusta( kai. pa,nta wvfe,lima"; (Migne, 31, 1536): "On the interpretation and remarking of the names and terms th/j qeopneu,stou grafh/j"; (Migne, 32, 228): megi,sth de. o`do.j pro.j th/n tou/ kah,kontoj eu;resin kai. h` mele,th tw/n qeopneu,twn grafw/n. Gregory Naz. (Migne, 35, 504): peri. tou/ qeopneu,stou tw/n a`gi,wn grafw/n; (Migne, 36, 472, cf. 37, 589), peri. tw/n ghsi,wn bibli,wn th/j qeopneu,stou grafh/j; (Migne, 36, 1589), toi/j qeopneu,stoij grafai/j. Gregory Nyssen, "Against Eunom.," vii. 1: "What we understand of the matter is as follows:  `H qeo,pneustoj grafh,, as the divine apostle calls it, is the Scripture of the Holy Spirit and its intention is the profit of men"; (Migne, 44, 68), mo,nhj th/j qeopneu,stou diaqh,khj. Cyrillus Alex. (Migne, 68, 225), polumerw/j kai. polutro,pwj h` qeo,pneustoj grafh. th/j dia. cristou/ swthri,aj proanafwnei/ tou.j tu,pouj. Neilos Abbas (Migne, 79, 141, cf. 529): grafh. h` qeo,pneustoj ouvde.n le,gei avkai,rwj ktl) Theodoret of Cyrrhus ("H. E.", i. 6; Migne, iii. 920). John of Damascus (Migne, 85, 1041), etc.

If, then, we are to make an induction from the use of the word, we shall find it bearing a uniformly passive significance, rooted in the idea of the creative breath of God. All that is, is God-breathed ("Sibyll." v. 406) ; and accordingly the rivers that water the Cymean plain are God-breathed ("Sibyll." v. 308), the spices God provides for the dead body of His friend ("Testament of Abraham," A. xx), and above all the wisdom He implants in the heart of man (Ps.-Phocyl. 121), the dreams He sends with a message from Him (Ps.-Plut., v. 2, 3) and the Scriptures He gives His people (II Tim. iii. 16). By an extension of meaning by no means extreme, those whom He has greatly honored as His followers, whom He has created into His saints, are called God-breathed men ("Vita Sabae" 16. Inscription in Kaibel) ; and even the sandals that have touched the feet of the Son of God are called God-breathed sandals (Nonnus), i. e., sandals that have been made by this divine contact something other than what they were: in both these cases, the word approaching more or less the broader meaning of "divine." Nowhere is there a trace of such an active significance as "God-breathing"; and though in the application of the word to individual men and to our Lord's sandals there may be an approach to the sense of "God-imbued," this sense is attained by a pathway of development from the simple idea of God-given, God-determined, and the like.

It is carefully to be observed, of course, that, although Dr. Cremer wishes to reach an active signification for the word in II Tim. iii. 16, he does not venture to assign an active sense to it immediately and directly, but approaches this goal through the medium of another signification. It is fully recognized by him that the word is originally passive in its meaning; it is merely contended that this original passive sense is not "God-inspired," but rather "God-filled" - a sense which, it is pleaded, will readily pass into the active sense of "God-breathing," after the analogy of such words as a;pneustoj( eu;pneustoj, which from "ill- or well-breathed" came to mean "breathing ill or well." What is filled with God will certainly be redolent of God, and what is redolent of God will certainly breathe out God. His reasons for preferring the sense of "gifted or filled with God's Spirit, divinely spirited," to "God-inspired" for the original passive connotation of the word are drawn especially from what he thinks the unsuitableness of the latter idea to some of the connections in which the word is found. It is thought that, as an epithet of an individual man, as an epithet of Scripture or a fountain, and (in the later editions of the "Lexicon" at least) especially, as an epithet of a sandal, "God-inspired" is incongruous, and something like "filled with God's Spirit and therefore radiating it" is suggested. There is obviously some confusion here arising from the very natural contemplation of the Vulgate translation "a Deo inspiratus" as the alternative rendering to what is proposed. There is, we may well admit, nothing in the word qeo,pneustoj to warrant the in- of the Vulgate rendering: this word speaks not of an "inspiration" by God, but of a "spiration" by God. The alternatives brought before us by Dr. Cremer's presentation are not to be confined, therefore, to the two, "Divinely spirited" and "Divinely inspired," but must be made to include the three, "Divinely spirited," "Divinely inspired," and "Divinely spired." The failure of Dr. Cremer to note this introduces, as we say, some confusion into his statement. We need only thus incidentally refer to it at this point, however. It is of more immediate importance to observe that what we are naturally led to by Dr. Cremer's remarks, is to an investigation of the natural meaning of the word qeo,pneustoj under the laws of word-formation. In these remarks he is leaning rather heavily on the discussion of Ewald to which he refers us, and it will conduce to a better understanding of the matter if we will follow his directions and turn to our Ewald.

Ewald, like Dr. Cremer, is dissatisfied with the current explanation of qeo,pneustoj and seeks to obtain for it an active sense, but is as little inclined as Dr. Cremer to assign an active sense directly to it. He rather criticises Winer,⁵⁹ for using language when speaking of qeo,pneustoj which would seem to imply that such compounds could really be active - as if "it were to be taken as a passive, although such words as eu;pneustoj( a;pneustoj are used actively." He cannot admit that any compound of a word like - pneustoj can be really active in primary meaning, and explains that eu;pneustoj means not so much "breathing good," i. e., propelling something good by the breath, as "endowed with good breath," and expresses, therefore, just like a;pneustoj, "breathless," i. e., "dead," a subjective condition, and is therefore to be compared with a half-passive verb, as indeed the word-form suggests. Just so, qeo,pneustoj, he says, is not so much our "God-breathing" as our "full of God's Spirit," "permeated and animated by God's Spirit." Thus, he supposes qeo,pneustoj to mean "blown through by God" (Gottdurchwehet, "God-pervaded"), rather than "blown into by God" (Gotteingewehet, "God-inspired ") as the Vulgate (inspiratus) and Luther (eingegeben) render it - an idea which, as he rightly says, would have required something like qee,mpneustoj⁶⁰ (or we may say qeei,spneustoj)⁶¹ to express it.

At first he seems to have thought that by this explanation he had removed all implication as to the origination of Scripture from the epithet: it expresses, he said,⁶² what Scripture is - viz., pervaded by God, full of His Spirit - without the least hint as to how it got to be so. He afterwards came to see this was going too far, and contented himself with saying that though certainly implicating a doctrine of the origin of the Scriptures, the term throws the emphasis on its quality.⁶³ He now, therefore, expressed himself thus: "It is certainly undeniable that the new expression qeo,pneustoj, II Tim. iii. 16, is intended to say very much what Philo meant, but did not yet know how to express sharply by means of such a compressed and strong term. For qeo,pneustoj (like eu;pneustoj, accurately, 'well-breathed') must mean 'God-breathed' or 'God-animated' (Gottbeathmet, or Gottbegeistert), and, in accordance with the genius of the compressed, clear Greek compounds, this includes in itself the implication that the words are spoken by the Spirit of God, or by those who are inspired by God," - a thing which, he adds, is repeatedly asserted in Scripture to have been the case, as, for example, in II Pet. i. 21. On another occasion,⁶⁴ he substantially repeats this, objecting to the translations inspiratus, eingegeben, as introducing an idea not lying in the word and liable to mislead, affirming a general but not perfect accord of the idea involved in it with Philo's conception of Scripture, and insisting on the incomplete parallelism between the term and our dogmatic idea of "inspiration." "This term," he says, "no doubt expresses only what is everywhere presupposed by Philo as to Scripture and repeatedly said by him in other words; still his usage is not yet so far developed; and it is accordant with this that in the New Testament, also, it is only in one of the latest books that the word is thus used. This author was possibly the first who so applied it." Again, qeo,pneustoj "means, purely passively, God-spirited (Gottbegeistet), or full of God's Spirit, not at all, when taken strictly, what we call discriminatingly God-inspired (Gottbegeistert) or filled with God's inspiration (Begeisterung), but in itself only, in a quite general sense, God-breathed, God-inspired (Gottbeathmet, Gottbegeistert), or filled with the divine spirit. In itself, therefore, it permits the most divers applications and we must appeal purely to the context in each instance in order to obtain its exact meaning."

Here we have in full what Dr. Cremer says so much more briefly in his articles. In order to orient ourselves with reference to it, we shall need to consider in turn the two points that are emphasized. These are, first, the passive form and sense of the word; and, secondly, the particular passive sense attributed to it, to wit: Gottbegeistet rather than Gottbegeistert, "endowed with God's Spirit," rather than "inspired by God."

On the former point there would seem to be little room for difference of opinion. We still read in Schmiedel's Winer: "Verbals in -toj correspond sometimes to Latin participles in -tus, sometimes to adjectives in -bilis"; and then in a note (despite Ewald's long-ago protest), after the adduction of authorities, "qeo,pneustoj, inspiratus (II Tim. iii. 16; passive like e;mpneustoj, while eu;pneustoj( a;pneustoj are active)."65 To these Thayer-Grimm adds also puri,pneustoj and dusdia,pneustoj as used actively and dusana,pneustoj as used apparently either actively or passively. Ewald, however, has already taught us to look beneath the "active" usage of eu;pneustoj and a;pneustoj for the "half-passive" background, and it may equally be found in the other cases; in each instance it is a state or condition at least, that is described by the word, and it is often only a matter of point of view whether we catch the passive conception or not. For example, we shall look upon dusdia,pneustoj as active or passive according as we think of the object it describes as a "slowly evaporating" or a "slowly evaporated" object - that is, as an object that only slowly evaporates, or as an object that can be only with difficulty evaporated. We may prefer the former expression; the Greeks preferred the latter: that is all. We fully accord with Prof. Schulze, therefore, when he says that all words compounded with -pneustoj have the passive sense as their original implication, and the active sense, when it occurs, is always a derived one. On this showing it cannot be contended, of course, that qeo,pneustoj may not have, like some of its relatives, developed an active or quasi-active meaning, but a passive sense is certainly implied as its original one, and a certain presumption is thus raised for the originality of the passive sense which is found to attach to it in its most ordinary usage.⁶⁶

This conclusion finds confirmation in a consideration which has its bearing on the second point also - the consideration that compounds of verbals in -toj with qeo,j normally express an effect produced by God's activity. This is briefly adverted to by Prof. Schulze, who urges that "the closely related qeodi,daktoj, and many, or rather most, of the compounds of qeo- in the Fathers, bear the passive sense," adducing in illustration: qeo,blastoj , qeobou,lhtoj, qeoge,nhtoj, qeo,grptoj, qeo,dmhtoj, qeo,dotoj, qeodw,rhtoj, qeo,qreptoj, qeoki,nhtoj, qeo,klhtoj, qeopoi,htoj, qeofo,rhtoj, qeo,crhstoj, qeo,cristoj. The statement may be much broadened and made to cover the whole body of such compounds occurring in Greek literature. Let any one run his eye down the list of compounds of qeo,j with verbals in -toj as they occur on the pages of any Greek Lexicon, and he will be quickly convinced that the notion normally expressed is that of a result produced by God. The sixth edition of Liddell and Scott happens to be the one lying at hand as we write; and in it we find entered (if we have counted aright), some eighty-six compounds of this type, of which, at least, seventy-five bear quite simply the sense of a result produced by God. We adjoin the list: qeh,latoj, qeoba,staktoj, qeo,blustoj, qeobou,lhtoj, qeobra,beutoj, qeoge,nhtoj, qeo,gnwstoj, qeo,graptoj, qeodek,toj, qeodi,daktoj, qeo,dmhtoj, qeoo,mhtoj, qeo,dotoj, qeodw,rhtoj, qeo,qetoj, qeokata,ratoj, qeokataskeu,astoj, qeoke,leustoj, qeoki,nhtoj, qeo,klhtoj, qeo,kmhtoj, qeo,krantoj, qeo,kritoj, qeo,kthtoj, qeo,ktistoj, qeo,ktitoj, qeokube,rnhtoj, qeoku,rwtoj, qeo,lektoj, qeo,lhptoj, qeomaka,ristoj, qeomi,shtoj, qeo,mustoj, qeo,paistoj, qeopara,dotoj, qeopa,raktoj, qeo,pemptoj, qeope,ratoj, qeo,plhktoj, qeo,ploutoj, qeopoi,htoj, qeopo,nhtoj, qeopro,sdektoj, qeo,ptustoj, qeo,rghtoj, qeo,rrhtoj, qe,ortoj, qeo,sdotoj, qeo,streptoj, qeosth,riktoj, qeostu,ghtoj, qeosu,llektoj, qeosu,mfutoj, qeosu,naktoj, qeo,sutoj, qeosfra,gistoj, qeo,swstoj, qeote,ratoj, qeo,teuktoj, qeoti,mhtoj, qeo,treptoj, qeotu,pwtoj, qeou?po,statoj, qeou<fantoj, qeo,fantoj, qeo,fqegktoj, qeofi,lhtoj, qeo,foitoj, qeofo,rhtoj, qeofrou,rhtoj, qeofu,laktoj, qeoco,lwtoj, qeo,crhstoj, qeo,cristoj. The eleven instances that remain, as in some sort exceptions to the general rule, include cases of different kinds. In some of them the verbal is derived from a deponent verb and is therefore passive only in form, but naturally bears an active sense: such are qeodh,lhtoj (God-injuring), qeomi,mhtoj (God-imitating), qeo,septoj (feared as God). Others may possibly be really passives, although we prefer an active form in English to express the idea involved: such are, perhaps, qeo,klutov ("Godheard," where we should rather say, "calling on the gods"), qeoko,llhtoj ("God-joined," where we should rather say, "united with God"), qeo,preptoj ("God-distinguished," where we should rather say, "meet for a god"). There remain only these five: qeai,thtoj ("obtained from God"), qeo,qutov ("offered to the gods"), qeora,stoj and the more usual qeo,rrotoj ("flowing from the gods"), and qeocw,rhtoj ("containing God"). In these the relation of qeo,j to the verbal idea is clearly not that of producing cause to the expressed result, but some other: perhaps what we need to recognize is that the verbal here involves a relation which we ordinarily express by a preposition, and that the sense would be suggested by some such phrases as "God-asked-of," "God-offered-to," ''God-flowedfrom," "God-made-room-for." In any event, these few exceptional cases cannot avail to set aside the normal sense of this compound, as exhibited in the immense majority of the cases of its occurrence. If analogy is to count for anything, its whole weight is thrown thus in favor of the interpretation which sees in qeo,pneustoj, quite simply, the sense of "Godbreathed," i.e., produced by God's creative breath.

If we ask, then, what account is to be given of Ewald's and, after him, Prof. Cremer's wish, to take it in the specific sense of "God-spirited," that is, "imbued with the Spirit of God," we may easily feel ourselves somewhat puzzled to return a satisfactory answer. We should doubtless not go far wrong in saying, as already suggested, that their action is proximately due to their not having brought all the alternatives fairly before them. They seem to have worked, as we have said, on the hypothesis that the only choice lay between the Vulgate rendering, "God-inspired," and their own "God-imbued." Ewald, as we have seen, argues (and as we think rightly) that "God-inspired" is scarcely consonant with the word-form, but would have required something like qee,mpneustoj. Similarly we may observe Dr. Cremer in the second edition of his "Lexicon" (when he was arguing for the current conception) saying that "the formation of the word cannot be traced to the use of pne,w, but only of evmpne,w," and supporting this by the remark that "the simple verb is never used of divine action"; and throughout his later article, operating on the presumption that the rendering "inspired" solely will come into comparison with his own newly proposed one. All this seems to be due, not merely to the traditional rendering of the word itself, but also to the conception of the nature of the divine action commonly expressed by the term, "inspiration," and indeed to the doctrine of Holy Scripture, dominant in the minds of these scholars.⁶⁷ If we will shake ourselves loose from these obscuring prepossessions and consider the term without preoccupation of mind, it would seem that the simple rendering "God-breathed" would commend itself powerfully to us: certainly not, with the Vulgate and Luther, "God-inbreathed," since the preposition "in" is wholly lacking in the term and is not demanded for the sense in any of its applications; but equally certainly not "God-imbued" or "God-infused" in the sense of imbued or infused with (rather than by) God, since, according to all analogy, as well as according to the simplest construction of the compound, the relation of "God" to the act expressed is that of "agent." On any other supposition than that this third and assuredly the most natural alternative, "God-breathed," was not before their minds, the whole treatment of Ewald and Dr. Cremer will remain somewhat inexplicable.

*****Why otherwise, for example, should the latter have remarked, that the "word must be traced to the use of evmpne,w and not to the simple verb pne,w?" Dr. Cremer, it is true, adds, as we have said, that the simple verb is never used of divine action. In any case, however, this statement is overdrawn. Not only is pne,w applied in a physical sense to God in such passages of the LXX. as Ps. cxlvii. 7 (18) (pneu,sei to. pneu/ma auvtou/) and Isa. xl. 24, and of Symmachus and Theodotion as Isa. xl. 7; and not only in the earliest Fathers is it used of the greatest gifts of Christ the Divine Lord, in such passages as Ign., "Eph." 17: - "For this cause the Lord received ointment on His head, that He might breathe incorruption upon His Church (i[na pne,h| th/| evkklhsi,a| ajfqarsi,an)"; but in what may be rightly called the normative passage, Gen. ii. 7, it is practically justified, in its application to God, by the LXX. use of pnoh, in the objective clause, and actually employed for the verb itself by both Symmachus and Theodotion. And if we will penetrate beneath the mere matter of the usage of a word to the conception itself, nothing could be more misleading than such a remark as Dr. Cremer's. For surely there was no conception more deeply rooted in the Hebrew mind, at least, than that of the creative "breath of God"; and this conception was assuredly not wholly unknown even in ethnic circles. To a Hebrew, at all events, the "breath of God" would seem self-evidently creative; and no locution would more readily suggest itself to him as expressive of the Divine act of "making" than just that by which it would be affirmed that He breathed things into existence. The "breath of the Almighty" - pnoh. pantokra,toroj - was traditionally in his mouth as the fit designation of the creative act (Job xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 4); and not only was he accustomed to think of man owing his existence to the breathing of the breath of God into his nostrils (Gen. ii. 7, especially Symm. Theod.) and of his life as therefore the "breath of God" (pneu/ma qei/oj, LXX., Job xxvii. 8), which God needs but to draw back to Himself that all flesh should perish (Job xxxiv. 14): but he conceived also that it was by the breath of God's mouth (pneu,mati tou/ stw,matoj, Ps. xxxiii. 6), that all the hosts of the heavens were made, and by the sending forth of His breath, (pneu/ma, Ps. civ. 30) that the multiplicity of animal life was created. By His breath even (pnoh,, Job xxxvii. 10), he had been told, the ice is formed; and by His breath (pneu/ma, Isa. xi. 5, cf. Job iv. 9) all the wicked are consumed. It is indeed the whole conception of the Spirit of God as the executive of the Godhead that is involved here: the conception that it is the Spirit of God that is the active agent in the production of all that is. To the Hebrew consciousness, creation itself would thus naturally appear as, not indeed an "inspiration," and much less an "infusion of the Divine essence," but certainly a "spiration"; and all that exists would appeal to it as, therefore, in the proper sense theopneustic, i. e., simply, "breathed by God," produced by the creative breath of the Almighty, the pnoh. pantokra,toroj.

This would not, it needs to be remembered, necessarily imply an "immediate creation," as we call it. When Elihu declares that it is the breath of the Almighty that has given him life or understanding (Job xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 4), he need not be read as excluding the second causes by which he was brought into existence; nor need the Psalmist (civ. 30) be understood to teach an "immediate creation" of the whole existing animal mass. But each certainly means to say that it is God who has made all these things, and that by His breath: He breathed them into being - they are all qeo,pneustoi. So far from the word presenting a difficulty therefore from the point of view of its conception, it is just, after the nature of Greek compounds, the appropriate crystallization into one concise term of a conception that was a ruling idea in every Jewish mind. Particularly, then, if we are to suppose (with both Ewald and Cremer) that the word is a coinage of Paul's, or even of Hellenistic origin, nothing could be more natural than that it should have enshrined in it the Hebraic conviction that God produces all that He would bring into being by a mere breath. From this point of view, therefore, there seems no occasion to seek beyond the bare form of the word itself for a sense to attribute to it. If we cannot naturally give it the meaning of "God-inspired," we certainly do not need to go so far afield as to attribute to it the sense of "filled with God": the natural sense which belongs to it by virtue of its formation, and which is commended to us by the analogy of like compounds, is also most consonant with the thought-forms of the circles in which it perhaps arose and certainly was almost exclusively used. What the word naturally means from this point of view also, is "God-spirated," "God-breathed," "produced by the creative breath of the Almighty."

Thus it appears that such a conception as "God-breathed" lies well within the general circle of ideas of the Hellenistic writers, who certainly most prevailingly use the word. An application of this conception to Scripture, such as is made in II Tim. iii. 16, was no less consonant with the ideas concerning the origin and nature of Scripture which prevailed in the circles out of which that epistle proceeded. This may indeed be fairly held to be generally conceded.

The main object of Ewald's earlier treatment of this passage, to be sure, was to void the word qeo,pneustoj of all implication as to the origination of Scripture. By assigning to it the sense of "God-pervaded," "full of God's Spirit," he supposed he had made it a description of what Scripture is, without the least suggestion of how it came to be such; and he did not hesitate accordingly, to affirm that it had nothing whatever to say as to the origin of Scripture." But he afterwards, as we have already pointed out, saw the error of this position, and so far corrected it as to explain that, of course, the termqeo,pneustoj includes in itself the implication that the words so designated are spoken by the Spirit of God or by men inspired by God - in accordance with what is repeatedly said elsewhere in Scripture, as, for example, in II Pet. i. 21 - yet still to insist that it throws its chief emphasis rather on the nature than the origin of these words.⁶⁹ And he never thought of denying that in the circles in which the word was used in application to Scripture, the idea of the origination of Scripture by the act of God was current and indeed dominant. Philo's complete identification of Scripture with the spoken word of God was indeed the subject under treatment by him, when he penned the note from which we have last quoted; and he did not fail explicitly to allow that the conceptions of the writer of the passage in II Timothy were very closely related to those of Philo. "It is certainly undeniable," he writes, "that the new term qeo,pneustoj, II Tim. iii. 16, is intended to express very much what Philo meant, and did not yet know how to say sharply by means of so compressed and direct a term"; and again, in another place, "this term, no doubt, embodies only what is everywhere presupposed by Philo as to the Scriptures, and is repeatedly expressed by him in other words; yet his usage is not yet so far developed; and it is in accordance with this that in the New Testament, too, it is only one of the latest writings which uses the term in this way."70

It would seem, to be sure, that it is precisely this affinity with Philo's conception of Scripture which Dr. Cremer wishes to exclude in his treatment of the term. "Let it be added," he writes, near the close of the extract from his Herzog article which we have given above, "that the expression 'breathed by God, inspired by God,' though an outgrowth of the Biblical idea, certainly, so far as it is referred to the prophecy which does not arise out of the human will (II Pet. i. 20), yet can scarcely be applied to the whole of the rest of Scripture - unless we are to find in II Tim. iii. 16 the expression of a conception of sacred Scripture similar to the Philonian." And a little later he urges against the testimony of the exegetical tradition to the meaning of the word, that it was affected by the conceptions of Alexandrian Judaism - that is, he suggests, practically of heathenism. There obviously lies beneath this mode of representation an attempt to represent the idea of the nature and origin of Scripture exhibited in the New Testament, as standing in some fundamental disaccord with that of the Philonian tracts; and the assimilation of the conception expressed in II Tim. iii. 16 to the latter as therefore its separation from the former. Something like this is affirmed also by Holtzmann when he writes :71 "It is accordingly clear that the author shares the Jewish conception of the purely supernatural origin of the Scriptures in its straitest acceptation, according to which, therefore, the theopneusty is ascribed immediately to the Scriptures themselves, and not merely, as in II Pet. i. 21, to their writers; and so far as the thing itself is concerned there is nothing incorrect implied in the translation, tota Scriptura." The notion that the Biblical and the Philonian ideas of Scripture somewhat markedly differ is apparently common to the two writers: only Holtzmann identifies the idea expressed in II Tim. iii. 16 with the Philonian, and therefore pronounces it to be a mark of late origin for that epistle; while Cremer wishes to detach it from the Philonian, that he may not be forced to recognize the Philonian conception as possessing New Testament authorization.

No such fundamental difference between the Philonian and New Testament conceptions as is here erected, however, can possibly be made out; though whatever minor differences may be traceable between the general New Testament conception and treatment of Scripture and that of Philo, it remains a plain matter of fact that no other general view of Scripture than the so-called Philonian is discernible in the New Testament, all of whose writers - as is true of Jesus lIimself also, according to His reported words, - consistently look upon the written words of Scripture as the express utterances of God, owing their origin to His direct spiration and their character to this their divine origin. It is peculiarly absurd to contrast II Pet. i. 21 with II Tim. iii. 16 (as Holtzmann does explicitly and the others implicitly), on the ground of a difference of conception as to "inspiration," shown in the ascription of inspiration in the former passage to the writers, in the latter immediately to the words of Scripture. It is, on the face of it, the "word of prophecy" to which Peter ascribes divine surety; it is written prophecy which he declares to be of no "private interpretation"; and if he proceeds to exhibit how God produced this sure written word of prophecy - viz., through men of God carried onward, apart from their own will, by the determining power of the Holy Ghost⁷² - surely this exposition of the mode of the divine action in producing the Scriptures can only by the utmost confusion of ideas be pleaded as a denial of the fact that the Scriptures were produced by the Divine action. To Peter as truly as to Paul, and to the Paul of the earlier epistles as truly as to the Paul of II Timothy, or as to Philo himself, the Scriptures are the product of the Divine Spirit, and would be most appropriately described by the epithet of "God-breathed," i. e., produced by the breath, the inspiration, of God.

The entire distinction which it is sought to erect between the New Testament and the Philonic conceptions of Scripture, as if to the New Testament writers the Scriptures were less the oracles of God than to Philo, and owed their origin less directly to God's action, and might therefore be treated as less divine in character or operation, hangs in the mere air. There may be fairly recognized certain differences between the New Testament and the Philonic conceptions of Scripture; but they certainly do not move in this fundamental region. The epithet "God-breathed," "produced by the creative breath of the Almighty," commends itself, therefore, as one which would lie near at hand and would readily express the fundamental view as to the origination of Scripture current among the whole body of New Testament writers, as well as among the whole mass of their Jewish contemporaries, amid whom they were bred. The distinction between the inspiration of the writers and that of the record, is a subtlety of later times of which they were guiltless: as is also the distinction between the origination of Scripture by the action of the Holy Ghost and the infusing of the Holy Spirit into Scriptures originating by human activity. To the writers of this age of simpler faith, the Scriptures are penetrated by God because they were given by God: and the question of their effects, or even of their nature, was not consciously separated from the question of their origin. The one sufficient and decisive fact concerning them to these writers, inclusive of all else and determinative of all else that was true of them as the Word of God, was that they were "God-given," or, more precisely, the product of God's creative "breath."

In these circumstances it can hardly be needful to pause to point out in detail how completely this conception accords with the whole New Testament doctrine of Scripture, and with the entire body of phraseology currently used in it to express its divine origination. We need only recall the declarations that the Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture (Heb. iii. 7, x. 15), "in whom" it is, therefore, that its human authors speak (Matt. xxii. 43; Mark xii. 36), because it is He that speaks what they speak "through them" (Acts i. 16, iv. 25), they being but the media of the prophetic word (Matt. i. 22, ii. 15, iii. 3, iv. 14, viii. 17, xii. 17, xiii. 35, xxi. 4, xxiv. 15, xxvii. 9, Luke xviii. 31, Acts ii. 16, xxvii. 25, Rom. i. 2, Luke i. 76, Acts i. 16, iii. 18, 21). The whole underlying conception of such modes of expression is in principle set forth in the command of Jesus to His disciples that, in their times of need, they should depend wholly on the Divine Spirit speaking in them (Matt. x. 20; Mark xiii. 11; cf. Luke i. 41, 67, xii. 12; Acts iv. 8) : and perhaps even more decidedly still in Peter's description of the prophets of Scripture as "borne by the Holy Ghost," as pneumato,foroi, whose words are, therefore, of no "private interpretation," and of the highest surety (II Pet. i. 21). In all such expressions the main affirmation is that Scripture, as the product of the activity of the Spirit, is just the "breath of God"; and the highest possible emphasis is laid on their origination by the divine agency of the Spirit. The primary characteristic of Scripture in the minds of the New Testament writers is thus revealed as, in a word, its Divine origin.

That this was the sole dominating conception attached from the beginning to the term qeo,pneustoj as an epithet of Scripture, is further witnessed by the unbroken exegetical tradition of its meaning in the sole passage of the New Testament in which it occurs. Dr. Cremer admits that such is the exegetical tradition, though he seeks to break the weight of this fact by pleading that the unanimity of the patristic interpretation of the passage is due rather to preconceived opinions on the part of the Fathers as to the nature of Scripture, derived from Alexandrian Judaism, than to the natural effect on their minds of the passage itself. Here we are pointed to the universal consent of Jewish and Christian students of the Word as to the divine origin of the Scriptures they held in common - a fact impressive enough of itself - as a reason for discrediting the testimony of the latter as to the meaning of a fundamental passage bearing on the doctrine of Holy Scripture. One is tempted to ask whether it can be really proved that the theology of Alexandrian Judaism exercised so universal and absolute a dominion over the thinking of the Church, that it is likely to be due to its influence alone that the Christian doctrine of inspiration took shape, in despite (as we are told) of the natural implications of the Christian documents themselves. And one is very likely to insist that, whatever may be its origin, this conception of the divine origination of Scripture was certainly shared by the New Testament writers themselves, and may very well therefore have found expression in II Tim. iii. 16 - which would therefore need no adjustment to current ideas to make it teach it. At all events, it is admitted that this view of the teaching of II Tim. iii. 16 is supported by the unbroken exegetical tradition; and this fact certainly requires to be taken into consideration in determining the meaning of the word.

It is quite true that Dr. Cremer in one sentence does not seem to keep in mind the unbrokenness of the exegetical tradition. We read: "Origen also, in 'Hom. 21 in Jerem.', seems so [i. e., as Dr. Cremer does] to understand it [that is, qeo,pneustoj]: - sacra volumina spiritus plenitudinem spirant." The unwary reader may infer from this that these words of Origen are explanatory of II Tim. iii. 16, and that they therefore break the exegetical tradition and show that Origen assigned to that passage the meaning that "the Holy Scriptures breathe out the plenitude of the Spirit." Such is, however, not the case. Origen is not here commenting on II Tim. iii. 16, but only freely expressing his own notion as to the nature of Scripture. His words here do not, therefore, break the constancy of the exegetical tradition, but at the worst only the universality of that Philonian conception of Scripture, to the universality of which among the Fathers, Dr. Cremer attributes the unbrokenness of the exegetical tradition. What results from their adduction is, then, not a weakening of the patristic testimony to the meaning of qeo,pneustoj in II Tim. iii. 16, but (at the worst) a possible hint that Dr. Cremer's explanation of the unanimity of that testimony may not, after all, be applicable. When commenting on II Tim. iii. 16, Origen uniformly takes the word qeo,pneustoj as indicatory of the origin of Scripture; though when himself speaking of what Scripture is, he may sometimes speak as Dr. Cremer would have him speak. It looks as if his interpretation of II Tim. iii. 16 were expository of its meaning to him rather than impository of his views on it. Let us, by way of illustration, place a fuller citation of Origen's words, in the passage adduced by Dr. Cremer, side by side with a passage directly dealing with II Tim. iii. 16, and note the result.

Secundum istiusmodi expositiones decet sacras litteras credere nee unum quidem apicem habere vacuum sapientia Dei. Qui enim mihi homini præcipit dicens: Non apparebis ante conspectum meum vacuus, multo plus hoc ipse agit, ne aliquid vacuum loquatur. Ex plenitudine ejus accipientes prophetæ, ea, quæ erant de plenitudine sumpta, cecinerunt: et idcirco sacra volumina spiritus plenitudinem spirant, nihilque est sive in prophetia, sive in lege, sive in evangelio, sive in apostolo, quod non a plenitudine divinæ majestatis descendat. Quamobrem spirant in scripturis sanctis hodieque plenitudinis verba. Spirant autem his, qui habent et oculos ad videnda coelestia et aures ad audienda divina, et nares ad ea, quæ sunt plenitudinis, sentienda (Origen, "in Jeremiam Homilia," xxi, 2. Wirceburg ed., 1785, ix, 733).

Here Origen is writing quite freely: and his theme is the divine fullness of Scripture. There is nothing in Scripture which is vain or empty and all its fullness is derived from Him from whom it is dipped by the prophets. Contrast his manner, now, when he is expounding II Tim. iii. 16.

"Let us not be stupefied by hearing Scriptures which we do not understand; but let it be to us according to our faith, by which also we believe that every Scripture because it is theopneustic (pa/sa grafh. qeo,pneustoj ou=sa) is profitable. For you must needs admit one of two things regarding these Scriptures: either that they are not theopneustic since they are not profitable, as the unbeliever takes it; or, as a believer, you must admit that since they are theopneustic, they are profitable. It is to be admitted, of course, that the profit is often received by us unconsciously, just as often we are assigned certain food for the benefit of the eyes, and only after two or three days does the digestion of the food that was to benefit the eyes give us assurance by trial that the eyes are benefited . . . . So, then, believe also concerning the divine Scriptures, that thy soul is profited, even if thy understanding does not perceive the fruit of the profit that comes from the letters, from the mere bare reading" [Origen, "Hom. XX in Josuam" 2, in J. A. Robinson's Origen's "Philocalia," p. 63).

It is obvious that here Origen does not understand II Tim. iii. 16, to teach that Scripture is inspired only because it is profitable, and that we are to determine its profitableness first and its inspiration therefrom; what he draws from the passage is that Scripture is profitable because it is inspired, and that though we may not see in any particular case how, or even that, it is profitable, we must still believe it to be profitable because it is inspired, i. e., obviously because it is given of God for that end.

It seemed to be necessary to adduce at some length these passages from Origen, inasmuch as the partial adduction of one of them, alone, by Dr. Cremer might prove misleading to the unwary reader. But there appears to be no need of multiplying passages from the other early expositors of II Tim. iii. 16, seeing that it is freely confessed that the exegetical tradition runs all in one groove. We may differ as to the weight we allow to this fact; but surely as a piece of testimony corroborative of the meaning of the word derived from other considerations, it is worth noting that it has from the beginning been understood only in one way - even by those, such as Origen and we may add Clement, who may not themselves be absolutely consistent in preserving the point of view taught them in this passage.⁷³

The final test of the sense assigned to any word is, of course, derived from its fitness to the context in which it is found. And Dr. Cremer does not fail to urge with reference to qeo,pneustoj in II Tim. iii. 16, that the meaning he assigns to it corresponds well with the context, especially with the succeeding clauses; as well as, he adds, with the language elsewhere in the New Testament, as, for example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where what Scripture says is spoken of as the utterance, the saying of the Holy Ghost, with which he would further compare even Acts xxviii. 25.

That the words of Scripture are conceived, not only in Hebrews but throughout the New Testament, as the utterances of the Holy Ghost is obvious enough and not to be denied. But it is equally obvious that the ground of this conception is everywhere the ascription of these words to the Holy Ghost as their responsible author: littera scripta manet and remains what it was when written, viz., the words of the writer. The fact that all Scripture is conceived as a body of Oracles and approached with awe as the utterances of God certainly does not in the least suggest that these utterances may not be described as God-given words or throw a preference for an interpretation of qeo,pneustoj which would transmute it into an assertion that they are rather God-giving words.

And the same may be said of the contextual argument. Naturally, if qeo,pneustoj means "God-giving," it would as an epithet or predicate of Scripture serve very well to lay a foundation for declaring this "God-giving Scripture" also profitable, etc. But an equal foundation for this declaration is laid by the description of it as "God-given." The passage just quoted from Origen will alone teach us this. All that can be said on this score for the new interpretation, therefore, is that it also could be made accordant with the context; and as much, and much more, can be said for the old. We leave the matter in this form, since obviously a detailed interpretation of the whole passage cannot be entered into here, but must be reserved for a later occasion. It may well suffice to say now that obviously no advantage can be claimed for the new interpretation from this point of view. The question is, after all, not what can the word be made to mean, but what does it mean; and the witness of its usage elsewhere, its form and mode of composition, and the sense given it by its readers from the first, supply here the primary evidence. Only if the sense thus commended to us were unsuitable to the context would we be justified in seeking further for a new interpretation - thus demanded by the context. This can by no means be claimed in the present instance, and nothing can be demanded of us beyond showing that the more natural current sense of the word is accordant with the context.

The result of our investigation would seem thus, certainly, to discredit the new interpretation of qeo,pneustoj offered by Ewald and Cremer. From all points of approach alike we appear to be conducted to the conclusion that it is primarily expressive of the origination of Scripture, not of its nature and much less of its effects. What is qeo,pneustoj is "God-breathed," produced by the creative breath of the Almighty. And Scripture is called qeo,pneustoj in order to designate it as "God-breathed," the product of Divine spiration, the creation of that Spirit who is in all spheres of the Divine activity the executive of the Godhead. The traditional translation of the word by the Latin inspiratus a Deo is no doubt also discredited, if we are to take it at the foot of the letter. It does not express a breathing into the Scriptures by God. But the ordinary conception attached to it, whether among the Fathers or the Dogmaticians, is in general vindicated. What it affirms is that the Scriptures owe their origin to an activity of God the Holy Ghost and are in the highest and truest sense His creation. It is on this foundation of Divine origin that all the high attributes of Scripture are built.

Endnotes:

From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, v. XT, pp. 89-130.

The novelty of the view in question must not be pressed beyond measure. It was a new view in the sense of the text, but, as we shall subsequently see, it was no invention of Prof. Cremer's, but was derived by him from Ewald.

That is at least to the eighth edition (1895), which is the last we have seen. The chief differences between the Herzog and "Lexicon" articles are found at the beginning and end - the latter being fuller at the beginning and the former at the end. The "Lexicon" article opens thus: "qeo,pneustoj, -on, gifted with God's Spirit, breathing the Divine Spirit (but not, as Weiss still maintains = inspired by God). The term belongs only to Hellenistic and Ecclesiastical Greek, and as peculiar thereto is connected with expressions belonging to the sphere of heathen prophecy and mysteries, qeofo,roj, qeofo,rhtoj, qeoforou,menoj, qeh,latoj, qeoki,nhtoj, qeode,gmwn, qeode,ktwr, qeopro,poj, qeo,mantij, qeo,frwn, qeofra,dmwn, qeofradh,j, e;nqeoj, evnqousiasth,j, et al., to which Hellenistic Greek adds two new words, qeo,pneustoj and qeodi,daktoj, without, however, denoting what the others do - an ecstatic state." The central core of the article then runs parallel in both forms. Nothing is added in the "Lexicon," except (in the later editions) immediately after the quotations from Nonnus this single sentence: "This usage in Nonnus shows just that it is not to be taken as = inspiratus, inspired by God but as = filled with God's Spirit and therefore radiating it." Then follows immediately the next sentence, precisely as in Herzog, with which the "Lexicon" article then runs parallel to the quotation from Origen, immediately after which it breaks off.

The contrast is between "gottlich begeistet" and "gottlich begeistert." The reference to Ewald is given in the "Lexicon": Jahrb. f. bibl. Wissenschaft, vii. 68. seq.; ix. 91 seq.

Of which the facts given by Cremer may for the present be taken as a fair conspectus, only adding that the word occurs not only in the editions of Plutarch, "De plac. phil.," v. 2, 3, but also in the printed text of the dependent document printed among Galen's works under the title of "De hist. phil.," 106.

Cf. Mahaffy, "History of Greek Literature" (American ed.), i. 188, note 1.

"The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ," E. T., II, iii. 286, whence the account given in the text is derived.

See his "Gesammelte Abhandlungen," edited by Usener in 1885. Usener's Preface should be also consulted.

So Harnack, "Theologische Literaturzeitung," 1885, No. 7, p. 160: also, J. R. Harris, "The Teaching of the Apostles and the Sibylline Books" (Cambridge, 1888): both give internal evidences of the Christian origin of the book. Cf. what we have said in The Andover Review for August, 1886, p. 219.

Oxford 8vo edition, 1795-1830, Vol. iv, ii. 650.

As by Diels in his "Doxographi Graci," p. 15: "fuit scilicet qeope,mptouj, quod sero intellectum est a Wyttenbachio in indice Plutarcheo. si Galenum inspexissit, ipsum illud qeope,mptouj inventurus erat." But Diels' presentation of Galen was scarcely open to Wyttenbach's inspection: and the editions then extant read qeopneu,stouj as Corsini rightly tells us.

"Plutarchi de Physicis Philosophorum Decretis," ed. Chr. Dan. Beckius, Leipzig, 1787.

Tübingen, 1791-1804, Vol. XII (1800), p. 467.

"Plutarchi de Placitis Philosophorum Libb. v." (Florentiæ, 1750).

A very clear account of Diels' main conclusions is given by Franz Susemihl in his "Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit" (Leipzig, 1891-1892), ii. pp. 250, 251, as well as in Bursian's Jahresbericht for 1881 (VII, i. 289 seq.). A somewhat less flattering notice by Max Heinze appears in Bursian for 1880, p. 3 seq. Cf. Gerke, sub voc. "Aëtios," in the new edition of Pauly's "Real-Encyclopaedie" (Wissowa's ed., 1894), I, i. 705 a.

Cf. the remarks of Max Heinze as above.

It would be possible to hold, of course, that Athenagoras used not the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch, but the hypothetical Aëtios, of which Diels considers the former an excerpt: but Diels does not himself so judge: "anceps est quæstio utrum excerpserit Athenagoras Plutarchi Placita an maius illud opus, cuius illa est epitome. illud mihi probatur, hoc R. Volkmanno 'Leben Plut.,' i. 169. . . ." (p. 51).

The relation of the Pseudo-Galen to the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch Diels expresses thus: "Alter liber quo duce ex generali physicorum tanquam promulside ad largiorem dapam Galenus traducit est 'Plutarchus de Placidis philosophorum physicis.' Unde cum in prioribus pauca suspensa manu ut condimentum adspersa sint (c. 5, 20, 21), jam a c. 25 ad finem Plutarchus ita regnat, nihil aliud ut præterea adscitum esse appareat . . . ergo fœdioribus Byzantiorum soloecismis amputatis hanc partem ad codicum fidem descripsimus, non nullis Plutarcheæ emendationis auxilium, pluribus fortasse humanæ perversitatis insigne testimonium" (pp. 252, 253).

Plutarch's, pp. 267 seq.; Galen's, pp. 595 seq.

Plutarch's "Ep.," v. 2, 3 (p. 416); Galen's "Hist. Phil.," 106 (p. 640).

For Bernardakis reads qeopneu,stouj in his text (Teubner series, Plutarch's "Moralia," v. 351), recognizing at the same time in a note that the reading of Galen is qeope,mptouj.

In Pauly's "Real-Encyclopædie," new ed., s. v.

It is not meant, of course, that Diels was the first to deny the tract to Plutarch. It has always been under suspicion. Wyttenbach, for example, rejects its Plutarchian claim with decision, and speaks of the tract in a tone of studied contempt, which is, indeed, reflected in the note already quoted from him, in the remark that we would not be justified in obtruding elegancies on a mere compiler. Cf. i. p. xli: "Porro, si quid hoc est, spurius liber utriusque nomine perperam fertur idem, Plutarchi qui dicitur De Philosophorum Placitis, Galeni Historia philosophiæ."

Diels does not think highly of this portion of Kahn's edition: "Kuehnius, qui prioribus sui corporis voluminibus manum subinde admovit quamvis parum felicem, postremo urgenti typothetæ ne inspectas quidem Charterianae plagulas typis discribendas tradidisse fertur. neque aliter explicari potest, quod editio ambitiose suscepta tam misere absoluta est" (p. 241, 2).

Though Diels informs us that the editors have made very little effort to ascertain the readings of the MSS.

"Ex archetypo haud vetusto eodemque mendosissimo quattuor exempla transcripta esse, ac fidelius quidem Laur. A, peritius sed interpolate Laur. B." (p. 241).

Diels' language is: "dolendum sane est libri condicionem tam esse desperatam ut etiam Plutarcheo archetypo comparato haud semel plane incertus hæreas, quid sibi velit compilator" (p. 12).

"Verum quamvis sit summa opus cautione ne ventosi nebulonis commenta pro sincera memoria amplexemur, inest tamen in Galeno optimarum lectionum pæne intactus thesaurus" (p. 13).

"Codices manu scripti quotquot noti sunt ex archetypo circa millesimum annum scripto deducti sunt" (p. 33). "duo autem sunt recensendi Plutarchi instrumenta ... unum recentius ex codicis petendum, inter quos A B C archetypo proximos ex ceterorum turba segregavi ... alterum genus est excerptorum . . ." (p. 42).

The readings of A are drawn from a collation of it with the Frankfort edition of 1620 published by C. F. Matthæi in his "Lectiones Mosquenses." In a number of important readings, the MS. has been reinspected for Diels by Voelkel with the result of throwing some doubt on the completeness of Matthæi's collation. Accordingly the MS. is cited in parenthesis whenever it is cited e silentio (see Diels, p. 33).

The general use of qeo,pemptoj is illustrated in the Lexicons, by the citation of Arist., "Ethic. Nic.," i. 9, 3, where happiness is spoken of as qeo,pemptoj in contrast to the attainment of virtue in effort; Longinus, c. 34, where we read of qeo,pempta tina dwrh,mata in contrast with avnqrw,pina; Themist, "Or." 13, p. 178 D, where o` q) neani,oj is found; Dion. Hal., T. 14. Liddell and Scott quote for the secondary sense of "extraordinary," Longus, 3, 18; Artem., i. 7.

Arist.,  de divinat, 2 p. 4636 13: o[lwj d v evpei. kai. tw/n a;llwn zw,wn ovneirw,ttei tina.( qeo,pempta me.n ouvk a;n ei;h ta. evnu,pni,a( ouvde. ge,gone tou,tou ca,rin( diamo,nia me,noi\ h` ga.r fu,sij daimoni,a( avll v ouv qei,a.

Cf. Philo's tract peri. tou/ qeope,mptouj ei;nai tou.j ovnei,rouj (Mangey., 1. 620). Its opening words run (Yonge's translation, ii. 292): "The treatise before this one has contained our opinions as to those of tw/n ovnei,rwn qeope,mptwn classed in the first species . . . which are defined as dreams in which the Deity sends the appearances beheld in dreams according to his own suggestion (to. qei/on kata. th.n ivdi,an u`pobolhj ta.j evn toi/j u[pnoij ejpipe,mpein fantasi,aj)," whereas this later treatise is to discuss the second species of dreams, in which, "our mind being moved along with that of the universe, has seemed to be hurried away from itself and to be God-borne (qeoforei/swqai) so as to be capable of preapprehension and foreknowledge of the future." Cf. also § 22, th/j qeope,mptou fantasi,aj: § 33, qeope,mptouj ovnei,rouj: ii. § 1, tw/n qeope,mptwn ovnei,rwn. The superficial parallelism of Philo with what is cited from Herophilus is close enough fully to account for a scribe harking back to Philo's language - or even for the compiler of the Pseudo-Galen doing so.

"Clementine Homilies," xvii. 15: "And Simon said: 'If you maintain that apparitions do not always reveal the truth, yet for all that visions and dreams, being God-sent (ta. o`ra,mata kai. ta. evnu,pnia qeo,pempta o;nta ouv yeu,detai) do not speak falsely in regard to those matters which they wish to tell.' And Peter said: 'You were right in saying that, being God-sent, they do not speak falsely (qeo,pempta ovnta ouv yeu,detai. But it is uncertain if he who sees has seen a God-sent dream (eiv o` ivdw.n qeo,pempton evw,raken o;neiron)." What has come to the "Clementine Homilies" is surely already a Christian commonplace.

The immediately preceding paragraph in the Pseudo-Galen (§ 105), corresponding with [Pseudo?-] Plutarch, v. i. 1, 2.3 is edited by Diels thus: Pla,twn kai. oi` Stwikoi. th.n mantikh.n eivsa,gousi\ kai. ga.r qeo,pempton ei=nai( o[per evsti.n evnqeastiko.n kai. kata. to. qeio,taton th/j yuch/j( o[per evsti.n evnqousiastiko,n( kai. to. ovneiropuliko.n kai. to. avstronomiko.n kai. to. ovrneoskopiko,n) Xenofa,nhj kai.  vEpi,kouroj avnairou/si th.n mantikh,n) Puqago,raj de, mo,non to. qutiko.n ouvk evgkri,nei)  vAristote,lhj kai. Dikai,arcoj tou.j ovnei,rouj eivsa,gousin( avqa,naton me,n th.n yuch.n ouv nomi,zontevj qei,ou de, tinoj mete,xein) Surely the scribe or compiler who could transmute the section peri. mantikh/j in the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch into this, with its intruded qeo,pempton before him and its allusion to Aristotle on dreams, might be credited without much rashness with the intrusion of qeope,mptouj into the next section.

Cf. in general E. Thramer. Hastings ERE, VI, p. 542.

It is duly recorded in Boeckh, "Corpus Inscript. Grace," 4700 b. (Add. iii). It is also printed by Kaibel, "Epigrammata Græca" (Berlin, 1878), p. 428, but not as a Christian inscription, but under the head of "Epigrammata dedicatoria: V. proscynemata."

Porphyry: "Ant. Nymph.," 116: h`gou/nto ga.r prosiza,nein tw|/ u[dati ta.j yuca.j qeopno,w| o;nti( w[j fhsin o` Noumh,nioj\ dia. tou/to le,gwn kai. to.n profh,thn eivrhke,nai( evmfe,resqai evpa,no tou/ u[datoj qeou/ pneu/ma - a passage remarkable for containing an appeal to Moses (Gen. i. 5) by a heathen sage. "God-breathed water" is rendered by Holstenius: "aquæ quæ divino spiritu foveretur"; by Gesnerus: "aquæ divinitus afliatæ"; by Thomas Taylor: "water which is inspired by divinity." Pisid. "Hexaem.," 1489: h` qeo,pnouj avkro,thj (quoted unverified from Hase-Dindorf's Stephens). The Christian usage is illustrated by the following citations, taken from Sophocles: Hermes Tris., "Poem," 17. 14: th/j a;lhqei,aj; Anastasius of Sinai, Migne, 89. 1169 A: Those who do not have flesh, love of God, "these, having a diabolical will and doing the desires of their flesh, paraito/ntai w`j ponhro.n to. qeo,moion, kai. qeo,ktiston( kai. qeo,moion th/j noera/j kai. qeocara,ktou h`mw/n yuch/j o`mologei/n evn Cristw|/( kai. th.n zwopoio.n au`th/j kai. sustatikh.n qeo,pnoun evse,rgeian."

pneumatofo,roj and pneumatoforei/sqai are pre-Christian Jewish words, already used in the LXX. (Hos. ix. 7, Zeph, iii. 4, Jer. ii. 24). Compounds of qeo,j found in the LXX. are qeo,ktistoj, II Mace. vi. 23; qeomacei/n, II Macc. vii. 19 [qeoma,coj Sm., Job xxvi. 5, et al.]; qeose,beia, Gen. xx. 11 et al.; qeosebh,j Ex. xviii. 21 et al.

No derivative of cristo,j except cristiano,j is found in the New Testament. The compounds are purely Patristic. See Lightfoot's note on Ignatius, Eph. ix; Phil. viii and the note in Migne's "Pat. Gram.," xi. 1861, at Adamantii "Dialogus de recta fide," § 5.

In the Hase-Dindorf Stephens, sub-voc. qeo,pneustoj, the passage, from the [Pseudo?-] Plutarch is given within square brackets in this form: ["Plut. Mor. p. 904F: tou.j ovnei,rouj tou.j qeoplou,touj]." What is to be made of this new reading, we do not know. One wonders whether it is a new conjecture or a misprint. No earlier reference is given for qeo,ploutoj in the "Thesaurus" than Chrysostom: "Ita Jobum appellat Jo. Chrystom, Vol. iv, p. 297, Suicer." Sophocles cites also Anast. Sinai. for the word: Hexæmeron XII ad fin. (Migne, 1076 D., Vol. 89): o[pwj tou/to katabalw.n evn tai/j yucai/j trapezisw/n sw/n  a;rvr`wn se di v auvtw/n th.n qeo,plouton kataplouth,sw.

So it may be confidently inferred from the summary of what we know of Herophilus given in Susemihl's "Geschichte der Griechisch. Literatur in d. Alexandrinerzeit," Vol. i, p. 792, or from Marx's "De Herophili . . . vita scriptis atque in medicina mentis" (Göttingen, 1840), p. 38. In both cases Herophilus' doctrine of dreams is gathered solely from our excerpts - in the case of Susemihl from "Aëtius" and in the case of Marx primarily from Galen with the support of Plutarch.

Loc. cit.

In the common text the passage goes on to tell us of the dreams of mixed nature, i. e., presumably partly divine and partly human in origin. But the idea itself seems incongruous and the description does not very well fit the category. Diels, therefore, conjectures pneumatikou,v in its place in which case there are three categories in the enumeration: Theopneustic, physical (i. e., the product of the yuch, or lower nature), and pneumatic, or the product of the higher nature. The whole passage in Diels' recension runs as follows: Aët. 'Plac.,' p. 416 (Pseudo-Plut., V. 2, 3):  `Hrofiloj tw/n ovnei,rwn tou.j me.n qeope,mptouj kat v avna,gkhn gi,nesqai( tou.j de. fusikou.j avneidwlopoioume,nhj yuch/j( to. sumfe,ron auvth|/ kai. to. pa,ntwj evso,menon( tou.j de. sugkramatikou.j [pneumatikou.j? Diels, but this is scarcely the right correction, cf. Susemihl, "Gesch. d. Gr. Lit.," etc. i. 792] [evk tou/ au`toma,tou] kat v eivdw,lwn pro,sptwsin, o[tan a[ boulo,meqa ble,pwmen( w`j evpi. tw/n ta.j evrwme,naj o`rw,ntwn evn u[pnw| gi,netai."

V. 308 seq. The full text, in Rzach's edition, runs:

Ku,mh d v h` mwrh. su.n na,masin oi-j qeopneu,stoij
vEn pala,maij avqe,wn avndrw/n kai. avqe,smwn
vRifqei/j j ouvk e;ti ti,sson evj aivqe,ra r`h/ma prodw,sei\
vAlla. menei/ nekrh. evni, na,masi kumai,oisin.

Strabo, "Rerum Geographicarum," liber xiii, iii. 6, pp. 622, 623 (Amsterdam ed., 1707, p. 924). A good summary may be read in Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography," i. 724, 725.

Alexandre translates "plenis numine lymphis"; Dr. Terry, "inspired streams."

So Herodotus observes (i, 157).

p, 408 seq. In Rzach's text the lines run:

Ouv ga.r avkhde,stwj aivnei/ qeo.n evx avfanou/j gh/j
ouvde. pe,trhn poi,hse sofo.j te,ktwn para. tou,toivj
ouv cruso.n ko,smou avpa,thn yucw/n t v evseba,sqh(
avlla. me,gan geneth/ra qeo.n pa,ntwn qeopneu,stwn
evn qusi,aij evge,rair v a`gi,aivj kalai/j q v e`kato,mbaij.

In this second edition, Dr. Terry has altered this to "The Mighty Father, God of all things God-inspired": but this scarcely seems an improvement.

ouvde. fobhqei.j avqa,naton geneth/ra qeo.n pa,ntwn avnqrw,pwn ouvk e;qelej tima/n. Rzach compares also Xenophon. "Fragm.," i. 1, M., ei]j qeo.j e;n te qeoi-si kai. avnqrw,poisi me,gistoj\

Terry, Ed. 2: "the immortal Father, God of all mankind."

Recension A, chap. xx. p. 103, ed. James.

Nonni Panopolitani "Paraphrasis in Joannem" (i. 27), in Migne, xliii. 753:

Kai. ovpi,steroj o[stij i`ka,nei
Sh,meron u`mei,wn me,soj i[statai( ou- podo.j a]krou(
vAndrome,hn pala,mhn ouvk a[xio,j eivmi pela,ssaj(
Lu/sai mou/non i`ma,nta qeopneu,stoio pedi,lou)

Op. cit., p. 756.

It is given in Kaibel's "Epigrammata Græca," p. 477. Waddington supposes the person meant to be a certain Archbishop of Bostra, of date 457-474, an opponent of Origenism, who is commemorated in the Greek Church on June 13. The inscription runs as follows:

Do,xhj] ovrqoto[n]ou tami,hj kai. u`pe,rmacoj evsqlo,j,
avrciereu.j qeo,pneustoj evdei,mato ka,lloj a;metron
vAnti,patr]o[j] kluto,mhtij aveqlofo,rouj met v avgw/navj
ku[d]ai,nwn mega,lwj qeomh,tora parqe,non a`gnh,n
Mari,an polu,umnon( avkh,raton avglao,dwron\

Wetstein cites the expression as applied (where, he does not say) to "Marcus Ægyptus," by which he means, we suppose, Marcus of Scetis, mentioned by Sozomen, H. E., vi. 29, and Nicephorus Callistus, H. E., xi. 35. Dr. Cremer transmutes the designation into Marcus Eremita, who is mentioned by Nicephorus Callistus, H. E., xiv. 30, 54, and whose writings are collected in Migne, lxv. 905 seq. The two are often identified, but are separately entered in Smith and Wace.

That is doubtless the Jewish teacher to whom he elsewhere refers, as, e. g., "De Principiis," iv. 20 (Ante-Nicene Library, N. Y. ed., iv. 375), where the same general subject is discussed.

"Jahrb. f. bibl. Wissenschaft," vii. 114.

In a note on p. 89, Ewald adds as to qee,mpneustoj that it is certainly true that such compounds are not common, and that this particular one does not occur: but that they are possible is shown by the occurrence of such examples as qeosu,naktovj qeokataskeu,astoj, in which the preposition occurs: and dem Laute nach, the formation is like qeh,latoj. There seems to be no reason, we may add, why, if it were needed, we should not have had a qee,mpneustoj by the side of qeo,pneustoj, just as by the side of pneumatofo,roj we have pneumate,mforoj ("Etymologicum Magnum," 677, 28; John of Damascus, in Migne, 96, 837c.: +Hse profhtw/n pneumate,mforon sto,ma).

For not even qeempne,w would properly signify "breathe into" but rather "breathe in," "inhale." It is by a somewhat illogical extension of meaning that the verb and its derivatives (e;mpneusij( e;mpnoia) are used in the theological sense of "inspiration," in which sense they do not occur, however, either in the LXX. or the New Testament. In the LXX. e;mpneusij means a "blast," a "blowing" (Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 15; cf. the participle evmpne,wn, Acts ix. l); e;mpnouj, "living," "breathing" (II Mace. vii. 5, xiv. 45); and the participle pa/n evmpne,on, "every living, breathing thing" (Deut. xx. 16; Josh. x. 28, 30, 35, 37, 39, 40; xi. 14; Wisd. xv. 11).  vEispne,w is properly used by the classics in the sense of "breathing into," "inspiring": it is not found in itself or derivatives in LXX. or the New Testament - though it occurs in Aq. at Ex. i. 5. How easily and in what a full sense, however, evmpne,w is used by ecclesiastical writers for "inspire" may be noted from such examples as Ign. "ad Mag.," 8: "For the divine (qeio,tatoi) prophets lived after Christ; for this cause also they were persecuted, being inspired by His grace (evmneo,menoi u`po. th/j ca,ritoj auvtou/) for the full persuasion of those that are disobedient." Theoph. of Antioch, "ad. Autol.," ii. 9: "But the men of God, pneumatofo,roi of the Holy Ghost, and becoming prophets u`p v auvtou/ tou/ qeou/ evmpneusqe,ntej kai. sofisqe,ntej, became qeodi,daktoi and holy and righteous." The most natural term for "inspired" in classic Greek one would be apt to think, would be e;nqeoj (e;nqouj), with to. e;nqeon for "inspiration"; and after it, participial or other derivatives of evnqousia,zw: but both eivspne,w and evmpne,w were used for the "inspiration" that consisted of "breathing into" even in profane Greek.

P. 88

"Geschichte des Volkes Israel," vi. 245, note.

"Jahrb. f. bibl. Wissenschaft," ix. 91.

Sec. 16, 2, p. 135. Cf. Thayer's Winer, p. 96; Moulton's, p. 120. Also Thayer's Buttmann, p. 190. The best literature of the subject will be found adduced by Winer.

Compounds of  -pneustoj do not appear to be very common. Liddell and Scott (ed. 6) do not record either avna,- or dia,- or evpi,- or even eu;-; though the cognates are recorded, and further compounds presupposing them. The rare word eu;pneustoj might equally well express "breathing-well" quasi-actively, or "well-aired" passively; just as a;pneustoj is actually used in the two senses of "breathless" and "unventilated": and a similar double sense belongs to dusana,pneustoj.  ;Empneustoj does not seem to occur in a higher sense; its only recorded usage is illustrated by Athenaeus, iv. 174, where it is connected with o;rgana in the sense of wind-instruments: its cognates are used of "inspiration." Only puri,pneustoj = puri,pnooj = "fire-breathing" is distinctively active in usage: cf. avna,pneustoj, poetic for a;pneustoj = "breathless."

Two fundamental ideas, lying at the root of all their thinking of Scripture, seem to have colored somewhat their dealing with this term: the old Lutheran doctrine of the Word of God, and the modern rationalizing doctrine of the nature of the Divine influence exerted in the production of Scripture. On account of the latter point of view they seem determined not to find in Scripture itself any declaration that will shut them up to "a Philonian conception of Scripture" as the Oracles of God - the very utterances of the Most High. By the former they seem predisposed to discover in it declarations of the wonder-working power of the Word. The reader cannot avoid becoming aware of the influence of both these dogmatic conceptions in both Ewald's and Cremer's dealing with qeo,pneustoj. But it is not necessary to lay stress on this.

"Jahrb. f. bibl. Wissenschaft," vii. 88, 114.

"Geschichte des Volkes Israel," i. 245, note.

"Jahrb.," etc., ix. 92.

"Die Pastoralbriefe" u. s. w., p. 163.

For the implications of the term fero,menoi here (as distinguished from avgo,menoi) consult the fruitful discussion of the words in Schmidt's "Synonymik."

Cf. Prof. Schulze, loc. cit.: "Further, it should not be lost sight of (and Dr. Cremer does not do so) how the Church in its defenders has understood this word. There can be no doubt that in the conflict with Montanism, the traditional doctrine of theopneusty was grounded in the conception of qeo,pneustoj, but never that of the Scriptures breathing out the Spirit of God. The passage which Cremer adduces from Origen gives no interpretation of this word, but only points to a quality of Scripture consequent on their divine origination by the Holy Spirit: and elsewhere when he adduces the rule of faith, the words run, quod per spiritum dei sacræ scripturæ conscriptæ sint, or a verbo dei et spirita dei dictæ sunt: just as Clem. Alex. also, when, in Coh. 71, he is commenting on the Pauline passage, takes the word in the usual way, and yet, like Origen, makes an inference from the God-likeness (as qeopoiei/n) in Plato's manner, from the whole passage - though not deriving it from the word itself. For the use of the word in Origen, we need to note: Sel. in Ps., ii. 527; Hom. in Joh., vi. 134, Ed. de la R."

The Gospel of Paul

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

2 Corinthians v. 14-15, 18-19, 21:—For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again. . . . But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses. . . . Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

I HAVE chosen for my text three sentences which do not form a consecutive passage. They stand, however, in very close contiguity within the limits of a single short paragraph, within the narrow compass, indeed, of eight verses. More than that, they stand out upon the face of this short paragraph as marked features, from which it receives its character and chief significance. Glancing over this paragraph, the eye can no more fail to fix itself upon these three sentences than gazing over a rich plain from some high point of sight it could fail to be attracted by a series of bold promontories throwing themselves athwart it; or glancing on the fretted lid of some highly wrought casket it could fail to be drawn and dazzled by the jewels which blaze upon it. We cannot say, indeed, that the paragraph exists for these three sentences: they, rather, are here for the purposes of the paragraph and fulfil these purposes with perfection. But in prosecuting the end he has here in view the apostle is led to make his appeal to considerations of so high an order that the sentences in which they are adduced stand out above the general drift of the discussion like mountain-peaks in a plain, glow on its surface like jewels in their setting.

What Paul is engaged upon in this section of his Epistle is the vindication of his integrity as a minister of grace, and of the purity of the Gospel he preached. It is in full view of the judgment-seat of Christ, he asserts, that he prosecutes the mission that has been committed to him; and he has permitted nothing to deflect him by a hair's-breadth from the message which has been placed on his lips. In giving force to this contention he is led to enunciate the contents of the message of which he has been made the bearer: and it is this enunciation which is thrown up to our view in these sentences I have chosen for my text.

In these sentences is contained therefore the announcement of Paul's Gospel; and it is this fact which gives them their distinction. Search throughout the whole compass of Paul's Epistles and it is doubtful if you will find another such succinct, complete and pungent statement of the Gospel which Paul preached; of what he deemed the very touchstone and heart of the message he brought to men. Certainly you will find none more formally set forth as the apostle's own declaration of the essence of his Gospel. If we wish to know precisely what Paul preached and precisely in what he conceived all that he preached to centre and to be summed up, we cannot do better than attend to these crisp sentences.

I have called them crisp sentences, and I might almost have spoken of them as detached sentences. For part and parcel as they are of Paul's argument, fitting into it and bearing their part in it with the perfection of sentences born of the discussion of the moment, they yet have an odd air of detachment about them, which seems to assure us they were not struck out in the heat of this debate, but have been brought into it from without. One of them is introduced by what we may almost call a formula of citation: "because we thus judge"—"seeing that our judgment is this,"—viz. what follows. All of them are phrased with that sharply cut frugality of language which belongs to proverbial speech, and is the result, no doubt, of the attrition which sentences suffer from much repetition, by which all the rough edges, like superfluous particles, are worn off. "One died for all: therefore all died: and He died for all that, living, they might no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died and rose for them." "All is of God; who reconciled us with Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, since it was God who in Christ was reconciling the world with Himself." "Him that knew no sin He made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." There is not a redundant word in any of these sentences; there is even a notable parsimony of words; even what might have been deemed the necessary connecting particles are omitted. I think we may be quite sure that these sentences were not first framed as Paul set them down on the sheets of this letter; that they had often been on his lips before; and that they went down on the sheets he was writing here in the form they had taken on his lips after numerous repetitions. In a word, we have here the phrases in which Paul was accustomed to give expression to the heart of his Gospel.

It is tempting to turn aside to remark upon the analogy supplied by this discovery to a phenomenon characteristic of the so-called Pastoral Epistles, in which we repeatedly meet with gnome-like announcements of the great truths of the Gospel, encysted, as it were, in the tissues of the Epistle. It would seem that from the beginning Paul was accustomed to imbed in his Epistles the "faithful sayings" in which he was wont to find adequate expression given to the mighty truths it was his life-work to make effective among men. It is important, however, that we should not permit our attention to be distracted from the main point which now claims it. This is that we have in the sentences now before us not only an announcement of the essence of Paul's Gospel, perhaps the most clear and formal announcement of its essence to be found in his Epistles, but also this announcement in the form which he habitually gave it. It was in these precise words that Paul was accustomed to express himself when he desired to carry the essence of his Gospel home to the minds of men and fix it there with precision and in unmistakable and unalterable distinctness. We may approach the study of these sentences, then, with the utmost confidence that we have in them not some chance, perhaps one-sided, deliverance valid only for the immediate purpose of a particular controversy, but the well-weighed and carefully compacted expression of the very core of his Gospel, that Gospel which had been committed to him by the Lord Himself, by which he won the world, upon which he nourished his own spirit, and which he offers to us as the very word of life.

What, then, is this Gospel of Paul, brought before us here with such directness and energy of expression?

Casting our eye over the sentences in which it is embodied, we are struck at once with the fact that it is a universalistic Gospel. We should have expected this of Paul. The hinge upon which his whole lifework turned was the universalizing of the Gospel of Christ. It was therefore that he was the Apostle of the Gentiles. And it was out of this that all his conflicts, trials, sufferings arose. The bitter strife in which he was engaged in this very Church of Corinth, one campaign of which is fought out in this letter, was itself rooted in the universalism of his Gospel. It could not be that the note of this universalism should be unheard in anything that can put in the slightest claim to be the embodiment of Paul's Gospel.

It is so little unheard here that it would be truer to say that it forms the ground-tone of the whole enunciation. "One died for all: therefore all died"—that is the key-note which is struck at the beginning. "God was in Christ reconciling the world with Himself"—that is the great announcement in which it culminates. We may be perfectly sure that neither statement was here made by Paul for the first time. Rather, these were the things on which he had fed his courage in those days of afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labours, watchings, fastings, in which his life had been spent. We may fancy him in the midst of the deaths which he died daily repeating to himself over and over again these great words: "One died for all: therefore all died": "God was in Christ reconciling the world with Himself"—and deriving from them the force by virtue of which, though he died yet behold he lived again, though he was chastened yet he was not destroyed, though he was brought to grief yet he always rejoiced, though he was himself poor he yet enriched many, though he had nothing he yet possessed all things. They constitute indeed the battle-cry of Paul's whole immense conflict and give its character to his entire life-history. Eliminate this note of universalism from Paul's Gospel and you do away with his significance in history; you cut up the Gospel to which he freely gave his life by the roots.

You cannot exaggerate, therefore, the significance to his Gospel of Paul's universalism. In important respects this universalism was his Gospel. But unfortunately it is very possible to misconceive and to misrepresent this universalism: and unhappily it is commonly very gravely misconceived and misrepresented. After all, Paul's universalism was Paul's universalism; and Paul's universalism stood in opposition, not to the particularism of divine grace, but to the exclusiveness of Jewish nationalism. What he gave his life to, what he directed all his teaching toward, was not a passionate assertion of absolute indiscrimination on God's part in His dealings with sinners of the human race, but the vindication to the Gospel of God's grace in Christ Jesus of a world-wide reference. If he argues at one time that "there is no difference" between men, he makes it plain that he means this in point of claim upon God for His mercy; and so soon as he comes to speak of the distribution of the divine gifts, he makes it equally plain that there is a great difference and that this difference depends on the will of the Divine Giver. When Paul therefore nailed to his mast-head the great declaration: "One died for all; therefore all died," he was as far as possible from intimating that Jesus' death was equally and without distinction in behalf of every individual of the human race, and that therefore every individual of the human race, past, present and to come, died with Christ on the cross. This crass distributive universalism of redemption apparently never once entered his mind. And equally, when he inscribed upon his banner, "God was in Christ reconciling the world with Himself," he thought of nothing so little as teaching that this reconciliation concerned itself equally with each and every individual who has ever lived in the world, lives in it now, or ever shall live in it. Such a conception is quite alien to his entire thought. What he means is just that God, who is the God not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles, has given His Son to die not for the Jews only but for the world. His eye has caught this great vision; and, his mouth being open and his heart enlarged, he cries, Not one people only, but the world for Christ! It is the great missionary cry which Paul gives us here. "The world for Christ!" That is the cry that sounds in our ears to-day and fills us with enthusiasm in our service of the cross. It is the cry which Paul heard in his heart two thousand years ago, and under the impulse of which he inaugurated that great mission work which still occupies our hearts and hands. "The world for Christ"—not one nation, not one class, not one race or condition of men, but the world and nothing less than the world for Christ!

It would certainly be exceedingly unfortunate in any event to eviscerate Paul's whole Gospel for the sake of gratuitously imposing on his language an inoperative universalism of redemption which does not actually save. That men could perish for whom Christ died, Paul never imagined that human minds could conceive. The very nerve of his great declaration that "Christ died for all; therefore all died," is that participation in the death of Christ is salvation. Therefore he goes on to declare that those who thus die with Christ live, live with the Christ who not only died for them but also rose again for them. So little was it possible for him to admit a distinction between dying with Christ, which is the unconscious lot of all, and living with Christ, which is the conscious attainment of only some, that he even founds elsewhere an a fortiori argument on participation in Christ's death as removing all doubt of participation in His life. "But God commendeth His own Son towards us," he reasons, "in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath through Him. For if while we were sinners, we were reconciled with God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life." "But if we died with Christ," he reasons again, "we believe that we shall also live with Him"; and again, "For if we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection." Paul therefore will have nothing to do with a distinction between men who have only died with Christ and those who also live with Him. With Paul, to die with Christ means to live together with Him; to be reconciled with God through the death of Christ means to enter into the full inheritance of life. When he passionately declares that when Christ died He died not for Jews only but for all, that in Him God was reconciling nothing less than the world with Himself, he is thinking of no half-measures. He is proclaiming the world-wide reach, the world-wide destiny of God's salvation.

How impossible it is to read Paul as teaching here a purely potential universalism in the death of Christ, to be made effective in each instance by the individual's own act of appropriation, is rendered clear by another prime characteristic of his Gospel as here enunciated. This is what we may perhaps call, for lack of a better phrase, its high supernaturalism. By this we mean to refer to the emphasis and persistence with which he ascribes the whole saving process—in its initiation and outworking alike—to God. This too we should have expected of Paul. There is no more marked feature of his total thought than the vision of God which informs it: and no matter from what point of departure his argument takes its start, it can find its point of rest only when it arrives at "the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." It can cause us no surprise therefore when we find him in our present passage insisting, of the new life which he discovers in those—in all those—who have died with Christ, that it is all of God; and representing the whole tremendous transaction by which we sinners are transformed into the likeness of Christ as inaugurated and carried through by God alone. All those for whom Christ died He tells us died with Him and rose again with Him, and are consequently a new creation, the old things having passed away and become new. And then he adds with what might almost seem superfluous emphasis—for how could these things be, except by the power of God?—"But all these things are of God, who it is that has reconciled us with Himself through Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation, seeing that it was God  (observe the emphasis again) "who in Christ was reconciling the world with Himself." Accordingly, when a few verses later he alludes to the redemptive process again, he tells us quite naturally, not that "He who knew no sin was made sin for us," but that "Him who knew no sin God made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." So eager is the apostle that his readers shall take off from his page at least this assurance, that what they are in Christ Jesus and all that they shall become they owe to God and to God alone. It was He, he tells us, who made Christ, the sinless one, to be sin for us; it was He who reconciled us with Himself through Christ; it is of Him that we are new creatures in Christ. In the whole saving process we supply nothing but the sinners to be saved, and the consequent activities induced in us by the saving process, as, in accordance with our nature, we move as we are moved upon.

It surely belongs to the most astonishing curiosities of exposition, then, that in the face of this abounding emphasis upon the sole efficiency of God in salvation, there should be found those who insist that, according to Paul's teaching, the decisive act in salvation is supplied by an action of the human will. See, we are told, the apostle in this very context beseeches his readers not to permit the grace of God to come to them in vain, but to be reconciled with God. Does not this imply that all that God has done lies without us, and it belongs to us, in our sovereign freedom, to give it validity each for his own person? We need not pause to point out that the inference thus so confidently drawn is explicitly contradicted a score of times elsewhere by the apostle, who consistently represents it as "of God" that men differ in their spiritual endowments; and declares that no one has the least advantage over another which he has not received from above, and therefore cannot glory in it as if it were of his own production,—that, in a word, in the matter of spiritual standing, it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that showeth mercy. Nor need we pause to point out that there is a great difference, which we dare not neglect in a matter like the present, between an exhortation to action in accordance with the really moving force, and exhortation to action designed to set this force in motion. When this same apostle exhorts us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, "for it is God who is working in you both the willing and the doing for His good pleasure," we certainly cannot infer that our salvation so hangs upon our own will that God's energizing waits upon our act: the contrary is openly asserted—that our act rests rather on His energizing; it is He that works our very willing as well as our doing. Similarly it can scarcely be inferred from Paul's exhortation to us "to be reconciled with God," that reconciliation with God so depends on the unmoved action of our own free-will that all of God's action looking to our salvation must wait upon it. Apart from all this, it would seem to be enough to observe that no inference of this kind can set aside Paul's explicit and emphatic ascription here of this very reconciliation to God. For it is precisely our reconciliation which Paul ascribes to God with what seems almost an excessive energy of emphasis: "All these things are of God, who it was that reconciled us with Himself through Jesus Christ": "It was God who, in Christ, was reconciling the world with Himself." When, immediately after this strong assertion of the divine production of reconciliation, he entreats his readers to be reconciled with God, the one most certain thing of all is that he does not mean to imply that their reconciliation is so in their own hands that the act of God waits upon their act. And this becomes the more evident when we observe that even in this exhortation itself the verb is thrown into the passive voice, and points therefore not to something which we are to do, but to something which we are to suffer. The exhortation, in other words, is not that we should "reconcile ourselves" to God, but that we should assume an attitude consonant with the reconciliation which God has wrought with respect to us. That is to say, we have a conception here which ranges perfectly with that other exhortation which we have already illustratively adduced: that we should work out our own salvation, knowing it is God who is working in us both the willing and the doing. It is an exhortation to consonant, not to determining activity.

We are led thus, however, to advert to a further prime characteristic of the Gospel of Paul, as set forth in our passage. That is that it finds its key-note in a doctrine of reconciliation. The core of Paul's Gospel is indeed expressed in this one word, Reconciliation; and it behoves us to consider carefully what he means by it. There are several things that are told us about it in our present passage. In the first place we are very emphatically told, as we have just seen, that the author of it is God: it is God Himself, not man, who works this reconciliation. "All these things," says the apostle, "are of God, who it is that has reconciled us with Himself through Christ." "For it was God who in Christ was reconciling the world with Himself." Next we are told that the effects by which this reconciliation manifests itself among men are relief from the burden of their sin, and the proclamation of free pardon. "It was surely God who in Christ was reconciling the world with Himself, since He does not impute to them their trespasses and has placed in us the word of reconciliation." Then we are told that it finds its ground in the sin-bearing of Christ. " We beseech you in the behalf of Christ, Be ye reconciled with God: Him who knew no sin He made sin for us, that we may be the righteousness of God in Him." From such suggestions as these it is perfectly easy to see what Paul means by this reconciliation, the ministry of which he declares to be his only function, the proclamation of which his one duty—or rather privilege—in the world. It is, shortly, not the reconciliation of man to God, as the shortcomings of our English version might mislead us into supposing: but the reconciliation of God to man—a reconciliation which God has Himself undertaken and which He has accomplished at the tremendous cost of the death of His Son, on the ground of which He is able to release men from their trespasses. Of course men are at enmity with God: they do not like even to retain God in their knowledge, and they turn against Him with unconcealed dread and hatred. But this is not the thing which most disturbs Paul. What most disturbs him is that God is at enmity with man: that His wrath is revealed from heaven against their abounding unrighteousness. And what fills his heart with joy—the joy that made him the zealous missionary he was,—is the assurance that this enmity has been removed, that this wrath has been appeased and that by God Himself, who has reconciled us with Himself through Christ, by making Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,—and so enabling Himself not to impute our trespasses to us. The proclamation of this great transaction seemed to Paul so glorious that he joyfully made the ministry of reconciliation his life-work; the word of reconciliation his Gospel. In it lies, in a word, the very heart of Paul's Gospel. 

Now the presupposition of this Gospel, you will perceive, is a deep and keen sense of human sin and that in the aspect of guilt. The reason why Paul's heart was filled with such joy at the thought of a reconciled God was that his heart was oppressed with a sense of guilt in the presence of a just God. A holy and righteous God, he knew, could not possibly look upon him, or his partners in guilt, without abhorrence and indignation. In his conscience the wrath of God was revealed against the abounding iniquity of men. O wretched men that we are, his soul of souls cried out, who shall deliver us from this mass of sin? It was because he felt so deeply and keenly the guilt of sin, and knew so clearly the depth and heinousness of his own and of the world's guilt, that he broke out with such rejoicing at the sight of a reconciled God, and made the proclamation of His reconciliation his Gospel—the substance of the glad tidings which he bore to a sin-stricken and hopeless race. The underlying conception of sin,—of sin oppressing, of sin removed—thus dominates the passages which are now engaging our attention. Why should Christ,—the "One"—need to die for men: and why is it glad tidings that all for whom He died, died with Him? Why should the Gospel of reconciliation be announced as manifesting itself precisely in the non-imputation of men's trespasses to them? Why above all should the exhortation to be reconciled with God be supported by the great declaration that He who knew no sin has been made sin for us? Is it not clear that underneath all Paul's Gospel lies the most profound and poignant sense of sin, and that his Gospel consists precisely in a proclamation of relief from the intolerable burden of guilt? This then was the word of reconciliation, the ministry of which was committed to him: that the righteous wrath of God against sin has been appeased and the face of God has been turned to us again clothed in a smile of favour.

It has seemed worth while to dwell upon this, partly because of the apparent dying out of a deep sense of sin in wide circles of present-day life, but more because this sense of sin though it may be temporarily obscured cannot really die out, but will sooner or later assert itself in every human breast and bring despair when it does not find its antidote in a sense of a reconciled God. No doubt our age is marked by a "vanishing sense of sin," and there are multitudes about us who seem never to have awakened to any adequate realization of their moral condition, or of the significance of their moral condition with respect to their relations to God and to that future over which the righteous award of God rules. It would not be strange if there were some sitting here to-day to whom Paul's strong agony under the consciousness of sin seems wholly alien to normal human experience, something at any rate into which they find it impossible sympathetically to enter. I do not say that this condition of apathy in face of the most tremendous fact of human life is scarcely creditable to you: I do not even say that it ought to be viewed by you as a signal of extreme danger, because it is the index of an indurated heart, a heart callous to its own wickedness, and therefore should cause you the deepest concern and call out your best endeavours to see things more truly even if less comfortably. What I wish to say now to you is, that it is a condition that cannot last. We are all sinners: and, being sinners, we are under the condemnation of the just God, who does righteousness in heaven and on earth. We cannot always conceal from ourselves this state of things. Sooner or later our troubled eyes will open with fright upon it: and all our smug contentment with ourselves will be gone. Now, life may run on upon oiled axles. Then, Time will seem to us "a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury slinging flame." And then, having discovered what sin is and what we are as sinners, we shall discover also the joy which Paul felt at the vision of a reconciled God. It will no longer seem strange to us that our Lord declared that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. It will no longer be difficult for us to understand that the gladdest of all glad tidings which the apostle knew to bring to the world, was the glad tidings of reconciliation in the blood of Jesus Christ.

I say, reconciliation in the blood of Jesus Christ. For we do not get to the heart of Paul's doctrine of reconciliation, until we bring clearly before us what he teaches us of the way in which it has been accomplished. That way is, briefly, by a great act of substitution: of the substitution of Jesus Christ for us before the judgment-seat of God and the expiating of our guilt by Him on the tree. If Paul's doctrine of reconciliation is the heart of his Gospel, his doctrine of substitution is the heart of the heart of his Gospel. In it all the glad tidings he had to proclaim to man culminate and find their true significance. What does Paul mean by that great declaration which stands in the forefront of our present passage: "One died for all: therefore all died"? And what does he mean by that even greater declaration with which the passage closes: "Him who knew no sin God made sin for us "? Obviously what he means is just substitution. We must not lose ourselves here in possibly learned but certainly meaningless discussions of the precise fundamental significance of the preposition "for." Of course its fundamental meaning is "for the sake of," "for the benefit of." It was for the sake of the all that Christ died; and it was precisely because He died for their sakes that they share in that death of His which was for their benefit and not for His. It was for our sakes that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin; and it is precisely because this great transaction was done for our benefit that it avails for us. And what else could Paul have meant when he cries out in the joy of his salvation, "Christ died for me," "God made Him sin for me," than just that Christ had died for his sake and it inured to his benefit that He had been made sin? Would you expect a beneficiary of this tremendous transaction, suffused with a sense of the immense benefit received, to employ in describing it language which was wholly denuded of all emotional recognition that it was all for him, for his sake? And this is the real account to give of the prevalence in the allusions of the Biblical writers to the death of Christ of the broad preposition "for," with the primary implication of "for the sake of," rather than of the more precise "for" with the primary implication of "instead of," in relating that death to themselves. They were not putting together a systematic statement of the exact relation of Christ's death to human salvation: they were giving expression to their deepest religious convictions, and they could not but choose language charged with their profound emotions. When they employ the particular preposition they do employ, they derogate nothing from the substitutive nature of the death they are describing, but they couch their description of it in language freighted with their answering gratitude and love. When Paul declares that when Christ died in behalf of all, then all died with Him—that God made Him sin in our behalf though He Himself knew no sin—he asserts substitution just as clearly as if he had said that He died in our stead and had been made sin in our place; and at the same time he uncovers to us his own heart, throbbing with grateful response to such an unheard-of benefit.

The glad tidings which Paul's Gospel brings to men, then, is just, to put it briefly and in familiar language, salvation from sin in the blood of Jesus Christ. What it means is, in the crispest form of statement, just that Jesus has done it all. He has taken our place and borne in His own body on the tree all our iniquities: He has died our death: and He grants us His righteousness that hereafter we may live and live to Him. This, according to Paul, is the very heart of the heart of the Gospel. 

And now let us observe finally what according to Paul is the issue of all this for life. Here we have brought before us yet another primary characteristic of his Gospel. Shall we say. Because Jesus has done it all, there remains nothing for us to do? So says not Paul. We could not save ourselves, or do the least thing towards, or contributing to, our salvation. Until Jesus had died for us there was nothing for us to do but to die. We were dead in sin, and held under death for sin. But now since He has died for us, we can work our salvation out into life. And that is what Paul teaches us. We cannot save ourselves: but having been saved, we can illustrate our salvation in newness of life. "One died for all," he says, "therefore all died: and He died for all, that, living, they might no longer live for themselves, but to Him who for them died and rose again." "He that knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." "So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things have passed away, behold, they have become new." There is, it will be observed, a declaration here and an exhortation. The declaration is that this newness of life is the result of salvation in Christ. The exhortation is that we shall walk in accordance with this newness of life. The apostle does not leave it an open question whether those for whom Christ has died (and who, therefore,—so he says—have died with Him) shall possess this new life. He says they are "a new creation"; and a new creation is not a self-made thing, which waits upon our own choice whether it is made or not; but a product of the almighty power of God. And therefore the apostle at once adds that it has God for its author: "And all these things are of God." If Christ died for us, He died for us only for this end—that we may live and, living, may live not for ourselves, but to Him. If He was made sin for us, He was made sin for us only for this end—that we may be the righteousness of God in Him. The end can no more fail than the means. He who is in Christ Jesus is a "new creation." To him the old things have passed away; all has become wholly new. Paul had found it so: and he makes his finding it so the substance of his defence to the Corinthians. He could not but be true to his mission and office as an apostle of Christ: for it was the love of Christ—not his love to Christ, but Christ's love to him—which constrained him—held him in—that he should not give himself to aught but that to which he was sent. Being in Christ, he was a new creation, and everything that was of the flesh had fallen away from him. 

And every one who, like Paul, has been made the object of Christ's love, for whom Christ has died, and who has been made partaker of Christ's death, will like Paul find the love of Christ constraining him, will find the life of Christ flowing into his veins, will discover himself a new creation, looking out as such on a new world, filled with new enthusiasms, directing himself to new ends. You cannot die with Christ and not rise again with Him: it cannot be that He who knew no sin shall have been made sin for you, and you who have known no righteousness shall not be made the righteousness of God in Him. This is Paul's declaration to you: and there could be no declaration of greater joy. Being in Christ Jesus, you have within you the powers of a new life, and they will grow, and grow, and grow. Sinner that you are, Christ who knew no sin has been made sin for you, and you shall become the righteousness of God in Him. Could there be a greater inducement to effort brought to bear upon us than this great declaration? It is God that is working in us: shall we not then work out our own salvation with fear and trembling? This is Paul's exhortation to you. In effect he says: Seeing that you are a new creation, live as becomes those who are a new creation. Desert the old plane of your living; it is not worthy of new creatures. Having died with Christ, live with and for Him. He has been made sin for you. See that you become the righteousness of God in Him. You are released from the bondage of sin and freed for a new life of holiness. Live it. Adorn the Gospel you profess: for God has called you not to sin but to holiness, and if you walk not in this holiness,—are you in Him? have you died with Him? He who dies with Him lives also in and with Him, and living in and with Him lives to Him.

So the apostle mingles declaration and exhortation, warning and encouragement; and the upshot of it all is, as we cannot have failed long ere this to have told ourselves, that the Gospel he preaches is an eminently ethical Gospel. Righteousness in Christ, righteousness through Christ,—justification, sanctification —these things do not stand with the apostle as separable entities over against one another, one of which can be had without the other. They are distinctly correlatives, implying and implicating one the other. It would be inconceivable to him that there could be sanctification which did not rest on justification, or that there could be justification which did not issue in sanctification. To die with Christ is to live with Him; to live with Him means to live to Him. To be reconciled with God by Christ's death means a new creation through His Spirit. Analysis of parts and stages there may be; distinguishings of inceptions from continuations and continuations from consummations: but to the apostle there is but one salvation, and that salvation is an indivisible whole. The holy life ripening into that perfection without which no man shall see the Lord, is not with Him an arbitrary addition to acceptance by God in Christ Jesus, but its natural and necessary outgrowth: and therefore, with all his proclamation of life in Christ, the life of faith, and of an objective salvation in the blood of Jesus, he never looses sight of the essence of salvation in holiness of life. So, in our present passage, the whole movement of which turns as on its hinge upon the substitution of Christ for sinners and His death in their behalf and their consequent righteousness in Him, the issue of all is found nevertheless in holiness of life. Those for whom Christ has died are, in their new creaturehood, to live no longer for themselves but for Him who died and rose again for them. The revolution in standing is marked by a revolution in living. If their trespasses are no longer imputed to them, they are also no longer to have trespasses to be imputed to them. In a word, their salvation is not merely from the penalty but from the power of sin: and the mark of it is the life that is free not only from the condemnation but from the commission of sin. We are saved while yet sinners, but not that we may remain sinners, but that we may glorify God and His saving power by becoming under His guidance saints.

This is what, according to Paul, we are saved to: this is what, in his conception of it, salvation is. It is the promise to us of a perfected life. And surely there is no promise which could come to us with a more penetrating appeal. There is no one of us so degraded that he would not fain be good: the desire that stirs within us may be so faded and so weak that we can scarcely call it a desire, but we secretly admire the good even when we pursue the bad. Paul points the way not to an inoperative admiration, but to an effective accomplishment. He says to us in effect that all which the best of men have longed for and vainly striven after and the worst have dully admired while impatiently spuming is placed within our reach in Christ Jesus. He says that in Him there is the potency of a new life and that this potency shall surely pass into actualization for all those that are in Him. Or if we choose, we can give form to his message to us to-day rather in the words of his Master and our Master. For what does he say in effect but this: Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled? For they shall be filled! Let these words be our encouragement to-day. Let them become from to-day the strength of our life. "They shall be filled!"

The Gospel of the Covenant

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

John vi. 38-39:—For I am come down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that of all that which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

IN the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand our Lord presented Himself symbolically to man as the food of the soul. For, as Augustine reminds us, though the miracles wrought by our Lord are divine works, intended primarily to raise the mind from visible things to their invisible author, yet their message is not exhausted by this. They are to be interrogated also as to what they tell us about Christ, and they will be found to have a tongue of their own if we have skill to understand it. "For," he adds, "since Christ is Himself the Word of God, even a deed of the Word is a word to us." One of His miracles is accordingly not to be treated as a mere picture, which we may be satisfied to look upon and praise; but rather as a writing, which we are not content to praise though we delight in its beauty, but find no satisfaction until we have read and understood it. We may possibly consider Augustine's detailed decipherment of the signs in which this miracle is written somewhat fanciful. He discovers in it a complete parable of the salvation of man and of men. But we can scarcely refuse, as we read it in the pregnant record of John, to say in Pauline phrase, "These things contain an allegory."

As such, indeed, John presents it. This is the meaning of his care to tell us, as he introduces his recital, that "the passover was at hand"; not a mere chronological note, we may be sure; nor yet merely an explanation of the presence of the multitude, gathered for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but a premonition of what is to come,—John's account of the occasion and meaning of the miracle, which itself was the occasion of the great discourse on the bread of life. Christ, the true passover, chose the passover time, when men's minds were upon the type, to present the antitype to them in symbol and open speech. It was therefore also that He tested His disciples with searching questions, designed to bring them to the discovery of whether they yet knew Him; and that He taxed the people that "signs" were wasted upon them, and that while they were demanding a sign that they might see and believe, the sign had been given them, and though they had seen, they did not believe. It was therefore above all, that Christ followed up the miracle with the wonderful discourse in which He explains the sign, and declares Himself openly to be "the bread of God that cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world." This is the tremendous truth which miracle and discourse united to proclaim to the multitudes gathered on the shores of Gennesaret at that passover season; but which, despite type and sign and teaching—each a manifest word from God,—they could neither receive nor understand. And this is the blessed truth which our text,—taken from the centre of the discourse and constituting, indeed, its kernel,—presents to our apprehension and belief anew to-day. May the Spirit of truth, who searches all things, even the deep things of God, illuminate our minds and prepare our hearts, that we may understand and believe.

Let us begin by observing the testimony borne by our Lord and Master here to His heavenly origin and descent: "I am come down from heaven," He says. And the truth here declared is the foundation of the entire discourse. The whole gist of it is to represent Jesus as the "bread out of heaven," "the true bread out of heaven," "the bread of God that cometh down out of heaven," which the Father hath given for the life of the world. I need not remind you how this representation pervades John's Gospel,—from the testimony of the Baptist, that He who was to supplant him "cometh from above," and is therefore "above all," to Jesus' own triumphant declaration at the close of His life, that. His work being finished. He is ready to return to the Father who sent Him, and to the glory that He had with Him before the world was. Our present asseveration is but a single instance of the constant self-testimony of the Son of Man to His heavenly origin and descent.

The older Unitarianism was prodigal of miracle. It was not the supernatural, but the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the God-man that were its scandal. When brought face to face with such passages as these, it was wont, therefore, to explain that Jesus, born miraculously of His virgin mother, but a mere man, was taken up to heaven by the divine power to learn the things of God; whence He again descended to bring divine teaching to men. To the newer Unitarianism, on the other hand, it is precisely the supernatural which is the offence. Its philosophical forms might hospitably receive such mysteries as the Trinity and the God-man, if only they may be permitted to run freely into their moulds. But divine interventions of any kind, and most of all the descent of a personal God from heaven to earth, to be incased in flesh and to herd for a season among men, it cannot allow. It therefore attacks our passages with a theory of ideal, not real, pre-existence, and teaches that Jesus means only that, in the thought and intention of God, His advent into the world had long been provided for, and that, in that sense. He was with God and came forth from God.

How weak, how inconceivably banal, all such expedients are before the majesty of Christ's self-witness: "I am come down from heaven." And when we turn over the pages of this Gospel,—the leading idea of which, it has been said, inadequately indeed, but so far truly, is the divine glory of Christ in the incarnation,—and observe our Lord's constant witness in the discourses recorded in it, not merely to His descent from the Father, but to His essential equality and oneness with God, to His eternal preexistence with Him, and to His prospective return to His primal glory with the Father, after His task on earth is accomplished,—how our spirits bow in worship before that God only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, who became flesh and tabernacled among us for a season full of grace and truth, and by His very existence among us "declared" to us that God, not only whom He came forth from, but who He is.

We should not fail to observe, however, that the incarnation is not spoken of in our text as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end. The object of our Lord here is not to present the bare fact of His having come down from heaven to the wonder of men, but to expound the purpose of His coming down from heaven. "I am come down from heaven," He declares, "in order that I may do the will of Him that sent Me." You will scarcely need to be reminded that this, too, is the representation, not of our text only, but of the whole body of relevant deliverances recorded by John from the mouth of the Master, and indeed of the entire Gospel itself. Everywhere and always, it is not the coming down from heaven itself, but the purpose of the coming, that receives the emphasis. And this is why it is inadequate to say that the leading idea of John's Gospel is the glory of Christ in the incarnation. Its leading idea is, rather, the sufficient end of the incarnation, or, in other words, its leading purpose is to present what we may call a satisfactory philosophy of the incarnation. 

And this is the precise amount of truth that lies behind the assertion so freely made by those who are stumbled by the heights of John's theology, that his Gospel is not a simple narrative of fact, but an ideological treatise,—which, in their view, is equivalent to saying that it does not give us fact but fancy, and is to be looked upon not as a sober history but as a metaphysical essay. But does history cease to be history when it passes beyond the mere tabulation of events, and essays to marshal them according to their relations and under the categories of cause and effect?—when it ceases to be a mere chronicle, in a word, and becomes what we have learned to call philosophical history? And is it to be made a reproach to a writer of history that he has sought not merely to collect, but also to understand his facts; and to record them in such a way as to bring out their internal nature as well as their external form?

Bishop Alexander, in his delightful little book on The Leading Ideas of the Gospels, places the matter relatively to John's Gospel in a very clear light. "A great life," he reminds us, "cannot be rendered by a simple agglomeration of facts." "A great life,—a life whose words and works influence mankind profoundly,—is not sufficiently told by merely relating its facts and dates. What an enigma, for instance, is the life of Napoleon! How many of his biographies are mere masks, concealing those bronze features! We cannot understand any great and complicated life, good or evil, by merely recording the isolated events along which it moved. It is an organic whole, and must be reconstructed as such. . . . This, then, is the great Leading Idea of St. John's Gospel. Given the facts of Christ's life, how shall we bind them into unity, and read them as a whole? What theory of His Person and Nature -will give us a logical and consistent view? . . . What Christ did and said becomes explicable only by knowing what Christ is. . . . Some who have not lost all reverence for Christianity speak as if St. John's prologue added a difficulty for faith; as if St. Matthew or St. Luke on the incarnation were comparatively easy to receive. Is it so for those who think? Place side by side these statements. On the one side—'When as His Mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.' On the other side, the four oracular propositions—'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh.' Which is easier to receive? . . . In St. John the fact of the Incarnation is lifted up and flooded with the light of a divine idea. If in the Unity of the divine Existence there be a Trinity of Persons; if the Second Person of that Trinity is to assume the reality of flesh and the likeness of sinful flesh, we can in some measure see why He needed the tabernacle of a body, framed and moulded by the Eternal Spirit, to be His fitting habitation. The mystery of a Virgin Mother is the correlative of the mystery of the Word made flesh."

Surely this is most admirably said. To be made quite perfect, it needs only the removal of the emphasis from the nature of Christ to the work of Christ. "If the Second Person of that Trinity is to assume the reality of flesh, and the likeness of sinful flesh." . . . Aye, if. . . . Dr. Alexander leaves this "if" hanging in the air. But not so John. To give an adequate account of it is just the object and chief end of his Gospel. We need to amend the postulation of the problem, therefore, so far as not only to insert, but to emphasize this element. "Given the facts of Christ's life, how shall we bind them together into unity, and read them as a whole? What theory of His Person and Nature, and Purpose and Work, will give us a logical and consistent view?" This is the problem that John's Gospel answers. And in answering it, it gives us a philosophy of the incarnation, and thus renders not only the incarnation itself, but all that Incarnated Life, not only credible but natural, and not only natural—may we not even say?—but almost inevitable—impossible to be otherwise. And thus John fulfils the end of his writing: "These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name."

What, then, is the account of the incarnation which this Gospel thus commends to us as its philosophy? We note at once that in our text our Lord states it, in the first instance, relatively not to man, but to God. The reason of the incarnation, rendering it credible, natural, inevitable, is traced back into the councils of the Godhead. "I am come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent me."

The purpose of the incarnation is therefore primarily to please God the Father, and to perform His will. We cannot avoid the implication that the incarnated one comes, therefore, in a subordinate capacity. He came down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. He was sent. He was given a commission, a work, to do. How this conception is repeated over and over again in the discourses recorded by John! Even to John the Baptist He is the "sent of God." When Nicodemus approached Him as a teacher come from God, He explained that He was not come primarily as a teacher, but as one sent by God to do a work. And this is the burden of the great discourses at the pool of Bethesda, at the feast of Tabernacles, on the Light of the World, and as well of the closing discourses at the last passover. In all alike Jesus is the sent of God, come not of Himself to seek His own will, but to do the will of Him that sent Him; and only when He had "accomplished the work given Him to do" to return to the Father who sent Him. 

Now this subordinate relation in which Jesus thus pervasively represents Himself as standing to the Father, so as to have been sent by Him, must be a matter either of nature or of arrangement. It must be either essential or economic. It must find its account and origin either in the necessity of nature or else in the provisions of a plan. But side by side with this perfectly pervasive proclamation of His subordination to the Father, in the whole matter of the incarnation itself, and the purpose or "will" that hes behind that incarnation and gives it its justification and its philosophical account, there runs an equally pervasive assertion by Jesus Himself and by His historian as well, of His essential equality and oneness with God. He was not only in the beginning with God: He was God. He is the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father. To have seen Him is to have seen the Father also. He draws and receives from Thomas the worshipping cry, "My Lord and my God." He declares to the Jews, "I and the Father are One." It seems to be clear, therefore, that the subordination in which the Father is recognized as greater than He, prescribing a "will" for Him to come into the world to perform, is economic, not essential; a matter of arrangement, not of necessity of nature.

By such a representation we are, of course, carried at once back into the darkness, or, what is equally blinding, into the blaze of mystery. It may be thought that it is enough to be asked to believe in the mysteries of the God-man and of the Trinity,—that within the unity of the Godhead there exists such a distinction of persons that of each we may assert in turn that from the beginning he has been with God, and has been God. Are we to add this additional mystery of fancying the persons of the Godhead, though numerically one in essence and sharers in all the divine attributes, "acting," as Dr. Martineau puts it, "each on the other as outside beings and conducting a divine drama among themselves,"—imposing tasks on one another, requiring conditions of one another, and earning favours from one another? No doubt it is past our comprehension. But do we gain or lose by denying its possibility, its reality? What does the Trinity mean, if it does not mean such a distinction of persons that each may say relatively to the other, "I," and "Thou," and "He"? What can the incarnation of the Second Person mean, if the persons may not stand over against one another in a measure far transcending our power to comprehend? And let us remember that John presents this conception to us, not as an added difficulty to faith, but as the philosophy, the explanation of the incarnation. It may well happen here, too, that two mysteries support and render credible each the other,—as two beams of wood, neither of which could stand easily alone, when bowed together not only support each other, but provide a firm foundation upon which you may safely pile the weight of a slated roof. To adopt Bishop Alexander's mode of statement,—"If in the Unity of the Divine Existence there be a Trinity of Persons, and if the Second Person of that Trinity is to assume the reality of flesh and the likeness of sinful flesh,"—is it an additional difficulty or an aid to faith in this supernal mystery to be further told that this colossal humiliation of the Son of God was not an objectless display of arbitrary power, nor yet a tentative and unconsidered effort of divine compassion to do somewhat, as yet undetermined in kind or amount, for sinful mankind, but the execution in time of an eternal plan,—a plan born of, and redolent in its every part with the infinite compassion of God, shaped in all its details from all eternity by brooding love, and now remaining only to be executed by each person involved taking and completing his appointed part in its tremendous work? The mystery of the covenant is the correlative of the mystery of the incarnation. Without its postulation the incarnation would present increased difficulties of belief. Without the added words, "In order to do the will of Him that sent Me," the declaration, "I am come down from heaven," would remain a simple marvel and prove a strain on faith.

And now let us not fail to observe that it results from what we have said, that John's Gospel is the Gospel of the Covenant . If its leading idea is not merely the glory of the incarnation, but the philosophy of the incarnation; and if that philosophy runs back into an economic arrangement or plan between the Persons of the Trinity, by which the Second Person comes to perform a work committed to Him by the Father, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him: this is but another way of saying that the leading idea of John's Gospel is the idea of the Covenant. And is it not so? Search and look, and you will find not only that this covenant idea recurs again and again throughout the Gospel, with a frequency and an emphasis which throw it well into the foreground, but that the book, as a whole, is moulded in its form and contents upon it. The burden of its first chapters is Christ's testimony that He has come because sent by the Father; the burden of the last chapters is His approaching return to the Father who sent Him; the accomplished work lies between. And therefore it is that when Nicodemus came to Him at the opening of His ministry and asked for teaching, Jesus pointed him rather to His work, and declared the doctrine of regeneration itself "an earthly thing" compared with the heavenly mysteries He had to tell,—those mysteries of His descent from heaven, sent by the Father to save the world. And therefore it is that in the midst of His ministry He opens this great discourse from which our text is taken, by declaring that the Son of Man has been "sealed," appointed and set apart, by the Father for the work of giving eternal life to men; and when His disciples stumbled at the height of the great truth involved,—that He had come down from heaven to give His flesh as the food of the soul,—He sorrowfully added, "What, then, if you should see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?" And therefore it is that at the end of His life He compares His finished work with the joy a woman has after travail, when at length the child is born; and declares that, having accomplished the work which the Father gave Him to do, the covenant condition is fulfilled, and the covenanted reward is at hand, and He is about to return to His primal glory. John's Gospel,—we ought not to miss it,—is the Gospel of the Covenant.

How our hearts should burn within us as we approach the last and most central question of all, and ask what is our Lord's account of the nature and terms of this mysterious but most blessed covenant, to fulfil the conditions of which He came down from heaven. We observe at once,—and with what emotions of gladness we ought to observe it,—that it concerns the salvation of men. And equally at once we observe, with still swelling emotion, that it is complete and perfect in its provisions,—that it provides for an entire and finished, for a sure and unfailing salvation. And we observe that this involves—as of course it must involve—the consequence that it is definite and precise in its terms,—that it contemplates definite and particularly designated men. "And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that of all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." The will of the Father which Christ came down from heaven to do, concerned, then, distinctively: "all that He hath given Me." And His will with reference to these, which He sent the Son to perform, was not the making of some indefinite provision looking toward their rescue from sin and shame, but the definite actual, complete, and final saving of them: that "I should lose nothing of it, but should raise it up at the last day."

Let our hearts stand still while we read these great provisions. It is the testimony of the covenanted Son Himself, as to the terms of the covenant which He came to fulfil, that it had a definite and well-defined subject, and that it had a definite and fully-determined end,—not merely the rendering the salvation of men possible; nor merely the removing of the legal obstacles in the way of the salvation of men; nor merely the breaking down of whatever difficulties may stand in the path of the free outflow of God's love to men; much less merely the introduction into the world of a better example of life than had hitherto been before men, or of a new divine force making for righteousness; or the impressing of men with a deeper sense of the love of God for them, or of His hatred of sin; but the actual, complete, and sure salvation of all that the Father had given the Son: "This is the will of Him that sent Me, that all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing of it, but should raise it up at the last day."

In a word, we have presented to us here, in these pregnant words, not only in outline, but in all its essential details, what has come to be known among us as the Covenant of Redemption. For what element of the doctrine is lacking here? "I am come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me": there is the assertion of an economic arrangement as the precondition of the incarnation, and of the prestipulation of the incarnated work. "And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that of all that He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day": there is the revelation of the contents of the preincarnation arrangement, and the provision through the incarnation for the certain salvation of a chosen body of lost men. "All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me"; "No man can come unto Me except the Father which sent Me draw Him": there is the twin definition of the subjects of the salvation. Or, if we desire further witness than this one passage, it is spread fully on the pages of this Gospel. Let us attend only to those calm and final words which, as His work was accomplishing, our blessed Redeemer addressed, not to us men, but to His Father, in a divinely assured assertion of His righteous claims upon the fruit of His work. "Father, the hour is come: glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee: even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that to all that Thou hast given Him, He should give to them eternal life. ... I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou didst give Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou didst give them to Me. ... I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me." All His work is in fulfilment of an arrangement with the Father; and the whole of it, down to this High-Priestly prayer itself, making intercession for His own, concerns, primarily and in its chief import, those whom the Father gave Him out of the world, and secures beyond failure their complete salvation. This is the whole doctrine of the Covenant of Redemption: the Reformed theology has grasped it, and teaches it; but it has not added one single thought to it.

And now let us bask a little, before we close, in the comforting assurances of this blessed teaching.

How the love of God is magnified to us by this teaching. It is not from a yesterday only that He has busied Himself with our salvation. In the depths of eternity our foreseen miseries were a cause of care to Him. In that mysterious intercourse between Father and Son, which is as eternal as the essence of Godhead itself, we—our state, our sin, our helplessness, and the dreadfulness of our condition and end,—were a subject of consideration and solicitude. What a God this is that is unveiled before us here. A God of holiness: a God so holy that even in the abyss of eternity-past He could not rest indifferent to the sin which was only after the lapse of innumerable ages to dawn in this corner of the as yet unexistent universe. A God of justice: a God so just that already His indignation burned against the as yet uncommitted sin of such petty creatures of His will as man. But a God of love: a love so inconceivably vast as already in the profundity of the unlimited past to brood over unimaginable plans of mercy toward these few guilty wretches among the numberless multitudes of His contemplated creatures. When the Psalmist raised his eyes to the heavens above, the work of the fingers of the Almighty, and considered the moon and stars which He had ordained, he was lost in a natural wonder that so great a Creator should concern Himself with so puny a creature: "What is man that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that Thou shouldst visit him?" But how much greater a marvel is before us now. It is not man as man,—a weak and puny creature—that we have to consider; but man as sinner,—this weak and puny creature become vile and filthy, offensive and hateful to a holy and just God. It is not in contrast even with the grandeur of the worlds circling about worlds which crowd the depths of the heavens and dwarf the consequence of this speck of earth on the skirts of the universe which is our home, that we are to consider him; but in contrast with the majesty of the increate Triune maker of all that is. It is not simply that God has taken notice of this sinful, puny creature, that we have to consider; but that the All-Holy and All-Blessed God has felt care and solicitude for his fate and looked not at His own things in comparison with his. What indeed is sinful man that God should love him; and before the foundations of the world should prepare to save him by so inconceivable a plan as to give His only-begotten Son as a ransom for his life! My brethren, this is not to the glory of man, but to the glory of God; it is not the expression of our dignity and worth, but raises our wondering hearts to the contemplation of the breadth and length, and height and depth of the love of God that passeth knowledge.

And how our appreciation of the perfection of the work of our Saviour is enhanced by this teaching. As it was upon no sudden caprice that He came into the world, but in execution of a long-cherished and thoroughly laid plan, so it was no partial work which He performed, but the whole work of salvation. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." And this He has accomplished, even to the uttermost. When He cried upon the cross, as His agony went out in the darkness of death,—a death for us—in those words of deepest import and of mighty power, "It is finished!"—when in His great sacerdotal prayer, he proleptically declared that He had "accomplished the work" which the Father "had given Him to do," and was now ready to lay aside His humiliation and re-enter His glory: the precise thing which He published as "finished" and "accomplished" was salvation. All has been done by Him. His saving work neither needs nor admits of supplementary addition by any needy child of man, even to the extent of an iota. When we look to Him we are raising grateful eyes, not to one who invites us to save ourselves; nor merely to one who has broken out a path, in which walking, we may attain to salvation; nor yet merely to one who offers us a salvation wrought out by Him, on a condition; but to one who has saved us,—who is at once the beginning and the middle and the end of our salvation, the author and the finisher of our faith.

What can we possibly need that we do not find provided in Him? Do we hopelessly groan under the curse of the broken law, hanging menacingly over us? Christ has "redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us." Do we know that only he that worketh righteousness is acceptable to God, and despair of attaining life on so unachievable a condition? Christ Jesus "hath of God been made unto us righteousness." Do we loathe ourselves in the pollution of our sins, and know that God is greater than we, and that we must be an offence in His holy sight? The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin. But do we not need faith, that we may be made one with Him and so secure those benefits? Faith, too, is the gift of God: and that we believe on Him is granted by God in the behalf of Christ. Have we sought to run, and learned by bitter experience that it is not of him that runneth nor of him that willeth? We may learn too by a happy experience that it is of God that showeth mercy and that worketh in us both the willing and the doing. Nothing has been forgotten, nothing neglected, nothing left unprovided. In the person of Jesus Christ, the great God, in His perfect wisdom and unfailing power, has taken our place before the outraged justice of God and under His perfect law, and has wrought out a complete salvation.

What an indefectible certitude of salvation is given by this great teaching. If Christ Jesus came to save and has saved, how can salvation fail? If the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, how can this eternal life thus freely given go out in time, and fail to accord with its very designation as eternal? If Christ has undertaken not merely to open a way of salvation to us, but to save us; if He came into the world for the precise purpose of performing this will of God, "that of all that He hath given Him, He should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day,"—what possibility lies open of the failure of this great design, framed in eternity by Triune Godhead, and executed in time by none other than the strong Son of God? Therefore our gracious Lord assures us: "All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me, and him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." And therefore His servant, condescending to the weakness of our fears, argues with us: "God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, being justified by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath by Him." Oh, the certitude in that "much more." "If God be for us," he argues again, "who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" O weak and trembling soul, can you not find, not courage merely, but certitude in this? What matters your weakness? Your salvation rests not on it, but on God's strength. He loves you; He determined to save you; He sent His Son to save you; He has come to do it: He has done it. You are saved: it cannot fail, unless God's set purpose can fail; unless Christ's power to save can fail; unless His promises of love can fail.

What a clear ground of assurance of salvation is furnished by this great teaching. Does some wayward spirit say: "All this is true only of the elect, those whom the Father gave to Christ. And I, alas! how may I know that I am of the elect?" Ah, self-tormenting soul, why expend strength in prying into God's secrets, instead of taking Him at His word? It is true indeed that it is only those whom He has given to Christ that Christ has saved; and the comfort, as the salvation, is for them alone. But it is not true that God requires election of you for salvation, or offers predestination to you as the way of life. He offers you not predestination, but Christ; and He requires of you not election, but faith. Do you make election itself a ground of doubt and despair? This, says an old Puritan, is indeed to gather poison out of the sweetest of herbs. "God layeth it as a duty upon every one to repent and believe, to come to Him and he shall have rest to his soul. ... If, then, thou behevest, thou repentest, this may be a sure testimony unto thee of thy everlasting glory."

Election does indeed lie at the root of our salvation: but faith is the proof of election. Are we saved? The question is resolved in this: Do we believe in Jesus Christ? Christ indeed says, "This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." Here is election the root of the saving work of Christ. But have you failed to note or to remember that He immediately adds: "For this is the will of My Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him should have eternal life, and that I should raise him up at the last day." Here is the work of Christ received in faith the ground of salvation: and here is faith laying hold of Christ the evidence of salvation. And therefore it is not only said, "All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me," but it is immediately added: ''And him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out." These words are gracious enough in their broadest sense to send a thrill of joy through the heart. But there lies hidden within them a further delicate grace which is lost in the English translation. The word for "come" is so varied in the two clauses as to lay the stress in the first instance "upon the successful issue of the coming, the arrival," and in the second "on the process of the coming and the welcome." "All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me"—shall certainly and unfailingly reach Me. "And him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out"—"him that is in the process of coming,"—yea, even though he is but just begun, with weak and faltering steps, even such an one as this who is but beginning to come—"I will in no wise cast out."

What a blessed assurance, when faith is made thus not the ground of salvation, not the condition of salvation, but its evidence! It is here that the sweet herb of election begins to pour forth its refreshing cordial. Men may tell us, indeed, "Believe and you shall be saved," while still making faith the ground or the condition of salvation. And, then, with what dreadful solicitude will we pluck up our faith over and over again by the roots, to examine it with anxious fear. Is it the right faith? Is it a strong enough faith? Do I believe aright? Do I believe enough? Shall I abide in my belief until the end? Dreadful uncertainty! Inexpressible misery of ineradicable doubt! It is only when we have learned from such words of our Master as those before us to-day, that we dare say to our souls not only. Believe and ye shall be saved but those other words of deeper meaning and fuller comfort, caught from the Master's own blessed lips: Believe and ye are saved! "Verily, verily, I say unto you," says our Saviour in words which sum up previous teachings, "He that heareth My words and beheveth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." Blessed John, who so caught his Master's words and recorded them for us. When faith is thus made not the ground or the condition, but the evidence of salvation, our eternal bliss is no longer suspended in any sense on aught that we are or do, but hangs solely on the work of Christ, doing His Father's will. Faith, even faith, as the ground or condition of salvation, may be also the ground of despair: but faith as the proof of salvation is the charter of assured though humble hope. It takes hold of the "strong Son of God, immortal love," and of the indefectible purpose of Almighty grace which cannot fail or know any shadow of turning. This we owe to that doctrine of the eternal covenant which our blessed Saviour reveals to us in the words on which we have meditated to-day. Because of its blessed provisions we can cry joy to our souls, though they tremble with natural fear and can scarce believe that Christ will save such faithless souls as they. Though they have faith but as a grain of mustard-seed, they are saved already. For, this is the will of Him who sent our Redeemer, that of all that He gave Him He should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day: for this is the will of the Father, that every one that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him should have eternal life and He should raise him up at the last day. 

Beloved, do not, I beseech you, ground your salvation even in your faith. Ground it only in Jesus Christ who alone is your Saviour. And remember this,—that it is not your faith that saves you but God, and God alone, by whom it is that faith is wrought in your soul, and by whose power it is that you are guarded through your faith unto that salvation which is reserved for you in heaven, and which shall without fail be revealed at the last day. Can your faith fail? Nay, forget your faith. Certainly the power of God, your Almighty Saviour, through which alone you have faith and which is pledged to your guarding, cannot fail!

The Idea and Theories of Revelation

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[Article "Revelation," from Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas,
R. Johnson, ed. v. 10, pp. 79-81. Pub. N.Y., 1909, by D. Appleton and Co.]

REVELATION [from Latin revela'tio, an unveiling, revealing, derivative of revela're, unveil; re-, back + vela're, to veil, derivative of ve'lum, a veil]: in its active meaning, the act of God by which he communicates to man the truth concerning himself - his nature, works, will, or purposes; in the passive meaning, the knowledge resultant upon such activity of God. The term is commonly employed in two senses: a wider - general revelation; and a narrower - special revelation. In its wider sense it includes all modes in which God makes himself known to men; or, passively, all knowledge concerning God however attained, inasmuch as it is conceived that all such knowledge is, in one way or another, wrought by him. In its narrower sense it is confined to the communication of knowledge in a supernatural as distinguished from a natural mode; or, passively, to the knowledge of God which has been supernaturally made known to men. The reality of general revelation is disputed by none but the anti-theist and agnostic, of whom one denies the existence of a God to make himself known, and the other doubts the capacity of the human intellect, if there be a God, to read the vestiges he has left of himself in his handiwork. Most types of modern theology explicitly allow that all knowledge of God rests on revelation; that God can be known only because and so far as he reveals himself. In this the extremest "liberals," such as Biedermann, Lipsius, and Pfleiderer, agree with the extremest "conservatives." Revelation is everywhere represented as the implication of theism, and as necessary to the very being of religion: "The man who does not believe that God can speak to him will not speak to God" (A. M. Fairbairn). It is only with reference to the reality of special revelation that debate concerning revelation continues; and it is this that Christian apologetics needs to validate. Here, too, the controversy is ultimately with antitheistic presuppositions, with the postulates of an extreme deism or of an essential pantheism; but it is proximately with all those types of thought which seek to mediate between deistic or pantheizing conceptions and those of a truly Christian theism.

In the eighteenth century the debate was chiefly with deism in its one-sided emphasis upon the divine transcendence, and with the several compromising schemes which grew up in the course of the conflict, such as pure rationalism and dogmatistic rationalism. The deist denied the reality of all special revelation, on the grounds that it was not necessary for man and was either metaphysically impossible or morally unworthy of God. Convinced of the reality of special revelation, the rationalist still denied its necessity, while the dogmatist, admitting also its necessity, denied that it constituted the authoritative ground of the acceptance of truth. Kant's criticism struck a twofold blow at rationalism. On the negative side his treatment of the theistic proofs discredited the basis of natural (general) revelation, in which the rationalist placed his whole confidence. Thus the way was prepared for philosophical agnosticism and for that Christian agnosticism which is exemplified in the school of Ritschl. On the positive side he prepared the way for the idealistic philosophy, whose fundamentally pantheistic presuppositions introduced a radical change in the form of the controversy concerning the reality of a special revelation without in any way altering its essence. Instead of denying the supernatural with the deists, this new mode of thought formally denied the natural. All thought was conceived as the immanent work of God. This change of position antiquated the forms of statement and argument which had been wrought out against the deists; but the question at issue still remained the same - whether there is any special revelation of God possible, actual, extant, whether man has received any other knowledge of God than what is excogitable by the normal action of his own unaided faculties. Men's ontology of the human faculties and activities was changed; it was now affirmed that all that they excogitated was of God, and the natural was accordingly labeled supernatural. But a special supernatural interposition for a new gift of knowledge continued to be denied as strenuously as before. Thus it has come about that, in the nineteenth century, the controversy as to special revelation is no longer chiefly with the one-sided emphasis upon the transcendence of God of the deist, but with the equally one-sided emphasis upon the immanence of God of the pantheist, and with the various compromising schemes which have grown up in the course of the conflict, through efforts to mediate between pantheism and a truly Christian theism. It is no longer necessary to prove that God may and does speak in the souls of men; it is admitted on all hands that he reveals himself unceasingly through all the activities of creaturely minds. The task has come to be to distinguish between God's general and God's special revelations, to prove the possibility and actuality of the latter alongside of the former, and to vindicate for it a supernaturalness of a more immediate order than that which is freely attributed to all the thought of man concerning divine things.

In order to defend the idea of distinctively supernatural revelation against this insidious undermining, it has become necessary, in defining it in its highest and strictest sense, to emphasize the supernatural in the mode of knowledge and not merely in its source. When stress is laid upon the source only without taking into account the mode of knowledge, the way lies open to those who postulate immanent deity in all human thought to confound the categories of reason and revelation, and so practically to do away with the latter altogether. Even when the data on which our faculties work belong to a distinctively supernatural order, yet so long as the mode of acquisition of knowledge from them is conceived as purely human, the resultant knowledge remains natural knowledge; and, since intuition is a purely human mode of knowledge, so-called intuitions of divine truth would form no exception to this classification. Only such knowledge as is immediately communicated by God is, in the highest and strictest sense, supernaturally revealed. The differentia of revelation in its narrowest and strictest sense, therefore, is not merely that the knowledge so designated has God for its source, nor merely that it becomes the property of men by a supernatural agency, but further that it does not emerge into human consciousness as an acquisition of the human faculties, pure and simple.

Such a conception may give us a narrower category than that usually called special revelation. In contending for its reality it is by no means denied that there are other revelations of God which may deserve the name of special or supernatural in a distinctive sense. It is only affirmed that among the other modes in which God has revealed himself there exists also this mode of revelation, viz., a direct and immediate communication of truth, not only from God but by God, to minds which occupy relatively to the attainment of this truth a passive or receptive attitude, so that the mode of its acquisition is as supernatural as its source. In the knowledge of God which is acquired by man in the normal use of his own faculties - naturally, therefore, as to mode - some deserves the name of special and supernatural above the rest, because the data upon which the human faculties work in acquiring it belong to a supernatural order. Such knowledge forms an intermediate class between that obtained by the faculties working upon natural data and that obtained in a supernatural mode as well as from a supernatural source. Again, in the knowledge of God, communicated by the objective activities of his Spirit upon the minds of special organs of revelation - supernaturally, thus, as to immediate origin as well as to ultimate source - some may emerge into consciousness along the lines of the ordinary action of the human faculties. Such knowledge would form a still higher intermediate class - between that obtained by the natural faculties working according to their native powers on supernatural data and that obtained in a purely supernatural mode, as well as from a supernatural source and by a supernatural agency. These modes of revelation are not to be overlooked. But neither is it to be overlooked that among the ways in which God has revealed himself is also this way - that he has spoken to man as Spirit to spirit, mouth to mouth, and has made himself and his gracious purposes known to him in an immediate and direct word of God, which is simply received and not in any sense attained by man. In these revelations we reach the culminating category of special revelation, in which its peculiar character is most clearly seen. And it is these direct revelations which modern thought finds most difficult to allow to be real, and which Christian apologists must especially vindicate.

THEORIES OF REVELATION

In the state of the case which has just been pointed out, it is a matter of course that recent theories of revelation should very frequently leave no or but little place for the highest form of revelation, that by the direct word of God. The lowest class of theories represent revelation as taking place only through the purely natural activities of the human mind, and deny the reality of any special action of the Divine Spirit directly on the mind in the communication of revealed truth. Those who share this general position may differ very greatly in their presuppositions. They may, from a fundamentally deistic standpoint, jealously guard the processes of human thought from all intrusion on the part of God; or they may, from a fundamentally pantheistic standpoint, look upon all human thought as only the unfolding of the divine thought. They may differ also very greatly as to the nature and source of the objective data on which the mind is supposed to work in obtaining its knowledge of God. But they are at one in conceiving that which from the divine side is spoken of as revelation, as on the human side, simply the natural development of the moral and religious consciousness. The extreme deistic theory allows the possibility of no knowledge of God except what is obtained by the human mind working upon the data supplied by creation to the exclusion of providential government. Modern speculative theists correct the deistic conception by postulating an immanent divine activity, both in external providence and in mental action. The data on which the mind works are supplied, according to them, not only by creation, but also by God's moral government; and the theory grades upward in proportion as something like a special providence is admitted in the peculiar function ascribed to Israel in developing the idea of God, and the significance of Jesus Christ as the embodiment of the perfect relation between God and man is recognized. (Biedermann, "Christl. Dogmatik," i., 264; Lipsius, "Dogmatik," 41; Pfleiderer, "Religionsphilosophie," iv., 46.) The school of Ritschl, though they speak of a "positive revelation" in Jesus Christ, make no real advance upon this. Denying not only all mystical connection of the soul with God, but also all rational knowledge of divine things, they confine the data of revelation to the historical manifestation of Christ, which makes an impression on the minds of men such as justifies us in speaking of him as revealing God to us. (Herrmann, "Der Begriff der Offenbarung," and "Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott"; Kaftan, "Das Wesen," etc.)

We are on higher ground, however, although still moving in essentially the same circle of conceptions as to the nature of revelation, when we rise to the theory which identifies revelation strictly with the series of redemptive acts (Koehler, "Stud. und Kritiken," 1852, p. 875). From this point of view, as truly as from that of the deist or speculative theist, revelation is confined to the purely external manifestation of God in a series of acts. It is differentiated from the conceptions of the deist and speculative theist only in the nature of the works of God, which are supposed to supply the data which are observed and worked into knowledge by the unaided activities of the human mind. In emphasizing here those acts of a special providence which constitute the redemptive activity of God, this theory for the first time lays the foundation for a distinction between general and special revelation; and it grades upward in proportion as the truly miraculous character of God's redemptive work is recognized, and acts of a truly miraculous nature are included in it. And it rises above itself in proportion as, along with the supernatural character of the series of objective acts with which it formally identifies revelation, it recognizes an immediate action of God's Spirit on the mind of man, preparing, fitting, and enabling him to apprehend and interpret aright the revelation made objectively in the redemptive acts. J. Chr. K. Hofmann in his earlier work, "Prophecy and Fulfillment," announces this theory in a lower form, but corrects it in his later "Schriftbeweis." Richard Rothe ("Zur Dogmatik," p. 54) is an outstanding example of one of its higher forms. To him revelation consists fundamentally in the "manifestation" of God in the series of redemptive acts, by which God enters into natural history by means of an unambiguously supernatural and peculiarly divine history, and which man is enabled to understand and rightly to interpret by virtue of an inward work of the Divine Spirit that Rothe calls "inspiration." But this internal action of the Spirit does not communicate new truth; it only enables the subject to combine the elements of knowledge naturally received into a new combination, from which springs an essentially new thought which he is clearly conscious that he did not produce. The theory propounded by Prof. A. B. Bruce in his well-known lectures on "The Chief End of Revelation" stands possibly one stage higher than Rothe's, to which it bears a very express relation. Dr. Bruce speaks with great circumspection. He represents revelation as consisting in the "self-manifestation of God in human history as the God of a gracious purpose - the manifestation being made not merely or chiefly by words, but very specially by deeds" (p. 155); while he looks upon "inspiration" as "not enabling the prophets to originate a new idea of God," but "rather as assisting them to read aright the divine name and nature." Dr. Bruce transcends the position of the class of theorists here under consideration in proportion as he magnifies the office of inner "inspiration," and, above all, in proportion to the extent of meaning which he attaches to the saving clause that revelation is not merely by word, but also by deed. The theory commended by the great name of Bishop B. F. Westcott ("The Gospel of Life") is quite similar to Dr. Bruce's.

By these transitional theories we are already carried well into a second class of theories, which recognize that revelation is fundamentally the work of the Spirit of God in direct communication with the human mind. At its lowest level this conception need not rise above the pantheistic postulate of the unfolding of the life and thought of God within the world. The Divine Spirit stirs men's hearts, and feelings and ideas spring up, which are no less revelations of God than movements of the human soul. A higher level is attained when the action of God is conceived as working in the heart of man an inward certainty of divine life - as, for example, by Schultz ("Old Testament Theology"); revelation being confined as much as possible to the inner life of man apparently to avoid the recognition of objective miracle. A still higher level is reached where the action of the Spirit is thought of - after the fashion of Rothe, for example - as a necessary aid granted to certain men to enable them to apprehend and interpret aright the objective manifestation of God. The theory rises in character in proportion as the necessity of this action of the Spirit, its relative importance, and the nature of the effect produced by it are magnified. So long, however, as it conceives of this work of the Spirit as secondary, and ordinarily if not invariably successive to the series of redemptive acts of God, which are thought to constitute the real core of the revelation, it falls short of the biblical idea. According to the biblical representations, the fundamental element in revelation is not the objective process of redemptive acts, but the revealing operations of the Spirit of God, which run through the whole series of modes of communication proper to Spirit, culminating in communications by the objective word. The characteristic element in the Bible idea of revelation in its highest sense is that the organs of revelation are not creatively concerned in the revelations made through them, but occupy a receptive attitude. The contents of their messages are not something thought out, inferred, hoped, or feared by them, but something conveyed to them, often forced upon them by the irresistible might of the revealing Spirit. No conception can do justice to the Bible idea of revelation which neglects these facts. Nor is justice done even to the rational idea of revelation when they are neglected. Here, too, we must interpret by the highest category in our reach. "Can man commune with man," it has been eloquently asked, "through the high gift of language, and is the Infinite mind not to express itself, or is it to do so but faintly or uncertainly, through dumb material symbols, never by blessed speech?" (W. Morrison, "Footprints of the Revealer," p. 52.)

THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION

The doctrine of revelation which has been wrought out by Christian thinkers in their effort to do justice to all the biblical facts, includes the following features. God has never left himself without a witness. In the act of creation he has impressed himself on the work of his hands. In his work of providence he manifests himself as the righteous ruler of the world. Through this natural revelation men in the normal use of reason rise to a knowledge of God - a notitia Dei acquisita, based on the notitia Dei insita - which is trustworthy and valuable, but is insufficient for their necessities as sinners, and by its very insufficiency awakens a longing for a fuller knowledge of God and his purposes. To this purely natural revelation God has added a revelation of himself as the God of grace, in a connected series of redemptive acts, which constitute as a whole the mighty process of the new creation. To even the natural mind contemplating this series of supernatural acts which culminate in the coming of Christ, a higher knowledge of God should be conveyed than what is attainable from mere nature, though it would be limited to the capacity of the natural mind to apprehend divine things. In the process of the new creation God, however, works also inwardly by his regenerating grace, creating new hearts in men and illuminating their minds for apprehending divine things: thus, over against the new manifestation of himself in the series of redemptive acts, he creates a new subject to apprehend and profit by them. But neither by the presentation of supernatural facts to the mind nor by the breaking of the power of sin within, by which the eyes of the mind were holden that they should not see, is the human mind enabled to rise above itself, that it may know as God knows, unravel the manifestation of his gracious purposes from the incompleted pattern which he is weaving into the fabric of history, or even interpret aright an unexplained series of marvelous facts involving mysteries which "angels desire to look into." It may be doubted whether even the supreme revelation of God in Jesus Christ could have been known as such in the absence of preparatory, accompanying and succeeding explanatory revelations in words: "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation." God has therefore, in his infinite mercy, added a revelation of himself, strictly so called, communicating by his Spirit directly to men knowledge concerning himself, his works, will, and purposes. The modes of communication may be various - by dreams or visions, in ecstasy or theophany, by inward guidance, or by the simple objective word; but in all cases the object and result are the direct supernatural communication of special knowledge.

Of this special revelation it is to be said: (1) It was not given all at once, but progressively, "by divers portions and in divers manners," in the form of a regular historical development. (2) Its progressive unfolding stands in a very express relation to the progress of God's redemptive work. If it is not to be conceived, on the one hand, however, as an isolated act, wholly out of relation to God's redemptive work, neither is it to be simply identified with the series of his redemptive acts. The phrase, "revelation is for redemption and not for instruction," presents a false antithesis. Revelation as such is certainly just "to make wise," though it is to make wise only "unto salvation." It is not an alternative name for the redemptive process, but a specific part of the redemptive process. Nor does it merely grow out of the redemptive acts as their accompanying or following explanation; it is rather itself one of the redemptive acts, and takes its place along with the other redemptive acts, co-operative with them to the one great end. (3) Its relation to miracles has often been very unnecessarily confused by one-sided statements. Miracles are not merely credentials of revelation, but vehicles of revelation as well; but they are primarily credentials; and some of them are so barely "signs" as to serve no other purpose. As works of God, however, they are inevitably revelatory of God. Because the nature of the acts performed necessarily reveals the character of the actor is no proof, nevertheless, that their primary purpose was self-revelation; but this fact gives them a place in revelation itself; and as revelation as a whole is a substantial part of the redemptive work of God, also in the redemptive work of God. (4) Its relation to predictive prophecy is in some respects different. As a rule, at all events, predictive prophecy is primarily a part of revelation, and becomes a credential of it only secondarily, on account of the nature of the particular revelation which it conveys. When a revelation is, in its very contents, such as could come only from God, it obviously becomes a credential of itself as a revelation, and carries with it an evidence of the divine character of the whole body of revelation with which it stands in organic connection. (5) Its relation to the Scriptures is already apparent from what has been said. As revelation does not exist solely for the increase of knowledge, but by increasing knowledge to build up the kingdom of God, so neither did it come into being for no other purpose than the production of the Scriptures. The Scriptures also are a means to the one end, and exist only as a part of God's redemptive work. But if, thus, the Scriptures can not be exalted as the sole end of revelation, neither can they be degraded into the mere human record of revelation. They are themselves a substantial part of God's revelation; one form which his revealing activity chose for itself; and that its final and complete form, adopted as such for the very purpose of making God's revealed will the permanent and universal possession of man. Among the manifold methods of God's revelation, revelation through "inspiration" thus takes its natural place; and the Scriptures, as the product of this "inspiration," become thus a work of God; not only a substantial part of revelation, but, along with the rest of revelation, a substantial part of his redemptive work: Along with the other acts of God which make up the connected series of his redemptive acts, the giving of the Scriptures ranks as an element of the building up of the kingdom of God. That within the limits of Scripture there appears the record of revelations in a narrower and stricter sense of the term, in nowise voids its claim to be itself revelation. Scripture records the sequence of God's great redeeming acts. But it is much more than merely "the record, the interpretation, and the literary reflection of God's grace in history." Scripture records the direct revelations which God gave to men in days past, so far as those revelations were intended for permanent and universal use. But it is much more than a record of past revelations. It is itself the final revelation of God, completing the whole disclosure of his unfathomable love to lost sinners, the whole proclamation of his purposes of grace, and the whole exhibition of his gracious provisions for their salvation.

The Idea of Systematic Theology¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The term "Systematic Theology" has long been in somewhat general use, especially in America, to designate one of the theological disciplines. And, on the whole, it appears to be a sufficiently exact designation of this discipline. It has not, of course, escaped criticism. The main faults that have been found with it are succinctly summed up by a recent writer in the following compact phrases: 

The expression "systematic theology" is really an impertinent tautology. It is a tautology, in so far as a theology that is not systematic or methodical would be no theology. The idea of rational method lies in the word logos, which forms part of the term theology. And it is an impertinence, in so far as it suggests that there are other theological disciplinae, or departments of theology, which are not methodical.² 

Is not this, however, just a shade hypercritical? What is meant by calling this discipline "Systematic Theology" is not that it deals with its material in a systematic or methodical way, and the other disciplines do not; but that it presents its material in the form of a system. Other disciplines may use a chronological, a historical, or some other method: this discipline must needs employ a systematic, that is to say, a philosophical or scientific method. It might be equally well designated, therefore, "Philosophical Theology," or "Scientific Theology." But we should not by the adoption of one of these terms escape the ambiguities which are charged against the term "Systematic Theology." Other theological disciplines may also claim to be philosophical or scientific. If exegesis should be systematic, it should also be scientific. If history should be methodical, it should also be philosophical. An additional ambiguity would also be brought to these terms from their popular usage. There would be danger that "Philosophical Theology" should be misapprehended as theology dominated by some philosophical system. There would be a similar danger that "Scientific Theology" should be misunderstood as theology reduced to an empirical science, or dependent upon an "experimental method." Nevertheless these terms also would fairly describe what we mean by "Systematic Theology." They too would discriminate it from its sister disciplines, as the philosophical discipline which investigates from the philosophical standpoint the matter with which all the disciplines deal. And they would keep clearly before our minds the main fact in the case, namely, that Systematic Theology, as distinguished from its sister disciplines, is a science, and is to be conceived as a science and treated as a science. 

The two designations, "Philosophical Theology" and "Scientific Theology," are practically synonyms. But they differ in their connotation as the terms "philosophy" and "science" differ. The distinction between these terms in a reference like the present would seem to be that between the whole and one of its parts. Philosophy is the scientia scientiarum. What a science does for a division of knowledge, that philosophy essays to do for the mass of knowledge. A science reduces a section of our knowledge to order and harmony: philosophy reduces the sciences to order and harmony. Accordingly there are many sciences, and but one philosophy. We, therefore, so far agree with Professor D. W. Simon (whom we have quoted above in order to disagree with him), when he says that "what a science properly understood does for a subsystem; that, philosophy aims to do for the system which the subsystems constitute." "Its function is so to grasp the whole that every part shall find its proper place therein, and the parts, that they shall form an orderly organic whole": "so to correlate the reals, which with their interactivities make up the world or the universe, that the whole shall be seen in its harmony and unity; and that to every individual real shall be assigned the place in which it can be seen to be discharging its proper functions."3 This, as will be at once perceived, is the function of each science in its own sphere. To call "Systematic Theology" "Philosophical Theology" or "Scientific Theology" would therefore be all one in essential meaning. Only, when we call it "Philosophical Theology," we should be conceiving it as a science among the sciences and should have our eye upon its place in the universal sum of knowledge: while, when we call it "Scientific Theology," our mind should be occupied with it in itself, as it were in isolation, and with the proper mode of dealing with its material. In either case we are affirming that it deals with its material as an organizable system of knowledge; that it deals with it from the philosophical point of view; that it is, in other words, in its essential nature a science. 

It is possible that the implications of this determination are not always fully realized. When we have made the simple assertion of "Systematic Theology" that it is in its essential nature a science, we have already determined most of the vexing questions which arise concerning it in a formal point of view. In this single predicate is implicitly included a series of affirmations, which, when taken together, will give us a rather clear conception not only of what Systematic Theology is, but also of what it deals with, whence it obtains its material, and for what purpose it exists. 

I. First of all, then, let us observe that to say that Systematic Theology is a science is to deny that it is a historical discipline, and to affirm that it seeks to discover, not what has been or is held to be true, but what is ideally true; in other words, it is to declare that it deals with absolute truth and aims at organizing into a concatenated system all the truth in its sphere. Geology is a science, and on that very account there cannot be two geologies; its matter is all the well-authenticated facts in its sphere, and its aim is to digest all these facts into one all-comprehending system. There may be rival psychologies, which fill the world with vain jangling; but they do not strive together in order that they may obtain the right to exist side by side in equal validity, but in strenuous effort to supplant and supersede one another: there can be but one true science of mind. In like manner, just because theology is a science there can be but one theology. This all-embracing system will brook no rival in its sphere, and there can be two theologies only at the cost of one or both of them being imperfect, incomplete, false. It is because theology, in accordance with a somewhat prevalent point of view, is often looked upon as a historical rather than a scientific discipline, that it is so frequently spoken of and defined as if it were but one of many similar schemes of thought. There is no doubt such a thing as Christian theology, as distinguished from Buddhist theology or Mohammedan theology; and men may study it as the theological implication of Christianity considered as one of the world's religions. But when studied from this point of view, it forms a section of a historical discipline and furnishes its share of facts for a history of religions; on the data supplied by which a science or philosophy of religion may in turn be based. We may also, no doubt, speak of the Pelagian and Augustinian theologies, or of the Calvinistic and Arminian theologies; but, again, we are speaking as historians and from a historical point of view. The Pelagian and Augustinian theologies are not two coordinate sciences of theology; they are rival theologies. If one is true, just so far the other is false, and there is but one theology. This we may identify, as an empirical fact, with either or neither; but it is at all events one, inclusive of all theological truth and exclusive of all else as false or not germane to the subject. 

In asserting that theology is a science, then, we assert that, in its subject-matter, it includes all the facts belonging to that sphere of truth which we call theological; and we deny that it needs or will admit of limitation by a discriminating adjectival definition. We may speak of it as Christian theology just as we may speak of it as true theology, if we mean thereby only more fully to describe what, as a matter of fact, theology is found to be; but not, if we mean thereby to discriminate it from some other assumed theology thus erected to a coordinate position with it. We may describe our method of procedure in attempting to ascertain and organize the truths that come before us for building into the system, and so speak of logical or inductive, of speculative or organic theology; or we may separate the one body of theology into its members, and, just as we speak of surface and organic geology or of physiological and direct psychology, so speak of the theology of grace and of sin, or of natural and revealed theology. But all these are but designations of methods of procedure in dealing with the one whole, or of the various sections that together constitute the one whole, which in its completeness is the science of theology, and which, as a science, is inclusive of all the truth in its sphere, however ascertained, however presented, however defended. 

II. There is much more than this included, however, in calling theology a science. For the very existence of any science, three things are presupposed: (1) the reality of its subject-matter; (2) the capacity of the human mind to apprehend, receive into itself, and rationalize this subject-matter; and (3) some medium of communication by which the subject-matter is brought before the mind and presented to it for apprehension. There could be no astronomy, for example, if there were no heavenly bodies. And though the heavenly bodies existed, there could still be no science of them were there no mind to apprehend them. Facts do not make a science; even facts as apprehended do not make a science; they must be not only apprehended, but also so far comprehended as to be rationalized and thus combined into a correlated system. The mind brings to every science somewhat which, though included in the facts, is not derived from the facts considered in themselves alone, as isolated data, or even as data perceived in some sort of relation to one another. Though they be thus known, science is not yet; and is not born save through the efforts of the mind in subsuming the facts under its own intuitions and forms of thought. No mind is satisfied with a bare cognition of facts: its very constitution forces it on to a restless energy until it succeeds in working these facts not only into a network of correlated relations among themselves, but also into a rational body of thought correlated to itself and its necessary modes of thinking. The condition of science, then, is that the facts which fall within its scope shall be such as stand in relation not only to our faculties, so that they may be apprehended; but also to our mental constitution so that they may be so far understood as to be rationalized and wrought into a system relative to our thinking. Thus a science of aesthetics presupposes an aesthetic faculty, and a science of morals a moral nature, as truly as a science of logic presupposes a logical apprehension, and a science of mathematics a capacity to comprehend the relations of numbers. But still again, though the facts had real existence, and the mind were furnished with a capacity for their reception and for a sympathetic estimate and embracing of them in their relations, no science could exist were there no media by which the facts should be brought before and communicated to the mind. The transmitter and intermediating wire are as essential for telegraphing as the message and the receiving instrument. Subjectively speaking, sense perception is the essential basis of all science of external things; self-consciousness, of internal things. But objective media are also necessary. For example, there could be no astronomy, were there no trembling ether through whose delicate telegraphy the facts of light and heat are transmitted to us from the suns and systems of the heavens. Subjective and objective conditions of communication must unite, before the facts that constitute the material of a science can be placed before the mind that gives it its form. The sense of sight is essential to astronomy: yet the sense of sight would be useless for forming an astronomy were there no objective ethereal messengers to bring us news from the stars. With these an astronomy becomes possible; but how meager an astronomy compared with the new possibilities which have opened out with the discovery of a new medium of communication in the telescope, followed by still newer media in the subtle instruments by which our modern investigators not only weigh the spheres in their courses, but analyze them into their chemical elements, map out the heavens in a chart, and separate the suns into their primary constituents. 

Like all other sciences, therefore, theology, for its very existence as a science, presupposes the objective reality of the subject-matter with which it deals; the subjective capacity of the human mind so far to understand this subject-matter as to be able to subsume it under the forms of its thinking and to rationalize it into not only a comprehensive, but also a comprehensible whole; and the existence of trustworthy media of communication by which the subject-matter is brought to the mind and presented before it for perception and understanding. That is to say: (1) The affirmation that theology is a science presupposes the affirmation that God is, and that He has relation to His creatures. Were there no God, there could be no theology; nor could there be a theology if, though He existed, He existed out of relation with His creatures. The whole body of philosophical apologetics is, therefore, presupposed in and underlies the structure of scientific theology. (2) The affirmation that theology is a science presupposes the affirmation that man has a religious nature, that is, a nature capable of understanding not only that God is, but also, to some extent, what He is; not only that He stands in relations with His creatures, but also what those relations are. Had man no religious nature he might, indeed, apprehend certain facts concerning God, but he could not so understand Him in His relations to man as to be able to respond to those facts in a true and sympathetic embrace. The total product of the great science of religion, which investigates the nature and workings of this element in man's mental constitution, is therefore presupposed in and underlies the structure of scientific theology. (3) The affirmation that theology is a science presupposes the affirmation that there are media of communication by which God and divine things are brought before the minds of men, that they may perceive them and, in perceiving, understand them. In other words, when we affirm that theology is a science, we affirm not only the reality of God's existence and our capacity so far to understand Him, but we affirm that He has made Himself known to us - we affirm the objective reality of a revelation. Were there no revelation of God to man, our capacity to understand Him would lie dormant and unawakened; and though He really existed it would be to us as if He were not. There would be a God to be known and a mind to know Him; but theology would be as impossible as if there were neither the one nor the other. Not only, then, philosophical, but also the whole mass of historical apologetics by which the reality of revelation and its embodiment in the Scriptures are vindicated, is presupposed in and underlies the structure of scientific theology. 

III. In thus developing the implications of calling theology a science, we have already gone far towards determining our exact conception of what theology is. We have in effect, for example, settled our definition of theology. A science is defined from its subject-matter; and the subject-matter of theology is God in His nature and in His relations with His creatures. Theology is therefore that science which treats of God and of the relations between God and the universe. To this definition most theologians have actually come. And those who define theology as "the science of God," mean the term God in a broad sense as inclusive also of His relations; while others exhibit their sense of the need of this inclusiveness by calling it "the science of God and of divine things"; while still others speak of it, more loosely, as "the science of the supernatural." These definitions fail rather in precision of language than in correctness of conception. 

Others, however, go astray in the conception itself. Thus theologians of the school of Schleiermacher usually derive their definition from the sources rather than the subject-matter of the science - and so speak of theology as "the science of faith" or the like; a thoroughly unscientific procedure, even though our view of the sources be complete and unexceptionable, which is certainly not the case with this school. Quite as confusing is it to define theology, as is very currently done and often as an outgrowth of this same subjective tendency, as "the science of religion," or even - pressing to its greatest extreme the historical conception, which as often underlies this type of definition - as "the science of the Christian religion." Theology and religion are parallel products of the same body of facts in diverse spheres; the one in the sphere of thought and the other in the sphere of life. And the definition of theology as "the science of religion" thus confounds the product of the facts concerning God and His relations with His creatures working through the hearts and lives of men, with those facts themselves; and consequently, whenever strictly understood, bases theology not on the facts of the divine revelation, but, on the facts of the religious life. This leads ultimately to a confusion of the two distinct disciplines of theology, the subject-matter of which is objective, and the science of religion, the subject-matter of which is subjective; with the effect of lowering the data of theology to the level of the aspirations and imaginings of man's own heart. Wherever this definition is found, either a subjective conception of theology, which reduces it to a branch of psychology, may be suspected; or else a historical conception of it, a conception of "Christian theology" as one of the many theologies of the world, parallel even if unspeakably truer than, the others with which it is classed and in conjunction with which it furnishes us with it full account of religion. When so conceived, it is natural to take a step further and permit the methodology of the science, as well as its idea, to be determined by its distinguishing element: thus theology, in contradiction to its very name, becomes Christocentric. No doubt "Christian theology," as a historical discipline, is Christocentric; it is by its doctrine of redemption that it is differentiated from all the other theologies that the world has known. But theology as a science is and must be theocentric. So soon as we firmly grasp it from the scientific point of view, we see that there can be but one science of God and of His relations to His universe, and we no longer seek a point of discrimination, but rather a center of development; and we quickly see that there can be but one center about which so comprehensive a subject-matter can be organized - the conception of God. He that hath seen Christ, has beyond doubt seen the Father; but it is one thing to make Christ the center of theology so far as He is one with God, and another thing to organize all theology around Him as the theanthropos and in His specifically theanthropic work. 

IV. Not only, however, is our definition of theology thus set for us: we have also determined in advance our conception of its sources. We have already made use of the term "revelation," to designate the medium by which the facts concerning God and His relations to His creatures are brought before men's minds, and so made the subject-matter of a possible science. The word accurately describes the condition of all knowledge of God. If God be a person, it follows by stringent necessity, that He can be known only so far as He reveals or expresses Himself. And it is but the converse of this, that if there be no revelation, there can be no knowledge, and, of course, no systematized knowledge or science of God. Our reaching up to Him in thought and inference is possible only because He condescends to make Himself intelligible to us, to speak to us through work or word, to reveal Himself. We hazard nothing, therefore, in saying that, as the condition of all theology is a revealed God, so, without limitation, the sole source of theology is revelation. 

In so speaking, however, we have no thought of doubting that God's revelation of Himself is "in divers manners." We have no desire to deny that He has never left man without witness of His eternal power and Godhead, or that He has multiplied the manifestations of Himself in nature and providence and grace, so that every generation has had abiding and unmistakable evidence that He is, that He is the good God, and that He is a God who marketh iniquity. Under the broad skirts of the term "revelation," every method of manifesting Himself which God uses in communicating knowledge of His being and attributes, may find shelter for itself - whether it be through those visible things of nature whereby His invisible things are clearly seen, or through the constitution of the human mind with its causal judgment indelibly stamped upon it, or through that voice of God that we call conscience, which proclaims His moral law within us, or through His providence in which He makes bare His arm for the government of the nations, or through the exercises of His grace, our experience under the tutelage of the Holy Ghost - or whether it be through the open visions of His prophets, the divinely-breathed pages of His written Word, the divine life of the Word Himself. How God reveals Himself - in what divers manners He makes Himself known to His creatures - is thus the subsequent question, by raising which we distribute the one source of theology, revelation, into the various methods of revelation, each of which brings us true knowledge of God, and all of which must be taken account of in building our knowledge into one all-comprehending system. It is the accepted method of theology to infer that the God that made the eye must Himself see; that the God who sovereignly distributes His favors in the secular world may be sovereign in grace too; that the heart that condemns itself but repeats the condemnation of the greater God; that the songs of joy in which the Christian's happy soul voices its sense of God's gratuitous mercy are valid evidence that God has really dealt graciously with it. It is with no reserve that we accept all these sources of knowledge of God - nature, providence, Christian experience - as true and valid sources, the well-authenticated data yielded by which are to be received by us as revelations of God, and as such to he placed alongside of the revelations in the written Word and wrought with them into one system. As a matter of fact, theologians have always so dealt with them; and doubtless they always will so deal with them. 

But to perceive, as all must perceive, that every method by which (God manifests Himself, is, so far as this manifestation can be clearly interpreted, a source of knowledge of Him, and must, therefore, be taken account of in framing all our knowledge of Him into one organic whole, is far from allowing that there are no differences among these various manifestations - in the amount of revelation they give, the clearness of their message, the ease and certainty with which they may be interpreted, or the importance of the special truths which they are fitted to convey. Far rather is it a priori likely that if there are "divers manners" in which God has revealed Himself, He has not revealed precisely the same message through each; that these "divers manners" correspond also to divers messages of divers degrees of importance, delivered with divers degrees of clearness. And the mere fact that He has included in these "divers manners" a copious revelation in a written Word, delivered with an authenticating accompaniment of signs and miracles, proved by recorded prophecies with their recorded fulfillments, and pressed, with the greatest solemnity, upon the attention and consciences of men as the very Word of the Living God, who has by it made all the wisdom of men foolishness; nay, proclaimed as containing within itself the formulation of His truth, the proclamation of His law, the discovery of His plan of salvation: this mere fact, I say, would itself and prior to all comparison, raise an overwhelming presumption that all the others of "the divers manners" of God's revelation were insufficient for the purposes for which revelation is given, whether on account of defect in the amount of their communication or insufficiency of attestation or uncertainty of interpretation or fatal one-sidedness in the character of the revelation they are adapted to give. 

We need not be surprised, therefore, that on actual examination, such imperfections are found undeniably to attach to all forms of what we may, for the sake of discrimination, speak of as mere manifestations of God; and that thus the revelation of God in His written Word - in which are included the only authentic records of the revelation of Him through the incarnate Word - is easily shown not only to be incomparably superior to all other manifestations of Him in the fullness, richness, and clearness of its communications, but also to contain the sole discovery of much that it is most important for the soul to know as to its state and destiny, and of much that is most precious in our whole body of theological knowledge. The superior lucidity of this revelation makes it the form of interpretation for what is revealed so much more darkly through the other methods of manifestation. The gloious character of the discoveries made in it throws all other manifestations into comparative shadow. The amazing fullness of its disclosures renders what they can tell us of little relative value. And its absolute completeness for the needs of man, taking up and reiteratingly repeating in the clearest of language all that can be wrung from their sometimes enigmatic indications, and then adding to this a vast body of still more momentous truth undiscoverable through them, all but supersedes their necessity. With the fullest recognition of the validity of all the knowledge of God and His ways with men, which can be obtained through the manifestations of His power and divinity in nature and history and grace; and the frankest allowance that the written Word is given, not to destroy the manifestations of God, but to fulfill them; the theologian must yet refuse to give these sources of knowledge a place alongside of the written Word, in any other sense than that he gladly admits that they, alike with it, but in unspeakably lower measure, do tell us of God. And nothing can be a clearer indication of a decadent theology or of a decaying faith, than a tendency to neglect the Word in favor of some (one, or of all of the lesser sources of theological truth, as fountains from which to draw our knowledge of divine things. This were to prefer the flickering rays of a taper to the blazing light of the sun; to elect to draw our water from a muddy run rather than to dip it from the broad bosom of the pure fountain itself. 

Nevertheless, men have often sought to still the cravings of their souls with a purely natural theology; and there are men to-day who prefer to derive their knowledge of what God is and what He will do for man from an analysis of the implications of their own religious feelings: not staying to consider that nature, "red in tooth and claw with ravin," can but direct our eyes to the God of law, whose deadly letter kills; or that our feelings must needs point us to the God of our imperfect apprehensions or of our unsanctified desires - not to the God that is, so much as to the God that we would fain should be. The natural result of resting on the revelations of nature is despair; while the inevitable end of making our appeal to even the Christian heart is to make for ourselves refuges of lies in which there is neither truth nor safety. We may, indeed, admit that it is valid reasoning to infer from the nature of the Christian life what are the modes of God's activities towards His children: to see, for instance, in conviction of sin and the sudden peace of the new-born soul, God's hand in slaying that He may make alive, His almighty power in raising the spiritually dead. But how easy to overstep the limits of valid inference; and, forgetting that it is the body of Christian truth known and assimilated that determines the type of Christian experience, confuse in our inferences what is from man with what is from God, and condition and limit our theology by the undeveloped Christian thought of the man or his times. The interpretation of the data included in what we have learned to call "the Christian consciousness," whether of the individual or of the Church at large, is a process so delicate, so liable to error, so inevitably swayed to this side or that by the currents that flow up and down in the soul, that probably few satisfactory inferences could be drawn from it, had we not the norm of Christian experience and its dogmatic implications recorded for us in the perspicuous pages of the written Word. But even were we to suppose that the interpretation was easy and secure, and that we had before us, in an infallible formulation, all the implications of the religious experience of all the men who have ever known Christ, we have no reason to believe that the whole body of facts thus obtained would suffice to give us a complete theology. After all, we know in part and we feel in part; it is only when that which is perfect shall appear that we shall know or experience all that Christ has in store for us. With the fullest acceptance, therefore, of the data of the theology of the feelings, no less than of natural theology, when their results are validly obtained and sufficiently authenticated as trustworthy, as divinely revealed facts which must be wrought into our system, it, remains nevertheless true that we should be confined to a meager and doubtful theology were these data not confirmed, reinforced, and supplemented by the surer and fuller revelations of Scripture; and that the Holy Scriptures are the source of theology in not only a degree, but also a sense in which nothing else is. 

There may be a theology without the Scriptures - a theology of nature, gathered by painful, and slow, and sometimes doubtful processes from what man sees around him in external nature and the course of history, and what he sees within him of nature and of grace. In like manner there may be and has been an astronomy of nature, gathered by man in his natural state without help from aught but his naked eyes, as he watched in the fields by night. But what is this astronomy of nature to the astronomy that has become possible through the wonderful appliances of our observatories? The Word of God is to theology as, but vastly more than, these instruments are to astronomy. It is the instrument which so far increases the possibilities of the science as to revolutionize it and to place it upon a height from which it can never more descend. What would be thought of the deluded man, who, discarding the new methods of research, should insist on acquiring all the astronomy which he would admit, from the unaided observation of his own myopic and astigmatic eyes? Much more deluded is he who, neglecting the instrument of God's Word written, would confine his admissions of theological truth to what he could discover from the broken lights that play upon external nature, and the faint gleams of a dying or even a slowly reviving light, which arise in his own sinful soul. Ah, no! The telescope first made a real science of astronomy possible: and the Scriptures form the only sufficing source of theology. 

V. Under such a conception of its nature and sources, we are led to consider the place of Systematic Theology among the other theological disciplines as well as among the other sciences in general. Without encroaching upon the details of Theological Encyclopedia, we may adopt here the usual fourfold distribution of the theological disciplines into the Exegetical, the Historical, the Systematic, and the Practical, with only the correction of prefixing to them a fifth department of Apologetical Theology. The place of Systematic Theology in this distribution is determined by its relation to the preceding disciplines, of which it is the crown and head. Apologetical Theology prepares the way for all theology by establishing its necessary presuppositions without which no theology is possible - the existence and essential nature of God, the religious nature of man which enables him to receive a revelation from God, the possibility of a revelation and its actual realization in the Scriptures. It thus places the Scriptures in our hands for investigation and study. Exegetical Theology receives these inspired writings from the hands of Apologetics, and investigates their meaning; presenting us with a body of detailed and substantiated results, culminating in a series of organized systems of Biblical History, Biblical Ethics, Biblical Theology, and the like, which provide material for further use in the more advanced disciplines. Historical Theology investigates the progressive realization of Christianity in the lives, hearts, worship, and thought of men, issuing not only in a full account of the history of Christianity, but also in a body of facts which come into use in the more advanced disciplines, especially in the way of the manifold experiments that have been made during the ages in Christian organization, worship, living, and creed-building, as well as of the sifted results of the reasoned thinking and deep experience of Christian truth during the whole past. Systematic Theology does not fail to strike its roots deeply into this matter furnished by Historical Theology; it knows how to profit by the experience of all past generations in their efforts to understand and define, to systematize and defend revealed truth; and it thinks of nothing so little as lightly to discard the conquests of so many hard-fought fields. It therefore gladly utilizes all the material that Historical Theology brings it, accounting it, indeed, the very precipitate of the Christian consciousness of the past; but it does not use it crudely, or at first hand for itself, but accepts it as investigated, explained, and made available by the sister discipline of Historical Theology which alone can understand it or draw from it its true lessons. It certainly does not find in it, its chief or primary source, and its relation to Historical Theology is, in consequence, far less close than that in which it stands to Exegetical Theology which is its true and especial handmaid. The independence of Exegetical Theology is seen in the fact that it does its work wholly without thought or anxiety as to the use that is to be made of its results; and that it furnishes a vastly larger body of data than can be utilized by any one discipline. It provides a body of historical, ethical, liturgic, ecclesiastical facts, as well as a body of theological facts. But so far as its theological facts are concerned, it provides them chiefly that they may be used by Systematic Theology as material out of which to build its system. 

This is not to forget the claims of Biblical Theology. It is rather to emphasize its value, and to afford occasion for explaining its true place in the encyclopedia, and its true relations on the one side to Exegetical Theology, and on the other to Systematics - a matter which appears to be even yet imperfectly understood in some quarters. Biblical Theology is not a section of Historical Theology, although it must be studied in a historical spirit, and has a historical face; it is rather the ripest fruit of Exegetics, and Exegetics has not performed its full task until its scattered results in the way of theological data are gathered up into a full and articulated system of Biblical Theology. It is to be hoped that the time will come when no commentary will be considered complete until the capstone is placed upon its fabric by closing chapters gathering up into systematized exhibits, the unsystematized results of the continuous exegesis of the text, in the spheres of history, ethics, theology, and the like. The task of Biblical Theology, in a word, is the task of coordinating the scattered results of continuous exegesis into a concatenated whole, whether with reference to a single book of Scripture or to a body of related books or to the whole Scriptural fabric. Its chief object is not to find differences of conception between the various writers, though some recent students of the subject seem to think this is so much their duty, that when they cannot find differences they make them. It is to reproduce the theological thought of each writer or group of writers in the form in which it lay in their own minds, so that we may be enabled to look at all their theological statements at their angle, and to understand all their deliverances as modified and conditioned by their own point of view. Its exegetical value lies just in this circumstance, that it is only when we have thus concatenated an author's theological statements into a whole, that we can be sure that we understand them as he understood them in detail. A light is inevitably thrown back from Biblical Theology upon the separate theological deliverances as they occur in the text, such as subtly colors them, and often, for the first time, gives them to us in their true setting, and thus enables us to guard against perverting them when we adapt them to our use. This is a noble function, and could students of Biblical Theology only firmly grasp it, once for all, as their task, it would prevent this important science from being brought into contempt through a tendency to exaggerate differences in form of statement into divergences of view, and so to force the deliverances of each book into a strange and unnatural combination, in the effort to vindicate a function for this discipline. 

The relation of Biblical Theology to Systematic Theology is based on a true view of its function. Systematic Theology is not founded on the direct and primary results of the exegetical process; it is founded on the final and complete results of exegesis as exhibited in Biblical Theology. Not exegesis itself, then, but Biblical Theology, provides the material for Systematics. Biblical Theology is not, then, a rival of Systematics; it is not even a parallel product of the same body of facts, provided by exegesis; it is the basis and source of Systematics. Systematic Theology is not a concatenation of the scattered theological data furnished by the exegetic process; it is the combination of the already concatenated data given to it by Biblical Theology. It uses the individual data furnished by exegesis, in a word, not crudely, not independently for itself, but only after these data have been worked up into Biblical Theology and have received from it their final coloring and subtlest shades of meaning - in other words, only in their true sense, and after Exegetics has said its last word upon them. Just as we shall attain our finest and truest conception of the person and work of Christ, not by crudely trying to combine the scattered details of His life and teaching as given in our four Gospels into one patchwork life and account of His teaching; but far more rationally and far more successfully by first catching Matthew's full conception of Jesus, and then Mark's, and then Luke's, and then John's, and combining these four conceptions into one rounded whole: so we gain our truest Systematics not by at once working together the separate dogmatic statements in the Scriptures, but by combining them in their due order and proportion as they stand in the various theologies of the Scriptures. Thus we are enabled to view the future whole not only in its parts, but in the several combinations of the parts; and, looking at it from every side, to obtain a true conception of its solidity and strength, and to avoid all exaggeration or falsification of the details in giving them place in the completed structure. And thus we do not make our theology, according to our own pattern, as a mosaic, out of the fragments of the Biblical teaching; but rather look out from ourselves upon it as a great prospect, framed out of the mountains and plains of the theologies of the Scriptures, and strive to attain a point of view from which we can bring the whole landscape into our field of sight. 

From this point of view, we find no difficulty in understanding the relation in which the several disciplines stand to one another, with respect to their contents. The material that Systematics draws from other than Biblical sources may be here left momentarily out of account. The actual contents of the theological results of the exegetic process, of Biblical Theology, and of Systematics, with this limitation, may be said to be the same. The immediate work of exegesis may be compared to the work of a recruiting officer: it draws out from the mass of mankind the men who are to constitute the army. Biblical Theology organizes these men into companies and regiments and corps, arranged in marching order and accoutered for service. Systematic Theology combines these companies and regiments and corps into an army - a single and unitary whole, determined by its own all-pervasive principle. It, too, is composed of men - the same men which were recruited by Exegetics; but it is composed of these men, not as individuals merely, but in their due relations to the other men of their companies and regiments and corps. The simile is far from a perfect one; but it may illustrate the mutual relations of the disciplines, and also, perhaps, suggest the historical element that attaches to Biblical Theology, and the element of all-inclusive systematization which is inseparable from Systematic Theology. It is just this element, determining the spirit and therefore the methods of Systematic Theology, which, along with its greater inclusiveness, discriminates it from all forms of Biblical Theology, the spirit of which is purely historical. 

VI. The place that theology, as the scientific presentation of all the facts that are known concerning God and His relations, claims for itself within the circle of the sciences is an equally high one with that which it claims among the theological disciplines. Whether we consider the topics which it treats, in their dignity, their excellence, their grandeur; or the certainty with which its data can be determined; or the completeness with which its principles have been ascertained and its details classified; or the usefulness and importance of its discoveries: it is as far out of all comparison above all other sciences as the eternal health and destiny of the soul are of more value than this fleeting life in this world. It is not so above them, however, as not to be also a constituent member of the closely interrelated and mutually interacting organism of the sciences. There is no one of them all which is not, in some measure, touched and affected by it, or which is not in some measure included in it. As all nature, whether mental or material, may be conceived of as only the mode in which God manifests Himself, every science which investigates nature and ascertains its laws is occupied with the discovery of the modes of the divine action, and as such might be considered a branch of theology. And, on the other hand, as all nature, whether mental or material, owes its existence to God, every science which investigates nature and ascertains its laws, depends for its foundation upon that science which would make known what God is and what the relations are in which He stands to the work of His hands and in which they stand to Him; and must borrow from it those conceptions through which alone the material with which it deals can find its explanation or receive its proper significance. 

Theology, thus, enters into the structure of every other science. Its closest relations are, no doubt, with the highest of the other sciences, ethics. Any discussion of our duty to God must rest on a knowledge of our relation to Him; and much of our duty to man is undiscoverable, save through knowledge of our common relation to the one God and Father of all, and one Lord the Redeemer of all, and one Spirit the Sanctifier of all - all of which it is the function of theology to supply. This fact is, of course, not fatal to the existence of a natural ethics; but an ethics independent of theological conceptions would be a meager thing indeed, while the theology of the Scriptural revelation for the first time affords a basis for ethical investigation at once broad enough and sure enough to raise that science to its true dignity. Accordingly, a purely natural ethics has always been an incomplete ethics even relatively to the less developed forms of ethics resting on a revealed basis. A careful student has recently told us, for example, that: 

Between the ethics of pagan antiquity and that of the Old Testament there is a difference of the widest and most radical kind. There is no trace of gradual transition from the one to the other. That difference is first seen in the pagan conception of God and of man's ethical relation to Him. . . . It was essentially a morality between man and man. For where man's relation to a personal God is not apprehended, anything approaching an universal ethics is impossible, and only individual virtues can be manifested. Ethics was thus deprived of its unity. . . . Morality became but a catalogue of separate virtues, and was deprived of that penetrating bond of union which it receives when the realm of human personalities is bound by innumerable links to the great central personality, God.⁴ 

We must not, however, on the ground of this intimacy of relation, confound the two sciences of theology and ethics. Something like it in kind and approaching it in degree exists between theology and every other science, no one of which is so independent of it as not to touch and be touched by it. Something of theology is implicated in all metaphysics and physics alike. It alone can determine the origin of either matter or mind, or of the mystic powers that have been granted to them.⁵ It alone can explain the nature of second causes and set the boundaries to their efficiency. It alone is competent to declare the meaning of the ineradicable persuasion of the human mind that its reason is right reason, its processes trustworthy, its intuitions true. All science without God is mutilated science, and no account of a single branch of knowledge can ever be complete until it is pushed back to find its completion and ground in Him. In the eloquent words of Dr. Pusey: 

God alone is in Himself, and is the Cause and Upholder of everything to which He has given being. Every faculty of the mind is some reflection of His; every truth has its being from Him; every law of nature has the impress of His hand; everything beautiful has caught its light from His eternal beauty; every principle of goodness has its foundation in His attributes. . . . Without Him, in the region of thought, everything is dead; as without Him everything which is, would at once cease to be. All things must speak of God, refer to God, or they are atheistic. History, without God, is a chaos without design, or end, or aim. Political Economy, without God, would be a selfish teaching about the acquisition of wealth, making the larger portion of mankind animate machines for its production; Physics, without God, would be but a dull inquiry into certain meaningless phenomena; Ethics, without God, would be a varying rule, without principle, or substance, or centre, or regulating hand; Metaphysics, without God, would make man his own temporary god, to be resolved, after his brief hour here, into the nothingness out of which he proceeded.⁶ 

It is thus as true of sciences as it is of creatures, that in Him they all live and move and have their being. The science of Him and His relations is the necessary ground of all science. All speculation takes us back to Him; all inquiry presupposes Him; and every phase of science consciously or unconsciously rests at every step on the science that makes Him known. Theology, thus, as the science which treats of God, lies at the root of all sciences. It is true enough that each could exist without it, in a sense and in some degree; but through it alone can any one of them reach its true dignity. Herein we see not only the proof of its greatness, but also the assurance of its permanence. "What so permeates all sections and subjects of human thought, has a deep root in human nature and an immense hold upon it. What so possesses man's mind that he cannot think at all without thinking of it, is so bound up with the very being of intelligence that ere it can perish, intellect must cease to be."7 

It is only in theology, therefore, that the other sciences find their completion. Theology, formally speaking, is accordingly the apex of the pyramid of the sciences by which the structure is perfected. Its relation to the other sciences is, thus, in this broader sphere quite analogous to its relation to the other branches of the theological encyclopedia in that narrower sphere. All other sciences are subsidiary to it, and it builds its fabric out of material supplied by them. Theology is the science which deals with the facts concerning God and His relations with the universe. Such facts include all the facts of nature and history: and it is the very function of the several sciences to supply these facts in scientific, that is, thoroughly comprehended form. Scientific theology thus stands at the head of the sciences as well as at the head of the theological disciplines. The several sciences deal each with its own material in an independent spirit and supply a multitude of results not immediately useful to theology. But so far as their results stand related to questions with which theology deals, they exist only to serve her. Dr. Flint well says: 

The relevant data of natural theology are all the works of God in nature and providence, all the phenomena and laws of matter, mind, and history, - and these can only be thoroughly ascertained by the special sciences. The surest and most adequate knowledge of them is knowledge in the form called scientific, and therefore in this form the theologian must seek to know them. The sciences which deal with nature, mind, and history hold the same position towards natural theology which the disciplines that treat of the composition, genuineness, authenticity, text, development, etc., of the Scriptures do towards Biblical theology. They inform us, as it were, what is the true text and literal interpretation of the book of creation. Their conclusions are the premisses, or at least the data, of the scientific natural theologian. All reasonings of his which disregard these data are ipso facto condemned. A conflict between the results of these sciences and the findings of natural theology is inconceivable. It would be a conflict between the data and conclusions of natural theology, and so equivalent for natural theology to self-contradiction. . . . The religion of the Bible . . . is but one of a multitude of religions which have left traces of themselves in documents, monuments, rites, creeds, customs, institutions, individual lives, social changes, etc.; and there is a theological discipline - comparative theology - which undertakes to disclose the spirit, delineate the character, trace the development, and exhibit the relations of all religions with the utmost attainable exactitude. Obviously the mass of data which this science has to collect, sift, and interpret is enormous. They can only be brought to light and set in their natural relationships by the labours of hosts of specialists of all kinds. . . . Christian dogmatics has to make use of the results of natural theology, Biblical theology, and comparative theology, and to raise them to a higher stage by a comprehensive synthesis which connects them with the person and work of Christ, as of Him in whom all spiritual truth is comprehended and all spiritual wants supplied.⁸ 

The essence of the matter is here admirably set forth, though as connected with some points of view which may require modification. It would seem to be a mistake, for example, to conceive of scientific theology as the immediate and direct synthesis of the three sources - Natural Theology, Biblical Theology, and Comparative Theology - so that it would be considered the product in like degree or even in similar manner of the three. All three furnish data for the completed structure; but if what has been said in an earlier connection has any validity, Natural and Comparative Theology should stand in a somewhat different relation to Scientific Theology from that which Biblical Theology occupies - a relation not less organic indeed, but certainly less direct. The true representation seems to be that Scientific Theology is related to the natural and historical sciences, not immediately and independently for itself, but only indirectly, that is, through the mediation of the preliminary theological discipline of Apologetics. The work of Apologetics in its three branches of Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical, results not only in presenting the Bible to the theological student, but also in presenting to him God, Religion, and Christianity. And in so doing, it supplies him with the total material of Natural and Comparative Theology as well as with the foundation on which exegesis is to raise the structure of Biblical Theology. The materials thus provided Scientific Theology utilizes, just as it utilizes the results of exegesis through Biblical Theology, and the results of the age-long life of men under Christianity through Historical Theology. Scientific Theology rests, therefore, most directly on the results of Biblical exegesis as provided in Biblical Theology; but avails itself likewise of all the material furnished by all the preceding disciplines, and, in the results of Apologetics as found in Natural Theology and Comparative Theology, of all the data bearing on its problems, supplied by all the sciences. But it does not make its direct appeal crudely and independently to these sciences, any more than to exegesis and Christian history, but as it receives the one set of results from the hands of Exegetics and Histories, so it receives the others from the hand of Apologetics.⁹ Systematic Theology is fundamentally one of the theological disciplines, and bears immediate relation only to its sister disciplines; it is only through them that it reaches further out and sets its roots in more remote sources of information. 

VII. The interpretation of a written document, intended to convey a plain message, is infinitely easier than the interpretation of the teaching embodied in facts themselves. It is therefore that systematic treatises on the several sciences are written. Theology has, therefore, an immense advantage over all other sciences, inasmuch as it is more an inductive study of facts conveyed in a written revelation, than an inductive study of facts as conveyed in life. It was, consequently, the first-born of the sciences. It was the first to reach relative completeness. And it is to-day in a state far nearer perfection than any other science. This is not, however, to deny that it is a progressive science. In exactly the same sense in which any other science is progressive, this is progressive. It is not meant that new revelations are to be expected of truth which has not been before within the reach of man. There is a vast difference between the progress of a science and increase in its material. All the facts of psychology, for instance, have been in existence so long as mind itself has existed; and the progress of this science has been dependent on the progressive discovery, understanding, and systematization of these facts. All the facts of theology have, in like manner, been within the reach of man for nearly two millenniums; and the progress of theology is dependent on men's progress in gathering, defining, mentally assimilating, and organizing these facts into a correlated system. So long as revelation was not completed, the progressive character of theology was secured by the progress in revelation itself. And since the close of the canon of Scripture, the intellectual realization and definition of the doctrines revealed in it, in relation to one another, have been, as a mere matter of fact, a slow but ever advancing process. 

The affirmation that theology has been a progressive science is no more, then, than to assert that it is a science that has had a history - and a history which can be and should be genetically traced and presented. First, the objective side of Christian truth was developed: pressed on the one side by the crass monotheism of the Jews and on the other by the coarse polytheism of the heathen, and urged on by its own internal need of comprehending the sources of its life, Christian theology first searched the Scriptures that it might understand the nature and modes of existence of its God and the person of its divine Redeemer. Then, more and more conscious of itself, it more and more fully wrought out from those same Scriptures a guarded expression of the subjective side of its faith; until through throes and conflicts it has built up the system which we all inherit. Thus the body of Christian truth has come down to us in the form of an organic growth; and we can conceive of the completed structure as the ripened fruit of the ages, as truly as we can think of it as the perfected result of the exegetical discipline. As it has come into our possession by this historic process, there is no reason that we can assign why it should not continue to make for itself a history. We do not expect the history of theology to close in our own day. However nearly completed our realization of the body of truth may seem to us to be; however certain it is that the great outlines are already securely laid and most of the details soundly discovered and arranged; no one will assert that every detail is as yet perfected, and we are all living in the confidence so admirably expressed by old John Robinson, "that God hath more truth yet to break forth from His holy Word." Just because God gives us the truth in single threads which we must weave into the reticulated texture, all the threads are always within our reach, but the finished texture is ever and will ever continue to be before us until we dare affirm that there is no truth in the Word which we have not perfectly apprehended, and no relation of these truths as revealed which we have not perfectly understood, and no possibility in clearness of presentation which we have not attained. 

The conditions of progress in theology are clearly discernible from its nature as a science. The progressive men in any science are the men who stand firmly on the basis of the already ascertained truth. The condition of progress in building the structures of those great cathedrals whose splendid piles glorify the history of art in the Middle Ages, was that each succeeding generation should build upon the foundations laid by its predecessor. If each architect had begun by destroying what had been accomplished by his forerunners, no cathedral would ever have been raised.¹⁰ The railroad is pushed across the continent by the simple process of laying each rail at the end of the line already laid. The prerequisite of all progress is a clear discrimination which as frankly accepts the limitations set by the truth already discovered, as it rejects the false and bad. Construction is not destruction; neither is it the outcome of destruction. There are abuses no doubt to be reformed; errors to correct; falsehoods to cut away. But the history of progress in every science and no less in theology, is a story of impulses given, corrected, and assimilated. And when they have been once corrected and assimilated, these truths are to remain accepted. It is then time for another impulse, and the condition of all further progress is to place ourselves in this well-marked line of growth. Astronomy, for example, has had such a history; and there are now some indisputable truths in astronomy, as, for instance, the rotundity of the earth and the central place of the sun in our system. I do not say that these truths are undisputed; probably nothing is any more undisputed in astronomy, or any other science, than in theology. At all events he who wishes, may read the elaborate arguments of the "Zetetic" philosophers, as they love to call themselves, who in this year of grace are striving to prove that the earth is flat and occupies the center of our system. Quite in the same spirit, there are "Zetetic" theologians who strive with similar zeal and acuteness to overturn the established basal truths of theology - which, however, can nevermore be shaken; and we should give about as much ear to them in the one science as in the other. It is utter folly to suppose that progress can be made otherwise than by placing ourselves in the line of progress; and if the temple of God's truth is ever to be completely built, we must not spend our efforts in digging at the foundations which have been securely laid in the distant past, but must rather give our best efforts to rounding the arches, carving the capitals, and fitting in the fretted roof. What if it is not ours to lay foundations? Let us rejoice that that work has been done! Happy are we if our God will permit us to bring a single capstone into place. This fabric is not a house of cards to be built and blown down again a hundred times a day, as the amusement of our idle hours: it is a miracle of art to which all ages and lands bring their varied tribute. The subtle Greek laid the foundations; the law-loving Roman raised high the walls; and all the perspicuity of France and ideality of Germany and systematization of Holland and deep sobriety of Britain have been expended in perfecting the structure; and so it grows. 

We have heard much in these last days of the phrase "progressive orthodoxy," and in somewhat strange connections. Nevertheless, the phrase itself is not an inapt description of the building of this theological house. Let us assert that the history of theology has been and ever must be a progressive orthodoxy. But let us equally loudly assert that progressive orthodoxy and retrogressive heterodoxy can scarcely be convertible terms. Progressive orthodoxy implies that first of all we are orthodox, and secondly that we are progressively orthodox, that is, that we are ever growing more and more orthodox as more and more truth is being established. This has been and must be the history of the advance of every science, and not less, among them, of the science of theology. Justin Martyr, champion of the orthodoxy of his day, held a theory of the intertrinitarian relationship which became heterodoxy after the Council of Nicea; the ever struggling Christologies of the earlier ages were forever set aside by the Chalcedon Fathers; Augustine determined for all time the doctrine of grace, Anselm the doctrine of the atonement, Luther the doctrine of forensic justification. In any progressive science, the amount of departure from accepted truth which is possible to the sound thinker becomes thus ever less and less, in proportion as investigation and study result in the progressive establishment of an ever increasing number of facts. The physician who would bring back to-day the medicine of Galen would be no more mad than the theologian who would revive the theology of Clement of Alexandria. Both were men of light and leading in their time; but their time is past, and it is the privilege of the child of to-day to know a sounder physic and a sounder theology than the giants of that far past yesterday could attain. It is of the very essence of our position at the end of the ages that we are ever more and more hedged around with ascertained facts, the discovery and establishment of which constitute the very essence of progress. Progress brings increasing limitation, just because it brings increasing knowledge. And as the orthodox man is he that teaches no other doctrine than that which has been established as true, the progressively orthodox man is he who is quick to perceive, admit, and condition all his reasoning by all the truth down to the latest, which has been established as true. 

VIII. When we speak of progress our eyes are set upon a goal. And in calling theology a progressive science we unavoidably raise the inquiry, what the end and purpose is towards an ever increasing fitness to secure which it is continually growing. Its own completeness and perfecting as a science - as a department of knowledge - is naturally the proximate goal towards which every science tends. And when we consider the surpassing glory of the subject-matter with which theology deals, it would appear that if ever science existed for its own sake, this might surely be true of this science. The truths concerning God and His relations are, above all comparison, in themselves the most worthy of all truths of study and examination. Yet we must vindicate a further goal for the advance of theology and thus contend for it that it is an eminently practical science. The contemplation and exhibition of Christianity as truth, is far from the end of the matter. This truth is specially communicated by God for a purpose, for which it is admirably adapted. That purpose is to save and sanctify the soul. And the discovery, study, and systematization of the truth is in order that, firmly grasping it and thoroughly comprehending it in all its reciprocal relations, we may be able to make the most efficient use of it for its holy purpose. Well worth our most laborious study, then, as it is, for its own sake as mere truth, it becomes not only absorbingly interesting, but inexpressibly precious to us when we bear in mind that the truth with which we thus deal constitutes, as a whole, the engrafted Word that is able to save our souls. The task of thoroughly exploring the pages of revelation, soundly gathering from them their treasures of theological teaching, and carefully fitting these into their due places in a system whereby they may be preserved from misunderstanding, perversion, and misuse, and given a new power to convince the understanding, move the heart, and quicken the will, becomes thus a holy duty to our own and our brothers' souls as well as an eager pleasure of our intellectual nature. 

That the knowledge of the truth is an essential prerequisite to the production of those graces and the building up of those elements of a sanctified character for the production of which each truth is especially adapted, probably few will deny: but surely it is equally true that the clearer, fuller, and more discriminating this knowledge is, the more certainly and richly will it produce its appropriate effect; and in this is found a most complete vindication of the duty of systematizing the separate elements of truth into a single soundly concatenated whole, by which the essential nature of each is made as clear as it can be made to human apprehension. It is not a matter of indifference, then, how we apprehend and systematize this truth. On the contrary, if we misconceive it in its parts or in its relations, not only do our views of truth become confused and erroneous, but also our religious life becomes dwarfed or contorted. The character of our religion is, in a word, determined by the character of our theology: and thus the task of the systematic theologian is to see that the relations in which the separate truths actually stand are rightly conceived, in order that they may exert their rightful influence on the development of the religious life. As no truth is so insignificant as to have no place in the development of our religious life, so no truth is so unimportant that we dare neglect it or deal deceitfully with it in adjusting it into our system. We are smitten with a deadly fear on the one side, lest by fitting them into a system of our own devising, we cut from them just the angles by which they were intended to lay hold of the hearts of men: but on the other side, we are filled with a holy confidence that, by allowing them to frame themselves into their own system as indicated by their own natures - as the stones in Solomon's temple were cut each for its place - we shall make each available for all men, for just the place in the saving process for which it was divinely framed and divinely given. 

These theoretical considerations are greatly strengthened by the historical fact, that throughout all the ages every advance in the scientific statement of theological truth has been made in response to a practical demand, and has been made in a distinctly practical interest. We wholly misconceive the facts if we imagine that the development of systematic theology has been the work of cold, scholastic recluses, intent only upon intellectual subtleties. It has been the work of the best heart of the whole Church driving on and utilizing in its practical interests, the best brain. The true state of the case could not be better expressed than it is by Professor Auguste Sabatier, when he tells us that: 

The promulgation of each dogma has been imposed on the Church by some practical necessity. It has always been to bring to an end some theological controversy which was in danger of provoking a schism, to respond to attacks or accusations which it would have been dangerous to permit to acquire credit, that the Church has moved in a dogmatic way. . . . Nothing is more mistaken than to represent the Fathers of the Councils, or the members of the Synods as theoricians, or even as professional theologians, brought together in conference by speculative zeal alone, in order to resolve metaphysical enigmas. They were men of action, not of speculation; courageous priests and pastors who understood their mission, like soldiers in open battle, and whose first care was to save their Church, its life, its unity, its honor - ready to die for it as one dies for his country.¹¹

In quite similar manner one of the latest critics (M. Pannier) of Calvin's doctrinal work feels moved to bear his testimony to the practical purpose which ruled over the development of his system. He says: 

In the midst, as at the outset of his work, it was the practical preoccupations of living faith which guided him, and never a vain desire for pure speculation. If this practical need led [in the successive editions of the "Institutes"] to some new theories, to many fuller expositions of principles, this was not only because he now desired his book to help students of theology to interpret Scripture better - it was because, with his systematic genius, Calvin understood all that which, from the point of view of their application, ideas gain severally in force by forming a complete whole around one master thought.¹² 

Wrought out thus in response to practical needs, the ever growing body of scientific theology has worked its way among men chiefly by virtue of its ever increasing power of meeting their spiritual requirements. The story of the victory of Augustinianism in Southern Gaul, as brought out by Professor Arnold of Breslau, is only a typical instance of what each age has experienced in its own way, and with its own theological advances. He warns us that the victory of Augustinianism is not to be accounted for by the learning or dialectic gifts of Augustine, nor by the vigorous propaganda kept up in Gaul by the African refugees, nor by the influence of Caesarius, deservedly great as that was, nor by the pressure brought to bear from Rome: but rather by the fullness of its provision for the needs of the soul. 

These were better met by Christianity than by heathenism; by Catholicism than by Arianism; by the enthusiasm of asceticism than by the lukewarm worldliness of the old opponents of monachism: and they found more strength and consolation in the fundamental Augustinian conception of divine grace, than in the paltry mechanism of the synergistic moralism.¹³ 

Here is the philosophy, sub specie temporis, of the advance of doctrinal development; and it all turns on the progressively growing fitness of the system of doctrine to produce its practical fruits.¹⁴ 

It may possibly be thought, however, that these lessons are ill-applied to systematic theology properly so called: that it may be allowed indeed that the separate truths of religion make themselves felt in the life of men, but scarcely that the systematic knowledge of them is of any value for the religious life. Surely, however, we may very easily fall into error here. We do not possess the separate truths of religion in the abstract: we possess them only in their relations, and we do not properly know any one of them - nor can it have its full effect on our life - except as we know it in its relations to other truths, that is, as systematized. What we do not know, in this sense, systematically, we rob of half its power on our conduct; unless, indeed, we are prepared to argue that a truth has effect on us in proportion as it is unknown, rather than in proportion as it is known. To which may be added that when we do not know a body of doctrine systematically, we are sure to misconceive the nature of more or fewer of its separate elements; and to fancy, in the words of Dr. Charles Hodge, "that that is true which a more systematic knowledge would show us to be false," so that "our religious belief and therefore our religious life would become deformed and misshapen." Let us once more, however, strengthen our theoretical opinion by testimony: and for this let us appeal to the witness of a recent French writer who supports his own judgment by that of several of the best informed students of current French Protestantism.¹⁵ Amid much external activity of Christian work, M. Arnaud tells us, no one would dare say that the life lived with Christ in God is flourishing in equal measure: and his conclusion is that, "in order to be a strong and living Christian, it does not suffice to submit our heart and will to the gospel: we must submit also our mind and our reason." "The doctrines of Christianity," he adds: 

The doctrines of Christianity have just as much right to be believed as its duties have to be practised, and it is not permissible to accept these and reject those. In neglecting to inquire with care into the Biblical verities, and to assimilate them by reflection, the Christian loses part of his virtue, the preacher part of his force; both build their house on the sand or begin at the top; they deprive themselves of the precious lights which can illuminate and strengthen their faith, and fortify them against the frivolous or learned unbelief as well as against the aberrations of false individualism, that are so diffused in our day. 

In support of this judgment he quotes striking passages, among others, from Messrs. F. Bonifas and Ch. Bois. The former says:16 

What strikes me to-day is the incomplete and fragmentary character of our faith: the lack of precision in our Christian conceptions; a certain ignorance of the wonderful things which God has done for us and which He has revealed to us for the salvation and nourishment of our souls. I discover the traces of this ignorance in our preaching as well as in our daily life. And here is one of the causes of the feebleness of spiritual life in the bosom of our flocks and among ourselves. To these fluid Christian convictions, there necessarily corresponds a lowered Christian life. 

Mr. Bois similarly says:17

There does not at present exist among us a strongly concatenated body of doctrine, possessing the conscience and determining the will. We have convictions, no doubt, and even strong and active convictions, but they are, if I may so speak, isolated and merely juxtaposed in the mind, without any deep bond uniting them into an organism. . . . Upon several fundamental points, even among believers, there is a vagueness, an indetermination, which leave access open to every fluctuation and to the most unexpected mixtures of belief. Contradictory elements often live together and struggle with one another, even in the most positively convinced, without their suspecting the enmity of the guests they have received into their thought. It is astonishing to observe the strange amalgams which spring up and acclimate themselves in the minds of the young theological generations, which have been long deprived of the strong discipline of the past. This incoherence of ideas produces weakness and danger elsewhere also, besides in the sphere of doctrine. It is impossible but that spiritual life and practical activity should sustain also serious damage from this intellectual anarchy. 

Cannot we see in the state of French Protestantism as depicted in these extracts, a warning to ourselves, among whom we may observe the beginnings of the same doctrinal anarchy? And shall we not, at least, learn this much: that doctrine is in order to life, and that the study of doctrine must be prosecuted in a spirit which would see its end in the correction and edification of life? Shall we not, as students of doctrine, listen devoutly to the words of one of the richest writers on experimental religion of our generation,¹⁸ when he tells us that 

Living knowledge of our living Lord, and of our need of Him, and of our relations to Him for peace, life, testimony, service, consistency, is given by the Holy Comforter alone. But it is given by Him in the great rule of His dealings with man, only through the channel of doctrine, of revealed, recorded, authenticated truth concerning the Lord of life. 

And shall we not catch the meaning of the illustrations which he adds: 

Does the happy soul, happy because brought to the "confidence of self-despair," and to a sight of the foundation of all peace, find itself saying, "O Lamb of God, I come," and know that it falls, never to be cast out, into the embraces of ever-living love? Every element in that profound experience of restful joy has to do with doctrine, applied by the Spirit. "O Lamb of God" would be a meaningless incantation were it not for the precious and most definite doctrine of the sacrifice of propitiation and peace. That I may "come just as I am" is a matter of pure Divine information. My emotions, my deepest and most awful convictions, without such information, say the opposite; my instinct is to cry, "Depart, for I am a sinful man." The blessed doctrine, not my reveries, says, "Nay; He was wounded for thy transgressions; come unto Him." . . . And when [one] ... draws towards the journey's end, and exchanges the trials of the pilgrimage for the last trial, "the river that hath no bridge," why does he address himself in peace to die, this man who has been taught the evil of his own heart and the holiness of the Judge of all? It is because of doctrine. He knows the covenant of peace, and the Mediator of it. He knows, and he knows it through revealed doctrine only, that to depart is to be with Christ, and is far better. He knows that the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But he knows, with the same certainty, that God giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ; and that His sheep shall never perish; and that He will raise up again at the last day him that has come to God through Him. All this is doctrine. It is made to live in the man by the Holy Ghost given to him. But it is in itself creed, not life. It is revealed information. 

If such be the value and use of doctrine, the systematic theologian is preeminently a preacher of the gospel; and the end of his work is obviously not merely the logical arrangement of the truths which come under his hand, but the moving of men, through their power, to love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves; to choose their portion with the Saviour of their souls; to find and hold Him precious; and to recognize and yield to the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit whom He has sent. With such truth as this he will not dare to deal in a cold and merely scientific spirit, but will justly and necessarily permit its preciousness and its practical destination to determine the spirit in which he handles it, and to awaken the reverential love with which alone he should investigate its reciprocal relations. For this he needs to be suffused at all times with a sense of the unspeakable worth of the revelation which lies before him as the source of his material, and with the personal bearings of its separate truths on his own heart and life; he needs to have had and to be having a full, rich, and deep religious experience of the great doctrines with which he deals; he needs to be living close to his God, to be resting always on the bosom of his Redeemer, to be filled at all times with the manifest influences of the Holy Spirit. The student of systematic theology needs a very sensitive religious nature, a most thoroughly consecrated heart, and an outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon him, such as will fill him with that spiritual discernment, without which all native intellect is in vain. He needs to be not merely a student, not merely a thinker, not merely a systematizer, not merely a teacher - he needs to be like the beloved disciple himself in the highest, truest, and holiest sense, a divine.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, vii. 1896, pp. 243-271. 

Professor D. W. Simon, D.D., "The Nature and Scope of Systematic Theology," in Bibliotheca Sacra, li. 1894, p. 587. 

Loc. cit., p. 592. 

W. S. Bruce, "The Ethics of the Old Testament," 1895, pp. 12-14. 

Cf. the ground-texts which Professor Laidlaw has placed at the head of the first division of his "The Bible Doctrine of Man," 1895: "The truth concerning the soul can only be established by the word of God." - Plato, "Timæus," 72 D. "How can the knowledge of the substance of the rational soul be sought or had from philosophy? It must surely be derived from the same divine inspiration from which the substance of the soul first emanated." - Bacon, "De Augmentis Scientiarum," lib. iv. cap. iii. § 3.

E. B. Pusey, "Collegiate and Professorial Teaching and Discipline," Oxford: Parker, 1854, pp. 215, 216. 

A. M. Fairbairn, "Theology as an Academic Discipline," in The Contemporary Review, li. 1887, p. 202. 

Article "Theology," in the "Encyclopmdia Britannica," ninth edition, xxiii. 1888, pp. 264 f. 

It may be useful to seek to give a rough graphic representation of the relations of Systematic Theology as thus far outlined:

"Commend me," says Coleridge, "to the Irish architect who took out the foundation stone to repair the roof" ("Anima Poetæ," 1895, p. 139). Such architects seem to be rather numerous in the sphere of theology. 

A. Sabatier, "Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion," 1897, p. 306; cf. "The Vitality of Christian Dogmas," London, 1898, pp. 31-33. 

Jacques Pannier, "Le Temoignage du Saint-Esprit," 1893, p. 79. 

C. F. Arnold, "Caesarius von Arelate," 1894, p. 343. 

It is only another way of saying this to say with Professor W. M. Ramsay, when speaking of another of the great controversies (The Expositor, January, 1896 (Fifth Series, iii.], p. 52): "Difficult, however, as it is to appreciate the real character of the Arian controversy as a question of social life, on the whole we gather, I think, that the progressive tendencies were on the side of Basil, and acquiescence in the existing standard of morality characterized the Arian point of view. The 'Orthodox' Church was still the champion of higher aspirations, and Basil, however harsh he was to all who differed from him, was an ennobling and upward-struggling force in the life of his time." 

Arnaud, "Manuel de dogmatique," 1890, p. ix. 

"De la valeur religieuse des doctrines chrétiennes," p. 14. 

Revue theologique de Montauban, 13e Année, p. 14. 

Principal H. C. G. Moule, in his paper entitled "On the Relations Between Doctrine and Life," printed in "The Church and her Doctrine" (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1892), pp. 185-188. 

Imitating the Incarnation

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

Philippians ii. 5-8:—Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man. He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

"CHRIST our Example." After "Christ our Redeemer," no words can more deeply stir the Christian heart than these. Every Christian joyfully recognizes the example of Christ, as, in the admirable words of a great Scotch commentator, a body "of living legislation," as "law, embodied and pictured in a perfect humanity." In Him, in a word, we find the moral ideal historically realized, and we bow before it as sublime and yearn after it with all the assembled desires of our renewed souls.

How lovingly we follow in thought every footstep of the Son of Man, on the rim of hills that shut in the emerald cup of Nazareth, on the blue marge of Gennesaret, over the mountains of Judea, and long to walk in spirit by His side. He came to save every age, says Irenæus, and therefore He came as an infant, a child, a boy, a youth, and a man. And there is no age that cannot find its example in Him. We see Him, the properest child that ever was given to a mother's arms, through all the years of childhood at Nazareth "subjecting Himself to His parents." We see Him a youth, labouring day by day contentedly at His father's bench, in this lower sphere, too, with no other thought than to be "about His father's business." We see Him in His holy manhood, going, "as His custom was," Sabbath by Sabbath, to the synagogue,—God as He was, not too good to worship with His weaker brethren. And then the horizon broadens. We see Him at the banks of Jordan, because it became Him to fulfil every righteousness, meekly receiving the baptism of repentance for us. We see Him in the wilderness, calmly rejecting the subtlest trials of the evil one: refusing to supply His needs by a misuse of His divine power, repelling the confusion of tempting God with trusting God, declining to seek His Father's ends by any other than His Father's means. We see Him among the thousands of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power, going about doing good: with no pride of birth, though He was a king; with no pride of intellect, though omniscience dwelt within Him; with no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in His hands; or of station, though the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; or of superior goodness or holiness: but in lowliness of mind esteeming every one better than Himself, healing the sick, casting out devils, feeding the hungry, and everywhere breaking to men the bread of life. We see Him everywhere offering to men His life for the salvation of their souls: and when, at last, the forces of evil gathered thick around Him, walking, alike without display and without dismay, the path of suffering appointed for Him, and giving His life at Calvary that through His death the world might live.

"Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" is too low a question. Who can find in all His life a single lack, a single failure to set us a perfect example? In what difficulty of life, in what trial, in what danger or uncertainty, when we turn our eyes to Him, do we fail to find just the example that we need? And if perchance we are, by the grace of God, enabled to walk with Him but a step in the way, how our hearts burn within us with longing to be always with Him,—to be strengthened by the almighty power of God in the inner man, to make every footprint which He has left in the world a stepping-stone to climb upward over His divine path. Do we not rightly say that next to our longing to be in Christ is our corresponding longing to be like Christ; that only second in our hearts to His great act of obedience unto death by which He became our Saviour, stands His holy life in our world of sin, by which He becomes our example?

Of course our text is not singular in calling upon us to make Christ our example. "Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ Jesus," is rather the whole burden of the ethical side of Paul's teaching. And in this, too, he was but the imitator of his Lord, who pleads with us to "learn of Him because He is meek and lowly in heart." The peculiarity of our present passage is only that it takes us back of Christ's earthly life and bids us imitate Him in the great act of His incarnation itself. Not, of course, as if the implication were that we were equal with Christ and needed to stoop to such service as He performed. "Why art thou proud, O man?" Augustine asks pointedly. "God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to initate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God. The Son of God came in the character of man and was made low. . . . He, since He was God, became man: do thou, O man, recognize that thou art man. Thy entire humility is to know thyself." The very force of the appeal lies, in a word, in the infinite exaltation of Christ above us: and the mention of the incarnation is the apostle's reminder to us of the ineffable majesty which was by nature His to whom he would raise our admiring eyes. Paul prises at our hearts here with the great lever of the deity of our exemplar. He calls upon us to do nothing less than to be imitators of God. "What encouragement is greater than this?" cries Chrysostom, with his instinctive perception of the motive-springs of the human heart. "Nothing arouses a great soul to the performance of good works so much as learning that in this it is likened to God." And here, too, Paul is but the follower of his Lord: "Be ye merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful," are words which fell from His divine lips, altogether similar in their implication to Paul's words in the text: "Let it be this mind that is in you, which also was in Christ Jesus." It is the spirit which animated our Lord in the act of His incarnation which His apostle would see us imitate. He would have us in all our acts to be like Christ, as He showed Himself to be in the innermost core of His being, when He became poor. He that was rich, that we by His poverty might be made rich.

We perceive, then, that the exhortation of the apostle gathers force for itself from the deity of Christ, and from the nature of the transaction by which He, being God, was brought into this sphere of dependent, earthly life in which we live by nature. It is altogether natural, then, that he sharpens his appeal by reminding his readers somewhat fully who Christ was and what He did for our salvation, in order that, having the facts more vividly before their minds, they may more acutely feel the spirit by which He was animated. Thus, in a perfectly natural way, Paul is led, not to inform his readers but to remind them, in a few quick and lively phrases which do not interrupt the main lines of discourse but rather etch them in with a deeper colour, of what we may call the whole doctrine of the Person of Christ. With such a masterly hand, or let us rather say with such an eager spirit and such a loving clearness and firmness of touch, has he done this, that these few purely incidental words constitute one of the most complete statements of an essential doctrine to be found within the whole compass of the Scriptures. Though compressed within the limits of three short verses, it ranks in fulness of exposition with the already marvellously concise outline of the same doctrine given in the opening verses of the Gospel of John. Whenever the subtleties of heresy confuse our minds as we face the problems which have been raised about the Person of our Lord, it is pre-eminently to these verses that we flee to have our apprehension purified, and our thinking corrected. The sharp phrases cut their way through every error: or, as we may better say, they are like a flight of swift arrows, each winged to the joints of the harness.

The golden-mouthed preacher of the ancient Church, impressed with this fulness of teaching and inspired himself to one of his loftiest flights by the verve of the apostle's crisp language, pictures the passage itself as an arena, and the Truth, as it runs burning through the clauses, as the victorious chariot dashing against and overthrowing its contestants one after the other, until at last, amid the clamour of applause which rises from every side to heaven, it springs alone towards the goal, with coursers winged with joy sweeping like a single flash over the ground. One by one he points out the heresies concerning the Person of Christ which had sprung up in the ancient Church, as clause by clause the text smites and destroys them; and is not content until he shows how the knees of all half-truths and whole falsehoods alike concerning this great matter are made by these searching words to bow before our Saviour's perfect deity, His complete humanity, and the unity of His person. The magic of the passage has lost none of its virtue with the millennium and a half which has fled by since John Chrysostom electrified Constantinople with his golden words: this sword of the Spirit is as keen to-day as it was then, and happy is the man who knows its temper and has the arm to wield it. But we must not lose ourselves in a purely theological interest with such a passage before us. Rather let us keep our eyes, for this hour, on Paul's main purpose, and seek to feel the force of the example of Christ as he here advances it, for the government of our lives. But to do this, as he points it with so full a reference to the Person of Christ, following him we must begin by striving to realize who and what our Lord was, who set us this example.

Let us observe, then, first, that the actor to whose example Paul would direct our eyes, is declared by him to have been no other than God Himself. "Who was before in the form of God," are his words: and they are words than which no others could be chosen which would more explicitly or with more directness assert the deity of the person who is here designated by the name of Christ Jesus. After the wear and tear of two thousand years on the phrases, it would not be surprising if we should fail to feel this as strongly as we ought. Let us remember that the phraseology which Paul here employs was the popular usage of his day, though first given general vogue by the Aristotelian philosophy: and that it was accordingly the most natural language for strongly asserting the deity of Christ which could suggest itself to him. As you know, this mode of speech resolved everything into its matter and its form,—into the bare material out of which it is made, and that body of characterizing qualities which constitute it what it is. "Form," in a word, is equivalent to our phrase "specific character." If we may illustrate great things by small, we may say, in this manner of speech, that the "matter" of a sword, for instance, is steel, while its "form" is that whole body of characterizing qualities which distinguish a sword from all other pieces of steel, and which, therefore, make this particular piece of steel distinctively a sword. In this case, these are, of course, largely matters of shape and contour. But now the steel itself, which constitutes the matter of the sword, has also its "matter" and its "form": its "matter" being metal, and its "form" being the whole body of qualities that distinguish steel from other metals, and make this metal steel. Going back still a step, metal itself has its "matter" and "form"; its "matter" being material substance and its "form" that body of qualities which distinguish metallic from other kinds of substance. And last of all, matter itself has its "matter," namely, substance, and its "form," namely, the qualities which distinguish material from spiritual substance, and make this substance what we call matter. The same mode of speech is, of course, equally applicable to the spiritual sphere. The "matter" of the human spirit is bare spiritual substance, while its "form" is that body of qualities which constitute this spirit a human spirit, and in the absence of which, or by the change of which, this spirit would cease to be human and become some other kind of spirit. The "matter" of an angel, again, is bare spiritual substance, while the "form" is the body of qualities which make this spirit specifically an angel. So, too, with God: the "matter" of God is bare spiritual substance, and the "form" is that body of qualities which distinguish Him from all other spiritual beings, which constitute Him God, and without which He would not be God. What Paul asserts then, when he says that Christ Jesus existed in the "form of God," is that He had all those characterizing qualities which make God God, the presence of which constitutes God, and in the absence of which God does not exist. He who is "in the form of God." is God.

Nor is it without significance that, out of the possible modes of expression open to him, Paul was led to choose just this mode of asserting the deity of our Lord. His mind in this passage was not on the bare divine essence; it was upon the divine qualities and prerogatives of Christ . It is not the abstract conception that Christ is God that moves us to our deepest admiration for His sublime act of self-sacrifice: but rather our concrete realization that He was all that God is, and had all that God has,—that God's omnipotence was His, His infinite exaltation, His unapproachable blessedness. Therefore Paul is instinctively led to choose an expression which tells us not the bare fact that Christ was God, but that He was "in the form of God,"—that He had in full possession all those characterizing qualities which, taken together, make God that all-holy, perfect, all-blessed being which we call God. Thus the apostle prepares his readers for the great example by quickening their apprehension not only of who, but of what Christ was.

Let us note, then, secondly, that the apostle outlines for us very fully the action which this divine being performed. "He took the form of a servant by coming into the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming subject even unto death, and that the death of the cross." There is no metamorphosis of substance asserted here: the "form of God" is not said to have been transmuted into the "form of a servant"; but He who was "in the form of God" is declared to have taken also to Himself "the form of a servant." Nor is there, on the other hand, any deceptive show of an unreal humiliation brought before us here: He took, not the appearance, mere state and circumstances, or mere work and performance, but veritably "the form of a servant,"—all those essential qualities and attributes which belong to, and constitute a being "a servant." The assumption involved the taking of an actually servile nature, as well as of a subordinate station and a servant's work. And therefore it is at once further explained in both its mode and its effects. He took the form of a servant "by coming into the likeness of men": He did not become merely a man, but by taking the form of a servant He came into a state in which He appeared as man. His humanity was real and complete: but it was not all,—He remained God in assuming humanity, and therefore only appeared as man, not became only man. And by taking the form of a servant and thus being found in fashion as a man. He became subject to obedience,—an obedience pressed so far in its humiliation that it extended even unto death, and that the shameful death of the cross. Words cannot adequately paint the depth of this humiliation. But this it was,—the taking of the form of a servant with its resultant necessity of obedience to such a bitter end,—this it was that He who was by nature in the form of God, in the full possession and use of all the divine attributes and qualities, powers and prerogatives,—was willing to do for us.

Let us observe, then, thirdly, that the apostle clearly announces to us the spirit in which our Lord performed this great act. "Although He was in the form of God, He yet did not consider His being on an equality with God a precious prize to be eagerly retained, but made no account of Himself, taking the form of a servant." It was then in a spirit of pure unselfishness and self-sacrifice, that looked not on its own things but on the things of others, that under the force of love esteemed others more than Himself,—it was in this mind: or, in the apostle's own words, it was as not considering His essential equality with God as a precious possession, but making no account of Himself,—it was in this mind, that Christ Jesus who was before in the form of God took the form of a servant. This was the state of mind that led Him to so marvellous an act,—no compulsion from His Father, no desires for Himself, no hope of gain or fear of loss, but simple, unselfish, self-sacrificing love.

Now it is not to be overlooked that some of the clauses the meaning of which we have sought to fathom, are differently explained among expositors. Nevertheless, although I have sought to adduce them so as to bring out the apostle's exact meaning, and although I believe that his appeal acquires an additional point and a stronger leverage when they are thus understood, it remains true that the main drift of the passage is unaffected by any of the special interpretations which reasonable expositors have put upon the several clauses. These divergent expositions do seriously affect our doctrine of the Person of Christ. In particular, all the forms of the popular modern doctrine of kenosis or exinanition, which teaches that the divine Logos in becoming man "emptied Himself," and thus, that the very God in a more or less literal sense contracted Himself to the limits of humanity, find their chief, almost their sole Biblical basis in what appears to me a gratuitously erroneous interpretation of one of these clauses,—that one which the Authorized Version renders, "He made Himself of no reputation," and which I have ventured to render, "He made no account of Himself," that is, in comparison with the needs of others; but which the theologians in question, followed, unfortunately as I think, by the Revised Version, render with an excessive literality, "He emptied Himself," thereby resurrecting the literal physical sense of the word in an unnatural context. We have many reasons to give why this is an illegitimate rendering; chief among which are, that the word is commonly employed in its figurative sense and that the intrusion of the literal sense here is forbidden by the context. But it is unnecessary to pause to argue the point. Whatever the conclusion might be, the main drift of the passage remains the same. No interpretation of this phrase can destroy the outstanding fact that the passage at large places before our wondering eyes the two termini of "the form of God" and "the form of a servant," involving obedience even unto a shameful death; and "measures the extent of our Lord's self-denying grace by the distance between equality with God and a public execution on a gibbet." In any case the emphasis of the passage is thrown upon the spirit of self-sacrificing unselfishness as the impelling cause of Christ's humiliation, which the apostle adduces here in order that the sight of it may impel us also to take no account of ourselves, but to estimate lightly all that we are or have in comparison with the claims of others on our love and devotion. The one subject of the whole passage is Christ's marvellous self-sacrifice. Its one exhortation is, "Let it be this mind that is also in you." As we read through the passage we may, by contact with the full mind and heart of the apostle, learn much more than this. But let us not fail to grasp this, his chief message to us here,—that Christ Jesus, though He was God, yet cared less for His equality with God, cared less for Himself and His own things, than He did for us, and therefore gave Himself for us.

Firmly grasping this, then, as the essential content and special message of the passage, there are some inferences that flow from it which we cannot afford not to remind ourselves of.

And first of these is a very great and marvellous one,—that we have a God who is capable of self-sacrifice for us. It was although He was in the form of God, that Christ Jesus did not consider His being on an equality with God so precious a possession that He could not lay it aside, but rather made no account of Himself. It was our God who so loved us that He gave Himself for us. Now, herein is a wonderful thing. Men tell us that God is, by the very necessity of His nature, incapable of passion, incapable of being moved by inducements from without; that He dwells in holy calm and unchangeable blessedness, untouched by human sufferings or human sorrows for ever,—haunting 

The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind.
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow.
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans.
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
His sacred, everlasting calm.

Let us bless our God that it is not true. God can feel; God does love. We have Scriptural warrant for believing, as it has been perhaps somewhat inadequately but not misleadingly phrased, that moral heroism has a place within the sphere of the divine nature: we have Scriptural warrant for believing that, like the old hero of Zurich, God has reached out loving arms and gathered into His own bosom that forest of spears which otherwise had pierced ours.

But is not this gross anthropomorphism? We are careless of names: it is the truth of God. And we decline to yield up the God of the Bible and the God of our hearts to any philosophical abstraction. We have and we must have an ethical God; a God whom we can love, and in whom we can trust. We may feel awe in the presence of the Absolute, as we feel awe in the presence of the storm or of the earthquake: we may feel our dependence in its presence, as we feel our helplessness before the tornado or the flood. But we cannot love it; we cannot trust it; and our hearts, which are just as trustworthy a guide as our dialectics, cry out for a God whom we may love and trust. We decline once for all to subject our whole conception of God to the category of the Absolute, which, as has been truly said, "like Pharaoh's lean kine, devours all other attributes." Neither is this an unphilosophical procedure. As has been set forth renewedly by Andrew Seth, "we should be unfaithful to the fundamental principle of the theory of knowledge" "if we did not interpret by means of the highest category within our reach." "We should be false to ourselves, if we denied in God what we recognize as the source of dignity and worth in ourselves." In order to escape an anthropomorphic God, we must not throw ourselves at the feet of a zoomorphic or an amorphic one.

Nevertheless, let us rejoice that our God has not left us by searching to find Him out. Let us rejoice that He has plainly revealed Himself to us in His Word as a God who loves us, and who, because He loves us, has sacrificed Himself for us. Let us remember that it is a fundamental conception in the Christian idea of God that God is love; and that it is the fundamental dogma of the Christian religion that God so loved us that He gave Himself for us. Accordingly, the primary presupposition of our present passage is that our God was capable of, and did actually perform, this amazing act of unselfish self-sacrifice for the good of man.

The second inference that we should draw from our passage consists simply in following the apostle in his application of this divine example to our human life: a life of self-sacrificing unselfishness is the most divinely beautiful life that man can lead. He whom as our Master we have engaged to obey, whom as our Example we are pledged to imitate, is presented to us here as the great model of self-sacrificing unselfishness. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," is the apostle's pleading. We need to note carefully, however, that it is not self-depreciation, but self-abnegation, that is thus commended to us. If we would follow Christ, we must, every one of us, not in pride but in humility, yet not in lowness but in lowliness, not degrade ourselves but forget ourselves, and seek every man not his own things but those of others.

Who does not see that in this organism which we call human society, such a mode of life is the condition of all real help and health? There is, no doubt, another ideal of life far more grateful to our fallen human nature, an ideal based on arrogance, assumption, self-assertion, working through strife, and issuing in conquest,—conquest of a place for ourselves, a position, the admiration of man, power over men. We see its working on every side of us: in the competition of business life,—in the struggle for wealth on the one side, forcing a struggle for bare bread on the other; in social life,—in the fierce battle of men and women for leading parts in the farce of social display; even in the Church itself, and among the Churches, where, too, unhappily, arrogant pretension and unchristian self-assertion do not fail to find their temporal reward. But it is clear that this is not Christ's ideal, nor is it to this that He has set us His perfect example. "He made no account of Himself": though He was in the form of God, He yet looked not upon His equality with God as a possession to be prized when He could by forgetting self rescue those whom He was not ashamed, amid all His glory, to call His brethren.

Are there any whom you and I are ashamed to call our brethren? O that the divine ideal of life as service could take possession of our souls! O that we could remember at all times and in all relations that the Son of Man came into the world to minister, and by His ministry has glorified all ministering for ever. O that we could once for all grasp the meaning of the great fact that self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice express the divine ideals of life.

And thus we are led to a third inference, which comes to us from the text: that it is difficult to set a limit to the self-sacrifice which the example of Christ calls upon us to be ready to undergo for the good of our brethren. It is comparatively easy to recognize that the ideal of the Christian life is self-sacrificing unselfishness, and to allow that it is required of those who seek to enter into it, to subordinate self and to seek first the kingdom of God. But is it so easy to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that this is to be read not generally merely but in detail, and is to be applied not only to some eminent saints but to all who would be Christ's servants?—that it is required of us, and that what is required of us is not some self-denial but all self-sacrifice? Yet is it not to this that the example of Christ would lead us?—not, of course, to self-degradation, not to self-effacement exactly, but to complete self-abnegation, entire and ungrudging self-sacrifice? Is it to be unto death itself? Christ died. Are we to endure wrongs? What wrongs did He not meekly bear? Are we to surrender our clear and recognized rights? Did Christ stand upon His unquestioned right of retaining His equality with God? Are we to endure unnatural evils, permit ourselves to be driven into inappropriate situations, unresistingly sustain injurious and unjust imputations and attacks? What more unnatural than that the God of the universe should become a servant in the world, ministering not to His Father only, but also to His creatures,—our Lord and Master washing our very feet? What more abhorrent than that God should die? There is no length to which Christ's self-sacrifice did not lead Him. These words are dull and inexpressive; we cannot enter into thoughts so high. He who was in the form of God took such thought for us, that He made no account of Himself. Into the immeasurable calm of the divine blessedness He permitted this thought to enter, "I will die for men!" And so mighty was His love, so colossal the divine purpose to save, that He thought nothing of His divine majesty, nothing of His unsullied blessedness, nothing of His equality with God, but, absorbed in us,—our needs, our misery, our helplessness—He made no account of Himself. If this is to be our example, what Hmit can we set to our self-sacrifice? Let us remember that we are no longer our own but Christ's, bought with the price of His precious blood, and are henceforth to live, not for ourselves but for Him,—for Him in His creatures, serving Him in serving them. Let all thought of our dignity, our possessions, our rights, perish out of sight, when Christ's service calls to us. Let the mind be in us that was also in Him, when He took no account of Himself, but, God as He was, took the form of a servant and humbled Himself,—He who was Lord,—to lowly obedience even unto death, and that the death of the cross. In such a mind as this, where is the end of unselfishness?

Let us not, however, do the apostle the injustice of fancying that this is a morbid life to which he summons us. The self-sacrifice to which he exhorts us, unlimited as it is, going all lengths and starting back blanched at nothing, is nevertheless not an unnatural life. After all, it issues not in the destruction of self, but only in the destruction of selfishness; it^ leads us not to a Buddha-like unselfing, but to a Christ-like self-development. It would not make us into

deedless dreamers lazying out a life
Of self-suppression, not of selfless love,

but would light the flames of a love within us by which we would literally "ache for souls." The example of Christ and the exhortation of Paul found themselves upon a sense of the unspeakable value of souls. Our Lord took no account of Himself, only because the value of the souls of men pressed upon His heart. And following Him, we are not to consider our own things, but those of others, just because everything earthly that concerns us is as nothing compared with their eternal welfare.

Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others. And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice: not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish. It concentrates our whole attention on self—self-knowledge, self-control—and can therefore eventuate in nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness. At best it succeeds only in subjecting the outer self to the inner self, or the lower self to the higher self; and only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self and excluding its grosser and more outward elements. Self-denial, then, drives to the cloister; narrows and contracts the soul; murders within us all innocent desires, dries up all the springs of sympathy, and nurses and coddles our self-importance until we grow so great in our own esteem as to be careless of the trials and sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of our fellow-men. Self-denial, thus understood, will make us cold, hard, unsympathetic,—proud, arrogant, self-esteeming,—fanatical, overbearing, cruel. It may make monks and Stoics,—it cannot make Christians.

It is not to this that Christ's example calls us. He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self. He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own soul to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him. He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us. His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will be we to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man's hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means manysidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives,—binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home. It is, after all, then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be made truly men.

Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish. Only, when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise true, that he who loses his life shall find it. Only, when, like Christ, and in loving obedience to His call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but freely give ourselves to others, we shall find, each in his measure, the saying true of himself also: "Wherefore also God hath highly exalted him." The path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory.

Imputation

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., v. pp. 465-467 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1909).

I. ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE TERM 

The theological use of the term "imputation" is probably rooted ultimately in the employment of the verb imputo in the Vulgate to translate the Greek verb logizesthai in Ps. xxxii. 2. This passage is quoted by Paul in Rom. iv. 8 and made one of the foundations of his argument that, in saving man, God sets to his credit a righteousness without works. It is only in these two passages, and in the two axiomatic statements of Rom. iv. 4 and v. 13 that the Vulgate uses imputo in this connection (cf., with special application, II Tim. iv. 16; Philemon 18). There are other passages, however, where it might just as well have been employed, but where we have instead reputo, under the influence of the mistaken rendering of the Hebrew ḥashabh in Gen. xv. 6. In these passages the Authorized English Version improves on the Latin by rendering a number of them (Rom. iv. 11, 22, 23, 24; II Cor. v. 19; James ii. 23) by "impute," and employing for the rest synonymous terms, all of which preserve the "metaphor from accounts" inherent in logizesthai (and ellogein) in this usage (cf. W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, "Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans," iv. 3), such as "count" (Rom. iv. 3, 5), "account" (Gal. iii. 6), and "reckon" (Rom. iv. 4, 9, 10); the last of which the Revised English Version makes its uniform rendering of logizesthai. Even the meager employment of imputo in the Latin version, however, supplied occasion enough for the adoption of that word in the precise language of theology as the technical term for that which is expressed by the Greek words in their so-called "commercial  sense, or what may, more correctly, be called their forensic or "judicial" sense, "that is, putting to one's account," or, in its twofold reference to the credit and debit sides, "setting to one's credit" or "laying to one's charge." 

II. THREE ACTS OF IMPUTATION 

From the time of Augustine (early fifth century), at least, the term "imputation" is found firmly fixed in theological terminology in this sense. But the applications and relations of the doctrine expressed by it were thoroughly worked out only in the discussions which accompanied and succeeded the Reformation. In the developed theology thus brought into the possession of the Church, three several acts of imputation were established and expounded. These are the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity; the imputation of the sins of His people to the Redeemer; the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to His people. Though, of course, with more or less purity of conception and precision of application, these three great doctrines became the property of the whole Church, and found a place in the classical theology of the Roman, Lutheran, and Reformed alike. In the proper understanding of the conception, it is important to bear in mind that the divine act called "imputation" is in itself precisely the same in each of the three great transactions into which it enters as a constituent part. The grounds on which it proceeds may differ; the things imputed may be different; and the consequent treatment of the person or persons to which the imputation is made may and will differ as the things imputed to them differ. But in each and every case alike imputation itself is simply the act of setting to one's account; and the act of setting to one's account is in itself the same act whether the thing set to his account stands on the credit or debit side of the account, and whatever may be the ground in equity on which it is set to his account. That the sin of Adam was so set to the account of his descendants that they have actually shared in the penalty which was threatened to it; and that the sins of His people were so set to the account of our Lord that He bore them in His own body on the tree, and His merits are so set to their account that by His stripes they are healed, the entirety of historical orthodox Christianity unites in affirming. 

III. PELAGIAN OPPOSITION TO THE DOCTRINE

Opposition to these doctrines has, of course, not been lacking in the history of Christian thought. The first instance of important contradiction of the fundamental principle involved is presented by the Pelagian movement (see "Pelagius, Pelagian Controversies"), which arose at the beginning of the fifth century. The Pelagians denied the equity and, therefore, under the government of God, the possibility of the involvement of one free agent in the acts of another; they utterly denied, therefore, that men either suffer harm from Adam's sin or profit by Christ's merits. By their examples only, they said, can either Adam or Christ affect us; and by free imitation of them alone can we share in their merits or demerits. It is not apparent why Pelagius permitted himself such extremity of denial. What he had at heart to assert was the inamissibility by the human subject of plenary ability of will to do all righteousness. To safeguard this he had necessarily to deny all subjective injury to men from Adam's sin (and from their own sins too, for that matter), and the need or actuality of subjective grace for their perfecting. But there was no reason growing out of this point of sight why he might not allow that the guilt of Adam's sin had been imputed to his posterity, and had supplied the ground for the infliction upon them of external penalties temporal or eternal; or that the merits of Christ might be imputed to His people as the meritorious ground of their relief from these penalties, as well as of the forgiveness of their own actual sins and of their reception into the favor of God and the heavenly blessedness. Later Pelagianizers found this out; and it became not uncommon (especially after Duns Scotus' strong assertion of the doctrine of "immediate imputation") for the imputation of Adam's sin to be exploited precisely in the interest of denial or weakening of the idea of the derivation of inherent corruption from Adam. A very good example of this tendency of thought is supplied by the Roman Catholic theologian Ambrosius Catharinus, whose admirable speech to this effect at the Council of Trent is reported by Father Paul ("History of the Council of Trent," E. T. London, 1676, p. 165). Even Zwingli was not unaffected by it. He was indeed free from the Pelagianizing attenuation of the corruption of nature which is the subjective effect on his posterity of Adam's sin. With him, "original sin" was both extensively and intensively a total depravity, the fertile source of all evil action. But he looked upon it rather as a misfortune than a fault, a disease than a sin; and he hung the whole weight of our ruin on our direct participation in Adam's guilt. As a slave can beget only a slave, says he, so all the progeny of man under the curse are born under the curse. 

IV. IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE 

In sharp contradiction to the current tendency to reduce to the vanishing-point the subjective injury wrought by Adam's sin on his posterity, the churches gave themselves to emphasizing the depth of the injury and especially its sinfulness. Even the Council of Trent acknowledged the transfusion into the entire human race of "sin, which is the death of the soul." The Protestants, who, as convinced Augustinians, were free from the Pelagianizing bias of Rome, were naturally even more strenuous in asserting the evil and guilt of native depravity. Accordingly they constantly remark that men's native guilt in the sight of God rests not merely upon the imputation to them of Adam's first sin, but also upon the corruption which they derive from him - a mode of statement which meets us, indeed, as early as Peter Lombard ("Sentences," II. xxx.) and for the same reason. The polemic turn given to these statements has been the occasion of a remarkable misapprehension, as if it were intended to subordinate the imputation of Adam's transgression to the transmission of his corrupted nature as the source of human guilt. Precisely the contrary is the fact. The imputation of Adam's transgression was not in dispute; all parties to the great debate of the age fully recognized it; and it is treated therefore as a matter of course. What was important was to make it clear that native depravity was along with it the ground of our guilt before God. Thus it was sought to hold the balance true, and to do justice to both elements in a complete doctrine of original sin. Meanwhile the recovery of the great doctrine of justification by faith threw back its light upon the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ which had been in the possession of the Church since Anselm; and the better understanding of this doctrine, thus induced, in turn illuminated the doctrine of sin, whose correlative it is. Thus it came about that in the hands of the great Protestant leaders of the sixteenth century, and of their successors, the Protestant systematizers of the seventeenth century, the threefold doctrine of imputation - of Adam's sin to his posterity, of the sins of His people to the Redeemer, and of the righteousness of Christ to His people - at last came to its rights as the core of the three constitutive doctrines of Christianity - the sinfulness of the human race, the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and justification by faith. The importance of the doctrine of imputation is that it is the hinge on which these three great doctrines turn, and the guardian of their purity. 

V. SOCINIAN, ARMINIAN, AND RATIONALISTIC OPPOSITION 

Of course the Church was not permitted to enjoy in quiet its new understanding of its treasures of doctrine. Radical opponents arose in the Reformation age itself, the most important of whom were the Socinians (see "Socinus, Faustus, Socinians"). By them it was pronounced an inanity to speak of the transference of either merit or demerit from one person to another: we can be bad with another's badness, or good with another's goodness, they said, as little as we can be white with another's whiteness. The center of the Socinian assault was upon the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ: it is not possible, they affirmed, for one person to bear the punishment due to another. But their criticism cut equally deeply into the Protestant doctrines of original sin and justification by faith. The influence of their type of thought, very great from the first, increased as time went on and became a factor of importance both in the Arminian revolt at the beginning of the seventeenth century and in the rationalistic defection a hundred years later. Neither the Arminians (e.g. Limborch, Curcellaeus) nor the Rationalists (e.g. Wegscheider) would hear of an imputation of Adam's sin, and both attacked with arguments very similar to those of the Socinians also the imputation of our sins to Christ or of His righteousness to us. Rationalism almost ate the heart out of the Lutheran Churches; and the Reformed Churches were saved from the same fate only by the prompt extrusion of the Arminian party and the strengthening of their position by conflict with it. In particular, about the middle of the seventeenth century the "covenant" or "federal" method of exhibiting the plan of the Lord's dealings with men (see "Cocceius, Johannes, and his School") began to find great acceptance among the Reformed Churches. There was nothing novel in this mode of conceiving truth. The idea was present to the minds of the Church Fathers and the Schoolmen; and it underlay Protestant thought, both Lutheran and Reformed, from the beginning, and in the latter had come to clear expression, first in Ursinus. But now it quickly became dominant as the preferable manner of conceiving the method of the divine dealing with men. The effect was to throw into the highest relief the threefold doctrine of imputation, and to make manifest as never before the dependency of the great doctrines of sin, satisfaction, and justification upon it. 

VI. LA PLACE AND LATER THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOOLS

About the same time a brilliant French professor, Josué de la Place (see "Placeus, Josua"), of the Reformed school at Saumur, reduced all that could be called the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity simply to this - that because of the sin inherent in us from our origin we are deserving of being treated in the same way as if we had committed that offense. This confinement of the effect of Adam's sin upon his posterity to the transmission to them of a sinful disposition - inherent sin - was certainly new in the history of Reformed thought: Andreas Rivetus (see "Rivet, Andre") had no difficulty in collecting a long line of "testimonies" from the confessions and representative theologians explicitly declaring that men are accounted guilty in God's sight, both because of Adam's act of transgression imputed to them and of their own sinful disposition derived from him. The conflict of views was no doubt rendered sharper, however, by the prevalence at the time of the "Covenant theology" in which the immediate imputation of Adam's transgression is particularly clearly emphasized. Thus "immediate" and "mediate" imputation (for by the latter name La Place came subsequently to call his view) were pitted against each other as mutually exclusive doctrines: as if the question at issue were whether man stood condemned in the sight of God solely on account of his "adherent" sin, or solely on account of his "inherent" sin. The former of these doctrines had never been held in the Reformed Churches, since Zwingli, and the latter had never been held in them before La Place. From the first both "adherent" and "inherent" sin had been confessed as the double ground of human guilt; and the advocates of the "Covenant theology" were as far as possible from denying the guilt of "inherent" sin. La Place's innovation was as a matter of course condemned by the Reformed world, formally at the Synod of Charenton (1644-1645) and in the Helvetic Consensus (1675) and by argument at the hands of the leading theologians - Rivetus, Turretin, Maresius, Driessen, Leydecker, and Marck. But the tendencies of the time were in its favor and it made its way. It was adopted by theologians like Wyttenbach, Endemann, Stapfer, Roell, Vitringa, Venema; and after a while it found its way through Britain to America, where it has had an interesting history-forming one of the stages through which the New England Theology (q.v.) passed on its way to its ultimate denial of the quality of sin involving guilt to anything but the voluntary acts of a free agent; and finally becoming one of the characteristic tenets of the so-called "New School Theology" of the Presbyterian Churches. Thus it has come about that there has been much debate in America upon "imputation," in the sense of the imputation of Adam's sin, and diverse types of theology have been framed, especially among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, centering in differences of conception of this doctrine. Among the Presbyterians, for example, four such types are well marked, each of which has been taught by theologians of distinction. These are (1) the "Federalistic," characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of "immediate imputation," represented, for example, by Dr. Charles Hodge; (2) the "New School," characterized by its adherence to the doctrine of "mediate imputation," represented, for example, by Dr. Henry B. Smith; (3) the "Realistic," which teaches that all mankind were present in Adam as generic humanity, and sinned in him, and are therefore guilty of his and their common sin, represented, for example, by Dr. W. G. T. Shedd; and (4) one which may be called the "Agnostic," characterized by an attempt to accept the fact of the transmission of both guilt and depravity from Adam without framing a theory of the mode of their transmission or of their relations one to the other, represented, for example, by Dr. R. W. Landis. See "Adam"; "Atonement"; "Justification" "Redemption" "Satisfaction"; "Sin." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The literature of the subject is the literature of "Sin," "Atonement," and "Justification" (qq. v.). Special treatment is usually given also in the systems of doctrinal theology, especially of the Calvinistic type. Consult: A. Rivetus, "Opera," Rotterdam, iii. 1660, pp. 798 ff.; R. Rüetschi, "Geschichte und Kritik der kirchlichen Lehre von . . . Sündenfall," Leiden, 1881; C. Hodge, in "Theological Essays," New York, 1846, pp. 128-217; A. Schweizer, "Die protestantischen Centraldogmen," Zürich, 1854-1856; W. Cunningham, "The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation," Edinburgh, 1866, pp. 371 ff.; J. Buchanan, "The Doctrine of Justification," Edinburgh, 1867, pp. 279, 321-323, 334, 337; G. P. Fisher, in the New Englander, xxvii. 1868, pp. 468-516; J. Müller, "The Christian Doctrine of Sin," Edinburgh, ii. 1868, pp. 342 ff.; T. J. Crawford, "The Doctrine of Holy Scripture respecting the Atonement," Edinburgh, 1871, pp. 181-183, 424; R. W. Landis, "The Doctrine of Original Sin as Received and Taught by the Churches of the Reformation," Richmond, 1884; W. G. T. Shedd, "Dogmatic Theology," New York, ii. 1888, pp. 29, 42, 57-63, 192-194; H. B. Smith, "System of Christian Theology," ed. W. S. Karr, New York, 1886, pp. 283-323; R. V. Foster, "Systematic Theology," Nashville, 1898, pp. 408-413; W. A. Brown, "Christian Theology in Outline," New York, 1906, pp. 285, 290-291, 311, 362.

Incarnate Truth

by Rev. B. B. WARFIELD

[from Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2, Edited by John E. Meeter, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970. originally from Princeton Sermons, 1893, pp/ 94-114 ]

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us full of ... truth" (John 1:14).

The obvious resemblance between the prologue to John's Gospel and the proem of Genesis is not a matter of mere phraseology and external form. As the one, in the brief compass of a few verses, paints the whole history of the creation of a universe with a vividness which makes the quickened imagination a witness of the process, so the other in still briefer compass traces the whole history of the re-creation of a dead world into newness of life. In both we are first pointed back into the depths of eternity, when only God was. In both we are bidden to look upon the chaotic darkness of lawless matter or of lawless souls, over which the brooding Spirit was yet to move. In both, as the tremendous pageants are unrolled before our eyes, we are made to see the Living God; and to see him as the Light and the Life of the world, the Destroyer of all darkness, the Author of all good. Here too, however, the Old Testament revelation is the preparation for the better to come. In it we see God as the God of power and of wisdom, the Author and Orderer of all; in this we see him as the God of goodness and mercy, the Restorer and Redeemer of the lost. Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Through what a sublime sweep does the apostle lead our panting thought as he strives to tell us who and what the Word is, and what he has done for men. He lifts the veil of time, that we may peer into the changeless abyss of eternity and see him as he is, in the mystery of his being, along with God and yet one with God--in some deep sense distinct from God, in some higher sense identical with God. Then he shows us the divine work which he has wrought in time. He is the All-Creator--"all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that hath been made." He is the All-Illuminator--he "was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." And now in these last days he has become the All-Redeemer--prepared for by his prophet, he came to his own, and his own received him not; but "as many as received him," without regard to race or previous preparation, "he gave to them the right to become children of God, to them that believe on his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Then the climax of this great discourse breaks on us as we are told how the Word, when he came to his own, manifested himself to flesh. It was by himself becoming flesh, and tabernacling among us, full of grace and truth. He came as Creator, as Revealer, as Redeemer: as Creator, preparing a body for his habitation; as Revealer, "trailing clouds of glory as he came"; as Redeemer, heaping grace on grace.

It is clear that it is primarily in its aspect as a revelation of God that John is here contemplating the incarnation. Accordingly, he bears his personal witness to it as such: "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten of the Father." Accordingly, too, he summons the prophetic witness of the forerunner. And accordingly, still further, he closes the whole with a declaration of the nature of the revelation made, and its guarantee in the relation of the incarnated Word to the Father: "No man hath seen God at any time; God only-begotten which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

In the special verse from which we have taken our text we perceive, then, that John is bearing his personal witness: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory." He is telling us what of his own immediate knowledge he knows--testifying what he had heard, what he had seen with his eyes, what he had beheld and his hands had handled. An eye-witness to Christ's majesty, he had seen his glory and bears his willing witness to it. Nor must we fancy that he gives us merely a subjective opinion of his own, as if he were telling us only that the man Jesus was so full of grace and truth in his daily walk that he, looking upon him admiringly, had been led to conjecture that he was more than man. He testifies not to subjective opinion but to objective fact. We observe that the testimony is made up of three assertions. First, we have the fact, the objective fact, of the incarnation asserted "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Second, we have the self-evidencing glory of the incarnation asserted: "and we beheld his glory, a glory as of an only begotten of the Father." And third, we have the characteristic elements which entered into and constituted the glory which he brought from heaven with him and exhibited to men, as serted: "full of grace and truth." Jesus Christ was incarnated love and truth. And precisely what John witnesses is, that the Word did become flesh, and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth, and that the blaze of this his glory was manifest to every seeing eye that looked upon him.

Now it seems evident, further, that John had a special form of the manifestation of love and truth before his mind when he wrote these words. He is thinking of the covenant God, who proclaimed himself to Moses on the mount when he descended on the cloud as "Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full of compassion, and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth." He is thinking of David's prayer, "O prepare lovingkindness and truth"; and his heart burns within him as he sees them now prepared. It is the thought of Christ's redeeming work which is filling his mind, and which leads him to sum up the revelation of the incarnation in the revelation of love and truth. Therefore he says, not "love," but "grace"--undeserved love to sinners. And in "truth" he is thinking chiefly of Christ's "faithfulness." The divine glory that rested as a nimbus on the Lord's head was compounded before all else of his ineffable love for the unlovely, of his changeless faithfulness to the unfaithful For in Christ, God commended his love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Nevertheless, it would be a serious error to confine the words as here used to this single implication. This is rather the culmination and climax of their meaning than the whole extent and impletion of it. Christ is not only love as manifested in grace, but as the God of love manifest in the flesh he is love itself in all its height and breadth. Not only the loftiest reaches of love, love for the undeserving, find their model in him, but all the love that is in the world finds its source and must seek its support in him. His was the love that wept at the grave of a friend and over the earthly sorrows of Jerusalem that yearned with the bereaved mother at Nain, and took the little children into his arms to bless them; as well as the love that availed to offer himself a sacrifice for sin. In like manner that John has especially in mind here the highest manifestations of truth--our Lord's trustworthiness in the great work of salvation--in no way empties the word of its lower connotations. He is still the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and all the truth that is in the world comes from him and must seek its strength in him. "We beheld his glory," says the apostle, "full"--complete, perfect--of grace and truth." And perfection of love and truth avails for all their manifestations. This man, the man Christ Jesus, could not act in any relation otherwise than lovingly, could not speak on any subject otherwise than truly. He is the pure fountain of love and truth.

I. We confine ourselves on the present occasion to the latter of the two characteristics here brought together. And doing so, the first message which the declaration brings us is one so obvious that, in circumstances other than those in which we are now standing, it would seem an insult to our intelligence to direct attention to it. It is this, that since Jesus Christ our Lord, the manifested Jehovah, was as such the incarnation of truth, no statement which ever fell from his lips can have contained any admixture of error. This is John's testimony. For let us remind ourselves again that he is here bearing his witness, not to the essential truth of the divine nature incarnated in our Lord prior to its incarnation, but to the fulness of truth which dwelt in the God-man: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, full of . . . truth." More--it is the testimony of our Lord himself. "I," he declared, with his majestic and pregnant brevity, "I am the Truth." Nor dare we fancy that his plenitude of truth is exhausted in his witness to the great and eternal verities of religion, while the pettier affairs of earth and man are beyond its reach. His own norm of judgment is that only he that is faithful in the least may be trusted with the great. And it was testified of him not only that he knew whence he came and whither he went, but equally that he knew all men and needed not that any should bear witness of man, for he himself knew what was in man. He himself suspends his trustworthiness as to heavenly things upon his trustworthiness as to earthly things: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things?"

Are we beating the air when we remind ourselves of such things? Would that we were! But alas! we are fallen on evil days, when we need to defend the truth of incarnate truth itself against the aspersions of even its professed friends. O, the unimaginable lengths to which the intellectual pride of men will carry them! Has one spun out some flimsy fancy as to the origin and composition of certain Old Testament books, which is found to clash with Jesus' testimony to their authorship and trustworthiness? We are coolly told that "as a teacher of spiritual truth sent from God and full of God he is universal," but "as a logician and critic he belongs to his times," and therefore had "a definite restricted outfit and outlook, which could be only those of his own day and generation." "Why should he be supposed to know the science of the criticism of the Old Testament," we are asked,"which began to exist centuries after his death?" Does another cherish opinions as to the interpretation of certain Old Testament passages which will not square with the use that Christ makes of them? He tells us at once that "interpretation is essentially a scientific function, and one conditioned by the existence of scientific means, which, in relation to the Old Testament, were only imperfectly at the command of Jesus." Has another adopted preconceptions which render our Lord's dealings with the demoniacs distasteful to him? He too reminds us that the habit of ascribing disease to demoniacal influences was universal in Jesus' day, and that we can scarcely expect him to be free from the current errors of his time. Let us cut even deeper. When one desires to break out a "larger hope" for those who die impenitent than Christ's teachings will allow, he suggests that in his efforts to lead his hearers to repentance Jesus spoke habitually as a popular preacher, and far more strongly than he could have permitted himself to do had he been an exact theologian. When another burns with a zeal for moral reform which is certainly not according to knowledge, he suggests that we have reached a stage of ethical development when "new and larger perceptions of truth" have brought "new and larger perceptions of duty" than were attainable in Christ's day, and are accordingly bound to govern our lives by stricter rules than would apply to him in that darker age. Or, to sum up the whole, we have been recently told plainly that "Christ in his manhood was not the equal of Newton in mathematical knowledge," and not "the equal of Wellhausen in literary criticism," because--so we are actually told--the pursuit of such sciences requires "much exercise of mind."

Is, then, the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world gone out in darkness? What is left us of the Truth Indeed, who proclaims himself no more the Way and the Life than the Truth, if his testimony cannot be trusted as to the nature, origin, authority, and meaning of the Scriptures of which his own Spirit was the inspirer; as to the constitution of that spiritual world of which he is the Creator and the King; as to the nature of that future state which it is his to determine as Judge; or as to the moral Jife of which he is the sole author? Yet these are devout men who are propagating such teachings; and each has of course his own way of saving himself from conscious blasphemy in erecting his own thought above the thought of the God-man. The most popular way at present is to suggest that when God became man he so surrendered the attributes of divinity as that, though God, he had shrunk to the capacity of man, and, accepting the weaknesses, become subject also to the limitations of a purely human life in the world. Thus it is sought to save the veracity of the Lord at the expense of his knowledge, his truthfulness at the expense of his truth. But who can fail to see that, were this true, the sorrowing world would be left like Mary standing weeping in the garden and crying, "They have taken away my Lord"? Where then would be Christ our Prophet? Who could assure us of his trustworthiness in his witness to his oneness with God, to his mission from God, to the completeness of his work for our salvation? Faith has received a serious wound, as it has been well phrased, if we are to believe that Jesus Christ could have been deceived; if we are to believe that he could--wittingly or unwittingly--deceive, faith has received its death blow.

Let us bless the Lord, then, that he has left us little excuse for doubting in so important a matter. To the law and the testimony. Is the man Christ Jesus dramatized before us in the length and breadth of that marvelous history which fills these four Gospels, as a child of his times, limited by the intellectual outlook of his times, or rather as a teacher to his times, sent from God as no more the power of God than the wisdom of God? Is he represented to us as learning what he taught us from men, or, as he himself bore witness, from God?--"My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me"; "I am come down out of heaven," and "he that hath sent me is true"; and "the things that I have heard from him, these speak 1 unto the world." Did he even in his boyhood amaze the doctors in the temple by his understanding (Luke 2:47)? Did he know even "letters," not having learned them from man (John 7:15)? Did he see Nathanael when, under the fig tree, he bowed in secret prayer (John 1:47)? Did he know without human informant all the things that ever the Samaritan woman did (John 4:29)? Did he so search the heart of man that he saw the thoughts of his enemies (Matt. 9:4); knew that one of the twelve whom he had chosen was a "devil" (John 6:70); led Peter to cry in his adoring distress, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee" (John 20:17); and called out the testimony of John that "he knew all men, and needed not that any should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man" (John 2:25); as well as the testimony of all the disciples that they knew that he came from God, because "he knew all things" (John16:30)?

But why need we go into the details that are spread from one end to the other of these Gospels? In our text itself John bears witness that the fulness of truth which dwelt in the incarnate Word so glorified all his life as to mark him out as the Son of God: "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of an only-begotten of the Father, full of truth." We surely need not fear to take our stand not only by the truthfulness but by the truth of our Lord. We surely need not shrink from, with the utmost simplicity, embracing, proclaiming, and living by his views of God and the universe, of man and the world. It was he that made the world; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. Who shall teach him how its beams were laid or how its structure has grown? It was he that revealed the Word. Who shall teach him how were written or what is intended by the words which he himself gave through his servants the prophets? It is he who is at once the Source and Standard of the moral law, and the Fount and Origin of all compassion for sinful man. Who shall teach him what it is right to do, or how it is loving to deal with the children of men? We need not fear lest we be asked to credit Jesus against the truth; we may confide wholly in him, because he is the Truth.

II. Nor let us do this timidly. Trust is never timid. Just because Jesus is the Truth, while we without reserve accept, proclaim, and live by every word which he has spoken, not fearing that after all it may prove to be false, we may with equal confidence accept, proclaim, and live by every other truth that may be made known to us, not fearing that after a while it may prove to contradict the Truth himself. Thus we may be led to the formulation of a second message which the text brings us: that since Jesus Christ our Lord, the Founder of our religion, was the very incarnation of truth, no truth can be antagonistic to the religion which he founded. John tells us that he was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and we may read this as meaning that as the Word of God, the great Revealer, it is he that leads man by whatever path to the attainment of whatever truth. There is, then, no truth in the world which does not come from him. It matters not through what channel it finds its struggling way into our consciousness or to our recognition--whether our darkened eyes are enabled to catch their glimpse of it by the light of nature, as we say, by the light of reason, by the light of history, or by the light of criticism. These may be but broken lights; but they are broken lights of that one Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Every fragment of truth which they reveal to us comes from him who is the Truth, and is rendered great and holy as a revelation from and of him.

We must not, then, as Christians, assume an attitude of antagonism toward the truths of reason, or the truths of philosophy, or the truths of science, or the truths of history, or the truths of criticism. As children of the light, we must be careful to keep ourselves open to every ray of light. If it is light, its source must be sought in him who is the true Light; if it is truth, it belongs of right to him who is the plenitude of truth. All natural truths must be--in varying degrees indeed, but all truly--in some sense commentaries on the supernaturally revealed truth; and by them we may be led to fuller and more accurate comprehension of it. Nature is the handiwork of God in space; history marks his pathway through time. And both nature and history are as infallible teachers as revelation itself, could we but skill to read their message aright. It is distressingly easy to misinterpret them; but their employment in the elucidation of Scripture is, in principle, closely analogous to the interpretation of one Scripture by another, though written by another human hand and at an interval of an age of time. God speaks through his instruments. Prediction interprets prediction; doctrine, doctrine; and fact, fact. Wherever a gleam of light is caught, it illuminates. The true Light, from whatsoever reflected, lighteth.

Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them than we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable to receive it, more loyal to follow it whithersoever it leads. It is not for Christians to be lukewarm in regard to the investigations and discoveries of the time. Rather, the followers of the Truth Indeed can have no safety, in science or in philosophy, save in the arms of truth. It is for us, therefore, as Christians, to push investigation to the utmost; to be leaders in every science; to stand in the van of criticism; to be the first to catch in every field the voice of the Revealer of truth, who is also our Redeemer. The curse of the Church has been her apathy to truth, in which she has too often left to her enemies that study of nature and of history and philosophy, and even that investigation of her own peculiar treasures, the Scriptures of God, which should have been her chief concern. Thus she has often been forced to learn from the inadvertent or unwilling testimony of her foes the facts she has needed to protect herself from their assaults. And thus she has been led to borrow from them false theories in philosophy, science, and criticism, to make unnecessary concessions to them, and to expose herself, as they changed their positions from time to time, to unnecessary disgrace. What has the Church not suffered from her unwillingness to engage in truly scientific work! She has nothing to fear from truth; but she has everything to fear, and she has already suffered nearly everything, from ignorance. All truth belongs to us as followers of Christ, the Truth; let us at length enter into our inheritance.

III. In so speaking, we have already touched somewhat upon a third message which our text brings us: that since Christ Jesus our Lord and Master is incarnate Truth, we as his children must love the truth. Like him, we must be so single of eye, so steadfast in purpose, so honest in word, that no guile can be found in our mouth. The philosophers have sought variously for the sanction of truth. Kant found it in the respect a man owes to the dignity of his own moral nature: the liar must despise himself because lying is partial suicide--it is the renunciation of what we are and the substitution of a feigned man in our place. Fichte found it in our sense of justice toward our fellowmen: to lie is to lead others astray and subject their freedom to our selfish ends--it is ultimately to destroy society by destroying trust among men. From each of these points of view a powerful motive to truth may be developed. It is unmanly to lie; it is unneighborly to lie. It will destroy both our self-respect and all social life. But for us as Christians no sanction can approach in power that derived from the simple fact that as Christians we are "of the Truth"; that we are not of him who when he speaketh a lie speaketh of his own, who is a liar and the father thereof, but of him who is the fulness of truth--who is light and in whom is no darkness at all. As the children of truth, truth is our essential nature; and to lie is to sin against that incarnate Truth who is also our Lord and Redeemer--in whom, we are told, no liar can have part or share.

Bare avoidance of falsehood is far, however, from fulfilling our whole duty as lovers of truth. There is a positive duty, of course, as well as this negative one beckoning us. We have already noted the impulse which should thence arise to investigation and research. If all truth is a revelation of our Lord, what zeal we should have to possess it, that we may the better know him! As children of the truth we must love the truth, every truth in its own order, and therefore especially and above all others those truths which have been revealed by God for the salvation of the world. How tenacious we should be in holding them, how persistent in propagating them, how insistent in bearing our witness to them! "To this end was I born," said our Lord himself, "and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." And we too, as his servants, must be, each in his place, witnesses of the truth. This is the high function that has been given us as followers of Jesus: as the Father sent him into the world, so he has sent us into the world, to bear witness of the truth.

We all know in the midst of what dangers, in the midst of what deaths, those who have gone before us have fulfilled this trust. "Martyrs," we call them; and we call them such truly. For "martyrs" means "witnesses"; and they bore their witness despite cross and sword, fire and raging beast. So constant was their witness, so undismayed, that this proverb has enshrined their eulogy for all time, that "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church." They were our fathers: have we inherited their spirit? If we be Christians at all, must not we too be "martyrs," "witnesses"? must not we too steadfastly bear our witness to the truth assailed in our time? There may be no more fires lighted for our quivering flesh: are there no more temptations to a guilty silence or a weak evasion? Surely there is witness still to be borne, and we are they to bear it. The popular poet of the day sings against "the hard God served in Jerusalem," and all the world goes after him. But we--do we not know him to be the God of our salvation? the God who hath lovingly predestinated us unto the adoption of sons, through Jesus Christ, unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace? May God grant that in times like these, when men will not endure the sound doctrine, we may be enabled by his grace to bear unwavering witness to the glory of the Lord God Almighty, who "hath made everything for its own purpose, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil."

Need we pause further to enforce that highest form of the love of the truth, the love of the gospel of God's grace, which braves all things for the pure joy of making known the riches of his love to fallen men? The missionary spirit is the noblest fruit of the love of truth; the missionary's simple proclamation the highest form of witness-bearing to the truth. This spirit is no stranger among you. And I am persuaded that your hearts are burning within you as you think that to you "this grace has been given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the stewardship of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God." You need not that I should exhort you to remember that above all else "it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful." May God grant that while you may ask in wonder, as you contemplate the work of your ministry, Who is sufficient for these things? you may be able to say, like Paul, "We are not as the many, corrupting the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ." May God grant that the desire which flamed in Paul may burn in you too:

O could I tell ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How could I tell or how can ye receive it,
How till he bringeth you where I have been?

Give me a voice, a cry and a complaining-
O let my sound be stormy in their ears!
Throat that would shout but cannot stay for straining,
Eyes that would weep but cannot wait for tears.

Inspiration

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[Article " Inspiration," from The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia,
James Orr General Editor, v. 3, pp. 1473-1483. Pub. Chicago, 1915, by The Howard-Severance Co.]

THE word "inspire" and its derivatives seem to have come into Middle English from the French, and have been employed from the first (early in the fourteenth century) in a considerable number of significations, physical and metaphorical, secular and religious. The derivatives have been multiplied and their applications extended during the procession of the years, until they have acquired a very wide and varied use. Underlying all their use, however, is the constant implication of an influence from without, producing in its object movements and effects beyond its native, or at least its ordinary powers. The noun "inspiration," although already in use in the fourteenth century, seems not to occur in any but a theological sense until late in the sixteenth century. The specifically theological sense of all these terms is governed, of course, by their usage in Latin theology; and this rests ultimately on their employment in the Latin Bible. In the Vulgate Latin Bible the verb inspiro (Gen. ii. 7; Wisd. xv. 11; Ecclus. iv. 12; 2 Tim. iii. 16; 2 Pet. i. 21) and the noun inspiratio (2 Sam, xxii. 16; Job xxxii. 8; Ps. xvii. 16; Acts xvii. 25) both occur four or five times in somewhat diverse applications. In the development of a theological nomenclature, however, they have acquired (along with other less frequent applications) a technical sense with reference to the Biblical writers or the Biblical books. The Biblical books are called inspired as the Divinely determined products of inspired men; the Biblical writers are called inspired as breathed into by the Holy Spirit, so that the product of their activities transcends human powers and becomes Divinely authoritative. Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness. 

Meanwhile, for English-speaking men, these terms have virtually ceased to be Biblical terms. They naturally passed from the Latin Vulgate into the English versions made from it (most fully into the Rheims-Douay: Job xxxii. 8; Wisd. xv. 11; Ecclus. iv. 12; 2 Tim. iii. 16; 2 Pet. i. 21). But in the development of the English Bible they have found ever-decreasing place. In the English versions of the Apocrypha (both Authorized Version and Revised Version) "inspired" is retained in Wisd. xv. 11; but in the canonical books the nominal form alone occurs in the Authorized Version and that only twice: Job xxxii. 8, "But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding"; and 2 Tim. iii. 16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." The Revised Version removes the former of these instances, substituting "breath" for "inspiration"; and alters the latter so as to read: "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness," with a marginal alternative in the form of, "Every scripture is inspired of God and profitable," etc. The word "inspiration" thus disappears from the English Bible, and the word "inspired" is left in it only once, and then, let it be added, by a distinct and even misleading mistranslation.

For the Greek word in this passage - qeo,pneustoj( theópneustos - very distinctly does not mean "inspired of God." This phrase is rather the rendering of the Latin, divinitus inspirata, restored from the Wyclif ("Al Scripture of God ynspyrid is . . .") and Rhemish ("All Scripture inspired of God is . . .") versions of the Vulgate. The Greek word does not even mean, as the Authorized Version translates it, "given by inspiration of God," although that rendering (inherited from Tindale: "All Scripture given by inspiration of God is . . ." and its successors; cf. Geneva: "The whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is . . .") has at least to say for itself that it is a somewhat clumsy, perhaps, but not misleading, paraphrase of the Greek term in the theological language of the day. The Greek term has, however, nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a "spiring" or "spiration." What it says of Scripture is, not that it is "breathed into by God" or is the product of the Divine "inbreathing" into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, "Godbreathed," the product of the creative breath of God. In a word, what is declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a Divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them. No term could have been chosen, however, which would have more emphatically asserted the Divine production of Scripture than that which is here employed. The "breath of God" is in Scripture just the symbol of His almighty power, the bearer of His creative word. "By the word of Jehovah," we read in the significant parallel of Ps. xxxiii. 6, "were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." And it is particularly where the operations Of God are energetic that this term (whether x;Wr, rūaḥ, or hm';v'n., neshāmāh) is employed to designate them - God's breath is the irresistible outfloew of His power. When Paul declares, then, that "every scripture," or "all scripture" is the product of the Divine breath, "is God-breathed," he asserts with as much energy as he could employ that Scripture is the product of a specifically Divine operation.

(1) 2 Tim. iii. 16: In the passage in which Paul makes this energetic assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture he is engaged in explaining the greatness of the advantages which Timothy had enjoyed for learning the saving truth of God. He had had good teachers; and from his very infancy he had been, by his knowledge of the Scriptures, made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The expression, "sacred writings," here employed (ver. 15), is a technical one, not found elsewhere in the New Testament, it is true, but occurring currently in Philo and Josephus to designate that body of authoritative books which constituted the Jewish "Law." It appears here anarthrously because it is set in contrast with the oral teaching which Timothy had enjoyed, as something still better: he had not only had good instructors, but also always "an open Bible," as we should say, in his hand. To enhance yet further the great advantage of the possession of these Sacred Scriptures the apostle adds now a sentence throwing their nature strongly up to view. They are of Divine origin and therefore of the highest value for all holy purposes.

There is room for some difference of opinion as to the exact construction of this declaration. Shall we render "Every Scripture" or "All Scripture"? Shall we render "Every [or all] Scripture is God-breathed and [therefore] profitable," or "Every [or all] Scripture, being God-breathed, is as well profitable"? No doubt both questions are interesting, but for the main matter now engaging our attention they are both indifferent. Whether Paul, looking back at the Sacred Scriptures he had just mentioned, makes the assertion he is about to add, of them distributively, of all their parts, or collectively, of their entire mass, is of no moment: to say that every part of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed and to say that the whole of these Sacred Scriptures is God-breathed, is, for the main matter, all one. Nor is the difference great between saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, God-breathed and therefore profitable, and saying that they are in all their parts, or in their whole extent, because God-breathed as well profitable. In both cases these Sacred Scriptures are declared to owe their value to their Divine origin; and in both cases this their Divine origin is energetically asserted of their entire fabric. On the whole, the preferable construction would seem to be, "Every Scripture, seeing that it is God-breathed, is as well profitable." In that case, what the apostle asserts is that the Sacred Scriptures, in their every several passage - for it is just "passage of Scripture" which "Scripture" in this distributive use of it signifies - is the product of the creative breath of God, and, because of this its Divine origination, is of supreme value for all holy purposes.

It is to be observed that the apostle does not stop here to tell us either what particular books enter into the collection which he calls Sacred Scriptures, or by what precise operations God has produced them. Neither of these subjects entered into the matter he had at the moment in hand. It was the value of the Scriptures, and the source of that value in their Divine origin, which he required at the moment to assert; and these things he asserts, leaving to other occasions any further facts concerning them which it might be well to emphasize. It is also to be observed that the apostle does not tell us here everything for which the Scriptures are made valuable by their Divine origination. He speaks simply to the point immediately in hand, and reminds Timothy of the value which these Scriptures, by virtue of their Divine origin, have for the "man of God." Their spiritual power, as God-breathed, is all that he had occasion here to advert to. Whatever other qualities may accrue to them from their Divine origin, he leaves to other occasions to speak of.

(2) 2 Pet. i. 19-21: What Paul tells here about the Divine origin of the Scriptures is enforced and extended by a striking passage in 2 Pet. (i. 19-21). Peter is assuring his readers that what had been made known to them of "the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" did not rest on "cunningly devised fables." He offers them the testimony of eyewitnesses of Christ's glory. And then he intimates that they have better testimony than even that of eyewitnesses. "We have," says he, "the prophetic word" (English versions, unhappily, "the word of prophecy"): and this, he says, is "more sure," and therefore should certainly be heeded. He refers, of course, to the Scriptures. Of what other "prophetic word" could he, over against the testimony of the eyewitnesses of Christ's "excellent glory" (Authorized Version) say that "we have" it, that is, it is in our hands? And he proceeds at once to speak of it plainly as "Scriptural prophecy." You do well, he says, to pay heed to the prophetic word, because we know this first, that "every prophecy of scripture . . ." It admits of more question, however, whether by this phrase he means the whole of Scripture, designated according to its character, as prophetic, that is, of Divine origin; or only that portion of Scripture which we discriminate as particularly prophetic, the immediate revelations contained in Scripture. The former is the more likely view, inasmuch as the entirety of Scripture is elsewhere conceived and spoken of as prophetic. In that case, what Peter has to say of this "every prophecy of scripture" - the exact equivalent, it will be observed, in this case of Paul's "every scripture" (2 Tim. iii. 16) - applies to the whole of Scripture in all its parts. What he says of it is that it does not come "of private interpretation"; that is, it is not the result of human investigation into the nature of things, the product of its writers' own thinking. This is as much as to say it is of Divine gift. Accordingly, he proceeds at once to make this plain in a supporting clause which contains both the negative and the positive declaration: "For no prophecy ever came [margin "was brought"] by the will of man, but it was as borne by the Holy Spirit that men spoke from God." In this singularly precise and pregnant statement there are several things which require to be carefully observed. There is, first of all, the emphatic denial that prophecy - that is to say, on the hypothesis upon which we are working, Scripture - owes its origin to human initiative: "No prophecy ever was brought - 'came' is the word used in the English version text, with 'was brought' in Revised Version margin - by the will of man." Then, there is the equally emphatic assertion that its source lies in God: it was spoken by men, indeed, but the men who spoke it "spake from God." And a remarkable clause is here inserted, and thrown forward in the sentence that stress may fall on it, which tells us how it could be that men, in speaking, should speak not from themselves, but from God: it was "as borne" - it is the same word which was rendered "was brought" above, and might possibly be rendered "brought" here - "by the Holy Spirit" that they spoke. Speaking thus under the determining influence of the Holy Spirit, the things they spoke were not from themselves, but from God.

Here is as direct an assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture as that of 2 Tim. iii. 16. But there is more here than a simple assertion of the Divine origin of Scripture. We are advanced somewhat in our understanding of how God has produced the Scriptures. It was through the instrumentality of men who "spake from him." More specifically, it was through an operation of the Holy Ghost on these men which is described as "bearing" them. The term here used is a very specific one. It is not to be confounded with guiding, or directing, or controlling, or even leading in the full sense of that word. It goes beyond all such terms, in assigning the effect produced specifically to the active agent. What is "borne" is taken up by the "bearer," and conveyed by the "bearer's" power, not its own, to the "bearer's" goal, not its own. The men who spoke from God are here declared, therefore, to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the goal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why "the prophetic word" is so sure. Though spoken through the instrumentality of men, it is, by virtue of the fact that these men spoke "as borne by the Holy Spirit," an immediately Divine word. It will be observed that the proximate stress is laid here, not on the spiritual value of Scripture (though that, too, is seen in the background), but on the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture. Because this is the way every prophecy of Scripture "has been brought," it affords a more sure basis of confidence than even the testimony of human eyewitnesses. Of course, if we do not understand by "the prophetic word" here the entirety of Scripture described, according to its character, as revelation, but only that element in Scripture which we call specifically prophecy, then it is directly only of that element in Scripture that these great declarations are made. In any event, however, they are made of the prophetic element in Scripture as written, which was the only form in which the readers of this Epistle possessed it, and which is the thing specifically intimated in the phrase "every prophecy of scripture." These great declarations are made, therefore, at least of large tracts of Scripture; and if the entirety of Scripture is intended by the phrase "the prophetic word," they are made of the whole of Scripture.

(3) Jn. x. 34 f.: How far the supreme trustworthiness of Scripture, thus asserted, extends may be conveyed to us by a passage in one of Our Lord's discourses recorded by John (Jn. x. 34-35). The Jews, offended by Jesus' "making himself God," were in the act to stone Him, when He defended Himself thus: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified [margin "consecrated"] and sent unto the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" It may be thought that this defence is inadequate. It certainly is incomplete: Jesus made Himself God (Jn. x. 33) in a far higher sense than that in which "Ye are gods" was said of those "unto whom the word of God came": He had just declared in unmistakable terms, "I and the Father are one." But it was quite sufficient for the immediate end in view - to repel the technical charge of blasphemy based on His making Himself God: it is not blasphemy to call one God in any sense in which he may fitly receive that designation; and certainly if it is not blasphemy to call such men as those spoken of in the passage of Scripture adduced gods, because of their official functions, it cannot be blasphemy to call Him God whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world. The point for us to note, however, is merely that Jesus' defence takes the form of an appeal to Scripture; and it is important to observe how He makes this appeal. In the first place, He adduces the Scriptures as law: "Is it not written in your law?" He demands. The passage of Scripture which He adduces is not written in that portion of Scripture which was more specifically called "the Law," that is to say, the Pentateuch; nor in any portion of Scripture of formally legal contents. It is written in the Book of Psalms; and in a particular psalm which is as far as possible from presenting the external characteristics of legal enactment (Ps. lxxxii. 6). When Jesus adduces this passage, then, as written in the "law" of the Jews, He does it, not because it stands in this psalm, but because it is a part of Scripture at large. In other words, He here ascribes legal authority to the entirety of Scripture, in accordance with a conception common enough among the Jews (cf. Jn. xii. 34), and finding expression in the New Testament occasionally, both on the lips of Jesus Himself, and in the writings of the apostles. Thus, on a later occasion (Jn. xv. 25), Jesus declares that it is written in the "law" of the Jews, "They hated me without a cause," a clause found in Ps. xxxv. 19. And Paul assigns passages both from the Psalms and from Isaiah to "the Law" (1 Cor, xiv. 21; Rom. iii. 19), and can write such a sentence as this (Gal. iv. 21 f.): "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written . . ." quoting from the narrative of Genesis. We have seen that the entirety of Scripture was conceived as "prophecy"; we now see that the entirety of Scripture was also conceived as "law": these three terms, the law, prophecy, Scripture, were indeed, materially, strict synonyms, as our present passage itself advises us, by varying the formula of adduction in contiguous verses from "law" to "scripture." And what is thus implied in the manner in which Scripture is adduced, is immediately afterward spoken out in the most explicit language, because it forms an essential element in Our Lord's defence. It might have been enough to say simply, "Is it not written in your law?" But Our Lord, determined to drive His appeal to Scripture home, sharpens the point to the utmost by adding with the highest emphasis: "and the scripture cannot be broken." This is the reason why it is worth while to appeal to what is "written in the law," because "the scripture cannot be broken." The word "broken" here is the common one for breaking the law, or the Sabbath, or the like (Jn. v. 18; vii. 23; Mt. v. 19), and the meaning of the declaration is that it is impossible for the Scripture to be annulled, its authority to be withstood, or denied. The movement of thought is to the effect that, because it is impossible for the Scripture - the term is perfectly general and witnesses to the unitary character of Scripture (it is all, for the purpose in hand, of a piece) - to be withstood, therefore this particular Scripture which is cited must be taken as of irrefragable authority. What we have here is, therefore, the strongest possible assertion of the indefectible authority of Scripture; precisely what is true of Scripture is that it "cannot be broken." Now, what is the particular thing in Scripture, for the confirmation of which the indefectible authority of Scripture is thus invoked? It is one of its most casual clauses - more than that, the very form of its expression in one of its most casual clauses. This means, of course, that in the Saviour's view the indefectible authority of Scripture attaches to the very form of expression of its most casual clauses. It belongs to Scripture through and through, down to its most minute particulars, that it is of indefectible authority.

It is sometimes suggested, it is true, that Our Lord's argument here is an argumentum ad hominem, and that his words, therefore, express not His own view of the authority of Scripture, but that of His Jewish opponents. It will scarcely be denied that there is a vein of satire running through Our Lord's defence: that the Jews so readily allowed that corrupt judges might properly be called "gods," but could not endure that He whom the Father had consecrated and sent into the world should call Himself Son of God, was a somewhat pungent fact to throw up into such a high light. But the argument from Scripture is not ad hominem but e concessu; Scripture was common ground with Jesus and His opponents. If proof were needed for so obvious a fact, it would be supplied by the circumstance that this is not an isolated but a representative passage. The conception of Scripture thrown up into such clear view here supplies the ground of all Jesus' appeals to Scripture, and of all the appeals of the New Testament writers as well. Everywhere, to Him and to them alike, an appeal to Scripture is an appeal to an indefectible authority whose determination is final; both He and they make their appeal indifferently to every part of Scripture, to every element in Scripture, to its most incidental clauses as well as to its most fundamental principles, and to the very form of its expression. This attitude toward Scripture as an authoritative document is, indeed, already intimated by their constant designation of it by the name of Scripture, the Scriptures, that is "the Document," by way of eminence; and by their customary citation of it with the simple formula, "It is written." What is written in this document admits so little of questioning that its authoritativeness required no asserting, but might safely be taken for granted. Both modes of expression belong to the constantly illustrated habitudes of Our Lord's speech. The first words He is recorded as uttering after His manifestation to Israel were an appeal to the unquestionable authority of Scripture; to Satan's temptations He opposed no other weapon than the final "It is written"! (Mt. iv. 4.7.10; Lk. iv. 4.8). And among the last words which He spoke to His disciples before He was received up was a rebuke to them for not understanding that all things "which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and psalms" concerning Him - that is (ver. 45) in the entire "Scriptures"- "must needs be" (very emphatic) "fulfilled" (Lk. xxiv. 44). "Thus it is written," says He (ver. 46), as rendering all doubt absurd. For, as He had explained earlier upon the same day (Lk. xxiv. 25 ff.), it argues only that one is "foolish and slow at heart" if he does not "believe in" (if his faith does not rest securely on, as on a firm foundation) "all" (without limit of subject-matter here) "that the prophets" (explained in ver. 27 as equivalent to "all the scriptures") "have spoken."

The necessity of the fulfilment of all that is written in Scripture, which is so strongly asserted in these last instructions to His disciples, is frequently adverted to by Our Lord. He repeatedly explains of occurrences occasionally happening that they have come to pass "that the scripture might be fulfilled" (Mk. xiv. 49; Jn. xiii. 18; xvii. 12; cf. xii. 14; Mk. ix. 12.13). On the basis of Scriptural declarations, therefore, He announces with confidence that given events will certainly occur: "All ye shall be offended [literally "scandalized"] in me this night: for it is written . . ." (Mt. xxvi. 31; Mk. xiv. 27; cf. Lk. xx. 17). Although holding at His command ample means of escape, He bows before on-coming calamities, for, He asks, how otherwise "should the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Mt. xxvi. 54). It is not merely the two disciples with whom He talked on the way to Emmaus (Lk, xxiv. 25) whom He rebukes for not trusting themselves more perfectly to the teaching of Scripture. "Ye search the scriptures," He says to the Jews, in the classical passage (Jn. v. 39), "because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life!" These words surely were spoken more in sorrow than in scorn: there is no blame implied either for searching the Scriptures or for thinking that eternal life is to be found in Scripture; approval rather. What the Jews are blamed for is that they read with a veil lying upon their hearts which He would fain take away (2 Cor. iii. 15 f.). "Ye search the scriptures" - that is right: and "even you" (emphatic) "think to have eternal life in them" - that is right, too. But "it is these very Scriptures" (very emphatic) "which are bearing witness" (continuous process) "of me; and" (here is the marvel! ) "ye will not come to me and have life!" that you may, that is, reach the very end you have so properly in view in searching the Scriptures. Their failure is due, not to the Scriptures but to themselves, who read the Scriptures to such little purpose.

Quite similarly Our Lord often finds occasion to express wonder at the little effect to which Scripture had been read, not because it had been looked into too curiously, but because it had not been looked into earnestly enough, with sufficiently simple and robust trust in its every declaration. "Have ye not read even this scripture?" He demands, as He adduces Ps. cxviii. to show that the rejection of the Messiah was already intimated in Scripture (Mk. xii. 10; Mt. xxi. 42 varies the expression to the equivalent: "Did ye never read in the scriptures?"). And when the indignant Jews came to Him complaining of the Hosannas with which the children in the Temple were acclaiming Him, and demanding, "Hearest thou what these are saying?" He met them (Mt. xxi. 16) merely with, "Yea: did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" The underlying thought of these passages is spoken out when He intimates that the source of all error in Divine things is just ignorance of the Scriptures: "Ye do err," He declares to His questioners, on an important occasion, "not knowing the scriptures" (Mt. xxii. 29); or, as it is put, perhaps more forcibly, in interrogative form, in its parallel in another Gospel: "Is it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures?" (Mk. xii. 24). Clearly, he who rightly knows the Scriptures does not err. The confidence with which Jesus rested on Scripture, in its every declaration, is further illustrated in a passage like Mt. xix. 4. Certain Pharisees had come to Him with a question on divorce and He met them thus: "Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? . . . What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." The point to be noted is the explicit reference of Gen. ii. 24 to God as its author: "He who made them . . . said"; "what therefore God hath joined together." Yet this passage does not give us a saying of God's recorded in Scripture, but just the word of Scripture itself, and can be treated as a declaration of God's only on the hypothesis that all Scripture is a declaration of God's. The parallel in Mk. (x. 5 ff.) just as truly, though not as explicitly, assigns the passage to God as its author, citing it as authoritative law and speaking of its enactment as an act of God's. And it is interesting to observe in passing that Paul, having occasion to quote the same passage (1 Cor. vi. 16), also explicitly quotes it as a Divine word: "For, The twain, saith he, shall become one flesh" - the "he" here, in accordance with a usage to be noted later, meaning just "God."

Thus clear is it that Jesus' occasional adduction of Scripture as an authoritative document rests on an ascription of it to God as its author. His testimony is that whatever stands written in Scripture is a word of God. Nor can we evacuate this testimony of its force on the plea that it represents Jesus only in the days of His flesh, when He may be supposed to have reflected merely the opinions of His day and generation. The view of Scripture He announces was, no doubt, the view of His day and generation as well as His own view. But there is no reason to doubt that it was held by Him, not because it was the current view, but because, in His Divine-human knowledge, He knew it to be true; for, even in His humiliation, He is the faithful and true witness. And in any event we should bear in mind that this was the view of the resurrected as well as of the humiliated Christ. It was after He had suffered and had risen again in the power of His Divine life that He pronounced those foolish and slow of heart who do not believe all that stands written in all the Scriptures (Lk. xxiv. 25) ; and that He laid down the simple "Thus it is written" as the sufficient ground of confident belief (Lk. xxiv. 46). Nor can we explain away Jesus' testimony to the Divine trustworthiness of Scripture by interpreting it as not His own, but that of His followers, placed on His lips in their reports of His words. Not only is it too constant, minute, intimate and in part incidental, and therefore, as it were, hidden, to admit of this interpretation; but it so pervades all our channels of information concerning Jesus' teaching as to make it certain that it comes actually from Him. It belongs not only to the Jesus of our evangelical records but as well to the Jesus of the earlier sources which underlie our evangelical records, as anyone may assure himself by observing the instances in which Jesus adduces the Scriptures as Divinely authoritative that are recorded in more than one of the Gospels (e.g. "It is written," Mt. iv. 4.7.10 [Lk. iv. 4.8.10]; Mt. xi. 10; [Lk. vii. 27]; Mt. xxi. 13 [Lk. xix. 46; Mk. xi. 17]; Mt. xxvi. 31 [Mk. xiv. 21]; "the scripture" or "the scriptures," Mt. xix. 4 [Mk. x. 9]; Mt. xxi. 42 [Mk, xii. 10; Lk. xx. 17]; Mt. xxii. 29 [Mk. xii. 24; Lk. xx. 37]; Mt. xxvi. 56 [Mk. xiv. 49; Lk. xxiv. 44]). These passages alone would suffice to make clear to us the testimony of Jesus to Scripture as in all its parts and declarations Divinely authoritative.

The attempt to attribute the testimony of Jesus to His followers has in its favor only the undeniable fact that the testimony of the writers of the New Testament is to precisely the same effect as His. They, too, cursorily speak of Scripture by that pregnant name and adduce it with the simple "It is written," with the implication that whatever stands written in it is Divinely authoritative. As Jesus' official life begins with this "It is written" (Mt. iv. 4), so the evangelical proclamation begins with an "Even as it is written" (Mk. i. 2); and as Jesus sought the justification of His work in a solemn "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day" (Lk. xxiv. 46 ff.), so the apostles solemnly justified the Gospel which they preached, detail after detail, by appeal to the Scriptures, "That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" and "That he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Cor. xv. 3.4; cf. Acts viii. 35; xvii. 3; xxvi. 22, and also Rom. i. 17; iii. 4.10; iv. 17; xi. 26; xiv. 11; 1 Cor. i. 19; ii. 9; iii. 19; xv. 45; Gal. iii. 10.13; iv. 22.27). Wherever they carried the gospel it was as a gospel resting on Scripture that they proclaimed it (Acts xvii. 2; xviii. 24.28); and they encouraged themselves to test its truth by the Scriptures (Acts xvii. 11). The holiness of life they inculcated, they based on Scriptural requirement (1 Pet. i. 16), and they commended the royal law of love which they taught by Scriptural sanction (Jas. ii. 8). Every detail of duty was supported by them by an appeal to Scripture (Acts xxiii. 5; Rom. xii. 19). The circumstances of their lives and the events occasionally occurring about them are referred to Scripture for their significance (Rom. ii. 26; viii. 36; ix. 33; xi. 8; xv. 9.21; 2 Cor, iv. 13). As Our Lord declared that whatever was written in Scripture must needs be fulfilled (Mt. xxvi. 54; Lk. xxii. 37; xxiv. 44), so His followers explained one of the most startling facts which had occurred in their experience by pointing out that "it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David" (Acts i. 16). Here the ground of this constant appeal to Scripture, so that it is enough that a thing "is contained in scripture" (1 Pet. ii. 6) for it to be of indefectible authority, is plainly enough declared: Scripture must needs be fulfilled, for what is contained in it is the declaration of the Holy Ghost through the human author. What Scripture says, God says; and accordingly we read such remarkable declarations as these: "For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up" (Rom. ix. 17); "And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, . . . In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (Gal. iii. 8). These are not instances of simple personification of Scripture, which is itself a sufficiently remarkable usage (Mk, xv. 28; Jn. vii. 38.42; xix. 37; Rom. iv. 3; x. 11; xi. 2; Gal. iv. 30; Z Tim. v. 18: Jas. ii. 23; iv. 5 f.), vocal with the conviction expressed by James (iv. 5) that Scripture cannot speak in vain. They indicate a certain confusion in current speech between "Scripture  and "God," the outgrowth of a deep-seated conviction that the word of Scripture is the word of God. It was not "Scripture" that spoke to Pharaoh, or gave his great promise to Abraham, but God. But "Scripture" and "God" lay so close together in the minds of the writers of the New Testament that they could naturally speak of "Scripture" doing what Scripture records God as doing. It was, however, even more natural to them to speak casually of God saying what the Scriptures say; and accordingly we meet with forms of speech such as these: "Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, To-day if ye shall hear His voice," etc. (Heb. iii. 7, quoting Ps. xcv. 7); "Thou art God . . . who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage," etc. (Acts iv. 25 Authorized Version, quoting Ps. ii. 1); "He that raised him from the dead . . . hath spoken on this wise, I will give you . . . because he saith also in another [place] . . ." (Acts xiii. 34, quoting Isa. Iv. 3 and Ps. xvi. 10), and the like. The words put into God's mouth in each case are not words of God recorded in the Scriptures, but just Scripture words in themselves. When we take the two classes of passages together, in the one of which the Scriptures are spoken of as God, while in the other God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures, we may perceive how close the identification of the two was in the minds of the writers of the New Testament.

This identification is strikingly observable in certain catenae of quotations, in which there are brought together a number of passages of Scripture closely connected with one another. The first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies an example. We may begin with ver. 5: "For unto which of the angels said he"- the subject being necessarily "God" -"at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?"- the citation being from Ps. ii. 7 and very appropriate in the mouth of God - "and again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?"-from 2 S. vii. 14, again a declaration of God's own - "And when he again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him" - from Deut. xxxii. 43, Septuagint, or Ps. xcvii. 7, in neither of which is God the speaker - "And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire"- from Ps. civ. 4, where again God is not the speaker but is spoken of in the third person -"but of the Son he saith. Thy throne, O God, etc." - from Ps. xlv. 6.7 where again God is not the speaker, but is addressed - "And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning," etc. - from Ps. cii. 2527, where again God is not the speaker but is addressed - "But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand?" etc. - from Ps. cx. 1, in which God is the speaker. Here we have passages in which God is the speaker and passages in which God is not the speaker, but is addressed or spoken of, indiscriminately assigned to God, because they all have it in common that they are words of Scripture, and as words of Scripture are words of God. Similarly in Rom. xv. 9 ff. we have a series of citations the first of which is introduced by "as it is written," and the next two by "again he saith," and "again," and the last by "and again, Isaiah saith," the first being from Ps. xviii. 49; the second from Deut. xxxii. 43; the third from Ps. cxvii. 1; and the last from Isa. xi. 10. Only the last (the only one here assigned to the human author) is a word of God in the text of the Old Testament.

This view of the Scriptures as a compact mass of words of God occasioned the formation of a designation for them by which this their character was explicitly expressed. This designation is "the sacred oracles," "the oracles of God." It occurs with extraordinary frequency in Philo, who very commonly refers to Scripture as "the sacred oracles" and cites its several passages as each an "oracle." Sharing, as they do, Philo's conception of the Scriptures as, in all their parts, a word of God, the New Testament writers naturally also speak of them under this designation. The classical passage is Rom. iii. 2 (cf. Heb. v. 12; Acts vii. 38). Here Paul begins an enumeration of the advantages which belonged to the chosen people above other nations; and, after declaring these advantages to have been great and numerous, he places first among them all their possession of the Scriptures: "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God." That by "the oracles of God" here are meant just the Holy Scriptures in their entirety, conceived as a direct Divine revelation, and not any portions of them, or elements in them more especially thought of as revelatory, is perfectly clear from the wide contemporary use of this designation in this sense by Philo, and is put beyond question by the presence in the New Testament of habitudes of speech which rest on and grow out of the conception of Scripture embodied in this term. From the point of view of this designation, Scripture is thought of as the living voice of God speaking in all its parts directly to the reader; and, accordingly, it is cited by some such formula as "it is said," and this mode of citing Scripture duly occurs as an alternative to "it is written" (Lk. iv. 12, replacing "it is written" in Mt.; Heb. iii. 15; cf. Rom. iv. 18). It is due also to this point of view that Scripture is cited, not as what God or the Holy Spirit "said," but what He "says," the present tense emphasizing the living voice of God speaking in Scriptures to the individual soul (Heb. iii. 7; Acts xiii. 35; Heb. i. 7. 8. 10; Rom. xv. 10). And especially there is due to it the peculiar usage by which Scripture is cited by the simple "saith," without expressed subject, the subject being too well understood, when Scripture is adduced, to require stating; for who could be the speaker of the words of Scripture but God only (Rom. xv. 10; 1 Cor. vi. 16; 2 Cor. vi. 2; Gal. iii. 16; Eph. iv. 8; v. 14)? The analogies of this pregnant subjectless "saith" are very widespread. It was with it that the ancient Pythagoreans and Platonists and the mediaeval Aristotelians adduced each their master's teaching; it was with it that, in certain circles, the judgments of Hadrian's great jurist Salvius Julianus were cited; African stylists were even accustomed to refer by it to Sallust, their great model. There is a tendency, cropping out occasionally, in the old Testament, to omit the name of God as superfluous, when He, as the great logical subject always in mind, would be easily understood (cf. Job xx. 23; xxi. 17; Ps. cxiv. 2; Lam. iv. 22). So, too, when the New Testament writers quoted Scripture there was no need to say whose word it was: that lay beyond question in every mind. This usage, accordingly, is a specially striking intimation of the vivid sense which the New Testament writers had of the Divine origin of the Scriptures, and means that in citing them they were acutely conscious that they were citing immediate words of God. How completely the Scriptures were to them just the word of God may be illustrated by a passage like Gal. iii. 16: "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." We have seen Our Lord hanging an argument on the very words of Scripture (Jn. x. 34); elsewhere His reasoning depends on the particular tense (Mt. xxii. 32) or word (Mt. xxii. 43) used in Scripture. Here Paul's argument rests similarly on a grammatical form. No doubt it is the grammatical form of the word which God is recorded as having spoken to Abraham that is in question. But Paul knows what grammatical form God employed in speaking to Abraham only as the Scriptures have transmitted it to him; and, as we have seen, in citing the words of God and the words of Scripture he was not accustomed to make any distinction between them. It is probably the Scriptural word as a Scriptural word, therefore, which he has here in mind: though, of course, it is possible that what he here witnesses to is rather the detailed trustworthiness of the Scriptural record than its direct divinity - if we can separate two things which apparently were not separated in Paul's mind. This much we can at least say without straining, that the designation of Scripture as "scripture" and its citation by the formula., "It is written," attest primarily its indefectible authority; the designation of it as "oracles" and the adduction of it by the formula, "It says," attest primarily its immediate divinity. Its authority rests on its divinity and its divinity expresses itself in its trustworthiness; and the New Testament writers in all their use of it treat it as what they declare it to be - a God-breathed document, which, because God-breathed, as through and through trustworthy in all its assertions, authoritative in all its declarations, and down to its last particular, the very word of God, His "oracles."

That the Scriptures are throughout a Divine book, created by the Divine energy and speaking in their every part with Divine authority directly to the heart of the readers, is the fundamental fact concerning them which is witnessed by Christ and the sacred writers to whom we owe the New Testament. But the strength and constancy with which they bear witness to this primary fact do not prevent their recognizing by the side of it that the Scriptures have come into being by the agency of men. It would be inexact to say that they recognize a human element in Scripture: they do not parcel Scripture out, assigning portions of it, or elements in it, respectively to God and man. In their view the whole of Scripture in all its parts and in all its elements, down to the least minutiae, in form of expression as well as in substance of teaching, is from God; but the whole of it has been given by God through the instrumentality of men. There is, therefore, in their view, not, indeed, a human element or ingredient in Scripture, and much less human divisions or sections of Scripture, but a human side or aspect to Scripture; and they do not fail to give full recognition to this human side or aspect. In one of the primary passages which has already been before us, their conception is given, if somewhat broad and very succinct, yet clear expression. No 'prophecy,' Peter tells us (2 Pet. i. 21), 'ever came by the will of man; but as borne by the Holy Ghost, men spake from God.' Here the whole initiative is assigned to God, and such complete control of the human agents that the product is truly God's work. The men who speak in this "prophecy of scripture" speak not of themselves or out of themselves, but from "God": they speak only as they are "borne by the Holy Ghost." But it is they, after all, who speak. Scripture is the product of man, but only of man speaking from God and under such a control of the Holy Spirit as that in their speaking they are "borne" by Him. The conception obviously is that the Scriptures have been given by the instrumentality of men; and this conception finds repeated incidental expression throughout the New Testament.

It is this conception, for example, which is expressed when Our Lord, quoting Ps. cx., declares of its words that "David himself said in the Holy Spirit" (Mk. xii. 36). There is a certain emphasis here on the words being David's own words, which is due to the requirements of the argument Our Lord was conducting, but which none the less sincerely represents Our Lord's conception of their origin. They are David's own words which we find in Ps. cx., therefore; but they are David's own words, spoken not of his own motion merely, but "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say - we could not better paraphrase it - "as borne by the Holy Spirit." In other words, they are "God-breathed" words and therefore authoritative in a sense above what any words of David, not spoken in the Holy Spirit, could possibly be. Generalizing the matter, we may say that the words of Scripture are conceived by Our Lord and the New Testament writers as the words of their human authors when speaking "in the Holy Spirit," that is to say, by His initiative and under His controlling direction. The conception finds even more precise expression, perhaps, in such a statement as we find - it is Peter who is speaking and it is again a psalm which is cited - in Acts i. 16, "The Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of David." Here the Holy Spirit is adduced, of course, as the real author of what is said (and hence Peter's certainty that what is said will be fulfilled); but David's mouth is expressly designated as the instrument (it is the instrumental preposition that is used) by means of which the Holy Spirit speaks the Scripture in question. He does not speak save through David's mouth. Accordingly, in Acts iv. 25, 'the Lord that made the heaven and earth,' acting by His Holy Spirit, is declared to have spoken another psalm 'through the mouth of . . . David,' His "servant"; and in Mt. xiii. 35 still another psalm is adduced as "spoken through the prophet" (cf. Mt. ii. 5). In the very act of energetically asserting the Divine origin of Scripture the human instrumentality through which it is given is constantly recognized. The New Testament writers have, therefore, no difficulty in assigning Scripture to its human authors, or in discovering in Scripture traits due to its human authorship. They freely quote it by such simple formulae as these: "Moses saith" (Rom. x. 19); "Moses said" (Mt. xxii. 24; Mk. vii. 10; Acts iii. 22); "Moses writeth" (Rom. x. 5); "Moses wrote" (Mk. xii. 19; Lk. xx. 28); "Isaiah . . . saith" (Rom. x. 20); "Isaiah said" (Jn. xii. 39); "Isaiah crieth" (Rom. ix. 27); "Isaiah hath said before" (Rom. ix. 29); "said Isaiah the prophet" (Jn. i. 23); "did Isaiah prophesy" (Mk. vii. 6; Mt. xv. 7); "David saith" (Lk. xx. 42; Acts ii. 25; Rom. xi. 9); "David said" (Mk. xii. 36). It is to be noted that when thus Scripture is adduced by the names of its human authors, it is a matter of complete indifference whether the words adduced are comments of these authors or direct words of God recorded by them. As the plainest words of the human authors are assigned to God as their real author, so the most express words of Gvd, repeated by the Scriptural writers, are cited by the names of these human writers (Mt. xv. 7; Mk. vii. 6; Rom, x. 5.19.20; cf. Mk. vii. 10 from the Decalogue). To say that "Moses" or "David says," is evidently thus only a way of saying that "Scripture says," which is the same as to say that "God says." Such modes of citing Scripture, accordingly, carry us little beyond merely connecting the name, or perhaps we may say the individuality, of the several writers with the portions of Scripture given through each. How it was given through them is left meanwhile, if not without suggestion, yet without specific explanation. We seem safe only in inferring this much: that the gift of Scripture through its human authors took place by a process much more intimate than can be expressed by the term "dictation," and that it took place in a process in which the control of the Holy Spirit was too complete and pervasive to permit the human qualities of the secondary authors in any way to condition the purity of the product as the word of God. The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God's book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men's book as well as God's, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.

If we attempt to get behind this broad statement and to obtain a more detailed conception of the activities by which God has given the Scriptures, we are thrown back upon somewhat general representations, supported by the analogy of the modes of God's working in other spheres of His operation. It is very desirable that we should free ourselves at the outset from influences arising from the current employment of the term "inspiration" to designate this process. This term is not a Biblical term and its etymological implications are not perfectly accordant with the Biblical conception of the modes of the Divine operation in giving the Scriptures. The Biblical writers do not conceive of the Scriptures as a human product breathed into by the Divine Spirit, and thus heightened in its qualities or endowed with new qualities; but as a Divine product produced through the instrumentality of men. They do not conceive of these men, by whose instrumentality Scripture is produced, as working upon their own initiative, though energized by God to greater effort and higher achievement, but as moved by the Divine initiative and borne by the irresistible power of the Spirit of God along ways of His choosing to ends of His appointment. The difference between the two conceptions may not appear great when the mind is fixed exclusively upon the nature of the resulting product. But they are differing conceptions, and look at the production of Scripture from distinct points of view - the human and the Divine; and the involved mental attitudes toward the origin of Scripture are very diverse. The term "inspiration" is too firmly fixed, in both theological and popular usage, as the technical designation of the action of God in giving the Scriptures, to be replaced; and we may be thankful that its native implications lie as close as they do to the Biblical conceptions. Meanwhile, however, it may be justly insisted that it shall receive its definition from the representations of Scripture, and not be permitted to impose upon our thought ideas of the origin of Scripture derived from an analysis of its own implications, etymological or historical. The Scriptural conception of the relation of the Divine Spirit to the human authors in the production of Scripture is better expressed by the figure of "bearing" than by the figure of "inbreathing"; and when our Biblical writers speak of the action of the Spirit of God in this relation as a breathing, they represent it as a "breathing out" of the Scriptures by the Spirit, and not a "breathing into" the Scriptures by Him.

So soon, however, as we seriously endeavor to form for ourselves a clear conception of the precise nature of the Divine action in this "breathing out" of the Scriptures - this "bearing" of the writers of the Scriptures to their appointed goal of the production of a book of Divine trustworthiness and indefectible authority - we become acutely aware of a more deeply lying and much wider problem, apart from which this one of inspiration, technically so called, cannot be profitably considered. This is the general problem of the origin of the Scriptures and the part of God in all that complex of processes by the interaction of which these books, which we call the sacred Scriptures, with all their peculiarities, and all their qualities of whatever sort, have been brought into being. For, of course, these books were not produced suddenly, by some miraculous act - handed down complete out of heaven, as the phrase goes; but, like all other products of time, are the ultimate effect of many processes cooperating through long periods. There is to be considered, for instance, the preparation of the material which forms the subject-matter of these books: in a sacred history, say, for example, to be narrated; or in a religious experience which may serve as a norm for record; or in a logical elaboration of the contents of revelation which may be placed at the service of God's people; or in the progressive revelation of Divine truth itself, supplying their culminating contents. And there is the preparation of the men to write these books to be considered, a preparation physical, intellectual, spiritual, which must have attended them throughout their whole lives, and, indeed, must have had its beginning in their remote ancestors, and the effect of which was to bring the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them. When "inspiration," technically so called, is superinduced on lines of preparation like these, it takes on quite a different aspect from that which it bears when it is thought of as an isolated action of the Divine Spirit operating out of all relation to historical processes. Representations are sometimes made as if, when God wished to produce sacred books which would incorporate His will - a series of letters like those of Paul, for example - He was reduced to the necessity of going down to earth and painfully scrutinizing the men He found there, seeking anxiously for the one who, on the whole, promised best for His purpose; and then violently forcing the material He wished expressed through him, against his natural bent, and with as little loss from his recalcitrant characteristics as possible. Of course, nothing of the sort took place. If God wished to give His people a series of letters like Paul's, He prepared a Paul to write them, and the Paul He brought to the task was a Paul who spontaneously would write just such letters.

If we bear this in mind, we shall know what estimate to place upon the common representation to the effect that the human characteristics of the writers must, and in point of fact do, condition and qualify the writings produced by them, the implication being that, therefore, we cannot get from man a pure word of God. As light that passes through the colored glass of a cathedral window, we are told, is light from heaven, but is stained by the tints of the glass through which it passes; so any word of God which is passed through the mind and soul of a man must come out discolored by the personality through which it is given, and just to that degree ceases to be the pure word of God. But what if this personality has itself been formed by God into precisely the personality it is, for the express purpose of communicating to the word given through it just the coloring which it gives it? What if the colors of the stained-glass window have been designed by the architect for the express purpose of giving to the light that floods the cathedral precisely the tone and quality it receives from them? What if the word of God that comes to His people is framed by God into the word of God it is, precisely by means of the qualities of the men formed by Him for the purpose, through which it is given? When we think of God the Lord giving by His Spirit a body of authoritative Scriptures to His people, we must remember that He is the God of providence and of grace as well as of revelation and inspiration, and that He holds all the lines of preparation as fully under His direction as He does the specific operation which we call technically, in the narrow sense, by the name of "inspiration." The production of the Scriptures is, in point of fact, a long process, in the course of which numerous and very varied Divine activities are involved, providential, gracious, miraculous, all of which must be taken into account in any attempt to explain the relation of God to the production of Scripture. When they are all taken into account we can no longer wonder that the resultant Scriptures are constantly spoken of as the pure word of God. We wonder, rather, that an additional operation of God - what we call specifically "inspiration," in its technical sense - was thought necessary. Consider, for example, how a piece of sacred history - say the Book of Chronicles, or the great historical work, Gospel and Acts, of Luke - is brought to the writing. There is first of all the preparation of the history to be written: God the Lord leads the sequence of occurrences through the development He has designed for them that they may convey their lessons to His people: a "teleological" or "aetiological" character is inherent in the very course of events. Then He prepares a man, by birth, training, experience, gifts of grace, and, if need be, of revelation, capable of appreciating this historical development and eager to search it out, thrilling in all his being with its lessons and bent upon making them clear and effective to others. When, then, by His providence, God sets this man to work on the writing of this history, will there not be spontaneously written by him the history which it was Divinely intended should be written? Or consider how a psalmist would be prepared to put into moving verse a piece of normative religious experience: how he would be born with just the right quality of religious sensibility, of parents through whom he should receive just the right hereditary bent, and from whom he should get precisely the right religious example and training, in circumstances of life in which his religious tendencies should be developed precisely on right lines; how he would be brought through just the right experiences to quicken in him the precise emotions he would be called upon to express, and finally would be placed in precisely the exigencies which would call out their expression. Or consider the providential preparation of a writer of a didactic epistle - by means of which he should be given the intellectual breadth and acuteness, and be trained in habitudes of reasoning, and placed in the situations which would call out precisely the argumentative presentation of Christian truth which was required of him. When we give due place in our thoughts to the universality of the providential government of God, to the minuteness and completeness of its sway, and to its invariable efficacy, we may be inclined to ask what is needed beyond this mere providential government to secure the production of sacred books which should be in every detail absolutely accordant with the Divine will.

The answer is, Nothing is needed beyond mere providence to secure such books - provided only that it does not lie in the Divine purpose that these books should possess qualities which rise above the powers of men to produce, even under the most complete Divine guidance. For providence is guidance; and guidance can bring one only so far as his own power can carry him. If heights are to be scaled above man's native power to achieve, then something more than guidance, however effective, is necessary. This is the reason for the superinduction, at the end of the long process of the production of Scripture, of the additional Divine operation which we call technically "inspiration." By it, the Spirit of God, flowing confluently in with the providentially and graciously determined work of men, spontaneously producing under the Divine directions the writings appointed to them, gives the product a Divine quality unattainable by human powers alone. Thus these books become not merely the word of godly men, but the immediate word of God Himself, speaking directly as such to the minds and hearts of every reader. The value of "inspiration" emerges, thus, as twofold. It gives to the books written under its "bearing" a quality which is truly superhuman; a trustworthiness, an authority, a searchingness, a profundity, a profitableness which is altogether Divine. And it speaks this Divine word immediately to each reader's heart and conscience; so that he does not require to make his way to God, painfully, perhaps even uncertainly, through the words of His servants, the human instruments in writing the Scriptures, but can listen directly to the Divine voice itself speaking immediately in the Scriptural word to him.

That the writers of the New Testament themselves conceive the Scriptures to have been produced thus by Divine operations extending through the increasing ages and involving a multitude of varied activities, can be made clear by simply attending to the occasional references they make to this or that step in the process. It lies, for example, on the face of their expositions, that they looked upon the Biblical history as teleological. Not only do they tell us that "whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope" (Rom. xv. 4; cf. Rom. iv. 23.24); they speak also of the course of the historical events themselves as guided for our benefit: "Now these things happened unto them by way of example" - in a typical fashion, in such a way that, as they occurred, a typical character, or predictive reference impressed itself upon them; that is to say, briefly, the history occurred as it did in order to bear a message to us - "and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come" (1 Cor. x. 11; cf. ver. 6). Accordingly, it has become a commonplace of Biblical exposition that "the history of redemption itself is a typically progressive one" (Kuper), and is "in a manner impregnated with the prophetic element," so as to form a "part of a great plan which stretches from the fall of man to the first consummation of all things in glory; and, in so far as it reveals the mind of God toward man, carries a respect to the future not less than to the, present" (P. Fairbairn). It lies equally on the face of the New Testament allusions to the subject that its writers understood that the preparation of men to become vehicles of God's message to man was not of yesterday, but had its beginnings in the very origin of their being. The call by which Paul, for example, was made an apostle of Jesus Christ was sudden and apparently without antecedents; but it is precisely this Paul who reckons this call as only one step in a long process, the beginnings of which antedated his own existence: "But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me" (Gal, i. 15.16; cf. Jer. i. 5; Isa. xlix. 1.5). The recognition by the writers of the New Testament of the experiences of God's grace, which had been vouchsafed to them as an integral element in their fitting to be the bearers of His gospel to others, finds such pervasive expression that the only difficulty is to select from the mass the most illustrative passages. Such a statement as Paul gives in the opening verses of 2 Cor. is thoroughly typical. There he represents that he has been afflicted and comforted to the end that he might "be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith" he had himself been "comforted of God." For, he explains, "Whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which worketh in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer" (2 Cor. i. 4-6). It is beyond question, therefore, that the New Testament writers, when they declare the Scriptures to be the product of the Divine breath, and explain this as meaning that the writers of these Scriptures wrote them only as borne by the Holy Spirit in such a fashion that they spoke, not out of themselves, but "from God," are thinking of this operation of the Spirit only as the final act of God in the production of the Scriptures, superinduced upon a long series of processes, providential, gracious, miraculous, by which the matter of Scripture had been prepared for writing, and the men for writing it, and the writing of it had been actually brought to pass. It is this final act in the production of Scripture which is technically called "inspiration"; and inspiration is thus brought before us as, in the minds of the writers of the New Testament, that particular operation of God in the production of Scripture which takes effect at the very point of the writing of Scripture - understanding the term "writing" here as inclusive of all the processes of the actual composition of Scripture, the investigation of documents, the collection of facts, the excogitation of conclusions, the adaptation of exhortations as means to ends and the like - with the effect of giving to the resultant Scripture a specifically supernatural character, and constituting it a Divine, as well as human, book. Obviously the mode of operation of this Divine activity moving to this result is conceived, in full accord with the analogy of the Divine operations in other spheres of its activity, in providence and in grace alike, as confluent with the human activities operative in the case; as, in a word, of the nature of what has come to be known as "immanent action."

It will not escape observation that thus "inspiration" is made a mode of "revelation." We are often exhorted, to be sure, to distinguish sharply between "inspiration" and "revelation"; and the exhortation is just when "revelation" is taken in one of its narrower senses, of, say, an external manifestation of God, or of an immediate communication from God in words. But "inspiration" does not differ from "revelation" in these narrowed senses as genus from genus, but as a species of one genus differs from another. That operation of God which we call "inspiration," that is to say, that operation of the Spirit of God by which He "bears" men in the process of composing Scripture, so that they write, not of themselves, but "from God," is one of the modes in which God makes known to men His being, His will, His operations, His purposes. It is as distinctly a mode of revelation as any mode of revelation can be, and therefore it performs the same office which all revelation performs, that is to say, in the express words of Paul, it makes men wise, and makes them wise unto salvation. All "special " or "supernatural" revelation (which is redemptive in its very idea, and occupies a place as a substantial element in God's redemptive processes) has precisely this for its end; and Scripture, as a mode of the redemptive revelation of God, finds its fundamental purpose just in this: if the "inspiration" by which Scripture is produced renders it trustworthy and authoritative, it renders it trustworthy and authoritative only that it may the better serve to make men wise unto salvation. Scripture is conceived, from the point of view of the writers of the New Testament, not merely as the record of revelations, but as itself a part of the redemptive revelation of God; not merely as the record of the redemptive acts by which God is saving the world, but as itself one of these redemptive acts, having its own part to play in the great work of establishing and building up the kingdom of God. What gives it a place among the redemptive acts of God is its Divine origination, taken in its widest sense, as inclusive of all the Divine operations, providential, gracious and expressly supernatural, by which it has been made just what it is - a body of writings able to make wise unto salvation, and profitable for making the man of God perfect. What gives it its place among the modes of revelation is, however, specifically the culminating one of these Divine operations, which we call "Inspiration": that is to say, the action of the Spirit of God in so "bearing" its human authors in their work of producing Scripture, as that in these Scriptures they speak, not out of themselves, but "from God." It is this act by virtue of which the Scriptures may properly be called "God-breathed."

It has been customary among a certain school of writers to speak of the Scriptures, because thus "inspired," as a Divine-human book, and to appeal to the analogy of Our Lord's Divine-human personality to explain their peculiar qualities as such. The expression calls attention to an important fact, and the analogy holds good a certain distance. There are human and Divine sides to Scripture, and, as we cursorily examine it, we may perceive in it, alternately, traits which suggest now the one, now the other factor in its origin. But the analogy with Our Lord's Divine-human personality may easily be pressed beyond reason. There is no hypostatic union between the Divine and the human in Scripture; we cannot parallel the "inscripturation" of the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of the Son of God. The Scriptures are merely the product of Divine and human forces working together to produce a product in the production of which the human forces work under the initiation and prevalent direction of the Divine: the person of Our Lord unites in itself Divine and human natures, each of which retains its distinctness while operating only in relation to the other. Between such diverse things there can exist only a remote analogy; and, in point of fact, the analogy in the present instance amounts to no more than that in both cases Divine and human factors are involved, though very differently. In the one they unite to constitute a Divine-human person, in the other they cooperate to perform a Divine-human work. Even so distant an analogy may enable us, however, to recognize that, as, in the case of Our Lord's person, the human nature remains truly human while yet it can never fall into sin or error because it can never act out of relation with the Divine nature into conjunction with which it has been brought; so in the case of the production of Scripture by the conjoint action of human and Divine factors, the human factors have acted as human factors, and have left their mark on the product as such, and yet cannot have fallen into that error which we say it is human to fall into, because they have not acted apart from the Divine factors, by themselves, but only under their unerring guidance.

The New Testament testimony is to the Divine origin and qualities of "Scripture"; and "Scripture" to the writers of the New Testament was fundamentally, of course, the Old Testament. In the primary passage, in which we are told that "every" or "all Scripture" is "God-breathed," the direct reference is to the "sacred writings" which Timothy had had in knowledge since his infancy, and these were, of course, just the sacred books of the Jews (2 Tim. iii. 16). What is explicit here is implicit in all the allusions to inspired Scriptures in the New Testament. Accordingly, it is frequently said that our entire testimony to the inspiration of Scripture concerns the Old Testament alone. In many ways, however, this is overstated. Our present concern is not with the extent of "Scripture" but with the nature of "Scripture"; and we cannot present here the considerations which justify extending to the New Testament the inspiration which the New Testament writers attribute to the Old Testament. It will not be out of place, however, to point out simply that the New Testament writers obviously themselves made this extension. They do not for an instant imagine themselves, as ministers of a new covenant, less in possession of the Spirit of God than the ministers of the old covenant: they freely recognize, indeed, that they have no sufficiency of themselves, but they know that God has made them sufficient (2 Cor. iii. 5.6). They prosecute their work of proclaiming the gospel, therefore, in full confidence that they speak "by the Holy Spirit" (1 Pet. i. 12), to whom they attribute both the matter and form of their teaching (1 Cor. ii. 13). They, therefore, speak with the utmost assurance of their teaching (Gal. i. 7.8); and they issue commands with the completest authority (1 Thess. iv. 2.14; 2 Thess. iii. 6.12), making it, indeed, the test of whether one has the Spirit that he should recognize what they demand as commandments of God (1 Cor. xiv. 37). It would be strange, indeed, if these high claims were made for their oral teaching and commandments exclusively. In point of fact, they are made explicitly also for their written injunctions. It was "the things" which Paul was "writing," the recognition of which as commands of the Lord, he makes the test of a Spirit-led man (1 Cor. xiv. 37). It is his "word by this epistle," obedience to which he makes the condition of Christian communion (2 Thess. iii. 14). There seems involved in such an attitude toward their own teaching, oral and written, a claim on the part of the New Testament writers to something very much like the "inspiration" which they attribute to the writers of the Old Testament.

And all doubt is dispelled when we observe the New Testament writers placing the writings of one another in the same category of "Scripture" with the books of the Old Testament. The same Paul who, in 2 Tim. iii. 16, declared that 'every' or 'all scripture is God-breathed' had already written in 1 Tim. v. 18: "For the scripture saith, Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And, The laborer is worthy of his hire." The first clause here is derived from Deuteronomy and the second from the Gospel of Luke, though both are cited as together constituting, or better, forming part of the "Scripture" which Paul adduces as so authoritative as by its mere citation to end all strife. Who shall say that, in the declaration of the later epistle that "all" or "every" Scripture is Godbreathed, Paul did not have Luke, and, along with Luke, whatever other new books he classed with the old under the name of Scripture, in the back of his mind, along with those old books which Timothy had had in his hands from infancy? And the same Peter who declared that every "prophecy of scripture" was the product of men who spoke "from God," being 'borne' by the Holy Ghost (2 Pet. i. 21), in this same epistle (iii. 16), places Paul's Epistles in the category of Scripture along with whatever other books deserve that name. For Paul, says he, wrote these epistles, not out of his own wisdom, but "according to the wisdom given to him," and though there are some things in them hard to be understood, yet it is only "the ignorant and unstedfast" who wrest these difficult passages - as what else could be expected of men who wrest "also the other Scriptures" (obviously the Old Testament is meant) -"unto their own destruction" ? Is it possible to say that Peter could not have had these epistles of Paul also lurking somewhere in the back of his mind, along with "the other scriptures," when he told his readers that every "prophecy of scripture" owes its origin to the prevailing operation of the Holy Ghost? What must be understood in estimating the testimony of the New Testament writers to the inspiration of Scripture is that "Scripture" stood in their minds as the title of a unitary body of books, throughout the gift of God through His Spirit to His people; but that this body of writings was at the same time understood to be a growing aggregate, so that what is said of it applies to the new books which were being added to it as the Spirit gave them, as fully as to the old books which had come down to them from their hoary past. It is a mere matter of detail to determine precisely what new books were thus included by them in the category "Scripture." They tell us some of them themselves. Those who received them from their hands tell us of others. And when we put the two bodies of testimony together we find that they constitute just our New Testament. It is no pressure of the witness of the writers of the New Testament to the inspiration of the Scripture, therefore, to look upon it as covering the entire body of "Scriptures," the new books which they were themselves adding to this aggregate, as well as the old books which they had received as Scripture from the fathers. Whatever can lay claim by just right to the appellation of "Scripture," as employed in its eminent sense by those writers, can by the same just right lay claim to the "inspiration" which they ascribe to this Scripture."

LITERATURE. - J. Gerhard, "Loci Theolog.," Locus I; F. Turretin, "Instit. Theol.," Locus II; B. de Moor, "Comm. in J. Marckii Comp.," cap. ii; C. Hodge, "Syst. Theol.," New York, 1871, I, 151-86; Henry B. Smith, "The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," New York, 1855, new ed., Cincinnati, 1891; A. Kuyper, "Encyclopedie der heilige Godgeleerdheid," 1888-89, II, 347 ff., ET; "Enc of Sacred Theol.," New York, 1898, 341-563; also "De Schrift het woord Gods," Tiel, 1870; H. Bavinck, "Gereformeerde Dogmatiek2," Kampen, 1906, I, 406-527; R. Haldane, "The Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures Established," Edinburgh, 1830; J. T. Beck, "Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre," Stuttgart, 1838, 2d ed., 1870; A. G. Rudelbach, "Die Lehre von der Inspiration der heil. Schrift," Zeitschrift fur die gesammte Lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1840, 1, 1841, 1, 1842, 1; S. R. L. Gaussen, "Theopneustie ou inspiration pleniere des saintes ecritures2," Paris, 1842, ET by E. N. Kirk, New York, 1842; also "Theopneustia; the Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," David Scott's tr., reëdited and revised by B. W. Carr, with a preface by C. H. Spurgeon, London, 1888; William Lee, "The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," Donellan Lecture, 1852, New York, 1857; James Bannerman, "Inspiration: the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures," Edinburgh, 1865; F. L. Patton, "The Inspiration of the Scriptures," Philadelphia, 1869 (reviewing Lee and Bannerman); Charles Elliott, "A Treatise on the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures," Edinburgh, 1877; A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, "Inspiration," Presbyterian Review, April, 1881, also tract, Philadelphia, 1881; R. Watts, "The Rule of Faith and the Doctrine of Inspiration," Edinburgh, 1885; A. Cave, "The Inspiration of the OT Inductively Considered," London, 1888; B. Manly, "The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration," New York, 1888; W. Rohnert, "Die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift und ihre Bestreiter," Leipzig, 1889; A. W. Dieckhoff, "Die Inspiration und Irrthumlosigkeit der heiligen Schrift," Leipzig, 1891; J. Wichelhaus, "Die Lehre der heiligen Schrift," Stuttgart, 1892; J. Macgregor, "The Revelation and the Record," Edinburgh, 1893; J. Urquhart, "The Inspiration and Accuracy of the Holy Scriptures," London, 1895; C. Pesch, "De Inspiratione Sacrae Scripturae," Freiburg, 1906; James Orr, "Revelation and Inspiration," London, 1910.

Inspiration and Criticism¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Fathers and Brothers:

It is without doubt a very wise provision by which, in institutions such as this, an inaugural address is made a part of the ceremony of induction into the professorship. Only by the adoption of some such method could it be possible for you, as the guardians of this institution, responsible for the principles here inculcated, to give to each newly-called teacher an opportunity to publicly declare the sense in which he accepts your faith and signs your standards. Eminently desirable at all times, this seems particularly so now, when a certain looseness of belief (inevitable parent of looseness of practice) seems to have invaded portions of the Church of Christ, - not leaving even its ministry unaffected; - when there may be some reason to fear that "enlightened clerical gentlemen may sometimes fail to look upon subscription to creeds as our covenanting forefathers looked upon the act of putting their names to theological documents, and as mercantile gentlemen still look upon endorsement of bills."2 And how much more forcibly can all this be pled when he who appears before you at your call, is young, untried and unknown. I wish, therefore, to declare that I sign these standards not as a necessary form which must be submitted to, but gladly and willingly as the expression of a personal and cherished conviction; and, further, that the system taught in these symbols is the system which will be drawn out of the Scriptures in the prosecution of the teaching to which you have called me, - not, indeed, because commencing with that system the Scriptures can be made to teach it, but because commencing with the Scriptures I cannot make them teach anything else.

This much of personal statement I have felt it due both to you and myself to make at the outset; but having done with it, I feel free to turn from all personal concerns.

In casting about for a subject on which I might address you, I have thought I could not do better than to take up one of our precious old doctrines, much attacked of late, and ask the simple question: What seems the result of the attack? The doctrine I have chosen, is that of "Verbal Inspiration." But for obvious reasons I have been forced to narrow the discussion to a consideration of the inspiration of the New Testament only; and that solely as assaulted in the name of criticism. I wish to ask your attention, then, to a brief attempt to supply an answer to the question:

IS THE CHURCH DOCTRINE OF THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ENDANGERED BY THE ASSURED RESULTS OF MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM?

At the very outset, that our inquiry may not be a mere beating of the air, we must briefly, indeed, but clearly, state what we mean by the Church Doctrine. For, unhappily, there are almost as many theories of inspiration held by individuals as there are possible stages imaginable between the slightest and the greatest influence God could exercise on man. It is with the traditional doctrine of the Reformed Churches, however, that we are concerned; and that we understand to be simply this: - Inspiration is that extraordinary, supernatural influence (or, passively, the result of it,) exerted by the Holy Ghost on the writers of our Sacred Books, by which their words were rendered also the words of God, and, therefore, perfectly infallible. In this definition, it is to be noted: 1st. That this influence is a supernatural one - something different from the inspiration of the poet or man of genius. Luke's accuracy is not left by it with only the safeguards which "the diligent and accurate Suetonius" had. 2d. That it is an extraordinary influence - something different from the ordinary action of the Spirit in the conversion and sanctifying guidance of believers. Paul had some more prevalent safeguard against false-teaching than Luther or even the saintly Rutherford. 3d. That it is such an influence as makes the words written under its guidance, the words of God; by which is meant to be affirmed an absolute infallibility (as alone fitted to divine words), admitting no degrees whatever - extending to the very word, and to all the words. So that every part of Holy Writ is thus held alike infallibly true in all its statements, of whatever kind.

Fencing around and explaining this definition, it is to be remarked further:

lst. That it purposely declares nothing as to the mode of inspiration. The Reformed Churches admit, that this is inscrutable. They content themselves with defining carefully and holding fast the effects of the divine influence, leaving the mode of divine action by which it is brought about draped in mystery.

2d. It is purposely so framed as to distinguish it from revelation; - seeing that it has to do with the communication of truth not its acquirement.

3d. It is by no means to be imagined that it is meant to proclaim a mechanical theory of inspiration. The Reformed Churches have never held such a theory:3 though dishonest, careless, ignorant or over-eager controverters of its doctrine have often brought the charge. Even those special theologians in whose teeth such an accusation has been oftenest thrown (e. g., Gaussen) are explicit in teaching that the human element is never absent.⁴ The Reformed Churches hold, indeed, that every word of the Scriptures, without exception, is the word of God; but, alongside of that, they hold equally explicitly that every word is the word of man. And, therefore, though strong and uncompromising in resisting the attribution to the Scriptures of any failure in absolute truth and infallibility, they are before all others in seeking, and finding, and gazing on in loving rapture, the marks of the fervid impetuosity of a Paul - the tender saintliness of a John - the practical genius of a James, in the writings which through them the Holy Ghost has given for our guidance. Though strong and uncompromising in resisting all effort to separate the human and divine, they distance all competitors in giving honor alike to both by proclaiming in one breath that all is divine and all is human. As Gaussen so well expresses it, "We all hold that every verse, without exception, is from men, and every verse, without exception, is from God"; "every word of the Bible is as really from man as it is from God."

4th. Nor is this a mysterious doctrine - except, indeed, in the sense in which everything supernatural is mysterious. We are not dealing in puzzles, but in the plainest facts of spiritual experience. How close, indeed, is the analogy here with all that we know of the Spirit's action in other spheres! Just as the first act of loving faith by which the regenerated soul flows out of itself to its Saviour, is at once the consciously chosen act of that soul and the direct work of the Holy Ghost; so, every word indited under the analogous influence of inspiration was at one and the same time the consciously self-chosen word of the writer and the divinely-inspired word of the Spirit. I cannot help thinking that it is through failure to note and assimilate this fact, that the doctrine of verbal inspiration is so summarily set aside and so unthinkingly inveighed against by divines otherwise cautious and reverent. Once grasp this idea, and how impossible is it to separate in any measure the human and divine. It is all human - every word, and all divine. The human characteristics are to be noted and exhibited; the divine perfection and infallibility, no less.

This, then, is what we understand by the church doctrine: - a doctrine which claims that by a special, supernatural, extraordinary influence of the Holy Ghost, the sacred writers have been guided in their writing in such a way, as while their humanity was not superseded, it was yet so dominated that their words became at the same time the words of God, and thus, in every case and all alike, absolutely infallible.

I do not purpose now to undertake the proof of this doctrine. I purpose rather to ask whether, assuming it to have been accepted by the Church as apparently the true one, modern biblical criticism has in any of its results reached conclusions which should shake our previously won confidence in it. It is plain, however, that biblical criticism could endanger such a doctrine only by undermining it - by shaking the foundation on which it rests - in other words by attacking the proof which is relied on to establish it. We have, then, so far to deal with the proofs of the doctrine. It is evident, now, that such a doctrine must rest primarily on the claims of the sacred writers. In the very nature of the case, the writers themselves are the prime witnesses of the fact and nature of their inspiration. Nor does this argument run in a vicious circle. We do not assume inspiration in order to prove inspiration. We assume only honesty and sobriety. If a sober and honest writer claims to be inspired by God, then here, at least, is a phenomenon to be accounted for. It follows, however, that besides their claims, there are also secondary bases on which the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures rests, and by the shaking of which it can be shaken. These are: - first, the allowance of their claims by the contemporaries of the writers, - by those of their contemporaries, that is, who were in a position to judge of the truth of such claims. In the case of the New Testament writers this means the contemporary church, who had the test of truth in its hands: "Was God visibly with the Apostles, and did He seal their claims with His blessing on their work?" And, secondly, the absence of all contradictory phenomena in or about the writings themselves. If the New Testament writers, being sober and honest men, claim verbal inspiration, and this claim was allowed by the contemporary church, and their writings in no respect in their character or details negative it, then it seems idle to object to the doctrine of verbal inspiration on any critical grounds.

In order, therefore, to shake this doctrine, biblical criticism must show: either, that the New Testament writers do not claim inspiration; or, that this claim was rejected by the contemporary church; or, that it is palpably negatived by the fact that the books containing it are forgeries; or, equally clearly negatived by the fact that they contain along with the claim errors of fact or contradictions of statement. The important question before us to-day, then, is: Has biblical criticism proved any one of these positions?

I. Note, then, in the first place, that modern biblical criticism does not in any way weaken the evidence that the New Testament writers claim full, even verbal, inspiration. Quite the contrary. The careful revision of the text of the New Testament and the application to it of scientific principles of historico-grammatical exegesis, place this claim beyond the possibility of a doubt. This is so clearly the case, that even those writers who cannot bring themselves to admit the truth of the doctrines, yet not infrequently begin by admitting that the New Testament writers claim such an inspiration as is in it presupposed. Take, for instance, the twin statements of Richard Rothe: "To wish to maintain the inspiration of the subject-matter, without that of the words, is a folly; for everywhere are thoughts and words inseparable," and "It is clear that the orthodox theory of inspiration [by which he means the very strictest] is countenanced by the authors of the New Testament." If we approach the study of the New Testament under the guidance of and in the use of the methods of modern biblical science, more clearly than ever before is it seen that its authors make such a claim. Not only does our Lord promise a supernatural guidance to his Apostles, both at the beginning of their ministry (Matthew x. 19, 20) and at the close of his life (Mark xii. 11; Luke xxi. 12, cf. John xiv and xvi) but the New Testament writers distinctly claim divine authority. With what assurance do they speak - exhibiting the height of delirium, if not the height of authority. The historians betray no shadow of a doubt as to the exact truth of their every word, - a phenomenon hard to parallel elsewhere among accurate and truth-loving historians who commonly betray less and less assurance in proportion as they exhibit more and more painstaking care. The didactic writers claim an absolute authority in their teaching, and betray as little shadow of doubt as to the perfectly binding character of their words (II Cor. x. 7, 8). If opposed by an angel from heaven, the angel is indubitably wrong and accursed (Gal. i. 7, 8). Therefore, how freely they deal in commands (I Thes. iv. 2, 11; II Thes. iii. 6-14) ; commands, too, which they hold to be absolutely binding on all; so binding that it is the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize them as the commandments of God (I Cor. xiv. 37), and no Christian ought to company with those who reject them (II Thes. iii. 6-14). Nor is it doubtful that this authority is claimed specifically for the written word. In I Cor. xiv. 37, it is specifically "the things which I am writing" that must be recognized as the commands of the Lord; and so in II Thes. ii. 15; iii. 6-14, it is the teaching transmitted by letter as well as by word of mouth that is to be immediately and unquestionably received.

Now, on what is this immense claim of authority grounded? If a mere human claim, it is most astounding impudence. But that it is not a mere human claim, is specifically witnessed to. Paul claims to be but the transmitter of this teaching (II Thes. iii. 6; para,) ; it is, indeed, his own (II Thes. iii. 14, h`mw/n), but still, the transmitted word is God's word (I Thes. ii. 13). He speaks, indeed, and issues commands, but they are not his commands, but Christ's, in virtue of the fact that they are given through him by Christ (I Thes. iv. 2). The other writers exhibit the same phenomena. Peter distinctly claims that the Gospel was preached in (evn) the Holy Spirit (I Peter, i. 12); and John calls down a curse on those who would in any way alter his writing (Rev. xxii. 18, 19; cf. I John, v. 10). These, we submit, are strange phenomena if we are to judge that these writers professed no inspiration.

"But," we are asked, "is this all?" We answer, that we have but just begun. All that we have said is but a cushion for the specific proof to rest easily on. For here we wish to make two remarks:

1. The inspiration which is implied in these passages, is directly claimed elsewhere. We will now appeal, however, to but two passages. Look at I Cor. vii. 40, where the best and most scientific modern exegesis proves that Paul claimed for his "opinion" expressed in this letter direct divine inspiration, saying, "this is my opinion," and adding, not in modesty, or doubt, but in meiotic irony, "and it seems to me that I have the Spirit of God." If this interpretation be correct, and with the "it seems to me" and the very emphatic "I" staring us in the face, drawing the contrast so sharply between Paul and the impugners of his authority, it seems indubitably so; then it is clear that Paul claims here a direct divine inspiration in the expression of even his "opinion" in his letters. Again look for an instant at I Cor. ii. 13. "Which things, also we utter not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit; joining spiritual things with spiritual things;" where modern science, more clearly even than ancient faith, sees it stated that both the matter and the manner of this teaching are from the Holy Ghost - both the thoughts and the words - yes, the words themselves. "It is not meet," says the Apostle, "that the things taught by the Holy Ghost should be expressed in merely human words; there must be Spirit-given words to clothe the Spirit-given doctrines. Therefore, I utter these things not in the words taught by human wisdom - not even in the most wisely-chosen human words - but in those taught by the Spirit, joining thus with Spirit-given things (as was fit) only Spirit-given words." It is impossible to deny that here there is clearly taught a suggestio verborum. Nor will it do to say that this does not bear on the point at issue, seeing that lo,goj and not r`h/ma is the term used. Not only is even this subterfuge useless in the face of what we will have still to urge, but it is even meaningless here. No one supposes that the mere grammatical forms separately considered are inspired: the claim concerns words in their ordered sequence - in their living flow in the sentences - and this is just what is expressed by lo,goi. This passage thus stands before us distinctly claiming verbal inspiration. The two together seem reconcilable with nothing less far reaching than the church doctrine.

2. But we must turn to our second remark. It is this: The New Testament writers distinctly place each other's writings in the same lofty category in which they place the writings of the Old Testament; and as they indubitably hold to the full - even verbal - inspiration of the Old Testament, it follows that they claim the same verbal inspiration for the New. Is it doubted that the New Testament writers ascribe full inspiration to the Old Testament? Modern science does not doubt it; nor can anyone doubt it who will but listen to the words of the New Testament writers in the matter. The whole New Testament is based on the divinity of the Old, and its inspiration is assumed on every page. The full strength of the case, then, cannot be exhibited. It may be called to our remembrance, however, that not only do the New Testament writers deal with the Old as divine, but that they directly quote it as divine. Those very lofty titles, "Scripture," "The Scriptures," "The Oracles of God," which they give it, and the common formula of quotation, "It is written," by which they cite its words, alone imply their full belief in its inspiration. And this is the more apparent that it is evident that for them to say, "Scripture says," is equivalent to their saying, "God says," (Romans ix. 17; x. 19; Galatians iii. 8.) Consequently, they distinctly declare that its writers wrote in the Spirit (Matthew xxii. 43; cf. Luke xx. 42; and Acts ii. 24); the meaning of which is made clear by their further statement that God speaks their words (Matthew i. 22; ii. 15, etc.), even those not ascribed to God in the Old Testament itself (Acts xiii. 35; Hebrews viii. 8; i. 6, 7, 8; v. 5; Eph. iv. 8), thereby evincing the fact that what the human authors speak God speaks through their mouths (Acts iv. 25). Still more narrowly defining the doctrine, it is specifically stated that it is the Holy Ghost who speaks the written words of Scripture (Hebrews iii. 7) - yea, even in the narrative parts (Hebrews iv. 4). In direct accordance with these statements, the New Testament writers use the very words of the Old Testament as authoritative and "not to be broken." Christ, himself, so deals with a tense in Matthew xxii. 32, and twice elsewhere founds an argument on the words (John x. 34; Matthew xxii. 43); and it is in connection with one of these word arguments that his divine lips declare "the Scriptures cannot be broken." His Apostles follow his example (Galatians iii: 16). Still, further, we have, at least, two didactic statements in the New Testament, directly affirming the inspiration of the Old (II Timothy iii. 16, and II Peter i. 21). In one of these it is declared that every Scripture is God-inspired; in the other, that no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but borne along by the Holy Ghost it was that holy men of God spoke. It is, following the best results of modern critical exegesis, therefore, quite certain that the New Testament writers held the full verbal inspiration of the Old Testament. Now, they plainly place the New Testament books in the same category. The same Paul, who wrote in II Timothy, "Every Scripture is God-inspired," quotes in its twin letter, I Timothy, a passage from Luke's Gospel calling it "Scripture" (I Timothy, v. 18), - nay, more, - parallelizing it as equally Scripture with a passage from the Old Testament. And the same Peter, who gave us our other didactic statements, and in the same letter, does the same for Paul that Paul did for Luke, and that even more broadly, declaring (II Peter iii. 16) that all Paul's Epistles are to be considered as occupying the same level as the rest of the Scriptures. It is quite indisputable, then, that the New Testament writers claim full inspiration for the New Testament books.

Now none of these points are weakened in either meaning or reference by the application of the principles of critical exegesis. In every regard they are strengthened. We can be quite bold, therefore, in declaring that modern criticism does not set aside the fact that the New Testament writers claim the very fullest inspiration.

II. We must ask, then, secondly, if modern critical investigation has shown that this claim of inspiration was disallowed by the contemporaries of the New Testament writers. Here again our answer must be in the negative. The New Testament writings themselves bristle with the evidences that they expected and received a docile hearing; parties may have opposed them, but only parties. And again, all the evidence that exists coming down to us from the sub-apostolic church - be it more or less voluminous, yet such as it is admitted to be by the various schools of criticism - points to a very complete reception of the New Testament claims. No church writer of the time can be pointed out who made a distinction derogatory to the New Testament, between it and the Old Testament, the Divine authority of which latter, it is admitted, was fully recognized in the church. On the contrary, all of them treat the New Testament with the greatest respect, hold its teachings in the highest honor, and run the statement of their theology into its forms of words as if they held even the forms of its statements authoritative. They all know the difference between the authority exercised by the New Testament writers and that which they can lawfully claim. They even call the New Testament books, and that, as is now pretty well admitted, with the fullest meaning, "Scripture." Take a few examples: No result of modern criticism is more sure than that Clement of Rome, himself a pupil of Apostles, wrote a letter to the Corinthians in the latter years of the first century; and that we now possess that letter, its text witnessed to by three independent authorities and therefore to be depended on. That epistle exhibits all the above-mentioned characteristics, except that it does not happen to quote any New Testament text specifically as Scripture. It treats the New Testament with the greatest respect, it teaches for doctrines only what it teaches, it runs its statements into New Testament forms, it imitates the New Testament style, it draws a broad distinction between the authority with which Paul wrote and that which it can claim, it declares distinctly that Paul wrote " most certainly in a spirit-led way" (evp v avlhqei,aj pneumatikw/j. c. 47.) Again, even the most sceptical of schools place the Epistle of Barnabas in the first or at the very beginning of the second century, and it again exhibits these same phenomena, - moreover quoting Matthew definitely as Scripture. One of the latest triumphs of a most acute criticism has been the vindication of the genuineness of the seven short Greek letters of Ignatius, which are thus proved to belong to the very first years of the second century and to be the production again of one who knew Apostles. In them again we meet with the same phenomena. Ignatius even knows of a collected New Testament equal in authority to the Divinely inspired Old Testament. But we need not multiply detailed evidence; every piece of Christian writing which is even probably to be assigned to one who knew or might have known the Apostles, bears like testimony. This is absolutely without exception. They all treat the New Testament books as differentiated from all other writings, and no single voice can be adduced as raised against them. The very heretics bear witness to the same effect; anxious as they are to be rid of the teaching of these writings they yet hold them authoritative and so endeavor to twist their words into conformity with their errors. And if we follow the stream further down its course, the evidence becomes more and more abundant in direct proportion to the increasing abundance of the literary remains and their change from purely practical epistles or addresses to Jews and heathen to controversial treatises between Christian parties. It is exceedingly clear, then, that modern criticism has not proved that the contemporary church resisted the assumption of the New Testament writers or withstood their claim to inspiration: directly the contrary. Every particle of evidence in the case exhibits the apostolic church, not as disallowing, but as distinctly recognizing the absolute authority of the New Testament writings. In the brief compass of the extant fragments of the Christian literature of the first two decades of the second century we have Matthew and Ephesians distinctly quoted as Scripture, the Acts and Pauline Epistles specifically named as part of the Holy Bible, and the New Testament consisting of evangelic records and apostolic writings clearly made part of one sacred collection of books with the Old Testament.⁵ Let us bear in mind that the belief of the early church in the inspiration of the Old Testament is beyond dispute, and we will see that the meaning of all this is simply this: The apostolic church certainly accepted the New Testament books as inspired by God. Such are the results of critical enquiry into the opinions on this subject of the church writers standing next to the Apostles.

III. If then, the New Testament writers clearly claim verbal inspiration and the apostolic church plainly allowed that claim, any objection to this doctrine must proceed by attempting to undermine the claim itself. From a critical standpoint this can be done only in two ways: It may be shown that the books making it are not genuine and therefore not authentic, in which case they are certainly not trustworthy and their lofty claims must be set aside as part of the impudence of forgery. Or it may be shown that the books, as a matter of fact, fall into the same errors and contain examples of the same mistakes which uninspired writings are guilty of, - exhibit the same phenomena of inaccuracy and contradiction as they, - and therefore, of course, as being palpably fallible by their very character disprove their claims to infallibility. It is in these two points that the main strength of the opposition to the doctrine of verbal inspiration lies, - the first being urged by unbelievers, who object to any doctrine of inspiration, the second by believers, who object to the doctrine of plenary and universal inspiration. The question is: Has either point been made good?

1. In opposition to the first, then, we risk nothing in declaring that modern biblical criticism has not disproved the authenticity of a single book of our New Testament. It is a most assured result of biblical criticism that every one of the twenty-seven books which now constitute our New Testament is assuredly genuine and authentic. There is, indeed, much that arrogates to itself the name of criticism and has that honorable title carelessly accorded to it, which does claim to arrive at such results as set aside the authenticity of even the major part of the New Testament. One school would save five books only from the universal ruin. To this, however, true criticism opposes itself directly, and boldly proclaims every New Testament book authentic. But thus two claimants to the name of criticism appear, and the question arises, before what court can the rival claims be adjudicated? Before the court of simple common sense, it may be quickly answered. Nor is it impossible to settle once for all the whole dispute. By criticism is meant an investigation with three essential characteristics: (1) a fearless, honest mental abandonment, apart from presuppositions, to the facts of the case, (2) a most careful, complete and unprejudiced collection and examination of the facts, and (3) the most cautious care in founding inferences upon them. The absence of any one of these characteristics throws grave doubts on the results; while the acme of the uncritical is reached when in the place of these critical graces we find guiding the investigation that other trio, - bondage to preconceived opinion, - careless, incomplete or prejudiced collection and examination of the facts, - and rashness of inference. Now, it may well be asked, is that true criticism which starts with the presupposition that the supernatural is impossible, proceeds by a sustained effort to do violence to the facts, and ends by erecting a gigantic historical chimera - overturning all established history - on the appropriate basis of airy nothing? And, is not this a fair picture of the negative criticism of the day? Look at its history, - see its series of wild dreams, - note how each new school has to begin by executing justice on its predecessor. So Paulus goes down before Strauss, Strauss falls before Baur, and Baur before the resistless logic of his own negative successors. Take the grandest of them all, - the acutest critic that ever turned his learning against the Christian Scriptures, and it will require but little searching to discover that Baur has ruthlessly violated every canon of genuine criticism. And if this is true of him, what is to be said of the school of Kuenen which now seems to be in the ascendant? We cannot now follow theories like this into details. But on a basis of a study of those details we can remark without fear of successful contradiction that the history of modern negative, criticism is blotted all over and every page stained black with the proofs of work undertaken with its conclusion already foregone and prosecuted in a spirit that was blind to all adverse evidence.⁶ Who does not know, for example, of the sustained attempts made to pack the witness box against the Christian Scriptures? - the wild denials of evidence the most undeniable, - the wilder dragging into court of evidence the most palpably manufactured? Who does not remember the remarkable attempt to set aside the evidence arising from Barnabas' quotation of Matthew as Scripture, on the ground that the part of the epistle which contained it was extant only in an otherwise confessedly accurate Latin version; and when Tischendorf dragged an ancient Greek copy out of an Eastern monastery and vindicated the reading, who does not remember the astounding efforts then made to deny that the quotation was from Matthew, or to throw doubt on the early date of the epistle itself? Who does not know the disgraceful attempt made to manufacture, - yes simply to manufacture, - evidence against John's gospel, persevered in in the face of all manner of refutation until it seems at last to have received its death blow through one stroke of Dr. Lightfoot's trenchant pen on "the silence of Eusebius?"7 In every way, then, this criticism evinces itself as false.

But false as it is, its attacks must be tested and the opposition of true criticism to its results exhibited. The attack, then, proceeds on the double ground of internal and external evidence. It is claimed that the books exhibit such contradictions among themselves and errors in historical fact, as evince that they cannot be authentic. It is claimed, moreover, that external evidence such as would prove them to have existed in the Apostolic times is lacking. How does true criticism meet these attacks?

Joining issue first with the latter statement, sober criticism meets it with a categorical denial. It exhibits the fact that every New Testament book, except only the mites Jude, II and III John, Philemon and possibly II Peter, are quoted by the generation of writers immediately succeeding the Apostles, and are thereby proved to have existed in the apostolic times; and that even these four brief books which are not quoted by those earliest authors in the few and brief writings which have come down from them to us, are so authenticated afterwards as to leave no rational ground of doubt as to their authenticity.

It is admitted on all hands that there is less evidence for II Peter than for any other of our books. If the early date of II Peter then can be made good, the early date of all the rest follows a fortiori; and there can be no doubt but that sober criticism fails to find adequate grounds for rejecting II Peter from the circle of apostolic writings. It is an outstanding fact that at the beginning of the third century this epistle was well known; it is during the early years of that century that we meet with the first explicit mention of it, and then it is quoted in such a way as to exhibit the facts that it was believed to be Peter's and was at that time most certainly in the canon. What has to be accounted for, then, is how came it in the canon of the early third century? It was certainly not put there by those third century writers; their notices utterly forbid this. Then, it must have been already in it in the second century. But when in that century did it acquire this position? Can we believe that critics like Irenaeus, or Melito, or Dionysius would have allowed it to be foisted before their eyes into a collection they held all-holy? It could not, then, have first attained that entrance during the latter years of the second century; and that it must have been already in the New Testament, received and used by the great writers of the fourth quarter of the second century, seems scarcely open to doubt. Apart from this reasoning, indeed, this seems established; Clement of Alexandria certainly had the book, Irenaeus also in all probability possessed it. If, now, the book formed a part of the canon current in the fourth quarter of the second century, there can be little doubt but that it came from the bosom of the Apostolic circle. One has but to catch from Irenaeus, for instance, the grounds on which he received any book as scripture, to be convinced of this. The one and all-important sine-qua-non was that it should have been handed down from the fathers, the pupils of the Apostles, as the work of the Apostolic circle. And Irenaeus was an adequate judge as to whether this was the case; his immediate predecessor in the Episcopal office at Lyons was Pothinus, whose long life spanned the whole intervening time from the Apostles, and his teacher was Polycarp, who was the pupil of John. That a book formed a part of the New Testament of this period, therefore authenticates it as coming down from those elders who could bear personal witness to its authorship. This is one of the facts of criticism apart from noting which it cannot proceed. The question, then, is not: do we possess independently of this, sufficient evidence of the Petrine authorship of the book to place it in the canon? but: do we possess sufficient evidence against its Petrine authorship, to reject it from the canon of the fourth quarter of the second century authenticated as that canon as a whole is? The answer to the question cannot be doubtful when we remember that we have absolutely no evidence against the book; but, on the contrary, that all the evidence of whatever kind which is in existence goes to establish it. There is some slight reason to believe, for instance, that Clement of Rome had the letter, more that Hermas had it and much that Justin had it. There is also a good probability that the early author of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs had and used it. Any one of these references, independently of all the rest, would, if made good, throw the writing of the book back into the first century. Each supports the others, and the sum of the probabilities raised by all, is all in direct support of the inference drawn from the reception of the book by later generations, so that there seems to be really no room for reasonable doubt but that the book rightly retains its position in our New Testament. This conclusion gains greatly in strength when we compare the data on which it rests, with what is deemed sufficient to authenticate any other ancient writing. We find at least two most probable allusions to II Peter within a hundred years after its composition, and before the next century passes away we find it possessed by the whole church and that as a book with a secured position in a collection super-authenticated as a whole. Now, Herodotus, for instance, is but once quoted in the century which followed its composition, but once in the next, not at all in the next, only twice in the next, and not until the fifth century after its composition is it as fully quoted as II Peter during its second century. Yet who doubts the genuineness of the histories of Herodotus? Again the first distinct quotation from Thucydides does not occur until quite two centuries after its composition; while Tacitus is first cited nearly a century after his death, by Tertullian. Yet no one can reasonably doubt the genuineness of the histories of either Thucydides or Tacitus.⁸ We hazard nothing then, in declaring that no one can reasonably doubt the authenticity of the better authenticated II Peter.

If now such a conclusion is critically tenable in the case of II Peter, what is to be said of the rest of the canon? There are some six writings which have come down to us, which were written within twenty years after the death of John; these six brief pieces alone, as we have said, prove the prior existence of the whole New Testament, with the exception of Jude, II and III John, Philemon and (possibly) II Peter, and the writers of the succeeding years vouch for and multiply their evidence. In the face of such contemporary testimony as this, negative criticism cannot possibly deny the authenticity of our books. A strenuous effort has consequently been made to break the force of this testimony. The genuineness of these witnessing documents themselves has been attacked or else an attempt has been made to deny that their quotations are from the New Testament books. Neither the one effort nor the other, however, has been or can be successful. And yet with what energy have they been prosecuted! We have already seen what wild strivings were wasted in an attempt to get rid of Barnabas' quotation of Matthew. That whole question is now given up; it is admitted that the quotation is from Matthew; and it is admitted that Barnabas was written in the immediately sub-apostolic times. But Barnabas quotes not only Matthew, but I Corinthians and Ephesians, and in Keim's opinion witnesses also to the prior existence of John. This may be taken as a type of the whole controversy. The references to the New Testament books in the Apostolic fathers are too plain to be disputed and it is simply the despair of criticism that is exhibited by the invention of elaborate theories of accidental coincidences or of endless series of hypothetical books to which to assign them. The quotations are too numerous, too close, and glide too imperceptibly and regularly from mere adoption of phrases into accurate citations of authorities, to be explained away. They therefore stand, and prove that the authors of these writings already knew the New Testament books and esteemed them authoritative.

Nor has the attempt to deny the early date of these witnessing writers fared any better. The mere necessity of the attempt is indeed fatal to the theory it is meant to support; if to exhibit the unauthenticity of the New Testament books, we must hold all subsequent writings unauthentic too, it seems plain that we are on a false path. And what violence is done in the attempt! For instance, the Epistle of Polycarp witnesses to the prior existence of Matthew, Luke, Acts, eleven Epistles of Paul, I Peter and I John; and as Polycarp was a pupil of John, his testimony is very strong. It must then be got rid of at all hazards. But Irenaeus was Polycarp's pupil, and Irenaeus explicitly cites this letter and declares it to be Polycarp's genuine production; and no one from his time to ours has found cause to dispute his statement until it has become necessary to be rid of the testimony of the letter to our canon. But if Polycarp's letter be genuine, it sets its own date and witnesses in turn to the letters of Ignatius, which themselves bear internal testimony to their own early date; and these letters of Ignatius testify not only to the prior individual existence of Matthew, John, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, I Thessalonians and I John; but also to the prior existence of an authoritative Divinely-inspired New Testament. This is but a specimen of the linked character of our testimony. Not only is it fairly abundant, but it is so connected by evidently undesigned, indeed, but yet indetachable articulations, that to set aside any one important piece of it usually necessitates such a wholesale attack on the literature of the second century as to amount to a reductio ad absurdum. We may, then, boldly formulate as our conclusion that external evidence imperiously forbids the dethronement of any New Testament book from its place in our canon.

What, then, are we to do with the internal evidence that is relied upon by the negative school? What, but set it summarily aside also? It amounts to a twofold claim: (1.) The sacred writers are hopelessly inconsistent with one another, and (2.) they are at variance with contemporary history. Of course, disharmony between the four gospels, and between Acts and the Epistles is what is mainly relied on under the first point, and it must be admitted that much learning and acuteness has been expended on the effort to make out this disharmony. But it is to be noted: (1.) That even were it admitted up to the full extent claimed, it would be no proof of unauthenticity; it would be no more than that found between secular historians admitted to be authentic, when narrating the same actions from different points of view. And (2.) in no case has it been shown that disharmony must be admitted. No case can be adduced where a natural mode of harmonizing cannot be supplied, and it is a reasonable principle, recognized among critics of secular historians, that two writers must not be held to be contradictory where any natural mode of harmonizing can be imagined. Otherwise it amounts to holding that we know fully and thoroughly all the facts of the case, - better even than eye-witnesses seem ever to know them. In order to gain any force at all, therefore, for this objection, both the extent and degree of the disharmony has been grossly exaggerated. Take an example: It is asserted that the two accounts (in Matthew and Luke) of the events accompanying our Lord's birth are mutually exclusive. But even a cursory examination will show that there is not a single contradiction between them. How then is the charge of disharmony supported? In two ways: First, by erecting silence into contradiction. Since Matthew does not mention the visit of the shepherds, he is said to contradict Luke who does. Since Luke does not mention the flight into Egypt he is said to contradict Matthew who does. And secondly, by a still more astounding method which proceeds by first confounding two distinct transactions and then finding irreconcilable contradictions between them. Thus Strauss calmly enumerates no less than five discrepancies between Matthew's account of the visit of the angel to Joseph and Luke's account of the visit of the angel to Mary. On the same principle we might prove both Motley's "Dutch Republic" and Kingslake's "Crimean War" to be unbelievable histories by gravely setting ourselves to find "discrepancies" between the account in the one of the brilliant charges of Egmont at St. Quentin and the account in the other of the great charge of the six hundred at Balaclava. This is not an unfair example of the way in which the New Testament is dealt with in order to exhibit its internal disharmony. We are content, however, that it should pass for an extreme case. For it will suffice for our present purpose to be able to say that if the New Testament books are to be proved unauthentic by their internal contradictions, by parity of reasoning the world has never yet seen an authentic writing. In fact so marvelously are our books at one that, leaving the defensive, the harmonist may take the offensive and claim this unwonted harmony as one of the chief evidences of Christianity. Paley has done this for the Acts and Epistles; and it can be done also for the Gospels.

Perhaps we ought to content ourselves with merely repeating this same remark in reference to the charge that the New Testament writers are at variance with contemporary history. So far is this from being true that one of the strongest evidences for Christianity is the utter accord with the minute details of contemporary history which is exhibited in its records. There has been no lack indeed of "instances" of disaccord confidently put forth; but in every case the charge has recoiled on the head of its maker. Thus, the mention of Lysanias in Luke iii. 1 was long held the test case of such inaccuracy and sceptics were never weary of dwelling upon it; until it was pointed out that the whole "error" was not Luke's but - the sceptic's. Josephus mentions this Lysanias and in such a way that he should not have been confounded with his older namesake; and inscriptions have been brought to light which explicitly assign him to just Luke's date. And so this stock example vanishes into the air from which it was made. The others have met a like fate. The detailed accuracy of the New Testament writers in historical matters is indeed wonderful, and is more and more evinced by every fresh investigation. Every now and then a monument is dug up, touching on some point adverted to in the New Testament; and in every case only to corroborate the New Testament. Thus not only has Luke long ago been proved accurate in calling the ruler of Cyprus a "proconsul," but Mr. Cesnola has lately brought to light a Cyprian inscription which mentions that same Proconsul Paulus whom Luke represents Paul as finding on the island. - ("Cyprus," p. 425.) Let us but consider the unspeakable complication of the political history of those times; - the frequent changes of provinces from senatorial to imperial and vice versa, - the many alterations of boundaries and vacillations of relation to the central power at Rome, - which made it the most complicated period the world has ever seen, and renders it the most dangerous ground possible for a forger to enter upon; - and how impossible is it to suppose that a book whose every most incidental notice of historical circumstances is found after most searching criticism to be minutely correct, - which has threaded all this labyrinth with firm and unfaltering step, - was the work of unlearned forgers, writing some hundred years after the facts they record. Confessedly accurate Roman historians have not escaped error here; even Tacitus himself has slipped.⁹ To think that a second century forger could have walked scathless among all the pitfalls that gaped around him, is like believing a blind man could thread a row of a hundred cambric needles at a thrust. If we merely apply the doctrine of probabilities to the accuracy of these New Testament writers they are proved to be the work of eyewitnesses and wholly authentic.¹⁰

We can, then, at the end, but repeat the statement with which we began: Modern negative criticism neither on internal nor on external grounds has been able to throw any doubt on the authenticity of a single book of our New Testament. Their authenticity, accuracy and honesty are super-vindicated by every new investigation. They are thus proved to be the productions of sober, honest, accurate men; they claim verbal inspiration; their claim was allowed by the contemporary church. So far modern criticism has gone step by step with traditional faith. There remains but one critical ground on which the doctrine we are considering can be disputed. Do these books in their internal character negative their claim? Are the phenomena of the writings in conflict with the claim they put forth? We must, then, in conclusion consider this last refuge of objection.

2. Much has been already said incidentally which bears on this point; but something more is needed. An amount of accuracy which will triumphantly prove a book to be genuine and surely authentic, careful and honest, may fall short of proving it to be the very word of God. The question now before us is: Granting the books to be in the main accurate, are they found on the application of a searching criticism to bear such a character as will throw destructive objection in the way of the dogma that they are verbally from God? This inquiry opens a broad - almost illimitable - field, utterly impossible to treat fully here. It may be narrowed somewhat, however, by a few natural observations. (1). It is to be remembered that we are not defending a mechanical theory of inspiration. Every word of the Bible is the word of God according to the doctrine we are discussing; but also and just as truly, every word is the word of a man. This at once sets aside as irrelevant a large number of the objections usually brought from the phenomena of the New Testament against its verbal inspiration. No finding of traces of human influence in the style, wording or forms of statement or argumentation touches the question. The book is throughout the work of human writers and is filled with the signs of their handiwork. This we admit on the threshold; we ask what is found inconsistent with its absolute accuracy and truth. (2). It is to be remembered, again, that no objection touches the question, that is obtained by pressing the primary sense of phrases or idioms. These are often false; but they are a necessary part of human speech. And the Holy Ghost in using human speech, used it as He found it. It cannot be argued then that the Holy Spirit could not speak of the sun setting, or call the Roman world "the whole world." The current sense of a phrase is alone to be considered; and if men so spoke and were understood correctly in so speaking, the Holy Ghost, speaking their speech would also so speak. No objection then is in point which turns on a pressure of language. Inspiration is a means to an end and not an end in itself; if the truth is conveyed accurately to the ear that listens to it, its full end is obtained. (3). And we must remember again that no objection is valid which is gained by overlooking the prime question of the intentions and professions of the writer. Inspiration, securing absolute truth, secures that the writer shall do what he professes to do; not what he does not profess. If the author does not profess to be quoting the Old Testament verbatim, - unless it can be proved that he professes to give the ipsissima verba, - then no objection arises against his verbal inspiration from the fact that he does not give the exact words. If an author does not profess to report the exact words of a discourse or a document - if he professes to give, or it is enough for his purposes to give, an abstract or general account of the sense or the wording, as the case may be, - then it is not opposed to his claim to inspiration that he does not give the exact words. This remark sets aside a vast number of objections brought against verbal inspiration by men who seem to fancy that the doctrine supposes men to be false instead of true to their professed or implied intention. It sets aside, for instance, all objection against the verbal inspiration of the Gospels, drawn from the diversity of their accounts of words spoken by Christ or others, written over the cross, etc. It sets aside also all objection raised from the freedom with which the Old Testament is quoted, so long as it cannot be proved that the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament in a different sense from that in which it was written, in cases where the use of the quotation turns on this change of sense. This cannot be proved in a single case.

The great majority of the usual objections brought against the verbal inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures from their phenomena, being thus set aside, the way is open to remarking further, that no single argument can be brought from this source against the church doctrine which does not begin by proving an error in statement or contradiction in doctrine or fact to exist in these sacred pages. I say, that does not begin by proving this. For if the inaccuracies are apparent only, - if they are not indubitably inaccuracies, - they do not raise the slightest presumption against the full, verbal inspiration of the book. Have such errors been pointed out? That seems the sole question before us now. And any sober criticism must answer categorically to it, No! It is not enough to point to passages difficult to harmonize; they cannot militate against verbal inspiration unless it is not only impossible for us to harmonize them, but also unless they are of such a character that they are clearly contradictory, so that if one be true the other cannot by any possibility be true. No such case has as yet been pointed out. Why should the New Testament harmonics be dealt with on other principles than those which govern men in dealing with like cases among profane writers? There, it is a first principle of historical science that any solution which affords a possible method of harmonizing any two statements is preferable to the assumption of inaccuracy or error - whether those statements are found in the same or different writers. To act on any other basis, it is clearly acknowledged, is to assume, not prove, error. We ask only that this recognized principle be applied to the New Testament. Who believes that the historians who record the date of Alexander's death - some giving the 28th, some the 30th of the month - are in contradiction?¹¹ And if means can be found to harmonize them, why should not like cases in the New Testament be dealt with on like principles? If the New Testament writers are held to be independent and accurate writers, - as they are by both parties in this part of our argument, - this is the only rational rule to apply to their writings; and the application of it removes every argument against verbal inspiration drawn from assumed disharmony. Not a single case of disharmony can be proved.

The same principle, and with the same results, may be applied to the cases wherein it is claimed that the New Testament is in disharmony with the profane writers of the times, or other contemporary historical sources. But it is hardly necessary to do so. At the most, only three cases of even possible errors in this sphere can be now even plausibly claimed: the statements regarding the taxing under Quirinius, the revolt under Theudas, and the lordship of Aretas over Damascus. But Zumpt's proof that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria, the first time just after our Lord's birth, sets the first of these aside; whereas the other two, while not corroborated by distinct statements from other sources, yet are not excluded either. Room is found for the insignificant revolt of this Theudas - who is not to be confounded with his later and more important namesake - in Josephus' statement that at this time there were "ten thousand" revolts not mentioned by him. And the lordship of Aretas over Damascus is rendered very probable by what we know from other sources of the posture of affairs in that region, as well as by the significant absence of Roman-Damascene coinage for just this period. Even were the New Testament writers in direct conflict in these or in other statements, with profane sources, it would still not be proven that the New Testament was in error. There would still be an equal chance, to say the least (much too little as it is), that the other sources were in error. But it is never in such conflict; and, therefore, cannot be charged with having fallen into historical error, unless we are prepared to hold that the New Testament writers are not to be believed in any statement which cannot be independently of it proved true; in other words, unless it be assumed beforehand to be untrustworthy. This, again, is to assume, not prove error. Not a single case of error can be proved.

We cannot stop to mention even the fact that no doctrinal contradictions, or scientific errors can be proved. The case stands or falls confessedly on the one question: Are the New Testament writers contradictory to each other or to other sources of information in their record of historical or geographical facts? This settled, indubitably all is settled. We repeat, then, that all the fierce light of criticism which has so long been beating upon their open pages has not yet been able to settle one indubitable error on the New Testament writers. This being so, no argument against their claim to write under a verbal inspiration from God can be drawn from the phenomena of their writings. No phenomena can be pled against verbal inspiration except errors, - no error can be proved to exist within the sacred pages; that is the argument in a nut-shell. Such being the result of the strife which has raged all along the line for decades of years, it cannot be presumptuous to formulate our conclusion here as boldly as after the former heads of discourse: - Modern criticism has absolutely no valid argument to bring against the church doctrine of verbal inspiration, drawn from the phenomena of Scripture. This seems indubitably true.

It is, indeed, well for Christianity that it is. For, if the phenomena of the writings were such as to negative their distinct claim to full inspiration, we cannot conceal from ourselves that much more than their verbal inspiration would have to be given up. If the sacred writers were not trustworthy in such a witness-bearing, where would they be trustworthy? If they, by their performance, disproved their own assertions, it is plain that not only would these assertions be thus proven false, but, also, by the same stroke the makers of the assertions convicted of either fanaticism or dishonesty. It seems very evident, then, that there is no standing ground between the two theories of full verbal inspiration and no inspiration at all. Gaussen is consistent; Strauss is consistent: but those who try to stand between! It is by a divinely permitted inconsistency that they can stand at all. Let us know our position. If the New Testament, claiming full inspiration, did exhibit such internal characteristics as should set aside this claim, it would not be a trustworthy guide to salvation. But on the contrary, since all the efforts of the enemies of Christianity - eager to discover error by which they might convict the precious word of life of falsehood - have proved utterly vain, the Scriptures stand before us authenticated as from God. They are, then, just what they profess to be; and criticism only secures to them the more firmly the position they claim. Claiming to be verbally inspired, that claim was allowed by the church which received them, - their writers approve themselves sober and honest men, and evince the truth of their claim, by the wonder of their performance. So, then, gathering all that we have attempted to say into one point, we may say that modern biblical criticism has nothing valid to urge against the church doctrine of verbal inspiration, but that on the contrary it puts that doctrine on a new and firmer basis and secures to the church Scriptures which are truly divine. Thus, although nothing has been urged formally as a proof of the doctrine, we have arrived at such results as amount to a proof of it. If the sacred writers clearly claim verbal inspiration and every phenomenon supports that claim, and all critical objections break down by their own weight, how can we escape admitting its truth? What further proof do we need?

With this conclusion I may fitly close. But how can I close without expression of thanks to Him who has so loved us as to give us so pure a record of His will, - God-given in all its parts, even though cast in the forms of human speech, - infallible in all its statements, - divine even to its smallest particle! I am far from contending that without such an inspiration there could be no Christianity. Without any inspiration we could have had Christianity; yea, and men could still have heard the truth, and through it been awakened, and justified, and sanctified and glorified. The verities of our faith would remain historically proven true to us - so bountiful has God been in his fostering care - even had we no Bible; and through those verities, salvation. But to what uncertainties and doubts would we be the prey! - to what errors, constantly begetting worse errors, exposed! - to what refuges, all of them refuges of lies, driven! Look but at those who have lost the knowledge of this infallible guide: see them evincing man's most pressing need by inventing for themselves an infallible church, or even an infallible Pope. Revelation is but half revelation unless it be infallibly communicated; it is but half communicated unless it be infallibly recorded. The heathen in their blindness are our witnesses of what becomes of an unrecorded revelation. Let us bless God, then, for His inspired word! And may He grant that we may always cherish, love and venerate it, and conform all our life and thinking to it! So may we find safety for our feet, and peaceful security for our souls.

Endnotes:

The same points may be found discussed in "The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration," read at the Summer School of the Amer. Inst. of Christian Philosophy, July 7, 1893. Inaugural Address delivered upon the occasion of Dr. Warfield's induction into the Chair of New Testament Literature and Exegesis in the Western Theological Seminary.

Peter Bayne in "The Puritan Revolution."

See Dr. C. Hodge's "Systematic Theology," page 157, Vol. I.

Cf. Gaussen's "Theopneusty," New York, 1842; pp. 34, 36, 44 seq. et passim. In these passages he explicitly declares that the human element is never absent. Yet he has been constantly misunderstood: thus, Van Oosterzee ("Dog.," i. p. 202), Dorner ("Protestant Theo.," ii. 477) and even late English and American writers who, if no others, should have found it impossible to ascribe a mechanical theory to a man who had abhorrently repudiated it in an English journal and in a note prefixed to the subsequent English editions of his work. (See: "It is Written," London: Bagster & Sons, 3d edition, pp. i-iv.) In that notice he declares that he wishes "loudly to disavow" this theory, "that he feels the greatest repugnance to it," "that it is gratuitously attributed to him," "that he has never, for a single moment, entertained the idea of keeping it," etc. Yet so late a writer as President Bartlett, of Dartmouth (Princeton Review, January, 1880, p. 34), can still use Gaussen as an example of the mechanical theory. Gaussen's book ought never to have been misunderstood; it is plain and simple. The cause of the constant misunderstanding, however, is doubtless to be found in the fact that his one object is to give a proof of the existence of an everywhere present divine element in the Scriptures, - not to give a rounded statement of the doctrine of inspiration. He has, therefore, dwelt on the divinity, and only incidentally adverted to the humanity exhibited in its pages. Gaussen may serve us here as sufficient example of the statement in the text. The doctrine stated in the text is the doctrine taught by all the representative theologians in our own church.

See Barn, 4, Poly. 12. Test. xii., Patt. Benj. 10. Ign. Phil. 5, 8, etc.

We hear much of "apologists" undertaking critical study with such pre-conceived theories as render the conclusion foregone. Perhaps this is sometimes true, but it is not so necessarily. A Theist, believing that there is a personal God, is open to the proof as to whether any particular message claiming to be a revelation is really from him or not, and according to the proof, he decides. A Pantheist or Materialist begins by denying the existence of a personal God, and hence the possibility of the supernatural. If he begins the study of an asserted revelation, his conclusion is necessarily foregone. An honest Theist, thus, is open to evidence either way; an honest Pantheist or Materialist is not open to any evidence for the supernatural. See some fine remarks on this subject by Dr. Westcott, Contemporary Review, xxx. p. 1070.

Contemporary Review, xxv. p. 169.

See Rawlinson's "Hist. Evid.," p. 370 f.

Cf. "Annal," xi. p. 23.

See this slightly touched on by Dr. Peabody, Princeton Rev., March, 1880.

For methods by which these are harmonized, see Lee "Inspiration," p. 350.

The Inspiration of the Bible¹

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

THE subject of the Inspiration of the Bible is one which has been much confused in recent discussion. He who, seeking to learn the truth, should gather about him the latest treatises, hearing such titles as, "Inspiration, and other Lectures," "Inspiration and the Bible," "What is Inspiration?" "How did God inspire the Bible?" "The Oracles of God?"2 - would find himself led by them in every conceivable direction at once. No wonder if he should stand stock-still in the midst of his would-be guides, confounded by the Babel of voices. The old formula, quot homines tot sententiæ, seems no longer adequate. Wherever five "advanced thinkers" assemble, at least six theories as to inspiration are likely to be ventilated. They differ in every conceivable point, or in every conceivable point save one. They agree that inspiration is less pervasive and less determinative than has heretofore been thought, or than is still thought in less enlightened circles. They agree that there is less of the truth of God and more of the error of man in the Bible than Christians have been wont to believe. They agree accordingly that the teaching of the Bible may be, in this, that, or the other, - here, there, or elsewhere, - safely neglected or openly repudiated. So soon as we turn to the constructive side, however, and ask wherein the inspiration of the Bible consists; how far it guarantees the trustworthiness of the Bible's teaching; in what of its elements is the Bible a divinely safeguarded guide to truth: the concurrence ends and hopeless dissension sets in. They agree only in their common destructive attitude towards some higher view of the inspiration of the Bible, of the presence of which each one seems supremely conscious.

It is upon this fact that we need first of all to fix our attention. It is not of the variegated hypotheses of his fellow-theorizers, but of some high doctrine of inspiration, the common object of attack of them all, that each new theorizer on the subject of inspiration is especially conscious, as standing over against him, with reference to which he is to orient himself, and against the claims of which he is to defend his new hypothesis. Thus they themselves introduce us to the fact that over against the numberless discordant theories of inspiration which vex our time, there stands a well-defined church-doctrine of inspiration. This church-doctrine of inspiration differs from the theories that would fain supplant it, in that it is not the invention nor the property of an individual, but the settled faith of the universal church of God; in that it is not the growth of yesterday, but the assured persuasion of the people of God from the first planting of the church until today; in that it is not a protean shape, varying its affirmations to fit every new change in the ever-shifting thought of men, but from the beginning has been the church's constant and abiding conviction as to the divinity of the Scriptures committed to her keeping. It is certainly a most impressive fact, - this well-defined, aboriginal, stable doctrine of the church as to the nature and trustworthiness of the Scriptures of God, which confronts with its gentle but steady persistence of affirmation all the theories of inspiration which the restless energy of unbelieving and half-believing speculation has been able to invent in this agitated nineteenth century of ours. Surely the seeker after the truth in the matter of the inspiration of the Bible may well take this church-doctrine as his starting-point.

What this church-doctrine is, it is scarcely necessary minutely to describe. It will suffice to remind ourselves that it looks upon the Bible as an oracular book, - as the Word of God in such a sense that whatever it says God says, - not a book, then, in which one may, by searching, find some word of God, but a book which may be frankly appealed to at any point with the assurance that whatever it may be found to say, that is the Word of God. We are all of us members in particular of the body of Christ which we call the church: and the life of the church, and the faith of the church, and the thought of the church are our natural heritage. We know how, as Christian men, we approach this Holy Book, - how unquestioningly we receive its statements of fact, bow before its enunciations of duty, tremble before its threatenings, and rest upon its promises. Or, if the subtle spirit of modern doubt has seeped somewhat into our hearts, our memory will easily recall those happier days when we stood a child at our Christian mother's knee, with lisping lips following the words which her slow finger traced upon this open page, - words which were her support in every trial and, as she fondly trusted, were to be our guide throughout life. Mother church was speaking to us in that maternal voice, commending to us her vital faith in the Word of God. How often since then has it been our own lot, in our turn, to speak to others all the words of this life! As we sit in the midst of our pupils in the Sabbath-school, or in the centre of our circle at home, or perchance at some bedside of sickness or of death; or as we meet our fellow-man amid the busy work of the world, hemmed in by temptation or weighed down with care, and would fain put beneath him some firm support and stay: in what spirit do we turn to this Bible then? with what confidence do we commend its every word to those whom we would make partakers of its comfort or of its strength? In such scenes as these is revealed the vital faith of the people of God in the surety and trustworthiness of the Word of God.

Nor do we need to do more than remind ourselves that this attitude of entire trust in every word of the Scriptures has been characteristic of the people of God from the very foundation of the church. Christendom has always reposed upon the belief that the utterances of this book are properly oracles of God. The whole body of Christian literature bears witness to this fact. We may trace its stream to its source, and everywhere it is vocal with a living faith in the divine trustworthiness of the Scriptures of God in every one of their affirmations. This is the murmur of the little rills of Christian speech which find their tenuous way through the parched heathen land of the early second century. And this is the mighty voice of the great river of Christian thought which sweeps through the ages, freighted with blessings for men. Dr. Sanday, in his recent Bampton Lectures on "Inspiration" - in which, unfortunately, he does not teach the church-doctrine - is driven to admit that not only may "testimonies to the general doctrine of inspiration" from the earliest Fathers, "be multiplied to almost any extent; but [that] there are some which go further and point to an inspiration which might be described as 'verbal"'; "nor does this idea," he adds, "come in tentatively and by degrees, but almost from the very first."3 He might have spared the adverb "almost." The earliest writers know no other doctrine. If Origen asserts that the Holy Spirit was co-worker with the Evangelists in the composition of the Gospel, and that, therefore, lapse of memory, error or falsehood was impossible to them,⁴ and if Irenaeus, the pupil of Polycarp, claims for Christians a clear knowledge that " he Scriptures are perfect, seeing that they are spoken by God's Word and his Spirit";⁵ no less does Polycarp, the pupil of John, consider the Scriptures the very voice of the Most High, and pronounce him the first-born of Satan, "whosoever perverts these oracles of the Lord."6 Nor do the later Fathers know a different doctrine. Augustine, for example, affirms that he defers to the canonical Scriptures alone among books with such reverence and honor that he most "firmly believes that no one of their authors has erred in anything, in writing."7 To precisely the same effect did the Reformers believe and teach. Luther adopts these words of Augustine's as his own, and declares that the whole of the Scriptures are to be ascribed to the Holy Ghost, and therefore cannot err.⁸ Calvin demands that whatever is propounded in Scripture, “without exception," shall be humbly received by us, - that the Scriptures as a whole shall be received by us with the same reverence which we give to God, "because they have emanated from him alone, and are mixed with nothing human."9 The saintly Rutherford, who speaks of the Scriptures as a more sure word than a direct oracle from heaven,¹⁰ and Baxter, who affirms that "all that the holy writers have recorded is true (and no falsehood in the Scriptures but what is from the errors of scribes and translators),"11 hand down this supreme trust in the Scripture word to our own day - to our own Charles Hodge and Henry B. Smith, the one of whom asserts that the Bible "gives us truth without error,"12 and the other, that "all the books of the Scripture are equally inspired; . . . all alike are infallible in what they teach; . . . their assertions must be free from error."13 Such testimonies are simply the formulation by the theologians of each age of the constant faith of Christians throughout all ages.

If we would estimate at its full meaning the depth of this trust in the Scripture word, we should observe Christian men at work upon the text of Scripture. There is but one view-point which will account for or justify the minute and loving pains which have been expended upon the text of Scripture, by the long line of commentators that has extended unbrokenly from the first Christian ages to our own. The allegorical interpretation which rioted in the early days of the church was the daughter of reverence for the biblical word; a spurious daughter you may think, but none the less undeniably a direct offspring of the awe with which the sacred text was regarded as the utterances of God, and, as such, pregnant with inexhaustible significance. The patient and anxious care with which the Bible text is scrutinized today by scholars, of a different spirit no doubt from those old allegorizers, but of equal reverence for the text of Scripture, betrays the same fundamental viewpoint, - to which the Bible is the Word of God, every detail of the meaning of which is of inestimable preciousness. No doubt there have been men who have busied themselves with the interpretation of Scripture, who have not approached it in such a spirit or with such expectations. But it is not the Jowetts, with their supercilious doubts whether Paul meant very much by what he said, who represent the spirit of Christian exposition. This is represented rather by the Bengels, who count no labor wasted, in their efforts to distill from the very words of Holy Writ the honey which the Spirit has hidden in them for the comfort and the delight of the saints. It is represented rather by the Westcotts, who bear witness to their own experience of the "sense of rest and confidence which grows firmer with increasing knowledge," as their patient investigation has dug deeper and deeper for the treasures hid in the words and clauses and sentences of the Epistles of John,¹⁴ - to the sure conviction which forty years of study of the Epistle to the Hebrews has brought them that "we come nearer to the meaning of Scripture by the closest attention to the subtleties and minute variations of words and order." It was a just remark of one of the wisest men I ever knew, Dr. Wistar Hodge, that this is "a high testimony to verbal inspiration."15

Of course the church has not failed to bring this, her vital faith in the divine trustworthiness of the Scripture word, to formal expression in her solemn creeds. The simple faith of the Christian people is also the confessional doctrine of the Christian churches. The assumption of the divine authority of the scriptural teaching underlies all the credal statements of the church; all of which are formally based upon the Scriptures. And from the beginning, it finds more or less full expression in them. Already, in some of the formulas of faith which underlie the Apostles' Creed itself, we meet with the phrase "according to the Scriptures" as validating the items of belief; while in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, amid the meagre clauses outlining only what is essential to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, place is given to the declaration that He is to be found speaking in the prophets - "who spake by the prophets." It was in conscious dependence upon the immemorial teaching of the church that the Council of Trent defined it as of faith in the Church of Rome, that God is the author of Scripture, - a declaration which has been repeated in our own day by the Vatican Council, with such full explanations as are included in these rich words: "The church holds" the books of the Old and New Testaments, "to be sacred and canonical, not because, having been carefully composed by mere human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor merely because they contain revelation with no admixture of error; but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author." Needless to say that a no less firm conviction of the absolute authority of Scripture underlies all the Protestant creeds. Before all else, Protestantism is, in its very essence, an appeal from all other authority to the divine authority of Holy Scripture. The Augsburg Confession, the first Protestant creed, is, therefore, commended to consideration, only on the ground that it is "drawn from the Holy Scriptures and the pure word of God." The later Lutheran creeds, and especially the Reformed creeds, grow progressively more explicit. It is our special felicity, that; is Reformed Christians, and heirs of the richest and fullest formulation of Reformed thought, we possess in that precious heritage, the Westminster Confession, the most complete, the most admirable, the most perfect statement of the essential Christian doctrine of Holy Scripture which has ever been formed by man. Here the vital faith of the church is brought to full expression; the Scriptures are declared to be the word of God in such a sense that God is their author, and they, because immediately inspired by God, are of infallible truth and divine authority, and are to be believed to be true by the Christian man, in whatsoever is revealed in them, for the authority of God himself speaking therein.

Thus, in every way possible, the church has borne her testimony from the beginning, and still in our day, to her faith in the divine trustworthiness of her Scriptures, in all their affirmations of whatever kind. At no age has it been possible for men to express without rebuke the faintest doubt as to the absolute trustworthiness of their least declaration. Tertullian, writing at the opening of the third century, suggests, with evident hesitation and timidity, that Paul's language in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians may be intended to distinguish, in his remarks on marriage and divorce, between matters of divine commandment and of human arrangement. Dr. Sanday is obliged to comment on his language: "Any seeming depreciation of Scripture was as unpopular even then as it is now."16 The church has always believed her Scriptures to be the book of God, of which God was in such a sense the author that every one of its affirmations of whatever kind is to be esteemed as the utterance of God, of infallible truth and authority.

In the whole history of the church there have been but two movements of thought, tending to a lower conception of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, which have attained sufficient proportions to bring them into view in an historical sketch.

(1) The first of these may be called the Rationalistic view. Its characteristic feature is an effort to distinguish between inspired and uninspired elements within the Scriptures. With forerunners among the Humanists, this mode of thought was introduced by the Socinians, and taken up by the Syncretists in Germany, the Remonstrants in Holland, and the Jesuits in the Church of Rome. In the great life-and-death struggle of the eighteenth century it obtained great vogue among the defenders of supernatural religion, in their desperate efforts to save what was of even more importance, - just as a hardpressed army may yield to the foe many an outpost which justly belongs to it, in the effort to save the citadel. In the nineteenth century it has retained a strong hold, especially upon apologetical writers, chiefly in the three forms which affirm respectively that only the mysteries of the faith are inspired, i. e. things undiscoverable by unaided reason, - that the Bible is inspired only in matters of faith and practice, - and that the Bible is inspired only in its thoughts or concepts, not in its words. But although this legacy from the rationalism of an evil time still makes its appearance in the pages of many theological writers, and has no doubt affected the faith of a considerable number of Christians, it has failed to supplant in either the creeds of the church or the hearts of the people the church doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Bible, i. e. the doctrine that the Bible is inspired not in part but fully, in all its elements alike, - things discoverable by reason as well as mysteries, matters of history and science as well as of faith and practice, words as well as thoughts.

(2) The second of the lowered views of inspiration may be called the Mystical view. Its characteristic conception is that the Christian man has something within himself, - call it enlightened reason, spiritual insight, the Christian consciousness, the witness of the Spirit, or call it what you will, - to the test of which every "external revelation" is to be subjected, and according to the decision of which are the contents of the Bible to be valued. Very varied forms have been taken by this conception; and more or less expression has been given to it, in one form or another, in every age. In its extremer manifestations, it has formerly tended to sever itself from the main stream of Christian thought and even to form separated sects. But in our own century, through the great genius of Schleiermacher it has broken in upon the church like a flood, and washed into every corner of the Protestant world. As a consequence, we find men everywhere who desire to acknowledge as from God only such Scripture as "finds them," - who cast the clear objective enunciation of God's will to the mercy of the currents of thought and feeling which sweep up and down in their own souls, - who "persist" sometimes, to use a sharp but sadly true phrase of Robert Alfred Vaughan's, "in their conceited rejection of the light without until they have turned into darkness their light within." We grieve over the inroads which this essentially naturalistic mode of thought has made in the Christian thinking of the day. But great and deplorable as they have been, they have not been so extensive as to supplant the church-doctrine of the absolute authority of the objective revelation of God in his Word, in either the creeds of the church, or the hearts of the people. Despite these attempts to introduce lowered conceptions, the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, which looks upon them as an oracular book, in all its parts and elements, alike, of God, trustworthy in all its affirmations of every kind, remains to-day, as it has always been, the vital faith of the people of God, and the formal teaching of the organized church.

The more we contemplate this church-doctrine, the more pressing becomes the question of what account we are to give of it, - its origin and persistence. How shall we account for the immediate adoption of so developed a doctrine of inspiration in the very infancy of the church, and for the tenacious hold which the church has kept upon it through so many ages? The account is simple enough, and capable of inclusion in a single sentence: this is the doctrine of inspiration which was held by the writers of the New Testament and by Jesus as reported in the Gospels. It is this simple fact that has commended it to the church of all ages as the true doctrine; and in it we may surely recognize an even more impressive fact than that of the existence of a stable, abiding church-doctrine standing over against the many theories of the day, - the fact, namely, that this church-doctrine of inspiration was the Bible doctrine before it was the church-doctrine, and is the church doctrine only because it is the Bible doctrine. It is upon this fact that we should now fix our attention.

In the limited space at our disposal we need not attempt anything like a detailed proof that the church-doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Bible is the Bible's own doctrine of inspiration. And this especially for three very obvious reasons:

First, because it cannot be necessary to prove this to ourselves. We have the Bible in our hands, and we are accustomed to read it. It is enough for us to ask ourselves how the apostles and our Lord, as represented in its pages, conceived of what they called "the Scriptures," for the answer to come at once to our minds. As readers of the New Testament, we know that to the men of the New Testament "the Scriptures" were the Word of God which could not be broken, i. e. whose every word was trustworthy; and that a simple "It is written" was therefore to them the end of all strife. The proof of this is pervasive and level to the apprehension of every reader. It would be an insult to our intelligence were we to presume that we had not observed it, or could not apprehend its meaning.

Secondly, it is not necessary to prove that the New Testament regards "Scripture" as the mere Word of God, in the highest and most rigid sense, to modern biblical scholarship. Among untrammelled students of the Bible, it is practically a matter of common consent that the writers of the New Testament books looked upon what they called "Scripture" as divinely safeguarded in even its verbal expression, and as divinely trustworthy in all its parts, in all its elements, and in all its affirmations of whatever kind. This is, of course, the judgment of all those who have adopted this doctrine as their own, because they apprehend it to be the biblical doctrine. It is also the judgment of all those who can bring themselves to refuse a doctrine which they yet perceive to be a biblical doctrine. Whether we appeal, among men of this class, to such students of a more evangelical tendency, as Tholuck, Rothe, Farrar, Sanday, or to such extremer writers as Riehm, Reuss, Pfleiderer, Keunen, they will agree in telling us that the high doctrine of inspiration which we have called the church-doctrine, was held by the writers of the New Testament. This is common ground between believing and unbelieving students of the Bible, and needs, therefore, no new demonstration in the forum of scholarship. Let us pause here, therefore, only long enough to allow Hermann Schultz, surely a fair example of the "advanced" school, to tell us what is the conclusion in this matter of the strictest and coldest exegetical science. "The Book of the Law," he tells us, "seemed already to the later poets of the Old Testament, the 'Word of God.' The post-canonical books of Israel regard the Law and the Prophets in this manner. And for the men of the New Testament, the Holy Scriptures of their people are already God's word in which God himself speaks." This view, which looked upon the scriptural books as verbally inspired, he adds, was the ruling one in the time of Christ, was shared by all the New Testament men, and by Christ himself, as a pious conception, and was expressly taught by the more scholastic writers among them.¹⁷ It is hardly necessary to prove what is so frankly confessed.

The third reason why it is not necessary to occupy our time with a formal proof that the Bible does teach this doctrine, arises from the circumstance that even those who seek to rid themselves of the pressure of this fact upon them, are observed to be unable to prosecute their argument without an implied admission of it as a fact. This is true, for example, of Dr. Sanday's endeavors to meet the appeal of the church to our Lord's authority in defence of the doctrine of plenary inspiration.¹⁸ He admits that the one support which has been sought by the church of all ages for its high doctrine has been the "extent to which it was recognized in the sayings of Christ himself." As over against this he begins by suggesting "that, whatever view our Lord himself entertained as to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the record of his words has certainly come down to us through the medium of persons who shared the current view on the subject." This surely amounts to a full admission that the writers of the New Testament at least, held and taught the obnoxious doctrine. He ends with the remark that "when deductions have been made . . . there still remains evidence enough that our Lord, while on earth did use the common language of his contemporaries in regard to the Old Testament." This surely amounts to a full admission that Christ as well as his reporters taught the obnoxious doctrine.

This will be found to be a typical case. Every attempt to escape from the authority of the New Testament enunciation of the doctrine of plenary inspiration, in the nature of the case begins by admitting that this is, in very fact, the New Testament doctrine. Shall we follow Dr. Sanday, and appeal from the apostles to Christ, and then call in the idea of kenosis, and affirm that in the days of his flesh, Christ did not speak out of the fulness and purity of his divine knowledge, but on becoming man had shrunk to man's capacity, and in such matters as this was limited in his conceptions by the knowledge and opinions current in his day and generation? In so saying, we admit, as has already been pointed out, not only that the apostles taught this high doctrine of inspiration, but also that Christ too, in whatever humiliation he did it, yet actually taught the same. Shall we then take refuge in the idea of accommodation, and explain that, in so speaking of the Scriptures, Christ and his apostles did not intend to teach the doctrine of inspiration implicated, but merely adopted, as a matter of convenience, the current language, as to Scripture, of the time? In so speaking, also, we admit that the actual language of Christ and his apostles expresses that high view of inspiration which was confessedly the current view of the day - whether as a matter of convenience or as a matter of truth, the Christian consciousness may be safely left to decide. Shall we then remind ourselves that Jesus himself committed nothing to writing, and appeal to the uncertainties which are accustomed to attend the record of teaching at second-hand? Thus, too, we allow that the words of Christ as transmitted to us do teach the obnoxious doctrine. Are we, then, to fall back upon the observation that the doctrine of plenary inspiration is not taught with equal plainness in every part of the Bible, but becomes clear only in the later Old Testament books, and is not explicitly enunciated except in the more scholastic of the New Testament books? In this, too, we admit that it is taught in the Scriptures; while the fact that it is taught not all at once, but with progressive clearness and fulness, is accordant with the nature of the Bible as a book written in the process of the ages and progressively developing the truth. Then, shall we affirm that our doctrine of inspiration is not to be derived solely from the teachings of the Bible, but from its teachings and phenomena in conjunction; and so call in what we deem the phenomena of the Bible to modify its teaching? Do we not see that the very suggestion of this process admits that the teaching of the Bible, when taken alone, i. e., in its purity and just as it is, gives us the unwelcome doctrine? Shall we, then, take counsel of desperation and assert that all appeal to the teaching of the Scriptures themselves in testimony to their own inspiration is an argument in a circle, appealing to their inspiration to validate their inspiration? Even this desperately illogical shift to be rid of the scriptural doctrine of inspiration, obviously involves the confession that this is the scriptural doctrine. No, the issue is not, What does the Bible teach? but, Is what the Bible teaches true? And it is amazing that any or all of such expedients can blind the eyes of any one to the stringency of this issue.

Even a detailed attempt to explain away the texts which teach the doctrine of the plenary inspiration and unvarying truth of Scripture, involves the admission that in their obvious meaning such texts teach the doctrine which it is sought to explain away. And think of explaining away the texts which inculcate the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures! The effort to do so is founded upon an inexplicably odd misapprehension - the misapprehension that the Bible witnesses to its plenary inspiration only in a text here and there: texts of exceptional clearness alone probably being in mind, - such as our Saviour's declaration that the Scriptures cannot be broken; or Paul's, that every scripture is inspired of God; or Peter's, that the men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Such texts, no doubt, do teach the doctrine of plenary inspiration, and are sadly in need of explaining away at the hands of those who will not believe this doctrine. As, indeed, we may learn from Dr. Sanday's treatment of one of them, that in which our Lord declares that the Scriptures cannot be broken. Dr. Sanday can only speak of this as "a passage of peculiar strangeness and difficulty "; "because," he tells us, "it seems to mean that the dicta of Scripture, even where we should naturally take them as figurative, must be true." Needless to say that the only "strangeness and difficulty" in the text arises from the unwillingness of the commentator to approach the Scriptures with the simple trust in their detailed divine trustworthiness and authority which characterized all our Lord's dealings with them.

But no grosser misconception could be conceived than that the Scriptures bear witness to their own plenary inspiration in those outstanding texts alone. These are but the culminating passages of a pervasive testimony to the divine character of scripture, which fills the whole New Testament; and which includes not only such direct assertions of divinity and infallibility for Scripture as these, but, along with them, an endless variety of expressions of confidence in, and phenomena of use of, Scripture which are irresistible in their teaching when it is once fairly apprehended. The induction must be broad enough to embrace, and give their full weight to, a great variety of such facts as these: the lofty titles which are given to Scripture, and by which it is cited, such as "Scripture," "the Scriptures," even that almost awful title, "the Oracles of God"; the significant formulæ by which it is quoted, "It is written," "It is spoken," "It says," "God says"; such modes of adducing it as betray that to the writer "Scripture says" is equivalent to "God says," and even its narrative parts are conceived as direct utterances of God; the attribution to Scripture, as such, of divine qualities and acts, as in such phrases as "the Scriptures foresaw"; the ascription of the Scriptures, in whole or in their several parts as occasionally adduced, to the Holy Spirit, as their author, while the human writers are treated as merely his media of expression; the reverence and trust shown, and the significance and authority ascribed, to the very words of Scripture; and the general attitude of entire subjection to every declaration of Scripture of whatever kind, which characterizes every line of the New Testament. The effort to explain away the Bible's witness to its plenary inspiration reminds one of a man standing safely in his laboratory and elaborately expounding - possibly by the aid of diagrams and mathematical formulæ - how every stone in an avalanche has a defined pathway and may easily be dodged by one of some presence of mind. We may fancy such an elaborate trifler's triumph as he would analyze the avalanche into its constituent stones, and demonstrate of stone after stone that its pathway is definite, limited, and may easily be avoided. But avalanches, unfortunately, do not come upon us, stone by stone, one at a time, courteously leaving us opportunity to withdraw from the pathway of each in turn: but all at once, in a roaring mass of destruction. Just so we may explain away a text or two which teach plenary inspiration, to our own closet satisfaction, dealing with them each without reference to its relation to the others: but these texts of ours, again, unfortunately do not come upon us in this artificial isolation; neither are they few in number. There are scores, hundreds, of them: and they come bursting upon us in one solid mass. Explain them away? We should have to explain away the whole New Testament. What a pity it is that we cannot see and feel the avalanche of texts beneath which we may lie hopelessly buried, as clearly as we may see and feel an avalanche of stones! Let us, however, but open our eyes to the variety and pervasiveness of the New Testament witness to its high estimate of Scripture, and we shall no longer wonder that modern scholarship finds itself compelled to allow that the Christian church has read her records correctly, and that the church-doctrine of inspiration is simply a transcript of the biblical doctrine; nor shall we any longer wonder that the church, receiving these Scriptures as her authoritative teacher of doctrine, adopted in the very beginnings of her life, the doctrine of plenary inspiration, and has held it with a tenacity that knows no wavering, until the present hour.

But, we may be reminded, the church has not held with such tenacity to all doctrines taught in the Bible. How are we to account, then, for the singular constancy of its confession of the Bible's doctrine of inspiration? The account to be given is again simple, and capable of being expressed in a single sentence. It is due to an instinctive feeling in the church, that the trustworthiness of the Scriptures lies at the foundation of trust in the Christian system of doctrine, and is therefore fundamental to the Christian hope and life. It is due to the church's instinct that the validity of her teaching of doctrine as the truth of God, - to the Christian's instinct that the validity of his hope in the several promises of the gospel, - rests on the trustworthiness of the Bible as a record of God's dealings and purposes with men.

Individuals may call in question the soundness of these instinctive judgments. And, indeed, there is a sense in which it would not be true to say that the truth of Christian teaching and the foundations of faith are suspended upon the doctrine of plenary inspiration, or upon any doctrine of inspiration whatever. They rest rather upon the previous fact of revelation: and it is important to keep ourselves reminded that the supernatural origin and contents of Christianity, not only may be vindicated apart from any question of the inspiration of the record, but, in point of fact, always are vindicated prior to any question of the inspiration of the record. We cannot raise the question whether God has given us an absolutely trustworthy record of the supernatural facts and teachings of Christianity, before we are assured that there are supernatural facts and teachings to be recorded. The fact that Christianity is a supernatural religion and the nature of Christianity as a supernatural religion, are matters of history; and are independent of any, and of every, theory of inspiration.

But this line of remark is of more importance to the Christian apologist than to the Christian believer, as such; and the instinct of the church that the validity of her teaching, and the instinct of the Christian that the validity of his hope, are bound up with the trustworthiness of the Bible, is a perfectly sound one. This for three reasons:

First, because the average Christian man is not and cannot be a fully furnished historical scholar. If faith in Christ is to be always and only the product of a thorough historical investigation into the origins of Christianity, there would certainly be few who could venture to preach Christ and him crucified with entire confidence; there would certainly be few who would be able to trust their all to him with entire security. The Christian scholar desires, and, thank God, is able to supply, a thoroughly trustworthy historical vindication of supernatural Christianity. But the Christian teacher desires, and, thank God, is able to lay his hands upon, a thoroughly trustworthy record of supernatural Christianity; and the Christian man requires, and, thank God, has, a thoroughly trustworthy Bible to which he can go directly and at once in every time of need. Though, then, in the abstract, we may say that the condition of the validity of the Christian teaching and of the Christian hope, is no more than the fact of the supernaturalism of Christianity, historically vindicated; practically we must say that the condition of the persistence of Christianity as a religion for the people, is the entire trustworthiness of the Scriptures as the record of the supernatural revelation which Christianity is.

Secondly, the merely historical vindication of the supernatural origin and contents of Christianity, while thorough and complete for Christianity as a whole, and for all the main facts and doctrines which enter into it, does not by itself supply a firm basis of trust for all the details of teaching and all the items of promise upon which the Christian man would fain lean. Christianity would be given to us; but it would be given to us, not in the exact form or in all the fulness with which God gave it to his needy children through his servants, the prophets, and through his Son and his apostles; but with the marks of human misapprehension, exaggeration, and minimizing upon it, and of whatever attrition may have been wrought upon it by its passage to us through the ages. That the church may have unsullied assurance in the details of its teaching, - that the Christian man may have unshaken confidence in the details of the promises to which he trusts, - they need, and they know that they need, a thoroughly trustworthy Word of God in which God himself speaks directly to them all the words of this life.

Thirdly, in the circumstances of the present case, we cannot fall back from trust in the Bible upon trust in the historical vindication of Christianity as a revelation from God, inasmuch as, since Christ and his apostles are historically shown to have taught the plenary inspiration of the Bible, the credit of the previous fact of revelation - even of the supreme revelation in Christ Jesus - is implicated in the truth of the doctrine of plenary inspiration. The historical vindication of Christianity as a revelation from God, vindicates as the truth of God all the contents of that revelation; and, among these contents, vindicates, as divinely true, the teaching of Christ and his apostles, that the Scriptures are the very Word of God, to be trusted as such in all the details of their teaching and promises. The instinct of the church is perfectly sound, therefore, when she clings to the trustworthiness of the Bible, as lying at the foundation of her teaching and her faith.

Much less can she be shaken from this instinctive conviction by the representations of individual thinkers who go yet a step further, and, refusing to pin their faith either to the Bible or to history, affirm that "the essence of Christianity" is securely intrenched in the subjective feelings of man, either as such, or as Christian man taught by the Holy Ghost; and therefore that there is by no means needed an infallible objective rule of faith in order to propagate or preserve Christian truth in the world. It is unnecessary to say that "the essence of Christianity" as conceived by these individuals, includes little that is characteristic of Christian doctrine, life, or hope, as distinct from what is taught by other religions or philosophies. And it is perhaps equally unnecessary to remind ourselves that such individuals, having gone so far, tend to take a further step still, and to discard the records which they thus judge to be unnecessary. Thus, there may be found even men a ill professing historical Christianity, who reason themselves into the conclusion that "in the nature of the case, no external authority can possibly be absolute in regard to spiritual truth";¹⁹ just as men have been known to reason themselves into the conclusion that the external world has no objective reality and is naught but the projection of their own faculties.

But as in the one case, so in the other, the common sense of men recoils from such subtleties; and it remains the profound persuasion of the Christian heart that without such an "external authority" as a thoroughly trustworthy Bible, the soul is left without sure ground for a proper knowledge of itself, its condition, and its need, or for a proper knowledge of God's provisions of mercy for it and his promises of grace to it, - without sure ground, in a word, for its faith and hope. Adolphe Monod gives voice to no more than the common Christian conviction, when he declares that, "If faith has not for its basis a testimony of God to which we must submit, as to an authority exterior to our personal judgment, and independent of it, then faith is no faith."20 "The more I study the Scriptures, the example of Christ, and of the apostles, and the history of my own heart," he adds, "the more I am convinced, that a testimony of God, placed without us and above us, exempt from all intermixture of sin and error which belong to a fallen race, and received with submission on the sole authority of God, is the true basis of faith."21

It is doubtless the profound and ineradicable conviction, so expressed, of the need of an infallible Bible, if men are to seek and find salvation in God's announced purpose of grace, and peace and comfort in his past dealings with his people, that has operated to keep the formulas of the churches and the hearts of the people of God, through so many ages, true to the Bible doctrine of plenary inspiration. In that doctrine men have found what their hearts have told them was the indispensable safeguard of a sure word of God to them, - a word of God to which they could resort with confidence in every time of need, to which they could appeal for guidance in every difficulty, for comfort in every sorrow, for instruction in every perplexity; on whose "Thus saith the Lord" they could safely rest all their aspirations and all their hopes. Such a Word of God, each one of us knows he needs, - not a Word of God that speaks to us only through the medium of our fellow-men, men of like passions and weaknesses with ourselves, so that we have to feel our way back to God's word through the church, through tradition, or through the apostles, standing between us and God; but a Word of God in which God speaks directly to each of our souls. Such a Word of God, Christ and his apostles offer us, when they give us the Scriptures, not as man's report to us of what God says, but as the very Word of God itself, spoken by God himself through human lips and pens. Of such a precious possession, given to her by such hands, the church will not lightly permit herself to be deprived. Thus the church's sense of her need of an absolutely infallible Bible, has co-operated with her reverence for the teaching of the Bible to keep her true, in all ages, to the Bible doctrine of plenary inspiration.

What, indeed, would the church be - what would we, as Christian men, be - without our inspired Bible? Many of us have, no doubt, read Jean Paul Richter's vision of a dead Christ, and have shuddered at his pictures of the woe of a world from which its Christ has been stolen away. It would be a theme worthy of some like genius to portray for us the vision of a dead Bible, - the vision of what this world of ours would be, had there been no living Word of God cast into its troubled waters with its voice of power, crying, "Peace! Be still!" What does this Christian world of ours not owe to this Bible! And to this Bible conceived, not as a part of the world's literature, - the literary product of the earliest years of the church; not as a book in which, by searching, we may find God and perchance somewhat of God's will: but as the very Word of God, instinct with divine life from the "In the beginning" of Genesis to the "Amen" of the Apocalypse, - breathed into by God, and breathing out God to every devout reader. It is because men have so thought of it that it has proved a leaven to leaven the whole lump of the world. We do not half realize what we owe to this book, thus trusted by men. We can never fully realize it. For we can never even in thought unravel from this complex web of modern civilization, all the threads from the Bible which have been woven into it, throughout the whole past, and now enter into its very fabric. And, thank God, much less can we ever untwine them in fact, and separate our modern life from all those Bible influences by which alone it is blessed, and sweetened, and made a life which men may live. Dr. Gardiner Spring published, years ago, a series of lectures in which he sought to take some account of the world's obligations to the Bible, - tracing in turn the services it has rendered to religion, to morals, to social institutions, to civil and religious liberty, to the freedom of slaves, to the emancipation of woman and the sweetening of domestic life, to public and private beneficence, to literary and scientific progress, and the like.²² And Adolphe Monod, in his own inimitable style, has done something to awaken us as individuals to what we owe to a fully trusted Bible, in the development of our character and religious life.²³ In such matters, however, we can trust our imaginations better than our words, to remind us of the immensity of our debt.

Let it suffice to say that to a plenarily inspired Bible, humbly trusted as such, we actually, and as a matter of fact, owe all that has blessed our lives with hopes of an immortality of bliss, and with the present fruition of the love of God in Christ. This is not an exaggeration. We may say that without a Bible we might have had Christ and all that he stands for to our souls. Let us not say that this might not have been possible. But neither let us forget that, in point of fact, it is to the Bible that we owe it that we know Christ and are found in him. And may it not be fairly doubted whether you and I, - however it may have been with others, - would have had Christ had there been no Bible? We must not at any rate forget those nineteen Christian centuries which stretch between us and Christ, whose Christian light we would do much to blot out and sink in a dreadful darkness if we could blot out the Bible. Even with the Bible, and all that had come from the Bible to form Christian lives and inform a Christian literature, after a millennium and a half the darkness had grown so deep that a Reformation was necessary if Christian truth was to persist, - a Luther was necessary, raised up by God to rediscover the Bible and give it back to man. Suppose there had been no Bible for Luther to rediscover, and on the lines of which to refound the church, - and no Bible in the hearts of God's saints and in the pages of Christian literature, persisting through those darker ages to prepare a Luther to rediscover it? Though Christ had come into the world and had lived and died for us, might it not be to us, - you and me, I mean, who are not learned historians but simple men and women, - might it not be to us as though he had not been? Or, if some faint echo of a Son of God offering salvation to men could still be faintly heard even by such dull ears as ours, sounding down the ages, who would have ears to catch the fulness of the message of free grace which he brought into the world? who could assure our doubting souls that it was not all a pleasant dream? who could cleanse the message from the ever-gathering corruptions of the multiplying years? No: whatever might possibly have been had there been no Bible, it is actually to the Bible that you and I owe it that we have a Christ, - a Christ to love, to trust and to follow, a Christ without us the ground of our salvation, a Christ within us the hope of glory.

Our effort has been to bring clearly out what seem to be three very impressive facts regarding the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, - the facts, namely, that this doctrine has always been, and is still, the church-doctrine of inspiration, as well the vital faith of the people of God as the formulated teaching of the official creeds; that it is undeniably the doctrine of inspiration held by Christ and his apostles, and commended to us as true by all the authority which we will allow to attach to their teaching; and that it is the foundation of our Christian thought and life, without which we could not, or could only with difficulty, maintain the confidence of our faith and the surety of our hope. On such grounds as these is not this doctrine commended to us as true?

But, it may be said, there are difficulties in the way. Of course there are. There are difficulties in the way of believing anything. There are difficulties in the way of believing that God is, or that Jesus Christ is God's Son who came into the world to save sinners. There are difficulties in the way of believing that we ourselves really exist, or that anything has real existence besides ourselves. When men give their undivided attention to these difficulties, they may become, and they have become, so perplexed in mind, that they have felt unable to believe that God is, or that they themselves exist, or that there is any external world without themselves. It would be a strange thing if it might not so fare with plenary inspiration also. Difficulties? Of course there are difficulties. It is nothing to the purpose to point out this fact. Dr. J. Oswald Dykes says with admirable truth: "If men must have a reconciliation for all conflicting truths before they will believe any; if they must see how the promises of God are to be fulfilled before they will obey his commands; if duty is to hang upon the satisfying of the understanding, instead of the submission of the will, - then the greater number of us will find the road of faith and the road of duty blocked at the outset."24 These wise words have their application also to our present subject. The question is not, whether the doctrine of plenary inspiration has difficulties to face. The question is, whether these difficulties are greater than the difficulty of believing that the whole church of God from the beginning has been deceived in her estimate of the Scriptures committed to her charge - are greater than the difficulty of believing that the whole college of the apostles, yes and Christ himself at their head, were themselves deceived as to the nature of those Scriptures which they gave the church as its precious possession, and have deceived with them twenty Christian centuries, and are likely to deceive twenty more before our boasted advancing light has corrected their error, - are greater than the difficulty of believing that we have no sure foundation for our faith and no certain warrant for our trust in Christ for salvation. We believe this doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures primarily because it is the doctrine which Christ and his apostles believed, and which they have taught us. It may sometimes seem difficult to take our stand frankly by the side of Christ and his apostles. It will always be found safe.

Endnotes:

A lecture. From " Bibliotheca Sacra," v. 51, 1894, pp. 614-640. Pub. also in "King's Own," v. 6, Lond. 1895, pp. 791-794, 833-840, 926-933.

Titles of recent treatises by Rooke, Horton, DeWitt, Smyth, and Sanday respectively.

Sanday, "Inspiration," p. 34.

On Matt. xvi. 12 and Jno. vi. 18.

Adv. Haer, ii. 28.

Ep. ad Phil., cap. vii.

Ep. ad Hier. lxxxii. 3.

"Works" (St. Louis ed.), xix. 305; (Erlangen ed.), xxxvii. 11 and xxxviii.

"Institutes," i. 18; "Commentary on Romans," xv. 4, and on 2 Tim. iii.16.

"Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience," p. 373.

"Works," xv. 65.

Henry B. Smith, "Sermon on Inspiration" (Cincinnati ed.), p. 19.

Charles Hodge, "Syst. Theol.," i. 163.

B. F. Westcott, "The Epistles of St. John," p. vi.

C. Wistar Hodge, "Presbyterian and Reformed Review," ii. 330.

Sanday, "Inspiration," p. 42 (note).

Hermann Schultz, "Grundriss d. Evang. Dogmatik," p. 7.

"Inspiration," p. 393 seq.

Professor W. F. Adeney, "Faith and Criticism," p. 90.

"Life of Adolphe Monod," p. 224.

Ibid., p. 357.

Gardiner Spring, "Obligations of the World to the Bible." (New York: M. W. Dodd. 1855.)

Adolphe Monod, " L'Inspiration prouvée par ses Œuvres."

J. Oswald Dykes, "Abraham," etc. (1877), p. 257.

Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Volume V.

I. The Origin and Nature of Pelagianism

It was inevitable that the energy of the Church in intellectually realizing and defining its doctrines in relation to one another, should first be directed towards the objective side of Christian truth. The chief controversies of the first four centuries and the resulting definitions of doctrine, concerned the nature of God and the person of Christ; and it was not until these theological and Christological questions were well upon their way to final settlement, that the Church could turn its attention to the more subjective side of truth. Meanwhile she bore in her bosom a full recognition, side by side, of the freedom of the will, the evil consequences of the fall, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation. Individual writers, or even the several sections of the Church, might exhibit a tendency to throw emphasis on one or another of the elements that made up this deposit of faith that was the common inheritance of all. The East, for instance, laid especial stress on free will: and the West dwelt more pointedly on the ruin of the human race and the absolute need of God’s grace for salvation. But neither did the Eastern theologians forget the universal sinfulness and need of redemption, or the necessity, for the realization of that redemption, of God’s gracious influences; nor did those of the West deny the self-determination or accountability of men. All the elements of the composite doctrine of man were everywhere confessed; but they were variously emphasized, according to the temper of the writers or the controversial demands of the times. Such a state of affairs, however, was an invitation to heresy, and a prophecy of controversy; just as the simultaneous confession of the unity of God and the Deity of Christ, or of the Deity and the humanity of Christ, inevitably carried in its train a series of heresies and controversies, until the definitions of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ were complete. In like manner, it was inevitable that sooner or later some one should arise who would so one-sidedly emphasize one element or the other of the Church’s teaching as to salvation, as to throw himself into heresy, and drive the Church, through controversy with him, into a precise definition of the doctrines of free will and grace in their mutual relations.

This new heresiarch came, at the opening of the fifth century, in the person of the British monk, Pelagius. The novelty of the doctrine which he taught is repeatedly asserted by Augustin¹, and is evident to the historian; but it consisted not in the emphasis that he laid on free will, but rather in the fact that, in emphasizing free will, he denied the ruin of the race and the necessity of grace. This was not only new in Christianity; it was even anti-Christian. Jerome, as well as Augustin, saw this at the time, and speaks of Pelagianism as the “heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno;”² and modern writers of the various schools have more or less fully recognized it. Thus Dean Milman thinks that “the greater part” of Pelagius’ letter to Demetrias “might have been written by an ancient academic;”³ Dr. De Pressensé identifies the Pelagian idea of liberty with that of Paganism;⁴ and Bishop Hefele openly declares that their fundamental doctrine, “that man is virtuous entirely of his own merit, not of the gift of grace,” seems to him “to be a rehabilitation of the general heathen view of the world,” and compares with it Cicero’s words:5 “For gold, lands, and all the blessings of life, we have to return thanks to the Gods; but no one ever returned thanks to the Gods for virtues.”⁶ The struggle with Pelagianism was thus in reality a struggle for the very foundations of Christianity; and even more dangerously than in the previous theological and Christological controversies, here the practical substance of Christianity was in jeopardy. The real question at issue was whether there was any need for Christianity at all; whether by his own power man might not attain eternal felicity; whether the function of Christianity was to save, or only to render an eternity of happiness more easily attainable by man.⁷ 

Genetically speaking, Pelagianism was the daughter of legalism; but when it itself conceived, it brought forth an essential deism. It is not without significance that its originators were “a certain sort of monks;” that is, laymen of ascetic life. From this point of view the Divine law is looked upon as a collection of separate commandments, moral perfection as a simple complex of separate virtues, and a distinct value as a meritorious demand on Divine approbation is ascribed to each good work or attainment in the exercises of piety. It was because this was essentially his point of view that Pelagius could regard man’s powers as sufficient to the attainment of sanctity,—nay, that he could even assert it to be possible for a man to do more than was required of him. But this involved an essentially deistic conception of man’s relations to his Maker. God had endowed His creature with a capacity (possibilitas) or ability (posse) for action, and it was for him to use it. Man was thus a machine, which, just because it was well made, needed no Divine interference for its right working; and the Creator, having once framed him, and endowed him with the posse, henceforth leaves the velle and the esse to him. 

At this point we have touched the central and formative principle of Pelagianism. It lies in the assumption of the plenary ability of man; his ability to do all that righteousness can demand,—to work out not only his own salvation, but also his own perfection. This is the core of the whole theory; and all the other postulates not only depend upon it, but arise out of it. Both chronologically and logically this is the root of the system. 

When we first hear of Pelagius, he is already advanced in years, living in Rome in the odour of sanctity,⁸ and enjoying a well-deserved reputation for zeal in exhorting others to a good life, which grew especially warm against those who endeavoured to shelter themselves, when charged with their sins, behind the weakness of nature.⁹ He was outraged by the universal excuses on such occasions,—“It is hard!” “it is difficult!” “we are not able!” “we are men!”—“Oh, blind madness!” he cried: “we accuse God of a twofold ignorance,—that He does not seem to know what He has made, nor what He has commanded,—as if forgetting the human weakness of which He is Himself the Author, He has imposed laws on man which He cannot endure.”¹⁰ He himself tells us¹¹ that it was his custom, therefore, whenever he had to speak on moral improvement and the conduct of a holy life, to begin by pointing out the power and quality of human nature, and by showing what it was capable of doing. For (he says) he esteemed it of small use to exhort men to what they deemed impossible: hope must rather be our companion, and all longing and effort die when we despair of attaining. So exceedingly ardent an advocate was he of man’s unaided ability to do all that God commanded, that when Augustin’s noble and entirely scriptural prayer—“Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt”—was repeated in his hearing, he was unable to endure it; and somewhat inconsistently contradicted it with such violence as almost to become involved in a strife.¹² The powers of man, he held, were gifts of God; and it was, therefore, a reproach against Him as if He had made man ill or evil, to believe that they were insufficient for the keeping of His law. Nay, do what we will, we cannot rid ourselves of their sufficiency: “whether we will, or whether we will not, we have the capacity of not sinning.”¹³ “I say,” he says, “that man is able to be without sin, and that he is able to keep the commandments of God;” and this sufficiently direct statement of human ability is in reality the hinge of his whole system. 

There were three specially important corollaries which flowed from this assertion of human ability, and Augustin himself recognized these as the chief elements of the system.¹⁴ It would be inexplicable on such an assumption, if no man had ever used his ability in keeping God’s law; and Pelagius consistently asserted not only that all might be sinless if they chose, but also that many saints, even before Christ, had actually lived free from sin. Again, it follows from man’s inalienable ability to be free from sin, that each man comes into the world without entailment of sin or moral weakness from the past acts of men; and Pelagius consistently denied the whole doctrine of original sin. And still again, it follows from the same assumption of ability that man has no need of supernatural assistance in his striving to obey righteousness; and Pelagius consistently denied both the need and reality of divine grace in the sense of an inward help (and especially of a prevenient help) to man’s weakness. 

It was upon this last point that the greatest stress was laid in the controversy, and Augustin was most of all disturbed that thus God’s grace was denied and opposed. No doubt the Pelagians spoke constantly of “grace,” but they meant by this the primal endowment of man with free will, and the subsequent aid given him in order to its proper use by the revelation of the law and the teaching of the gospel, and, above all, by the forgiveness of past sins in Christ and by Christ’s holy example.¹⁵ Anything further than this external help they utterly denied; and they denied that this external help itself was absolutely necessary, affirming that it only rendered it easier for man to do what otherwise he had plenary ability for doing. Chronologically, this contention seems to have preceded the assertion which must logically lie at its base, of the freedom of man from any taint, corruption, or weakness due to sin. It was in order that they might deny that man needed help, that they denied that Adam’s sin had any further effect on his posterity than might arise from his bad example. “Before the action of his own proper will,” said Pelagius plainly, “that only is in man which God made.”¹⁶ “As we are procreated without virtue,” he said, “so also without vice.”¹⁷ In a word, “Nothing that is good and evil, on account of which we are either praiseworthy or blameworthy, is born with us,—it is rather done by us; for we are born with capacity for either, but provided with neither.”¹⁸ So his later follower, Julian, plainly asserts his “faith that God creates men obnoxious to no sin, but full of natural innocence, and with capacity for voluntary virtues.”¹⁹ So intrenched is free will in nature, that, according to Julian, it is “just as complete after sins as it was before sins;”²⁰ and what this means may be gathered from Pelagius’ definition in the “Confession of Faith,” that he sent to Innocent: “We say that man is always able both to sin and not to sin, so as that we may confess that we have free will.” That sin in such circumstances was so common as to be well-nigh universal, was accounted for by the bad example of Adam and the power of habit, the latter being simply the result of imitation of the former. “Nothing makes well-doing so hard,” writes Pelagius to Demetrias, “as the long custom of sins which begins from childhood and gradually brings us more and more under its power until it seems to have in some degree the force of nature (vim naturæ).” He is even ready to allow for the force of habit in a broad way, on the world at large; and so divides all history into progressive periods, marked by God’s (external) grace. At first the light of nature was so strong that men by it alone could live in holiness. And it was only when men’s manners became corrupt and tarnished nature began to be insufficient for holy living, that by God’s grace the Law was given as an addition to mere nature; and by it “the original lustre was restored to nature after its blush had been impaired.” And so again, after the habit of sinning once more prevailed among men, and “the law became unequal to the task of curing it,”²¹ Christ was given, furnishing men with forgiveness of sins, exhortations to imitation of the example and the holy example itself.²² But though thus a progressive deterioration was confessed, and such a deterioration as rendered desirable at least two supernatural interpositions (in the giving of the law and the coming of Christ), yet no corruption of nature, even by growing habit, is really allowed. It was only an ever-increasing facility in imitating vice which arose from so long a schooling in evil; and all that was needed to rescue men from it was a new explanation of what was right (in the law), or, at the most, the encouragement of forgiveness for what was already done, and a holy example (in Christ) for imitation. Pelagius still asserted our continuous possession of “a free will which is unimpaired for sinning and for not sinning;” and Julian, that “our free will is just as full after sins as it was before sins;” although Augustin does not fail to twit him with a charge of inconsistency.²³ 

The peculiar individualism of the Pelagian view of the world comes out strongly in their failure to perceive the effect of habit on nature itself. Just as they conceived of virtue as a complex of virtuous acts, so they conceived of sin exclusively as an act, or series of disconnected acts. They appear not to have risen above the essentially heathen view which had no notion of holiness apart from a series of acts of holiness, or of sin apart from a like series of sinful acts.²⁴ Thus the will was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all organic connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied.²⁵ After each act of the will, man stood exactly where he did before: indeed, this conception scarcely allows for the existence of a “man”—only a willing machine is left, at each click of the action of which the spring regains its original position, and is equally ready as before to reperform its function. In such a conception there was no place for character: freedom of will was all. Thus it was not an unnatural mistake which they made, when they forgot the man altogether, and attributed to the faculty of free will, under the name of “possibilitas” or “posse,” the ability that belonged rather to the man whose faculty it is, and who is properly responsible for the use he makes of it. Here lies the essential error of their doctrine of free will: they looked upon freedom in its form only, and not in its matter; and, keeping man in perpetual and hopeless equilibrium between good and evil, they permitted no growth of character and no advantage to himself to be gained by man in his successive choices of good. It need not surprise us that the type of thought which thus dissolved the organism of the man into a congeries of disconnected voluntary acts, failed to comprehend the solidarity of the race. To the Pelagian, Adam was a man, nothing more; and it was simply unthinkable that any act of his that left his own subsequent acts uncommitted, could entail sin and guilt upon other men. The same alembic that dissolved the individual into a succession of voluntary acts, could not fail to separate the race into a heap of unconnected units. If sin, as Julian declared, is nothing but will, and the will itself remained intact after each act, how could the individual act of an individual will condition the acts of men as yet unborn? By “imitation” of his act alone could (under such a conception) other men be affected. And this carried with it the corresponding view of man’s relation to Christ. He could forgive us the sins we had committed; He could teach us the true way; He could set us a holy example; and He could exhort us to its imitation. But He could not touch us to enable us to will the good, without destroying the absolute equilibrium of the will between good and evil; and to destroy this was to destroy its freedom, which was the crowning good of our divinely created nature. Surely the Pelagians forgot that man was not made for will, but will for man. 

In defending their theory, as we are told by Augustin, there were five claims that they especially made for it.²⁶ It allowed them to praise as was their due, the creature that God had made, the marriage that He had instituted, the law that He had given, the free will which was His greatest endowment to man, and the saints who had followed His counsels. By this they meant that they proclaimed the sinless perfection of human nature in every man as he was brought into the world, and opposed this to the doctrine of original sin; the purity and holiness of marriage and the sexual appetites, and opposed this to the doctrine of the transmission of sin; the ability of the law, as well as and apart from the gospel, to bring men into eternal life, and opposed this to the necessity of inner grace; the integrity of free will to choose the good, and opposed this to the necessity of divine aid; and the perfection of the lives of the saints, and opposed this to the doctrine of universal sinfulness. Other questions, concerning the origin of souls, the necessity of baptism for infants, the original immortality of Adam, lay more on the skirts of the controversy, and were rather consequences of their teaching than parts of it. As it was an obvious fact that all men died, they could not admit that Adam’s death was a consequence of sin lest they should be forced to confess that his sin had injured all men; they therefore asserted that physical death belonged to the very nature of man, and that Adam would have died even had he not sinned.²⁷ So, as it was impossible to deny that the Church everywhere baptized infants, they could not refuse them baptism without confessing themselves innovators in doctrine; and therefore they contended that infants were not baptized for forgiveness of sins, but in order to attain a higher state of salvation. Finally, they conceived that if it was admitted that souls were directly created by God for each birth, it could not be asserted that they came into the world soiled by sin and under condemnation; and therefore they loudly championed this theory of the origin of souls. 

The teachings of the Pelagians, it will be readily seen, easily welded themselves into a system, the essential and formative elements of which were entirely new in the Christian Church; and this startlingly new reading of man’s condition, powers, and dependence for salvation, it was, that broke like a thunderbolt upon the Western Church at the opening of the fifth century, and forced her to reconsider, from the foundations, her whole teaching as to man and his salvation. 

II. The External History of the Pelagian Controversy 

Pelagius seems to have been already somewhat softened by increasing age when he came to Rome about the opening of the fifth century. He was also constitutionally averse to controversy; and although in his zeal for Christian morals, and in his conviction that no man would attempt to do what he was not persuaded he had natural power to perform, he diligently propagated his doctrines privately, he was careful to rouse no opposition, and was content to make what progress he could quietly and without open discussion. His methods of work sufficiently appear in the pages of his “Commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul,” which was written and published during these years, and which exhibits learning and a sober and correct but somewhat shallow exegetical skill. In this work, he manages to give expression to all the main elements of his system, but always introduces them indirectly, not as the true exegesis, but by way of objections to the ordinary teaching, which were in need of discussion. The most important fruit of his residence in Rome was the conversion to his views of the Advocate Coelestius, who brought the courage of youth and the argumentative training of a lawyer to the propagation of the new teaching. It was through him that it first broke out into public controversy, and received its first ecclesiastical examination and rejection. Fleeing from Alaric’s second raid on Rome, the two friends landed together in Africa (A.D. 411), whence Pelagius soon afterwards departed for Palestine, leaving the bolder and more contentious²⁸ Coelestius behind at Carthage. Here Coelestius sought ordination as a presbyter. But the Milanese deacon Paulinus stood forward in accusation of him as a heretic, and the matter was brought before a synod under the presidency of Bishop Aurelius.²⁹ 

Paulinus’ charge consisted of seven items,³⁰ which asserted that Coelestius taught the following heresies: that Adam was made mortal, and would have died, whether he sinned or did not sin; that the sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the human race; that new-born children are in that state in which Adam was before his sin; that the whole human race does not, on the one hand, die on account of the death or the fall of Adam, nor, on the other, rise again on account of the resurrection of Christ; that infants, even though not baptized, have eternal life; that the law leads to the kingdom of heaven in the same way as the gospel; and that, even before the Lord’s coming, there had been men without sin. Only two fragments of the proceedings of the synod in investigating this charge have come down to us;³¹ but it is easy to see that Coelestius was contumacious, and refused to reject any of the propositions charged against him, except the one which had reference to the salvation of infants that die unbaptized,—the sole one that admitted of sound defence. As touching the transmission of sin, he would only say that it was an open question in the Church, and that he had heard both opinions from Church dignitaries; so that the subject needed investigation, and should not be made the ground for a charge of heresy. The natural result was, that, on refusing to condemn the propositions charged against him, he was himself condemned and excommunicated by the synod. Soon afterwards he sailed to Ephesus, where he obtained the ordination which he sought. 

Meanwhile Pelagius was living quietly in Palestine, whither in the summer of 415 a young Spanish presbyter, Paulus Orosius by name, came with letters from Augustin to Jerome, and was invited, near the end of July in that year, to a diocesan synod, presided over by John of Jerusalem. There he was asked about Pelagius and Coelestius, and proceeded to give an account of the condemnation of the latter at the synod of Carthage, and of Augustin’s literary refutation of the former. Pelagius was sent for, and the proceedings became an examination into his teachings. The chief matter brought up was his assertion of the possibility of men living sinlessly in this world; but the favour of the bishop towards him, the intemperance of Orosius, and the difficulty of communication between the parties arising from difference of language, combined so to clog proceedings that nothing was done; and the whole matter, as Western in its origin, was referred to the Bishop of Rome for examination and decision.³² 

Soon afterwards two Gallic bishops,—Heros of Arles, and Lazarus of Aix,—who were then in Palestine, lodged a formal accusation against Pelagius with the metropolitan, Eulogius of Cæsarea; and he convened a synod of fourteen bishops which met at Lydda (Diospolis), in December of the same year (415), for the trial of the case. Perhaps no greater ecclesiastical farce was ever enacted than this synod exhibited.³³ When the time arrived, the accusers were prevented from being present by illness, and Pelagius was confronted only by the written accusation. This was both unskilfully drawn, and was written in Latin which the synod did not understand. It was, therefore, not even consecutively read, and was only head by head rendered into Greek by an interpreter. Pelagius began by reading aloud several letters to himself from various men of reputation in the Episcopate,—among them a friendly note from Augustin. Thoroughly acquainted with both Latin and Greek, he was enabled skillfully to thread every difficulty, and pass safely through the ordeal. Jerome called this a “miserable synod,” and not unjustly: at the same time it is sufficient to vindicate the honesty and earnestness of the bishops’ intentions, that even in such circumstances, and despite the more undeveloped opinions of the East on the questions involved, Pelagius escaped condemnation only by a course of most ingenious disingenuousness, and only at the cost both of disowning Coelestius and his teachings, of which he had been the real father, and of leading the synod to believe that he was anathematizing the very doctrines which he was himself proclaiming. There is really no possibility of doubting, as any one will see who reads the proceedings of the synod, that Pelagius obtained his acquittal here either by a “lying condemnation or a tricky interpretation”³⁴ of his own teachings; and Augustin is perfectly justified in asserting that the “heresy was not acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy,”³⁵ and who would himself have been anathematized had he not anathematized the heresy. 

However obtained, the acquittal of Pelagius was yet an accomplished fact. Neither he nor his friends delayed to make the most widely extended use of their good fortune. Pelagius himself was jubilant. Accounts of the synodal proceedings were sent to the West, not altogether free from uncandid alterations; and Pelagius soon put forth a work In Defence of Free-Will, in which he triumphed in his acquittal and “explained his explanations” at the synod. Nor were the champions of the opposite opinion idle. As soon as the news arrived in North Africa, and before the authentic records of the synod had reached that region, the condemnation of Pelagius and Coelestius was re-affirmed in two provincial synods,—one, consisting of sixty-eight bishops, met at Carthage about midsummer of 416; and the other, consisting of about sixty bishops, met soon afterwards at Mileve (Mila). Thus Palestine and North Africa were arrayed against one another, and it became of great importance to obtain the support of the Patriarchal See of Rome. Both sides made the attempt, but fortune favored the Africans. Each of the North-African synods sent a synodal letter to Innocent I., then Bishop of Rome, engaging his assent to their action: to these, five bishops, Aurelius of Carthage and Augustin among them, added a third “familiar” letter of their own, in which they urged upon Innocent to examine into Pelagius’ teaching, and provided him with the material on which he might base a decision. The letters reached Innocent in time for him to take advice of his clergy, and send favorable replies on Jan. 27, 417. In these he expressed his agreement with the African decisions, asserted the necessity of inward grace, rejected the Pelagian theory of infant baptism, and declared Pelagius and Coelestius excommunicated until they should return to orthodoxy. In about six weeks more he was dead: but Zosimus, his successor, was scarcely installed in his place before Coelestius appeared at Rome in person to plead his cause; while shortly afterwards letters arrived from Pelagius addressed to Innocent, and by an artful statement of his belief and a recommendation from Praylus, lately become bishop of Jerusalem in John’s stead, attempting to enlist Rome in his favour. Zosimus, who appears to have been a Greek and therefore inclined to make little of the merits of this Western controversy, went over to Coelestius at once, upon his profession of willingness to anathematize all doctrines which the pontifical see had condemned or should condemn; and wrote a sharp and arrogant letter to Africa, proclaiming Coelestius “catholic,” and requiring the Africans to appear within two months at Rome to prosecute their charges, or else to abandon them. On the arrival of Pelagius’ papers, this letter was followed by another (September, 417), in which Zosimus, with the approbation of the clergy, declared both Pelagius and Coelestius to be orthodox, and severely rebuked the Africans for their hasty judgment. It is difficult to understand Zosimus’ action in this matter: neither of the confessions presented by the accused teachers ought to have deceived him, and if he was seizing the occasion to magnify the Roman see, his mistake was dreadful. Late in 417, or early in 418, the African bishops assembled at Carthage, in number more than two hundred, and replied to Zosimus that they had decided that the sentence pronounced against Pelagius and Coelestius should remain in force until they should unequivocally acknowledge that “we are aided by the grace of God, through Christ, not only to know, but to do what is right, in each single act, so that without grace we are unable to have, think, speak, or do anything pertaining to piety.” This firmness made Zosimus waver. He answered swellingly but timidly, declaring that he had maturely examined the matter, but it had not been his intention finally to acquit Coelestius; and now he had left all things in the condition in which they were before, but he claimed the right of final judgment to himself. Matters were hastening to a conclusion, however, that would leave him no opportunity to escape from the mortification of an entire change of front. This letter was written on the 21st of March, 418; it was received in Africa on the 29th of April; and on the very next day an imperial decree was issued from Ravenna ordering Pelagius and Coelestius to be banished from Rome, with all who held their opinions; while on the next day, May 1, a plenary council of about two hundred bishops met at Carthage, and in nine canons condemned all the essential features of Pelagianism. Whether this simultaneous action was the result of skillful arrangement, can only be conjectured: its effect was in any case necessarily crushing. There could be no appeal from the civil decision, and it played directly into the hands of the African definition of the faith. The synod’s nine canons part naturally into three triads.³⁶ The first of these deals with the relation of mankind to original sin, and anathematizes in turn those who assert that physical death is a necessity of nature, and not a result of Adam’s sin; those who assert that new-born children derive nothing of original sin from Adam to be expiated by the laver of regeneration; and those who assert a distinction between the kingdom of heaven and eternal life, for entrance into the former of which alone baptism is necessary. The second triad deals with the nature of grace, and anathematizes those who assert that grace brings only remission of past sins, not aid in avoiding future ones; those who assert that grace aids us not to sin, only by teaching us what is sinful, not by enabling us to will and do what we know to be right; and those who assert that grace only enables us to do more easily what we should without it still be able to do. The third triad deals with the universal sinfulness of the race, and anathematizes those who assert that the apostles’ (1 John i. 8) confession of sin is due only to their humility; those who say that “Forgive us our trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, is pronounced by the saints, not for themselves, but for the sinners in their company; and those who say that the saints use these words of themselves only out of humility and not truly. Here we see a careful traversing of the whole ground of the controversy, with a conscious reference to the three chief contentions of the Pelagian teachers.³⁷ 

The appeal to the civil power, by whomsoever made, was, of course, indefensible, although it accorded with the opinions of the day, and was entirely approved by Augustin. But it was the ruin of the Pelagian cause. Zosimus found himself forced either to go into banishment with his wards, or to desert their cause. He appears never to have had any personal convictions on the dogmatic points involved in the controversy, and so, all the more readily, yielded to the necessity of the moment. He cited Coelestius to appear before a council for a new examination; but that heresiarch consulted prudence, and withdrew from the city. Zosimus, possibly in the effort to appear a leader in the cause he had opposed, not only condemned and excommunicated the men whom less than six months before he had pronounced “orthodox” after a ‘mature consideration of the matters involved,’ but, in obedience to the imperial decree, issued a stringent paper which condemned Pelagius and the Pelagians, and affirmed the African doctrines as to corruption of nature, true grace, and the necessity of baptism. To this he required subscription from all bishops as a test of orthodoxy. Eighteen Italian bishops refused their signature, with Julian of Eclanum, henceforth to be the champion of the Pelagian party, at their head, and were therefore deposed, although several of them afterwards recanted, and were restored. In Julian, the heresy obtained an advocate, who, if aught could have been done for its re-instatement, would surely have proved successful. He was the boldest, the strongest, at once the most acute and the most weighty, of all the disputants of his party. But the ecclesiastical standing of this heresy was already determined. The policy of Zosimus’ test act was imposed by imperial authority on North Africa in 419. The exiled bishops were driven from Constantinople by Atticus in 424; and they are said to have been condemned at a Cilician synod in 423, and at an Antiochian one in 424. Thus the East itself was preparing for the final act in the drama. The exiled bishops were with Nestorius at Constantinople in 429; and that patriarch unsuccessfully interceded for them with Coelestine, then Bishop of Rome. The conjunction was ominous. And at the ecumenical synod at Ephesus in 431, we again find the “Coelestians” side by side with Nestorius, sharers in his condemnation. 

But Pelagianism did not so die as not to leave a legacy behind it. “Remainders of Pelagianism”³⁸ soon showed themselves in Southern Gaul, where a body of monastic leaders attempted to find a middle ground on which they could stand, by allowing the Augustinian doctrine of assisting grace, but retaining the Pelagian conception of our self-determination to good. We first hear of them in 428, through letters from two laymen, Prosper and Hilary, to Augustin, as men who accepted original sin and the necessity of grace, but asserted that men began their turning to God, and God helped their beginning. They taught³⁹ that all men are sinners, and that they derive their sin from Adam; that they can by no means save themselves, but need God’s assisting grace; and that this grace is gratuitous in the sense that men cannot really deserve it, and yet that it is not irresistible, nor given always without the occasion of its gift having been determined by men’s attitude towards God; so that, though not given on account of the merits of men, it is given according to those merits, actual or foreseen. The leader of this new movement was John Cassian, a pupil of Chrysostom (to whom he attributed all that was good in his life and will), and the fountain-head of Gallic monasticism; and its chief champion at a somewhat later day was Faustus of Rhegium (Riez). 

The Augustinian opposition was at first led by the vigorous controversialist, Prosper of Aquitaine, and, in the next century, by the wise, moderate, and good Cæsarius of Arles, who brought the contest to a conclusion in the victory of a softened Augustinianism. Already in 431 a letter was obtained from Pope Coelestine, designed to close the controversy in favor of Augustinianism, and in 496 Pope Gelasius condemned the writings of Faustus in the first index of forbidden books; while, near the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas was appealed to for a renewed condemnation. The end was now in sight. The famous second Synod of Orange met under the presidency of Cæsarius at that ancient town on the 3d of July, 529, and drew up a series of moderate articles which received the ratification of Boniface II. in the following year. In these articles there is affirmed an anxiously guarded Augustinianism, a somewhat weakened Augustinianism, but yet a distinctive Augustinianism; and, so far as a formal condemnation could reach, semi-Pelagianism was suppressed by them in the whole Western Church. But councils and popes can only decree; and Cassian and Vincent and Faustus, despite Cæsarius and Boniface and Gregory, retained an influence among their countrymen which never died away. 

III. Augustin’s Part in the Controversy 

Both by nature and by grace, Augustin was formed to be the champion of truth in this controversy. Of a naturally philosophical temperament, he saw into the springs of life with a vividness of mental perception to which most men are strangers; and his own experiences in his long life of resistance to, and then of yielding to, the drawings of God’s grace, gave him a clear apprehension of the great evangelic principle that God seeks men, not men God, such as no sophistry could cloud. However much his philosophy or theology might undergo change in other particulars, there was one conviction too deeply imprinted upon his heart ever to fade or alter,—the conviction of the ineffableness of God’s grace. Grace,—man’s absolute dependence on God as the source of all good,—this was the common, nay, the formative element, in all stages of his doctrinal development, which was marked only by the ever growing consistency with which he built his theology around this central principle. Already in 397,—the year after he became bishop,—we find him enunciating with admirable clearness all the essential elements of his teaching, as he afterwards opposed them to Pelagius.⁴⁰ It was inevitable, therefore, that although he was rejoiced when he heard, some years later, of the zealous labours of this pious monk in Rome towards stemming the tide of luxury and sin, and esteemed him for his devout life, and loved him for his Christian activity, he yet was deeply troubled when subsequent rumours reached him that he was “disputing against the grace of God.” He tells us over and over again, that this was a thing no pious heart could endure; and we perceive that, from this moment, Augustin was only biding his time, and awaiting a fitting opportunity to join issue with the denier of the Holy of holies of his whole, I will not say theology merely, but life. “Although I was grieved by this,” he says, “and it was told me by men whom I believed, I yet desired to have something of such sort from his own lips or in some book of his, so that, if I began to refute it, he would not be able to deny it.”⁴¹ Thus he actually excuses himself for not entering into the controversy earlier. When Pelagius came to Africa, then, it was almost as if he had deliberately sought his fate. But circumstances secured a lull before the storm. He visited Hippo; but Augustin was absent, although he did not fail to inform himself on his return that Pelagius while there had not been heard to say “anything at all of this kind.” The controversy against the Donatists was now occupying all the energies of the African Church, and Augustin himself was a ruling spirit in the great conference now holding at Carthage with them. While there, he was so immersed in this business, that, although he once or twice saw the face of Pelagius, he had no conversation with him; and although his ears were wounded by a casual remark which he heard, to the effect “that infants were not baptized for remission of sins, but for consecration to Christ,” he allowed himself to pass over the matter, “because there was no opportunity to contradict it, and those who said it were not such men as could cause him solicitude for their influence.”⁴² 

It appears from these facts, given us by himself, that Augustin was not only ready for, but was looking for, the coming controversy. It can scarcely have been a surprise to him when Paulinus accused Coelestius (412); and, although he was not a member of the council which condemned him, it was inevitable that he should at once take the leading part in the consequent controversy. Coelestius and his friends did not silently submit to the judgment that had been passed upon their teaching: they could not openly propagate their heresy, but they were diligent in spreading their plaints privately and by subterraneous whispers among the people.⁴³ This was met by the Catholics in public sermons and familiar colloquies held everywhere. But this wise rule was observed,—to contend against the erroneous teachings, but to keep silence as to the teachers, that so (as Augustin explains⁴⁴) “the men might rather be brought to see and acknowledge their error through fear of ecclesiastical judgment than be punished by the actual judgment.” Augustin was abundant in these oral labours; and many of his sermons directed against Pelagian error have come down to us, although it is often impossible to be sure as to their date. For one of them (170) he took his text from Phil. iii. 6–16, “as touching the righteousness which is by the law blameless; howbeit what things were gain to me, those have I counted loss for Christ.” He begins by asking how the apostle could count his blameless conversation according to the righteousness which is from the law as dung and loss, and then proceeds to explain the purpose for which the law was given, our state by nature and under law, and the kind of blamelessness that the law could produce, ending by showing that man can have no righteousness except from God, and no perfect righteousness except in heaven. Three others (174, 175, 176) had as their text 1 Tim. i. 15, 16, and developed its teaching, that the universal sin of the world and its helplessness in sin constituted the necessity of the incarnation; and especially that the necessity of Christ’s grace for salvation was just as great for infants as for adults. Much is very forcibly said in these sermons which was afterwards incorporated in his treatises. “There was no reason,” he insists, “for the coming of Christ the Lord except to save sinners. Take away diseases, take away wounds, and there is no reason for medicine. If the great Physician came from heaven, a great sick man was lying ill through the whole world. That sick man is the human race” (175, 1). “He who says, ‘I am not a sinner,’ or ‘I was not,’ is ungrateful to the Saviour. No one of men in that mass of mortals which flows down from Adam, no one at all of men is not sick: no one is healed without the grace of Christ. Why do you ask whether infants are sick from Adam? For they, too, are brought to the church; and, if they cannot run thither on their own feet, they run on the feet of others that they may be healed. Mother Church accommodates others’ feet to them so that they may come, others’ heart so that they may believe, others’ tongue so that they may confess; and, since they are sick by another’s sin, so when they are healed they are saved by another’s confession in their behalf. Let, then, no one buzz strange doctrines to you. This the Church has always had, has always held; this she has received from the faith of the elders; this she will perseveringly guard until the end. Since the whole have no need of a physician, but only the sick, what need, then, has the infant of Christ, if he is not sick? If he is well, why does he seek the physician through those who love him? If, when infants are brought, they are said to have no sin of inheritance (peccatum propaginis) at all, and yet come to Christ, why is it not said in the church to those that bring them, ‘take these innocents hence; the physician is not needed by the well, but by the sick; Christ came not to call the just, but sinners’? It never has been said, and it never will be said. Let each one therefore, brethren, speak for him who cannot speak for himself. It is much the custom to intrust the inheritance of orphans to the bishops; how much more the grace of infants! The bishop protects the orphan lest he should be oppressed by strangers, his parents being dead. Let him cry out more for the infant who, he fears, will be slain by his parents. Who comes to Christ has something in him to be healed; and he who has not, has no reason for seeking the physician. Let parents choose one of two things: let them either confess that there is sin to be healed in their infants, or let them cease bringing them to the physician. This is nothing else than to wish to bring a well person to the physician. Why do you bring him? To be baptized. Whom? The infant. To whom do you bring him? To Christ. To Him, of course, who came into the world? Certainly, he says. Why did He come into the world? To save sinners. Then he whom you bring has in him that which needs saving?”⁴⁵ So again: “He who says that the age of infancy does not need Jesus’ salvation, says nothing else than that the Lord Christ is not Jesus to faithful infants; i.e., to infants baptized in Christ. For what is Jesus? Jesus means saviour. He is not Jesus to those whom He does not save, who do not need to be saved. Now, if your hearts can bear that Christ is not Jesus to any of the baptized, I do not know how you can be acknowledged to have sound faith. They are infants, but they are made members of Him. They are infants, but they receive His sacraments. They are infants, but they become partakers of His table, so that they may have life.”⁴⁶ The preveniency of grace is explicitly asserted in these sermons. In one he says, “Zaccheus was seen, and saw; but unless he had been seen, he would not have seen. For ‘whom He predestinated, them also He called.’ In order that we may see, we are seen; that we may love, we are loved. ‘My God, may His pity prevent me!’”⁴⁷ And in another, at more length: “His calling has preceded you, so that you may have a good will. Cry out, ‘My God, let Thy mercy prevent me’ (Ps. lviii. 11). That you may be, that you may feel, that you may hear, that you may consent, His mercy prevents you. It prevents you in all things; and do you too prevent His judgment in something. In what, do you say? In what? In confessing that you have all these things from God, whatever you have of good; and from yourself whatever you have of evil” (176, 5). “We owe therefore to Him that we are, that we are alive, that we understand: that we are men, that we live well, that we understand aright, we owe to Him. Nothing is ours except the sin that we have. For what have we that we did not receive?” (1 Cor. ix. 7) (176, 6). 

It was not long, however, before the controversy was driven out of the region of sermons into that of regular treatises. The occasion for Augustin’s first appearance in a written document bearing on the controversy, was given by certain questions which were sent to him for answer by “the tribune and notary” Marcellinus, with whom he had cemented his intimacy at Carthage, the previous year, when this notable official was presiding, by the emperor’s orders, over the great conference of the catholics and Donatists. The mere fact that Marcellinus, still at Carthage, where Coelestius had been brought to trial, wrote to Augustin at Hippo for written answers to important questions connected with the Pelagian heresy, speaks volumes for the prominent position he had already assumed in the controversy. The questions that were sent, concerned the connection of death with sin, the transmission of sin, the possibility of a sinless life, and especially infants’ need of baptism.⁴⁸ Augustin was immersed in abundant labours when they reached him:49 but he could not resist this appeal, and that the less as the Pelagian controversy had already grown to a place of the first importance in his eyes. The result was his treatise, On the Merits and Remission of Sins and on the Baptism of Infants, consisting of two books, and written in 412. The first book of this work is an argument for original sin, drawn from the universal reign of death in the world (2–8), from the teaching of Rom. v. 12–21 (9–20), and chiefly from the baptism of infants (21–70).⁵⁰ It opens by exploding the Pelagian contention that death is of nature, and Adam would have died even had he not sinned, by showing that the penalty threatened to Adam included physical death (Gen. iii. 19), and that it is due to him that we all die (Rom. viii. 10, 11; 1 Cor. xv. 21) (2–8). Then the Pelagian assertion that we are injured in Adam’s sin only by its bad example, which we imitate, not by any propagation from it, is tested by an exposition of Rom. v. 12 sq. (9–20). And then the main subject of the book is reached, and the writer sharply presses the Pelagians with the universal and primeval fact of the baptism of infants, as a proof of original sin (21–70). He tracks out all their subterfuges,—showing the absurdity of the assertions that infants are baptized for the remission of sins that they have themselves committed since birth (22), or in order to obtain a higher stage of salvation (23–28), or because of sin committed in some previous state of existence (31–33). Then turning to the positive side, he shows at length that the Scriptures teach that Christ came to save sinners, that baptism is for the remission of sins, and that all that partake of it are confessedly sinners (34 sq.); then he points out that John ii. 7, 8, on which the Pelagians relied, cannot be held to distinguish between ordinary salvation and a higher form, under the name of “the kingdom of God” (58 sq.); and he closes by showing that the very manner in which baptism was administered, with its exorcism and exsufflation, implied the infant to be a sinner (63), and by suggesting that the peculiar helplessness of infancy, so different not only from the earliest age of Adam, but also from that of many young animals, may possibly be itself penal (64–69). The second book treats, with similar fulness, the question of the perfection of human righteousness in this life. After an exordium which speaks of the will and its limitations, and of the need of God’s assisting grace (1–6), the writer raises four questions. First, whether it may be said to be possible, by God’s grace, for a man to attain a condition of entire sinlessness in this life (7). This he answers in the affirmative. Secondly, he asks, whether any one has ever done this, or may ever be expected to do it, and answers in the negative on the testimony of Scripture (8–25). Thirdly, he asks why not, and replies briefly because men are unwilling, explaining at length what he means by this (26–33). Finally, he inquires whether any man has ever existed, exists now, or will ever exist, entirely without sin,—this question differing from the second inasmuch as that asked after the attainment in this life of a state in which sinning should cease, while this seeks a man who has never been guilty of sin, implying the absence of original as well as of actual sin. After answering this in the negative (34), Augustin discusses anew the question of original sin. Here after expounding from the positive side (35–38) the condition of man in paradise, the nature of his probation, and of the fall and its effects both on him and his posterity, and the kind of redemption that has been provided in the incarnation, he proceeds to answer certain cavils (39 sq.), such as, “Why should children of baptized people need baptism?”—“How can a sin be remitted to the father and held against the child?”—“If physical death comes from Adam, ought we not to be released from it on believing in Christ?”—and concludes with an exhortation to hold fast to the exact truth, turning neither to the right nor left,—neither saying that we have no sin, nor surrendering ourselves to our sin (57 sq.). 

After these books were completed, Augustin came into possession of Pelagius’ Commentary on Paul’s Epistles, which was written while he was living in Rome (before 410), and found it to contain some arguments that he had not treated,—such arguments, he tells us, as he had not imagined could be held by any one.⁵¹ Unwilling to re-open his finished argument, he now began a long supplementary letter to Marcellinus, which he intended to serve as a third and concluding book to his work. He was some time in completing this letter. He had asked to have the former two books returned to him; and it is a curious indication of his overworked state of mind, that he forgot what he wanted with them:52 he visited Carthage while the letter was in hand, and saw Marcellinus personally; and even after his return to Hippo, it dragged along, amid many distractions, slowly towards completion.⁵³ Meanwhile, a long letter was written to Honoratus, in which a section on the grace of the New Testament was incorporated. At length the promised supplement was completed. It was professedly a criticism of Pelagius’ Commentary, and therefore naturally mentioned his name; but Augustin even goes out of his way to speak as highly of his opponent as he can,⁵⁴—although it is apparent that his esteem is not very high for his strength of mind, and is even less high for the moral quality that led to his odd, oblique way of expressing his opinions. There is even a half sarcasm in the way he speaks of Pelagius’ care and circumspection, which was certainly justified by the event. The letter opens by stating and criticising in a very acute and telling dialectic, the new arguments of Pelagius, which were such as the following: “If Adam’s sin injured even those who do not sin, Christ’s righteousness ought likewise to profit even those who do not believe” (2–4); “No man can transmit what he has not; and hence, if baptism cleanses from sin, the children of baptized parents ought to be free from sin;” “God remits one’s own sins, and can scarcely, therefore, impute another’s to us; and if the soul is created, it would certainly be unjust to impute Adam’s alien sin to it” (5). The stress of the letter, however, is laid upon two contentions,—1. That whatever else may be ambiguous in the Scriptures, they are perfectly clear that no man can have eternal life except in Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance (7); and 2. That original sin in infants has always been, in the Church, one of the fixed facts, to be used as a basis of argument, in order to reach the truth in other matters, and has never itself been called in question before (10–14). At this point, the writer returns to the second and third of the new arguments of Pelagius mentioned above, and discusses them more fully (15–20), closing with a recapitulation of the three great points that had been raised; viz., that both death and sin are derived from Adam’s sin by all his posterity; that infants need salvation, and hence baptism; and that no man ever attains in this life such a state of holiness that he cannot truly pray, “Forgive us our trespasses.” 

Augustin was now to learn that one service often entails another. Marcellinus wrote to say that he was puzzled by what had been said in the second book of this work, as to the possibility of man’s attaining to sinlessness in this life, while yet it was asserted that no man ever had attained, or ever would attain, it. How, he asked, can that be said to be possible which is, and which will remain, unexampled? In reply, Augustin wrote, during this same year (412), and sent to his noble friend, another work, which he calls On the Spirit and the Letter, from the prominence which he gives in it to the words of 2 Cor. iii. 6.55 He did not content himself with a simple, direct answer to Marcellinus’ question, but goes at length into a profound disquisition into the roots of the doctrine, and thus gives us, not a mere explanation of a former contention, but a new treatise on a new subject,—the absolute necessity of the grace of God for any good living. He begins by explaining to Marcellinus that he has affirmed the possibility while denying the actuality of a sinless life, on the ground that all things are possible to God,—even the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle, which nevertheless has never occurred (1, 2). For, in speaking of man’s perfection, we are speaking really of a work of God,—and one which is none the less His work because it is wrought through the instrumentality of man, and in the use of his free will. The Scriptures, indeed, teach that no man lives without sin, but this is only the proclamation of a matter of fact; and although it is thus contrary to fact and Scripture to assert that men may be found that live sinlessly, yet such an assertion would not be fatal heresy. What is unbearable, is that men should assert it to be possible for man, unaided by God, to attain this perfection. This is to speak against the grace of God: it is to put in man’s power what is only possible to the almighty grace of God (3, 4). No doubt, even these men do not, in so many words, exclude the aid of grace in perfecting human life,—they affirm God’s help; but they make it consist in His gift to man of a perfectly free will, and in His addition to this of commandments and teachings which make known to him what he is to seek and what to avoid, and so enable him to direct his free will to what is good. What, however, does such a “grace” amount to? (5). Man needs something more than to know the right way: he needs to love it, or he will not walk in it; and all mere teaching, which can do nothing more than bring us knowledge of what we ought to do, is but the letter that killeth. What we need is some inward, Spirit-given aid to the keeping of what by the law we know ought to be kept. Mere knowledge slays: while to lead a holy life is the gift of God,—not only because He has given us will, nor only because He has taught us the right way, but because by the Holy Spirit He sheds love abroad in the hearts of all those whom He has predestinated, and will call and justify and glorify (Rom. viii. 29, 30). To prove this, he states to be the object of the present treatise; and after investigating the meaning of 2 Cor. iii. 6, and showing that “the letter” there means the law as a system of precepts, which reveals sin rather than takes it away, points out the way rather than gives strength to walk in it, and therefore slays the soul by shutting it up under sin,—while “the Spirit” is God’s Holy Ghost who is shed abroad in our hearts to give us strength to walk aright,—he undertakes to prove this position from the teachings of the Epistle to the Romans at large. This contention, it will be seen, cut at the very roots of Pelagianism: if all mere teaching slays the soul, as Paul asserts, then all that what they called “grace” could, when alone, do, was to destroy; and the upshot of “helping” man by simply giving him free will, and pointing out the way to him, would be the loss of the whole race. Not that the law is sin: Augustin teaches that it is holy and good, and God’s instrument in salvation. Not that free will is done away: it is by free will that men are led into holiness. But the purpose of the law (he teaches) is to make men so feel their lost estate as to seek the help by which alone they may be saved; and will is only then liberated to do good when grace has made it free. “What the law of works enjoins by menace, that the law of faith secures by faith. What the law of works does is to say, ‘Do what I command thee;’ but by the law of faith we say to God, ‘Give me what thou commandest.’”(22).⁵⁶ In the midst of this argument, Augustin is led to discuss the differentiating characteristics of the Old and New Testaments; and he expounds at length (33–42) the passage in Jer. xxxi. 31–34, showing that, in the prophet’s view, the difference between the two covenants is that in the Old, the law is an external thing written on stones; while in the New, it is written internally on the heart, so that men now wish to do what the law prescribes. This writing on the heart is nothing else, he explains, than the shedding abroad by the Holy Spirit of love in our hearts, so that we love God’s will, and therefore freely do it. Towards the end of the treatise (50–61), he treats in an absorbingly interesting way of the mutual relations of free will, faith, and grace, contending that all co-exist without the voiding of any. It is by free will that we believe; but it is only as grace moves us, that we are able to use our free will for believing; and it is only after we are thus led by grace to believe, that we obtain all other goods. In prosecuting this analysis, Augustin is led to distinguish very sharply between the faculty and use of free will (58), as well as between ability and volition (53). Faith is an act of the man himself; but only as he is given the power from on high to will to believe, will he believe (57, 60). 

By this work, Augustin completed, in his treatment of Pelagianism, the circle of that triad of doctrines which he himself looked upon as most endangered by this heresy,⁵⁷—original sin, the imperfection of human righteousness, the necessity of grace. In his mind, the last was the kernel of the whole controversy; and this was a subject which he could never approach without some heightened fervour. This accounts for the great attractiveness of the present work,—through the whole fabric of which runs the golden thread of the praise of God’s ineffable grace. In Canon Bright’s opinion, it “perhaps, next to the ‘Confessions,’ tells us most of the thoughts of that ‘rich, profound, and affectionate mind’ on the soul’s relations to its God.”⁵⁸ 

After the publication of these treatises, the controversy certainly did not lull; but it relapsed for nearly three years again, into less public courses. Meanwhile, Augustin was busy, among other most distracting cares (Ep. 145, 1), still defending the grace of God, by letters and sermons. A fair illustration of his state of mind at this time, may be obtained from his letter to Anastasius (145), which assuredly must have been written soon after the treatise On the Spirit and the Letter. Throughout this letter, there are adumbrations of the same train of thought that filled this treatise; and there is one passage which may almost be taken as a summary of it. Augustin is so weary of the vexatious cares that filled his life, that he is ready to long for the everlasting rest, and yet bewails the weakness which allowed the sweetness of external things still to insinuate itself into his heart. Victory over, and emancipation from, this, he asserts, “cannot, without God’s grace, be achieved by the human will, which is by no means to be called free so long as it is subject to enslaving lusts.” Then he proceeds: “The law, therefore, by teaching and commanding what cannot be fulfilled without grace, demonstrates to man his weakness, in order that the weakness, thus proved, may resort to the Saviour, by whose healing the will may be able to do what it found impossible in its weakness. So, then, the law brings us to faith, faith obtains the Spirit in fuller measure, the Spirit sheds love abroad in us, and love fulfils the law. For this reason the law is called a schoolmaster, under whose threatening and severity ‘whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.’ But ‘how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?’ Wherefore, that the letter without the Spirit may not kill, the life-giving Spirit is given to those that believe and call upon Him; but the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us, so that the words of the same apostle, ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law,’ may be realized. Thus the law is good to him that uses it lawfully; and he uses it lawfully, who, understanding wherefore it was given, betakes himself, under the pressure of its threatening, to liberating grace. Whoever ungratefully despises this grace by which the ungodly is justified, and trusts in his own strength for fulfilling the law, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish his own righteousness, is not submitting himself to the righteousness of God; and therefore the law is made to him not a help to pardon, but the bond of guilt; not because the law is evil, but because ‘sin,’ as it is written, ‘works death to such persons by that which is good.’ For by the commandment, he sins more grievously, who, by the commandment, knows how evil are the sins which he commits.” Although Augustin states clearly that this letter is written against those “who arrogate too much to the human will, imagining that, the law being given, the will is, of its own strength, sufficient to fulfil the law, though not assisted by any grace imparted by the Holy Ghost, in addition to instruction in the law,”—he refrains still from mentioning the names of the authors of this teaching, evidently out of a lingering tenderness in his treatment of them. This will help us to explain the courtesy of a note which he sent to Pelagius himself at about this time, in reply to a letter he had received some time before from him; of which Pelagius afterwards (at the Synod of Diospolis) made, to say the least of it, an ungenerous use. This note,⁵⁹ Augustin tells us, was written with “tempered praises” (wherefrom we see his lessening respect for the man), and so as to admonish Pelagius to think rightly concerning grace,—so far as could be done without raising the dregs of the controversy in a formal note. This he accomplished by praying from the Lord for him, those good things by which he might be good forever, and might live eternally with Him who is eternal; and by asking his prayers in return, that he, too, might be made by the Lord such as he seemed to suppose he already was. How Augustin could really intend these prayers to be understood as an admonition to Pelagius to look to God for what he was seeking to work out for himself, is fully illustrated by the closing words of this almost contemporary letter to Anastasius: “Pray, therefore, for us,” he writes, “that we may be righteous,—an attainment wholly beyond a man’s reach, unless he know righteousness, and be willing to practise it, but one which is immediately realized when he is perfectly willing; but this cannot be in him unless he is healed by the grace of the Spirit, and aided to be able.” The point had already been made in the controversy, that, by the Pelagian doctrine, so much power was attributed to the human will, that no one ought to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” 

If he was anxious to avoid personal controversy with Pelagius himself in the hope that he might even yet be reclaimed, Augustin was equally anxious to teach the truth on all possible occasions. Pelagius had been intimate, when at Rome, with the pious Paulinus, bishop of Nola; and it was understood that there was some tendency at Nola to follow the new teachings. It was, perhaps, as late as 414, when Augustin made reply in a long letter,⁶⁰ to a request of Paulinus’ for an exposition of certain difficult Scriptures, which had been sent him about 410.61 Among them was Rom. xi. 28; and, in explaining it, Augustin did not withhold a tolerably complete account of his doctrine of predestination, involving the essence of his whole teaching as to grace: “For when he had said, ‘according to the election they are beloved for their father’s sake,’ he added, ‘for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ You see that those are certainly meant who belong to the number of the predestinated.…‘Many indeed are called, but few chosen;’ but those who are elect, these are called ‘according to His purpose;’ and it is beyond doubt that in them God’s foreknowledge cannot be deceived. These He foreknew and predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first born among many brethren. But ‘whom He predestinated, them He also called.’ This calling is ‘according to His purpose,’ this calling is ‘without repentance,’”etc., quoting Rom. v. 28–31. Then continuing, he says, “Those are not in this vocation, who do not persevere unto the end in the faith that worketh by love, although they walk in it a little while.…But the reason why some belong to it, and some do not, can easily be hidden, but cannot be unjust. For is there injustice with God? God forbid! For this belongs to those high judgments which, so to say, terrified the wondering apostle to look upon.” 

Among the most remarkable of the controversial sermons that were preached about this time, especial mention is due to two that were delivered at Carthage, midsummer of 413. The former of these⁶² was preached on the festival of John the Baptist’s birth (June 24), and naturally took the forerunner for its subject. The nativity of John suggesting the nativity of Christ, the preacher spoke of the marvel of the incarnation. He who was in the beginning, and was the Word of God, and was Himself God, and who made all things, and in whom was life, even this one “came to us. To whom? To the worthy? Nay, but to the unworthy! For Christ died for the ungodly, and for the unworthy, though He was worthy. We indeed were unworthy whom He pitied; but He was worthy who pitied us, to whom we say, ‘For Thy pity’s sake, Lord, free us!’ Not for the sake of our preceding merits, but ‘for Thy pity’s sake, Lord, free us;’ and ‘for Thy name’s sake be propitious to our sins,’ not for our merit’s sake.…For the merit of sins is, of course, not reward, but punishment.” He then dwelt upon the necessity of the incarnation, and the necessity of a mediator between God and “the whole mass of the human race alienated from Him by Adam.” Then quoting 1 Cor. iv. 7, he asserts that it is not our varying merits, but God’s grace alone, that makes us differ, and that we are all alike, great and small, old and young, saved by one and the same Saviour. “What then, some one says,” he continues, “even the infant needs a liberator? Certainly he needs one. And the witness to it is the mother that faithfully runs to church with the child to be baptized. The witness is Mother Church herself, who receives the child for washing, and either for dismissing him [from this life] freed, or nurturing him in piety.…Last of all, the tears of his own misery are witness in the child himself.…Recognize the misery, extend the help. Let all put on bowels of mercy. By as much as they cannot speak for themselves, by so much more pityingly let us speak for the little ones,”—and then follows a passage calling on the Church to take the grace of infants in their charge as orphans committed to their care, which is in substance repeated from a former sermon.⁶³ The speaker proceeded to quote Matt. i. 21, and apply it. If Jesus came to save from sins, and infants are brought to Him, it is to confess that they, too, are sinners. Then, shall they be withheld from baptism? “Certainly, if the child could speak for himself, he would repel the voice of opposition, and cry out, ‘Give me Christ’s life! In Adam I died: give me Christ’s life; in whose sight I am not clean, even if I am an infant whose life has been but one day in the earth.’” “No way can be found,” adds the preacher, “of coming into the life of this world except by Adam; no way can be found of escaping punishment in the next world except by Christ. Why do you shut up the one door?” Even John the Baptist himself was born in sin; and absolutely no one can be found who was born apart from sin, until you find one who was born apart from Adam. “‘By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin, death; and so it passed through upon all men.’ If these were my words, could this sentiment be expressed more expressly, more clearly, more fully?” 

Three days afterwards,⁶⁴ on the invitation of the Bishop of Carthage, Augustin preached a sermon professedly directed against the Pelagians,⁶⁵ which takes up the threads hinted at in the former discourse, and develops a full polemic with reference to the baptism of infants. He began, formally enough, with the determination of the question in dispute. The Pelagians concede that infants should be baptized. The only question is, for what are they baptized? We say that they would not otherwise have salvation and eternal life; but they say it is not for salvation, not for eternal life, but for the kingdom of God.…“The child, they say, although not baptized, by the desert of his innocence, in that he has no sin at all, either actual or original, either from himself or contracted from Adam, necessarily has salvation and eternal life even if not baptized; but is to be baptized for this reason,—that he may enter into the kingdom of God, i.e., into the kingdom of heaven.” He then shows that there is no eternal life outside the kingdom of heaven, no middle place between the right and left hand of the judge at the last day, and that, therefore, to exclude one from the kingdom of God is to consign him to the pains of eternal fire; while, on the other side, no one ascends into heaven unless he has been made a member of Christ, and this can only be by faith,—which, in an infant’s case, is professed by another in his stead. He then treats, at length, some of the puzzling questions with which the Pelagians were wont to try the catholics; and then breaking off suddenly, he took a volume in his hands. “I ask you,” he said, “to bear with me a little: I will read somewhat. It is St. Cyprian whom I hold in my hand, the ancient bishop of this see. What he thought of the baptism of infants,—nay, what he has shown that the Church always thought,—learn in brief. For it is not enough for them to dispute and argue, I know not what impious novelties: they even try to charge us with asserting something novel. It is on this account that I read here St. Cyprian, in order that you may perceive that the orthodox understanding and catholic sense reside in the words which I have been just now speaking to you. He was asked whether an infant ought to be baptized before he was eight days old, seeing that by the ancient law no infant was allowed to be circumcised unless he was eight days old. A question arose from this as to the day of baptism,—for concerning the origin of sin there was no question; and therefore from this thing of which there was no question, that question that had arisen was settled.” And then he read to them the passage out of Cyprian’s letter to Fidus, which declared that he, and all the council with him, unanimously thought that infants should be baptized at the earliest possible age, lest they should die in their inherited sin, and so pass into eternal punishment.⁶⁶ The sermon closed with a tender warning to the teachers of these strange doctrines: he might call them heretics with truth, but he will not; let the Church seek still their salvation, and not mourn them as dead; let them be exhorted as friends, not striven with as enemies. “They disparage us,” he says, “we will bear it; let them not disparage the rule [of faith], let them not disparage the truth; let them not contradict the Church, which labours every day for the remission of infants’ original sin. This thing is settled. The errant disputer may be borne with in other questions that have not been thoroughly canvassed, that are not yet settled by the full authority of the Church,—their error should be borne with: it ought not to extend so far, that they endeavour to shake even the very foundation of the Church!” He hints that although the patience hitherto exhibited towards them is “perhaps not blameworthy,” yet patience may cease to be a virtue, and become culpable negligence: in the mean time, however, he begs that the catholics should continue amicable, fraternal, placid, loving, long suffering. 

Augustin himself gives us a view of the progress of the controversy at this time in a letter written in 414.67 The Pelagians had everywhere scattered the seeds of their new error; and although some, by his ministry and that of his brother workers, had, “by God’s mercy,” been cured of their pest, yet they still existed in Africa, especially about Carthage, and were everywhere propagating their opinions in subterraneous whispers, for fear of the judgment of the Church. Wherever they were not refuted, they were seducing others to their following; and they were so spread abroad that he did not know where they would break out next. Nevertheless, he was still unwilling to brand them as heretics, and was more desirous of healing them as sick members of the Church than of cutting them off finally as too diseased for cure. Jerome also tells us that the poison was spreading in both the East and the West, and mentions particularly as seats where it showed itself the islands of Rhodes and Sicily. Of Rhodes we know nothing further; but from Sicily an appeal came to Augustin in 414 from one Hilary,⁶⁸ setting forth that there were certain Christians about Syracuse who taught strange doctrines, and beseeching Augustin to help him in dealing with them. The doctrines were enumerated as follows: “They say (1) that man can be without sin, (2) and can easily keep the commandments of God if he will; (3) that an unbaptized infant, if he is cut off by death, cannot justly perish, since he is born without sin; (4) that a rich man that remains in his riches cannot enter the kingdom of God, except he sell all that he has;…(5) that we ought not to swear at all;” (6) and, apparently, that the Church is to be in this world without spot or blemish. Augustin suspected that these Sicilian disturbances were in some way the work of Coelestius, and therefore in his answer⁶⁹ informs his correspondent of what had been done at the Synod of Carthage (412) against him. The long letter that he sent back follows the inquiries in the order they were put by Hilary. To the first he replies, in substance, as he had treated the same matter in the second book of the treatise, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, that it was opposed to Scripture, but was less a heresy than the wholly unbearable opinion that this state of sinlessness could be attained without God’s help. “But when they say that free will suffices to man for fulfilling the precepts of the Lord, even though unaided to good works by God’s grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is to be altogether anathematized and detested with all execrations. For those who assert this are inwardly alien from God’s grace, because being ignorant of God’s righteousness, like the Jews of whom the apostle speaks, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to God’s righteousness, since there is no fulfilment of the law except love; and of course the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not by ourselves, nor by the force of our own will, but by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.” Dealing next with the second point, he drifts into the matter he had more fully developed in his work On the Spirit and the Letter. “Free will avails for God’s works,” he says, “if it be divinely aided, and this comes by humble seeking and doing; but when deserted by divine aid, no matter how excellent may be its knowledge of the law, it will by no means possess solidity of righteousness, but only the inflation of ungodly pride and deadly arrogance. This is taught us by that same Lord’s Prayer; for it would be an empty thing for us to ask God ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ if the matter was so placed in our power that we would avail for fulfilling it without any aid from Him. For this free will is free in proportion as it is sound, but it is sound in proportion as it is subject to divine pity and grace. For it faithfully prays, saying, ‘Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no iniquity reign over me.’ For how is that free over which iniquity reigns? But see who it is that is invoked by it, in order that it may not reign over it. For it says not, ‘Direct my ways according to free will because no iniquity shall rule over me,’ but ‘Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no iniquity rule over me.’ It is a prayer, not a promise; it is a confession, not a profession; it is a wish for full freedom, not a boast of personal power. For it is not every one ‘who confides in his own power,’ but ‘every one who calls on the name of God, that shall be saved.’ ‘But how shall they call upon Him,’ he says, ‘in whom they have not believed?’ Accordingly, then, they who rightly believe, believe in order to call on Him in whom they have believed, and to avail for doing what they receive in the precepts of the law; since what the law commands, faith prays for.” “God, therefore, commands continence, and gives continence; He commands by the law, He gives by grace; He commands by the letter, He gives by the spirit: for the law without grace makes the transgression to abound, and the letter without the spirit kills. He commands for this reason,—that we who have endeavoured to do what He commands, and are worn out in our weakness under the law, may know how to ask for the aid of grace; and if we have been able to do any good work, that we may not be ungrateful to Him who aids us.” The answer to the third point traverses the ground that was fully covered in the first book of the treatise On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, beginning by opposing the Pelagians to Paul in Rom. v. 12–19: “But when they say that an infant, cut off by death, unbaptized, cannot perish since he is born without sin,—it is not this that the apostle says; and I think that it is better to believe the apostle than them.” The fourth and fifth questions were new in this controversy; and it is not certain that they belong properly to it, though the legalistic asceticism of the Pelagian leaders may well have given rise to a demand on all Christians to sell what they had, and give to the poor. This one of the points, Augustin treats at length, pointing out that many of the saints of old were rich, and that the Lord and His apostles always so speak that their counsels avail to the right use, not the destruction, of wealth. Christians ought so to hold their wealth that they are not held by it, and by no means prefer it to Christ. Equal good sense and mildness are shown in his treatment of the question concerning oaths, which he points out were used by the Lord and His apostles, but advises to be used as little as possible lest by the custom of frequent oaths we learn to swear lightly. The question as to the Church, he passes over as having been sufficiently treated in the course of his previous remarks. 

To the number of those who had been rescued from Pelagianism by his efforts, Augustin was now to have the pleasure of adding two others, in whom he seems to have taken much delight. Timasius and James were two young men of honorable birth and liberal education, who had, by the exhortation of Pelagius, been moved to give up the hope that they had in this world, and enter upon the service of God in an ascetic life.⁷⁰ Naturally, they had turned to him for instruction, and had received a book to which they had given their study. They met somewhere with some of Augustin’s writings, however, and were deeply affected by what he said as to grace, and now began to see that the teaching of Pelagius opposed the grace of God by which man becomes a Christian. They gave their book, therefore, to Augustin, saying that it was Pelagius’, and asking him for Pelagius’ sake, and for the sake of the truth, to answer it. This was done, and the resulting book, On Nature and Grace, sent to the young men, who returned a letter of thanks⁷¹ in which they professed their conversion from their error. In this book, too, which was written in 415, Augustin refrained from mentioning Pelagius by name,⁷² feeling it better to spare the man while not sparing his writings. But he tells us, that, on reading the book of Pelagius to which it was an answer, it became clear to him beyond any doubt that his teaching was distinctly anti-Christian;⁷³ and when speaking of his own book privately to a friend, he allows himself to call it “a considerable book against the heresy of Pelagius, which he had been constrained to write by some brethren whom he had persuaded to adopt his fatal error, denying the grace of Christ.”⁷⁴ Thus his attitude towards the persons of the new teachers was becoming ever more and more strained, in despite of his full recognition of the excellent motives that might lie behind their “zeal not according to knowledge.” This treatise opens with a recognition of the zeal of Pelagius, which, as it burns most ardently against those who, when reproved for sin, take refuge in censuring their nature, Augustin compares with the heathen view as expressed in Sallust’s saying, “the human race falsely complains of its own nature,”⁷⁵ and which he charges with not being according to knowledge, and proposes to oppose by an equal zeal against all attempts to render the cross of Christ of none effect. He then gives a brief but excellent summary of the more important features of the catholic doctrine concerning nature and grace (2–7). Opening the work of Pelagius, which had been placed in his hands, he examines his doctrine of sin, its nature and effects. Pelagius, he points out, draws a distinction, sound enough in itself, between what is “possible” and what is “actual,” but applies it unsoundly to sin, when he says that every man has the possibility of being without sin (8–9), and therefore without condemnation. Not so, says Augustin; an infant who dies unbaptized has no possibility of salvation open to him; and the man who has lived and died in a land where it was impossible for him to hear the name of Christ, has had no possibility open to him of becoming righteous by nature and free will. If this be not so, Christ is dead in vain, since all men then might have accomplished their salvation, even if Christ had never died (10). Pelagius, moreover, he shows, exhibits a tendency to deny the sinful character of all sins that are impossible to avoid, and so treats of sins of ignorance as to show that he excuses them (13–19). When he argues that no sin, because it is not a substance, can change nature, which is a substance, Augustin replies that this destroys the Saviour’s work,—for how can He save from sins if sins do not corrupt? And, again, if an act cannot injure a substance, how can abstention from food, which is a mere act, kill the body? In the same way sin is not a substance; but God is a substance,—yea, the height of substance, and only true sustenance of the reasonable creature; and the consequence of departure from Him is to the soul what refusal of food is to the body (22). To Pelagius’ assertion that sin cannot be punished by more sin, Augustin replies that the apostle thinks differently (Rom. i. 21–31). Then putting his finger on the main point in controversy, he quotes the Scriptures as declaring the present condition of man to be that of spiritual death. “The truth then designates as dead those whom this man declares to be unable to be damaged or corrupted by sin,—because, forsooth, he has discovered sin to be no substance!” (25). It was by free will that man passed into this state of death; but a dead man needs something else to revive him,—he needs nothing less than a Vivifier. But of vivifying grace, Pelagius knew nothing; and by knowing nothing of a Vivifier, he knows nothing of a Saviour; but rather by making nature of itself able to be sinless, he glorifies the Creator at the expense of the Saviour (39). Next is examined Pelagius’ contention that many saints are enumerated in the Scriptures as having lived sinlessly in this world. While declining to discuss the question of fact as to the Virgin Mary (42), Augustin opposes to the rest the declaration of John in 1 John i. 8, as final, but still pauses to explain why the Scriptures do not mention the sins of all, and to contend that all who ever were saved under the Old Testament or the New, were saved by the sacrificial death of Christ, and by faith in Him (40–50). Thus we are brought, as Augustin says, to the core of the question, which concerns, not the fact of sinlessness in any man, but man’s ability to be sinless. This ability Pelagius affirms of all men, and Augustin denies of all “unless they are justified by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (51). Thus, the whole discussion is about grace, which Pelagius does not admit in any true sense, but places only in the nature that God has made (52). We are next invited to attend to another distinction of Pelagius’, in which he discriminates sharply between the nature that God has made, the crown of which is free will, and the use that man makes of this free will. The endowment of free will is a “capacity;” it is, because given by God in our making, a necessity of nature, and not in man’s power to have or not have. It is the right use of it only, which man has in his power. This analysis, Pelagius illustrates at length, by appealing to the difference between the possession and use of the various bodily senses. The ability to see, for instance, he says, is a necessity of our nature; we do not make it, we cannot help having it; it is ours only to use it. Augustin criticises this presentation of the matter with great sharpness (although he is not averse to the analysis itself),—showing the inapplicability of the illustrations used,—for, he asks, is it not possible for us to blind ourselves, and so no longer have the ability to see? and would not many a man like to control the “use” of his “capacity” to hear when a screechy saw is in the neighbourhood? (55); and as well the falsity of the contention illustrated, since Pelagius has ignored the fall, and, even were that not so, has so ignored the need of God’s aid for all good, in any state of being, as to deny it (56). Moreover, it is altogether a fallacy, Augustin argues, to contend that men have the “ability” to make every use we can conceive of our faculties. We cannot wish for unhappiness; God cannot deny Himself (57); and just so, in a corrupt nature, the mere possession of a faculty of choice does not imply the ability to use that faculty for not sinning. “Of a man, indeed, who has his legs strong and sound, it may be said admissibly enough, ‘whether he will or not, he has the capacity of walking;’ but if his legs be broken, however much he may wish, he has not the ‘capacity.’ The nature of which our author speaks is corrupted” (57). What, then, can he mean by saying that, whether we will or not, we have the capacity of not sinning,—a statement so opposite to Paul’s in Rom. vii. 15? Some space is next given to an attempted rebuttal by Pelagius of the testimony of Gal. v. 17, on the ground that the “flesh” there does not refer to the baptized (60–70); and then the passages are examined which Pelagius had quoted against Augustin out of earlier writers,—Lactantius (71), Hilary (72), Ambrose (75), John of Constantinople (76), Xystus,—a blunder of Pelagius, who quoted from a Pythagorean philosopher, mistaking him for the Roman bishop Sixtus (57), Jerome (78), and Augustin himself (80). All these writers, Augustin shows, admitted the universal sinfulness of man,—and especially he himself had confessed the necessity of grace in the immediate context of the passage quoted by Pelagius. The treatise closes (82 sq.) with a noble panegyric on that love which God sheds abroad in the heart, by the Holy Ghost, and by which alone we can be made keepers of the law. 

The treatise On Nature and Grace was as yet unfinished, when the over-busy⁷⁶ scriptorium at Hippo was invaded by another young man seeking instruction. This time it was a zealous young presbyter from the remotest part of Spain, “from the shore of the ocean,”—Paulus Orosius by name, whose pious soul had been afflicted with grievous wounds by the Priscillianist and Origenist heresies that had broken out in his country, and who had come with eager haste to Augustin, on hearing that he could get from him the instruction which he needed for confuting them. Augustin seems to have given him his heart at once; and, feeling too little informed as to the special heresies which he wished to be prepared to controvert, persuaded him to go on to Palestine to be taught by Jerome, and gave him introductions which described him as one “who is in the bond of catholic peace a brother, in point of age a son, and in honour a fellow-presbyter,—a man of quick understanding, ready speech, and burning zeal.” His departure to Palestine gave Augustin an opportunity to consult with Jerome on the one point that had been raised in the Pelagian controversy on which he had not been able to see light. The Pelagians had early argued,⁷⁷ that, if souls are created anew for men at their birth, it would be unjust in God to impute Adam’s sin to them. And Augustin found himself unable either to prove that souls are transmitted (traduced, as the phrase is), or to show that it would not involve God in injustice to make a soul only to make it subject to a sin committed by another. Jerome had already put himself on record as a believer in both original sin and the creation of souls at the time of birth. Augustin feared the logical consequences of this assertion, and yet was unable to refute it. He therefore seized this occasion to send a long treatise on the origin of the soul to his friend, with the request that he would consider the subject anew, and answer his doubts.⁷⁸ In this treatise he stated that he was fully persuaded that the soul had fallen into sin, but by no fault of God or of nature, but of its own free will; and asked when could the soul of an infant have contracted the guilt, which, unless the grace of Christ should come to its rescue by baptism, would involve it in condemnation, if God (as Jerome held, and as he was willing to hold with him, if this difficulty could be cleared up) makes each soul for each individual at the time of birth? He professed himself embarrassed on such a supposition by the penal sufferings of infants, the pains they endured in this life, and much more the danger they are in of eternal damnation, into which they actually go unless saved by baptism. God is good, just, omnipotent: how, then, can we account for the fact that “in Adam all die,” if souls are created afresh for each birth? “If new souls are made for men,” he affirms, “individually at their birth, I do not see, on the one hand, that they could have any sin while yet in infancy; nor do I believe, on the other hand, that God condemns any soul which He sees to have no sin;” “and yet, whoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of the sacrament of baptism, shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration,” and “he that is not made alive in Christ must necessarily remain under the condemnation of which the apostle says that by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” “Wherefore,” he adds to his correspondent, “if that opinion of yours does not contradict this firmly grounded article of faith, let it be mine also; but if it does, let it no longer be yours.”⁷⁹ So far as obtaining light was concerned, Augustin might have spared himself the pain of this composition: Jerome simply answered⁸⁰ that he had no leisure to reply to the questions submitted to him. But Orosius’ mission to Palestine was big with consequences. Once there, he became the accuser of Pelagius before John of Jerusalem, and the occasion, at least, of the trials of Pelagius in Palestine during the summer and winter of 415 which issued so disastrously, and ushered in a new phase of the conflict. 

Meanwhile, however, Augustin was ignorant of what was going on in the East, and had his mind directed again to Sicily. About a year had passed since he had sent thither his long letter to Hilary. Now his conjecture that Coelestius was in some way at the bottom of the Sicilian outbreak, received confirmation from a paper which certain catholic brethren brought out of Sicily, and which was handed to Augustin by two exiled Spanish bishops, Eutropius and Paul. This paper bore the title, Definitions Ascribed to Coelestius, and presented internal evidence, in style and thought, of being correctly so ascribed.⁸¹ It consisted of three parts, in the first of which were collected a series of brief and compressed “definitions,” or “ratiocinations” as Augustin calls them, in which the author tries to place the catholics in a logical dilemma, and to force them to admit that man can live in this world without sin. In the second part, he adduced certain passages of Scripture in defence of his doctrine. In the third part, he undertook to deal with the texts that had been quoted against his contention, not, however, by examining into their meaning, or seeking to explain them in the sense of his theory, but simply by matching them with others which he thought made for him. Augustin at once (about the end of 415) wrote a treatise in answer to this, which bears the title of On the Perfection of Man’s Righteousness. The distribution of the matter in this work follows that of the treatise to which it is an answer. First of all (1–16), the “ratiocinations” are taken up one by one and briefly answered. As they all concern sin, and have for their object to prove that man cannot be accounted a sinner unless he is able, in his own power, wholly to avoid sin,—that is, to prove that a plenary natural ability is the necessary basis of responsibility,—Augustin argues per contra that man can entail a sinfulness on himself for which and for the deeds of which he remains responsible, though he is no longer able to avoid sin; thus admitting that for the race, plenary ability must stand at the root of sinfulness. Next (17–22) he discusses the passages which Coelestius had advanced in defence of his teachings, viz., (1) passages in which God commands men to be without sin, which Augustin meets by saying that the point is, whether these commands are to be fulfilled without God’s aid, in the body of this death, while absent from the Lord (17–20); and (2) passages in which God declares that His commandments are not grievous, which Augustin meets by explaining that all God’s commandments are fulfilled only by Love, which finds nothing grievous; and that this love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, without whom we have only fear, to which the commandments are not only grievous, but impossible. Lastly, Augustin patiently follows Coelestius through his odd “oppositions of texts,” explaining carefully all that he had adduced, in an orthodox sense (23–42). In closing, he takes up Coelestius’ statement, that “it is quite possible for man not to sin even in word, if God so will,” pointing out how he avoids saying “if God give him His help,” and then proceeds to distinguish carefully between the differing assertions of sinlessness that may be made. To say that any man ever lived, or will live, without needing forgiveness, is to contradict Rom. v. 12, and must imply that he does not need a Saviour, against Matt. ix. 12, 13. To say that after his sins have been forgiven, any one has ever remained without sin, contradicts 1 John i. 8 and Matt. vi. 12. Yet, if God’s help be allowed, this contention is not so wicked as the other; and the great heresy is to deny the necessity of God’s constant grace, for which we pray when we say, “Lead us not into temptation.”  

Tidings were now (416) beginning to reach Africa of what was doing in the East. There was diligently circulated everywhere, and came into Augustin’s hands, an epistle of Pelagius’ own “filled with vanity,” in which he boasted that fourteen bishops had approved his assertion that “man can live without sin, and easily keep the commandments if he wishes,” and had thus “shut the mouth of opposition in confusion,” and “broken up the whole band of wicked conspirators against him.” Soon afterwards a copy of an “apologetical paper,” in which Pelagius used the authority of the Palestinian bishops against his adversaries, not altogether without disingenuousness, was sent by him to Augustin through the hands of a common acquaintance, Charus by name. It was not accompanied, however, by any letter from Pelagius; and Augustin wisely refrained from making public use of it. Towards midsummer Orosius came with more authentic information, and bearing letters from Jerome and Heros and Lazarus. It was apparently before his coming that a controversial sermon was preached, only a fragment of which has come down to us.⁸² So far as we can learn from the extant part, its subject seems to have been the relation of prayer to Pelagianism; and what we have, opens with a striking anecdote: “When these two petitions—‘Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors,’ and ‘Lead us not into temptation’—are objected to the Pelagians, what do you think they reply? I was horrified, my brethren, when I heard it. I did not, indeed, hear it with my own ears; but my holy brother and fellow-bishop Urbanus, who used to be presbyter here, and now is bishop of Sicca,” when he was in Rome, and was arguing with one who held these opinions, pressed him with the weight of the Lord’s Prayer, and “what do you think he replied to him? ‘We ask God,’ he said, ‘not to lead us into temptation, lest we should suffer something that is not in our power,—lest I should be thrown from my horse; lest I should break my leg; lest a robber should slay me, and the like. For these things,’ he said, ‘are not in my power; but for overcoming the temptations of my sins, I both have ability if I wish to use it, and am not able to receive God’s help.’⁸³ You see, brethren,” the good bishop adds, “how malignant this heresy is: you see how it horrifies all of you. Have a care that you be not taken by it.” He then presses the general doctrine of prayer as proving that all good things come from God, whose aid is always necessary to us, and is always attainable by prayer; and closes as follows: “Consider, then, these things, my brethren, when any one comes to you and says to you, ‘What, then, are we to do if we have nothing in our power, unless God gives all things? God will not then crown us, but He will crown Himself.’ You already see that this comes from that vein: it is a vein, but it has poison in it; it is stricken by the serpent; it is not sound. For what Satan is doing to-day is seeking to cast out from the Church by the poison of heretics, just as he once cast out from Paradise by the poison of the serpent. Let no one tell you that this one was acquitted by the bishops: there was an acquittal, but it was his confession, so to speak, his amendment, that was acquitted. For what he said before the bishops seemed catholic; but what he wrote in his books, the bishops who pronounced the acquittal were ignorant of. And perchance he was really convinced and amended. For we ought not to despair of the man who perchance preferred to be united to the catholic faith, and fled to its grace and aid. Perchance this was what happened. But, in any event, it was not the heresy that was acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy.”⁸⁴ 

The coming of Orosius must have dispelled any lingering hope that the meaning of the council’s finding was that Pelagius had really recanted. Councils were immediately assembled at Carthage and Mileve, and the documents which Orosius had brought were read before them. We know nothing of their proceedings except what we can gather from the letters which they sent⁸⁵ to Innocent at Rome, seeking his aid in their condemnation of the heresy now so nearly approved in Palestine. To these two official letters, Augustin, in company with four other bishops, added a third private letter,⁸⁶ in which they took care that Innocent should be informed on all the points necessary to his decision. This important letter begins almost abruptly with a characterization of Pelagianism as inimical to the grace of God, and has grace for its subject throughout. It accounts for the action of the Palestinian synod, as growing out of a misunderstanding of Pelagius’ words, in which he seemed to acknowledge grace, which these catholic bishops understood naturally to mean that grace of which they read in the Scriptures, and which they were accustomed to preach to their people,—the grace by which we are justified from iniquity, and saved from weakness; while he meant nothing more than that by which we are given free will at our creation. “For if these bishops had understood that he meant only that grace which we have in common with the ungodly and with all, along with whom we are men, while he denied that by which we are Christians and the sons of God, they not only could not have patiently listened to him,—they could not even have borne him before their eyes.” The letter then proceeds to point out the difference between grace and natural gifts, and between grace and the law, and to trace out Pelagius’ meaning when he speaks of grace, and when he contends that man can be sinless without any really inward aid. It suggests that Pelagius be sent for, and thoroughly examined by Innocent, or that he should be examined by letter or in his writings; and that he be not cleared until he unequivocally confessed the grace of God in the catholic sense, and anathematized the false teachings in the books attributed to him. The book of Pelagius which was answered in the treatise On Nature and Grace was enclosed, with this letter, with the most important passages marked: and it was suggested that more was involved in the matter than the fate of one single man, Pelagius, who, perhaps, was already brought to a better mind; the fate of multitudes already led astray, or yet to be deceived by these false views, was in danger. 

At about this same time (417), the tireless bishop sent a short letter⁸⁷ to a Hilary, who seems to be Hilary of Norbonne, which is interesting from its undertaking to convey a characterization of Pelagianism to one who was as yet ignorant of it. It thus brings out what Augustin conceived to be its essential features. “An effort has been made,” we read, “to raise a certain new heresy, inimical to the grace of Christ, against the Church of Christ. It is not yet openly separated from the Church. It is the heresy of men who dare to attribute so much power to human weakness that they contend that this only belongs to God’s grace,—that we are created with free will and the possibility of not sinning, and that we receive God’s commandments which are to be fulfilled by us; but, for keeping and fulfilling these commandments, we do not need any divine aid. No doubt, the remission of sins is necessary for us; for we have no power to right what we have done wrong in the past. But for avoiding and overcoming sins in the future, for conquering all temptations with virtue, the human will is sufficient by its natural capacity without any aid of God’s grace. And neither do infants need the grace of the Saviour, so as to be liberated by it through His baptism from perdition, seeing that they have contracted no contagion of damnation from Adam.”⁸⁸ He engages Hilary in the destruction of this heresy, which ought to be “concordantly condemned and anathematized by all who have hope in Christ,” as a “pestiferous impiety,” and excuses himself for not undertaking its full refutation in a brief letter. A much more important letter was sent off, at about the same time, to John of Jerusalem, who had conducted the first Palestinian examination of Pelagius, and had borne a prominent part in the synod at Diospolis. He sent with it a copy of Pelagius’ book which he had examined in his treatise On Nature and Grace, as well as a copy of that reply itself, and asked John to send him an authentic copy of the proceedings at Diospolis. He took this occasion seriously to warn his brother bishop against the wiles of Pelagius, and begged him, if he loved Pelagius, to let men see that he did not so love him as to be deceived by him. He pointed out that in the book sent with the letter, Pelagius called nothing the grace of God except nature; and that he affirmed, and even vehemently contended, that by free will alone, human nature was able to suffice for itself for working righteousness and keeping all God’s commandments; whence any one could see that he opposed the grace of God of which the apostles spoke in Rom. vii. 24, 25, and contradicted, as well, all the prayers and benedictions of the Church by which blessings were sought for men from God’s grace. “If you love Pelagius, then,” he continued, “let him, too, love you as himself,—nay, more than himself; and let him not deceive you. For when you hear him confess the grace of God and the aid of God, you think he means what you mean by it. But let him be openly asked whether he desires that we should pray God that we sin not; whether he proclaims the assisting grace of God, without which we would do much evil; whether he believes that even children who have not yet been able to do good or evil are nevertheless, on account of one man by whom sin entered into the world, sinners in him, and in need of being delivered by the grace of Christ.” If he openly denies such things, Augustin would be pleased to hear of it. 

Thus we see the great bishop sitting in his library at Hippo, placing his hands on the two ends of the world. That nothing may be lacking to the picture of his universal activity, we have another letter from him, coming from about this same time, that exhibits his care for the individuals who had placed themselves in some sort under his tutelage. Among the refugees from Rome in the terrible times when Alaric was a second time threatening the city, was a family of noble women,— Proba, Juliana, and Demetrias,⁸⁹ —grandmother, mother, and daughter,— who, finding an asylum in Africa, gave themselves to God’s service, and sought the friendship and counsel of Augustin. In 413 the granddaughter “took the veil” under circumstances that thrilled the Christian world, and brought out letters of congratulation and advice from Augustin and Jerome, and also from Pelagius. This letter of Pelagius seems not to have fallen into Augustin’s way until now (416): he was so disturbed by it that he wrote to Juliana a long letter warning her against its evil counsels.⁹⁰ It was so shrewdly phrased, that, at first sight, Augustin was himself almost persuaded that it did somehow acknowledge the grace of God; but when he compared it with others of Pelagius’ writings, he saw that here, too, he was using ambiguous phrases in a non-natural sense. The object of his letter (in which Alypius is conjoined, as joint author) to Juliana is to warn her and her holy daughter against all opinions that opposed the grace of God, and especially against the covert teaching of the letter of Pelagius to Demetrias.⁹¹ “In this book,” he says, “were it lawful for such an one to read it, a virgin of Christ would read that her holiness and all her spiritual riches are to spring from no other source than herself; and thus before she attains to the perfection of blessedness, she would learn—which may God forbid!—to be ungrateful to God.” Then, after quoting the words of Pelagius, in which he declares that “earthly riches came from others, but your spiritual riches no one can have conferred on you but yourself; for these, then, you are justly praised, for these you are deservedly to be preferred to others,—for they can exist only from yourself and in yourself,” he continues: “Far be it from any virgin to listen to statements like these. Every virgin of Christ understands the innate poverty of the human heart, and therefore declines to be adorned otherwise than by the gifts of her spouse.…Let her not listen to him who says, ‘No one can confer them on you but yourself, and they cannot exist except from you and in you:’ but to him who says, ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.’ And be not surprised that we speak of these things as yours, and not from you; for we speak of daily bread as ‘ours,’ but yet add ‘give it to us,’ lest it should be thought it was from ourselves.” Again, he warns her that grace is not mere knowledge any more than mere nature; and that Pelagius, even when using the word “grace,” means no inward or efficient aid, but mere nature or knowledge or forgiveness of past sins; and beseeches her not to forget the God of all grace from whom (Wisdom i. 20, 21) Demetrias had that very virgin continence which was so justly her boast. 

With the opening of 417, came the answers from Innocent to the African letters.⁹² And although they were marred by much boastful language concerning the dignity of his see, which could not but be distasteful to the Africans, they admirably served their purpose in the satisfactory manner in which they, on the one hand, asserted the necessity of the “daily grace, and help of God,” for our good living, and, on the other, determined that the Pelagians had denied this grace, and declared their leaders Pelagius and Coelestius deprived of the communion of the Church until they should “recover their senses from the wiles of the Devil by whom they are held captive according to his will.” Augustin may be pardoned for supposing that a condemnation pronounced by two provincial synods in Africa, and heartily concurred in by the Roman bishop, who had already at Jerusalem been recognized as in some sort the fit arbiter of this Western dispute, should settle the matter. If Pelagius had been before jubilant, Augustin found this a suitable time for his rejoicing. 

About the same time with Innocent’s letters, the official proceedings of the synod of Diospolis at last reached Africa, and Augustin lost no time (early in 417) in publishing a full account and examination of them, thus providing us with that inestimable boon, a full contemporary history of the chief events connected with the controversy up to this time. This treatise, which is addressed to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, opens with a brief explanation of Augustin’s delay heretofore, in discussing Pelagius’ defence of himself in Palestine, as due to his not having received the official copy of the Proceedings of the Council at Diospolis (1–2a). Then Augustin proceeds at once to discuss at length the doings of the synod, point by point, following the official record step by step (2b-45). He treats at large here eleven items in the indictment, with Pelagius’ answers and the synod’s decision, showing that in all of them Pelagius either explained away his heresy, taking advantage of the ignorance of the judges of his books, or else openly repudiated or anathematized it. When the twelfth item of the indictment was reached (41b-43), Augustin shows that the synod was so indignant at its character (it charged Pelagius with teaching that men cannot be sons of God unless they are sinless, and with condoning sins of ignorance, and with asserting that choice is not free if it depends on God’s help, and that pardon is given according to merit), that, without waiting for Pelagius’ answer, it condemned the statement, and Pelagius at once repudiated and anathematized it (43). How could the synod act in such circumstances, he asks, except by acquitting the man who condemned the heresy? After quoting the final judgment of the synod (44), Augustin briefly characterizes it and its effect (45) as being indeed all that could be asked of the judges, but of no moral weight to those better acquainted than they were with Pelagius’ character and writings. In a word, they approved his answers to them, as indeed they ought to have done; but they by no means approved, but both they and he condemned, his heresies as expressed in his writings. To this statement, Augustin appends an account of the origin of Pelagianism, and of his relations to it from the beginning, which has the very highest value as history (46–49); and then speaks of the character and doubtful practices of Pelagius (50–58), returning at the end (59–65) to a thorough canvass of the value of the acquittal which he obtained by such doubtful practices at the synod. He closes with an indignant account of the outrages which the Pelagians had perpetrated on Jerome (66). 

This valuable treatise is not, however, the only account of the historical origin of Pelagianism that we have, from Augustin’s hands. Soon after the death of Innocent (March 12, 417), he found occasion to write a very long letter⁹³ to the venerable Paulinus of Nola, in which he summarized both the history of and the arguments against this “worldly philosophy.” He begins by saying that he knows Paulinus has loved Pelagius as a servant of God, but is ignorant in what way he now loves him. For he himself not only has loved him, but loves him still, but in different ways. Once he loved him as apparently a brother in the true faith: now he loves him in the longing that God will by His mercy free him from his noxious opinions against God’s grace. He is not merely following report in so speaking of him: no doubt report did for a long time represent this of him, but he gave the less heed to it because report is accustomed to lie. But a book of his⁹⁴ at last came into his hands, which left no room for doubt, since in it he asserted repeatedly that God’s grace consisted of the gift to man of the capacity to will and act, and thus reduced it to what is common to pagans and Christians, to the ungodly and godly, to the faithful and infidels. He then gives a brief account of the measures that had been taken against Pelagius, and passes on to a treatment of the main matters involved in the controversy,—all of which gather around the one magic word of “the grace of God.” He argues first that we are all lost,—in one mass and concretion of perdition,—and that God’s grace alone makes us to differ. It is therefore folly to talk of deserving the beginnings of grace. Nor can a faithful man say that he merits justification by his faith, although it is given to faith; for at once he hears the words, “what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” and learns that even the deserving faith is the gift of God. But if, peering into God’s inscrutable judgments, we go farther, and ask why, from the mass of Adam, all of which undoubtedly has fallen from one into condemnation, this vessel is made for honor, that for dishonor,—we can only say that we do not know more than the fact; and God’s reasons are hidden, but His acts are just. Certain it is that Paul teaches that all die in Adam; and that God freely chooses, by a sovereign election, some out of that sinful mass, to eternal life; and that He knew from the beginning to whom He would give this grace, and so the number of the saints has always been fixed, to whom he gives in due time the Holy Ghost. Others, no doubt, are called; but no others are elect, or “called according to his purpose.” On no other body of doctrines, can it be possibly explained that some infants die unbaptized, and are lost. Is God unjust to punish innocent children with eternal pains? And are they not innocent if they are not partakers of Adam’s sin? And can they be saved from that, save by the undeserved, and that is the gratuitous, grace of God? The account of the Proceedings at the Palestinian synod is then taken up, and Pelagius’ position in his latest writings is quoted and examined. “But why say more?” he adds.…“Ought they not, since they call themselves Christians, to be more careful than the Jews that they do not stumble at the stone of offence, while they subtly defend nature and free will just like philosophers of this world who vehemently strive to be thought, or to think themselves, to attain for themselves a happy life by the force of their own will? Let them take care, then, that they do not make the cross of Christ of none effect by the wisdom of word (1 Cor. i. 17), and thus stumble at the rock of offence. For human nature, even if it had remained in that integrity in which it was created, could by no means have served its own Creator without His aid. Since then, without God’s grace it could not keep the safety it had received, how can it without God’s grace repair what it has lost?” With this profound view of the Divine immanence, and of the necessity of His moving grace in all the acts of all his creatures, as over against the heathen-deistic view of Pelagius, Augustin touched in reality the deepest point in the whole controversy, and illustrated the essential harmony of all truth.⁹⁵ 

The sharpest period of the whole conflict was now drawing on.⁹⁶ Innocent’s death brought Zosimus to the chair of the Roman See, and the efforts which he made to re-instate Pelagius and Coelestius now began (September, 417). How little the Africans were likely to yield to his remarkable demands, may be seen from a sermon⁹⁷ which Augustin preached on the 23d of September, while Zosimus’ letter (written on the 21st of September) was on its way to Africa. The preacher took his text from John vi. 54–66. “We hear here,” he said, “the true Master, the Divine Redeemer, the human Saviour, commending to us our ransom, His blood. He calls His body food, and His blood drink; and, in commending such food and drink, He says, ‘Unless you eat My flesh, and drink My blood, ye shall have no life in you.’ What, then, is this eating and drinking, but to live? Eat life, drink life; you shall have life, and life is whole. This will come,—that is, the body and blood of Christ will be life to every one,—if what is taken visibly in the sacrament is in real truth spiritually eaten and spiritually drunk. But that He might teach us that even to believe in Him is of gift, not of merit, He said, ‘No one comes to Me, except the Father who sent Me draw him.’ Draw him, not lead him. This violence is done to the heart, not the flesh. Why do you marvel? Believe, and you come; love, and you are drawn. Think not that this is harsh and injurious violence; it is soft, it is sweet; it is sweetness itself that draws you. Is not the sheep drawn when the succulent herbage is shown to him? And I think that there is no compulsion of the body, but an assembling of the desire. So, too, do you come to Christ; wish not to plan a long journey,—when you believe, then you come. For to Him who is everywhere, one comes by loving, not by taking a voyage. No doubt, if you come not, it is your work; but if you come, it is God’s work. And even after you have come, and are walking in the right way, become not proud, lest you perish from it: ‘happy are those that confide in Him,’ not in themselves, but in Him. We are saved by grace, not of ourselves: it is the gift of God. Why do I continually say this to you? It is because there are men who are ungrateful to grace, and attribute much to unaided and wounded nature. It is true that man received great powers of free will at his creation; but he lost them by sinning. He has fallen into death; he has been made weak; he has been left half dead in the way, by robbers; the good Samaritan has lifted him up upon his ass, and borne him to the inn. Why should we boast? But I am told that it is enough that sins are remitted in baptism. But does the removal of sin take away weakness too? What! will you not see that after pouring the oil and the wine into the wounds of the man left half dead by the robbers, he must still go to the inn where his weakness may be healed? Nay, so long as we are in this life we bear a fragile body; it is only after we are redeemed from corruption that we shall find no sin, and receive the crown of righteousness. Grace, that was hidden in the Old Testament, is now manifest to the whole world. Even though the Jew may be ignorant of it, why should Christians be enemies of grace? why presumptuous of themselves? why ungrateful to grace? For, why did Christ come? Was not nature already here,—that very nature by the praise of which you are beguiled? Was not the law here? But the apostle says, ‘If righteousness is of the law, then is Christ dead in vain.’ What the apostle says of the law, that we say to these men about nature: if righteousness is by nature, then Christ is dead in vain. What then was said of the Jews, this we see repeated in these men. They have a zeal for God: I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to the righteousness of God. My brethren, share my compassion. Where you find such men, wish no concealment; let there be no perverse pity in you: where you find them, wish no concealment at all. Contradict and refute, resist, or persuade them to us. For already two councils have, in this cause, sent letters to the Apostolic See, whence also rescripts have come back. The cause is ended: would that the error might some day end! Therefore we admonish so that they may take notice, we teach so that they may be instructed, we pray so that their way be changed.” Here is certainly tenderness to the persons of the teachers of error; readiness to forgive, and readiness to go all proper lengths in recovering them to the truth. But here is also absolute firmness as to the truth itself, and a manifesto as to policy. Certainly, on the lines of the policy here indicated, the Africans fought out the coming campaign. They met in council at the end of this year, or early in the next (418); and formally replied to Zosimus, that the cause had been tried, and was finished, and that the sentence that had been already pronounced against Pelagius and Coelestius should remain in force until they should unequivocally acknowledge that “we are aided by the grace of God through Christ, not only to know, but to do, what is right, and that in each single act; so that without grace we are unable to have, think, speak, or do anything belonging to piety.” As we may see Augustin’s hand in this, so, doubtless, we may recognize it in that remarkable piece of engineering which crushed Zosimus’ plans within the next few months. There is, indeed, no direct proof that it was due to Augustin, or to the Africans under his leading, or to the Africans at all, that the State interfered in the matter; it is even in doubt whether the action of the Empire was put forth as a rescript, or as a self-moved decree: but surely it is difficult to believe that such a coup de théâtre could have been prepared for Zosimus by chance; and as it is well known, both that Augustin believed in the righteousness of civil penalty for heresy, and invoked it on other occasions, and defended and used it on this, and that he had influential friends at court with whom he was in correspondence, it seems, on internal grounds, altogether probable that he was the Deus ex machinâ who let loose the thunders of ecclesiastical and civil enactment simultaneously on the poor Pope’s devoted head. 

The “great African Council” met at Carthage, on the 1st of May, 418; and, after its decrees were issued, Augustin remained at Carthage, and watched the effect of the combination of which he was probably one of the moving causes. He had now an opportunity to betake himself once more to his pen. While still at Carthage, at short notice, and in the midst of much distraction, he wrote a large work, in two books which have come down to us under the separate titles of On the Grace of Christ, and On Original Sin, at the instance of another of those ascetic families which formed so marked a feature in those troubled times. Pinianus and Melania, the daughter of Albina, were husband and wife, who, leaving Rome amid the wars with Alaric, had lived in continence in Africa for some time, but now in Palestine had separated, he to become head of a monastery, and she an inmate of a convent. While in Africa, they had lived at Sagaste under the tutelage of Alypius, and in the enjoyment of the friendship and instruction of Augustin. After retiring to Bethlehem, like the other holy ascetics whom he had known in Africa, they kept up their relations with him. Like the others, also, they became acquainted with Pelagius in Palestine, and were well-nigh deceived by him. They wrote to Augustin that they had begged Pelagius to condemn in writing all that had been alleged against him, and that he had replied in the presence of them all, that “he anathematized the man who either thinks or says that the grace of God whereby Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners is not necessary, not only for every hour and for every moment, but also for every act of our lives,” and asserted that “those who endeavor to disannul it are worthy of everlasting punishment.”⁹⁸ Moreover, they wrote that Pelagius had read to them, out of his book that he had sent to Rome,⁹⁹ his assertion “that infants ought to be baptized with the same formula of sacramental words as adults.”¹⁰⁰ They wrote that they were delighted to hear these words from Pelagius, as they seemed exactly what they had been desirous of hearing; and yet they preferred consulting Augustin about them, before they were fully committed regarding them.¹⁰¹ It was in answer to this appeal, that the present work was written; the two books of which take up the two points in Pelagius’ asseveration,—the theme of the first being “the assistance of the Divine grace towards our justification, by which God co-operates in all things for good to those who love Him, and whom He first loved, giving to them that He may receive from them,”—while the subject of the second is “the sin which by one man has entered the world along with death, and so has passed upon all men.”¹⁰² 

The first book, On the Grace of Christ, begins by quoting and examining Pelagius’ anathema of all those who deny that grace is necessary for every action (2 sq.). Augustin confesses that this would deceive all who were not fortified by knowledge of Pelagius’ writings; but asserts that in the light of them it is clear that he means that grace is always necessary, because we need continually to remember the forgiveness of our sins, the example of Christ, the teaching of the law, and the like. Then he enters (4 sq.) upon an examination of Pelagius’ scheme of human faculties, and quotes at length his account of them given in his book, In Defence of Free Will, wherein he distinguishes between the possibilitas (posse), voluntas (velle), and actio (esse), and declares that the first only is from God and receives aid from God, while the others are entirely ours, and in our own power. Augustin opposes to this the passage in Phil. ii. 12, 13 (6), and then criticises (7 sq.) Pelagius’ ambiguous acknowledgment that God is to be praised for man’s good works, “because the capacity for any action on man’s part is from God,” by which he reduces all grace to the primeval endowment of nature with “capacity” (possibilitas, posse), and the help afforded it by the law and teaching. Augustin points out the difference between law and grace, and the purpose of the former as a pedagogue to the latter (9 sq.), and then refutes Pelagius’ further definition of grace as consisting in the promise of future glory and the revelation of wisdom, by an appeal to Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and his experience under its discipline (11 sq.). Pelagius’ illustrations from our senses, of his theory of natural faculty, are then sharply tested (16); and the criticism on the whole doctrine is then made and pressed (17 sq.), that it makes God equally sharer in our blame for evil acts as in our praise for good ones, since if God does help, and His help is only His gift to us of ability to act in either part, then He has equally helped to the evil deeds as to the good. The assertion that this “capacity of either part” is the fecund root of both good and evil is then criticised (19 sq.), and opposed to Matt. vii. 18, with the result of establishing that we must seek two roots in our dispositions for so diverse results,—covetousness for evil, and love for good,—not a single root for both in nature. Man’s “capacity,” it is argued, is the root of nothing; but it is capable of both good and evil according to the moving cause, which, in the case of evil, is man-originated, while, in the case of good, it is from God (21). Next, Pelagius’ assertion that grace is given according to our merits (23 sq.) is taken up and examined. It is shown, that, despite his anathema, Pelagius holds to this doctrine, and in so extreme a form as explicitly to declare that man comes and cleaves to God by his freedom of will alone, and without God’s aid. He shows that the Scriptures teach just the opposite (24–26); and then points out how Pelagius has confounded the functions of knowledge and love (27 sq.), and how he forgets that we cannot have merits until we love God, while John certainly asserts that God loved us first (1 John iv. 10). The representation that what grace does is to render obedience easier (28–30), and the twin view that prayer is only relatively necessary, are next criticised (32). That Pelagius never acknowledges real grace, is then demonstrated by a detailed examination of all that he had written on the subject (31–45). The book closes (46–80) with a full refutation of Pelagius’ appeal to Ambrose, as if he supported him; and exhibition of Ambrose’s contrary testimony as to grace and its necessity. 

The object of the second book—On Original Sin—is to show, that, in spite of Pelagius’ admissions as to the baptism of infants, he yet denies that they inherit original sin and contends that they are born free from corruption. The book opens by pointing out that there is no question as to Coelestius’ teaching in this matter (2–8), as he at Carthage refused to condemn those who say that Adam’s sin injured no one but himself, and that infants are born in the same state that Adam was in before the fall, and openly asserted at Rome that there is no sin ex traduce. As for Pelagius, he is simply more cautious and mendacious than Coelestius: he deceived the Council at Diospolis, but failed to deceive the Romans (5–13), and, as a matter of fact (14–18), teaches exactly what Coelestius does. In support of this assertion, Pelagius’ Defence of Free Will is quoted, wherein he asserts that we are born neither good nor bad, “but with a capacity for either,” and “as without virtue, so without vice; and previous to the action of our own proper will, that that alone is in man which God has formed” (14). Augustin also quotes Pelagius’ explanation of his anathema against those who say Adam’s sin injured only himself, as meaning that he has injured man by setting a bad “example,” and his even more sinuous explanation of his anathema against those who assert that infants are born in the same condition that Adam was in before he fell, as meaning that they are infants and he was a man! (16–18). With this introduction to them, Augustin next treats of Pelagius’ subterfuges (19–25), and then animadverts on the importance of the issue (26–37), pointing out that Pelagianism is not a mere error, but a deadly heresy, and strikes at the very centre of Christianity. A counter argument of the Pelagians is then answered (38–45), “Does not the doctrine of original sin make marriage an evil thing?” No, says Augustin, marriage is ordained by God, and is good; but it is a diseased good, and hence what is born of it is a good nature made by God, but this good nature in a diseased condition,—the result of the Devil’s work. Hence, if it be asked why God’s gift produces any thing for the Devil to take possession of, it is to be answered that God gives his gifts liberally (Matt. v. 45), and makes men; but the Devil makes these men sinners (46). Finally, as Ambrose had been appealed to in the former book, so at the end of this it is shown that he openly proclaimed the doctrine of original sin, and here too, before Pelagius, condemned Pelagius (47 sq.). 

What Augustin means by writing to Pinianus and his family that he was more oppressed by work at Carthage than anywhere else, may perhaps be illustrated from his diligence in preaching while in that capital. He seems to have been almost constantly in the pulpit, during this period “of the sharpest conflict with them,”¹⁰³ preaching against the Pelagians. There is one series of his sermons, of the exact dates of which we can be pretty sure, which may be adverted to here,—Sermons 151 and 152, preached early in October, 418; Sermon 155 on Oct. 14, 156 on Oct.17, and 26 on Oct. 18; thus following one another almost with the regularity of the days. The first of these was based on Rom. vii. 15–25, which he declares to contain dangerous words if not properly understood; for men are prone to sin, and when they hear the apostle so speaking they do evil, and think they are like him. They are meant to teach us, however, that the life of the just in this body is a war, not yet a triumph: the triumph will come only when death is swallowed up in victory. It would, no doubt, be better not to have an enemy than even to conquer. It would be better not to have evil desires: but we have them; therefore, let us not go after them. If they rebel against us, let us rebel against them; if they fight, let us fight; if they besiege, let us besiege: let us look only to this, that they do not conquer. With some evil desires we are born: others we make, by bad habit. It is on account of those with which we are born, that infants are baptized; that they may be freed from the guilt of inheritance, not from any evil of custom, which, of course, they have not. And it is on account of these, too, that our war must be endless: the concupiscence with which we are born cannot be done away as long as we live; it may be diminished, but not done away. Neither can the law free us, for it only reveals the sin to our greater apprehension. Where, then, is hope, save in the superabundance of grace? The next sermon (152) takes up the words in Rom. viii. 1–4, and points out that the inward aid of the Spirit brings all the help we need. “We, like farmers in the field, work from without: but, if there were no one who worked from within, the seed would not take root in the ground, nor would the sprout arise in the field, nor would the shoot grow strong and become a tree, nor would branches and fruit and leaves be produced. Therefore the apostle distinguishes between the work of the workmen and of the Creator (1 Cor. iii. 6, 7). If God give not the increase, empty is this sound within your ears; but if he gives, it avails somewhat that we plant and water, and our labor is not in vain.” He then applies this to the individual, striving against his lusts; warns against Manichean error; and distinguishes between the three laws,—the law of sin, the law of faith, and the law of deeds,—defending the latter, the law of Moses, against the Manicheans; and then he comes to the words of the text, and explains its chief phrases, closing thus: “What other do we read here than that Christ is a sacrifice for sin?…Behold by what ‘sin’ he condemned sin: by the sacrifice which he made for sins, he condemned sin. This is the law of the Spirit of life which has freed you from the law of sin and death. For that other law, the law of the letter, the law that commands, is indeed good; ‘the commandment is holy and just and good:’ but ‘it was weak by the flesh,’ and what it commanded it could not bring about in us. Therefore there is one law, as I began by saying, that reveals sin to you, and another that takes it away: the law of the letter reveals sin, the law of grace takes it away.” Sermon 155 covers the same ground, and more, taking the broader text, Rom. viii. 1–11, and fully developing its teaching, especially as discriminating between the law of sin and the law of Moses and the law of faith; the law of Moses being the holy law of God written with His finger on the tables of stone, while the law of the Spirit of life is nothing other than the same law written in the heart, as the prophet (Jer. xxx. 1, 33) clearly declares. So written, it does not terrify from without, but soothes from within. Great care is also taken, lest by such phrases as, “walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh,” “who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” a hatred of the body should be begotten. “Thus you shall be freed from the body of this death, not by having no body, but by having another one and dying no more. If, indeed, he had not added, ‘of this death,’ perchance an error might have been suggested to the human mind, and it might have been said, ‘You see that God does not wish us to have a body.’ But He says, ‘the body of this death.’ Take away death, and the body is good. Let our last enemy, death, be taken away, and my dear flesh will be mine for eternity. For no one can ever ‘hate his own flesh.’ Although the ‘spirit lusts against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit,’ although there is now a battle in this house, yet the husband is seeking by his strife not the ruin of, but concord with, his wife. Far be it, far be it, my brethren, that the spirit should hate the flesh in lusting against it! It hates the vices of the flesh; it hates the wisdom of the flesh; it hates the contention of death. This corruption shall put on incorruption,—this mortal shall put on immortality; it is sown a natural body; it shall rise a spiritual body; and you shall see full and perfect concord,—you shall see the creature praise the Creator.” One of the special interests of such passages is to show, that, even at this early date, Augustin was careful to guard his hearers from Manichean error while proclaiming original sin. One of the sermons which, probably, was preached about this time (153), is even entitled, “Against the Manicheans openly, but tacitly against the Pelagians,” and bears witness to the early development of the method that he was somewhat later to use effectively against Julian’s charges of Manicheanism against the catholics.¹⁰⁴ Three days afterwards, Augustin preached on the next few verses, Rom. viii. 12–17, but can scarcely be said to have risen to the height of its great argument. The greater part of the sermon is occupied with a discussion of the law, why it was given, how it is legitimately used, and its usefulness as a pedagogue to bring us to Christ; then of the need of a mediator; and then, of what it is to live according to the flesh, which includes living according to merely human nature; and the need of mortifying the flesh in this world. All this, of course, gave full opportunity for opposing the leading Pelagian errors; and the sermon is brought to a close by a direct polemic against their assertion that the function of grace is only to make it more easy to do what is right. “With the sail more easily, with the oar with more difficulty: nevertheless even with the oar we can go. On a beast more easily, on foot with more difficulty: nevertheless progress can be made on foot. It is not true! For the true Master who flatters no one, who deceives no one,—the truthful Teacher and very Saviour to whom the most grievous pedagogue has led us,—when he was speaking about good works, i.e., about the fruits of the twigs and branches, did not say, ‘Without me, indeed, you can do something, but you will do it more easily with me;’ He did not say, ‘You can make your fruit without me, but more richly with me.’ He did not say this! Read what He said: it is the holy gospel,—bow the proud necks! Augustin does not say this: the Lord says it. What says the Lord? ‘Without me you can do nothing!’” On the very next day, he was again in the pulpit, and taking for his text chiefly the ninety-fourth Psalm.¹⁰⁵ The preacher began¹⁰⁶ by quoting the sixth verse, and laying stress on the words “our Maker.” ‘No Christian,’ he said, ‘doubted that God had made him, and that in such a sense that God created not only the first man, from whom all have descended, but that God to-day creates every man,—as He said to one of His saints, “Before that I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.” At first He created man apart from man; now He creates man from man: nevertheless, whether man apart from man, or man from man, “it is He that made us, and not we ourselves.” Nor has He made us and then deserted us; He has not cared to make us, and not cared to keep us. Will He who made us without being asked, desert us when He is besought? But is it not just as foolish to say, as some say or are ready to say, that God made them men, but they make themselves righteous? Why, then, do we pray to God to make us righteous? The first man was created in a nature that was without fault or flaw. He was made righteous: he did not make himself righteous; what he did for himself was to fall and break his righteousness. This God did not do: He permitted it, as if He had said, “Let him desert Me; let him find himself; and let his misery prove that he has no ability without Me.” In this way God wished to show man what free will was worth without God. O evil free will without God! Behold, man was made good; and by free will man was made evil! When will the evil man make himself good by free will? When good, he was not able to keep himself good; and now that he is evil, is he to make himself good? Nay, behold, He that made us has also made us “His people” (Ps. xciv. 7). This is a distinguishing gift. Nature is common to all, but grace is not. It is not to be confounded with nature; but if it were, it would still be gratuitous. For certainly no man, before he existed, deserved to come into existence. And yet God has made him, and that not like the beasts or a stock or a stone, but in His own image. Who has given this benefit? He gave it who was in existence: he received it who was not. And only He could do this, who calls the things that are not as though they were: of whom the apostle says that “He chose us before the foundation of the world.” We have been made in this world, and yet the world was not when we were chosen. Ineffable! wonderful! They are chosen who are not: neither does He err in choosing, nor choose in vain. He chooses, and has elect whom He is to create to be chosen: He has them in Himself; not indeed in His nature, but in His prescience. Let us not, then, glory in ourselves, or dispute against grace. If we are men, He made us. If we are believers, He made us this too. He who sent the Lamb to be slain has, out of wolves, made us sheep. This is grace. And it is an even greater grace than that grace of nature by which we were all made men.’ “I am continually endeavouring to discuss such things as these,” said the preacher, “against a new heresy which is attempting to rise; because I wish you to be fixed in the good, untouched by the evil.…For, disputing against grace in favor of free will, they became an offence to pious and catholic ears. They began to create horror; they began to be avoided as a fixed pest; it began to be said of them, that they argued against grace. And they found such a device as this: ‘Because I defend man’s free will, and say that free will is sufficient in order that I may be righteous,’ says one, ‘I do not say that it is without the grace of God.’ The ears of the pious are pricked up, and he who hears this, already begins to rejoice: ‘Thanks be to God! He does not defend free will without the grace of God! There is free will, but it avails nothing without the grace of God.’ If, then, they do not defend free will without the grace of God, what evil do they say? Expound to us, O teacher, what grace you mean? ‘When I say,’ he says, ‘the free will of man, you observe that I say “of man”?’ What then? ‘Who created man?’ God. ‘Who gave him free will?’ God. ‘If, then, God created man, and God gave man free will, whatever man is able to do by free will, to whose grace does he owe it, except to His who made him with free will?’ And this is what they think they say so acutely! You see, nevertheless, my brethren, how they preach that general grace by which we were created and by which we are men; and, of course, we are men in common with the ungodly, and are Christians apart from them. It is this grace by which we are Christians, that we wish them to preach, this that we wish them to acknowledge, this that we wish,—of which the apostle says, ‘I do not make void the grace of God, for if righteousness is by the law, Christ is dead in vain.’” Then the true function of the law is explained, as a revealer of our sinfulness, and a pedagogue to lead us to Christ: the Manichean view of the Old Testament law is attacked, but its insufficiency for salvation is pointed out; and so we are brought back to the necessity of grace, which is illustrated from the story of the raising of the dead child in 2 Kings iv. 18–37,—the dead child being Adam; the ineffective staff (by which we ought to walk), the law; but the living prophet, Christ with his grace, which we must preach. “The prophetic staff was not enough for the dead boy: would dead nature itself have been enough? Even this, by which we are made, although we nowhere read of it under this name, we nevertheless, because it is given gratuitously, confess to be grace. But we show to you a greater grace than this, by which we are Christians.…This is the grace by Jesus Christ our Lord: it was He that made us,—both before we were at all, it was He that made us, and now, after we are made, it is He that has made us all righteous,—and not we ourselves.” There was but one mass of perdition from Adam, to which nothing was due but punishment; and from that mass vessels have been made unto honor. “Rejoice because you have escaped; you have escaped the death that was due,—you have received the life that was not due. ‘But,’ you ask, ‘why did He make me unto honor, and another unto dishonor?’ Will you who will not hear the apostle saying, ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’ hear Augustin?…Do you wish to dispute with me? Nay, wonder with me, and cry out with me, ‘Oh the depth of the riches!’ Let us both be afraid,—let us both cry out, ‘Oh the depth of the riches!’ Let us both agree in fear, lest we perish in error.” 

Augustin was not less busy with his pen, during these months, than with his voice. Quite a series of letters belong to the last half of 418, in which he argues to his distant correspondents on the same themes which he was so iterantly trying to make clear to his Carthaginian auditors. One of the most interesting of these was written to a fellow-bishop, Optatus, on the origin of the soul.¹⁰⁷ Optatus, like Jerome, had expressed himself as favoring the theory of a special creation of each at birth; and Augustin, in this letter as in the paper sent to Jerome, lays great stress on so holding our theories on so obscure a matter as to conform to the indubitable fact of the transmission of sin. This fact, such passages as 1 Cor. xv. 21 sq., Rom. v. 12 sq., make certain; and in stating this, Augustin takes the opportunity to outline the chief contents of the catholic faith over against the Pelagian denial of original sin and grace: that all are born under the contagion of death and in the bond of guilt; that there is no deliverance except in the one Mediator, Christ Jesus; that before His coming men received him as promised, now as already come, but with the same faith; that the law was not intended to save, but to shut up under sin and so force us back upon the one Saviour; and that the distribution of grace is sovereign. Augustin pries into God’s sovereign counsels somewhat more freely here than is usual with him. “But why those also are created who, the Creator foreknew, would belong to damnation, not to grace, the blessed apostle mentions with as much succinct brevity as great authority. For he says that God, ‘wishing to show His wrath and demonstrate His power,’ etc. (Rom. ix. 22). Justly, however, would he seem unjust in forming vessels of wrath for perdition, if the whole mass from Adam were not condemned. That, therefore, they are made on birth vessels of anger, belongs to the punishment due to them; but that they are made by re-birth vessels of mercy, belongs to the grace that is not due to them. God, therefore, shows his wrath,—not, of course, perturbation of mind, such as is called wrath among men, but a just and fixed vengeance.…He shows also his power, by which he makes a good use of evil men, and endows them with many natural and temporal goods, and bends their evil to admonition and instruction of the good by comparison with it, so that these may learn from them to give thanks to God that they have been made to differ from them, not by their own deserts which were of like kind in the same mass, but by His pity.…But by creating so many to be born who, He foreknew, would not belong to his grace, so that they are more by an incomparable multitude than those whom he deigned to predestinate as children of the promise into the glory of His Kingdom,—He wished to show by this very multitude of the rejected how entirely of no moment it is to the just God what is the multitude of those most justly condemned. And that hence also those who are redeemed from this condemnation may understand, that what they see rendered to so great a part of the mass was the due of the whole of it,—not only of those who add many others to original sin, by the choice of an evil will, but as well of so many children who are snatched from this life without the grace of the Mediator, bound by no bond except that of original sin alone.” With respect to the question more immediately concerning which the letter was written, Augustin explains that he is willing to accept the opinion that souls are created for men as they are born, if only it can be made plain that it is consistent with the original sin that the Scriptures so clearly teach. In the paper sent to Jerome, the difficulties of creationism are sufficiently urged; this letter is interesting on account of its statement of some of the difficulties of traducianism also,—thus evidencing Augustin’s clear view of the peculiar complexity of the problem, and justifying his attitude of balance and uncertainty between the two theories. ‘The human understanding,’ he says, ‘can scarcely comprehend how a soul arises from a parent’s soul in the offspring; or is transmitted to the offspring as a candle is lighted from a candle and thence another fire comes into existence without loss to the former one. Is there an incorporeal seed for the soul, which passes, by some hidden and invisible channel of its own, from the father to the mother, when it is conceived in the woman? Or, even more incredible, does it lie enfolded and hidden within the corporeal seed?’ He is lost in wonder over the question whether, when conception does not take place, the immortal seed of an immortal soul perishes; or, does the immortality attach itself to it only when it lives? He even expresses the doubt whether traducianism will explain what it is called in to explain, much better than creationism; in any case, who denies that God is the maker of every soul? Isaiah (lvii. 16) says, “I have made every breath;” and the only question that can arise is as to method,—whether He “makes every breath from the one first breath, just as He makes every body of man from the one first body; or whether he makes new bodies indeed, from the one body, but new souls out of nothing.” Certainly nothing but Scripture can determine such a question; but where do the Scriptures speak unambiguously upon it? The passages to which the creationists point only affirm the admitted fact that God makes the soul; and the traducianists forget that the word “soul” in the Scriptures is ambiguous, and can mean “man,” and even a “dead man.” What more can be done, then, than to assert what is certain, viz., that sin is propagated, and leave what is uncertain in the doubt in which God has chosen to place it? 

This letter was written not long after the issue of Zosimus’ Tractoria, demanding the signature of all to African orthodoxy; and Augustin sends Optatus “copies of the recent letters which have been sent forth from the Roman see, whether specially to the African bishops or generally to all bishops,” on the Pelagian controversy, “lest perchance they had not yet reached” his correspondent, who, it is very evident, he was anxious should thoroughly realize “that the authors, or certainly the most energetic and noted teachers,” of these new heresies, “had been condemned in the whole Christian world by the vigilance of episcopal councils aided by the Saviour who keeps His Church, as well as by two venerable overseers of the Apostolical see, Pope Innocent and Pope Zosimus, unless they should show repentance by being convinced and reformed.” To this zeal we owe it that the letter contains an extract from Zosimus’ Tractoria, one of the two brief fragments of that document that have reached our day. 

There was another ecclesiastic in Rome, besides Zosimus, who was strongly suspected of favoring the Pelagians,—the presbyter Sixtus, who afterwards became Pope Sixtus III. But when Zosimus sent forth his condemnation of Pelagianism, Sixtus sent also a short letter to Africa addressed to Aurelius of Carthage, which, though brief, indicated a considerable vigor against the heresy which he was commonly believed to have before defended,¹⁰⁸ and which claimed him as its own.¹⁰⁹ Some months afterwards, he sent another similar, but longer, letter to Augustin and Alypius, more fully expounding his rejection of “the fatal dogma” of Pelagius, and his acceptance of “that grace of God freely given by Him to small and great, to which Pelagius’ dogma was diametrically opposed.” Augustin was overjoyed with these developments. He quickly replied in a short letter¹¹⁰ in which he expresses the delight he has in learning from Sixtus’ own hand that he is not a defender of Pelagius, but a preacher of grace. And close upon the heels of this he sent another much longer letter,¹¹¹ in which he discusses the subtler arguments of the Pelagians with an anxious care that seems to bear witness to his desire to confirm and support his correspondent in his new opinions. Both letters testify to Augustin’s approval of the persecuting measures which had been instituted by the Roman see in obedience to the emperor; and urge on Sixtus his duty not only to bring the open heretics to deserved punishment, but to track out those who spread their poison secretly, and even to remember those whom he had formerly heard announcing the error before it had been condemned, and who were now silent through fear, and to bring them either to open recantation of their former beliefs, or to punishment. It is pleasanter to recall our thoughts to the dialectic of these letters. The greater part of the second is given to a discussion of the gratuitousness of grace, which, just because grace, is given to no preceding merits. Many subtle objections to this doctrine were brought forward by the Pelagians. They said that “free will was taken away if we asserted that man did not have even a good will without the aid of God;” that we made “God an accepter of persons, if we believed that without any preceding merits He had mercy on whom He would, and whom He would He called, and whom He would He made religious;” that “it was unjust, in one and the same case, to deliver one and punish another;” that, if such a doctrine is preached, “men who do not wish to live rightly and faithfully, will excuse themselves by saying that they have done nothing evil by living ill, since they have not received the grace by which they might live well;” that it is a puzzle “how sin can pass over to the children of the faithful, when it has been remitted to the parents in baptism;” that “children respond truly by the mouth of their sponsors that they believe in remission of sins, but not because sins are remitted to them, but because they believe that sins are remitted in the church or in baptism to those in whom they are found, not to those in whom they do not exist,” and consequently they said that “they were unwilling that infants should be so baptized unto remission of sins as if this remission took place in them,” for (they contend) “they have no sin; but they are to be baptized, although without sin, with the same rite of baptism through which remission of sins takes place in any that are sinners.” This last objection is especially interesting¹¹² because it furnishes us with the reply which the Pelagians made to the argument that Augustin so strongly pressed against them from the very act and ritual of baptism, as implying remission of sins.¹¹³ His rejoinder to it here is to point to the other parts of the same ritual, and to ask why, then, infants are exorcised and exsufflated in baptism. “For, it cannot be doubted that this is done fictitiously, if the Devil does not rule over them; but if he rules over them, and they are therefore not falsely exorcised and exsufflated, why does that prince of sinners rule over them except because of sin?” On the fundamental matter of the gratuitousness of grace, this letter is very explicit. “If we seek for the deserving of hardening, we shall find it.…But if we seek for the deserving of pity, we shall not find it; for there is none, lest grace be made a vanity if it is not given gratis, but rendered to merits. But, should we say that faith preceded and in it there is desert of grace, what desert did man have before faith that he should receive faith? For, what did he have that he did not receive? and if he received it, why does he glory as if he received it not? For as man would not have wisdom, understanding, prudence, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of God, unless he had received (according to the prophet) the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of prudence and fortitude, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; as he would not have justice, love, continence, except the spirit was received of whom the apostle says, ‘For you did not receive the spirit of fear, but of virtue, and love, and continence:’ so he would not have faith unless he received the spirit of faith of whom the same apostle says, ‘Having then the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore spoke,” we too believe and therefore speak.’ But that He is not received by desert, but by His mercy who has mercy on whom He will, is manifestly shown where he says of himself, ‘I have obtained mercy to be faithful.’” “If we should say that the merit of prayer precedes, that the gift of grace may follow,…even prayer itself is found among the gifts of grace” (Rom. viii. 26). “It remains, then, that faith itself, whence all righteousness takes beginning;…it remains, I say, that even faith itself is not to be attributed to the human will which they extol, nor to any preceding merits, since from it begin whatever good things are merits: but it is to be confessed to be the gratuitous gift of God, since we consider it true grace, that is, without merits, inasmuch as we read in the same epistle, ‘God divides out the measure of faith to each’ (Rom. xii. 3). Now, good works are done by man, but faith is wrought in man, and without it these are not done by any man. For all that is not of faith is sin” (Rom. xiv. 23). 

By the same messenger who carried this important letter to Sixtus, Augustin sent also a letter to Mercator,¹¹⁴ an African layman who was then apparently at Rome, but who was afterwards (in 429) to render service by instructing the Emperor Theodosius as to the nature and history of Pelagianism, and so preventing the appeal of the Pelagians to him from being granted. Now he appears as an inquirer: Augustin, while at Carthage, had received a letter from him in which he had consulted him on certain questions that the Pelagians had raised, but in such a manner as to indicate his opposition to them. Press of business had compelled the postponement of the reply until this later date. One of the questions that Mercator had put concerned the Pelagian account of infants sharing in the one baptism unto remission of sins, which we have seen Augustin answering when writing to Sixtus. In this letter he replies: “Let them, then, hear the Lord (John iii. 36). Infants, therefore, who made believers by others, by whom they are brought to baptism, are, of course, unbelievers by others, if they are in the hands of such as do not believe that they should be brought, inasmuch as they believe they are nothing profited; and accordingly, if they believe by believers, and have eternal life, they are unbelievers by unbelievers, and shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on them. For it is not said, ‘it comes on them,’ but ‘it abideth on them,’ because it was on them from the beginning, and will not be taken from them except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.…Therefore, when children are baptized, the confession is made that they are believers, and it is not to be doubted that those who are not believers are condemned: let them, then, dare to say now, if they can, that they contract no evil from their origin to be condemned by the just God, and have no contagion of sin.” The other matter on which Mercator sought light concerned the statement that universal death proved universal sin:115 he reported that the Pelagians replied that not even death was universal,—that Enoch, for instance, and Elijah, had not died. Augustin adds those who are to be found living at the second advent, who are not to die, but be “changed;” and replies that Rom. v. 12 is perfectly explicit that there is no death in the world except that which comes from sin, and that God a Saviour, and we cannot at all “deny that He is able to do that, now, in any that he wishes, without death, which we undoubtingly believe is to be done in so many after death.” He adds that the difficult question is not why Enoch and Elijah did not die, if death is the punishment of sin; but why, such being the case, the justified ever die; and he refers his correspondent to his book On the Baptism of Infants¹¹⁶ for a resolution of this greater difficulty. 

It was probably at the very end of 418 that Augustin wrote a letter of some length¹¹⁷ to Asellicus, in reply to one which he had written on “avoiding the deception of Judaism,” to the primate of the Bizacene province, and which that ecclesiastic had sent to Augustin for answering. He discusses in this the law of the Old Testament. He opens by pointing out that the apostle forbids Christians to Judaize (Gal. ii. 14–16), and explains that it is not merely the ceremonial law that we may not depend upon, “but also what is said in the law, ‘Thou shalt not covet’ (which no one, of course, doubts is to be said to Christians too), does not justify man, except by faith in Jesus Christ and the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He then expounds the use of the law: “This, then, is the usefulness of the law: that it shows man to himself, so that he may know his weakness, and see how, by the prohibition, carnal concupiscence is rather increased than healed.…The use of the law is, thus, to convince man of his weakness, and force him to implore the medicine of grace that is in Christ.” “Since these things are so,” he adds, “those who rejoice that they are Israelites after the flesh, and glory in the law apart from the grace of Christ, these are those concerning whom the apostle said that ‘being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to God’s righteousness;’ since he calls ‘God’s righteousness’ that which is from God to man; and ‘their own,’ what they think that the commandments suffice for them to do without the help and gift of Him who gave the law. But they are like those who, while they profess to be Christians, so oppose the grace of Christ, that they suppose that they fulfil the divine commands by human powers, and, ‘wishing to establish their own,’ are ‘not subject to the righteousness of God,’ and so, not indeed in name, but yet in error, Judaize. This sort of men found heads for themselves in Pelagius and Coelestius, the most acute asserters of this impiety, who by God’s recent judgment, through his diligent and faithful servants, have been deprived even of catholic communion, and, on account of an impenitent heart, persist still in their condemnation.” 

At the beginning of 419, a considerable work was published by Augustin on one of the more remote corollaries which the Pelagians drew from his teachings. It had come to his ears, that they asserted that his doctrine condemned marriage: “if only sinful offspring come from marriage,” they asked, “is not marriage itself made a sinful thing?” The book which Augustin composed in answer to this query, he dedicated to, and sent along with an explanatory letter to, the Comes Valerius, a trusted servant of the Emperor Honorius, and one of the most steady opponents at court of the Pelagian heresy. Augustin explains¹¹⁸ why he has desired to address the book to him: first, because Valerius was a striking example of those continent husbands of which that age furnishes us with many instances, and, therefore, the discussion would have especial interest for him; secondly, because of his eminence as an opponent of Pelagianism; and, thirdly, because Augustin had learned that he had read a Pelagian document in which Augustin was charged with condemning marriage by defending original sin.¹¹⁹ The book in question is the first book of the treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence. It is, naturally, tinged, or rather stained, with the prevalent ascetic notions of the day. Its doctrine is that marriage is good, and God is the maker of the offspring that comes from it, although now there can be no begetting and hence no birth without sin. Sin made concupiscence, and now concupiscence perpetuates sinners. The specific object of the work, as it states it itself, is “to distinguish between the evil of carnal concupiscence, from which man, who is born therefrom, contracts original sin, and the good of marriage” (I. 1). After a brief introduction, in which he explains why he writes, and why he addresses his book to Valerius (1–2), Augustin points out that conjugal chastity, like its higher sister-grace of continence, is God’s gift. Thus copulation, but only for the propagation of children, has divine allowance (3–5). Lust, or “shameful concupiscence,” however, he teaches, is not of the essence, but only an accident, of marriage. It did not exist in Eden, although true marriage existed there; but arose from, and therefore only after, sin (6–7). Its addition to marriage does not destroy the good of marriage: it only conditions the character of the offspring (8). Hence it is that the apostle allows marriage, but forbids the “disease of desire” (1 Thess. iv. 3–5); and hence the Old-Testament saints were even permitted more than one wife, because, by multiplying wives, it was not lust, but offspring, that was increased (9–10). Nevertheless, fecundity is not to be thought the only good of marriage: true marriage can exist without offspring, and even without cohabitation (11–13), and cohabitation is now, under the New Testament, no longer a duty as it was under the Old Testament (14–15), but the apostle praises continence above it. We must, then, distinguish between the goods of marriage, and seek the best (16–19). But thus it follows that it is not due to any inherent and necessary evil in marriage, but only to the presence, now, of concupiscence in all cohabitation, that children are born under sin, even the children of the regenerate, just as from the seed of olives only oleasters grow (20–24). And yet again, concupiscence is not itself sin in the regenerate; it is remitted as guilt in baptism: but it is the daughter of sin, and it is the mother of sin, and in the unregenerate it is itself sin, as to yield to it is even to the regenerate (25–39). Finally, as so often, the testimony of Ambrose is appealed to, and it is shown that he too teaches that all born from cohabitation are born guilty (40). In this book, Augustin certainly seems to teach that the bond of connection by which Adam’s sin is conveyed to his offspring is not mere descent, or heredity, or mere inclusion in him, in a realistic sense, as partakers of the same numerical nature, but concupiscence. Without concupiscence in the act of generation, the offspring would not be a partaker of Adam’s sin. This he had taught also previously, as, e.g., in the treatise On Original Sin, from which a few words may be profitably quoted as succinctly summing up the teaching of this book on the subject: “It is, then, manifest, that that must not be laid to the account of marriage, in the absence of which even marriage would still have existed.…Such, however, is the present condition of mortal men, that the connubial intercourse and lust are at the same time in action.…Hence it follows that infants, although incapable of sinning, are yet not born without the contagion of sin,…not, indeed, because of what is lawful, but on account of that which is unseemly: for, from what is lawful, nature is born; from what is unseemly, sin” (42). 

Towards the end of the same year (419), Augustin was led to take up again the vexed question of the origin of the soul,—both in a new letter to Optatus,¹²⁰ by the zeal of the same monk, Renatus, who had formerly brought Optatus’ inquiries to his notice,—in an elaborate treatise entitled On the Soul and its Origin, by way of reply to a rash adventure of a young man named Vincentius Victor, who blamed him for his uncertainty on such a subject, and attempted to determine all the puzzles of the question, though, as Augustin insists, on assumptions that were partly Pelagian and partly worse. Optatus had written in the hope that Augustin had heard by this time from Jerome, in reply to the treatise he had sent him on this subject. Augustin, in answering his letter, expresses his sorrow that he has not yet been worthy of an answer from Jerome, although five years had passed away since he wrote, but his continued hope that such an answer will in due time come. For himself, he confesses that he has not yet been able to see how the soul can contract sin from Adam and yet not itself be contracted from Adam; and he regrets that Optatus, although holding that God creates each soul for its birth, has not sent him the proofs on which he depends for that opinion, nor met its obvious difficulties. He rebukes Optatus for confounding the question of whether God makes the soul, with the entirely different one of how he makes it, whether ex propagine or sive propagine. No one doubts that God makes the soul, as no one doubts that He makes the body. But when we consider how he makes it, sobriety and vigilance become necessary lest we should unguardedly fall into the Pelagian heresy. Augustin defends his attitude of uncertainty, and enumerates the points as to which he has no doubt: viz., that the soul is spirit, not body; that it is rational or intellectual; that it is not of the nature of God, but is so far a mortal creature that it is capable of deterioration and of alienation from the life of God, and so far immortal that after this life it lives on in bliss or punishment forever; that it was not incarnated because of, or according to, preceding deserts acquired in a previous existence, yet that it is under the curse of sin which it derives from Adam, and therefore in all cases alike needs redemption in Christ. 

The whole subject of the nature and origin of the soul, however, is most fully discussed in the four books which are gathered together under the common title of On the Soul and its Origin. Vincentius Victor was a young layman who had recently been converted from the Rogatian heresy; on being shown by his friend Peter, a presbyter, a small work of Augustin’s on the origin of the soul, he expressed surprise that so great a man could profess ignorance on a matter so intimate to his very being, and, receiving encouragement, wrote a book for Peter in which he attacked and tried to solve all the difficulties of the subject. Peter received the work with transports of delighted admiration; but Renatus, happening that way, looked upon it with distrust, and, finding that Augustin was spoken of in it with scant courtesy, felt it his duty to send him a copy of it, which he did in the summer of 419. It was probably not until late in the following autumn that Augustin found time to take up the matter; but then he wrote to Renatus, to Peter, and two books to Victor himself, and it is these four books together which constitute the treatise that has come down to us. The first book is a letter to Renatus, and is introduced by an expression of thanks to him for sending Victor’s book, and of kindly feeling towards and appreciation for the high qualities of Victor himself (1–3). Then Victor’s errors are pointed out,—as to the nature of the soul (4–9), including certain far-reaching corollaries that flow from these (10–15), as well as, as to the origin of the soul (16–30); and the letter closes with some remarks on the danger of arguing from the silence of Scripture (31), on the self-contradictions of Victor (34), and on the errors that must be avoided in any theory of the origin of the soul that hopes to be acceptable,—to wit, that souls become sinful by an alien original sin, that unbaptized infants need no salvation, that souls sinned in a previous state, and that they are condemned for sins which they have not committed but would have committed had they lived longer. The second book is a letter to Peter, warning him of the responsibility that rests on him as Victor’s trusted friend and a clergyman, to correct Victor’s errors, and reproving him for the uninstructed delight he had taken in Victor’s crudities. It opens by asking Peter what was the occasion of the great joy which Victor’s book brought him? could it be that he learned from it, for the first time, the old and primary truths it contained? (2–3); or was it due to the new errors that it proclaimed,—seven of which he enumerates? (4–16). Then, after animadverting on the dilemma in which Victor stood, of either being forced to withdraw his violent assertion of creationism, or else of making God unjust in His dealings with new souls (17), he speaks of Victor’s unjustifiable dogmatism in the matter (18–21), and closes with severely solemn words to Peter on his responsibility in the premises (22–23). In the third and fourth books, which are addressed to Victor, the polemic, of course, reaches its height. The third book is entirely taken up with pointing out to Victor, as a father to a son, the errors into which he has fallen, and which, in accordance with his professions of readiness for amendment, he ought to correct. Eleven are enumerated: 1. That the soul was made by God out of Himself (3–7); 2. That God will continuously create souls forever (8); 3. That the soul has desert of good before birth (9); 4. (contradictingly), That the soul has desert of evil before birth (10); 5. That the soul deserved to be sinful before any sin (11); 6. That unbaptized infants are saved (12); 7. That what God predestinates may not occur (13); 8. That Wisd. iv. 1 is spoken of infants (14); 9. That some of the mansions with the Father are outside of God’s kingdom (15–17); 10. That the sacrifice of Christ’s blood may be offered for the unbaptized (18); 11. That the unbaptized may attain at the resurrection even to the kingdom of heaven (19). The book closes by reminding Victor of his professions of readiness to correct his errors, and warning him against the obstinacy that makes the heretic (20–23). The fourth book deals with the more personal elements of the controversy, and discusses the points in which Victor had expressed dissent from Augustin. It opens with a statement of the two grounds of complaint that Victor had urged against Augustin; viz., that he refused to express a confident opinion as to the origin of the soul, and that he affirmed that the soul was not corporeal, but spirit (1–2). These two complaints are then taken up at length (2–16 and 17–37). To the first, Augustin replies that man’s knowledge is at best limited, and often most limited about the things nearest to him; we do not know the constitution of our bodies; and, above most others, this subject of the origin of the soul is one on which no one but God is a competent witness. Who remembers his birth? Who remembers what was before birth? But this is just one of the subjects on which God has not spoken unambiguously in the Scriptures. Would it not be better, then, for Victor to imitate Augustin’s cautious ignorance, than that Augustin should imitate Victor’s rash assertion of errors? That the soul is not corporeal, Augustin argues (18–35) from the Scriptures and from the phenomena of dreams; and then shows, in opposition to Victor’s trichotomy, that the Scriptures teach the identity of “soul” and “spirit” (36–37). The book closes with a renewed enumeration of Victor’s eleven errors (38), and a final admonition to his rashness (39). It is pleasant to know that Augustin found in this case, also, that righteousness is the fruit of the faithful wounds of a friend. Victor accepted the rebuke, and professed his better instruction at the hands of his modest but resistless antagonist. 

The controversy now entered upon a new stage. Among the evicted bishops of Italy who refused to sign Zosimus’ Epistola Tractoria, Julian of Eclanum was easily the first, and at this point he appears as the champion of Pelagianism. It was a sad fate that arrayed this beloved son of his old friend against Augustin, just when there seemed to be reason to hope that the controversy was at an end, and the victory won, and the plaudits of the world were greeting him as the saviour of the Church.¹²¹ But the now fast-aging bishop was to find, that, in this “very confident young man,” he had yet to meet the most persistent and most dangerous advocate of the new doctrines that had arisen. Julian had sent, at an earlier period, two letters to Zosimus, one of which has come down to us as a “Confession of Faith,” and the other of which attempted to approach Augustinian forms of speech as much as possible; the object of both being to gain standing ground in the Church for the Italian Pelagians. Now he appears as a Pelagian controversialist; and in opposition to the book On Marriage and Concupiscence, which Augustin had sent Valerius, he published an extended work in four thick books addressed to Turbantius. Extracts from the first of these books were sent by some one to Valerius, and were placed by him in the hands of Alypius, who was then in Italy, for transmission to Augustin. Meanwhile, a letter had been sent to Rome by Julian,¹²² designed to strengthen the cause of Pelagianism there; and a similar one, in the names of the eighteen Pelagianizing Italian bishops, was addressed to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica, and representative of the Roman see in that portion of the Eastern Empire which was regarded as ecclesiastically a part of the West, the design of which was to obtain the powerful support of this important magnate, perhaps, also, a refuge from persecution within his jurisdiction. These two letters came into the hands of the new Pope, Boniface, who gave them also to Alypius for transmission to Augustin. Thus provided, Alypius returned to Africa. The tactics of all these writings of Julian were essentially the same; he attempted not so much to defend Pelagianism, as to attack Augustinianism, and thus literally to carry the war into Africa. He insisted that the corruption of nature which Augustin taught was nothing else than Manicheism; that the sovereignty of grace, as taught by him, was only the attribution of “acceptance of persons,” and partiality, to God; and that his doctrine of predestination was mere fatalism. He accused the anti-Pelagians of denying the goodness of the nature that God had created, of the marriage that He had ordained, of the law that He had given, of the free will that He had implanted in man, as well as the perfection of His saints.¹²³ He insisted that this teaching also did dishonour to baptism itself which it professed so to honour, inasmuch as it asserted the continuance of concupiscence after baptism,—and thus taught that baptism does not take away sins, but only shaves them off as one shaves his beard, and leaves the roots whence the sins may grow anew, and need cutting down again. He complained bitterly of the way in which Pelagianism had been condemned,—that bishops had been compelled to sign a definition of dogma, not in council assembled, but sitting at home; and he demanded a rehearing of the whole case before a lawful council, lest the doctrine of the Manichees should be forced upon the acceptance of the world. 

Augustin felt a strong desire to see the whole work of Julian against his book On Marriage and Concupiscence before he undertook a reply to the excerpts sent him by Valerius; but he did not feel justified in delaying obedience to that officer’s request, and so wrote at once two treatises, one an answer to these excerpts, for the benefit of Valerius, constituting the second book of his On Marriage and Concupiscence; and the other, a far more elaborate examination of the letters sent by Boniface, which bears the title, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians. The purpose of the second book of On Marriage and Concupiscence, Augustin himself states, in its introductory sentences, to be “to reply to the taunts of his adversaries with all the truthfulness and scriptural authority he could command.” He begins (2) by identifying the source of the extracts forwarded to him by Valerius, with Julian’s work against his first book, and then remarks upon the garbled form in which he is quoted in them (3–6), and passes on to state and refute Julian’s charge that the catholics had turned Manicheans (7–9). At this point, the refutation of Julian begins in good earnest, and the method that he proposes to use is stated; viz., to adduce the adverse statements, and refute them one by one (10). Beginning at the beginning, he quotes first the title of the paper sent him, which declares that it is directed against “those who condemn matrimony, and ascribe its fruit to the Devil” (11), which certainly, says Augustin, does not describe him or the catholics. The next twenty chapters (10–30), accordingly, following Julian’s order, labour to prove that marriage is good, and ordained by God, but that its good includes fecundity indeed, but not concupiscence, which arose from sin, and contracts sin. It is next argued, that the doctrine of original sin does not imply an evil origin for man (31–51); and in the course of this argument, the following propositions are especially defended: that God makes offspring for good and bad alike, just as He sends the rain and sunshine on just and unjust (31–34); that God makes everything to be found in marriage except its flaw, concupiscence (35–40); that marriage is not the cause of original sin, but only the channel through which it is transmitted (41–47); and that to assert that evil cannot arise from what is good leaves us in the clutches of that very Manicheism which is so unjustly charged against the catholics—for, if evil be not eternal, what else was there from which it could arise but something good? (48–51). In concluding, Augustin recapitulates, and argues especially, that shameful concupiscence is of sin, and the author of sin, and was not in paradise (52–54); that children are made by God, and only marred by the Devil (55); that Julian, in admitting that Christ died for infants, admits that they need salvation (56); that what the Devil makes in children is not a substance, but an injury to a substance (57–58); and that to suppose that concupiscence existed in any form in paradise introduces incongruities in our conception of life in that abode of primeval bliss (59–60). 

The long and important treatise, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, consists of four books, the first of which replies to the letter sent to Rome, and the other three to that sent to Thessalonica. After a short introduction, in which he thanks Boniface for his kindness, and gives reasons why heretical writings should be answered (1–3), Augustin begins at once to rebut the calumnies which the letter before him brings against the catholics (4–28). These are seven in number: 1. That the catholics destroy free will; to which Augustin replies that none are “forced into sin by the necessity of their flesh,” but all sin by free will, though no man can have a righteous will save by God’s grace, and that it is really the Pelagians that destroy free will by exaggerating it (4–8); 2. That Augustin declares that such marriage as now exists is not of God (9); 3. That sexual desire and intercourse are made a device of the Devil, which is sheer Manicheism (10–11); 4. That the Old-Testament saints are said to have died in sin (12); 5. That Paul and the other apostles are asserted to have been polluted by lust all their days; Augustin’s answer to which includes a running commentary on Rom. vii. 7 sq., in which (correcting his older exegesis) he shows that Paul is giving here a transcript of his own experience as a typical Christian (13–24); 6. That Christ is said not to have been free from sin (25); 7. That baptism does not give complete remission of sins, but leaves roots from which they may again grow; to which Augustin replies that baptism does remit all sins, but leaves concupiscence, which, although not sin, is the source of sin (26–28). Next, the positive part of Julian’s letter is taken up, and his profession of faith against the catholics examined (29–41). The seven affirmations that Julian makes here are designed as the obverse of the seven charges against the catholics. He believed: 1. That free will is in all by nature, and could not perish by Adam’s sin (29); 2. That marriage, as now existent, was ordained by God (30); 3. That sexual impulse and virility are from God (31–35); 4. That men are God’s work, and no one is forced to do good or evil unwillingly, but are assisted by grace to good, and incited by the Devil to evil (36–38); 5. That the saints of the Old Testament were perfected in righteousness here, and so passed into eternal life (39); 6. That the grace of Christ (ambiguously meant) is necessary for all, and all children—even those of baptized parents—are to be baptized (40); 7. And that baptism gives full cleansing from all sins; to which Augustin pointedly asks, “What does it do for infants, then?” (41). The book concludes with an answer to Julian’s conclusion, in which he demands a general council, and charges the catholics with Manicheism. 

The second, third, and fourth books deal with the letter to Rufus in a somewhat similar way, the second and third books being occupied with the calumnies brought against the catholics, and the fourth with the claims made by the Pelagians. The second begins by repelling the charge of Manicheism brought against the catholics (1–4), to which the pointed remark is added, that the Pelagians cannot hope to escape condemnation because they are willing to condemn another heresy; and then defends (with less success) the Roman clergy against the charge of prevarication in their dealing with the Pelagians (5–8), in the course of which all that can be said in defence of Zosimus’ wavering policy is said well and strongly. Next the charges against catholic teaching are taken up and answered (9–16), especially the two important accusations that they maintain fate under the name of grace (9–12), and that they make God an “accepter of persons” (13–16). Augustin’s replies to these charges are in every way admirable. The charge of “fate” rests solely on the catholic denial that grace is given according to preceding merits; but the Pelagians do not escape the same charge when they acknowledge that the “fates” of baptized and unbaptized infants do differ. It is, in truth, not a question of “fate,” but of gratuitous bounty; and “it is not the catholics that assert fate under the name of grace, but the Pelagians that choose to call divine grace by the name of ‘fate’” (12). As to “acceptance of persons,” we must define what we mean by that. God certainly does not accept one’s “person” above another’s; He does not give to one rather than to another because He sees something to please Him in one rather than another: quite the opposite. He gives of His bounty to one while giving all their due to all, as in the parable (Matt. xx. 9 sq.). To ask why He does this, is to ask in vain: the apostle answers by not answering (Rom. ix.); and before the dumb infants, who are yet made to differ, all objection to God is dumb. From this point, the book becomes an examination of the Pelagian doctrine of prevenient merit (17–23), concluding that God gives all by grace from the beginning to the end of every process of doing good. 1. He commands the good; 2. He gives the desire to do it; and, 3. He gives the power to do it: and all, of His gratuitous mercy. The third book continues the discussion of the calumnies of the Pelagians against the catholics, and enumerates and answers six of them: viz., that the catholics teach, 1. That the Old-Testament law was given, not to justify the obedient, but to serve as cause of greater sin (2–3); 2. That baptism does not give entire remission of sins, but the baptized are partly God’s and partly the Devil’s (4–5); 3. That the Holy Ghost did not assist virtue in the Old Testament (6–13); 4. That the Bible saints were not holy, but only less wicked than others (14–15); 5. That Christ was a sinner by necessity of His flesh (doubtless, Julian’s inference from the doctrine of race-sin) (16); 6. That men will begin to fulfil God’s commandments only after the resurrection (17–23). Augustin shows that at the basis of all these calumnies lies either misapprehension or misrepresentation; and, in concluding the book, enumerates the three chief points in the Pelagian heresy, with the five claims growing out of them, of which they most boasted, and then elucidates the mutual relations of the three parties, catholics, Pelagians, and Manicheans, with reference to these points, showing that the catholics stand asunder from both the others, and condemn both (24–27). This conclusion is really a preparation for the fourth book, which takes up these five Pelagian claims, and, after showing the catholic position on them all in brief (1–3), discusses them in turn (4–19): viz., the praise of the creature (4–8), the praise of marriage (9), the praise of the law (10–11), the praise of free will (12–16), and the praise of the saints (17–18). At the end, Augustin calls on the Pelagians to cease to oppose the Manicheans, only to fall into as bad heresy as theirs (19); and then, in reply to their accusation that the catholics were proclaiming novel doctrine, he adduces the testimony of Cyprian and Ambrose, both of whom had received Pelagius’ praise, on each of the three main points of Pelagianism (20–32),¹²⁴ and then closes with the declaration that the “impious and foolish doctrine,” as they called it, of the catholics, is immemorial truth (33), and with a denial of the right of the Pelagians to ask for a general council to condemn them (34). All heresies do not need an ecumenical synod for their condemnation; usually it is best to stamp them out locally, and not allow what may be confined to a corner to disturb the whole world. 

These books were written late in 420, or early in 421, and Alypius appears to have conveyed them to Italy during the latter year. Before its close, Augustin, having obtained and read the whole of Julian’s attack on the first book of his work On Marriage and Concupiscence, wrote out a complete answer to it,¹²⁵—a task that he was all the more anxious to complete, on perceiving that the extracts sent by Valerius were not only all from the first book of Julian’s treatise, but were somewhat altered in the extracting. The resulting work, Against Julian, one of the longest that he wrote in the whole course of the Pelagian controversy, shows its author at his best: according to Cardinal Noris’s judgment, he appears in it “almost divine,” and Augustin himself clearly set great store by it. In the first book of this noble treatise, after professing his continued love for Julian, “whom he was unable not to love, whatever he [Julian] should say against him” (35), he undertakes to show that in affixing the opprobrious name of Manicheans on those who assert original sin, Julian is incriminating many of the most famous fathers, both of the Latin and Greek Churches. In proof of this, he makes appropriate quotations from Irenæus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzenus, Basil, John of Constantinople.¹²⁶ Then he argues, that, so far from the catholics falling into Manichean heresy, Julian plays, himself, into the hands of the Manicheans in their strife against the catholics, by many unguarded statements, such as, e.g., when he says that an evil thing cannot arise from what is good, that the work of the Devil cannot be suffered to be diffused by means of a work of God, that a root of evil cannot be placed within a gift of God, and the like. The second book advances to greater detail, and adduces the five great arguments which the Pelagians urged against the catholics, in order to test them by the voice of antiquity. These arguments are stated as follows (2): “For you say, ‘That we, by asserting original sin, affirm that the Devil is the maker of infants, condemn marriage, deny that all sins are remitted in baptism, accuse God of the guilt of sin, and produce despair of perfection.’ You contend that all these are consequences, if we believe that infants are born bound by the sin of the first man, and are therefore under the Devil unless they are born again in Christ. For, ‘It is the Devil that creates,’ you say, ‘if they are created from that wound which the Devil inflicted on the human nature that was made at first.’ ‘And marriage is condemned,’ you say, ‘if it is to be believed to have something about it whence it produces those worthy of condemnation.’ ‘And all sins are not remitted in baptism,’ you say, ‘if there remains any evil in baptized couples whence evil offspring are produced.’ ‘And how is God,’ you ask, ‘not unjust, if He, while remitting their own sins to baptized persons, yet condemns their offspring, inasmuch as, although it is created by Him, it yet ignorantly and involuntarily contracts the sins of others from those very parents to whom they are remitted?’ ‘Nor can men believe,’ you add, ‘that virtue—to which corruption is to be understood to be contrary—can be perfected, if they cannot believe that it can destroy the inbred vices, although, no doubt, these can scarcely be considered vices, since he does not sin, who is unable to be other than he was created.’” These arguments are then tested, one by one, by the authority of the earlier teachers who were appealed to in the first book, and shown to be condemned by them. The remaining four books follow Julian’s four books, argument by argument, refuting him in detail. In the third book it is urged that although God is good, and made man good, and instituted marriage which is, therefore, good, nevertheless concupiscence is evil, and in it the flesh lusts against the spirit. Although chaste spouses use this evil well, continent believers do better in not using it at all. It is pointed out, how far all this is from the madness of the Manicheans, who dream of matter as essentially evil and co-eternal with God; and shown that evil concupiscence sprang from Adam’s disobedience and, being transmitted to us, can be removed only by Christ. It is shown, also, that Julian himself confesses lust to be evil, inasmuch as he speaks of remedies against it, wishes it to be bridled, and speaks of the continent waging a glorious warfare. The fourth book follows the second book of Julian’s work, and makes two chief contentions: that unbelievers have no true virtues, and that even the heathen recognize concupiscence as evil. It also argues that grace is not given according to merit, and yet is not to be confounded with fate; and explains the text that asserts that ‘God wishes all men to be saved,’ in the sense that ‘all men’ means ‘all that are to be saved’ since none are saved except by His will.¹²⁷ The fifth book, in like manner, follows Julian’s third book, and treats of such subjects as these: that it is due to sin that any infants are lost; that shame arose in our first parents through sin; that sin can well be the punishment of preceding sin; that concupiscence is always evil, even in those who do not assent to it; that true marriage may exist without intercourse; that the “flesh” of Christ differs from the “sinful flesh” of other men; and the like. In the sixth book, Julian’s fourth book is followed, and original sin is proved from the baptism of infants, the teaching of the apostles, and the rites of exorcism and exsufflation incorporated in the form of baptism. Then, by the help of the illustration drawn from the olive and the oleaster, it is explained how Christian parents can produce unregenerate offspring; and the originally voluntary character of sin is asserted, even though it now comes by inheritance. 

After the completion of this important work, there succeeded a lull in the controversy, of some years duration; and the calm refutation of Pelagianism and exposition of Christian grace, which Augustin gave in his Enchiridion,¹²⁸ might well have seemed to him his closing word on this all-absorbing subject. But he had not yet given the world all he had in treasure for it, and we can rejoice in the chance that five or six years afterwards drew from him a renewed discussion of some of the more important aspects of the doctrine of grace. The circumstances which brought this about are sufficiently interesting in themselves, and open up to us an unwonted view into the monastic life of the times. There was an important monastery at Adrumetum, the metropolitan city of the province of Byzacium,¹²⁹ from which a monk named Florus went out on a journey of charity to his native country of Uzalis about 426. On the journey he met with Augustin’s letter to Sixtus,¹³⁰ in which the doctrines of gratuitous and prevenient grace were expounded. He was much delighted with it, and, procuring a copy, sent it back to his monastery for the edification of his brethren, while he himself went on to Carthage. At the monastery, the letter created great disturbance: without the knowledge of the abbot, Valentinus, it was read aloud to the monks, many of whom were unskilled in theological questions; and some five or more were greatly offended, and declared that free will was destroyed by it. A secret strife arose among the brethren, some taking extreme grounds on both sides. Of all this, Valentinus remained ignorant until the return of Florus, who was attacked as the author of all the trouble, and who felt it his duty to inform the abbot of the state of affairs. Valentinus applied first to the bishop, Evodius, for such instruction as would make Augustin’s letter clear to the most simple. Evodius replied, praising their zeal and deprecating their contentiousness, and explaining that Adam had full free will, but that it is now wounded and weak, and Christ’s mission was as a physician to cure and recuperate it. “Let them read,” is his prescription, “the words of God’s elders.…And when they do not understand, let them not quickly reprehend, but pray to understand.” This did not, however, cure the malecontents, and the holy presbyter Sabrinus was appealed to, and sent a book with clear interpretations. But neither was this satisfactory; and Valentinus, at last, reluctantly consented that Augustin himself should be consulted,—fearing, he says, lest by making inquiries he should seem to waver about the truth. Two members of the community were consequently permitted to journey to Hippo, but they took with them no introduction and no commendation from their abbot. Augustin, nevertheless, received them without hesitation, as they bore themselves with too great simplicity to allow him to suspect them of deception. Now we get a glimpse of life in the great bishop’s monastic home. The monks told their story, and were listened to with courtesy and instructed with patience; and, as they were anxious to get home before Easter, they received a letter for Valentinus¹³¹ in which Augustin briefly explains the nature of the misapprehension that had arisen, and points out that both grace and free will must be defended, and neither so exaggerated as to deny the other. The letter of Sixtus, he explains, was written against the Pelagians, who assert that grace is given according to merit, and briefly expounds the true doctrine of grace as necessarily gratuitous and therefore prevenient. When the monks were on the point of starting home, they were joined by a third companion from Adrumetum, and were led to prolong their visit. This gave him the opportunity he craved for their fuller instruction: he read with them and explained to them not only his letter to Sixtus, from which the strife had risen, but much of the chief literature of the Pelagian controversy,¹³² copies of which also were made for them to take home with them; and when they were ready to go, he sent by them another and longer letter to Valentinus, and placed in their hands a treatise composed for their especial use, which, moreover, he explained to them. This longer letter is essentially an exhortation “to turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left,”—neither to the left hand of the Pelagian error of upholding free will in such a manner as to deny grace, nor to the right hand of the equal error of so upholding grace as if we might yield ourselves to evil with impunity. Both grace and free will are to be proclaimed; and it is true both that grace is not given to merits, and that we are to be judged at the last day according to our works. The treatise which Augustin composed for a fuller exposition of these doctrines is the important work On Grace and Free Will. After a brief introduction, explaining the occasion of his writing, and exhorting the monks to humility and teachableness before God’s revelations (1), Augustin begins by asserting and proving the two propositions that the Scriptures clearly teach that man has free will (2–5), and, as clearly, the necessity of grace for doing any good (6–9). He then examines the passages which the Pelagians claim as teaching that we must first turn to God, before He visits us with His grace (10–11), and then undertakes to show that grace is not given to merit (12 sq.), appealing especially to Paul’s teaching and example, and replying to the assertion that forgiveness is the only grace that is not given according to our merits (15–18), and to the query, “How can eternal life be both of grace and of reward?” (19–21). The nature of grace, what it is, is next explained (22 sq.). It is not the law, which gives only knowledge of sin (22–24), nor nature, which would render Christ’s death needless (25), nor mere forgiveness of sins, as the Lord’s Prayer (which should be read with Cyprian’s comments on it) is enough to show (26). Nor will it do to say that it is given to the merit of a good will, thus distinguishing the good work which is of grace from the good will which precedes grace (27–30); for the Scriptures oppose this, and our prayers for others prove that we expect God to be the first mover, as indeed both Scripture and experience prove that He is. It is next shown that both free will and grace are concerned in the heart’s conversion (31–32), and that love is the spring of all good in man (33–40), which, however, we have only because God first loved us (38), and which is certainly greater than knowledge, although the Pelagians admit only the latter to be from God (40). God’s sovereign government of men’s wills is then proved from Scripture (41–43), and the wholly gratuitous character of grace is illustrated (44), while the only possible theodicy is found in the certainty that the Lord of all the earth will do right. For, though no one knows why He takes one and leaves another, we all know that He hardens judicially and saves graciously,—that He hardens none who do not deserve hardening, but none that He saves deserve to be saved (45). The treatise closes with an exhortation to its prayerful and repeated study (46). 

The one request that Augustin made, on sending this work to Valentinus, was that Florus, through whom the controversy had arisen, should be sent to him, that he might converse with him and learn whether he had been misunderstood, or himself had misunderstood Augustin. In due time Florus arrived at Hippo, bringing a letter¹³³ from Valentinus which addresses Augustin as “Lord Pope” (domine papa), thanks him for his “sweet” and “healing” instruction, and introduces Florus as one whose true faith could be confided in. It is very clear, both from Valentinus’ letter and from the hints that Augustin gives, that his loving dealing with the monks had borne admirable fruit: “none were cast down for the worse, some were built up for the better.”¹³⁴ But it was reported to him that some one at the monastery had objected to the doctrine he had taught them, that “no man ought, then, to be rebuked for not keeping God’s commandments; but only God should be besought that he might keep them.”¹³⁵ In other words, it was said that if all good was, in the last resort, from God’s grace, man ought not to be blamed for not doing what he could not do, but God ought to be besought to do for man what He alone could do: we ought, in a word, to apply to the source of power. This occasioned the composition of yet another treatise On Rebuke and Grace,¹³⁶ the object of which was to explain the relations of grace to human conduct, and especially to make it plain that the sovereignty of God’s grace does not supersede our duty to ourselves or our fellow-men. It begins by thanking Valentinus for his letter and for sending Florus (whom Augustin finds well instructed in the truth), thanking God for the good effect of the previous book, and recommending its continued study, and then by briefly expounding the Catholic faith concerning grace, free-will, and the law (1–2). The general proposition that is defended is that the gratuitous sovereignty of God’s grace does not supersede human means for obtaining and continuing it (3 sq.). This is shown by the apostle’s example, who used all human means for the prosecution of his work, and yet confessed that it was “God that gave the increase” (3). Objections are then answered (4 sq.),—especially the great one that “it is not my fault if I do not do what I have not received grace for doing” (6); to which Augustin replies (7–10), that we deserve rebuke for our very unwillingness to be rebuked, that on the same reasoning the prescription of the law and the preaching of the gospel would be useless, that the apostle’s example opposes such a position, and that our consciousness witnesses that we deserve rebuke for not persevering in the right way. From this point an important discussion arises, in this interest, of the gift of perseverance (11–19), and of God’s election (20–24); the teaching being that no one is saved who does not persevere, and all that are predestinated or “called according to the purpose” (Augustin’s phrase for what we should call “effectual calling”) will persevere, and yet that we co-operate by our will in all good deeds, and deserve rebuke if we do not. Whether Adam received the gift of perseverance, and, in general, the difference between the grace given to him (which was that grace by which he could stand) and that now given to God’s children (which is that grace by which we are actually made to stand), are next discussed (26–38), with the result of showing the superior greatness of the gifts of grace now to those given before the fall. The necessity of God’s mercy at all times, and our constant dependence on it, are next vigorously asserted (39–42); even in the day of judgment, if we are not judged “with mercy” we cannot be saved (41). The treatise is brought to an end by a concluding application of the whole discussion to the special matter in hand, rebuke (43–49). Seeing that rebuke is one of God’s means of working out his gracious purposes, it cannot be inconsistent with the sovereignty of that grace; for, of course, God predestinates the means with the end (43). Nor can we know, in our ignorance, whether our rebuke is, in any particular case, to be the means of amendment or the ground of greater condemnation. How dare we, then, withhold it? Let it be, however, graduated to the fault, and let us always remember its purpose (46–48). Above all, let us not dare hold it back, lest we hold back from our brother the means of his recovery, and, as well, disobey the command of God (49). 

It was not long afterwards (about 427) when Augustin was called upon to attempt to reclaim a Carthaginian brother, Vitalis by name, who had been brought to trial on the charge of teaching that the beginning of faith was not the gift of God, but the act of man’s own free will (ex propria voluntatis). This was essentially the semi-Pelagian position which was subsequently to make so large a figure in history; and Augustin treats it now as necessarily implying the basal idea of Pelagianism. In the important letter which he sent to Vitalis,¹³⁷ he first argues that his position is inconsistent with the prayers of the church. He, Augustin, prays that Vitalis may come to the true faith; but does not this prayer ascribe the origination of right faith to God? The Church so prays for all men: the priest at the altar exhorts the people to pray God for unbelievers, that He may convert them to the faith; for catechumens, that He may breathe into them a desire for regeneration; for the faithful, that by His aid they may persevere in what they have begun: will Vitalis refuse to obey these exhortations, because, forsooth, faith is of free will and not of God’s gift? Nay, will a Carthaginian scholar array himself against Cyprian’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer? for he certainly teaches that we are to ask of God what Vitalis says is to be had of ourselves. We may go farther: it is not Cyprian, but Paul, who says, “Let us pray to God that we do no evil” (2 Cor. xiii. 7); it is the Psalmist who says, “The steps of man are directed by God” (Ps. xxxvi. 23). “If we wish to defend free will, let us not strive against that by which it is made free. For he who strives against grace, by which the will is made free for refusing evil and doing good, wishes his will to remain captive. Tell us, I beg you, how the apostle can say, ‘We give thanks to the Father who made us fit to have our lot with the saints in light, who delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love’ (Col. i. 12, 13), if not He, but itself, frees our choice? It is, then, a false rendering of thanks to God, as if He does what He does not do; and he has erred who has said that ‘He makes us fit, etc.’ ‘The grace of God,’ therefore, does not consist in the nature of free-will, and in law and teaching, as the Pelagian perversity dreams; but it is given for each single act by His will, concerning whom it is written,”—quoting Ps. lxvii. 10. About the middle of the letter, Augustin lays down twelve propositions against the Pelagians, which are important as communicating to us what he thought, at the end of the controversy, were the chief points in dispute. “Since, therefore,” he writes, “we are catholic Christians: 1. We know that new-born children have not yet done anything in their own lives, good or evil, neither have they come into the miseries of this life according to the deserts of some previous life, which none of them can have had in their own persons; and yet, because they are born carnally after Adam, they contract the contagion of ancient death, by the first birth, and are not freed from the punishment of eternal death (which is contracted by a just condemnation, passing over from one to all), except they are by grace born again in Christ. 2. We know that the grace of God is given neither to children nor to adults according to our deserts. 3. We know that it is given to adults for each several act. 4. We know that it is not given to all men; and to those to whom it is given, it is not only not given according to the merits of works, but it is not even given to them according to the merits of their will; and this is especially apparent in children. 5. We know that to those to whom it is given, it is given by the gratuitous mercy of God. 6. We know that to those to whom it is not given, it is not given by the just judgment of God. 7. We know that we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, and each shall receive according to what he has done through the body,—not according to what he would have done, had he lived longer,—whether good or evil. 8. We know that even children are to receive according to what they have done through the body, whether good or evil. But according to what “they have done” not by their own act, but by the act of those by whose responses for them they are said both to renounce the Devil and to believe in God, wherefore they are counted among the number of the faithful, and have part in the statement of the Lord when He says, “Whosoever shall believe and be baptized, shall be saved.” Therefore also, to those who do not receive this sacrament, belongs what follows, “But whosoever shall not have believed, shall be damned” (Mark xvi. 16). Whence these too, as I have said, if they die in that early age, are judged, of course, according to what they have done through the body, i.e., in the time in which they were in the body, when they believe or do not believe by the heart and mouth of their sponsors, when they are baptized or not baptized, when they eat or do not eat the flesh of Christ, when they drink or do not drink His blood,—according to those things, then, which they have done through the body, not according to those which, had they lived longer, they would have done. 9. We know that blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; and that what they would have done had they lived longer, is not imputed to them. 10. We know that those that believe, with their own heart, in the Lord, do so by their own free will and choice. 11. We know that we who already believe act with right faith towards those who do not wish to believe, when we pray to God that they may wish it. 12. We know that for those who have believed out of this number, we both ought and are rightly and truly accustomed to return thanks to God, as for his benefits.” Certainly such a body of propositions commends their author to us as Christian both in head and heart: they are admirable in every respect; and even in the matter of the salvation of infants, where he had not yet seen the light of truth, he expresses himself in a way as engaging in its hearty faith in God’s goodness as it is honorable in its loyalty to what he believed to be truth and justice. Here his doctrine of the Church ran athwart and clouded his view of the reach of grace; but we seem to see between the lines the promise of the brighter dawn of truth that was yet to come. The rest of the epistle is occupied with an exposition and commendation of these propositions, which ranks with the richest passages of the anti-Pelagian writings, and which breathes everywhere a yearning for his correspondent which we cannot help hoping proved salutary to his faith. 

It is not without significance, that the error of Vitalis took a semi-Pelagian form. Pure Pelagianism was by this time no longer a living issue. Augustin was himself, no doubt, not yet done with it. The second book of his treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence, which seems to have been taken to Italy by Alypius, in 421, received at once the attention of Julian, and was elaborately answered by him, during that same year, in eight books addressed to Florus. But Julian was now in Cilicia, and his book was slow in working its way westward. It was found at Rome by Alypius, apparently in 427 or 428, and he at once set about transcribing it for his friend’s use. An opportunity arising to send it to Africa before it was finished, he forwarded to Augustin the five books that were ready, with an urgent request that they should receive his immediate attention, and a promise to send the other three as soon as possible. Augustin gives an account of his progress in his reply to them in a letter written to Quodvultdeus, apparently in 428.138 This deacon was urging Augustin to give the Church a succinct account of all heresies; and Augustin excuses himself from immediately undertaking that task by the press of work on his hands. He was writing his Retractations, and had already finished two books of them, in which he had dealt with two hundred and thirty-two works. His letters and homilies remained and he had given the necessary reading to many of the letters. Also, he tells his correspondent, he was engaged on a reply to the eight books of Julian’s new work. Working night and day, he had already completed his response to the first three of Julian’s books, and had begun on the fourth while still expecting the arrival of the last three which Alypius had promised to send. If he had completed the answer to the five books of Julian which he already had in hand, before the other three reached him, he might begin the work which Quodvultdeus so earnestly desired him to undertake. In due time, whatever may have been the trials and labours that needed first to be met, the desired treatise On Heresies was written (about 428), and the eighty-eighth chapter of it gives us a welcome compressed account of the Pelagian heresy, which may be accepted as the obverse of the account of catholic truth given in the letter to Vitalis.¹³⁹ But the composition of this work was not the only interruption which postponed the completion of the second elaborate work against Julian. It was in the providence of God that the life of this great leader in the battle for grace should be prolonged until he could deal with semi-Pelagianism also. Information as to the rise of this new form of the heresy at Marseilles and elsewhere in Southern Gaul was conveyed to Augustin along with entreaties, that, as “faith’s great patron,” he would give his aid towards meeting it, by two laymen with whom he had already had correspondence,—Prosper and Hilary.¹⁴⁰ They pointed out¹⁴¹ the difference between the new party and thorough-going Pelagianism; but, at the same time, the essentially Pelagianizing character of its formative elements. Its representatives were ready, as a rule, to admit that all men were lost in Adam, and no one could recover himself by his own free will, but all needed God’s grace for salvation. But they objected to the doctrines of prevenient and of irresistible grace; and asserted that man could initiate the process of salvation by turning first to God, that all men could resist God’s grace, and no grace could be given which they could not reject, and especially they denied that the gifts of grace came irrespective of merits, actual or foreseen. They said that what Augustin taught as to the calling of God’s elect according to His own purpose was tantamount to fatalism, was contrary to the teaching of the fathers and the true Church doctrine, and, even if true, should not be preached, because of its tendency to drive men into indifference or despair. Hence, Prosper especially desired Augustin to point out the dangerous nature of these views, and to show that prevenient and co-operating grace is not inconsistent with free will, that God’s predestination is not founded on foresight of receptivity in its objects, and that the doctrines of grace may be preached without danger to souls. 

Augustin’s answer to these appeals was a work in two books, On the Predestination of the Saints, the second book of which is usually known under the separate title of The Gift of Perseverance. The former book begins with a careful discrimination of the position of his new opponents: they have made a right beginning in that they believe in original sin, and acknowledge that none are saved from it save by Christ, and that God’s grace leads men’s wills, and without grace no one can suffice for good deeds. These things will furnish a good starting-point for their progress to an acceptance of predestination also (1–2). The first question that needs discussion in such circumstances is, whether God gives the very beginnings of faith (3 sq.); since they admit that what Augustin had previously urged sufficed to prove that faith was the gift of God so far as that the increase of faith was given by Him, but not so far but that the beginning of faith may be understood to be man’s, to which, then, God adds all other gifts (compare 43). Augustin insists that this is no other than the Pelagian assertion of grace according to merit (3), is opposed to Scripture (4–5), and begets arrogant boasting in ourselves (6). He replies to the objection that he had himself once held this view, by confessing it, and explaining that he was converted from it by 1 Cor. iv. 7, as applied by Cyprian (7–8), and expounds that verse as containing in its narrow compass a sufficient answer to the present theories (9–11). He answers, further, the objection that the apostle distinguishes faith from works, and works alone are meant in such passages, by pointing to John vi. 28, and similar statements in Paul (12–16). Then he answers the objection that he himself had previously taught that God acted on foresight of faith, by showing that he was misunderstood (17–18). He next shows that no objection lies against predestination that does not lie with equal force against grace (19–22),—since predestination is nothing but God’s foreknowledge of and preparation for grace, and all questions of sovereignty and the like belong to grace. Did God not know to whom he was going to give faith (19)? or did he promise the results of faith, works, without promising the faith without which, as going before, the works were impossible? Would not this place God’s fulfilment of his promise out of His power, and make it depend on man (20)? Why are men more willing to trust in their weakness than in God’s strength? do they count God’s promises more uncertain than their own performance (22)? He next proves the sovereignty of grace, and of predestination, which is but the preparation for grace, by the striking examples of infants, and, above all, of the human nature of Christ (23–31), and then speaks of the twofold calling, one external and one “according to purpose,”—the latter of which is efficacious and sovereign (32–37). In closing, the semi-Pelagian position is carefully defined and refuted as opposed, alike with the grosser Pelagianism, to the Scriptures of both Testaments (38–42). 

The purpose of the second book, which has come down to us under the separate title of On the Gift of Perseverance, is to show that that perseverance which endures to the end is as much of God as the beginning of faith, and that no man who has been “called according to God’s purpose,” and has received this gift, can fall from grace and be lost. The first half of the treatise is devoted to this theme (1–33). It begins by distinguishing between temporary perseverance, which endures for a time, and that which continues to the end (1), and affirms that the latter is certainly a gift of God’s grace, and is, therefore, asked from God which would otherwise be but a mocking petition (2–3). This, the Lord’s Prayer itself might teach us, as under Cyprian’s exposition it does teach us,—each petition being capable of being read as a prayer for perseverance (4–9). Of course, moreover, it cannot be lost, otherwise it would not be “to the end.” If man forsakes God, of course it is he that does it, and he is doubtless under continual temptation to do so; but if he abides with God, it is God who secures that, and God is equally able to keep one when drawn to Him, as He is to draw him to Him (10–15). He argues anew at this point, that grace is not according to merit, but always in mercy; and explains and illustrates the unsearchable ways of God in His sovereign but merciful dealing with men (16–25), and closes this part of the treatise by a defence of himself against adverse quotations from his early work on Free Will, which he has already corrected in his Retractations. The second half of the book discusses the objections that were being urged against the preaching of predestination (34–62), as if it opposed and enervated the preaching of the Gospel. He replies that Paul and the apostles, and Cyprian and the fathers, preached both together; that the same objections will lie against the preaching of God’s foreknowledge and grace itself, and, indeed, against preaching any of the virtues, as, e.g., obedience, while declaring them God’s gifts. He meets the objections in detail, and shows that such preaching is food to the soul, and must not be withheld from men; but explains that it must be given gently, wisely, and prayerfully. The whole treatise ends with an appeal to the prayers of the Church as testifying that all good is from God (63–65), and to the great example of unmerited grace and sovereign predestination in the choice of one human nature without preceding merit, to be united in one person with the Eternal Word,—an illustration of his theme of the gratuitous grace of God which he is never tired of adducing (66–67). 

These books were written in 428–429, and after their completion the unfinished work against Julian was resumed. Alypius had sent the remaining three books, and Augustin slowly toiled on to the end of his reply to the sixth book. But he was to be interrupted once more, and this time by the most serious of all interruptions. On the 28th of August, 430, with the Vandals thundering at the gates of Hippo, full of good works and of faith, he turned his face away from the strifes—whether theological or secular—of earth, and entered into rest with the Lord whom he loved. The last work against Julian was already one of the most considerable in size of all his books; but it was never finished, and retains until to-day the significant title of The Unfinished Work. Augustin had hesitated to undertake this work, because he found Julian’s arguments too silly either to deserve refutation, or to afford occasion for really edifying discourse. And certainly the result falls below Augustin’s usual level, though this is not due, as is so often said, to failing powers and great age; for nothing that he wrote surpasses in mellow beauty and chastened strength the two books, On the Predestination of the Saints, which were written after four books of this work were completed. The plan of the work is to state Julian’s arguments in his own words, and follow it with his remarks; thus giving it something of the form of a dialogue. It follows Julian’s work, book by book. The first book states and answers certain calumnies which Julian had brought against Augustin and the catholic faith on the ground of their confession of original sin. Julian had argued, that, since God is just, He cannot impute another’s sins to innocent infants; since sin is nothing but evil will, there can be no sin in infants who are not yet in the use of their will; and, since the freedom of will that is given to man consists in the capacity of both sinning and not sinning, free will is denied to those who attribute sin to nature. Augustin replies to these arguments, and answers certain objections that are made to his work On Marriage and Concupiscence, and then corrects Julian’s false explanations of certain Scriptures from John viii., Rom. vi., vii., and 2 Timothy. The second book is a discussion of Rom. v. 12, which Julian had tried, like the other Pelagians, to explain by the “imitation” of Adam’s bad example. The third book examines the abuse by Julian of certain Old-Testament passages—in Deut. xxiv., 2 Kings xiv., Ezek. xviii.—in his effort to show that God does not impute the father’s sins to the children; as well as his similar abuse of Heb. xi. The charge of Manicheism, which was so repetitiously brought by Julian against the catholics, is then examined and refuted. The fourth book treats of Julian’s strictures on Augustin’s On Marriage and lxvi Concupiscence ii. 4–11, and proves from 1 John ii. 16 that concupiscence is evil, and not the work of God, but of the Devil. He argues that the shame that accompanies it is due to its sinfulness, and that there was none of it in Christ; also, that infants are born obnoxious to the first sin, and proves the corruption of their origin from Wisd. x. 10, 11. The fifth book defends On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 12 sq., and argues that a sound nature could not have shame on account of its members, and the need of regeneration for what is generated by means of shameful concupiscence. Then Julian’s abuse of 1 Cor. xv., Rom. v., Matt. vii. 17 and 33, with reference to On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 14, 20, 26, is discussed; and then the origin of evil, and God’s treatment of evil in the world. The sixth book traverses Julian’s strictures on On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 34 sq., and argues that human nature was changed for the worse by the sin of Adam, and thus was made not only sinful, but the source of sinners; and that the forces of free will by which man could at first do rightly if he wished, and refrain from sin if he chose, were lost by Adam’s sin. He attacks Julian’s definition of free will as “the capacity for sinning and not sinning” (possibilitas peccandi et non peccandi); and proves that the evils of this life are the punishment of sin,—including, first of all, physical death. At the end, he treats of 1 Cor. xv. 22. 

Although the great preacher of grace was taken away by death before the completion of this book, yet his work was not left incomplete. In the course of the next year (431) the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism for the whole world; and an elaborate treatise against the pure Pelagianism of Julian was already in 430 an anachronism. Semi-Pelagianism was yet to run its course, and to work its way so into the heart of a corrupt church as not to be easily displaced; but Pelagianism was to die with the first generation of its advocates. As we look back now through the almost millennium and a half of years that has intervened since Augustin lived and wrote, it is to his Predestination of the Saints,—a completed, and well-completed, treatise,—and not to The Unfinished Work, that we look as the crown and completion of his labours for grace. 

IV. The Theology of Grace 

The theology which Augustin opposed, in his anti-Pelagian writings, to the errors of Pelagianism, is, shortly, the theology of grace. Its roots were planted deeply in his own experience, and in the teachings of Scripture, especially of that apostle whom he delights to call “the great preacher of grace,” and to follow whom, in his measure, was his greatest desire. The grace of God in Jesus Christ, conveyed to us by the Holy Spirit and evidenced by the love that He sheds abroad in our hearts, is the centre around which this whole side¹⁴² of His system revolves, and the germ out of which it grows. He was the more able to make it thus central because of the harmony of this view of salvation with the general principle of his whole theology, which was theocentric and revolved around his conception of God as the immanent and vital spirit in whom all things live and move and have their being.¹⁴³ In like manner, God is the absolute good, and all good is either Himself or from Him; and only as God makes us good, are we able to do anything good. 

The necessity of grace to man, Augustin argued from the condition of the race as partakers of Adam’s sin. God created man upright, and endowed him with human faculties, including free will;¹⁴⁴ and gave to him freely that grace by which he was able to retain his uprightness.¹⁴⁵ Being thus put on probation,¹⁴⁶ with divine aid to enable him to stand if he chose, Adam used his free choice for sinning, and involved his whole race in his fall.¹⁴⁷ It was on account of this sin that he died physically and spiritually, and this double death passes over from him to us.¹⁴⁸ That all his descendants by ordinary generation are partakers in Adam’s guilt and condemnation, Augustin is sure from the teachings of Scripture; and this is the fact of original sin, from which no one generated from Adam is free, and from which no one is freed save as regenerated in Christ.¹⁴⁹ But how we are made partakers of it, he is less certain: sometimes he speaks as if it came by some mysterious unity of the race, so that we were all personally present in the individual Adam, and thus the whole race was the one man that sinned;¹⁵⁰ sometimes he speaks more in the sense of modern realists, as if Adam’s sin corrupted the nature, and the nature now corrupts those to whom it is communicated;¹⁵¹ sometimes he speaks as if it were due to simple heredity;¹⁵² sometimes, again, as if it depended on the presence of shameful concupiscence in the act of procreation, so that the propagation of guilt depends on the propagation of offspring by means of concupiscence.¹⁵³ However transmitted, it is yet a fact that sin is propagated, and all mankind became sinners in Adam. The result of this is that we have lost the divine image, though not in such a sense that no lineaments of it remain to us;¹⁵⁴ and, the sinning soul making the flesh corruptible, our whole nature is corrupted, and we are unable to do anything of ourselves truly good.¹⁵⁵ This includes, of course, an injury to our will. Augustin, writing for the popular eye, treats this subject in popular language. But it is clear that he distinguished, in his thinking, between will as a faculty and will in a broader sense. As a mere faculty, will is and always remains an indifferent thing,¹⁵⁶—after the fall, as before it, continuing poised in indifferency, and ready, like a weathercock, to be turned whithersoever the breeze that blows from the heart (“will,” in the broader sense) may direct.¹⁵⁷ It is not the faculty of willing, but the man who makes use of that faculty, that has suffered change from the fall. In paradise man stood in full ability: he had the posse non peccare, but not yet the non posse peccare;¹⁵⁸ that is, he was endowed with a capacity for either part, and possessed the grace of God by which he was able to stand if he would, but also the power of free will by which he might fall if he would. By his fall he has suffered a change, is corrupt, and under the power of Satan; his will (in the broader sense) is now injured, wounded, diseased, enslaved,—although the faculty of will (in the narrow sense) remains indifferent.¹⁵⁹ Augustin’s criticism of Pelagius’ discrimination¹⁶⁰ of “capacity” (possibilitas, posse), “will” (voluntas, velle), and “act” (actio, esse), does not turn on the discrimination itself, but on the incongruity of placing the power, ability in the mere capacity or possibility, rather than in the living agent who “wills” and “acts.” He himself adopts an essentially similar distribution, with only this correction;¹⁶¹ and thus keeps the faculty of will indifferent, but places the power of using it in the active agent, man. According, then, to the character of this man, will the use of the free will be. If the man be holy he will make a holy use of it, and if he be corrupt he will make a sinful use of it: if he be essentially holy, he cannot (like God Himself) make a sinful use of his will; and if he be enslaved to sin, he cannot make a good use of it. The last is the present condition of men by nature. They have free will;¹⁶² the faculty by which they act remains in indifferency, and they are allowed to use it just as they choose: but such as they cannot desire and therefore cannot choose anything but evil;¹⁶³ and therefore they, and therefore their choice, and therefore their willing, is always evil and never good. They are thus the slaves of sin, which they obey; and while their free will avails for sinning, it does not avail for doing any good unless they be first freed by the grace of God. It is undeniable that this view is in consonance with modern psychology: let us once conceive of “the will” as simply the whole man in the attitude of willing, and it is immediately evident, that, however abstractly free the “will” is, it is conditioned and enslaved in all its action by the character of the willing agent: a bad man does not cease to be bad in the act of willing, and a good man remains good even in his acts of choice. 

In its nature, grace is assistance, help from God; and all divine aid may be included under the term,—as well what may be called natural, as what may be called spiritual, aid.¹⁶⁴ Spiritual grace includes, no doubt, all external help that God gives man for working out his salvation, such as the law, the preaching of the gospel, the example of Christ, by which we may learn the right way; it includes also forgiveness of sins, by which we are freed from the guilt already incurred; but above all it includes that help which God gives by His Holy Spirit, working within, not without, by which man is enabled to choose and to do what he sees, by the teachings of the law, or by the gospel, or by the natural conscience, to be right.¹⁶⁵ Within this aid are included all those spiritual exercises which we call regeneration, justification, perseverance to the end,—in a word, all the divine assistance by which, in being made Christians, we are made to differ from other men. Augustin is fond of representing this grace as in essence the writing of God’s law (or of God’s will) on our hearts, so that it appears hereafter as our own desire and wish; and even more prevalently as the shedding abroad of love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, given to us in Christ Jesus; therefore, as a change of disposition, by which we come to love and freely choose, in co-operation with God’s aid, just the things which hitherto we have been unable to choose because in bondage to sin. Grace, thus, does not make void free will:166 it acts through free will, and acts upon it only by liberating it from its bondage to sin, i.e., by liberating the agent that uses the free will, so that he is no longer enslaved by his fleshly lusts, and is enabled to make use of his free will in choosing the good; and thus it is only by grace that free will is enabled to act in good part. But just because grace changes the disposition, and so enables man, hitherto enslaved to sin, for the first time to desire and use his free will for good, it lies in the very nature of the case that it is prevenient.¹⁶⁷ Also, as the very name imports, it is necessarily gratuitous;¹⁶⁸ since man is enslaved to sin until it is given, all the merits that he can have prior to it are bad merits, and deserve punishment, not gifts of favour. When, then, it is asked, on the ground of what, grace is given, it can only be answered, “on the ground of God’s infinite mercy and undeserved favour.”¹⁶⁹ There is nothing in man to merit it, and it first gives merit of good to man. All men alike deserve death, and all that comes to them in the way of blessing is necessarily of God’s free and unmerited favour. This is equally true of all grace. It is pre-eminently clear of that grace which gives faith, the root of all other graces, which is given of God, not to merits of good-will or incipient turning to Him, but of His sovereign good pleasure.¹⁷⁰ But equally with faith, it is true of all other divine gifts: we may, indeed, speak of “merits of good” as succeeding faith; but as all these merits find their root in faith, they are but “grace on grace,” and men need God’s mercy always, throughout this life, and even on the judgment day itself, when, if they are judged without mercy, they must be condemned.¹⁷¹ If we ask, then, why God gives grace, we can only answer that it is of His unspeakable mercy; and if we ask why He gives it to one rather than to another, what can we answer but that it is of His will? The sovereignty of grace results from its very gratuitousness:172 where none deserve it, it can be given only of the sovereign good pleasure of the great Giver,—and this is necessarily inscrutable, but cannot be unjust. We can faintly perceive, indeed, some reasons why God may be supposed not to have chosen to give His saving grace to all,¹⁷³ or even to the most;¹⁷⁴ but we cannot understand why He has chosen to give it to just the individuals to whom He has given it, and to withhold it from just those from whom He has withheld it. Here we are driven to the apostle’s cry, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the mercy and the justice of God!”¹⁷⁵ 

The effects of grace are according to its nature. Taken as a whole, it is the recreative principle sent forth from God for the recovery of man from his slavery to sin, and for his reformation in the divine image. Considered as to the time of its giving, it is either operating or co-operating grace, i.e., either the grace that first enables the will to choose the good, or the grace that co-operates with the already enabled will to do the good; and it is, therefore, also called either prevenient or subsequent grace.¹⁷⁶ It is not to be conceived of as a series of disconnected divine gifts, but as a constant efflux from God; but we may look upon it in the various steps of its operation in men, as bringing forgiveness of sins, faith, which is the beginning of all good, love to God, progressive power of good working, and perseverance to the end.¹⁷⁷ In any case, and in all its operations alike, just because it is power from on high and the living spring of a new and re-created life, it is irresistible and indefectible.¹⁷⁸ Those on whom the Lord bestows the gift of faith working from within, not from without, of course, have faith, and cannot help believing. Those to whom perseverance to the end is given must persevere to the end. It is not to be objected to this, that many seem to begin well who do not persevere: this also is of God, who has in such cases given great blessings indeed, but not this blessing, of perseverance to the end. Whatever of good men have, that God has given; and what they have not, why, of course, God has not given it. Nor can it be objected, that this leaves all uncertain: it is only unknown to us, but this is not uncertainty; we cannot know that we are to have any gift which God sovereignly gives, of course, until it is given, and we therefore cannot know that we have perseverance unto the end until we actually persevere to the end;¹⁷⁹ but who would call what God does, and knows He is to do, uncertain, and what man is to do certain? Nor will it do to say that thus nothing is left for us to do: no doubt, all things are in God’s hands, and we should praise God that this is so, but we must co-operate with Him; and it is just because it is He that is working in us the willing and the doing, that it is worth our while to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God has not determined the end without determining the appointed means.¹⁸⁰ 

Now, Augustin argues, since grace certainly is gratuitous, and given to no preceding merits,—prevenient and antecedent to all good,—and, therefore, sovereign, and bestowed only on those whom God selects for its reception; we must, of course, believe that the eternal God has foreknown all this from the beginning. He would be something less than God, had He not foreknown that He intended to bestow this prevenient, gratuitous, and sovereign grace on some men, and had He not foreknown equally the precise individuals on whom He intended to bestow it. To foreknow is to prepare beforehand. And this is predestination.¹⁸¹ He argues that there can be no objection to predestination, in itself considered, in the mind of any man who believes in a God: what men object to is the gratuitous and sovereign grace to which no additional difficulty is added by the necessary assumption that it was foreknown and prepared for from eternity. That predestination does not proceed on the foreknowledge of good or of faith,¹⁸² follows from its being nothing more than the foresight and preparation of grace, which, in its very idea, is gratuitous and not according to any merits, sovereign and according only to God’s purpose, prevenient and in order to faith and good works. It is the sovereignty of grace, not its foresight or the preparation for it, which places men in God’s hands, and suspends salvation absolutely on his unmerited mercy. But just because God is God, of course, no one receives grace who has not been foreknown and afore-selected for the gift; and, as much of course, no one who has been foreknown and afore-selected for it, fails to receive it. Therefore the number of the predestinated is fixed, and fixed by God.¹⁸³ Is this fate? Men may call God’s grace fate if they choose; but it is not fate, but undeserved love and tender mercy, without which none would be saved.¹⁸⁴ Does it paralyze effort? Only to those who will not strive to obey God because obedience is His gift. Is it unjust? Far from it: shall not God do what He will with His own undeserved favour? It is nothing but gratuitous mercy, sovereignly distributed, and foreseen and provided for from all eternity by Him who has selected us in His Son. 

When Augustin comes to speak of the means of grace, i.e., of the channels and circumstances of its conference to men, he approaches the meeting point of two very dissimilar streams of his theology,—his doctrine of grace and his doctrine of the Church,—and he is sadly deflected from the natural course of his theology by the alien influence. He does not, indeed, bind the conference of grace to the means in such a sense that the grace must be given at the exact time of the application of the means. He does not deny that “God is able, even when no man rebukes, to correct whom He will, and to lead him on to the wholesome mortification of repentance by the most hidden and most mighty power of His medicine.”¹⁸⁵ Though the Gospel must be known in order that man may be saved¹⁸⁶ (for how shall they believe without a preacher?), yet the preacher is nothing, and the preachment is nothing, but God only that gives the increase.¹⁸⁷ He even has something like a distant glimpse of what has since been called the distinction between the visible and invisible Church,—speaking of men not yet born as among those who are “called according to God’s purpose,” and, therefore, of the saved who constitute the Church,¹⁸⁸—asserting that those who are so called, even before they believe, are “already children of God enrolled in the memorial of their Father with unchangeable surety,”¹⁸⁹ and, at the same time, allowing that there are many already in the visible Church who are not of it, and who can therefore depart from it. But he teaches that those who are thus lost out of the visible Church are lost because of some fatal flaw in their baptism, or on account of post-baptismal sins; and that those who are of the “called according to the purpose” are predestinated not only to salvation, but to salvation by baptism. Grace is not tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred save in the means; but it is tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred without the means. Baptism, for instance, is absolutely necessary for salvation: no exception is allowed except such as save the principle,—baptism of blood (martyrdom),¹⁹⁰ and, somewhat grudgingly, baptism of intention. And baptism, when worthily received, is absolutely efficacious: “if a man were to die immediately after baptism, he would have nothing at all left to hold him liable to punishment.”¹⁹¹ In a word, while there are many baptized who will not be saved, there are none saved who have not been baptized; it is the grace of God that saves, but baptism is a channel of grace without which none receive it.¹⁹² 

The saddest corollary that flowed from this doctrine was that by which Augustin was forced to assert that all those who died unbaptized, including infants, are finally lost and depart into eternal punishment. He did not shrink from the inference, although he assigned the place of lightest punishment in hell to those who were guilty of no sin but original sin, but who had departed this life without having washed this away in the “laver of regeneration.” This is the dark side of his soteriology; but it should be remembered that it was not his theology of grace, but the universal and traditional belief in the necessity of baptism for remission of sins, which he inherited in common with all of his time, that forced it upon him. The theology of grace was destined in the hands of his successors, who have rejoiced to confess that they were taught by him, to remove this stumbling-block also from Christian teaching; and if not to Augustin, it is to Augustin’s theology that the Christian world owes its liberation from so terrible and incredible a tenet. Along with the doctrine of infant damnation, another stumbling-block also, not so much of Augustinian, but of Church theology, has gone. It was not because of his theology of grace, or of his doctrine of predestination, that Augustin taught that comparatively few of the human race are saved. It was, again, because he believed that baptism and incorporation into the visible Church were necessary for salvation. And it is only because of Augustin’s theology of grace, which places man in the hands of an all-merciful Saviour and not in the grasp of a human institution, that men can see that in the salvation of all who die in infancy, the invisible Church of God embraces the vast majority of the human race,—saved not by the washing of water administered by the Church, but by the blood of Christ administered by God’s own hand outside of the ordinary channels of his grace. We are indeed born in sin, and those that die in infancy are, in Adam, children of wrath even as others; but God’s hand is not shortened by the limits of His Church on earth, that it cannot save. In Christ Jesus, all souls are the Lord’s, and only the soul that itself sinneth shall die (Ezek. xviii. 1–4); and the only judgment wherewith men shall be judged proceeds on the principle that as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as have sinned under law shall be judged by the law (Rev. ii. 12). 

Thus, although Augustin’s theology had a very strong churchly element within it, it was, on the side that is presented in the controversy against Pelagianism, distinctly anti-ecclesiastical. Its central thought was the absolute dependence of the individual on the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It made everything that concerned salvation to be of God, and traced the source of all good to Him. “Without me ye can do nothing,” is the inscription on one side of it; on the other stands written, “All things are yours.” Augustin held that he who builds on a human foundation builds on sand, and founded all his hope on the Rock itself. And there also he founded his teaching; as he distrusted man in the matter of salvation, so he distrusted him in the form of theology. No other of the fathers so conscientiously wrought out his theology from the revealed Word; no other of them so sternly excluded human additions. The subjects of which theology treats, he declares, are such as “we could by no means find out unless we believed them on the testimony of Holy Scripture.”¹⁹³ “Where Scripture gives no certain testimony,” he says, “human presumption must beware how it decides in favor of either side.”¹⁹⁴ “We must first bend our necks to the authority of Scripture,” he insists, “in order that we may arrive at knowledge and understanding through faith.”¹⁹⁵ And this was not merely his theory, but his practice.¹⁹⁶ No theology was ever, it may be more broadly asserted, more conscientiously wrought out from the Scriptures. Is it without error? No; but its errors are on the surface, not of the essence. It leads to God, and it came from God; and in the midst of the controversies of so many ages it has shown itself an edifice whose solid core is built out of material “which cannot be shaken.”¹⁹⁷ 

Endnotes:

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 6, 11, 12; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 32; Against Julian, i. 4; On Heresies, 88; and often elsewhere. Jerome found roots for the theory in Origen and Rufinus (Letter 133, 3), but this is a different matter. Compare On Original Sin, 25. 

Preface to Book iv. of his work on Jeremiah. 

Latin Christianity, i. 166, note 2. 

Trois Prem. Siécles, ii. 375. 

De Natura Deorum, iii. 36. 

History of the Councils of the Church (E.T.), ii. 446, note 3. 

Compare the excellent statement in Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte, i. 483.

On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 46; On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 1; Epistle 186, etc. 

On Nature and Grace, 1. 

Epistle to Demetrias, 16. 

Do. 2 and 19. 

On the Gift of Perseverance, 53. 

On Nature and Grace, 49. 

On the Gift of Perseverance, 4; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 24; iv. 2 sq.

On the Spirit and the Letter, 4; On Nature and Grace, 53; On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 20, 22, 38; On the Grace of Christ, 2, 3, 8, 31, 42, 45; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 11; On Grace and Free Will, 23-26, and often. 

On Original Sin, 14. 

On Original Sin, 14. 

On Original Sin, 14. 

The Unfinished Work, iii. 82. 

Do. i. 91; compare do. i. 48, 60; ii. 20. “There is nothing of sin in man, if there is nothing of his own will.” “There is no original sin in infants at all.” 

On Original Sin, 30.

On the Grace of Christ, 43. 

The Unfinished Work, i. 91; compare 69. 

Dr. Matheson finely says (Expositor, i. ix. 21), “There is the same difference between the Christian and Pagan idea of prayer as there is between the Christian and Pagan idea of sin. Paganism knows nothing of sin, it knows only sins: it has no conception of the principle of evil, it comprehends only a succession of sinful acts.” This is Pelagianism too. 

Compare Schaff, Church History, iii. 804; and Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte, i. 487-8.

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 25, and iv. at the beginning. 

This belongs to the earlier Pelagianism; Julian was ready to admit that death came from Adam, but not sin.

On Original Sin, 13. 

Early in 412, or, less probably, according to the Ballerini and Hefele 411. 

See On Original Sin, 2, 3, 12; On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 23. They are also given by Marius Mercator (Migne, xlviii. 69, 70), and the fifth item (on the salvation of unbaptized infants) omitted,—though apparently by an error. 

Preserved by Augustin, On Original Sin, 3, 4.

An account of this synod is given by Orosius himself in his Apology for the Freedom of the Will. 

A full account and criticism of the proceedings are given by Augustin in his On the Proceedings of Pelagius. 

On Original Sin, 13, at the end. 

Augustin’s Sermons (Migne, v. 1511).

Compare Canon Bright’s Introduction in his Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises, p. xli.

See above, p. xv., and the passages in Augustin cited in note 3. 

Prosper’s phrase.

Augustin gives their teaching carefully in his On the Predestination of the Saints, 2. 

Compare his work written this year, On Several Questions to Simplicianus. For the development of Augustin’s theology, see the admirable statement in Neander’s Church History, E.T., ii. 625 sq.

On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 46. 

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 12. 

Epistle 157, 22. 

On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 46.

Sermon 176, 2. 

Sermon 174.

Do. 

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 1. 

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, i. 1. Compare Epistle 139. 

On the prominence of infant baptism in the controversy, and why it was so, see Sermon 165, 7 sq. “What do you say? ‘Just this,’ he says, ‘that God creates every man immortal.’ Why, then do infant children die? For if I say, ‘Why do adult men die?’ you would say to me, ‘They have sinned.’ Therefore I do not argue about the adults: I cite infancy as a witness against you,” and so on, eloquently developing the argument.

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 1. 

Letter 139, 3. 

Letter 140.

See chaps. 1 and 5. 

Sermon 163 treats the text similarly.

See this prayer beautifully illustrated from Scripture in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, ii. 5. 

See above, p. xv.

As quoted above, p. xx.

Epistle 146. See On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 50, 51, 52. 

Epistle 149. See especially 18 sq. 

Epistle 121. 

Sermon 293.

Sermon 176, 2.

The inscription says, “V Calendus Julii,” i.e., June 27; but it also says, “In natalis martyris Guddentis,” whose day appears to have been July 18. Some of the martyrologies assign 28th of June to Gaudentius (which some copies read here), but possibly none to Guddene.

Sermon 294.

The passage is quoted at length in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, iii. 10. Compare Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 23.

Epistle 157, 22.

Epistle 156, among Augustin’s Letters. 

Epistle, 157, 22.

Epistles 177, 6; and 179, 2. 

Epistle 168. On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 48. 

On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 47; and Epistle 186, 1. 

Compare On Nature and Grace, 7; and Epistle 186, 1.

Epistle 169, 13. 

On Nature and Grace, 1. Sallust’s Jugurtha, prologue.

For Augustin’s press of work just now, see Epistle 169, 1 and 13.

The argument occurs in Pelagius’ Commentary on Paul, written before 410, and is already before Augustin in On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, etc., iii. 5. 

Epistle 166. 

An almost contemporary letter to Oceanus (Epistle 180, written in 416) adverts to the same subject and in the same spirit, showing how much it was in Augustin’s thoughts. Compare Epistle 180, 2 and 5. 

Epistle 172.

See On the Perfection of Man’s Righteousness, 1.

Migne’s Edition of Augustin’s Works, vol. v. pp. 1719-1723. 

Compare the words of Cicero quoted above, p. xiv. 

Compare the similar words in Epistle 177, 3, which was written, not only after what had occurred in Palestine was known, but also after the condemnatory decisions of the African synods. 

Epistles 175 and 176 in Augustin’s Letters.

Epistle 177. The other bishops were Aurelius, Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius. 

Epistle 178. 

Epistle 179.

See vol. i. of this series, p. 459, and the references there given. Compare Canon Robertson’s vivid account of them in his History of the Christian Church, ii. 18, 145. 

Epistle 188. 

Compare On the Grace of Christ, 40. In the succeeding sections, some of its statements are examined.

Epistles 181, 182, 183, among Augustin’s Letters.

Epistle 186, written conjointly with Alypius. 

The book given him by Timasius and James, to which On Nature and Grace is a reply.

Compare also Innocent’s letter (Epistle 181) to the Carthaginian Council, chap. 4, which also Neander, History of the Christian Church, E.T., ii. 646, quotes in this connection, as showing that Innocent “perceived that this dispute was connected with a different way of regarding the relation of God’s providence to creation.” As if Augustin did not see this too!

The book addressed to Dardanus, in which the Pelagians are confuted, but not named, belongs about at this time. Compare Retractations, ii. 49. 

Sermon 131, preached at Carthage.

On the Grace of Christ, 2.

99 The so-called Confession of Faith sent to Innocent after the Synod of Diospolis, but which arrived after Innocent’s death.

On Original Sin, 1. 

Do., 5. 

On the Grace of Christ, 55.

On the Gift of Perseverance, 55.

Compare, below, pp. lv-lviii. Neander, in the second volume (E.T.) of his History of the Christian Church, discusses the matter in a very fair spirit.

English version, xcv., see verse 6. 

Sermon 26.

Epistle 190.

See Epistle 194, 1.

See Epistle 191, 1.

Epistle 191. 

Epistle 194.

It appears to have been first reported to Augustin, by Marius Mercator, in a letter received at Carthage. See Epistle 193, 3. 

As, for example, in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, etc., i.

Epistle 193. 

Compare On Dulcitius’ Eight Questions, 3. 

That is, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, etc., ii. 30 sq. 

Epistle 196.

On Marriage and Concupiscence, i. 2. 

Compare the Benedictine Preface to The Unfinished Work.

Epistle 202, bis. Compare Epistle 190.

Compare Epistle 195. 

Julian afterwards repudiated this letter, perhaps because of some falsifications it had suffered; it seems to have been certainly his.

Compare Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 24: and see above, p. xv.

To wit: Cyprian’s testimony on original sin (20-24), on gratuitous grace (25-26), on the imperfection of human righteousness (27-28), and Ambrose’s testimony on original sin (29), on gratuitous grace (30), and on the imperfection of human righteousness (31).

Compare Epistle 207, written probably in the latter half of 421. 

That is, Chyrsostom.

Compare On Rebuke and Grace, 44, and the footnote there. 

See vol. iii. of this series, pp. 227 sq. 

Now a portion of Tunis. 

Epistle 194.

Epistle 214. 

Epistle 215, 2 sq.

Epistle 216.

On Rebuke and Grace, 1.

Retractions, ii. 67. Compare On Rebuke and Grace, 5 sq. 

On the importance of this treatise for Augustin’s doctrine of predestination, see Wiggers’ Augustinianism and Pelagianism, E.T. p. 236, where a sketch of the history of this doctrine in Augustin’s writings may be found.

Epistle 217.

Epistle 224.

The account given of Pelagianism is as follows: “They are in such degree enemies of the grace of God, by which we have been predestined into the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ unto Himself (Eph. i. 5), and by which we are delivered from the power of darkness so as to believe in Him, and be translated into His kingdom (Col. i. 13)—wherefore He says, ‘No man comes to Me, except it be given him of My Father’ (John vi. 66)—and by which love is shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. v. 5), so that faith may work by love: that they believe that man is able, without it, to keep all the Divine commandments,—whereas, if this were true, it would clearly be an empty thing that the Lord said, ‘Without Me ye can do nothing’ (John xv. 5). When Pelagius was at length accused by the brethren, because he attributed nothing to the assistance of God’s grace towards the keeping of His commandments, he yielded to their rebuke, so far as not to place this grace above free will, but with faithless cunning to subordinate it, saying that it was given to men for this purpose; viz., that they might be able more easily to fulfil by grace, what they were commanded to do by free will. By saying, ‘that they might be able more easily,’ he, of course, wished it to be believed that, although with more difficulty, nevertheless men were able without divine grace to perform the divine commands. But that grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, they say does not exist except in free will, which without any preceding merits our nature received from Him; and that He adds His aid only in that by His law and teaching we may learn what we ought to do, but not in that by the gift of His Spirit we may do what we have learned ought to be done. Accordingly, they confess that knowledge by which ignorance is banished is divinely given to us, but deny that love by which we may live a pious life is given; so that, forsooth, while knowledge, which, without love, puffeth up, is the gift of God, love itself, which edifieth so that knowledge may not puff up, is not the gift of God (1 Cor. viii. 11). They also destroy the prayers which the Church offers, whether for those that are unbelieving and resisting God’s teaching, that they may be converted to God; or for the faithful, that faith may be increased in them, and they may persevere in it. For they contend that men do not receive these things from Him, but have them from ourselves, saying, that the grace of God, by which we are freed from impiety, is given according to our merits. Pelagius was compelled, no doubt, to condemn this by his fear of being condemned by the episcopal judgment in Palestine; but he is found to teach it still in his later writings. They also advanced so far as to say that the life of the righteous in this world is without sin, and the Church of Christ is perfected by them in this mortality, to the point of being entirely without spot or wrinkle (Eph. v. 27); as if it were not the Church of Christ, that, in the whole world, cries to God, ‘Forgive us our debts.’ They also deny that children, who are carnally born after Adam, contract the contagion of ancient death from their first birth. For they assert that they are born so without any bond of original sin, that there is absolutely nothing that ought to be remitted to them in the second birth, yet they are to be baptized; but for this reason, that, adopted in regeneration, they may be admitted to the kingdom of God, and thus be translated from good into better,—not that they may be washed by that renovation from any evil of the old bond. For although they be not baptized, they promise to them, outside the kingdom of God indeed, but nevertheless, a certain eternal and blessed life of their own. They also say that Adam himself, even had he not sinned, would have died in the body, and that this death would not have come as a desert to a fault, but as a condition of nature. Certain other things also are objected to them, but these are the chief, and also either all, or nearly all, the others may be understood to depend on these.” 

Compare Epistles 225, 1, and 156. It is, of course, not certain that this is the same Hilary that wrote to Augustin from Sicily, but it seems probable.

In Letters 225 and 226.

This is a necessary limitation, for there is another side—a churchly side—of Augustin’s theology, which was only laid alongside of, and artificially combined with, his theology of grace. This was the traditional element in his teaching, but was far from the determining or formative element. As Thomasius truly points out (Dogmengeschichte, i. 495), both his experience and the Scriptures stood with him above tradition.

It is only one of the strange assertions in Professor Allen’s Continuity of Christian Thought, that he makes “the Augustinian theology rest upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle” (p. 3), which is identified with “a tacit assumption of deism” (p. 171), and explained to include a “localization of God as a physical essence in the infinite remoteness,” “separated from the world by infinite reaches of space.” As a matter of mere fact, Augustin’s conception of God was that of an immanent Spirit, and his tendency was consequently distinctly towards a pantheistic rather than a deistic view of His relation to His creatures. Nor is this true only “at a certain stage of his career” (p. 6), which is but Professor Allen’s attempt to reconcile fact with his theory, but of his whole life and all his teaching. He, no doubt, did not so teach the Divine immanence as to make God the author of the form as well as the matter of all acts of His creatures, or to render it impossible for His creatures to turn from Him; this would be to pass the limits that separate the conception of Christian immanence from pure pantheism, and to make God the author of sin, and all His creatures but manifestations of Himself. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 27, 28. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 29, 31 sq. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 28. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 28. 

On the City of God, xiii. 2, 12, 14; On the Trinity, iv. 13. 

On the Merits and Remission of Sins, i. 15, and often. 

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7; On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, iii. 14, 15. 

On Marriage and Concupiscence, ii. 57; On the City of God, xiv. 1. 

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7. 

On Original Sin, 42. 

Retractations, ii. 24. 

Against Julian, iv. 3, 25, 26. Compare Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte, i. 501 and 507. 

On the Spirit and the Letter, 58. 

On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, ii. 30. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 11.

On the Spirit and the Letter, 58. 

On the Grace of Christ, 4 sq. 

On the Predestination of the Saints, 10. 

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 5. Epistle 215, 4 and often. 

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 7. Compare i. 5, 6. 

Sermon 26. 

On Nature and Grace, 62. On the Grace of Christ, 13. On Rebuke and Grace, 2 sq. 

On the Spirit and Letter, 52; On Grace and Free Will, 1 sq.

On the Spirit and Letter, 60, and often. 

On Nature and Grace, 4, and often. 

On the Grace of Christ, 27, and often. 

On the Grace of Christ, 34, and often. 

On Grace and Free Will, 21. 

On Grace and Free Will, 30, and often. 

On the Gift of Perseverance, 16; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ii. 15. 

Epistle to Optatus, 190. 

On the Predestination of the Saints, 17, 18. 

On Grace and Free Will, 17; On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 34, and often.

Compare Thomasius’ Dogmengeschichte, i. 510. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 40, 45; On the Predestination of the Saints, 13. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 40. 

On the Gift of Perseverance, 56. 

On the Predestination of the Saints, 36 sq. 

On the Gift of Perseverance, 41 sq., 47. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 39. Compare 14.

On the Gift of Perseverance, 29; Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, ii. 9 sq. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 1. 

On the Predestination of the Saints, 17, 18; if the gospel is not preached at any given place, it is proof that God has no elect there. 

On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, etc., ii. 37. 

On Rebuke and Grace, 23. 

Do., 20. 

On the Soul and its Origin, i. 11; ii. 17. 

On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, etc., ii. 46. 

On Augustin’s teaching as to baptism, see Rev. James Field Spalding’s The Teaching and Influence of Augustin, pp. 39 sq.

On the Soul and its Origin, iv. 14. 

On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, etc., ii. 59. 

On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, i. 29. 

Compare On the Spirit and the Letter, 63.

On the subject of this whole section, compare Reuter’s Augustinische Studien, which has come to hand only after the whole was already in type, but which in all essential matters—such as the formative principle, the sources, and the main outlines of Augustin’s theology—is in substantial agreement with what is here said.

"It Says:" "Scripture Says:" "God Says"1

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

IT would be difficult to invent methods of showing profound reverence for the text of Scripture as the very Word of God, which will not be found to be characteristic of the writers of the New Testament in dealing with the Old. Among the rich variety of the indications of their estimate of the written words of the Old Testament as direct utterances of Jehovah, there are in particular two classes of passages, each of which, when taken separately, throws into the clearest light their habitual appeal to the Old Testament text as to God Himself speaking, while, together, they make an irresistible impression of the absolute identification by their writers of the Scriptures in their hands with the living voice of God. In one of these classes of passages the Scriptures are spoken of as if they were God; in the other, God is spoken of as if He were the Scriptures: in the two together, God and the Scriptures are brought into such conjunction as to show that in point of directness of authority no distinction was made between them.

Examples of the first class of passages are such as these: Gal. iii. 8, "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (Gen. xii. 1-3); Rom. ix. 17, "The Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up" (Ex. ix. 16). It was not, however, the Scripture (which did not exist at the time) that, foreseeing God's purposes of grace in the future, spoke these precious words to Abraham, but God Himself in His own person: it was not the not yet existent Scripture that made this announcement to Pharaoh, but God Himself through the mouth of His prophet Moses. These acts could be attributed to "Scripture" only as the result of such a habitual identification, in the mind of the writer, of the text of Scripture with God as speaking, that it became natural to use the term "Scripture says," when what was really intended was "God, as recorded in Scripture, said."

Examples of the other class of passages are such as these: Matt. xix. 4, 5, "And he answered and said, Have ye not read that he which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh?" (Gen. ii. 24); Heb. iii. 7, "Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye shall hear his voice," etc. (Ps. xcv. 7); Acts iv. 24, 25, "Thou art God, who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things" (Ps. ii. 1); Acts xiii. 34, 35, "He that raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, . . . hath spoken in this wise, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David" (Isa. lv. 3); "because he saith also in another [Psalm], Thou wilt not give thy holy one to see corruption" (Ps. xvi. 10); Heb. i. 6, "And when he again bringeth in the first born into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him" (Deut. xxxii. 43); "and of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels wings, and his ministers a flame of fire" (Ps. civ. 4); "but of the Son, He saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever," etc., (Ps. xlv. 7) and, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning," etc. (Ps. cii. 26). It is not God, however, in whose mouth these sayings are placed in the text of the Old Testament: they are the words of others, recorded in the text of Scripture as spoken to or of God. They could be attributed to God only through such habitual identification, in the minds of the writers, of the text of Scripture with the utterances of God that it had become natural to use the term "God says" when what was really intended was "Scripture, the Word of God, says."

The two sets of passages, together, thus show an absolute identification, in the minds of these writers, of "Scripture" with the speaking God.

In the same line with these passages are commonly ranged certain others, in which Scripture seems to be adduced with a subjectless le,gei or fhsi,, the authoritative subject - whether the divinely given Word or God Himself - being taken for granted. Among these have been counted such passages, for example, as the following: Rom. ix. 15, "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion" (Ex. xxxiii. 19); Rom. xv. 10, "And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people" (Deut. xxxii. 43); and again, "Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and let all the people praise him" (Ps. cvii. 1); Gal. iii. 16, "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed (Gen. xiii. 15), which is Christ"; Eph. iv. 8, "Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men" (Ps. lxviii. 18); Eph. v. 14, "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall shine upon thee" (Isa. Ix. 1); I Cor. vi. 16, "For the twain, saith he, shall become one flesh" (Gen. ii. 24); I Cor. xv. 27, "But when he saith, All things are put in subjection" (Ps. viii. 7); II Cor. vi. 2, "For he saith, At an acceptable time, I hearkened unto thee, and in a day of salvation did I succor thee" (Isa. xlix. 8); Heb. viii. 5, "For see, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mount" (Ex. xxv. 40); James iv. 6, "Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble" (Prov. iii. 34).

There is room for difference of opinion, of course, whether all these passages are cases in point. And there has certainly always existed some difference of opinion among commentators as to the proper subauditum in such instances as are allowed. The state of the case would seem to be fairly indicated by Alexander Buttmann, when he says:

"The predicates le,gei or fhsi,n are often found in the New Testament in quotations, o` qeo,j or even merely h` grafh, being always to be supplied as subject; as I Cor. vi. 16, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16, Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, Heb. viii. 5, iv. 3 (ei;rhken). These subjects are also expressed, as in Gal. iv. 30, I Tim. v. 18, or to be supplied from the preceding context, as in Heb. i. 5 seq."2

Of the alternatives thus offered, Jelf apparently prefers the one:

"In the New Testament we must supply profhth,j( h` grafh,( pneu/ma, etc., before fhsi,( le,gei( marturei/."3

Winer and Blass take the other:

"The formulas of citation - le,gei, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16, Eph. iv. 8 al., fhsi,, I Cor. vi. 16, Heb. viii. 5; ei;rhke, Heb. iv. 4 (cf. the Rabbinical rmwaw); marturei/, Heb. vii. 17 (ei=pe, I Cor. xv. 27) - are probably in no instance impersonal in the minds of the New Testament writers. The subject (o` qeo,j) is usually contained in the context, either directly or indirectly; in I Cor. vi. 16 and Matt. xix. 5, fhsi,, there is an apostolic ellipsis (of o` qeo,j); in Heb. vii. 17, the best authorities have marturei/tai."4

"In the formulas of citation such as le,gei, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16, etc.; fhsi,n, I Cor. vi. 16, Heb. viii. 5; ei;rhke, Heb. iv. 4 - o` qeo,j is to be understood ('He says'); in II Cor. x. 10, fhsi,n (a DE, etc. [?], 'one says'), appears to be a wrong reading for fasi,n (B), unless perhaps a tij has dropped out (but cp. Clem. Hom., xi. 9 ad init.)."5

The commentators commonly range themselves with Winer and Blass. Thus, on Rom. ix. 15, Sanday and Headlam comment: "le,gei without a nominative for qeo.j le,gei is a common idiom in quotations," referring to Rom. xv. 10 as a parallel case. On Gal. iii. 16, Meyer says: "sc. qeo,j, which is derived from the historical reference of the previous evrvr`e,qhsan, so well known to the reader"; and Alford: "viz., He who gave the promises - God"; and Sieffert: "ouv le,gei sc. qeo,j which flows out of the historical relation (known to the reader) of the preceding evrvr`e,qhsan (cf. Eph. iv. 8, v. 14)." On Eph. iv. 8, Meyer's comment runs: "Who says it (comp. v. 14) is obvious of itself, namely, God, whose word the Scripture is. See on I Cor. vi. 16; Gal. iii. 16; the supplying h` grafh, or to. pneu/ma must have been suggested by the context (Rom. xv. 10). The manner of citation with the simple le,gei, obviously meant of God, has as its necessary presupposition, in the mind of the writer and readers, the Theopneustia of the Old Testament." Haupt, similarly: "The introduction of a citation with the simple le,gei, with which, of course, 'God' is to be supplied as subject, not 'the Scripture,' is found in Paul again v. 14, II Cor. vi. 2, Rom. xv. 10; similarly fhsi,, I Cor. vi. 16 (ei=pen with the addition o` qeo,j, II Cor. vi. 16)." A similar comment is given by Ellicott, who adds at Eph. v. 14: "scil. o` qeo,j, according to the usual form of St. Paul's quotations; see notes on chap. iv. 8 and on Gal. iii. 16": though on I Cor. vi. 16 he speaks with less decision: "It may be doubted what nominative is to be supplied to this practically impersonal verb, whether h` grafh, (comp. John vii. 38, Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17, al.) or o` qeo,j (comp. Matt. xix. 5, II Cor. vi. 2, where this nominative is distinctly suggested by the context): the latter is perhaps the more natural: comp. Winer, Gr., § 58, 9, and notes on Eph. iv. 8." On I Cor. vi. 16, Edwards comments: "sc. o` qeo,j, as in Rom. ix. 15. Cf. Matt. xix. 4, 5, where o` poi,hsaj supplies a nom. to ei=pen. Similarly in Philo and Barnabas fhsi, introduces citations from Scripture." On II Cor. vi. 2, Waite says: "A statement of God Himself is adduced"; and De Wette: "sc. qeo,j, who Himself speaks." On Heb. viii. 5, Bleek comments: "That there is to be understood as the subject of fhsi,, not, as Bohme thinks, h` grafh,, but o` qeo,j, can least of all be doubtful here, where actual words of God are adduced"; and Weiss: "This statement is now established (ga,r) by appeal to Ex. xxv. 40, which passage is characterized only by the interpolated fhsi,n (cf. Acts xxv. 22) as a divine oracle.... The subject of (fhsi,n is, of course, God, neither o` crhmatismo,j (Lün.) nor h` grafh, (Bhm.)." On James iv. 6, Mayor comments: "The subject understood is probably God, as above, i. 12, evphggei,lato, and Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, where the same phrase occurs; others take it as h` grafh,. Cf. above, v. 5."6

Most of these passages have, on the other hand, been explained by some commentators on the supposition that it is h` grafh, that is to be supplied, as has sufficiently appeared indeed from the controversial remarks in the notes quoted above. This circumstance may be taken as precluding the necessity of adducing examples here.⁷ Suffice it to say that those so filling in the subauditum are entirely at one with the commentators already quoted in looking upon the citations as treated by the New Testament writers as of divine authority, it being, in their apprehension, all one in this regard whether the subauditum is conceived as h` grafh, or as o` qeo,j.

In the meantime, however, there has occasionally showed itself a tendency to treat these subjectless verbs more or less as true impersonals. Thus we read in Delitzsch's note on Heb. viii. 5: "For 'see,' saith He, i. e., o` qeo,j, or taking fhsi, impersonally (that is, without a definite subject), 'it is said' (i. e., in Scripture), (Bernhardy, 'Synt.,' 419)." So Kern on James iv. 6 comments: "le,gei here impersonaliter, instead of the foregoing le,gei h` grafh,"; and accordingly Beyschlag, in his recent commentary says: "to le,gei( h` grafh, is to be supplied, or it is to be taken with Kern impersonally." Similarly Godet on I Cor. vi. 16 says: "The subject of the verb fhsi,n, says he, may be either Adam or Moses, or Scripture, or God Himself, or finally, as is shown by Heinrici, the verb may be a simple formula of quotation like our 'It is said.' This form is frequently found in Philo."8 Some such usage as is here supposed may seem actually to occur in the common text of Wisdom xv. 12⁹ and II Cor. x. 10.10 But in both passages the true reading is probably fasi,n; in neither instance is it clear that, if fhsi,n be read, it has no subject implied in the context; if fhsi,n be read and taken as equivalent to fasi,n it still is not purely indefinite; and in any case the instances are not parallel, inasmuch as in neither of these passages is it Scripture, or indeed any document, that is adduced.

The fact that a few very able commentators have taken this unlikely line of exposition would call for nothing more than this incidental remark, were not our attention attracted somewhat violently to it by the dogmatic tone and extremity of contention of a recent commentator who has adopted this opinion. We refer to Dr. T. K. Abbott's comment on Eph. iv. 8, in his contribution to "The International Critical Commentary." It runs to a considerable length, but as on this very account it opens out somewhat more fully than usual this rather unwonted view of the construction, we shall venture to quote it in extenso. Dr. Abbott says:

"Dio. le,gei. 'Wherefore it saith' = 'it is said.' If any substantive is to be supplied, it is h` grafh,; but the verb may well be taken impersonally, just as in colloquial English one may often hear: 'it says' or the like. Many expositors supply, however, o` qeo,j. Meyer even says, 'Who says it is obvious of itself, namely, God, whose word the Scripture is.¹¹ Similarly Alford¹² and Ellicott.¹³ If it were St. Paul's habit to introduce quotations from the Old Testament, by whomsoever spoken in the original text, with the formula o` Qeo.j le,gei, then this supplement here might be defended. But it is not. In quoting he sometimes says le,gei, frequently h` grafh. le,gei, at other times Dabi.d le,gei,  `Hsai<aj le,gei. There is not a single instance in which o` Qeo,j is either expressed or implied as the subject, except where in the original context God is the speaker, as in Rom. ix. 15. Even when that is the case he does not hesitate to use a different subject, as in Rom. x. 19, 20: 'Moses saith,' 'Isaiah is very bold, and saith'; Rom. ix. 17, 'The Scripture saith to Pharaoh.'

"This being the case, we are certainly not justified in forcing upon the apostle here and in chap. v. 14 a form of expression consistent only with the extreme view of verbal inspiration. When Meyer (followed by Alford and Ellicott) says that h` grafh, must not be supplied unless it is given by the context, the reply is obvious, namely, that, as above stated, h` grafh. le,gei does, in fact, often occur, and therefore the apostle might have used it here, whereas o` Qeo.j le,gei does not occur (except in cases unlike this), and we have reason to believe could not be used by St. Paul here. It is some additional confirmation of this that both here and in chap. v. 14 (if that is a Biblical quotation) he does not hesitate to make important alterations. This is the view taken by Braune, Macpherson, Moule; the latter, however, adding that for St. Paul 'the word of the Scripture and the word of its Author are convertible terms.'

"It is objected that although fhsi, is used impersonally, le,gei is not. The present passage and chap. v. 14¹⁴ are enough to prove the usage for St. Paul, and there are other passages in his Epistles where this sense is at least applicable; cf. Rom. xv. 10, where le,gei is parallel to ge,graptai in ver. 9; Gal. iii. 16, where it corresponds to evrvr`h,qhsan. But, in fact, the impersonal use of fhsi, in Greek authors is quite different, namely = fasi,, 'they say' (so II Cor. x. 10). Classical authors had no opportunity of using le,gei as it is used here, as they did not possess any collection of writings which could be referred to as h` grafh,, or by any like word. They could say: o` no,moj le,gei and to. lego,menon."

It is not, it will be observed, the fact that Dr. Abbott decides against the subauditum, o` qeo,j, in these passages, which calls for remark. As he himself points out, many others have been before him in this. It is the extremity of his opinion that first of all attracts attention. For it is to be noticed that, though he sometimes speaks as if he understood an implied h` grafh,, or some like term, as the subject of le,gei, that is not his real contention. What he proposes is to take the verb wholly indefinitely - as equivalent to "it is said," as if the source of the quotation were unimportant and its authority insignificant. This interpretation of his proposal is placed beyond doubt by his remarks on chap. v. 14. There we read:

"Dio. le,gei. 'Wherefore it is said.' It is generally held that this formula introduces a quotation from canonical Scripture. . . . The difficulties disappear when we recognize that le,gei need not be taken to mean o` Qeo.j le,gei - an assertion which has been shown in iv. 8 to be untenable. It means, 'it says,' or 'it is said,' and the quotation may probably be from some liturgical formula or hymn - a supposition with which its rhythmical character agrees very well. . . . Theodoret mentions this opinion. . . . Stier adopts a similar view, but endeavors to save the supposed limitation of the use of le,gei by saying that in the Church the Spirit speaks. As there are in the Church prophets and prophetic speakers and poets, so there are liturgical expressions and hymns which are holy words. Comparing vv. 18, 19, Col. iii. 16, it may be said that the apostle is here giving us an example of this self-admonition by new spiritual songs."

So extreme an opinion, as we have already hinted, naturally finds, however, little support in the commentators, even in those quoted to buttress it, - of course, in its fundamental point. Braune says: "We must naturally supply h` grafh,, the Scripture, with le,gei, 'saith,' (James iv. 6, Rom. xv. 10, Gal. iii. 16, I Cor. vi. 16: fhsi,n), and not o` qeo,j (Meyer, Schenkel¹⁵), or o` le,gwn (Bleek: the writer)": to which Dr. M. T. Riddle, his translator, however, adds: "The fact that Paul frequently supplies h` grafh, (Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17, x. 11, Gal. iv. 30, I Tim. v. 18) is against Braune's view; for in some of these passages there is a reason for its insertion (see "Romans," p. 314), and as the Scriptures are God's Word (Meyer), the natural aim and obvious subject is o` qeo,j. So Alford, Ellicott and most." Moule's comment runs: "Wherefore he saith] Or it, i. e., the Scripture, saith. St. Paul's usage in quotation leaves the subject of the verb undetermined here and in similar cases (see, e. g., chap. v. 14¹⁶). For him the word of the Scripture and the word of its author are convertible terms." Macpherson alone, of those appealed to by Dr. Abbott, supports, in a somewhat carelessly written note, the indefinite interpretation put forward by Dr. Abbott, - being misled apparently by remarks of Lightfoot's and Westcott's. His comment runs:

"A very simple quotation formula is here employed, the single word le,gei. It is also similarly used (chap. v. 14; II Cor. vi. 2; Gal. iii. 16; Rom. xv. 10).¹⁷ This word is frequently employed in the fuller formula, The Scripture saith, le,gei h` grafh, (Rom. iv. 3, x. 11, xi. 2; Jas. ii. 23, etc.); or the name of the writer of the particular scripture, Esaias, David, the Holy Spirit, the law (Rom. xv. 12; Acts xiii. 35; Heb. iii. 7; I Cor. xiii. 34, etc.).¹⁸ Of le,gei, fhsi,, ei;rhke, and similar words thus used, Winer ("Grammar," p. 656, 1882) says that probably in no instance are they impersonal in the minds of the New Testament writers, but that the subject, o` qeo,j, is somewhere in the context, and is to be supplied.¹⁹ On the contrary, Lightfoot, in his note on Gal. iii. 16, remarks that le,gei, like the Attic fhsi,, seems to be used impersonally, the nominative being lost sight of. In our passage we have no nominative in the context which we can supply, and it seems better to render the phrase impersonally, It is said. The same word is used very frequently in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but always with God or Christ understood from the immediate context. Westcott very correctly remarks (p. 457) that the use of the formula in Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, seems to be of a different kind."20

Outside of these commentators quoted by himself, however, Prof. Abbott's extreme view has (as has, indeed, already incidentally appeared) the powerful support of Lightfoot and Heinrici. The former expresses his opinion not only in his note on Gal. iii. 16, to which Macpherson refers, but more fully and argumentatively in his note on I Cor. vi. 16 printed in his posthumous "Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul." In the former of these places he says:

"ouv le,gei seems to be used impersonally, like the Attic fhsi, in quoting legal documents, the nominative being lost sight of. If so, we need not inquire whether o` qeo,j or h` grafh, is to be understood. Comp. le,gei, Rom. xv. 10, Eph. iv. 8, v. 14; and fhsi,n, I Cor. vi. 16, II Cor. x. 10 (v. l)."

In the latter, speaking more at large "as to the authority assigned to the passage" quoted by St. Paul, he says:

"What are we to understand by fhsi,n? Is o` qeo,j to be supplied or h` grafh,? To this question it is safest to reply that we cannot decide. The fact is that, like le,gei, fhsi,n when introducing a quotation seems to be used impersonally. This usage is common in Biblical Greek (le,gei, Rom. xv. 10, Gal. iii. 16, Eph. iv. 8, v. 14; fhsi,n, Heb. viii. 5, II Cor. x. 10 (v. l.), more common in classical Greek. Alford, after Meyer, objects to rendering fhsi,n impersonally here, as contrary to St. Paul's usage. But the only other occurrence of the phrase in St. Paul is II Cor. x. 10, where he is not introducing Scripture, but the objections of human critics and of more than one critic. If then fhsi,n be read there at all, it must be impersonal. The apostle's analogous use of le,gei points to the same conclusion. In Eph. v. 14 it introduces a quotation which is certainly not in Scripture, and apparently belonged to an early Christian hymn. We gather therefore that St. Paul's usage does not suggest any restriction here to o` qeo,j or h` grafh,. But we cannot doubt from the context that the quotation is meant to be authoritative."

In his own commentary on I Corinthians (1880), Heinrici writes as follows:

"To fhsi,, just as to le,gei (II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16) nothing at all is to be supplied, but like inquit it stands, sometimes as the introduction to an objection (II Cor. x. 10, where Holsten refers to Bentley on Horat., Serm., i, 4, 78), sometimes as a general formula of citation. It is especially often used in the latter sense by Philo, in the quotation of Scripture passages, and by Arrian-Epictetus, who supplies many most interesting parallels to the Pauline forms of speech. Schweighauser, in his Index, under fhsi,, remarks of it: nec enim semper in proferenda objectione locum habet illa formula, verum etiam in citando exemplo ad id quod agitur pertinente. J. G. Muffler (Philo the Jew's Book on the Creation, Berlin, 1841, p. 44) says that fhsi,, after the example of Plato (?), became gradually among the Hellenistic Jews the standing formula of citation."

In his edition of Meyer's " Commentary on I Corinthians " (eighth edition, 1896), this note reappears in this form:

"fhsi,n). Who? According to the usual view, God, whose words the sayings of the Scripture are, even when they, like Gen. ii. 24 through Adam, are spoken through another. Winer, 7 § 58, 9, 486: Buttmann, 117. But the impersonal sense 'es heisst,' 'inquit,' lies nearer the Pauline usage; he coincides in this with Arrian-Epictetus and Philo, with whom fhsi, sometimes introduces an objection, sometimes is the customary formula of citation. Cf. II Cor. x. 10, vi. 2, I Cor. xv. 27, Eph. iv. 8; Winer, as above; Muller, in Philo, De op. mund., 44; Heinrici, i. 181. In accordance with this, are the other supplements of subject - h` grafh, or to. pneu/ma (Ruckert) - to be estimated."

Even in the extremity of his contention, therefore, Dr. Abbott, it seems, is not without support - on the philological side, at least - in previous commentators of the highest rank.

He himself does not seem, however, quite clear in his own mind: and his confusion of both considerations and commentators which make for the fundamentally diverse positions that there is to be supplied with le,gei some such subject as h` grafh,, and that there is nothing at all to be supplied but the word is to be taken with entire indefiniteness, is indicatory of the main thing that calls for remark in Dr. Abbott's note. For, why should this confusion take place? It is quite evident that in interpreting the phrase the fundamental distinction lies between the view which supposes that a subject to le,gei is so implied as to be suggested either by the context or by the mind of the reader from the nature of the case, and that which takes le,gei as a case of true impersonal usage, of entirely indefinite subject. It is a minor difference among the advocates of the first of these views, which separates them into two parties - those which would supply as subject o` qeo,j, and those which would supply h` grafh,. That one of these subdivisions of the first class of views should be violently torn from its true comradeship and confused with the second view, betrays a preoccupation on Dr. Abbott's part, when dealing with this passage, with considerations not of purely exegetical origin. He is for the moment less concerned with ascertaining the meaning of the apostle than with refuting a special interpretation of his words: and therefore everything which stands opposed in any measure to the obnoxious interpretation appears to him to be "on his side." Put somewhat brusquely, this is as much as to say that Dr. Abbott is in this note dominated by dogmatic prejudice.

There do not lack other indications of this fact. The most obtrusive of them is naturally the language - scarcely to be called perfectly calm - with which the second paragraph of the note opens: "We are certainly not justified in forcing upon the apostle here and in chap. v. 14 a form of expression consistent only with the extreme view of verbal inspiration." Certainly not. But because we chance not to like "the extreme view of verbal inspiration," are we justified in forbidding the apostle to use a form of expression consistent only with it, and forcing upon him some other form of expression which we may consider consistent with a view of inspiration which we like better? Would it not be better to permit the apostle to choose his own form of expression and confine ourselves, as expositors, to ascertaining from his form of expression what view of inspiration lay in his mind, rather than seek to force his hand into consistency with our preconceived ideas? The whole structure of the note evinces, however, that it was not written in this purely expository spirit. Thus only can be explained a certain exaggerated dogmatism in its language, as if doubt were to be silenced by decision of manner if not by decisiveness of evidence. So also probably is to be explained a certain narrowness in the appeal to usage - that rock on which much factitious exegesis splits. Only, it is intimated, in case "it were St. Paul's habit to introduce quotations from the Old Testament, by whomsoever spoken in the original text, with the formula o` qeo.j le,gei," "could this supplement here be defended." One asks in astonishment whether St. Paul really could make known his estimate of Scripture as the very voice of God which might naturally be quoted with the formula "God says," and so render the occurrence of that formula occasionally in his writings no matter of surprise, only by a habitual use of this exact formula in quoting Scripture. And one notes without surprise that the narrowness of Dr. Abbott's rule for the adduction of usage supplies no bar to his practice when he is arguing "on the other side." At the opening of the very next paragraph we read, "It is objected that although fhsi, is used impersonally, le,gei is not": and to this the answer is returned, "The present passage and chap. v. 14 are sufficient to prove the usage for St. Paul"; with the supplement, "And there are other passages in his epistles where this sense is at least applicable"; and further, "But in fact, the impersonal use of fhsi, in Greek authors is quite different." One fancies Dr. Abbott must have had a grim controversial smile upon his features when he wrote that last clause, which pleads that the meaning assigned to le,gei here is absolutely unexampled in Greek literature, not only for le,gei but even for fhsi,, as a reason for accepting it for le,gei here! But apart from this remarkable instance of skill in marshaling adverse facts - a skill not unexampled elsewhere in the course of this note, as any one who will take the trouble to examine the proof-texts adduced in it will quickly learn - might not the advocates of the supplement, o` qeo,j, say equally that "the present passage and chap. v. 14 are sufficient to prove the usage for St. Paul, and there are other passages in his epistles where this sense is at least applicable." And might they not support this statement with better proof-texts than those adduced by Dr. Abbott, or indeed with the same with better right; as well as with a more applicable supplementary remark than the one with which he really subverts his whole reasoning - such as this, for example, that elsewhere, in the New Testament, as for instance in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the usage contended for undoubtedly occurs, and a satisfactory basis is laid for it in the whole attitude of the entire body of New Testament writers, inclusive of Paul, toward the Old Testament? Certainly, reasoning so one-sided and dominated by preconceived opinions so blinding is thoroughly inconclusive. The note is, indeed, an eminent example of that form of argumentation which, to invert a phrase of Omar Khayyam's, "goes out at the same door at which it came in": and even though its contention should prove sound, can itself add nothing to the grounds on which we embrace it. At best it may serve as the starting-point of a fresh investigation into the proper interpretation of the phrase with which it deals.

For such a fresh investigation we should need to give our attention particularly to two questions. The first would inquire into the light thrown by Paul's method of introducing quotations from the Old Testament, upon his estimate of the text of the Old Testament, - with a view to determining whether it need cause surprise to find him adducing it with such a formula as "God says." Subsidiary to this it might be inquired whether it is accurate to say that "there is not a single instance in which o` qeo,j is either expressed or implied as the subject, except where in the original context God is the speaker," and further, if Paul's usage elsewhere can be accurately so described, whether that fact will warrant us in denying such an instance to exist in Eph. iv. 8. The second question would inquire into the general usage of the subjectless le,gei or fhsi, in and out of the New Testament, with a view to discovering what light may be thrown by it upon the interpretation of the passages in question. It might be incidentally asked in this connection whether it is a complete account to give of fhsi in profane Greek to say that the "impersonal use of fhsi, in Greek authors is quite different from that of the New Testament, inasmuch as with them fhsi, = fasi,, 'they say."'

It is really somewhat discouraging at this late date to find it treated as still an open question, how Paul esteemed the written words of the Old Testament. And it brings us, as the French say, something akin to stupefaction, when Dr. Abbott goes further and uses language concerning Paul's attitude toward the Old Testament text which implies that Paul habitually distinguished, in point of authority, between those passages "where in the original context God is the speaker" and the rest of the volume, so that "we have reason to believe" that the formula o` qeo.j le,gei "could not be used by Paul" in introducing Scriptural language not recorded as spoken by God in the original context. He even suggests, indeed, that Paul shows an underlying doubt as to the Divine source of even the words attributed to God in the Old Testament text - "not hesitating to use a different subject" when quoting them, "as in Rom. x. 19, 20, 'Moses saith,' 'Isaiah is very bold and saith' ; Rom. ix. 17, 'The Scripture saith to Pharaoh"' - and deals with the text of other portions with a freedom which exhibits his little respect for them - "not hesitating to make important alterations" in them. It would seem to require a dogmatic prejudice of the very first order to blind one to a fact so obvious as that with Paul "Scripture," as such, is conceived everywhere as the authoritative declaration of the truth and will of God - of which fact, indeed, no better evidence can be needed than the very texts quoted by Dr. Abbott in a contrary sense.

For, when Paul, in Rom. ix. 15, supports his abhorrent rejection of the supposition that there may be unrighteousness with God, with the divine declaration taken from Ex. xxxiii. 19, introduced with the formula, "For he" - that is, as Dr. Abbott recognizes, God - "saith to Moses," and then immediately, in Rom. ix. 17, supports the teaching of this declaration with the further word of God taken from Ex. ix. 16, introduced with the formula, "For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh" - the one thing which is thrown into a relief above all others is that, with Paul, "God saith" and "Scripture saith" are synonymous terms, so synonymous in his habitual thought that he could not only range the two together in consecutive clauses, but use the second in a manner in which, taken literally, it is meaningless and can convey an appropriate sense only when translated back into its equivalent of "God saith." The present tense in both formulas, moreover, advises us that, despite the fact that in both instances they are words spoken by God which are cited, it is rather as part of that Scripture which to Paul's thinking is the ever-present and ever-speaking word of God that they are adduced. It is not as words which God once spoke (ei=pen, LXX.) to Moses that the former passage is here adduced, but as living words still speaking to us - it is not as words Moses was once commanded to speak to Pharaoh that the second is here adduced, but as words recorded in the ever-living Scripture for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world have come. They are thus not assigned to Scripture in order to lower their authority: but rather as a mark of their abiding authority. And similarly when in that catena of quotations in Rom. x. 16-21, we read at ver. 19, "first Moses saith," and then at ver. 20, "and Isaiah is very bold and saith," both adducing words of God - the implication is not that Paul looks upon them as something less than the words of God and so cites them by the names of these human authors; but that it is all one to him to say, "God says," and "Moses says," or "Isaiah says": and therefore in this catena of quotations - in which are included four, not two, quotations - all the citations are treated as alike authoritative, though some are in the original context words of God and others (ver. 16) words of the prophet - and though some are adduced by the name of the prophet and some without assignment to any definitely named human source. The same implication, again, underlies the fact that in the catena of quotations on Rom. xv. 9 seq., the first is introduced by kaqw.j ge,graptai, the next two by kai. pa,lin le,gei and kai. pa,lin, and the last by kai. pa,lin  `Hsai<aj le,gei - the first being from Ps. lxxviii. 50, the second from Deut. xxxii. 43, the third from Ps. cxvii. 1, and only the last from Isaiah - Isa. xi. 10: clearly it is all one to the mind of Paul how Scripture is adduced - it is the fact that it is Scripture that is important. So also it is no more true that in Gal. iii. 16, the le,gei "corresponds to evrvr`h,qhsan" of the immediately preceding context, than that it stands in line with the "and the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand unto Abraham" of iii. 8 - a thing which the Scripture as such certainly did not do; and with the "for it is written" of iii. 10 and iii. 13, and the unheralded quotations of the Scriptures as unquestioned authority of iii. 11 and iii. 12; and with the general appeal in iii. 22 to the teaching of Scripture as a whole as the sole testimony needed: the effect of the whole being to evince in the clearest manner that to Paul the whole text of Scripture, inclusive of Gen. xii. 3, Deut. xxvii. 26, Hab. ii. 4, Lev. xviii. 5, and Gen. xxii. 18, was as such the living word of the living God profitable to all ages alike for divine instruction.

We need not go, indeed, beyond the first sentence of this Epistle to the Romans from which all but one of Dr. Abbott's citations are drawn, to learn Paul's conception of Scripture as the crystallized voice of God. There he declares himself to have been "separated unto the gospel of God which he promised afore by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures" (Rom. i. 2). Dr. George T. Purves, in a singularly well-considered and impressive paper on "St. Paul and Inspiration," printed in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for January, 1893,21 justly draws out the meaning of this compressed statement thus:

"Not only did Moses and the prophets speak from God, but the sacred Scriptures themselves were in some way composed under divine control. He not only affirms with Peter that 'moved by the Holy Ghost, men spake from God,' but that 'the Scriptures themselves are inspired by God.' Paul plainly recognizes the human authorship of the books, and quotes Moses and David and Isaiah as speaking therein. But not only through them, but in these books of theirs did God also speak. Many readers notice the first part of Paul's statement, but not the second. God spake 'through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures."'

This emphasis on the written Scriptures as themselves the product of a divine activity, making them as such the divine voice to us, is characteristic of the whole treatment of Scripture by Paul (I Cor. x. 11, Rom. xv. 4, iv. 23, I Cor. ix. 10, iv. 6): and it is thoroughly accordant with the point of view so exhibited, that he explicitly declares, not of the writers of Scripture, but of the sacred writings themselves, that they are theopneustic - breathed out, or breathed into by God (II Tim. iii. 16). For he applies this epithet not to "every prophet," but to "every Scripture" - that is, says Dr. Purves, to "the whole collection to which he had just referred as the 'sacred writings,' and all their parts": these writings are theopneustic. "By their inspiration, he evidently meant," continues Dr. Purves justly, "that, as writings, they were so composed under God's particular direction that both in substance and in form they were the special utterances of His mind and will."

It could be nothing more than an accident if Paul, under the dominance of such a conception of Scripture, has nowhere happened to adduce from it a passage, taken out of a context in which God is not expressly made in the Old Testament narrative itself the speaker, with the formula, o` qeo.j le,gei, expressed or implied. If no instance of such an adduction occurs, it is worth while to note that fact, to be sure, as one of the curious accidents of literary usage; but as there is no reason to doubt that such a formula would be entirely natural on the lips of Paul, so there is no propriety in calling it impossible in Paul, or even in erecting a distinction between him and other New Testament writers on the ground that they do and he does not quote Scripture by such a formula. As a matter of fact, the distinction suggested between passages in Scripture "where in the original context God is the speaker" and passages where He is not the speaker -a s if the one could be cited with a "God says," and the other not, - is foreign to Paul's conception and usage, as has abundantly appeared already: so that whatever passages of the former kind occur - "as in Rom. ix. 15," says Dr. Abbott - are really passages in which Scripture is quoted with a "God says." It cannot be held to be certain, moreover, that passages do not occur in which the "God says" introduces words not ascribed to God in the original context - so long, at least, as it is not obvious that "God" is not the subauditum in passages like Acts xiii. 35, Rom. xv. 10, Gal. iii. 16. It is no doubt, however, also worth observing that it is equally matter of fact, that it is rather to the Epistle to the Hebrews than to those that bear the name of Paul that we shall need to go to find a body of explicit instances of the usage in question. This is, as we have said, an interesting fact of literary usage, but it is not to be pressed into an indication of a divergent point of view toward "Scripture" between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the epistles that bear Paul's name.

Even Dr. Westcott seems, to be sure, so to press it. In the interesting dissertation "On the Use of the Old Testament in the Epistle," which he has appended to his "Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews," he sets out in some detail the facts that bear on the mode in which that epistle cites the Old Testament:

"The quotations," he tells us, "are without exception made anonymously. There is no mention anywhere of the name of the writer (iv. 7 is no exception to the rule). God is presented as the speaker through the person of the prophet, except in the one place where He is directly addressed (ii. 6). . . . In two places the words are attributed to Christ. . . . In two other places the Holy Spirit specially is named as the speaker. . . . But it is worthy of notice that in each of these two cases the words are also quoted as the words of God (iv. 7, viii. 8). This assignment of the written word to God, as the Inspirer of the message, is most remarkable when the words spoken by the prophet in his own person are treated as divine words - as words spoken by Moses: i. 6 (Deut. xxxii. 43); iv. 4, comp. vv. 5, 7, 8 (Gen. ii. 2); x. 30 (Deut. xxxii. 36); and by Isaiah: ii. 13 (Isa. viii. 17 f), comp. also xiii. 5 (Deut. xxxi. 6). Generally it must be observed that no difference is made between the word spoken and the word written. For us and for all ages the record is the voice of God. The record is the voice of God, and as a necessary consequence the record is itself living. . . . The constant use of the present tense in quotations emphasizes this truth: ii. 11, iii. 7, xii. 5. Comp. xii. 26." 22

Every careful student will recognize this at once as a very clear and very true statement of the attitude of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews toward the Old Testament. But we cannot help thinking that Dr. Westcott overshoots the mark when he throws it into strong contrast with the attitude of the rest of the New Testament writers to the Old Testament. When he says, for example: "There is nothing really parallel to this general mode of quotation in the other books of the New Testament" - meaning apparently to suggest, as the subsequent context indicates, that the author of this Epistle exhibits an identification in his mind of the written text of the Scriptures with the voice of God which is foreign to the other writers of the New Testament - he would seem to have attached far too great significance to what is, after all, so far as it is real, nothing more than one of those surface differences of individual usage which are always observable among writers who share the same fundamental view-point, or even in different treatises from the same hand. Entirely at one in looking upon the Scriptures as nothing less than ta. lo,gia tou/ qeou/ (Rom. iii. 2, Heb. v. 12 23) - in all their parts and phrases the utterance of God - the epistles that bear the name of Paul and this epistle yet chance to differ in the prevalent mode in which these "oracles" are adduced: the one in its formulas of citation emphasizing the sole fact that they are "oracles" it is quoting, the others, that these "oracles" lie before them in written form. Let the fact of this difference, of course, be noted: but let it not be overstrained and, as if it were the sole relevant fact in the field of view, made to bear the whole weight of a theory of the relations of the two in their attitude toward Scripture.

Impossible as such a procedure should be in any case, it becomes doubly so when we note the extremely narrow and insecure basis for the conclusion drawn, which is offered by the differences in usage adduced between Hebrews and the rest of the New Testament - which means for us primarily the epistles that bear the name of Paul. Says Dr. Westcott in immediate sequence to what we have quoted from him:

"There is nothing really parallel to this general mode of quotation in the other books of the New Testament. Where the word le,gei occurs elsewhere, it is for the most part combined either with the name of the prophet or with 'Scripture': e.g., Rom. x. 16,  `Hsai<aj; x. 19, Mwush/j le,gei; xi. 9, Dauei.d le,gei; iv. 3, h` grafh. le,gei; ix. 17, le,gei h` grafh,, etc. Where God is the subject, as is rarely the case, the reference is to words directly spoken by God: II Cor. vi. 2, le,gei ga.r (o` qeo,j); Rom. ix. 15, tw|/ Mwusei/; ix. 25, evn tw|/   `Wshe. le,gei . Comp. Rom. xv. 9-12 (lge,graptai ) ) )le,gei ) ) ) `Hsai<aj le,gei). The two passages in the Epistle to the Ephesians (iv. 8, v. 14, dio. le,gei) appear to be different in kind."

The last remark is apparently intended to exclude Eph. iv. 8 and v. 14 from consideration.²⁴ The immediately preceding one seems intended to suggest that the subject to be supplied to le,gei in Rom. xv. 10, which carries with it also Rom. xv. 11, is h` grafh,; if we rather supply with Sanday-Headlam qeo,j, this citation would afford an instance to the contrary. Other cases similar to this, e. g., Acts xiii. 35²⁵ and (with the parallel fhsi,) I Cor. vi. 16,26 are simply passed by in silence. If such cases were considered, perhaps the induction would be different.

It is possible, on the other hand, that the usage of the Epistle to the Hebrews also is conceived by Dr. Westcott a shade too narrowly. It scarcely seems sufficient to say of ii. 6, for example, that this passage is not an exception to the more general usage of the Epistle inasmuch as it is "the one place where God is directly addressed" - and is therefore not ascribed to Him, but to "some one somewhere." According to Dr. Westcott's own exposition,²⁷ we have in i. 10 also words addressed to God and yet cited as spoken by God, and in a number of passages words spoken of God nevertheless cited as spoken by Him; and, in a word, the fundamental principle of the mode of quotation used by this Epistle is that the words of Scripture as such are the living words of God and are cited as such indifferently - whether in the original context spoken by Him or by another of Him, to Him, or apart from Him. In any event, therefore, the citation in the present passage by the formula "someone hath somewhere borne witness" is an exception to the general usage of the Epistle, and evidences that the author of it, though conceiving Scripture as such as a body of divine oracles, did not really lose sight of the fact that these oracles were delivered through men, and might therefore be cited on occasion as the deliverances of these men. In other words, here is a mode of citation of the order affirmed to be characteristic of the letters bearing the name of Paul. It is at least not beyond the limits of possibility that another such instance occurs in iv. 7: "saying in David." No doubt, "in David," may be taken here, as Dr. Westcott takes it, as meaning "in the person of David," i. e., through his prophetic utterances; but it seems, on the whole, much more natural to take it as parallel to evn th|/ bi,blw| Mwuse,wj (Mark xii. 26), evn tw|/  `Wshe, (Rom. ix. 25), and as meaning "in the book of David"28 - exhibiting the consciousness of the author that he is quoting not merely "God," but God in the written Scripture - written by the hand of men. This is the more worth insisting on that it is really not absolutely certain that the subject of the le,gwn here is immediately "God" at all. There is no subject expressed either for it or the o`ri,zei on which it depends; and when we go back in the context for an express subject it eludes us, and we shall not find it until we arrive at the "even as the Holy Ghost saith" of iii. 7. From that point on, we have a series of quotations, introduced, quite in the manner of Philo, with formulæ which puzzle us as to their reference - whether to God, who is the general subject of the whole context, or to Scripture, conceived as the voice of God (e. g., iii. 15, evn tw|/ le,gesqai - by whom? God? or "the Scripture" already quoted? iv. 4, ei;rhken - who? God? or Scripture? iv. 5, kai. evn tou,tw| pa,lin). Something of the same kind meets us in the eighth chapter, where quite in the manner of Philo, we begin at ver. 5: "Even as Moses was oracularly warned when about to make the tabernacle, for 'see,' fhsi,n, etc." and proceed at ver. 8, with a subjectless le,gei, to close with ver. 13 with an equally subjectless evn tw|/ le,gein. It certainly is not obvious that the subject to be supplied to these three verbs is "God" rather than "oracular Scripture."

One can but feel that with a due regard to these two classes of neglected facts, a somewhat broader comparison of the usage of the Epistle to the Hebrews and that of those letters that bear the name of Paul would not leave an impression of such sharp and indubitable divergence in point of view as Dr. Westcott's statement is apt to suggest. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the verb le,gw is used to introduce citations, (1) with expressed subject: ii. 6, "But someone somewhere hath borne witness, saying . . . ." ; iii. 7, "Even as the Holy Ghost saith . . . ." ; vi. 14, "God .... sware by himself, saying . . . .": (2) with subject to be supplied from the preceding context: i. 6, "And when he (God) again bringeth in the firstborn into the world, he saith . . .; i. 7, "And of the angels he (God) saith . . . ."; ii. 12, "He (Christ) is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying . . . ."; v. 6, "As he (God) saith also in another place . . . .": (3) with subject to be supplied from the general knowledge of the reader: x. 5, "Wherefore when he (Christ) cometh into the world, he saith . . . ." ; x. 8, "Saying (Christ) above . . . ."; xii. 26, "But now hath he (God) promised, saying . . . .": (4) without obvious subject: iii. 15, "While it is said, To day, etc." (by whom? God? or the Scripture quoted, iii. 7 seq.?); iv. 7, "He [or it?] again defineth a certain time, saying in David . . . ."; viii. 8, "For finding fault with them, he [or it?] saith . . . ." (cf. viii. 13, "in that he [or it?] saith . . .). On the other hand, in the epistles that bear the name of Paul we may distinguish some four cases of the adduction of Scripture by the formula le,gei. (1) Sometimes, quoting Scripture as a divine whole, the formula runs h` grafh. le,gei or le,gei h` grafh,: Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17 (le,gei h` grafh, tw|/ Faraw|<), xi. 2 (h` grafh. evn  `Hlei,a), Gal. iv. 30, I Tim. v. 18. (2) Sometimes it is adduced by the name of the author: Dauei.d le,gei, Rom. iv. 6, xi. 9;  `Hsai,aj le.gei, Rom. x. 16, 20, xv. 12. (3) Sometimes it is quoted by its contents: o` no,moj le,gei, Rom. iii. 19, vii. 7, I Cor. ix. 8, 10, xiv. 34; the righteousness that is of faith le,gei, Rom. x. 6 (cf. ver. 10); o` crhmatismo,j le,gei, Rom. xi. 4. (4) Sometimes it is adduced by the verb le,gei without expressed subject. (A) In some of these cases the subject is plainly indicated in the preceding context: Rom. ix. 25 = "God," from ver. 22; x. 10 = "the righteousness of faith," (?) from ver. 6; x. 21 = "Isaiah," from ver. 20. (B) In others it is less clearly indicated and is not altogether obvious: [Acts xiii. 34 = "God," from ei;rhken?]; Rom. ix. 15 = "God," from ver. 14?; Rom. xv. 10 = "Scripture," from ge,graptai?; II Cor. vi. 2 = "God," from preceding context; Gal. iii. 16 = "God," from the promises?; Eph. iv. 8 and v. 12. It should be added that parallel to the use of the subjectless fhsi, in Heb. viii. 5 we have the similar use of it in I Cor. vi. 16.

When we glance over these two lists of phenomena we shall certainly recognize a difference between them: but the difference is not suggestive of such an extreme distinction as Dr. Westcott appears to indicate. The fact is that for its proper estimation we must rise to a higher viewpoint and look upon the two lists in the light of a much larger fact. For we cannot safely study this difference of usage as an isolated phenomenon: and we shall get the key to its interpretation into our hands only when we correlate it with a more general view of the estimate of Scripture and mode of adducing Scripture prevalent at the time and in the circles which are represented by these epistles. Dr. Westcott already points the way to this wider outlook, when at the end of his discussion he adds these words:

"The method of citation on which we have dwelt is peculiar to the Epistle [to the Hebrews] among the writings of the New Testament; but it is interesting to notice that there is in the Epistle of Clement a partial correspondence with it. Clement generally quotes the LXX. anonymously. He attributes the prophetic words to God (15, 21, 46), to Christ (16, 22), to the Holy Word (13, 56), to the Holy Spirit (13, 16). But he also, though rarely, refers to the writers (26, Job; 52, David), and to Books (57, Proverbs, 'the all virtuous Wisdom'), and not unfrequently uses the familiar form ge,graptai (14, 39, etc.). The quotations in the Epistle of Barnabas are also commonly anonymous, but Barnabas mentions several names of the sacred writers, and gives passages from the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms with the formula, 'the Prophet saith' (vi. 8; 2; 4, 6)."

And, he should have added, Barnabas also repeatedly adduces what he held to be the Word of God with the formulas ge,graptai (iv. 3, 14, v. 2, xi. 1, xiv. 6, xv. 1, xvi. 6) and le,gei h` grafh, (iv. 7, 11, v. 4, vi. 12, xiii. 2, xv. 5) : and indeed passes from the one mode of citation to the other without the least jar, as. for example, in chap. v.: "For it is written concerning him, some things indeed with respect to Israel, and some with respect to us. For it saith this (Isa. liii. 5, 7). . . . . And the Scripture saith (Prov. i. 17). . . . And still also this (Jer. i. 25). . . . . For God saith (Zech. xiii. 6). . . . . For the prophesier saith (Ps. xxii. 21, etc.). . . . . And again it saith (Isa. 1. 6)." Though adverting thus to these facts, however, Dr. Westcott quite misses their significance. What they mean is shortly this: that the two modes of citing Scripture thought to distinguish Hebrews and the letters that bear the name of Paul, do not imply well-marked distinctive modes of conceiving Scripture; but coexist readily within the limits of one brief letter, like the letter of Clement or that of Barnabas. No wonder, when laid side by side, we found the usages of the two to present no sharply marked division line, but to crumble into one another along the edges. And when we look beyond Clement and Barnabas and take a general glance over the literature of the time, it is easily seen that we are looking in the two cases only at two fragments of one fact, and are seeing in each only one of the everywhere current methods of citing Scripture as the very Word of God. It seems inconceivable that one could rise from reading, say, twenty pages of Philo, for example, without being fully convinced of this.

Philo's fundamental conception of Scripture is that it is a book of oracles; each passage of it is a crhsmo,j or lo,gion, and the whole is therefore oi` crhsmoi, or ta. lo,gia: he currently quotes it, accordingly, as "the living voice" of God, and whole treatises of his may be read without meeting with a single citation introduced by ge,graptai or with the Scriptures once called h` grafh,. Nevertheless, when occasion serves, he adduces Scripture readily enough as h` grafh,, and cites it with ge,graptai, and calls it ta. gra,mmata. We have no more reason for assuming that such modes of citing Scripture would have been foreign to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (whose mode of citing Scripture is markedly Philonic) than we have for assuming that the author of the tract de Mutatione Nominum, in which they do not occur, but where Scripture is almost exclusively oi` chsmoi,, or the author of the tracts de Somniis, where again they do not occur, but where Scripture is almost exclusively o` i`ero.j (or o` qei/oj) lo,goj (i. 14, 22, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42, ii. 4, 9, 37, etc. ; i. 33, ii. 37) - which designations are rare again in de Mutatione Nominum (o` q) l), 20; o` i`) l., 38) - held a different conception of Scripture from the author of the tract de Legatione ad Caium (§ 29) or the tract de Abrahamo (§ 1), in which the Scriptures are spoken of as ta. gra,mmata or ai` grafai,. There is no reason, in a word, why, if the Epistle to the Hebrews had contained even a single other verse, it might not have presented the "exotic," h` grafh, or ge,graptai. Because Philo or the author of this Epistle was especially accustomed to look on Scripture as a body of oracles and to cite it accordingly, is no reason why he should forget that it is a body of written oracles and be incapable on occasion of citing it from that point of view. Similarly because Paul ordinarily cites Scripture as written is no reason why he should not be firmly convinced that what is written in it is oracles, or should not occasionally cite it from that point of view. In a word, the two modes of citing Scripture brought into contrast by Bishop Westcott are not two mutually exclusive ways of citing Scripture, but two mutually complementary methods. The use of the one by any writer does not argue that the other is foreign to him; if we have enough written material from his hand, we are sure rather to find in him traces of the other usage also. This is the meaning of the presence in the Epistle to the Hebrews of suggestive instances of an approach to the citation of Scripture as a document: and of the presence in the epistles bearing the name of Paul of instances of modes of citation which hint of his conception of Scripture as an oracular book. Where and when the sense of the oracular character of the source of the quotation is predominatingly in mind it tends to be quoted with the simple fhsi, or le,gei, with the implication that it is God that says it: this is most richly exhibited in Philo, and, within the limits of the New Testament, most prevailingly in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Where and when, on the other hand, the consciousness that it is from a written source that the authoritative words are drawn is predominant in the mind, it tends to be quoted with the simple ge,graptai or the more formal h` grafh. le,gei: this is the mode in which it is most commonly cited in the epistles that bear the name of Paul. Both modes of citation rest on the common consciousness of the Divine authority of the matter cited, and have no tendency to exclude one another: they appear side by side in the same writer, and must be held to predominate variously in different writers only according to their prevailing habits of speaking of Scripture, and at different times in the same writer according as the circumstances under which he was writing threw the emphasis in his mind temporarily upon the Scriptures as written oracles or as written oracles.

From this point of view we may estimate Dr. Westcott's remark: "Nor can it be maintained that the difference of usage is to be explained by the difference of readers, as being [in Hebrews] Jews, for in the Gospels ge,graptai is the common formula (nine times in St. Matthew)." This remark, like his whole treatment of the subject, seems conceived in a spirit which is too hard and narrow, too drily statistical. No one, doubtless, would contend that the difference of readers directly produced the difference of usage, as if the Scriptures must be quoted to Jews as "oracles of God," and to Gentiles as "written documents." But it is far from obvious that the difference of readers may not, after all, have had very much to do with the prevalence of the one mode of citation in the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the other in the epistles that bear the name of Paul. The Jews were certainly accustomed to the current citation of the Scriptures as the living voice of God in oracular deliverances - as the usage of Philo sufficiently indicates: and it may be that this was subtly felt the most impressive method of adducing the words of the Holy Book when addressing Jews. On the other hand, the heathen were accustomed to authoritative documents, cited currently, with an implication of their authority, by the formula ge,graptai:29 and it may well be that this subtly suggested itself as the most telling way of adducing Scripture as authoritative law to the Gentiles. We need not ride such a notion too hard: but it at least seems far from inconceivable that the selfsame writer, addressing, on the one hand, a body of devout Jews, and, on the other, a body of law-loving Romans, might find himself using almost unconsciously modes of adducing Scripture suggestive, in the one case, of loving awe in its presence and, in the other, of its binding authority over the conscience. Be this as it may, however, it is quite clear that the fact that Paul ordinarily adduces Scripture with "the forms (kaqw.j) ge,graptai (sixteen times in the Epistle to the Romans), h` grafh. le,gei, and the like, which never occur in the Epistle to the Hebrews," implies no far-reaching difference of conception on his part from that exhibited by that Epistle, as to the fundamental character of the Scriptures as an oracular book - which, on the contrary, is just what he calls them (Rom. iii. 2) - and certainly raises no presumption against his occasionally quoting them as an oracular book with the formula so characteristic of the Epistle to the Hebrews, o` qeo.j le,gei, or its equivalents. And the fact that "Paul not unfrequently quotes the words of God as 'Scripture' simply (e. g., Rom, ix. 17)" so far from raising a presumption that he would not quote "Scripture" as "words of God," actually demonstrates the contrary, as it only in another way indicates the identification on his part of the written word with the voice of the speaking God.

If we approach the study of such texts as Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, therefore, from the point of view of the Pauline conception of Scripture, there is no reason why they should not be understood as adducing Scripture with a high "God says." To say that "we have reason to believe" that such a formula "could not be used by Paul," is as wide of the mark as could well be. To say that it is a formula more in accordance with the point of view of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is to confound mere occasional differences in usage with fundamental differences in conception. To Paul, too, the Scriptures are a book of oracles, and though he cites them ordinarily as written oracles there is no reason why he should not occasionally cite them merely as oracles. And in any case, whether we take the subauditum in such passages as "God," or "Scripture," or prefer to render simply by "it," from Paul's point of view the meaning is all one: in any case, Scripture is to him the authoritative dictum of God and what it says is adduced as the authoritative word that ends all strife.

In seeking to estimate the likelihoods as to the meaning of such a locution as the dio. le,gei of Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, we should not lose from sight, on the other hand, the fact that the Greek language was not partial to true "impersonals," that is, absolutely indefinite uses of its verbs. Says Jelf :

"Of impersonal verbs (in English, verbs with the indefinite it) the Greek language has but few."30

Says Kühner:

"Impersonal verbs, by which we understand a verb agreeing with the indefinite pronoun it, are not known to the Greek language: for expressions like dei/( crh, . . . le,getai, etc. . . . the Greek always conceived as personal, in that the infinitive or subjoined sentence was considered the subject of these verbs."31

No doubt, the subject often suffers ellipsis - especially when it may be counted upon readily to suggest itself, either out of the predicate itself, or out of the context, or out of the knowledge of the reader: and no doubt this implied subject is sometimes the indefinite tij. But it remains true that as yet there has turned up no single instance in all Greek literature of le,gei in the purely indefinite sense of "someone says," equivalent to "it is said" in the meaning of general rumor, or of a common proverb, or a current saying; and though there have been pointed out instances of something like this in the case of the kindred word fhsi,, it still remains somewhat doubtful precisely how they are to be interpreted. The forms commonly used to express this idea are either the expressed tiv, or the third person plural, as le,gousi( fasi,( ovnoma,zousin, or the third person singular passive, as le,getai, or the second person singular optative or indicative of the historical tenses, as fai,hvj a;n, = dicas, or the like.³²

We find it, indeed, occasionally asserted that (fhsi, is used sometimes or frequently as a pure impersonal, in the sense of "it is said." The passage from Bernhardy, to be sure, to which reference has been made in support of this assertion, by more than one of the commentators adduced above, has its primary interest not in this point, but in the different one of the use of the singular fhsi, for the plural - like the Latin inquit, and the English "says" in that vulgar colloquial locution in which it is made to do duty not only in the form "he says," but also in such forms as "I says" and "you says," and even "they says" and "we says." What Bernhardy remarks is:33

"The rhetorical employment of the singular for the plural rests on the Greek peculiarity (K. 3, 5; 6, 13c.) of clearly conceiving and representing the multitude by means of the individual. A ready instance of this is supplied by the formula fhsi,, like the Latin inquit an expression for all persons and numbers for designating an indefinite speaker (den beliebigen Redner) - 'heisst es'; and by the more classic eivpe, moi in appeal to the multitude in Attic life, Arist. (as Pac., 385, eivpe, moi ti, pa,scet v w;ndrej; coll. Eccl., 741), Plat. (clearly in a turn like eivpe, moi, w= Sw,krate,j te kai. u`mei/j oi` a;lloi), Demosth., Phil. i, p. 45; Chers., p. 108; Timocr., p. 718."34

The usage of fhsi, here more particularly adverted to - for all numbers and persons - seems a not uncommon one. Instances may possibly be found in the "Discourses" of Epictetus i. 29, 34 (Schenkl, p. 95). "Even athletes are dissatisfied with slight young men: 'He cannot lift me,' fhsi,," where fhsi, might perhaps be rendered by our vernacular, "says they," referring to "the athletes." Again, iv. 9, 15 (Schenkl, p. 383): "But learn from what the trainers of boys do. The boy has fallen: 'Rise,' fhsi,, 'wrestle again, till you become strong!"' where we may possibly have another 'says they,' viz., the trainers. Possibly again ii. 10, 20 (Schenkl, p. 133), "But consider, if you refer everything to a small coin, not even he who loses his nose is in your opinion damaged. 'Yes,' fhsi,, 'for he is mutilated in his body,"' where possibly fhsi, is "says you," referring to the collocutor, addressed in the preceding context in the second person - though, no doubt, another explanation is here possible. Indeed, in no one of the instances cited is it impossible to conceive a singular subject derived from the contextual plural as specially in mind. If fhsi, were genuine in Wisdom xv. 12,35 II Cor. x. 10,36 these might well supply other instances - the "says they" in each case continuing the contextual or implicated plural. But in none of these instances, it is to be observed, would the subject be conceived as in the strict sense "indefinite." It is a perfectly definite subject that is present to the mind of the writer, given either in the immediate context or in the thorough understanding that exists between the writer and reader. There is in them nothing whatever of the vagueness that attaches to the French "on dit," or the German "man sagt," or the English "it is said." The Greeks had other locutions for expressing this idea, and if it was ever expressed by the simple fhsi,, only the slightest traces of it remain in their extant literature.

In the seventh edition of the Greek Lexicon of Liddell & Scott,³⁷ nevertheless, this usage is expressly assigned to fhsi,. We read:

"fhsi, parenthetically, they say, it is said, Il. 5, 638, Od. 6, 42 and Att.; but in prose also fhsi,, like French on dit, Dem. 650, 13, Plut. 2, 112 C., etc. (so Lat. inquit, ait, Gronov, Liv. 34, 3, Bent. Hor. 1 Sat. 4, 79; - especially in urging an objection or counterargument, v. Interpp. Pers. Sat. 1, 40); - so also e;fh, c. acc. et inf., Xen. An. i, 6, 6."

It is far from obvious, however, that the passages here adduced will justify precisely the usage which they are cited to illustrate. In the passage from Demosthenes - e;stw, fhsi.n( u`pe.r auvtou/ h` auvth. timwri,a , etc. - it seems to be quite clear, as the previous sentence suggests and the editors recognize,³⁸ that the subject of the (fhsi, is e;kastoj tw/n gegrafo,twn, and is far from a purely indefinite tij. The passage from Plutarch ("Consolatio ad Apollonium," xxi) is more specious. It runs: avll v ouv ga.r h;lpizon( fhsi,( tau/ta pei,sesqai( ouvde. prosedo,kwn; and is translated in the Latin version, "At, inquiunt, præter spem mihi hic casus et expectationem evenit"; and in Holland's old English version, "But haply you will say, I never thought that this would have befallen unto me, neither did I so much as doubt any such thing." A glance at the context, however, is enough to show that there is no purely indefinite fhsi, here, though it may be that we have here another instance of its usage without regard to number and person. In any case, the subject is the quite definitely conceived interlocutor of the passage. That the e;fh adduced at the end of the note as in some degree of the same sort is not an indefinite e;fh, but has the Clearchus of the immediately preceding context as its subject, is too obvious for remark. Clearchus was present by the request of Cyrus at the trial of Orontes, and when he came out he reported to his friends the manner in which the trial was conducted: "He said (e;fh) that Cyrus began to speak as follows." It is not by such instances as these that the occurrence of a purely indefinite fhsi, can be established.³⁹

The subjectless fhsi,, to be sure, does occur very thickly scattered over the face of Greek literature, introducing or emphasizing quotations, or adducing objections, or the like: but the "it" that is to be supplied to it is, ordinarily at least, a quite definite one with its own definite reference perfectly clear. A characteristic instance, often referred to, is that in Demosth., "Leptin," § 56:40 kai. ga,r toi mo,nw| tw/n pa,ntwn auvtw|/ tou/t v evn th|/ sth,lh| ge,graptai( evpeidh. Ko,nwn( fhsi,n( hvleuqe,rwse tou.j  vAqhnai,wn summa,couj. -  ;Esti de. tou/to to. gra,mma. . . ." Here F. A. Wolf comments: "Absolute ibi interjectum est fhsi,n, aut, si mavis, subaudi o` gra,yaj"; and Schaefer adds: "Subaudi h` sth,lh."41 It does not appear why we should not render simply "it says": but this "it" is so far from an "'indefinite' it" that it has its clear reference to the inscription just mentioned. Perhaps even more instructive is a passage in the third Philippic⁴² of Demosthenes, which runs as follows:

"That such is our present state, you yourselves are witnesses, and need not any testimony from me. That our state in former times was quite opposite to this, I shall now convince you, not by any arguments of mine, but by a decree of your ancestors (gra,mmata tw/n progo,nwn), which they inscribed upon a brazen column (sth,lhn) erected in the citadel. . . . What, then, says the decree (ti, ou=n le,gei ta. gra,mmata)? 'Let Arithmius,' it says (fhsi,n), 'of Zelia, the son of Pythonax, be accounted infamous and an enemy to the Athenians and their allies, both he and all his race.' . . . The sentence imported somewhat more, for, in the laws importing capital cases, it is enacted (ge,graptai) that 'when the legal punishment of a man's crime cannot be inflicted he may be put to death,' and it was accounted meritorious to kill him. 'Let not the infamous man,' saith the law, 'be permitted to live' (kai. a;timoj( fhsi,, teqna,tw), intimating that he is free from guilt who executes this sentence (tou/to dh.( le,gei( kaqaro.n to.n tou,twn tina. avpoktei,nanta ei;nai)."

In both cases it is doubtless enough to render fhsi,, "it says," its function being in each case to call pointed attention to the words quoted: but the "it" is by no means "indefinite" in the sense that its reference was not very definitely conceived. On the second instance of its occurrence Wolf comments: "s. o` foniko.j no,moj,"43 while Schaefer says: "

"Pleonastice positum cum ge,graptai praecesserit. Verumtamen h. l. sensum paulo magis juvat quam ubi post ei=pon, ei=te, continuo sequitur e;fhn( e;fh. Ad fhsi, subaudi o` nomoqe,thj."

These instances will supply us with typical examples of the "absolute" fhsi,; and, in this sense, "subjectless fhsi," is of very common occurrence indeed in Greek literature.

But really "subjectless fhsi,," i. e., fhsi, without any implied subject in context or common knowledge, which therefore we must take quite indefinitely, is very rare indeed, if not non-existent. Perhaps one of the most likely instances of such a usage is offered us by a passage in Plutarch's "Consolatio ad Apollonium," 34.45 Holland's old version of it runs thus:46

"And verily in regard of him who is now in a blessed estate, it has not been naturall for him to remaine in this life longer than the terme prefixed and limited unto him; but after he had honestly performed the course of his time, it was needfull and requisit for him to take the way for to returne unto his destinie that called for him to come unto her."

From this we may at least learn that fhsi,n here presented some difficulty, as Holland passes it by unrendered. The common Latin version restores it, reading the last clause thus: "Sed ita postulabit natura ut hoc expleto fatale quod aiunt iter conficeret, revocante eum jam ad se natura"; the Greek running thus: "avll v euvta,ktwj tou/ton evkplh,santi pro.j th.n ei`marme,nhn evpana,gein porei,an( kalou,shj auvth/j( fhsi,n, h;dh pro.j e`auth,n." The theory of the Latin version obviously is that fhsi,n here is to be taken indefinitely, that is as an index hand pointing to a current designation of death as an entering upon the "fated journey" - h` ei`marme,nh porei,a. This is explained to us by Wyttenbach's note:47

"fhsi,n] non debebat offendere viros doctos. Est ut ait poeta ille unde hoc sumptum est. Videt hoc et Reiskius. Correxi versionem. De Tragici dicto in Animadversibus dicetur."

Accordingly, in the Animadversions,⁴⁸ he addresses himself first to showing that the expression here signalized was a current poetical saying - appealing to Plato,⁴⁹ Julian, Philo; and then adds:

"Cæterum fhsi,n ita elliptice usitatum est: v. c. Plutarcho, p. 135 B.,⁵⁰ 817 D., Dion. Chrys., p. 493 D., 532 A., 562 B. Notavit et Uptonus ad Epict. in Indice. In annotatoribus ad Lambertum Bosium de Ellipsibus unus Schoettgenius, idque ex uno Paulo Apostolo hunc usum annotavit, p. 74. Et. Latine ita dicitur inquit, quod monuerunt J. F. Gronovius et A. Drakenborch. ad Livium xxxiv. 3, J. A. Ernestus in Clav. Cic. voce Inquit."

It does not seem, however, that Wyttenbach would have us read the fhsi, here quite indefinitely, as adducing for example a current saying: judging from his own paraphrase this might appear to him as a certain exaggeration of its implication. Its office would seem rather to be to call attention to the words, to which it is adjoined, as quoted, and thus, in the good understanding implied to exist between the writer and his readers, to point definitely to its source: so that it might be a proper note to it to say, "subaudi o` tragiko,j, vel o` poihth,j" - and this might be done with a considerable emphasis on the o`; nay, the actual name of the poet, well known to both writer and reader, though now lost to us, might equally well be the subauditum, and such, indeed, may be the implication of the subauditum suggested by Wyttenbaeh: ut ait poeta ille unde hoe scriptum est. Surely, an instance like this is far from a clear case of the absolutely indefinite or even generally undefining use of fhsi,.

Among the references with which Wyttenbach supports his note, the most promising sends us to Epictetus, whose "Discourses" abound in the most varied use of 0rlvi, and offer us at the same time one of our most valuable sources of knowledge of the Greek in common use near the times of the apostles.⁵¹ We meet with many instances here which it has been customary to explain as cases of fhsi, in a wholly indefinite reference. But the matter is somewhat complicated by the facts that we are not reading here Epictetus' "Discourses" pure and simple, but Arrian's report of them; and that Arrian may exercise his undoubted right to slip in a fhsi, of his own whenever he specially wishes to keep his readers' attention fixed upon the fact that they are his master's words he is setting down, or perhaps even merely out of the abiding sense, on his own part, that he is reporting Epictetus and not writing out of his own mind. When such a fhsi, occurs at the beginning of a section it gives no trouble: every reader recognizes it at once as Arrian's. But when it occurs unexpectedly in the midst of a vivacious discussion, the reader who is not carrying with him the sense of Arrian's personality, standing behind the Epictetus he is attending to, is very apt to be stumbled by it, and to resort to some explanation of it on the theory that it is Epictetus' own and is to find its interpretation in the context. An attempt has been made by Schenkl in the index to his edition of Epictetus⁵² to distinguish between the instances in which fhsi, occurs "inter Epicteti verba ab Arriano servata," and those in which it occurs "inter Arriani verba." It will be found that most of the instances where it has been thought markedly indefinite in its reference are classed by him in the second group and are thus made very definite indeed - the standing subauditum being "Epictetus." Opinions will, no doubt, differ as to the proper classification of a number of these: and in any case many instances remain which cannot naturally be so explained - occurring as they do in the midst of vividly conceived dramatic passages. In this very vividness of dramatic action, however, is doubtless to be found the explanation of these instances. So far are the verbs here from being impersonal, that the speakers in these little dialogues stood out before Epictetus' mind's eye as actual persons; and it is therefore that he so freely refers to them with his vivid fhsi,.

The following are some of the most striking examples of his usage of the word. "But now we admit that virtue produces one thing, and we declare that approaching near to it is another thing, namely progress or improvement. Such a person, fhsi,n, is already able to read Chrysippus by himself. Indeed, sir, you are making great progress" (i, 4, 9).⁵³ Here Schenkl suggests that the fhsi,n is Arrian's, and this would seem to be a good suggestion, as it illuminates the passage in more ways than one. If not, the subauditum would seem to be the collocutor of the paragraph: a "some one," no doubt, but rather the "some one" most prominent in the mind of writer and reader in this discussion. "But a man may say, Whence shall I get bread to eat, when I have nothing (kai. po,qen fa,gw( fhsi,( mhde.n e;xwn;)?" (i. 9, 8). Here again the fhsi, seems best explained as Arrian's (Schenkl): if not, the subauditum is again the collocutor prominent through the context, and only, in that sense, indefinite. "Who made these things and devised them? 'No one,' you say (fhsi,n). O amazing shamelessness and stupidity" (i. 16, 8). The reference is to the collocutor. "They are thieves and robbers you may say (kle,ptai( fhsi,n( eijsi ) ) ))" (i. 18, 3). Either Arrian's (Schenkl), or with the collocutor as the subauditum. " How can you conquer the opinion of another man? By applying terror to it, he replies (fhsi,n), I will conquer it" (i, 29, 12). Subaudi the collocutor. "For why, a man says (fhsi,), do I not know the beautiful and the ugly?" (ii, 11, ?). Either Arrian's (Schenkl), or subaudi the collocutor. "How, he replies (fhsi,n), am I not good?" (ii, 13, 17). Either Arrian's (Schenkl), or subaudi the collocutor. So also similarly in ii, 22, 4; iii, 2, 5; iii, 5, 1, etc. Cf. also ii, 23, 16; iii, 3, 12; 9, 15; 20, 12; 26, 19. Similarly, in the "Fragments" we have this: "They are amusing fellows, said he (e;fh = Epictetus), who are proud of the things which are not in our power. A man says, I (evgw,, fhsi,) am better than you, for I possess much land and you are wasting with hunger. Another says (a;lloj le,gei). . . . .") "Frag.," xviii. [Schw.,16]). Here the fhsi, is brought in as the initial member of a series and in contrast with a;lloj le,gei: it would seem to be Epictetus' own, therefore, and to mean "says one," as distinguished from another; and thus it appears to be the most likely instance of the "indefinite fhsi," in the whole mass. But even it seems an essentially different locution from the really indefinite "it is said," "on dit," " man sagt."

A glance over the whole usage of fhsi, in Arrian-Epictetus leaves on the mind a keen sense of the lively way in which the word must have been interjected into Greek conversation, but does not greatly alter the impression of its essential implication which we derive from the general use of the word. Take a single instance of its current use in the "Discourses" in its relation to kindred words:

"So also Diogenes somewhere says (pou le,gei) that there exists but one means of obtaining freedom - to die contentedly, and he writes (gra,fei) to the king of the Persians, 'You cannot enslave the city of the Athenians, any more,' says he (fhsi,n), 'than fishes.' 'How? Can I not catch them ?' 'If you catch them,' says he (fhsi,n), 'they will immediately leave you and be gone, just like fishes: for whatever one of them you catch dies, and if these men die when they are caught, what good will your preparations do you?"' (iv, 1, 30).

The lively effect given by such unexpected interpositions of fhsi,n is lost in our decorous translation of the New Testament examples: but it exists in them too. Thus: "But she, being urged on by her mother, 'Give me,' says she, 'here upon a charger, the head of John the Baptist"' (Matt. xiv. 8); "But he, 'Master, speak,' says he" (Luke vii. 40); "But Peter to them, 'Repent,' says he, 'and be baptized each one of you"' (Acts ii. 38) ; "'Let those among you,' says he, 'that are able, go down with me"' (Acts xxv. 5); "'To-morrow,' says he, ' thou shalt hear him"' (Acts xxv. 22); "But Paul, 'I am not mad,' says he, 'most noble Festus"' (Acts xxvi. 25).⁵⁴ The main function of fhsi, then would appear to be to keep the consciousness of the speaker reported clearly before the mind of the reader. It is therefore often used to mark the transition from indirect to direct quotation:55 and it lent itself readily, therefore, to mark the adduction both of objections and of literary citations. But, one would imagine, it did not very readily lend itself to vague and indefinite references.

If we desire to find cases of "subjectless le,gei" in any way similar to those of fhsi,, we must apparently turn our back on profane Greek altogether.⁵⁶ We have fortunately in Philo, however, an author, the circumstances of whose writing made literary quotation as frequent with him as oral is in the lively pages of Epictetus' "Discourses." And in Philo's treatises le,gei takes its place by the side of its more common kinsman fhsi,, and is used in much the same way, though naturally somewhat less frequently. In harmony with his fundamental viewpoint - which looked on the Scriptures as a body of oracular sayings - Philo adduces Scripture commonly with verbs of "saying" - fhsi,, le,getai( le,gei( ei=pen (ge,graptai falling into the background). Passages so adduced are often woven into the fabric of his discussion of the contents of Scripture; and where the words adduced are words of a speaker in the Biblical narrative, the subject of the fhsi, or le,gei which introduces them naturally is often this speaker - whether God or some other person. Equally often, however, the subject given immediately or indirectly in the context is something outside of the narrative that is dealt with: in this case it is sometimes Moses, or "the prophet," or "the lawgiver" - at other times, "the Holy Word," or "the sacred Word," or "the Oracle," or "the Oracles" (o` qei/oj lo,goj( o` i`ero.j lo,goj( o` crhsmo,j( to. lo,gion( oi` crhsmoi,( ta. lo,gia) - at other times still it is "God," under various designations. Often, however, the verb - fhsi, or le,gei - stands not only without expressed subject, but equally without indicated subject. The rendering of these cases has given students of Philo some trouble, arising out of the apparent confusion, when the subject is expressed, of the reference of the verb, - now to a speaker in the text of Scripture and now to the author of the particular Scripture, to God as the author of all Scripture, or to Scripture itself conceived as a living Word. This apparent confusion is due solely to Philo's fundamental conception of Scripture as an oracular book, which leads him to deal with its text as itself the Word of God: he has himself fully explained the matter,⁵⁷ and we should be able to steer clear of serious difficulties with his explanation in our hands.

Nevertheless, a somewhat mechanical mode of dealing with his citations has produced, on more than one occasion, certain odd results. Prof. Ryle says:58

"The commonest forms of quotation employed by Philo are fhsi,( ei=pen( le,gei( le,getai( ge,graptai ga.r. Whether the subject of fhsi, be Moses or Scripture personified cannot in many cases be determined."

In no case is the subject strictly indeterminate, however, and the failure to determine it aright may introduce confusion. Thus, for example, in "De Confus. Ling.," § 26 (Mangey, i. 424), Philo mentions the Book of Judges, and cites it with the subjectless fhsi,. Prof. Ryle comments thus:59

"He does not mention any opinion as to authorship, and introduces his quotation with his usual formula fhsi,n. We are hardly justified in assuming that Philo intended Moses as the subject of fhsi,n, and regarded him as the author of Judges (so Dr. Pick, Journal of Biblical Literature, 1884). Moses is doubtless often spoken of by Philo as if he were the personification of the Inspired Word; but we cannot safely extend this idea beyond the range of the Pentateuch. All that we can say is that fhsi,n, used in this quotation from Judges, refers either to the unknown writer of this book or to the personification of Holy Scripture."

Or else, we may add, to God, the real author, in Philo's conception, of every word of Scripture. Prof. Ryle, however, has not caught precisely Dr. Pick's meaning: Dr. Pick does not commit himself to the extravagant view that wherever subjectless fhsi, occurs in Philo the subauditum "Moses" is implied: he only says, in direct words, that here - in this special passage -"Moses is introduced as speaking." It would seem obvious that he had a text before him which read "Moses says," and not simply "says," at this place. This text was doubtless nothing other than Yonge's English translation, which reads Moses here, as often elsewhere with as little warrant: "'For,' says Moses, ' Gideon swore, etc."'60 The incident illustrates the evil of mechanically supplying a supplement to these subjectless verbs - which cannot indeed be understood except on the basis of Philo's primary principle, that it is all one to say "Moses says," "the Scripture says," or "God says." The simple fact here is that Philo quotes Judges, as he does the rest of Scripture, with the subjectless "says," and with the same implication, viz., that Judges is to him a part of the Word of God.

As has been already hinted, by all means the commonest verb used by Philo thus, - without expressed or obviously indicated subject, - to introduce a Scripture passage, is fhsi,. Perhaps, however, the one instance to which we have incidentally adverted will suffice to illustrate the usage - other instances of which may be seen on nearly every page of Philo's treatises. It is of more interest for us to note that le,gei seems also to be used in the same subjectless way - examples of which may be seen, for instance, in the following places, "Legg. Allegor.," i, 15; ii, 4; iii, 8; "Quod Det. Pot. Insid.," 48; "De Posterit. Caini," 9; 22; 52; "De Gigant.," 11; 12; "De Confus. Ling.," 32; "De Migrat. Abrah.," 11; "Fragment. ex Joh. Monast." (ii, 668). In " Legg. Allegor.," i, 15, for instance, we have a string of quotations without obvious subject, introduced, the first by the subjectless fhsi,, the next by the equally subjectless evpife,rei pa,lin, and the third (from Exod. xx. 23) by le,gei de. kai. evn e`te,roij. In "Legg. Allegor.," ii, 4, we have Gen. ii. 19 introduced by le,gei ga.r without any obvious subject. Yonge translates this too by "For Moses says": but to obtain warrant for this we should have to go back two pages and a half (of Richter's text), quite to the beginning of the treatise, where we find an apostrophe to the "prophet." In "De Posterit. Caini," 22, le,gei evpi. me.n  vAbraa.m ou[twj (Gen. xi. 29), though Yonge supplies "Moses" again, that would seem to be demonstrably absurd, as the passage proceeds to place "Moses," in parallelism with Abraham, in the object. Similarly the passages adduced from "De Gigant.," 11 and 12 (Num. xiv. 44 and Deut. xxxiv. 6) are about Moses, and it would scarcely do to fill out the ellipsis of subject with his name. Examples need not, however, be multiplied.

It would seem quite clear that both the subjectless fhsi, frequently, and the subjectless le,gei less often, occur in Philo after a fashion quite similar to the instances adduced from the New Testament. And it would seem to be equally clear that the lack of a subject in their case is not indicative of indefiniteness, but rather of definiteness in their reference. Philo does not adduce passages of Scripture with the bare fhsi, or le,gei because he knows or cares very little whence they come or with what authority; but because he and his readers alike both know so well the source whence they are derived, and yield so unquestionably to its authority, that it is unnecessary to pause to indicate either. The use of the bare fhsi, or le,gei in citations from Scripture is in his case, obviously, the outgrowth and the culminating sign of his absolute confidence in Scripture as the living voice of God, fully recognized as such both by himself and his readers. In the same sense in which to the dying Sir Walter Scott there was but one "Book," to him and his readers there was but one authoritative divine Word, and all that was necessary in adducing it was to indicate the fact of adduction. The fhsi, or le,gei serves thus primarily the function of "quotation marks" in modern usage: but under such circumstances and with such implications that bare quotation marks carry with them the assurance that the words adduced are divine words.

It would seem to be very easy, in these circumstances, to give ourselves more uneasiness than is at all necessary as to the precise subauditum which we are to assume with these verbs. It may serve very well to render them simply, "It says," with the implication that Philo is using the codex of Scripture as the living voice of God speaking to him and his readers. The case, in a word, would seem to be very similar to that of the common New Testament formula of quotation ge,graptai - meaning not that what is adduced is somewhere written, but that it is the authoritative law that is being adduced. Just so, "It says," in such a case would mean not that somebody or something says what is adduced, but that the Word of God says it. As the one usage is the natural outgrowth of the conception of the Scriptures as a written authoritative law, the other is the equally natural outgrowth of the conception of Scripture as the living voice of God. How very natural a development this usage is, may be illustrated by the fact that something very similar to it may be met with in colloquial English. In the same circles where we may hear God spoken of as simply "He," as if it were dangerous to name His name too freely, we may also occasionally hear the Bible quoted with a simple "It says," or even with an elision of the "it," as "'Tsays": and yet the "it," though treated thus cavalierly, is in reality a very emphatic "It" indeed - the phrase being the product of awe in the presence of "the Book," and importing that there is but one "It" that could be thought of in the case. Somewhat similarly, in the case of Philo, the Scriptures are cited with the bare fhsi,( le,gei, because, in his mind and in the circles which he addressed, there stood out so far above all other voices this one Voice of God embodied in His Scriptures, that none other would be thought of in the case. The phrase is the outgrowth of reverence for the Word and of unquestioning submission to it: and the fundamental fact is that no special subject is expressed simply because none was needed and it would be all one whether we understood as subject, Moses, the prophet and lawgiver - the holy or sacred Word or the oracle – or finally, God Himself. In any case, and with any subauditum, the real subject conceived as speaking is GOD. 61

If now, in the light of the facts we have thus brought to our recollection, we turn back to the New Testament passages in which the Old Testament is cited with a simple fhsi, or le,gei, it may not be impossible for us to perceive their real character and meaning. There would seem to be absolutely no warrant in Greek usage for taking le,gei, and but very little, if any, for taking fhsi, really indefinitely: and even if there were, it would be inconceivable that the New Testament writers, from their high conception of "Scripture," should have adduced Scripture with a simple "it is said" - somewhere, by some one - without implication of reverence toward the quoted words or recognition of the authority inherent in them. It is rather in the usage of Philo that we find the true analogue of these examples. Like Philo, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews looks upon Scripture as an oracular book, and all that it says, God says to him: and accordingly, like Philo, he adduces its words with a simple "it says," with the full implication that this "it says" is a "God says" also. Whenever the same locution occurs elsewhere in the New Testament, it bears naturally the same implication. There is no reason why we should recognize the Philonic fhsi, in Heb. viii. 5, and deny it in I Cor. vi. 16: or why we should recognize the Philonic le,gei in Heb. viii. 8 and deny it in Acts xiii. 35, Rom. ix. 15, xv. 10, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16, or in Eph. iv. 8, v. 14. Only in case it were very clear that Paul did not share the high conception of Scripture as the living voice of God which underlies this usage in Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews, could we hesitate to understand this phrase in him as we understand it in them. But we have seen that such is not the case: and his use in adducing Scripture of the subjectless fhsi, and le,gei quite in their manner is, rightly viewed, only another indication, among many, that his conception of Scripture was fundamentally the same with theirs, and it cannot be explained away on the assumption that it was fundamentally different.

It does not indeed follow that on every occasion when a Scripture passage is introduced by a fhsi, or le,gei it is to be explained as an instance of this subjectless usage - even though a subject for it is given or plainly implied in the immediate context. That is not possible even in Philo, where the introductory formula often finds its appropriate subject expressed in the preceding context. But it does follow that we need not and ought not resort to unnatural expedients to find a subject for such a fhsi, or le,gei in the context, or that acquiescing, whenever that seems more natural, in its subjectlessness, we should seek to explain away its high implications.⁶² Men may differ as to the number of clear instances of such a usage, that may be counted in the New Testament. But most will doubtless agree that some may be counted: and will doubtless place among them Eph. iv. 8 and v. 14. Some will contend, no doubt, that in the latter of these texts, the passage adduced is not derived from the Old Testament at all. That, however, is "another story," on which we cannot enter now, but on which we must be content to differ. We pause only to say that we reckon among the reasons why we should think the citation here is derived from the Old Testament, just its adduction by dio. le,gei - which would seem to advise us that Paul intended to quote the oracular Word.

There may be room for difference of opinion again as to the precise subauditum which it will be most natural to assume with these subjectless verbs: whether o` qeo,j or h` grafh,. In our view it makes no real difference in their implication: for, in our view, the very essence of the case is, that, under the force of their conception of the Scriptures as an oracular book, it was all one to the New Testament writers whether they said "God says" or "Scripture says." This is made very clear, as their real standpoint, by their double identification of Scripture with God and God with Scripture, to which we adverted at the beginning of this paper, and by which Paul, for example, could say alike "the Scripture saith to Pharaoh" (Rom. ix. 17) and "God . . . . saith, Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to see corruption" (Acts xiii. 34). We may well be content in the New Testament as in Philo to translate the phrase wherever it occurs, "It says" - with the implication that this "It says" is the same as "Scripture says," and that this "Scripture says" is the same as "God says." It is this implication that is really the fundamental fact in the case.

Endnotes:

From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. x, 1899, pp. 472-510.

"A Grammar of the New Testament Greek," Thayer's translation p. 134.

Sec. 373, 3.

Winer, Sec. 58, 9, g; p. 656 of Moulton's translation.

Blass' "Grammar of N. T. Greek"; English translation by H. St. J. Thackeray, M.A., p. 75.

So also Wandel: "James then cites the passage Prov. iii. 24, in which we must simply supply 'God' to le,gei."

As a single example, take, e. g., Oltramare, on Eph. iv. 8: "Dio. le,gei, scil. h` grafh,: In accord with the extreme frequency with which the New Testament is cited, Paul often cites by saying simply le,gei (v. 14, Rom. xv. 10, II Cor. vi. 2, Gal. iii. 16; cf. Rom. iv. 3, x. 17, I Tim. v. 18), or fhsi, (I Cor. vi. 16; cf. Heb. viii. 15), or ei;pe (I Cor. xv. 27). He understands the subject, which is understood of itself, grafh, or qeo,j (see Winer, Gr., p. 486)."

Earlier still De Wette explained the phrase in a somewhat similar way. His note on Eph. v. 8 runs: "Old Testament support. dio. le,gei] therefore (because Christ gives the gifts and according to the presupposition that all that concerns Christ is predicted in the Old Testament it is said, [heisst es] (cf. Gal. iii. 16, I Cor. vi. 16 - a formula of citation (also v. 14) like Jas. iv. 6, Acts xiii. 35, Heb. x. 5, not elsewhere found in the apostle (cf., however, II Cor. vi. 17) . . . "And again on Eph. v. 14 we read: "dio. le,gei] therefore it is said [heisst es] (in the Scriptures). Cf. iv. 8." He supposes that, in the latter passage, Paul confuses a customary application of Scripture with the very words of Scripture.

Grimm's note on the passage runs: "Instead of the rec. reading, fhsi,n, Alex. Ephr., 157, 248, 296, Compl. have fasi,n. Nevertheless the author may here return to the singular, referring to the potter before depicted (see the following verses). Or fhsi, may stand impersonally, in the sense of 'heisst es,' 'sagt man,' Win., p. 462, 6th ed.; Müller, 'Philo's Buch von d. Weltschopfung,' p. 44." Cf. further, below, p. 316.

fhsi,n is placed by Tischendorf, Tregelles and Westcott and Hort in their texts: while fasi,n is read by Lachmann and placed in their margins by Tregelles and Westcott and Hort. The former is read by aDEFGKLP, etc., by the cursives, and by the Vulgate and Coptic versions, while the latter is the reading of B, Old Latin and Syriac. Heinrici pertinently remarks (in his own "Commentary," 1887): "The reading fasi,n, which Lachmann accepts, is just as strongly witnessed by B, the Itala and Peschitto as fhsi,n (aDFG Vulg. Copt.) and it almost looks as if fhsi,n were a correction occasioned by the succeeding o` toiou/toj (against Meyer)." Alford, who continues to read fhsi,n equally pertinently on that hypothesis, remarks: "fhsi,n, taken by Winer (Ed. 6, § 58, 96), De Wette and Meyer as impersonal, ' heisst es,' 'men say'; but why should not the tij of ver. 7, and o` toiou/toj of ver. 11, be the subject?" See further below, p. 316.

[See above, p. 287.]

["He (viz., God, whose word the Scriptures are. See reff. [i. e., Rom. xii. 3, II Cor. x. 13, iv. 13, 16 = Paul only], and notes: not merely 'it,' es heisst, as, De Wette, al.: nor h` grafh,: had it been the subject it must have been expressed, as in Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17, al.) says (viz., Ps. lxviii. 18, see below: not in some Christian hymn, as Flatt and Storr - which would not agree with le,gei, nor with the treatment of the citation, which is plainly regarded as carrying the weight of Scripture.") ]

["'He saith,' sc. o` qeo,j, not h` grafh,. This latter nominative is several times inserted by St. Paul (Rom. iv. 3, ix. 17, x. 11, Gal. iv. 30, I Tim. v. 18), but is not therefore to be regularly supplied whenever there is an ellipsis (Bos, Ellips., p. 54) without reference to the nature of the passages. The surest and in fact only guide is the context; when that affords no certain hint, we fall back upon the natural subject, o` qeo,j, whose words the Scriptures are; see notes on Gal. iii. 16." See further above, p. 287. At Gal. iii. 16, Ellicott had said: "'He saith not'; not h` grafh, (Bos, Ellips., p. 54), as in Rom. xv. 10 - where the subst. is supplied from ge,graptai, ver. 9 - or to. pneu/ma (Ruck., Winer, Gr., §39, 1), which appears arbitrary, but the natural subject o` qeo,j, as in Eph. iv. 8, v. 14, and (fhsi,) I Cor. vi. 16, Heb. viii. 5. So apparently Syr., which here inserts illi after le,gei." The passage referred to in Bos (London ed. of 1825, pp. 57, 58) is as follows: "In the New Testament, where the Scripture of the Old Testament is cited, fhsi, or le,gei often occurs with h` grafh, understood - a word which actually stands in other passages: I Cor. vi. 16, Eph. v. 14, Gal. iii. 16. The same thing occurs in the Greek fathers. Marcus Eremita, in his earlier aphorisms, No. 106, ouvdei.j fhsi,, strateuo,menoj evmple,ketai tai/j tou~ bi,ou pragmatei,aij, 'No one, says (the Scripture, II Tim. ii. 4) going a-soldiering is entangled in the affairs of this life.' So, No. 134: fhsi, ga.r( o` u`yw/~n evauto.n tapeinwqh,setai, 'For, says (Scripture), he that exalteth himself shall be brought low.' There may be also understood pro re nata euvaggelisth,j, profhth,j( avpo,stoloj: but the other is more general and suits excellently. Schoettg."]

[The text actually has "ver. 14," but we venture to correct the obvious slip.]

["With le,gei God is to be supplied as subject. From this way of adducing it, it is already clear that the cited words cannot be taken from a Christian hymn in use in the Church at Ephesus (Storr, Flatt), but must belong to the sacred, God-given Scripture." Accordingly at v. 14 he says: "In accordance with the formula (le,gei, chap. iv. 8) usual in adducing Scripture, it can scarcely be doubtful that the apostle intended to cite an Old Testament passage."]

The comment there is simply: "he saith] or possibly it (the Scripture) saith."

[The parenthetical marks should doubtless be removed.]

[This sentence seems formally incomplete; probably "is frequently employed" is to be supplied from the preceding clause.]

[This scarcely gives a complete view of Winer's remark: he says that "the subject o` qe,oj) is usually contained in the context, either directly or indirectly," and proceeds to adduce cases of ellipsis.]

[What Westcott apparently says is not that "the two passages in the Epistle to the Ephesians (iv. 8, v. 14, dio. le,gei) appear to be different in kind" from the usage of Hebrews, but from the cases in the rest of the New Testament, where God is the subject of le,gei indeed, but "the reference is to words directly spoken by God." He possibly means, "different in kind" from the usage both of Hebrews and of the rest of the New Testament: but he does not seem to say this directly. See post, p. 305.]

Vol. iv, p. 13.

Op. cit., pp. 285, 286, 287.

Westcott, in loc., "it seems more natural to refer it to the collected writings of the Old Testament."

What is meant may possibly be that these two passages in Ephesians are analogous neither to the usage of Hebrews nor to that of the rest of the New Testament, but stand out by themselves. In that case Dr. Westcott probably means to take them as instances of the indefinite use of le,gei. Cf. above, p. 293.

Cf. Meyer's note: "le,gei], the subject is necessarily that of ei;rhken, ver. 34, and so, neither David (Bengel, Heinrichs and others), nor the Scriptures (Herrmann), but God, although Ps. xvi. 10 contains David's words addressed to God. But David is considered as the interpreter of God, who has put the prayer into his mouth. Comp. on Matt. xix. 5."

Cf. Meyer's note: "fhsi,n], who it is that says it, is self-evident, namely, God, the utterances of Scripture being His words, even when they may be spoken through another, as Gen. ii. 24 was through Adam. Comp. on Matt. xix. 5. Similarly Gal. iii. 16, Eph. iv. 8, Heb. viii. 5, I Cor. xv. 27.  `H grafh,, which is usually supplied here, would need to be suggested by the context, as in Rom. xv. 10. Ruckert arbitrarily prefers to. pneu/ma." "To take it impersonally, 'it is said' as in II Cor. x. 10, according to the well-known usage in the classics, would be without warrant from any other instance of Paul's quotations from Scripture. Comp. Winer, Gr., p. 486 [English translation, 656]; Buttmann, Neut. Gr., p. 117 [English translation, 134]."

For he supposes the words quoted in i. 10 to be addressed not to Christ, but to God: "God through His Spirit so speaks in the Psalmist that words not directly addressed to Christ find their fulfillment in Him."

So (according to Lünemann), Dindorf, Schulz, Böhme, Bleek, Ebrard Alford, Woerner: add Lowrie, Riggenbach.

Cf. Deissmann, "Bibelstudien," 109; "Neue Bibelstudien," 77: and also for the implications, Kuyper, "Encyclopædia of Sacred Theology," pp. 433-435 and 444-445.

§ 373, 1. obs., 1.

"Ausfuhr. Gram.," ii. 30 (§ 352).

Jelf, § 373, 7: Kuhner, l. c.: Jannaris ("A Historical Greek Grammar," 1161 seq.), treats the omitted subject no otherwise than Kuhner.

"Syntax.," 419.

These references are added in a note: "Von fhsi, in späten manche nach Bentley, wie Dav. ad Cic. Tus. i. 39; Wytt. ad Plut., T. vi, p. 791. Von eivpe, moi, Heind. ad Euthyd., 29."

Cf. Grimm's note, given above, p. 289.

Meyer, in loc., continues to read fhsi,. He says, "It is said, impersonal, as often with the Greeks. See Bernhardy, p. 419. The reading fasi,n (Lachmann, following B. Vulg.), is a rash correction. Comp. Fritzsche, ad Thesmoph., p. 189; Buttmann, Neut. Gram., p. 119 [English translation, 136]." So in essence most commentators, including Flatt, Storr, Krause, De Wette, Kling, Waite. Rückert more warily comments: "fhsi,n is here properly recognized as a formula of adduction, without reference to the number of those speaking. See Winer (304)." Cf. above, p. 289.

P. 1665a (Oxford, 1883).

Whiston, Reiske, Weber.

We are indebted to Prof. S. S. Orris, of Princeton University, for suggestions in preparing this paragraph. He permits us to add that, in his opinion, "fhsi, is never equivalent to the general, indefinite they say or it is said."

Reiske, p. 477; Dindorf, ii. 23.

Reiske and Schaefer, vi. 162.

iii. §§ 41, 42 (p. 122); "Oratores Attici," v. 214.

Reiske-Schaefer, v. 579.

Op. cit., p. 581.

P. 119 F (Wyttenbach, I. ii. 470).

P. 530 (20-30).

I, ii. 470.

VI, ii. 791.

Phaedo, 401 B. (115): "in these arrayed, [the soul] is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her time comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or other. Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls (evme. de. nu/n h;dh kalei/( fai,h a;n avnh.r tragiko.vj h` eivmarme,nh)." The other passages adduced witness only to the currency of the phrase h` evmarme,nh porei,a. But the language of both Plutarch and Plato would seem to imply that the "calling" is certainly a part of the quotation.

Præcepta Sanit. Tuend., 135 B., ouv kata, ge th.n evmh.n( e;fh( gnw,mhn. Wytt.: "e;fh notat alterius dictum ut alibi fhsi,, de quo diximus, p. 119 F."

Cf. Heinrici as above, p. 481; and Blass, "Gram. of New Testament Greek," English translation, p. 2.

“Epicteti Dissertationes," etc. (Lipsiæ, 1894), Index, pp. 701, 702.

We purposely use Long's translation, which, in all these instances, proceeds on the theory that the fhsi, is Epictetus' own.

The matter of this interposition is investigated for Plato by Stallbaum, p. 472 D., 580 D. - where he seems to have collected all the instances of interposed fame,n in Plato. Cf. also Bornemann and Sauppe on Xenophon's Memorab., iii. 5, 13, and the indices of Schenkl on Arrian-Epictetus and Thieme-Sturz on Xenophon (sub. voc. fa,nai).

On Acts xxv. 5, Blass has this note: "5 fit transitus ex or. obliqua in rectam, ut I. 4 al; hinc fhsi,n interpositum ut I. 4 ß.," i. e., in the Western text of I, 4, which reads: "'Which ye heard,' says he, 'from my mouth."' The interposition of a "he says," or some similar phrase, to keep the consciousness of the hearer or reader bright on the fact that the words before him are quoted words is, of course, a general linguistic and not a specifically Greek usage. It is found in all languages. A Hebrew instance, for example, may be found in I Kgs. ii. 4.

Schenkl catalogues in the "Discourses" of Epictetus two cases of interposited le,gei, quite in the style of fhsi, - iii. 19, 1 and "Fragment," xxi. 10 - but in both cases the subject is expressed.

In "De Vita Mosis," iii. 23.

"Philo and Holy Scripture," p. xlv.

Op. cit., p. xxv.

Vol. ii. p. 27.

The reverent use of an indefinite may be illustrated from the mode of citation adopted in Heb. ii. 6 - "one hath somewhere testified " - a mode of citation not uncommon in Philo [as, for example, de Temul. (ed. Mang., i. 365), ei=pe ga,r pou, tij (i. e., Abraham, Gen. xx. 12), and other examples in Bleek, II, i. 239]. Delitzsch correctly explains: "The citation is thus introduced with a special solemnity, the author naming neither the place whence he takes it nor the original speaker, but making use (as Philo frequently) of the vague term pou, tij, so that the important testimony itself becomes only the more conspicuous, like a grand pictured figure in the plainest, narrowest frame."

The matter is approached in a sensible and helpful way by Viteau, in his "Étude sur le Grec du N. T.: sujet, complement et attribute" (1896), p. 61. He is treating of the subject to be mentally supplied, i. e., of the case where the reader may be fairly counted upon to supply the subject, and he remarks (inter alia): "76 (9). There is a kind of mental subject peculiar to the New Testament. When events of the Old Testament are spoken of, these events are supposed to be known to the reader or the hearer, who is invited to supply the subject of the verb mentally. . . . 77 (10). There is still another kind of mental subject peculiar to the New Testament and kindred to the preceding. In the citations made by the New Testament the subject is often lacking, as well for the verb which announces the citation as for the verb in the citation itself. The reader is supposed to recognize the passage and is invited to supply the subject. (a) For the verbs which announce the citation there occur as subjects: o` qe,oj, Acts ii. 17; o` profh,thj, Acts vii. 48; Dauei.d, Rom. iv. 6; Mwu?sh/j, Rom. x. 19;  `Hsai,aj, Rom. xv. 12; h` grafh,, Gal. iv. 30. When the verb has no subject, the reader is to supply it mentally: Acts xiii. 34, 35, ei=rhken and le,gei, the subject is o` qe,oj, according to the LXX., Es. lv. 3, and Ps. xv. 10; Rom. xv. 10, pa,lin le,gei (o` Mwu?sh/j), according to Deut. xxxii. 43; Eph. iv. 8, le,gei (o` qeo,j or Dauei.d), according to Ps. lxvii. 19; Eph. v. 14, dio. le,gei, those who regard the passage as imitated or partially cited from the Old Testament give  `Hsai,aj as the subject of le,gei, according to Isa. lx. 1, 2, but if we regard this passage as containing some kw/la of an early hymn (in imitation of Isaiah) we must supply as the subject tij, 'it is said,' 'it is sung' (96a); Heb. viii. 5, fhsi,n (o` qe,oj), according to Ex. xxv. 40." We do not accord, of course, with the remark on Eph. v. 14; and we miss in Viteau's remarks the expected reference to the deeper fact in the case.

Jesus' Mission, According to His Own Testimony¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

(Synoptics)

Under the title of "'I came': the express self-testimony of Jesus to the purpose of His sending and His coming," Adolf Harnack has published a study of the sayings of Jesus reported in the Synoptic Gospels, which are introduced by the words "I came" or, exceptionally, "I was sent," or their equivalents.² These, says he, are "programmatic" sayings, and deserve as such a separate and comprehensive study, such as has not heretofore been given to them. In his examination of them, he pursues the method of, first, gathering the relevant sayings together and subjecting them severally to a critical and exegetical scrutiny; and, then, drawing out from the whole body of them in combination - Jesus' own testimony to His mission.

It goes without saying that, in his critical scrutiny of the passages, Harnack proceeds on the same presuppositions which govern his dealing with the Synoptic tradition in general; that is to say, on the presuppositions of the "Liberal" criticism, which he applies, however, here as elsewhere, with a certain independence. It goes without saying also, therefore, that the passages emerge from his hands in a very mauled condition; brought as far as it is possible to bring them, even with violence, into line with the "Liberal" view of what the mission of Jesus ought to have been. It is reassuring, however, to observe that, even so, they cannot be despoiled of their central testimony. That Jesus proclaimed Himself to have come - to have been sent - on a mission of salvation, of salvation of the lost, Harnack is constrained to present as their primary content. By the side of this, it is true, he places a second purpose - to fulfil the law, that is, to fill it out, to complete it. Accordingly, he says, Jesus' self-testimony is to the effect that "the purpose of His coming, and therewith His significance, are given in this - that He is at once Saviour and Lawgiver." Behind both lies, no doubt, love, as the propulsive cause - "I came to minister" - and yet Jesus is perfectly aware that His purpose is not to be attained without turmoil and strife - "I came to cast fire upon the land and to bring a sword." These sayings, he remarks in conclusion, contain very few words; and yet is not really everything said in them? Shall we call it an accident that "under the superscription 'I came,' the purpose, the task, the manner of Jesus' work, all seem to be really exhaustively stated, and even the note of a bitter and plaintive longing is not lacking"?

It seems to be well worth while to follow Harnack's example and to make this series of sayings in which our Lord's testimony to the nature of His mission has been preserved for us in the Synoptic record, the object of a somewhat careful examination. Approaching them free from the "Liberal" presuppositions which condition Harnack's dealing with them, we may hope to obtain from them a more objective understanding than he has been able to attain of how Jesus really thought of His mission.

I

Our differences with Harnack begin with even so simple a matter as the collection of the passages. He discovers eight, as follows: Mt. x. 34 ff. = Lk. xii. 51, 53; Mk. ii. 17 = Mt. ix. 13 = Lk. v. 32; Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28; Lk. xii. 49; Lk. xix. 10; Lk. ix. 56; Mt. v. 17, Mt. xv. 24. This list, however, seems to us to require a certain amount of correction.

(1) We are compelled to omit from it Lk. ix. 56, as, despite the vigorous defence of its genuineness by Theodor Zahn,³ certainly spurious.

Harnack's argument in its favor suffers somewhat from a confusion of it with some neighboring interpolations. Because he supposes himself to discover certain Lucan characteristics in these, he concludes that this too is Lucan in origin. Because some of them appear to have stood in Marcion's Gospel he assumes that this also stood in that Gospel. It is a matter of complete indifference, meanwhile, whether it stood in Marcion's Gospel or not. It may be urged, to be sure, that it is easier to suppose that it was stricken out of Luke because of Marcion's misuse of it, than that it was taken over into Luke from the Gospel of that "first-born of Satan." Meanwhile, there is no decisive evidence that it stood in Marcion's Gospel;⁴ and, if it had a place there, there is no reason to suppose that it was taken over thence into Luke. It was, on the contrary, already current in certain Lucan texts before Marcion.⁵

The method of criticism which is employed by Harnack here, - a method with which Hilgenfeld used to vex us and of which Harnack and Bousset and Conybeare seem to have served themselves especially heirs⁶ - is, let us say it frankly, thoroughly vicious. Its one effort is at all costs to get behind the total formal transmission, and in the attempt to do this it is tempted to prefer to the direct evidence, however great in mass and conclusive in effect, any small item of indirect evidence which may be unearthed, however weak in its probative force or ambiguous in its bearing. The fundamental principle of this method of criticism naturally does not commend itself to those who have made the criticism of texts their business. Even an Eduard Norden sounds a salutary warning against it,⁷ and the professional critics of the New Testament text reject it with instructive unanimity.⁸ Nobody doubts that wrong readings were current in the second century and it goes but a little way towards showing that a reading is right to show that it was current in the second century. Many of the most serious corruptions which the text of the New Testament has suffered had already entered it in the first half of that century. The matter of importance is not to discover which of the various readings at any given passage chances to appear earliest, by a few years, in the citations of that passage which have happened to be preserved to us in extant writings. It is to determine which of them is a genuine part of the text as it came from its author's hands. For the determination of this question Harnack's method of criticism advances us directly not a single step, and indirectly (through, that is, the better ascertainment of the history of the transmission of the text) but a little way.

When, now Harnack deserts the textual question and suggests that it is of little importance whether the passage be a genuine portion of the Gospel of Luke or not, since in any event it comes from an ancient source, he completely misses the state of the case. This professed saying of Jesus has no independent existence. It exists only as transmitted in Luke's Gospel. If it is spurious there, we have no evidence whatever that it was spoken by Jesus. It comes to us as a saying of Jesus' only on the faith of its genuineness in Luke. Falling out of Luke it falls out of existence. There is no reason to suppose that it owes its origin to anything else than the brooding mind of some devout scribe - or, if we take the whole series of interpolations in verses 54-56 together, we may say to the brooding minds of a series of scribes, supplementing the work one of another - whose pen - or pens - filled out more or less unconsciously the suggestions of the text which was in process of copying. The manuscripts are crowded with such complementary interpolations, - E. S. Buchanan, for example, has culled many instructive examples from Latin manuscripts⁹ - and none could bear more clearly on its face the characteristic marks of the class than those now before us. "And when His disciples, James and John saw, they said, Lord, wilt Thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven and consume them [as [also] Elias did]? But He turned and rebuked them and said, ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. [[For] the Son of Man came not to destroy [men's] lives, but to save them]."

(2) As an offset to the omission of Lk. ix. 56 we should insert into the list Mk. i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43.

This passage Harnack rejects on the ground that no reference is made to the mission of Jesus in Mark's "for to this end came I out," His coming forth from Capernaum alone being meant; while Luke's specific, "for therefore was I sent" is due merely to a misunderstanding on Luke's part of Mark's statement. The major premiss of the conclusion thus reached is obviously a particular hypothesis of the composition of the Synoptic Gospels and especially of the relation of Luke to Mark. On this hypothesis, Mark is the original "Narrative-Source," and the matter common to Luke and Mark is derived directly by Luke from Mark. We cannot share this hypothesis: the matter presented by both Luke and Mark seems to us rather to be derived by both alike from a common source (call it the "Primitive Mark" - Urmarkus - if you like) underlying both. But assuredly no hypothesis could be more infelicitous as an explanation of the relation of Luke to Mark in our present passage. If Luke is here drawing directly on Mark, he certainly uses a very free hand. The same general sense could scarcely be conveyed by two independent writers more diversely. This is apparent even to the reader of the English version, for the difference extends to the whole literary manner, the very conception and presentation of the incident. It is much more striking in the Greek, for the difference permeates so thoroughly the language employed by the two writers as to approach the limit of the possible. In the verse which particularly concerns us, for example, it is literally true that except at most the two words, translated diversely in the English version, in Mark "to this end," in Luke "therefore,"10 no single word is the same in the two accounts. If there is anything clear from the literary standpoint, it is clear that Luke is not here drawing upon Mark but is giving an independent account. In that case, Luke's report of what our Lord said cannot be summarily set aside as a mere misunderstanding of Mark.

It may still be said, of course, that what Luke gives us is a deliberate alteration of Mark. Something like this appears to be the meaning of C. G. Montefiore, who writes: "Luke's 'I was sent' (i. e. by God) is a grandiose and inaccurate interpretation of Mark's 'I came forth' (from the city)." Alfred Loisy traces at length what he conceives to be the transformation of the simple record of facts given by Mark into the announcement of a principle by Luke. "The difference between the historical tradition and the theological point of view," he remarks, "appears very clearly in the words of Christ; 'Let us go elsewhere . . . it is for this that I came out'; and 'It must needs be that I proclaim to other towns the kingdom of God - I was sent for that."' It is the same general conception that underlies H. A. W. Meyer's explanation that Mark's "expression is original, but had already acquired in the tradition that Luke here follows a doctrinal development with a higher meaning." And the step from this is not a long one to H. J. Holtzmann's representation of Luke's "I was sent" as a transition-step to the doctrinal language of John. Luke's language, however, bears no appearance of being a correction, conscious or unconscious, either of Mark's or anybody else's statement: it looks rather very much like an independent account of a well-transmitted saying of Jesus'. And we are moving ever further from the actual state of the case, in proportion as we introduce into our explanation the principle of a developing tradition with its implication of lapse of time. There is no decisive reason for supposing that Luke wrote later than Mark. And it is no less unjustified to describe his point of view than his Gospel as later than Mark's. The two Gospels were written near the same time, - Mark's being probably, indeed, a few years the younger."11 They came out of the same circle, the missionary circle of Paul. And they reflect the same tradition in the same stage of development, if we may speak of stages of development regarding a tradition in which we can trace no growth whatever. If the element of time be eliminated, and we speak merely of differing temperaments, there might be more propriety in attributing a more theological tendency to the one than to the other. When a matter of historical accuracy is involved, however, Luke surely is not a historian who can be lightly set aside in his statements of fact. His representation that Jesus spoke here of His divine mission and not merely of His purpose in leaving the city that morning, makes on purely historical grounds as strong a claim upon our credence as any contradictory representation which may be supposed to be found in Mark, especially as it was confessedly no unwonted thing for Jesus to speak of His divine mission.

In point of fact, however, there is no difference of representation between Luke and Mark. Mark too reports Jesus as speaking of His divine mission. The possibility that he does so is allowed by Harnack himself, when he writes: "The probability is altogether preponderant that in the words of Jesus (Mark i. 38), 'Let us go elsewhere into the next towns that I may preach there also; for to this end came I forth,' the 'came I forth' (evxh/lqon) has no deeper sense, but takes up again the 'went out' (evxh/lqen) of verse 35: 'And in the morning, a great while before day, He rose up and went out [from Capernaum] and departed."' Others, making the same general contention, open the door to this possibility still wider. C. G. Montefiore comments: "'I came out' - i. e., from the city. But the phrase is odd. Does it mean 'from heaven'? In that case it would be a late 'theological' reading." In similar doubt Johannes Weiss writes: "It is not altogether clear whether He means 'For this purpose I left the house so early,' or 'For this purpose I have come out from God - come into the world' (it is thus that Luke understood the text)." Mark's meaning is, then, not so clearly that Jesus referred merely to His coming out from Capernaum, nor indeed is it quite so simple, as it is sometimes assumed to be.

Harnack is scarcely right in any event in making the "I came out" of verse 38 both refer to Jesus' leaving Capernaum and resume the "He went out" of verse 35. It is not at all likely that the "He went out" of verse 35 refers to His leaving Capernaum. The statements as to Jesus' movements in verse 35 are remarkably circumstantial: they tell us that Jesus, having got up¹² before dawn, went out and went forth to a desert place. It is not the "went out" (evxh/lqen) but the "went forth" (avph/lqen) which refers to His departure from Capernaum: the "went out" means that He "went out of doors," "out of the house." This is very generally recognized. It is recognized, for example by both Loisy and Montefiore, as well as by Holtzmann before them, all of whom understand the "going out" of verse 38 of "leaving the town." It is recognized also by Johannes Weiss, who saves the back reference to it of verse 38 by making the "I came out" of that verse too mean "from the house." Surely, however, it would be too trivial to make Jesus say: "It was for this reason that I left the house so early this morning - that I might preach also in the neighboring towns." Was He to visit all those towns that day, and therefore needed to make an early start? Mark apparently means us to understand, on the contrary, that the reason of His leaving the house so early was that He might find retirement for prayer. The "coming out" of verse 38 is then, in any case, not a resumption of that of verse 35, but a new "coming out" not previously mentioned. What reason is there for referring it back to the "going forth" (avph/lqen, "departed") from Capernaum of verse 35? Would it be much less trivial to make Jesus say that He came out from Capernaum so early that morning to preach throughout Galilee than that He came out of the house for that purpose? The solemn declaration, "For to this end came I out" must have a deeper meaning than this. In point of fact He did "come" in this deeper meaning to preach; and He did fulfil this purpose and preached throughout Galilee as Mark had just duly recorded (i. 14). Is it not much more natural that He should have said this here, and that His biographer should have recorded that He said it, than that He should have said and been recorded as saying that He came out of Capernaum that morning early with this purpose in view? We cannot but think G. Wohlenberg right in pronouncing such an understanding of the declaration "superficial." Jesus seems clearly to be making here a solemn reference to His divine mission.¹³

(3) There is another passage with Harriack's dealing with which we cannot agree. This is Luke xii. 49-53.

Harnack rends this closely knit paragraph into fragments; discards two of its five constituent sentences altogether; and, separating the other three into two independent sayings, identifies one of these (verses 51, 53) with Mt. x. 34 ff. and leaves the other (verses 49, 50) off to itself. This drastic treatment of the passage seems to have been suggested to him by the comment on it of Julius Wellhausen.¹⁴ This comment runs as follows:

The three first verses do not square with one another. The fire which Jesus longs for is an abiding, universal effect, the baptism of death a passing personal experience, the prospect of which he dreads. What stands here is not: My death is the necessary precondition of my great historical effect. Rather, the declarations of verse 49 and verse 50 are presented as parallel, although they are not so. Just as little is verse 50 homogeneous with verse 51. But neither do verses 49 and 51 agree together; the wished-for fire can have nothing to do with the terrible division of families. The whole of verse 50 and the second half of verse 49 are lacking in Marcion. In their absence, a connection would no doubt be instituted; the fire would be the inward war, and Luke would be reduced to Matthew (x. 34, 35). I have, however, no confidence whatever in this reading of Marcion's, but rather believe that Luke has brought together wholly disparate things according to some sort of association of ideas.

This slashing criticism Harnack reproduces in its main features, as follows:

Luke would undoubtedly have these two verses [49 and 50] considered as fellows: they are bound together by de,, are framed similarly, and close even with a rhyme. But their contents are so diverse as to interpose a veto on their conjunction. It has been in vain, moreover, that the expositors have tried to build a bridge between the two verses. Every bridge is wrecked on the consideration that the first verse refers to the action of Jesus, the second to something which threatens Him; for it is impossible to think in the second verse of baptism in general (Jesus' own baptism of suffering is meant, see Mk. x. 39), since the words, "How am I straitened, etc.," would then be wholly unintelligible or would have to be explained in a very artificial manner. The contention also that the eschatological idea connects the two verses is wrong; for the futures which the two verses contemplate are different. Add that the "fire" of the first verse has nothing to do with the "baptism with fire"; for Jesus could not say of that fire that He came "to cast" it upon the earth. It is therefore to be held that Luke who often follows external associations of ideas, has been led to put the two verses transmitted to him together by the similarity of their structure, and because some connection between fire and baptism hovered before his mind. He has similarly again made an arbitrary connection in the case of the next verse, when he adjoins the saying about peace and sword of which we have already spoken. This saying too can scarcely have been spoken in the same breath with ours, precisely because it exhibits a certain relationship with it but is differently oriented.

The superficiality of this criticism is flagrant. It owes whatever plausibility it may possess to the care which is taken not to go below the surface. So soon as we abstract ourselves from the mere vocables and attend to the thought the logical unity of the paragraph becomes even striking. Even in form of statement, however, the passage is clearly a unity. Harnack himself calls attention to the structure of verses 49 and 50 as a plain intimation that they form a pair in their author's intention, and the bridge which he desiderates to connect them he himself indicates in the "but" by which the author, before the expositors busied themselves with the matter, expressly joins them. When Jesus had given expression to the pleasure that it would give Him to see the fire He had come to cast into the world already kindled, it was altogether natural that He should add an intimation of what it was that held this back - He must die first. And nothing could be more natural than that He should proceed then to speak further of the disturbance which His coming should create. It would be difficult to find a series of five verses more inseparately knit together. That such rents should exist between them as are asserted, and they be invisible to H. J. Holtzmann, say, or Johannes Weiss, neither of whom is commonly either unable or unwilling to see flaws in the evangelical reports of Jesus' sayings is, to say the least, very remarkable; and a unitary understanding of the passage which commends itself in its general features alike to these expositors and, say, Theodor Zahn, can scarcely be summarily cast aside as impossible. It is quite instructive to observe that the lack of harmony between verses 49 and 50, which is the hinge of the disintegrating criticism of the passage, is so little obvious to, say, Johannes Weiss, that it is precisely to the combination of these two verses that he directs us to attend if we wish really to understand Jesus' state of mind with reference to His death. "The parallelism of the fire and baptism, preserved only by Luke," he urges, "is one of Jesus' most important sayings, because we can perceive from it how Jesus thought of His end." "How Jesus really thought of His future," he says in another place, "a declaration like Luke xii. 49 f., perhaps shows."15

Looking, thus, upon Lk. xii. 49-53 as a closely knit unit, it would be difficult for us to accept Harnack's identification of Lk. xii. 51, 53, torn from its context, with Mt. x. 34-36, also removed from its context; and the assignment of the "saying," thus preserved by both Matthew and Luke, to the hypothetical "Discourse-Source," which it is now fashionable to cite by the symbol "Q." Even apart from this difficulty, however, the equation of the two passages would not commend itself to us. The phraseology in which they are severally cast is distinctly different. The decisive matter, however, is the difference in the settings into which they are severally put by the two evangelists. Both of the sections in which they severally occur, confessedly present difficulties to the harmonist, and the dispositions which harmonists have made of them in their arrangement of the evangelical material vary greatly.¹⁶ It seems to be reasonably clear, however, that in the tenth chapter of Matthew and the twelfth chapter of Luke we are dealing with two quite distinct masses of material, spoken by our Lord on separate occasions. We may be sorry to forego any advantage which may be thought to accrue from the assignment of one of the sayings of Jesus in which He speaks of His mission to the hypothetical "Discourse-Source."17 But we cannot admit that there is involved any loss of authenticity for the two sayings in question. We see no reason to suppose that the source or sources, from which the two evangelists drew severally the sayings they have reported to us, compared unfavorably, in point of trustworthiness as vehicles of the tradition of Jesus' sayings, with the hypothetical "Discourse-Source," from which they both sometimes draw in common. On the whole the certainty that Jesus said what is here attributed to Him is increased by His being credibly reported to have said it twice in very similar language and to entirely the same effect.

We therefore amend Harnack's list at this point also, and instead of listing the two sayings as Mt. x. 34-36 = Lk. xii. 51, 53, and Lk. xii. 49, 50, give them as Mt. x. 34-36 and Lk. xii. 49-53.

As the result of this survey of the material, we find ourselves, like Harnack, with eight "sayings" at our disposal, although these eight are not precisely the same as those which he lists. Arranged, as nearly as the chronological order can be made out, in the order in which they were spoken, they are as follows: Mk. i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43; Mt. v. 17; Mk. ii. 17 = Mt. ix. 13 = Lk. v. 32; Mt. x. 34 f.; Mt. xv. 24; Lk. xii. 49 ff.; Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28; Lk. xix. 10.18 Five of these sayings are found in Matthew; four in Luke; and three in Mark. As no one of them is found only in Matthew and Luke we need not insist that any of them is derived from the hypothetical " DiscourseSource" (Q), to which are commonly assigned the portions of the Synoptics found in Matthew and Luke but lacking in Mark. As all of these sayings are found in either Matthew or in Luke (and one in both) there seems to be no good reason, however, why some (or all) of them may not possibly have had a place in a document from which both Matthew and Luke are supposed to draw.¹⁹ One is found in all three Gospels, one in Mark and Matthew, and one in Mark and Luke. These three at least, two of them very confidently in the form in which we have them, and the third (Mk. i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43) very possibly in one of the forms in which it has come to us, may be thought to have stood in the hypothetical "NarrativeSource" (Urmarkus). And it is possible that all the others may have stood in it too, since all the Gospels draw from it. Three are found in Matthew alone and two in Luke alone. These are at no disadvantage in point of trustworthiness in comparison with their companions which occur in more than one Gospel. Apart from the fact that they may have stood in any source from which their companions were drawn but did not chance to be taken from it by more than one evangelist, the determination that some of the sources used by the evangelists were drawn upon by more than one of them has no tendency to depreciate the value of those which were drawn upon by only one. No doubt the hypothetical "Narration-Source" which lies behind all three of the Synoptics is a very old document and is very highly commended to us by the confident dependence of them all upon it. There is no sound reason for assigning any of these Gospels to a date later than the sixties, and Luke and Matthew may easily have come from a considerably earlier date. A document underlying them all must have existed in the fifties and may be carried back almost to any date subsequent to the facts it records. But much the same may be said of a document underlying any one of the Synoptics: a document drawn on by one of them only may be just as old and just as authoritative as one drawn on by all of them. The matter of primary importance does not concern the particular hypothetical document - they are all hypothetical - from which it may be supposed that our Gospels have derived this saying or that. The disentangling of the hypothetical sources from which they may be supposed to have derived the several items of their narratives is a mere literary matter. We know nothing of these sources after we have disentangled them except that they all are earlier than the Gospels which used them; and that when the contents of each are gathered together and scrutinized, the contents of them all prove to be, from the historical point of view, all of a piece. This is the fundamental fact concerning them which requires recognition. The tradition of Jesus' sayings and doings, gathered out of earlier sources (written or oral) and preserved by the Synoptic Gospels, is a homogeneous tradition, and the original tradition. Behind it there lies nothing but the facts. Whether written down in the fifties or the forties or the thirties: whether some short interval separates its writing from the facts it records - say ten or twenty years - or no interval at all; no trace whatever exists of any earlier tradition of any kind behind it. It is for us at least the absolute beginning. In these circumstances we are justified in holding with confidence to all the sayings of Jesus transmitted to us in these Gospels. It is not that we cannot get behind these Gospels: it is that we can get behind them and find behind them nothing but what is in them.²⁰

The term used by our Lord in these passages to express the fact of His mission is normally the simple "I came" (h=lqon, Mk. ii. 17, Mt. v. 17, ix. 13, Mt. x. 34, Lk. xii. 49; cf. h=lqen, Mk. x. 45, Mt. xx. 28). But variations from this "technical term" occur. Once, after it has been once employed, it is varied on repetition to "the more elegant" (as Harnack calls it) term for public manifestation, "I came forth" (paregeno,mhn, Lk. xii. 49, 51). Once, in a parallel, the tense is changed to "I have come" (evlh,luqa, Lk. v. 32). Once the compound "I came out" (evxh/lqon, Mk. i. 38) is used. And in two passages, "I was sent" (Lk. iv. 43, Mt. xv. 24; cf. Mk. ix. 37 = Lk. ix. 48, Mt. x. 40, Lk. x. 16) takes the place of "I came." In the majority of cases our Lord speaks directly of Himself as the one whose mission He is describing, in the first person: "I came," "I was sent," "I came out." In a few instances, however, He speaks of Himself in the third person under the designation of "the Son of Man" - "the Son of Man came" (Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28, Lk. xix. 10). There is a difference also in the nature and, so to say, the profundity of the reference to His mission. Sometimes He is speaking only of His personal ministry in "the days of His flesh," and the manner of its performance (Mk. i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43, Mt. xv. 24, cf. Lk. xix. 10). Sometimes His mind is on the circumstantial effects of the execution of His mission (Mt. x. 34 ff., Lk. xii. 49 ff.). Sometimes the horizon widens and the ultimate ethical result of His work is indicated (Mt. v. 17). Sometimes the declaration cuts to the bottom and the fundamental purpose of His mission is announced with respect both to the object sought and the means of its accomplishment (Mk. ii. 17 = Mt. ix. 13 = Lk. v. 32; Lk. xix. 10; Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28): "I came not to call the righteous but sinners"; "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost"; "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." It should not pass without notice that it is in these last instances only that our Lord deserts the simple form of statement with the personal pronoun, "I came," and substitutes for it the solemn declaration, "the Son of Man came."

II

In investigating the meaning of these sayings severally it is not necessary to follow carefully the chronological order of their utterance. In a broad sense they increase in richness of contents as our Lord's ministry develops itself. It was not until late in His ministry, for example, that our Lord spoke insistently of His death and His allusions to His mission in His later ministry reflect this change. Nevertheless these sayings do not grow uniformly in richness as time goes on, and it will be more convenient to arrange them arbitrarily in order of relative richness of content than strictly to follow the chronological sequence. The order to be pursued has been suggested at the close of the immediately preceding paragraph.

1

Mk. i. 38: And He saith unto them, Let us go elsewhere into the next towns, that I may preach there also; for to this end came I out.
Lk. iv. 43: But He said unto them, I must preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for to this end was I sent.

As reported by Mark, in this saying Jesus declares His mission in the briefest and simplest terms possible. It was just to preach. "For to this end came I out," He says; namely "to preach."21 The context intimates, it is true, that this preaching was to be done in the first instance in the immediately neighboring towns: "Let us go elsewhere into the next towns that I may preach there also." It lay in the nature of the case that any preaching intended to extend over the land should begin with the nearest towns, and that these therefore should be particularly in mind in the announcement. But that the preaching was not intended to be limited to these "next" towns²² is clear enough in itself, and is made quite plain (so far as the understanding of the reporter, at least, is concerned) by the next verse, which tells us what Jesus did by way of fulfilling the mission which He here announces: "And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee,²³ preaching and casting out devils." Luke in the parallel, extends the boundaries even further. "And He was preaching in the synagogues of Judaea," he says, - but without prefixing the emphatic "all." By "Judaea " he means "Palestine as a whole,"24 but, as the omission of the "all" already advises us, he does not intend to assert that there was no part of Palestine to which Jesus did not carry His Gospel, so much as that His mission was distinctively to Palestine.²⁵ In a word, Jesus announces His mission here as a mission to the Jewish people: He came out, was sent, to preach to the Jews.

The emphasis thus laid on preaching as the substance of Jesus' mission does not, however, so set preaching in contrast, say, to the working of miracles as to exclude the latter from any place in His mission. It has become fashionable in one school of expositors to see in the accounts which the evangelists give here a more or less complete misunderstanding of Jesus' motives in leaving Capernaum, although these are supposed nevertheless to shimmer through the narrative sufficiently to guide "the seeing eye."26 When Jesus is represented as moved by a desire to preach in other places, less than half the truth, it is said, is told. What really determined His action was a desire to get away from Capernaum. And the reason for His desire to get away from Capernaum was that a thaumaturgical function had been thrust upon Him there. He fled from this in the night (Mk. i. 35). What He really announced in the words here misleadingly reported, was that His mission was to preach, not to work miracles. So far from permitting this to shimmer through them however, the narratives of the evangelists flatly contradict it. Mark, for example, tells us that in leaving Capernaum Jesus did not leave His miracles behind Him: "And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching, and casting out devils." The parallel in Matthew (iv. 23) enlarges on this: "And He went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness among the people." It may be easy to say, as Johannes Weiss for example does say, that such statements do not correspond with what really happened, and that Luke in his parallel account (iv. 44) has done well to omit them. But it is not so easy thus lightly to erase, not a couple of remarks merely, but the entire presentation of Jesus' work by the evangelists. According to their account, not merely at Capernaum in the beginning, but throughout His whole ministry, "mighty works" were as characteristic a feature of Jesus' ministry as His mighty word itself.²⁷ There is not the least justification in the narratives themselves, moreover, for the attempted rereading of their implications. There is no suggestion in them that Jesus was " betrayed into thaumaturgical works" at Capernaum. There is no hint that He was shocked or troubled by His abounding miracles there, or that He looked upon them as a scattering of His energies, or a diversion of Him from His proper task or as making a draft upon His strength. They are represented rather as His crown of glory. He is not represented as fleeing from them and as endeavoring to confine Himself to activities of a different nature. He is represented rather as looking upon them as the seal of His mission and His incitement to its full accomplishment. "I must needs preach in the other towns": "that I may preach there also." Not a contrast with His work at Capernaum, but a repetition of it, is what He hopes for elsewhere. The whole contrast lies between Capernaum and the rest of the land: between a local and an itinerant ministry. What He had done in Capernaum, He felt the divine necessity of His mission driving Him to do also in the other cities. And therefore "He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee preaching, and casting out devils." The ground of Jesus' leaving Capernaum lay, shortly, as Holtzmann recognizes it to be Luke's purpose to intimate, solely in "the universality of His mission."28

What Jesus came out to preach in fulfilment of His mission Mark's statement does not tell us. It says simply, "I came out to preach." But this is not to leave it in doubt. It was too well understood to require statement. Mark had just told his readers summarily that "after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the glad-tidings of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe in the glad-tidings" (cf. Mt. iv. 17). When he tells them now that Jesus announced His mission to be to preach, it is perfectly evident that it is just this preaching which he has in mind. The parallel in Luke declares this in so many words. "I must needs," Jesus is there reported as saying, "proclaim the glad-tidings of the kingdom of God, for to this end was I sent." The accent of necessity is here sounded. It were impossible that Jesus should do anything other than preach just this Gospel of the kingdom of God. His mission to this end lays a compulsion upon Him: He was sent to do precisely this, and needs must do it.²⁹ Jesus' mission is to preach a Gospel, the Gospel of the kingdom of God.

For Jesus so to describe His mission, clearly was to lay claim to the Messianic function. Preaching the glad-tidings of the kingdom of God is the Messianic proclamation. The accompanying miracles are the signs of the Messiah. Accordingly when the Baptist sent to Jesus inquiring, "Art thou He that Cometh or look we for another?" Jesus replied by pointing to these things: "the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the glad-tidings preached to them."30 "He that Cometh" is a Messianic title, and therefore, as Harnack reminds us, those who heard Jesus say, "For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord," understood Him to be speaking of the Messiah, and would have understood that just the same if the words "in the name of the Lord" had been wanting.³¹ The question lies near at hand, accordingly, whether Jesus merely by speaking of "coming," "being sent," does not lay claim to Messianic dignity. In that case those terms would be used pregnantly. The Baptist "came," neither eating nor drinking, as truly as Jesus "came" eating and drinking (Mt. xi. 18; cf. xxi. 32). The prophet is "sent" as truly as the Messiah (Lk. iv. 26; Mt. xiii. 37 = Lk. xiii. 34; Jno. i. 6, 8, iii. 28). What the words openly declare is a consciousness of divine mission; and the two modes of expression differ according as the emphasis falls on the divine source of the mission ("I was sent") or on its voluntary performance ("I came").³² Something more needs to be added, therefore, to mark the mission which they assume, plainly as Messianic. That something more is added in the present passage by the purpose which is declared to be subserved by the mission. That purpose is the Messianic proclamation. He who came to preach the glad-tidings of the kingdom of God and who could point to the signs of the Messiah accompanying His preaching, has come as the Messiah.

Jesus, however, does not here say merely " I came." He says, "I came out," and the preposition should not be neglected. At the least it must refer to Jesus' coming publicly forward and entering upon the task of public teacher. J. J. van Oosterzee insists upon this sense: "The Saviour speaks simply of the purpose for which He now appeared publicly as a teacher."33 That, however, in this Messianic context, appears scarcely adequate. We seem to be compelled to see in this term a reference to Jesus' manifestation as Messiah with whatever that may carry with it. This is apparently what C. F. Keil and G. Wohlenberg have in mind. According to the former, the phrase "I came out" is used here absolutely in the sense of coming into publicity, coming into the world; and if, he adds, we wish to supply anything we may add in thought para. or avpo, tou/ qeou/ - as we may find in Jno. xiii. 3; xvi. 27, 30. Similarly the latter considers the reference to be to Jesus' entrance upon His Messianic calling, and adds that it is not surprising if the expression tempts us to find in it an allusion to the coming forth from the Father such as John speaks of at xiii. 3; xvi. 27, 30; xvii. 8. Even if we follow this path to its end and say simply, with J. A. Alexander, F. Godet, A. Plummer, H. B. Swete and others, that when He says, "I came out" Jesus means, "I came out from God" or "from heaven" we are not going beyond the implications of the Messianic reference. If Jesus thought Himself the Messiah there is no reason why He may not be supposed to have thought of Himself as that transcendent Messiah which was "in the air" in "the days of His flesh." That He did think of Himself as the transcendent Messiah is indeed already evident from His favorite self-designation of the Son of Man, - as reported by Mark as by the other evangelists. The Son of Man carries with it the idea of preëxistence. When then Mark records that He spoke of His mission as a "coming out," the phrase may very well come before us as the vehicle of Jesus' consciousness of His preëxistence; and F. Godet is speaking no less critically than theologically when he remarks that "Mark's term appears to allude to the incarnation, Luke's only refers to the mission of Jesus."34

When we say Messiah we say Israel. We naturally revert here, then, to Jesus' testimony that His mission was to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to the cities of Judaea. He is obviously speaking not of the utmost reach of His mission, but of the limits of His personal ministry. His personal ministry, however, He describes as distinctively to the Jews. He "came out," He "was sent," to proclaim the glad-tidings of the imminence of that Kingdom to the people of God to whom the Kingdom had been promised. This was, in its external aspects, His mission.

2

Mt. xv. 24: And He answered and said, I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

What in the former saying is given a perhaps somewhat unarresting positive expression is in this saying asserted in a strong, almost startling, negative form. Jesus declares that His mission was not only to the Jews, but to them only. Denying a request from His disciples that He should exercise His miraculous powers for the healing of a heathen girl who was suffering from possession, He justifies the denial by explaining that His mission was not to the heathen but solely to the Jews: "I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The language in which He clothes this explanation had been employed by Him on a previous occasion. When He was sending His disciples on their first mission He laid, first of all, this charge upon them: "Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt. x. 5-6). The circumstantial negative clauses act as definitions of the language of the positive clause. This language is just as sharply definite in our present saying. Jesus declares that He has no mission to the heathen. His mission is distinctively to the Jews.

It may be possible to exaggerate, however, the exclusiveness of this declaration. After all, it has a context. And it should not be overlooked that despite the emphasis of His assertion that He had no mission to the heathen, Jesus healed this heathen girl. Nor can it quite be said that He healed her by way of exception; overpersuaded, perhaps, by the touching plea of her mother, or even, perhaps, instructed by her shrewd common-sense to a wider apprehension of the scope of His mission than He had before attained. When He threw Himself back on His mission, He invoked in His justification the authority of God.³⁵ And therefore, in adducing His mission, He employs the phrase "I was sent" rather than "I came." By that phrase He appeals to Him with whose commission He was charged, and transfers the responsibility for the terms of His mission to Him.³⁶ After this it can scarcely be supposed that He overstepped the terms of His mission, as He understood them, in healing the heathen child. In other words, when He declares, "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He is not to be understood as declaring that His mission was so exclusively to the Jews that the heathen had no part in it whatever.

The whole drift of the incident as recorded whether by Mark or by Matthew bears out this conclusion. The precise point which is stressed in both accounts alike is, not that the Jews have the exclusive right to the benefits of Jesus' mission, but that the preference belongs to them. This is given open expression in Jesus' words as reported by Mark, "Let the children first be fed; it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs." But it is equally the implication of Matthew's account.³⁷ Jesus does not suggest that the dogs³⁸ shall have nothing; but that they shall have only the dogs' portion. What the portion of the dogs is, is not here indicated. It is only intimated that they have a portion. The children have the preference, of course: but there is something also for the dogs. Jesus' whole conversation in this incident is certainly pedagogically determined. He employed the application of this heathen woman to Him in order to teach His disciples the real scope of His mission. There is no contradiction between His declaration to them that He was sent distinctively to Israel and His subsequent healing of the heathen child. He heals the child not in defiance of the terms of His mission, but because it fell within its terms; and He commends the mother because she had found the right way: "And He said unto her, For this saying, go thy way: the devil is gone out of thy daughter." A comment of Alfred Edersheim's sums up not badly the teaching of the incident: "when He breaks the bread to the children, in the breaking of it the crumbs must fall all around."39

Obviously what Jesus tells us here is very much what Paul tells us, when, summing up his Gospel ringingly as the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes, he adds, "To the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Rom. i. 16, cf. ii. 10). Many "Liberal" expositors therefore represent Mark as corrupting the record of Jesus' conversation when he puts on Jesus' lips a sharp assertion of this principle: "Let the children first be filled."40 " If the Jews have only the first right," comments Johannes Weiss, for example, "it follows that the heathen too have a right. This is an echo from the Epistle to the Romans, i. 16, - the Jew first, then the Greek!"41 It is not, however, merely in this sharp assertion of it that this principle is given expression in the narrative of the incident. It is present as truly in the account of Matthew as in that of Mark. The whole drift of both accounts alike - the climax of which is found not in any word of Jesus' but in a marvellous word of His petitioner's - is that there is something left for the dogs after the children are filled: "Even the dogs under the table eat of the crumbs of the children"; "even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters." Had there been no provision for the Gentiles, indeed, Jesus could scarcely have expected His disciples to recognize Him as that "One to Come" with whose mission there had from the beginning been connected blessings for the Gentiles also. The evangelists are not drawing from Paul when they represent Jesus as teaching that His mission was to Israel and yet extends in its beneficial effects to the world (cf. especially Mt. viii. 11; xxviii. 19).⁴² Paul on the contrary is reflecting the teaching of Jesus as reported by the evangelists when, as Jesus proclaimed Himself to have been sent only to Israel, he declares Him to have been made a minister of the circumcision;⁴³ and when, as Jesus suggests that nevertheless there is in His mission a blessing for Gentiles also, he declares that by His ministry to the circumcision not only is the truth of God exalted and the promises unto the fathers confirmed, but mercy is brought to the Gentiles also (Rom. xv. 8 ff.).

How His mission could be distinctively for Israel and yet contain in it a blessing for the Gentiles also Jesus does not here explain to His disciples. He is content to fix the fact in their minds by the awakening object-lesson of this memorable miracle in which His saving power goes out of Himself and effects its beneficent result across the borders of a strange land.⁴⁴ We can scarcely go astray, however, if we distinguish here, as in the case of Mark i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43, between His personal ministry and the wider working of His mission. When He says, "I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He has His personal ministry in mind. It will hardly be doubted that this was the understanding of the evangelist. C. G. Montefiore, for example, paraphrases thus: "His disciples shall convert the world; He Himself is sent only to Israel." "Jesus says that He has been sent to the lost sheep of Israel only. This looks like a 'narrow' tradition. But it is not. It is intended to explain the undoubted but perplexing fact that Jesus the universal Saviour and Mediator, did actually confine Himself to the Jews. The explanation is that God had ordered this limitation. After His resurrection, He will send His disciples to all the world."45 Did Jesus Himself have no anticipation of this course of events, or purpose with reference to it? It should go without saying that, just because He conceived His mission as Messianic, He necessarily conceived it both as immediately directed to Israel, and as in its effects extending also to the Gentiles. That was how the mission of the Messiah had been set forth in those prophecies on which He fed. We cannot be surprised, then, that it is customary to recognize that it is to His personal ministry alone that Jesus refers when He declares that He "was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."46

The Messianic character of His mission is already implied in the terms in which He here describes it. When He speaks of "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," His mind is on the great messianic passage, Ezek. xxxiii., xxxiv., in which Jehovah promises that He Himself will feed His sheep, "and seek that which was lost"; and that He will "set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them and he shall be their shepherd."47 When, with His mind on this prophecy, Jesus spoke of His mission as to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" it may admit of question whether the genitive is epexegetical or partitive, - whether He conceives His mission to be directed to Israel as a whole, conceived as having wandered from God, or to that portion of Israel which had strayed⁴⁸ - but it can admit of no question that He conceived of those to whom His mission was directed as "lost." He thought of His mission, therefore, as distinctively a saving mission, and He might just as well have said, "I was sent to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Harnack is quite right, therefore, when, after calling attention to the adoption of the language of Ezek. xxxiv. 15, 16, he adds: "And the mission to the lost sheep contains implicitly the 'to seek and to save."' How He is to accomplish the saving of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jesus does not in this utterance tell us. He tells us only that He has come, as the promised Messiah, with this mission entrusted to Him, - to save these lost sheep.

3

Mt. x. 34 ff.: Think not that I came to cast peace on the earth; I came not to cast peace but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

In this context Jesus is preparing His disciples for the persecutions which awaited them. They must not think their case singular: their Teacher and Lord had Himself suffered, before them. Nor must they imagine that they are deserted: the Father has not forgotten them. And after all, such things belong in their day's work. They have not been called to ease but to struggle. Strife then is their immediate portion; but after the strife comes the reward.

When Jesus introduces what He has to say with the words, "Think not," He intimates that He is correcting a false impression, prevalent among His hearers (cf. v. 17).⁴⁹ His reference can only be to expectations of a kingdom of peace founded on Old Testament prophecy.⁵⁰ Since these expectations are focussed upon His own person He is obviously speaking out of a Messianic consciousness; and is assuming for Himself the rôle of the Messiah, come to introduce the promised kingdom.⁵¹ Of course He does not mean to deny that the Messianic kingdom which He has come to introduce is the eternal kingdom of peace promised in the prophets. He is only warning His followers that the Messianic peace must be conquered before it is enjoyed. As His mind at the moment is on the individual, He describes the strife which awaits His followers in terms of the individual's experience. The language in which He does this is derived from an Old Testament passage (Micah vii. 6) in which the terrible disintegration of natural relationships incident to a time of deep moral corruption is described. The dissolution of social ties which His followers shall have to face will be like this. Let them gird themselves to meet the strain upon them loyally. For, as the succeeding verses show, it is distinctly a question of personal loyalty that is at issue.⁵²

It should be observed that Jesus does not say merely, "Think not that I came to send (or bring) peace upon the earth," as our English versions have it. He says, "Think not that I came to cast peace upon the earth." The energy of the expression should not be evaporated (cf. vii. 6). What Jesus denies is that He has come to fling peace suddenly and immediately upon the earth,⁵³ so that all the evils of life should at once and perfectly give way to the unsullied blessedness of the consummated kingdom. Such seems to have been the expectation of His followers. He undeceives them by telling them plainly that He came on the contrary to cast a sword. Strife and struggle lie immediately before them, and the peace to which they look forward is postponed. The pathway upon which they have adventured in attaching themselves to Him leads indeed to peace, but it leads through strife.

When Jesus says that He came to cast a sword upon the earth and to set men at variance with one another, the declaration of purpose must not be weakened into a mere prediction of result.⁵⁴ He is speaking out of the fundamental presupposition of the universal government of God, which had just found expression in the assertion that not even a sparrow, or indeed a hair of our heads, falls to the ground "apart from our Father" (verses 29-31). The essence of the declaration lies in the assurance that nothing is to befall His followers by chance or the hard necessity of things, but all that comes to them comes from Him.⁵⁵ Not merely the ultimate end, but all the means which lead up to this end - in a linked chain of means and ends - are of His appointment and belong to the arrangements which He has made for His people. They are to face the strife which lies before them, therefore, as a part of the service they owe to Him (verses 37 ff.), their Master and Lord (verses 24 f.). This strife is not indeed all that Jesus came to bring, but this too He came to bring; and when He casts it upon the earth, He is fulfilling so far His mission. He "came," "was sent" (verse 40) to "cast a sword."

In this saying, too, we perceive, Jesus is dealing with what we may without impropriety speak of as a subordinate element of His mission. He does not mean that the sole or the chief purpose of His coming was to stir up strife. He means that the strife which His coming causes has its part to play in securing the end for which He came. When He said in Mk. i. 38 = Lk. iv. 43, "I came to preach," He was looking through the preaching, as means, to the end which it was to subserve. When He said in Mt. xv. 24 that He was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, He did not forget the wider end of which His ministry to Israel should be the means. So, when He says, "I came to cast a sword upon the earth," He is thinking of the strife which He thus takes up unto His plan not for itself but as an instrument by which His ultimate purpose should be reached. He tells us nothing of how long this strife is to last, or through what steps and stages it is to pass into the peace which waits behind it. Is He speaking only of the turmoil which must accompany the acceptance of Him as Messiah by His own people, involving as it does adjustment to the revised Messianic ideal which He brought?⁵⁶ Is He speaking in a "springing sense" of the ineradicable conflict of His Gospel with worldly ideals, through age after age, until at last "the end shall come"?⁵⁷ Or is He speaking of the "growing pains" which must accompany the steady upward evolution through all the ages of the religion which He founded?⁵⁸ The passage itself tells us nothing more than that Jesus came to cast a sword upon the earth; that there were to result from His coming strife and strain; and that only through this strife and strain is the full purpose for which He came attainable. For what is more than this we must go elsewhere. Only let us bear well in mind that the note of the saying is not discouragement but confidence. There rings through it the "Fear not!" of verse 31. There underlies it the "I too will confess him before my Father in heaven" of verse 32. And it passes unobserved into the "He who loses His life for my sake shall find it" of verse 39, and the "whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward" of verse 42. Jesus warns His followers of the stress and strain before them. But He does this as one who buckles their armor on them and sends them forth to victory. The word on which the discussion closes is "Reward."

4

Lk. xii. 49-53: I came to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish that it was already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished! Think ye that I am come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided, three against two and two against three. They shall be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

To some of the questions started by Mt. x. 34 ff., answers are suggested by the present saying. Here too Jesus is protecting His followers against the false expectation which they had been misled into forming, that He, the Messiah, would at once introduce the promised reign of peace.⁵⁹ In repelling this expectation, His own claim to the Messianic dignity and function is given express intimation. He corrects, not their estimate of His person or vocation, but their conception of the nature of the Messianic work. The language in which He makes this correction is very strong: "Ye think that it is peace that I am come to give in the earth. Not at all, I tell you; nothing but division."60 The emphasis which, by its position, falls on the word "fire" in the first clause, corresponds with this strength of language and prepares the way for it: "It is fire that I came to cast upon the earth."61 It is clear that the two sentences belong together and constitute together but a single statement. The "fire" of the one is, then, taken up and explained by the "division" of the other, just as the "came" (h=lqon) of the one is repeated in the "am come" (paregeno,mhn) of the other, and the "cast" (balei/n) of the one by the "give" (dou/nai) of the other. The greater energy of the language in the former declaration is due to its being the immediate expression of Jesus' own thought and feeling: "It is fire that I came to cast upon the earth"; whereas in its repetition it is the thought of His followers to which He gives expression: " Ye think that it is peace that I am here⁶² to give." What it is of chief importance for us to observe is that by the "fire" which He has come to cast upon the earth, Jesus means just the "division"63 which He describes in the subsequent clauses in much the same language in which He had spoken of it in Mt. x. 34 ff. That is to say, He has in mind, here as there, a great disarrangement of social relationships which He speaks of as the proximate result of the introduction of the Kingdom of God into the world.

No more here than there does Jesus mean to represent this discord which He declares He came to give in the earth, as the proper purpose or the ultimate result of His coming.⁶⁴ The strength of the language in which He declares it to be His purpose in coming to produce this dissension, shuts off, indeed, all view beyond. When He says, "Ye think it is peace that I am here to give on the earth. Not at all, I tell you: nothing but division," He is thinking, of course, only of the immediate results, and, absorbed in them, leaving what lies beyond for the time out of sight. The absoluteness of the language is like the absoluteness of the, "I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But something does lie beyond. This not only belongs to the nature of the case, but is already intimated in the last clause of the first sentence (verse 49): "It is fire that I came to cast on the earth, and how I wish that it was already kindled." Clearly Jesus did not long for the kindling of the fire for the fire's own sake; but for the sake of what would come out of the fire.

What this clause particularly teaches us, however, is that the fire which Jesus came to cast on the earth was not yet kindled. The clause is of recognized difficulty and has been variously rendered. Most of these renderings yield, however, the same general sense; and it is reasonably clear that the meaning is represented with sufficient accuracy by, "And how I wish that it was already kindled."65 For even the fire which He came to cast upon the world, Jesus thus points to the future. Not even it has yet been kindled. The peace which His followers were expecting lies yet beyond it. He was not to give peace in the world but nothing but division: yet even the division was not yet come - for even that His followers were to look forward. He is, then, not accounting to His followers for the trials they were enduring: He is warning them of trials yet to come. He is saying to them in effect, "In the world ye shall have tribulation"; but the subaudition also is present, "But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." These things He was speaking to them, therefore, that despite the impending tribulation, they might have the peace which they were expecting - at least in sure prospect.

From the strong wish which Jesus expresses that the fire which He came to cast upon the earth had already been kindled, Harnack takes occasion to represent Him as a disappointed man. Harnack explains the fire which Jesus says He came to cast upon the earth as "an inflammation and refining agitation of spirits," and discovers an immense pathos in Jesus' inability to see that it had as yet been kindled.

Jesus moved with pain, acknowledges that the fire does not yet burn . . . What Jesus wishes, yes, what He speaks of as the purpose of His coming, He does not yet see fulfilled - the great trying and refining agitation of spirits in which the old is consumed and the new is kindled. That "men of violence" (bastai,) are necessary that the kingdom of God may be taken, He says at Mt. xi. 12. To become such a man of violence (basth,j) one must be kindled from the fire. This fire He fain would bring, He has brought; but it will not yet burn; hence His pained exclamation. Elsewhere, only in the saying about Jerusalem (Mt. xxiii. 37) does this pained complaint of the failure of results come to such sharp expression.

It is needless to point out that this whole representation is in direct contradiction with the context. Harnack has prepared the way for it by cutting off the context and taking the single sentence of verse 49 in complete isolation. In so doing, he has rendered it impossible, however, confidently to assign any particular meaning to that, in that case, perfectly insulated saying. It is in this state equally patient to a dozen hypothetical meanings. The sense which Harnack puts upon it is simply imposed upon it from his own subjectivity: he merely ascribes to Jesus the feelings which, from his general conception of His person and work, he supposes He would naturally express in such an exclamation. Fortunately, the context interposes a decisive negative to the ascription. We have here not the weak wail of disappointment, but a strong assertion of conscious control. That, indeed, is sufficiently clear from the declaration itself. When Jesus asserts, "It is to cast fire upon the earth that I came" it is anything but the consciousness of impotence that is suggested to us. And the note of power vibrating in the assertion is not abolished by the adjoined expression of a wish that this fire was already kindled. No doubt there is an acknowledgment that the end for which He came was not yet fully accomplished: He had not finished His work which He came to do. But this does not involve confession either of disappointment at the slowness of its accomplishment, or fear that it may never be accomplished. The very form of the acknowledgment suggests confidence in the accomplishment. When Jesus says, "Would that it was already kindled"! He expresses no uncertainty that it will in due time be kindled. And even the time, He does not put outside of His power. He even tells us why it has not already been kindled. And the reason proves to lie in the orderly prosecution of His task. "How I wish," He exclaims, "that it was already kindled! But . . ." He himself is postponing the kindling: "But I have a baptism to be baptized with." The fire cannot be kindled until He has undergone His baptism.⁶⁶ Its kindling is contingent upon that. No doubt He looks forward to this baptism with apprehension: "And how am I straitened till it be accomplished"! But with no starting back. It is to be accomplished: and His face is set to its accomplishment. The entire course of events lies clearly in His view, and fully within His power. He has come to cast fire on the earth; but one of the means through which this fire is to be cast on the earth is a baptism with which He is to be baptized. This baptism is a dreadful experience which oppresses His soul as He looks forward to it. He could wish it were all well over. But He has no thought of doubting its accomplishment or of shrinking from His part in it. It is a veritable pre-Gethsemane which is revealed to us here.⁶⁷ But as in the actual Gethsemane, with the "Let this cup pass from me," there is conjoined the, "Nevertheless not my will but thine be done."

That the baptism with which Jesus declares that He is to be baptized (cf. Mk. x. 38) is His death is unquestionable and is unquestioned. What we learn, then, is that the kindling of the fire which He came to cast upon the earth is in some way consequent upon His death.⁶⁸ Of the manner of His death He tells us nothing, save what we may infer from the oppression of spirit which its prospect causes Him. Of the nature of its connection with the kindling of the fire which He came to cast upon the earth He tells us as little. We may be sure, indeed, that the relation of the two events is not a merely chronological one of precedence and subsequence. The relation between such events cannot be merely chronological; the order of time which is imperative in the development of Jesus' mission can never be a purely arbitrary temporal order. We must assume that the death of Jesus stands in some causal relation to the kindling of the fire He came to cast on the earth. What this causal relation is He does not, however, tell us here. Can we think of His death as needed to prepare Him to execute His task of casting fire upon the earth? Shall we think of His death giving impressiveness to His teaching and example and so creating in all hearts that crisis which issues in the decision by which there is produced the division with which the fire is identified? Or are we to think of His death entering in some yet more intimate manner into the production of this crisis, lying in some yet more fundamental manner at the basis of His efficient activity in the world? Jesus is silent. He tells us only that His death has a part to play in the kindling of the fire which He came to cast upon the earth; and that before it - and that means without it - that fire cannot be kindled. He tells us that His death is indispensable to His work; but He does not explain how it is indispensable.

Meanwhile we are advanced greatly in our understanding of what Jesus means by the "fire," the "sword," the "division" which, according to His statement in Mt. x. 34 ff., Lk. xii. 49 ff., He came to cast on the earth. And our sense of His control over the events by which His mission is accomplished is greatly deepened. What He came to do, He will do; even though in order to do it, He must die: even though He die - nay, just because He dies - He will do it. He came to set the world on fire. He came to die that He might set the world on fire. He wishes that the conflagration was already kindled: He is oppressed by the prospect before Him as He walks the path to death. But let no man mistake Him or His progress in the performance of His mission. His death, He will accomplish: the fire He will kindle. Men may fancy that He is come to give peace: not at all: nothing but division. That primarily. We shall see the whole world turned up-side-down (Acts xvii. 6). After that, no doubt, we shall see what we shall see. But the implication is express that, in whatever we shall see, will be included at least that peace which, after all said, lies at the end of the sequence.

5

Mt. v. 17, 18: Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For, verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.

"Think not," says Jesus to His disciples, "that I came to destroy the law or the prophets." That is as much as to say that they were thinking it, or at least were in danger of thinking it.⁶⁹ And that is as much as to say that He was recognized by them as the Messiah, and that He was speaking to them on the presupposition of His Messiahship, and of His Messianic mission. On the basis of such a prophecy as that on the New Covenant in Jer. xxxi. 31 ff.⁷⁰ it was not unnatural to think of the Messiah as a new law-giver under whom "the old law should be annulled and a new spiritual law given in its stead."71 This point of view, we know, existed among the later Jews,⁷² and could hardly fail to have its part to play in the Messianic conceptions of Jesus' time. That Jesus needed to guard His disciples against it was, thus, a matter of course,⁷³ and it was most natural that He should take opportunity to do so after the great words in which He greeted them as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and exhorted them to let their light so shine before men that their good works should be seen and their Father in heaven be glorified. In guarding them against it He declares, almost expressly following out the thought of Jeremiah's prediction with respect to the writing of the law on the heart (Jer. xxxi. 33), that He came not to abrogate but to perfect. Thus, in the most striking way possible, Jesus lays claim to the Messianic dignity.

Richness and force is given to Jesus' declaration, "I came not to destroy but to fulfil," by the absence of an expressed object. The object naturally taken over from the preceding clause is a double one, "the law or the prophets." The development in the subsequent verses deals only with the law. The statement itself stands in majestic generality. Jesus declares that His mission was not a destroying but a fulfilling one. In making this declaration, His mind was particularly engaged with the law, as the course of the subsequent discussion suggests; or rather with the Scriptures of the Old Covenant as a whole, thought of at the moment from the point of view of the righteousness which they inculcate, as the collocation of the "law" and the "prophets" in the preceding clause suggests. But His mind is engaged with the law as an application⁷⁴ of the general principle asserted, rather than as exhausting its whole content. He presents Himself quite generally as not an abrogator but a perfecter.

The commentators are at odds with one another as to the exact meaning which should be assigned to the word "fulfil." Some insist that, in its application to the law, it means nothing but to do what the law commands: Theodor Zahn, for example, employing a lucid figure, describes the law - or more broadly the written Word - as an empty vessel which is fulfilled when it receives the content appropriate to it, - law in obedience, prophecy in occurrence.⁷⁵ Others urge that "to fulfil the law" means to fill the law out, to bring it to its full and perfect formulation:76 Theophylact beautifully illustrates this idea by likening Jesus' action to that of a painter who does not abrogate the sketch which he completes into a picture. The generality of the expression surely requires us to assign to it its most inclusive meaning, and we do not see that Th. Keim can be far wrong when he expounds "to fulfil" as "to teach the law, to do it, and to impose it." It is clear enough from the subsequent context that when Jesus applied to the law His broad declaration that He had come not as an abrogator but as a fulfiller, He had in mind both the perfecting and the keeping of the law. In point of fact, He presents Himself both as the legislator developing the law into its fullest implications (verses 21 ff.), and as the administrator, securing full obedience to the law (verses 18-20). The two functions are fairly included in the one act spoken of by Jeremiah - whose prophecy we have seen reason to suppose underlay Jesus' remark - as writing the law on the heart. To write the law on the heart is at once to perfect it - to give it its most inclusive and most searching meaning - and to secure for it spontaneous and therefore perfect obedience. It is to obtain these two ends that Jesus declares that He came, when He represents His mission to be that of "fulfiller" with reference to the law.

Harnack, nevertheless, lays all the stress on the single element of legislation.⁷⁷ Jesus, he supposes, presents Himself here as lawgiver; and what He declares, he paraphrases thus: "I came not to break, that is, to dissolve the law together with the prophets: I came not in general to dissolve but to consummate, that is, to make complete." He explains:

The exact opposite to katalu,sai is to "establish," to "ratify." But Jesus intends to say something more than this. He is not satisfied, as Wellhausen finely remarks, with the positive but chooses the superlative. Not to ratify, that is to say, to establish (see Rom. iii. 31), is His intention, but to consummate. That could be done, with reference to the law, in a twofold manner, either by strengthening its authority, or by completing its contents. Since, however, the former cannot be thought of - because the law possesses divine authority - only the latter can be meant; and it is precisely this to which expression is given in verses 21-48. In this discourse the law is completed thus - that what "was said to them of old time" remains indeed in existence (ouv katalu,w) but is completed by deeper and stricter commands which go to the bottom and direct themselves to the disposition, through which moreover it comes about that many definitions are supplanted by others. Those that are replaced do not appear, however, to be abrogated because the legislative intention of Jesus does not look upon the previous legislation as false but as incomplete, and completes it.

What is said here is not without its importance. Jesus does present Himself as a lawgiver come to perfect the law, by uncovering the depths of its meaning, and thus extending its manifest reach. How He, thus, as legislator brings the law to its perfection He shows in the specimen instances brought together in verses 21-48. But, saying this, we have said only half of what must be said. What Jesus is primarily concerned for here, is not the completer formulation of the law but its better keeping. And what He proclaims His mission fundamentally to be is less the perfecting of the law as a "doctrine" as Harnack puts it - "our verses [17-19] too are spoken by Him as legislator, that is, they contain a doctrine" - (although this too enters into His mission) than the perfecting of His disciples as righteous men (a thing which could not be done without the perfecting of the law as a "doctrine"). The immediately succeeding context of His proclamation of His mission as not one of destruction but of fulfilment, deals not with the formulation of the law but with its observance (verses 18-20).

"I came not," says Jesus, "to destroy but to fulfil, - for . . ." And, then, with this "for," He immediately grounds His assertion in the further one that the whole law in all its details, down to its smallest minutiae, remains permanently in force and shall be obeyed. "For, verily I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall pass away from the law until all [of them] be accomplished." This assertion is made with the utmost solemnity: "Verily, I say unto you"; and there are two elements in it neither of which should be allowed to obscure the other. On the one hand it is asserted with an emphasis which could not easily be made stronger, that the law in its smallest details remains in undiminished authority so long as the world lasts. Jesus has not come to abrogate the law - on the contrary the law will never be abrogated, not even in the slightest of its particulars - the dotting of an "i" or the crossing of a "t" - so long as the world endured. But Jesus does not content Himself with this "canonizing of the letter" as H. J. Holtzmann calls it, certainly without exaggeration. The law, remaining in all its details in undiminished authority, is, on the other hand, to be perfectly observed. Jesus declares that while the world lasts no jot or tittle of the law shall pass away - until they all, all the law's merest jots and tittles, shall be accomplished. He means to say not merely that they should be accomplished, but that they shall be accomplished. The words are very emphatic. The "all," standing in correlation with the "one" of the "one jot" and "one tittle," declares that all the jots and all the tittles of the law shall be accomplished. Not one shall fail. The expression itself is equivalent to a declaration that a time shall come when in this detailed perfection, the law shall be observed. This amounts to a promise that the day shall surely come for which we pray when, in accordance with Jesus' instruction we ask, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth." So far from coming to abrogate the law, He comes then to get the law kept; not merely to republish it, in all its reach, whether of the jots and tittles of its former publication, or of its most deeply cutting and widely reaching interpretation, but to reproduce it in actual lives, to write it on the hearts of men and in their actual living. "Therefore," He proceeds to tell His disciples (verses 19-20), the "breaking"78 of one of the least of these - these jots and tittles of - commandments, and the teaching of men so, is no small matter for them. Their place in the kingdom of heaven depends on their faithfulness to the least of them; and unless their righteousness far surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees with all their, no doubt misplaced, strictness, they shall have no place in that kingdom at all.

In a word, we do not understand the nature of the mission which Jesus here ascribes to Himself until we clearly see that it finds its end in the perfecting of men. His purpose in coming is not accomplished in merely completing the law: it finds its fulfilment in bringing men completely to keep the completed law. If we speak of Him as legislator, then, we mean that He claims plenary authority with respect to the law. The law is His, and He uses it as an instrument in the accomplishment of His great end, the making of men righteous. He knows what is in the law, and He brings all its content out, with the most searching analysis. But this is but the beginning. He came to make this law, thus nobly expounded, the actual law of human lives. Abrogate it? Nothing could be further from His purpose. He came rather to fulfil it, to work it out into its most widereaching applications, and to work it, thus worked-out, into men's lives. Those who are His disciples will not be behind the Scribes and Pharisees themselves in the perfection of their obedience to its very jots and tittles. But their righteousness will not be the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. The difference will be that their obedience will not be confined to these jots and tittles. In their lives there will be "accomplished" the whole law of God in its highest and profoundest meaning. Their lives will be a perfect transcript in act of the law of God, a perfect reflection of the will of God in life. It is for this that Jesus says that He "came." When this complete moralization of His disciples shall be accomplished; how, by what means, in what stages this perfect righteousness is to be made theirs; He does not tell us here. He tells us merely that He "came" to do this thing: so that His disciples shall be truly the salt of the earth which has not lost its savor, the light of the world which cannot be hid.

6

Mk. ii. 17: And when Jesus heard it, He saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous but sinners.
Mat. ix. 12-13: But when He heard it, He said, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy and not sacrifice: for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
Lk. v. 31: And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole have no need of a physician but they that are sick. I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

In the immediately preceding saying (Mt. v. 17), Jesus tells us that He came to make men righteous. In this He tells us what manner of men they are whom He came to make righteous. They are sinners. "I came not to call righteous but sinners." The anarthrous terms throw the qualities of the opposing classes into strong relief. Of course Jesus means by these terms the really righteous and really sinful. This Harnack perceives. "The righteous," he rightly remarks, "are really, apart from all irony, the righteous; and the sinners are really the sinners; and Jesus says that His life-calling is not to call the one but the other." Here, says Harnack, is an immense paradox. "It is one of the greatest milestones in the history of religion," he declares; "for Jesus puts His call in contrast with all that had hitherto been considered the presupposition of religion." So Celsus, he adds, already saw; and that is the reason of his passion when he writes:79

Those who invite to the solemnization of other mysteries make proclamation as follows: "He who has clean hands and an understanding tongue, come hither," or "He who is pure from all fault, and who is conscious in his soul of no sin, and who has led a noble and righteous life, come hither." This is what is proclaimed by those who promise expiation of sins! Let us hear, on the other hand, what kind of people the Christians invite: "Him who is a sinner, a fool, a simpleton, in a word an unfortunate - him will the Kingdom of God receive. By the sinner they mean the unjust, the thief, the burglar, the poisoner, the sacrilegious, the grave-robber. If one wished to recruit a robber band, it would be such people that he would collect.

The contrast here is very arresting and very instructive. But we can scarcely call it paradoxical to invite sinners to salvation - as Origen did not fail to remind Celsus. Paradox is already expressly excluded when Luke, in his record, adds the words, "to repentance." There is no paradox in calling not righteous but sinners - to repentance. Harnack, no doubt, asserts that this addition is "inappropriate." So little inappropriate is it, however, that it would necessarily be understood even if it were not expressed, and it is understood in the records of Matthew and Mark where it is not expressed. There can be no doubt that Jesus came preaching precisely repentance (Mk. i. 15, Mt. iv. 17): and when He says that He came to call not righteous but sinners, it is clear that this was just because He was calling to repentance. All paradox, moreover, is already excluded by the preceding "parable" of which this declaration is the plain explanation: "They that are strong," says Jesus, "have no need of a physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call righteous but sinners." If Jesus' mission is like that of a physician and its end is healing, how could it be directed to the strong? Just because He came to save, He came to call only sinners. "But," says Harnack, "we have no certainty that this saying stood originally in this context (see Wellhausen on the passage), nor that the saying of Jesus originally combined both clauses." And if it did (he contends), - it would not yield the idea of calling to repentance. For in that case, sin would be likened to sickness, and sickness requires healing, not repentance. It is best, then, to take the simple words, "I came not to call righteous but sinners" by themselves. They need no presupposition to be supplied by the preceding "parable": "they stand on their own feet with equal surety." This is obviously special pleading. Harnack does not desire the qualifications provided by the context, and therefore will have no context. Meanwhile, it is clear that Jesus who came preaching the Gospel of God, and crying Repent! (Mk. i. 15, Mt. iv. 17) - to preach which Gospel He declares that He "was sent," (Lk. iv. 43) - very naturally represents that His mission is not to righteous but sinners; and equally naturally likens His work to that of a physician who deals not with well people but with the sick. He does not mean by this to say that sin is merely a sickness and that sinners must therefore be dealt with in the unmixed tenderness of a healer of diseases; but that the terms of His mission like those of a physician cast His lot with the derelicts of the world. He has come to call sinners, and where would men expect to find Him except with sinners?

When Jesus declares, "I came not to call righteous but sinners," then, He uses the words "righteous" and "sinners" in all seriousness, in their literal senses. By "righteous," He does not mean the Pharisees; nor by "sinners" the publicans. Nevertheless it is clear that He so far takes His start from the Pharisaic point of view that He accepts its estimate of His table-companions as sinners. He does not deny that those with whom He ate were sinners.⁸⁰ His defence is not that they were miscalled sinners, but that His place was with sinners, whom He came to call.⁸¹ Similarly His employment of the term "righteous" may not be free from a slight infusion of ironic reference to the Pharisees, who, by their question, contrasted themselves with the others and thus certainly ranked themselves with those "which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and set the rest at nought" (Lk. xviii. 9). His saying would at least raise in their own minds the question where they came in; and thus would act as a probe to enable them to "come to themselves" and to form a juster estimate of themselves. That such a probing of their consciences was within the intention of Jesus, is made clear by a clause in His declaration, preserved only by Matthew, interposed between the "parable" of the physician and the plain statement of the nature of His mission: "But go and learn what this meaneth, I desire mercy and not sacrifice" (Mt. ix. 13).⁸² He is as far as possible from implying, therefore, that the Pharisees were well and had no need of His curative ministrations. He rather subtly suggests to them (and perhaps with Hos. vi. 6 in mind we would better not say so subtly either) that they deceived themselves if they fancied that to be the case. In thus intimating that the Pharisees were themselves sinners, He intimates that there were none righteous. A. Jülicher, it is true, vigorously asserts the contrary,⁸³ and insists that the "righteous" must be as actually existing a class of men as "sinners": and A. Loisy follows him in this. Jesus, looking out upon mankind, saw that some were righteous and some sinners. With the righteous, He had nothing to do; they needed no saving. It was to the sinners only that He had a mission; and His mission to them was, as Luke is perfectly right in adding, to call them to repentance. There were many who needed no repentance (Lk. xv. 2), but no sinner can be saved without repentance, and Luke's motive in adding "to repentance" is to make this clear and thus to guard against Jesus' call of sinners being taken in too broad, not to say too loose, a sense. This, however, is quite inconsistent with the whole drift of the narrative. Jesus is not separating mankind into two classes and declaring that His mission is confined to one of these classes. He is contemplating men from two points of view and declaring that His mission presupposes the one point of view rather than the other. Reprobation of Him had been expressed, because He associated with publicans and sinners. He does not pursue the question of the justice of the concrete contrast - though, as we have seen, not failing to drop hints even of it. He responds simply, "That is natural, I came on a mission not to righteous men but to sinners." The question whether any righteous men actually existed is not raised.⁸⁴ The point is that His mission is to sinners, and that it ought to occasion no surprise, therefore, that He is found with sinners.⁸⁵

What Jesus does in this saying, therefore, is to present Himself as the Saviour of sinners.⁸⁶ He came to call sinners; He is the physician who brings healing to sick souls. He does not tell us how He saves sinners. He speaks only of "calling them," of calling them "to repentance." From this we may learn that an awakened sense of wrong-doing, and a "change of heart," issuing in a changed life, enter into the effects of their "calling," - that, in a word, it issues in a transformed mind and life. But nothing is told us of the forces brought to bear on sinners to bring about these results. Meanwhile Jesus declares explicitly that His mission in the world was to "call sinners." That was no doubt implicit in all the definitions of this mission which have heretofore come before us. It is here openly proclaimed. Harnack says this saying is not Messianic, "because," he explains, "it has nothing to do with the Judgment or the Kingdom." When He who came to announce the Kingdom of God, calling on men to repent, called sinners to repentance, - had that nothing to do with the Kingdom? A "call to repentance" - has that not the Judgment in view? Who in any case is the Saviour of Sinners if not the Messiah? And who but the Messiah could proclaim with majestic brevity, "I came not to call righteous but sinners"?

7

Lk. xix. 10: - For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.

This saying is very much a repetition of the immediately preceding one in more searching language. Harnack himself points out the closeness of their relation. "This saying," says he, "in the best way completes that one, with which it is intimately connected; the 'sinners' are the 'lost,' but in being 'called' they are 'saved."' The expressive language of the present saying is derived from the great Messianic prophecy of Ezek. xxxiv. 11 ff., which Jesus has taken up and applies to Himself and His mission. Harnack is thoroughly justified, therefore, in saying: "What is most important about this saying, along with its contents, is that Jesus claims for Himself the work which God proclaimed through the prophets as His own future work." The whole figurative background of the saying, and its peculiarities of language as well, are taken from Ezekiel. "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah," we read there: "Behold I myself, even I, will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered abroad, so will I seek out my sheep and I will deliver them . . . I will seek that which was lost, and will bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up all that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick. . . ." Jesus obviously means to say that He came like this shepherd, with the particular task laid upon Him to seek and to save what was lost. Because the statement is introduced as the reason, we might almost say the justification, of His saving that "sinful man," Zacchaeus, the word "came" is put prominently forward,⁸⁷ with the effect of declaring with great emphasis that it was the very purpose of Jesus' "coming" "to seek and to save that which is lost." Here too Harnack's observations are just:

 vHlqen is given the first place here with emphasis. Thus it is made very clear that the salvation of what is lost (see Mt. x. 6, xv. 24; Lk. xv. 6, 9, 32) is the main purpose of Jesus' coming. What appears often in the parables and in separate sayings, is here collected into a general declaration, which elevates the saving activity of Jesus above all that is accidental. He Himself testifies that it is His proper work.

The term "lost" here is a neuter singular, used collectively.⁸⁸ It is simply taken over in this form from Ezek. xxxiv. 16, where Jehovah declares: "I will seek that which was lost."89 In explaining His saving of Zacchaeus, Jesus assigns him to the class to seek and save which He declares to be His particular mission. Precisely what He meant by speaking of the objects of His saving actively as "lost" has been made the subject of some discussion. Hermann Cremer, for example, wishes us to bear in mind that "lost sheep" may always be found again; that they exist, so to speak for the purpose of being found. And A. B. Bruce, taking up this notion, even reduces the idea of "the lost" to that of "the neglected," and invites us to think of Jesus' mission as directed to "the neglected classes."90 Such minimizing interpretations are not only wholly without support in the usage of the terms, and in the demands of the passages in which they occur. They are derogatory to the mission which Jesus declares that He came to execute. He speaks of His mission in tones of great impressiveness, as involving supremely great accomplishments. Obviously "the lost" which He declares that He came to seek and to save were not merely neglected people but veritably lost people, lost beyond retrieval save only as He not merely sought them but in some great sense saved them. The solemnity with which Jesus speaks of having come as the Saviour of "the lost" will not permit us to think lightly of their condition, which necessarily carries with it thinking lightly also of His mission and achievement.

The solemnity of this declaration is much enhanced by Jesus' designation of Himself in it by the great title of "the Son of Man." He does not say here simply, as in the sayings we have heretofore had before us, "I came," or "I was sent," but, speaking of Himself in the third person, "The Son of Man came." By thus designating Himself He does far more than explicitly declare Himself the Messiah and His mission the Messianic mission, thus justifying His adoption of Ezekiel's language to describe it. He declares Himself the transcendent Messiah, and in so doing declares His mission, to put it shortly, a divine work, not merely in the sense that it was prosecuted under the divine appointment, but in the further sense that it was executed by a divine agent. Great pregnancy is at once imparted to the simple verb "came" by giving it the transcendent Son of Man for its subject. To say "I came" may mean nothing more than a claim to divine appointment. But to say, "the Son of Man came" transports the mind back into the pre-temporal, heavenly existence of the Son of Man and conveys the idea of His voluntary descent to earth. We recall here the language of Mk. i. 38, and see that intimation that Jesus thought of His work on earth as a mission of a visitant from a higher sphere, raised into the position of an explicit assertion. We perceive that Jesus is employing a high solemnity of utterance which necessarily imparts to every word of His declaration its deepest significance. The terms "lost," "saved" must be read in their most pregnant sense. Jesus represents those whom He came to seek and save as "lost"; but He declares that the Son of Man who came from heaven for the purpose has power to "save" them. The stress lies on the greatness of the agent, which carries with it the greatness of the achievement, and that in turn carries with it the hopelessness, apart from this achievement by this agent, of the condition of the "lost." It is with the fullest meaning that Jesus represents Himself here as the Saviour of the lost.

If Jesus represents Himself here as the Saviour of the lost, however, does He not represent Himself as the Saviour of the lost of Israel only? We have heard Him in a previous saying, with the same passage from Ezekiel lying in the background, declaring, "I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt. xv. 24). Is not salvation here similarly declared to have been brought by Him to Zacchaeus' house only because Zacchaeus too was a son of Abraham?⁹¹ Jesus is speaking, primarily, of course, of His own personal ministry, which was strictly confined to Israel.⁹² It was in the prosecution of His personal ministry to Israel that He came to Zacchaeus' house, bringing salvation. When He justifies doing this by appealing to the terms of His mission as the Saviour of the lost, He naturally has primary reference to the salvation of Zacchaeus, that Son of Abraham, and may be said by the "lost" to mean, in the first instance, such as he. Must we understand Him as having the lost specifically of Israel therefore exclusively in view? The evangelist who has recorded these words for us certainly did not so understand them. They are in themselves quite general. The Gentiles too are sinners, and are comprehended too under the word "lost." However they may have lain outside the scope of Jesus' personal ministry, they did not lie beyond the horizon of His saving purpose.⁹³ If we cannot quite say that He tells us here that His mission of salvation extends to them also, we need not contend that He tells us that it does not. The declaration has, in point of fact, nothing to say of the extension of His mission. It absorbs itself in the definition of its intensive nature. It is a mission of salvation. It is a mission to the "lost." Jesus in it declares that the explicit purpose of His coming was to save the lost. This is the great message which this saying brings us.

8

Mk. x. 45: For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Mt. xx. 28: Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Although Harnack too includes this saying among Jesus' testimonies to the purpose of His "coming," he nevertheless, expresses grave doubt of its authenticity; and this doubt passes, with respect to the latter member of it, into decisive rejection. The grounds on which he bases this doubt and rejection are three.⁹⁴ The saying is not recorded in Lk. xxii. 24-34, a passage which Harnack chooses to consider another and older form of the tradition reproduced in Mt. xx. 20-28 = Mk. x. 35-45. The transition from "ministering" to "giving the life as a ransom," Harnack represents as, although not unendurable, yet unexpected and hard: "ministry" is the act of a servant and no servant is in a position to ransom others. Nowhere else, except in the words spoken at the Last Supper, is there preserved in the oldest tradition an announcement by Jesus that He was to give His life instead of others.⁹⁵ As these reasons bear chiefly upon the latter portion of the saying, Harnack contents himself with rejecting it, and allows to Jesus the former half, which commends itself to him, moreover, by its paradoxical form and the pithiness of its contents. The statement of these grounds of doubt is their sufficient refutation. There is no reason to suppose that the incident recorded in Lk. xxii. 24-36 is the same as that recorded in Mt. xx. 20-28 = Mk. x. 35-45. The differences are decisive.⁹⁶ Jesus does not represent the giving of one's life as a ransom for others as a servant's function, or even ascribe the act to a servant. He represents the giving of one's life as a ransom for others as a supreme act of service for one, not Himself a servant, to render when He gave Himself to service to the uttermost. Harnack himself allows that in one other saying, at least, Jesus does represent His death as offered for others, and, indeed, in a subsequent passage, himself extracts all the probative force from this objection, by pointing out that no presumption can lie against Jesus' expressing Himself concerning His death as He is here reported as doing (p. 26):

Whether Jesus Himself expressly included in the service which He performed, the giving of His life as a ransom for many, we must leave an open question; but the matter is not of so much importance as is commonly supposed. If His eye was always fixed upon His death (and the zealous effort to throw this into doubt is, considering the situation in which He ordinarily stood, simply whimsical) and knew Himself as the good shepherd, John has only said the most natural thing in the world when he puts on Jesus' lips the declaration that the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Whether Jesus really said it, whether He, in another turn of phrase, represented His life as a thing of value for the ransoming of others, is not to be certainly determined; but if He designated His life in general as "service" then His death is properly included in it, for the highest service is - so it has been and so it will remain - the giving of the life.⁹⁷

The case being so; it is surely unreasonable to deny to Jesus words credibly reported from His lips in which He declares that His ministry culminated in the giving of His life for others, merely because He is not reported as having frequently made this great declaration.⁹⁸

There is the less reason for doubting that we have before us here an authentic saying of Jesus', because it was eminently natural and to be expected that Jesus, at this stage of His ministry, when describing the nature of His mission, should not pause until He had intimated the place of His death in it. According to the representation of all the evangelists, it was characteristic of this period of His ministry that He spoke much and very insistently of the death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem, and of the indispensableness of this death for the fulfilment of His task. "From that time," says Matthew, marking the beginning of a period, "began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem . . . and be killed."99 His insistence upon this teaching during this period is marked by all the evangelists again and again,¹⁰⁰ and it was immediately after the third of these insistences which have been recorded for us that the incident is introduced by Matthew and Mark which occasioned the declaration before us. Jesus' preoccupation with His death is strikingly betrayed by His allusion to it even in His response to the ambitious request of James and John, and that in such a manner as to show that it held, in His view, an indispensable place in His work.¹⁰¹ It would have been unnatural, if when, in the sequel to this incident, He came to reveal to His disciples the innermost nature of His mission as one of self-sacrificing devotion, He had made no allusion whatever to the death in which it culminated, and the indispensableness of which to its accomplishment He was at the time earnestly engaged in impressing upon them.

The naturalness, not to say inevitableness, of an allusion to His death in this saying has not prevented some expositors, it is true, from attempting violently to explain away the open allusion which is made to it.¹⁰² Thus, for example, Ernest D. Burton¹⁰³ wishes us to believe that "to give His life" means not "to die" but "to live," - "to devote His life-energies" - and that Jesus here without direct reference to His death is only exhorting His followers to devote their lives without reserve to the service of their fellows. In support of this desperate contention, he urges that he has not been able to find elsewhere the exact phrase, "to give life," used as a synonym of "to die."104 It does not seem very difficult to find;¹⁰⁵ but in any event Burton might have remembered that this phrase is not so much used here as the synonym of "to die," as the wider phrase "to give His life a ransom for" is used as a synonym for "to die instead of."106 In other words, the employment of the term "to give" is determined here by the idea of a ransom - which is a thing given, whether it be money or blood - and not by the idea of dying.¹⁰⁷ Its employment carries with it, indeed, the implication that Jesus' death was a voluntary act - He gave it; but the thought is not completed until the purpose for which He gave it is declared - He gave it as a ransom.

In this context, the saying occurs as an enforcement of Jesus' exhortation to His disciples to seek their greatness in service. He adduces His own example. "For even the Son of Man," He says, "came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." To enhance His example He designates Himself by the transcendent title, "The Son of Man."108 If any, the Son of Man might expect "to be ministered unto" in His sojourn on earth. In His sojourn on earth - for, when we say "Son of Man" we intimate that His earthly life is a sojourn. The eye fixes itself at once on a heavenly origin and a heavenly issue; and we necessarily think of pomp and glory. If even the Son of Man "came" not to be ministered unto but to minister, what shall we say of the proper life-ideal for others? Jesus is not speaking of the manner of His daily life on earth when He speaks here of "coming" to serve. The manner of His daily life on earth was not that of a servant. He lived among His followers as their Master and Lord, claiming their obedience and receiving their reverence.¹⁰⁹ He did not scruple to accept from others or to apply to Himself titles of the highest, even of superhuman, dignity. In this very saying He speaks of Himself by a title which assigns to Him a transcendent being. It was not the manner of His earthly life but the mere fact of this earthly life for Him, which He speaks of as a servile mission. That He was on earth at all; that He, the heavenly one, demeaned Himself to a life in the world; this was what required explanation. And the explanation was, service.

This was not news to His followers. He is not informing them of something hitherto unimagined by them. He is reminding them of a great fact concerning Himself which, He intimates, it were well for them to bear in mind. He "came," not to exercise the lordship which belongs naturally to a great one like Himself, but to perform a service. What the service which He came to perform was, and how He performs it He tells us by mentioning a single item, but that single item one lying so much at the center that it is in effect the whole story. "To minister and to give His life a ransom" are not presented as two separate things. They are one thing presented in general and in particular. The "and" is not merely copulative; it is intensive,¹¹⁰ and may almost be read epexegetically: "The Son of Man came to minister, namely to give His life a ransom."111 It is in "to give His life a ransom" that the declaration culminates; on it that it rests; through it that it conveys its real meaning. For this is the wonderful thing of which Jesus reminds His followers, to compose their ambitious rivalries - that He, the Son of Man, came unto the world to die. Dying was the service by way of eminence which He came to perform. Dying in the stead of others who themselves deserved to die¹¹² - that they need not die. We do not catch the drift of this great saying until we perceive that all its emphasis gathers itself up upon the declaration that Jesus came into the world just to die as a ransom.

The mode in which the service which Jesus came to render to others is performed is described here, then, in the phrase, "to give His life a ransom for many." It would be difficult to make the language more precise. Jesus declares that He came to die; to die voluntarily; to die voluntarily in order that His death may serve a particular purpose. This particular purpose He describes as a "ransom"; and the idea of a "ransom" is explicated by adding that, in thus giving His life as a ransom, His given life, His death, is set over against others in a relation of equivalence, takes their place and serves their need and so releases them."113

It is always possible to assign to each word in turn in a statement like this the least definite or the most attenuated meaning which is ever attached to it in its varied literary applications, and thus to reduce the statement as a whole literally to insignificance. Thus Jesus' strong and precise assertion that He came into the world in order to give His life as a ransom-price for the deliverance of many has been transmuted into the expression of a dawning recognition by Him that His death had became inevitable and of a more or less strong hope, or expectation, that it might not be quite a fatal blow to His wish to be of use, but might in some way or to some extent prove of advantage to His followers."114 According to H. H. Wendt,¹¹⁵ for example, Jesus makes no reference whatever here to the "ransoming" of individual souls from the guilt and punishment of sin: "it is more correct to say that Jesus meant the bringing about of the salvation of the Messianic end-time in a wholly general sense."

Because He now, as death threatened Him for His works' sake, was determined rather to give His life up than be untrue to the vocation imposed on Him by God (Jno. x. 11-18) ; and because in strong trust in God, He was assured that His death would work out not for the destruction but for the furthering of His work; He could designate His yielding up of His life a "ransom," that is a means for bringing about the Messianic "liberation" for all those who would permit themselves to be led by Him to the Messianic salvation.

According to Friedrich Niebergall,¹¹⁶ on the other hand, there is no objective reference in the allusion to a ransom: "the figure is doubtless here only an expression for the religious impression that by Christ's death we are liberated from evil Powers." In a similar vein Johannes Weiss says:117

When Mark wrote this declaration it was immediately intelligible to all his readers. For their religious life was governed by the fundamental feeling that they were liberated from the dominion of the devil and the demons (cf. I Cor. xii. 2, Gal. iv. 8) and therewith delivered from the terrible destruction which impended over the kingdom of sin at the end of the ages.

Questions, such as have been raised by the dogmaticians, as to the meaning of the saying "will no longer occupy us," says Weiss, "if we keep the main idea in mind, that the immediate liberation from the dominion of demonic tyrants which was felt directly by the ancient Christians was a mark of the ministering love of the Christ who gave His life for them."

Comments like these merely lead away from the simple, penetrating declaration of Jesus, the meaning of which is perfectly clear in itself,¹¹⁸ and is further fixed by the testimony of His followers. For Jesus' declaration did not fall fruitless to the ground: it finds an echo in the teaching of His followers, and in this echo we can hear His own tones sounding.¹¹⁹ It marks the very extremity of perverseness, when an attempt is made to reverse the relation of this key-declaration and its echoes in the apostolical writings, explaining it as rather an echo of them. How this is managed may be read briefly in, say, H. J. Holtzmann's-comment on Mk. x. 45.

The thought of the Discourse-Source, Lk. xxii. 27, is so expressed here in Paulinizing. form (cf. Rom. xv. 3) that Jesus also is represented as having found His vocation only in service (Phil. ii. 7, I Cor. ix. 19), and as having yielded up His life in that service (Phil. ii. 8). . . . While, however, the disciple can only "lose" his life in the service of his Lord (Mk. viii. 35 = Mt. x. 39, xvi. 25 = Lk. ix. 24, xvii. 33), it is the part of the Lord to give it voluntarily, according to Gal. i. 4, ii. 20. Especially, however, the "give His life a ransom for many" corresponds to the "who gave Himself a ransom for all" of I Tim. ii. 6 and the "He gave Himself for us that He might ransom us" of Titus ii. 14, that is, the idea of Jesus is glossed by a reminiscence of the Pauline doctrine of redemption.

Perverse as this is, it at least fixes the sense of Jesus' declaration. The attempt to represent it as a reminiscence of the Pauline doctrine of redemption shows at any rate that it is identical with the Pauline doctrine of redemption.

It lies in the nature of the case that a brief saying, consisting of only two short clauses, made, moreover, not for itself but in order to enforce an exhortation to conduct becoming in followers of Jesus, should not tell us all we should like to know of the great matter which it thus allusively brings before us. Many questions arise for guidance on which we must look elsewhere. Fortunately answers to some of them are supplied by the sayings which have already engaged our attention. We can scarcely refuse to correlate Jesus' testimony in them, for example, that He came "to call sinners," that He came "to save the lost" with His testimony here that He came to do many a service, - above all, this service, by His death to ransom them. Undoubtedly the giving of His life as a ransom is the manner in which He saves the lost. And undoubtedly by the "lost" are meant just "sinners," and by "sinners" in turn are meant those who are not "righteous," that is to say the guilt-laden.¹²⁰ What we have here, then, is a declaration by Jesus that He came to save lost sinners by giving His life a ransom for them. The effect, called in a former saying "salvation," is clearly in the first instance relief from the penalties due to their sin: He purchases lost sinners out of the obligations which they have incurred by their sin, by giving His life a ransom for them. That is as far perhaps as our particular saying will carry us. Others of the sayings which have come before us, however, carry us further. They tell us that Jesus secures for lost sinners also perfected righteousness of life - and perhaps something like that is after all suggested in this saying also, for it too has to do with conduct. His disciples are exhorted to follow Jesus' example, and it is implied that His example is a perfect one. The ransom-paying certainly lies at the bottom of all and of that alone is there explicit mention. But there is a call to perfection of life too: and not a call to it merely, but a provision for it. In a word there is a complete "salvation" hinted at here: relief from sin both in its curse and its power. Say that it is in this its completeness only hinted at. That is to say that it is hinted at.

III

We shall only in the briefest possible manner sum up the results of this survey of the eight sayings in which, according to the report of the Synoptics, Jesus declared the purpose of His mission. In doing so we may take our start from the remarks with which Harnack opens the summary of the results of his survey of practically the same series of sayings. "The eight sayings from the Synoptics which we have collected and studied," says he, "contain very few words, but how much is said in them! On investigation they compose a unity which is equally important for the characterization of Jesus, and for the compass and range of His work." We shall wish to say a word each on both of these matters.

First of all, we note, then, that these sayings are not without their teaching as to Jesus' person. The simple phrases, "I came," "I was sent," naturally, do not of themselves testify to more than Jesus' consciousness of a divine mission. It is quite clear, however, that this divine mission of which He thus expresses consciousness, stands in His mind as that of the Messiah. He speaks in all these sayings out of the Messianic consciousness and assumes in them all Messianic functions. Even that, however, does not exhaust their implications.¹²¹ There is a certain pregnancy of speech in them, a certain majesty of tone, a certain presupposition of voluntariness in the action expressed by the " I came," - of active acquiescence lying behind the "I was sent" - which have constantly led expositors to feel in them a claim greater than that to the Messianic dignity itself. Harnack will not admit that even the specifically Messianic consciousness speaks through them, and yet is constrained to exclaim (p. 28) :

Who, then is this "I" that here "came". . . Undoubtedly there lies in that "I came," no matter who is meant, something authoritative and final. There lies in it the consciousness of a divine mission, as indeed it is interchanged with the expression "I was sent." The finality, however, is given by the definitions of purpose. He who came to perfect the law, He who was sent to recover the lost sheep, that is, to fulfil the prediction of the coming of God Himself, He who came with fire and sword - He comes as the final and ultimate one.

To others, even this seems inadequate; and they are right. Justice may be done by it to the impression which the reader receives from these sayings of the majesty of the speaker; scarcely to the impression which they equally make on him of the speaker's sense of complete control over all the circumstances of His mission, including the mission itself. It is this strong impression which expresses itself in the constant tendency of expositors to see in the "I came," "I was sent" a testimony by Jesus not merely to His divine mission but to His heavenly origin. "In the coming of Jesus," expounds A. Seeberg, for example,¹²² "it is not some kind of an appearance (Auftreten) of Jesus in the world that is spoken of, but His entrance (Eintritt) into the world, such as is unmistakably spoken of in Jno. xvi. 28, where the coming into the world corresponds to the going away to the Father."

Unquestionably in some of these sayings Jesus speaks out of a consciousness of preëxistence. That is not merely suggested by the appearance in one of them, instead of the simple "I came" of a more significant "I came out" (Mk. i. 38), which is scarcely completely satisfied by any other supplement than "from heaven" or "from the Father." It is clearly presupposed in two of them by the employment, instead of the personal pronoun, of the descriptive periphrasis, "the Son of Man," the particular Messianic designation which especially emphasizes preëxistence (Lk. xix. 10, Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28). The declaration of Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28 runs most strikingly on the same lines with Phil. ii. 5 ff., and bears similar testimony to the preëxistent glory of the great exemplar of humility, whom both passages hold up to view. The whole force of the example resented turns on the immense incongruity of the Son of Man appearing in the rSle of a servant; this force would be much decreased, if not destroyed, if the Son of Man had never been anything but a servant, was in His own nature a servant, and was fitted only for a servant's rôle. That three out of eight of these sayings thus imply the preëxistence of Jesus, and take their coloring from this implication, perhaps sufficiently accounts for the tendency of commentators to read the whole of them from this point of sight. We know at least that He who says in them, "I came," "I was sent," was conscious of having come from heaven to perform the mission which He ascribes to Himself.

In this implication of a preëxistence in glory, distinct in some of these sayings, possibly to be assumed in them all, they range themselves by the side of the more numerous similar sayings of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John.¹²³ "The not infrequent addition, 'into the world,"' remarks Harnack, in commenting on these, "shows a new horizon, alien to Jesus Himself." Not so. The difference in this as in other things, between the Synoptic and the Johannine record, is rather quantitative than qualitative. This Johannine feature too is found in the Synoptic record; but in fewer instances.

It is not, however, of the person of Jesus, but, as was to be expected - for do they not speak of His mission? - of His work, that we learn most from these sayings. According to their teaching Jesus' work may be fairly summed up in the one word, "salvation." He came to call "sinners"; He came to seek and save "the lost"; He came to give His life a "ransom" for many. Everything else which Jesus testifies that He came to do takes a place subordinate and subsidiary to "salvation." Even the "fulfilling" of the law. Harnack is wrong in attempting to coordinate the two functions of Saviour and Lawgiver in Jesus' testimony to His mission. "According to His self testimony, the purpose of His coming and thus His significance is given in this - that He is at once Saviour and Lawgiver. . . . Redeemer and Lawgiver: all that constitutes the significance of His coming is exhausted in that collocation . . . Programmatic in the strict sense are only these two sayings: 'I came to save' and 'I came to fulfil the law."'124 Jesus does declare that He came to fulfil the law, and by this He means also "to fill it out," to complete and perfect it, so that it shall be a faultless transcript of the will of God, the Righteous One. But not this only, or even mainly. He means more fundamentally that He came to get the law observed, so that it shall be perfectly expressed in righteous lives. His mind is more on the transforming of law-breakers into law-keepers, than on the perfecting of the codex itself. That is to say, He is thinking of salvation; of salvation in its ultimate effects. And what could be more poignant than to declare side by side, "I came not to call righteous but sinners," "I came to make human lives the perfect reflection of the law of God"?

Those whom Jesus came to call, He describes as sinners and as lost, that is to say as lost sinners; as those who can lay claim to no righteousness of their own and who have no power to obtain any, that is to say as helpless dependents on Him the Saviour. To them He comes to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom; He calls them to repentance; He seeks them out and saves them; He gives His life a ransom for them; He writes the law of God upon their hearts. This is the process of His "salvation." Their own energies are enlisted: He preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom to them and calls them to repentance. Their hearts are changed: He writes the law of God upon their hearts and sets them spontaneously to fulfil it. But beneath all this, there lies something deeper still which attracts to itself especially His greatest word: "I came to save." He gives His life a ransom for them. And it is only as He thus ransoms them by the gift of Himself that they cease to be "lost"; and having thus ceased to lie under the curse, can cease also to lie under the power of sin.

Harnack pushes this greatest declaration, "I came to give my life a ransom for many" into the background. It makes little difference, he hints, whether Jesus ever said it or not. Jesus certainly died. And if all His work in the world was comprehended - as He witnesses that it was - in the category of ministry, then of course His death was included in this ministry. We may even say it was the culmination of His ministry, since the gift of one's life is the highest ministry which he can render. But the main matter is that Jesus declares that He came into the world to minister - whether by living or dying. "What it has meant in history that Jesus expressly said that He did not come to be ministered unto but to 'minister' - that cannot be expressed in words! All the advance in ethics, in these nineteen centuries which have flowed by, has had its most powerful lever in this."125

Imitatio Christi! It certainly is the most powerful lever to move men to endeavor which has ever entered the world; it has revolutionized all conceptions of values; it has transformed the whole spirit of conduct and changed the entire aspect of life. But it has one indispensable precondition. Only living things can imitate anything. Dead things must be brought to life. Lost things must be found. Sinners must be saved. Even the heathen knew that he may see the good and yet pursue the bad. The awakened soul cries out, O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me out of this body of death? Jesus has done for us something far greater than set us a good example, and summon us to its imitation: something without which there could have been no imitation of His example; no transformed ethics; no transfigured lives. He has undoubtedly set before our eyes in living example the perfect law of love. But He has done more than that. He has written it on our hearts. He has given us new ideals. And He has given us something even above that. He has given us the power to realize these ideals. In one word, He has brought to us newness of life. And He has obtained for us this newness of life by His own blood.

It is this that Jesus declares when He says, "I came to give my life a ransom for many." And therefore this is the greatest declaration of all. In it He shows us not how He has become our supreme example merely, but how He has become our Saviour. He has set us a perfect example. He has given us a new ideal. But He has also given us His life. And in giving us His life, He has given us life. For "He gave His life a ransom instead of many."

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, v. xiii, 1915, pp. 513-586.

Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1912, xxii, pp. 1-30.

"Das Evangelium des Lucas" ausgelegt von Theodor Zahn, 1913, pp. 400 ff., 765 ff. The grounds on which the omission of the passage is justified are sufficiently stated by F. J. A. Hort, "The New Testament in the Original Greek," [ii], Appendix, 1881, pp. 59 ff.

Cf. Zahn, as cited, p. 767: "On the other hand we do not as yet know whether Marcion had this third questionable passage also (verse 56a: o` ga.r ui`oj ) ) ) sw/sai in his Gospel. Tertullian, however, had precisely this passage in his text . . ."

The character of its attestation implies as much. Accordingly Tischendorf remarks ad loc.: "It is unquestionable from the witnesses, especially the Latin and Syriac, that the whole of this interpolation was current in MSS. already in the second century."

This vicious critical method is thetically asserted by H. J. Holtzmann, "Einleitung," §49, ed. 2, p. 49. It has been recently defended in principle by G. Kittel, TSK, 1912, 85, pp. 367-373.

"Agnoatos Theos," 1913, p. 301: "The philologist knows from experience that the manuscript transmission must be given a higher value than the indirect."

Cf. C. R. Gregory,"Prolegomena" to the eighth edition of Tischendorf's New Testament, "Pars Ultima," 1894, p. 1138; "Textkritik des Neuen Testaments," ii, 1902, p. 754; "Canon and Text of the New Testament," 1907, p. 422; E. Miller in Scriverner's "Introduction," etc., ed. 4, ii, pp. 188-189; Hammond, "Outlines," etc., ed. 2, p. 66. On the general subject, see Ll. J. M. Bebb, in the Oxford "Studia Biblica," ii, 1890, p. 221.

In his "Sacred Latin Texts" (i, 1912; ii, 1914, iii, 1914) Buchanan is accustomed to give lists of striking readings occurring in the manuscript he is editing. Here are a few from the Irish codex, Harl.,1023: Lk. i. 57, And she brought forth according to the word of God a son; viii. 12, Take heed how ye hear the word of God; xi. 3, Give us today for bread, the word of God from heaven; xv. 29, But as soon as this son of the devil came; Jno. vi. 44, No man can come unto me except the Father which sent me and the Holy Spirit draw him; viii. 12, He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the eternal light of the life of God. See also "The Records Unrolled," 1911. The parallel is made more striking by Buchanan's tendency to think such readings more original than those of the critical texts. The lengths he would go in this contention may be observed in his pamphlet: "The Search for the Original Words of the Gospel," 1914.

We give to ei`j tou/to the benefit of the doubt in Lk. iv. 43. Probably the right reading is evpi. tou/to.

A. Plummer's dating of Mark ("The Gospel According to St. Mark," 1914), between 65 and 70 A.D., probably nearer the latter than the former date (we should say about A.D. 68), seems to us the only reasonable one: cf. Johannes Weiss, "Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments," I1, 1906, p. 32 (cf. also p. 35): "about the year 70, probably somewhat earlier." On the other hand Harnack's later view of the date of Luke as prior to A.D. 63 seems to be not improbable.

Cf. Holtzmann's note: "avnastaj is to be taken here literally, therefore not merely as = ~q'y"w:." Cf. also G. Wohlenberg's note.

So J. A. Alexander, J. J. Van Oosterzee, E. Klostermann, H. B. Swete, A. Plummer, et al. Mayer ad loc. gives older names.

A. Loisy appears not unwilling also to make a discreet use of Wellhausen's disintegrating criticism in his attempt to show how Luke concocted his narrative. Montefiore after reporting Wellhausen's criticism, expresses doubt regarding it, and then slips off into the lines of his favorite mentor, Loisy.

"Die Schriften," etc.1, i, pp. 438 and 138. Weiss even speaks of Mk. x. 38 as "no doubt an echo of Lk. xii. 50" (p. 160), but it is not perfectly clear what he means by this (it is retained in the second edition).

For example, Edward Robinson, having placed Mt. x. 34 ff. in its natural position in his §62, preposits Lk. xii. 49 ff. to his §52. John H. Kerr, on the contrary, retaining the same natural position for Mt. x. 34 ff. (at his §50), more correctly places Lk. xii. 49 ff. at his §90. C. W. Hodge, Sr., "Syllabus of Lectures on the Gospel History," 1888, p. 73, very properly speaks of Robinson's "dislocation" of the material of Luke as "the principal blot on his harmony": "he breaks up the connection just where commentators find a striking unity."

Willoughby C. Allen and A. Plummer deny that Mt. x. 34 ff. and Lk. xii. 51 ff. come from Q. "Phraseology and context alike differ," says Allen. "The two evangelists draw from different sources."

Along with these there are certain other sayings which come illustratively into consideration. Primary among them is Mt. xi. 3 ff. = Lk. vii. 20 ff. which Harnack (p. 23) is tempted to include in the list itself as a ninth saying. Others are: Mk. xi. 9, 10 = Mt. xxi. 9 = Lk. xix. 38 = Jno. xii. 13; Mt. xxiii. 39; Mt. xi. 18, 19 = Lk. vii. 33, 34. Cf. also Mt. x. 40; Mk. ix. 37 = Lk. ix. 48; Lk. x. 16. There may be added [Mk. ix. 11 = Mt. xvii. 13; Mt. iii. 11 = Lk. iii. 16]. We have made some remarks on the general subject in "The Lord of Glory," pp. 39 f., 76 f., 126 f., 190 f.

We may quote here, say, Johannea Weiss, who says ("Die Schriften1," i, p. 33): "Possibly there belongs to it yet many another [passage] which is found only in Matthew, or only in Luke." As we ourselves believe that Mark also knew the "Discourse-Source," we might add also "or only in Mark."

See the state of the case as presented in the Princeton Theological Review, 1913, xi, 2, pp. 195-269.

Cf. G. Wohlenberg in loc.: "The eivj tou/to, verse 38, means just the khru,ssein in general, not especially the kavkei/ khru,ssein."

In the parallel, Luke says simply, "to the other cities," which suggests no other limitation than what Th. Zahn (p. 247) calls "the self-evident one" of "the other Jewish cities of Palestine."

Cf. Mt. iv. 23: "And He went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the good tidings of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of disease, and all manner of sickness among the people." The emphasis in both Mark and Matthew is on the completeness with which Galilee was covered by this itinerant preaching.

See especially Th. Zahn, p. 248, and pp. 61 f. Cf. A. Loisy, i, p. 462: "Luke has chosen a general term in order to signify that the mission of Jesus was for the whole country, conformably to what was said in verse 43 (B. Weiss, "Einleitung," pp. 307-308)." Also, B. Weiss, C. F. Keil, Johannes Weiss in loc. Wellhausen: "Judaea (verse 44) includes Galilee in it: cf. i. 5; vi. 17; vii. 17, and D. xxiii. 5." Godet rejects the reading "Judaea" as "absurd."

We are following Th. Zahn here (p. 248).

So, e. g., H. J. Holtzmann, A. Loisy, J. Weiss. C. G. Montefiore draws back.

Cf. the conjunction of the two in Jesus' instructions to the Twelve, Mt. x. 5-8, and His reply to the Baptist's question, Mt. xi. 4-5.

P. 333: "The ground of His flight, verse 43 finds in the universality of His mission."

On the accent of "necessity" in Jesus' life, see Hastings' "Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels," article "Foresight," at the beginning.

Mt. xi. 3 ff. = Lk. vii. 20 ff. Harnack (p. 23) says: "The question whether the miracles which are enumerated are to be understood spiritually is to be answered in the negative for Matthew and Luke, and probably also for Jesus Himself." But that places Harnack in a quandary: "But that Jesus should have spoken here literally of raising the dead is nevertheless not easy to acknowledge."

P. 1: Mt. xxiii. 39 = Lk. xiii. 35.

Cf. Th. Zahn's words "Das Evangelium des Matthäus3," p. 610, distinguishing between "the execution of a commission laid on Him by God (Mt. x. 40, o` avpostei,laj me, xv. 24; xxi. 37) " and "the purpose and meaning of His life comprehended by Himself (h=lqen)."

On Lk. iv. 43.

It is less obvious that the simple "I came" presupposes preëxistence as many commentators insist (e. g., A. Plummer, "Matthew," p. 156, note 2, cf. A. M. McNeille on Mt. x. 40). But on this see below pp. 568, 581 ff.

Montefiore is quite right in saying: "The explanation is that God had ordered this limitation."

In only two of the sayings in which Jesus expounds His mission (Lk. iv. 43, Mt. xv. 24) is the form "I was sent" employed. It is perhaps not without significance that in the only one of these which has a parallel (Lk. iv. 43), it is not the simple "I came" which stands in this parallel (Mk. i. 38), but a form which more pointedly refers to the source of the mission in God ("I came out"). The "I was sent" is reflected in its active equivalent in the "Johannine" (Jno. xiii. 20) phrase of Mt. x. 40; Mk. ix. 37 = Lk. ix. 48; Lk. x. 16, in which the unity of the sent and sender is suggested. Note the emphasis placed on Jesus' employment of "I was sent" in our present passage by F. L. Steinmeyer, "The Miracles of Our Lord," pp. 140 ff., and J. Laidlaw, "The Miracles of Our Lord," p. 252. Th. Zahn remarks that here for the first time in Matthew is Jesus presented as the avpo,stoloj of God, and adds: "cf. xv. 24; xxi. 37 as correlate of the h=lqon of v. 17; ix. 13; x. 34. Apart from John cf. Heb. iii. 1, Clem., I Cor. xl, 1."

This is solidly shown by Th. Zahn.

It has been often pointed out that the use of the diminutive here softens the apparent harshness of the language. Shall we say "doglings"?

"Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah1," ii, 1883, p. 41.

H. J. Holtzmann (p. 184): "Let first (prw/ton = prius, maxim from Rom. i. 16; ii. 9, 10) the children (Israelites) be filled"; this explanation, which still leaves room for the satisfaction of the mother, is simply lacking in Mt. xv. 26, and therefore the conclusion is commonly drawn that in the narrative of Mark we have a deliberate mitigation, a dependence upon the later, Pauline mission, and therefore secondary work (so Hilgenfeld, last in ZWTh, 1889, p. 497; B. and J. Weiss, Jülicher, "Gleichnisreden," ii, p. 256 f., even Wittichen p. 188, and with more reserve, Wernle, p. 133)."

"Schriften," etc.1, i, 1906, p. 128.

Wellhausen represents Mark as free from such universalizing utterances. Nowhere does it put such a statement as Mt. viii. 11 f. on Jesus' lips; and only in the eschatological discourse, Mk. xiii. 10, do we find a prediction of the extension of the preaching of the Gospel to the heathen attributed to Jesus. Montefiore adds xiv. 9. The implication is, of course, that neither of these passages is authentic.

"Christ has become minister of the circumcised," comments H. A. W. Meyer; "for to devote His activity to the welfare of the Jewish nation was, according to promise, the duty of His Messianic office, cf. Mt. xx. 28, xv. 24." 

"It has been remarked," says Wellhausen ("Das Ev. Marci," 1903, p. 60), that this is up to now the only example in Mark in which Jesus heals from a distance, by His mere word." "This is the second example of a miracle wrought from a distance," says Loisy (i, p. 977). "The first was wrought on the centurion's son." Then he cites Augustine's remarks in "Quaest. Ev.," i, 18.

Vol. ii, pp. 657, 658.

So from Augustine and Jerome down. H. A. W. Meyer expresses the general opinion when he says: "It was not intended that Christ should come to the Gentiles in the days of His flesh, but that He should do so at the subsequent period (xxviii. 19) in the person of the Spirit acting through the medium of the Apostolic preaching (Jno. x. 16, Eph. ii. 17)." Cf. Th. Zahn: "His personal and immediate vocation." Also, R. C. Trench, "Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord," second American ed., 1852, p. 274; J. Laidlaw, "The Miracles of Our Lord," 1890, p. 252; A. Edersheim, "Life and Times," etc.', 1883, ii, p. 40.

Observe the address of the petitioner in our passage (Mt. xv. 22), "O Lord, Son of David," which is not repelled by Jesus. "Spoken by a heathen," remarks Edersheim (ii, p. 39), "these words were an appeal, not to the Messiah of Israel, but to an Israelitish Messiah." They supply the starting point for a conversation, however, in which the Messiah of Israel brings relief to the heathen.

That in Mt. x. 6, "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," the genitive is not partitive seems to be shown by the contrast of verse 5: the disciples are to go, not to Gentiles or the Samaritans, but to Israel, described here as "lost sheep." Cf. H. A. W. Meyer in loc.: "Such sheep (ix. 36) were all, seeing that they were without faith in Him, the heaven-sent Shepherd." The same phrase in Mt. xv. 24, in a similar contrast (with the Canaanitish woman), might naturally be held to be used in the same broad sense. Israel as a whole in that case would be the "lost sheep."

Cf. B. Weiss (Meyer, 9, 1898) and A. Plummer in loc., and A. Loisy, i, p.891.

G. S. Goodspeed, "Israel's Messianic Hope," 1900, p. 123: "All the seers of Israel look forward out of their present, whether gloomy or bright, to a golden age of peace." W. A. Brown, Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," iii, p. 733°: ":lmong the blessings to which Israel looks forward in the Messianic times, none is more emphasized than peace." Cf. A. Loisy, i, p. 891.

Neglecting this, Harnack speaks inadequately when he writes: "This discourse is not Messianic in the literal sense - even John the Baptist could, it would appear, have said it - but in the burden of the discourse and in the saying, 'I came for this purpose,' there lies a claim which soars above the prophets and the Baptist. For Jesus implicitly demands here that the severest sacrifices be made and the enmity of the nearest kindred be incurred, for the sake of His person "

Cf. the excellent remarks of Th. Zahn, p. 415.

So B. Weiss, "Das Matthaeusevangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen," 1876, p. 281, also in Meyer, 9th ed., 1898, and in "Die Vier Evangelien," etc., 1900, in loc. So also H. J. Holtzmann, "Die Synoptiker3," 1901, p. 235, who remarks: "Thus Jesus strikes out of the picture of the Messianic age, at least for the immediately following transitional period, the joy and peace predicted in Micah. iv. 3, v. iv, Zech. ix. 9, 10, and brings war into prospect in its stead, in reminiscence of Ex. xxxii. 27, Ezek. vi. 3, xiv. 17, xxi. 12."

It is often so weakened. Thus e. g., A. Loisy: "The appearance of the Christ has therefore, for consequence - not for end, but the Biblical language does not make a sharp distinction between the two - the division signified by the sword." Also, B. Weiss (Meyer, 9th ed., 1898): "What is the immediate, inevitable consequence of His coming, Jesus announces as its purpose." Cf. A. H. McNeille on Mt. x. 34.

Cf. B. Weiss, "Das Matthaeusevangelium," etc., 1876, p. 281: "It does not come like an unavoidable evil which is connected with the sought-for good, but it is foreseen and intended by Him."

This appears to be A. Loisy's idea: "Because the proclamation of the kingdom has as its immediate effect (had not the Saviour found this Himself in His own home?) to cause discord in families - one accepting the faith, another rejecting it, and this discord placing believers and unbelievers at odds." See also C. G. Montefiore: "The sword does not mean war between nations, but dissension between families, of which one member remains a Jew, while another becomes a Christian."

This appears to be A. Plummer's meaning: "So long as men's wills are opposed to the Gospel there can be no peace. . . . Once more Christ guards His disciples against being under any illusions. They have entered the narrow way, and it leads to tribulation, before leading to eternal life."

Something like this seems to be Johannes Weiss' meaning: "This saying belongs to the most characteristic and the most authentic sayings of Jesus concerning Himself: 'I came not to bring peace on the earth but a sword.' Jesus must have felt deeply how utterly His proclamation stood in contradiction with what men were accustomed to hear and wished to hear. And what He Himself in His parental home seems to have experienced, that he foresees as a universal phenomenon which He portrays by means of words derived from Micah: a cleft is to go through families; and indeed it is to be the young generation which shall oppose the old ('three against two and two against three' says Luke: the wife of the son lives in the house of her parents-in-law). Jesus does not reprehend this, and offers no exhortation against loss of piety. He simply posits it as an inevitable fact. Thus it has always been a thousand times over; and it may be to the elders a warning and to the children a consolation, that even the Gospel of Jesus must create so painful a division."

Cf. Hahn's note in loc.

A. Plummer: "I came not to send any other thing than division." Th. Zahn: "Think ye that I am come to give peace on earth? No, I say to you, nothing else than division." Cf. II Cor. i. 13.

Cf. Plummer's note.

paragi,nomai "to come to the aide of," is, says Harnack, a "more elegant" word than e;rcomai, and Luke has varied the h=lqon of verse 49 to the paregeno,mhn of verse 51 for the sake of better literary form. If Luke was really the author of all the nice touches with which he is credited, he would need to be recognized as one of the most "exquisite" writers of literary history. The variations of language between the parallel statements of verses 49 and 51 are grounded in the nature of the case and reflect the truth of life. It is better to explain paregeno,mhn as the natural phrase to express the disciples' thought of Jesus' "coming" relatively to themselves, than to give it with Thayer-Grimm the sense of "coming forth," "making one's public appearance" (Mt. iii. 1, Heb. ix. 11).

Cf. Loisy, p. 892: "In view of the expressions chosen and of the progress of the discourse, the fire is nothing else than the discord introduced into the world by the preaching of the Gospel, or, better still perhaps the movement excited for or against the religion of Jesus by the Apostolic preaching, from which the discord arose."

Cf. Zahn, p. 516: "That the ultimate purpose of His life and work is to bring peace upon the earth, Jesus of course does not here deny" [cf. to the contrary, Acts x. 36, Lk. i. 79, Iaa. ix. 6, Eph. ii. 14-17], "but only that the intended and immediate consequence of His coming and manifestation is a universal condition of peace upon earth, - a thing which even the angels on the night of His birth did not proclaim. . . ."

So Kuinoel, Olshauaen, De wette, Bleek, Meyer, B. Weiss, Holtzmann, Zahn. On this use of the ti. see A. T. Robertson, "A Grammar of the Greek of the New Testament," 1914, on Lk. xii. 49 as per Index, and Zahn in loc. p. 514, note 54. On the eiv h;dh avnh,fqh see Zahn in loc. and note 53.

So Holtzmann (p. 374), and Zahn (p. 515).

Cf. "Princeton Biblical and Theological Studies," 1912, pp. 71 f.

The "from henceforth" of verse 52 introduces no difficulty; cf. H. A. W. Meyer's comment: "Jesus already realizes His approaching death." "The lighting up of this fire," he remarks at an earlier point, "which by means of His teaching and work He had already prepared, was to be effected by His death (see avpo. tou/ nu/n verse 52) which became the subject of offense, as, on the other hand, of His divine courage of faith and life (cf. ii. 35)." A. Loisy is altogether unreasonable when he writes (p. 893): "In making Jesus say that the divisions will exist henceforth, 'from now,' the evangelist appears to forget that, according to him, the fire of discord should be kindled only later, when the Saviour had been baptized in death; but with him the time when Jesus spoke and that of His death were almost confounded together."

It is unreasonable for Johannes Weiss (p. 246) to say: "The error that Jesus came to destroy the law and the prophets was no doubt current in the time of the evangelist in certain circles, but cannot be proved for the life-time of Jesus, at least in the case of His disciples." Harnack refutes Weiss on his own ground (pp. 19 f.): but no refutation is needed beyond the words themselves.

Cf. F. Giesebrecht, "Com. on Jer.," 1894, in loc.: "For Jeremiah, to whom it was a matter of course that the old covenant would not last forever, there can therefore lie in the future only a new covenant, as with Isa. Iv. 3; lix. 21, lx. 20, lxi. 8, and Ezek. xxxiv. 25, xxxvii, 26. The old covenant had proved its insufficiency by the people's not keeping it and not being able to keep it. And since every good and perfect gift comes from above, God must for the future give the strength which the people lack for keeping the law, or else no stable, abiding relation between God and the people is ever possible. The requirement envisaging the people now m external letters must become one with the mind and will of man. . . . He has not yet attained to the conception of a 'new heart,' Ezek. xi. 19, xxx. 2 ff.; Ps. li. 12, although he thinks of an inward influencing of the heart by divine power, so that it acquires a new attitude towards the content of the law."

These words are quoted from A. F. Gfrorer, "Das Jahrhundert des Heils," 1838, ii, p. 341.

See Gfrörer as cited, and especially the citation (p. 342) from the book Siphra on Levit. xxvi. 9.

H. A. W. Meyer states the matter excellently with respect to our passage.

See Zahn's discussion here.

P. 213 f.

So H. A. W. Meyer, and A. H. McNeille.

So also Wellhausen.

That lu,sh|, verse 19, is "break," not "abrogate," the parallel poih,sh| sufficiently shows.

Origen, "Contra Celsum," iii. 59.

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer on Mt. ix. 10: "Observe that Jesus Himself by no means denies the ponhro.n ei=nai in regard to those associated with Him at table, ver. 12 f. They were truly diseased ones," sinners.

Cf. Johannes Weiss (p. 167): "The answer which He gives to the criticism of the Scribes neither provides a complete analysis of His motives nor wholly reveals what He holds as to the publicans and sinners. He justifies His conduct only by an immediately obvious reason against which there is nothing to adduce: 'The strong have no need of a physician, but the sick' . . . He goes to those who need help and where He can help."

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer in loc.: "Through that quotation from the Scriptures . . . it is intended to make the Pharisees understand how much they too were sinners."

"Die Gleichnisreden Jesu," ii, pp. 175, 322.

So far rightly, H. H. Wendt, "The Teaching of Jesus," E. T., vol. ii, p. 51: "In these words He left quite untouched the question whether any were truly righteous in His sense."

Cf. J. A. Alexander: "The distinction which He draws is not between two classes of men, but between two characters or conditions of the whole race."

J. Weiss will not allow that Jesus spoke more than the "parable" of the physician; but he recognizes that the Evangelist, by the main saying he puts into Jesus' mouth reflects the belief of the community that Jesus is the Saviour of sinners: "All those called into the community, felt themselves saved sinners, and in the retrospect of the whole work of Jesus, He appears as the savior of sinners. Cf. Lk. xix. 10."

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer: "h=lqe: emphatically placed first."

Cf. the similar use of the collective neuter in Jno. vi. 37, xvii. 2, 24.

Harnack therefore remarks that Wellhausen rightly supplies "sheep," translating: "For the Son of man came to seek and save das verlorene Schaf." Is the employment of the singular, "Schaf," here accurate? Wellhausen can scarcely intend it to apply to Zacchaeus as the example of a class.

"The Kingdom of God," p. 136. Bruce allows that the middle voice of the verb avpo,llumi sometimes imports "irretrievable perdition," but he will allow no such connotation to "the neuter participle to. avpolwlo,j." The neuter participle to, avpolwlo,j is found in the absolute sense of the "the lost," however, only in Lk. xix. 10. The participle occurs, however, as a qualifier of substantives in Lk. xv. 4, 6, 24, 32, Mt. x. 6, xv. 24. These are all the passages which Bruce has to go on: they obviously do not sustain his contention.

Cf. the language of Lk. xiii. 16. We cannot take the words in a spiritual sense, even with the modification suggested by Holtzmann and Plummer who combine the two senses.

Cf. Zahn p. 623, note 73: "According to the whole evangelical tradition, Jesus repeatedly indeed visited localities with a preponderant heathen population, and even worked some healings there (cf. Lk. viii. 27-39, Mt. xv. 26-28, xv. 29-39, and see "Commentary on Matthew3," pp. 531 ff.), but He never preached to the heathen or even once entered a heathen's house (cf. Lk. vii. 2-10, Jno. vii. 35, xix, 20-32, and see "Commentary on John'," pp. 391 f. 511, 518)."

Cf. in Luke, iii. 5, 6; iv. 24 ff.; xiii. 18-21, 29; xiv. 22 f.; xx. 16; xxiv. 47. See above in Mt. xv. 24. On the universalism of Luke, cf. Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," vol. iii, pp. 172 f. On the universaliam of Jesus, cf. F. Spitta, "Jesus und die Heidenmission," 1909, and the article "Missions" in Hastings' "Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels."

In these criticisms Harnack pretty closely follows Wellhauaen, "Das Evangelium Marci," 1903, p. 91: "The avpolu,trwsij through the death of Jesus intrudes into the Gospel only here: immediately before, He did not die for others and in their stead, but He died before them that they might die afterwards. The words kai. dou/nai ktl. are lacking in Lk. xxii. 27. They do not in fact fit in with diakonh/sai, for that means 'wait at table' as the third and fourth evangelists rightly understand. The passage from serving to giving life as a ransom is a meta,basiv eivj avllo. ge,noj. It is explained by the service at the Lord's Supper, where Jesus administers His flesh and blood with bread and wine." Wellhausen is an adept at this sort of carping, surface verbal criticism.

Johannes Weiss, "Die Schriften," etc.1,i. p. 161, tells us that the grounds on which recent criticism denies the saying to Jesus are these three - which may be compared with Harnack's: "First, the entire life-activity of the Lord is here reviewed ('He came'); secondly, the term 'ransom' and the whole series of conceptions opened up by it, do not occur elsewhere in Jesus' preaching; and thirdly, the parallel declaration from the Discourse-Source, Lk. xxii. 27, contains nothing of the redemptive death." That is to say, in brief, Jesus cannot have said what He is here reported to have said, because He is not reported to have said it often.

Cf. G. Hollmann, "Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu" and Runze as there quoted.

Somewhat similarly, Johannes Weiss, who denies Mk. x. 45, Mk. xx. 28, to Jesus but allows to Him Lk. xxii. 27, writes ("Die Schriften1," vol. i, pp. 161-162): "It is, however, of course not inconceivable that Jesus should have included also His approaching death in this work of service and love. It is even probable that He was of the conviction that His death would somehow accrue to the advantage of the men for whom He had labored in word and deed. But whether He thought directly of a sacrificial death, or of a vicarious punishment, such as is described by Isaiah in the Fifty-third chapter, - that must remain doubtful, cf. xiv. 24." Why - when He certainly knew Isaiah liii, certainly applied it to Himself, and is credibly reported to have spoken of His death as a sacrificial offering (Mk. xiv. 24) and as a vicarious punishment (Mk. x. 45)? The discussion by H. J. Holtzmann, "Synopt3.," p. 160 is notable from the same point of view.

It is purely arbitrary for Harnack to add in a note: "If the declaration," as to giving His life as a ransom, "comes from Jesus, we have at least no guaranty that it was spoken in connection with the diakonei/n and was introduced by h=lqon." There is no justification in any legitimate method of criticism for thus rending unitary sayings into fragments and dealing with each clause as a separate entity.

Mt. xvi. 21; cf. Mk. viii. 31; Lk. ix. 22.

Mt. xvii. 22 f., Mk. ix. 30 f., Lk. ix. 43 ff.: Mt. xx. 17 ff., Mk. x. 32 ff., Lk. xviii., 31 ff.

Mt. xx. 22, Mk, x. 38.

Not Harnack, whose phrase: "The announcement that Jesus gave His life as a lu,tron for others, that is to say, was to die for all" . . . indicates his conception of the meaning of the words.

"Biblical Ideas of Atonement," 1909, pp. 114 ff.

He finds the phrase "give your lives" in the exhortations of Mattathias to his sons, I Macc. ii. 50 f.; but he supposes it to mean there, "to devote your life energies," an interpretation which did not suggest itself to Josephus, "Antt." xii. 8. 3, Niese iii. pp. 120f. (cf. Sirach xxix. 15, and, with paradi,dwmi, Acts xv. 26, Hermas, "Sim.," ix, 28.2; Just. "Apol." i, 50 from Isa. 53,12).

See preceding note, and also cf. Ex. xxi. 23: dw,sei yuch.n avnti. yuch/j. A. Seeberg, "Der Tod Christi," etc., 1895, p. 350, says: "The words dou/nai th.n yuch,n refer in any case to death, for this formula which corresponds to the Hebrew vp,n, !t;n" occurs frequently in the sense of the surrender of the life in death." In a note he cites Ex. xxi. 23, I Macc. ii. 55, Sr. xxix. 15, with other less close parallels. There can be no doubt that "to give His life" means to Clement of Alexandria, for instance, "Paed." I, ix, somewhat past the middle, simply to die.

Cf. Th. Zahn, "Das Ev. d. Matthaeus1," 1903, p. 604, ed. 3, 1910, p. 611: "The greatest service, however, will be done by Him only in the gift of His life. No doubt this is not said clearly by dou/nai th.n yuch.n auvtou/ by itself; dou/nai rather finds its necessary supplement only in the object-predicate lu,tron avnti. pollw/n. But just this action described so figuratively, can take place only in a voluntary endurance of death; for no one can give a purchase-price for another without in doing so depriving himself of it."

Cf. H. A. w. Meyer, on Mt. xx. 28 (E. T., ii, p. 51): "dou/nai is made choice of, because the yuch, (the soul, as the principle of the life of the body) is conceived of as a lu,tron (a ransom)." Note Josephus, "Antt." xiv. 7.1: lu,tron avnti. pa,ntwn e;doken, and cf. LXX Ex. xxi. 30, xxx. 12.

Cf. Harnack (p. 10): "That Jesus says here, not 'I' but 'the Son of Man' is explained from the contents of the saying, which acquires force from Jesus' laying claim at the same time to the (future) Messianic dignity." This is saying too little and its says it with a wrong implication, but it allows the main matter. Jesus' use of "the Son of Man" here plays the same part that Paul's phrase "being in the form of God" plays in Phil. ii. 6.

Cf. the striking presentation of the facts here by Zahn, "Matthew1," p. 603.

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer: "intensive: adding on the highest act, the culminating point in the diakonh/sai."

Cf. Seeberg, p. 348: "Jesus became man, in order as Messiah, to give His life in death, for of course the words dou/nai th.n yuch,n give the content of diakonh/sai."

Whoever the "many" are, they certainly include the "sinners" whom He "came to call" (Mk. ii. 17, Mt. ix. 13, Lk. v. 32) and "the lost" whom "He came to seek and save" (Lk. xix. 10). For these "sinners" and "lost" He came to give His life a ransom. This is the way He saves them.

Cf. H. A. W. Meyer on Mt. xx. 28: "avnti, denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place (is given instead) of those who are to be set free in consideration thereof." The "meaning is strictly and specifically defined by lu,tron (rp,Ko) according to which avnti, can only be understood in the sense of substitution, the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf it is paid." In the koinh,( avnti, seems to be going out of use. Instead of it u`pe,r is employed (L. Rademacher, "N. T. Grammatik," 1911, pp. 115-116). It must therefore be held to be fully intended when used.

Cf. C. G. Montefiore, vol. i, p. 260: "Moreover Jesus may just conceivably have realized that His death would be to the advantage of many; that many would enter the Kingdom as the effect of His death. Menzies takes this view. He thinks 'Jesus became reconciled to the prospect of death when He saw that He was to die for the benefit of others.' This is a possible view, though I think it an unlikely one. It is rebutted by Pfleiderer, "Urchristentum," i, p. 372. Holtzmann thinks that lu,tron here is a translation of an Aramaic word which may merely mean 'deliverance.' Jesus 'delivered' people by causing them to repent . . ." "Holtzmann" at the end of this extract is a misprint for "Hollmann": see G. Hollmann, "Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu," 1901, pp. 124 f.: "The following is then to be summarily derived from our passage: (1) that Jesus' death stands on the same plane with Jesus' life-work; (2) (negatively) that it prevents many souls from falling into destruction; (3) (positively) that it brings many hitherto unbelieving to salvation. There can be added as most probable that (4) their salvation lies in the operation of metanoia."

"System der Christl. Lehre," pp. 308 ff., 323.

Lietzmann's "Handbuch zum N. T.," v, 1909, pp. 102 f.

"Die Schriften," etc1. v. i, p. 161. He speaks of the statement as Mark's, not Jesus'.

We content ourselves with referring here to the excellent remarks of James Denney, "The Death of Christ'," 1903, pp. 36 ff., cap. pp. 42 ff.

Cf. Zahn, p. 605, note 90: "The conception of the redemption (redemptio) wrought by Jesus and especially by His death, would not recur everywhere in the New Testament, if it did not go back to Jesus Himself." Zahn then cites the details.

Cf. Harnack (p. 24): "The 'lost' and the 'sinners' are, however, still more closely characterized by the contrast 'not the righteous,' - they are really the dying and guilt-laden, who must perish without Him."

A. Seeberg, "Der Tod Christi," etc., 1895, p. 348, is quite right when he says: "All the passages in which a coming of Jesus into the world is spoken of (Mk. ii. 17, Mt. v. 17, ix. 13, Lk. v. 32, xii. 49, xix. 10) fix their eyes upon a nearer or more distant purpose of His Messianic vocation."

As cited.

The Johannine passages are adverted to by Harnack twice, pp. 2 and 22. For a synoptical view of them see B. F. Westcott in the "additional note" on Jno. xx. 21.

Pp. 25-26.

P. 26.

Jesus Only

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

Acts iv. 12:—And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.

A NOTABLE miracle had been wrought. As Peter and John were entering the temple at the hour of afternoon prayer, they had encountered a poor cripple who was in the habit of having himself laid at the gateway to beg alms of the passing worshippers. Him they had healed, attracting his attention and faith by the great word, "In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk!" To the confounded crowd that ran together Peter had improved the opportunity to preach Jesus, whose mighty name, on faith having been awakened in it, had wrought this wonderful cure. The Sadducean leaders of the people had been, as the narrative puts it, greatly "worked up" by the occurrence; and, apprehending Peter and John, they had cast them into prison overnight and brought them on the morrow before the Sanhedrin. The question put to the apostles in their examination before this body was studiedly insulting in its every phrase, and runs up into an explosion of angry contempt: "What sort of power is it, and what sort of a name is it that you have done this thing by—you?" There is here an open relegation of the apostles to that herd of "vagabond Jews" who infested every city, working strange things by the power of some great name which they pronounced in their incantations.

"Then Peter," says the narrative, "filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: 'Rulers of the people, and elders, if it can possibly be we'"—note the emphasis of personal protest in this "we,"—"'who are to-day called to account, for a good deed'"—note this emphatic "good deed"; not the misdeed for which it is customary to call men to account—"'to an infirm man, by what it is that he has been saved,—be it known to all of you and to the whole people of Israel'"—here Peter it will be seen is rising to his climax,—"'that it is by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom ye'"—an emphatic "ye" locating the persons with clear and strong assertion—"'whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead,'"—oh, the tremendous poignancy of that contrast!—"'by this name it is that he stands before you whole. This is the stone that was despised by you the builders, that is become the head of the corner.'"

Assuredly, we will say, pungency of rejoinder, boldness of proclamation, could go no further. And there stood the healed man in their midst, the living witness of the truth of the declaration. But Peter does go further than even this. Not content with so ringing an assertion of the reversal in the court of heaven of their earthly verdict on Jesus the despised Nazarene, and of the living presence among them of Him whom they had foully slain, doing wonders, Peter now suddenly rises to the height of his great argument and sets His Master on the pinnacle of His glory as the sole Prince and Saviour of all the earth. "This," he says, "is the stone that was set at nought by you the builders, that has been made the head of the corner, and in none other," he adds,—"in none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven given among men, by which we must be saved!"

It is too late now to speak of the fine note of defiance, of holy and chastened challenge, that rings in this trumpet-like speech of Peter's. In these last words it has passed beyond defiance and even beyond challenge, and taken on the note of summons and high proclamation. In them Peter steps forth unabashed before the world, as the herald of the Prince of Life, and asserts His crown prerogatives. Into the face of the sneering Sanhedrin before whom he stands arraigned he, an unlearned and ignorant man, flings this great and sweeping declaration: that Jesus Christ of Nazareth—whom they had crucified—was not only God's Holy Servant, by way of eminence the Holy and Righteous One, against whom they had therefore grievously sinned when they laid their wicked hands upon Him; but is actually (though they have slain Him) the very Lord and Source of Life, into whose sole hands are gathered all the issues of Being, whether in this world or in the world to come.

We must not pause to seek to picture the effect with which this daring predication to Jesus of the unique empire over salvation must have struck upon those Jewish ears that day. Him they had slain, but truly He had risen from the dead to trouble them, and was showing forth His might in signs and wonders done in His name. Here was this crippled man, saved from his infirmity; and who could gainsay that the cure had been wrought by the name of Jesus? Nay, here are these unlearned and ignorant men themselves, saved from their special infirmities also; Peter, for example, who had denied his Lord at the mere glance of a serving-woman, now stands before the Sanhedrin itself, careless of their frowns and his own chains, and boldly proclaims his Lord's risen glory and dominion over the whole realm of life. Who could gainsay that this cure too had been wrought by the name of Jesus? It is easy to imagine what searchings of heart there were in the Sanhedrin that day; what marvellings; what anxious inquiries as to what could be done to stop the spread of such a gospel. The two thousand years that have passed have taught us how vain all their efforts were; and, having rejected the stone that the Lord had made the head of the corner, how completely was fulfilled in them the further prediction of this same Jesus, that "he that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces, while on whomsoever it shall fall it will scatter him to dust."

It is of more importance for us to-day, however, to inquire what we to-day—after these two thousand years of enlightenment during which the gospel of Jesus has had free course and been glorified—should learn from this great declaration of Peter, spoken, we are told explicitly, when he was filled with the Holy Spirit. It assures us too, after so long a time, that there is salvation in none other than Jesus, and that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. What are we to understand by this tremendous assertion?

We shall be counselled, of course, at the outset, to remember that we have before us here an announcement that belongs to the beginnings of the Gospel; that we are listening to words of Peter, not, say, of Paul or John; and to words of Peter even, which were spoken before he had been enlightened by the great vision that visited him on the house-top of Joppa. We shall even be counselled to remember that a miracle of physical healing lay at the root of this announcement, and that in its primary meaning, at least, it must be held to bear its natural reference to it. It would be a pity assuredly to forget such things as these. It is only by bearing them fully in mind that the large and rich comprehensiveness of Peter's great declaration can be apprehended. It is true that the whole situation turns on a miracle of healing; that Peter is addressing himself in his entire speech to a demand for an explanation of the power by which this physical cure had been wrought; that he had just spoken of the healing as a "salvation," making use of the same word that he employs in this great declaration itself. He certainly means to declare, and he certainly does declare, that in none other than Jesus is such physical salvation to be had; and that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby they must even thus be saved. Exorcists there were and healers enough, who pronounced other names over the afflicted children of men. None of them had power to save. If ever the evils of this life are to be relieved, the forces of disease and decay, of injury and death, to be broken, it will be only by Jesus that it will be done; only His name, by faith in His name, can give that perfect soundness for which we long. It is doubtlessly equally true that Peter had not yet wholly sloughed off the hard casing of Jewish exclusiveness that enclosed and straitened his heart. We know not what elements of crude Messianic hopes may not have still clung to his thought and conditioned his conception of salvation. The Jesus whom he proclaimed was undoubtedly in his view a king, the fruit of David's loins, and seated upon David's throne; a prophet aforepromised by Moses and all who came after Moses, now come primarily to Israel that he might bless them first of all, and others, only in and through Israel. He means to proclaim, and he does proclaim, that there is no national Saviour but Jesus, that there is no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby men must be saved from the oppressions of society and the organized life of states. Many other national Saviours had offered themselves and were still offering themselves to his hearers. There was, for example, one Theudas, whom they all remembered, who gave himself out to be a somebody; and there was Judas of Galilee who only the other day had presented himself to their acceptance. What had become of those that followed after them? No; if the yoke of the oppressor is ever to be broken, if society is ever to become that promised kingdom of righteousness for which all long, it will only be by Jesus that it will be accomplished; only His name, by faith in His name, can bring in the long-expected reign of God.

But it is beyond all possibility of doubt equally true that salvation in Peter's apprehension of it stretched far beyond these conceptions and found its real significance in the things of the spirit. "Remission of sins," and the gift of the Holy Ghost as an inward power making for holiness,—these are the ideas which, at least from Pentecost onward, dominated his thoughts; the "blotting out of sin" that seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord might come—here is expressed the very core of all his longing. No doubt, as regards this spiritual salvation too, he had yet much to learn. No doubt the wideness of God's mercy had not yet been fully revealed in his thought, and no doubt he still expected the Gentiles to become participants in this salvation, not as Gentiles, but only as the result of a spiritual conquest of them by Judaism. But assuredly not the less, but much the more rather, was it therefore inconceivable to Peter that Gentiles could be saved apart from that one Saviour in whom alone was there salvation for even the Jews. That channels of salvation could be open to the "sinners of the Gentiles" which are closed to Jews could not enter his imagination. Any remnants of Jewish exclusivism which may be imagined to have still clung to his thought, cannot be supposed, then, to render it doubtful whether or no the Gentiles too are to be understood to be shut up to this one announced means of salvation, but quite the contrary. "Sinners of the Gentiles," in the very nature of the case, rested in his view under a condemnation indefinitely deeper than the chosen people; and could hope for salvation only by participation in the blessing which came first to them. So that it must remain beyond all question that Peter's declaration was intended to assert and does assert in the most unqualified and the most exceptionless way possible that in none other than Jesus is this spiritual salvation to be had, and that there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby men in this sphere, above all, must be saved.

It would seem quite clear, therefore, that to catch Peter's meaning in this great declaration, we must take the conception of salvation in the most comprehensive sense possible for it to bear, and that we must give to his restriction of this salvation to Jesus and His mighty name, the strictest and most stringent interpretation. Doing so, we shall not be subjecting Peter's words to undue pressure, forcing them out of their natural and simple meaning. Rather it is only thus that we can protect them from wresting and preserve to them their natural and simple meaning. Nor can we affect surprise that such is the case. In both matters Peter is here only reflecting in his own way and consonantly with his own personal stage of growth and the circumstances which were determining his language, the common Biblical doctrine.

We certainly shall never do justice indeed to the Biblical conception of salvation taken as a whole, save by giving to that term its widest conceivable connotation. It may be that we are prone to narrow and limit it on this side and that, and then to feel some surprise, perhaps some perplexity, when we open the pages of Scripture and light upon passage after passage which will not square with our poor starveling ideas. In the Biblical conception of it,—we shall not be able to say it too emphatically—salvation broadens its beneficent reach to cover every evil that afflicts the afflicted race of man. And that with the best of reason. For in the centre of its centre, in the heart of its heart, salvation is deliverance from sin, and accordingly it is deliverance from all the evils that find their roots in sin: and every evil of every kind that has ever entered the sphere of human life is consequent on sin and but the manifestation of sin's presence and power in humanity. We open a recent book and find written: "God Himself cannot prevent the consequences of sin, the sorrow, disgrace and suffering which are the direct effect of evil doing." We bless the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, that such is not the teaching of this blessed Bible. "They shall hunger no more," we read, "neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat, . . . and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes . . . and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." Symbolical this language no doubt is, but it is such, nevertheless, because it expresses much more, not less, than it directly says: and so far as faithfulness to Biblical teaching goes it could be read with the literalness of a legal document. The favourite expression for salvation in the Biblical record is that great word Life; which is set over against the equally great word Death, as the best comprehensive term to gather up all the evils from which we shall be saved. Whatever Death is, and all that Death is, and all that leads up to, accompanies and follows Death, in any one of its possible applications, physical and temporal, spiritual and eternal—that is what we shall be saved from in this salvation. And whatever Life is, and all that Life is, and all that leads up to, accompanies and expresses, and grows out of and crowns Life—in every possible application of that great conception—that is what we shall be saved to in this salvation: or rather that, in Biblical language, is salvation. "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die"—in these terms was couched the great prohibition of "the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste," as Milton, not a whit too comprehensively, puts it, "brought death into the world and all our woe." Everything that vexes and troubles human life in every sphere of its manifestation is but the issue of this first disobedience. Conceive man as a physical organism held together by the subtle forces which govern material life; all that brings him pain, disease and death, emerges as the unavoidable result of sin and therefore the necessary object of salvation. Conceive him as a social being bound in fellowship with his companions by those mutual ties which hold together the fabric of society; all that brings him discontent, strife, injustice, oppression, want or neglect, equally truly is the fruitage of sin and equally truly is therefore the object of salvation. Or conceive him at the height of his nature, as a spiritual being standing in relation to that spiritual world above him which stretches upwards to the throne of God itself; all that breaks the free play of this high communion and rouses in him the sense of incompatibility with his higher environment; all that rises within him as a bar to that favour of God which is life, whether in the form of guilt or corruption,—this above all is the bitter fruit of sin and therefore above all the immediate object of salvation. We must conceive salvation as reaching out with its healing hand to the utmost confines of the effects of sin, or else fail to recognize with the poet the Restorer as a "greater man" than him through whom we suffered this grievous loss. The Scriptures certainly will not permit us to entertain fancies so derogatory to the glory of the Redeemer. They do not content themselves indeed even with an equation of the spheres in which the forces of destruction and restoration work as if it were enough to say that the gift of life shall supplant the curse of death—following it into all the ramifications of its baneful effects that it may work their reversal. Nay, no sooner have they drawn the parallel than they at once correct it with a fervid, "but not as the trespass, so also is the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound unto the many." There is a superabundance of grace, and an extension of it immeasurably beyond the ravages wrought even by sin.

Would we do justice to the Scriptural representations, then, we must conceive nobly of salvation. We must enlarge its borders if we would give to it all the land which the Lord has promised it. It belongs to the glory of Christ that His salvation enters into every region of human need and proclaims in all alike complete deliverance. Even the lower creation, by virtue of the relation in which it stands to man, partakes in his redemption. If the very ground was cursed for man's sake that the place of his abode might sympathetically partake in his punishment, no less shall it share in his restoration. Man's sighs are not the only expression of the evil that curses human life in its sinful development. The whole creation groans and travails together with him. But it shares also in the hope of the coming deliverance. For there shall be a new heaven, we are told, and a new earth. Under these new heavens, in this new earth, shall gather redeemed humanity, in the perfection of its idea, and in perfect harmony with its perfected environment. In the perfection of physical vigour: for what is sown in corruption shall have been raised in incorruption, what is sown in dishonour shall have been raised in glory, what is sown in weakness shall have been raised in power, what is sown in selfishness shall have been raised in spirituality. In the perfection of social organization and intercourse: for there shall be none to hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain, and all the people of the Lord shall have learned righteousness. In the perfection of spiritual communion with God: for then it is that the Lord shall make Himself known to His people and shall dwell with them, and they shall need no Temple to which men should require to repair in order to meet the Lord, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple thereof, and the grace of the Lord shall flow down the streets in a river of the water of Life washing into every nook and corner. Such is the picture the Scriptures draw for us of the salvation of our God. And let us not fail to note that it is a picture of a saved world. As no sphere of human life is left untouched by it; as on its touch, every sphere of human life is transformed; so the completeness and the profundity of its renovation of man is matched by the wideness of its extension over man. It is the renewed heavens and the renewed earth that we are bidden to contemplate; and dwelling in them in endless bliss renewed humanity. Renewed humanity; not a meagre company withdrawn from the sin-festering race, but the race itself, cleansed and purified and gathered home to the Father's arms; not without loss suffered by the way, it is true, for there are some who shall not enter into this holy city; but with all losses made good, all breaks in the ranks filled up, and all lacks and wants supplied by Him who has redeemed it to Himself and led it to its new estate of perfection in itself and eternal communion with Him. Such is the salvation that has been wrought out for us by Christ.

Now the point to which the words of Peter, which are particularly engaging our thought to-day, energetically direct our attention is that neither this salvation as a whole, nor any least part of or element in it, can possibly be attained save in Jesus Christ. "And in none other," he declares with tremendous emphasis, "in none other is there this salvation," this well-known salvation which fills all our hopes and longings:—"in none other is there this salvation: for neither is there any other name, under heaven, given among men, wherein we must be saved." Peter's interest, we will observe, is absorbed, not in the greatness of the salvation, but in the greatness of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, who is the Lord and sole disposer of this great salvation. He assumes that the idea of this salvation and its indescribable greatness, and an insistent craving for it, are all present, persistent, controlling in the minds and hearts of his auditors. What he is concerned with is to carry home to their minds and hearts the autocracy of Jesus Christ the Nazarene over it. Hence the negative form given to his declaration. He does not say, you observe, "You ask by what power or by what name this cure has been wrought. I reply by the power and name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, in whose mighty hands rests power to heal all the ills of men." No, he gives quite a different tone to his declaration when he turns forward its negative edge and declares with enormous energy of expression: "You ask by what sort of power or by what sort of name we have done this thing. I reply it is by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, and there is not in any other this salvation; for neither is there another name, under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved." Observe the accumulation of emphatic phrases to enhance the stress laid on the exclusiveness of Jesus' power to save. First of all, there is the redoubled assertion: "in none other is there salvation," and then again that none might miss it, "there is no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." Then there is the heaping up of clauses, in almost superfluous reiteration of the absoluteness of the exclusion of all but Jesus from the power of saving: there is "none other," there is "no other name," "under heaven," "given among men"—as if it should be said, "Seek you wherever men can be found, search to the utmost limits of the encanopying sky,—nowhere among men, nowhere under the stretch of heaven's roof, will you find a whisper of another name in which salvation can be found." And then, at last, there is the curious turn given to the phrase: "in which we must be saved." We weaken it vastly in our careless current reproductions of it, saying, "neither is there any other name under heaven given among men wherein we may be saved,—wherein we can be saved." Peter does not so phrase it. He says, "wherein we must be saved." The accent of necessity is in it. It is not merely that we may be saved by Jesus, or that we can be saved by Jesus; but, if we be saved at all, it must be in Him that we are saved. There is no possibility otherwise or elsewhere. And with the emergence of this vigorous must at the end of the sentence the last hammer falls, the last rivet is clinched, and the last band of steel is fixed around this tremendous assertion of the exclusiveness of salvation in Jesus Christ alone.

The note of Peter's declaration here, you will observe, is, "Jesus only!" "Jesus only!" There is a note of severity in the mode in which he declares it, for the occasion of its declaration was such as to call for assertion,—assertion in the face of hard unbelief, of persistent denial of the crown-rights of the King. But through all the severity there sounds also a note of exuberance. This is the account to be given indeed of the almost unexampled piling up of phrases to which we have adverted, adding little to one another as they do except an ever-growing emphasis for the main declaration; expressive in a word only of the overflowing emotion that was flooding the speaker's heart. The name of Jesus was inexpressibly precious to Peter, and it was thus inexpressibly precious to him because it was the saving name, nay, we will not express it adequately until we say it outright—because it was the only saving name in all the universe. It was much to him, no doubt, that he had come to perceive that there had been given to that broken and suffering man whom he had seen but yesterday hanging on the cruel cross, the Name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This supreme exaltation of his Master alone must have filled his soul with swelling delight. But there was something beyond this supreme exaltation itself that was suffusing his whole being with unutterable joy. It was the exuberant sense of the uniqueness of Jesus' office of Saviour that pressed for utterance and found it haltingly in an accumulation of phrases that must appear extravagant to all who do not with him rise to the height of the great vision. Jesus exalted to the throne of the universe,—that is a great vision; but Jesus the sole Lord of salvation, holding in His hands the keys of life, and dividing to each as He will,—Jesus the only Name under heaven given among men whereby man must be saved—to sin-stricken and despairing men, surely this is a much greater vision. It was this greater vision that had caught Peter's uplifted eyes.

Not, of course, as if it were to his eyes alone that it was given to see it. There is nothing that Peter tells us here that is not told us over and over again by every writer of this New Testament. It belongs indeed to the very heart of the Gospel that these writers preached, which centred not precisely in the proclamation of salvation, but in the preaching of Jesus as Saviour. To them indeed Jesus is the Gospel; and where Jesus is not, there there is no gospel at all. It is of the very essence of the Gospel, therefore, that salvation can be obtained through Jesus alone. And so it was preached from the beginning. "I am the way, the truth, and the life," said Jesus Himself as plainly as majestically: "no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." And equally plainly again, in that equally majestic assertion reported to us by Matthew and Luke on which He founds one of the most touching of His invitations: "All things have been delivered unto Me by My Father; and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him." That as there is one God, so there is only "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," after whose once offering of Himself "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins," became accordingly the centre of the Gospel proclamation by His accredited messengers. And therefore they did not hesitate to proclaim boldly that only they who believe in Jesus Christ shall be saved: and that those who are without Christ have no hope and are without God in the world. The life that God has given us, explains John in his searching way, is deposited for us " in the Son," and therefore, "he that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life."

It was, in fact, this arrogant exclusiveness of the Gospel in which its offence in large part consisted. Even the Jew might have been persuaded to accept Jesus as a Rabbi, teaching a way to God; and the Gentiles in that syncretistic age would have welcomed with acclamation such a teacher among the multitude of their other masters. But neither Jesus nor His followers would accept such an assignment. He and they alike claimed for Him the sole empire over salvation and would brook no fellow by his side. When we contemplate the wide liberality of the Roman world, and consider the ease with which the most varied cults found room for themselves side by side in that spacious toleration, we are sometimes tempted to wonder why, among all this crowd of religions, Christianity alone was singled out for violent and indeed relentless persecution. The solution is of course that Christianity was not, and would not consent to be considered, one of these multiform religions. It was and it proclaimed itself to be the one only valid religion; and, thus pitting itself against them all, it drew the hatred and the assault of all against itself. A recent writer, seeking to draw for us a picture of the exclusive attitude of Christianity in those old days of the beginning of the Gospel, commences with a string of quotations from the great representative writers of the time,—Irenaeus and Tatian and Commodian and Tertullian and Cyprian himself, that man of moderate, one might say even politic, spirit, from whom more smooth speech might have been expected: but wearying of his task he breaks off suddenly with the remark that to present the whole case it would be necessary to cite the whole body of Christian authors, and well-nigh the whole list of Acts of Martyrs with them—since there is, he says, no one of them who does not assert the exclusiveness of Christianity. It brought them ridicule; it brings us ridicule yet. It brought them persecution of unexampled ferocity, as it brings us the scorn of man yet. But in that sign they conquered. Heathenism, throwing itself upon them with fury, did not break them: it broke itself upon them. And they have handed on the banner to us still bearing the unsullied legend of "Jesus only,"—Jesus the sole author of salvation.

Now, it is not a popular thing to-day any more than it was two thousand years ago to assert the exclusiveness of Christianity. Men no longer cast us to the lions when we proclaim Jesus the only Saviour the world can know; His name the only name under heaven given among men wherein they must be saved. But the world of to-day endures with no more real patience than that older world two thousand years ago the arrogance of such lofty claims. This is above all others that have preceded it the day of eager and appreciative study of other faiths; and equally with the others that have preceded it, the day of indifference, if not hostility, to the high claims of Jesus. You will be pressed on every side to give some recognition to the large element of truth and good that is found in the historical religions of the earth; to the high conceptions of God that are enshrined in some of them, the noble ethical teaching that is the essence of others, the poignant pity for suffering humanity that throbs through others. You will be pressed on every side to accord an appreciative hearing to the voice of the religious spirit speaking in the hearts of men, who, nevertheless, have not learned to express their religious emotions in the formulas with which you have been made familiar. What, you will be asked, will you refuse your welcome to the aspirations of the soul that is naturally Christian; will you not give hearty recognition to the service that is rendered to the "essential Christ" by thousands who have never heard His earthly name, or who, having heard it, have failed rightly to estimate His unique character? Will you forget that the man Christ Jesus was the Word of God before He became flesh, and remains through all the ages that Light that lights every man that comes into the world? Will you dare to deny to His sovereign grace the right to quicken whom He will, under whatever sky and calling on God by whatever human name; or refuse to recognize the movings of His inspiration in the hearts of men—because, forsooth, they speak not your words and swear not in your symbols? It will be hard for you to resist the specious pleas with which you will be plied and to preserve in your heart—I will not say now on your lips—the echoes of Peter's great declaration that in none other than Jesus is there salvation, that there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.

I beg you, when the temptation to admit other saviours to a place by His side, to acknowledge other names as equally potent with this unique name of Jesus, is strong upon you to remember three things. Remember the great commission: remember the peril of your own souls: remember the honour of Jesus Christ your Saviour.

Remember the great commission! "All authority is given unto me in heaven and earth," declared our Saviour when He was about to ascend to His throne. "Go ye, therefore," He commanded His disciples, "and make disciples of all the nations." Was this great commission the great mistake of history? It has required all the heroism the Church could command to make even the tentative efforts she has been able to make to fulfil it; and every step of the way has been watered by floods of her best blood. Have we now come at last to see it in a clearer light and to understand the error of judgment, or rather the profoundly deflected point of view, on which it was all founded? From our higher standpoint, shall we say that all the nations are already in the right path, and need no instruction from us to find the way: that the essential truth is already in their grasp and they may be trusted to its guidance: that having thus the leading of the Logos they cannot fail of the life? Such clearly was not our Saviour's view, whom we recognize as the Logos, to the guidance of whom we would trust the world, and who proclaimed Himself the Truth indeed, or He would never have sent His Church upon this—in that case—useless if not noxious mission. And if such be our view, we will never go upon this great mission in which consists, nevertheless, the very reason for the existence of the Church on earth. Only if we catch the apostles' view-point, and can say to our souls with the clearness of conviction which they felt, that there is salvation in Jesus alone, will we be inspired with the zeal that filled them, to evangelize the world. The nerve of the missionary spirit after all is embalmed for ever in Paul's great sorties. Only they that call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" The salvation of the world hangs, thus, in our human mode of speaking, on the clearness and the strength of our conviction that there is salvation in none other than Jesus, that there is none other name under heaven, given among men, wherein they must be saved. O the cruelty of that indifferentism, miscalled broadness of mind, that would withhold from a perishing world the only healing draught, on the pretence, forsooth, that it is not needed. O remember that the whole world lies in iniquity—ill to death with the dreadful disease of sin,—and that you have in your hands the one curative potion, the only water of life which can purge away sin and restore to spiritual health and beauty. Remember the great commission!

And remember the peril of your own souls! Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners. And He calls you to Him, you who are weary and heavy laden with the burden of your sins. He points you to His wounded hands and feet and to His riven side. He points you to His outpoured blood. He points you to His finished sacrifice and to the Father's great, It is enough! In Him he proclaims to you there has been opened up at last access to the Father, and to the Father's forgiveness, and to the Father's love He is able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God through Him. He pleads with you to come. He presses upon you the greatness of the opportunity, the greatness of the peril. He urges you with the great promise: He that believeth shall be saved. He importunes you with the sharp warning: He that believeth not shall be lost. Will you neglect so great salvation, which has at the first been spoken by the Lord, and has been confirmed unto us by those that heard Him, God also bearing witness by the wonders of His grace without us and within? And all because, forsooth, we cannot believe there is no other way? Other masters enough will demand your attention; other teachers essay your guidance. The wisdom of the world will laugh at your narrowness and point you to other ways of approach to God. I charge you, by the welfare of your own souls—and what should a man give in exchange for his soul?—to bear steadily in mind that the world by its wisdom has never yet attained to the knowledge of God. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Let those who are set on perishing despise the word of the cross as foolishness. You who are set on salvation—bear it well in mind that it is the power of God unto salvation, apart from which there is no salvation. On the peril of your souls, I charge you to remember that Jesus Christ is the only way, the only truth, the only life; that no man comes or can come to the Father except by Him, that all the life that is in the world is in Him, and he only that hath Him hath the life, while he that hath not Him hath not the life. Listen to the solemn words of the apostle of love: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son," he, and he only, "hath the Father also." Let us note it clearly and note it whole: there is no access to God for sinners save in the blood of Jesus Christ.

Ah, I know what is rising upon your lips to say! You are of these who have believed in Jesus; your hearts are full of joy because you find yourselves in Him, and, being in Him, in the enjoyment of His salvation. I charge you, then, brethren, companions of the blessed life, remember the crown rights of your Lord and Saviour! Let His honour be precious in your sight! I have charged you in the words of Paul to let no man rob you of your crown: I charge you now in yet more insistent tones, to let no man rob your Saviour of His crown. In Him and in Him alone is redemption. In His hands He holds, as sovereign Lord of salvation, all the issues of life. Being at the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promised Holy Spirit, it is He and He alone that sheds down on earth all the currents of influence that make for salvation. Say in your heart and shout abroad with your lips, that all men may know it assuredly, that God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ, and beside Him there is no other. See to it that you ever honour Him in your hearts and ceaselessly proclaim Him with your voice as the one only Saviour the world can ever have; since in none other is there any salvation; and there is no other name under heaven given among men, wherein we must be saved. Only so will you render to Him the glory that is His due. For when there was no one in the heavens or on the earth or under the earth who was able to open the book of salvation or to break the seals thereof, this man was counted worthy; worthy to endure the pangs of death for the offences of men, worthy to rise from the dead for their justification, worthy to be exalted to the throne of God and to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing. He by whose hand has been wrought salvation, He is and remains the only Lord of Salvation, and beside Him is no fellow. Let this good confession, I beg you, echo throughout all the corridors of your life and fill with its voice all the recesses of your souls. Above even the great commission, above even the peril of your own souls, remember—remember as those should remember who owe their all to Him, remember the honour due to Jesus Christ, the Saviour, the sole Saviour, of this lost world.

John Calvin: The Man and His Work

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[From The Methodist Review, Quarterly edited by Gross Alexander, October, 1909 (lviii. pp. 642-M).
Reprinted in pamphlet form, 1909, Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South.]

JOHN CALVIN was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, in Picardy. His boyhood was spent under the shadow of the "long, straight-backed" cathedral which dominates his native town. His mother, a woman of notable devoutness, omitted no effort to imbue her son with her own spirit. His father, a successful advocate and shrewd man of affairs, holding both ecclesiastical and civil offices, stood in close relations with the cathedral chapter, and seems to have been impressed with the advantages of a clerical life. At all events, he early devoted his promising son to it. According to the bad custom of the times, a benefice in the cathedral was assigned to the young Calvin at an early age, and to it was afterwards added a neighboring curacy; thus funds were provided for his support. His education was conducted in companionship with the youthful scions of the local noble house of Montmor, and began, therefore, with the training proper to a gentleman. As changing circumstances dictated changes of plan, he was educated, first as a churchman, then as a lawyer, and through all and most abundantly of all as a man of letters. He was an eager student, rapidly and solidly mastering the subjects to which he turned his attention, and earning such admiration from his companions as to be esteemed by them rather a teacher than a fellow pupil. His youth was as blameless as it was strenuous. It is doubtless legendary, that the censoriousness of his bearing earned for him from his associates the nickname of "The Accusative Case." But serious-minded he undoubtedly was, dominated by a scrupulous piety and schooled in a strict morality which brooked with difficulty immorality in his associates; an open-minded, affectionate young man, of irreproachable life and frank manners; somewhat sensitive, perhaps, but easy to be entreated, and attracting not merely the confidence but the lasting affection of all with whom he came into contact.

At the age of twenty-two this high-minded young man is found established at Paris as a humanist scholar, with his ambition set upon literary fame. His debut was made by the publication of an excellent commentary on Seneca's treatise "On Clemency" (April, 1532), in which a remarkable command of the whole mass of classical literature, a fine intelligence, and a serious interest in the higher moralities are conspicuous. A great career as a humanist seemed opening before him, when suddenly he was "converted," and his whole life revolutionized. He had always been not only of an elevated ethical temper, but of a deeply religious spirit; but now the religious motive took complete possession of him and directed all his activities. "Renouncing all other studies," says Beza, "he devoted himself to God." He did not, indeed, cease to be a "man of letters," any more than he ceased to be a man. But all his talents and acquisitions were henceforth dedicated purely to the service of God and His gospel. Instead of annotating classical texts, we find him now writing a Protestant manifesto for the use of his friend Nicholas Cop (November 1, 1533), a detailed study of the state of the soul after death (1534), and, in his enforced retirement at Angouleme (1534), making a beginning at least with a primary treatise on Christian doctrine, designed for the instruction of the people as they came out into the light of the gospel -which, however, when driven from France, he was destined to publish from his asylum at Basle (spring of 1536), in circumstances which transformed it into "at once an apology, a manifesto, and a confession of faith." It is interesting to observe the change which in the meantime had come over his attitude toward his writings. When he sent forth his commentary on Seneca's treatise - his first and last humanistic work - he was quivering with anxiety for the success of his book; he wanted to know how it was selling, whether it was being talked about, what people thought of it. He was proud of his performance; he was zealous to reap the fruits of his labor; he was eager for his legitimate reward. Only four years have passed, and he issues his first Protestant publication -it is the immortal "Institutes of the Christian Religion" in its "first state" - free from all such tremors. He is living at Basle under an assumed name, and is fully content that no one of his acquaintance shall know him for the author of the book which was creating such a stir in the world. He hears the acclamations with which it was greeted with a certain personal detachment. He has sent it forth not for his own glory, but for the glory of God; he is not seeking his own advantage or renown by it, but the strengthening and the succoring of the saints. His sole joy is that it is doing its work. He has not ceased to be a "man of letters," we repeat; but he has consecrated all his gifts and powers as a "man of letters" without reserve to the service of God and His gospel.

What we see in Calvin, thus, fundamentally is the "man of letters" as saint. He never contemplated for himself, he never desired, in all his life he never fully acquiesced in, any other vocation. He was by nature, by gifts, by training-by inborn predilection and by acquired capacities alike - a "man of letters"; and he earnestly, perhaps we may even say passionately, wished to dedicate himself as such to God. This was the life which he marked out for himself, from which he was diverted only under compulsion, and which he never in principle abandoned. It was only by "the dreadful imprecation" of Farel that he was constrained to lay aside his cherished plans and enter upon the direct work of the reformation of Geneva (autumn of 1536). And when, after two years of strenuous labor at this uncongenial employment, he was driven from that turbulent city, it came to him only as a release. Once more he settled down at Basle and applied himself to his beloved studies. It required all of Bucer's strategy as well as entreaties to entice him away from his books to an active ministry at Strasburg; and he yielded at last only when it was made clear to him that there would be leisure there for literary labors. That leisure he certainly not so much found as made for himself. His little conventicle of French refugees quickly became under his hand a model church. His lectures at the school attracted ever wider and wider attention. As time passed, he was called much away to conferences and colloquies, where as "the Theologian," as Melanchthon admiringly called him, he did important service. But it was at Strasburg that his literary activity as a Protestant man of letters really began. There he transformed his "little book" of religion - the "Institutes" of 1536, which was not much more than an extended catechetical manual - into an ample treatise on theology (August, 1539). There, too, he inaugurated the series of his epoch-making expositions of Scripture with his noble commentary on Romans (March, 1540). Thence, too, he sent out his beautiful letter to Sadoleto, the most winningly written of all his controversial treatises (September, 1539). There, too, was written that exquisite little popular tract on the Lord's Supper, which was the instruction and consolation of so many hundreds of his perplexed fellow-countrymen (published in 1541). It caused Calvin great perturbation when these fruitful labors were broken in upon by a renewed call to Geneva. It was with the profoundest reluctance that he listened to this call, and he obeyed it only under the stress of the sternest sense of duty. Returning to Geneva was to him going "straight to the cross": he went, as he said, "as a sacrifice slain unto God" - "bound and fettered to obedience to God." He was not the man to take up a cross and not bear it; and this cross, too, he bore faithfully to the end. But neither was he the man to forget the labor of love to which he had given his heart. Hence the unremitting toil of his pen, with which he wore out the days and nights at Geneva; hence the immensity of his literary output, produced in circumstances as unfavorable as any in which a rich literary output was ever produced. Even "on this rack" Calvin remained fundamentally the "man of letters."

It requires fifty-nine quarto volumes to contain the "Works of John Calvin" as collected in the great critical edition of Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss. Astonishing for their mere mass, these " works "are still more astonishing for their quality. They are written in the best Latin of their day, elevated, crisp, energetic, eloquent with the eloquence of an earnest and sober spirit - almost too good Latin, as Joseph Scaliger said, for a theologian; or in a French which was a factor of importance in the creation of a worthy French prose for the discussion of serious themes. The variety of their literary form runs through the whole gamut of earnest discourse, from lofty discussion and pithy comment laden with meaning, to burning exhortation, vehement invective, and biting satire. The whole range of subjects proper to a teacher of fundamental truth, who was also both a churchman and a statesman, a minute observer of the life of the people, and a student of the forces by which peoples are moved, is treated, and never without that touch of illumination which we call genius.

At the head of the list of his writing stands, of course, his great dogmatic treatise - the "Institutes of the Christian Religion." In a very literal sense this book may indeed be called his life-work. It was the first book he published after he had "devoted himself to God," and thus introduces the series of his works consecrated to the propagation of religion. But from its first appearance in the spring of 1536 to the issue of its definitive edition in 1559 - throughout nearly a quarter of a century - Calvin was continually busy with it, revising, expanding, readjusting it, until from a simple little handbook, innocent of constructive principle, it had grown into a bulky but compact and thoroughly organized textbook in theology. The importance to the Protestant cause of the publication of this book can hardly be overstated. It is inadequate praise to describe it, as the Roman Catholic historian, Kampschulte, describes it, as "without doubt the most outstanding and the most influential production in the sphere of dogmatics which the Reformation literature of the sixteenth century presents." This goes without saying. What demands recognition is that the publication of the "Institutes" was not merely a literary incident but an historical event, big with issues which have not lost their importance to the present day. By it was given to perplexed, hard-bestead Protestantism an adequate positive programme for its Reformation. As even a not very friendly critic is compelled to bear witness, in this book Calvin at last raised banner against banner, and sounded out a ringing sursum corda which was heard and responded to wherever men were seeking the new way. "The immense service which the Institutes rendered to the 'Evangelicals,'" expounds this critic - it is M. Buisson in his biography of Sebastien Castellion, and he is thinking particularly of the "Evangelicals" of France though, mutatis mutandis, what he says has its application elsewhere too - "was to give a body to their ideas, an expression to their faith." Protesting against superstitious and materialistic interpretations of doctrine and worship, "their vague aspirations would, undoubtedly, have issued in nothing in the Church or out of it." What they needed, and what the "Institutes" did for them, was the disengagement of a principle "from this vortex of ideas," and the development of its consequences. "Such a book," continues M. Buisson, "is equally removed from a pamphlet of Ulrich von Hutten, from the satire of Erasmus, from the popular preaching, mystical and violent, of Luther: it is a work of a theologian in the most learned sense of the term, a religious work undoubtedly, penetrated with an ethical inspiration, but before all, a work of organization and concentration, a code of doctrine for the minister, an arsenal of arguments for simple believers: it is the Summa of Reformed Christianity." "The author's concernment is far more to bring out the logical force and the moral power of his own doctrine than to descant on the weak points of the opposing doctrine. What holds his attention is not the past but the future - it is the reconstruction of the Church." What wonder, then, that it has retained its influence through all succeeding time? As the first adequate statement of the positive programme of the Reformation movement, the "Institutes" lies at the foundation of the whole development of Protestant theology, and has left an impress on evangelical thought which is ineffaceable. After three centuries and a half, it retains its unquestioned preeminence as the greatest and most influential of all dogmatic treatises. "There," said Albrecht Ritschl, pointing to it, "There is the masterpiece of Protestant theology."

Second only to the service he rendered by his "Institutes" was the service Calvin rendered by his expositions of Scripture. These fill more than thirty volumes of his collected works, thus constituting the larger part of his total literary product. They cover the whole of the New Testament except II and III John and the Apocalypse, and the whole of the Old Testament except the Solomonic and some of the Historical books. It was doubtless in part to his humanistic training that he owed the acute philological sense and the unerring feeling for language which characterize all his expositions. A recent writer who has made a special study of Calvin's Humanism, at least, remarks: "In his sober grammatico-historical method, in the stress he laid on the natural sense of the text, by the side of his deep religious understanding of it - in his renunciation of the current allegorizing, in his felicitous, skillful dealing with difficult passages, the humanistically trained master is manifest, pouring the new wine into new bottles." Calvin was, however, a born exegete, and adds to his technical equipment of philological knowledge and trained skill in the interpretation of texts a clear and penetrating intelligence, remarkable intellectual sympathy, incorruptible honesty, unusual historical perception, and an incomparable insight into the progress of thought, while the whole is illuminated by his profound religious comprehension. His expositions of Scripture were accordingly a wholly new phenomenon, and introduced a new exegesis - the modern exegesis. He stands out in the history of biblical study as, what Diestel, for example, proclaims him, "the creator of genuine exegesis." The authority which his comments immediately acquired was immense - they "opened the Scriptures" as the Scriptures never had been opened before. Richard Hooker - "the judicious Hooker" - remarks that in the controversies of his own time, "the sense of Scripture which Calvin alloweth" was of more weight than if "ten thousand Augustines, Jeromes, Chrysostoms, Cyprians were brought forward." Nor have they lost their value even to-day. Alone of the commentaries of their age the most scientific of modern expositors still find their profit in consulting them. As Professor A. J. Baumgartner, who has set himself to investigate the quality of Calvin's Hebrew learning (which he finds quite adequate), puts it, after remarking on Calvin's "astounding, multiplied, almost superhuman activity" in his work of biblical interpretation: "And - a most remarkable thing - this work has never grown old; these commentaries whose durable merit and high value men of the most diverse tendencies have signalized, - these commentaries remain to us even to-day, an astonishingly rich, almost inexhaustible mine of profound thoughts, of solid and often ingenious interpretation, of wholesome exposition, and at the same time of profound erudition."

The Reformation was the greatest revolution of thought which the human spirit has wrought since the introduction of Christianity; and controversy is the very essence of revolutions. Of course Calvin's whole life, which was passed in the thick of things, was a continuous controversy; and directly controversial treatises necessarily form a considerable part of his literary output. We have already been taught, indeed, that his fundamental aim was constructive, not destructive: he wished to rebuild the Church on its true foundations, not to destroy its edifice. But, like certain earlier rebuilders of the Holy City, he needed to work with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other. Probably no more effective controversialist ever wrote. "The number of Calvin's polemical treatises," remarks an unfriendly critic, "is large; and they are all masterpieces in their kind." At the head of them, in time as well as in attractiveness, stands his famous "Letter to Cardinal Sadoleto," written in his exile at Strasburg for the protection from an insidious foe of the Church which had cast him out. Courteous, even gentle and deferential in tone, and yet cogent, conclusive, in effect, it perfectly exemplifies the precept of suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. Others are, no doubt, set in a different key. The critic we have just quoted (E. F. Bahler) tells of the one he thinks "the harshest and bitterest of all," the "Defense Against the Calumnies of Peter Caroli." "The letter to Sadoleto," he remarks, " was certainly written in a good hour; the contrary must be said of the present book. From the point of view of literary history, the Defense, no doubt, merits unrestricted praise. The elegant, crisp style, the skill with which the author not only casts a moral shadow upon his opponent, but brands him as an unsavory person not to be taken seriously, while over all is poured the most sovereign disdain, brings to the reader of this book, now almost four hundred years old, such aesthetic pleasure that it is only with difficulty that he recalls himself to righteous indignation over the gross unfairness and open untruthfulness which the author permits himself against Caroli." No doubt Calvin often spoke in harsh terms of his opponents; they were harsh things they were seeking for him; and the contest in which he was engaged was not a sparring match for the amusement of the onlookers. Nor need it be asserted that he was infallible; though "even his enemies will admit," as even Mark Pattison allows, "that he knows not how to decorate or disguise a fact." Between the suavity of the "Letter to Sadoleto" and the furiousness of the "Defense Against Caroli," a long list of controversial writings of very varying manners range themselves. A frankness of speech characterizes them which never balks at calling a spade a spade; we meet in them with depreciatory, even defamatory, epithets which jar sadly on our modern sensibilities. These are faults not of the man, but of the times: as we are reminded by M. Lenient, the historian of French satire, of all figures of rhetoric euphemism was the least in use in the sixteenth century. But none of Calvin's controversial tracts fails to be informed from beginning to end with a loftiness of purpose, to be conducted with a seriousness and directness of argument, and to be filled with a solid instruction, such as raise them far above the plane of mere partisan wrangle and give them a place among the permanent possessions of the Church.

Fault was found with him in his own day -as, for example, by Castellion - for permitting himself the use of satire in religious debate. This was not merely a result of native temperament with him, but a matter of deliberate and reasoned choice. Of course he had nothing in common with the mere mockers of the time - des Periers, Marot, Rabelais - whose levity was almost as abominable to him as their coarseness. Satire to him was a weapon, not an amusement. The proper way to deal with folly, he thought, was to laugh at it. The superstitions in which the world had been so long entangled were foolish as truly as wicked; and how could it be, he demanded, that in speaking of things so ridiculous, so intrinsically funny, we should not laugh at them "with wide-open mouth"? Of course this laugh was not the laugh of pure amusement; and as it gained in earnestness it naturally lost in lightness of touch. It was a rapier in Calvin's hands, and its use was to pierce and cut. And how well he uses it! The Sorbonne, for example, issued a series of "Articles," declaring the orthodox doctrine on the points disputed by the Protestants. Calvin republishes these "Articles," and subjoins to each of them a quite innocent-looking "Proof," conceived perfectly in the Sorbonnic manner, but issuing in each case in a hopeless reductio ad absurdum. Thus: "It is proved, moreover, that vows are obligatory from their being dispensed and loosed: the Pope could not dispense vows were it not for the power of the keys, and hence it follows that they bind the conscience," - truly as fine a specimen of lucus a non lucendo as one will find in a day's search. It is only rarely that the mask is dropped a moment and a glimpse given of the mocking eyes behind - as thus: "But that our masters, when congregated in one body, are the Church, is proved from this, that they are very like the ark of Noah -since they form a herd of all sorts of beasts." The matter is indeed in general so subtly managed that perhaps the "Antidote," which in each instance follows on the "Proof," was not altogether unnecessary. There is no such subtlety in what is, perhaps, the best known of Calvin's satirical pieces - his "Admonition, Showing the Advantage which Christendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics." Here we have a simple, straightforward enumeration of the relics exposed in various churches for the veneration of the people. 'The effect is produced by the incongruity, which grows more and more monstrous, of the reduplication of these relics. "Everybody knows that the inhabitants of Tholouse think that they have got six of the bodies of the apostles. Now, let us attend to those who have had two or three bodies. For Andrew has another body at Malfi, Philip and James the Less have each another body at the Church of the Holy Apostles, and Simeon and Jude, in like manner, at the Church of St. Peter. Bartholomew has also another in the church dedicated to him at Rome. So here are six who each have two bodies, and also, by way of a supernumerary, Bartholomew's skin is shown at Pisa. Matthias, however, surpasses all the rest, for he has a second body at Rome, in the church of the elder Mary, and a third one at Treves. Besides, he has another head, and another arm, existing separately by themselves. There are also fragments of Andrew existing at different places, and quite sufficient to make up half a body." And so on endlessly; and of course monotonously -which, however, is part of the calculated effect. As M. Lenient remarks, "his pitiless calculations give to a mathematical operation all the piquancy of a bon mot, and the irony of numbers destroys the credit of the most respected pilgrimages." It is, however, in such a tract as the "Excuse of the Nicodemites" that Calvin's satire is found at its best, as he rails at those weak Protestants who were too timid to declare themselves. "His pen," says M. Lenient, "was never more light or incisive. Moralist and painter after the fashion of La Bruyere, he amuses himself sketching all these profiles of effeminate Christians, with their slacknesses, their compromises of conscience, their calculations of selfishness, and indifferent luke-warmness." Literature this all is, doubtless, and good literature; and by virtue of it "Calvinistic satire" - Calvin, Beza, and Viret were its first masters - has a recognized place in the history of French satire. But it is not primarily or chiefly literature, and it had its part to play among the moral and religious forces which Calvin liberated for the accomplishment of his reforming work.

Perhaps enough has been said to suggest how Calvin fulfilled his function as reformer by his literary labors. There were, of course, other forms of his literary product which have not been mentioned - creeds and catechisms, Church ordinances and forms of worship, popular tracts and academic consilia. We need not stop to speak of them particularly. Of one other product of his literary activity, however, a special word seems demanded. Calvin was the great letter-writer of the Reformation age. About four thousand of his letters have come down to us, some of them almost of the dimensions of treatises, many of them practically theological tractates, but many of them also of the most intimate character in which he pours out his heart. In these letters we see the real Calvin, the man of profound religious convictions and rich religious life, of high purpose and noble strenuousness, of full and freely flowing human affections and sympathies. In them he rebukes rulers and instructs statesmen, and strengthens and comforts saints. Never a perplexed pastor but has from him a word of encouragement and counsel; never a martyr but has from him a word of heartening and consolation. Perhaps no friend ever more affectionately leaned on his friends; certainly no friend ever gave himself more ungrudgingly to his friends. Had he written these letters alone, Calvin would take his place among the great Christians and the great Christian leaders of the world.

It is time, however, that we reminded ourselves that Calvin's work as a reformer is not summed up in his literary activities. A "man of letters" he was fundamentally; and a "man of letters" he remained in principle all his life. But he was something more than a "man of letters." This was his chosen sphere of service; and he counted it a cross to be compelled to expend his energies through other channels. But this cross was laid upon him, and he took it up and bore it. And the work which he did under the cross was such that had we no single word from his pen, he would still hold his rank among the greatest of the Reformers. We call him "the Reformer of Geneva." But in reforming Geneva he set forces at work which have been world-wide in their operation and are active still to-day. Were we to attempt to characterize in a phrase the peculiarity of his work as a reformer, perhaps we could not do better than to say it was the work of an idealist become a practical man of affairs. He did not lack the power to wait, to make adjustments, to advance by slow and tentative steps. He showed himself able to work with any material, to make the best of compromises, to abide patiently the coming of fitting opportunities. The ends which he set before himself as reformer he attained only in the last years of his strenuous life. But he was incapable of abandoning his ideals, of acquiescing in half measures, of drifting with the tide. Therefore his whole life in Geneva was a conflict. But in the end he made Geneva the wonder of the world, and infused into the Reformed Churches a spirit which made them not only invincible in the face of their foes, but an active ferment that has changed the face of the world. Thus this "man of letters," entering into life with his ideals, was "the means," to adopt the words of a critic whose sympathy with those ideals leaves much to be desired, "of concentrating in that narrow corner" of the world "a moral force which saved the Reformation"; or rather, to put it at its full effect, which "saved Europe." "It may be doubted," as the same critic - Mark Pattison - exclaims in extorted admiration, "if all history can furnish another instance of such a victory of moral force." 

When Calvin came to Geneva, he tells us himself, he found the gospel preached there, but no Church established. "When I first came to this Church," he says, "there was as good as nothing here - il n'y avoit quasi comme rien. There was preaching, and that was all." He would have found much the same state of things everywhere else in the Protestant world. The "Church" in the early Protestant conception was constituted by the preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments: the correction of the morals of the community was the concern not of the Church but of the civil power. As a recent historian - Professor Karl Rieker - rather flippantly expresses it: "Luther, when he had preached and sowed the seed of the Word, left to the Holy Spirit the care of producing the fruit, while with his friend Philip he peacefully drank his glass of Wittenberg beer." Calvin could not take this view of the matter. "Whatever others may hold," he observed, "we cannot think so narrowly of our office that when preaching is done our task is fulfilled, and we may take our rest." In his view the mark of a true Church is not merely that the gospel is preached in it, but that it is "followed." For him the Church is the "communion of saints," and it is incumbent upon it to see to it that it is what it professes to be. From the first he therefore set himself strenuously to attain this end, and the instrument which he sought to employ to attain it was, briefly - Church discipline. It comes to us with a surprise which is almost a shock to learn that we owe to Calvin all that is involved, for the purity and welfare of the Church, in the exercise of Church discipline. But that is the simple truth, and so sharp was the conflict by which the innovation won a place for itself, and so important did the principle seem, that it became the mark of the Reformed Churches that they made "discipline" one of the fundamental criteria of the true Church. Moreover, the application of this principle carried Calvin very far, and, indeed, in its outworking gave the world through him the principle of a free Church in a free State. It is ultimately to him, therefore, that the Church owes its emancipation from the State, and to him goes back that great battle-cry which has since fired the hearts of many saints in many crises in many lands: "The Crown Rights of King Jesus in His Church."

Censorship of manners and morals was not introduced by Calvin into Geneva. Such a censorship, often of the most petty and galling kind, was the immemorial practice not only of Geneva but of all other similarly constituted towns. It was part of the recognized police regulations of the times. Calvin's sole relation to this censorship was through his influence - he never bore civil office or exercised civil authority in Geneva, and, indeed, acquired the rights of citizenship there only late in life - gradually to bring some order and rationality into its exercise. What Calvin introduced - and it was so revolutionary with respect both to the State and to the Church that it required eighteen years of bitter struggle before it was established -was distinctively Church discipline. The principles on which he proceeded were already laid down in the first edition of his "Institutes" (spring of 1536). And when he came to Geneva in the autumn of 1536 he lost no time in seeking to put them into practice. Already at the opening of 1537 we find a document drawn up by him in the name of the ministers of Geneva before the Council, in which the whole new conception is briefly outlined. This great charter of the Church's liberties - for it is as truly such as the "Magna Charta" is the charter of British rights - opens with these simple and direct words: "It is certain that a Church cannot be said to be well ordered and governed unless the Holy Supper of our Lord is frequently - celebrated and attended in it, and that with such good regulation that no one would dare to present himself at it except with piety and deep reverence. And it is therefore necessary for the Church to maintain in its integrity the discipline of excommunication, by which those should be corrected who are unwilling to yield themselves amiably and in all obedience to the holy Word of God." In the body of the document the matter is argued, and three things are proposed: First, that it be ascertained at the outset who of the inhabitants of the town wished "to avow themselves of the Church of Jesus Christ." For this, it is suggested that a brief and comprehensive Confession of Faith be prepared, and "all the inhabitants of your town" be required to "make confession and render reason of their faith, that it may be ascertained which accord with the Gospel, and which prefer to be of the kingdom of the Pope rather than of Jesus Christ." Secondly, that a catechism be prepared, and the children be diligently instructed in the elements of the faith. And thirdly, that provision be made by the appointment of "certain persons of good life and good repute among all the faithful, and likewise of constancy of spirit and not open to corruption," who should keep watch over the conduct of the Church members, advise with them, admonish them, and in obstinate cases bring them to the attention of the ministers, when, if they still prove unamenable, they are "to be held as rejected from the company of Christians," and "as a sign of this, rejected from the communion of the Lord's Supper, and denounced to the rest of the faithful as not to be companied with familiarly." By this programme Calvin became nothing less than the creator of the Protestant Church. The particular points to be emphasized in it are two. It is purely Church discipline which is contemplated, with none other but spiritual penalties. And the Church is for this purpose especially discriminated from the body of the people - the State - and a wedge is thus driven in between Church and State which was bound to separate the one from the other.

In claiming for the Church this discipline, Calvin, naturally, had no wish in any way to infringe upon the police regulations of the civil authorities. They continued, in their own sphere, to command his approval and cooperation. He has the clearest conception of the limits within which the discipline of the Church must keep itself, and expressly declares that it is confined absolutely to the spiritual penalty of excommunication. But he just as expressly suggests that the State, on its own part, might well take cognizance of spiritual offenses; and even invokes the aid of the civil magistrate in support of the authority of the Church. "This," he says to the Council, after outlining his scheme for the appointment of lay helpers - in effect elders - in the exercise of discipline, - "this seems to us a good way to introduce excommunication into our Church, and to maintain it in its entirety. And beyond this correction the Church cannot proceed. But if there are any so insolent and abandoned to all perversity that they only laugh at being excommunicated, and do not mind living and dying in such a condition of rejection, it will be for you to consider how long you will endure and leave unpunished such contempt and such mockery of God and His Gospel." This is not requiring the State to execute the Church's decrees: the Church executes her own decrees, and its extremest penalty is excommunication. It is only recognizing that the State as well as the Church may take account of spiritual offenses. And particularly it is declaring that while the Church by her own sanctions protects her own altars, it is the part of the State by its own sanctions to sustain the Church in protecting its altars. Calvin has not risen to the conception of the complete mutual independence of Church and State: his view still includes the conception of an "established Church." But the "established Church" which he pleads for is a Church absolutely autonomous in its own spiritual sphere. In asking this he was asking for something new in the Protestant world, and something in which lay the promise and potency of all the freedom which has come to the Reformed Churches since.

Of course Calvin did not get what he asked for in 1537. Nor did he get it when he returned from his banishment in 1541. But he never lost it from sight; he never ceased to contend for it; he was always ready to suffer for its assertion and defense; and at last he won it. The spiritual liberties which he demanded for the Church in 1536, for the assertion of which he was banished in 1538, for the establishment of which he ceaselessly struggled from 1541, he measurably attained at length in 1555. In the fruits of that great victory we have all had our part. And every Church in Protestant Christendom which enjoys to-day any liberty whatever, in performing its functions as a Church of Jesus Christ, owes it all to John Calvin. It was he who first asserted this liberty in his early manhood - he was only twenty-seven years of age when he presented his programme to the Council; it was he who first gained it in a lifelong struggle against a determined opposition; it was he who taught his followers to value it above life itself, and to secure it to their successors with the outpouring of their blood. And thus Calvin's great figure rises before us as not only in a true sense the creator of the Protestant Church, but the author of all the freedom it exercises in its spiritual sphere.

It is impossible to linger here on the relations of this great exploit of Calvin's, even to point out its rooting in his fundamental religious conceptions, or its issue in the creation of a spirit in his followers to the efflorescence of which this modern world of ours owes its free institutions. We cannot even stop to indicate other important claims he has upon our reverence. We say nothing here, for example, of Calvin the preacher - the "man of the Word" as Doumergue calls him, pronouncing him as such greater than he was as "man of action" or "man of thought," as both of which he was very great - who for twenty-five years stood in the pulpit of Geneva, preaching sometimes daily, sometimes twice a day, a word the echoes of which were heard to the confines of Europe. We say nothing, again, of his reorganization of the worship of the Reformed Churches, and particularly of his gift to them of the service of song: for the Reformed Churches did not sing until Calvin taught them to do it. There are many who think that he did few things greater or more far-reaching in their influence than the making of the Psalter - that Psalter of which twenty-five editions were published in the first year of its existence, and sixty-two more in the next four years; which was translated or transfused into nearly every language of Europe; and which wrought itself into the very flesh and bone of the struggling saints throughout all the "killing times" of Protestant history. The activities of Calvin were too varied and multiplex, his influence in numerous directions too enormous, to lend themselves to rapid enumeration. We can pause further only to say a necessary word of that system of divine truth which, by his winning restatement and powerful advocacy of it, he has stamped with his name, and with his eye upon which a Roman Catholic writer of our day - Canon William Barry - pronounces Calvin "undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and, perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most persistently followed by his disciples of any western writer on theology."

It has become very much the custom of modern historians to insist that Calvin's was not an original but only a systematizing genius. Thus, for example, Reinhold Seeberg remarks: "His was an acute and delicate but not a creative mind." "As a dogmatician, he furnished no new ideas; but with the most delicate sense of perception he arranged the dogmatic ideas at hand in accordance with their essential character and their historical development." "He possessed the wonderful talent of comprehending any given body of religious ideas in its most delicate refinements and giving appropriate expression to the results of his investigations." Accordingly, he did not leave behind him "uncoined gold, like Luther," or "questionable coinage, like Melanchthon," but good gold well minted - and in this lies the explanation of the greatness of his influence as a theologian. The contention may very easily be overpressed. But at its basis there lies the perception of a very important fact; perhaps we may say the most important fact in the premises.

Calvin was a thoroughly independent student of Scripture, and brought forth from that treasure-house things not only old but new; and if it was not given to him to recover for the world so revolutionizing a doctrine as that of Justification by Faith alone, the contributions of his fertile thought to doctrinal advance were neither few nor unimportant. He made an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity: by his insistence on "self-existence" as a proper attribute of Son and Spirit as well as of the Father, he drove out the lingering elements of Subordinationism, and secured to the Church a deepened consciousness of the co-equality of the Divine Persons. He introduced the presentation of the work of Christ under the rubrics of the threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King. He created the whole discipline of Christian Ethics. But above all he gave to the Church the entire doctrine of the Work of the Holy Spirit, profoundly conceived and wrought out in its details, with its fruitful distinctions of common and efficacious grace, of noëtic, aisthetic, and thelematic effects, - a gift, we venture to think, so great, so pregnant with benefit to the Church as fairly to give him a place by the side of Augustine and Anselm and Luther, as the Theologian of the Holy Spirit, as they were respectively the Theologian of Grace, of the Atonement, and of Justification.

Nevertheless, despite such contributions – contributions of the first order - to theological advance, it is quite true - and it is a truth deserving the strongest emphasis - that the system of doctrine which Calvin taught, and by his powerful commendation of which his greatest work for the world was wrought, was not peculiar to himself, was in no sense new, - was, in point of fact, just "the Gospel" common to him and all the Reformers, on the ground of which they spoke of themselves as "Evangelicals," and by the recovery of which was wrought out the revolution which we call the Reformation. Calvin did not originate this system of truth; as "a man of the second generation "he inherited it, and his greatest significance as a religious teacher is that by his exact and delicate sense of doctrinal values and relations and his genius for systematic construction, he was able, as none other was, to cast this common doctrinal treasure of the Reformation into a well-compacted, logically unassailable, and religiously inspiring whole. In this sense it is as systematizer that he makes his greatest demand on our admiration and gratitude. It was he who gave the Evangelical movement a theology.

The system of doctrine taught by Calvin is just the Augustinianism common to the whole body of the Reformers for the Reformation was, as from the spiritual point of view a great revival of religion, so from the theological point of view a great revival of Augustinianism. And this Augustinianism is taught by him not as an independent discovery of his own, but fundamentally as he learned it from Luther, whose fertile conceptions he completely assimilated, and most directly and in much detail from Martin Bucer into whose practical, ethical point of view he perfectly entered. Many of the very forms of statement most characteristic of Calvin - on such topics as Predestination, Faith, the stages of Salvation, the Church, the Sacraments - only reproduce, though of course with that clearness and religious depth peculiar to Calvin, the precise teachings of Bucer, who was above all others, accordingly, Calvin's master in theology. Of course he does not take these ideas over from Bucer and repeat them by rote. They have become his own and issue afresh from him with a new exactness and delicacy of appreciation, in themselves and in their relations, with a new development of implications, and especially with a new richness of religious content. For the prime characteristic of Calvin as a theologian is precisely the practical interest which governs his entire thought and the religious profundity which suffuses it all. It was not the head but the heart which made him a theologian, and it is not the head but the heart which he primarily addresses in his theology.

He takes his start, of course, from God, knowledge of whom and obedience to whom he declares the sum of human wisdom. But this God he conceives as righteous love - Lord as well as Father, of course, but Father as well as Lord; whose will is, of course, the prima causa rerum (for is He not God?), but whose will also it will be our joy as well as our wisdom to embrace (for is He not our Father?). It was that we might know ourselves to be wholly in the hands of this God of perfect righteousness and goodness - not in those of men, whether ourselves or some other men - that he was so earnest for the doctrine of predestination: which is nothing more than the declaration of the supreme dominion of God. It was that our eternal felicity might hang wholly on God's mighty love-and not on our sinful weakness -that he was so zealous for the doctrine of election: which is nothing more than the ascription of our entire salvation to God. As he contemplated the majesty of this Sovereign Father of men, his whole being bowed in reverence before Him, and his whole heart burned with zeal for His glory. As he remembered that this great God has become in His own Son the Redeemer of sinners, he passionately gave himself to the proclamation of the glory of His grace. Into His hands he committed himself without reserve: his whole spirit panted to be in all its movement subjected to His government - or, to be more specific, to the "leading of His Spirit." All that was good in him, all the good he hoped might be formed in him, he ascribed to the almighty working of this Divine Spirit. The "glory of God alone" - the "leading of the Spirit" (or, as a bright young French student of his thought has lately expressed it, la maitrise, the "mastery," the control, of the Spirit),-became thus the twin principles of his whole thought and life. Or, rather, the double expression of the one principle; for - since all that God does, He does by His Spirit - the two are at bottom one.

Here we have the secret of Calvin's greatness and the source of his strength unveiled to us. No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction. "We cannot better characterize the fundamental disposition of Calvin the man and the reformer," writes a recent German student of his life - Bernhard Bess - "than in the words of the Psalm: 'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?' After that virtuoso in religion of ancient Israel, no one has spoken of the majesty of God and the insignificance of man with such feeling and truth as Calvin. The appearance which Luther's expressions often give, as if God exists merely for man's sake, never is given by Calvin. God is for him the almighty will which lies behind all that comes to pass. What comes to pass in the world serves no doubt man, the Church, and salvation; but this is not its ultimate end, but the revelation of the glory and the honor of God." If there is anything that will make a man great, surely it is placing himself unreservedly at the disposal of God and seeking not only to do nothing but God's will, but to do all God's will. This is what Calvin did, and it is because he did this that he was so great. He was, of course, not without his weaknesses. He had no doubt a high temper, though to do him justice we must take the term in all its senses. He did not in all things rise superior to the best opinion of his age. We have seen, for example, that he was in full accord with his time in its extension of the cognizance of the civil courts to spiritual offenses; and it was by the consent of his mind to this universal conviction of the day that he was implicated in that unhappy occurrence - the execution of Servetus. But to do him justice here we must learn to speak both of his connection with that occurrence and of Servetus himself in quite other terms than the reckless language with which a modern writer of repute speaks when he calls Calvin "the author of the great crime of the age - the murder of the heroic Servetus." Servetus, that "fool of genius," as a recent writer, not without insight, characterizes him, was anything but an heroic figure. The "crime" of his "murder," unfortunately, had scores of fellows in that age, in which life was lightly valued, and it was agreed on all hands that grave heresy and gross blasphemy were capital offenses in well-organized states. And Servetus was condemned and executed by a tribunal of which Calvin was not a member, with which he possessed little influence, and which rejected his petition against the unnecessary cruelty of the penalty inflicted.

"There are people," remarks Paul Wernle, who is certainly under the influence of no glamour for Calvin or Calvinism - "There are people who have been told at school that Servetus was burned through Calvin's fault, and are therefore done with this man. They ought to remember that had they lived at the time, they would in all probability have joined in burning him. It is not so easy to be done with the man who was the most luminous and penetrating theologian of his time and the source from which flowed that power which Protestantism showed in Scotland, France, England, Holland. We are all glad, no doubt, that we did not live under his rod; but who knows what we would all be, had not this divine ardor possessed him? Concentrated, well-directed enthusiasm that is his essence; it was himself, first of all, whom he consumed in his zeal; his rule at Geneva was no more rigorous than the heroism was glorious with which he compacted half the Protestantism of Europe into a power which nothing could break. Calvin was in very truth the soul of the battling and conquering Reformed world; it was he who fought on the battlefields of the Huguenots and the Dutch, and in the hosts of the Puritans. In scarcely another of the Reformers is there to be seen such thoroughness, absoluteness. And yet what moderation, what real dread of every kind of excess; with what deference and tact did he know how to speak to the great! If you would know the man, how he lived with and for God and the world, read first of all in the Institutes the section On the Life of the Christian Man. It is the portrait of himself. And then for his religious individuality add the sections On Justification and On Predestination, where will be found what is most profound, most moving in his life of faith."

Such a man was John Calvin; and such was the work he did for God and His Kingdom on earth. Adolf Harnack has said that between Paul the Apostle and Luther the Reformer, Augustine was the greatest man God gave His Church. We may surely add that from Luther the Reformer to our day God has given His Church no greater man than John Calvin.

The Lamb of God

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

John i. 29:—Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

JOHN the Apostle was the pupil of John the Baptist. Alone of the evangelists, he had not merely heard the preaching of this last and greatest of the prophets, but had formed one of the inner circle of his disciples, closely attached to his person and intimately acquainted with his entire thought. And he had brought to this teaching the same receptive and brooding heart, attuned to the higher truth, which he afterwards brought to the teaching of Christ. The result was very much the same. There are scattered here and there through the sayings of Jesus recorded by the other evangelists, deep sayings enough to assure us that, even as they would set it forth, there was this element in the teaching of the Master; but John's record of our Lord's discourses is compacted of these deep sayings. So there are hints enough in the record of the Baptist's preaching given by the other evangelists, to make it clear that there was such a side to it as John records; but it is John alone who throws this aspect of it into the foreground. In both alike, the Baptist is purely the forerunner of the Lord, whose whole work consisted in making ready for the Lord's coming. But the attention of the other evangelists is directed to the pathway prepared for the feet of the Lord; John's is focused upon the figure advancing over the road. They tell us, therefore, of the trumpet call to repentance which the Baptist sent ringing through the land, of his searching inquisition into the hearts of men, of his unsparing rebuke of evil whether in high places or in low, of his flaming proclamation of judgment; John tells us rather of the testimony of the Baptist to Christ. From them we learn accordingly what the Baptist thought of man; from John, what he thought of Jesus.

And when we learn from John what the Baptist thought of Jesus, we are startled by the clearness and fulness of his prophetic vision. We have already reminded ourselves that John was a pupil of the Baptist. Let us now give its full validity to this fact. At least this much he obviously would himself have us say,—that all he ever came to know of Jesus he saw, when he looked back upon the teaching of his first master, to have been already contained in germ in his prophetic instruction. It is therefore that he lays such stress on the testimony of the Baptist to Jesus. Even from the reports of the Baptist's teaching given in the other evangelists, we may perceive that he saw in Jesus a person, and expected of Him a work, which marked Him out as the divine Saviour of the world. What is thus implicit in their report, however, is made explicit in John's. We need not suppose that John fully understood from the beginning all he heard from the Baptist's lips. But, like Mary, he belonged to that class of profound religious natures who are accustomed to hide the deep declarations of the prophets in their hearts, that they may ripen under the influences which the experiences of later life bring. And thus, after John had lain on Jesus' bosom as he had sat at the Baptist's feet, and had drunk from that fuller and richer fountain, he was in a position to tell us that there was included in the Baptist's declaration a true knowledge of Jesus, a knowledge of who and what He was and what He came into the world to do, a knowledge of Him, in the fulness of the meaning of that great designation, as the "Son of God," and, in the fulness of the meaning of that great declaration, as "the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world."

It is easy to say that such fulness of apprehension is incredible in the Baptist. That, standing as he did, in the grey dawn of the new dispensation, it is incongruous to bathe him in the full light of noonday, a noonday which did not shine upon Christ's own disciples until long afterwards—which, indeed, never shone upon them until their Master's work had been accomplished and was bearing its own witness to itself, until He had not only died for our sins, but risen again for our justification and had sent His Spirit to teach their laggard understandings things which earlier they had been unable to bear. Nay, are we not attributing to the Baptist, it is asked, a knowledge to which even Jesus Himself attained only slowly, as He learned by the things which He suffered; for did not He Himself begin His ministry animated by the hope of establishing the Kingdom He came to erect through the mere force of His winning proclamation, and only gradually learn, as the cross threw more and more deeply its baleful shadow over His pathway, that it was only through suffering that He could attain His glory? How shall we believe that to the Baptist there lay open from the beginning all that the Lord Himself and all His disciples learned only at the end; and even, that the Baptist taught it all, on his prophetic authority, both to Jesus and to Jesus' disciples, who were his pupils,—although certainly with so little effect that they forthwith forgot it and required painfully to recover it in the hard school of experience? If indeed we must not even say that the Baptist forgot it himself; for how else can we suppose that he could send to Jesus that perplexed inquiry, "Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?"

Plausible, however, as such doubts and hesitations may be made to appear, the answer to them is easy and decisive. They are utterly without historical foundation. They are purely the fruit of an attempt to reconstruct the historical sequences of the evangelical narrative in the interests of an a priori theory,—of an a priori theory, moreover, the principle of which is rejection of the supernatural factor in the history, though this supernatural factor is no less the nerve of the whole historical development than the very heart of the Christian religion. If we are to credit the evangelical narrative (and what other source of information have we?) it is not true that our Lord began His ministry with the expectation of accomplishing His mission through the instrumentality of successful preaching alone. Every one of the evangelists represents Him as undertaking His work with a clear perception of precisely what lay before Him; as coming into the world, in a word, not that He might live and build up a Kingdom, but that He might die and through His death purchase a people to Himself; as entering from the beginning, that is to say, upon the conscious fulfilment of the programme which the Baptist marked out for Him when He called Him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. It is true the disciples are represented as, in their preoccupation with another Messianic ideal, slow of heart to believe that it should be thus and not otherwise with their Master, that it should be through the sufferings and death of the cross that He should accomplish His work and enter into His glory. But the significance for this of the Baptist's preannouncement falls into the background in view of the repeated declarations of the Lord Himself, running up at last into careful and precise instruction, which only their dullness of spirit was able to resist; and, indeed, in view of the broad preadumbrations of the Old Testament itself, which the evangelists would have us understand laid down beforehand the entire plan of our Lord's life. When the risen Christ turned to His despondent disciples with the sorrowful rebuke, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, ought not the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?" He but put into direct words once again before He was taken up the teaching of His whole life, which has become the teaching of all His biographers as well.

From the point of sight of our Lord Himself and of these narratives which embalm His memory for us, there was really nothing new in the Baptist's proclamation and nothing exceptional in it, beyond its designation of the man Jesus as the expected Messiah. It was but the summary presentation of the essential teaching of the Old Testament, and particularly of that great prophet of whom as truly as of Elijah the Baptist was a revival, and in whose prophecies his testimony, as recorded by John, is steeped. Little marvel that those who could forget Isaiah, could forget also the Baptist's crisp summary of Isaiah's teaching. Little marvel that, in the hour of his own trial, even he himself should sink into a certain measure of despondency and need to reassure himself that He on whose head he had seen the Spirit descend and rest, was really He that should come, and he need not look for another. In the progress alike of the individual and of the Kingdom of God upwards towards those heights of knowledge and privilege which at the start, perchance, stand out clearly in view touched with the glow of sunrise, it often happens that they are temporarily lost from sight as the lower valleys and shaded paths are traversed, by which they are approached. The very process of attaining the fuller possession of them involves the hiding of them for a time from view. There is nothing psychologically unnatural, therefore, either in the clear perception of the Baptist, from the vantage-ground of the opening of the new dispensation, of the true character of the Messiah and the real nature of His work; or in the evangelist's recalling the fulness of this prophetic teaching after the event had justified it and he had himself through his inspiration attained a firm grasp of its elements. What John, in effect, invites us to do, is to come back with him to the dawn of the Christian proclamation, and to observe with him how this lonely peak was "fired by the red glow of the rushing morn." "Listen," says he to us, "listen, to these marvellous words which fell from the great prophet's lips in the rich flow of his inspiration. When I heard them, then, they kindled a flame in my heart which has not yet died down; in their impulse I turned and followed Jesus. When I recall them now I see in them nothing less than a direct witness from God to what Jesus was and did. Hearken to them as a voice from heaven, declaring what in truth is the central fact of the Gospel."

So we seem to hear the evangelist speaking to us out of the records of his Gospel this morning, and we would not be disobedient to the heavenly message. Let us, then, ask what it is that the Baptist, thus reported to us, bids us behold in Him whom he declares to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

We remark, then, in the first place, that he bids us see in Jesus the suffering servant of God.

In the preparation for the coming of redemption which forms the main burden of the Old Testament revelation the promised redeemer is presented in a great variety of aspects, corresponding to the multifarious functions which he was to perform as the Saviour of His people. Among these, none fell in so completely with the popular temper, or appealed with such force to the popular imagination, as that which foretold Him as the Son of David, the great warrior-king who should subdue the world to the God of Israel and for ever rule over the whole race of man. Fired with hopes kindled by this great prediction, the prevailing conception of the Messiah very naturally came to be that of a monarch, whose dominion was inevitably transmuted into a more or less carnal kingdom of power over the enemies of Israel. Meanwhile the other lines of prophetic description were neglected; and among them most of all that culminating in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, in which the Messiah is depicted as the righteous servant of Jehovah, preserving his integrity amid the contradictions of sinners, and by his patient endurance of the sufferings inflicted upon Him not merely earning the favour of God, but purchasing blessings for the people. What it concerns us to observe now is that the Baptist, in designating Jesus the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, recalls his hearers from the one Messianic ideal to the other. His prophetic announcement is the authoritative designation of Jesus as the long-expected Messiah, the Hope of Israel; but along with that, the authoritative definition of the Messianic ideal to be fulfilled in Jesus, as very especially that set forth in the figure of the servant of Jehovah. It is the prophetic proclamation of the great doctrine of the suffering Messiah, in terms and tones which imperatively claimed a hearing and admitted no misunderstanding.

In this, indeed, consists the offence of the Baptist's announcement. It was its offence at the time. Had the Baptist come proclaiming the advent of a warrior-king, who should, with the rod of His anger, break in pieces the oppressors of Israel, Herod might still have slain him, but the Pharisees would have believed in Him, and no Jew would ever have questioned whether his mission were from heaven. It remains his offence to the present day. This doctrine of a suffering Messiah, we are asked,—what unheard-of doctrine is this? No Jew ever dreamed of it, we are told, until he had been taught it by the Christians; and the Christians invented it only to reconcile the catastrophe which had befallen their Christ with their hope that it would have been He who should redeem Israel. It concerns us little when the Jews, in their engrossment with the expectation of a Messianic King of the earth rather than of heaven, first began to lend tardy ear to the Isaian proclamation of a suffering Messiah; it is a historical question of some obscurity whose solution has little bearing on our practical life. But it is obvious that the contention that the doctrine of a suffering Messiah was first introduced by the Christians to save the situation when their Messiah succumbed to the machinations of His foes and poured out His blood at Calvary, involves the complete rewriting of the New Testament in the interests of an a priori theory. Here stands written in the forefront of the Gospel narrative, a crisp proclamation of the doctrine of the suffering Messiah from the mouth of John the Baptist; and over and over again from the very outset of the narrative of His life it is represented as underlying the announcements of Jesus Himself, as it is later made the prime topic of His instruction to His disciples and the staple of the preaching of all His followers. In very truth, if we conceive the great religious movement inaugurated by John the Baptist, and carried through by Jesus and His followers, from the point of view of the development of the Messianic conception, its significance is precisely that of a sustained effort to revolutionize the dominant Messianic ideal,—to substitute for the conception of Messiah the king of Israel, that of Messiah the suffering servant of Jehovah. This is written large over the whole face of the New Testament. Every one of the evangelists as he seeks to present a vital picture of how Jesus comported Himself on earth, makes his appeal to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, as laying down the programme on which His life was ordered (Matthew viii. 17, Mark xv. 28, Luke xxii. 37, John xii. 35; also Matthew xi. 5, xii. 18, xxi. 5, Luke iv. 18, etc.). In the didactic portions of the New Testament this conception is simply carried forward and developed into its doctrinal implications (Rom. x. i6, i Peter ii. 22, Acts viii. 28, Rev. v. 6, xiii. 8). The doctrine of the suffering Messiah may thus be truly said to be the nerve of the whole New Testament presentation. There is nothing peculiar, therefore, in the Baptist's proclamation except its initial position at the head of a development which has revolutionized, not the Messianic ideal merely, but the world itself. Historically speaking its entire significance is that it announces in a clear, sharp, startlingly worded proclamation at the very outset of the new dispensation, its whole programme. Precisely what characterizes the New Testament most profoundly as the documentation of a movement issuing from the bosom of Judaism is its ideal of the Messiah as the suffering servant of Jehovah. Precisely what differentiates Christianity most sharply from the Judaism from which it issued is its proclamation of this Messianic ideal. Precisely the distinction of the Baptist is his initial announcement of this altered hope.

"Behold," cries the Baptist, pointing to Jesus,—"behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." In that meek and lowly figure passing yonder, in bearing so simple and unassuming amid His fellow-men, see the Hope of Israel, the Chosen of God. Lay aside your national passions, your fierce chafing under the foreign yoke; man suffers from something worse than political bondage or alien oppression; there is a higher deliverance than that from the dominion of the stranger. It is not a king you need so much as a redeemer; and the God of our fathers knows it. Behold, there is the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. To his first hearers, that is substantially what the proclamation of the Baptist meant. To us, to-day, it means, that if we would know Jesus, we must dismiss from our minds all preconceived notions of what it behoved the Lord of all the earth to be, and how it behoved Him to bear Himself in the world, and, under the Baptist's direction, go to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and read in that prophetic picture what Jehovah's righteous servant was and how He lived in the earth. And certainly it is no attractive portrait, as men count attractiveness, that the prophet draws of Him. "His visage," he writes, " was so marred, more than any man, and his form more than the sons of man." "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him." "He was despised and rejected of men," we are told, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their face He was despised and we esteemed Him not." "He was stricken, smitten of men, and afflicted "—wounded, bruised, chastised, oppressed, led like a lamb to the slaughter, put to grief. Epithet is piled upon epithet almost beyond measure, to convey to us a sense of the depth of His humiliation. This, says the prophet to us,—this is our Redeemer. If we would see Jesus as He was, looking beneath the appearance to the actual reality and faultless truth, the Baptist tells us to look at Him in this portrait,—subjected, to put it shortly and sharply, to the most fathomless humiliation that ever befell or will ever again befall a sentient, feeling, palpitating being in all God's universe. There never has been, there never will be, another to stoop as He stooped. You know how Paul put it, seeking to suggest the depth of the humiliation by the interval between that which He was by nature and that which He became by His condescension. God on His throne—a broken slave on the cross; these are the end terms. As God, He was the Lord of all the earth; when He became man, He became servant to the whole world; and not content with that, being found in fashion as a man. He humbled Himself still further even unto death itself, and that the death of the cross. Enough: words cannot paint this humiliation. We read the prophetic portrayal in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah; we read the historical portraiture in the pages of the Gospels, culminating in the agony of Gethsemane and the anguish of the Passion; we read the dogmatic representation in the arguments of the Epistles. They fill our minds with wonder; they wring our hearts with compassion; but we remain conscious through all that even the bloody sweat of Gethsemane and the forsaken cry on the cross are an insufficient index of the soul-anguish which was endured by this greatest of earth's sufferers, this most humiliated of all those who from the primal curse have trodden with bloody feet the thorny surface of this sin-smitten world of ours. Surely the Baptist was right when he bade us see in this Jesus, the type of all righteous sufferers, the suffering servant of Jehovah.

But a great deal more is to be said of this sufferer than merely that He stands before us as the type of all sufferers. His sufferings were not endured for their own sake; nor did the Baptist suppose that they were. We need to remark, in the second place, therefore, that the Baptist bids us see in Jesus the substitutive sacrifice for sin.

"Behold the Lamb of God," cries the Baptist, "which taketh away the sin of the world." Not, Behold the Prophet like unto Moses, whom ye shall hear; nor yet. Behold the Israelite without guile, in whom meet perfect purity, wisdom and truth; nor even. Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who shall scatter your foes and deliver you from all your enemies. He might have said any one or all of these things. They are all true of Jesus. Christ is our teacher, and our example, and our king. But there is something more fundamental than any of these things; something which underlies them all and from which they acquire their value. And it is this that the Baptist saw in Christ and sends us to Christ to find. "Behold," says he, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." That image could mean but one thing to an humble, sin-conscious Old Testament saint. He would think first of the righteous sufferer of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: and that righteous sufferer is not merely described there, we will remember, as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb, the very embodiment of meekness and patience in enduring the violence of the despoiler; but, in well-remembered words which throw a glory over these sufferings to which even meek patience and uncomplaining endurance can lend nothing, we read: "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed." "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." "For the transgression of my people was he stricken . . . yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. . . . By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. . . . He bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." And along with the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the Old Testament saint, when directed to the Lamb of God which takes away sin, would inevitably think also of the paschal lamb, the fundamental national symbol of deliverance; along with it, beyond question, also of the lamb of the daily sacrifice and of the underlying significance of the whole sacrificial system, with its typical finger pointing forward to something better,—to God's own Lamb, who should really take away sin, a lamb of God's providing, able and willing to bear on his own head the sin of the world.

It is through the eyes of such an Old Testament saint that we of these later days may hope to catch for ourselves the Baptist's meaning. Men have no doubt wearied themselves with efforts to derive from his declaration some less explicit reference to sacrifice. Jesus might well be compared to a lamb, it has been said, merely because of His mild and inoffensive disposition, the gentleness of His bearing, the patience of His demeanour under the injuries of His foes; and He might well be said to take sin away from the world with reference merely to His zeal for purity of conduct and heart, the loftiness of His ethical character, the winning example of the holiness of His life. It may certainly be doubted whether those who take this line of remark, have fully understood Jesus—whether they remember the sternness of His demeanour in the presence of sin, the excoriation of His rebuke, that scourge of cords with which He drove the traders from the Temple, that bearing which, when He set his face to go up to Jerusalem, caused even His followers to draw back from Him afraid, leaving Him to rush on alone in the van. We must beware, because Jesus is described as bearing with patience the sufferings He came to endure, of picturing Him therefore to ourselves as without the power of indignation or without the will to use it. And it may equally be doubted whether those who suppose that the sin of the world may be taken away by any power of persuasion or example, rightly understand man, or his love of sinning, or the power of sin in him. But let all this pass. The artificiality of such attempts to explain away the plain significance of the Baptist's declaration is too glaring to require formal refutation. Jesus is not merely compared with a lamb in it; He is identified with a specific and particular lamb,—the well-known "Lamb of God." And whether this be taken as Isaiah's lamb of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, or the passover lamb, or the lamb of the common sacrifices, it is in each and every case a sacrificial lamb which is indicated. Nor is Jesus said here in some broad and general way to take away sin. He is said to be the sin-bearer as the Lamb of God: and there is but one way in which from the beginning of the world, or in any nation, a lamb has ever been known to bear sin, and that is, as a piacular sacrifice, expiating guilt in the sight of a propitiated God. The Lamb of God which takes away sin, is and can be nothing other than the lamb of God's providing upon whose head sin is laid, and by whose blood expiation is wrought.

When, then, the Baptist pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he pointed Him out as the divinely provided sacrifice for sin: he pointed Him out as the substitute for sinners, by whose stripes they are healed. Thus he preached beforehand the Gospel of the blood of Jesus—that blood of Jesus by which alone can our sins be washed away. Following his direction, we shall see in Jesus not merely and not primarily our prophet and not merely and not primarily our king—our prophet and our king though we adoringly recognize Him as being, by whom alone we are effectively instructed in the truth, or protected from the most intimate enemies of our peace and safely directed in our way. Nay, we shall recognize in Him not merely our priest who represents us before God and makes satisfaction for our sins; but before all and above all, as our sacrifice,—the victim itself upon whose head our sin is laid, and by whose outpoured blood our guilt is cleansed. It is, in a word, the Gospel of the cross—of the cross of Christ—which the Baptist commends to us here; that Gospel, not only of Christ simpliciter, but of Christ as crucified, which has ever remained to the Jews a stumbling-block and to Gentiles foolishness, but which has also ever remained, and will ever remain, to the called themselves, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. The blood of Jesus,—O, the blood of Jesus!—when we have reached it, we have attained not merely the heart, but the heart of the heart of the Gospel. It is as a lamb as it had been slain, that He draws to Himself most mightily the hearts, as He attracts to Himself most fully the praises of His saints.

But not even in this high testimony is the witness of the Baptist exhausted. We reach its height only when we remark, in the third place, that he calls upon us to see in Jesus the Saviour of the world.

"Behold," he cries, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,"—not "our sin" merely, though we praise God that may be gloriously true; nor "the sin of His people" merely, though that too, when properly understood, expresses the entire fact; but, with clear vision of the ultimate issue, "the sin of the world." The propitiatory sacrifice which the Baptist sees in Jesus, is a sacrifice of world-wide efficacy: the salvation which he perceives to issue from it stretches onward in its working until it embraces the whole world. The sin of the world, as a whole, he gathers, as it were, into one mass; and, laying it upon the head of Jesus, cries, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is in this universalism, we say, that we reach the height of the Baptist's declaration.

And it is in this universalism that it has become common to discover the element in the Baptist's proclamation which is specifically new. The suffering Messiah, it is often said, is no doubt an Old Testament doctrine; Messiah the sin-bearer, yes, even that may be found in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: but Messiah the bearer of the sin of the world,—was it not reserved to the opening of the new dispensation, characterized by spiritual breadth, and to John the Baptist, harbinger of Christ, to give explicit expression to this great truth? It will be well, however, to walk warily even here. The narrowness of the ordinary Jewish outlook cannot, perhaps, be easily overstated,—the pride of the Jews as the special favourites of heaven, and their ingrained determination to confine the grace of God to the limits of their own nation. But they certainly were never encouraged in this restricted view of the reach of God's mercy by the revelation of His purposes which Jehovah had made to them. From the moment when He promised to the mother of all living a seed by whose bruised heel the serpent's head—the source of all evil in the world—should be crushed, the extension of His grace was never confined within narrower limits than the race itself. The normative promise to the father of the faithful,—typical of all the other promises of redemption that fill the Old Testament,—was that in his great Seed (for He saith not seeds, as of many, but Seed, as of one) should all the nations of the earth be blessed. Least of all in this wonderful chapter of Isaiah to which the Baptist's words carry us most immediately is the sacrifice of the righteous sufferer circumscribed in its efficacy by the cleansing of the sins of Israel. "When He shall have made His soul an offering for sin," we read, "He shall justify many"; and, bearing the sins of many, "so shall He sprinkle many nations." No doubt the Baptist's declaration, in the springing growth of prophetic annunciation, goes beyond even this, and asserts not a relative but an absolute universalism. Not many nations, but the whole world, is what he bids us see redeemed in Christ: the Jesus he proclaims as the God-provided sacrifice bears upon His broad and mighty shoulders nothing less than the world's sin.

It is the note, then, of pure universalism, we perceive, that is sounded in the Baptist's great proclamation. He does not think, of course, of denying that salvation is of the Jews. This Lamb of God was a Jew of the Jews, and came as the Hope of Israel: and only as the Hope of Israel does He become also the Hope of the world. No more does He think of doubting that only as it should work its way out from Israel, perhaps by slow and even tentative stages, could this redemption of Israel extend into and throughout the world. We cannot credit him, to be sure, with detailed foresight of the actual process by which the salvation in Jesus has been conveyed to the world: through the scattering of the disciples from Jerusalem, the preaching of Paul and his companions, the slow missionary advance of the Church and slower leavening of the ingathered mass, through all these two thousand lagging years—and no one knows how many more thousands of years the secular process must continue before the great goal is attained and the great promise fulfilled that the whole shall be leavened. But the Baptist certainly expected the redemption he saw in its potency in Jesus to take effect only through the process of discipling; and accordingly he directs his own disciples to Jesus that they might attach them selves to Him whose very nature it was to "increase," and he himself remains through life an interested observer of the work and career of Him whose pathway it was his own highest ambition to smooth. Least of all does the Baptist ever think of obscuring that dark, that terrible fact, that as the redemption in Jesus thus makes its way surely to its ultimate goal of the salvation of the world, there are multitudes of sinners left to this side and that, out of the direct line of its advance; there are many who fail to hear the call; there are many who hearing refuse to hearken to it; there are whole masses of men that are extruded in the progress of the perfecting whole to its consummate end. Though the progress be continuous, therefore, and the goal sure, yet so long as it is progress to a goal as yet unreached, there must ever remain among the saved, unsaved—dross amid the gold, chaff to be winnowed out from the wheat. This Saviour, accordingly, whom the Baptist proclaims as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he presents also as the husbandman who prunes and weeds His garden, and cuts down the unfruitful trees to cast them into the flames; as the Lord of the harvest who has His fan in His hand and thoroughly purges His threshing-floor, burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. The Baptist neither denies nor glozes such things as these. But neither does he focus his eye upon them as if they were the end which Jesus had in view in coming into the world. Rather, looking through and beyond them, he fixes his gaze upon the ultimate goal which, after the process attended by these effects is over, shall at length be attained, and in this great declaration points to Jesus as bearing in His own body on the tree nothing less than the sin of the world.

You will observe, that what I am endeavouring to do, is to make as plain as I can that the Baptist's gaze, when he declares that Jesus takes away the sin of the world, is directed to the end of a process—a process of long continuance and of varied appearance through the several stadia of its course. He sees in Jesus the Saviour of the world and perceives in Him a saved world. Through the turmoil and the labour which accompany the accomplishment of this great task; through the long years of progress towards the goal, the centuries and millenniums of but partial success and oft-times even of apparent failure, which we know as the history of the Church and which even we (let us praise God for it) can recognize as the history of the expansion of Christianity; he looks out upon the end, that end to which all has been steadily advancing, when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth even as the waters cover the sea,—with the same breadth and expansion, leaving no nook or cranny unfilled, and with the same depth of fulness, overwhelming all. It is the spectacle of a saved world thus which fills his vision. And with this spectacle full in his eye, he may well afford to neglect all that intervenes, and to proclaim Jesus simply as the Lamb of God that takes away the world's sin. He is unquestionably the husbandman who prunes His garden well, and casts the improfitable plants and branches to the flames: but on that very account He is not a Husbandman who gives over His garden—the garden of the Lord—to thorns and weeds and unfruitful trees, but rather one who cleanses it and makes it in effect—this very garden in its entirety—what it has in principle been from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, the Garden of the Lord in which shall grow at last, luxuriantly filling it in its whole extent, only plants of worth and trees of delight. He is beyond doubt the winnower of men, whose fan is in His hand, to beat out the chaff and cast it in the fire: but on this very account He does not give over His threshing-floor to the worthless and cumbering chaff, but thoroughly purges it that, after the chaff is burned, it may remain the garner of the Lord heaped with the precious grain. Accordingly the Baptist does not teach us that in Jesus the sin of the world is so taken away in the mass, that there has not been and shall not yet be in the process by which the world has been and is being saved by Him, unfruitful trees cut down and chaff cast into the fire; but rather that in the end, when the process is over, no unfruitful trees will be found growing in God's garden, the world, no chaff be found cumbering God's threshing-floor, the world. The vision he brings before us, let us repeat it, is the vision of the ultimate salvation of the world, its complete conquest to Christ when at last Jesus' last enemy shall have been conquered and the whole world shall bow before Him as its Lord and its Redeemer. On the basis of this great consummation seen hanging on the margin of the future by his prophetic eye, he declares of Jesus that He bears in His body on the tree the whole world's sin, and in very truth is to be acclaimed as the Saviour of the World.

Such, then, is the Jesus to whom the Baptist would direct our eyes, when he bids us behold in Him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Let us not fail to derive at least two great lessons from his exhortation.

The first of them is this: we must never despair of the world. This is certainly a much-needed lesson. For are we not very prone to despair of the world? And is there not very good apparent reason why we should despair of it? For who can deny that the world is very evil? Only, we must not add in the words of the old hymnist, that therefore ''the times are waxing late." This world is not to rot down into destruction, but to become, however slowly and by whatever tentative processes, the very garden of the Lord. That the world is very evil is no proof, then, that the times are waxing late; but, if any inference can be drawn from it, the contrary rather. The world has always been very evil, ever since there entered it, through that forbidden fruit, the sin of man and all our human woes. Throughout all the ages, its sin has gone up reeking before God to heaven. Viewed in itself we could not but despair of it. But the great fact—the great fact, greater even than the fact of the world's sin—is that Christ has redeemed this sinful world. In Him we behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. Not, who strives to take it away and fails; not, who takes it away in some measure, but is unable to take it away entirely; not, who suspends its taking away upon a gigantic IF—as though His taking it away were dependent on some aid given Him by the world itself—that world which loves its sin and will never give it up of itself and which will, of course, always act when left to itself in accordance with its nature as the sinful world. No, but who actually, completely, finally, takes away its sin. This,—I beg you to bind the great truth on your heart,—this, despite all appearances that smite the astounded eye and the slowness of its realization of its great destiny—is a redeemed world, in which we live. It has been purchased unto God by the most precious blood of His Son. Its salvation, in God's own good time and way, can no more fail than the purpose of God can fail, than the blood of Jesus Christ can be of none effect. God's ways, to be sure, are not as our ways: there is none of us fitted to be His counsellor; we cannot review His plans nor bid Him stay and justify to us His methods of working. It must ever remain a mystery to us why He works in this world by process; why He created the world by process, why He has peopled it by process, why He has redeemed it by process, why He is saving it by process—by process so slow and to our human eye so uncertain, cast so much to the mercy of the currents that flow up and down through the earth, that we are tempted at times to doubt whether it is directed to a goal at all. We know only that it is by process that God chooses to work in the world,—except this further: that, though He works by process. He ever gloriously attains His ends. This wicked world in which we live is, then, God's world, Christ's world; it belongs to Christ by right of purchase and nothing can snatch it out of His hands. The day will surely come when the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdom of our God and His Christ; and we—you and I—are coworkers with God in bringing about the great consummation. O lift up your eyes from the dust and noise of the strife and its apparently fitful fortunes, and, shall I not even say? doubtful issue; and under the direction of the Baptist, fix them upon the end: lift them from the world's sin and its just doom for its sin, to the world's Saviour and its abounding life in Him. See the redeemed world in its redeeming Lord, clothed in righteousness; and let your hearts beat high with the vision and gather courage for your daily tasks as messengers of God to a world lost indeed in its sin, but found again in its Saviour.

The second lesson is: we must not despair of ourselves. Living in this sinful world, as constituent members of it, we are partakers of its sin; or, as it may be more fair to put it, its sinfulness is but the expression of our sin. How can we, sinners, cherish hope of life? In ourselves, surely, we can find no ground for such a hope: and that we know right well. Our hearts condemn us and God is greater than our hearts. If we look at ourselves, how can we not despair? Let us look, therefore, not at ourselves but at Jesus; for Jesus, the Baptist tells us, is the Lamb of God which takes away sin. And, note it well, troubled heart, the Baptist did not make this declaration to those who had no sin, or even to those who, having it, knew not that they had it. What appeal, in fact, could such a declaration make to such men as that? He made it to those whom he had called with flaming speech to repentance; and who, with burning hearts, had come to his baptism of remission of sin. The message is, then, to you too whose hearts are sore with the sense of sin. To you and me also he cries to-day: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away sin." Is it not a joyful message to sin-stricken souls? Let others think of Jesus as they may. Let them hail him as a king: let them sit at His feet as a prophet: let them eagerly seek to follow in His steps. For you and me, sinners, He is most glorious and most precious, as a Saviour. Let others make elaborate inquisition into the possible reasons which led Him to come into this sinful world of ours. He Himself tells us that there were but two reasons which could have brought Him into the world—to judge the world, or to save the world. And, blessed be His name. He has further told us that it was actually to save the world that He came. This is the only reason that can satisfy our hearts, or even our reason,—that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. It is only as the Lamb of God that has been slain, to purchase unto God by His blood of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and to make them unto God a kingdom and priests who shall reign on the earth,—that the heavenly hosts in the apocalyptic vision hymn Him; and it is only as we catch a glimpse of this His true glory that we can worthily add our voices to His praise. It is only when we see in Him a slaughtered lamb, lying on a smoking altar, from which ascends the sweet savour of an acceptable sacrifice to God for sin, that we can rise to anything like a true sense of the glory of Jesus Christ, or in any degree give a sufficing account to our souls of His presence in the world.

"The Lord has come into His world!"
Nay, nay, that cannot be;
The world is full of noisomeness
And all iniquity:
He is the Lord of all the earth—
How could He stoop to human birth?

"The Lord has come into His world!"
A slaughtered lamb I see,
A smoking altar on which burns
A sacrifice for me!
O blessed Lord! O blessed day!
He comes to take my sin away!

The Latest Phase of Historical Rationalism¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

FIRST ARTICLE 

I. "DOGMA," AND "EXTERNAL AUTHORITY" 

Mr. G. A. Simcox, reviewing Dr. Liddon's recently published "Life of Pusey," tells us that Dr. Pusey "developed into a great tactician, who kept an academical majority together in face of all manner of discouragement from outside."2 Nothing is more remarkable, indeed, than the prosperity of Dr. Pusey's leadership, and the success with which he impressed his peculiar modes of thinking upon a whole church. The secret of it is not to be found, however, in any "tact" which he may be supposed to have exercised - as we might be led to suspect by the mere sound of the word "tactician." Dr. Pusey had as great a capacity for blundering as any man who ever lived; and one wonders how his cause could survive his repeated and gross errors of judgment. "What strikes us rather," says Mr. Simcox truly, "is how many false moves he made, and how little harm they did him." The secret of it is found in his intensity, steadfastness, and single-hearted devotion to what he believed to be divine truth. The mere "tactician" has always ultimately failed, since the world began. The blunderer who lays himself a willing sacrifice upon the altar of what he believes to be the truth of God has never wholly failed. This is true even when truth has been misconceived. The power of truth is the greatest power on earth. Next to it, however, is the power of sincere, earnest, and steadfast conviction. 

Dr. Pusey himself lays open to us the secret of his power, in a letter written to Dr. Hook in the period of the deepest depression of the fortunes of "the party." "I am quite sure," he says, "that nothing can resist infidelity except the most entire system of faith; one said mournfully, 'I could have had faith; I cannot have opinions.' One must have a strong, positive, objective system which people are to believe, because it is true, on authority out of themselves. Be that authority what it may, the Scriptures through the individual teaching of the Spirit, the Primitive Church, the Church when it was visibly one, the present Church, it must be a strong authority out of one's self."3 Here is the most successful leader of modern times telling us the principles that gave force to his leadership. What do they prove to be? Two: the steadfast, consistent proclamation of an "entire system of faith," strong, positive, objective, which people are required to believe on the simple ground that it is true; and the foundation of this system upon an external authority, an "authority out of one's self." All experience bears Dr. Pusey out. The only propagandism that has ever won a lasting hold upon men has been the bold proclamation of positive, dogmatic truth, based on external, divine authority; and the only power that can resist the infidelity of our day is the power of consistently concatenated dogmatic truth, proclaimed on the authority of a fully trusted, "Thus saith the Lord." 

The value of positive truth proclaimed on the basis of divine authority, is not to be measured, of course, simply by its usefulness in propagating Christianity. It has an individual importance which is far greater. Without it Christianity would not be able to acquire or maintain empire over the soul. Adolphe Monod points out, for example, how dependent we are for all adequate conceptions of sin upon the dogmatic teachings of "external authority." "Our own personal meditations," he tells us,⁴ "will never reveal to us what sin is; and here I particularly feel the necessity and the reality of the inspiration and Divine authority of the Scriptures, because we should never have learned to know what sin is, unless we learned it from obedience to an outward authority superior to us, independent of our secret feelings, upon which we ought certainly to meditate with study and fervent prayers. But enlightened truth comes from above, is given by the Spirit of God, speaking with the authority of God himself; for we must begin by believing the horror that sin ought to inspire, before we are capable of feeling it." And he points out equally how dependent we are for a proper basis for faith on the same "external authority." "The more I study the Scriptures," he says,⁵ "the example of Jesus Christ, and of the Apostles, and the history of my own heart, the more I am convinced that a testimony of God, placed without us and above us, exempt from all intermixture of the sin and error which belong to a fallen race, and received with submission on the sole authority of God, is the true basis of faith." "If faith," he says,⁶ "has not for its basis a testimony of God to which we must submit, as to an authority exterior to our own personal judgment, superior to it, and independent of it, then faith is no faith." That this witness is true, the heart of every Christian may be trusted to bear witness. But for the moment we may fix our attention on the more external fact already adverted to, that the only basis of an appeal to men which can at all hope to be prevalent is positive truth commended on the credit of "external authority." 

What is ominous in the present-day drift of religious thought is the sustained effort that is being made to break down just these two principles: the principle of a systematized body of doctrines as the matter to be believed, and the principle of an external authority as the basis of belief. What arrogates to itself the title of "the newer religious thinking" sets itself, before everything else, in violent opposition to what it calls "dogma" and "external authority." The end may be very readily foreseen. Indefinite subjectivism or subjective indifferentism has no future. It is not only in its very nature a disintegrating, but also a destructive, force. It can throw up no barrier against unbelief. Its very business is to break down barriers. And when that work is accomplished the floods come in. 

The assault on positive doctrinal teaching is presented today chiefly under the flag of "comprehension." Men bewail the divisions of the Church of Christ, and propose that we shall stop thinking, so that we may no longer think differently. This is the true account to give of many of the phases of the modern movement for "church union." Men are tired of thinking. They are tired of defending the truth. Let us all stop thinking, stop believing, they cry, and what a happy family we shall be! Look into Mr. David Nelson Beach's recent book (1893), which he calls "The Newer Religious Thinking," but which seems to us to be rather a plea for unthinking irreligion, and see how clearly this is its dominant note. He tells us that God is no more a respecter of religions than of persons; that the doctrine of the Trinity is a mere philosophy and ought no longer to stand between brethren; that access to God is no longer to be represented as exclusively "as a matter of terms," through Christ. In a word, the lines that separate evangelical from "liberal" Christianity, and those that separate distinctive Christianity from the higher heathenism, are to be obliterated. We are no longer to defend anything that any religious soul doubts. We are to recognize every honest worshiper as a child of God, though the God he worships may be but another name for force or for the world. 

We find the seeds of this movement towards "comprehension" in the most unlikely places. Even Dr. Schaff, in his latest book, represents himself as occupying a position in which not only Arminianism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, but also Rationalism and Supranaturalism, are reconciled. It is essentially present wherever the concessive habit of dealing with truth has taken root. For what is the "concessive" method of controversy but a neat device by which one may appear to conquer while really yielding the citadel? It is as if the governor of a castle should surrender it to the foe if only the foe will permit him to take possession of it along with them. On this pathway there is no goal except the ultimate naturalization of Christianity, and that means the perishing of distinctive Christianity out of the earth. Dr. Pusey calls attention to the fact that the Rationalists of Germany were the descendants not of the unbelievers of former controversies, but of the "defenders" of Christianity. The method of concession was tried, and that was the result. The so-called "defenders" were found in the camp of the enemy. 

Along with this attack on distinctive truth goes necessarily an accompanying attack on "external authority in religion." For if there be an "external authority," that which it teaches is true for all. This canker, too, has therefore necessarily entered our churches. It exists in various stages of development. It begins by rejecting the authority of the Bible for minor matters only - in the "minima," in "circumstantials" and "by-passages" and "incidental remarks," and the like. The next step is to reject its authority for everything except "matters of faith and practice." Then comes unwillingness to bow to all its doctrinal deliverances and ethical precepts; and we find men like Dr. DeWitt, of New Brunswick, and Mr. Horton, of London, subjecting the religious and ethical contents of the Bible to the judgment of their "spiritual instinct." Then the circle is completed by setting aside the whole Bible as authority; perchance with the remark, so far as the New Testament is concerned, that in the apostolic age men depended each on the spirit in his own heart, and no one dreamed of making the New Testament the authoritative word of God, while it was only in the later second century that the canon was formed, and "external authority" took the place of "internal authority." This point of view comes to its rights only when every shred of "external authority" in religion is discarded, and appeal is made to what is frankly recognized as purely human reason: we call it then Rationalism. It is only another form of this Rationalism, however, when it would fain believe that what it appeals to within the human breast is not the unaided spirit of man, but the Holy Ghost in the heart, the Logos, the strong voice of God. In this form it asks, "Were the Quakers right?" and differs from technical Rationalism only in a matter of temperature, the feelings and not the cold reason alone being involved: we call it then Mysticism. 

Of course men cannot thus reject the Bible, to which Christ appealed as authoritative, without rejecting also the authority of Christ, which is thus committed to the Bible's authority. Accordingly, we already find not only a widespread tendency to neglect the authority of Christ on many points, but also a formal rejection of that authority by respectable teachers in the churches. We are told that authority is limited by knowledge, and that Christ's knowledge was limited to pure religion. We are told that even in matters of religion He accommodated Himself, in the form at least of His teachings, to the times in which He lived. Thus all "external authority" is gradually evaporated, and men are left to the sole authority each of his own spirit, whether under the name of reason or under the name of the Holy Spirit in the heart. As each man's spirit has, of course, its separate rights, all basis for objective doctrine thus departs from the earth. 

The attitude of mind which is thus outlined constitutes the most dangerous, because the most fundamental, of heresies. Distinctive Christianity, supernatural religion, cannot persist where this blight is operative. It behooves the Church, if it would consult its peace or even preserve its very life, to open its eyes to the working of the evil leaven. Nor will it do to imagine that we shall have to face in it only a sporadic or temporary tendency of thought. It is for this tendency of thought that the powerful movement known in Germany as Ritschlism practically stands. And it has already acquired in America the proportions of an organized propaganda, with its literary organ, its summer schools, its apostles and its prophets. It is something like this Ritschlite Rationalism that Professor George D. Herron teaches in his numerous works, as the coming form of Christianity. It is something like it that Mr. B. Fay Mills is propagating in his evangelistic tours. It is something like it that The Kingdom is offering to the churches; and that those whom that newspaper has gathered to its support are banded to make a force in the land. Surely there is clamant need to inform ourselves of its meaning and its purposes. 

II. RITSCHLITE RATIONALISM 

"Rationalism" never is the direct product of unbelief. It is the indirect product of unbelief, among men who would fain hold their Christian profession in the face of an onset of unbelief, which they feel too weak to withstand. Rationalism is, therefore, always a movement within the Christian Church; and its adherents are characterized by an attempt to save what they hold to be the essence of Christianity, by clearing it from what they deem to be accretions, or by surrendering what they feel to be no longer defensible features of its current representations. The name historically represents specifically that form of Christian thought which, under the pressure of eighteenth century deism, felt no longer able to maintain a Christianity that needed to appeal to other evidences of its truth than the human reason; and which, therefore, yielded to the enemy every element of Christian teaching which could not validate itself to the logical understanding on axiomatic grounds. The effect was to reduce Christianity to a "natural religion." 

The most recent form of Rationalism, the Ritschlite, partakes, of course, of the general Rationalistic features. In its purely theological aspect, its most prominent characteristic is an attempt to clear theology of all "metaphysical" elements. Otherwise expressed, this means that nothing will be admitted to belong to Christianity except facts of experience; the elaboration of these facts into "dogmas" contains "metaphysical" elements. For example, the Ritschlite defines God as love. He means by this that the Christian experiences God as love, and this much he therefore knows. Beyond that, he cannot define God; since all question of what God is in Himself, as distinguished from what God is to us, belongs to the sphere of "metaphysics," and is, therefore, out of the realm of religion. Similarly, the Ritschlite defines Christ as Lord, and declares that the saying of Luther, Er ist mein Herr, includes all that we need to believe concerning Christ. He means by this that the Christian experiences Christ as his master, bows before His life and teaching, and therefore knows Him as Lord. But beyond what he can verify in such experiences, he knows nothing of Him. For example, he can know, in such experience, nothing of Christ's preexistence, and cannot control anything told us about it by any available tests; he can know nothing of Christ's present activities by such experience; but he can know something of the power and worth of His historical apparition, in such experience. All that is outside the reach of such verification belongs to the sphere of "metaphysics," and is, therefore, out of the realm of religion. The effort is to save the essence of Christianity from all possible danger from the speculative side. The means taken to effect this is to yield the whole sphere of "metaphysical" thought to the enemy. The result is the destruction of the whole system of Christian doctrine. Doctrine cannot be stated without what the Ritschlite calls "metaphysical elements"; a theory of knowledge underlies, indeed, the Ritschlite construction of "Christianity without metaphysics itself." But, however inconsistently, the Ritschlite contention ultimates in an "undogmatic Christianity." Theology, we are told, is killing religion. 

But Christianity as it has come down to us is very far from being an undogmatic Christianity. The history of Christianity is the history of doctrine. Ritschlite Rationalism must, therefore, deal with a historical problem, as well as with a speculative and a practical one. What is it to do with a historical Christianity which is a decidedly doctrinal Christianity? Its task is obviously to explain the origin and development of doctrinal Christianity in such a manner as to evince essential Christianity to be undogmatic. Its task, in a word, is historically to explain doctrinal Christianity as corrupted Christianity; or, in other words, to explain the rise and development of doctrine as a series of accretions from without, overlying and concealing Christianity. Ritschlism, in the very nature of the case, definitely breaks with the whole tradition of Christian doctrine, from Justin Martyr down. Adolf Harnack, one of the most learned of modern church historians, has consecrated his great stores of knowledge and his great powers to the performance of the task thus laid upon his school of thought. 

The characteristic feature of Harnack's reconstruction of the history of Christian dogma, in the interests of Ritschlite Rationalism, is to represent all Christian doctrine as the product of Greek thought on Christian ground. The simple gospel of Christ was the gospel of love. On the basis of this gospel the ancient world built up the Catholic Church, but in doing so it built itself bankrupt. That is, the ancient world transferred itself to the Church; and in what we call church theology we are looking only at the product of heathen thinking on the basis of the gospel. To make our way back to original Christianity, we must shovel off this whole superincumbent mass until we arrive at the pure kernel of the gospel itself, hidden beneath. That kernel is simple subjective faith in God as Father, revealed to us as such by Jesus Christ. 

These new teachings have been variously put within the reach of the American churches. Professor Mitchell, of Hartford Seminary, has given us a translation of Harnack's "Outlines of the History of Dogma." Mr. Rutherfurd has published a translation of Moeller's "History of the Christian Church," in which Harnack's views are adopted and ably reproduced. Williams and Norgate, the great "liberal" publishing-house of London, are issuing a translation of Harnack's great "History of Dogma." The writings of Edwin Hatch, the Oxford representative of Ritschlism, have had a wide circulation on this side of the sea. But of late years something more has come to be reckoned with within the American churches than such literary importations. Young American students, visiting German universities, have returned home enthusiastic devotees of the "new views." They have been commended to them by the immense learning of Harnack; by his attractive personality and his clear and winning methods of presenting his views; by the great vogue which they have won in Germany; and possibly by a feeling on their own part that they offer a mode of dealing with the subject which will lessen the difficulty of the Christian apologist in defending the faith. The less faith you have to defend the easier it is apt to seem to defend it. At all events, it is a fact that the historical Rationalism of the Ritschlite is now also an American movement and needs to be reckoned with as such. There are in particular three recent American publications in which the influence of Harnack's rationalizing reconstruction of Christian history is dominating, to which attention ought to be called in this connection: The first of these is a very readable "Sketch of the History of the Apostolic Church," by Professor Oliver J. Thatcher, formerly of the United Presbyterian Seminary at Allegheny, but now of the University of Chicago. Another is the very able Inaugural Address, delivered by Professor Arthur C. McGiffert at his induction into the chair of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, New York, which deals with the subject of "Primitive and Catholic Christianity." The third is a lecture by the Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Hall, of Chicago, pronounced before the students of Queens University, Kingston, Canada, and bearing the title of "Faith and Reason in Religion." Anyone who will take the trouble to look into these publications will soon become convinced of the importance of observing what the American churches are now being taught by the pupils of Harnack as to the origin of Christianity. 

It will then, doubtless, repay us to look for a moment into this matter. The best way to do so is doubtless to analyze briefly one of these three publications. We select for the purpose Dr. McGiffert's brief and admirably clear paper. And in the following pages we shall attempt to give as clear an account of its contents as the necessity for succinctness will allow. 

Dr. McGiffert begins with a few remarks on the function of church history and the duty of the historian of the Church. The object of the whole of church history is, he tells us, to enable us to understand Christianity better, and to fit us "to distinguish between its essential and non-essential elements."7 And the special task of the historian is to "discover by a careful study of Christianity at successive stages of its career whether it has undergone any transformations and, if so, what those transformations are" (p. 17). It is not the duty of the historian to pass judgment on the value of any assimilations or accretions which Christianity may be found to have made. That is the theologian's work. The historian's is only to make clear what belonged to the original form of Christianity and what has been acquired by it, in its process of growth, in its environment of the world. Dr. McGiffert gives us to understand, however, that, in his opinion, the value of an element of our system is not to be determined merely by its origin: whether it belonged to original Christianity or has been acquired by it from the world. Its right to a place in the Christian system is to be determined solely by what we deem its vital relation to, or at least its harmony with, Christianity itself. 

He chooses as his subject, the portrayal of "the most vital and far-reaching transformation that Christianity has ever undergone - a transformation, the effects of which the entire Christian Church still feels, and which has in my opinion done more than anything else to conceal Christianity's original form and to obscure its true character" (p. 18). This is the transformation of the primitive into the Catholic Church; and it was "practically complete before the end of the second century of the Church's life." He points out that it would be too much to attempt to explain such a momentous transformation in all its features in the limits of a single discourse. He confines himself, therefore, to indicating and explaining as fully as the time at his disposal permitted, the change of spirit which constitutes the essence of the transformation. 

He begins with a picture of the primitive, that is, of the apostolic Church. Its spirit was "the spirit of religious individualism, based upon the felt presence of the Holy Ghost" (p. 19). That is to say, it was the universal conviction of the primitive Church that, every Christian had, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in him, a personal source of inspiration at his disposal, to which he could turn in every time of need. There was, therefore, no occasion for an authority for Christian teaching, external to the individual's own spirit; and there had arisen no conception, accordingly, as yet, of a "rule of faith," or of a "New Testament Canon." The only authority that was recognized was the Holy Spirit; and He was supposed to speak to every believer as truly as He spoke to an apostle. There was no instituted Church, and no external bond of Christian unity. There were some common forms of worship, and Christians met together for mutual edification; but their only bond of union was their common possession of the Spirit of God and their common ideal and hope. There was no intervening class of clerics, standing between the Christian and the source of grace; but every Christian enjoyed immediate contact with God through the Spirit. Such was the spirit of the primitive Church - of the Church of the apostles and of the Church of the post-apostolic age, for there was no change of spirit on the death of the apostles. The Church of the second half of the second century believed itself as truly and exclusively under the authority of the indwelling Spirit as the apostolic Church and as the apostles themselves. On historic grounds, we can draw no distinction between the apostolic and post-apostolic ages on the ground of supernatural endowment. 

The change of spirit which marks the rise of the Catholic Church took place, then, in the second century. In general terms, it was the result of the secularization of the Church and of the effort of the Church to avoid such secularization. Among the heathen brought into the Church in the second century, gradually more and more men of education were included. Among these were some philosophical spirits of a Platonizing tendency, who brought into the Church with them a habit of speculation. Their speculative theories they represented as Christianity, and they appealed to the authority of the apostles in their favor. Thus arose the first theologizing in the Christian Church; the Gnostics were the first creed-builders within the limits of the Church and the first inventors of the idea of apostolic authority, and of the consequent conception of an apostolic Christian canon. And it was in conflict with them that the Church, for her part, first reached the conception of apostolic authority and of an apostolic canon, and gradually developed the full conception of authority which gave us finally the full-fledged Catholic Church. 

The steps by which this transformation was made were three: "First, the recognition of the teaching of the Apostles as the exclusive standard and norm of Christian truth; second, the confinement to a specific office (viz., the Catholic office of bishop) of the power to determine what is the teaching of the Apostles; and third, the designation of a specific institution (viz., the Catholic Church) as the sole channel of divine grace" (p. 29). The transformation was, it will be seen, complete. The spirit of free individualism under the sole guidance of the indwelling Spirit, which characterized the primitive Church, passed permanently away. The spirit of submission to "external authority" took permanently its place. The transformation to Catholicism means simply, then, that the Church had emptied itself of its spiritual heritage, that it had denuded itself of its spiritual power, and that it had invented for itself, and subjected itself to, a complete system of "external authority." The first step was to recognize the exclusive authority of apostolic teaching. Thus Christians laid aside their privilege of being the constant organs of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and framed for themselves a "rule of faith" (Creed) and a New Testament Scripture (Canon). The next step was to confine to a particular office the power to transmit and interpret that teaching. The believer was thus permanently denied not only the privilege of receiving divine revelations, but also the right to interpret for himself the revelations received and transmitted by the apostles. The last step was to confine the transmission of grace itself to the organized Church, so that out of it there could be no salvation. Thus the believer's last privilege was taken from him; he could no longer possess anything save as through the Church. When this last step was completed, the Catholic Church was complete. 

No "transformations" of the Church have taken place since this great transformation. Changes have occurred, and changes which may seem to the casual observer of more importance. But, in fact, the Church is still living in the epoch of the Catholic Church. The Reformation was, indeed, an attempt at a real "transformation," and it has wrought a real "transformation" upon as much of the Church as has accepted it. It was a revival of the primitive spirit of individualism, and a rejection of "external authority." But the Reformation has affected only a small portion of the Church; and it was, even for the Protestant Churches, only a partial revival of the primitive spirit. It "did not repudiate, it retained the Catholic conception of an apostolic Scripture canon - a conception which the primitive Church had entirely lacked" (p. 42). Thus it has retained the essential Catholic idea of an "external authority." But the Reformers sought to bring this idea into harmony with the primitive conception of the continued action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of true believers; and it is by this fact alone that Protestants can be justified in retaining the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice. The true statement of the Protestant position, therefore, is not, That the word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the sole and ultimate standard of Christian truth. It is, "That the Spirit of God is the sole and ultimate standard for Christian truth - the Spirit of God who spoke through the Apostles and who still speaks to his people" (p. 43); it is, That "the Holy Spirit, which voices itself both in the teaching of the Apostles and in the enlightened Christian consciousness of true believers," is "the only source and standard of spiritual truth" (p. 42). 

This is, as briefly as possible, the gist of Dr. McGiffert's Address. Two things are to be especially noted in it: First, the whole development of a Christian "authority" - the rise alike of the very conception of authority as attributed to the apostles, and of the conception of a New Testament canon is assigned to post-apostolic times. The Church of the apostles, and the apostles themselves, knew nothing of an authoritative Christian teaching. Thus all Christian doctrine is a human product, and of no real authority in the Church. And, secondly, the Christian Scriptures are in no sense the authoritative rule of faith and practice which we have been taught to believe that they are. The apostles who wrote them did not intend them as such. The Church which received them did not receive them as such. The Protestant Churches can be justified in declaring them such, only provided they do not mean to erect them over the Christian spirit - "the Christian consciousness of true believers" - but mean only to place them side by side with it as co-source of the knowledge of Christian truth. This is, of course, to deny "authority" to the New Testament in toto. If we are to follow Dr. McGiffert, therefore, we are to renounce all doctrinal Christianity at a stroke, and to reject all "authority" in the New Testament, on pain of being unprimitive and unapostolic. These things are, according to his conception, parts of the accretion that has gathered itself to Christianity in its passage through the ages. 

This, then, is the question which the introduction of the Ritschlite historical Rationalism has brought to the American churches. Are we prepared to surrender the whole body of Christian doctrine as being no part of essential Christianity, but the undivine growth of ages of human development, the product of the "transformations" of Christianity, or, as Dr. T. C. Hall phrases it with admirable plainness of speech, the product of the "degradations" of Christianity? Are we prepared to surrender the New Testament canon, as the invention of the second century Church to serve its temporary needs in conflict with heresy? Once more, Dr. Hall gives us an admirably plain-spoken account of what, on this view, was actually done when the canon was made: "The need of an infallible authority to interpret a code gave rise to the fiction of apostolic authority, at first confined to written and spoken messages, and later imbedded in an organization, and inherited by its office-holders." Are we prepared to represent the authority of the apostles, as imbedded in their written words and preserved in our New Testament, as a "fiction"? This is the teaching of the new historical Rationalism; and it is with this teaching that the Church has now to reckon. 

Let us now enter a little more into detail as to the meaning of this new teaching; and in order to do this, let us examine more fully one or two of the fundamental positions of Dr. McGiffert's Address. And first of all let us look a moment at 

III. DR. MCGIFFERT'S THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT 

The learning, the ability, and the skill in the presentation of its material, which characterize Dr. McGiffert's Inaugural Address, will occasion surprise to no one. These things have been confidently expected of the accomplished annotator of Eusebius. There will be many, doubtless, however, who will be surprised to find the fundamental thought of so learned an address, delivered by a Presbyterian professor, to be the presentation of Christianity under the form of a development, of a sort not merely outside the ordinary lines of Protestant thinking, but apparently inconsistent with the most fundamental of Protestant postulates. 

When the body of revealed truth was committed into the hands of men, it of course became subject to adulteration with the notions of men. As it was handed down from age to age, it inevitably gathered around it a mass of human accretions, as a snowball grows big as it rolls down a long slope. The importance of that committal of the divine revelation to writing, by which the inspired Scriptures were constituted, becomes thus specially apparent. The "word of God written" stands through all ages as a changeless witness against human additions to, and corruptions of, God's truth. The chief task of historical criticism, in its study of Christianity, becomes also thus very apparent. Dr. James M. Ludlow, who delivered the charge to the new professor, and whose charge is printed along with the Address, does not fail to point this out. Because "what the truth receives in the way of admixture from the passing ages it is apt to retain," therefore he charges the new professor to remember that "the most pressing demand upon historical criticism" is "to separate from essential Christianity what the ages have contributed" (p. 8). 

The Reformation was, in this sense, a critical movement. The weapon it used in its conflict with the pretensions of Rome was historical criticism. The task it undertook was to tear off the medieval and patristic swathings in which Christianity had become wrapped in the course of the careless ages, and to stand her once more before men in her naked truth, as she had been presented to the world by Christ and His apostles. "The fittest and most suggestive criticism we can to-day pass on Catholicism," says Adolf Harnack justly, "is to conceive it as Christianity in the garb of the ancient world with a medieval overcoat. . . . What is the Reformation but the word of God which was to set the Church free again? All may be expressed in the single formula, the Reformation is the return to the pure gospel; only what is sacred shall be held sacred; the traditions of men, though they be most fair and most worthy, must be taken for what they are - viz., the ordinances of man." 

The principle on which Protestantism proceeded in this great and salutary task had two sides, a negative and a positive one. On the negative side, it took the form that every element of current ecclesiastical teaching or of popular belief, which, on being traced back in history, ran out before Christ's authoritative apostles were reached, was to be accounted a spurious accretion to Christianity and no part of Christianity itself. On the positive side, and this is the so-called "formal principle of Protestantism," it took the form that everything enters as an element into the Christian system that is taught in the Holy Scriptures, which were imposed on the Church as its authoritative rule of faith and practice by the apostles, who were themselves appointed by the Lord as His authoritative agents in establishing the Church, and were endowed with all needed graces and accompanied by all needed assistance from the Holy Spirit for the accomplishing of their task. This is what is meant by that declaration of Chillingworth which has passed into a Protestant proverb: "That the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." And this is what is meant by the Westminster Confession when it asserts that "the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men" (i. 6). This is the corner-stone of universal Protestantism; and on it Protestantism stands, or else it falls. 

This "formal principle" of Protestantism, of course, does not deny that there has been such a thing as a "development of doctrine." It does not make its appeal to the early Church as the norm of Christian truth; and it does not imagine that the first generation of Christians had already sounded all the depths of revelation. It makes its appeal to the Scriptures of God, which embody in written form the teaching of Christ through His apostles upon which the earliest as well as the latest Church was builded. Protestantism expects to find, and does find, a progressive understanding and realization of this teaching of Christ in the Church. The Reformers knew, as well as the end of the nineteenth century knows, that there is a sense in which the Nicene Christology, the Augustinian Anthropology, the Anselmic Soteriology, their own doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, were new in the Church. They thought of nothing so little as discarding these doctrines because they were "new," in the only sense in which they were new. They rather held them to constitute the very essence of Christian truth. They believed in "the development of true Christian doctrine," and looked upon themselves as raised up by God to be the instruments of a new step in this development. Following the Reformers, Protestants universally believe in "the development of true Christian doctrine"; but, as Dr. Ludlow pointedly and truly adds, "not the growth of its revelation, for that we believe was made complete in the New Testament, but its development in the conception of men" (p. 5). 

This "development in the conception of men" Protestants are very far from supposing ever to take place, in ever so small a one of its stages, without the illuminating agency of the Holy Spirit. They affirm the activity of the Spirit of revelation in the Church of God continuously through all the ages. And they attribute to His brooding over the confused chaos of human thinking every step that is taken towards a truer or a fuller apprehension of God's saving truth. But they know how to distinguish between "the inward illumination of the Spirit of God," by virtue of which Christian men enter progressively into fuller possession of the truth which was once for all delivered unto the saints, and "new revelations of the Spirit," by virtue of which men may suppose that additions are made to the substance of this truth. 

Despite Dr. Ludlow's faithful warnings in the charge which he laid upon him, Dr. McGiffert appears to have failed to make this distinction. In opposition to the fundamental Protestant principle, he teaches that the true system of Christianity has gradually come into existence during the last two millenniums through a process of development. He conceives of "Christianity" (the word has somewhat of the character of an "undistributed middle" in his use of it) as having been planted in "the days of Christ" only in germinal form. From this original germ it has grown through the ages, not merely by unfolding explicitly what was implicitly contained in it, but also by assimilating and making its own elements from without, elements even of late and foreign origin. "The fact that any element of our system is of later growth than Christianity itself does not necessarily condemn it, nor even the fact that it is of foreign growth" (p. 18). For "guarantee of truth" is not given by "general prevalence" or by "age" (as if the question of its tracing to the apostles were a question of mere age!); but the "right [of any element] to a place within the Christian system "is vindicated" only by showing its vital relation to, or at least its harmony with, Christianity itself" (p. 18). Though present-day Christianity contains elements "of late and foreign origin," elements which materially modify the forms of expressing the spirit of primitive Christianity, conceptions even which the primitive Church (i.e. the Church of the apostles) "certainly lacked," it may not be the less pure Christianity on that account. It may even be the more pure Christianity on this very account: it may "mark a real advance" on primitive Christianity. 

For we must bear constantly in mind that the right of any elements "to a place within the Christian system" is vindicated solely by their power to express the Christian spirit. This is the true test alike of elements of late and foreign origin and of the elements which entered into primitive Christianity itself. When speaking of the former, Dr. McGiffert makes a significant addition to his sentence so as emphatically to include the latter also. "By the degree to which they give expression to that spirit" (i.e. "the Christian spirit"), he says, "is the value of such elements, and of all elements, to be measured." "If they contribute to its clear, and just, and full expression," he adds, "they vindicate their right to a place within the Christian system; if they hinder that spirit's action, they must be condemned" (p. 42). Thus we learn that there were in primitive Christianity itself - the Christianity of "the days of Christ" and of His apostles - both essential and nonessential elements; elements of permanent and universal worth, and others of only temporary and local significance; and the criterion for distinguishing between them is our own subjective judgment of their fitness to express "the Christian spirit" - of course, according to our own conception of that spirit. 

Thus Professor McGiffert takes emphatic issue with both sides of the fundamental Protestant principle. As over against its assertion that the whole counsel of God is set down in Scripture, "unto which nothing at any time is to be added," he declares that it is a "pernicious notion that apostolic authority is necessary for every element of the Christian system" (p. 33); and that elements of even late and foreign origin can "vindicate their right to a place within the Christian system" "by showing their vital relation to, or at least their harmony with, Christianity itself" (p. 18). That is to say, the test of a distinctively Christian truth is not that it is part of that body of truth which was once for all delivered to the saints, as all Protestantism, with one voice, affirms; but whether it seems to us to harmonize with what we consider that Christianity is or ought to be. A subjective criterion thus takes the place of the objective criterion of the written word of God. 

Accordingly, as over against the fundamental Protestant principle that "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments are the word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience" (Larger Catechism, Q. 3), Professor McGiffert declares that the teaching of the apostles is not "the sole standard of truth" (p. 33). He is willing to allow, indeed, that the teaching of the apostles was regarded by the primitive Church, and may be rightly regarded by the modern Church, as "a source from which [may] . . . be gained a knowledge of divine truth" (p. 32). But that it is "the only rule," or "standard," he will not admit; or even that it is more than a "source" along with others. For he tells us that Protestants can be justified "in retaining the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice" (p. 43) only on the condition that they join with the Scriptures for this function "the enlightened Christian consciousness of true believers," affirming the two to be alike the organs of the Holy Ghost, "the only source and standard of spiritual truth" (p. 42). "The true statement of the Protestant position," he adds, "is not that the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, but that the Spirit of God is the sole and ultimate authority for Christian truth - the Spirit of God who spoke through the Apostles and who still speaks to his people" (p. 43). If this be so, the Reformers, the first Protestant divines, and the Reformed Confessions, including our own Standards, were not only ignorant of the "true statement of the Protestant position," but in ineradicable opposition to it. When the Shorter Catechism (Q. 2) asserts that "the word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only rule" it speaks with the intention and effect of confining the "word of God," which it declares to be "the only rule," to the Scriptures, and of thereby excluding not only the "word of God" which the Romanist affirms to be presented in objective tradition, but also the "word of God" which the mystic affirms that he enjoys through subjective illumination. And, therefore, the Confession of Faith explicitly explains its assertion that "nothing at any time is to be added" to the "whole counsel of God" "set down in Scripture," by adding: "whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men" (i. 6). A theory of development on a mystical basis is no less in open contradiction to the "formal principle of Protestantism" than one on a Romish basis. 

We have spoken only of Dr. McGiffert's formal theory of development, and have pointed out its inconsistency with the "formal principle" of Protestantism. The material development which, under this formal theory, he would ascribe to Christianity, he does not draw out in the present Address. The Address is consecrated, no doubt, to the depicting of one of the greatest changes which Christianity has undergone; but this change is not one which appears to Dr. McGiffert to commend itself, according to the tests he lays down, as a proper development of Christianity. The material changes in Christianity which are brought to our attention by the Address, therefore, are not illustrations of his theory of development, but are instances of the progressive deterioration of Christianity in its environment of the world. Let us, however, attend for a moment to them. 

IV. DR. MCGIFFERT'S THEORY OF THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 

"The subject of study in Church History, as in all the theological sciences," Professor McGiffert tells us in the opening of his Inaugural Address, "is Christianity itself." The church historian's aim is, therefore, "to contribute to a clearer and fuller understanding of Christianity." In the prosecution of this aim he must learn to distinguish between the "essential and non-essential elements" of Christianity, "between that in it which is of permanent and universal worth, and that which is of only temporary and local significance" (p. 16). He must, further, make it his special task "to discover by a careful study of Christianity at successive stages of its career whether it has undergone any transformations, and, if so, what those transformations are" (p. 17). One would think, as we have already pointed out, that the purpose of this discovery would be to obtain knowledge of what belongs really to Christianity, so that the accretions which have gathered to it from without may be rejected, and the original form of that deposit of faith once for all delivered to the saints may be recovered. But Professor McGiffert excludes all passing of judgment on results from the sphere of the historian as such. The historian's business is merely to present a complete picture of the transformations that Christianity has undergone. The theologian comes after him, and estimates the value and meaning of the assimilations and accretions which the historian's labor has brought to light. But Dr. McGiffert, as we have seen, cannot resist the temptation so far to desert this role of pure historian as to tell us on what such an estimation must turn. It must not turn, he tells us, on the question of the originality of this element or that in the Christian system, but solely on its ideal harmony with the Christian spirit. Doubtless, the "theologian" who comes after him, however, along with the whole body of Christian people, may be trusted to disagree with him in this pronouncement. It is the Christianity of Christ and His apostles alone that they will care to profess; and they will thank the historian for tracing out the transformations of Christianity, chiefly because his work will enable them to recover for their souls the Christianitywhich Christ and His apostles taught. 

Dr. McGiffert devotes his Inaugural Address to the discussion of a single one of these "transformations" of Christianity, the one which he believes to be the "most vital and far-reaching transformation that Christianity has ever undergone," the "transformation of the primitive into the Catholic Church" (p. 18). This transformation, which was "practically complete before the end of the second century of the Church's life," was so radical that it has "done more than anything else to conceal Christianity's original form and to obscure its true character"; and it has been so powerful and far-reaching in its influence that "the entire Christian Church still feels" the effects of it. In fact, in Dr. McGiffert's view, it gave to the greater portion of the Church what has proved to be its permanent form. In it the spirit of primitive Christianity permanently disappeared (p. 28), and the spirit which still rules the Catholic Church permanently entered. The Catholic Church is still living in the period inaugurated then (p. 40), the Greek and Roman Churches being but localizations of the one Church which had existed in undivided form for some centuries before their separation. 

Since this great "transformation" of the primitive into the Catholic Church, therefore, there have been no "transformations" of Christianity. There have been changes. And these later changes have often been such as to "impress the casual observer more forcibly, and seem to him more worthy of notice," than this great fundamental transformation itself. He will think of "the cessation of persecution with the accession of Constantine, and the subsequent union of Church and State; the preaching of Christianity to the barbarians of western and northern Europe; the development of the Greek patriarchate and of the Roman papacy; the formation of the elaborate liturgies of the eastern and western Churches; the rise of saint and image worship, of the confessional and of the mass; the growth of monasticism, which began with renouncing the world and ended with subjugating it; the development of Nicene trinitarianism, of the Chalcedonian Christology, of the Augustinian anthropology and of the Anselmic theory of the atonement" (pp. 18-19). And as he thinks of these, he may think them "of greater historical significance than any changes which took place during the first two centuries." But he will be mistaken. The transformation of the primitive into the Catholic Church, which took place in the course of the second century, was a far more fundamental change than any of these subsequent changes, or than them all taken together. 

Before this great transformation, it was the free spirit of primitive Christianity that reigned; after it, the Church was a completely secularized institution. For the secularization of the Church "was not due, as has been so widely thought, to the favors shown the Church by the Emperor Constantine, or to the ultimate union of Church and State. The Church was in principle secularized as completely as it ever was long before the birth of Constantine. The union of Church and State was but a ratification of a process already complete, and is itself of minor significance" (p. 38). Of all subsequent movements only that one which we know as the Reformation was sufficiently radical to promise a new "transformation." This movement was in essence a revival of the spirit of primitive Christianity, and it did open a new epoch in the Church, so far as it produced its effects. But unfortunately Protestantism has affected only a part, and that the smaller part, of the Church. The Church at large is still living in the epoch which was inaugurated by the great "transformation" which took place in the second century. 

If, then, we speak of the "transformations" of Christianity we must have our eye fixed upon changes which took place before the great transformation that gave birth to the Catholic Church - changes greater and more radical than any that have occurred subsequent to that event. In the days of the Church's strenuous youth, it rapidly passed through a series of "transformations" of fundamental importance, much, we suppose, as the stages of babyhood, childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood are all run through in some twenty restless years, to be followed by an extended period of unchanged manhood for the better part of a century. If we understand Dr. McGiffert, he would count, including the Reformation, some four such transformations in all, three of which were suffered by Christianity during the first two centuries of its existence. In other words, by the time that two hundred years had rolled over it the introduction of alien ideas had three times fundamentally transformed the gospel of Christ. In quick succession there were presented to the world each largely effacing its predecessor, first the Gospel of Love, which Christ preached; then the Gospel of Holiness, which ruled in the primitive Church; then the Gospel of Knowledge, announced by the Greek spirit, not so much converted by, as converting, the Church; and finally, the Gospel of Authority, the proud self-assertion of the Catholic Church. Last of all, after ages of submission, the primitive spirit once more rises in what we call Protestantism, and revolting against authority proclaims anew the Gospel of Individualistic Freedom. 

Let us look a little more closely at Dr. McGiffert's conceptions of these several "transformations." 

1. Christ's Christianity "was, above all, ethical; the Sermon on the Mount strikes its key-note." According to Christ, "the active principle of love for God and man . . . constituted the sum of all religion" (p. 24). Christ came, in other words, not teaching a dogma, but setting an example of a life of perfect love; proclaiming the Kingdom of God, founded on the fundamental principle of love for God and man; and announcing the law of the Kingdom in such language as that preserved for us in the Sermon on the Mount. It was His example of holy love which reveals God to the world as Father; and all the emphasis of His teaching was laid on the principle of love. 

2. But Christianity extended; and, as it grew, it changed its environment from the Jewish to the Gentile world. This change induced in it "certain modifications, which were of permanent significance" (p. 21). These modifications centered in a change of emphasis of fundamental importance, by which, "in consequence of the conception of the immediate and constant presence of the Holy Spirit, and in opposition to the moral corruptness of the age, the element of personal holiness or purity naturally came more and more to the front, and increasingly obscured the fundamental principle of Christ" (p. 24). This is the Christianity of the primitive Church, or the Church of the apostles, though the latter name is the less descriptive one, inasmuch as the death of the apostles and the close of the apostolic age introduced no change of spirit, but the Church of the first half of the second century remained in principle the same Church as that of the last half of the first century. 

When Dr. McGiffert speaks of the consequent obscuration of "the fundamental principle of Christ" as "increasing," he seems to refer to the effect of the introduction into the Church, early in the second century, of the educated classes of society. Wherever the influence of Stoicism predominated among these, they readily assimilated with the spirit which already characterized the primitive Church. For with the Stoics "the ethical element came to the front, and religion lost its independent significance, having no other value than to promote virtue by supplying it with a divine basis and sanction." This tendency, we are told, "was in entire harmony with that of the Hebrew mind and of early Christianity in general" (p. 25). Primitive Christianity, therefore, was simply an ethical system with a changed ethical ideal from that of Christ - laying the emphasis on holiness rather than on love. It was, in a word, a "Society for Ethical Culture," with a background of monotheism, and looking to Jesus as its founder and example. "It is true that, from the beginning, belief in one God and in Jesus Christ was demanded of all converts, but such belief was commonly taken for granted - the formula of baptism itself implied it - and all the emphasis was laid upon the ethical element" (p. 31). 

3. With the introduction of the educated classes into the Church, however, another class of philosophers came in besides the Stoics - a class which brought in a speculative tendency grounded in Platonism, and which began to lay stress on knowledge. Christianity seemed to these thinkers only a revelation; and accordingly they busied themselves at once with its rational investigation and elucidation. Here appeared the first Christian theologians, and they gave the Church, for the first time, a "theology." In their hands arose the first Christian creeds; through their work Christianity became for the first time a system of belief. The transformation of Christianity which they wrought did not come without throes and conflicts. Nevertheless, so far as this it did come; and its coming is marked later on by the approval and adoption by the Church of "the speculative theology of the great fathers and doctors." In this sense "the spirit of Gnosticism . . . lived on and finally won a permanent place within the Church" (pp. 27, 28). Here is a transformation as great as it is possible to conceive: the "Society for Ethical Culture" becomes an institution for the propagation of a body of truth. 

4. But the temporary dualistic form in which the speculative spirit first entered the Church could not, and did not, find acceptance. And "it was in the effort to repudiate it that steps were taken which resulted" in that momentous transformation, to the description of which Dr. McGiffert gives his Address - the transformation into the Catholic Church. These efforts to repudiate Gnosticism involved an appeal to authority, and the essence of this great transformation consists, therefore, in the substitution of the idea of external authority for the individualistic spirit of earlier Christianity. "The spirit of Catholicism . . . means submission to an external authority in matters both of faith and of practice, and dependence upon an external source for all needed spiritual supplies" (p. 21). 

Three steps are counted in this transformation: "First, the recognition of the teaching of the Apostles as the exclusive standard and norm of Christian truth; second, the confinement to a specific office (viz., the Catholic office of bishop) of the power to determine what is the teaching of the Apostles; and third, the designation of a specific institution (viz., the Catholic Church) as the sole channel of divine grace" (p. 29). When the transformation was complete, therefore, the whole Catholic machinery of "external authority" had been invented, and the last vestige of spiritual freedom had been crushed out. But its earlier stages included the invention of the very first and simplest forms of "external authority" to which Christians bowed, the first recognition of the authority of the apostles as teachers, and the rise of the very conception of an apostolical Scripture canon. The greatness of the transformation that is asserted can be properly estimated only by remembering that it thus includes, not only the completion of the full Catholic system, but, at the other extreme, the very earliest conception of a Christian "external authority" at all. Before this change, Christians had no external law; by virtue of the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, each was a law unto himself. The change consisted in the finding of an external Christian authority. This was found first in the teaching of the apostles, either as written in their extant books (and hence arose the idea of a New Testament), or as formulated in clear, succinct statements (and hence arose the idea of arule of faith, and of creeds). That it was found afterwards in the bishop, considered as the living representative of the apostles, and still later in the organized Church as the institute of salvation, constitutes only a minor matter. The finding of an "external authority" at all was the main thing, and constituted a tremendous transformation in the spirit and the nature of Christianity. This great transformation took place in the course of the second century. Before that there was no external Christian authority at all. 

5. It was only after ages of submission to external authority that a partial revival of the individualistic spirit of primitive Christianity arose in the Protestant Reformation. By the Protestants "the Catholic principle was definitely rejected" (p. 40); "but elements of Catholicism were retained which materially modified the forms of that spirit's [the revived spirit of primitive Christianity] expression, and which have served to make the Protestant a different thing from the primitive Church" (p. 42). In so far as Protestantism restored to the individual his spiritual rights, and "made the Holy Spirit, which voices itself both in the teaching of the Apostles and in the enlightened Christian consciousness of true believers, the only source and standard of spiritual truth," it is a revival of the spirit of primitive Christianity. But in so far as it did not repudiate but "retained the Catholic conception of an apostolic Scripture canon - a conception which the primitive Church had entirely lacked," it remains in bondage to the Catholic conception of "external authority." The true statement of the Protestant position is not, then, "That the word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments . . . is the sole and ultimate authority for Christian truth." That is Catholic. But it is, "That the Spirit of God is the sole and ultimate authority for Christian truth - the Spirit of God who spoke through the Apostles and who still speaks to his people" (p. 43). No doubt the voice of the Spirit must always accord with itself, and we may, therefore, allow that the genuine teaching of the apostles is also true; for they, too, had the Spirit. But the true Protestant spirit finds "authority" in the Holy Ghost alone; and He speaks in the hearts of Christians to-day as truly as He ever did to the apostles. It cannot, then, come under bondage to the "external authority" of the apostolic teaching. In a word, the specific Quaker position is the only true Protestant one. 

Now there is much that occurs to us to say of this scheme of the "transformations" of Christianity which Dr. McGiffert presents. That in the course of the ages Christianity did undergo very real "transformations" there is, of course, no reason to deny. And no Protestant will doubt that, of these, the most complete and the most destructive to the conceptions of primitive Christianity was that great transformation which gave the world the Catholic Church, with its claim to all the authority of heaven for the execution of its will. But it is another question whether Dr. McGiffert's characterization of the several "transformations" which he thinks Christianity has undergone - or even his characterization of that great "transformation" alone which produced the Catholic Church - is just and accordant with the facts. Had we space at our disposal we think we could show that it is not, in a single instance. It can be shown that Jesus did much more than introduce into the world a new ethical ideal, founded on the active principle of love. A whole dogmatic system underlies and is presupposed in even the "Sermon on the Mount"; and Jesus represented Himself continuously as the bearer of a revelation of truth. It can be shown that the primitive Church - the Church of the apostles - was something far other and more than a "Society for Ethical Culture." A complete system of doctrinal truth was authoritatively taught it by the apostles, as the basis of allethical endeavor. It can be shown that "the Catholic Church" was not the inventor of "external authority," the first stage in the development of the Church to assign "authority" to the teaching of the apostles, and the first to frame the conception of an apostolic Scripture canon. The authority of the apostolic teaching and of the apostolic canon was fully recognized from the beginning, and constituted, indeed, the very corner-stone of the fabric of the Church. It can be shown, finally, that Protestantism is not Quakerism; and that the Protestant principle does not coordinate "the teaching of the Apostles" and "the enlightened Christian consciousness of true believers," as co-sources of equal rank of the knowledge of God's truth and will; but appeals to the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures as the Supreme Judge in all matters of religious truth. But these are obvious matters, and may be safely left without formal proof. 

It will be more instructive to permit our attention to rest for a moment on some of the effects of Dr. McGiffert's teachings. Its effect upon our estimate of and interest in the apostolic writings and teachings - our "New Testament Scriptures" in a word - is illustrated in an enlightening manner by a remark of Dr. McGiffert's own. He is pointing out the "stupendous significance" of the invention, by the second century Church, of the conception of an apostolic Scripture canon. He remarks upon what he judges "pernicious" in its results; mainly this, that men are led to think that they must have apostolic authority for every element of the Christian system. This he offsets by pointing out an advantage we have received from the change of attitude towards the apostles. "To it is largely due, on the other hand," he says, "much of the knowledge of the apostolic age which we possess, for had the original conception of continuing divine revelations been retained, there would have seemed little reason for preserving apostolic writings and traditions" (p. 33). Just so. And if this conception, which Dr. McGiffert thinks the original one, should be now "revived," will there not seem now as little reason to preserve and study the apostolic writings? On Dr. McGiffert's notion of a continuous, direct access of every believer to the revealing Spirit for all needed truth, of a growing revelation which has left the Biblical revelation in the rear, so that it is a "pernicious notion" that we must have its authority for all the elements of our Christian system, why should we bother ourselves with those old and outworn writings of the apostles? They are useless in the presence of the Spirit in our hearts; nay, they may (possibly have) become even Nehushtan (II Kings xviii. 4). So opposite are his principles to the true Protestant principle, that the most precious possession of Protestantism, the Bible, could not be deemed other than a clog upon the free operation of the Spirit of God, were his views to prevail. 

It is interesting to ask, further, why Dr. McGiffert makes so much of "primitive" and "original" Christianity. All the early "transformations" of original Christianity are represented by him as evils, and Protestantism is a good only because it partly restores, and only so far as it restores, "primitive Christianity." But, on his principles, what is "primitive Christianity" to us? Have we not the Spirit as truly as those old believers, including the apostles? And are not the revelations of the Spirit to the Church progressive, "as truth may be needed," so that it "is a pernicious notion that apostolic authority is necessary for every element of the Christian system"? When we turn our eyes back longingly to the primitive Church, are we not deserting the principle of spiritual independence, and betraying a craving for apostolic authority lingering in our breast? Ought we not to go to the Spirit in our hearts instead of to the "primitive Church," or to the apostles, or to Christ Himself, for our knowledge of the truth, as well as for our encouragement in embracing it, and for our support and stay in proclaiming and defending it? To look back, thus, to the past, is it not to hanker after the leeks and onions of Egypt? 

We are told that the whole conception of authority in religion is unprimitive and the invention of the second century, in the effort of the Church to conquer its temporary heresies. If we wish to be "primitive," if we desire to be followers of the apostles, we must cast off all "external authority," and especially must we cast off the fancy that the teaching of the apostles is authority. But why should we wish to be "primitive," or desire to be followers of the apostles? It can only be because, in feeling after the authority we have lost, we instinctively look to them as authoritative teachers whom we can trust. We cannot question the truth of their teaching (p. 29). But in matters of truth, authority consists precisely in the possession of unquestionable truth. How can we fail, then, to recognize and appeal to the authority of this unquestionable truth taught by the apostles, as the standard to which all so-called teachings of the Spirit in the heart shall be conformed? According to Professor McGiffert, however, such an appeal to the authority of the apostles is itself unapostolic. To go back to the apostles is to renounce the authority of the apostles; it is to renounce every "external authority," for they knew nothing of an "external authority," and to submit everything to the internal authority of the Holy Spirit, who speaks in every Christian's heart. This is what the apostles teach us. Is not this to cut the limb off on which he is sitting? He appeals to the authority of the apostles in order to destroy the authority of the apostles. This seems to us a most illogical proceeding. It appears to us that we ought either to renounce all appeal to authority, and cast ourselves wholly on the Holy Spirit in the heart as the sole revealer of truth, or else, making our appeal to the authority of the apostles, roundly to accept their authority as supreme. 

To this, indeed, it must come. We cannot have two supreme standards. Either the Holy Spirit in the heart is the norm of truth and the deliverances of the apostles must be subjected to what we consider His deliverances (and then we have Mysticism cooling down into Rationalism), or else the apostolic revelation is the norm of truth, and the fancied deliverances of the Spirit in our heart must be subjected to the apostolic declarations (and then we have Protestantism). There can be no doubt which view is Confessional. The Westminster Confession (i. 10), for example, tells us distinctly that the Supreme Judge is the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture and that all private judgments are to be subject to it. There can be as little doubt which is apostolic. The Apostle Paul, for example, demands that the reality of all claims to be led by the Spirit shall be tested by their recognition of his claim to speak authoritatively the word of God (I Cor. xiv. 37). Nor can there be much doubt which is rational. Is it still asked: What difference does it make what the Apostle Paul says, if we have the revealing Spirit as truly as he had it? This much, at any rate, we must reply: If his words were really not authoritative they were not even true, for he asserts them to be authoritative. And if the words of Paul and his fellow apostles were not true, we do not even know whether there be a Holy Spirit. It is on the authority of the New Testament alone that we know of the existence of a Holy Spirit, or of His indwelling in the hearts of Christians; that we are justified in interpreting inward aspiration as His leading. If their authority cannot be trusted we have no Holy Spirit. After all, we must build on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being our chief corner-stone, or we build on the sand. 

SECOND ARTICLE 

In the first part of this paper we undertook to give some general account of the new historical rationalism which is being now introduced to the American churches by certain enthusiastic pupils of Adolph Harnack; and then, for its better elucidation, began a somewhat fuller exposition of one or two of the more fundamental positions assumed by Dr. A. C. McGiffert in his Inaugural Address, in his advocacy of it. We pointed out in that section of our paper Dr. McGiffert's conception of Christianity as a development, and gave some account of the "transformations" which he conceives Christianity to have undergone since its origination by Christ. The most important of these "transformations" he represents, certainly with the best of right from his point of view, to be that from the primitive to the Catholic Church, to the better understanding of which his Address is devoted. For our better estimation of the significance of his teaching here, we should next consider more closely: 

V. DR. MCGIFFERT'S THEORY OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 

One of the most striking passages in Dr. McGiffert's Inaugural Address is that in which he draws a picture of "primitive Christianity" as it is conceived by him, preliminary to expounding what he calls the momentous "transformation of the primitive into the Catholic Church, of the Church of the Apostles into that of the old Catholic fathers" (p. 19). That important changes did take place in the spirit, teaching, and organization of the Church during the first two centuries of its life is, as we have said, of course, undoubted. Whether these changes were, however, of the nature which Dr. McGiffert represents them to have been is a different matter, and depends very largely upon the truth of his picture of "primitive Christianity." We desire now to look for a moment at this picture. 

He sums up his conception of "primitive Christianity" in the brief formula: "The spirit of primitive Christianity is the spirit of religious individualism, based upon the felt presence of the Holy Ghost" (p. 19). There are combined in this statement the recognition of a fundamental truth of the first importance and the assertion of a fundamental error of the utmost seriousness. The truth is, that all vital Christianity was conceived by the apostles and their first converts as the product of the Holy Spirit working upon the hearts of men. The error is, that the result of this conception was "religious individualism" in Dr. McGiffert's sense, that is, in the sense that each individual Christian felt and asserted himself to be, by virtue of his possession of the Spirit, a law unto himself, independent of the objective revelation of God's will through the apostles, of the objective means of grace provided in the ordinances of the Church, and of the objective discipline exercised by the organized Christian societies; which three things Dr. McGiffert brings together under the somewhat contemptuous designation of "external authority." The diligent reader of those documents of "primitive Christianity," which we call the New Testament, will scarcely need to be told that the effect of the work of the Holy Spirit upon the hearts of Christians is represented in them to be to draw and to bind Christians to these "external authorities," not to array them against them. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the emphasis which is placed, in these primitive documents, upon the presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers as the indispensable condition of their becoming or remaining Christians. They were Christians by virtue of their new relation to Christ. Christ was preached to them, and that as crucified; the truth concerning Him was made known to them, and accepted by them. They were Christians because they accepted Him as their Prophet, Priest, and King. But no man could say Jesus is Lord but in the Holy Spirit. It was only by the work of the Holy Spirit, therefore, that Christians were made Christians, and He remained the immanent source of all spiritual life. It was this feature of the new covenant which had engrossed the attention of Joel when he foresaw the glories that should come. It was this great promise that the dying Master had presented as the comfort of His people. It was by the visible and audible descent of the Spirit that the Church was constituted on that first great Pentecost. It was by receiving the Spirit that men became Christians, in the Spirit that they were baptized into one body, by His presence within them that they were made the sons of God, and by His leading that they were enabled to cherish the filial spirit. Christians were taught to look to the Spirit as the source of every impulse to good and of every power to good. In Him alone was the inspiration, the strength, the sphere of the Christian's whole life. 

The presence of the Spirit of God in the apostolic Church was, moreover, manifested not merely by the spiritual graces of Christians, of every one of which He was the sole author, but also in a great variety of miraculous gifts. It is no exaggeration to say that the apostolic Church was a miraculous Church. It is not easy to overestimate the supernatural character of either our Lord's ministry or the apostolic Church. When the Son of God came to earth, He drew heaven with Him. The signs which accompanied His ministry were but the trailing cloud of glory which He brought from heaven, which is His home. His own divine power, by which He began to found His Church, He continued in the apostles whom He had chosen to complete this great work; although their use of it, as was fitting, appears to have been more sporadic than His own. And they transmitted it, as a part of their own miracle-working and the crowning sign of their divine commission, to others, in the form of what the New Testament calls "spiritual gifts," that is, extraordinary capacities produced in the primitive communions by direct gift of the Holy Ghost. The number, variety, and diffusion of these "spiritual gifts" are, perhaps, quite commonly underestimated. The classical passage concerning them (I Cor. xii.-xiv.) only brings before us a chance picture of divine worship in an apostolical church; it is the ordinary church service of the time, and we have no reason to suppose that essentially the same scenes would not be witnessed in any one of the many congregations planted by the apostles in the length and breadth of the world. The exception would be a church without, not a church with, miraculous gifts. Everywhere the apostolic Church was marked out among men as itself a gift from God, by manifesting its possession of the Spirit through appropriate works of the Spirit: miracles of healings and power, miracles of knowledge and speech. The apostolic Church was characteristically a miraculous Church. 

In such circumstances, it would seem very difficult to exaggerate the supernatural claims of the "primitive Church." But Dr. McGiffert has managed to do so. How he has managed to do so, and with what serious consequences to the fundamental bases of our religion, it will now be our duty to point out. 

1. He exaggerates the supernatural character of the apostolic Church, in the first place, by representing the enjoyment of the "spiritual gifts" in it as absolutely universal. This is the constant assumption of the Address, and is expressed in such statements as this: "It was the universal conviction of the primitive Church that every Christian believer enjoys the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit. . . . The presence of the Spirit . . . meant the power to work miracles, to speak with tongues, to utter prophecies" (p. 19). "The consciousness of the possession of supernatural gifts" is made, accordingly, the characteristic of the primitive Christian. 

But, widespread as the supernatural gifts were in the apostolical Church, they were not universal. They were the characteristic of the apostolical Church, not of the primitive Christian. The circumstances attending the conversion of the Samaritans are recorded for us, in the eighth chapter of Acts, apparently for the very purpose of teaching us this. The first converts were all brought into the Church by the apostles, and the primitive Christians themselves were, it appears, in danger of supposing that the possession of miraculous gifts was the mark of a Christian. Therefore, it was ordered that the conversion of the Samaritans should take place through non-apostolic preaching, that all men might learn (and Simon among them) that "it was through the laying on of the hands of the Apostles that the Spirit was given." In a word, the miraculous gifts are, in the New Testament, made one of the "signs of an Apostle." Where he conveyed them they existed; where he did not convey them they did not exist. In every case where there is record of them they are connected with apostles; usually they are conferred by the actual laying on of the apostles' hands. In no recorded instance are they conferred by the laying on of the hands of one not an apostle. In fine, the supernatural gifts of the apostolic Church are attestations of the apostles' commission and authority. By detaching them from the apostles, and representing them as the possession of the primitive Christian as such, Dr. McGiffert depreciates the apostles relatively to other Christians, and assimilates Christians as such to the apostles. He can gain no authority for this from the New Testament record. 

2. The seriousness of this error is exhibited so soon as we note the stress which Dr. McGiffert lays, among the supernatural gifts, on the special gift of revelation as the universal possession of primitive Christians. This, again, is the constant assumption of the Address, and comes to expression in such statements as this: "Christian believers had . . . from the beginning . . . believed themselves in immediate contact with the Holy Spirit and had looked chiefly and directly to him for revelations of truth, as such truth might be needed" (p. 33). Accordingly, we are told that the original conception was that of continuing divine revelations; and the "communion with God through the Holy Ghost," enjoyed by the primitive Christians, is spoken of as involving the reception of "revelations immediately from him" (p. 21); and this is sharply emphasized by contrasting it with "the submission to an external authority in matters both of faith and of practice," which characterized later times. In a word, Dr. McGiffert teaches that the primitive Christian as such, by virtue of his communion with God through the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit within him, needed no source of knowledge of God's truth and will external to himself: "The Holy Spirit was in the Church, imparting all needed truth and light" (p. 29), and spoke as truly to the other Christians as to the apostles themselves. 

Certainly, however, this is not the state of affairs reflected in those documents of the primitive Church gathered into our New Testament. In them the gifts of prophecy, interpretation, revelation, do not appear as the universal possession of Christians as such. They are expressly confined to some, to whom the Spirit has imparted them as He distributes His gifts severally to whom He will. In them, the authority over all Christians of the apostolic declarations of truth and duty is expressly and reiteratingly affirmed, and is based upon the possession of the Spirit by the apostles in a sense in which He was not common to all believers. In them, so far from the apostolic word being subjected to the test of the Spirit in the hearts of all Christians, it is made the test of their possession of the Spirit. In a word, in them the "external authority" of the revelation of truth and duty through the apostles is made supreme; and the recognition of it as supreme is made the test of the presence of the Spirit in the heart of others (I Cor. xiv. 37). Neglecting the whole body of apostolic assertion of authority, and the proof of the acceptance of that authority by the whole body of Christians which pervades the New Testament, Dr. McGiffert represents the common gift of the Holy Spirit to Christians as constituting every Christian a law to himself, and so depreciates the apostles and the apostolic word relatively to other Christians, and assimilates Christians as such to the apostles. He can obtain no warrant for this from the New Testament. 

3. The seriousness of this error is still further increased by the circumstance that Dr. McGiffert extends what we may call the supernatural age of Christianity, or what a writer of the same school of thought with himself calls "the Spirit-permeated community," far beyond the limits of the apostolic period. He expressly tells us that no change of spirit took place synchronously "with the passage of Christianity from the Jewish to the Gentile world," nor yet synchronously "with the death of the Apostles and the close of the apostolic age" (pp. 21, 22). "The Church of the first half of the second century," he tells us, "believed itself to be just as truly under the immediate control of the Spirit as the apostolic Church. There was the same consciousness of the possession of supernatural gifts, especially of the gift of prophecy. . . . No line, in fact, was drawn between their own age and that of the Apostles by the Christians of the early second century. They were conscious of no loss, either of light or of power" (p. 22). "The only authority which was recognized," we are told again, "was the Holy Spirit, and he was supposed to speak to Christians of the second century as truly as he had ever spoken through the Apostles" (p. 33). Accordingly, we are told that it is only on a priori or dogmatic grounds, not on historical ones that a line can be drawn between the apostolic and postapostolic ages, so as to "emphasize the supernatural character of the former as distinguished from the latter" (p. 22). 

This is again, however, certainly not the impression which the contemporary records make on the reader. Those records do draw the line very sharply between the apostles and any leaders, however great, of the second century Church. To the apostles alone, the Christians of this age conceived, did Jesus give "authority over the gospel," as Barnabas phrases it.⁸ They alone were conceived of as in such a sense the mouthpieces of Christ that Ignatius, for example, could say that "the Lord did nothing without the Father, either by Himself or by the apostles."9 It does not mark the personal humility of the men, but the recognized proprieties of the case, when Polycarp, for instance, wrote to the Philippians: "These things, brethren, write I unto you . . . because you invited me; for neither am I, nor is anyone like unto me, able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul";¹⁰ or when Ignatius wrote to the Romans: "I do not enjoin you as Peter and Paul did; they were apostles, I am a convict."11 From the beginning, therefore, the writings of the apostles are appealed to by name, quoted as "Scripture" along with, and with equal respect with, the Old Testament, and bowed to with reverence and submission. No one apparently dreamed of claiming that equality with the apostles which Dr. McGiffert ascribes to every Christian, as a channel of knowledge concerning divine things; everybody submitted to the "external authority" of their writings. 

Nor do these records permit us to believe that the supernatural gifts extended into the second century in an unbroken stream. Who can fail to feel the gulf that yawns between the clear, detailed, and precise allusions to these gifts that meet us in the New Testament, and the vague and general allusions to them which alone are found in the authentic literature of the second century? As was long ago pointed out triumphantly by Conyers Middleton, the early second century is almost bare of allusions to contemporary supernatural gifts. The apostolical Fathers contain no clear and certain allusions to them. And so characteristic of the age is this sobriety of claim, that the apparently miraculous occurrences recorded as attending the martyrdom of Polycarp, in the letter of the church of Smyrna, are an acknowledged bar to the admission of the genuineness of the document; and it is only on purifying the record of them, some as interpolations, some as misinterpretations, that Dr. Lightfoot, for example, thought himself warranted in assigning to it as early a date as A. D. 155. When references to supernatural gifts occur, as in Justin and Irenaeus, they are couched in general terms, and suggest rather a general knowledge that such gifts had been common in the Church than specific acquaintance with them as ordinary occurrences of the time. The whole evidence in the matter, in a word, is just what we should expect if these gifts were conferred by the apostles, and gradually died out with the generation which had been brought to Christ by their preaching. The copious stories of supernatural occurrences in writings of the third and later centuries have their roots, not in the authentic literature of the second century, but in the apocryphal Gospels and Acts. Dr. McGiffert can obtain no warrant from the contemporary records for his assimilation of the Christians of the early second century to the apostles, and his consequent depreciation of the apostles, both in their personal authority and in the authority of their written word, relatively to the Spirit-led Christian, as such. 

4. The whole effect, and, we ought, perhaps, also to say the whole purpose, of the speculatively reconstructed picture of "primitive Christianity" which Dr. McGiffert gives us, is to destroy the supreme authority of the New Testament in the Church as the source and norm of truth and duty, and to reduce Christianity to a form of mystical subjectivism. 

Dr. McGiffert admits, indeed, inconsistently with his fundamental conception but consistently with historical fact, that "from the very beginning, the Jewish Scriptures, to which Christ and his Apostles had so frequently appealed, had been appropriated by the Christian Church" (p. 28), although not, possibly, in their native sense. He admits, also, that the truth of apostolic teaching was unquestioned, and that "the Apostles were universally recognized as the divinely commissioned and inspired founders of the Church" (p. 29); and because they were thus looked upon, "their teaching was . . . everywhere regarded as a source from which might be gained a knowledge of divine truth" (p. 32). 

But he very justly points out that thus to look upon the teaching of the apostles as one of the sources from which a knowledge of truth may be obtained is a "very different thing from making the teaching of the Apostles the sole standard of truth," and "ascribing to their teaching exclusive normative authority" (pp. 32-33). Accordingly, he is able to tell us that "the primitive Church had entirely lacked" "the Catholic conception of an apostolic Scripture canon" (p. 42); that the Church attained the conception of an authoritative "apostolic Scripture canon" only deep in the second century and as a piece of borrowed goods from Gnostic heresy; that the early Church needed no New Testament, "especially since the Holy Spirit was in the Church imparting all needed truth and light" (p. 29); and accordingly that "the only authority which was recognized was the Holy Spirit, and he was supposed to speak to Christians of the second century as truly as he had ever spoken through the Apostles" (p. 33). 

The ideas thus attributed to the "primitive Church" are the ideas of Dr. McGiffert; and therefore he tells us that the Protestant churches do not speak the truth when they make "the word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments," "the sole and ultimate authority for Christian truth" (p. 43), since the Spirit of God is this sole and ultimate authority - as He speaks still to His people as well as formerly through His apostles (p. 43). He tells us, therefore, plainly, that the Holy Spirit still reveals Himself to the members of the several churches "if they keep themselves in touch with him, as truly as to members of the primitive Church" (p. 39), and that is, as we have seen, "as truly as he had ever spoken through the Apostles" (p. 33). 

Thus the upshot of Dr. McGiffert's speculative reconstruction of the primitive Church is to set aside the authority of the New Testament altogether, and to enthrone in its place the supreme authority of an "inner light." This is most excellent Quaker teaching, but it is a direct onslaught upon the very basis of Reformed, and, indeed, of the whole Protestant, theology. It seems to be incumbent upon us, therefore, to scrutinize with some care, before we bring these observations on Dr. McGiffert's teaching to a close, what he has to say regarding the origin of the New Testament. 

VI. DR. MCGIFFERT'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 

The task of Dr. McGiffert's Inaugural Address, as we have seen, is to trace the steps in what he thinks "the most vital and far-reaching transformation that Christianity has ever undergone" - "the transformation of the primitive into the Catholic Church, of the Church of the Apostles into that of the old Catholic fathers" (pp. 18, 19). One of the steps in this "momentous transformation" - a step which is justly spoken of as "of stupendous significance," if it can be made good that it constituted a part of a transformation which took place in the Church of the second century - is represented to be no less a one than this: "the recognition of the teaching of the Apostles as the exclusive standard and norm of Christian truth" (p. 29). In this was included, as one of its chief elements, what may be called, without exaggerating Dr. McGiffert's conception, the invention by the second century Church of the New Testament canon. We must now give some consideration to this astonishing representation. 

According to Dr. McGiffert, the primitive Church "entirely lacked" the "conception of an apostolic Scripture canon" (p. 42). Its spirit was in fact wholly alien to such a conception. Its spirit was "a spirit of religious individualism, based upon the felt presence of the Holy Ghost" (p. 19). As all Christians possessed the Spirit, He was "the only authority which was recognized"; and He was supposed to speak to all Christians "as truly as he had ever spoken through the Apostles" (p. 33). The apostles were no doubt "reverenced" as "divinely guided and inspired" (p. 32); they "were universally recognized as the divinely commissioned and inspired founders of the Church" (p. 29); and "their teaching was consequently everywhere regarded as a source from which might be gained a knowledge of divine truth" (p. 32). But we will remember that we are very justly told that "that is a very different thing from making the teaching of the Apostles the sole standard of truth, a very different thing from ascribing to their teaching exclusive normative authority" (pp. 32-33). All Christians were as truly "in immediate contact with the Holy Spirit" as the apostles; to Him directly and not to the apostles they looked "for revelations of truth, as such truth might be needed" (p. 33); and having Him always with them, and having, moreover, along with Him, the Old Testament, they "needed no New Testament" (p. 29). 

But Gnosticism arose, and the Church joined in combat with it. In the effort to repudiate the spirit of Gnosticism it was that steps were taken which resulted in the disappearance of that spirit of individualism which was the spirit of the "Church of the Apostles," and the introduction of "the spirit of Catholicism," "which means submission to an external authority in matters both of faith and of practice" (p. 21). Three steps were taken towards this consummation. The first of these was "the recognition of the teaching of the Apostles as the exclusive standard and norm of Christian truth" (p. 29). And in this step were included the formation of a New Testament canon, and the formation of an apostolic rule of faith. 

"The Gnostics were the first Christians to have a New Testament." In seeking to commend their bizarre doctrines, they were led to appeal to the authority of the apostles transmitted orally or in writing. "Hence they felt themselves impelled at an early date to form a canon of their own, which should contain the teachings of Christ through his Apostles, which should, in other words, be apostolic" (pp. 29-30). This was a new thing in Christendom. But no one could deny that what the apostles taught was true; the apostles, as well as other Christians, had the Spirit. The Gnostics' appeal to apostolic authority could be met, therefore, only by determining what was truly apostolic. Thus "the Church reached the conception of an authoritative apostolic Scripture canon and of an authoritative apostolic rule of faith" (p. 29). "Thus it was led to gather into one whole all those writings which were commonly regarded as of apostolic origin; in other words, to form an authoritative and exclusive apostolic Scripture canon, which all who wished to be regarded as Christian disciples must acknowledge, and whose teachings they must accept." "The conception of an apostolic Scripture canon had arisen, and the appeal to that canon had been widely made before the close of the second century" (p. 30). 

This is the account which Dr. McGiffert gives of the creation of the New Testament canon. It will be seen that it is very comprehensive. It includes an account of the origin of the ascription of "authority" to the apostolic teaching; an account of the rise of the very conception of an apostolic canon of Scripture; an account of the collection into such a canon of the writings "commonly regarded as of apostolic origin"; and an account of the imposition of this body of collected writings upon the Church as its law of faith and conduct. It includes an account, in a word, of the whole "stupendous transformation," from a state of affairs in which every Christian man, by virtue of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, was a law to himself, and knew no external apostolic authority at all; to a state of affairs when, "under the stress of conflict, they resigned their lofty privileges and made the Apostles the sole recipients (under the new dispensation) of divine communications, and thus their teaching the only source (the Old Testament, of course, excepted) for a knowledge of Christian truth, and the sole standard and norm of such truth" (p. 33). This whole stupendous transformation from beginning to end is included in the course of the second century, that is, belongs to distinctly post-apostolic times. And it was due to the pressure of the Gnostic controversy, and, indeed, was a following by the Church of Gnostic example. In a word, the ascription of any "authority" as teachers to the apostles at all, and the very conception and existence of a New Testament canon, and much more the erection of such a canon as, along with the Old Testament, the exclusive standard of faith and practice, were no part of primitive or apostolical Christianity at all. They were inventions of the second century Church, as expedients the better to meet its difficulties in controversy. 

What is to be said of this theory of the formation of the New Testament canon? 

1. This is to be said, in the first place: That the cause which is assigned for this stupendous transformation is utterly inadequate to bear its weight. 

We are asked to believe that a Church which had hitherto known nothing of apostolic authority, and much less of a canon of authoritative apostolic writings, but had depended wholly upon the living voice of the ever present Holy Spirit speaking to Christians as such, suddenly invented this whole machinery of external authority, solely in order to meet the appeal of the Gnostics to such an external authority. That is to say, in conflict with the Gnostic position, the Church deserted its own entrenched position and went over to the Gnostic position, horse, foot, and dragoons. The Church, we are told, made its sole appeal to the internal authority of the Holy Spirit, speaking in the hearts of living Christians. The Gnostics appealed to the external authority of the apostles, and were the first to do so. If the situation was in any measure like this, the Church was assuredly entitled to meet, and most certainly would have met, this heretical appeal to external authority with the declaration that the Holy Spirit of God which it had was greater than the apostles which the Gnostics claimed to have; and that the living and incorruptible voice of that Spirit in the hearts of Christians was more sure than the dead, corruptible word of the apostles. Yet instead of doing this we are told that the Church weakly submitted to the Gnostic imposition of an external authority upon it, and made its sole appeal to it. This construction is an impossible one. The facts that the Gnostics appealed to apostolic authority, and especially to a body of authoritative apostolic writings as against the Church, and that the Church appealed to apostolic authority and to an apostolic canon as against the Gnostics, do not suggest that the Gnostics were the first to appeal to apostolic teaching and to make a New Testament; but rather prove that the authority of apostolic teaching and of the apostolic writings was already the settled common ground on which all Christians of all names stood. 

This is not to be met by saying that just what we have supposed the Church would do in the circumstances assumed was done - by the Montanists. The Montanists were not the Church; but from their first origin were in violent conflict with the Church. Nor did the Montanists represent a revival of the primitive spirit. The main reason for fancying so arises from the exigencies of the theory at present under discussion; and they were certainly not recognized as doing so by the men of their time best qualified to judge of their affiliations. They are uniformly represented as smacking more of Phrygia than of Palestine, more of Cybele than of Christ. Nor yet did they essay to do what in these circumstances we should have expected the Church to do; but something very different indeed. They, too, accepted the external authority of apostles and canon. They themselves rested in this external authority, and did not seek to add to the deposit of truth handed down by it. They claimed only to "develop" the "practical" side of Christianity; and that not by means of a universal teaching of the Spirit, but by means of the sporadic continuance of the specific prophetic office, and by a series of requirements laid by this external authority upon the consciences of men. 

Nor is the case met by the remark that the surrender of the Church to the point of view of the Gnostics in this matter of external authority no doubt does presuppose "a partial loss of the original consciousness of the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit" (p. 37). Of course it does; if such an original consciousness ever existed in the sense intended. The point at issue is whether any such "original consciousness," in the sense intended, ever existed. The point urged is that if this consciousness existed it could not but have shown itself in the conflict against Gnosticism. The point yielded is that it must indeed have already been "partially lost." The point claimed is that there is no proof, then, that it ever existed, but every proof that the Gnostics and the Church stood on common ground in their common appeal to "external authority." 

2. It is to be said, secondly, that the origin of this stupendous transformation is assigned by this theory to a most unlikely source. 

The Gnostics were not just the people whom we can naturally suspect of the invention of the idea of an external apostolic authority. They are known in history as men of speculative intellect, pride of knowledge, rationalistic methods. They are known in history as rejecters of external authorities, not as the creators of them. It is allowed that the Old Testament had from the beginning been accepted by the Church as the authoritative voice of God. The Gnostics repudiated the Jewish Scriptures. Marcion is represented to us, by every contemporary witness, as a man who discarded part of the New Testament canon which had come to his hand; and he certainly mutilated and curtailed the books of his "Apostolicum." To such men as these we can scarcely ascribe the invention of the fiction of an apostolic canon. That they held and appealed to such an "external authority" can be accounted for only on the supposition that this was already the settled position of the Church, which they sought to rationalize and so to reform. 

3. It is to be said, thirdly, that to assign the origin of the New Testament canon to the Gnostics is to contradict the whole body of historical testimony which has come down to us as to the relation of the Gnostics to the New Testament canon. 

The Fathers, to whose refutation of them we are indebted for well-nigh our whole knowledge of the Gnostics, are unanimous in representing them as proceeding with the church canon as their point of departure, not as first suggesting to the Church the conception of a canon. They differed among themselves, we are told, in their mode of dealing with the Church's canon. Some, like Marcion, used the shears, and boldly cut off from it all that did not suit their purposes; others, like Valentinus, depended on artificial exegesis to conform the teaching of the apostles to their own views. For all alike, however, an authoritative apostolic canon is presupposed, and to all alike this presupposed authoritative apostolic canon constituted an obstacle to their heretical teachings, and accordingly would not have been presupposed by them could it have been avoided. 

4. And this leads to saying, fourthly, that this whole theory of the formation of the New Testament canon involves a serious arraignment of the trustworthiness, or, as we should rather say plainly, the truthfulness, of the whole body of the great Church Fathers who ornament the closing years of the second century. 

Take such a man, for instance, as Irenaeus. It is positively impossible to believe that anything like the origination of, or any essential change in, the New Testament canon occurred in his lifetime without charging him with conscious falsehood in his witness concerning it. For Irenaeus not only testifies to the existence and estimate as divinely authoritative of the New Testament at the close of his life, but repeatedly asserts that this same New Testament had enjoyed this same authority from the apostles' day. Now, Irenaeus was already a young man when Marcion provided his followers with his mutilated New Testament. He had himself sat as a pupil at the feet of John's pupil, Polycarp, in Asia Minor. He had served the church of Lyons as presbyter and bishop. He had kept in full communication with the churches both of Ephesus and of Rome. And he tells us that so strict had been the Church's watchfulness over its New Testament that not even a single text of it had been corrupted. It avails nothing to say that, nevertheless, many texts had been corrupted. Irenaeus could be mistaken in some things; but in some things he could not be mistaken. If such a thing as the New Testament had been invented in his own day he could not have been ignorant of it. Here the dilemma is stringent: either Irenaeus has borne consciously false witness, or else the Church in Ephesus, in Rome, and in Gaul, already had in the days of Marcion the same New Testament which it is confessed that it had at the close of the century. And practically the same argument might be formed on the testimony of Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Theophilus of Antioch, or, indeed, the whole body of the church writers of the close of the second century. 

5. It is to be said, still further, that the whole theory of the origin of the New Testament canon in post-apostolic circles is inconsistent with the acknowledged position of the Church during this period. 

It is acknowledged that from the beginning the Church received the Old Testament at the apostles' hands as the word of God (p. 28). From the beginning, therefore, the Church had an "external authority," and possessed already the idea of a "canon." How could it help adding to this authoritative teaching the writings of the apostles, whom, as is admitted, it "recognized as the divinely commissioned and inspired founders of the Church" (p. 29), and whom it reverenced "as divinely guided and inspired" (p. 32)? The whole dealing of the Church with the heresies of the day betrays the fact that apostolicity and authority were to it synonymous terms. Every step which Dr. McGiffert traces in the opposition to these heresies is an outgrowth of this conception, and is recognized by Dr. McGiffert as an expression of this conception. Apostolicity was indeed the war-cry in all the Church's battles; and yet we are asked to suppose that this was a borrowed war-cry - borrowed from its enemies! 

6. Finally, it is to be said that there is quite as much evidence from this whole period of the Church's possession and high estimate of the New Testament, as the nature of the literary remains from the time would warrant us in expecting. 

It is nothing to the point to say that we cannot, with full historical right, speak of a New Testament "canon" until deep in the fourth century, since this word was not applied to the New Testament in this sense until then; or that we cannot, with full historical right, speak of a "New Testament" until late in the second century, for not until then was this name applied to it. We are not investigating the history of names, but of things. The term "instrument" which Tertullian applies to the New Testament is just as good a designation of the thing as the term "canon" that Jerome uses. And there was an earlier name for what we call the "New Testament" than that now hoary and sacred title. Over against "The Law and the Prophets," which was the name then given the Old Testament, men had a "Gospel and Apostles," which was the name they gave the New Testament. And as they commonly called the one half of the canon briefly "The Law," so they called the other half for similar reasons "The Gospel." The name still remains in Augustine; it is the common name for the New Testament in the second century. It was clearly already in use in the days of Ignatius, and of the authors of the so-called second epistle of Clement and the epistle to Diognetus. New Testament books are among the "Oracles" in the days of Papias and of the author of II Clement. To Polycarp, Ephesians was already along with Psalms in "the sacred letters." To Barnabas, Matthew was "Scripture"; and indeed, already to I Timothy Luke was as much "Scripture" as Deuteronomy (I Tim. v. 18), and to II Peter Paul's letters as much Scripture as "the other Scriptures" of the Old Testament. Dr. McGiffert gives some hint (p. 27), indeed, that he may deny that I Timothy was a letter of Paul's, or even a product of the first Christian century. Whether he would make II Peter also of post-Gnostic origin, he does not tell us. But too many adjustments of this kind will need to be made to render it "historical" to deny that the Church had an authoritative New Testament from the beginning of its life. 

What color of historical ground remains, then, for the asserted "stupendous transformation" in the Church during the second century, by which it acquired not only the actual possession but the very conception of an apostolic Scripture canon? 

There is, first of all, this fact: that in the latter part of the second century the evidence that the Church possessed a New Testament canon first becomes copious. But this is not because the Church then first acquired a canon; the evidence is retrospective in its character and force. It is simply because Christian literature of a sort which could bear natural testimony to the fact first then becomes abundant. It is a great historical blunder to confound such an emergence of copious testimony with the historical emergence of the thing testified to. 

Then, secondly, there is doubtless this fact: that in its controversies with the Gnostic sects the Church was thrown back upon its New Testament and its authority as before it had never had occasion to be. When the gospel was preached to Jews and Gentiles the simple story was told; and there was no occasion to appeal to books, save in the former case to the prophecies of the Old Testament. When Christianity was defended before Jews or before Gentiles, the common ground of appeal was necessarily restricted to the Old Testament and to reason; and any allusion to Christian books was necessarily only by the way and purely incidental. But when new gospels were preached, then the appeal was necessarily to the authority of the authoritative teachers of the true gospel. There is a sense, then, in which it may be said that, in these controversies, the Church "discovered" its New Testament. It learned its value; it investigated its contents with new zeal and new insight; in the process it strengthened its sense of its preciousness and authority. 

Harnack in one place uses phraseology in describing what took place with the New Testament in the second century, which, if we could only be allowed to take it in its strict verbal meaning, would express the exact truth. The transformation, he tells us, must be looked upon as "a change in interest in the Holy Scriptures brought about by the Gnostic and Montanistic conflict." This is just what happened. But this is not what Harnack and his followers demand of us to believe to have happened. They demand that we shall believe that in these controversies the Church created these "Holy Scriptures" of the New Testament. They do so without historical warrant, and in doing so they destroy the New Testament as "Holy Scriptures"; that is, they reduce its authority as "Holy Scriptures" to the authority of the second century Church, which they would have us believe created it " Holy Scripture" in its controversies, and which, indeed, as they would teach us, even created some of the books themselves (e.g. I Timothy) out of which this "Holy Scripture" was constituted. 

How, then, are we to conceive the formation of the New Testament canon? After so much said as to how we are not to conceive it, it is but right that before we bring this paper to a close we should try to place clearly before us the actual process of its formation. Let us now essay to do this in the simplest and most primary way. 

VII. THE FORMATION OF THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 

In order to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation of the canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly in our minds one fact, which is obvious enough, and to which attention has been already called, but the importance of which in this connection cannot be overemphasized. That is, that the Christian Church did not require to form for itself the idea of a "canon," or, as we should more commonly call it to-day, of a "Bible" - that is, of a collection of books given of God to be the authoritative rule of faith and practice. It inherited this idea from the Jewish Church, along with the thing itself, the Jewish Scriptures, or the "Canon of the Old Testament." The Church did not grow up by natural law; it was founded. And the authoritative teachers sent forth by Christ to found His Church carried with them as their most precious possession a body of divine Scriptures, which they imposed on the Church that they founded as its code of law. No reader of the New Testament can need proof of this; on every page of that book is spread the evidence that from the very beginning the Old Testament was as cordially recognized as law by the Christian as by the Jew. The Christian Church thus was never without a "Bible" or a "canon." 

But the Old Testament books were not the only ones which the apostles (by Christ's own appointment the authoritative founders of the Church) imposed upon the infant churches as their authoritative rule of faith and practice. No more authority dwelt in the prophets of the old covenant than in themselves, the apostles, who had been "made sufficient as ministers of a new covenant"; for (as one of themselves argued) "if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory." Accordingly, not only was the gospel they delivered, in their own estimation, itself a divine revelation, but it was also preached "in the Holy Ghost" (I Pet. i. 12); not merely the matter of it but the very words in which it was clothed were "of the Holy Spirit" (I Cor. ii. 13). Their own commands were, therefore, of divine authority (I Thess. iv. 2), and their writings were the depository of these commands (II Thess. ii. 15). "If any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle," says Paul to one church (II Thess. iii. 14), "note that man, that ye have no company with him." To another he makes it the test of a Spirit-led man to recognize that what he was writing to them was "the commandments of the Lord" (I Cor. xiv. 37). Inevitably, such writings, making so awful a claim on their acceptance, were received by the infant churches as of a quality equal to that of the old "Bible," placed alongside of its older books as an additional part of the one law of God, and read as such in their meetings for worship - a practice which, moreover, was required by the apostles (I Thess. v. 27; Col. iv. 16; Rev. i. 3). In the apprehension, therefore, of the earliest churches, the "Scriptures" were not a closed but an increasing "canon." Such they had been from the beginning, as they gradually grew in number from Moses to Malachi; and such they were to continue as long as there should remain among the churches "men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 

We say that this immediate placing of the new books, given the Church under the seal of apostolic authority, among the Scriptures already established as such was inevitable. It is also historically evinced from the very beginning. Thus, the Apostle Peter, writing in A.D. 68, speaks of Paul's numerous letters, not in contrast with the Scriptures, but as among the Scriptures, and in contrast with "the other Scriptures" (II Pet. iii. 16), that is, of course, those of the Old Testament. In like manner, the Apostle Paul combines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Luke under the common head of "Scripture" (I Tim. v. 18): "For the Scripture saith, 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn' [Deut. xxv. 4]; and, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire' [Luke x. 7]." The line of such quotations is never broken in Christian literature. Polycarp¹² in A.D. 115 unites the Psalms and Ephesians in exactly similar manner: "In the sacred books, . . . as it is said in these Scriptures, 'Be ye angry and sin not,' and 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."' So, a few years later, the so-called second letter of Clement, after quoting Isaiah, adds (chap. 2): "And another Scripture, however, says, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,"' quoting from Matthew, a book which Barnabas (circa 97-106 A.D.) had already adduced as Scripture. After this such quotations are common. 

What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level, and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture. They are conclusive evidences, rather, of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival "canon" of "new books" which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the "old books"; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally "Scripture" with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of "the Scriptures." 

The earliest name given to this new section of Scripture was framed on the model of the name by which what we know as the Old Testament was then known. Just as it was called "The Law and the Prophets and the Psalms" (or "The Hagiographa"), or, more briefly, "The Law and the Prophets," or, even more briefly still, "The Law," so the enlarged Bible was called "The Law and the Prophets, with the Gospels and the Apostles,"13 or, more briefly, "The Law and the Gospel" (so Claudius Apollinaris, Irenaeus); while the new books separately were called "The Gospel and the Apostles," or, most briefly of all, "The Gospel." This earliest name for the new Bible, with all that it involves as to its relation to the old and briefer Bible, is traceable as far back as Ignatius (A.D. 115), who makes use of it repeatedly.¹⁴ In one passage he gives us a hint of the controversies which the enlarged Bible of the Christians aroused among the Judaizers: "When I heard some saying," he writes,¹⁵ "'Unless I find it in the Old [Books] I will not believe the Gospel,' on my saying, 'It is written,' they answered, 'That is the question.' To me, however, Jesus Christ is the Old [Books]; His cross and death and resurrection, and the faith which is by Him, the undefiled Old [Books], by which I wish, by your prayers, to be justified. The priests, indeed, are good, but the High Priest better," etc. Here Ignatius appeals to the "Gospel" as Scripture, and the Judaizers object, receiving from him the answer, in effect, which Augustine afterwards formulated in the well-known saying that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is first made clear in the New. What we need now to observe, however, is that to Ignatius the New Testament was not a different book from the Old Testament, but part of the one body of Scripture with it; an accretion, so to speak, which had grown upon it. 

This is the testimony of all the early witnesses, even of those which speak for the distinctively Jewish-Christian churches. For example, that curious Jewish-Christian writing, "The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs" ("Benjamin," 11), tells us, under the cover of an ex post facto prophecy, that "the work and word" of Paul, that is, confessedly, the Book of Acts and Paul's epistles, "shall be written in the Holy Books," that is, as is understood by all, made a part of the existent Bible. So, even in the Talmud, in a scene intended to ridicule a "bishop" of the first century, he is represented as finding Galatians by "sinking himself deeper" into the same "book" which contained the Law of Moses ("Babl. Shabbath," 116 a and b). The details cannot be entered into here. Let it suffice to say that, from the evidence of the fragments which alone have been preserved to us of the Christian writings of that very early time, it appears that from the beginning of the second century (and that is from the end of the apostolic age) a collection (Ignatius, II Clement) of "New Books" (Ignatius), called the "Gospel and Apostles" (Ignatius, Marcion), was already a part of the "oracles" of God (Polycarp, Papias, II Clement), or "Scriptures" (I Timothy, II Peter, Barnabas, Polycarp, II Clement), or the "Holy Books," or "Bible The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs"). 

The number of books included in this added body of New Books, at the opening of the second century, cannot, of course, be satisfactorily determined by the evidence of these fragments alone. From them we may learn, however, that the section of it called the "Gospel" included Gospels written by "the apostles and their companions" (Justin), which there is no reason to doubt were our four Gospels now received. The section called "The Apostles" contained the Book of Acts ("The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs") and epistles of Paul, John, Peter, and James. The evidence from various quarters is, indeed, enough to show that the collection in general use contained all the books which we at present receive, with the possible exceptions of Jude, II and III John, and Philemon; and it is more natural to suppose that failure of very early evidence for these brief booklets is due to their insignificant size rather than to their non-acceptance. 

It is to be borne in mind, however, that the extent of the collection may have - and, indeed, is historically shown actually to have - varied in different localities. The Bible was circulated only in hand-copies, slowly and painfully made; and an incomplete copy, obtained, say, at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would be likely to remain for many years the Bible of the church to which it was conveyed, and might, indeed, become the parent of other copies, incomplete like itself, and thus the means of providing a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, when we inquire after the history of the New Testament canon, we need to distinguish such questions as these: (1) When was the New Testament canon completed? (2) When did any one church acquire a completed canon? (3) When did the completed canon, the complete Bible, obtain universal circulation and acceptance? (4) On what ground and evidence did the churches with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books when they were made known to them? 

The canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the Apocalypse, about A.D. 98. Whether the church of Ephesus had a completed canon when it received the Apocalypse, or not, would depend on whether there was any epistle, say that of Jude, which had not yet reached it, with authenticating proof of its apostolicity. There is room for historical investigation here. Certainly the whole canon was not universally received by the churches till somewhat later. The Latin Church of the second and third centuries did not quite know what to do with the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Syrian churches for some centuries may have lacked the lesser of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation. But from the time of Irenasus down, the Church at large had the whole canon as we now possess it. And though a section of the Church may not yet have been satisfied of the apostolicity of a certain book, or of certain books, and though afterwards doubts may have arisen in sections of the Church as to the apostolicity of certain books (e.g. of Revelation), yet in no case was it more than a respectable minority of the Church which was slow in receiving, or which came afterwards to doubt, the credentials of any of the books that then, as now, constituted the canon of the New Testament accepted by the Church at large. And in every case the principle on which a book was accepted, or doubts against it laid aside, was the historical tradition of apostolicity. 

Let it, however, be clearly understood that it was not exactly apostolic authorship which constituted a book a portion of the "canon." Apostolic authorship was, indeed, early confounded with canonicity. It was doubt as to the apostolic authorship of Hebrews, in the west, and of James and Jude, which seems to underlie the slowness of the inclusion of these books in the "canon" of certain churches. But from the beginning it was not so. The principle of canonicity was not apostolic authorship, but imposition by the apostles as "law." Hence Tertullian's name for the "canon" is "instrumentum," and he speaks of the Old and New Instrument as we would of the Old and New Testament. That the apostles so imposed the Old Testament on the churches which they founded as their "instrument," or "law," or "canon," can be denied by none. And in imposing new books on the same churches, by the same apostolical authority, they did not confine themselves to books of their own composition. It is the Gospel according to Luke, a man who was not an apostle, which Paul parallels in I Tim. v. 18, with Deuteronomy, as equally "Scripture" with it, in the first extant quotation of a New Testament book as Scripture. The Gospels which constituted the first division of the New Books - of "The Gospel and the Apostles" - Justin tells us, were "written by the apostles and their companions." The authority of the apostles, as founders of the Church by divine appointment, was embodied in whatever books they imposed on the Church as law, not merely in those which they themselves had written. 

The early churches received, as we receive, into their New Testament all the books historically evinced to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law; and we must not mistake the historical evidences of the slow circulation and authentication of these books over the widely extended Church for evidence of slowness of "canonization" of books by the authority or the taste of the Church itself.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Presbyterian Quarterly, ix. 1895, pp. 36-67 and 185-210. The sections marked L, III., IV., V., VI., appeared earlier in The Presbyterian Journal, of Philadelphia; the section marked IL, in The Presbyterian Messenger, of Pittsburgh; and the section marked VII, in The Sunday-School World, of Philadelphia. The section marked VII. has been copyrighted by the American Sunday-School Union, and can be had at their house at 1122 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, in tract form. 

The Academy for October 28, 1893 (aliv. p. 368). 

H. P. Liddon, "Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey," ii. 1893, p. 489. 

"Farewell to his Friends and to the Church," 1858, p. 56.

"Life and Letters of Adolphe Monod," by one of his daughters, E.T. London, 1885, pp. 357-358. 

Ibid., p. 224. 

"Primitive and Catholic Christianity," 1893, p. 16.

Ep. 8.

"Epistola ad Magnesios," 7. 

"Ad Philippenses," 3. 

"Ad Romanos," 4.

"Epistola ad Philippenses," 12.

So Clement of Alexandria, "Stromata," vi. 11: 88; Tertullian, "De præscriptione hæreticorum," 36. 

E.g. "Ad Philad.," 5; "Ad Smyrnæos," 7.

"Ad Philadelphenses," 8.

The Making of the Westminster Confession,

and Especially of Its Chapter on the Decree of God¹

It is the purpose of this article to give as clear a view as possible of the process by which the Westminster Confession was made. In prosecuting this purpose two tasks present themselves. One concerns the modes of procedure of the Assembly in framing the Confession; the other the course of the debates by which it was beaten out. We shall attempt to give some account of both matters. The latter offers so wide a field, however, that we shall be constrained to deal with it by sample - and, for reasons which will readily suggest themselves at the present juncture, we shall select the third chapter of the Confession as the sample to be dealt with. We shall therefore try first to trace the formal procedure of the Assembly in framing the whole Confession, and to obtain some adequate conception of the labor and time that was expended on it; and then, taking up the third chapter, we shall essay to reconstruct as fully as may be a picture of the actual work of the Assembly in producing it.² 

I. HOW THE CONFESSION WAS MADE 

The amount of time consumed directly on the preparation of the Confession of Faith was certainly very great. But even this does not completely represent the pains expended on this task. To estimate that fairly, there should also be taken into account the time and care given formally to other subjects, which yet necessarily conduced indirectly to the perfecting of the final statement of doctrine. Nearly all the labors of the body, from its coming together on July 1, 1643 till the completion of the Shorter Catechism on April 12, 1648, may without exaggeration be said to have had a doctrinal side; and much time was spent in direct doctrinal discussion. None of this discussion that was precedent to or contemporary with the formulation of the propositions incorporated into the Confession was lost labor with respect to it. There were in particular three or four of the tasks of the Assembly, however, which bore so immediately on its preparation for framing the Confession that they deserve especial mention in this connection. 

Among these the first in time to occupy its attention was the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles to which it was set on first coming together.³ This was the main work of the Assembly from the 8th of July to the 12th of October, 1643, and it necessarily led to a somewhat thorough review, at the very outset of its labors, of the doctrines of God and the Trinity, the Person and Work of Christ, the Scriptures and Rule of Faith, Original Sin and the Freedom of the Will, Justification and Sanctification - the main topics on which the first sixteen Articles touch. Lightfoot's "Journal" contains very little record of the debates that were held in the course of this revision,⁴ and we should perhaps be in danger of underestimating their reach and thoroughness, had not some fuller intimation of them been preserved in the manuscript Minutes and some specimens of their nature in the published speeches of Dr. Featley. It is evident that very careful and thoroughgoing work was done, of which the text of the revised Articles themselves gives but meager suggestion. All this told afterward on the formulation of these same topics in the Confession of Faith. "The keen and lengthened debates," remarks Dr. Mitchell, "which occurred in the discussions on these Articles could not fail to prepare the way for a more summary mode of procedure in connection with the Confession of Faith. The proceedings then were more summary, or at least more summarily recorded, just because the previous discussions on the more important doctrines of the Protestant system, and especially on that of Justification by Faith, had been thorough and exhaustive, and pretty fully recorded."5 There does not even lack evidence that in framing the very language of the Confession, regard was had to the minutiæ of the work done on this former occasion. Now and again little points of phraseology, for example, are taken over into the Confessional statements from the revised Articles,⁶ such as serve to show that the Divines kept their former labors fully in mind in the prosecution of their later, and were perfecting their work in full view of all that had previously been done.⁷ 

Of far less importance, but perhaps worth mentioning in this connection, was the work done by the Assembly in the spring of 1645, in defining for the House of Commons "the particulars of that ignorance and scandal for which persons should be excluded from the sacrament."8 At this time, also, though in a more summary manner, the Assembly had occasion, prior to its entrance on the actual preparation of the Confession, to review in a systematic exhibit all the chief topics of a dogmatic system.⁹

Many topics which touched on the subjects treated in parallel portions of the Confession were also debated in the preparation of the Form of Government; and, we may be sure, this was not without consciousness on the part of the debaters that their investigations would bear double fruit. We meet, for example, on May 6, 1645, before any part of the Confession had come before the Assembly, a note like this: "Debate whether to bring this under the head of government or a Confession of Faith." And accordingly the proposition thus debated was in substance actually incorporated into the subsequently framed Confession.¹⁰ Similarly the long debates on the jus divinum cannot fail to have borne fruit both for the Government and for such chapters of the Confession as that on "The Church and Church Censures," then in process of framing. 

Finally the labors of the Assembly in preparing its Catechism, so far as they were carried on before the Confession left its hands, were of course of use to it in preparing the Confession also. In some sense, these labors began indeed as early as December, 1643: but the matter incorporated into the Catechism does not seem to have come before the Assembly itself earlier than September 14, 1646, from which date until January 4, 1647, the substance of the original Catechism was reported as far as that project was prosecuted by the Assembly.¹¹ During this period the Assembly was in the process of its review of the text of the Confession, and had reached a portion of it for which the debates upon the Catechism could afford little or no aid.¹² The scrutiny of the substance of doctrine for the Catechism therefore could serve as a help in the formulation of the Confession only in so far as the members of the Committee at work on the Catechism were moulding their opinions by it. In the general Assembly the influence was the other way about. In fact, Baillie tells us that on the reporting of the first matter for the Catechism, the Assembly fell on such "rubbes and long debates" that it was purposely "laid aside till the Confession wes ended, with resolution to have no matter in it but what wes expressed in the Confession, which should not be debated over againe in the Catechise."13 The subject is nevertheless worth mentioning here as indicating afresh how repeatedly the Divines were, in committee or in full house, led to go over the whole series of doctrinal statements either prior to or parallel with their work in formulating the Confession: all of which repeated reviews of the matter to be placed in the Confession of course were of use in its formulation for that purpose. 

If there ever was a document, therefore, whose contents might be expected to exhibit that genius, the essence of which consists, we are told, in taking pains, it assuredly is the Westminster Confession of Faith. And when we read its exquisitely balanced phrases, and are moved with admiration for the perfection of the guarding which it gives to its doctrinal propositions on this side and that, we are reaping the benefit of these repeated reviews which the Assembly was forced to give the whole matter, perhaps even more than of the minute scrutiny it lavished on the formulation of it on the final occasion of its actual incorporation into the Confession. And when, after this, and in the light of all the experience gained by such repeated reviews of the material, first the Larger Catechism and then the Shorter Catechism were elaborated, it is not at all strange that a precision of definition was attained which has called forth such praises as these documents, and especially the Shorter Catechism, have received from the most varied quarters. 

The framing of a new Confession of Faith was a portion of the task that devolved on the Westminster Assembly through the provisions of the Solemn League and Covenant, by which an engagement was entered into for bringing "the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for worship and catechising."14 The prosecution of the work of uniting the two Churches in a common Confession of course involved the substitution of a new Confession, agreed upon by both Churches, for those previously in use, whether in Scotland or in England; it accordingly rendered the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, on which the Assembly had been engaged during the first months of its labors, no longer ad rem. No doubt the persistency of the Commons in securing the insertion into the "Ordinance" calling the Assembly of a clause setting forth as one of the objects in view the procuring of a "nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland,"15 although more particularly referring to the point of "Government," affected in some degree the whole work of the Assembly and bore fruit even in its revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. But the particular instructions given regarding the revision of these Articles limited the Assembly to "vindicating and clearing" them "from all false calumnies and aspersions," and the Assembly itself looked upon this work accordingly as "relating only to the Church of England."16 When now, on the 25th of September, 1643, the Solemn League and Covenant was taken, the whole situation was changed. Parliament was now committed to that policy of uniformity in religion for the whole country for which the Scots had been unwearyingly pressing ever since their Peace Commissioners had gone up to London early in 1641, and the Assembly considered its work on the Articles as entirely set aside by the subsequent order, as it itself expresses it, "to employ us in framing a Confession of Faith for the three kingdoms, according to our Solemn League and Covenant."17 It was only with great reluctance and with protestations of their insufficiency that it placed in the hands of the Parliament, when subsequently required to do so, the Articles so far as they had been revised by it.¹⁸ 

Nevertheless, the severer task of forming a new Confession of Faith for the whole kingdom was not at once entered upon. A still more severe and, in the judgment of all alike, a still more pressing task required attention first - the framing of a unifying "Government" for the Churches of the whole kingdom. This great labor was begun on October 12, 1643, and consumed the energies and time of the Assembly for many months. The first motion toward undertaking the new Confession was made apparently on Tuesday morning, August 20, 1644. Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, lately arrived from Scotland, appeared in the Assembly on August 14, bringing letters from the General Assembly; and in presenting them he emphasized "the general desire of all the nation of Scotland for the hastening of the work in hand" - that is, the work of completing the uniformity in all its parts in accordance with the Solemn League and Covenant. In his response Dr. Burgess added his voice to Warriston's: and "Mr. Henderson also spake to the same purpose, of forwarding and hastening our work. Whereupon it was ordered, that the grand committee should meet to-morrow."19 The report from the Grand Committee came in on August 20, and contained five resolutions designed for expediting the work. The second of these proposed "a committee to join with the commissioners of Scotland, to draw up a confession of faith." No order, however, was as yet come from Parliament "to enable us to such a thing,"20 and the proposition, therefore, caused some debate; but it was at last determined upon, and a committee of nine, consisting of Drs. Temple, Gouge and Hoyle, Messrs. Gataker, Arrowsmith, Burroughs, Burgess, Vines and Goodwin, was appointed to take the work in hand.²¹ Two weeks later, Lightfoot tells us further, "Dr. Temple, chairman of the committee for the drawing up of a confession of faith, desired, that that committee might be augmented."22 This also was done, and there were added the names of Dr. Smith and Messrs. Palmer, Newcomen, Herle, Reynolds, Wilson, Tuckney, Young, Ley, and Sedgewick. Baillie congratulates himself that thus the preparation of the Confession had been "put in severall the best hands that are here," and that "the heads of it being distribute among many able hands, it may in a short time be so drawn up, as the debates of it may cost little time."23 

It was not until the next summer, nevertheless, that any portion of the Confession came before the Assembly.²⁴ In the spring it seems to have been taken up in earnest, but progress was still slow.²⁵ Baillie informs us under date of April 25, 1645, that some reports had already been made to the Assembly.²⁶ We hear of it in the Minutes for the first time, however, on Monday, April 21,27 and then after a fashion that hints of pressure brought on the Assembly for completing the work. The Scotch Commissioners, returning on April 9 from their visit to the Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland,²⁸ had had presented by the Grand Committee to the Houses of Parliament and the Assembly of Divines alike a paper setting out the satisfaction of their Kirk with the parts of the Uniformity already prepared, and urging that "it is with no less zeal and earnestness desired and expected by that whole Kirk and kingdom, that the remanent parts of Uniformity be expedited."29 Stress was especially laid in this paper on the completion of the Form of Government; but when the paper came before the Commons (on April 14) it found that body engaged on matters of doctrine,³⁰ and its immediate fruit was accordingly an action to hasten on the preparation of the "Confession of Faith." A paper had been sent up from the Divines to both Houses on March 6 looking to the "preserving the sacraments pure," and both Houses had taken up the matter at once. The debate in the Commons from March 25 took the form of determining the particulars of ignorance and scandal which should exclude from the Lord's Supper. Several communications were passed between the House, sitting in committee, and the Divines by means of which it was determined what should be defined as "a competent measure of understanding" - "concerning God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost," "concerning the state of man by the creation, and by his fall," "the redemption of Jesus Christ, etc.," "the ways and means to apply Christ, etc.," "the nature and necessity of faith, etc.," "repentance, etc.," "the nature and use of the Sacraments, etc.," "the condition of man after this life, etc."31 The report of the Grand Committee embodying these findings was made to the Commons on the 17th of April, and on the same day a Committee was appointed to draft an ordinance in the terms of the findings.³² Simultaneously the House voted to desire the Assembly with all convenient speed to resolve upon a Confession of Faith for the Church of England and present it to the House.³³ In this we may doubtless see the combined effects of the pressure brought to bear on the House by the letter from Scotland and its own sense of need arising from its labors in defining censurable ignorance. There are entries in the Minutes of the Assembly for April 18 which may be taken as indicating the reception of this order by that body.³⁴ In this case it would seem that Messrs. Seaman, Tuckney, Burroughs, Young, Whitaker, Rayner, Vines, and Delamarch were appointed "to consider of this order," and were instructed to meet that afternoon and report at the next meeting. In any event the order was already in process of being obeyed at this next meeting, Monday, April 21. Apparently the Committee appointed on April 18 then reported that the best way to meet the immediate needs of Parliament would be to place in its hands a revised edition of the Thirty-nine Articles, to serve until a Confession of Faith could be prepared. Accordingly it was ordered that the Committee in whose charge the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles had formerly been, or perhaps the new Committee of April 18,35 should "consider how far they or any of them may be useful to be recommended to both Houses of Parliament for the present, till a Confession of Faith can be drawn up by this Assembly"; and further, that "the Committee for Confession of Faith do meet on Wednesday, in the afternoon." 

Nothing further appears until Friday, May 9,36 when, a new order having meanwhile been received from Parliament for dispatch,³⁷ it was ordered "that the Assembly consider on Monday morning the best way to expedite the Confession of Faith, . . . and that the two Committees for the Confession of Faith be put into one." What two Committees were here united we have no means of ascertaining. We have heard hitherto of only one Committee to which the "preparing matter" for a Confession of Faith was committed (August 20, 1644), and which was subsequently (September 4) augmented; and even on April 21, as we have just seen, "the Committee for Confession of Faith" is spoken of quite simply as if there were but one, and between that entry and the present one there is no allusion in the Minutes to the matter.³⁸ But Baillie, though in the previous autumn speaking of "a Committee" to which the Confession of Faith had been referred, under date of April 25, says, "The Catechise and Confession of Faith are put in the hands of severall committees."39 It is probably easiest to suppose that in the meanwhile another Committee, additional to that of August 20-September 4, 1644, had been appointed.⁴⁰ At all events, in accordance with the provision of May 9, the Assembly on Monday, May 12, proceeded to make further arrangements for "expediting the Confession of Faith." The report in the Minutes of what was done is somewhat obscure. But it appears that besides reading and debating "the report of the Confession of Faith," there was an additional "debate about the Committee for drawing up the Confession"; and it was determined that "the first draught of the Confession of Faith shall be drawn up by a Committee of a few"; which Committee was then constituted - apparently of the following members: Drs. Temple and Hoyle, Messrs. Gataker, Harris, Burgess, Reynolds and Herle. This Committee is then instructed to meet that same afternoon; and the Scotch Commissioners "are desired to be assisting to this Committee." The question arises whether this Committee was additional to the former Committee or Committees (of August 20, September 4, 1644, and May 9, 1645), or was a substitute for it or them. Dr. Mitchell supposes the former, and looks upon this new Committee as erected in order to receive the material collected by the already existing Committee, or Committees, and to digest it into more formal shape before it was finally submitted to the Assembly.⁴¹ There are certain serious difficulties, however, in the way of this supposition. And these are greatly increased by a subsequent act of the Assembly's. On Friday, July 11, 1645, it was ordered - "Monday morning to divide the body of the Confession of Faith to the three Committees." Accordingly on the next Monday - July 14 - we hear of a "debate about dividing of heads of confession": but the matter was not concluded on that day. On the following Wednesday - July 16, 1645 - we read of a "report made from the Committee of the heads of Confession," and it was ordered: "The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon these heads: God and the Holy Trinity; God's decrees, Predestination, Election, etc.; the works of Creation and Providence; Man's Fall"; "The Second Committee: Sin, and the punishment thereof; Free will; the Covenant of Grace; Christ our Mediator"; "The Third Committee: Effectual Vocation; Justification; Adoption; Sanctification"; "Those three Committees to meet to-morrow in the afternoon"; "If they think fit to leave out any of those heads, or add any other, they are to make report to the Assembly." Dr. Mitchell supposes with obvious justice that the three large Committees into which the Assembly was permanently divided for the preparing of its business⁴² are referred to in these orders; and that "the material prepared by the previous small committee" was "handed over to these larger committees, and further discussed and elaborated by them before being brought into the Assembly." This seems altogether reasonable in itself, and is fully borne out by the subsequent proceedings. But certainly, under this supposition, it becomes very unlikely that the earlier Committee or Committees (of August 20, September 4, 1644, and May 9, 1645) still continued in existence - if for no other reason than the complicated process which would in that case be involved in getting the several parts of the Confession before the Assembly. First the Committee of August 20-September 4, 1644, would collect the material; then the Committee of May 12, 1645, with the aid of the Scotch Commissioners, would digest it; then the large Committee required thereto on July 16, would further digest it; and only then would it reach the Assembly. Surely this complication of process throws something in the scale to justify us in looking on the Committee of May 12 as a substitute for that of August 20-September 4, rather than additional to it.⁴³ In that case we must suppose that the Assembly had sought at first to get along with only one Committee, which should prepare the matter of the Confession for its discussion; that that first appointed (August 20, 1644), augmented on September 4, 1644, and again perhaps on May 9, 1645, had proved too large and unwieldy for rapid work, and was superseded by a smaller one, May 12, 1645 - the members of which were, however (with one exception, viz., Mr. Harris), taken from the earlier Committees. Subsequently, for the better digesting of the material, it was ordered (July 11 and 16, 1645) that the reports of the Committee should in the first instance be submitted to one or the other of the three great Committees into which the Assembly was divided for the preparation of its business, and be by them actually brought before the whole body. 

There are, to be sure, not lacking some difficulties in the way of the supposition of even this very natural and workable arrangement. Among them the chief are that in the action of May 9 we read (as we have seen) of its being ordered, "that the two Committees for the Confession of Faith be put into one"; and in the action of July 4 we read of "the sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith," as if there were still divisions in the Committee; and again on July 18 we read of' a "report concerning God, by Dr. Temple" being put in - although Dr. Temple was not a member of the First great Committee to which this topic was assigned, but of the Third great Committee, while, on the other hand, he was a member of the Committee of May 12, and as representing it had "made report of that part of the Confession of Faith touching the Scriptures" on July 7 - i.e., before the distribution of the heads to the three great Committees had been made. These difficulties do not, however, seem to be insuperable. We have already offered a suggestion in explanation of the mention of two Committees on May 9. The term "Sub-Committee" in the action of July 4 need not be pressed: it may be, and probably is, only a designation of the Committee of May 12, called Sub-Committee possibly because of its small size in comparison with the three great Committees; or it may be thought not impossible that the work on the topics of God and the Scriptures may actually have been done by a Sub-Committee of that Committee. It seems further, on closer examination, that Dr. Temple made the report of July 18 on "God," as well as that of July 7 on "The Scriptures," in consequence of the order of July 4 "that the sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith shall make report to the Assembly on Monday morning of what is in their hands concerning God and concerning the Scriptures" - so that these two topics were accounted as in that manner already before the Assembly, though in the interval between this and July 18, when the "report concerning God, by Dr. Temple," was - not made, but - "read and debated," provision had been made for another course to be subsequently pursued. It is not an insuperable objection to this solution of the difficulty that in the distribution of the heads of the Confession to the three Committees on July 16, the head on "Scripture" is not assigned to the first Committee - doubtless as already fully before the house - while the head on "God and the Holy Trinity" is so assigned, as if it were not yet - at least in full - before the house. There are so many things we do not know about the precise course of action that a plausible supposition such as we have suggested may be allowed to be probable, even though we cannot explain all the details. And it is to be observed that when the report on this topic came from the first Committee on July 23, it was not of "God and the Holy Trinity," but "of the article of the Trinity." It may be taken as likely then that the original Committee of May 12 reported as required on the two topics, "The Scriptures" and "God," and that the first report from the great Committee was on " the Trinity " only. 

This construction receives further support from other circumstances. We hear nothing of "Committees," but only of a, "Committee" on the Confession between the dates May 9, when the "two Committees" were "put into one," and July 16, when the three great Committees were charged with the Confession, while afterwards this is no longer so - as e.g. on August 20 we read of "the Committees for the Confession of Faith." We hear no more of reports from Dr. Temple on the Confession after those on the "Scriptures" of July 7 and on "God" of July 18. At the very next session - July 23 - we read rather: "Report made from the Committee of the article of the Trinity," and afterwards, on August 29: "Report from the first Committee concerning God's decrees"; "Report made by the second Committee of Christ the Mediator"; "Debate on the report of the first Committee of God's decree"; on September 3, "Report from the first Committee about adding the word 'absolutely'"; "Debate about the 2d Committee's report of Christ the Mediator," and so on.⁴⁴ This mode of reference varied only to such forms as the following. On September 8, "Dr. Gouge offered a report of an addition, though the Committee was not a full number, but 7" - Dr. Gouge being a member of the First Committee, and possibly at this time its chairman.⁴⁵ On September 9, "Dr. Stanton made report additional of Christ the Mediator.⁴⁶ Mr. Prophet made report of Effectual Calling"47 - Dr. Stanton having been from the first chairman of the Second Committee and Mr. Prophet being a member of the Third, the several Committees to which these topics had been assigned on July 16. A note in the proceedings for November 18 (sess. 537) gives the whole state of the case very clearly: "Dr. Gouge [made] report from First Committee of Creation. Mr. Whitakers from the Second Committee, of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and the Punishment thereof. The Third Committee made no report." In the presence of such clear declarations, supported by a number of incidental references accordant with them (such as have been set down in the footnotes), we need not hesitate to say that the several heads of the Confession were obviously reported directly to the Assembly by the three great Committees, even though there remain a few instances where a reference occurs not easily explicable. 

The most striking of these are those instances in which we read of a topic of the Confession being reported by a member who does not seem to have been a member of the great Committee to which this topic was assigned. On one occasion, for example, Dr. Gouge is spoken of as reporting on a topic not belonging to the First, but to the Second Committee: December 15, 1645, "Dr. Gouge made report about Free-will." Dr. Gouge may have been acting here, however, as representing not the original Committee which reported this subject to the Assembly, but a special Committee to which it or some part of it had been recommitted. Color is lent to this suggestion by three facts. First, the recommitment of special points to special Committees was not uncommon with the Assembly; instances may be noted on pp. 183, 184, 187, 208, 217, 218, 219 of the "Minutes." Secondly, the note here is made in immediate conjunction with a case of recommitment. The Minutes proceed: "Mr. Arrowsmith made report of that committed concerning the Sacraments." The Sacraments constituted a topic belonging to the Second Committee, indeed, of which Mr. Arrowsmith was a member, and so this case may be only partially parallel. More clearly similar is the instance of November 7, when we read: "Report made by Mr. Reynolds about Reprobation" - evidently in pursuance of the order of November 6: "The paragraph concerning Reprobation referred to the Committee, to make report tomorrow morning." Mr. Reynolds was not, however, a member of the First Committee to which this topic belonged, but of the Second:48  and thus this would seem to be a case of reference to a special Committee. The matter is plainer still in another instance. We read in the Minutes for March 10, 1646: "Mr. Seaman made report of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience " - a topic belonging to the First Committee while Mr. Seaman was a member of the Second. The original report on Christian Liberty, however, was made on January 29, and not by Mr. Seaman but by Mr. Coleman - a member of the First Committee. The subject was debated on that day, and again on February 10, 12, 16, when it was resolved: "That this whole head of Christian Liberty shall be recommitted"; and further, "This shall be recommitted to a select Committee" - whose members are then named with Mr. Seaman at their head (p. 187). It is, of course, from this Committee that Mr. Seaman reported on March 10. It should, however, be borne in mind that we cannot implicitly trust the lists of names given in the schedule which Dr. Mitchell prints of the members of the three great Committees at the date nearest to the time when the Assembly was busied with the Confession. For example, we read in the Minutes of January 29, 1646: "Mr. Dury made report from the Second Committee of Church Offices and Censures." But the name of Mr. Dury does not occur on the roll of the members of the Second Committee, nor indeed on any of the three rolls. A similar instance is found in this same note of January 29: "Mr. Newcomen, Mr. Dury, Mr. Delmy, Dr. Temple, Dr. Gouge, added to the Committee for report about the Law; to report to-morrow morning." The reference is not to the original Third Committee, which had reported the chapter on the Law at least as early as January 7, but to a special Committee appointed January 12 to consider the propositions under debate concerning the meaning of the terms "ceremonial" and "judicial." Of the names given in this additional list, two - Messrs. Dury and Delmy - have no place in Dr. Mitchell's lists of the three Committees. Thirdly, it may be added that it does not appear likely that Dr. Gouge's report on December 15, 1645, represents the first report to the Assembly on the topic of Free Will. A month before (on November 18) it had been represented to the Assembly that the Second Committee had finished all the heads of the Confession that had been committed to it; and this representation was made the occasion of a new distribution of heads to the three Committees. In the interval, before December 15, topics from this second distribution had been reported from the Second Committee (e.g., December 1, on the Lord's Supper; December 5, "Of the Sacraments in general"). It does not seem likely that these would be reported before report had been made of material lying ready for report before these topics were undertaken. 

In the light of the facts, therefore, it seems certain that the several heads of the Confession were reported immediately from the three great Committees to the Assembly, and that therefore there was no Committee for further digesting their material intermediating between them and the Assembly. It is not safe to differ on such a matter from Dr. Mitchell, but, on the whole, it appears to us likely also that the small Committee appointed on the 12th May, 1645, was substituted for the earlier Committee or Committees (of August 20-September 4, 1644, and perhaps again in the ensuing winter), and that the mode of procedure was that the small Committee of May 12, 1645 - consisting of seven, a quorum of which was five - first drew up the heads of the Confession with the aid of the Commissioners of the Church of Scotland: and that these were then distributed by the Assembly among the three great Committees for thorough digesting: whence they came back finally to the Assembly for discussion and ordering. 

The first two of these "heads" had, to be sure, according to our supposition, already been reported to the Assembly by the small Committee, before it had been determined to distribute the heads between the three great Committees. In the Minutes of the session for Friday, July 4, 1645, we read: "Debate about the Confession of Faith. That the sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith shall make report to the Assembly on Monday morning of what is in their hands concerning God and concerning the Scriptures." Accordingly on Monday, July 7, we read: "Dr. Temple made report of that part of the Confession of Faith touching the Scriptures. It was read, debated." We hear no more of the report on the head "God," to be sure, until July 18 - before which date the distribution to the great Committees had been made. But what we read there is not that Dr. Temple made report on this topic, but: "Report concerning God, by Dr. Temple, read and debated"; while subsequently we read (July 23): "Report made from the Committee of the article of the Trinity." Whatever may be the right explanation of these phrases, the reports of the subsequent heads of the Confession were not made by Dr. Temple, but as we have seen from the First, Second, or Third Committee, or some one of their representatives. This series begins, if not on July 23, at least on August 29, with a notice of a report from the First Committee on God's decrees and from the Second Committee on Christ the Mediator. Thereafter the heads were reported one by one from the several Committees to which their digesting had been from time to time committed.⁴⁹ 

The consideration given in the Assembly itself to the several heads was very careful and the scrutiny of every clause and word searching. Recommitments, ordinarily at least to special Committees, were frequent: final dissent on the part of individuals was sometimes entered. In a word, time, pains, and scrupulous care were not spared for perfecting the instrument. Thus the work went slowly on, until near the middle of 1646, at which time, though the work was not yet completed, the attention of the Assembly was withdrawn by the Parliament to other matters. During the course of these long-continued and searching debates, it was inevitable that many alterations should be entered in the drafts of the several heads as they were first laid before the Assembly. It was felt by the Assembly from the first that provision should be made to have the text and alterations properly adjusted. As early as July 8, 1645, therefore, we find this order: "That Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Herle, Mr. Newcomen be desired to take care of the wording of the Confession of Faith, as it is voted in the Assembly from time to time, and to report to the Assembly when they think fit there should be any alteration in the words. They are first to consult with the Commissioners from the Church of Scotland, or one of them, before they report to the Assembly." Of this Committee we hear nothing more: it doubtless did the work committed to it and saw to it that the amendments made were fitted properly into their places and that all went smoothly. As the work advanced, another Committee of similar but apparently somewhat enlarged powers was appointed. This was done on December 8, 1645: "Ordered - Mr. Tuckney, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. Whitakers, a Committee to review the Confession of Faith as it is finished in the Assembly." Apparently it was not contemplated that reports should be made from this Committee in the meantime; but rather that it should quietly prepare matter for the further consideration of the Assembly in a final review of its work. At all events, after the stress of interruption was over and the Confession was completed (at least substantially), we find this Committee reporting (June 17, 1646). The note runs: "Report was made from the Committee about 'the perfecting of the Confession of Faith'" - and at once it is "Ordered - That Mr. Arrowsmith be added to the Committee for [perfecting] the Confession of Faith.⁵⁰ Upon a debate about the 'reading of the Report again,' it was Resolved upon the Q., 'Not to be read again entire, but in parts.' It was debated, and the Assembly began with the Scriptures; and part of that head was ordered." From this it would seem that the report of the Committee on "the perfecting of the Confession of Faith" consisted of the presentation of a perfected copy; that this was read first entire; and then ordered to be again read in parts. On June 19, 1646, it is further ordered, "That the Committee for wording and methodizing of the Confession of Faith shall have liberty, as they see things imperfect, to complete them; and to make report unto the Assembly." 

Under the guidance of this Committee the Assembly thus went again over the whole Confession. This work was not done perfunctorily.⁵¹ It was begun on June 17, 1646: immediately after determining, as has been already mentioned, to review the Confession in parts, it is noted: "The Assembly began with the Scriptures; and part of that head was ordered. Ordered - To proceed in the debate where we left." Accordingly in the Minutes of the next day (June 18) we read: "The Assembly proceeded in the debate of the Confession of Faith concerning 'the Scriptures'; and upon debate the whole head concerning the Scriptures was ordered ; and it is as followeth. . . . The Assembly proceeded in the debate of the Article concerning 'God and the Holy Trinity'; and upon debate that head also was ordered; and it is as followeth. . . . The Assembly proceeded in debate of the Article 'Of God's Eternal Decree'; and upon debate part of it was ordered. Upon debate about the last clause of it, concerning the handling of this doctrine, it was Resolved upon the Q., To refer this till to-morrow morning." The next day accordingly: "The Assembly proceeded in the debate of the Confession of Faith; and upon debate, that head 'of God's Eternal Decree' was ordered and is as followeth. . . ." Similarly chapters iv. and v. were passed on the same day; part of chapter vi. on June 22, and the remainder of chapter vi., and chapters vii. and viii. on June 25. Chapter ix., "of Free Will," gave apparently more trouble. We read in the Minutes of June 29: "Report was made by Mr. Tuckney 'of Free Will.' It was read, and also some additionals to the Article 'of the Fall of Man.' The additionals were debated, and ordered to be added. The Assembly debated the Report 'of Free Will'; and upon debate about the first branch of it concerning 'the natural liberty in the Will,' it was Resolved upon the Q., To be recommitted." In the Minutes of the next day (June 30) accordingly we read: "Report was made from the Committee of the proposition concerning Free Will recommitted. It was read and debated, and the whole Article assented to. It is as followeth. . . ." On the same day chapter x. was passed upon. After this, work on the Confession was intermitted for nearly a month, and was not resumed until a message was received from Parliament desiring the early completion of the Confession (July 22).⁵² On July 23 chapters xi. and xii. were passed: and on the next day, July 24, the interrupted work of framing the first draft of the Confession was also resumed, the Second Committee bringing in its reports on chapters xviii. and xxxii. The time of the Assembly was thereafter largely absorbed in framing the remainder of the first draft: and it is not until September 14 that we meet with the next note bearing on the review: on that date chapter xvii. was passed upon in its perfected form, and on September 15 chapter xviii., while on this latter date also: "Report was made from the Committee for perfecting the Confession of Faith 'of the Law.' It was read and debated, and upon debate much of it was assented to, the rest referred to the Committee." On September 16, chapters xiii. and xiv. were passed upon; on the 17th the rest of chapter xix.; on September 18, chapter xv. On September 21, chapter xvi. was passed; an addition was proposed to it on the 22d by Mr. Prophet, concerning which the Assembly - "Resolved upon the Q., Not to take this paper now read into debate"; nevertheless on September 23 its consideration was pressed on the attention of the Assembly again, whereupon it was "Resolved upon the Q., This proposition shall not be added." On the same day chapter xiii., on Sanctification, was taken up renewedly and certain alterations proposed by a Committee appointed for the purpose were entered into it. The same afternoon Mr. Whitaker sought to secure a similar review of a clause in chapter iii., but unsuccessfully. 

Thus the framing of the first draft of the latter portion of the Confession and the perfecting of that portion of it already drawn up went on side by side. The House of Commons was meanwhile still pressing for its completion and in response to an order received September 18,53 chapters xv.-xix. were completed and passed upon September 25, and the first nineteen chapters sent up to Parliament. Chapters xx. and xxi. were passed October 30; chapter xxii. November 6; chapter xxiii. November 9; xxvii. and xxviii. November 10; xxix. November 16; xxv. November 17; xxvi. November 20; xxx. xxxi. xxxii. and xxxiii. November 26. On November 26, 1646, the following note was spread on the Minutes: "The Confession of Faith was finished this day, and by order of the Assembly the Prolocutor gave thanks, in the name of the Assembly, to the Committee that had taken so good [or "great"] pains in the perfecting of the Confession of Faith." 

Even this exhibition of the work done in bringing the Confession to its present form is not, however, a complete account of the pains expended on it. On September 18, 1646, there seems to have been made an unsuccessful effort to establish yet another Committee for the reviewing of the whole Confession, after this second passage of it through the Assembly. We read: "Upon a motion to appoint a Committee to consider of the Confession of Faith, what errors are not obviated in it, and to that end that there be a review of the Articles of England and Ireland, it was Resolved upon the Q., There shall be no Committee to consider of the reviewing of the Articles what errors are not obviated in them." The meaning of this is perhaps elucidated by the form in which it stands in the other draft of the Minutes, lapping here with the printed copy and called Fascicle iii. by the editors: "A new Committee to consider of all the errors unobviated in several Confessions of England, Ireland and Scotland, to give in the catalogue of these errors to the Committee for the wording. R. - No Committee to consider of the reviewing Articles what errors are not obviated in them." That is to say, apparently, what was proposed was a Committee to see that all that was erroneous in earlier Confessions had been fitly dealt with in the new Confession: the anxiety seems to have been that no erroneous expressions, however slight and intrenched in the earlier Confessions, should escape correction in this new one. 

Though this effort failed, there was, however, a new reviewing made of the text of the Confession that bore fruit for its perfecting. This was accomplished in the process of its transcription. Over this transcription Dr. Burgess had the oversight. He made report September 21, 1646, "of the Confession of Faith transcribed, so much of it as the Assembly had perfected. It was read, and upon debate it was Resolved upon the Q., 'The several heads of the Confession of Faith shall be called by the name of Chapters.' Resolved upon the Q., That the several sections be distinguished by figures only." Thus was inaugurated what was really a second revision of the Confession - a passage of it through the Assembly for the third time. By September 25, as we have seen, nineteen chapters had passed through this third scrutiny, and were ordered sent up to the Parliament. Subsequently to that we find repeated instances in which Dr. Burgess moves certain alterations or additions to the already completed chapters - which do or do not commend themselves to the Assembly: e.g. on November 20 he moves certain additions to chapter xxi., which had been passed on October 30; on November 23, to chapter xxii., which had been passed on November 6; and an addition was made to chapter xxi. on that same day, doubtless on his motion. This process of improvement continues even after the entry made on November 26, celebrating the completion of the Confession, i.e. during the whole process of its official transcription. Thus on November 27 we read: "Dr. Burges moved for some alterations in the Confession of Faith in some words, which were assented to." And again on December 1, "Upon a motion for an alteration in the chapter of Censures in the Confession of Faith, it was Resolved upon the Q., There shall be no alteration." Indeed, the onerousness of Dr. Burgess' work of overseeing the transcription was recognized at this session by the order: "That the brethren that drew up the Confession of Faith" - that is, as we should conjecture, either the Committee appointed May 12, 1645, to frame the first draft (Messrs. Gataker, Harris, Temple, Burgess, Reynolds, Hoyle, Herle) or else the perfecting Committee (Messrs. Tuckney, Reynolds, Newcomen, Whitaker, Arrowsmith and Cawdry) appointed December 8, 1645, and augmented June 17, 1646, and September 1, 1646 - "do assist Dr. Burges in reading over the Confession of Faith with one of the scribes." On December 3 a number of changes in chapters xix. xxi. xxii. xxix. xxxi. were proposed by Dr. Burgess, and either accepted or rejected, and the Committee was required further to "consider of that which is propounded concerning the chapter of the Civil Magistrate." Other changes were debated on December 4, and Dr. Burgess' final report was made, whereupon it was "Ordered - That thanks be returned to the Assessor, Dr. Burges, for his great pains in transcribing the Confession of Faith, which was done by the Prolocutor. Resolved upon the Q., This" [i.e. the transcribed and finally adjusted copy of the Confession of Faith] "shall be presented to both Houses of Parliament by the whole Assembly. The Confession of Faith as it was presented is as followeth. . . ." Here we reach the really final act in the Assembly's preparation of the text of the Confession. Nothing remained now but the printing of it, and on receiving from Parliament an order to that effect, it was (December 10) "Ordered - That the Scribes take care of the exact printing of the Confession of Faith." 

The work of preparing proof-texts for the Confession was undertaken somewhat reluctantly by the Assembly, as a consequence of an order from the House of Commons of October 9, 1646, and reported in the Assembly on October 12. It was felt that the demand for proof-texts was only an expedient of "the retarding partie" in Parliament (as Baillie calls it) to delay the completion of the business: and it was feared that the attempt to add the texts would (as Baillie expressed it) "prove a very long business, if not dexterouslie managed," though, no doubt, it would be " for the advantage and strength of the work."54 A Committee was, however, at once appointed to advise the Assembly "how obedience may be yielded" to this order, and their report, adopted October 13, set forth that to append full proofs to so large a Confession would require a volume, and could scarcely be necessary, inasmuch as what was set forth in the Confession was for its substance "received truths among all churches," and the only question about it concerned "the manner of expression or the fitness to have it put into the Confession." What the Assembly explicitly asked, however, was only time, not absolute reprieve for the task.⁵⁵ Parliament was inexorable, and the work was fairly begun on January 6, 1647 (Wednesday). We read: "Ordered - That Mr. Wilson, Mr. Byfield, Mr. Gower, be a Committee to prepare Scriptures for the Confession of Faith." On the very next day the Scriptures for the first chapter were reported, and those for the first paragraph were debated. The work was continued steadily thereafter. The proof-texts of the first chapter were completed on January 15: and meanwhile those for the other chapters were being reported - those for chapter ii. having been brought in on January 8, and for chapter iii. on January 13. On Friday, March 5, 1647, the texts for the final chapters were reported, and the Assembly "Ordered - That thanks be returned to the Committee for the Scriptures, for their great pains and diligence in that business; which was accordingly done by the Prolocutor. Ordered - That Mr. Burges, Dr. Smith, Mr. Calamy, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Seaman, Mr. Strickland, Mr. Spurstow, Mr. Case, Mr. Scudder, and Dr. Hoyle, or any three of them, shall be a Committee to join with the Committee for the Scriptures, to review the Scriptures. They are to meet on Thursday next in the afternoon. The care of this Committee is referred to Mr. Scudder." These resolutions mark the completion of the proof-texts, however, only in the Committee. At this time the Assembly's consideration of them had reached no further than the twentieth chapter. It was not until April 5, 1647, that the work was completed by the Assembly. On that date the note is entered in the Minutes: " The Confession was finished." 

It was not even then "finished," however, except in first draft; and it was ordered that the report of the reviewing Committee should now go through the three large Committees, and so come to the Assembly - the work to be begun on the next day. There was an effort made at the same time to have some explanatory declaration added with reference to the proper use of the proof-texts, but this was unsuccessful. The action in full was as follows: "Upon a motion by Mr. Seaman that something be annexed by way of caution to show how the proofs are to be applied, it was Resolved upon the Q., There shall be no further debate about cautions to be added about the proofs of Scripture. Resolved upon the Q., That the Review of the Confession of Faith be considered of by the three Committees of the Assembly. Ordered - That the Committees appointed for the Review of the Confession make report to-morrow morning what they have done about it." It would seem that it was impracticable for the three Committees to report the next day, however, and the expedient appears to have been adopted - in this approximating to the manner in which the text of the Confession itself was first taken up - of having the Committee of Review report the first portion of the texts directly to the Assembly, while the remainder should come to it only through the large Committees. This is at least what appears to be implied by the entry for April 6: "Mr. Scudder made report of the Review of the proofs of the Confession of Faith for the seven first chapters and part of the 8th; and upon debate of it, it was assented to as the proofs are entered in the margin of the Confession of Faith. Ordered - That the rest of the 8th chapter, and chapters 9th to the 17th be referred to the First Committee to review; and from chapter 8th to the 25th to the Second Committee, and from chapter 26th to the end of the Confession to the Third Committee." On the succeeding days, April 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, the reports of these Committees for the several sections were brought in and the proof-texts passed by the Assembly. On the 15th April it was "Ordered - That Mr. Wilson, Mr. Gower, and Mr. Wallis do draw up, in the margin of two books of the Confession of Faith, the Scriptures, to be presented to the Parliament." An order having been received from Parliament to send up the texts (April 22), this was done on April 26, 1647, and they were presented to both Houses on April 29.56 

Thus the Confession of Faith passed in its completed form out of the hands of the Assembly, and the history of the attempt to create a common Confession of Faith for Great Britain properly closes. All the world knows the subsequent fortunes of the product of such long-continued labors. The text of the first nineteen chapters, it will be remembered, was sent up preliminarily to the two Houses of Parliament: they were presented to the House of Commons September 25, 1646, and to the House of Lords, October 1. On December 4 the completed text went to the Commons, and on the 7th of that month to the Lords. Already by November 4, 1646, the first nineteen chapters had passed the House of Lords in the exact form in which they had been sent up by the Assembly: the remainder was passed by them February 16, 1647. In the Commons, however, the matter dragged. The first nineteen chapters were passed perfunctorily on October 6, 1646, and taken up for debate in the Grand Committee on October 9: and then things stopped. Despite prodding from the Lords, the Commons awaited the reception of the proof-texts before they would do anything. On the 29th April, 1647, "the Scriptures" were handed to them, but the commencement of the debate was still postponed until May 19, and their review of the whole was not completed until March 17, 1648. On the 22d of that month a conference was held with the Lords concerning the changes introduced by the Commons, all of which the Lords assented to except that on " Marriage," and this being made known on June 3 to the Commons, the amended Confession was ordered printed on June 20, 1648. This edition omits the whole of chapters xxx. and xxxi., and also the fourth paragraph of chapter xx. and part of the fourth and the whole of the fifth and sixth paragraphs of chapter xxiv., together with the last clause of the fourth paragraph of chapter xxiii., besides making some unimportant alterations in that paragraph. "Further than this," remarks Mr. Shaw, "the Long Parliament never got in its review of the celebrated Confession."57 It was indeed taken up again by "the Rump" in 1650, and on March 2 agreed to as reported from the Assembly "in all the chapters except the 30th and 31st," and by an Act passed March 5 declared to be "the public Confession of Faith of the Church of England." But, as Mr. Shaw remarks, "needless to say that the enactment was perfectly futile and unregarded." 

Meanwhile, the Confession as presented to Parliament and printed without proofs in January, 1647, was carried at once to Scotland by Baillie, and presented to the Commission of the General Assembly; and doubtless the edition of the same with proofs, printed in the spring, reached Scotland before the meeting of the Assembly. At all events, it was in this form that, having been carefully considered in the Assembly of that year, it was passed by an approving Act, nemine contradicente, at its twenty-third session. This Act was ratified by the Scottish Parliament, February 7, 1649: and after the evil days of 1661, again in 1690. Thus it comes about that the Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland is in all respects the Confession as framed by the Assembly of Divines, and that the real history of the creation of the Confession closes with its labors, and may neglect all that was done in Parliament. 

For the better apprehension of the progress of the various chapters of the Confession through the hands of the Assembly of Divines we append a tabular statement of the work done upon each:58 

Chapter I. - "The sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith" was instructed on Friday, July 4, 1645, to "make report to the Assembly on Monday morning of what is in their hands concerning . . . the Scriptures." Accordingly on Monday, July 7, "Dr. Temple made report of that part of the Confession of Faith touching the Scriptures. It was read, debated." It was debated on July 7, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. It was debated in review June 17, 18, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported January 7,59 1647, and debated January 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15: and reviewed April 6, 1647. It was debated in the House of Commons on the 19th and 28th May, 1647 ("Journals of the House of Commons," v. pp. 177, 189) ; and the respited § 8 again debated and accepted, 17th March, 1648 (ibid., v. p. 502). 

Chapter II. - "The sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith" was instructed on Friday, July 4, 1645, to "make report to the Assembly on Monday morning of what is in their hands concerning God. . . ." Meanwhile on July 16, it was "Ordered - The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon these heads: God and the Holy Trinity. . . ." Nevertheless on July 18, the "report concerning God" was made by Dr. Temple, the chairman of "the sub-Committee." This was debated July 18 and 23, and on the latter date it is noted that a report was "made from the Committee," i.e. obviously the First Great Committee, "of the article of the Trinity." Clearly "the propositions concerning God" were reported in accordance with the order of July 4 from the "sub-Committee for the Confession of Faith," and the "article of the Trinity," in accordance with the disposition of the heads made on July 16, by the First Committee.⁶⁰ The whole "Article concerning 'God and the Holy Trinity"' was reviewed June 18, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported on January 8, 1647, and debated and ordered on the 18th: and reviewed April 6. It was debated in the House of Commons, May 28, 1647 ("Journals, etc.," v. p. 189). 

Chapter III. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon . . . God's decrees, Predestination, Election, etc." On August 29 - "Report from the first Committee concerning God's decrees" - and debate at once began. Debates were held on August 29, September 2, 3, [8], 9, 11, October 3, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, [30?], 31, November 3, 6, 7, 11. It was debated in review June 18, 19, 1646, and an additional debate was held on September 23, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported January 13, 1647, and debated and ordered January 19, 20, 21: they were reviewed April 6. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, May 28, 1647 ("Journals," v. p. 189). 

Chapter IV. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon . . . the works of Creation and Providence." On November 17, there was made a "report from the first Committee concerning Creation." It was debated on November 18, 19, 20, on the latter date the note running: "The Assembly proceeded in the debate of the report of Creation, and finished." It was reviewed June 19, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported on January 15, 1647, and debated and ordered on January 21 and 28; they were reviewed April 6. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, October 2, 1647 ("Journals," v. p. 323). 

Chapter V. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon . . . the works of Creation and Providence." On November 27, there was "report made from the First Committee about Providence." It was debated November 28, December 2 and 4: and reviewed and ordered June 19, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were debated on January 28, 29, and February 1; and they were reviewed April 6, 1647. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, October 2, 1647 ("Journals," v. p. 323). 

Chapter VI. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The first Committee to prepare the Confession of Faith upon . . . Man's Fall": and again, " The second Committee: Sin, and the punishment thereof." How the two topics were got together we are not informed. On November 17, 1645, there was made a "report concerning Fall of Man, Sin, and the Punishment thereof." This was debated November 20, 21. The review was introduced June 19, 1646, and debated and ordered June 22 and 25: and additions were made June 29. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered February 2, 1647: and reviewed April 6. 

Chapter VII. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The second Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . the Covenant of Grace." It was reported before October 9, at which date "the Assembly proceeded in the debate of the report concerning the Covenant[s]."61 It was debated further October 10, 17, November 6, 14, 17, December 23, 1645; and reviewed and ordered June 25, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported January 21, 1647, and debated and ordered February 3 and 5. 

Chapter VIII. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The second Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . Christ our Mediator." On August 29 following, there was "report made by the second Committee of Christ the Mediator." It was debated September 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, and November 14, 1645: and reviewed June 25, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered February 8, 1647, and reviewed April 6 and 7, 1647. 

Chapter IX. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The second Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . Free-will." On December 15 next, "Dr. Gouge made report about Free-will,"62 and on the 17th this report was debated. It was reviewed and ordered June 29, 30, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 2, 1647, and debated and ordered on February 9: they were reviewed April 8. 

Chapter X. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The third Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] Effectual Vocation." On September 9 following, "Mr. Prophet made report of Effectual Calling." It was debated September 17, 25, 29 (30), November 6, 13: and reviewed and ordered June 30, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 3, 1647, and debated and ordered February 9: they were reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XI. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The third Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . Justification." On December 2 next, there was made "report from Mr. Cheynell of Justification." It was debated December 3, (5), 8, 9, 10, (11), 16; and reviewed and ordered July 23, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 4, 1647, and debated and ordered February 10, 11: they were reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XII. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The third Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . Adoption." On November 20 next, "Mr. Prophet brought in a report from the Third Committee about Adoption." It was reviewed and ordered July 23, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 5, 1647: debated and ordered February 11; and reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XIII. - On July 16, 1645, it was "Ordered - The third Committee [to prepare the Confession of Faith upon] . . . Sanctification." On November 20 following, "Mr. Prophet brought in a report from the Third Committee . . . about Sanctification." It was debated November 24: and reviewed and ordered September 16 and 23, 1646. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 5, 1647, and debated February 12: they were reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XIV. - On the 19th August, 1646, it was "Resolved upon the Q., These heads of Faith, Repentance, and Good Works shall be referred to the three Committees in their order to prepare something upon them for the Confession of Faith."63 From August 21 to August 31 inclusive the Assembly sat only as a Grand Committee, lacking a quorum for a formal meeting: during this time the report on Saving Faith was reviewed.⁶⁴ This report was formally called up in the Assembly, September 4. It was debated September 9, and reviewed and ordered September 16. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 12, 1647: they were reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XV. - This chapter also was ordered to be prepared (by the Second Committee) August 19, 1646 (see under chapter xiv. ad init.). On September 9, "Dr. Stanton made Report of the Article concerning Repentance." It was debated September 10, 17, 18, at the last of which sessions it was ordered: on September 25, it was finally passed. The Scriptural proofs were debated February 12, 1647: and reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XVI. - This chapter also was ordered to be prepared (by the Third Committee) August 19, 1646 (see under chapter xiv. ad init.). On September 3, 1646, "Report was made by Dr. Temple 'of Good Works."' It was debated September 9, 18, 21, and ordered: the matter was reoperied September 22, 23; and the perfected chapter passed September 25. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered February 15, 1647: and reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XVII. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the First Committee, Perseverance. . . ." On December 19 following, there was made "Report from the First Committee of Perseverance." It was debated December 29, 1645; and reviewed September 14, 1646, and finally passed September 25. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered February 17, 1647, and reviewed April 8. 

Chapter XVIII. - On February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered . . . To the Second Committee, - Certainty of Salvation. . . ." It was reported from the Second Committee July 24, 1646, and "Ordered - This to be the title - 'Of the Certainty of Salvation.'" It was debated July 24 and 30, and September 14, 15, and assented to under the title, "Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation"; and finally passed September 25. The Scriptural proofs were debated on February 17 and 18, and reviewed April 7, 1647. 

Chapter XIX. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Third Committee, the Law. . . ." On January 1, 1646, "Dr. Wincop made report from the Third Committee about the Law of God." It was debated on January 7, 9, 12, 13, 29, February 2 and 9, 1646; also in the Grand Committee during the interval in the Assembly's meetings August 21-31, and in the Assembly September 1, 2, 3, 4, 15, 17, and finally passed September 25, 1646. A slight alteration was further made on December 3. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered on February 19 and 22, 1647. 

Chapter XX. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the First Committee, . . . Christian Liberty. . . ." It was debated January 29, 1646, February 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, (23), March (4), 10,65 26,66 27,67 30, 31,68 and again September 23, 24, 25, October 1, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 30. The Scriptural proofs were debated and ordered February 25, 26, 1647, March 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12. This chapter was debated in the House of Commons on the 4th February, 1648, and § 4 respited until chapter xxx. was under consideration ("Journals," v. p. 455). 

Chapter XXI. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Third Committee, . . . Religion, Worship. . . ." And on February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered - To the First Committee, in chief heads, - Christian Sabbath. . . ." On March 5, 1646, "Mr. Prophet made report of Religion and Worship," and on March 9, there was made "Report of the Sabbath." "Religion and Worship" was debated March 9,69 10 (when the title was changed to "of Religious Worship"),⁷⁰ 20,71 26,72 when the subject is recorded as finished. The topic "Of the Sabbath" was debated April 6 (when the title was set as "Of the Sabbath day"). On October 12 the two heads reappeared together: "Mr. Tuckney made report 'of Religious Worship and Sabbath-day'"; but it does not appear further that they constituted a single chapter. On October 30, "the Assembly debated the Chapter 'of Religious Worship'; and upon debate it was assented to . . ."; and there were further debates on November 20 and 23, and a slight correction was ordered on December 3. Report of Scriptural proofs for the 21st chapter was made February 18, 1647. The process by which the two chapters were reduced to one is obscure. It was debated in the House of Commons on February 4, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 455). 

Chapter XXII. - On January 8, 1646, there was made a "Report of a Lawful Oath by Mr. Prophet." Mr. Prophet was chairman of the Third Committee, but no such "head" had been recorded among the "heads" distributed to this Committee: perhaps it had emerged into a separate topic in the discussions of the head of "worship" assigned to the Third Committee on November 18, 1645.73 It was debated January 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 1646: and in review, October 12 ("of Lawful Oaths and Vows"), November 3, 6: while on November 23 and December 3 additional adjustments were made. The Scriptural proofs were reported February 18 and reviewed April 12, 1647. It was debated in the House of Commons, 4th February, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 455). 

Chapter XXIII. - On February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered - To the First Committee, in chief heads . . . the Civil Magistrate." It was reported to the Assembly, March 26, 1646, and debated April (23), 24, 27, [and possibly again October (12), 13, 14, 15, 20, although these debates probably belong to chapter xx.]. It was passed November 9, while further adjustments were made on December 3, 4. The Scriptural proofs were debated on March 3, and reviewed April 12, 1647. It was debated in the House of Commons, 4th February, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 456). 

Chapter XXIV. - On February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered - To the First Committee, in chief heads, - . . . Marriage and Divorce." On June 17 next, "Report was made 'of Marriage'" and the report was taken up July 23, and debated August 3 and 4 - apparently under the simple title "Of Marriage." Accordingly on August 10, "Dr. Gouge made Report 'of Divorce,"' which under the title "Of Divorce" was taken up and debated September 10, 11. The two were, however, reported on October 12 as constituting one "head," and were so debated November 9, 10, 11, and so passed. The Scriptural proofs were reported on March 3, 1647. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, February 4, 11, and March 3, 1648 ("Journals," v. pp. 456, 461, 478). 

Chapter XXV. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the First Committee . . . the Church. . . ." When we next hear of it, it is already in process of debate, February 16, 1646: the debate continues February 23, 26, 27, March 2, (3, 4), 5 [6, 9,74 13,75 16, 17, 18, 19, (20), (26), April 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17],⁷⁶ 20, 21, 22.77 It was taken up in review November 13, 1646, and ordered on the 17th. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 3, 1647. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 489). 

Chapter XXVI. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the First Committee . . . the Communion of Saints." On February 17, 1646, there was made a "Report of the Committee of the Communion of Sacraments" (sic): and debate was entered upon on it March 3, and continued March 4, 5. It was resumed for review November 13, 17, 19, 20. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 3, 1647, and reviewed April 7. It was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 490). 

Chapter XXVII. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Second Committee . . . Sacraments. . . ." The report was called for December 2, 1645, and given in December 5. It was debated December 11, 12, 15, 16, 24, 25, and recalled for review November 10, 1646. The Scriptural proofs are not referred to in the Minutes. It was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 490). 

Chapter XXVIII. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Second Committee . . . Baptism. . . ." On December 29 following, "Mr. Calamy made report of Baptism." Debate was held on the chapter, January 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16, (19), 21, 26, 1646; and again September 11; and on November 10 it was reviewed and ordered. No record of the adding of the Scriptural proofs. It was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 490). 

Chapter XXIX. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Second Committee . . . the Lord's Supper." On December 1 following, there was made a "Report from the Second Committee of the Lord's Supper": debate was "proceeded in" December 26: again it was taken up November 11, 12, 13, 1646, and on November 16 ordered. On December 3 some slight adjustments of language were made. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 5, 1647. The chapter was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 491). 

Chapter XXX. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Second Committee, Officers and Censures of the Church. . . ." On January 29, 1646, "Mr. Dury made report from the Second Committee of Church Officers and Censures." It was debated April 23,78 and recalled for review November 13, 23, 26, and at this last date ordered. An alteration was again proposed December 1. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 5, 1647, and voted April 2, 1647 ("Minutes," p. 345, note 1). 

Chapter XXXI. - On November 18, 1645, there was referred "to the Second Committee . . . Councils or Synods. . . ." It was reported to the Assembly, August 4, 1646, and debated August 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20: and again in review November 13 and 26, when it was ordered. On December 3 alterations were debated. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 5, 1647, debated and ordered April 2 (p. 345, note 1), and reviewed April 13. 

Chapter XXXII. - On February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered - . . . To the Second Committee, . . . the State of the Soul after death. To the Third Committee, - The Resurrection. . . ." The former was reported July 24, 1646, and debated July 31. The latter was reported August 4, and debated September 4. On November 26, 1646, "the Assembly debated 'of the State of Man after death': and upon debate it was assented to. . . ." How or when the two were united does not appear. The Scriptural proofs for the chapter were reported March 5, 1647, and voted April 5 (p. 345, note 2.) It was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 491). 

Chapter XXXIII. - On February 23, 1646, it was "Ordered - . . . To the Third Committee, . . . the Last Judgment, Life Eternal." The topic was debated in the Grand Committee during the interval in the meetings of the Assembly, August 21-31, 1646, and was debated in the Assembly September 4, and again on review November 26, when it was ordered. The Scriptural proofs were reported March 5, 1647, and voted April 5 (p. 345, note 2). It was debated in the House of Commons, March 10, 1648 ("Journals," v. p. 491). 

N. B. - In the third distribution of the "heads," made February 23, 1646, the topic "Lies and Equivocations" was assigned to the Second Committee. This topic does not emerge again by report to the Assembly, and there is no such chapter in the completed Confession. Possibly it was found that the material to be dealt with in it was sufficiently covered in chapter xxii., "Of Lawful Oaths and Vows" (see above, chapter xxii., note 73).⁷⁹ 

To this statement we append the chief references to the work of the Assembly on the Confession made in Baillie's "Letters": 

Under date of August 18, 1644 (ii. 1841, p. 220), Baillie recounts the coming of Warriston and the efforts for expedition (see the text above, note 19, p. 82), and under date of August 28 (p. 224) he recounts the progress thus far made in the work of "the Covenanted Uniformitie." Direct mention of the Confession begins in the Publick Letter of October, 1644: "The Confession of Faith is referred to a committee to be put in severall the best hands that are here" (p. 232). Under date of November 21 he writes: "What remains of the Directorie . . . will soon be dispatched. The Catechise is drawn up, and, I think, shall not take up much tyme. I feare the Confession of Faith may stick longer" (p. 242). Under date of December 26: "If the Directorie and Government were once out of our hands, as a few days will put them, then we will fall on our great question of Excommunication, the Catechise, and Confession. There is here matter to hold us long enough, if the wrangling humour which long predomined in many here did continue; but, thanks be to God, that is much abated, and all inclines toward a conclusion. . . . I think we must either passe the Confession to another season, or, if God will help us, the heads of it being distribute among many able hands, it may in a short time be so drawn up, as the debates of it may cost little time" (p. 248). Under date of April 25, 1645: "The Catechise and Confession of Faith are put in the hands of severall committees, and some reports are made to the Assemblie concerning both. We expect not so much debate upon these, as we have had in the Directorie and Government" (p. 266). Under date of May 4, 1645: "Our next work will be the Confession and Catechisme, upon both which we have allreadie made some entrance" (p. 272). In an undated letter printed immediately after the one just quoted from: "We are at a point with the Government; and beginning to take the Confession of Faith and Catechise to our consideration" (p. 275). Under date of July 8, 1645: "Mr. Henderson . . . and Mr. Rutherfoord are gone this day to Epsom waters: so long as anything is to doe here, he cannot be away. I hope the rest of us may ere long be well spared, if once we had through the Catechise and a part of the Confession" (p. 296). Under date of July 8: "Since my last, with our former post, July 1st, we have, thanks be to God, at last finished the whole body of Government. . . . Since, we have entered on the Confession of Faith; as yet I cannot pronounce of the length or shortness of our proceedings therein" (p. 300). In an undated public letter belonging doubtless to August, 1645: "In the Assemblie we have gone through a part of the Catechisme, and a part of the Confession of Faith; but . . . many [hindrances,] when least we expect them, comes in our way . . ." (p. 306). Under date of September 5: "In the Assemblie we are goeing on languidlie with the Confession of Faith and Catechisme" (p. 315). Under date of November 25: "In the Assemblie, we are goeing on with the Confession of Faith. We had long and tough debates about the Decrees of election; yet thanks to God all is gone right according to our mind" (p. 325). "We go on daily in some proposition of the Confession of Faith: till this be ended we will not take in any more of the Catechise" (p. 326). In an undated letter belonging to January 15, 1646: "We are going on in the Assemblie with the Confession, and could, if need were, shortly end it" (p. 336). In an undated letter ascribed by Dr. Laing to about January 20, 1646, he says: "We goe on in the Assemblie with prettie speed now in our Confession of Faith. We have past the heads of Scripture, God, Trinity, Decrees, Providence, Redemption, Covenant, Justification, Sanctification, Free-will, Sacraments in generall, a part of Perseverance, and of the Lord's Supper" (p. 344). Under date of January 31, 1646: "We proceed but slowlie in the Confession of Faith" (p. 348). In February, 1646: "However we wait daylie on the Assemblie, yet our progresse in the Confession of Faith is but slow . . . yet we hope, by God's grace, ere long to end the Confession" (p. 349). Cf. March 17, 1646 (p. 360). Under date of June 26, 1646: "The Parliament's questions have retarded us much: without them we had ended the Confession of Faith" (p. 377). Under date of July 14, 1646: "I have put some of my good friends, leading men in the House of Commons, to move the Assemblie to lay aside our questions" ["some very captious questions of the Parliament, about the clear scripturall warrant for all the punctilioes of the Government," sent in, as Baillie thinks, just "to keep all things from any conclusion" (p. 378)] "for a time, and labour that which is most necessar, and all are crying for, the perfecting of the Confession of Faith and Catechise. If this motion take, I hope we shall end shortly our Confession, for there is but a few articles now to goe through: it will be a very gracious and satisfactorie Confession when yow see it" (p. 379). Under date of August 13, 1646: "In the Assemblie we were like to have stucken many moneths on the questions; and the Independents were in a way to gett all their differences debated over againe. I dealt so with Mr. Rous and Mr. Tate, that they brought us ane order from the House to lay aside the questions till the Confession and Catechise were ended. Many took it for a trick of the Independents and Erastians for our hurt; but I knew it wes nothing less. We are now near an end of our Confession: we stick in the article of Synods, upon the proposition of their coercive power, or their power to excommunicat. If this were over, we apprehend no more long debates on the Confession" (p. 388). Under the date of August 18, 1646: "In the Assemblie we are returned to the Confession of Faith, and are drawing towards the end of it" (p. 390). Under date of September 22, 1646: "We have ended the Confession of Faith for the matter, and have perfyted the most half of it, nyneteen chapters; the other seventeen, I hope, in ten or twelve days will be perfyted, and so all be sent up to the Houses. It will be, I hope, a very sweet and orthodoxe peice, much better than any Confession yet extant, if the House of Commons mangle it not to us" (p. 397). Under date of October 2, 1646: "The Assemblie obleidged themselves by promise to sitt before and after noon for some tyme; but now, thinking they have satisfied the Houses, by sending up the half of the Confession, the first nineteen heads, they are relapsed into their former negligence. So we will be able few days in a week to make ane Assemblie; for if there be ane fewer than forty, it is no meeting; and though the rest of the heads be also past, yet, in the review, the alteration of words, and the methodizeing, takes up so much time, that we know not when we shall end. Besides that we have some additionalls, especially one proposition, about libertie of conscience, wherein the Independents offer to keep us long and tough debates; for long agoe they have laid downe in this their maske, and pleads for a libertie weell near universall" (pp. 400, 401). Under date of October 13, 1646: "Our Assemblie for one twenty dayes posted hard; bot since hes gotten into its old pace. The first halfe, and more, of the Confession we sent up to the House; the end of these who called for it, wes the shuffling out the Ordinance against Errors; yet our friends hes carried to goe on with that; but others hes carried the putting of Scriptures to the margin of the Confession, which may prove a very long business, if not dexterouslie managed. It will yet be a fortnight before the other halfe of it be ready; for sundry necessar but scabrous propositions were added in the review" (p. 403). Under date of October 27, 1646: " . . . before the Assemblie end the Confession; for that long I purpose to stay, though my permission to goe were come" (p. 406). Under date of December 1, 1646: "With much adoe we have gone through, at last, the rest of our Confession: the first part I sent, to yow three only, in Mr. David's letter, long agoe; the whole will goe up to the House one of these dayes, and so to the presse. It's generally taken here for a very gracious and brave peece of worke" (p. 411). About Christmas, 1646: "Our Assemblie, with much adoe, at last have wrestled through the whole Confession, and all is now printed. The House of Commons requires to put Scripture to it before they take it to consideration; and what time that will take up, who knows?" (p. 415). Under date of January 26, 1647: "The third point [of Uniformity], the Confession of Faith, I brought it with me [to Scotland], now in print, as it wes offered to the Houses by the Assemblie, without considerable dissent of any. It's much cryed up by all, even many of our greatest opposites, as the best Confession yet extant; it's expected the Houses shall pass it, as they did the Directorie, without much debate. Howbeit the retarding partie hes put the Assemblie to add Scriptures to it, which they omitted only to eschew the offence of the House, whose practice hitherto hes been, to enact nothing of religion on divine right or scripturall grounds, but upon their owne authoritie alone. This innovation of our opposites may weell cost the Assemblie some time, who cannot doe the most easie things with any expedition; but it will be for the advantage and strength of the work" (iii. p. 2). Cf. June 2, 1647 (pp. 5, 6). Speech in the General Assembly at Edinburgh, August 6, 1647: "Right Honourable and Reverend, yow remember, that all your ecclesiastick desyres from your brethren of England, that all the commissions and instructions laid upon us your servants, were only for the obtaining of Uniformitie in four particulars, - in the Worship of God, in the Government of the Church, in a Confession of Faith, and Catechisme. . . . In your third desyre, the Lord made our successe no less prosperous; a large Confession of Faith is perfyted with farr greater unanimitie than any living could have hoped for, among so many learned divines, in so distempered a place and distracted a season. I am confident, if the judgment of many my wiser do not deceave, this piece of work is so fine and excellent, that whenever yow shall be pleased to look upon it, the sight of it shall draw from the most censorius eye, a good acceptation" (p. 11; cf. p. 12). Under date of September 1, 1647, giving account of the Scotch General Assembly: "We agreed . . . after much debate in the Committee, to the Confession of Faith" (p. 20). 

A word in conclusion as to the title of the volume thus prepared is perhaps not out of place. The Assembly of Divines quite constantly speak of it in their Minutes, from the beginning, as "a Confession of Faith," or, after it was begun, "the Confession of Faith." The term was doubtless derived from the Solemn League and Covenant, which enumerates, among the items in which uniformity should be sought between the two nations, "Confession of Faith." Meanwhile, however, the work of its preparation was prosecuted without formally setting upon a title for the completed book. On the 3d of September, 1646, as it was approaching completion, it was "Ordered - The Committee for the perfecting of the Confession of Faith do prepare a title for it"; and on September 24 this duty was apparently laid specifically on Dr. Burgess. On September 25 the report upon the title came in, "and it was Ordered - This to be the title: 'To the Honble the House of Commons assembled in Parliament, The humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines, now by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster, concerning part of a Confession of Faith."' To the completed Confession also a like title was assigned: and it was under this title that the Confession was printed in the first instance. The title thus suggested, however, did not meet with the approval of the House of Commons. It seemed to it, as Rushworth tells us,⁸⁰ that nothing was practically a Confession which did not take the form of "I confess" at the beginning of each section, and, moreover, that it were well to keep up the usage established by the Thirty-nine Articles; and so they altered the title to "Articles of Faith agreed upon by both Houses of Parliament," or rather to "Articles of Christian religion approved and passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines" - under which latter title they published the Confession with the slight alterations they had made in it, in the summer of 1648.81 The adoption of the earlier title by the Church of Scotland in its previous action, together with the failure of the whole movement in England, has secured that the work has lived under the simple title of "The Confession of Faith": and it is as such that it is known among all the Churches which still adhere to it. 

II. THE FORMULATION OF THE THIRD CHAPTER 

The third chapter of the Confession of Faith, having been prepared in first draft by the Committee appointed for that service (May 12, 1645), passed through the hands of the First Great Committee (July 16, 1645) to the Assembly. It was reported from this Committee on August 29, 1645 (Friday), and the Assembly at once entered into debate upon it. Debate is mentioned as being held upon it August 29, September 2, 3, [8], 9, 11, October 3, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, [30], 31, November 3, 6, 7, 11. In the meantime portions of the chapter were twice, at least, (September 3 and November 6) recommitted - doubtless (for such seems to have been the Assembly's custom) to special Committees: and on five occasions (September [8], 9, 11, October 3, 17, 21) the original Committee brought in additional reports. In the subsequent reviewing of the Confession as passed, the third chapter was debated again on Thursday and Friday, June 18, 19, 1646, before it was finally ordered. It appears, further, that Mr. Whitaker, a member of the Committee of Review, appointed December 8, 1645, but acting apparently on his own behalf alone on this occasion, moved an additional alteration in the chapter on September 23, 1646, and this naturally caused some further debate. The text was now, however, finally passed from. The proof-texts for the chapter were debated on January [13], 19, 20, 21, 1647, and after having been considered by the reviewing Committee appointed March 5, 1647, were finally passed on by the Assembly, April 6, 1647. Thus the text of the third chapter occupied the attention of the Assembly some part of at least twenty separate days, besides all the time given to it in the various Committees through whose hands it or parts of it passed. The proof-texts similarly occupied the Assembly on some parts of at least four days in addition to the care given to them in Committee. It would not be excessive to say, in a word, that a good portion of a month's public labor was given to this chapter by the Assembly; and certainly much more than this was expended on it by its Committees. 

The debates upon the chapter which are signalized in the Minutes seem to have been especially careful and persistent:82 and they are perhaps unusually fully reported. We are not able to trace them in full, to be sure, or even to ascertain all the points on which they turned. But it is presumable that those mentioned explicitly were of more importance than those passed over without so much as an indication of the points on which they turned; and doubtless those recorded in some detail were the most important of all. If we may assume so much, we are not without some hint as to the matters about which most interest was felt, and the phraseology of which was framed most carefully and in the fullest light. As is usual in such cases, the real work of creating the chapter was of course done in Committee; and the chapter as finally passed by the Assembly is obviously substantially what in the first instance was reported by the Committee. The notes of debate are sufficient to certify us of that natural and almost inevitable fact. But they also certify us that it was not passed by the Assembly without the most careful scrutiny or without many adjustments and alterations, so that as passed it represents clearly the deliberate and reasoned judgment of the Assembly as a whole. 

This will at once be made evident by merely noting the special points on which debate is signalized. They concern the title of the chapter (August 29); the phrasing of the first section in no less than six separate particulars (August 29); the whole form of statement of the latter half of the second section (September 3 and 11); the statement of reprobation in section three (November 3, 1645, and September 23, 1646); the whole fabric and especially the retention of a particular phrase of the fifth section (October 3 and 17, 1645); the entire structure of the sixth section (October 20, 21), and, above all, the assertion of its last clause (October 22, 23, 24, 30, 31); the mode of statement of section seven (November 6, 7, 11); and at least the phraseology of section eight (June 18, 1646). It must be borne in mind that this is but a partial list of the topics debated; the precise topic debated is not always mentioned when the fact of a debate on chapter iii. is, nevertheless, recorded; and there is no reason to believe that when it is mentioned it is always done with completeness. The record is enough, however, to assure us that the debate was both extremely searching and very comprehensive. This chapter did not leave the Assembly's hands, we may feel sure, without having been conformed in every particular to the Assembly's belief and even taste. 

This will become even more apparent if we will attend to the details debated, so far as the record enables us to follow them. It is quite clear that the report brought in by the Committee, while framed with independence and special theological knowledge and skill, was yet based upon the Irish Articles, and in places followed them very closely - though elsewhere breaking away from them and striking out a new path. The knowledge of this fact will enable us now and again to reconstruct the form of the language in the original report, and so to follow the lines of the debate somewhat more closely than would otherwise be possible from the meager hints of the record. 

1. For example, when we are told in the Minutes of August 29, 1645, that debate on this chapter was first joined "upon the title," we shall be wise to remind ourselves that the title of the corresponding Article in the Irish Articles ran: "Of God's Eternal Decree and Predestination"; and that it is therefore extremely likely that it was reported to the Assembly in some such form. We note accordingly with interest that in the distribution of the heads of the Confession to the three great Committees which was made on July 16, this head reads "God's decrees, Predestination, Election, etc." It is altogether likely, therefore, that when this chapter came to the Assembly it bore a title somewhat like that of the Irish Articles, "Of God's Eternal Decree and Predestination," and that the Assembly curtailed this to the simpler "Of God's Eternal Decree"; although, of course, it is possible, on the other hand, that it was the simpler title that it bore, and what happened in the Assembly was that it was queried whether the longer title of the earlier Articles were not better restored. This Irish title was not exactly tautological; for in the prevailing speech of the time the term "Predestination" was commonly limited to the soteriological decree, so that in the Irish title the collocation really is equivalent to "of God's general and special decree," or "of God's cosmical and soteriological decree." Even the threefold enumeration made in the designation of the topic in the act distributing the heads of the Confession to the Committees, would not be incapable of defense on the ground of progressive advance from the more general to the more specific. It was not uncustomary at the time, however, to look upon the word "Predestination" as so much a synonym of "Election," that it embodied all its precious connotations - a fact which underlies the discrimination between the terms "predestinate" and "foreordain" as used in the third and fourth sections, which otherwise would be puzzling. However accordant with current usage it was, it might well have seemed, therefore, desirable to avoid the formal and unexplained treatment of Predestination as a more inclusive word than Election. Even the Irish heading might seem, indeed, to some, although not essentially tautological, yet to bear so nearly the formal appearance of tautology as to be offensive to the severer taste represented in the Assembly. The choice of the brief and simple "Of God's Eternal Decree" surely seems, in any event, to do the Assembly credit: it is as terse and simple as all the rest of its work and may be looked upon as a fair indication of its temper and taste alike. 

We might be tempted to suppose that in the debate on the title of the chapter another point would be raised - whether the singular or plural form should be used - "Of God's Eternal Decree," or "Of God's Eternal Decrees."83 On October 20, when the sixth section of the chapter was under discussion, a question involved in this difference was under debate, and some difference of opinion on the matter was developed. There is no hint, however, that the question was raised when the title of the chapter was under discussion; and the very occurrence and especially the nature of the subsequent debate render it difficult to suppose that the same subject had already been threshed out so short a while before. It seems altogether likely that the debate on the title was confined, therefore, to its compass, and that the form "Of God's Eternal Decree" was simply adopted, without question raised, from the Irish Articles. How little importance was attached to the difference between the singular and plural forms is evident not only from the subsequent debate, in which indifference to it is manifested by the strongest Calvinists in the body and it is generally treated as a question of language rather than of things; but also from the circumstance that though the singular form is consistently maintained in the Confession, the plural is equally consistently maintained in the Catechisms, both Larger and Shorter."84 

2. Our knowledge that the Irish Articles underlay the draft sent in to the Assembly is of yet more aid to us in understanding the debates that are noted as having taken place on the first section of the chapter (August 29, 1645). These are hinted at in the Minutes as follows: "Debate about the word 'counsel,' about those words 'most holy wise,' and about those words 'his own.' Debate about that word 'time,' about the word 'should.' Debate about the transposing." Not all these words occur in the section as passed: but they are explicable from the Irish Articles. We need only to assume that the first half of the section as at first reported was more similar to the Irish Articles than it became in the course of the debate. It probably ran as follows: "God from all eternity did, by the most holy and wise counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever in time should come to pass." In the process of the debate the word "counsel" was scrutinized and retained; the adjectives "holy" and "wise" were transposed; "His own" was scrutinized and retained; and the last clause after careful scrutiny of its phraseology was exchanged to the simpler "whatsoever comes to pass." Thus the form that was adopted was arrived at: "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass." That the changes thus made were improvements we can scarcely doubt: the order "wise and holy" is the order of nature as well as climax, in its progress from the intellectual to the moral perfections; while the new concluding clause is not only simpler and free from apparent but fictitious limitation, but avoids raising puzzling questions as to what are to be classed as pre- or extra-temporal and what as temporal acts.⁸⁵ 

What is intended by " the transposing," debate on which is noted, we have no means of confidently determining. It may concern simply the transposition of the adjectives " wise " and " holy," which we have already referred to. It may, on the other hand, concern some other transposition of words as originally reported of which we have no knowledge - or indeed some transposition of the words as given us which was not carried out. We note that the concluding words " but rather established " stand in the Irish Articles " but established rather ": possibly the reference is to this. It seems most probable, however, that it refers to a transposition to a new section of the clause excluding dependence of the decree on the Divine foresight, to the likelihood of which we shall recur when speaking of the following section - which, as we shall see, was originally a part of this section. 

3. The second section of the Confession has nothing parallel to it in the Irish Articles, which reserve the guarding of the independence of God's decree until they are dealing with specific or soteriological predestination (§ 14). Without this aid we find ourselves naturally in difficulties as we essay to reconstruct its original form. The chief notes in the Minutes concerning it are found in the entries for September 3 and September 11. The former reads: "Report from the first Committee about adding the word 'absolutely' - debated. Absolutely without any [not being moved thereunto by any]⁸⁶ foresight of anything without himself as a condition moving him thereunto. Ordered - This recommitted." The latter reads: "Report from the morning Committee that they think the former vote of the Assembly sufficient to print? the conditional decree." 

It is at least evident from these notes that the framing of this section cost the Assembly some trouble. The new report from the digesting Committee as to adding the word "absolutely" is proof that there had already been puzzled discussion of the section. The recommitment of the matter, doubtless (as was the wont of the Assembly) to a special Committee, exhibits its dissatisfaction with its work so far. Probably between September 3 and September 11 the matter had again been before the Assembly, and the adjustment made which gives us our present section: for the report of September 11 appears to have come from a Committee meeting that morning, and seems to close the matter by recommending the treatment of a so-called "conditional decree," as it then stood, for passage for printing. Certainly the adjustment that was made was a good deal of a triumph: we do not indeed know the wording of the whole section as originally reported, or at any former stage of the debate - but the phrasing as ultimately agreed on is obviously a much finer piece of work than anything could have been of which the phraseology of the note of September 3 was a part. Is it too much to conjecture that this clause, for which no appropriate place can be found in section 2 as passed, was originally only a part of the first section - coming, perhaps, in between the first and second clauses of that section? In that case the sentence would have read: "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, without any foresight of anything without Himself as a condition moving Him thereunto: yet so as thereby, etc." The stages of procedure would, in that case, be as follows: First, it was sought to strengthen the statement by inserting "absolutely" before "without." Then it was queried whether the "any" might not be better omitted. Then a new phraseology was tried: instead of "absolutely without foresight of anything," it was proposed to read "not being moved thereunto by any foresight of anything." It was finally seen that the trouble lay deeper than any adjustment of mere phraseology could cure; that the proposed addition to the Irish statement at this point hopelessly overweighted the sentence. The knot was then happily cut by relieving the sentence of the addition altogether and erecting a new section, which then it was comparatively easy to phrase happily. And, as we have already hinted, perhaps it is this transposition that was debated, but not determined, on August 29. 

It is so far in favor of this general supposition that it is altogether likely that an attempt would first be made to include the whole doctrine of the general or cosmical decree in one section, as had been done in the Irish Articles; and the relieving of the heavy sentence which thence resulted would be apt to be an afterthought. And it seems to be brought, in this general sense at least, out of the region of conjecture into that of ascertained fact by a note in the Minutes of September 8: "Dr. Gouge offered a report of an addition, though the Committee was not a full number, but 7. He read it; but the Assembly thought not fit to meddle with it, because they were not a Committee. The addition was, without respect to anything foreseen, to be added after freely and unchangeably." These words occur in the first section, which, accordingly, it was proposed to read thus: "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, without respect to anything foreseen, ordain whatsoever comes to pass." The proposal brought by Mr. Gouge is evidently a substitute for the heavy clause that was debated and recommitted on September 3, and accordingly that clause too was a part of the first section. 

The main result, in any event, of our scrutiny of the section is to advertise to us the importance which was attached by the Assembly to the proper guarding of the doctrine of the decree. This they sought to accomplish by adding in some fit way to the statement of the Irish Articles a clause explicitly affirming the independence of the decree - or, as has actually resulted in the event, fully setting forth the relation of the decree to the divine knowledge. 

4. So far as the Minutes record, there was very little debate on sections 3 and 4, which, again, together represent a single section in the Irish Articles (§ 12). We read indeed in the notes for October 3: "Report additional to the article of Predestination. Debate about it." It is possible that this may refer to section 3, in which the term "predestinated" occurs for the first time, and in which the thing, as currently defined (of specific or soteriological predestination), for the first time emerges. On the other hand, however, the term may be used in a still narrower sense and the reference be to section 5, where the doctrine of election is discussed in its details. And it is almost equally possible that it is used in its broadest sense and refers to the chapter as a whole. The sequence of notices runs as follows: August 29, 1645, "Debate on the report of . . . God's decree"; September 2, "proceed in the debate of the report of decrees"; September 9, "report concerning God's decree"; September 11, "proceed in the debate about the decree"; October 3, "report additional to the article of Predestination"; October 17, "debate upon the report . . . concerning Predestination" [when § 5 was debated]; November 6, "the paragraph concerning Reprobation referred to the Committee, to make report to-morrow morning"; November 7, "Report made . . . about Reprobation"; November 11, "Debate the report of Reprobation" [when § 7 was debated]. The appearance is rather strong that under the term "Predestination" the portion of the chapter that treats of soteriological predestination, or more particularly §§ 3-6, was intended. 

There can be little doubt that the entry in the Minutes of November 3, "Debate about leaving out those words, 'foreordained to everlasting death,"' refers to section 3: though it is, of course, not absolutely impossible (though most unlikely) that coming in at this late point in the debate, it may refer to a phrase originally in section 7, and omitted as the result of this debate. The likelihood of its reference to section 3 is moreover distinctly increased by an entry at a much later date - after the Confession, in fact, had been completed, and was ready to be sent up to Parliament. In the Minutes for September 23, 1646, we read: "Mr. Whitakers moved an alteration in these words in the chapt[er] of Predestination, viz., 'and some ordained to everlasting death.'87 It was debated, and upon debate it was Resolved upon the Q., The words shall stand without alteration. Mr. Whitakers enters his dissent." It can scarcely be doubted that the words in which Mr. Whitaker desired some alteration are the closing words of section 3; and the suggestion will perhaps present itself that he was only persisting at this final opportunity in pressing the desire of those who wished these words omitted in the earlier debate (November 3, 1645). It certainly is not said that Mr. Whitaker wished the words omitted, but only that "he moved an alteration in these words" - and what alteration he desired we have no means of ascertaining. And it would appear that he met with little or no support for his proposition. The Assembly not only rejected his motion, but he alone entered dissent. But it is at least not impossible that he was here only carrying to its latest stage the debate of November 3 for the omission of these words. 

In that case, we should learn that there were some in the Assembly - or perhaps only one, as Mr. Whitaker is alone in his dissent on September 23, 1646, and may have been equally alone in the contention of November 3, 1645 - who desired that the doctrine of reprobation should not be so sharply stated in section 3. What their - or his - reasons for so desiring were, we do not know.⁸⁸ But we should equally learn that the Assembly was not only decided, but we may say unusually decided in its determination to have the doctrine of reprobation clearly asserted in this its appropriate place in the Confession. We must not fail to observe that the matter was pressed to a vote, to the sharpest of decisions, and to a recorded dissent: and we must not fail to note the significance of this. Says Dr. Mitchell:89 "So far as appears from the minutes, the various articles of the Confession were passed by the Assembly all but unanimously. On some occasions, when dissent was indicated even by one or two of the members, the wording of the article they objected to was so modified as to satisfy them. The main occasions on which this policy was not followed were on 4th September 1645, with regard to Dr. Burgess's dissent from the resolution of the Assembly to leave out the word 'Blessed,' retained both in the English and Irish Articles, before the name of the Virgin mother of our Lord; on 23d September 1646, with regard to Mr. Whitaker's dissent from the words 'foreordained to everlasting death'; and on 21st October 1646, with regard to the dissent of several of the Independents from the insertion in a Confession of Faith of certain parts of § 3, chap. xxiii." We must esteem the clear and firm statement of the doctrine of foreordination to death, therefore, a matter which the Assembly deemed of the highest importance. When it was proposed to omit the words (November 3, 1645) the proposition was defeated: and when, at the eleventh hour, Mr. Whitaker returned to the charge and proposed at least some alteration in the words, it was resolved shortly, "The words shall stand without alteration," and Mr. Whitaker was left to enter his dissent. It is very clear that the Assembly by a very large majority - doubtless, in this case too, practically unanimously - deemed that important concerns were guarded by these words. 

It is noteworthy that no debates and no dissents are noted on section 4. 

5. Only the slightest hint of debate on section 5 is preserved. We have already observed the possibility, but hardly probability, of the notice of debate on "the article of Predestination" mentioned on October 3, 1645, referring to the fifth section. If that be set aside we have only the entry of October 17: "Report from the first Committee concerning Predestination. . . . Debate upon the report of the first Committee concerning Predestination. Debate about those words, 'unto everlasting glory,' whether they be not superfluous." The words were retained - to the enrichment of the statement. But the raising of the question of their superfluity is another indication of the severe terseness of the style given by the Assembly to this chapter - in contrast with the greater elaborateness, if not exactly elaboration, of the language of the underlying Irish Articles. 

6. It was about the sixth section, however - the section in which is concentrated the ordo salutis of the Westminster Divines - that debate most gathered. From before October 20 to October 31 the Assembly was occupied with this great statement, and every element of it was subjected to the closest scrutiny. Especially did the discussion expand around the three points of the unity of the decree and the relation respectively of the decrees concerning the fall and redemption to the decree of election. We do not know precisely when debate on this section was first begun. The first notice of it (October 20) runs already: "Proceed in the debate about permission of man's fall; about 'the same decree."' Nor can we reconstruct in its entirety the original form of the section. It seems to have begun somewhat thus: "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, to bring this to pass, ordained by the same decree to permit man to fall, etc."; and the debate first turned on the phrase "the same decree," and then on the phrase "to bring this to pass." To meet the objection to the former phrase, for which he would not contend - for, said he, "when that word is left out, is it not a truth, and so every one may enjoy his own sense" - Mr. Gillespie proposed that the statement should be modified so as to read: "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He for the same end ordained to permit man to fall." This involved, however, the retention, in other language, of the idea involved in the phrase "to bring this to pass," which the Assembly was not disposed to insist on. A formula offered by Mr. Reynolds on October 21 accordingly found more favor. It runs as follows: "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He by the same eternal and most free purpose of His will fore-ordained all the means thereunto, which He in His counsel is pleased to appoint for the executing of that decree; wherefore they who are endowed with so excellent a benefit, being fallen in Adam, are called in according to God's purpose." This formula preserves the mention of the fall of Adam, as had just been ordered, but also the phrase "the same decree," which had been debated but the omission of which was not yet determined fully on, and meets by a happy turn the determination that the words "to bring this to pass" should not stand. Whether, however, this formula was simply (as we have presumed) the original formula, modified to meet these orderings, or an entirely new one wrought out by Mr. Reynolds himself, we have no sure means of determining. Immediately after the entry, "Mr. Reynolds offered something," with the text as given above, it is added, "Mr. Chambers offered something" - but no hint is given of what it was, possibly because the differing reception given to the propositions of the two advertised the scribe that it was Mr. Reynolds' and not Mr. Chambers' offering that would form the basis of subsequent debate. In any event, Mr. Reynolds' paper appears to register the results of the debate so far, and to lay the basis for further advance. 

So far, we may say then, two things had been settled about this section: it should mention the fall of Adam and it should not insist on emphasizing the unity of the divine decree. In both matters the decision had been arrived at in the interest of what we may call, perhaps, comprehension - though this must be understood, of course, as a generic Calvinistic and not universalistic Christian comprehension. The Assembly had been led in this policy by the strictest Calvinists in the body. The sharp assertion of the sameness of the decree ordaining both the end and the means (for it was on this point of the unity of the decree alone that the debate turned) was advocated by Mr. Seaman, who seems to be most concerned about the possible misapprehension of the omission; by Mr. Whitaker, who takes the high ground that it is true, and therefore would best be expressed - an indication, by the way, of the sound Calvinism of the man who later was so strenuous to have some alteration (we know not what, but surely from this we can infer no anti-Calvinistic one) made in the last words of the third section; and by Mr. Palmer, who fears to be brought into a worse snare by leaving it out than could arise from inserting it. Mr. Seaman urged that "if those words 'in the same decree' be left out, will involve us in a great debate"; that "all the odious doctrine of Arminians is from their distinguishing of the decrees, but our divines say they are one and the same decree"; that the censure the Remonstrants lay under for making two decrees concerning election would lie equally against making two decrees of the end and means. Mr. Whitaker simply urged that with reference to time all decrees are "simul and semel: in eterno there is not prius and posterius"; that though the conceptions of the Divines were very various about the decrees, there was no reason why the truth should not be frankly asserted. The other side was taken by men like Rutherford, Gillespie, Gouge, Reynolds, and Calamy. They did not deny the truth meant to be expressed in the phrase "the same decree," but rather unanimously affirmed it. But the keynote of their discussion was expressed by Gillespie when he said, "When that word is left out, is it not a truth, and so every one may enjoy his own sense," and by Reynolds when he remarked, "Let not us put in disputes and scholastical things into a Confession of Faith." Obviously it was generic Calvinism they were intent on asserting and not any particular variety of it. And this is given point to by another incident of the debate. Besides the mere phrase "the same decree," its sameness was asserted in the original draft by the concatenation of the clauses. We do not know precisely how its language ran at first; but apparently it was, as we have seen, something like this: "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, to bring this to pass, ordained by the same decree to permit man to fall" - and so on enumerating the several steps in the ordo decretorum. "I question," remarked Mr. Calamy, "that 'to bring this to pass'; we assert massa pura in this. . . . I desire that nothing may be put in one way or other; it makes the fall of man to be medium executionis decreti." It was in the same sense that Rutherford wished to amend by saying simply "God also hath decreed." "It is very probable but one decree," he added, "but whether fit to express it in a Confession of Faith. . . ." A remark of Gillespie's would seem to show that he was not quite willing to yield in this matter; let there be no dispute indeed about a word, he seems to say - but the matter involved is another thing: "Say, 'For the same end God hath ordained to permit man to fall.' . . . This shows that in ordine naturce God ordaining man to glory goes before His ordaining to permit man to fall." The appearance is that Gillespie desired the Confession to be committed not indeed to the supralapsarian position - for that occupies narrower ground than his words need to imply - but to the inclusion of the fall of Adam explicitly in the means to glorification. 

Counsels of moderation thus prevailing as the result of this debate of Monday (October 20), the Assembly listened on Tuesday morning (October 21) to the "report made from the first Committee sitting before the Assembly"; and resolved "that mention be made of man's fall," and "that those words 'to bring this to pass' shall not stand." This is to say, it resolved to include man's fall within the decree of God, but not to assert it to be means to the end of glorification. It was then that Mr. Reynolds' statement as already quoted was brought before them and the debate commenced afresh from this new beginning. By what process this statement was ultimately reduced to the exquisite formula that was finally passed we are not informed. Considerable adjustment was needed. The first sentence required the omission not only of the word "same," but also of its whole concluding clause: "which He in His counsel is pleased to appoint for the executing of that decree" - a redundancy which must have been intolerable to this tersely speaking Assembly. Similarly, while the structure of the second section is adopted, and, of course, the happy phrase - cutting all knots - "being fallen in Adam," the language is wholly recast in the interests of clear and succinct statement: thus the long clause (derived from the Thirty-nine Articles) "who are endowed with so excellent a benefit" gives way to the simple "who are elected"; and the Scriptural "called according to God's purpose" to the more technical "effectually called," with an additional definition of that unto which they are called and by what divine agency. Thence the statement proceeds through the items of the ordo salutis. So far as we can trace it, this is the history of the formulation of this beautiful section - wise in its insertions and omissions alike. 

There remains, however, a very important clause of the section about which apparently the keenest and certainly the most fully reported of all the debates on this chapter was held - the final sentence of the section, which affirms: "Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only." The discussion of this statement was formally ordered at the close of the session on Tuesday, October 21, 1645: "Ordered - To debate the busin[ess] about Redemption of the elect only by Christ to-morrow morning." The debate, begun Wednesday morning, October 22, and continued at least to October 31, constitutes one of the most notable debates reported in the Minutes, and certifies us that the closing sentence of the sixth section is one of the most deliberate findings of the Assembly. 

The protagonist in the debate was Mr. Calamy, who opened it with the enunciation of what is known as the "Hypothetical Universalistic" schema - a well-guarded expression of this theory, certainly, and even, perhaps, a somewhat modified expression of it, but also a clearly-cut and fully developed enunciation of universal redemption with limited application. "I am far from universal redemption in the Arminian sense," he said; "but that that I hold is in the sense of our divines in the Synod of Dort, that Christ did pay a price for all, - absolute intention for the elect, conditional intention for the reprobate in case they do believe, - that all men should be salvabiles, non obstante lapsu Adami . . . that Jesus Christ did not only die sufficiently for all, but God did intend, in giving of Christ, and Christ in giving Himself, did intend to put all men in a state of salvation in case they do believe." Again, "The Arminians hold that Christ did pay a price for this intention only, that all men should be in an equal state of salvation. They say Christ did not purchase any impetration. . . . This universality of R[edemption]" - that is, of course, that which he, in opposition to this Arminian construction, advocates - "doth neither intrude upon either doctrine of special election or special grace." Still again: "In the point of election, I am for special election; and for reprobation, I am for massa corrupta. . . . Those to whom He . . . by virtue of Christ's death, there is ea administratio of grace to the reprobate, that they do wilfully damn themselves." If we were to take these statements just as they stand, we should probably be obliged to say that Calamy's position was characterized by the following points: 1. It denied the Arminian doctrine of a universal redemption for all men alike, without exception, on condition of faith, which faith is to be man's own act by virtue of powers renewed through a universal gift of sufficient grace. 2. It denied equally the Amyraldian doctrine of a universal redemption for all men alike, without exception, on condition of faith, which faith, however, is the product of special grace given to the elect alone, so that only the elect can fulfil the condition. 3. It affirmed a double intention on Christ's part in His work of redemption - declaring that He died absolutely for the elect and conditionally for the reprobate. Theologically his position, which has its closest affinities with the declarations of the English Divines at Dort, was an improvement upon the Amyraldian; but logically it was open, perhaps, to all the objections which were fatal to it as well as to others arising from its own lack of consistency. 

Both sets of objections were made to tell upon it in the debate. For example, the fundamental objection to all schemes of conditional redemption, that it is inapplicable to more than a moiety of the human race, was early pressed upon him with telling effect. Mr. Palmer asked subtly, "I desire to know whether he will understand it de omni homine," i.e. whether Christ died for every man - of all sorts and in all conditions - only conditionally on the exercise of faith. Mr. Calamy must have felt hard pressed indeed when he answered simply, "De adultis." Where, then, shall those that die in infancy appear? On the other hand, Mr. Reynolds struck a deadly blow at the peculiar form which Mr. Calamy had given his doctrine when he remarked that to assert that Christ, besides dying absolutely for the elect, died also conditionally for the reprobate - in case they do believe - is to say He died for them" upon a condition that they cannot perform, and God never intends to give them." It cannot seem strange to us, therefore, that Mr. Calamy was not able to preserve in the debate his somewhat artificial middle position, and is found arguing roundly for universal redemption of all and several, without distinction, at least in the Amyraldian sense. 

To Calamy's aid in the debate there came Messrs. Seaman, Marshall, and Vines: while he was opposed by Palmer, Reynolds, Gillespie, Rutherford, Wilkinson, Burgess, Lightfoot, Price, Goodwin, and Harris. In the early part of the first day the debate turned on the ordo decretorum. Gillespie held it firmly to this broader question, and from that point of view - that "there is a concatenation of the death of Christ with the decrees" - asked significantly "a parte post what follows upon that conditional redemption." On the authority of the Dordrechtan Divines, to whom Calamy had appealed, Reynolds explained that "the Synod intended no more than to declare the sufficiency of the death of Christ; it is pretium in se, of sufficient value to all, - nay, ten thousand worlds," and that "to be salvable is a benefit, and therefore belongs only to them that have interest in Christ." Later in the day the debate turned rather on the Scriptural argument, and Calamy rested his case on the two texts, John iii. 16 and Mark xvi. 15. From the former he argued that it was on account of the love of God for the world at large, not for the elect only, that Christ came - as the "whosoever believeth" sufficiently indicates. From the latter he argued that a universal redemption is requisite to give verity to the universal offer. Those who essayed to answer him exhibit minor differences, especially in the detailed exegesis of John iii. 16. Gillespie and Rutherford understand that when it is said God so loved the world, it is the elect scattered everywhere in the world that are intended; Lightfoot and Harris understand that "the world" in contra-distinction from the Jews is meant; and Price very wisely remarks that even if mankind at large be meant it does not at all follow that Christ died equally and alike for every individual - there is no inconsequence in saying that it was because of His love for the world that He gave His very life for the multitudes He chose out of this world to save. However the term "the world" be taken, therefore, the result of the debate showed that no conclusion could be drawn from this text to the universality of redemption. As to Mark xvi. 15, Rutherford pointed out at once that the argument that the universality of the offer of the Gospel necessarily inferred precedent universality of redemption as its ground was obviously unsound inasmuch as it proved too much - the same argument is equally applicable to, say, justification. The promise of justification is as much included in the Gospel as the promise of redemption: shall we say, then, that we cannot preach the Gospel to all except on the supposition of a precedent universal justification? To this Mr. Seaman could reply only by repeating the shibboleth that what Christ did was to make all men only salvable, as Adam had made all men damnable - which one cannot believe was much of an aid to the cause he was advocating, as it involved a seriously low view of the effect of Adam's fall as well as of Christ's redemption: surely there were few in the Assembly who would assent to the proposition that the whole effect of Adam's sin was to render men liable to be condemned, instead of bringing them under actual condemnation, and the whole effect of Christ's work was to render men capable of salvation, instead of actually saving them. Gillespie, however, as was usual with that brilliant young man, put his finger here, too, on the technical flaw in Calamy's reasoning by insisting on the distinction between the voluntas decreti and voluntas mandati: "The command doth not hold out God's intentions; otherwise God's command to Abraham concerning sacrificing of his son. . . ." Mr. Marshall, who with Mr. Vines gave a support to Mr. Calamy which was evidently as effective and wise as that of Mr. Seaman seems the opposite, acutely replies to this that "there is not only a mandatum but a promise" - but obviously this was a good rejoinder rather than a solid distinction. The weight of the debate was clearly on the side of the proposition proposed, and on that score alone we cannot feel surprise that it was retained in the Confession. 

The interest of the debate to us lies in the revelation which it gives us of the presence in the Assembly of an influential and able, but apparently small, body of men whose convictions lay in the direction of the modified Calvinism which had been lately promulgated by Cameron and Amyraut for the express purpose of finding a place for a universal redemption in the Calvinistic system. For the origin of this party Dr. Mitchell⁹⁰ would point us to English sources: but Baillie especially mentions Amyraut in this connection;⁹¹ and it would seem that it was Amyraut and Cameron - both of whom Gillespie mentions in this debate - whom men had especially in mind during the discussion; and it would seem further to be clear that while the adherents of this universalistic view of the atonement in the Assembly held it with British moderation, and were not prepared to go all lengths with the French Divines who had lately promulgated it with such force, they yet looked upon them as of their school and sought support from them. The result of the debate was a refusal to modify the Calvinistic statement in this direction - or perhaps we should rather say the definitive rejection of the Amyraldian views and the adoption of language which was precisely framed to exclude them. Dr. Mitchell, reviving an old contention, suggests indeed that unless the clause of the Confession in question be read disjunctively rather than, as it is actually phrased, conjunctively, it will not operate for the exclusion of Amyraldians.⁹² It is not clearly obvious, however, that the word "and" here binds the several items of the enumeration so closely together as to make it appear that all that is affirmed is only that the whole of this process takes place in the case of the elect only: the natural sense of the clause is clearly that no one of the transactions here brought together is to be affirmed of the non-elect. And this impression is increased by the broader context, not to speak of the parallel passages in viii. 3 and 5.93 It might seem somewhat more to the point, possibly, to recall that in this section the language is so ordered as to seem to deal with the actual ordo salutis rather than directly with the ordo decretorum. It is asserted that the ordo salutis is the result of the decreeing of the means by which the elect are brought to glory. But what is subsequently asserted is that none but the elect are (actually) redeemed by Christ, effectually called, etc. - the mind being abstracted for the moment from the intention to the performance. The Westminster Amyraldians - if we may venture so to call them - had, of course, freely admitted the distinction between the elect and nonelect in the application: it was only in the impetration that they disputed it: and it might perhaps seem to them possible to confess that though Christ had died for all, the merits of His death had actually been applied only to some, and to contend that only this is actually expressed by saying that none but the elect "are redeemed by Christ." Even this, however, appears more subtle than satisfactory; and in any event it would seem quite obvious that the Assembly intended to state in this clause with adequate clearness their reasoned and deliberate conviction that the decree of election lies behind the decree of the gift of Christ for redemption, and that the latter is to be classed as one of the means for the execution of the decree of election. This is the definite exclusion of the Amyraldian view, and anything that can be made really consistent with this conception of the ordo decretorum will be found to differ fundamentally from Amyraldism.⁹⁴ 

7. We first hear of the seventh section in the Assembly on November 6, 1645; but then after such a fashion as to suggest that it had already been before the Assembly and perhaps may have been already somewhat debated. We read simply: "The paragraph concerning Reprobation referred to the Committee, to make report to-morrow morning." This was doubtless a special Committee, according to the wont of the Assembly in such instances. On November 7 accordingly we read: "Report made by Mr. Reynolds about Reprobation." Then again on November 11 we read: "Debate the report of Reprobation. . . . Debate about that 'sovereign power.'" This is all that the Minutes tell us about the passage of this important section through the Assembly: and this tells us practically nothing, except that it was carefully scrutinized and debated. We may conjecture that the debate on the words "sovereign power" turned on the query whether something more or other than "power" might not wisely be indicated at this point: but this is mere conjecture, and we learn only that the retention of the phrase just as it now stands was not inadvertent but deliberate. The section is one of those which, though it has a point of suggestion in the Irish Articles, yet as it stands is the independent product of the Assembly: and it certainly does credit to the Assembly by the combined boldness and prudence, faithfulness, and tenderness of its sonorous language.⁹⁵ 

8. There is no debate signalized on section 8 in its first passage through the Assembly. But when the chapter came back again from the perfecting Committee - June 18, 1646 - we read: "The Assembly proceeded in debate of the Article 'of God's Eternal Decree'; and upon debate part of it was ordered. Upon debate about the last clause of it, concerning the handling of this doctrine, it was Resolved upon the Q., To refer this till to-morrow morning." We find nothing, however, on the subject in the Minutes for June 19 beyond this: "The Assembly proceeded in the debate of the Confession of Faith; and upon debate, that head' of God's Eternal Decree' was ordered, and is as followeth. . . ." We are therefore only certified concerning this admirable section that it was the object of the care of the Assembly itself up to the last moment, without being informed what precisely in the course of its stately march engaged its latest attention. 

From this survey, by means, as it were, of specimen bits of the debates during which the third chapter of the Confession as we have it was beaten out, we may obtain some sort of idea of the labor and care expended on it by the Assembly. The survey is certainly calculated to enhance our idea of the deliberateness of its formulation. We have here no hasty draft, rushed through the body at breakneck speed and adopted at the end on the credit of the Committee that had drafted it. The third chapter of the Confession is distinctly the work of the Assembly itself, and comes to us as the well-pondered and thoroughly adjusted expression of the living belief of that whole body. The differences that existed between the members were not smoothed over in ambiguous language. They were fully ventilated. Room was made for them when they were considered unimportant and mere apices logici: but when they concerned matters of moment, after full discussion, the doctrine of the Assembly - well-reasoned and fully thought out - as distinguished from that of individuals, was embodied clearly and firmly in the document. The document as it stands is thus emphatically the Confession of Faith of the Westminster Assembly. We cannot say that this or that clause represents this or that party in the Assembly. There were parties in the Assembly, and they were all fully heard and what they said was carefully weighed. But no merely party opinion was allowed a place in the document. When it came to voting the statements there to be set down, the Assembly as such spoke; and in speaking it showed itself capable of speaking its own mind. It is doing only mere justice to it, therefore, to read the document as the solemn and carefully framed expression of its reasoned faith. 

In the appended text (to follow on the succeeding pages) we have given, in the middle column, as nearly as we can make it out, the form in which the third chapter came before the Assembly from its Committee, marking in footnotes the chief amendments which were made in it in the process of reducing the earlier draft to the form in which it left the Assembly and has come down to us. In order that the relations of this first reported text to the Irish Articles, on the one hand, and the completed Westminster Confession, on the other, may be easily apprehended, we have printed these two texts alongside of it, and we have sought so to present them that the eye may easily unravel the historical connections involved. 

IRISH ARTICLES (1615)⁹⁶
COMMITTEE'S PROPOSAL
WESTMINSTER CONFESSION⁹⁸

III. OF GOD'S ETERNAL DECREE AND PREDESTINATION
OF GOD'S ETERNAL DECREE [AND PREDESTINATION]⁹⁷
OF GOD'S ETERNAL DECREE

(11) God, from all eternity, did, by his unchangeable counsel, ordain whatsoever in time should come to pass: yet so as thereby no violence is offered to the wills of the reasonable creatures, and neither the liberty nor the contingency of the second causes is taken away, but established rather.
[1] God from all eternity, did by the most holy [and] wise⁹⁹ counsel¹⁰⁰ of his [own]¹⁰⁰ will freely and unchangeably¹⁰¹ ordain whatsoever in time¹⁰² should come¹⁰³ to pass, [2] without any foresight of anything without himself as a condition moving him thereunto:104 yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contigency of second causes taken away but established rather.
1. GOD FROM ALL ETERNITY DID, by the most wise and holy COUNSEL of his own will, freely and unchangeably ORDAIN WHATSOEVER COMES TO PASS; YET SO AS THEREBY neither is God the author of sin; NOR IS VIOLENCE OFFERED TO THE WILL OF THE CREATURES, NOR IS THE LIBERTY OR CONTIGNECY OF SECOND CAUSES TAKEN AWAY, BUT RATHER ESTABLISHED.

2. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass, upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass, upon such conditions.

(12) By the same eternal counsel, God hath predestinated some unto life, and repreobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished.
[3] By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.¹⁰⁵ [4] These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, SOME men and angels are PREDESTINED UNTO everlasting LIFE, and others fore-ordained TO everlasting DEATH. 4. These angels and men, thus predestinated and fore-ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their NUMBER IS so CERTAIN and definite that it CANNOT BE EITHER INCREASED OR DIMINISHED.

(13) Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, he hath constantly decreed in his secret counsel to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.

(14) The cause moving God to predestinate unto life, is not the forseeing of faith, or perseverance, or good works, or of anything which is in the person predestinated, but only the good pleasure of God himself. For all things being ordained for the manifestation of his glory, and his glory being to appear both in the works of his mercy and of his justice, it seemed good to his heavenly wisdom to choose out a certain number, towards whom he would extend his undeserved mercy, leaving the rest to be spectacles of his justice.

[5] Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory,¹⁰⁶ out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.
5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD WAS LAID, according to his ETERNAL and immutable PURPOSE, AND THE SECRET COUNSEL and GOOD PLEASURE of his will, HATH CHOSEN IN CHRIST, UNTO EVERLASTING glory, out of his free grace and love alone, WITHOUT ANY FORESIGHT OF FAITH OR GOOD WORKS, OR PERSEVERANCE in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.

(15) Such as are predestinated unto life, be called according unto God's purpose (his Spirit working in due season), and through grace they obey the calling, they be justified freely, they be made sons of God by adoption, they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, they walk religiously in good works, and at length by God's mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.
[6] As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he to bring this to pass,¹⁰⁷ by the same decree,¹⁰⁸ ordained to permit man to fall; [and such as are predestinated unto life effectually to call to faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, to justify, adopt, sanctify, and to keep by his power through faith unto salvation¹⁰⁹].¹¹⁰ Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.¹¹¹
6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, fore-ordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam are redeemed by Christ, ARE effectually CALLED unto faith in Christ BY HIS SPIRIT WORKING IN DUE SEASON; ARE JUSTIFIED, ADOPTED, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are nay other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

But such as are not predestinated to salvation shall finally be condemned for their sins.
[7] The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power¹¹² over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.
7. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath FOR THEIR SIN, to the praise of his glorious justice.

(16) The godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things; as well because it doth greatly confirm and establish their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God. And, on the contrary side, for curious and carnal persons lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination is very dangerous.

(17) We must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth unto us in holy Scripture: and in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God.

[8] The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending to the will of God revealed in his word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel.¹¹³
8. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men ATTENDING THE WILL OF GOD REVEALED IN HIS WORD, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel.

Endnotes:

From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xii. 1901, pp. 226-283.

The fundamental authority for the study of the work of the Assembly for the period covered by it is, of course, the volume of its "Minutes" edited by Drs. A. F. Mitchell and John Struthers, and published by William Blackwood and Sons in 1874. Along with this Dr. Mitchell's Baird Lectures for 1882 on "The Westminster Assembly: Its History and Standards" (ed. 2, Philadelphia, 1897), should be consulted. Next to the "Minutes" the fullest source of information is Robert Baillie's "Letters and Journals," edited by Mr. David Laing, Edinburgh, 1841-1842. A very painstaking study of the whole constructive work of the Assembly has recently been published by Dr. Wm. A. Shaw in his "History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640-1660," 2 vols., London, New York, and Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900-a book simply packed with facts. The present article was unfortunately written before Dr. Shaw's book came into our hands. But we have carefully compared it with the account he has given (in pages 357-367 of his first volume) and examined the data afresh in the light of his narrative-not without profit to ourselves, or, occasionally, correction of details in Dr. Shaw's narrative. Where our account differs from Dr. Shaw's, therefore, it is to be understood that the difference is not unintentional. 

See the full and very interesting account of this work given by Dr. Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, pp. 150 sqq. Cf. Dr. Briggs's article in the Presbyterian Review for January, 1880.

He notes the emergence of the matter only on July 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 27, 28, August 1, 18, and October 12. 

"The Westminster Assembly," pp. 150 sq. Cf. Shaw, i. pp. 147 sq. 

Thus: Art. i. Old and Revised Artt. and Conf. of Faith: "of one substance" (Irish: "of one and the same substance"). Art. ii. Old and Revised Artt. and Conf. of Faith: "very and eternal God" (Irish: "true and eternal God"). Especially the following: Art. ii. Revised Artt. and Conf. of Faith: "and the manhood" (Old Artt. and Irish omit "the"); Art. x. Revised Artt. and Conf. of Faith: "or [to] prepare" (Old Artt. and Irish: "and prepare"). 

The text of the Westminster revision of the first fifteen Articles of the Church of England may be found in Hall's "Harmony of Protestant Confessions," 1844, Appendix i. pp. 505-512; Neal's "History of the Puritans," ii. 1849, Appendix vii. pp. 454-457; Stoughton's "Ecclesiastical History of England," ii. ("The Church of the Commonwealth"), 1867, Appendix iii. pp. 528-535; but correctly as to the 8th Article only in E. Tyrrell Green's "The Thirty-nine Articles and the Age of the Reformation," London, 1896, Appendix iv. pp. 343-348. Mr. Green marks all the changes made in the test. For the Preface and revised Article viii., see especially Mitchell and Struthers, "Minutes," pp. 541-542. Cf. Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, pp. 653 sq. 

A good account is given by Shaw, "History of the English Church," i. 1900, pp. 259-261. Cf. "Journals of Commons," iv. pp. 89 sq., etc., and Minutes of Assembly for March 1, 5, 21, 24, 28, April 2 (4?), 21 (August 14), 1645. 

For some indication of the nature of these topics see below, p. 85. 

Chapter xxiii. § 3.

See especially Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," pp. 420 sqq., but compare Shaw, i. p. 369, note. References may be found in the Minutes on December 2, 1644, February 7, 1645, May 12, 13, August 1, 4, 5, 19, 20, and September 11. Then especially September 14 (1646), 15, 17, 22, 23, 24, November 27, 30, December 1, 2, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 28, 31, and January 4 and 14, 1647, on which last day the order was given to intermit the preparation of the Catechism on which the Assembly had hitherto been working and to cast the material into two Catechisms. The text of this "first Catechism," so far as it is recorded in the Minutes, has been put together by Mr. Wm. Carruthers, in his admirable "The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines," in facsimile, London, 1897, pp. 21-26. 

When the first propositions from the Catechism were reported the Assembly had just passed chapter xvii. of the Confession (though one or two immediately preceding chapters were not yet passed). 

"Letters," ii. p. 379: July 14, 1646. 

It is with reference to this engagement that the following Minute, entered immediately after the completion of the (Larger) Catechism, October 15, 1647, must be read: "Upon a motion made by Mr. Rutherford, it was Ordered - That it be recorded in the Scribes' books, 'The Assembly hath enjoyed the assistance of the Honble Reverend and learned Commissioners from the Church of Scotland in the work of the Assembly'; during all the time of the debating and perfecting of the 4 things mentioned in the Covenant, viz., the Directory for Worship, the Confession of Faith, Form of Church Government, and Catechism, some of the Reverend and learned Divines Commissioners from the Church of Scotland have been present in and assisting to this Assembly." There is no question here of a farewell to the Assembly: but of a record of covenanted work completed. Rutherford's leavetaking was made on November 9 subsequent. The relation of the Scottish Commissioners to the Assembly and its work is not always fully understood: it is lucidly explained by Dr. Mitchell in his "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, pp. 180-181, note. They were not members of the Assembly and cast no vote in it: they took part in its debates only as private persons on its invitation. They were representatives of the Church of Scotland coordinate as a body with the Assembly as a whole, which represented the Church of England, and conferring with it as a whole on the common formularies. 

See Shaw, i. p. 127, note, and cf. the "Ordinance" itself as printed in most Scotch editions of the Confession of Faith and in Dr. Mitchell's "The Westminster Assembly," pp. xiii. sqq. 

So it says in its Preface prefixed to the portion of the Thirty-nine Articles it had revised, when this was sent up to the Commons. See the Preface in "Minutes," pp. 541-542. 

Preface to Thirty-nine Articles, as above. Cf. Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," p. 185. 

Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," p. 161.

Lightfoot, "Works," ed. Pitman, xiii. 1824, p. 303. Baillie's ("Letters," ii. pp. 220-221) account is as follows: "So soon as my Lord Warriston came up, we resolved on the occasion of his instructings, and the letters of our Generall Assemblie, both to ourselves and to this Assemblie, which he brought, to quicken them a little, who had great need of spurrs. My Lord Warriston very particularlie declared in the Assemblie the passionate desires both of our Parliament, Assemblie, armies, and whole people, of the performance of the Covenanted Uniformitie; and withall we called for a meeting of the grand Committee of Lords, Commons, Assemblie, and us; to whom we gave a paper penned, notablie well, by Mr. Henderson, bearing the great evills of so long a delay of settling religion, and our earnest desyres that some wayes might be found out for expedition. This paper my Lord Say took to deliver to the House of Lords, Mr. Solicitor also for the House of Commons, and a third copy was given to Mr. Marshall, to be presented to the Assemblie. . . Also we have the grand committee to meet on Monday, to find out wayes of expeditione; and we have gotten it to be the work of the Assemblie itselfe, to doe no other thing till they have found out wayes of accellerating; so by God's help we expect a farr quicker progress than hitherto." 

Lightfoot, as above, p. 305. 

Lightfoot, "Works," xiii. p. 305. The Assembly's own Minute runs: "A Committee to join with the Commissioners of the Church of Scotland to prepare matter for a joint Confession of Faith.

R. neg. 12. | R. aflirmat. 9 [to be a Committee]. |
Dr. Gouge. | Mr. Burges. | or any 5 of them."
Mr. Gataker. | Mr. Vines.
Mr. Arrowsmith. | Mr. Goodwin.
Dr. Temple. | Dr. Hoyle.
Mr. Burroughs. |

See " Minutes," pp. lxxxvi. sq. 

Lightfoot, p. 308. The Assembly's own Minute for September 4 runs: Report from the Committee for the Confession of Faith. They desire an addition of those persons to the said Committee-Ordered-Mr. Palmer, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. Herle, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Tuckney, Dr. Smith, Mr. Young, Mr. Ley, Mr. Sedgwicke, be added to the Committee for the ConI- «ion of Faith" (p. lxxxvii.). 

"Letters," ii. pp. 232, 248. 

On December 26, 1644, Baillie tells us why the work on the Confession was delayed: "If the Directorie and Government were once out of our hands, as a few days will put them, then we will fall on our great question of Excommunication, the Catechise, and Confession. There is here matter to hold us long enough, if the wrangling humour which long predomined in many here did continue.... I think we must either passe the Confession to another season, or, if God will help us, the heads of it being distribute among many able hands, it may in a short time be so drawn up, as the debates of it may cost little time. All this chalking is on the supposition of God's singular assistance, continuing such a disposition in the Assemblie and Parliament as hes appeared this moneth or two bypast" (ii. p. 248). 

It was not until July that any part of the text got before the Assembly. Baillie (ii. p. 275), writing apparently early in June (Shaw, i. p. 190), can still speak of the Assembly as only "beginning to take the Confession of Faith and Catechise to our consideration," and on the 5th September (ii. p. 315) says, "We are goeing on languidlie with the Confession of Faith and Catechisme."

"Letters," ii. p. 266. 

References to the Minutes are of course all to the volume published in 1874 by Drs. Mitchell and Struthers. References are equally easily verifiable whether made by pages, dates, or numbers of sessions - and therefore we shall not burden the footnotes with details. 

"Minutes," p. 77. Cf. pp. 28 sq.

This paper was brought into the Assembly on April 14: it is given by Dr. Mitchell from the "Journals of the House of Lords," vii. pp. 317, 318, on pp. 80-81, note, of the "Minutes." 

See a full account of the work of the Houses in this matter in Shaw's "History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth," i. 1900, pp. 257 sqq. 

Shaw, as above, i. pp. 259-261. "Minutes," p. 71 (March 21 and 24), p. 74 (March 28), p. 75 (April 2), p. 76? (April 4). 

Shaw, i. pp. 260-261, citing "Commons' Journal," iv. p. 114, April 17. The names of the Committee are given by Shaw, p. 261, note. 

Shaw, i. p. 358, citing "Commons' Journal," iv. p. 113. 34 

Shaw, i. p. 358. 

The language is: "That the Thirty-nine Articles be reviewed by the former Committee, and the Committee to consider &sc. . . . R. - To be referred to one Committee." Hence apparently two Committees are in view: but finally the whole matter was committed to one. Which one is not clear. 

On Tuesday, May 6, when the propositions as to the Civil Magistrate in the Government were under debate, question was raised whether a proposed form of statement should be placed in the Government or in "a Confession of Faith."

Shaw, i. p. 358, quoting "Commons' Journal," iv. p. 133: "Minutes" for May 8 (p. 90). 

The Confession of Faith is mentioned in the interval only on May 6 (as above, p. 78, and p. 86, note 36), and then only incidentally and indeterminately. 

As cited, ii. p. 266. 

Shaw, i. p. 358, supposes the Committee "to have subdivided" and to be now reunited. It is possible, of course, that the two parts (that appointed August 20 and that appointed September 4) had been sitting as separate Committees and were only now combined. 

"The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, Philadelphia, 1897, pp. 367 sq. 

Concerning them see Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," p. 147.

Shaw, i. p. 358, also seems to look upon the Committee of May 12, 1645, as a substitute for the former Committee. 

Reports from First Committee, "Minutes," pp. 129, 130, 150, 151, 164, 166, 167, 171, 192. Reports from Second Committee, "Minutes," pp. 130, 131, 150, 181, 162, 166, 167. Reports from Third Committee, "Minutes," pp. 165, 173. 

The detailed history of the large Committees is obscure: see Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, pp. 148 sq. Dr. Burgess was the first chairman of the First Committee, but he had in the meanwhile been in disgrace (p. 181) and during his suspension a new chairman must needs have been chosen. Cf. January 29, 1646, "Mr. Coleman made report of Christian Liberty" (cf. p. 104), Mr. Coleman being also a member of the First Committee: March 5, "Report from Dr. Gouge about the Church." 

Cf. November 12: "Dr. Stanton [made] report from second Committee"; December 5: "Report from Dr. Stanton of the Sacraments in general" (cf. pp. 164, 167); but December 29: "Mr. Calamy made report of Baptism." 

Cf. November 20: "Mr. Prophet brought in a report from the Third Committee," etc.; March 5, 1646: "Mr. Prophet made report of Religion and Worship," etc.; but December 2, 1645: "Report from Mr. Cheynell of Justification" - Mr. Cheynell being also a member of the Third Committee; January 1, 1646: "Dr. Wincop made report from the Third Committee about the Law of God"

Mr. Reynolds was, however, a member of the Committee of September 4, 1644, and also of that of May 12, 1645: and it is, of course, conceivable that it was to this fundamental Committee that the topic was recommitted. The case would not be so simple in the instances of Mr. Gouge and Mr. Arrowsmith; they were both members of the Committee of August 20, 1644, but not of that of May 12 - which in our view had been substituted for it. In Mr. Seaman's case, just to be mentioned, it is clear that it was to a special Committee that the recommitment was made, and he was moreover not a member of any of the Committees of August 20, September 4, 1644, May 12, 1645. 

There were four distributions - July 16, 1645, November 18, 1645, February 23, 1646 - to which should be added the supplementary distribution of August 19, 1646.

Mr. Cawdry was added also, September 1, 1646. 

Compare Baillie's account of the care expended on this review, ii. pp. 400-403: the passages are extracted below, pp. 119-120.

This order was "due to the letter from the Assembly of the Kirk in Scotland of the 18th of June, read in the Lords on the 9th of July (L. J., viii., 425; C. J., iv., 621) "-Shaw, i. p. 360. A letter from the Church of Scotland was delivered also to the Assembly, July 8.

The order was made on September 16 ("Commons' Journal," iv. p. 670; Shaw, i. p. 361), and received on September 18 ("Minutes," pp. 285-286).

Baillie, "Letters," ii. p. 403, iii. p. 2. See the text below, pp. 119, 120.

The answer of the Assembly to the requisition is printed by Dr. Mitchell in "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, 1897, pp. 377 sq.: the rejoinder of the House in the "Minutes," 1874, p. 295.

For a history of the proof-texts of the Confession, see Dr. Samuel T. Lowrie's article in The Presbyterian Review, July, 1888 (ix. pp. 443 sqq.), and his reports in the "Minutes" of the General Assembly for 1891 (pp. 129 sqq.), and 1894 (pp. 157 sqq.), or in the "Digest " of 1898 (pp. 21 sqq.).

As cited, i. p. 365. 

We have taken the idea of this tabular statement from Shaw (i. pp. 367 sqq.), who prints such an one; and we at first intended simply to quote Shaw's table. But on examination the accuracy of his presentation appeared scarcely adequate, and we have made out the whole afresh - deriving, of course, such aid from Shaw as we could. Where our table differs from Shaw's, therefore, it differs wittingly. 

See also " Minutes," p. 473. 

From Baillie also (ii. p. 344) we learn that the Articles "God" and "Trinity" when first passed were two separate Articles. See below, p. 118.

Why the bracketed "s" appears in the printed "Minutes" is not obvious. The "s" is arbitrarily present or absent in the allusions in the "Minutes." 

Why it is not likely that this is the first report of chapter ix. made to the Assembly is explained above, pp. 94-95.

It will be noted that these three chapters were apparently afterthoughts; they were, to all appearance, not contemplated in the first planning of the Confession.

"Minutes," p. 271.

Cf. also p. 205.

Cf. p. 436.

Cf. p. 437.

Cf. p. 439.

Cf. also p. 205.

P. 205.

Cf. p. 43.

Cf. p. 435.

See what is said of the topic, "Lies and Equivocations," at the end of this tabular statement (p. 116, N. B.). Is it possible that this chapter was developed out of that topic? It is against this supposition that different Committees seem concerned.

Cf. also p. 204. 

Cf. also p. 206. 

The material developed in the debates recorded on the dates contained within these square brackets entered very little into the formation of chapter xxv. Part of it was incorporated into chapter xxx. 

The debates on the jus divinum which took place on May (1), 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 18, 19, (25), 28, June 1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, July 6, 7, 10, 17, did not, of course, directly concern chapter xxv., but rather were in preparation of the answer of the Assembly to certain Parliamentary "Questions." See Baillie's account as given on p. 118, below; and compare Shaw, i. pp. 308 sqq. But the material thus gathered indirectly bore fruit for this chapter also.

See above under chapter xxv. (note 76).

Shaw (i. p. 372) mentions the topic Dedication to God, which is reported as debated January 2, 1646, as "if not represented by Article XII" (Adoption), probably a subsequently omitted Article. Possibly, however, it signalizes only a debate on one phase of Baptism, in immediate contiguity with which it is mentioned.

See Mitchell in "Minutes," p. 416.

Mitchell in "Minutes," p. 416, and in "The Westminster Assembly," pp. 378-379, and 526; Shaw, i. p. 365.

Baillie says (November 25, 1645; ii. p. 325): "We had long and tough debates about the Decrees of election; yet thanks to God all is gone right according to our mind."

In the interesting discussion published in pp. 185 sq. of his "Theology of the Westminster Symbols," 1900, Dr. Edward D. Morris appears to suggest something like this. "An interesting discussion," he says, "seems to have arisen in the Assembly respecting the use of the singular or the plural term, decree or decrees, in the exposition of this general doctrine." There is, however, no indication of any such discussion having occurred on the title: the debate adverted to by Dr. Morris was upon the sixth section and concerned directly another matter - as will be seen below. The Westminster Divines obviously attached very little importance to this mere matter of phraseology. 

The loosely kept notes which we have of the Minutes are too carelessly written to offer any testimony in such a matter. If we have counted correctly, the third chapter is mentioned more or less formally by name ten times in the "Minutes." In five the plural is used (pp. 114, 126, 127, 322, 323); in five the singular (pp. 126, 129, 130, 245, 246). 

In the Larger Catechism, Q. 12, the words "in time" are retained: "God's decrees are the wise, free and holy acts of the counsel of His will, whereby, from all eternity, He hath, for His own glory, unchangeably fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass in time, especially concerning angels and men." 

The words here placed in brackets stand in the Minutes above the line.

Dr. Mitchell notes that in the additional copy of the Minutes lapping at this part, which he calls Fascicle iii., the words stand: "and some foreordained to everlasting death." 

Whitaker was a high Calvinist (see below, p. 136), but beyond that we know too little of his personal opinions to permit ourselves any conjectures as to his position on the special point here raised. He left little in print behind him: Brook ("Lives of the Puritans," 1813, iii. pp. 190 sqq.) supposes that only a few occasional sermons were published by him, and names only three. He was a Cambridge Master of Arts, and a good scholar and unremitting in his labors as a preacher. See also Mr. Lupton's notice in the "Dictionary of National Biography," sub nom. It is illustrative of how little even the best scholars keep in mind the most important matters of Puritan (Presbyterian) history in England that Mr. Lupton can print such a sentence as this: "When the Westminster assembly of divines was convened in June 1643, he was one of the first members elected, and in 1647 was appointed moderator." Yet he had Brook's notice before his eyes (p. 191).

"The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, 1897, p. 373.

"Minutes," pp. lv. sqq. 

And his "Letters" have a number of references to the Amyraldian controversy and the pressing need of a telling refutation of Amyraut, which cannot mean anything else than that it was from him that the Assembly felt that the dissenting opinions emanated.

"Minutes," p. lvii. This contention, together with the other expedients which have been made use of by advocates of universal atonement to explain away the Confessional statement, is judiciously examined by Dr. Cunningham in his "Historical Theology," ii. 1864, pp. 327 sq. 

Dr. Cunningham remarks that the followers of Cameron made their contention that they were not condemned by the Synod of Dort turn precisely on the fact that nothing exactly like these clauses occurs in its "Canons" (op. cit., p. 329, note).

These debates are discussed with the care and prudence habitual to him by Dr. Mitchell, pp. lii. sqq. of his Introduction to the "Minutes"; and he says the best and most that can be said in favor of the view that Amyraldism is not peremptorily excluded by the statements finally agreed on. They are also discussed in somewhat the same spirit by Dr. E. D. Morris, op. cit., pp. 187 sqq., with which should be compared the remarks on pp. 382 sqq. Dr. Morris, though claiming for the Amyraldians a right of existence under the "symbol," seems to be unable to free himself of the suspicion that the letter of the symbol scarcely justifies it. We should heartily accord with such a conclusion - in both its elements. We have already referred to Dr. Cunningham's discussion of the meaning of the Symbolic declarations ("Historical Theology," ii. 1854, pp. 327 sq.).

At p. 813 of Dr. E. D. Morris' "Theology of the Westminster Symbols," 1900, we read the following sentences: "Some of the members [of the Westminster Assembly] held with Calamy (Minutes, 153) that by virtue of the death of Christ there is an administration of grace even to the reprobate, so that they in rejecting such grace do willfully damn themselves as a massa corrupta. It is a fact of considerable significance that, in deference to this opinion, it was proposed and somewhat debated in the Assembly to omit any statement respecting reprobation. This would have been in harmony with the course pursued in the framing of most of the continental symbols, which are quite silent respecting the relation of the divine decree to those who reject the divine grace. The statement in the Confession finally agreed upon, (Ch. III. vii.) simply declares that God, in the exercise of his sovereign power or dominion over his creatures passes by the wicked and unbelieving, and ordains them to dishonor and wrath for their sins, to the praise of his glorious justice." This seems to say that the omission of the seventh section of chapter iii. was proposed and debated in the Assembly: and indeed the omission of all statements respecting reprobation. There is nothing in the Minutes or, so far as known to us, in any witnessing document to justify such an affirmation. It would seem that Dr. Morris has fallen into an error here - possibly through a misinterpretation of the entries in the Minutes of propositions and debates concerning the language of iii. 3 - of which we have spoken above (pp. 130 sqq). This misinterpretation would be rendered easier by the circumstances that the former of these entries occurs in the Minutes for November 3, and is noted by Dr. Mitchell on the margin as a "debate on reprobation," while in the immediately next Minute we have a reference to "the paragraph concerning Reprobation," doubtless referring to §7, which was certainly under debate November 11. Nevertheless it is very plain that it is §3 that was debated on November 3: and even if that were not so, there is no ground for Dr. Morris' statement that "it was proposed and somewhat debated in the Assembly to omit any statement respecting reprobation." To desire an "alteration in the words 'and some [fore-] ordained to everlasting death,"' or even the omission "of those words, 'foreordained to everlasting death"' - the extent of the notices of the proposals and debates in question - is, certainly, something extremely different from proposing and debating the omission of " any statement respecting reprobation." It is probably safe to say that the attribution to any Westminster man of a suggestion to omit all reference to reprobation from the Confession would have struck him as a calumny injurious to the soundness of his faith if not of his intelligence. With reference to the attitude of the other Reformed symbols to reprobation see The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xiii. 1901, pp. 49-128, especially pp. 121-126: the doctrine of reprobation is certainly not left without "any statement" in the "most" of them.

This exhibit is taken without change from the Rev. E. Tyrrell Green's treatise on "The Thirty-nine Articles and the Age of the Reformation" (London [1896]), pp. 354-355. Phrases in italics are derived from the Thirty-nine Articles: those in thick-faced type from the Lambeth Articles. About 58 per cent. of the Irish Articles is taken from Art. xvii. of the Thirty-nine Articles, and about 15 per cent. from the Lambeth Articles: leaving about 27 per cent. of new matter. 

Possibly the title read originally as in the Irish Articles, and in the debate the last two words, here bracketed, were omitted. 

Phrases in italics are derived from the Thirty-nine Articles: those in thick type from the Lambeth Articles: those in small capitals from the Irish Articles. Phrases derived proximately from the Irish Articles and ultimately from the Thirty-nine Articles will therefore be found set in italic capitals: those derived proximately from the Irish Articles and ultimately from the Lambeth Articles in thick capitals. About 28 per cent. of the chapter is derived matter, about 72 per cent. being original. All but a trace of the derived matter is taken from the Irish Articles: end the material thus taken from the Irish Articles is about evenly divided between material original with them, and material ultimately derived from the Thirty-nine or Lambeth Articles - about 10 per cent. of the whole having each of these three sources for its origin. 

Amended to "most wise and holy." 

Debates signalized on these words, but details not given. 

Moved to insert here "without respect to anything foreseen," and omit corresponding clause below: "without . . . thereunto." 

"in time" omitted. 

"should come" amended to "comes." 

After several attempts to adjust this clause, "without . . . thereunto," vis.: (1) by prefixing "absolutely"; (2) by omitting "any"; (3) by modifying so as to read "not being moved thereunto by any foresight of anything without himself"; (4) by transferring in a shortened form to just after "unchangeably" (see note 3) - it was removed from this place and expanded into a new section (§ 2) of the completed Confession. 

Omission of the words "foreordained to everlasting death" proposed but refused: Mr. Whitaker proposed some alteration in them, which being refused, he entered his dissent. 

The words "unto everlasting glory" were challenged, as perhaps superfluous, but retained. 

Ordered not to express "to bring this to pass." Mr. Gilleapie proposed to substitute for the clause "so hath he . . . to permit man to fall": "For the same end God hath ordained to permit man to fall"; but it did not prevail. 

Ordered not to assert "the same decree." 

The bracketed portion is conjectural, to fill out the section according to the original opening: it is derived from the Irish Article. 

Mr. Reynolds proposed the following form, which supplied the basis on which the final form was made (the italicized words were altered in making out the final form): "As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he by the samea eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto, which he in his counsel is pleased to appoint for the executing of that decree;b wherefore they who are endowed with so excellent a benefit,c being fallen in Adam, ared called ine according to God's purpose,"f etc. (a) "same" was omitted. (b) This clause was omitted. (c) This clause, derived from Art. xvii. of the Thirty-nine Articles, changed into "elected." (d) "redeemed by Christ, are" was inserted here. (e)It is uncertain whether "in" here is a mere slip due to a mixture of the two expressions "according to" and "in accordance with," or whether the word "Christ " has fallen out inadvertently after it. (f) "called according to God's purpose" was altered to "effectually called unto faith in Christ." 

Much debate was held over this final clause, but it was retained decisively. 

"sovereign power" perhaps challenged but retained. 

Debate signalized on this section but no details given.

The Millennium and the Apocalypse¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Of the section of the Apocalypse which extends (according to his division of the book) from xx. 1 to xxi. 8, Kliefoth remarks, as he approaches its study, that "because the so-called millennium is included in its compass, it has been more than any other part of the book tortured by tendency-exposition into a variety of divergent senses."2 This is undoubtedly true: but in reprobating it, we must not permit ourselves to forget that there is a sense in which it is proper to permit our understanding of so obscure a portion of Scripture to be affected by the clearer teaching of its more didactic parts. We must guard, no doubt, against carrying this too far and doing violence to the text before us in the interests of Bible-harmony. But within due limits, surely, the order of investigation should be from the clearer to the more obscure. And it is to be feared that there has been much less tendency-interpretation of Rev. xx in the interest of preconceived theory, than there has been tendency-interpretation of the rest of Scripture in the interest of conceptions derived from misunderstandings of this obscure passage.

Nothing, indeed, seems to have been more common in all ages of the Church than to frame an eschatological scheme from this passage, imperfectly understood, and then to impose this scheme on the rest of Scripture vi et armis. To realize this, we have but to recall the manifold influences which have wrought not only on eschatological dreaming, but on theological thought and on Christian life itself, out of the conception summed up in the term "the millennium." Yet not only the word, but, as Kliefoth has himself solidly shown,³ the thing, is unknown to Scripture outside of this passage.⁴ And not only so, but there are not a few passages of Scripture - as Kliefoth also has shown⁵ - which seem definitely to exclude the whole conception, and which must be subjected to most unnatural exegetical manipulation to bring them into harmony with it at all. We need not raise the question whether Scripture can contradict Scripture: in our day, certainly, there is no lack of expositors who would feel little difficulty in expounding the eschatology of Revelation as definitely the antipodes of that, say, of Paul, not to say the eschatology of one section of Revelation as the precise contradictory of that of another. But surely, for those who look upon the Bible as something other than the chance driftage of the earliest age of Christianity, it is at least undesirable to assume such an antagonism beforehand; and on the emergence of apparent inconsistencies it certainly becomes in the first instance incumbent upon us to review our expositions under the impulse of at least the possibility that they may prove to be in error. We shall not proceed far in such an undertaking, as it seems to us, before we discover that the traditional interpretation of Revelation which yields the notion of a "millennium" is at fault; and that this book, when taken in its natural and self-indicated sense, needs no harmonizing with the eschatology of the rest of the New Testament, for the simple reason that its eschatology is precisely the same with that of its companion books.

In order to make this good, it will not be necessary to do more than pass in rapid review the series of visions which constitute the particular section of the Apocalypse of which the millennium-passage forms a part. The structure of the book, made up as it is of seven parallel sections,⁶ repeating with progressive clearness, fullness and richness the whole history of the inter-adventual period, and thus advancing in a spiral fashion to its climax, renders it possible to do this without drawing too much on a knowledge of the whole book. We have only to bear clearly in mind a few primary principles, apart from which no portion of the book can be understood, and we need not despair of unlocking the secrets of this section also.

These primary principles are, with the greatest possible brevity, the following: 1. The principle of recapitulation.⁷ That is to say, the structure of the book is such that it returns at the opening of each of its seven sections to the first advent, and gives in the course of each section a picture of the whole interadventual period - each successive portraiture, however, rising above the previous one in the stress laid on the issue of the history being wrought out during its course. The present section, being the last, reaches, therefore, the climax, and all its emphasis is thrown upon the triumph of Christ's kingdom. 2. The principle of successive visions. That is to say, the several visions following one another within the limits of each section, though bound to each other by innumerable links, yet are presented as separate visions, and are to be interpreted, each, as a complete picture in itself. 3. The principle of symbolism. That is to say - as is implied, indeed, in the simple fact that we are brought face to face here with a series of visions significant of events - we are to bear continually in mind that the whole fabric of the book is compact of symbols. The descriptions are descriptions not of the real occurrences themselves, but of symbols of the real occurrences; and are to be read strictly as such. Even more than in the case of parables, we are to avoid pressing details in our interpretation of symbols: most of the details are details of the symbol, designed purely to bring the symbol sharply and strongly before the mind's eye, and are not to be transferred by any method of interpretation whatever directly to the thing symbolized. The symbol as a whole symbolizes the real event: and the details of the picture belong primarily only to the symbol. Of course, now and then a hint is thrown out which may seem more or less to traverse this general rule: but, as a general rule, it is not only sound but absolutely necessary for any sane interpretation of the book. 4. The principle of ethical purpose. That is to say, here as in all prophecy it is the spiritual and ethical impression that rules the presentation and not an annalistic or chronological intent. The purpose of the seer is to make known indeed - to make wise - but not for knowledge's own sake, but for a further end: to make known unto action, to make wise unto salvation. He contents himself, therefore, with what is efficacious for his spiritual end and never loses himself in details which can have no other object than the satisfaction of the curiosity of the mind for historical or other knowledge.

One of the effects of the recognition of these primary principles - an effect the perception of which is no more interesting in itself than fruitful for the interpretation of the book - is the transference of the task of the interpreter from the region of minute philology to that of broad literary appreciation. The ascertainment of the meaning of the Apocalypse is a task, that is to say, not directly of verbal criticism but of sympathetic imagination: the teaching of the book lies not immediately in its words, but in the wide vistas its visions open to the fancy. It is the seeing eye, here, therefore, rather than the nice scales of linguistic science, that is needful more obviously than in most sections of Scripture.

If, now, we approach the study of the section at present before us under the guidance of these principles, it is probable that we shall not find it impossible to follow at least its main drift.

The section opens with a vision of the victory of the Word of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over all His enemies. We see Him come forth from heaven girt for war, followed by the armies of heaven; the birds of the air are summoned to the feast of corpses that shall be prepared for them: the armies of the enemy - the beasts and the kings of the earth - are gathered against Him and are totally destroyed; and "all the birds are filled with their flesh" (xix. 11-21). It is a vivid picture of a complete victory, an entire conquest, that we have here; and all the imagery of war and battle is employed to give it life. This is the symbol. The thing symbolized is obviously the complete victory of the Son of God over all the hosts of wickedness. Only a single hint of this signification is afforded by the language of the description, but that is enough. On two occasions we are carefully told that the sword by which the victory is won proceeds out of the mouth of the conqueror (verses 15 and 21). We are not to think, as we read, of any literal war or manual fighting, therefore; the conquest is wrought by the spoken word - in short, by the preaching of the Gospel. In fine, we have before us here a picture of the victorious career of the Gospel of Christ in the world. All the imagery of the dread battle and its hideous details are but to give us the impression of the completeness of the victory. Christ's Gospel is to conquer the earth: He is to overcome all His enemies.

There is, of course, nothing new in this. The victory of the Gospel was predicted over and over again even in Old Testament times under the figure of a spiritual conquest. It is thus also that Paul pictures it. It is thus that John himself elsewhere portrays it: it is indeed the staple representation of this whole book. In particular we perceive that this splendid vision is, after all, only the expansion of the parallel vision given in the second verse of the sixth chapter. When the first seal was opened, "And I saw," says the seer, "and, behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon had a bow; and there was given unto him a crown: and he came forth conquering, and to conquer." It is the same scene that is now before us, only strengthened and made more emphatic as befits its place near the end of the book. We recall now the principle of "recapitulation" which governs the structure of the book, and see that this first vision of the last section, in accordance with the general method of the book, returns to the beginning and portrays for us, as vi. 2 and xii. 1 do, the first coming of the Lord and the purpose and now, with more detail and stress, the issue of this coming. What we have here, in effect, is a picture of the whole period between the first and second advents, seen from the point of view of heaven. It is the period of the advancing victory of the Son of God over the world, emphasizing, in harmony with its place at the end of the book, the completeness of the victory. It is the eleventh chapter of Romans and the fifteenth of I Corinthians in symbolical form: and there is nothing in it that was not already in them - except that, perhaps, the completeness of the triumph of the Gospel is possibly somewhat more emphasized here.

With the opening of the twentieth chapter the scene changes (xx. 1-10). Here we are not smitten in the face with the flame and flare of war: it is a spectacle of utter peace rather that is presented to us. The peace is, however, it must be observed, thrown up against a background of war. The vision opens with a picture of the descent of an angel out of heaven who binds "the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan," for a thousand years. Then we see the saints of God reigning with their Lord, and we are invited to contemplate the blessedness of their estate. But when Satan is bound we are significantly told that after the thousand years "he must be loosed for a little time." The saints themselves, moreover, we are informed, have not attained their exaltation and blessedness save through tribulation. They have all passed through the stress of this beast-beset life - have all been "beheaded" for the testimony of Jesus. And at the end we learn of the renewed activity of Satan and his final destruction by fire out of heaven.

This thousand-year peace that is set before us is therefore a peace hedged around with war. It was won by war; the participants in it have come to it through war; it ends in war. What now is this thousand-year peace? It is certainly not what we have come traditionally to understand by the "millennium," as is made evident by many considerations, and sufficiently so by this one: that those who participate in it are spoken of as mere "souls" (ver. 4) - "the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God." It is not disembodied souls who are to constitute the Church during its state of highest development on earth, when the knowledge of the glory of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. Neither is it disembodied souls who are thought of as constituting the kingdom which Christ is intending to set up in the earth after His advent, that they may rule with Him over the nations. And when we have said this, we are surely following hard on the pathway that leads to the true understanding of the vision. The vision, in one word, is a vision of the peace of those who have died in the Lord; and its message to us is embodied in the words of xiv. 13: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth" - of which passage the present is indeed only an expansion.

The picture that is brought before us here is, in fine, the picture of the "intermediate state" - of the saints of God gathered in heaven away from the confused noise and garments bathed in blood that characterize the war upon earth, in order that they may securely await the end.⁸ The thousand years, thus, is the whole of this present dispensation, which again is placed before us in its entirety, but looked at now relatively not to what is passing on earth but to what is enjoyed "in Paradise." This, in fact, is the meaning of the symbol of a thousand years. For, this period between the advents is, on earth, a broken time - three and a half years, a "little time" (ver. 3)⁹ - which, amid turmoil and trouble, the saints are encouraged to look upon as of short duration, soon to be over. To the saints in bliss it is, on the contrary, a long and blessed period passing slowly and peacefully by, while they reign with Christ and enjoy the blessedness of holy communion with Him - "a thousand years."10

Of course the passage (xx. 1-10) does not give us a direct description of "the intermediate state." We must bear in mind that the book we are reading is written in symbols and gives us a direct description of nothing that it sets before us, but always a direct description only of the symbol by which it is represented. In the preceding vision (xix. 11-21) we had no direct description of the triumph and progress of the Gospel, but only of a fierce and gruesome war: the single phrase that spoke of the slaying sword as "proceeding out of the mouth" of the conqueror alone indicated that it was a conquest by means of persuading words. So here we are not to expect a direct description of the "intermediate state": were such a description given, that would be evidence enough that the intermediate state was not intended, but was rather the symbol of something else. The single hint that it is of the condition of the "souls" of those who have died in Christ and for Christ that the seer is speaking, is enough here to direct our thoughts in the right direction. What is described, or rather, to speak more exactly - for it is a course of events that is brought before us - what is narrated to us is the chaining of Satan "that he should deceive the nations no more"; the consequent security and glory of Christ's hitherto persecuted people; and the subsequent destruction of Satan. It is a description in the form of a narrative: the element of time and chronological succession belongs to the symbol, not to the thing symbolized. The "binding of Satan" is, therefore, in reality, not for a season, but with reference to a sphere; and his "loosing" again is not after a period but in another sphere: it is not subsequence but exteriority that is suggested. There is, indeed, no literal "binding of Satan" to be thought of at all: what happens, happens not to Satan but to the saints, and is only represented as happening to Satan for the purposes of the symbolical picture. What actually happens is that the saints described are removed from the sphere of Satan's assaults. The saints described are free from all access of Satan - he is bound with respect to them: outside of their charmed circle his horrid work goes on. This is indicated, indeed, in the very employment of the two symbols "a thousand years" and "a little time." A "thousand years" is the symbol of heavenly completeness and blessedness; the "little time" of earthly turmoil and evil. Those in the "thousand years" are safe from Satan's assaults: those outside the thousand years are still enduring his attacks. And therefore he, though with respect to those in the thousand years bound, is not destroyed; and the vision accordingly requires to close with an account of his complete destruction, and of course this also must needs be presented in the narrative form of a release of Satan, the gathering of his hosts and their destruction from above.

We may perhaps profitably advert to some of the traits that go to show that it is the children of God gathered in Paradise that are in view in the description of the rest and security that occupies the central section of the vision (vers. 4-6). We are told that the seer saw "thrones, and those that sat upon them, and judgment was given to them." Our Lord, we will remember, is uniformly represented as having been given a Messianic kingship in reward for His redemptive death, in order that He might carry out His mediatorial work to the end.¹¹ Those who, being His, go away from the body and home to the Lord, are accordingly conceived by the seer as ascending the throne with Him to share His kingship - not forever, however, but for a thousand years, i.e., for the Messianic period. Then, when the last enemy has been conquered and He restores the kingdom to the Father,¹² their co-reign with Him ceases, because His Messianic kingdom itself ceases. These reigning saints, now, are described as "souls" - a term which carries us back irresistibly to vi. 9, where we read of " the souls of them that had been slain for the Word of God resting underneath the altar," a passage of which the present is an expanded version. Similarly here, too, we are told that these souls are "of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand." The description in the symbol is drawn from the fate of martyrs; but it is not literal martyrs that are meant in the thing symbolized. To the seer all of Christ's saints are martyrs of the world. "For in the eyes of John," as has been well said, "all the disciples of a martyred Lord are martyrs": "Christ's Church is a martyr Church, she dies in her Master's service and for the world's good."13 These all, dying in Christ, die not but live - for Christ is not Lord, any more than God is God, of the dead but the living. We must catch here the idea that pervades the whole of Jewish thought - inculcated as it is with the most constant iteration by the whole Old Testament revelation - that death is the penalty of sin and that restoration from death, that is resurrection, is involved, therefore, in reception into the favor of God. It is this that underlies and gives its explanation to our Lord's famous argument for the resurrection to which we have just alluded. And it is this, doubtless, that underlies also the seer's designation in our passage of the state of the souls in Paradise with their Lord, saved in principle if not in complete fruition, as "the first resurrection." "This," he says, "is the first resurrection"; and he pronounces those blessed who have part in it, and declares that over them "the second death" has no power. Subsequently he identifies "the second death" with eternal destruction (ver. 14) in the lake of fire - the symbol throughout these visions of the final state of the wicked. To say that "the second death" has no power over the saints of whom he is here speaking is to say at once that they have already been subjected to the "first death," which can mean only that they have suffered bodily death, and that they are "saved souls" with their life hidden with Christ in God. That is to say, they are the blessed dead - the dwellers in the "intermediate state." The "first resurrection" is here, therefore, the symbolical description of what has befallen those who while dead yet live in the Lord; and it is set in contrast with the "second resurrection," which must mean the restoration of the bodily life. As partakers of this "first resurrection" they are set in contrast with "the rest of the dead" - who were to "live not" until "the thousand years should be finished." This phrase advertises us once more that those of whom the seer speaks are themselves in a sense "dead," and as they are declared repeatedly to be living - living and reigning with Christ - this cannot refer to spiritual death, but must find its reference to bodily death. Though dead, therefore, in this bodily sense, they were yet alive - alive in the paradise of God with Christ. The rest of the dead, on the other hand - those not alive with Christ - wait for the end to live again: they are in every sense dead - already suffering the penalty of sin and to be restored to even bodily life only to be plunged into the terrible "second death."

It seems scarcely possible to read over these three verses, however cursorily, without meeting thus with constant reminders that the peace and security pictured is the peace and security of the blessed dead, seated in the heavenly places, in their Lord, on the throne of the universe in company with Him. Any hesitancy we may feel to adopt this view appears to arise chiefly from the difficulty we naturally experience in reading this apparently historical narrative as a descriptive picture of a state - in translating, so to speak, the dynamic language of narrative into the static language of description. Does not the very term " a thousand years" suggest the lapse of time? And must we not, therefore, interpret what is represented as occurring before and after this thousand years as historical precedents and subsequents to it? Natural as this feeling is, we are persuaded it is grounded only on a certain not unnatural incapacity to enter fully into the seer's method and to give ourselves entirely to his guidance. If he elected to represent a state of completeness and perfection by a symbol which suggested lapse of time when taken in its literal meaning, he had no choice but to represent what was outside this state as before or after: that belonged to the very vehicle of representation. Now it is quite certain that the number 1000 represents in Bible symbolism absolute perfection and completeness; and that the symbolism of the Bible includes also the use of a period of time in order to express the idea of greatness, in connection with thoroughness and completeness.¹⁴ It can scarcely be necessary to insist here afresh on the symbolical use of numbers in the Apocalypse and the necessity consequently laid upon the interpreter to treat them consistently not merely as symbols but as symbols embodying definite ideas. They constitute a language, and like any other language they are misleading unless intended and read as expressions of definite ideas. When the seer says seven or four or three or ten, he does not name these numbers at random but expresses by each a specific notion. The sacred number seven in combination with the equally sacred number three forms the number of holy perfection ten, and when this ten is cubed into a thousand the seer has said all he could say to convey to our minds the idea of absolute completeness. It is of more importance doubtless, however, to illustrate the use of time-periods to convey the idea of completeness. Ezek. xxxix. 9 pnovides an instance. There the completeness of the conquest of Israel over its enemies is expressed by saying that seven years shall be consumed in the burning up of the débris of battle: they "shall go forth," we read, "and shall make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the hand-staves and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years." It were absurd to suppose that it is intended that the fires shall actually endure seven years. We have here only a hyperbole to indicate the greatness of the mass to be consumed and the completeness of the consumption. A somewhat similar employment of the time-phrase to express the idea of greatness is found in the twelfth verse of the same chapter, where, after the defeat of Gog "and all his multitude," it is said, "And seven months shall the children of Israel be burying of them that they may cleanse the land." That is to say, the multitude of the dead is so great that by way of hyperbole their burial is said to consume seven months. The number seven employed by Ezekiel in these passages is replaced by the number a thousand in our present passage, with the effect of greatly enhancing the idea of greatness and of completeness conveyed. When the saints are said to live and reign with Christ a thousand years the idea intended is that of inconceivable exaltation, security and blessedness - a completeness of exaltation, security and blessedness beyond expression by ordinary language.

We can scarcely go the length of Dr. Milligan, nevertheless, and say that the time-element is wholly excluded from our passage. After all it is the intermediate state that is portrayed and the intermediate state has duration. But it is within the limits of sobriety to say that the time-element retires into the background and the stress is laid on the greatness and completeness of the security portrayed. This is, however, portrayed under a time-symbol: and the point now is that, this being so, the very necessity of the symbolism imposed on the writer the representation of the other elements of the symbol also by time-expressions. Accordingly in the picture which he draws for us the vision of the security of the saints is preceded and followed by scenes represented as occurring before and after it, but to be read as occurring merely outside it. The chaining of Satan is not in the event a preliminary transaction, on which the security of the saints follows: nor is the loosing of Satan a subsequent transaction, on which the security of the saints ceases. The saints rather escape entirely beyond the reach of Satan when they ascend to their Lord and take their seats on His throne by His side, and there they abide nevermore subject to his assaults. This is indeed suggested in the issue (verse 9b), where the destruction of Satan is compassed by a fire from heaven and not through the medium of a battle with the saints. But while the saints abide in their security Satan, though thus "bound" relatively to them, is loosed relatively to the world - and that is what is meant by the statement in verse 3c that "he must be loosed for a little time" - which is the symbol of the inter-adventual period, in the world; and not less in verses 7-10. We must here look on the time-element, we repeat, as belonging wholly to the symbol and read in the interpretation space-elements in its place. The intermediate state is in one word conceived of not out of relation to the "world," but as, so to speak, a safe haven of retreat in the midst of the world: the world is around it, and there Satan still works and deceives, but he who escapes through the one door of "beheading" for Christ's sake, rises not only to security but to a kingdom.

As we scrutinize the text closely with this scheme of interpretation in mind, the apparent difficulties that stand in its path give way one after another. One clause alone seems so recalcitrant as not to lend itself readily to the proposed interpretation. This occurs in the middle of verse 3. There it is affirmed that Satan is chained "that he should deceive the nations no more." Under Dr. Milligan's interpretation of the thousand years' security, which he applies not to the saints in glory with their Lord - the intermediate state - but to the saints in conflict on earth - the militant state - this clause seems no doubt hopeless. But if we are to understand that it is the intermediate state that is portrayed, the difficulty which it presents does not seem to be insuperable. In its general meaning the clause indeed is only the extreme point of the temporal-machinery in which the vision is cast. If what is spacially distinct, so to speak, in the reality, is to be represented in the figure as temporally distinct, there seems no way in which it can be done except by saying that Satan is first bound so as not to act, in order that he may be afterward loosed so as to act. The only real difficulty lies in the word "nations." Should we not expect "saints" instead - for is it not merely with reference to the saints that Satan is supposed to be bound? And is not the word "nations" the standing denomination in the Apocalypse of precisely the anti-Christian hosts? The only solution that readily suggests itself turns on the supposition that the word "nations" may be used here in its wider inclusive sense, and not of "those without" in contrast with God's people. The term "world" occurs in this double sense, and there seems no reason why "nations" should not also, especially since it is continually understood that the "nations" include God's people in the making (xxii. 2). Possibly little more is intended to be conveyed by the phrase in verse 3 than "to bring out and express that aspect of Satan by which he is specially distinguished in the Apocalypse" - that is to say, to declare simply that "Satan the deceiver" was bound,¹⁵ and what is more than this belongs to the drapery of the symbolism. In verse 8 it appears to have a slightly different turn given it. There is a special propriety in its suggesting in this context "those without" indeed, but those without not so much the circle of Christ's people in general as Christ's people as gathered into the secure haven of the intermediate state. In a word, it seems that we may understand the "nations" here, not of the anti-Christian world in contrast with the Christian, but of the world on earth in contrast with the saints gathered in Paradise. As such the "nations" may include Christians also, but Christians not yet departed to their security - nay their monarchy - with their Lord. If these suggestions be allowed, something will certainly be gained towards a suitable interpretation of the clause. But it cannot be pretended that a real solution of its difficulties has been offered in any case; it remains a dark spot in an otherwise lucid paragraph and must be left for subsequent study to explain.

If the interpretation we have urged be adopted, this vision, therefore, as a whole (xx. 1-20), in sharp contrast with the preceding one (xix. 11-21), which pictured the strife of God's people in the world, brings before us the spectacle of the peace of God's saints gathered in heaven. It, too, embraces the whole inter-adventual period, but that period as passed in the security and glory of the intermediate state. This is set forth, however, not out of relation to the militant Church on earth, but as, so to speak, its other side. It is as if the seer had said, Look on this picture and on that: neither alone, but the two in combination supply the true picture of the course of events between the first and second advents. The Church toiling and struggling here below is but half the story: the Church gathering above is the other half. And both speed them to the end. For the one it is a period of conflict, though of a conflict advancing to victory. For the other it is a period of restful security, nay of royal ruling. It is the conjunction of the two that constitutes this inter-adventual period; and, together, they pass onward to the end:

Blessed that flock safe penned in Paradise;
Blessed this flock which tramps in weary ways;
All form one flock, God's flock; all yield Him praise
By joy or pain, still tending towards the prize."

Accordingly this vision is followed by a third, in which is depicted the last judgment, in which all - both in earth and heaven - partake. That this is the general judgment seems to be obvious on the face of it. Those whom it concerns are described as "the dead, both great and small," which seems to be an inclusive designation. That it is not merely the wicked who are summoned to it appears from the fact that not only the "book of deeds," but also the "book of life" is employed in it, and it is only those whose names are not found written in the book of life that are cast into the lake of fire - whence it seems to follow that some are present whose names are written in the "book of life." The destruction of "death and Hades" does not imply that the judgment is over the enemies of God only, but merely that hereafter, as Paul, too, says, death shall be no more. There is, no doubt, the "second death," but this is the lake of fire, that is to say, the eternal torment. It is, thus, the great final assize that is here presented to our contemplation: implying the general resurrection and preparing the entrance into eternal destiny. The former fulfills the proleptic declaration in verse 5 that "the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished": now they are finished and "the second resurrection," in which all - not Christ's people only - share, takes place: and accordingly they, too, are, in this reference, classed among "the dead" (ver. 12). The latter is adverted to, so far as the wicked are concerned, with the brevity consonant with this culminating part of the Apocalypse, in the concluding verse of the chapter: "And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." With respect to the destiny of God's saints, the things the seer has to say of them require new visions.

The scene, therefore, shifts at once and a new vision is presented to us (xxi. 1-8). It is the vision of the consummated kingdom of God. There is a new heaven and a new earth: and the new Jerusalem, the city of God, descends from heaven: and God makes His dwelling in its midst: and the happy inheritance of the saints is exhibited to us in all its richness and blessedness. To enhance the value and desirableness of this picture of holy bliss destined for God's people it is set between two declarations of the fate of the wicked (xx. 15, xxi. 8).

Nor is this all. For this vision is followed immediately by a symbolical description of the glorified people of God under the similitude of a city (xxi. 9-xxii. 5). It is the bride, the wife of the Lamb (verse 9) that is depicted: and she is described as a perfect and glorious city in which the Lord makes His abode, and which He Himself supplies with all that it can need. This is not a picture of heaven, be it observed: it is a picture of the heavenly estate of the Church - not merely of the ideal of the Church, but of the ideal of the Church as realized, after the turmoil of earth and the secluded waiting in Paradise alike are over. We quite agree with Dr. Milligan then when, in his latest exposition, he expounds the vision as a "detailed account of the true Church under the figure of a city," and remarks that this "city is really a figure, not of a place but of a people: it is not the final home of the redeemed: it is the redeemed themselves." But we cannot go with him when he adds that it is "essentially a picture, not of the future, but of the present; of the ideal condition of Christ's true people, of His 'little flock' on earth, in every age."16 True, it may be that "every blessing limned in upon this canvas is in principle the believer's now," but the realization of these blessings for the Church, as a whole, is surely reserved until the time when that Church shall at length be presented to its Lord "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish." "And I saw," said the seer, when he was contemplating the consummating glory (xxi. 2), "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband." But now, gazing in vision on the consummated glory, he has even more to show us. "Come hither," the angel said to him (xxi. 9), and "I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." The marriage has now taken place, it is no longer the bride preparing for her husband, or even the bride adorned for her husband: it is the bride, "the Lamb's wife." "The Church," says Dr. Milligan himself in an earlier and in this point, we belive, a better exposition, "is not only espoused but married to her Lord." Gazing on the beautiful traits limned for us, we see not indeed what we are, but what we shall be, and who can wonder if we cry with the sweet singer, Would God we were there!

It is not our purpose to go into a detailed exegesis of these visions. We content ourselves with this mere suggestion of their essential contents, satisfied to draw out from them merely the great features of the eschatology of the Apocalypse, culminating as it does in this section in which is summed up its entire teaching. So far as serves this purpose, we venture to hope that the exposition will commend itself as reasonable: and it will be wise not to lose ourselves in doubtful details of exegesis which might cloud the light that shines on the more general outline. Our main hesitation turns upon the distribution of the several visions. As we have read the section, we have separated it into only five visions. The whole structure of the Apocalypse is, however, dominated by the number seven. With a prologue and an epilogue the book is compounded of seven parallel and yet climactically wrought-out main sections. Four of these are formally subdivided into seven subsections each. It seems probable that this sevenfold structure runs through the remaining sections also, although it is not formally announced in them, and is left, therefore, for the reader to trace. On this ground we should expect the section now engaging our attention - xix. 11-xxii. 5 - to offer us a series of seven visions. But only five have been signalized by us. The suspicion lies close that we have in subdividing the section into its constituent visions missed two of its division lines. We think it very likely we have done so, but we have not been able to put our finger on obvious lines of cleavage, and have preferred to let the material fall apart where it naturally falls apart and to attempt no artificial dissecting. Possibly the points of separation may present themselves more clearly to others. In any event, it seems probable that if two separate visions have been confused by us into one, it is because they are very closely related visions, from one of which to the other there is rather progress than transition. In that very probable case the main lines of exposition would not be affected: and the purpose of our present enterprise would be secured as fully as if we had succeeded in separating between them.

What, then, is the eschatological outline we have gained from a study of this section? Briefly stated it is as follows. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to conquer the world to Himself, and this He does with a thoroughness and completeness which seems to go beyond even the intimations of Romans xi and I Cor. xv. Meanwhile, as the conquest of the world is going on below, the saints who die in the Lord are gathered in Paradise to reign with their Lord, who is also Lord of all, and who is from His throne directing the conquest of the world. When the victory is completely won there supervenes the last judgment and the final destruction of the wicked. At once there is a new heaven and a new earth and the consummation of the glory of the Church. And this Church abides forever (xxii. 5), in perfection of holiness and blessedness. In bare outline that is what our section teaches. It will be noted at once that it is precisely the teaching of the didactic epistles of Paul and of the whole New Testament with him. No attempts to harmonize as the several types of teaching are necessary, therefore, for their entire harmony lies on the surface. John knows no more of two resurrections - of the saints and of the wicked - than does Paul: and the whole theory of an intervening millennium - and indeed of a millennium of any kind on earth - goes up in smoke. We are forced, indeed, to add our assent to Kliefoth's conclusion, that "the doctrine of a thousand-year kingdom has no foundation in the prophecies of the New Testament, and is therefore not a dogma but merely a hypothesis lacking all Biblical ground."17 The millennium of the Apocalypse is the blessedness of the saints who have gone away from the body to be at home with the Lord.

But this conclusion obviously does not carry with it the denial that a "golden age" yet lies before the Church, if we may use this designation in a purely spiritual sense. As emphatically as Paul, John teaches that the earthly history of the Church is not a history merely of conflict with evil, but of conquest over evil: and even more richly than Paul, John teaches that this conquest will be decisive and complete. The whole meaning of the vision of xix. 11-21 is that Christ Jesus comes forth not to war merely but to victory; and every detail of the picture is laid in with a view precisely to emphasizing the thoroughness of this victory. The Gospel of Christ is, John being witness, completely to conquer the world. He says nothing, any more than Paul does, of the period of the endurance of this conquered world. Whether the last judgment and the consummated kingdom are to follow immediately upon its conquest - his visions are as silent, as Paul's teaching. But just on that account the possibility of an extended duration for the conquered earth lies open: and in any event a progressively advancing conquest of the earth by Christ's Gospel implies a coming age deserving at least the relative name of "golden." Perhaps a distinction may be made between a converted earth and a sanctified earth: such a distinction seems certainly more accordant with the tone of these visions than that more commonly suggested between a witnessed-to earth and a converted earth. The Gospel assuredly must be preached to the whole world as a witness, before the Lord comes. These visions seem to go farther and to teach that the earth - the whole world - must be won to Christ before He comes: and that it is precisely this conquest of it that He is accomplishing during the progress of this inter-adventual period.

Whether they go so far as to say that this winning of the world implies the complete elimination of evil from it may be more doubtful. In favor of the one view is the tremendous emphasis laid on the overthrow of all Christ's enemies, which must mean precisely his spiritual opponents - all that militates against the perfection of His rule over the hearts of men. In favor of the other is the analogy of the individual life, in which complete sanctification lags behind after the life has been in principle won to God. Perhaps it may even be said that a perfect life is not to be thought possible for sin-born men in the conditions of this sin-cursed world. Perhaps it may be affirmed that what is thus true of each individual must be true of the congeries of these individuals which we call the world. Perhaps it may be maintained on such grounds as these that as the perfecting of the individual waits for the next life, so the perfecting of the world must wait until the conquest is over - the last assize is held - and the New Jerusalem descends from heaven. In a word, that the perfected world - with all that means - is not to be discovered at xix. 21, but at xxi. 1, and that the description of it is to be read therefore in xxi. 9-xxii. 5, and at no previous point. No doubt there is an element of speculation in such suppositions, and we may well be content to leave the text to teach its own lessons, without additions from us. These lessons, however, at least include as much as this: that there is a "golden age" before the Church - at least an age relatively golden gradually ripening to higher and higher glories as the Church more and more fully conquers the world and all the evil of the world; and ultimately an age absolutely golden when the perfected Church is filled with the glory of the Lord in the new earth and under the new heavens. All the aspirations of the prophets, all the dreams of the seers, can surely find satisfaction in this great vision.

Meanwhile, the saints of God do not need to await the consummation of the ages before they enter into the joy of their Lord. Even "in this world" they receive their reward. The seer, in his vision, sees their accumulated hosts. But through all the years they are gathering, -

"They are flocking from the East
And the West,
They are flocking from the North
And the South,
Every moment setting forth,
*  *  *  *  *
Palm in hand, and praise in mouth,
They are flocking up the path
To their rest."

This their "rest" is the "Millennium" of the Apocalypse.

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, v. 2, 1904, pp. 599-617.

"Die Offenbarung des Johannes," 1874, III, 254.

"Christliche Eschatologie," 1886, pp. 183 sq.

"Once, and only once," says the "Encyc. Bibl.," 3095, "in the New Testament we hear of a millennium." W. A. Brown, in Hastings' "Bible Dict.," III, 371. The period of 1000 years seems to be applied to such a conception first in the Slavonic "Book of the Secrets of Enoch," 33: 1, 2 (see "Encyc. Bibl.," 1368; Hastings, I, 711a, III, 371a) which is dated by Charles in the first half of the first century. It is there based on the idea of a Sabbatical week: as the world was created in six days followed by a day of rest, so the world will last 6000 years followed by 1000 years of rest. The same idea seems to underlie Barnabas, c. 15, though Dr. Salmond, "Christian Doct. of Immort.," 1895, p. 438, does not think so. Cf. Gebhardt, "The Doctrine of the Apocalypse," E. T., pp. 277-278.

Ibid., pp. 187-188. Cf. Milligan, "Baird Lectures on the Revelation of St. John," 1886, pp. 205 sq.: and "Expositor's Bible: The Book of Revelation," 1889, pp. 345 sq.

The plan of the book is, then, something like the following: Prologue, I: 1-8; seven parallel sections divided at III: 22, VIII: 1, XI: 19, XIV: 20, XVI: 21 and XIX: 20; Epilogue, XXII: 6-21. The subdivisions of the several sections follow, each, its own course.

This principle of recapitulatio was announced by Augustine, and perfected by Nicolas Colladon (1584) and David Pareus (1618), and especially by Cocceius and Vitringa. A very large number of expositors have employed its fundamental principle, as, among later ones, for instance, Hofmann, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, Kienlen; but with varying degrees of judiciousness.

So far L. Kraussold ("Das tausendjährige Reich," u. s. w., 1863) is right: "The souls of the righteous live before God and with God - that is their first resurrection." But though he thus correctly interprets the "first resurrection" of the intermediate state, he does not see that the "millennium" is the intermediate period.

Cf. Milligan, "Baird Lectures," pp. 213-214; "Expositor's Bible," pp. 340-341. The term 'three and a half years' does not occur in the Apocalypse, but its equivalents, forty-two months (xi. 2, xiii. 5) and 1260 days (xi. 3, xii. 6) do, as well as the corresponding phrase "a time and times and half a time" (xii. 14), which is derived of course from Daniel vii. 25, xii. 7. All these designations alike "express the whole time of the Church's militant and suffering condition in the world, the whole time between the First and Second Coming of the Lord" (Milligan: Com. in Schaff's "Pop. Com. on N. T." on xi. 2, pp. 93, 94, where there is a clear and full statement). For the equivalent phrase "a little time" the references at the head of this note will suffice.

Cf. Lee ("Speaker's Com." on xx. 2, p. 792): "That the period of a 'thousand years' is to be taken figuratively is in accordance with such texts as Ps. xc. 4, . . . or II Peter iii. 8 . . . A space of time absolutely long is denoted. . . . A very great although not a countless number is signified. . . . . We are to understand a long though finite duration, beginning from the First Advent of Christ (I Cor. xv. 24, 25)."

E. g., Phil. ii. 10.

I Cor. xv. 54.

Milligan, "The Expositor's Bible: the Book of Revelation," pp. 182, 344. Cf. his beautiful words in Schaff's "Popular Commentary, The Revelation," in loc. IV.

Dr. Milligan has shown this very convincingly.

We are quoting here from Dr. Milligan's "Baird Lectures," first ed., pp. 223-225 note, which seems to us more suggestive than the note in "The Expositor's Bible" volume, pp. 350-351.

"Expositor's Bible" volume on "The Book of Revelation" (1889), pp. 364, 368, 373. In his earlier "Commentary" in Dr. Schaff's "Popular Com. on the N. T.," Dr. Milligan had interpreted this vision of the consummated Church - though not of the Church so much as of its "eternal home," i.e., heaven.

"Christl. Eschatol.," 1886, p. 188.

Modern Theories of the Atonement¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

We may as well confess at the outset that there is no such thing as a modern theory of the Atonement, in the sense in which there is a modern theory, say, of the Incarnation - the kenosis theory to wit, which is a brand-new conception, never dreamed of until the nineteenth century was well on its course, and likely, we may hope, to pass out of notice with that century. All the theories of the Atonement now current readily arrange themselves under the old categories, and have their prototypes running back more or less remotely into the depths of Church history. 

The fact is, the views men take of the atonement are largely determined by their fundamental feelings of need - by what men most long to be saved from. And from the beginning three well-marked types of thought on this subject have been traceable, corresponding to three fundamental needs of human nature as it unfolds itself in this world of limitation. Men are oppressed by the ignorance, or by the misery, or by the sin in which they feel themselves sunk; and, looking to Christ to deliver them from the evil under which they particularly labor, they are apt to conceive His work as consisting predominantly in revelation of divine knowledge, or in the inauguration of a reign of happiness, or in deliverance from the curse of sin. 

In the early Church, the intellectualistic tendency allied itself with the class of phenomena which we call Gnosticism. The longing for peace and happiness that was the natural result of the crying social evils of the time, found its most remarkable expression in what we know as Chiliasm. That no such party-name suggests itself to describe the manifestation given to the longing to be delivered from the curse of sin, does not mean that this longing was less prominent or less poignant: but precisely the contrary. The other views were sloughed off as heresies, and each received its appropriate designation as such: this was the fundamental point of sight of the Church itself, and as such found expression in numberless ways, some of which, no doubt, were sufficiently bizarre - as, for example, the somewhat widespread representation of the atonement as centering in the surrender of Jesus as a ransom to Satan. 

Our modern Church, you will not need me to tell you, is very much like the early Church in all this. All three of these tendencies find as full representation in present-day thought as in any age of the Church's life. Perhaps at no other period was Christ so frequently or so passionately set forth as merely a social Saviour. Certainly at no other period has His work been so prevalently summed up in mere revelation. While now, as ever, the hope of Christians at large continues to be set upon Him specifically as the Redeemer from sin. 

The forms in which these fundamental types of thinking are clothed in our modern days, differ, as a matter of course, greatly from those they assumed in the first age. This difference is largely the result of the history of thought through the intervening centuries. The assimilation of the doctrines of revelation by the Church was a gradual process; and it was also an orderly process - the several doctrines emerging in the Christian consciousness for formal discussion and scientific statement in a natural sequence. In this process the doctrine of the atonement did not come up for formulation until the eleventh century, when Anselm gave it its first really fruitful treatment, and laid down for all time the general lines on which the atonement must be conceived, if it is thought of as a work of deliverance from the penalty of sin. The influence of Anselm's discussion is not only traceable, but has been determining in all subsequent thought down to to-day. The doctrine of satisfaction set forth by him has not been permitted, however, to make its way unopposed. Its extreme opposite - the general conception that the atoning work of Christ finds its essence in revelation and had its prime effect, therefore, in deliverance from error - was advocated in Anselm's own day by perhaps the acutest reasoner of all the schoolmen, Peter Abelard. The intermediate view which was apparently invented five centuries later by the great Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, loves to think of itself as running back, in germ at least, to nearly as early a date. In the thousand years of conflict which has raged among these generic conceptions each has taken on protean shapes, and a multitude of mixed or mediating hypotheses have been constructed. But, broadly speaking, the theories that have divided the suffrages of men easily take places under one or other of these three types. 

There is a fourth general conception, to be sure, which would need to be brought into view were we studying exhaustive enumeration. This is the mystical idea which looks upon the work of Christ as summed up in the incarnation; and upon the saving process as consisting in an unobserved leavening of mankind by the inworking of a vital germ then planted in the mass. But though there never was an age in which this idea failed entirely of representation, it bears a certain aristocratic character which has commended it ordinarily only to the few, however fit: and it probably never was very widely held except during the brief period when the immense genius of Schleiermacher so overshadowed the Church that it could hardly think at all save in the formulas taught by him. Broadly speaking, the field has been held practically by the three theories which are commonly designated by the names of Anselm, Grotius, and Abelard; and age has differed from age only in the changing expression given these theories and the relative dominance of one or another of them. 

The Reformers, it goes without saying, were enthusiastic preachers of the Anselmic conception - of course as corrected, developed, and enriched by their own deeper thought and truer insight. Their successors adjusted, expounded, and defended its details, until it stood forth in the seventeenth century dogmatics in practical completeness. During this whole period this conception held the field; the numerous controversies that arose about it were rather joined with the Socinian or the mystic than internal to the circle of recognized Church teachers. It was not until the rise of Rationalism that a widely spread defection became observable. Under this blight men could no longer believe in the substitutive expiation which is the heart of the Anselmic doctrine, and a blood-bought redemption went much out of fashion. The dainty Supranaturalists attained the height only of the Grotian view, and allowed only a "demonstrative" as distinguished from an "ontological" necessity for an atonement, and an "executive" as distinguished from a "judicial" effect to it. The great evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, swept away all that. It is probable that a half-century ago the doctrine of penal satisfaction had so strong a hold on the churches that not more than an academic interest attached to rival theories. 

About that time a great change began to set in. I need only to mention such names as those of Horace Bushnell, McLeod Campbell, Frederick Dennison Maurice, Albrecht Ritschl, to suggest the strength of the assault that was suddenly delivered against the central ideas of an expiatory atonement. The immediate effect was to call out an equally powerful defense. Our best treatises on the atonement come from this period; and Presbyterians in particular may well be proud of the part played by them in the crisis. But this defense only stemmed the tide: it did not succeed in rolling it back. The ultimate result has been that the revolt from the conceptions of satisfaction, propitiation, expiation, sacrifice, reinforced continually by tendencies adverse to evangelical doctrine peculiar to our times, has grown steadily more and more widespread, and in some quarters more and more extreme, until it has issued in an immense confusion on this central doctrine of the gospel. Voices are raised all about us proclaiming a "theory" of the atonement impossible, while many of those that essay a "theory" seem to be feeling their tortuous way very much in the dark. That, if I mistake not, is the real state of affairs in the modern Church. 

I am not meaning to imply that the doctrine of substitutive atonement - which is, after all, the very heart of the gospel - has been lost from the consciousness of the Church. It has not been lost from the hearts of the Christian community. It is in its terms that the humble Christian everywhere still expresses the grounds of his hope of salvation. It is in its terms that the earnest evangelist everywhere still presses the claims of Christ upon the awakened hearer. It has not even been lost from the forum of theological discussion. It still commands powerful advocates wherever a vital Christianity enters academical circles: and, as a rule, the more profound the thinker, the more clear is the note he strikes in its proclamation and defense. But if we were to judge only by the popular literature of the day - a procedure happily not possible - the doctrine of a substitutive atonement has retired well into the background. Probably the majority of those who hold the public ear, whether as academical or as popular religious guides, have definitely broken with it, and are commending to their audiences something other and, as they no doubt believe, something very much better. A tone of speech has even grown up regarding it which is not only scornful but positively abusive. There are no epithets too harsh to be applied to it, no invectives too intense to be poured out on it. An honored bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church tells us that "the whole theory of substitutional punishment as a ground either of conditional or unconditional pardon is unethical, contradictory, and self-subversive."2 He may rightly claim to be speaking in this sweeping sentence with marked discretion and unwonted charity. To do justice to the hateful theme requires, it seems, the tumid turmoil and rushing rant of Dr. Farrar's rhetoric. Surely if hard words broke bones, the doctrine of the substitutional sacrifice of the Son of God for the sin of man would long ago have been ground to powder. 

What, then, are we offered instead of it? We have already intimated that it is confusion which reigns here: and in any event we cannot go into details. We may try, however, to set down in few words the general impression that the most recent literature of the subject makes. 

To obtain a just view of the situation, I think we ought to note, first of all, the wide prevalence among the sounder thinkers of the Grotian or Rectoral theory of the atonement - the theory, that is, that conceives the work of Christ not as supplying the ground on which God forgives sin, but only as supplying the ground on which He may safely forgive sins on the sole ground of His compassion. The theory of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ died as the proper substitute for all men on the condition, namely, that they should believe - whether in its Remonstrant or in its Amyraldian form - has in the conflict of theories long since been crushed out of existence - as, indeed, it well deserved to be. This having been shoved out of the way, the Grotian theory has come to be the orthodox Arminian view and is taught as such by the leading exponents of modern Arminian thought whether in Britain or America; and he who will read the powerful argumentation to that effect by the late Dr. John Miley, say, for example, will be compelled to agree that it is, indeed, the highest form of atonement-doctrine conformable to the Arminian system. But not only is it thus practically universal among the Wesleyan Arminians. It has become also, under the influence of such teachers as Drs. Wardlaw and Dale and Dr. Park, the mark also of orthodox Nonconformity in Great Britain and of orthodox Congregationalism in America. Nor has it failed to take a strong hold also of Scottish Presbyterianism: it is specifically advocated by such men of mark and leading as, for example, Dr. Marcus Dods. On the Continent of Europe it is equally widespread among the saner teachers: one notes without surprise, for example, that it was taught by the late Dr. Frederic Godet, though one notes with satisfaction that it was considerably modified upward by Dr. Godet, and that his colleague, Dr. Gretillat, was careful to correct it. In a word, wherever men have been unwilling to drop all semblance of an "objective" atonement, as the word now goes, they have taken refuge in this half-way house which Grotius has builded for them. I do not myself look upon this as a particularly healthful sign of the times. I do not myself think that, at bottom, there is in principle much to choose between the Grotian and the so-called "subjective" theories. It seems to me only an illusion to suppose that it preserves an "objective" atonement at all. But meanwhile it is adopted by many because they deem it "objective," and it so far bears witness to a remanent desire to preserve an "objective" atonement. 

We are getting more closely down to the real characteristic of modern theories of the atonement when we note that there is a strong tendency observable all around us to rest the forgiveness of sins solely on repentance as its ground. In its last analysis, the Grotian theory itself reduces to this. The demonstration of God's righteousness, which is held by it to be the heart of Christ's work and particularly of His death, is supposed to have no other effect on God than to render it safe for Him to forgive sin. And this it does not as affecting Him, but as affecting men - namely, by awaking in them such a poignant sense of the evil of sin as to cause them to hate it soundly and to turn decisively away from it. This is just Repentance. We could desire no better illustration of this feature of the theory than is afforded by the statement of it by one of its most distinguished living advocates, Dr. Marcus Dods.³ The necessity of atonement, he tells us, lies in the "need of some such demonstration of God's righteousness as will make it possible and safe for Him to forgive the unrighteous" (p. 181). Whatever begets in the sinner true penitence and impels him toward the practice of righteousness will render it safe to forgive him. Hence Dr. Dods asserts that it is inconceivable that God should not forgive the penitent sinner, and that Christ's work is summed up in such an exhibition of God's righteousness and love as produces, on its apprehension, adequate repentance. "By being the source, then, of true and fruitful penitence, the death of Christ removes the radical subjective obstacle in the way of forgiveness" (p. 184). "The death of Christ, then, has made forgiveness possible, because it enables man to repent with an adequate penitence, and because it manifests righteousness and binds men to God" (p. 187). There is no hint here that man needs anything more to enable him to repent than the presentation of motives calculated powerfully to induce him to repent. That is to say, there is no hint here of an adequate appreciation of the subjective effects of sin on the human heart, deadening it to the appeal of motives to right action however powerful, and requiring therefore an internal action of the Spirit of God upon it before it can repent: or of the purchase of such a gift of the Spirit by the sacrifice of Christ. As little is there any hint here of the existence of any sense of justice in God, forbidding Him to account the guilty righteous without satisfaction of guilt. All God requires for forgiveness is repentance: all the sinner needs for repentance is a moving inducement. It is all very simple; but we are afraid it does not go to the root of matters as presented either in Scripture or in the throes of our awakened heart. 

The widespread tendency to represent repentance as the atoning fact might seem, then, to be accountable from the extensive acceptance which has been given to the Rectoral theory of the atonement. Nevertheless much of it has had a very different origin and may be traced back rather to some such teaching as that, say, of Dr. McLeod Campbell. Dr. Campbell did not himself find the atoning fact in man's own repentance, but rather in our Lord's sympathetic repentance for man. He replaced the evangelical doctrine of substitution by a theory of sympathetic identification, and the evangelical doctrine of expiatory penalty-paying by a theory of sympathetic repentance. Christ so fully enters sympathetically into our case, was his idea, that He is able to offer to God an adequate repentance for our sins, and the Father says, It is enough! Man here is still held to need a Saviour, and Christ is presented as that Saviour, and is looked upon as performing for man what man cannot do for himself. But the gravitation of this theory is distinctly downward, and it has ever tended to find its lower level. There are, therefore, numerous transition theories prevalent - some of them very complicated, some of them very subtle - which connect it by a series of insensible stages with the proclamation of human repentance as the sole atonement required. As typical of these we may take the elaborate theory (which, like man himself, may be said to be fearfully and wonderfully made) set forth by the modern Andover divines. This finds the atoning fact in a combination of Christ's sympathetic repentance for man and man's own repentance under the impression made upon him by Christ's work on his behalf - not in the one without the other, but in the two in unison. A similar combination of the revolutionary repentance of man induced by Christ and the sympathetic repentance of Christ for man meets us also in recent German theorizing, as, for example, in the teaching of Häring. It is sometimes clothed in "sacrificial" language and made to bear an appearance even of "substitution." It is just the repentance of Christ, however, which is misleadingly called His "sacrifice," and our sympathetic repentance with Him that is called our participation in His "sacrifice"; and it is carefully explained that though there was "a substitution on Calvary," it was not the substitution of a sinless Christ for a sinful race, but the substitution of humanity plus Christ for humanity minus Christ. All of which seems but a confusing way of saying that the atoning fact consists in the revolutionary repentance of man induced by the spectacle of Christ's sympathetic repentance for man. 

The essential emphasis in all these transition theories falls obviously on man's own repentance rather than on Christ's. Accordingly the latter falls away easily and leaves us with human repentance only as the sole atoning fact - the entire reparation which God asks or can ask for sin. Nor do men hesitate to-day to proclaim this openly and boldly. Scores of voices are raised about us declaring it not only with clearness but with passion. Even those who still feel bound to attribute the reconciling of God somehow to the work of Christ are often careful to explain that they mean this ultimately only, and only because they attribute in one way or other to the work of Christ the arousing of the repentance in man which is the immediate ground of forgiveness. Thus Dean Fremantle tells us that it is "repentance and faith" that "change for us the face of God." And then he adds, doubtless as a concession to ingrained, though outgrown, habits of thought: "If, then, the death of Christ, viewed as the culminating point of His life of love, is the destined means of repentance for the whole world, we may say, also, that it is the means of securing the mercy and favour of God, of procuring the forgiveness of sins."4 And Dr. (now Principal) Forsyth, whose fervid address on the atonement at a great Congregationalist gathering a few years ago quite took captive the hearts of the whole land, seems really to teach little more than this. Christ sympathetically enters into our condition, he tells us, and gives expression to an adequate sense of sin. We, perceiving the effect of this, His entrance into our sinful atmosphere, are smitten with horror of the judgment our sin has thus brought on Him. This horror begets in us an adequate repentance of sin: God accepts this repentance as enough; and forgives our sin. Thus forgiveness rests proximately only on our repentance as its ground: but our repentance is produced only by Christ's sufferings: and hence, Dr. Forsyth tells us, Christ's sufferings may be called the ultimate ground of forgiveness.⁵

It is sufficiently plain that the function served by the sufferings and death of Christ in this construction is somewhat remote. Accordingly they quite readily fall away altogether. It seems quite natural that they should do so with those whose doctrinal inheritance comes from Horace Bushnell, say, or from the Socinian theorizing of the school of Ritschl. We feel no surprise to learn, for example, that with Harnack the sufferings and death of Christ play no appreciable part. With him the whole atoning act seems to consist in the removal of a false conception of God from the minds of men. Men, because sinners, are prone to look upon God as a wrathful judge. He is, on the contrary, just Love. How can the sinner's misjudgment be corrected? By the impression made upon him by the life of Jesus, keyed to the conception of the Divine Fatherhood. With all this we are familiar enough. But we are hardly prepared for the extremities of language which some permit themselves in giving expression to it. "The whole difficulty," a recent writer of this class declares, "is not in inducing or enabling God to pardon, but in moving men to abhor sin and to want pardon." Even this difficulty, however, we are assured is removable: and what is needed for its removal is only proper instruction. "Christianity," cries our writer, "was a revelation, not a creation." Even this false antithesis does not, however, satisfy him. He rises beyond it to the acme of his passion. "Would there have been no Gospel," he rhetorically demands - as if none could venture to say him nay - "would there have been no Gospel had not Christ died?"6 Thus "the blood of Christ" on which the Scriptures hang the whole atoning fact is thought no longer to be needed: the gospel of Paul, which consisted not in Christ simpliciter but specifically in "Christ as crucified," is scouted. We are able to get along now without these things. 

To such a pass have we been brought by the prevailing gospel of the indiscriminate love of God. For it is here that we place our finger on the root of the whole modern assault upon the doctrine of an expiatory atonement. In the attempt to give effect to the conception of indiscriminate and undiscriminating love as the basal fact of religion, the entire Biblical teaching as to atonement has been ruthlessly torn up. If God is love and nothing but love, what possible need can there be of an atonement? Certainly such a God cannot need propitiating. Is not He the All-Father? Is He not yearning for His children with an unconditioned and unconditioning eagerness which excludes all thought of "obstacles to forgiveness"? What does He want but - just His children? Our modern theorizers are never weary of ringing the changes on this single fundamental idea. God does not require to be moved to forgiveness; or to be enabled to pardon; or even to be enabled to pardon safely. He raises no question of whether He can pardon, or whether it would be safe for Him to pardon. Such is not the way of love. Love is bold enough to sweep all such chilling questions impatiently out of its path. The whole difficulty is to induce men to permit themselves to be pardoned. God is continually reaching longing arms out of heaven toward men: oh, if men would only let themselves be gathered unto the Father's eager heart! It is absurd, we are told - nay, wicked - blasphemous with awful blasphemy - to speak of propitiating such a God as this, of reconciling Him, of making satisfaction to Him. Love needs no satisfying, reconciling, propitiating; nay, will have nothing to do with such things. Of its very nature it flows out unbought, unpropitiated, instinctively and unconditionally, to its object. And God is Love! 

Well, certainly, God is Love. And we praise Him that we have better authority for telling our souls this glorious truth than the passionate assertion of these somewhat crass theorizers. God is Love! But it does not in the least follow that He is nothing but love. God is Love: but Love is not God and the formula "Love" must therefore ever be inadequate to express God. It may well be - to us sinners, lost in our sin and misery but for it, it must be - the crowning revelation of Christianity that God is love. But it is not from the Christian revelation that we have learned to think of God as nothing but love. That God is the Father of all men in a true and important sense, we should not doubt. But this term "All-Father" - it is not from the lips of Hebrew prophet or Christian apostle that we have caught it. And the indiscriminate benevolencism which has taken captive so much of the religious thinking of our time is a conception not native to Christianity, but of distinctly heathen quality. As one reads the pages of popular religious literature, teeming as it is with ill-considered assertions of the general Fatherhood of God, he has an odd feeling of transportation back into the atmosphere of, say, the decadent heathenism of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the gods were dying, and there was left to those who would fain cling to the old ways little beyond a somewhat saddened sense of the benignitas numinis. The benignitas numinis! How studded the pages of those genial old heathen are with the expression; how suffused their repressed life is with the conviction that the kind Deity that dwells above will surely not be hard on men toiling here below! How shocked they are at the stern righteousness of the Christian's God, who loomed before their startled eyes as He looms before those of the modern poet in no other light than as "the hard God that dwelt in Jerusalem"! Surely the Great Divinity is too broadly good to mark the peccadillos of poor puny man; surely they are the objects of His compassionate amusement rather than of His fierce reprobation. Like Omar Khayyam's pot, they were convinced, before all things, of their Maker that "He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well." 

The query cannot help rising to the surface of our minds whether our modern indiscriminate benevolencism goes much deeper than this. Does all this one-sided proclamation of the universal Fatherhood of God import much more than the heathen benignitas numinis? When we take those blessed words, "God is Love," upon our lips, are we sure we mean to express much more than that we do not wish to believe that God will hold man to any real account for his sin? Are we, in a word, in these modern days, so much soaring upward toward a more adequate apprehension of the transcendent truth that God is love, as passionately protesting against being ourselves branded and dealt with as wrath-deserving sinners? Assuredly it is impossible to put anything like their real content into these great words, "God is Love," save as they are thrown out against the background of those other conceptions of equal loftiness, "God is Light," "God is Righteousness," "God is Holiness," "God is a consuming fire." The love of God cannot be apprehended in its length and breadth and height and depth - all of which pass knowledge - save as it is apprehended as the love of a God who turns from the sight of sin with inexpressible abhorrence, and burns against it with unquenchable indignation. The infinitude of His love would be illustrated not by His lavishing of His favor on sinners without requiring an expiation of sin, but by His - through such holiness and through such righteousness as cannot but cry out with infinite abhorrence and indignation - still loving sinners so greatly that He provides a satisfaction for their sin adequate to these tremendous demands. It is the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity, after all, not that it preaches a God of love, but that it preaches a God of conscience. 

A somewhat flippant critic, contemplating the religion of Israel, has told us, as expressive of his admiration for what he found there, that "an honest God is the noblest work of man."7 There is a profound truth lurking in the remark. Only it appears that the work were too noble for man; and probably man has never compassed it. A benevolent God, yes: men have framed a benevolent God for themselves. But a thoroughly honest God, perhaps never. That has been left for the revelation of God Himself to give us. And this is the really distinguishing characteristic of the God of revelation: He is a thoroughly honest, a thoroughly conscientious God - a God who deals honestly with Himself and us, who deals conscientiously with Himself and us. And a thoroughly conscientious God, we may be sure, is not a God who can deal with sinners as if they were not sinners. In this fact lies, perhaps, the deepest ground of the necessity of an expiatory atonement. 

And it is in this fact also that there lies the deepest ground of the increasing failure of the modern world to appreciate the necessity of an expiatory atonement. Conscientiousness commends itself only to awakened conscience; and in much of recent theologizing conscience does not seem especially active. Nothing, indeed, is more startling in the structure of recent theories of atonement, than the apparently vanishing sense of sin that underlies them. Surely, it is only where the sense of guilt of sin has grown grievously faint, that men can suppose repentance to be all that is needed to purge it. Surely it is only where the sense of the power of sin has profoundly decayed, that men can fancy that they can at will cast it off from them in a "revolutionary repentance." Surely it is only where the sense of the heinousness of sin has practically passed away, that man can imagine that the holy and just God can deal with it lightly. If we have not much to be saved from, why, certainly, a very little atonement will suffice for our needs. It is, after all, only the sinner that requires a Saviour. But if we are sinners, and in proportion as we know ourselves to be sinners, and appreciate what it means to be sinners, we will cry out for that Saviour who only after He was perfected by suffering could become the Author of eternal salvation.

Endnotes:

An address delivered at the "Religious Conference," held in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, on October 13, 1902. Reprinted from The Princeton Theological Review, i. 1903, pp. 81-92. 

Bishop Foster, in his "Philosophy of Christian Experience": 1891, p. 113. 

In an essay in a volume called "The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought: A Theological Symposium" (London: James Clarke & Co., 1900). In this volume seventeen essays from as many writers are collected, and from it a very fair notion can be obtained of the ideas current in certain circles of our day. 

"The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought," as cited: pp. 168 f. 

Ibid., pp. 61 ff. 

Mr. Bernard J. Snell, in "The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought": pp. 265, 267. 

Cf. Mr. Edward Day's "The Social Life of the Hebrews," 1901, p. 207. He is quoting apparently the late Mr. Ingersoll. 

Mysticism and Christianity

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from The Biblical Review, ii. 1917, pp. 169-191 (published by The Biblical Seminary in New York; copyrighted).

Religion is, shortly, the reaction of the human soul in the presence of God. As God is as much a part of the environment of man as the earth on which he stands, no man can escape from religion any more than he can escape from gravitation. But though every man necessarily reacts to God, men react of course diversely, each according to his nature, or perhaps we would better say, each according to his temperament. Thus, broadly speaking, three main types of religion arise, corresponding to the three main varieties of the activity of the human spirit, intellectual, emotional, and voluntary. According as the intellect, sensibility, or will is dominant in him, each man produces for himself a religion prevailingly of the intellect, sensibility, or active will; and all the religions which men have made for themselves find places somewhere among these three types, as they produce themselves more or less purely, or variously intermingle with one another. 

We say advisedly, all the religions which men have made for themselves. For there is an even more fundamental division among religions than that which is supplied by these varieties. This is the division between man-made and God-made religions. Besides the religions which man has made for himself, God has made a religion for man. We call this revealed religion; and the most fundamental division which separates between religions is that which divides revealed religion from unrevealed religions. Of course, we do not mean to deny that there is an element of revelation in all religions. God is a person, and persons are known only as they make themselves known - reveal themselves. The term revelation is used in this distinction, therefore, in a pregnant sense. In the unrevealed religions God is known only as He has revealed Himself in His acts of the creation and government of the world, as every person must reveal himself in his acts if he acts at all. In the one revealed religion God has revealed Himself also in acts of special grace, among which is included the open Word. 

There is an element in revealed religion, therefore, which is not found in any unrevealed religion. This is the element of authority. Revealed religion comes to man from without; it is imposed upon him from a source superior to his own spirit. The unrevealed religions, on the other hand, flow from no higher source than the human spirit itself. However much they may differ among themselves in the relative prominence given in each to the functioning of the intellect, sensibility, or will, they have this fundamental thing in common. They are all, in other words, natural religions in contradistinction to the one supernatural religion which God has made. 

There is a true sense, then, in which it may be said that the unrevealed religions are "religions of the spirit" and revealed religion is the "religion of authority." Authority is the correlate of revelation, and wherever revelation is - and only where revelation is - is there authority. Just because we do not see in revelation man reaching up lame hands toward God and feeling fumblingly after Him if haply he may find Him, but God graciously reaching strong hands down to man, bringing him help in his need, we see in it a gift from God, not a creation of man's. On the other hand, the characteristic of all unrevealed religions is that they are distinctly man-made. They have no authority to appeal to, they rest solely on the deliverances of the human spirit. As Rudyard Kipling shrewdly makes his "Tommy" declare: 

The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and stone,
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own. 

Naturally it makes no difference in this respect whether it is the rational, emotional, or volitional element in the activities of the human spirit to which appeal is chiefly made. In no case are the foundations sunk deeper than the human spirit itself, and nothing appears in the structure that is raised which the human spirit does not supply. The preponderance of one or another of these activities in the structure does, however, make an immense difference in the aspect of that structure. Mysticism is the name which is given to the particular one of these structures, the predominant place in which is taken by the sensibility. It is characteristic of mysticism that it makes its appeal to the feelings as the sole, or at least as the normative, source of knowledge of divine things. That is to say, it is the religious sentiment which constitutes for it the source of religious knowledge. Of course mystics differ with one another in the consistency with which they apply their principle. And of course they differ with one another in the account they give of this religious sentiment to which they make their appeal. There are, therefore, many varieties of mystics, pure and impure, consistent and inconsistent, naturalistic and supernaturalistic, pantheistic and theistic - even Christian. What is common to them all, and what makes them all mystics, is that they all rest on the religious sentiment as the source of knowledge of divine things. 

The great variety of the accounts which mystics give of the feeling to which they make their appeal arises from the very nature of the case. There is a deeper reason for a mystic being "mute" - that is what the name imports - than that he wishes to make a mystery of his discoveries. He is "mute" because, as a mystic, he has nothing to say. When he sinks within himself he finds feelings, not conceptions; his is an emotional, not a conceptional, religion; and feelings, emotions, though not inaudible, are not articulate. As a mystic, he has no conceptional language in which to express what he feels. If he attempts to describe it he must make use of terms derived from the religious or philosophical thought in vogue about him, that is to say, of non-mystical language. His hands may be the hands of Esau, but his voice is the voice of Jacob. The language in which he describes the reality which he finds within him does not in the least indicate, then, what it is; it is merely a concession to the necessity of communicating with the external world or with his own more external self. What he finds within him is just to his apprehension an "unutterable abyss." And Synesius does himself and his fellow mystics no injustice when he declares that "the mystic mind says this and that, gyrating around the unutterable abyss." 

On the brink of this abyss the mystic may stand in awe, and, standing in awe upon its brink, he may deify it. Then he calls it indifferently Brahm or Zeus, Allah or the Holy Spirit, according as men about him speak of God. He explains its meaning, in other words, in terms of the conception of the universe which he has brought with him, or, as it is more fashionable now to phrase it, each in accordance with his own world-view. Those who are held in the grasp of a naturalistic conception of the world will naturally speak of the religious feeling of which they have become acutely conscious as only one of the multitudinous natural movements of the human soul, and will seek merely, by a logical analysis of its presuppositions and implications, to draw out its full meaning. Those who are sunk in a pantheistic world-view will speak of its movements as motions of the subliminal consciousness, and will interpret them as the surgings within us of the divine ground of all things, in listening to which they conceive themselves to be sinking beneath the waves that fret the surface of the ocean of being and penetrating to its profounder depths. If, on the other hand, the mystic chances to be a theist, he may look upon the movements of his religious feelings as effects in his soul wrought by the voluntary actions of the God whom he acknowledges; and if he should happen to be a Christian, he may interpret these movements, in accordance with the teachings of the Scriptures, as the leadings of the Holy Spirit or as the manifestations within him of the Christ within us the hope of glory. 

This Christian mysticism, now, obviously differs in no essential respect from the parallel phenomena which are observable in other religions. It is only general mysticism manifesting itself on Christian ground and interpreting itself accordingly in the forms of Christian thought. It is mysticism which has learned to speak in Christian language. The phenomena themselves are universal. There has never been an age of the world, or a form of religion, in which they have not been in evidence. There are always everywhere some men who stand out among their fellows as listeners to the inner voice, and who, refusing the warning which Thoas gives to Iphigenia in Goethe's play, "There speaks no God: thy heart alone 'tis speaks," respond like Iphigenia with passionate conviction, "'Tis only through our hearts the gods e'er speak." But these common phenomena are, naturally, interpreted in each instance, according to the general presuppositions of each several subject or observer of them. Thus, for example, they are treated as the intrusion of God into the soul (Ribet), or as the involuntary intrusion of the unconscious into consciousness (Hartmann), or as the intrusion of the subconscious into the consciousness (Du Prel), or as the intrusion of feeling, strong and overmastering, into the operations of the intellect (Goethe). 

According to these varying interpretations we get different types of mysticism, differing from one another not in intrinsic character so much as in the explanations given of the common phenomena. Many attempts have been made to arrange these types in logical schemes which shall embrace all varieties and present them in an intelligible order. Thus, for example, from the point of view of the ends sought, R. A. Vaughan distinguishes between theopathic, theosophic, and theurgic mysticism, the first of which is content with feeling, while the second aspires to knowledge, and the third seeks power. The same classes may perhaps be called more simply emotional, intellectual, and thelematic mysticism. From the point of view of the inquiry into the sources of religious knowledge four well-marked varieties present themselves, which have been given the names of naturalistic, supernaturalistic, theosophical, and pantheistic mysticism. 

The common element in all these varieties of mysticism is that they all seek all, or most, or the normative or at least a substantial part, of the knowledge of God in human feelings, which they look upon as the sole or at least the most trustworthy or the most direct source of the knowledge of God. The differences between them turn on the diverging conceptions which they entertain of the origin of the religious feelings thus appealed to. Naturalistic mysticism conceives them as merely "the natural religious consciousness of men, as excited and influenced by the circumstances of the individual." Supernaturalistic, as the effects of operations of the divine Spirit in the heart, the human spirit moving only as it is moved upon by the divine. Theosophical mysticism goes a step further and regards the religious feelings as the footprints of Deity moving in the soul, and as, therefore, immediate sources of knowledge of God, which is to be obtained by simple quiescence and rapt contemplation of these His movements. Pantheistic mysticism advances to the complete identification of the soul with God, who is therefore to be known by applying oneself to the simple axiom: "Know thyself." 

Clearly it is the type which has been called supernaturalistic that has the closest affinity with Christianity. Christian mysticism accordingly, at its best, takes this form and passes insensibly from it into evangelical Christianity, to which the indwelling of the Holy Ghost - the Christ within - is fundamental, and which rejoices in such spiritual experiences as are summed up in the old categories of regeneration and sanctification - the rebegetting of the soul into newness of life and the leading of the new-created soul along the pathway of holy living. From these experiences, of course, much may be inferred not only of the modes of God's working in the salvation of men but also of the nature and character of God the worker. 

The distinction between mysticism of this type and evangelical Christianity, from the point of view which is now occupying our attention, is nevertheless clear. Evangelical Christianity interprets all religious experience by the normative revelation of God recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures, and guides, directs, and corrects it from these Scriptures, and thus molds it into harmony with what God in His revealed Word lays down as the normal Christian life. The mystic, on the other hand, tends to substitute his religious experience for the objective revelation of God recorded in the written Word, as the source from which he derives his knowledge of God, or at least to subordinate the expressly revealed Word as the less direct and convincing source of knowledge of God to his own religious experience. The result is that the external revelation is relatively depressed in value, if not totally set aside. 

In the history of Christian thought mysticism appears accordingly as that tendency among professing Christians which looks within, that is, to the religious feelings, in its search for God. It supposes itself to contemplate within the soul the movements of the divine Spirit, and finds in them either the sole sources of trustworthy knowledge of God, or the most immediate and convincing sources of that knowledge, or, at least, a coordinate source of it alongside of the written Word. The characteristic of Christian mysticism, from the point of view of religious knowledge, is therefore its appeal to the "inner light," or "the internal word," either to the exclusion of the external or written Word, or as superior to it and normative for its interpretation, or at least as coordinate authority with it, this "inner light" or "internal word" being conceived not as the rational understanding but as the immediate deliverance of the religious sentiment. As a mere matter of fact, now, we lack all criteria, apart from the written Word, to distinguish between those motions of the heart which are created within us by the Spirit of God and those which arise out of the natural functioning of the religious consciousness. This substitution of our religious experience - or "Christian consciousness," as it is sometimes called - for the objective Word as the proper source of our religious knowledge ends therefore either in betraying us into purely rationalistic mysticism, or is rescued from that by the postulation of a relation of the soul to God which strongly tends toward pantheizing mysticism. 

In point of fact, mysticism in the Church is found to gravitate, with pretty general regularity, either toward rationalism or toward pantheism. In effect, indeed, it appears to differ from rationalism chiefly in temperament, if we may not even say in temperature. The two have it in common that they appeal for knowledge of God only to what is internal to man; and to what, internal to man, men make their actual appeal, seems to be determined very much by their temperaments, or, as has been said, by their temperatures. The human soul is a small thing at best; it is not divided into water-tight compartments; the streams of feeling which are flowing up and down in it and the judgments of the understanding which are incessantly being framed in it are constantly acting and reacting on one another. It is not always easy for it to be perfectly clear, as it turns within itself and gazes upon its complex movements, of the real source, rational or emotional, of the impressions which it observes to be crystallizing within it into convictions. It has often been observed in the progress of history, accordingly, that men who have deserted the guidance of external revelation have become mystics or rationalists largely according as their religious life was warm or cold. In periods of religious fervor or in periods of fervid religious reactions they are mystics; in periods of religious decline they are rationalists. The same person, indeed, sometimes vibrates between the two points of view with the utmost facility. 

It is, however, with pantheism that mysticism stands in the closest association. It would not be untrue, in fact, to say that as a historical phenomenon mysticism is just pantheism reduced to a religion, that is to say, with its postulates transformed into ends. Defenses of mysticism against the inevitable (and true) charge of pantheizing usually, indeed, stop with the announcement of this damaging fact. "Lasson," remarks Dean Inge as if that were the conclusion of the matter instead of, as it is, the confession of judgment, "says well, in his book on Meister Eckhart, 'Mysticism views everything from the standpoint of teleology, while pantheism generally stops at causality."' What it is of importance to observe is that it is precisely what pantheism, being a philosophy, postulates as conditions of being that mysticism, being a religion, proposes as objects of attainment. Mysticism is simply, therefore, pantheism expressed in the terms of religious aspiration. 

This is as true within the Christian Church as without it. All forms of mysticism have no doubt from time to time found a place for themselves within the Church. Or perhaps we should rather say that they have always existed in it, and have from time to time manifested their presence there. This must be said even of naturalistic mysticism. There are those who call themselves Christians who yet conceive of Christianity as merely the natural religious sentiment excited into action by contact with the religious impulse set in motion by Jesus Christ and transmitted down the ages by the natural laws of motion, as motion is transmitted, say, through a row of billiard balls in contact with one another. Yet it would only be true to say that mysticism as a phenomenon in the history of the Church has commonly arisen in the wake of the dominating influence in the contemporary world of a pantheizing philosophy. It is the product of a pantheizing manner of thinking impinging on the religious nature, or, if we prefer to phrase it from the opposite point of view, of religious thought seeking to assimilate and to express itself in terms of a pantheizing philosophy. 

The fullest stream of mystical thought which has entered the Church finds its origin in the Neoplatonic philosophy. It is to the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius that its naturalization in the Eastern Church is usually broadly ascribed. The sluice-gates of the Western Church were opened for it, in the same broad sense, by John Scotus Erigena. It has flowed strongly down through all the subsequent centuries, widening here and there into lakelets. The form of mysticism which is most widely disturbing the modern Protestant churches comes, however, from a different source. It takes its origin from the movement inaugurated in the first third of the nineteenth century by Friedrich Schleiermacher, with the ostensible purpose of rescuing Christianity from the assaults of rationalism by vindicating for religion its own independent right of existence, in a region "beyond reason." The result of this attempt to separate religion from reason has been, of course, merely to render religion unreasonable; even Plotinus warned us long ago that "he who would rise above reason falls outside of it." But what we are immediately concerned to observe is the very widespread rejection of all "external authority," which has been one of the results of this movement, and the consequent casting of men back upon their "religious experience," corporate or individual, as their sole trustworthy ground of religious convictions. This is, of course, only "the inner light" of an earlier form of mysticism under a new and (so it has been hoped) more inoffensive name; and it is naturally, therefore, burdened with all the evils which inhere in the mystical attitude. These evils do not affect extreme forms of mysticism only; they are intrinsic in the two common principles which give to all its forms their fundamental character - the misprision of "external authority," and the attempt to discover in the movements of the sensibilities the ground or norm of all the religious truth which will be acknowledged. 

"Mystics," says George Tyrrell, "think they touch the divine when they have only blurred the human form with a cloud of words." The astonishing thing about this judgment is not the judgment itself but the source from which it comes. For Tyrrell himself as a "Modernist" held with our "experientialists," and when he cast his eye into the future could see nothing but mysticism as the last refuge for religion. "Houtin and Loisy are right," he writes; "the Christianity of the future will consist of mysticism and charity, and possibly the eucharist in its primitive form as the outward bond. I desire no more." The plain fact is that this "religious experience," to which we are referred for our religious knowledge, can speak to us only in the language of religious thought; and where there is no religious thought to give it a tongue it is dumb. And above all, it must be punctually noted, it cannot speak to us in a Christian tongue unless that Christian tongue is lent it by the Christian revelation. The rejection of "external authority" and our relegation to "religious experience" for our religious knowledge is nothing more nor less, then, than the definitive abolition of Christianity and the substitution for it of natural religion. Tyrrell perfectly understood this, and that is what he means when he speaks of the Christianity of the future as reduced to "mysticism and charity." All the puzzling facts of Christianity (this is his view) - the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God and all the puzzling doctrines of Christianity - the atonement in Christ's blood, the renewal through the Spirit, the resurrection of the body - all, all will be gone. For all this rests on "external authority." And men will content themselves, will be compelled to content themselves, with the motions of their own religious sensibilities - and (let us hope) with charity. 

There is nothing more important in the age in which we live than to bear constantly in mind that all the Christianity of Christianity rests precisely on "external authority." Religion, of course, we can have without "external authority," for man is a religious animal and will function religiously always and everywhere. But Christianity, no. Christianity rests on "external authority," and that for the very good reason that it is not the product of man's religious sentiment but is a gift from God. To ask us to set aside "external authority" and throw ourselves back on what we can find within us alone - call it by whatever name you choose, "religious experience," "the Christian consciousness," "the inner light," "the immanent Divine" - is to ask us to discard Christianity and revert to natural religion. Natural religion is of course good - in its own proper place and for its own proper purposes. Nobody doubts - or nobody ought to doubt - that men are by nature religious and will have a religion in any event. The sensus divinitatis implanted in us - to employ Calvin's phrases - functions inevitably as a semen religionis. 

Of course Christianity does not abolish or supersede this natural religion; it vitalizes it, and confirms it, and fills it with richer content. But it does so much more than this that, great as this is, it is pardonable that it should now and then be overlooked. It supplements it, and, in supplementing it, it transforms it, and makes it, with its supplements, a religion fitted for and adequate to the needs of sinful man. There is nothing "soteriological" in natural religion. It grows out of the recognized relations of creature and Maker; it is the creature's response to the perception of its Lord, in feelings of dependence and responsibility. It knows nothing of salvation. When the creature has become a sinner, and the relations proper to it as creature to its Lord have been superseded by relations proper to the criminal to its judge, natural religion is dumb. It fails just because it is natural religion and is unequal to unnatural conditions. Of course we do not say that it is suspended; we say only that it has become inadequate. It requires to be supplemented by elements which are proper to the relation of the offending creature to the offended Lord. This is what Christianity brings, and it is because this is what Christianity brings that it so supplements and transforms natural religion as to make it a religion for sinners. It does not supersede natural religion; it takes it up in its entirety unto itself, expanding it and developing it on new sides to meet new needs and supplementing it where it is insufficient for these new needs. 

We have touched here the elements of truth in George Tyrrell's contention, otherwise bizarre enough, that Christianity builds not on Judaism but on paganism. The antithesis is unfortunate. Although in very different senses, Christianity builds both on Judaism and on paganism; it is the completion of the supernatural religion begun in Judaism, and it is the supernatural supplement to the natural religion which lies beneath all the horrible perversions of paganism. Tyrrell, viewing everything from the point of view of his Catholicism and dealing in historical as much as in theological judgments, puts his contention in this form: "That Catholicism is Christianized paganism or world-religion and not the Christianized Judaism of the New Testament." The idea he wishes to express is that Catholicism is the only tenable form of Christianity because it alone is founded, not on Judaism, but on "world-religion." What is worthy of our notice is that he says "world-religion," not "world-religions." He is thinking not of the infinite variety of pagan religions - many of them gross enough, none of them worthy of humanity ("man's worst crimes are his religions," says Dr. Faunce somewhere, most strikingly) - but of the underlying religion which sustains and gives whatever value they possess to them all. 

Now mysticism is just this world-religion; that is to say, it is the expression of the ineradicable religiosity of the human race. So far as it is this, and nothing but this, it is valid religion, and eternal religion. No man can do without it, not even the Christian man. But it is not adequate religion for sinners. And when it pushes itself forward as an adequate religion for sinners it presses beyond its mark and becomes, in the poet's phrase, "procuress to the lords of hell." As vitalized and informed, supplemented and transformed by Christianity, as supplying to Christianity the natural foundation for its supernatural structure, it is valid religion. As a substitute for Christianity it is not merely a return to the beggarly elements of the world, but inevitably rots down to something far worse. Confining himself to what he can find in himself, man naturally cannot rise above himself, and unfortunately the self above which he cannot rise is a sinful self. 

The pride which is inherent in the self-poised, self-contained attitude which will acknowledge no truth that is not found within oneself is already an unlovely trait, and a dangerous one as well, since pride is unhappily a thing which grows by what it feeds on. The history of mysticism only too clearly shows that he who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God. We may conceivably think that Mr. G. K. Chesterton might have chosen his language with a little more delicacy of feeling, but what he says in the following telling way much needs to be said in this generation in words which will command a hearing. He had seen some such observation as that which we have quoted from Tyrrell, to the effect that the Christianity of the future is to be a mere mysticism. This is the way he deals with it: 

Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armor of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armor of bones) turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer the truth. . . . Of all the conceivable forms of enlightenment, the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the God within. Anyone who knows anybody knows how it would work; anyone who knows anyone from thc Higher Thought Center knows how it does work. That Jones should worship the God within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the God within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inward, but to look outward, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. 

Certainly, valuable as the inner light is - adequate as it might be for men who were not sinners - there is no fate which could be more terrible for a sinner than to be left alone with it. And we must not blink the fact that it is just that, in the full terribleness of its meaning, which mysticism means. Above all other elements of Christianity, Christ and what Christ stands for, with the cross at the center, come to us solely by "external authority." No "external authority," no Christ, and no cross of Christ. For Christ is history, and Christ's cross is history, and mysticism which lives solely on what is within can have nothing to do with history; mysticism which seeks solely eternal verities can have nothing to do with time and that which has occurred in time. Accordingly a whole series of recent mystical devotional writers sublimate the entire body of those historical facts, which we do not say merely lie at the basis of Christianity - we say rather, which constitute the very substance of Christianity - into a mere set of symbols, a dramatization of psychological experiences succeeding one another in the soul. Christ Himself becomes but an external sign of an inward grace. Read but the writings of John Cordelier. Not even the most reluctant mystic, however, can altogether escape some such process of elimination of the external Christ; by virtue of the very fact that he will not have anything in his religion which he does not find within himself he must sooner or later "pass beyond Christ." 

We do not like Wilhelm Herrmann's rationalism any better than we like mysticism, and we would as soon have no Christ at all as the Christ Herrmann gives us. But Herrmann tells the exact truth when he explains in well-chosen words that "the piety of the mystic is such that at the highest point to which it leads Christ must vanish from the soul along with all else that is external." "When he has found God," he explains again, "the mystic has left Christ behind." At the best, Christ can be to the mystic but the model mystic, not Himself the Way as He declared of Himself, but only a traveler along with us upon the common way. So Miss Underhill elaborately depicts Him, but not she alone. Soderblom says of von Hugel that Jesus is to him "merely a high point in the religious development to which man must aspire." "He has no eye," he adds, "for the unique personal power which His figure exercises on man." This applies to the whole class. But much more than this needs to be said. Christ may be the mystic's brother. He may possibly even be his exemplar and leader, although He is not always recognized as such. What He cannot by any possibility be is his Saviour. Is not God within him? And has he not merely to sink within himself to sink himself into God? He has no need of "salvation" and allows no place for it. 

We hear much of the revolt of mysticism against the forensic theory of the atonement and imputed righteousness. This is a mere euphemism for its revolt against all "atonement" and all "justification." The whole external side of the Christian salvation simply falls away. In the same euphemistic language Miss Underhill declares that "nothing done for us, or exhibited to us, can have the significance of that which is done in us." She means that it has no significance for us at all. Even a William Law can say: "Christ given for us is neither more nor less than Christ given into us. He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement, than as His nature and spirit are born and formed in us." The cross and all that the cross stands for are abolished; it becomes at best but a symbol of a general law - per aspera ad astra. "There is but one salvation for all mankind," says Law, "and the way to it is one; and that is the desire of the soul turned to God. This desire brings the soul to God and God into the soul: it unites with God, it cooperates with God, and is one life with God." If Christ is still spoken of, and His death and resurrection and ascension, and all the currents of religious feeling still turn to Him, that is because Christians must so speak and feel. The same experiences may be had under other skies and will under them express themselves in other terms appropriate to the traditions of those other times and places. That Christian mysticism is Christ mysticism, seeking and finding Christ within and referring all its ecstasies to Him, is thus only an accident. And even the functions of this Christ within us, which alone it knows, are degraded far below those of the Christ within us of the Christian revelation. 

The great thing about the indwelling Christ of the Christian revelation is that He comes to us in His Spirit with creative power. Veni, creator Spiritus, we sing, and we look to be new creatures, created in Christ Jesus into newness of life. The mystic will allow, not a resurrection from the dead, but only an awakening from sleep. Christ enters the heart not to produce something new but to arouse what was dormant, what has belonged to man as man from the beginning and only needs to be set to work. "If Christ was to raise a new life like His own in every man," writes Law, "then every man must have had originally in the inmost spirit of his life a seed of Christ, or Christ as a seed of heaven, lying there in a state of insensibility, out of which it could not arise but by the mediatorial power of Christ." He cannot conceive of Christ bringing anything new; what Christ seems to bring he really finds already there. "The Word of God," he says, "is the hidden treasure of every human soul, immured under flesh and blood, till as a day-star it arises in our hearts and changes the son of an earthly Adam into a son of God." Nothing is brought to us; what is already in us is only "brought out," and what is already in us - in every man - is "the Word of God." This is Christ mysticism; that is to say, it is the mysticism in which the divinity which is in every man by nature is called Christ - rather than, say, Brahm or Allah, or what not. 

Even in such a movement as that represented by Bishop Chandler's Cult of the Passing Moment, the disintegrating operation of mysticism on historical Christianity - which is all the Christianity there is - is seen at work. Bishop Chandler himself, we are thankful to say, exalts the cross and thinks of it as a creative influence in the lives of men. But this only exemplifies the want of logical consistency, which indeed is the boast of the school which he represents. If our one rule of life is to be the spiritual improvement of the impressions of the moment, and we are to follow these blindly whithersoever they lead with no steadying, not to say guidance, derived from the great Revelation of the past, there can be but one issue. We are simply substituting our own passing impulses, interpreted as inspirations, for the one final revelation of God as the guide of life; that God has spoken once for all for the guidance of His people is forgotten; His great corporate provision for His people is cast aside; and we are adrift upon the billows of merely subjective feeling. 

We see that it is not merely Christ and His cross, then, which may be neglected, as external things belonging to time and space. God Himself, speaking in His Word, may be forgotten - in "the cult of the passing moment." We are reminded that there have been mystics who have not scrupled openly to contrast even the God without them with the God within, and to speak in such fashion as to be understood (or misunderstood) as counseling divesting ourselves of God Himself and turning only to the inwardly shining light. No doubt they did not mean all that their words may be pressed into seeming to say. Nevertheless, their words may stand for us as a kind of symbol of the whole mystical conception, with the exaggerated value which it sets upon the personal feelings and its contempt for all that is external to the individual's spirit, even though it must be allowed that this excludes all that makes Christianity the religion of salvation for a lost world - the cross, Christ Himself, and the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who in His love gave His Son to die for sinners. 

The issue which mysticism creates is thus just the issue of Christianity. The question which it raises is, whether we need, whether we have, a provision in the blood of Christ for our sins; or whether we, each of us, possess within ourselves all that can be required for time and for eternity. Both of these things cannot be true, and obviously tertium non datur. We may be mystics, or we may be Christians. We cannot be both. And the pretension of being both usually merely veils defection from Christianity. Mysticism baptized with the name of Christianity is not thereby made Christianity. A rose by any other name will smell as sweet. But it does not follow that whatever we choose to call a rose will possess the rose's fragrance.

The New Testament Terminology of "Redemption"1

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The most direct, but not the exclusive² vehicle in the Greek of the New Testament of the idea which we commonly express in our current speech by the term "redeem" and its derivatives, is provided by a group of words built up upon the Greek term lu,tron, "ransom."3 The exact implications of this group of words as employed by the writers of the New Testament have been brought into dispute.⁴ It seems desirable therefore to look afresh into their origin and usage sufficiently to become clear as to the matter, and the inquiry may perhaps be thought to possess enough intrinsic interest to justify going a little farther afield in it, and entering somewhat more into details, than would be necessary for the immediate purpose in hand. 

I

To begin at the beginning, at any rate, the ultimate base to which this group of words goes back seems to be represented by the Sanscrit LÛ, which bears the meaning of "to cut," or "to clip"; hence it is inferred that the earliest implication of the general Indo-European root LU was to set free by cutting a bond. The Greek primitive of this base, lu,ein, has the general meaning of "to loose," which is applied and extended in a great variety of ways. When applied to men, its common meaning is "'to loose, release, set free,' especially from bonds or prison, and so, generally, from difficulty, or danger." It developed a particular usage with reference to prisoners,⁵ which is of interest to us. In this usage, it means, in the active voice, "to release on receipt of ransom," "to hold to ransom"; and in the middle voice, " to secure release by payment of ransom," " to ransom" in the common sense of that word,⁶ passing on to a broader usage of simply "to redeem" (in which it is applied not merely to prisoners but to animals and landed property⁷) and even "to buy."8 It also acquired the serise of paying debts, and, when used with reference to wrong-doings, a sense of "undoing" or " making up for, " which is not far removed from that of making atonement for, them.⁹ 

Naturally, the usual derivatives and compounds are formed from lu,ein. Among the former the abstract active substantive, lu,sij, is especially interesting to us because among its various senses it reflects both of the usages of its primitive to which we have just called attention. It is used of a release, deliverance, effected by the payment of a ransom - a "ransoming."10 And it is used of a cleansing from guilt by means of an expiation - an "atonement."11 Little less interesting, however, are the nouns of agent, of which several are formed, bearing the general sense of "deliverer "- lu,sioj (lu,seioj), luth,r (lu,teira), lu,twr. Lu,sioj was used in the Dionysiac myth as an epithet of Dionysus,¹² and in the Orphics a great part was played by the qeoi. lu,sioi.¹³ In the Second Book of the "Republic,"14 Plato makes Adeimantos, performing the office of advocatus diaboli, urge in favor of being wicked and reaping its gains, that the penalties of wickedness may very easily be escaped: the gods can be propitiated, and so we can sin and pray, and then sin and pray some more, - and if you talk of a dread hereafter, why, are there not mysteries and lu,sioi qeoi, to whom we can look for deliverance? The form luth,r obtained sufficient currency to render it possible for the Christian poet Nonnus, the paraphrast of John, to employ it as a designation of our Lord, whom he calls "the Deliverer of the whole human race (o[lhj Lutrh/ra gene,qlhj)."15 But Nonnus was somewhat precious in his choice of words. 

The prepositional compounds are numerous and appear to have been in wide use to express the many modifications which the general notion of "loosing" was capable of receiving from them.¹⁶ We are naturally most interested in those of them which are employed of releasing men from chains or bondage, or broadly from other evils. Among these the special implication of avnalu,ein is that the release effected is a restoration. In evklu,ein - the exact etymological equivalent of the German Auslösung (or its doublet Erlösung, which has become the standing German designation of the Christian Redemption) - the emphasis falls on the deliverance which is wrought by the release in question, and this form tends to be employed when the idea of relief is prominent. It is, however, with avpolu,ein - in itself a close synonym of evklu,ein - that we are most nearly concerned. It is employed alternatively with the simple lu,ein, and like that term developed a discriminating use of the active and middle voices to express respectively releasing on the receipt or releasing by the payment of a ransom. Thus, like lu,ein, it came to mean not merely releasing but distinctively ransoming, and is used in that sense of the action of both of the parties involved.¹⁷ 

The particular derivative of lu,ein with which we are at the moment directly concerned - lu,tron - belongs to that class of derivatives usually spoken of as "instrumental," which denote the instrument or means by which the action of the verb is accomplished.¹⁸ The particular actions expressed by the verb lu,ein for the performance of which lu,tron denotes the instrument are those to which we have called especial attention above, - ransoming and atoning - the former regularly and the latter by way of exception. It commonly means just a ransom; infrequently, however, it means an expiation;¹⁹ and very rarely it passes over into the general sense of a recompense.²⁰ "Lu,tron 'means of deliverance' (Lösemittel)," says Franz Steinleitner²¹ quite accurately, "is employed by the old writers almost universally (mostly in the plural) in the sense of the ransom (Lösegeld) paid or to be paid for prisoners, in accordance with the use of lu,ein for the liberation (Auslösung) of prisoners, especially by ransoming (Loskauf)." It is only a special application of this general sense when the word is found in use in inscriptions and papyri as the technical term for the manumission-price of slaves.²² Its occurrence on two late inscriptions of a piacular character found near Könes in Lydia, on the other hand, illustrates its less common use of a means, an instrument, of expiation.²³ Both of these are, however, only special applications serving rather to illustrate than to qualify the essential meaning of the term as just the price paid as a ransom in order to secure release.²⁴ 

The formation of lu,tron was not due to any serious need of a term of its significance. It has synonyms enough.²⁵ Its formation must be traced to the natural influence of its primitive, lu,ein, dominating the mind when the idea of ransoming occupied it, and leading to the framing from it of derived vocables expressive of that idea. It "came natural" to a Greek, in other words, when he wished to say ransom, to say lu,tron, because when he thought of ransoming he thought in terms of lu,ein. This is an indication of the strength of the association of the idea of ransoming with lu,ein; but, after all, the idea of ransoming was connected with lu,ein only by association. It was not the intrinsic sense of that verb but only a signification which had - however firmly - been attached to it by usage. Accordingly the process of word-formation which began with lu,tron did not stop with it. It went on and built upon it a new verb with the distinctive meaning of just ransoming, - lutrou/n, lutrou/sqai, - which meant and could mean nothing but to release for or by a ransom.²⁶ If lu,ein, by a convention of speech, had come to express the idea of ransoming, this remained a mere convention of speech: the word intrinsically meant nothing more than to loose, to release, and was used in this wider sense side by side with its employment in the sense of ransoming. But lutrou/n meant intrinsically just to ransom and nothing else, and could lose, not the suggestion merely, but the open assertion of specifically ransoming as the mode of deliverance of which it spoke, only by suffering such a decay of its native sense as to lose its very heart. He who said lutrou/n, lutrou/sqai said lu,tron, and he who said lu,tron not merely intimated but asserted ransom. The only reason for the existence of this verb was to set by the side of the ambiguous lu,ein (avpolu,ein) an unambiguous term which would convey with surety, and without aid from the context or from the general understanding ruling its use, the express sense of ransoming. We are not surprised to observe therefore that throughout the whole history of profane Greek literature lutrou/n, lutrou/sqai maintained this sense unbrokenly. Its one meaning is just "to ransom"; in the active voice in the sense of to release on receipt of a ransom, and in the middle voice in the sense of to release by the payment of a ransom. We could ask no better proof of this than that neither H. Oltramare²⁷ nor Th. Zahn,²⁸ both of whom have sought diligently, has been able to discover an instance to the contrary. 

Of course the derivatives and compounds of lutrou/n, lutrou/sqai continue to convey the idea of ransoming. Impulse for forming them could arise only from a feeling out for unambiguous terms to express this idea. For the wider notion of deliverance the derivatives and compounds of the primitive, lu,ein( lu,esqai lay at hand. Not many derivatives and compounds of lutrou/n, lutrou/sqai seem, it is true, to have been formed, and those that were formed appear to occur only sparsely in profane Greek literature. Of the derivatives²⁹ we need concern ourselves only with lu,trwsij; of the compounds³⁰ only with avpolutrou/n( avpolutrou/sqai and its derivative, avpolu,trwsij. 

Lu,trwsij is so rare in profane Greek that it appears to have turned up heretofore only in a single passage, Plutarch, "Aratus " XI. There we read of Aratus that "having a present of five and twenty talents sent him from the king, he took them, it is true, but gave them all to his fellow-citizens who wanted money, among other purposes for the ransoming of those who had been taken prisoners (ei;j te ta=lla kai. lu,trwsin aivcmalw,twn)." 

vApolutrou/n (active voice) occurs somewhat more frequently, but avpolutrou/sqai (middle voice) and avpolu,trwsij are again very rare. How the active, avpolutrou/n is employed, may be seen from the following examples, which are all that the lexicographers adduce. Plato, "Laws," XI, § 919 A (Jowett, iv, p. 430) : He "treats them as enemies and captives who are at his mercy, and will not release (avpolutrw,sh|) them until they have paid the highest, most exorbitant and base price." The Epistle of Philip to the Athenians in Demosthenes 159, 15: "He put Amphilochus to ransom (avpolu,trwse) for nine talents." Polybius 2.6.6: "They made a truce with the inhabitants to deliver up all freemen and the city of Phoenice for a fixed ransom (avpolutrw,santej)." Polybius 22.21.8: "On a large sum of gold being agreed to be paid for the woman, he led her off to put her to ransom (avpolutrw,san)." Stephanus adds that Lucian somewhere says of Achilles that "he ransomed (avpolu,trwsaj) the body of Hector for a small sum." 

For the middle, avpolutrou/sqai, only late passages are cited. Th. Zahn, however, remarks very properly,³¹ that while "the middle avpolutrou/sqai is very rare, and is not to be found in the Bible," it nevertheless "lies in essentially the same sense as the middle lutrou/sqai at the basis of the use of the passive in Zeph. iii. 1 (iii. 3),³² and in Plutarch, 'Pompey,' 24." In this passage of Plutarch³³ we read that Helo who had been taken captive by pirates "was ransomed (avpelutrw,qh) with a great sum." In these passages avpolutrou/sqai is the passive of the middle, not of the active, sense. The lexicographers cite only two passages in which the middle is actually found. Polyaenus, a Macedonian rhetorician of the time of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, relates how Aristocrates the Athenian, entering a Spartan port in a ship disguised as peaceful, was able by this ruse to slay some and to abduct others as prisoners, which last, he adds, "Aristocles ransomed with a great sum (ou]j pollw/n crhma,twn  vAristoklh/j avpolutro,sato)."34 That is the manuscript reading. Nevertheless the modern editors, adopting an emendation of Casaubon's, print  vAristokra,thj for   vAristoklh/j. By this correction the meaning of avpolutro,sato is transformed, and we are made to read it, "Extorted a great sum for their ransom": that is to say, the middle is given the active sense. This result is unacceptable in view of the regular middle sense preserved in lu,esqai( avpolu,esqai( lutrou/sqai implied for avpolutrou/sqai in the passive use noted above, and actually appearing in the middle avpolutrou/sqai elsewhere. It must be held questionable, therefore, whether the text of the passage has been rightly settled by the editors: we need a different subject or else a different voice for the verb. There can be no question that in the only remaining passage in which it is cited, the Emperor Julian uses avpolutrou/sqai in its expected middle sense, and as the general equivalent of lutrou/sqai. "Whom, then," he says,³⁵ "are we to regard as a slave? Shall it be him whom we buy for so many silver drachmas, for two minae, or for ten staters of gold? Probably you will say that such a man is truly a slave. And why? Is it because we have paid down money for him to the seller? But in that case the prisoners of war whom we ransom (lutrou,meqa) would be slaves. And yet the law on the one hand grants these their freedom when they have come safe home, and we on the other hand ransom (avpolutrou,meqa) them not that they may become slaves, but that they may be free. Do you see then that in order to make a ransomed man (lutrwqe,nta) a slave it is not enough to pay down a sum of money . . .?"36

The noun avpolu,trwsij might express the action of either the active or the middle of the verb from which it is formed.³⁷ Zahn remarks:38 "For the corresponding use of avpolu,trwsij" - that is to say for the use of it in a sense corresponding to the middle sense of the verb, "to secure release by paying ransom" - "it seems that undoubted examples are lacking. Polybius, 6.58.11; 27.11.3, uses dialu,trwsij in its stead, and most writers content themselves with lu,trwsij." This is already to say that the use of avpolu,trwsij in this sense has the support of its cognates; and certainly there is nothing in its own very rare usage to object. The lexicons give, it is true, only a single instance of the word's occurrence - Plutarch, "Pompey," 24³⁹ - and in this instance it expresses the action of the active voice of the verb.⁴⁰ "Music," we read, "and dancing and banquets all along the shore, and seizings of officers and ransomings of captured cities (kai. po,lewn aivcmalw,twn avpolutrw/seij) were a reproach to the Roman supremacy."41 Another instance, however, has turned up in an inscription from Kos of the first or second Christian century, in which the word expresses the action of the middle voice. The inscription is speaking of that form of manumission of slaves, very widely current after the period of the Diadochi and illustrated by a great number of inscriptions at Delphi, in which the slave really purchased his own liberty, but did so through the intermediation of priests so as ostensibly to be purchased by a god. The purchase money deposited in the temple for the purpose is called the lu,tron or lu,tra. In the inscription in question, those who perform the avpeleuqe,rwsij are instructed "not to make formal record of the avpolu,trwsij until the priests have reported that the necessary sacrifice has been made."42 Both Deissmann and Zahn apparently suppose that the paralleling of avpolu,trwsij here with avpeleuqe,rwsij empties it of its specific meaning. This is obviously unjustified: the transaction was a manumission (avpeleuqe,rwsij) which took place by means of a payment (lu,tron, lu,tra) and was therefore, more exactly described, a ransoming (avpolu,trwsij). We are clearly to interpret: those who make the manumission are not to record the sale until the whole transaction is actually completed; and the two terms are respectively in their right places.⁴³ 

Throughout the whole history of the profane usage of the derivatives of lu,tron, we perceive, the intrinsic significance of lu,tron continuously determines their meaning.⁴⁴ This was to be expected. The case is not similar to that of such a word as, say, "dilapidated" in English which readily loses in figurative usages all suggestion of its underlying reference to stones; or even to that of such a word as "redeem" itself in English, which easily rubs off its edges and comes to mean merely to buy out and even simply to release. The bases of these words are foreign to English speech and do not inevitably obtrude themselves on the consciousness of every one who employs them. Lu,tron was a distinctively Greek word, formed from a Greek primitive in everyday use, according to instinctively working Greek methods of word-formation, carrying with them regular modifications of sense. No Greek lips could frame it, no Greek ear could hear it; in any of its derivatives, without consciousness of its intrinsic meaning. This is, of course, not to say that the word could not conceivably lose its distinctive sense. But in words of this kind the processes of such decay are difficult, and illustrations of it are comparatively rare; especially when as in this instance, the terms in question stand out on a background of a far more widely current use of their primitive in the broader sense. A Greek might well be tempted to use lu,ein and its derivatives in the sense of lutrou/n and its derivatives; and in point of fact he did so use them copiously. But it would not be natural for him to reverse the process and use lutrou/nv and its derivatives in the sense of lu,ein. It may be natural for us, standing at a sales-counter, to say "I will take that," meaning to "buy"; but it would never be natural for us to say, "I will buy that," meaning merely to "take." In the group of words built up around lu,tron the Greek language offered to the New Testament a series of terms which distinctly said "ransom"; and just in proportion as we think of the writers of the New Testament as using Greek naturally we must think of them as feeling the intrinsic significance of these words as they used them, and as using them only when they intended to give expression to this their intrinsic significance. It is safe to say that no Greek, to the manner born, could write down any word, the center of which was lu,tron, without consciousness of ransoming as the mode of deliverance of which he was speaking. 

The fact is not to be obscured, of course, that the writers of the New Testament were not in the strict sense Greeks. At the most Luke enjoys that unique distinction; and even he may have been in the wide sense a Hellenist rather than in the strict sense a Hellene. The rest were Jews: even Paul, coming out of the Diaspora, yet was able to speak in Aramaic; and apart from him and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, they were all of immediate Palestinian origin and traditions. Moreover they all had in their hands the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and may be thought to have derived their Greek religious terminology from it. We must, therefore, ascertain, we are told, how the group of words built up on lu,tron are employed in the Septuagint before we can venture to pass upon the sense in which they are used in the New Testament. And in turning to the Septuagint, it must be confessed, a surprising thing confronts us. Words of this group are certainly employed in the Septuagint without clear intimation of ransoming. This remarkable phenomenon is worthy of our careful and discriminating attention. 

II 

A considerable number of words of this group occur in the Septuagint - lu,tron, [avntilu,tron], lutrou/sqai( lu,trwsij( lutrwth,j( lutrwto,j( avpolutrou/n( ajpolu,trwsij( evklu,trwsij. Some of these, however, occur very seldom, and only one, lutrou/sqai, is copiously employed. 

 vAntilu,tron was printed in some of the early editions at Ps. xlviii. (xlix.) 9, but has been eliminated in the modern critical texts. 

Lu,tron occurs nineteen times and always, of course, in the quite simple sense of a ransom-price. H. Oltramare gives a very good account of its usage.⁴⁵ "Lu,tron, usually in the plural lu,tra, (= rpk, !wydp, hlag)⁴⁶ designates an indemnification, a pecuniary compensation, given in exchange for a cessation of rights over a person or even a thing, ransom. It is used for the money given to redeem a field, Lev. xxv. 24 - the life of an ox about to be killed, Ex. xxi. 30 - one's own life in arrest of judicial proceedings, Num. xxxv. 31, 32, or of vengeance, Prov. vi. 35, - the first-born over whom God had claims, Num. iii. 46, 48, 51, Lev. xviii. 15, etc. It is ordinarily used of the ransom given for redemption from captivity or slavery, Lev. xix. 20, Isa. xlv. 13, etc." 

The adjective lutrwto,j occurs only twice, in a single connection (Lev. xxv. 31, 32), in which we are told that the houses in unwalled villages and in the Levitical cities were alike at all times redeemable (lutrwtai. diapanto.j e;sontai: representing alag). 

The compound active noun, evklu,twsij, occurs only a single time (Num. iii. 49): "And for ta. lu,tra . . . thou shalt take five shekels apiece . . . and thou shalt give the money to Aaron and to his sons as lu,tra of the supernumerary among them; . . . and Moses took the money, ta. lu,tra of the supernumerary, for the evklu,twsij of the Levites . . . and Moses gave ta. lu,tra of the supernumeraries to Aaron and his sons." 

The compound verb, avpolutrou/n occurs twice, once in the active voice (Ex. xxi. 8⁴⁷ for the Hiphil of hdp) and once in the passive voice (Zeph. iii. 1 (3) for the Niphal of lag). In both instances the idea of ransoming is express; and, as Th. Zahn points out, the sense in which the passive is used in Zeph. iii. 1 (3) presupposes the middle, avpolutrou/sqai, in the sense of "to deliver by the payment of a ransom." Thus this verb bears the distinctive active and middle senses in the Septuagint which it and its congeners bear in profane Greek. 

So far the Septuagint usage shows no modification of that of profane Greek. No modification can be assumed even with reference to avpolu,trwsij, the active substantive derived from avpolutrou/n( avpolutrou/sqai. This term occurs only in Dan. iv. 32 (29 or 30) LXX in a context which at first sight might mislead us into giving it the undifferentiated signification of just "deliverance." "And at the end of the seven years," we read, "the time of my avpolutrw,sewj came, and my sins and my ignorance were fulfilled in the sight of the God of heaven." The "deliverance" here spoken of, however, must be held to be defined by the preceding context as resting on a "ransoming." There is a manifest reference back from this verse to iv. 24 where the king is exhorted to pray God concerning his sins and "to redeem (lu,trwsai) all his iniquities with almsgiving."48 No doubt the emphasis is thrown on the result of the ransoming, on the deliverance in which it has at last issued. This is doubtless the reason why the compound term is used here - avpolu,trwsij, - the avpo, in which, signifying "away from," shifting the emphasis from the process to the effects. The two terms, lutrou/sqai, verse 24, and avpolu,trwsij, verse 32, are respectively in their right places. 

When we turn to the verb lutrou/sqai itself and its two substantival derivatives, lu,trwsij and lutrwth,j, we find ourselves in deeper water. 

Lu,twsij occurs eight times,⁴⁹ representing the Hebrew bases lag and hdp, each four times. In four of its occurrences, it is employed in the simple literal sense of ransoming or redeeming (Lev. xxv. 29, 29, 48; Num. xviii. 16) ; and in yet another (Ps. xlviii. (xlix.) 8), -"the price of the redemption of his soul" - it is used equally of ransoming by a price, although now in the higher, spiritual sphere. In the remaining three instances an implication of a ransom-price is less clear: Ps. cx. (cxi), 9, "He sent redemption to His people; He commanded His covenant forever"; Ps. cxxix (cxxx), 7, "For with the Lord is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption"; Isa. lxiii. 4, "For the day of recompense (avntapodo,sewv) is upon them, and the year of redemption is at hand." Passages like these will naturally receive their precise interpretation from the implication of the usage of their more copiously employed primitive, lutrou/sqai. 

Similarly the noun of agent, lutrwth,j, which occurs only twice (Ps. xviii (xix), 14; lxxvii (lxxviii), 35, representing lag) - in both instances as an epithet of God, "our Redeemer" - will necessarily receive its exact shade of meaning from the general usage of its primitive, lutrou/sqai. 

This verb, lutrou/sqai, occurs some hundred and five times. It usually has at its base either lag (about forty-two times) or hdp (about forty times),⁵⁰ and rarely qrp (five times). Sometimes, of course, there is no Hebrew base (Sir. xlviii. 20, xlix. 10, 1. 24, li. 2, 3; Zech. iii. 15; I Macc. iv. 11). It is employed in more than one shade of meaning. 

First, it is used quite literally to express the redeeming of a thing by the payment for it of a ransom price. Thus, for example: Ex. xiii. 13, "Every one of an ass that openeth the womb, thou shalt exchange for a sheep; but if thou wilt not exchange, thou shalt redeem it; every firstborn of a man of thy sons, thou shalt redeem"; Levit. xix. 20, "If any one lie carnally with a woman, and she is a house-slave, kept for a man, and she has not been redeemed with a ransom (lu,troij) and freedom has not been given to her, . . . they shall not be put to death, because she was not set free"; Num. xviii. 15-17, "And everything which openeth the womb of all flesh, whatsoever they offer unto the Lord, from man unto beast, shall be thine; nevertheless the firstborn of men shall be redeemed with a ransom (lu,troij), and the firstborn of unclean beasts thou shalt redeem. And its redemption (lu,trwsij) is from a month old; the valuation (sunti,mhsij) is five sheckels, according to the sacred sheckel - there are twenty obols." In this simple literal usage the word occurs about twenty-seven times; but it seems to be confined to Exodus (six times), Leviticus (eighteen times) and Numbers (three times).⁵¹

Sharply differentiated from this literal usage is a parallel one in which lutrou/sqai is applied to the deliverance from Egypt. Here there is at least no emphasis placed on the deliverance being in mode a ransoming. The stress is thrown rather on the power exerted in it and the mind is focussed on the mightiness of the transaction. This is so marked that B. F. Westcott is led by it to declare,⁵² too broadly, of the use of lutrou/sqai and its derivatives in the Septuagint, that "the idea of the exertion of a mighty force, the idea that the 'redemption' costs much, is everywhere present." It is at least clear that the idea that the redemption from Egypt was the effect of a great expenditure of the divine power and in that sense cost much, is prominent in the allusions to it, and seems to constitute the central idea sought to be conveyed. The earliest passage in which this usage occurs is typical of the whole series: Ex. vi. 6, "Go, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, I am the Lord, and I will lead you forth from the tyranny of the Egyptians, and deliver (r`u,somai) you from your bondage and redeem (lutrw,somai) you with a high hand and a great judgment; and I will take you to myself for my people, and I will be to you a God and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God which bringeth you out from the oppression of the Egyptians." Other examples are: Deut. ix. 26, "And I prayed to God and said, O Lord, king of the Gods, destroy not thy people and thy portion which thou didst redeem, and didst lead forth out of Egypt by thy great might and by thy strong hand and by thy high hand"; Neh. i. 10, "And these are thy children and thy people, whom thou didst redeem by thy great power and by thy strong hand"; Ps. lxxvi (lxxvii) 15, 16, "Thou art the God that doest wonders, thou didst make known among the peoples thy power, thou didst redeem with thine arm thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph." This usage of the deliverance out of Egypt in might lies in the Pentateuch side by side with the former, occurring in Exodus (three times), and Deuteronomy (six times), and occurs on occasion in the later books.⁵³ 

Similarly to its employment to express the fundamental national deliverance from Egypt in the divine might, lutrou/sqai is used of other great national deliverances in which the power of Jehovah was manifested. In "the praise of famous men and of our fathers which begat us," that fills the later chapters of Sirach, the word is employed repeatedly in this sense: (xlviii. 20), "But they called upon the Lord which is merciful and stretched out their hands towards him; and immediately the Holy One heard them out of heaven, and delivered them by the ministry of Esay"; (xlix. 10), "And of the twelve prophets let the memorial be blessed, and let their bones flourish again out of their place; for they comforted Jacob, and delivered them by assured hope"; (1. 22, 24), "Now, then bless ye the God of all, which only doeth wondrous things everywhere. . . . That he would confirm his mercy with us and deliver us at his time." The general point of view finds clear expression in I Macc. iv. 10, 11, "Now, therefore, let us cry unto heaven, if peradventure the Lord will have mercy upon us, and remember the covenant of our fathers, and destroy this host before our face this day: that so all the heathen may know that there is one that delivereth and saveth (sw,zein) Israel." 

Among these great deliverances wrought for Israel, the chief place is taken, of course, by its second great cardinal emancipation - that from the Babylonian captivity. The employment of lutrou/sqai to express this deliverance is naturally comparatively frequent, and as naturally it shades insensibly into the expression of the Messianic deliverance of which this liberation (along with that from Egypt) is treated as the standing type. We may find the key-note struck, perhaps, in Jer. xxvii. (l.) 33, 34: "Thus saith the Lord, Oppressed have been the children of Israel and the children of Judah: all they that have taken them captive, together oppress them because they refuse to let them go. And their redeemer is strong, the Lord Almighty is his name; he shall judge judgment with his adversary, that he may destroy the land and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon. A sword is upon the Chaldeans and upon the inhabitants of Babylon! . . ." How close the eschatological application lies may be illustrated by Isa. li. 11-13 (9-11) : "Awake, awake Jerusalem and put on the strength of thine arm; awake as in the beginning of day, as the generation of eternity. Art thou not she that dried the sea, the deep waters of the abyss? that madest the depths of the sea a way for the delivered (r`uome,noij) and the redeemed to pass through? For by the Lord shall they return, and shall come into Zion with joy and eternal exultation." And we seem fairly on eschatological ground in Isa. xxxv. 9-10: "And there shall be no lion there, neither shall any of the evil beasts go up upon it, nor be found there, but the redeemed and the gathered on account of the Lord shall walk in it, and they shall return and come into Zion with joy and everlasting joy shall be over their heads."54 

Not essentially different is the employment of the word to express the intervention of God for the deliverance of an individual either from some great specific evil or from evil in general - the term rising in the latter case fully into the spiritual region. A couple of very instructive instances occur in the Septuagint: Daniel iii. 88, "Bless ye the Lord, Ananias, Adzarias and Misael, hymn and exalt him forever; because he liberated (evxei,lato) us from hades, and saved (e;swsen) us from the bonds of death, and delivered (evrvr`u,sato) us from the midst of the burning flame, and redeemed (evlutrw,sato) us from the fire"; vi. 27, "I, Darius, will worship and serve him all my days, for the idols made with hands cannot save (sw/sai) as the God of Daniel redeemed Daniel." Quite similarly we read in II Sam. iv. 9 (and I Kings i. 29): "And David answered Rechab and Baanah his brother, . . . and said unto them, As the Lord liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity"; and in Ps. cxliii. (cxliv.) 9-10: "O God, I will sing a new song to thee, . . . who giveth salvation unto kings, who redeemeth David his servant from the hurtful sword" (cf. vii. 2-3). "I will thank thee, O Lord King," says the son of Sirach in his concluding prayer (li. 1 ff.), "and I will praise thee, O God my Savior (swth/ra), I give thanks to thy name, because thou hast become my defender and helper, and hast redeemed my body from destruction, and from the snare of the slanderous tongue, from the lips that forge a falsehood, and hast become my helper against my adversaries and hast redeemed me, according to the multitude of thy mercies and name, from the teeth of them that were ready to devour me, from the hand of those that seek my life, from the manifold afflictions which I had. . . . ."55 The Psalms afford a number of examples in which this individual redemption in the region of the spirit is spoken of. The note that sounds through them is struck in Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.), 23: "The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants, and none of them that hope in him shall go wrong."56

The redeeming power in all this range of applications of lutrou/sqai is uniformly conceived as divine. It is to God, the Lord God Almighty, alone that redemption is ascribed, whether it be the redemption of Israel or of the individual, or whether it be physical or spiritual. God and God alone is the Redeemer alike of Israel and of the individual, in every case of deliverance of whatever order. We hear in Sirach, it is true, of the Holy One redeeming Israel by the hand of Isaiah (xlviii. 20) ; and indeed, in a somewhat confused sentence, of the twelve prophets, or of their bones, redeeming Jacob (xlix. 10) - or are we to assume that God is understood as the nominative of the verbs and read: "But God comforted Israel and redeemed them by the faith of hope"? There are besides two negative statements which may seem to imply the possibility of a human redeemer. The one is found in Ps. vii. 2-3, and the other, - a very instructive passage - in Lam. v. 8.57 In Ps. vii. 2-3 David prays: "O Lord, my God, in thee do I put my hope, save (sw/son) me from all that persecute me, and deliver (r`u/sai) me; let him not seize my soul, like a lion, while there is none to redeem (lutroume,nou) or to save (sw,zontoj)." In Lam. v. 8 we read: "Slaves, have ruled over us: there is none to redeem (lutrou/menoj) out of their hand." In neither instance is it intimated, however, that a human redeemer could be found: despair is rather expressed, and the cry is for the only Redeemer that can suffice. It is only in Dan. iv. 24 that we find a clear reference to a human redeemer. "Entreat him concerning thy sins and redeem thine iniquities with alms" (LXX); "redeem thy sins with alms" (Theod.). Here the king is exhorted to ransom his own soul by his good works. This conception, however, cuts athwart the whole current of the usage of lutrou/sqai in the Septuagint elsewhere when it is a matter of spiritual redemption. How little such a point of view accords with that elsewhere connected with lutrou/sqai may be learned from Ps. xlviii. (xlix.) 8-10: "A brother redeemeth (lutrou/tai) not: shall a man redeem (lutrw/setai)? He shall not give to God an expiation (evxi,lasma) for himself or the price of the redemption (th.n timah.n th/j lutrw,sewj) of his soul though he labor forever and live to the end, so that he should not see corruption." The sense of o` lutrou,menoj in Prov. xxiii. 10-11: "Remove not the ancient landmarks and enter not into the possession of orphans, for he that redeemeth them is a powerful Lord, and judgeth thy judgment with thee," may be open to some question. It is probably the intention of the Septuagint translators to intimate that the poor are under the especial protection of the God who is the "redeemer" by way of eminence of the needy. 

The emphasis put upon the power of God manifested in redemption which accompanies the entire usage of lutrou/sqai except in its literal sense, may tempt us to suppose that the notion of ransoming has been altogether lost in this usage. This is in point of fact widely taken for granted. B. F. Westcott, for example, writes:58 "It will be obvious from the usage of the LXX. that the idea of a ransom received by the power from which the captive is delivered is practically lost in lutrou/sqai &c." Such a statement is in any case fatally defective. It takes no account of the large use of lutrou/sqai in the Pentateuch in the purely literal sense (cf. Dan. iv. 24). It is doubtful, however, whether it can be fully sustained even with respect to the use of lutrou/sqai of the divine deliverance. No doubt, as has already been pointed out, the sense of the power of God exerted in the deliverances wrought by Him comes so forcibly forward as to obscure the implication of ransoming. This is pushed so far into the background as to pass out of sight; and not infrequently it seems to be pushed not only out of sight but out of existence. In a passage like Dan. iii. 88 LXX, for example, there seems no place left for ransom-paying; and the same may appear to be true of such passages as Dan. vi. 27 LXX, Lam. v. 8, Ps. vii. 2. Nor does the synonymy in which the word sometimes stands encourage seeking for it such an underlying idea: Ex. vi. 6, r`u,somai( lutrw,somai; Ps. vii. 2-3, sw/son( r`u/sai( lutroume,nou, sw,zontoj; Ps. lviii. (lix.) 2-3, evxelou/( lu,trwsai( r`u/sai; Ps. cv. (cvi.) 10 e;swsen( evlutrw,sato; Hos. xiii. 14, r`u,somai( lutrw,somai; Dan. iii. 88 LXX, evxei,leto( e;swsen( evrvr`u,sato( evlutrw,sato; Dan. vi. 27 LXX, sw/sai( evlutrw,sato; I Macc. iv. 10, 11, lutrou,menoj( sw,zwn. 

Nevertheless, as Westcott himself perceives, there is an abiding implication that the redemption has cost something: "the idea that the redemption costs much," says he, "is everywhere present." Perhaps we may say that, in this underlying suggestion, the conception of price-paying intrinsic in lutrou/sqai is preserved, and in this the reason may be found why it appears to be employed only when the mind is filled with the feeling that the redemption wrought has entailed the expenditure of almighty power. 

It is going too far, in any case, however, to say that the idea of ransoming "is practically lost in lutrou/sqai, &c." in their Septuagint usage - as, to be sure the insertion of the word "practically" may show that Westcott himself felt. Whatever may be the implications of lutrou/sqai when used to designate the intervention of God in His almighty power for the deliverance of His people, there is evidence enough to show that the feeling of ransoming as the underlying sense of the word remained ever alive in the minds of the writers. That could not in any event fail to be the fact, because of the parallel use of lutrou/sqai in its literal sense; we must not permit to fall out of memory that lutrou/sqai is employed in its literal sense in more than a fourth of all its occurrences in the Septuagint. Every now and then moreover the consciousness of the underlying sense of ransoming is thrown up to observation. This may be the case in a passage like Ps. lxxiii. (lxxiv.) 2: "Remember thy synagogue which thou didst acquire (evkth,sw = purchase) of old; thou didst redeem (evlutrw,sw) the rod of thine inheritance." It is more clearly the case in a passage like Isa. lii. 3: "Ye were sold for nought (dwrea,n) and ye shall not be redeemed (lutrwqh,sesqe) with money." There is an intimation here that no ransom price (in the sense intended) is to be paid for Israel; its redemption is to be wrought by the might of Jehovah. But it is equally intimated that a redemption without a price paid is as anomalous a transaction as a sale without money passing. That is to say, here is an unexceptionable testimony that the term lutrou/sqai in itself was felt to imply a ransom price. Another passage in point is provided by Ps. xlviii. (xlix.) 8: "A brother redeemeth (lutrou/tai) not: shall a man redeem (lutrw/setai)? He shall not give to God an expiation (evxi,lasma) for himself, and the price of the redemption (th.n timh.n th/j lutrw,sewj) of his soul, though he labor forever." To redeem is distinctly set forth here as the giving of a price which operates as an expiation: and the inability of a man to redeem a man out of the hand of God turns precisely on his inability to pay the price. Perhaps the most instructive passage, however, will be found in Isa. xliii. 1 ff.: "Fear not," Jehovah here says to His people, "because I have redeemed (evlutrwsa,mhn) thee. . . . I have made Egypt thy price (a;llagma) and Ethiopia and Soene in thy stead (u`pe.r sou/) . . . . And I will give men for thee (u`pe.r sou/) and rulers for thy head." Such passages as these, it surely does not require to be said, could not have been written by and to men in whose minds the underlying implication of ransoming had faded out of the terms employed. They bear witness to a living consciousness of this implication, and testify that, though lutrou/sqai and its derivatives may be employed to describe a redemption wrought in the almighty power of God, that was not in forgetfulness that redemption was properly a transaction which implies paying a price. 

III 

The broader use of lutrou/sqai (lu,trwsij( lutrwth,j) by the Septuagint of God's deliverance of His people, may not unfairly be said to throw the emphasis so strongly on the almightiness of the power manifested as to obscure, if not to obliterate, intimation of its mode as a ransoming. The assumption is frequently made that this usage is simply projected into the New Testament and determines the sense of all the terms of this group which are found in the New Testament. 

This assumption is met, however, by the initial difficulty that the usage of the New Testament is not even formally a continuation of that of the Septuagint. The usage of the Septuagint in question is distinctly a usage of lutrou/sqai, and affects only it and, to a limited extent, its two immediate derivatives, lu,trwsij (Ps. ex. (cxi.) 9, cxxix. (cxxx.) 7, Isa. lxiii. 4) and lutrwth,j (Ps. xviii. (xix.) 15, lxxvii. (lxxviii.) 35), which could not fail to be drawn somewhat into the current of any extended usage of lutrou/sqai. The more proper usage of other members of the group, and indeed even of these members of it in a large section of their employment, remains untouched. On the other hand, the usage of the New Testament is characteristically a usage of avpolu,trwsij, an otherwise rare form, which appears never to occur - itself or its primitive, avpolutrou/n( avpolutrou/sqai, - whether in profane Greek,⁵⁹ or in the Septuagint,⁶⁰ or in writers directly dependent on the Septuagint,⁶¹ in any other than its intrinsic sense of ransoming. It would be plausible to suggest that the Septuagint usage in question is continued in the lu,trwsij of Luke i. 68, ii. 38 and lutrou/sqai of Luke xxiv. 21 where redemption is spoken of on the plane of Old Testament expectation. But the suggestion loses all plausibility when extended beyond this. It would be more plausible to argue that the form avpolu,trwsij was selected by the New Testament writers in part purposely to avoid the ambiguities which might arise from the Septuagint associations clinging to lutrou/sqai. The simple fact, however, is that the characteristic terminology in the two sets of writings is different. 

This formal difference in the usages of the two sets of writers is immensely reinforced by a material difference in the presuppositions underlying what they severally wrote. Whatever may have been the nature of the expectations which the Old Testament saints cherished as to the mode of the divine deliverance to which they looked forward, the New Testament writers wrote of it, as a fact lying in the past, under the impression of a revolutionary experience of it as the expiatory death of the Son of God. It would have been unnatural to the verge of impossibility for them to speak of it colorlessly as to this central circumstance, especially when using phraseology with respect to it which in its intrinsic connotation emphasized precisely this circumstance. We must not obscure the fact that something had happened between the writing of the Old Testament and the New, something which radically affected the whole conception of the mode of the divine deliverance, and which set the development of Jewish and Christian ideas and expressions concerning it moving thenceforward on widely divergent pathways. It may sound specious when the Jewish eschatological conceptions are represented as supplying an analogy, according to which the New Testament phraseology may be understood. We may be momentarily impressed when it is explained that, as the Jews have set the Messiah as the great Deliverer (lawg) by the side of Moses, the first Deliverer (!wfarh lawg)and expect him, as Moses led Israel out of Egypt, to achieve the final Deliverance (hlag) and bring Israel home, without any interruption by an expiatory suffering and death, and merely by the power of his own personal righteousness,⁶² - so We must understand the New Testament writers, borrowing their language from the Jewish eschatology, to ascribe to Christ merely the Messianic deliverance, without any implication that it is wrought by an act of ransoming. But we can be only momentarily impressed by such representations. Between the Jewish and the New Testament conceptions of the Messianic deliverance there is less an analogy than a fundamental contradiction. There had taken place, first of all, on the part of the Christians what it is fashionable to speak of as a "predating" of the Messianic expectations: the redemption of God's people does not wait, with them, for the end-time, but has already been in principle wrought and awaits only its full realization in all its effects, in the end-time. And precisely what has already been wrought, contributing the very hinge on which the whole conception of the Messianic deliverance turns, is just that act of expiation which is wholly absent from the Jewish representation. If, in other words, the Jews looked only for a Deliverance, wrought by sheer power, the Christians put their trust precisely in a Redemption wrought in the blood of Christ. Of course so fundamental a difference could not fail to reflect itself in the language employed to give expression to the divergent conceptions. And that, again, may be, in part, the account to give of the adoption by the New Testament writers of the rare form avpolu,trwsij instead of the more current lutrou/sqai colored by Septuagint conceptions, to describe the redemption in Christ. That they conceived this redemption in terms of ransoming is made clear in any event by repeated contextual intimations to that effect.⁶³ 

The attempts which have been made to construe the terms derived from lutrou/sqai, employed by the writers of the New Testament⁶⁴ of the deliverance wrought by Christ, as inexpressive of their intrinsic implication that the deliverance intimated was in the mode of a ransoming, were foreordained to failure in the presence of general considerations like this. H. Oltramare's extended discussion in his comments on Rom. iii. 24 is often referred to as a typical instance of these attempts.⁶⁵ This, however, is rather unfair to them. Oltramare's argument is vitiated from the beginning by failure to discriminate between the differing usages of the active and middle voices of the whole series of verbs, lu,ein( avpolu,ein( lutrou/n( avpolutrou/n by which the active means "to put to ransom" and the middle "to ransom." It loses itself speedily accordingly in mere paradoxes. Of course he cites no passages from the Greek authors in which any of these terms is employed without intimation of a ransom-paying: to all appearance such passages do not exist. He is compelled to rely entirely therefore on the Septuagint usage of lutrou/sqai mechanically treated. He allows, of course, that lutrou/sqai (with which he confounds also lutrou/n) "signifies properly and etymologically to release, to liberate an object by giving to its holder or to one who has rights in it, a sum in return for which he desists from his possession, or from his rights, to ransom, to redeem." He very strangely, because it thus signifies "to secure a release by paying a ransom," sets it in contrast with ajpolutrou/n which he represents as meaning "to put to ransom," without observing that he has thus set the purely middle use of the one over against the purely active use of the other. Thus he parcels out between the two verbs the distinctive usages which obtain between the active and middle of each of them."  vApolutro,w," he says, "does not have the sense of the simple verb, 'to ransom' = redimere: we do not know a single example of it. The prefix avpo, (as in avpolu,w( avfi,hmi) so emphasizes the idea of liberating, delivering, that in profane authors, ajpolutrou/n signifies properly to release for a ransom, to hold to ransom." Even this is not all. For he now proceeds to conclude that "avpolu,trwsij designates therefore the action of releasing for a demanded ransom." "Its meaning is such," he continues gravely, " that if we absolutely insist on giving to avpolu,trwsij the sense of 'deliverance for ransom,' the expression dia. th/j avpolutrw,sewj th/j evn Cristw|/  vIhsou/ signifies 'by the release, the ransom-taking which is found in Jesus Christ' - that is to say that Jesus delivers us by demanding a ransom of us, far from by paying it for us." He sees but one way of escape from this conclusion. "Very happily," he concludes, "avpolu,trwsij is also used in the sense of deliverance, liberation, without any accessory idea of ransoming. All that it seems to have preserved of the radical is that it speaks principally of releasing from that which binds, confines, impedes, or shuts up." He has no evidence to present for this cardinal assertion, however, except the fact that Schleusner cites from the Old Testament the passage "cro,noj th/j avpolutrw,sewj h;lqe." As we know, this passage comes from Dan. iv. 32 LXX, where the context suggests that the deliverance had been purchased by almsgiving. To it Oltramare can add only certain New Testament passages in which he finds no accessory idea of ransoming notified. This is all quite incompetent. 

Th. Zahn's discussion, distributed through his notes on the same passage, is free, of course, from such eccentricities, and constitutes in its several parts a careful presentation of all the evidence which can possibly be brought together for taking ajpolu,trwsij in Rom. iii. 24 in the undifferentiated sense of deliverance. No evidence, of course, for this sense of the term is adduced from the usage of any derivative of lu,tron by a profane author: and no decisive instance is adduced from any quarter of the use of the term itself in this undifferentiated sense.⁶⁶ The force of the argument is dependent wholly on the cumulative effect of the discussion of the several terms lutrou/sqai( lu,trwsij( avpolutrou/n( avpolu,trwsij successively. In these discussions the more utilizable passages from the Septuagint are skilfully marshalled; certain New Testament passages in which there is no express intimation in the context that the deliverance in question is a ransoming (as if the form of the word itself and its appropriate usage elsewhere counted for nothing!) are added; and a few Patristic passages are subjoined. Despite the thoroughness of the research and the exhaustive adduction of the material, the whole discussion remains unconvincing. The reader rises from it with the conviction that an unnatural meaning is being thrust upon the term on insufficient grounds, and that, after all is said, "redemption" continues to mean redemption. 

Much more formidable than either Oltramare's or Zahn's argument is that which is developed with his usual comprehensiveness and vigor by Albrecht Ritschl in the second volume of his great work on "Justification and Reconciliation."67 Ritschl begins by speaking of the use of lutrou/n and its derivatives by the Septuagint to render the Hebrew stems lag and hdp. These stems, he remarks, had originally, like the Greek terms, the sense of delivering specifically by means of purchase. This implication of purchase had been lost, however, in usage. Their etymological implication was similarly lost, of course, by the Greek terms which were employed to render them, through an assimilation to the Hebrew terms which they rendered. These Greek terms came to the New Testament writers, therefore, with this broadened sense; and the New Testament writers naturally continued to employ them in it. If they are sometimes used by the New Testament writers in connections in which the original sense of purchasing might seem to be intimated, it is nevertheless not to be assumed that their original sense has reasserted itself. It is more natural to read them in these passages too in the broadened sense in which they have been inherited from the Septuagint. Paul, for example, must be supposed to have had the Hebrew in mind when he cited from the Septuagint, and to have taken from it his religious phraseology. This would hold him, when he used the Greek words, to the sense which they have as renderings of the broadened Hebrew terms. Of course, it may be argued that the Apostolic use of these words is rather controlled by our Lord's declaration that He came into the world to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark x. 45). But there is really no proof that this saying was known to Paul, to say nothing of its having determined the sense in which he employed terms only remotely related to the word used. The impression is left on the mind, rather, that Paul has chosen the compound term avpolu,trwsij instead of the simple lu,trwsij of the Septuagint, because by it the idea of separation from, or liberation, is thrown into great emphasis: he wishes, in a word, to say not ransoming but deliverance. 

The steps in this argument are the successive assertions that: (1) The Hebrew words lag and hdp had lost their original connotation of purchase; (2) The Greek words used to translate them must as a consequence have lost theirs; (3) The Septuagint usage of these Greek words must have extended itself into the New Testament; (4) The ordinary usage of these terms in the New Testament is in point of fact of this undifferentiated sort; (5) The instances of their use which do not seem of this sort must be nevertheless interpreted in harmony with this usage. 

No one of these propositions is, however, unqualifiedly true. (1) Though the original senses of lag and hdp - to redeem and to ransom⁶⁸ - are sometimes submerged in their figurative use, they are so far from being wholly obliterated that the words are copiously employed quite literally, and it is repeatedly made clear that even in the most extreme extension of their figurative use their etymological significance does not wholly cease to be felt. (2) The Greek terms fitted to these Hebrew terms seem to have been selected to render them because they were their closest Greek representatives in their literal sense. The use of these Greek terms to render the Hebrew is evidence therefore that they retained their fundamental meaning of redemption, ransoming; and though they naturally acquired from the Hebrew terms their figurative meanings when they were used to express them, there is no evidence that they ever really lost their native implications. It is misleading to speak of "the Septuagint usage" of these Greek terms, as if this "extended" usage were the only usage they have in the Septuagint. Lutrou/sqai, the most important of the Septuagint terms, is used in twenty-seven out of the one hundred and five instances in which it occurs in its literal sense of ransoming, redeeming; XuTpwais is used in five out of its eight occurrences in the sense of redemption, ransoming; all the compounds derived from lutrou/n are used solely in this sense. (3) In point of fact, the New Testament usage is not a "projection" of the Septuagint usage. The terminology of the New Testament is different from that of the Septuagint, and therefore the terminology of the New Testament was very certainly not derived from that of the Septuagint. Are we to suppose that the New Testament writers carried over the senses of the Septuagint terms without carrying over the terms which were the vehicles of those senses? The fundamental assumption, moreover, that the New Testament writers derived their whole phraseology from the Septuagint - Ritschl even speaks of Paul's "Greek speech, formed from the Septuagint" - cannot be justified. The Greek speech of the New Testament writers is the common speech of their day and generation and their terminology more naturally reflects a popular usage of the time. (4) It is not the fact that the ordinary usage of the derivatives of lu,tron in the New Testament is without modal implications. The contextual implications rather show ordinarily that the modal implications are present. (5) There is not only no reason why a broadened sense should be made normative for these derivatives and imposed upon them in defiance of their natural implication to the contrary, but in several instances they are so recalcitrant to it that it cannot be imposed upon them without intolerable violence. 

A brief survey of the New Testament passages seems to be desirable in order to justify the last two of these remarks.⁶⁹ 

Despite Ritschl's protest we must take our starting-point from our Lord's own description of His mission on earth as to give His life a ransom for many (Mt. xx. 28, Mark x. 45). This could not fail to determine for His followers their whole conception of the nature of His redemptive work.⁷⁰ We cannot be surprised, therefore, to find one of them, echoing His very words, describing His work as a giving of Himself as a ransom (avnti,lutron) for all (I Tim. ii. 6). Nor can we profess to be doubtful of his meaning when the same writer, writing at nearly the same time, but using now the verbal form, tells us that "our great God and Savior gave Himself for us that He might redeem (lutrou/sqai) us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works" (Tit. i. 14); or when another of the New Testament writers, closely affiliated with this one, and writing at about the same time, reminds the Christians that they "were redeemed (lutrou/sqai), not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from their vain manner of life handed down from their fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ" (I Pet. i. 18). There is in these passages an express intimation that the deliverance described by the verb lutrou/sqai as wrought by our Lord, was wrought in the mode of a ransoming. He gave Himself in working it. He gave His blood, as a lamb's blood is given at the altar. We cannot fail to hear here the echoes of His own declaration, that He came to give His life a ransom for many, or to perceive that the verb lutrou/sqai is employed in its native etymological sense of a deliverance by means of a price paid. It is not less clear that the noun lu,trwsij is used in the same natural sense in Heb. ix. 12, where, as in I Pet. i. 18, the blood of Jesus is compared with less precious things - here with the blood of goats and calves - and He is asserted, by means of this His own blood, to have "procured eternal redemption." No subtlety of interpretation can rid such passages of their implication of ransoming. 

The specialty of the New Testament usage lies, however, not in these simple forms, but in the large use made of the rare compound substantive, avpolu,trwsij. This unusual form occurs seven times in the Epistles of Paul, twice in the Epistle to the Hebrews and once in the Gospel of Luke.⁷¹ The preposition avpo, ("away from") with which it is compounded, no doubt, calls especial attention to the deliverance wrought by the ransoming intimated; and we are prepared, therefore, to see this form used when the mind is directed rather to the effects than to the process of the ransoming.⁷² That does not justify us, however, in supposing the term to declare the effects alone, with a total neglect of the process, namely ransoming, by which they are attained. In point of fact, in a number of instances the deliverance declared is in one way or another distinctly defined by the context as having been obtained by the payment of a price. Thus, in Heb. ix. 15, we are told that this deliverance was wrought by a death; in Eph. i. 7 by the blood of Christ; in Rom. iii. 24 by His being offered as a propitiatory sacrifice. 

The implications of the term being fixed by its usage in such passages, it is necessarily interpreted in accordance with them on the other occasions where it occurs. Some of these are so closely connected with these normative passages, indeed, as to be inevitably carried on with them in the same sense. Thus Eph. i. 14 must be read in connection with Eph. i. 7; and Col. i. 14 but repeats Eph. i. 14 and cannot bear a different meaning. From these passages, however, we learn that the effects of the ransoming intimated by avpolu,trwsij stretch into the far future and are not all reaped until the end itself. Thus the key is given us for the understanding of it in its "eschatological" application, as it occurs in Luke xxi. 28, Rom. viii. 33, Eph. iv. 30.73 In such passages the ultimate effects of the ransoming wrought by Jesus in His death are spoken of, not some new and different deliverance, unconnected with that ransoming or with any ransoming, and most certainly not some ransoming distinct from that. The mind of the writer is on the death of Christ as the procuring cause of the deliverance which he is representing by his employment of this term as obtained only at such a cost. 

No doubt there are a couple of passages in which there is less to go upon. There is nothing in I Cor. i. 30, for example,⁷⁴ which would independently fix the sense of the term as there used. But it is unnecessary that there should be, in the presence of so firmly established a significance for it. We must, of course, read it here in accordance with its etymological implications supported by its usage elsewhere: particularly in a writer like Paul whose whole thought of "redemption" is coloured through and through with the blood of Christ.⁷⁵ And there is certainly no reason why we should not conceive the deliverance spoken of in Heb. xi. 35 as one to be purchased by some price which the victims were unwilling to pay. That is indeed implied in the declaration that they would not accept deliverance, because they were looking for a better resurrection. Does it not mean that they would not accept deliverance, on the terms, say, apostasy, on which alone it could be had? It is quite clear in sum that ajpolu,trwsij in the New Testament is conceived, in accordance with its native connotation, and its usage elsewhere, distinctly as a ransoming; and that that implication must be read in it on every occasion of its occurrence. 

There remain, to be sure, three or four instances of the occurrence of the simple forms - lutrou/sqai Luke xxiv. 21, lu,trwsij Luke i. 68, ii. 38, lutrwth,j Acts vii. 35 - all in writings of Luke - which have the peculiarity of standing on the plane of the Old Testament dispensation, and of being consequently unaffected in their suggestions by the new revelation which had come in the ransoming death of Christ. When Zacharias blessed the Lord, the God of Israel, because in the promise to him of a son, He had "visited and brought redemption for His people" (Luke i. 68); when Anna spoke of God "to all those that were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem" (Luke ii. 38); when the two disciples, on their journey to Emmaus, bewailed to one another the death of Jesus, because they had hoped that "it was He that should redeem Israel" - it is clear enough that we are still on Old Testament ground. The redemptive "death which Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem" is not in sight to illuminate and give precision to the ideas which inform the language. In these passages, belonging to the dawn of the new dispensation, the usage of the Septuagint may not unnaturally be thought to prolong itself. And this point of view may, no doubt, not unnaturally be extended to such a passage as Acts vii. 35, where Moses, thought of as a type of Christ, is called a "redeemer." Even this is not to say, however, that lutrou/sqai( lu,trwsij( lutrwth,j stand in these passages wholly without implication of ransoming. As they were written down by Luke, they doubtless were written down with Calvary read into their heart. As they were originally spoken they were doubtless informed with longings which though surer of the deliverance promised than instructed in the precise manner in which it should be wrought, were not without some premonitions, vague and unformed, perhaps, that it would be costly. Those who spoke these words were not mere Jews (as we might say) ; they were the "quiet in the land" whose hearts were instructed above their fellows. After all, the main fact is that in the Old Testament, and in these few echoes of the Old Testament usage "in the beginnings of the Gospel," before the light of the cross had shined upon the world, the great deliverance which was longed for from God, was spoken of, not in the use of terms which expressed merely deliverance - of which plenty to choose from lay at hand -but in the use of terms which enshrined in their heart the conception of ransoming. 

Whatever we may think, however, of these few phrases preserved by Luke from the speech of men still only looking forward to the Gospel, they obviously stand apart from the general New Testament usage. That usage, whether of lutrou/sqai (Tit. ii. 14, I Pet. i. 18), lu,trwsij (Heb. ix. 12), or of avpolu,trwsij (Luke xxi. Rom. iii. 24, viii. 23, I Cor. i. 30, Eph. i. 7, 14, iv. 30, Col. i. 14, Heb. ix. 15, xi. 35), is very distinctly a usage in which the native sense of this group of words - the express sense of ransoming - is clearly preserved. We shall not do justice to the New Testament use of these terms unless we read them in every instance of their occurrence as intimating that the deliverance which they assert has been accomplished, in accordance with the native sense of the words in which it is expressed, by means of a ransom-paying. 

IV 

It is not of large importance, but it is not without an interest of its own to observe how this group of terms is used in the earliest Patristic literature. Three currents of inheritance unite here, and the effect is naturally to impart to the resultant usage a certain lack of consistency and sureness. There was the general Greek tradition, which gave to all the members of the group the uniform connotation of ransoming. There was the Septuagint modification of the simple terms, which wrought the more powerfully because the Septuagint supplied a rich body of quotable passages that were everywhere employed as vehicles of Christian faith and hope. And there was the New Testament usage in which the deliverance wrought by Christ is distinctly presented as a ransoming, but in which also a certain tendency is manifested to throw the emphasis on the effects of this ransoming and especially on its ultimate effect in delivering us from the wrath of God at the end-time. We can observe the influence of all these currents at work. 

In the first age, to be sure, there is no very copious use made of this group of terms. Only lu,tron( lutrou/sqai and lu,trwsij occur, for example, in the Apostolic Fathers; and they only sparingly. 

Lu,tron occurs twice and in both instances, of course, in its natural sense of "ransom." "Thou shalt work with thy hands," says Barnabas (xix. 10), commanding diligence in business, "for a ransom for thy sins." And in the Epistle to Diognetus, the greatness and power of God in our salvation is beautifully praised because "in pity He took upon Himself our sins and Himself parted with His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy for the lawless, the guiltless for the evil, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal." 

Lutrou/sqai occurs nine times. In some of these occurrences, it has reference to human rather than divine acts. One of these is I Clem. lv. "Many among ourselves have delivered themselves to bondage that they might ransom others." The native notion of ransoming intrinsic to the verb is here expressed very purely. This note is less clearly struck in Hermas, "Mand.," viii. 10. Hermas is giving a catalogue of Christian duties. "Hear now what follow upon these," he says: "To minister to widows, to visit the orphans and the needy, to ransom the servants of God from their afflictions, to be hospitable." And the note of ransoming appears to have sunk into silence in another passage of Hermas ("Vis.," iv. 1, 7). Pursued by a dreadful beast, he says, "And I began to cry and to beseech the Lord that He would deliver me from him." Dependence appears to be put on the might of God. 

In none of these instances is there reference to the great normal deliverance which the redemption of God is. This is spoken of, however, in Ignatius' Christ-like prayer for the persecutors of his friends (Phil. ii. 1): "May those who treated them with dishonor be redeemed through the grace of Jesus Christ." And it is spoken of also in Barnabas' exhortation (xix. 2): "Thou shalt glorify Him that redeemed thee from death." Neither passage gives clear intimation of how the redemption spoken of is supposed to be wrought. Nor indeed does the earlier passage in Barnabas (xiv. 4-8) in which, within the space of a few lines, he uses lutrou/sqai of the saving work of our Lord no less than four times. We quote Lightfoot's version with its odd variations in the rendering of the term: "Even the Lord Jesus, who was prepared beforehand hereunto, that, appearing in person, He might redeem out of darkness our hearts which had already been paid over unto death. . . . For it is written how the Father chargeth Him to deliver us from darkness. . . . We perceive, then, whence we are ransomed. Again the prophet saith, . . . 'Thus saith the Lord that ransomed thee, even God."' The citation at the end is from Isa. xlix. 6 ff. where the Septuagint has o` r`usame,noj. Why Barnabas substitutes o` lutrwsame,noj is a matter of conjecture. Possibly it was inadvertent. Possibly it was due to his having already written lutrou/sqai three times, and he adjusts his text to the language of the passage into which he brings it. Possibly he substitutes a term which more exactly describes what Christ actually did - Christianizes Isaiah's language, in a word. In the only remaining passage in which lutrou/sqai occurs in the Apostolic Fathers, II Clem. xvii. 4, it is used in the so-called "eschatological sense," illustrated in the New Testament by Luke xxi. 28, Rom. viii. 23, Eph. i. 14, iv. 30, Col. i. 14: "The Lord said, 'I will come to gather together all the peoples, tribes and tongues.' And He means by this the day of His epiphany, when, coming, He shall redeem us, each according to his works." 

The only other form which occurs in the Apostolic Fathers is lu,trwsij and it occurs only twice (I Clem. xii. 7, Did. iv. 6, cf. Barn. xix. 10 as v.r. for lu,tron). In Did. iv. 6, the Christians are being exhorted to almsgiving, and quite after the Jewish fashion (cf. Dan. iv. 24 Theod.) the exhortation takes the form: "If thou hast aught passing through thy hands, thou shalt give a ransom for thy sins." Almsgiving is a means of securing deliverance: it is the purchase-price paid for immunity from deserved punishment. In I Clem. xii. 7, the scarlet thread which Rahab hung out of the window is declared to have showed beforehand that "through the blood of the Lord there shall be redemption unto all them that believe and hope in God." Here also the sense is distinctly that of ransoming, and the price paid for redemption is noted as Christ's blood. 

This is rather a meagre showing for the currency of the language of redemption in the first age of the Church. The Apostolic Fathers are notable, however, for poverty of doctrinal content: perhaps it is only natural that this doctrine too finds only occasional allusion in them. We receive no impression that lutrou/sqai and its derivatives are employed as technical terms, as established vehicles of a definite doctrine. They appear to be cursorily used in the several senses and applications in which they would naturally suggest themselves to writers of the varied inheritance of these first Christians. The term which comes nearest to a technical term in the New Testament - Paul's avpolu,trwsij - does not occur here at all. And the terms that do occur are dealt with freely and librate in their suggestion between the two extremes of a strict ransoming and an undifferentiated deliverance - with the balance falling, as was natural, in the direction of the stricter signification. 

When we advance to the next age - the age of the Apologists - we meet with similar phenomena, though for a different reason. Apologies are no more natural receptacles of doctrinal terms than practical letters. No single term of our group of words occurs in a single Apology of this epoch. The whole period would be barren of these terms were it not that the Dialogue between Justin and Trypho happens to have been written in it. It this Dialogue, lutrou/sqai appears seven times, and lu,trwsij( lutrwth,j and avpolu,trwsij each once. Here it will be observed, first in Christian literature, is our Lord called "Redeemer" (lutrwth,j). And here first in uninspired Christian literature does Paul's avpolu,trwsij reappear - and it does not appear here of Christ's redemption of His people to which usage Paul had consecrated it, but only of the redemption of Israel through Moses. 

It is clear that the mind of this writer is not on these terms as technical terms for the Christian salvation, described in its mode. Of the ten passages in which they occur six are citations from the Old Testament: xix. 6 (Ez. xx. 12, 20), "That ye may know that I am God who redeemed you" (LXX: "who sanctifieth you"); xxvi. 3 (Isa. lxii. 12), "And he shall call it a holy nation, redeemed by the Lord"; xxxiv. 5 (Ps. lxxii. 14); "He shall redeem their souls from usury and injustice"; cxix. 3 (Isa. lxii. 12), "And they shall call them the holy people, redeemed of the Lord"; xxvi. 4 (Isa. lxiii. 4), "For the day of retribution has come upon them, and the year of redemption (lu,trwsij) is present"; xxx. 3 (Ps. xviii. (xix.) 15), "For we call him Helper and Redeemer (lutrwth,j)." In two more of them the allusion is not to the Christian redemption but to the Deliverance of Israel from Egypt: cxxxi. 3, "Ye who were redeemed from Egypt with a high hand and a visitation of great glory, when the sea was parted for you"; lxxxvi. 1, "Moses was sent with a rod to effect the redemption (avpolu,trwsij) of the people; and with this in his hands at the head of the people he divided the sea." 

Only two passages remain in which Justin uses lutrou/sqai at his own instance of the Christian redemption. 

The first of these is lxxxiii. 3. Here Justin is commenting on the Jewish attempt to interpret Ps. cx. 1 ff. of Hezekiah: "The Lord saith to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make thine enemies my footstool. He shall send forth a rod of power over Jerusalem, and it shall rule in the midst of thine enemies. In the splendor of the saints before the morning star have I begotten thee. The Lord hath sworn and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." He asks scornfully, "Who does not admit then, that Hezekiah is no priest after the order of Melchizedek? And who does not know that he is not the redeemer (lutrou,menoj) of Jerusalem? And who does not know that he neither sent a rod of power over Jerusalem, nor ruled in the midst of her enemies; but that it was God who averted from him the enemies after he mourned and was afflicted? But our Jesus. . . ." The reference to Jesus here is only indirect and the exact nature of the redemption spoken of is not clear. 

The other passage, lxxxvi. 6, is clearer. It runs: "Our Christ by being crucified on the tree, and by purifying us with water, has redeemed us, though plunged in the direst offences which we have committed, and has made us a house of prayer and adoration." Here it is from sin that we are said to have been redeemed, both from its guilt and from its pollution. The redeeming act is seen in the crucifixion; while the cleansing by baptism is associated with that as co-cause of the effect. The whole process of salvation is thus included in what is called redemption; the impetration and application of salvation alike. There is a price paid; and there is a work wrought. So broadly does Justin conceive of the scope of lutrou/sqai. 

We need not pursue the matter further. With Justin we are already a hundred years later than the New Testament usage. We perceive that, under the varied influences moulding its usage, the idea of redemption in the early fathers is at once very deep and very broad. It has not lost the implication of ransoming with which it began,but it embraces the whole process of salvation, which, beginning with our ransoming by the precious blood of Jesus, proceeds with our purification from sin, to end only with our deliverance from the final destruction and our ushering into the eternal glory. The breadth of the reference is interestingly illustrated in the opening words of the beautiful letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul. It is the New Testament word avpolu,trwsij which is used here. "The servants of Christ residing at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul," the letter begins, "to the brethren throughout Asia and Phrygia who hold with us the same faith and hope of redemption, peace and grace and glory from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord."76 "Who have the same faith and hope in the redemption that we have" - oi` auvth.n th/j avpolutrw,sewj h`mi/n pi,stin kai. evlpi,da e;contej. 

Adolf Harnack⁷⁷ warns us against supposing that the terms swthri,a( avpolu,trwsij and the like refer always - or regularly - to deliverance from sin. "In the superscription of the Epistle from Lyons, for example," he says, "it is manifestly the future redemption that is to be understood by avpolu,trwsij." Harnack's fault lies in introducing an illicit alternative. It is not a matter of either the redemption from sin or the future deliverance from wrath. Both are embraced. The writers of the letter speak not only of the common hope of redemption, but before that of the common faith in redemption: "to all that have the same faith and hope in redemption that we have." It is a redemption that has taken place in the past and that extends in its effects into the farthest future, of which they speak. 

It was just this comprehensiveness of redemption, meeting all our needs here and hereafter, that filled the hearts of the fathers with adoring gratitude. They did not think of eliminating the fundamental ransoming in which it consisted on the one side, because their outlook on its effects extended on the other to the final deliverance from the wrath of God. There is therefore a marked tendency among the fathers to speak of Christ's work as double, past and future. Christ came, says Origen,⁷⁸ "in order that lutrwqw/men kai. r`usqw/men from the enemy" - not for the one or the other, but for both. "Christ endured death for our sakes," says Eusebius,⁷⁹ "giving Himself as a lu,tron kai. avnti,yucon for those who are to be saved by Him." He died as a ransom certainly: but the salvation purchased by this ransom-price works itself out steadily in its successive stages unto the very end. This is the key to the "broad" use of lutrou/sqai and its derivatives of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.⁸⁰ 

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, v. xv, 1917, pp. 201-249.

Compare for example, the use of avgora,zw I Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23, II Pet. ii. 1, Rev. v. 9, xiv. 3, 4; evxagora,zw Gal. iii. 13, iv. 5; peripoie,omai Acts xx. 28.

lu,tron Mt. xx. 28, Mk x. 45; avnti,lutron I Tim. ii. 6; lutrou/sqai Lk. xxiv. 21, Tit. ii. 14, I Pet. i. 18; lu,trwsij Lk. i. 68, 1 38, Heb. ix. 12; ajpolu,trwsij Lk. xxi. 28, Rom. iii. 24, viii. 23, I Cor. i. 30, Eph. 1, 7, 14, iv. 30, Col. i. 14, Heb. ix. 15, xi. 35; [lutrwth,j] Acts vii. 35.

Cf. what Johannes Weiss says in his comment on I Cor. i. 30b (Meyer aeries): "Whereas heretofore the notion of ajpolu,trwsij has been carefully investigated with reference to its shade of meaning (whether it is to be taken simply generally as = 'Deliverance,' or - because of the lutr - as = 'Ransoming') and also with reference to the particular relations of the notion (Who was the former owner? What is the ransom price? Who pays it? Why is it of so great value?), the tendency of the day is to push all these questions aside as wrongly put: Paul uses here a common terminus technicus, as a piece of current coin, with regard to which he reckons on a ready understanding; it is approximately = swthri,a; accordingly it is translated simply 'Deliverance,' and no questions are asked with respect to a more exact explanation. This is generally right. . . ." Weiss himself conceives the term to be used primarily of the eschatological salvation, but to have received (like others of the kind) a certain predating and not to have lost entirely the idea of ransoming, though laying the stress on the effects rather than the means.

See Liddell and Scott, Sub voc. I. 2. c.

This distinctive usage of the active and middle may be excellently observed in the First and Twenty Fourth Books of the "Iliad." In the opening lines of Book I we are told that Chryses came to the ships of the Achæans to ransom (luso,menoj, line 13) his daughter, bearing a boundless ransom (a;poina); and that accordingly he supplicated the Achæans to ransom (lu/sai [lu,sate], line 20) her to him and accept the ransom (a;poina). Agamemnon, however, declared roundly that he would not ransom (lu,sw, line 29) her, and this was brought home to him in the subsequent council by Chalcas who charged him with not having ransomed (avpe,luse) her and accepted the ransom (a;poina), and required him now (lines 95 ff.) no longer to look for ransom but to give (do,menai) the maiden to her father unbought (avpria,thn) and unransomed (avna,poinon). Similarly, early in Book xxiv we read that Here despatched Thetis to Achilles (lines 115-116) to chide him for holding Hector's body and not ransoming (avpe,lusen) it, and to see to it, that, respecting her, he now ransomed (lu,sh|) it; and added that she will send Iris to Priam bidding him go and ransom (lu,sasqai) his son bearing gifts to Achilles. Accordingly Thetis goes and chides Achilles (line 135) for holding Hector's body and not ransoming (avpe,lusaj) it, and bids him ransom (lu/sai) it, accepting the ransom (a;poina) offered for the corpse: while Iris goes to Troy and urges Priam to go (line 144) to the ships and ransom (lu,sasqai) his son, carrying gifts to Achilles. Stephanus, "Thesaurus," sub voc. observes that the French word Delivrer has the same two senses; "for Delivrer un prisonnier is said both concerning him who redeems him and concerning him who releases him to a redeemer." The same is true of the English word, "to deliver" and also, indeed, of the English word "to ransom."

Liddell and Scott adduce i[ppon Xen. "An." 7. 8. 6; to. cwri,on Dem. 1215.20.

Liddell and Scott adduce "to buy from a pimp," Ar. "Vesp." 1353.

Cf. the usages classified by Liddell and Scott under IV, V = e.g. "to atone for, make up for, like Latin luere, rependere," as "to atone for sins," "to pay wages in full, to quit oneself of them," in the sense of "loosing" an obligation. According to the Greek conception wrong-doing was inevitably followed by punishment. "On the other hand, the punishment itself was sometimes regarded as an expiation of the guilt. So the death of Laius' murderer was to 'loose' i.e., undo, the effect of the original deed (Sophocles, "Oed. Tyr." 100 f.); so the chorus pray that Orestes' deed, a just manslaughter, may 'loose' the blood of long past murders (Æsch. "Choeph." 803 f.; cf. Eurip. "Her. Fur." 40)" - Arthur Fairbanks, Hastings' ERE, v, p. 653a.

E. g., Homer, "Il." xxiv. 655: "And there might be delay in the ransoming of the corpse (avna,blhsij lu,sioj nekroi/o)."

E. g., Plato, "Rep." 364 E. where it is said that lu,seij kai. kaqarmoi. tw/n avdikhma,twn - " expiations and atonements for sin " (Jowett) - are made by the Orphics both for the living and the dead. Cf. E. Rohde, "Psyche2," 1898, ii, p. 127 f.

See E. Rohde, as cited, p. 50, note 2; and Roscher, "Ausführlices Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie," vol. ii, col. 2212.

Cf. Rohde, as cited, p. 124.

P. 366. AB: Jowett, ii, p. 187.

On Jno. xvii. 21: Migne, xliii, col. 888. Nonnus is ordinarily assigned to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century.

Analu,ein( avna,lusij( avnaluth,r( avnalu,thj; avpolu,ein( avpo,lusij; dialu,ein( dia,lusij( dialuth,j( dia,lutoj( dialutiko,j; evklu,ein( e;klusij( evkluth,rioj( to. evkluth,rion( e;klutoj; evpilu,ein( evpi,lusij( evpilute,on( evpilutiko,j; katalu,ein( kata,lusij( kata,luma( kataluth,rion( katalu,thj( kataluth,j( katalu,simoj( katalute,oj( katalutiko,j; paralu,ein( para,lusij( paralute,on( paralutiko,j ; prolu,ein( prolu,tai; u`polu,ein( u`po,lusij.

See Liddell and Scott, sub voc., II. "In 'Iliad' always = avpolutro,w [to set at liberty], to let go free on receipt of ransom, . . . 24, 115, al.: Med. to set free by payment of ransom, to ransom, redeem, calkou/ te crusou/ t v avpoluso,meq v  at a price of . . ., 'Il.' 22.50; so too in 'Att.,' avpolu,esqai polluw/n crhma,twn Xen. 'Hell.' 4.8, 21." Th. Zahn (" Römerbrief," p. 179, note 50) has a note illustrating this double usage of ajpolu,ein active and middle. Cf. above note 5.

Cf. W. E. Jelf, "A Grammar of the Greek Language'," 1866, vol. i, p. 338 (§335, e): "Instrumental: (signifying the instrument or means by which a certain end is obtained) in troj and tra (contracted from th,rion( th,ria), as sei/stron, a rattle, di,daktron, schooling-money, lou/tron, bathing-water, bath." Cf. G. Hollmann, "Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu," 1901, p. 104, note 2: "That lu,tron is derived from lu,w is certain. From lu,tron is lutro,w then formed like metre,w from me,tron. Compare further cu,w( cu,tra( iva,omai( ivatro,j etc., Brugmann, "Griech. Gramm." 1900, p. 192 f. Numerous examples are given in Kühner-Blass, "Ausführl. Gramm. der griech. Sprache," 1892, iv. p. 271."

Cf. H. Cremer, "Biblisch-theologisches Wörterbuch3," 1883 (cf. E. T., p. 408), sub voc.: "Meanwhile it should be taken into consideration that lu,tron in profane Greek denotes also the means of expiation with reference to the intended result as in Æsch. "Choeph." 48, lu,tron ai[matoj, following lu,ein, in the sense of expiatory acts."

Liddell and Scott, sub voc.: "3. generally, a recompense, lu,tron kama,twn Pind. I. 8 (7). 1."

"Die Beicht in Zusammenhange mit der sakralen Rechtspflege, in der Antike," 1913, p. 37.

"The same word," continues Steinleitner, "in the plural, is employed in three documents of the first century after Christ, from Oxyrhynchus, in which slaves are emancipated; and stands in the same sense in the singular as well as in the plural in the Thessalian atone-records of slave-manumissions." He refers for the papyri to the "Oxyrhynchus Papyri," Part I, ed. by Grenfell-Hunt (London 1898) p. 105, no. XLVIII,. . . no. XLIX; Part IV (London 1904) p. 199, no. 722, line 24 f., line 29/30 . . . line 39/40; and also to L. Mitteis, "Papyri aus Oxyrhynchos," in "Hermes," vol. xxxiv (1899) p. 103 f. For the inscriptions he refers to Gualterus Renach, "De Manumissionum titulis apud Thessalos," Dissert: "Inaugural. Philologica," Halis Sax., 1908. Cf. also A. Deissmann, "Light from the Ancient East," (1910) pp. 324 ff., especially 331 ff.: he gives the literature.

They are described and expounded by Steinleitner, as cited. The longer of the two inscriptions reads:" "  ;Etouj skz. Artemidorus, the son of Diodotus and Amia, together with his six kinsmen, witting and unwitting, lu,tron according to the command of Mem Tyrannos and Zeus Ogmenos and the Gods with him:" Steinleitner explains: "They liberate Artemidorus and his kindred from the God to whom they have become indebted through a transgression, which had occurred partly wittingly and partly unwittingly, by means of a lu,tron to which the God had himself given the injunction through a dream-image or the mouth of the priest. This lu,tron consists in this case certainly not of money, but of the confession of guilt (Schuld) and the erection of the public expiatory monument." It is quite unnecessary, however, to labor to derive this expiatory usage of lu,tron from its use as the price of the manumission of slaves. The expiatory use was current from the days of Pindar and Aeschylus. What these inscriptions show is that lu,tron was in use not only of the emancipation price of slaves but also of the expiatory offering for guilt, until after the Christian era. Cf. also Deissmann, op.cit., p. 332, note 2.

Stephanus' definition very fairly describes its fundamental significance: "Redemptorium, Redemptionis Pretium, Pretium redempti, sine adjectione, quod Bud. ex Livio affert; Quod pro redemptione dependitur, Pretium quo captivi redimuntur; ab ea sc. verbi lu,esqai signif. qua ponitur pro Redimo."

a;llagma( avnta,llagma( timh,( poinh,( a;poina( zwa,gria( avnti,yucon.  ;Apoina is regularly used in the "Iliad" in the sense of lu,tron( lu,tra; perhaps also in that of zwa,gria; the verb avpoina,w formed from it and used in the active of demanding the fine from the murderer, is in the middle the synonym of lutrou/n to hold to ransom.

Jelf, "Grammar," as cited, vol. i, p. 332 (§330,c):" Verbs in o,w mostly from substantives and adjectives of the II. decl.; . . . have all a factitive meaning, making to be that which the primitive expresses, as puro,w, I set on fire from pu/r; cruso,w, I gild, from cruso,j; dhlo,w, I make known from dh/loj."

"Commentaire sur l'Épitre aux Romains," 1881, i, p. 308.

"Römerbrief1," p. 179. Zahn remarks that the regular meaning of the active lutrou/n( avpolutrou/n is dimittere, and of the middle lutrou/sqai( avpolutrou/sqai is redimere, the lu,tron being supposed in both cases. It is his view, however, that in the middle sense, "to ransom," the lu,tronv may be neglected and the verb come to mean merely "to deliver." When he comes to give vouchers, however, (p. 181, note 52), he fails to find any in profane Greek for this loose sense. He cites indeed only three passages from profane Greek: Plato, "Theat.," 165. E; Polyb. 18 (al. 17), 16, 1; Plutarch, "Cimen," 9; all of which expressly intimate a ransom-price as paid. Plato, "Theat." 165.E (Jowettiii, p.368): "He will have got you into his net, out of which you will not escape, until you have come to an understanding about the sum which is to be paid for your release." Polybius, 18 (al. 17), 16, 1 (Shuckburgh ii. 216): "King Attalus had for some time past been held in extraordinary honor by the Sicyonians, ever since the time that he ransomed the sacred land of Apollo for them at the coat of a large sum of money." Plutarch, "Cimon," 9 (Perrin ii. 432-433): "But a little time after the friends and kinsmen of the captives came home from Phrygia and Lydia and ransomed every one of them at a great price, so that Cimon had four months' pay and rations for his fleet, and besides that, much gold from the ransom (lu,tron) left over for the city."

The Lexicons record no other uncompounded derivative as occurring in profane Greek except lutrwte,on, Aristot. " Eth. Nic.," 9.2.4 (see next note). Other derivatives, for which no vouchers from profane Greek are given, include: lu,trwma, from a Christian hymn - "the precious redemption of our Jesus"; lutrw,simoj, Photius and Suidas, "redemmable"; lutrwth,rioj, "Chron. Pasch.," "redeeming"; lutrwth,j, LXX. and Acts, "redeemer"; lutrwtiko,j, Theodorus Prodromue, "of or for ransoming."

The Lexicons record such compound derivatives as the following:  vAntilutrwte,on Ariatot. "Eth. Nic.," 9.2.4: "But perhaps this is not always the case: for instance, must a person who has been ransomed (lutrwqe,nti) from robbers, ransom in return (ajntilutrwte,on) him who ransomed (lusa,menon) him, whoever he may be? Or should he repay him who has not been taken prisoner, but demands payment as a debt? Or should he ransom (lutrwte,on) his father rather than the other? For it would seem that he ought to ransom his father even in preference to himself." Dialu,trwsij, Polyb. 6.58.11: "But they frustrated the calculations of Hannibal and the hopes he had formed of the ransoming of the men" (there is no suggestion of mutual ransoming - "exchange of prisoners" we should say: on the contrary, it is a distinctly one-sided transaction, - the Romans were to pay three minae for each man); 27.11.2 (al. 14): "Just about the time when Perseus retired for the winter from the Roman war, Antenor arrived at Rhodes from him to negotiate for the ransom of Diophanes and those who were on board with him. Thereupon there arose a great dispute among the statesmen as to what course they ought to take. Philophenax, Theatetus and their party were against entering into such an arrangement upon any terms, Deinon and Polyaratus were for doing so. Finally they did enter upon an arrangement for their redemption."  vEklutrou/sqai, Scholium on Homer. " Odyss.," IV. 33: When princely Telemachus and the proud son of Neator arrived at Menelaus' palace, Eteoneus asks whether they are to be received or sent about their business. Menelaus replies that of course they are to be received: they had themselves often had to depend on the courtesy of strangers, "and we must look to Zeus henceforth to keep us safe from harm." The Scholium explains this as meaning that they would have to hope, "that after these things he (Zeus) may deliver (evklutrw,shtai) us from the impending distress." There is no obvious implication of ransoming here, but Liddell and Scott quite naturally define the word, with this sole voucher, "to redeem by payment of ransom."  vEpi,lutroj, set at liberty for ransom, Strabo, ii, p. 496:  [A d v a;n la,bwsin evpi,lutra poiou/ntai r`a|di,wj. Paralutrou,menoj is given by Athenaeus Grammaticus, p. 368, as the name of a comedy by Sotades.

"Römerbrief1:2," p. 181, note 52.

The LXX here reads, w; h` evpifanh.j kai. avpolelutrwme,nh po,lij - "Alas, the glorious and ransomed city." Oltramare (on Rom. 3.24) wishes to render, "relaxed, licentious." Morison supports Zahn quite properly in insisting on the sense of ransomed.

Reiske, p. 775.

"Strategemata," v. 40: Ed. Mursinna, Berlin, 1756, p. 326. In a note it is said: "Read,  vAristokra,thj. For avpolutrw,sato is not redemit, but pro redemptione exegit. Casaubon." Accordingly the Teubner Ed. 1877, edited by Melber, p. 270, prints  vAristokra,thj in the text with the note, "  vAristokra,thj Casaubon;   vAristolh~v F." "F" is the archetype from which all extant MSS. are descended. It reads  vAristolh/j which Casaubon in the editio princeps (Lugdunum Batavorum 1589) already suggested should be changed to  vAristokra,thj on the ground reported above. Whatever may be the true reading, the reason assigned for the proposed emendation is a bad one. For not only does the middle avpolutrou/sqai but the middle of the simple lutrou/sqai and the middles lu,esqai and avpolu,esqai before them, all mean distinctly not put to ransom but ransom.

"Sixth Oration, to the Uneducated Cynics": "Works," ed. by W. C. Wright, 1913, vol. ii. p. 44; ed. Teubner, 1875. vol. i. p. 253.

Stephanus cites also the late Christian writer Nicetas, " Paraphrasis [carm. arcan.] S. Gregorii Naz," ed. Dronk, pp. 26. 221; i.e., Migne, "Patr. Graec." 38. 705. Nicetas simply speaks of what Christ did that he might redeem (avpolutrw,shtai) men.

Zahn, "Römerbrief1,"pp. 179-181 says: "We must bear in mind that according as we take our start from the regular sense of the active lutrou/n( avpolutrou/n (dimittere) or from that of the middle, lutrou/sqai( avpolutrou/sqai (redimere), the derived substantive will designate either the action of him who discharges or releases from duress" (there should be added: "on receipt of a ransom") "him that is in duress to him, or the action of him who by means of the payment of a ransom, or else without such a payment" (there is no justification in profane Greek for this last clause) "secures the release of one in duress to another, be it person or thing."

P. 181. Note 52.

Reiske, p. 754.

So it is rightly taken both by Zahn (p. 181, note 52) and Oltramare (i. 310).

Liddell and Scott refer also to Philo, 2. 463 [Mangey], that is to say to "Quod Omn. Prob. Liboi," § 17. med.: "He judged a violent death preferable to the life that was before him, and despairing of ransoming (avpolu,trwsin), he cheer fully slew himself." Here avpolu,trwsij expresses distinctly the action of the middle voice of the verb. In the account given by Aristeas in the earlier portion of his letter to Philocrates (cf., also Josephus, " Antt." XII. ii. 2 ff.) of the liberation of the Jews by Ptolemy Philadelphus, the changes are rung on avpolu,ein( avpo,lusij( avpolutrou/n (20), avpolu,trwsij (12, 33) in the sense of securing release by payment of a ransom. The transaction was not a mere liberation, but involved the payment of a ransom - twenty drachmas for each (20 and 22), - the whole sum amounting to more than 400 talents (20): "More than 400 talents th/j avpolutrw,sewj" that is to say "of redemption money," says Josephus (Niese III. 77, line 11). Cf. § 27 with Joaephus XII. ii. 2 ad fin.

A. Deissmann, "Light from the Ancient East," p. 331, note 4; cf., Th. Zahn, "Romerbrief'," p. 180, note 51. Both Deisamann and Zahn give the fundamental references.

Naturally the details of the transactions in which slaves purchased their freedom varied endlessly. There are instances on record in which the money is paid down, but the manumission is to take effect only at some future time, say at the master's death. There are others in which the manumission is so far only partial that the slave remains bound to certain specified services. On the other hand there are instances in which the manumission is accomplished on credit, that is to say, it is enjoyed on sufferance until the price is paid in. This class of freedmen appears to have been known as pa,lai evleu,qeroi. "To such a suspended freedom," writes L. Mitteia ("Reichsrecht und Volksrecht," etc., 1891, p. 388), It must be reckoned the remission of the purchase money (Lösegeld) in the will of the master, as in the testament of Lyko ("Diog. Laert.," v. 61-64), where we read: Dhmhtri,w| me.n evleuqe,rw| pa,lai o;nti avfi,hmi ta. lu,tra [to Demetrius who is a pa,lai evleu,qeroj I remit the purchase-money]; E. Curtius has already correctly recognized that a pa,lai evleu,qeroj who is still in debt for his purchase money, is certainly no real freeman, but only a statu liber (" Anecdot.," p. 11)."

The only apparent exception which we have noted is the use of evklutrou/sqai in a scholium on Homer, "Odyss.," IV. 35; see above, note 30.

"Comm. sur L'Épitre aux Romains," 1881, i, p. 308.

rpk six times: Ex. xxi. 30, xxx. 12, Num. xxxv. 31, 32, Prov. vi. 35, xiii. 8; !wydp seven times: Num. iii. 46, 48, 51; Ex. xxi. 30; Num. iii. 49, Lev. xix. 20, Num. xviii. 15; hlag five times, Lev. xxv. 24, 26, 51, 52; xxvii. 31; also ryhm once, Isa. xlv. 13. Cf. G. Hollmann, "Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu," 1901, p. 102. Hollmann notes that lu,tra occurs in the same sentence as the rendoring both of rpk and !wydp in Ex. xxi. 30, "If there be laid on him a rpk he shall give for the !wydp of his life whatever is laid on him."

A. Seeberg, "Der Tod Christi," p. 218 says that in this passage "the master to whom the Israelitish maiden bought by him does not prove to be pleasing, is required hdphw which the LXX translate avplutrw,sei auvth,n, and that of course cannot mean, 'he shall buy her free' but only 'he shall free her."' But verse 11 opposes her going out for nothing, "without money," to the disposal of her required in verse 8, - which therefore must be for money. Undoubtedly the E. V. renders rightly: "Then shall he let her be redeemed," in accordance with the proper sense of the active voice of the verb - "to release for a ransom." Joseph Wirtz, "Die Lehre von der Apolytrosis," 1906, p. 2 and p. 3, note 2 has the right interpretation.

Cf. Dan. iv. 24, Theod.: "Therefore, O King, let my counsel be acceptable to thee and lu,trwsai thy sins with almsgivings and thine iniquities with mercies to the poor." The Aramaic word rendered by lu,trwsai here is p'rak - to take away: lu,trwsai accordingly represents a term which does not specifically express a ransoming (cf. S. R. Driver in loc.); cf. note 56. Nevertheless the purchase price is expressed and therefore lu,trwsai is appropriate.

We do not concern ourselves with Judges i. 15.

For the Hebrew synonyms, hdp and lag, see R. D. Wilson, PTR July 1919, p. 431.

Ex. xiii. 13 bis, 15, xxxiv. 20 bis; Lev. xix. 20, xxv. 25, 30, 33, 48, 49 bis, 54, xxvii. 13, 15, 19, 20 bis, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33; Num. xviii. 15 bis, 17. Cf. Dan. iv. 24.

"Hebrews3," p. 298, med.

Ex. vi. 6, xv. 13, 16; Deut. vii. 8, ix. 26, xiii. 5 (6), xv. 15, xxi. 8, xxiv. 18; II Sam. vii. 23 bis; I Chron. xvii. 21 bis, Neh. i. 10, Esther iv. 16, (9); Ps. lxxvi. (lxxvii.) 15, cv. (cvi.) 10, cvi. (cvii.) 2 bis; cxxxv. (cxxxvi.) 24; Mic. vi. 4 (Isa. lxiii. 9?).

In this general class there may be counted such passages as Isa. xli. 14, xliii.l4, xliv. 22, 23, 24, lxii. 12, lxiii. 9, Jer. xv. 21, xxxviii. (xxxi.) 11, Hos. vii. 13, xiii. 14, Mic. iv. 10, Zeph. (iii. 1) iii. 15, Zech. x. 8 and perhaps Ps. xxiv. (xxv.) 22, xliii. (xliv.) 26, lxxiii. (lxiv.) 2, cxxix. (cxxx.) 8.

Cf. Ps. lviii. (lix.) 1, lxviii. (lxix.) 18, exviii. (cxix.) 134.

Cf. Ps. xxv. (xxvi.) 11, xxx. (xxxi.) 5, xxxi. (xxxii.) 7, xlviii. (xlix.) 15, liv. (lv.) 18, lxx. (lxxi.) 23, lxxi. (lxxii.) 14, cii. (ciii.) 4, cxviii. (cxix.) 154; cf. Lam. iii. 58.

In both cases the Hebrew word rendered by lutrou/sqai is qrp, as it is also in Ps. cxxxv (cxxxvi), 24; cf. the corresponding Aramaic in Dan. iv. 24 (and Driver's note on it). On this word see Giesebrecht, ZATW, 1881, p. 285 and the note of Baethgen on Ps. vii. 3. It is literally "to snatch away," "to rescue"; cf. Brown-Driver in loc. Cf. note 48.

"Hebrews3," p. 298.

Plato, "Laws," 919. A; Demoathenea 159, 15; Polybius 2.6.6, 22.21.8; Lucian; Plutarch, "Pompey," 24; Polyaenus, "Strat.," V.40; Julian Imp., "Orat., vi," Teubner I. 253; Inscription from Kos. The passages are given above.

Ex, xxi. 8, Zeph. iii. 1 (3), Dan. LXX, iv. 24.

Philo, Mangey, ii. 463; Josephus, Niese, III. 77. 11; Ariateas, Wendland, 4.12; 7.19; 12.8.

Cf. F. Weber, "Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften2," 1897, p. 359 f. (§ 79.2); also p. 361.

Even Johannes Weiss is constrained to allow that it is probable that the idea of ransoming was felt in the New Testament usage, as appears from his very instructive comment on I Cor. i. 30: "The swthri,a, the zwh,, is the benefit which is obtained for us by the avpolu,trwsij. How far the conception of ransom is still felt in this is not to be debated here. Paul thinks in our passage more of the effect than of the means of the deliverance. But it is very probable (from passages like Gal. iii. 13, I Pet. 1. 18) that this shade is still felt." How impossible it is to eliminate the idea of purchase from the conceptions of the New Testament writers is illustrated by the admission by writers who argue for the wider notion of avpolu,trwsij that it lies expressed in other language by the side of the general notion of deliverance expressed by avpolu,trwsij. This is done, for example, by A. Ritschl. It is done also by H. Oltramare (on Rom. iii. 24): "That the idea of ransom is Scriptural," he says, "is incontestable; but who proves to us that avpolu,trwsij is the equivalent of these expressions?" - that is to say, such as are found in Mt. xx. 28, I Tim. ii. 6, I Pet. i. 18, I Cor. vi. 20, Gal. iii. 13. Similarly B. F. Westcott ("Hebrews3, " pp. 298-299), after arguing that the idea of ransom has faded from "lutrou/sqai etc." in the LXX and its place has been taken by that of power, is disinclined to confine the expenditure which God makes in the New Testament conception to that of might alone. Love or self-sacrifice, he suggests, may be the thing expended. He therefore remarks that in "the spiritual order" the idea of deliverance must be supplemented by that of purchase; and he adduces the passages in which that is expressed. He concludes with the dictum: "The Christian, it appears, is bought at the price of Christ's Blood for God." Like Ritschl he is only concerned to show that the idea is not intrinsic in the term lutrou/sqai: (avpolu,trwsij): it is a fact that we are bought to God by the blood of Christ, but this fact is not expressed by this term. The ingenuity required to validate this position (see especially Ritschl here) is its sufficient refutation.

We remind ourselves that these include a somewhat rare use of lutrou/sqai itself (Luke xxiv. 21; Tit. ii. 14, I Pet. i. 18) and its derivative lu,trwsij (Luke i. 68, ii. 38, Heb. ix. 12), with a relatively large use of avpolu,trwsij (Luke xxi. 28; Rom. iii. 24, viii. 23, I Cor. i. 30; Eph. i. 7,14; Col. i.14, Heb. ix. 15, xi. 35). Lutrwth,j occurs Acts vii. 35, but of Moses, not of Christ. Lu,tron occurs at Mt. xx. 28, Mark x. 45, and avnti,lutron at I Tim. ii. 6.

E.g. by Sanday-Headlam, on Rom. iii. 24, whose own conclusion is that "the idea of the lu,tron retains its full force, that it is identical with the timh,, and that both are ways of describing the Death of Christ. The emphasis is on the cost of man's redemption."

The only vouchers cited (pp. 179-180, note 51) are Rom. viii. 23, Eph. i. 14, iv. 30, and Clem. Alex. "Strom." VII. 56, to which Dan. iv. 30 Theod: o` cro,noj th/j avpolutrw,sewj is added p. 179, note 49. Clement, "Strom." VII. 10 (56) looks forward to a time when we shall live "with gods according to the will of God," "after we shall have been redeemed (avpoluqe,ntwn) from all chastisement and punishment which we shall have had to endure as salutary. chastening in consequence of our sins." "After which redemption (avpolu,trwsin)," he continues, "the rewards and honors are assigned to those who have become perfect, when they have got done with purification, and ceased from all service, though it be holy service, and among saints." They enter into eternal contemplation and receive the name of Gods and live with other Gods who have before been elevated to this condition by the Savior. Here the avvpolu,trwsij is conceived as a release from punishment and the moment of thought is fixed on the final removal of the soul to its rest. It is an instance of the so-called "eschatological sense" of the term, and "deliverance" would convey the main thought. But it does not follow that the idea of ransoming is eliminated, or that the term avpolu,trwsij is not employed because this "deliverance" is felt to rest at bottom on a ransoming.

Edition 3, 1899, pp. 222 ff.

Cf. Driver, on Deut. vii. 8.

For a fuller discussion of the implications of the New Testament usage, aee the Article, "Redemption" in Hastings"' Dictionary of the Apostolic Church."

Cf. A. Deissmann, "Light from the Ancient East," p. 331 and note 6.

"This rare word," exclaims Deissmann (p. 331, note 2) "occurs seven times in St. Paul!"

This is what Chrysostom means, in his comment on Rom. iii. 24, when he says: "And he said not simply, lu,trwsij (ransoming) but avpolu,trwsij (ransoming away), so that we come not again into the same bondage." Our ransoming removed us from the bondage under which we had suffered so that we were in no danger of falling back into it. Cf., R. C. Trench, "Synonyms of the N. T7.," 1871, p. 273; A. Deissmann, "Light from the Ancient East," p. 331, note 3. This is probably also all that Theophylact means when he defines avpolu,trwsij as "recall (evpana,klhtij) from captivity," not intending to deny that a ransoming is intimated (as Trench and Deissmann suppose) but emphasizing the reference to the effects of the transaction.

Cf. J. B. Lightfoot's comment on Eph. 1. 7: - "The avpolu,trwsij may be two-fold: (1) it may be initial and immediate, the liberation from the consequences of past sin and the inauguration of a new and independent life, as here: so Rom. iii. 24, I Cor. i. 30, Col. i. 14, Heb. ix. 15; or (2) future and final, the ultimate emancipation from the power of evil in all its forms, as in Luke xxi. 28. . . . Rom. viii. 23; comp. Heb. xi. 35. In the latter sense it is used below, ver. 14, and iv. 30. . . ." The point to be emphasized is that the only difference between these two classes of passages concerns the particular effects of the one "ransoming" by the blood of Christ which are for the moment engaging the mind of the writer as he thinks of what Christ has ransomed us away from. There is no specifically "eschatological sense" of avpolu,trwsij; there is only an eschatological application of the ransoming which has been wrought by Christ's gift of Himself.

Cf. Johannes Weiss' comment on this passage.

G. P. Wetter, "Charis," 1913, p. 21, says strikingly: "Something great, something not to be understood, has happened to all men. And this great thing is an act of God, an avpolu,trwsij, a ransoming, of course out of the earlier condition of wrath and condemnation, and that means with Paul that it happened on the cross."

Eusebius, H. E., V. 1. 3.

"History of Dogma," E. T., i. p. 202 note (German ed., i. p. 145 note).

"Hom. XIV on Jer.," Ed. Klostermann, III. 116.1.

Fragment on "The Theophany," Migne, xxiv. 633 B.

We have no concern here with the Patristic doctrine of the ransoming from Satan; see J. Wirtz, "Die Lehre von der Apolytrosis," 1906, on the early history of that.

The Ninety-Five Theses in Their Theological Significance¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

"A poor peasant's son, then a diligent student, a humble monk, and, finally, a modest, industrious scholar, Martin Luther had already exceeded the half of the life-time allotted to him, when - certainly with the decision characteristic of him, but with all the reserve imposed by his position in life and the immediate purpose of his action - he determined to subject the religious conceptions which lay at the basis of the indulgence-usages of the time to an examination in academic debate."2 This singularly comprehensive and equally singularly accurate statement of Paul Kalkoff's is worth quoting because it places us at once at the right point of view for forming an estimate of the Ninety-five Theses which Luther, in prosecution of the purpose thus intimated, posted on the door of the Castle-Church at Wittenberg on the fateful October 31, 1517. It sets clearly before us the Luther who posted the Theses. It was - as he describes himself, indeed, in their heading³ - Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Theology, Ordinary Professor of Theology in the University of Wittenberg. And it indicates to us with equal clearness the nature of the document which he posted. It consists of heads for a discussion designed to elucidate the truth with respect to the subject with which it deals - as again Luther himself tells us in its heading. We have to do here in a word with an academic document, prepared by an academic teacher, primarily for an academic purpose. All that the Theses were to become grows out of this fundamental fact. We have to reckon, of course, with the manner of man this Professor of Theology was; with the conception he held of the function of the University in the social organism; with the zeal for the truth which consumed him. But in doing so we must not permit to fall out of sight that it is with a hard-working Professor of Theology, in the prosecution of his proper academical work, that we have to do in these Theses. And above everything we must not forget the precise matter which the Theses bring into discussion; this was, as Kalkoff accurately describes it, the religious conceptions which lay at the basis of the indulgence traffic. 

Failure to bear these things fully in mind has resulted in much confusion. It is probably responsible for the absurd statement of A. Plummer to the effect that "Luther began with a mere protest against the sale of indulgences by disreputable persons."4 One would have thought a mere glance at the document would have rendered such an assertion impossible; although it is scarcely more absurd than Philip Schaff's remark that the Theses do not protest "against indulgences, but only against their abuse"5 - which Plummer elaborates into: "Luther did not denounce the whole system of indulgences. He never disputed that the Church has power to remit the penalties which it has imposed in the form of penances to be performed in this world."6 To treat the whole system of indulgences, as proclaimed at the time, as an abuse of the ancient custom of relaxing, on due cause, imposed penances, is to attack the whole system with a vengeance. 

The general lack of discernment with which the Theses have been read is nothing less than astonishing. It is not easy to understand, for instance, how T. M. Lindsay⁷ could have been led to say that they are "singularly unlike what might have been expected from a Professor of Theology." "They lack," he tells us, "theological definition, and contain many repetitions which might have been easily avoided." He speaks of them as simply unordered sledge-hammer blows directed against an ecclesiastical abuse: as such utterances as were natural to a man in close touch with the people, who, shocked at the reports of what the pardon-sellers had said, wished to contradict some of the statements which had been made in their defense. One does not know how Lindsay would expect a professional theologian to write. But certainly these Theses lack neither in profundity of theological insight nor in the strictest logical development of their theme. They constitute, in point of fact, a theological document of the first importance, working out a complete and closely knit argument against, not the abuses of the indulgence traffic, and not even the theory of indulgences, merely, but the whole sacerdotal conception of the saving process - an outgrowth and embodiment of which indulgences were. The popular aspects of the matter are reserved to the end of the document, and are presented there, not for their own sake, but as ancillary arguments for the theological conclusion aimed at. E. Bratke is right in insisting on the distinctively theological character of the Theses: they were, he says truly, "a scientific attempt at a theological examination"; and Luther's object in publishing them was a clearly positive one. "Not abuses," says Bratke rightly, "nor the doctrine of penance, but the doctrine of the acquisition of salvation, it was, for which Luther seized his weapons in his own interests and in the interests of Christianity."8 

Bernhard Bess⁹ may supply us, however, with our typical example of how the Theses should not be dealt with. He wishes to vindicate a Reformatory importance for them; but he has difficulty in discovering it. They do not look very important at first sight, he says. Everybody who reads them for the first time has a feeling of disappointment with them. Even letters of pardon. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share given to him by God in all the benefits of Christ and the Church, even without letters of pardon" - there is included in these "letters of pardon," expressly declared unnecessary, the whole sacerdotal machinery of salvation; and Luther is asserting salvation apart from this machinery as normal salvation. Reducing the ecclesiastical part in salvation to a purely ministerial and declaratory one, he sets the sinful soul nakedly face to face with its God and throws it back immediately on His free mercy for its salvation. 

The significance of the Theses as a Reformation act emerges thus in this: that they are a bold, an astonishingly bold, and a powerful, an astonishingly powerful, assertion of the evangelical doctrine of salvation, embodied in a searching, well-compacted, and thoroughly wrought-out refutation of the sacerdotal conception, as the underlying foundation on which the edifice of the indulgence traffic was raised. This is what Walther Köhler means when he declares that we must recognize this as the fundamental idea of Luther's Theses: "the emancipation of the believer from the tutelage of the ecclesiastical institute"; and adds, "Thus God advances for him into the foreground; He alone is Lord of death and life; and to the Church falls the modest role of agent of God on earth - only there and nowhere else." "The most far-reaching consequences flowed from this," he continues; "Luther smote the Pope on his crown and simply obliterated his high pretensions with reference to the salvation of souls in this world and the next, and in their place set God and the soul in a personal communion which in its whole intercourse bears the stamp of interiorness and spirituality." Julius Köstlin puts the whole matter with his accustomed clearness and balance - though with a little wider reference than the Theses themselves - when he describes the advance in Luther's testimony marked by the indulgence controversy thus: "As he had up to this time proclaimed salvation in Christ through faith, in opposition to all human merit, so he now proclaims it also in opposition to an external human ecclesiasticism and priesthood, whose acts are represented as conditioning the imparting of salvation itself, and as in and of themselves, even without faith, effecting salvation for those in whose interests they are performed."10 

How, in these circumstances, Philip Schaff can say of the Theses, "they were more Catholic than Protestant,"11 passes comprehension. He does, no doubt, add on the next page, "The form only is Romish, the spirit and aim are Protestant"; but that is an inadequate correction. They are nothing less than, to speak negatively, an anti-sacerdotal, to speak positively, an evangelical manifesto. There are "remainders of Romanism" in them, to be sure, for Luther had not worked his way yet to the periphery of his system of thought. These "remainders of Romanism" led him in after years to speak of himself as at this time still involved in the great superstition of the Roman tyranny (1520), and even as a mad papist, so sunk in the Pope's dogmas that he was ready to murder anyone who refused obedience to the Pope (1545). But these strong expressions witness rather to the horror with which he had come to look upon everything that was papist than do justice to the stage of his developing Protestantism which he had reached in 1517. The remainders of Romanism imbedded in the Theses are, after all, very few and very slight. Luther was not yet ready to reject indulgences in every sense. He still believed in a purgatory. He still had a great reverence for the organized Church; put a high value on the priestly function; and honored the Pope as the head of the ecclesiastical order. It is even possible to draw out from the Theses, indeed, some sentences which, in isolation, may appear startlingly Romish. We have in mind here such, for example, as the sixty-ninth, seventy-first, and seventy-third. It is to be observed that these are consecutive odd numbers. That is because they are mere protases, preparing the way, each for a ringing apodosis in which the gravamen of the assertion lies. 

Luther has reached the stage in his argument here where he has the crying abuses connected with the preaching of indulgences in view. He declares, to be sure, "It is incumbent on bishops and curates to receive the commissaries of the apostolical pardons with all reverence." But that is only that he may add with the more force: "But much more is it incumbent on them to see to it with all their eyes and to take heed to it with all their ears that these men do not preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the Pope." He proclaims, it is true, "He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed." But that is only to give zest to the contrast: "But he who exerts himself against the wantonness and license of speech of the preacher of pardons, let him be blessed." If he allows that "the Pope justly fulminates against those who use any kind of machinations to the injury of the traffic in pardons," that is only that he may add: "Much more does he intend to fulminate against those who under pretext of pardons use machinations to the injury of holy charity and truth." If Luther seems in these statements to allow the validity of indulgences, that must be set down to the fault of his antithetical rhetoric rather than of his doctrine. These protases are really of the nature of rhetorical concessions, and are meant to serve only as hammers to drive home the contrary assertions of his apodoses. Luther has already reduced valid indulgences to the relaxation of ecclesiastical penances, and curbed the Pope's power with reference to the remission of sin to a purely declaratory function. "The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority or by that of the Canons. The Pope has no power to remit any guilt except by declaring and approbating it to have been remitted by God." These two Theses (5 and 6) cut up sacerdotalism by the roots. 

We must be wary, too, lest we be misled by Luther's somewhat artificial use of his terms. He persistently means by "indulgences," "pardons," not the indulgences which actually existed in the world in which he lived - which he held to be gross corruptions of the only real indulgences - but such indulgences as he was willing to admit to be valid, that is to say, relaxations of ecclesiastically imposed penances; and he repeatedly speaks so as to imply that it is these which the Pope really intends - or at least in the judgment of charity ought to be assumed really to intend - by all the indulgences which he commissions. Even more persistently he means by "the Pope," not the Pope as he actually was, but the Pope as he should be; that is to say, a "public person" representing and practically identical with the ecclesiastical Canons. Thus, when he declares in the forty-second Thesis that "it is not the mind of the Pope that the buying of pardons is comparable to works of mercy," he explains in his "Resolutions" (1518) that what he really means is that the Canons do not put the two on a par. "I understand the Pope," he says,¹² "as a public person, that is, as he speaks through the Canons: there are no Canons which declare that the value of indulgences is comparable to that of works of mercy." At an earlier point he had said with great distinctness (on Thesis 26), "I am not in the least moved by what is pleasing or displeasing to the supreme Pontiff. He is a man like other men; there have been many supreme Pontiffs who were pleased not only with errors and vices but even with the most monstrous things. I hearken to the Pope as pope; that is when he speaks in the Canons and speaks according to the Canons, or when he determines with a Council: but not when he speaks according to his own head - for I do not wish to be compelled to say, with some whose knowledge of Christ is defective, that the horrible deeds of blood committed by Julius II against the Christian people were the good deeds of a pious pastor done to Christ's sheep."13 The Pope to Luther was thus an administrative officer: not precisely what we should call a responsible ruler, but rather what we should speak of as a limited executive. The distinction he draws is not between the Pope speaking ex cathedra and in his own private capacity; it is rather between the Pope speaking of himself and according to his mandate. Only when the Pope spoke according to his mandate was he the Pope, and Luther repeatedly in the Theses ascribes to the "Pope" what he found in the Canons, and denies to the "Pope" what the actual Pope was saying and doing, because it was not in the Canons. To him the Pope was not so much authoritative as what was authoritative was "the Pope." 

What Luther found it hardest to separate himself from in the Catholic system, was the authoritative ministration of the priest, God's representative, to weak and trembling souls. The strength and purity of the evangelicalism of the Theses is manifested in nothing more decisively than in their clear proclamation of the dependence of the soul for salvation on the mere grace of God alone. But Luther could not escape from the feeling that, in some way, the priest had an intermediating part to play in the application of this salvation. This feeling finds its expression particularly in Thesis 7: "God never remits guilt to anyone at all, except at the same time He subjects him, humbled in all things, to the priest, His vicar." In the exposition of this Thesis in the "Resolutions" he has much ado to discover an essential part in salvation for the priest to play. When the dust clears away, what he has to say is seen to reduce to this: "The remission of God, therefore, works grace, but the remission of the priest, peace."14 We may be saved without the priest, but we need his ministration to know that we are saved. The awakened sinner, by virtue of the very fact that he is awakened, cannot believe that he - even he - is forgiven, and needs the intermediation of God's representative, the priest, to assure him of it. The mischief is that Luther is inclined, if not to confuse, yet to join together these two things, and to treat salvation itself as therefore not quite accomplished until it is wrought in foro conscientiae as well as in foro coeli. "The remission of sin and the donation of grace is not enough," he says,¹⁵ "but there is necessary also the belief that it is remitted." It makes no difference to him, he says, whether you say that the priest is the sine qua non or any other kind of cause of the remission of sin: all that he is exigent for is that it be allowed that in some way or other the priestly absolution is concerned in the remission of sin and guilt. 

He will have, however, no opus operatum; and despite this magnifying of the part of absolution in salvation, he puts the priest firmly in his place, as a mere minister. It is after all not the priest, by virtue of any powers he may possess, but the man's own faith which in his absolution brings him remission. "For you will have only so much peace," he declares,¹⁶ "as you have faith in the words of Him who promised, 'whatsoever you loose, etc.' For our peace is Christ, but in faith. If anyone does not believe this word, he may be absolved a million times by the Pope himself, and confess to the whole world, and he will never come to rest." "Forgiveness depends not on the priest but on the word of Christ; the priest may be acting for the sake of gain or of honor - do you but seek without hypocrisy for forgiveness and believe Christ who has given you His promise, and even though it be of mere frivolity that he absolves you, you nevertheless will receive forgiveness from your faith . . . your faith receives it wholly. So great a thing is the word of Christ, and faith in it."17 "Accordingly it is through faith that we are justified, through faith also that we are brought to peace - not through works, penances, or confession."18 There is no lack even here, therefore, of the note of salvation by pure grace through faith alone. There is only an effort to place the actual experience of salvation in some real connection with the ministrations of the Church. And underlying this there is a tendency to confuse salvation itself with the assurance of it. Both these points of view lived on in the Lutheran churches. 

The part played, in the line of thought just reviewed, by Luther's conception of evangelical repentance ought not to be passed over without notice. This conception is in a sense the ruling conception of the Theses. The Christian, according to Luther, is a repentant sinner, and by his very nature as a repentant sinner must suffer continuously the pangs of repentance. By these pangs he is driven to mortifications of the flesh and becomes even greedy of suffering, which he recognizes as his appropriate life-element. So strong an emphasis does Luther place on suffering as a mark of the Christian life, indeed, that he has been sometimes represented as thinking of it as a good in itself, after the fashion of the mystics. Walther Köhler, for example, cries out, "The whole life a penance! Not only as often as the Church requires it in the confessional, no, the Christian's whole life is to be a great process of dying, 'mortification of the flesh' - up to the soul's leaving in death its bodily house. . . . The mystical warp is visible in this through and through personal religion."19 This, however, is a misconception. Luther is not dealing with men as men and with essential goods; he is speaking of sinners awakened to a knowledge of their sin, and of their necessary experience under the burden of their consciousness of guilt and pollution. He is giving us not his philosophy of life in the abstract, but his conception specifically of the Christian life. This, he says, is necessarily a life of penitent pain. In the fundamental opening Theses, he already points out that suffering, the suffering of rueful penitence, necessarily belongs to every sinner, so long as he remains a sinner - provided that he remains a repentant sinner. Without this compunction there is no remission of sin (36); with it there is no cessation in this life of suffering. The very process of salvation brings pain: no man, entering into life, can expect anything else for the outer man but "the cross, death, and hell" (58); nor does he seek to escape them, but he welcomes them rather as making for his peace (40, 29). And so, preaching "the piety of the cross" (68), Luther arrives at length at those amazing closing Theses in which, invoking a curse on those who cry, "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace, and pronouncing a blessing on those who call out, "The cross, the cross!" - though it is no real cross to the children of God - he declares that Christians must strive to follow Christ, their Head, through pains, deaths, and hells, and only thus to enter heaven through many tribulations - rather than, he adds, striking at the indulgence usages, "through the security of peace." There is a note of imitatio Christi here, of course; but not in the mystical sense. Rather there speaks here a deep conviction that the Christian life is a battle, a struggle, a strenuous work; and a great cry of outrage at the whole tendency of the indulgence system to ungird the loins, and call men off from the conflict, lulling their consciences into a fatal sleep. Luther is not dreaming here of the purchase of heaven by human suffering or works. He has a Christian man in mind. He is speaking of the path over which one treads, who, in his new life, is journeying to his final bliss. Clearly he does not expect to "lie down" on the grace that saves him. He looks at the Christian life as a life of strenuous moral effort. His brand of "passive" salvation is all activity. 

Its lack of moral earnestness was to earnest minds the crowning offense of the system of indulgences. In the midst of a system of work-salvation it had grown up as an expedient by means of which the work might be escaped and the salvation nevertheless secured. The "works" could not, to be sure, be altogether escaped: there must be something to take their place and represent them. That much the underlying idea of work-salvation demanded. That something wasmoney. The experience of young Friedrich Mecum (we know him as Myconius) may instruct us here. As a youth of eighteen he heard Tetzel preach the indulgences in 1510 at Annaberg. He was deeply moved with desire to save his soul. He had no money, but had he not read, posted on the church door, that it was the wish of the holy Father that from now on the indulgences should be sold for a low price and even indeed given gratis to those unable to purchase them? He presented himself at Tetzel's dwelling to make his plea. The high commissary himself he could not see; but the priests and confessors in the ante-chamber pointed out to him that indulgences could not be given, and if given would be worthless. They would benefit only those who stretched out a helping hand. Let him go out and beg from some pious person only so much as a groschen, or six pfennigs - and he could purchase one for that. This was not mere heartlessness. It was intrinsic to the system. An indulgence was a relaxation of penance, and penance was payment: provision might be made for less payment but not for no payment at all. At the bottom of all lies the fundamental notion that salvation must be paid for: it is only a question of the price. Indulgences thus emerge to sight as a scheme to evade one's spiritual and moral debts and to secure eternal felicity at the least possible cost. 

We need not insist here on the peculiarities of the Jubilee indulgences with which Luther was most immediately concerned, and the characteristic feature of which was that it included the sacrament of penance within itself. All indulgences in their developed form made a part of the sacerdotal system and worked in with the sacrament of penance: they were not offered to the heathen but to Christians, to men, that is, who had been baptized and had access to the ordinary ghostly ministrations. The fundamental idea embedded in them - of which they are, indeed, the culminating illustration - is that the offices of the Church may be called in not merely to supplement but to take the place of the duties of personal religion and common morality: they thus put the capstone on sacerdotal religiosity. It may be a coarse way of putting it, to say that in this system a man might buy his way into heaven; that he might purchase immunity for sin; that he might even barter for license to sin. But with whatever finessing the direct statement may be avoided, both in theory and practice it amounts to that. Baptism, penance, indulgence - these three provisions taken together provide a method by which a man, through the offices of the Church, might escape every evil consequence of his sin, inborn and self-committed; and by the expenditure of only a little ceremonial care and a little money, assure himself of unmerited salvation. He who is baptized is brought into a state of grace and through penance may maintain himself in grace - and, in the interests at once of the comfort of weak souls and of the power of the Church, the efficacy of penance is exalted, despite the defects of contrition and the substitution for it of mere attrition. Relieved by these offices of the eternal penalities of their sin, indulgences now come in to relieve men of their temporal penalties. Both the eternal and the temporal penalties being gone, guilt need not be bothered with: hell and purgatory having both been abolished, guilt will take care of itself. Thus a baptized man - and all within the pale of the Church are baptized - by shriving himself, say, every Easter and buying an indulgence or two, makes himself safe. The Church takes care of him throughout, and it costs him nothing but an annual confession and the few coins that rattle in the collection box. Adolf Harnack sums up the matter thus: "Every man who surrenders himself to the Catholic Church . . . can secure salvation from all eternal and temporal penalties - if he act with shrewdness and find a skilful priest." 

It was one of the attractions of the indulgences which Tetzel hawked about that they gave the purchaser the right to choose a confessor for himself and required this confessor to absolve him. They thus made his immunity from all punishment sure. Marvelous to say, the vendors of indulgences were not satisfied with thus selling the justice of heaven; they wished to sell the justice of earth, too. Luther, it is true, in a passage in his "Resolutions"20 denies that "the Pope" "remits civil or rather criminal penalties, inflicted by the civil law," but he adds that "the legates do do this in some places when they are personally present"; and in another place he betrays why he wishes to shield "the Pope" from the onus of this iniquity, saying that "the Pope" cannot be supposed to have the power to remit civil penalties, because in that case "the letters of indulgence will abolish all gibbets and racks throughout the world" - that is to say, would do away altogether with the punishment of crime. In point of fact the actual as distinguished from Luther's ideal Pope did issue indulgences embodying this precise provision, and those sold by Tetzel were among them. Henry Charles Lea remarks upon them thus: The power to protect from all secular courts "was delegated to the peripatetic vendors of indulgences, who thus carried impunity for crime to every man's door. The St. Peter's indulgences, sold by Tetzel and his colleagues, were of this character, and not only released the purchasers from all spiritual penalties but forbade all secular or criminal prosecution. . . . It was fortunate that the Reformation came to prevent the Holy See from rendering all justice, human and divine, a commodity to be sold in open market."21 

It is very instructive to observe the superficial resemblance between the language in which the indulgences were commended and that of the evangelical proclamation. Both offered a salvation that the recipient had not earned by his works, but was to receive from the immense mercy of God. "We have been conceived . . . in sin" - Tetzel's preaching is thus summarized by Julius Köstlin - "and are wrapped in bands of sin. It is hard - yea, impossible - to attain salvation without divine help. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but of His mercy, has God saved us. Therefore . . . put on the armor of God."22 The attractiveness of indulgences arose from this very thing - that they offered to men relief from the dread of anticipated punishment and reception into bliss, on grounds less onerous than the "works of righteousness" or "merit-making" involved in the ordinary church system. To the superficial view this could be given very much the appearance of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith. In both the pure mercy of God to lost and helpless sinners could be pointed to as the source of the salvation offered. In both the merits of Christ could be pointed to as the ground of the acceptance of the sinner. The Romanists included in their "Treasure" also, it is true, the merits of the saints, and Luther therefore couples the two in Thesis 58, although telling us in his "Resolutions" that the saints have no merits to offer, and if they had they would do us no good. It does not go deeply enough to say that the difference between the two proclamations lies in this - that Luther demands for this free salvation faith alone, while Tetzel proposes to hand it over for money down - in accordance with the quip attributed to Cardinal Borgia, that God desires not the death of sinners, but that they shall pay and live. The fundamental difference between the two doctrines is the fundamental difference between evangelicalism and sacerdotalism. Evangelicalism casts man back on God and God only; the faith that it asks of him is faith in God's saving grace in Christ alone. Sacerdotalism throws him into the hands of the Church and asks him to put his confidence in it - or, in the indulgences, very specifically in the Pope. He is to suspend his salvation on what the Pope can do - whether directly by his own power or in the way of suffrage - transferring to his credit the merits of Christ and His saints. This difference is correlated with this further one, that the release offered in the indulgences was from penalty, that sought in evangelicalism very distinctly from guilt. Transposed into positive language, that means that in the one case desire for comfort and happiness holds the mind, in the other a yearning for holiness. The one is non-ethical and must needs bear its fruits as such. The other tingles with ethicism to the finger tips. The mind, freed by its high enthusiasm from debilitating fear of suffering, is fired to unceasing endeavor by a great ambition to be well-pleasing to God. The gulf which separated Luther and the proclamation of indulgences and compelled him to appear in opposition to it was therefore radical and goes down to the roots of the contradictory systems of doctrine. It was not the abuses which accompanied this proclamation which moved him, though they shocked him profoundly. It was indeed not the indulgences themselves, but what lay behind and beneath the indulgences. J. Janssen is perfectly right, then, when speaking of the abuses of the traffic, he writes: "It was not, however, especially these abuses which occasioned Luther to his procedure against indulgences, but the doctrine of indulgences itself, particularly the church doctrine of good works which was contrary to his conceptions about justification and the bondage of the human will."23 

The Roman Curia had no difficulty in perceiving precisely where Luther's blow fell. The lighter forces rushed, of course, to the defense of the peripheral things: the papal authority, the legitimacy of indulgences. The result was that, as Luther says in the opening words of "The Babylonish Captivity," they served as teachers for him and opened his eyes to matters on which he had not perfectly informed himself before. He had preserved reverence for the Pope as head of the Church. They taught him to look upon him as Antichrist. He had not wished totally to reject indulgences. "By the kind aid of Sylvester and the Friars," he now learned that they could properly be described only as "the mere impostures of Roman flatterers, by which they took away both faith in God and men's money."24 In his "Assertio" of the Articles condemned by Leo's Bull, written in the same year (1520), he, with mock humility, retracts his statement, objected to, to the effect that indulgences were pious frauds of believers - a statement apparently borrowed from Albert of Mainz who calls them pious frauds by which the Church allured believers to pious works - and now asserts that they are just impious frauds and impostures of wicked popes.²⁵ But the Curia in its immediate action went deeper than these things. When Luther appeared before Cardinal Cajetan in October, 1518, the representative of the Pope laid his finger on just two propositions which he required him absolutely to recant. These were the assertion in the fifty-eighth Thesis that the merits of Christ work effectually without the intervention of the Pope and therefore cannot be the "Treasure" drawn upon by the indulgences; and an assertion in the "Resolutions" on the seventh Thesis to the effect that the sacraments do not work effectively unless received by faith. Obviously in these two propositions is embodied the essence of evangelicalism: salvation the immediate gift of Christ; faith and faith alone the real instrument of reception of grace. 

Cajetan's entire dealing with Luther consisted in insistence on his recanting just these two assertions. Luther gives a very amusing account of an undignified scene in which Cajetan pressed him to recant the fifty-eighth Thesis, on the basis of an Extravagant of Clement VI's. He would listen to no explanations, but simply demanded continuously, pointing at the Extravagant, "Do you believe that or do you not?" At last, says Luther, the Legate tried to beat him down with an interminable speech drawn from "the fables" of St. Thomas, into which Luther a half score of times attempted in vain to break. "Finally," he proceeds in his description, "I too began to shriek, and said, 'If it can be shown that that Extravagant teaches that the merits of Christ are the treasure of indulgences, I will recant, according to your wish.' Great God, into what triumphant gestures and scornful laughter he now broke out! He seized the book suddenly and read furiously and snarlingly until he came to the place where it says that Christ purchased a treasure by His suffering, etc. Here I said, 'Listen, reverend Father, note well the words - "He purchased." If Christ purchased the treasure by His merits, it follows that the treasure is not the merits, but that which the merits have purchased - that is the keys of the Church. Therefore my thesis is true.' Here he became suddenly confused; and since he did not wish to appear confused he jumped violently to other subjects and sought to have this forgotten. But I was (not very respectfully, I confess) incensed, and broke out thus: 'Reverend Father, you must not think that Germans are ignorant of grammar also; "to be a treasure" and "to purchase" are different things.'"26

We must confess that Luther escaped by the skin of his teeth that time. Fortunately he had better reasons for contending that the Scriptures do not teach the doctrine in question than that Clement and Sixtus do not. In his written answer to Cajetan he deals with the matter more seriously. He argues the question even there, however, with the understanding that his business is to show that his Thesis is not in disharmony with the papal teaching; and he not very safely promises to adopt as his own whatever the Pope may declare to be true, a promise which two years afterwards he could not have repeated. On the real evangelical core of the Thesis, however - that the merits of Christ work grace independently of the Pope - and on the second proposition which he was required to recant - that the sacraments are without effect in the absence of faith - he was absolutely unbending. He throws his assertion concerning faith, moreover, into such a form as to make it include assurance - a matter of some interest in view of the presence of a phrase or two in the Theses and in the letter to Albert of Mainz enclosing a copy of them to him, which might be incautiously read as denying the possibility of assurance, but which really mean only to deny that assurance can be derived from anything whatever except Christ alone. What he declares to Cajetan to be "absolutely true," is "that no man can be just before God except alone through faith"; and therefore, he adds, "it is necessary that a man certainly believe that he is just and not doubt that he receives grace. For if he doubt it, and is uncertain of it," he argues, "then he is not just but opposes grace and casts it away from him."27 

What Luther is eager to do is, not to leave men in uncertainty as to their salvation, but to protect them from placing their trust in anything but Christ - certainly not in letters of pardon (Thesis 32: "Those who believe that through letters of pardon they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers"), or in the assurances of any man whatever, no matter what his assumed spiritual authority may be (Thesis 52: "Vain is the hope of salvation through letters of pardon, even if a commissary - nay, the Pope himself - were to pledge his soul for them"): but just as certainly not in their own contrition (Thesis 30: "No man is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of the attainment of plenary remission" - a thesis which Luther declares in the "Resolutions" not to be true in his sense but only in that of his opponents). "May all such teaching as would persuade to security and confidence (securitatem et fiduciam) in or through anything whatever except the mercy of God, which is Christ, be accursed," he cries out in the "Resolutions" when speaking of Thesis 52.28 "Beware of confiding in thy contrition," he says when commenting on Thesis 36 - and the comment is needed, lest the unwary reader might suppose that Thesis to counsel this very thing - "or of attributing the remission of sins to thy sorrow. God does not look with favor on thee because of these things, but because of thy faith with which thou hast believed His threatenings and promises and which has wrought such sorrow." "Guard thyself, then," he says again (on Thesis 38), "against ever in any wise trusting in thy contrition, but only in the mere word of thy best and most faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ: thy heart can deceive thee, He cannot deceive thee - whether thou dost possess Him or dost desire Him."29 

How pure the evangelicalism here expressed is may be perceived by reading only a few lines of the positive comment on the great central Theses 36, 37. "It is impossible that one should be a Christian without Christ; but if anyone has Christ, he has with Him all that is Christ's. For the holy Apostle speaks thus - . . . Rom. viii. 32: 'How shall He not with Him also give us all things?"' "For this is the confidence of Christians, and the joy of our consciences, that by faith our sins become not ours but Christ's, on whom God has put our sins and He has borne our sins - He who is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. And again all Christ's righteousness is ours. For He lays His hands upon us and it is well with us; and He spreads His robe over us and covers us - the blessed Saviour forever, Amen!" "But since this sweetest participation and joyful interchange does not take place except by faith - and man cannot give and cannot take away this faith - I think it sufficiently clear that this participation is not given by the power of the keys, or by the benefit of letters of indulgence, but rather is given before and apart from them by God alone; as remission before remission, and absolution before absolution, so participation before participation. What participation then does the Pope give in his participation? I answer: They ought to say as was said above of remission in Thesis 6, that he gives participation declaratively. For how they can say anything else I confess I do not understand."30 "Why then do they magnify the Pontiff because of the keys and think of him as a terrible being? The keys are not his, but rather mine, given to me for my salvation, for my consolation, granted for my peace and quiet. In the keys the Pontiff is my servant and minister; he has no need of them as a Pontiff, but I."31 Through all it is faith that is celebrated. "You have as much as you believe."32 The sacraments are efficacious not because they are enacted, but because they are believed. Absolution is effective not because it is given, but because it is believed. Only - the penitent believer needs the authoritative priestly word that he may believe that he - even he - can really be sharer in these great things. "Therefore it is neither the sacrament, nor the priest, but faith in the word of Christ, through the priest and his office, that justifies thee. What difference does it make to thee if the Lord speak through an ass or a jenny, if only thou dost hear His word, on which thou dost stay thy hope and rest thy faith?"33 

It is not, however, only in a sentence here and there that the evangelical note is sounded in the Theses. What requires to be insisted upon is that they constitute in their entirety a compact and well-ordered presentation of the evangelical position in opposition to sacerdotalism. This presentation was called out by the preaching of indulgences and takes its form from its primary reference to them. But what it strikes particularly at is the sacerdotal roots of indulgences, and what it sets in opposition to them is the pure evangelical principle. It must not be imagined that these Theses were hastily prepared merely to meet a sudden emergency created by Tetzel's preaching at Jüterbog. Luther had preached on indulgences on the same day, October 31, of the preceding year, and in the midsummer (July 27) before that. And - this is the point to take especial note of - the Theses repeat the thought and much of the language of these sermons. They are therefore the deliberate expression of long-meditated and thoroughly matured thought; in substance and language alike they had been fully in mind for a year and more. The "Resolutions," published the next year - and manifesting next to no advance in opinion on the Theses which they expound - show that Luther was thoroughly informed on the whole subject and had its entire literature at easy command. His choice of October 31, the eve of All Saints' Day, for posting the Theses, has also its very distinct significance. This choice was determined by something more than a desire to gain for them the publicity which that day provided. All Saints' Day was not merely the anniversary of the consecration of the church, elaborate services on which were attended by thousands. It was also the day on which the great collection of relics accumulated by the Elector was exhibited; and to the veneration of them and attendance on the day's services special indulgences were attached. It was, in a word, Indulgence Day at Wittenberg; and that was the attraction which brought the crowds thither on it. Luther, we have just pointed out, had preached a sermon against indulgences on the preceding October 31. On this October 31 he posts his Theses. The coincidence is not accidental. The Theses came not at the beginning but in the middle of his attack on indulgences, and have in view, not Tetzel and his Jubilee indulgences alone, but the whole indulgence system. That the preaching in Germany of the Jubilee indulgences was the occasion of Luther's coming forward in this attack on indulgences, he tells us himself. He explains somewhat objectively how he was drawn into it, when writing to his ecclesiastical superior: "I was asked by many strangers as well as friends, both by letter and by word of mouth, for my opinion of these new not to say licentious teachings; for a while I held out - but in the end their complaints became so bitter as to endanger reverence for the Pope."34 Similarly he declares in the "Resolutions": "I have been compelled to lay down all these positions because I saw that some were infected with false opinions, and others were laughing in the taverns and holding up the holy priesthood to open ridicule, because of the great license with which the indulgences are preached." This is not to say, however, that in meeting this call upon him, Luther was not moved by a deeper-lying motive and did not wish to go to the bottom of the matter. When writing privately to his friends he did not hesitate to say as early as the middle of February, 1518, that "indulgences now seem to me to be nothing but a snare for souls and worth absolutely nothing except to those who slumber and idle in the way of Christ," and to explain his coming forward against them thus: "For the sake of opposing this fraud, for the love of truth, I entered this dangerous labyrinth of disputation."35 

The document itself however is the best witness to the care given to its preparation and to the depth of its purpose as an anti-sacerdotal manifesto. There are no signs of haste about it, and, in point of fact, the question is argued in it from the point of sight of fundamental principles. In its opening propositions, Luther begins by laying down in firm lines the Christian doctrine of penitence. It is, he says, of course the very mark of the penitent sinner that he is penitent; and of course he can never cease to be penitent so long as he is, what as a Christian he must be - a penitent sinner. His penitence is not only fundamentally an interior fact: but if it is real, it manifests itself in outward mortifications. This being what a Christian man essentially is, what now has the Pope to do with the penalties which he suffers - which constitute the very substance and manifestation of the penitence by virtue of which he is a penitent as distinguished from an impenitent sinner? Luther's answer is, Nothing whatever. With reference to the living he declares that the Pope can relieve a man only of penalties of his own imposing; with respect to penalties of God's imposing he has only a declarative function. With reference to the dying, why, by the very act of dying they escape out of the Pope's hands. There is, of course, purgatory. But purgatory is not a place where old scores are paid off; but a place where imperfect souls are perfected in holiness; and surely the Pope neither can nor would wish to intermit their perfecting. Clearly, then, it is futile to trust in indulgences. There is nothing for them to do. They cannot release us from the necessity of being Christians; and if we are Christians, we can have no manner of need of them. In asserting this, Luther closes this first and principal part of the document - constituting one third of the whole - with the great evangelical declarations: "Every truly contrite Christian has of right plenary remission of penalty and guilt - even without letters of pardon. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has given to him by God, a share in all the benefits of Christ and the Church - even without letters of pardon" (Theses 36, 37). 

Having thus laid down the general principles, Luther now takes a new start and points out some of the dangers which accompany the preaching of indulgences. There is the danger that the purchase of indulgences should be made to appear more important than the exercise of charity, or even than the maintenance of our dependents. There is the danger that the head of the Church may be made to appear more desirous of the people's money than of their prayers. There is the danger that the preaching of indulgences may encroach upon or even supersede the preaching of the gospel in the churches. After all, the preaching of the gospel is the main thing. It is the true treasure of the Church: indeed, it is the only treasure on which the Church can draw. The section closes with some pointed antitheses, contrasting the indulgences and the gospel: the indulgences which make the last to be first and seek after men's riches, and the gospel which makes the first to be last and seeks after those men who are rich indeed: indulgences are gainful things no doubt, but grace and the piety of the cross - they belong to the gospel. 

A third start is now taken, and Luther sharply arraigns the actual misdeeds of the preachers of pardons and their unmeasured assertions (licentiosa praedicatio) . Of course the commissaries of the apostolical pardons are not to be excluded from dioceses and parishes: they come with the Pope's commission and the Pope is the head of the Church. But bishops and curates are bound to see to it that the unbridled license of their preaching is curbed within the just limits of their commission. As it is, they have filled the world with murmurings and it is not easy to defend the Pope against the sharp questions which the people are asking. Luther adduces eight of these questions as specimens: they constitute a tremendous indictment against the whole indulgence traffic from the point of view of practical common sense, and are all the more effective because repeated out of the mouth of the people. They are such as these: If the Pope has the power to release souls from purgatory, why does he not, out of his mere charity, release the whole lot of them, and not dole their release out one by one for money? If souls are released from purgatory by indulgences, why does the Pope keep the endowments for masses for these same souls, after they have been released? Why should the money of a wicked man move the Pope to release a soul from purgatory more than that soul's own deep need? Why does the Pope treat dead Canons as still alive and take money for relaxing them? Why does the rich Pope not build St. Peter's out of his own superfluity and not tax the poor for it? What is it, after all, that the Pope remits to those whose perfect contrition has already gained their remission? What is the effect of accumulating indulgences? If it is the salvation of souls and not money that the Pope is after, why does he suspend old letters of pardon and put new ones on sale? Such searching arguments as these, Luther justly says, cannot be met by a display of force: they must be answered. 

Then he brings the whole document to a close with some fervent words renouncing a gospel of ease, crying Peace, peace! such as the indulgences offer: and proclaiming the strenuous gospel of the cross: "Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow their Head, Christ, through pains and deaths and hells, and thus to trust to enter heaven rather through many tribulations than through the security of peace." 

It belongs to the general structure of the document - advancing as it does from the principles which underlie the indulgence traffic, through the dangers which accompany it, to its actual abuses - that its tone should grow sharper and its attack more direct with its progress. Luther's argumentative purpose and his rhetorical instinct have no doubt cooperated to produce this result. It suited the end he had in view to present the indulgences as a species under a broader genus. But also it pleased his rhetorical sense so to manage his material as to have it grow in force and directness of assertion steadily to the end, and to close in what deserves the name of a fervent peroration. The calm, detached propositions of the first section pass in the second into a series of rhetorical repetitions, and these give way as the third section is approached to stinging antitheses. Nevertheless the real weight of the document lies in its first section, and it is by virtue of the propositions laid down there that it is worthy of its place as the first great Reformation act, and the day of its posting is justly looked upon as the birthday of the Reformation. 

The posting of these Theses does not mark the acquisition by Luther of his evangelical convictions. These had long been his - how long we hardly know but must content ourselves with saying, with Walther Köhler, that they were apparently acquired somewhere between 1509 and 1515. Neither does their posting mark the beginning of the evangelical proclamation. From at least 1515 Luther had been diligently propagating his evangelicalism in pulpit and chair, and had already fairly converted his immediate community to it. He could already boast of the victory of "our theology" in the university, and the town was in his hands. What is marked by the posting of these Theses is the issuing of the Reformation out of the narrow confines of the university circles of Wittenberg and its start on its career as a world-movement. Their posting gave wings to the Reformation. And it gave it wings primarily by rallying to its aid the smoldering sense of outrage which had long been gathering against a gross ecclesiastical abuse. This would not have carried it far, however, had not the document in which it was thus sent abroad had in it the potency of the new life. 

"What is epoch-making in the Theses," writes E. Bratke,³⁶ "is that they are the first public proclamation in which Luther in full consciousness made the truth of justifying faith as the sole principle of the communication of salvation, the theme of a theological controversy, and thus laid before the Church a problem for further research, which afterwards became the motive and principle of a new development of the Christian Church, yes, of civilization in general." What Bratke is trying to say here is true; and, being true, is vastly important. But he does not say it well. Luther had often before proclaimed the principle of justifying faith in full enthusiasm, to as wide a public as his voice could reach. It happens that neither faith nor justification is once mentioned in the Theses. It is in the Lectures on Romans of 1515-1516 that the epoch-making exposition of justification by faith was made, not in the Theses. Nevertheless, it is true that the Theses are the express outcome of Luther's new "life principle," and have as their fundamental purpose to set it in opposition to "human ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism." And it is true that the idea of justification by faith underlies them throughout and only does not come to explicit expression in them because the occasion does not call for that: Luther cannot expound them (as in the "Resolutions") without dwelling largely on it. The matter would be better expressed, however, by saying that Luther here sets the evangelical principle flatly in opposition to the sacerdotal. What he here attacks is just the sacerdotal principle in one of its most portentous embodiments - the teaching that men are to look to the Church as the institute of salvation for all their souls' welfare, and to derive from the Church all their confidence in life and in death. What he sets over against this sacerdotalism is the evangelical principle that man is dependent for his salvation on God and on God alone - on God directly, apart from all human intermediation - and is to look to God for and to derive from God immediately all that makes for his soul's welfare. In these Theses Luther brought out of the academic circle in which he had hitherto moved, and cast into the arena of the wide world's conflicts, under circumstances which attracted and held the attention of men, his newly found evangelical principle, thrown out into sharp contrast with the established sacerdotalism. It is this that made the posting of these Theses the first act of the Reformation, and has rightly made October Thirty-first the birthday of the Reformation.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Princeton Theological Review, xv. 1917, pp. 501-529.

P. Kalkoff, "Luther und die Entscheidungsjahre der Reformation," 1917, p. 9. 

For the Theses see any standard edition of Luther's "Works": e.g. "D. Martin Luthers Werke," Weimar edition, i. 1883, pp. 233-238. Cf. "Works of Martin Luther," Philadelphia, i. 1915, pp. 29-38; and Philip Schaff, "History of the Christian Church," vi. 1888, pp. 160-166. 

A. Plummer, "The Continental Reformation," 1912, p. 98.

"History of the Christian Church," vi. 1888, p. 157.

Op. cit., p. 98.

"A History of the Reformation," ed. 2, i. 1912, p. 228.

E. Bratke, "Luther's 95 Thesen," 1884, pp. 275 and 279; cf. p. 273. 

"Die 95 Thesen Luther's und der Anfang der Reformation," in Protestantische Monatshefte, v. 1901, pp. 434 ff. 

"The Theology of Luther," i. 1897, p. 218 (Hay's translation, from the second German edition). 

Op. cit., p. 157. 

"Luthers werke," weimar edition, i. 1883, p. 599. 

P. 582. 

P. 542. 

P. 543.

P. 541. 

Pp. 543 f. 

P. 544. 

See "Martin Luther und die deutsche Reformation," ed. 2, 1917, p. 35.

"Luthers Werke," Weimar edition, i. 1883, p. 536. 

"The Cambridge Modern History," i. 1902, p. 662.

"The Theology of Luther," i. 1897, p. 223 (Hay's translation, from the second German edition).

J. Janssen, "Geschichte des deutschen Volkes," ii. 1886, p. 75. 

"Luthers Werke," ed. Weimar, vi. 1888, p. 497. Cf. "Works," Philadelphia, ii. 1916, p. 170. 

"Werke," vii. 1897, p. 125.

From his letter to George Spalatin, written at Augsburg, October 14, 1518: E. L. Enders, "M. Luther's Briefwechsel," i. 1884, pp. 246-247. 

"Luthers sämmtliche Schriften," Walch edition, xv. 1899, col. 578; cf. " Werke," Weimar edition, ii. 1884, p. 13.

"Werke," ed. Weimar, i. 1883, p. 604. 

P. 596. 

P. 593. 

P. 596. 

P. 595, 

P. 595.

To Jerome Scultetus, Bishop of Brandenburg: Enders, "Briefwecheel," i. 1884, p. 148. 

To Spalatin, February 15, 1518: Enders, "Briefwechsel," i. 1884, p. 155.

Op. cit., p. 315.

On Faith in Its Psychological Aspects¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The English word "faith" came into the language under the influence of the French, and is but a modification of the Latin "fides," which is itself cognate with the Greek pi,stij. Its root-meaning seems to be that of "binding." Whatever we discover to be "binding" on us, is the object of "faith."2 The corresponding Germanic term, represented by the English word "believe" (and the German "glauben"), goes back to a root meaning "to be agreeable" (represented by our English "lief"), and seems to present the object of belief as something which we "esteem" - which we have "estimated  or "weighed" and "approved." The notion of "constraint" is perhaps less prominent in "belief" than in "faith," its place being taken in "belief" by that of "approval." We "believe" in what we find worthy of our confidence; we "have faith" in what compels our confidence. But it would be easy to press this too far, and it is likely that the two terms "faith," "belief" really express much the same idea.³ In the natural use of language, therefore, which is normally controlled by what we call etymology, that is, by the intrinsic connotation of the terms, when we say "faith," "belief," our minds are preoccupied with the grounds of the conviction expressed: we are speaking of a mental act or state to which we feel constrained by considerations objective to ourselves, or at least to the act or state in question. The conception embodied in the terms "belief," "faith," in other words, is not that of an arbitrary act of the subject's; it is that of a mental state or act which is determined by sufficient reasons. 

In their fundamental connotation, thus, these terms are very broad. There seems nothing in the terms themselves, indeed, to forbid their employment in so wide a sense as to cover the whole field of "sureness," "conviction." Whatever we accept as true or real, we may very properly be said to "believe," to "have faith in"; all that we are convinced of may be said to be matter of " belief," "faith." So the terms are, accordingly, very often employed. Thus, for example, Professor J. M. Baldwin defines " belief" simply as "mental endorsement or acceptance of something thought of, as real"; and remarks of "conviction," that it "is a loose term whose connotation, so far as exact, is near to that here given to belief."4 He even adds - we think with less exactness - that "judgment" is merely "the logical or formal side of the same state of mind" which, on the psychological side, is called "belief." To us, "judgment" appears a broader term than "belief," expressing - a mental act which underlies belief indeed, but cannot be identified with it.⁵

Meanwhile we note with satisfaction that Professor Baldwin recognizes the element of constraint ("bindingness") in "belief," and distinguishes it clearly from acts of the will, thereby setting aside the definition of it - quite commonly given - which finds the differentia of beliefs, among convictions, in this - that they are "voluntary convictions." "There is," he says,⁶ "a distinct difference in consciousness between the consent of belief and the consent of will. The consent of belief is in a measure a forced consent: it attaches to what is - to what stands in the order of things whether I consent or no. The consent of will is a forceful consent - a consent to what shall be through me." That is to say, with respect to belief, it is a mental recognition of what is before the mind, as objectively true and real, and therefore depends on the evidence that a thing is true and real and is determined by this evidence; it is the response of the mind to this evidence and cannot arise apart from it. It is, therefore, impossible that belief should be the product of a volition; volitions look to the future and represent our desires; beliefs look to the present and represent our findings. 

Professor Baldwin does not recognize this, however, in its entirety, as is already apparent from the qualification inserted into his description of "belief." It is, says he, "in a measure a forced consent." He wishes, after all, to leave room for "voluntary beliefs." Accordingly, he proceeds: "In cases in which belief is brought about by desire and will, there is a subtle consciousness of inadequate evidence, until by repetition the item desired and willed no longer needs volition to give it a place in the series deemed objective: then it is for the first time belief, but then it is no longer will." "Beliefs," then, according to Professor Baldwin, although not to be confounded with acts of the will, may yet be produced by the action of the will, even while the "evidence" on which they should more properly rest, is recognized by the mind willing them to be insufficient. 

We cannot help suspecting this suggestion to rest on a defective analysis of what actually goes on in the mind in the instances commented on. These appear to us to be cases in which we determine to act on suppositions recognized as lacking sufficient evidence to establish them in our minds as accordant with reality and therefore not accepted as accordant with reality, that is to say, as "beliefs." If they pass, as Dr. Baldwin suggests, gradually into "beliefs," when repeatedly so acted upon - is that not because the mind derives from such repeated action, resulting successfully, additional evidence that the suppositions in question do represent reality and may be safely acted on as such? Would not the thing acted on in such cases be more precisely stated as the belief that these suppositions may be accordant with reality, not that they are? The consciousness that the evidence is inadequate which accompanies such action (though Dr. Baldwin calls it "subtle") - is it not in fact just the witness of consciousness that it does not assert these suppositions to be accordant with reality, and does not recognize them as "beliefs," though it is willing to act on them on the hypothesis that they may prove to be accordant with reality and thus make good their aspirations to become beliefs? And can any number of repetitions (repetitions of what, by the way?) make this testimony of consciousness void? Apparently what we repeat is simply volitions founded an the possibility or probability of the suppositions in question being in accordance with reality; and it is difficult to see how the repetition of such volitions can elevate the suppositions in question into the rank of beliefs except by eliminating doubt as to their accordance with reality by creating evidence for them through their "working well." The repetition of a volition to treat a given proposition as true - especially if it is accompanied by a consciousness (however subtle) that there is no sufficient evidence that it is true - can certainly not result in making it true; and can scarcely of itself result in producing an insufficiently grounded conviction in the mind (always at least subtly conscious that it rests on insufficient evidence) that it is true, and so in giving it "a place in the series deemed objective." A habit of treating a given proposition as correspondent to reality may indeed be formed; and as this habit is formed, the accompanying consciousness that it is in point of fact grounded in insufficient evidence, may no doubt drop into the background, or even wholly out of sight; thus we may come to act - instinctively, shall we say? or inadvertently? - on the supposition of the truth of the proposition in question. But this does not seem to carry with it as inevitable implication that "beliefs" may be created by the action of the will. It may only show that more or less probable, or more or less improbable, suppositions, more or less clearly envisaged as such, may enter into the complex of conditions which influence action, and that the human mind in the processes of its ordinary activity does not always keep before it in perfect clearness the lines of demarcation which separate the two classes of its beliefs and its conjectures, but may sometimes rub off the labels which serve to mark its convictions off from its suppositions and to keep each in its proper place. 

It would seem to be fairly clear that "belief" is always the product of evidence and that it cannot be created by volitions, whether singly or in any number of repetitions. The interaction of belief and volition is, questionless, most intimate and most varied, but one cannot be successfully transmuted into the other, nor one be mistaken for the other. The consent of belief is in its very nature and must always be what Dr. Baldwin calls "forced consent," that is to say, determined by evidence, not by volition; and when the consent of will is secured by a supposition, recognized by consciousness as inadequately based in evidence, this consent of will has no tendency to act as evidence and raise the supposition into a belief - its tendency is only to give to a supposition the place of a belief in the ordering of life. 

We may infer from this state of the case that "preparedness to act" is scarcely a satisfactory definition of the state of mind which is properly called "faith," "belief." This was the definition suggested by Dr. Alexander Bain. "Faith," "belief" certainly expresses a state of preparedness to act; and it may be very fairly contended that "preparedness to act" supplies a very good test of the genuineness of "faith," "belief." A so-called "faith," "belief" on which we are not prepared to act is near to no real "faith," "belief" at all. What we are convinced of, we should certainly confide in; and what we are unwilling to confide in we seem not quite sure of - we do not appear thoroughly to believe, to have faith in. But though all "faith," "belief" is preparedness to act, it does not follow that all preparedness to act is "faith," "belief." We may be prepared to act, on some other ground than "faith," "belief"; on "knowledge," say - if knowledge may be distinguished from belief - or, as we have already suggested, on "supposition" - on a probability or even a possibility. To be sure, as we have already noted, the real ground of our action in such cases may be stated in terms of "faith," "belief." Our preparedness to act may be said to be our belief - our conviction - that, if the supposition in question is not yet shown to be in conformity to reality, it yet may be so. Meanwhile, it is clear that the supposition in question is not a thing believed to be in accordance with fact, and is therefore not a belief but a "supposition"; not a "conviction" but a conjecture. "Belief," "faith" is the consent of the mind to the reality of the thing in question; and when the mind withholds its consent to the reality, "belief," "faith" is not present. These terms are not properly employed except when a state of conviction is present; they designate the response of the mind to evidence in a consent to the adequacy of the evidence. 

It, of course, does not follow that all our "beliefs," "faiths" correspond with reality. Our convictions are not infallible. When we say that "belief," "faith" is the product of evidence and is in that sense a compelled consent, this is not the same as saying that consent is produced only by compelling evidence, that is, evidence which is objectively adequate. Objective adequacy and subjective effect are not exactly correlated. The amount, degree, and quality of evidence which will secure consent varies from mind to mind and in the same mind from state to state. Some minds, or all minds in some states, will respond to very weak evidence with full consent; some minds or all minds in some states, will resist very strong evidence. There is no "faith," "belief" possible without evidence or what the mind takes for evidence; "faith," "belief" is a state of mind grounded in evidence and impossible without it. But the fullest "faith," "belief" may ground itself in very weak evidence - if the mind mistakes it for strong evidence. "Faith," "belief" does not follow the evidence itself, in other words, but the judgment of the intellect on the evidence. And the judgment of the intellect naturally will vary endlessly, as intellect differs from intellect or as the states of the same intellect differ from one another. 

From this circumstance has been taken an attempt to define "faith," "belief" more closely than merely mental endorsement of something as true - as, broadly, the synonym of "conviction" - and to distinguish it as a specific form of conviction from other forms of conviction. "Faith," "belief," it is said (e.g. by Kant), is conviction founded on evidence which is subjectively adequate. "Knowledge" is conviction founded on evidence which is objectively adequate. That "faith" and "knowledge" do differ from one another, we all doubtless feel; but it is not easy to believe that their specific difference is found in this formula. It is of course plain enough that every act of "faith," "belief" rests on evidence which is subjectively adequate. But it is far from plain that this evidence must be objectively inadequate on pain of the mental response ceasing to be "faith," "belief" and becoming "knowledge." Are all "beliefs," "faiths," specifically such, in their very nature inadequately established convictions; convictions, indeed - matters of which we feel sure - but of which we feel sure on inadequate grounds - grounds either consciously recognized by us as inadequate, or, if supposed by us to be adequate, yet really inadequate? 

No doubt there is a usage of the terms current - especially when they are set in contrast with one another - which does conceive them after this fashion; a legitimate enough usage, because it is founded on a real distinction in the connotation of the two terms. We do sometimes say, "I do not know this or that to be true, but I fully believe it" - meaning that though we are altogether persuaded of it we are conscious that the grounds for believing it fall short of complete objective coerciveness. But this special usage of the terms ought not to deceive us as to their essential meaning. And it surely requires little consideration to assure us that it cannot be of the essence of "faith," "belief" that the grounds on which it rests are - consciously or unconsciously - objectively inadequate. Faith must not be distinguished from knowledge only that it may be confounded with conjecture. And how, in any case, shall the proposed criterion of faith be applied? To believe on grounds of the inadequacy of which we are conscious, is on the face of it an impossibility. The moment we perceive the objective inadequacy of the grounds on which we pronounce the reality of anything, they become subjectively inadequate also. And so long as they appear to us subjectively adequate, the resulting conviction will be indistinguishable from "knowledge." To say that "knowledge" is a justified recognition of reality and "faith," "belief" is an unjustified recognition of reality, is to erect a distinction which can have no possible psychological basis. The recognizing mind makes and can make no such distinction between the soundness and unsoundness of its own recognitions of reality. An outside observer might certainly distribute into two such categories the "convictions" of a mind brought under his contemplation; but the distribution would represent the outside observer's judgment upon the grounds of these convictions, not that of the subject himself. The moment the mind observed itself introducing such a distribution among its "convictions" it would remove the whole class of "convictions" to which it assigned an inadequate grounding out of the category of "convictions" altogether. To become conscious that some of its convictions were unjustified would be to abolish them at once as convictions, and to remove them into the category at best of conjectures, at worst of erroneous judgments. We accord with Dr. Baldwin, therefore, when he declares of this distinction that it is "not psychological."7 The mind knows and can know nothing of objectively and subjectively adequate grounds in forming its convictions. All it is conscious of is the adequacy or inadequacy of the grounds on which its convictions are based. If they appeal to it as adequate, the mind is convinced; if they do not, it remains unconvinced. Faith, belief, is to consciousness just an act or state of conviction, of being sure; and therefore cannot be explained as something less than a conviction, something less than being sure, or as a conviction indeed, but a conviction which differs from other convictions by being, if not ungrounded, yet not adequately grounded. That were all one with saying it is a conviction, no doubt, but nevertheless not quite a conviction - a manifest contradiction in terms. 

The failure of this special attempt to distinguish between faith and knowledge need not argue, however, that there is no distinction between the two. Faith may not be inadequately grounded conviction any more than it is voluntary conviction - the two come to much the same thing - and yet be a specific mode of conviction over against knowledge as a distinct mode of conviction. The persistence with which it is set over against knowledge in our popular usage of the words as well as in the definitions of philosophers may be taken as an indication that there is some cognizable distinction between the two, could we but fasten upon it. And the persistence with which this distinction is sought in the nature of the grounds on which faith in distinction from knowledge rests is equally notable. Thus we find Dr. Alexander T. Ormond⁸ a defining "faith" as "the personal acceptance of something as true or real, but - the distinguishing mark - on grounds that, in whole or part, are different from those of theoretic certitude." Here faith is distinguished from other forms of conviction - "knowledge" being apparently in mind as the other term of the contrast. And the distinguishing mark of "faith" is found in the nature of the grounds on which it rests. The nature of these grounds, however, is expressed only negatively. We are not told what they are but only that they are (in whole or in part) different to "those of theoretic certitude." The effect of the definition as it stands is therefore only to declare that the term "faith" does not express all forms of conviction, but one form only; and that this form of conviction differs from the form which is given the name of "theoretic certitude" - that is to say, doubtless, "knowledge" - in the grounds on which it rests. But what the positive distinguishing mark of the grounds on which the mode of conviction which we call "faith" rests is, we are not told. Dr. Ormond does, indeed, go on to say that "the moment of will enters into the assent of faith," and that "in the form of some subjective interest or consideration of value." From this it might be inferred that the positive differentia of faith, unexpressed in the definition, would be that it is voluntary conviction, conviction determined not by the evidence of reality present to our minds, but by our desire or will that it should be true - this desire or will expressing "some subjective interest or consideration of value."9 

Put baldly, this might be interpreted as meaning that we "know" what is established to us as true, we "believe  what we think we should be advantaged by if true; we "know" what we perceive to be real, we "believe" what we should like to be real. To put it so baldly may no doubt press Dr. Ormond's remark beyond his intention. He recognizes that "some faith-judgments are translatable into judgments of knowledge." But he does not believe that all are; and he suggests that "the final test of validity" of these latter must lie in "the sphere of the practical rather than in that of theoretical truth." The meaning is not throughout perfectly clear. But the upshot seems to be that in Dr. Ormond's opinion, that class of convictions which we designate "faith" differs from that class of convictions which we designate "knowledge" by the fact that they rest (in whole or in part) not on "theoretical" but on "practical" grounds - that is to say, not on evidence but on considerations of value. And that appears ultimately to mean that we know a thing which is proved to us to be true or real; but we believe a thing which we would fain should prove to be true or real. Some of the things which we thus believe may be reduced to "knowledge" because there may be proofs of their reality available which were not, or not fully, present to our minds "when we believed." Others of them may be incapable of such reduction either because no such proofs of their truth or reality exist, or because those proofs are not accessible to us. But our acceptance of them all alike as true rests, not on evidence that they are true, but (in whole or in part) on "some subjective interest" or "consideration of value." Failing "knowledge" we may take these things "on faith" - because we perceive that it would be well if they were true, and we cannot believe that that at least is not true of which it is clear to us that it would be in the highest degree well if it were true. 

It is not necessary to deny that many things are accepted by men as true and accordant with reality on grounds of subjective interest or considerations of value; or that men may be properly moved to the acceptance of many things as true and real by such considerations. Considerations of value may be powerful arguments - they may even constitute proofs - of truth and reality. But it appears obvious enough that all of those convictions which we know as "beliefs," "faiths" do not rest on "subjective interest or considerations of value" - either wholly or even in part. Indeed, it would be truer to say that none of them rest on subjective interests or considerations of value as such, but whenever such considerations enter into their grounds they enter in as evidences of reality or as factors of mental movement lending vividness and vitality to elements of proper evidence before the mind. Men do not mean by their "faiths," "beliefs" things they would fain were true; they mean things they are convinced are true. Their minds are not resting on considerations of value, but on what they take to be evidences of reality. The employment of these terms to designate "acceptances as true and real" on the ground of subjective interest or of considerations of value represents, therefore, no general usage but is purely an affair of the schools, or rather of a school. And it does violence not only to the general convictions of men but also to the underlying idea of the terms. No terms, in fact, lendthemselves more reluctantly to the expression of a "voluntary acceptance," in any form, than these. As we have already seen, they carry with them the underlying idea of bindingness, worthiness of acceptance; they express, in Dr. Baldwin's phrase, a "forced consent"; and whenever we employ them there is present to the mind a consciousness of grounds on which they firmly rest as expressive of reality. Whatever may be the differentia of "belief," "faith" as a specific form of conviction, we may be sure, therefore, that desire or will cannot be the determining element of the grounds on which this conviction rests. What we gain from Dr. Ormond's definition then is only the assurance that by "faith" is denoted not all forms of conviction, but a specific form - that this specific form is differentiated from other forms by the nature of the grounds on which the conviction called "faith" rests - and that the grounds on which this form of conviction rests are not those of theoretic certitude. The form of conviction which rests on grounds adapted to give "theoretic certitude" we call "knowledge." What the special character of the grounds on which the form of conviction we call "faith" rests remains yet to seek. 

This gain, although we may speak of it as, for the main matter, only negative, is not therefore unimportant. To have learned that in addition to the general usage of "faith," "belief," in which it expresses all "mental endorsement or acceptance" of anything "as real," and is equipollent with the parallel term "conviction," there is a more confined usage of it expressing a specific form of "conviction" in contrast with the form of conviction called "knowledge," is itself an important gain. And to learn further that the specific character of the form of conviction which we call "knowledge" is that it rests on grounds which give "theoretic certitude," is an important aid, by way of elimination, in fixing on the specific characteristic of the form of conviction which in contrast to "knowledge" we call "faith." "Faith" we know now is a form of conviction which arises differently to "theoretic certitude"; and if certain bases for its affirmation of reality which have been suggested have been excluded in the discussion - such as that it rests on a volition or a series of volitions, on considerations of value rather than of reality, on evidence only subjectively but not objectively adequate - the way seems pretty well cleared for a positive determination of precisely what it is that it does rest on. We have at least learned that while distinguishing it from "knowledge," which is conviction of the order of "theoretic certitude," we must find some basis for "faith," "belief" which will preserve its full character as "conviction" and not sublimate it into a wish or a will, a conjectural hypothesis or a mistake. 

It was long ago suggested that what we call "faith," "belief," as contradistinguished from "knowledge," is conviction grounded in authority, as distinguished from conviction grounded in reason. "We know," says Augustine, "what rests upon reason; we believe what rests upon authority"; and Sir William Hamilton pronounces this "accurately" said.¹⁰ It is not intended of course to represent "faith," "belief" as irrational, any more than it is intended to represent "knowledge" as free from all dependence on taking-on-trust. It was fully recognized by Augustine - as by Sir William Hamilton - that an activity of reason underlies all "faith," and an act of "faith" underlies all knowledge. "But reason itself," says Sir William Hamilton, expounding Augustine's dictum,¹¹ "must rest at last upon authority; for the original data of reason do not rest on reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. These data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts. Thus it is, that in the last resort, we must, perforce, philosophically admit, that belief is the primary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate ground of belief." With equal frankness Augustine allows that reason underlies all acts of faith. That mental act which we call "faith," he remarks, is one possible only to rational creatures, and of course we act as rational beings in performing it;¹² and we never believe anything until we have found it worthy of our belief.¹³ As we cannot accord faith, then, without perceiving good grounds for according it, reason as truly underlies faith as faith reason. It is with no intention, then, of denying or even obscuring this interaction of faith and knowledge - what may be justly called their interdependence - that they are distinguished from one another in their secondary applications as designating two distinguishable modes of conviction, the one resting on reason, the other on authority. What is intended is to discriminate the proximate grounds on which the mental consent designated by the one and the other rests. When the proximate ground of our conviction is reason, we call it "knowledge"; when it is authority we call it "faith," "belief." Or to put it in other but equivalent terms, we know what we are convinced of on the ground of perception: we believe what we are convinced of on the ground of testimony. "With respect to things we have seen or see," says Augustine,¹⁴ "we are our own witnesses; but with respect to those we believe, we are moved to faith by other witnesses." We cannot believe, any more than we can know, without adequate grounds; it is not faith but "credulity" to accord credit to insufficient evidence; and an unreasonable faith is no faith at all. But we are moved to this act of conviction by the evidence of testimony, by the force of authority - rationally determined to be trustworthy - and not by the immediate perception of our own rational understandings.¹⁵ In a word, while both knowing and believing are states of conviction, sureness - and the surety may be equally strong - they rest proximately on different grounds. Knowledge is seeing, faith is crediting.¹⁶ 

It powerfully commends this conception of the distinction between faith and knowledge, that it employs these terms to designate a distinction which is undoubtedly real. Whatever we choose to call these two classes of convictions, these two classes of convictions unquestionably exist. As Augustine puts it, "no one doubts that we are impelled to the acquisition of knowledge by a double impulse - of authority and of reason."17 We do possess convictions which are grounded in our own rational apprehension; and we do possess convictions which are grounded in our recognition of authority. We are erecting no artificial categories, then, when we distinguish between these two classes of convictions and label them respectively "knowledges" and "beliefs," "faiths." At the worst we are only applying to real distinctions artificial labels. It may possibly be said that there is no reason in the fitness of things why we should call those convictions which are of the order of "theoretical certitude," knowledge; and those which represent the certitude born of approved testimony, faith. But it cannot be said that no two such categories exist. It is patent to all of us, that some of our convictions rest on our ownrational perception of reality, and that others of them rest on the authority exercised over us by tested testimony. The only question which can arise is whether "knowledge," "faith" are appropriate designations by which to call these two classes of convictions. 

No one, of course, would think of denying that the two terms "knowledge," and "faith," "belief" are frequently employed as wholly equivalent - each designating simply a conviction, without respect to the nature of its grounds. Augustine already recognized this broad use of both terms to cover the whole ground of convictions.¹⁸ But neither can it be denied that they are often brought into contrast with one another as expressive each of a particular class of convictions, distinguishable from one another. The distinction indicated, no doubt, is often a distinction not in the nature of the evidence on which the several classes of conviction rest but in - shall we say the firmness, the clearness, the force of the conviction? The difficulty of finding the exact word to employ here may perhaps be instructive. When we say, for example, "I do not know it - but I fully believe it," is it entirely clear that we are using "knowledge" merely of a higher degree of conviction than "faith" expresses? No doubt such a higher degree of conviction is intimated when, for example, to express the force of our conviction of a matter which nevertheless we are assured of only by testimony, we say emphatically, "I do not merely believe it; I know it." But may it not be that it would be more precise to say that "knowledge" even here expresses primarily rather a more direct and immediate grounding of conviction, and "faith," "belief" a more remote and mediate grounding of it - and that it is out of this primary meaning of the two terms that a secondary usage of them has arisen to express what on the surface appears as differing grades of convictions, but in the ultimate analysis is really differing relations of immediacy of the evidence on which the conviction rests? It adds not a little to the commendation of the distinction between "knowledge" and "faith" under discussion, at all events, that it provides a starting-point on the assumption of which other current usages of the terms may find ready and significant explanations. 

When we come to inquire after the special appropriateness of the employment of the terms "faith," "belief" to designate those convictions which rest on authority or testimony, in distinction from those which rest on our immediate perception (physical or mental), attention should be directed to an element in "faith," "belief" of which we have as yet spoken little but which seems always present and indeed characteristic. This is the element of trust. There is an element of trust lying at the bottom of all our convictions, even those which we designate "knowledge," because, as we say, they are of the order of "theoretic certitude," or "rational assurance." "The original data of reason," says Sir William Hamilton truly, "do not rest on reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself." "These data," he adds, "are, therefore, in rigid propriety, Beliefs or Trusts." The collocation of the terms here, "beliefs or trusts," should be observed; it betrays the propinquity of the two ideas. To say that an element of trust underlies all our knowledge is therefore equivalent to saying that our knowledge rests on belief. The conceptions of believing and trusting go, then, together; and what we have now to suggest is that it is this open implication of "trust" in the conception of "belief," "faith" which rules the usage of these terms. 

There is, we have said, an element of trust in all our convictions, and therefore "faith," "belief" may be employed of them all. And when convictions are distinguished from convictions, the convictions in which the element of trust is most prominent tend to draw to themselves the designations of "faith," "belief." It is not purely arbitrary, therefore, that those convictions which rest on our rational perceptions are called "knowledge," while those which rest on "authority" or "testimony" receive the name of "belief," "faith." It is because the element of trust is, not indeed more really, but more prominently, present in the latter than in the former. We perceive and feel the element of trust in according our mental assent to facts brought to us by the testimony of others and accepted as facts on their authority as we do not in the findings of our own rational understandings. And therefore we designate the former matters of faith, belief, and the latter matters of knowledge. Knowing, we then say, is seeing; believing is crediting. And that is only another way of saying that "knowledge" is the appropriate designation of those convictions which rest on our own mental perceptions, while "faith," "belief" is the appropriate designation of those convictions which rest on testimony or authority. While we may use either term broadly for all convictions, we naturally employ them with this discrimination when they are brought in contrast with one another. 

It appears, therefore, not only that we are here in the presence of two classes of convictions - the difference between which is real - but that when these two classes are designated respectively by the terms "knowledge" and "faith," "belief" they are appropriately designated. These designations suggest the real difference which exists between the two classes of convictions. Matters of faith, matters of belief are different from matters of knowledge - not as convictions less clear, firm, or well-grounded, not as convictions resting on grounds less objectively valid, not as convictions determined rather by desire, will, than by evidence - but as convictions resting on grounds less direct and immediate to the soul, and therefore involving a more prominent element of trust, in a word, as convictions grounded in authority, testimony as distinguished from convictions grounded in rational proof. The two classes of convictions are psychologically just convictions; they are alike, in Dr. Baldwin's phrase, "forced consents"; they rest equally on evidence and are equally the product of evidence; they may be equally clear, firm, and assured; but they rest on differing kinds of evidence and differ, therefore, in accordance with this difference of kind in the evidence on which they rest. In "knowledge" as the mental response to rational considerations, the movement of the intellect is prominent to the obscuration of all else. Of course the whole man is active in "knowledge" too - for it is the man in his complex presentation who is the subject of the knowledge. But it is "reason" which is prominent in the activity which assures itself of reality on grounds of mental perception. In "faith," on the other hand, as the mental response to testimony, authority, the movement of the sensibility in the form of trust is what is thrust forward to observation. Of course, every other faculty is involved in the act of belief - and particularly the intellectual faculties to which the act of "crediting" belongs; but what attracts the attention of the subject is the prominence in this act of crediting, of the element of trust which has retired into the background in those other acts of assent which we know as "knowledge." "Faith" then emerges as the appropriate name of those acts of mental consent in which the element of trust is prominent. Knowledge is seeing; faith, belief, is trusting. 

In what we call religious faith this prominent implication of trust reaches its height. Religious belief may differ from other belief only in the nature of its objects; religious beliefs are beliefs which have religious conceptions as their contents. But the complex of emotions which accompany acts of assent to propositions of religious content, and form the concrete state of mind of the believer, is of course indefinitely different from that which accompanies any other act of believing. What is prominent in this state of mind is precisely trust. Trust is the active expression of that sense of dependence in which religion largely consists, and it is its presence in these acts of faith, belief, which communicates to them their religious quality and raises them from mere beliefs of propositions, the contents of which happen to be of religious purport, to acts possessed of religious character. It is the nature of trust to seek a personal object on which to repose, and it is only natural, therefore, that what we call religious faith does not reach its height in assent to propositions of whatever religious content and however well fitted to call out religious trust, but comes to its rights only when it rests with adoring trust on a person. The extension of the terms "faith," "belief" to express an attitude of mind towards a person, does not wait, of course, on their religious application. We speak familiarly of believing in, or having faith in, persons in common life; and we perceive at once that our justification in doing so rests on the strong implication of trust resident in the terms. It has been suggested not without justice, that the terms show everywhere a tendency to gravitate towards such an application.¹⁹ This element at all events becomes so prominent in the culminating act of religious faith when it rests on the person of God our benefactor, or of Christ our Saviour, as to absorb the prior implication of crediting almost altogether. Faith in God, and above all, faith, in Jesus Christ, is just trust in Him in its purity. Thus in its higher applications the element of trust which is present in faith in all its applications, grows more and more prominent until it finishes by becoming well-nigh the entire connotation of the term; and "to believe in," "to have faith in" comes to mean simply "entrust yourself to." When "faith" can come thus to mean just "trust" we cannot wonder that it is the implication of "trust" in the term which rules its usage and determines its applications throughout the whole course of its development. 

The justification of the application of the terms "believing," "faith" to these high religious acts of entrusting oneself to a person does not rest, however, entirely upon the circumstance that the element of trust which in these acts absorbs attention is present in all other acts of faith and only here comes into full prominence. It rests also on the circumstance that all the other constituent elements of acts of faith, belief, in the general connotation of these terms, are present in these acts of religious faith. The more general acts of faith, belief and the culminating acts of religious belief, faith, that is, differ from one another only in the relative prominence in each of elements common to both. For example, religious faith at its height - the act by which we turn trustingly to a Being conceived as our Righteous Governor, in whose hands is our destiny, or to a Being conceived as our Divine Saviour, through whom we may be restored from our sin, and entrust ourselves to Him - is as little a matter of "the will" and as truly a "forced" consent as is any other act called faith, belief. The engagement of the whole man in the act - involving the response of all the elements of his nature - is no doubt more observable in these highest acts of faith than in the lower, as it is altogether natural it should be from the mere fact that they are the highest exercises of faith. But the determination of the response by the appropriate evidence - its dependence on evidence as its ground - is no less stringent or plain. Whenever we obtain a clear conception of the rise in the human soul of religious faith as exercised thus at its apex as saving trust in Christ we perceive with perfect plainness that it rests on evidence as its ground. 

It is not unusual for writers who wish to represent religious faith in the form of saving trust in Christ as an act of the will to present the case in the form of a strict alternative. This faith, they say, is an exercise not of the intellect but of the heart. And then they proceed to develop an argument, aiming at a reductio ad absurdum of the notion that saving faith can possibly be conceived as a mere assent of the intellect. A simple assent of the mind, we are told, "always depends upon the nature and amount of proof" presented, and is in a true sense "involuntary." When a proposition is presented and sufficiently supported by proof "a mind in a situation to appreciate the proof believes inevitably." "If the proposition or doctrine is not supported by proof, or if the mind is incapable, from any cause, of appreciating the proof, unbelief or doubt is equally certain." "Such a theory of faith would, therefore, suspend our belief or unbelief, and consequently our salvation or damnation, upon the manner in which truth is presented to our minds, or our intellectual capability of its appreciation." "To express the whole matter briefly," concludes the writer whose argument we have been following, "it excludes the exercise of the will, and makes faith or unbelief a matter of necessity."20 

It is not necessary to pause to examine this argument in detail. What it is at the moment important to point out is that the fullest agreement that saving faith is a matter not of the intellect but of the heart, that it is "confidence" rather than "conviction," does not exclude the element of intelligent assent from it altogether, or escape the necessity of recognizing that it rests upon evidence. Is the "confidence" which faith in this its highest exercise has become, an ungrounded confidence? A blind and capricious act of the soul's due to a purely arbitrary determination of the will? Must it not rest on a perceived - that is to say a well-grounded - trustworthiness in the object on which it reposes? In a word, it is clear enough that a conviction lies beneath this confidence, a conviction of the trustworthiness of the object; and that this conviction is produced like other convictions, just by evidence. Is it not still true, then, that the confidence in which saving faith consists is inevitable if the proof of the trustworthiness of the object on which it reposes is sufficient - or as we truly phrase it, "compelling" - and the mind is in a situation to appreciate this proof; and doubt is inevitable if the proof is insufficient or the mind is incapable from any cause of appreciating the proof? Is not the confidence which is the faith of the heart, therefore, in any case, as truly as the conviction which is the faith of the intellect, suspended " upon the manner in which truth is presented," or our "capability of its appreciation"? In a word, is it not clear that the assent of the intelligence is an inamissible element of faith even in its highest exercises, and it never comes to be an arbitrary "matter of choice," in which I may do "as I choose"?²¹ For the exercise of this faith must there not then always be present to the mind, (1) the object on which it is to repose in confidence; (2) adequate grounds for the exercise of this confidence in the object? And must not the mind be in a situation to appreciate these grounds? Here, too, faith is, in Dr. Baldwin's phrase, a "forced consent," and is the product of evidence. 

The impulse of the writer whose views we have just been considering to make "saving faith" a so-called "act of free volition" is derived from the notion that only thus can man be responsible for his faith. It is a sufficiently odd notion, however, that if our faith be determined by reasons and these reasons are good, we are not responsible for it, because forsooth, we then "believe inevitably" and our faith is "a matter of necessity." Are we to hold that responsibility attaches to faith only when it does not rest on good reasons, or in other words is ungrounded, or insufficiently grounded, and is therefore arbitrary? In point of fact, we are responsible for our volitions only because our volitions are never arbitrary acts of a faculty within us called "will," but the determined acts of our whole selves, and therefore represent us. And we are responsible for our faith in precisely the same way because it is our faith, and represents us. For it is to be borne in mind that faith, though resting on evidence and thus in a true sense, as Professor Baldwin calls it, a "forced consent," is not in such a sense the result of evidence that the mind is passive in believing - that the evidence when adequate objectively is always adequate subjectively, or vice versa, quite independently of the state of the mind that believes. Faith is an act of the mind, and can come into being only by an act of the mind, expressive of its own state. There are two factors in the production of faith. On the one hand, there is the evidence on the ground of which the faith is yielded. On the other hand, there is the subjective condition by virtue of which the evidence can take effect in the appropriate act of faith. There can be no belief, faith without evidence; it is on evidence that the mental exercise which we call belief, faith rests; and this exercise or state of mind cannot exist apart from its ground in evidence. But evidence cannot produce belief, faith, except in a mind open to this evidence, and capable of receiving, weighing, and responding to it. A mathematical demonstration is demonstrative proof of the proposition demonstrated. But even such a demonstration cannot produce conviction in a mind incapable of following the demonstration. Where musical taste is lacking, no evidence which derives its force from considerations of melody can work conviction. No conviction, whether of the order of what we call knowledge or of faith, can be produced by considerations to which the mind to be convinced is inhabile. 

Something more, then, is needed to produce belief, faith, besides the evidence which constitutes its ground. The evidence may be objectively sufficient, adequate, overwhelming. The subjective effect of belief, faith is not produced unless this evidence is also adapted to the mind, and to the present state of that mind, which is to be convinced. The mind, itself, therefore - and the varying states of the mind - have their parts to play in the production of belief, faith; and the effect which is so designated is not the mechanical result of the adduction of the evidence. No faith without evidence; but not, no evidence without faith. There may stand in the way of the proper and objectively inevitable effect of the evidence, the subjective nature or condition to which the evidence is addressed. This is the ground of responsibility for belief, faith; it is not merely a question of evidence but of subjectivity; and subjectivity is the other name for personality. Our action under evidence is the touchstone by which is determined what we are. If evidence which is objectively adequate is not subjectively adequate the fault is in us. If we are not accessible to musical evidence, then we are by nature unmusical, or in a present state of unmusicalness. If we are not accessible to moral evidence, then we are either unmoral, or, being moral beings, immoral. The evidence to which we are accessible is irresistible if adequate, and irresistibly produces belief, faith. And no belief, faith can arise except on the ground of evidence duly apprehended, appreciated, weighed. We may cherish opinions without evidence, or with inadequate evidence; but not possess faith any more than knowledge. All convictions of whatever order are the products of evidence in a mind accessible to the evidence appropriate to these particular convictions. 

These things being so, it is easy to see that the sinful heart - which is enmity towards God - is incapable of that supreme act of trust in God - or rather of entrusting itself to God, its Saviour - which has absorbed into itself the term "faith" in its Christian connotation. And it is to avoid this conclusion that many have been tempted to make faith not a rational act of conviction passing into confidence, resting on adequate grounds in testimony, but an arbitrary act of sheer will, produced no one knows how. This is not, however, the solution of the difficulty offered by the Christian revelation. The solution it offers is frankly to allow the impossibility of "faith" to the sinful heart and to attribute it, therefore, to the gift of God. Not, of course, as if this gift were communicated to man in some mechanical manner, which would ignore or do violence to his psychological constitution or to the psychological nature of the act of faith. The mode of the divine giving of faith is represented rather as involving the creation by God the Holy Spirit of a capacity for faith under the evidence submitted. It proceeds by the divine illumination of the understanding, softening of the heart, and quickening of the will, so that the man so affected may freely and must inevitably perceive the force and yield to the compelling power of the evidence of the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ as Saviour submitted to him in the gospel. In one word the capacity for faith and the inevitable emergence in the heart of faith are attributed by the Christian revelation to that great act of God the Holy Spirit which has come in Christian theology to be called by the significant name of Regeneration. If sinful man as such is incapable of the act of faith, because he is inhabile to the evidence on which alone such an act of confident resting on God the Saviour can repose, renewed man is equally incapable of not responding to this evidence, which is objectively compelling, by an act of sincere faith. In this its highest exercise faith thus, though in a true sense the gift of God, is in an equally true sense man's own act, and bears all the character of faith as it is exercised by unrenewed man in its lower manifestations. 

It may conduce to a better apprehension of the essential nature of faith and its relation to the evidence in which it is grounded, if we endeavor to form some notion of the effect of this evidence on the minds of men in the three great stages of their life on earth - as sinless in Paradise, as sinful, as regenerated by the Spirit of God into newness of life. Like every other creature, man is of course absolutely dependent on God. But unlike many other creatures, man, because in his very nature self-conscious, is conscious of his dependence on God; his relation of dependence on God is not merely a fact but a fact of his self-consciousness. This dependence is not confined to any one element of human nature but runs through the whole of man's nature; and as self-conscious being man is conscious of his absolute dependence on God, physically, psychically, morally, spiritually. It is this comprehensive consciousness of dependence on God for and in all the elements of his nature and life, which is the fundamental basis in humanity of faith, in its general religious sense. This faith is but the active aspect of the consciousness of dependence, which, therefore, is the passive aspect of faith. In this sense no man exists, or ever has existed or ever will exist, who has not "faith." But this "faith" takes very different characters in man as unfallen and as fallen and as renewed. 

In unfallen man, the consciousness of dependence on God is far from a bare recognition of a fact; it has a rich emotional result in the heart. This emotional product of course includes fear, in the sense of awe and reverence. But its peculiar quality is just active and loving trust. Sinless man delights to be dependent on God and trusts Him wholly. He perceives God as his creator, upholder, governor, and bountiful benefactor, and finds his joy in living, moving, and having his being in Him. All the currents of his life turn to Him for direction and control. In this spontaneous trust of sinless man we have faith at its purest. 

Now when man fell, the relation in which he stood to God was fundamentally altered. Not as if he ceased to be dependent on God, in every sphere of his being and activity. Nor even as if he ceased to be conscious of this his comprehensive dependence on God. Even as sinner man cannot but believe in God; the very devils believe and tremble. He cannot escape the knowledge that he is utterly dependent on God for all that he is and does. But his consciousness of dependence on God no longer takes the form of glad and loving trust. Precisely what sin has done to him is to render this trust impossible. Sin has destroyed the natural relation between God and His creature in which the creature trusts God, and has instituted a new relation, which conditions all his immanent as well as transient activities Godward. The sinner is at enmity with God and can look to God only for punishment. He knows himself absolutely dependent on God, but in knowing this, he knows himself absolutely in the power of his enemy. A fearful looking forward to judgment conditions all his thought of God. Faith has accordingly been transformed into unfaith; trust into distrust. He expects evil and only evil from God. Knowing himself to be dependent on God he seeks to be as independent of Him as he can. As he thinks of God, misery and fear and hatred take the place of joy and trust and love. Instinctively and by his very nature the sinner, not being able to escape from his belief in God, yet cannot possibly have faith in God, that is trust Him, entrust himself to Him. 

The reëstablishment of this faith in the sinner must be the act not of the sinner himself but of God. This because the sinner has no power to render God gracious, which is the objective root, or to look to God for favor, which is the subjective root of faith in the fiducial sense. Before he can thus believe there must intervene the atoning work of Christ canceling the guilt by which the sinner is kept under the wrath of God, and the recreative work of the Holy Spirit by which the sinner's heart is renewed in the love of God. There is not required a creation of something entirely new, but only a restoration of an old relation and a renewal therewith of an old disposition. Accordingly, although faith in the renewed man bears a different character from faith in unfallen man, inasmuch as it is trust in God not merely for general goodness but for the specific blessing of salvation - that is to say it is soteriological - it yet remains essentially the same thing as in unfallen man. It is in the one case as in the other just trust - that trust which belongs of nature to man as man in relation to his God. And, therefore, though in renewed man it is a gift of God's grace, it does not come to him as something alien to his nature. It is beyond the powers of his nature as sinful man; but it is something which belongs to human nature as such, which has been lost through sin and which can be restored only by the power of God. In this sense faith remains natural even in the renewed sinner, and the peculiar character which belongs to it as the act of a sinner, namely its soteriological reference, only conditions and does not essentially alter it. Because man is a sinner his faith terminates not immediately on God, but immediately on the mediator, and only through His mediation on God; and it is proximately trust in this mediator for salvation - relief from the guilt and corruption of sin - and only mediately through this relief for other goods. But it makes its way through these intermediating elements to terminate ultimately on God Himself and to rest on Him for all goods. And thus it manifests its fundamental and universal character as trust in God, recognized by the renewed sinner, as by the unfallen creature, as the inexhaustible fountain to His creatures of all blessedness, in whom to live and move and have his being is the creature's highest felicity. 

In accordance with the nature of this faith the Protestant theologians have generally explained that faith includes in itself the three elements of notitia, assensus, fiducia. Their primary object has been, no doubt, to protest against the Romish conception which limits faith to the assent of the understanding. The stress of the Protestant definition lies therefore upon the fiducial element. This stress has not led Protestant theologians generally, however, to eliminate from the conception of faith the elements of understanding and assent. No doubt this has been done by some, and it is perhaps not rare even to-day to hear it asserted that faith is so purely trust that there is no element of assent in it at all. And no doubt theologians have differed among themselves as to whether all these elements are to be counted as included in faith, or some of them treated rather as preliminary steps to faith or effects of faith. But speaking broadly Protestant theologians have reckoned all these elements as embraced within the mental movement we call faith itself; and they have obviously been right in so doing. Indeed, we may go further and affirm that all three of these elements are always present in faith - not only in that culminating form of faith which was in the mind of the theologians in question - saving faith in Christ - but in every movement of faith whatever, from the lowest to the highest instances of its exercise. No true faith has arisen unless there has been a perception of the object to be believed or believed in, an assent to its worthiness to be believed or believed in, and a commitment of ourselves to it as true and trustworthy. We cannot be said to believe or to trust in a thing or person of which we have no knowledge; "implicit faith" in this sense is an absurdity. Of course we cannot be said to believe or to trust the thing or person to whose worthiness of our belief or trust assent has not been obtained. And equally we cannot be said to believe that which we distrust too much to commit ourselves to it. In every movement of faith, therefore, from the lowest to the highest, there is an intellectual, an emotional, and a voluntary element, though naturally these elements vary in their relative prominence in the several movements of faith. This is only as much as to say that it is the man who believes, who is the subject of faith, and the man in the entirety of his being as man. The central movement in all faith is no doubt the element of assent; it is that which constitutes the mental movement so called a movement of conviction. But the movement of assent must depend, as it always does depend, on a movement, not specifically of the will, but of the intellect; the assensus issues from the notitia. The movement of the sensibilities which we call "trust," is on the contrary the product of the assent. And it is in this movement of the sensibilities that faith fulfills itself, and it is by it that, as specifically "faith," it is "formed."

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Princeton Theological Review, ix. 1911, pp. 537 566. 

The Hebrew !ymah, hnwma go back to the idea of "holding": we believe in what "holds." In both the sacred languages, therefore, the fundamental meaning of faith is "surety." Cf. Latin "credo." 

Cf. M. Heyne's German Dictionary, sub voc. "Glaube": "Glaube is confiding acceptance of a truth. At the basis of the word is the root lub, which, with the general meaning of agreeing with and of approving, appears also in erlauben and loben."

Baldwin and Stout, " Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology," i. 1901, pp. 110 and 112. 

Professor Baldwin does not allow any psychological distinction between "belief" and "knowledge." See sub voc. "Knowledge."

Ibid., p. 112. The passage is quoted from Baldwin, "Handbook of Psychology: Feeling and Will," 1891, p. 171.

"Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology," i. 1901, p. 603.

Baldwin's "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology," i. 1901, p. 369. 

In his fuller discussion in his "Foundations of Knowledge," 1900, Part iii. chap. 1, Dr. Ormond tells us that what positively characterizes belief as over against knowledge is, subjectively, that "the volitional motive begins to dominate the epistemological" (p. 306), and, objectively, that the quality of "coerciveness" (p. 307) is lacking. The two criteria come very much to the same thing.

"The Works of Thomas Reid," ed. 2, 1849, p. 760 (Note A, § v.). 

Loc. cit. 

Ep. 120, [i.] 3 ("Opera Omnia," Paris, ii. 1836, col. 518): "we should not be able to believe if we did not have rational minds."

"De prædestinatione sanctorum," [ii.] 5 ("Opera Omnia," X. i. 1838, col. 1349).

Ep. 147, [iii.] 8 ("Opera Omnia," ii. 1836, col. 709). 

On Augustine's doctrine of Faith and Reason see The Princeton Theological Review, v. 1907, pp. 389 ff. (or B. B. Warfield, "Studies in Tertullian and Augustine," 1930, pp. 170ff.).

This conception of "faith" naturally became traditional. Thus e.g. Reginald Pecock (middle of the fifteenth century) defines faith as "a knowyng wherbi we assenten to eny thing as to trouth, for as mych as we have sure evydencis gretter than to the contrarie that it is toold and affermid to us to be trewe, bi him of whom we have sure evydencis, or notable likli evydencis, gretter than to the contrarie, that therinne he not lied" ("The Folewer to the Donet," f. 28, cited in J. L. Morison's "Reginald Pecock's Book of Faith," 1909, p. 85). Here we have "faith" resting on evidence; and the specific evidence on which it rests, testimony. Accordingly he defines Christian faith thus: "that feith, of which we speken now, into which we ben bounde, and which is oon of the foundementis of Cristen religioun, is thilke kinde or spice of knowyng, which a man gendrith and getith into his undirstonding, principali bi the telling or denouncing of another persoone, which may not lie, or which is God" ("The Booke of Faith," I. i. f. 9a, Morison's edition, p. 123). At the end of the discussion (f. 10a) Pecock plainly adds: "and bi this maner of his geting and gendring, feith is dyvers from other kindis and spicis of kunnyngis, which a man gendrith and getith into his undirstonding bi bisynes and labour of his natural resoun, bi biholding upon the causis or effectis or circumstancis in nature of the conclusioun or trouthe, and withoute eny attendaunce maad to eny sure teller or denouncer, that thilk conclusioun is a trouthe."

"Contra academicos," iii. [xx.] 43 ("Opera Omnia," Paris, i. 1836, col. 488). Cf. "De ordine," ii. [ix.] 26 ("Opera Omnia," i. coll. 568 f.).

"Retractationea," I, xiv. 3 ("Opera Omnia," i. coll. 52 f.).

"It is the nature and tendency of the word," says Bishop Moule, "to go out towards a person. . . . When we speak of having Faith we habitually direct the notion either towards a veritable person, or towards something which we personify in the mind. . . . I do not attempt to explain the fact, as fact I think it is. Perhaps we may trace in it a far-off echo of that primeval Sanskrit word whose meaning is 'to bind' . . ." ("Faith: its Nature and its Work," 1909, pp. 10-11).

Dr. Richard Beard, "Lectures on Theology," ii. 1871, pp. 362-363. 

Dr. Beard, as cited, p. 364.

On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

THE fundamental assertion of the Biblical doctrine of the origin of man is that he owes his being to a creative act of God. Subsidiary questions growing out of this fundamental assertion, however, have been thrown from time to time into great prominence, as the changing forms of current anthropological speculation have seemed to press on this or that element in, or corollary from, the Biblical teaching. The most important of these subsidiary questions has concerned the method of the divine procedure in creating man. Discussion of this question became acute on the publication of Charles Darwin's treatise on the "Origin of Species" in 1859, and can never sink again into rest until it is thoroughly understood in all quarters that "evolution" cannot act as a substitute for creation, but at best can supply only a theory of the method of the divine providence. Closely connected with this discussion of the mode of origination of man, has been the discussion of two further questions, both older than the Darwinian theory, to one of which it gave, however, a new impulse, while it has well-nigh destroyed all interest in the other. These are the questions of the Antiquity of Man and the Unity of the Human Race, to both of which a large historical interest attaches, though neither of them can be said to be burning questions of to-day. 

The question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance. It is to theology, as such, a matter of entire indifference how long man has existed on earth. It is only because of the contrast which has been drawn between the short period which seems to be allotted to human history in the Biblical narrative, and the tremendously long period which certain schools of scientific speculation have assigned to the duration of human life on earth, that theology has become interested in the topic at all. There was thus created the appearance of a conflict between the Biblical statements and the findings of scientific investigators, and it became the duty of theologians to investigate the matter. The asserted conflict proves, however, to be entirely factitious. The Bible does not assign a brief span to human history: this is done only by a particular mode of interpreting the Biblical data, which is found on examination to rest on no solid basis. Science does not demand an inordinate period for the life of human beings on earth: this is done only by a particular school of speculative theorizers, the validity of whose demands on time exact investigators are more and more chary of allowing. As the real state of the case has become better understood the problem has therefore tended to disappear from theological discussion, till now it is pretty well understood that theology as such has no interest in it. 

It must be confessed, indeed, that the impression is readily taken from a prima facie view of the Biblical record of the course of human history, that the human race is of comparatively recent origin. It has been the usual supposition of simple Bible readers, therefore, that the Biblical data allow for the duration of the life of the human race on earth only a paltry six thousand years or so: and this supposition has become fixed in formal chronological schemes which have become traditional and have even been given a place in the margins of our Bibles to supply the chronological framework of the Scriptural narrative. The most influential of these chronological schemes is that which was worked out by Archbishop Usher in his "Annales Veteri et Novi Testamenti" (1650-1654), and it is this scheme which has found a place in the margin of the Authorized English Version of the Bible since 1701. According to it the creation of the world is assigned to the year 4004 B.C. (Usher's own dating was 4138 B.C.); while according to the calculation of Petau (in his "Rationarium temporum"), the most influential rival scheme, it is assigned to the year 3983 B.C. On a more careful scrutiny of the data on which these calculations rest, however, they are found not to supply a satisfactory basis for the constitution of a definite chronological scheme. These data consist largely, and at the crucial points solely, of genealogical tables; and nothing can be clearer than that it is precarious in the highest degree to draw chronological inferences from genealogical tables. 

For the period from Abraham down we have, indeed, in addition to somewhat minute genealogical records, the combined evidence of such so-called "long-dates" as those of I Kings vi. 1, Gal. iii. 17, and several precise statements concerning the duration of definite shorter periods, together with whatever aid it may be possible to derive from a certain amount of contemporary extra-Biblical data. For the length of this period there is no difficulty, therefore, in reaching an entirely satisfactory general estimate. But for the whole space of time before Abraham, we are dependent entirely on inferences drawn from the genealogies recorded in the fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis. And if the Scriptural genealogies supply no solid basis for chronological inferences, it is clear that we are left without Scriptural data for forming an estimate of the duration of these ages. For aught we know they may have been of immense length. 

The general fact that the genealogies of Scripture were not constructed for a chronological purpose and lend themselves ill to employment as a basis for chronological calculations has been repeatedly shown very fully; but perhaps by no one more thoroughly than by Dr. William Henry Green in an illuminating article published in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1890. These genealogies must be esteemed trustworthy for the purposes for which they are recorded; but they cannot safely be pressed into use for other purposes for which they were not intended, and for which they are not adapted. In particular, it is clear that the genealogical purposes for which the genealogies were given, did not require a complete record of all the generations through which the descent of the persons to whom they are assigned runs; but only an adequate indication of the particular line through which the descent in question comes. Accordingly it is found on examination that the genealogies of Scripture are freely compressed for all sorts of purposes; and that it can seldom be confidently affirmed that they contain a complete record of the whole series of generations, while it is often obvious that a very large number are omitted. There is no reason inherent in the nature of the Scriptural genealogies why a genealogy of ten recorded links, as each of those in Genesis v. and xi. is, may not represent an actual descent of a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand links. The point established by the table is not that these are all the links which intervened between the beginning and the closing names, but that this is the line of descent through which one traces back to or down to the other. 

A sufficient illustration of the freedom with which the links in the genealogies are dealt with in the Biblical usage is afforded by the two genealogies of our Lord which are given in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. For it is to be noted that there are two genealogies of Jesus given in this chapter, differing greatly from one another in fullness of record, no doubt, but in no respect either in trustworthiness or in principle of record. The one is found in the first verse, and traces Jesus back to Abraham in just two steps: "Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." The other is found in verses 2-17, and expands this same genealogy into forty-two links, divided for purposes of symmetrical record and easy memorizing into a threefold scheme of fourteen generations each. And not even is this longer record a complete one. A comparison with the parallel records in the Old Testament will quickly reveal the fact that the three kings, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah are passed over and Joram is said to have begotten Uzziah, his great-great-grandson. The other genealogies of Scripture present similar phenomena; and as they are carefully scrutinized, it becomes ever clearer that as they do not pretend to give complete lists of generations, they cannot be intended to supply a basis for chronological calculation, and it is illegitimate and misleading to attempt to use them for that purpose. The reduction for extraneous reasons of the genealogy of Christ in the first chapter of Matthew into three tables of fourteen generations each, may warn us that the reduction of the patriarchal genealogies in Genesis v. and xi. into two tables of ten generations each may equally be due to extraneous considerations; and that there may be represented by each of these ten generations - adequately for the purposes for which the genealogy is recorded - a very much longer actual series of links. 

It must not be permitted to drop out of sight, to be sure, that the appearance of supplying data for a chronological calculation is in these particular genealogies not due entirely to the mere fact that these lists are genealogies. It is due to a peculiarity of these special genealogies by which they are differentiated from all other genealogies in Scripture. We refer to the regular attachment, to each name in the lists, of the age of the father at the birth of his son. The effect of this is to provide what seems to be a continuous series of precisely measured generations, the numbers having only to be added together to supply an exact measure of the time consumed in their sequence. We do not read merely that "Adam begat Seth; and Seth begat Enosh; and Enosh begat Kenan." We read rather that "Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat Seth; and Seth lived an hundred and five years and begat Enosh; and Enosh lived ninety years and begat Kenan." It certainly looks, at first sight, as if we needed only to add these one hundred and thirty, one hundred and five, and ninety years together in order to obtain the whole time which elapsed from the creation of Adam to the birth of Kenan; and, accordingly, as if we needed only to add together the similar numbers throughout the lists in order to obtain an accurate measure of the whole period from the Creation to the Deluge. Plausible as this procedure seems, however, it appears on a closer scrutiny unjustified; and it is the especial service which Dr. William Henry Green in the article already mentioned has rendered to the cause of truth in this matter that he has shown this clearly. 

For, if we will look at these lists again, we shall find that we have not yet got them in their entirety before us. Not only is there attached to each name in them a statement of the age at which the father begot his son, but also a statement of how long the father lived after he had begotten his son, and how many years his life-span counted up altogether. If we do not read merely, "Adam begat Seth; and Seth begat Enosh; and Enosh begat Kenan"; neither do we read merely, "Adam lived one hundred and thirty years and begat Seth; and Seth lived one hundred and five years and begat Enosh; and Enosh lived ninety years and begat Kenan." What we read is: "Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: and the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: and all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enosh: and Seth lived after he begat Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. And Enosh lived ninety years, and begat Kenan: and Enosh lived after he begat Kenan eight hundred and fifteen years and begat sons and daughters: and all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years: and he died." There is, in a word, much more information furnished with respect to each link in the chain than merely the age to which each father had attained when his son was begotten; and all this information is of the same order and obviously belongs together. It is clear that a single motive has determined the insertion of all of it; and we must seek a reason for its insertion which will account for all of it. This reason cannot have been a chronological one: for all the items of information furnished do not serve a chronological purpose. Only the first item in each case can be made to yield a chronological result; and therefore not even it was intended to yield a chronological result, since all these items of information are too closely bound together in their common character to be separated in their intention. They too readily explain themselves, moreover, as serving an obvious common end which was clearly in the mind of the writer, to justify the ascription of a different end to any one of them. When we are told of any man that he was a hundred and thirty years old when he begat his heir, and lived after that eight hundred years begetting sons and daughters, dying only at the age of nine hundred and thirty years, all these items cooperate to make a vivid impression upon us of the vigor and grandeur of humanity in those old days of the world's prime. In a sense different indeed from that which the words bear in Genesis vi., but full of meaning to us, we exclaim, "Surely there were giants in those days!" This is the impression which the items of information inevitably make on us; and it is the impression they were intended to make on us, as is proved by the simple fact that they are adapted in all their items to make this impression, while only a small portion of them can be utilized for the purpose of chronological calculation. Having thus found a reason which will account for the insertion of all the items of information which are given us, we have no right to assume another reason to account for the insertion of some of them. And that means that we must decline to look upon the first item of information given in each instance as intended to give us chronological information. 

The conclusion which we thus reach is greatly strengthened when we observe another fact with regard to these items of information. This is that the appearance that we have in them of a chronological scheme does not reside in the nature of the items themselves, but purely in their sequence. If we read the items of information attached to each name, apart from their fellows attached to the succeeding names, we shall have simply a set of facts about each name, which in their combination make a strong impression of the vigor and greatness of humanity in those days, and which suggest no chronological inference. It is only when the names, with the accompanying comments, are put together, one after the other, that a chronological inference is suggested. The chronological suggestion is thus purely the effect of the arrangement of the names in immediate sequence; and is not intrinsically resident in the items of information themselves. 

And now we must call attention to a characteristic of Scripture genealogies in general which seems to find a specially striking illustration in these comments. This is the habit of interposing into the structure of the genealogies, here and there, a short note, attached to this name or that, telling some important or interesting fact about the person represented by it. A simple genealogy would run thus: "Adam begat Seth; and Seth begat Enosh; and Enosh begat Kenan"; and the like, But it would be quite in the Biblical manner if there were attached to some, or even to each of these names, parenthetical remarks, calling attention to something of interest regarding the several persons. For example, it would be quite after the Biblical fashion should we have rather had this: "Adam, who was the first man, begat Seth; and Seth, he it was who was appointed as another seed in the stead of Abel whom Cain slew, begat Enosh; and Enosh, at his birth men began to call on the name of Jehovah, begat Kenan." The insertion of such items of information does not in the least change the character of the genealogy as in itself a simple genealogy, subject to all the laws which governed the formation and record of the Scriptural genealogies, including the right of free compression, with the omission of any number of links. It is strictly parenthetical in nature. 

Several examples of such parenthetical insertions occur in the genealogy of Jesus recorded in the first chapter of Matthew, to which we have already referred for illustration. Thus in verse 2, the fact that Judah had "brethren" is interposed in the genealogy, a fact which is noted also with respect to two others of the names which occur in the list (verses 3 and 11): it is noted here doubtless because of the significance of the twelve sons of Jacob as tribe-fathers of Israel. Again we find in four instances a notification of the mother interposed (Tamar, verse 3; Rahab, verse 5; Ruth, verse 5; her of Uriah, verse 6). The introduction of the names of these notable women, which prepares the way for the introduction of that of Mary in verse 16, constitutes a very remarkable feature of this particular genealogy. Another feature of it is suggested by the attachment to the name of David (verse 6) the statement that he was "the King"; and to the name of Jechoniah (verse 11) the statement that his life-span fell at the time of the carrying away to Babylon: the account of these insertions being found, doubtless, in the artificial arrangement of the genealogy in three symmetrical tables. The habit of inserting parenthetical notes giving items of interest connected with the names which enter into the genealogies is doubtless sufficiently illustrated by these instances. The only point in which the genealogies of Genesis v. and xi. differ in this respect from this one in Matthew i. is that such items of information are inserted with reference to every name in those genealogies, while they are inserted only occasionally in the genealogy of our Lord. This is, however, a difference of detail, not of principle. Clearly if these notes had been constant in the genealogy in Matthew i. instead of merely occasional, its nature as a genealogy would not have been affected: it would still have remained a simple genealogy subject to all the customary laws of simple genealogies. That they are constant in the genealogies of Genesis v. and xi. does not, then, alter their character as simple genealogies. These additions are in their nature parenthetical, and are to be read in each instance strictly as such and with sole reference to the names to which they are attached, and cannot determine whether or not links have been omitted in these genealogies as they are freely omitted in other genealogies. 

It is quite true that, when brought together in sequence, name after name, these notes assume the appearance of a concatenated chronological scheme. But this is pure illusion, due wholly to the nature of the parenthetical insertions which are made. When placed one after the other they seem to play into one another, whereas they are set down here for an entirely different purpose and cannot without violence be read with reference to one another. If the items of information were of a different character we should never think of reading them otherwise than each with sole reference to its own name. Thus, if they were given to show us how nobly developed primitive men were in their physical frames and read something as follows: "Adam was eight cubits in height and begat Seth; and Seth was seven cubits in height and begat Enosh; and Enosh was six cubits in height and begat Kenan"; we should have no difficulty in understanding that these remarks are purely parenthetical and in no way argue that no links have been omitted. The case is not altered by the mere fact that other items than these are chosen for notice, with the same general intent, and we actually read: "Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat Seth; and Seth lived an hundred and five years and begat Enosh; and Enosh lived ninety years and begat Kenan." The circumstance that the actual items chosen for parenthetical notice are such that when the names are arranged one after the other they produce the illusion of a chronological scheme is a mere accident, arising from the nature of the items chosen, and must not blind us to the fact that we have before us here nothing but ordinary genealogies, accompanied by parenthetical notes which are inserted for other than chronological purposes; and that therefore these genealogies must be treated like other genealogies, and interpreted on the same principles. But if this be so, then these genealogies too not only may be, but probably are, much compressed, and merely record the line of descent of Noah from Adam and of Abraham from Noah. Their symmetrical arrangement in groups of ten is indicative of their compression; and for aught we know instead of twenty generations and some two thousand years measuring the interval between the creation and the birth of Abraham, two hundred generations, and something like twenty thousand years, or even two thousand generations and something like two hundred thousand years may have intervened. In a word, the Scriptural data leave us wholly without guidance in estimating the time which elapsed between the creation of the world and the deluge and between the deluge and the call of Abraham. So far as the Scripture assertions are concerned, we may suppose any length of time to have intervened between these events which may otherwise appear reasonable. 

The question of the antiquity of man is accordingly a purely scientific one, in which the theologian as such has no concern. As an interested spectator, however, he looks on as the various schools of scientific speculation debate the question among themselves; and he can scarcely fail to take away as the result of his observation two well-grounded convictions. The first is that science has as yet in its hands no solid data for a definite estimate of the time during which the human race has existed on earth. The second is that the tremendous drafts on time which were accustomed to be made by the geologists about the middle of the last century and which continue to be made by one school of speculative biology to-day have been definitively set aside, and it is becoming very generally understood that man cannot have existed on the earth more than some ten thousand to twenty thousand years. 

It was a result of the manner of looking at things inculcated by the Huttonian geology, that speculation during the first three quarters of the nineteenth century estimated the age of the habitable globe in terms of hundreds of millions of years. It was under the influence of this teaching, for example, that Charles Darwin, in 1859, supposed that three hundred million years were an underestimate for the period which has elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary Age.² In reviewing Mr. Darwin's argument in his "Student's Manual of Geology," Professor Jukes remarked on the vagueness of the data on which his estimates were formed, and suggested that the sum of years asserted might with equal reasonableness be reduced or multiplied a hundredfold: he proposed therefore three million and thirty billion years as the minimum and maximum limits of the period in question. From the same fundamental standpoint, Professor Poulton in his address as President of the Zoological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Liverpool, September, 1896) treats as too short from his biological point of view the longest time asked by the geologists for the duration of the habitable earth - say some four hundred millions of years. Dwelling on the number of distinct types of animal existence already found in the Lower Cambrian deposits, and on the necessarily (as he thinks) slow progress of evolution, he stretches out the time required for the advance of life to its present manifestation practically illimitably. Taking up the cudgels for his biological friends, Sir Archibald Geikie³ chivalrously offers them all the time they desire, speaking on his own behalf, however, of one hundred million years as possibly sufficient for the period of the existence of life on the globe. These general estimates imply, of course, a very generous allowance for the duration of human life on earth; but many anthropologists demand for this period even more than they allow. Thus, for example, Professor Gabriel de Mortillet⁴ reiterates his conviction that the appearance of man on earth cannot be dated less than two hundred and thirty thousand years ago, and Professor A. Penck⁵ would agree with this estimate, while Dr. A. R. Wallace has been accustomed to ask more than double that period.⁶ 

These tremendously long estimates of the duration of life on earth and particularly of the duration of human life are, however, speculative, and, indeed, largely the creation of a special type of evolutionary speculation - a type which is rapidly losing ground among recent scientific workers. This type is that which owes its origin to the brooding mind of Charles Darwin; and up to recent times it has been the regnant type of evolutionary philosophy. Its characteristic contention is that the entire development of animate forms has been the product of selection, by the pressure of the environment, of infinitesimal variations in an almost infinite series of successive generations; or to put it rather brusquely, but not unfairly, that chance plus time are the true causes which account for the whole body of differentiated forms which animate nature presents to our observation. Naturally, therefore, heavy drafts have been made on time to account for whatever it seemed hard to attribute to brute chance, as if you could admit the issuing of any effect out of any conditions, if you only conceived the process of production as slow enough. James Hutton had duly warned his followers against the temptation to appeal to time as if it were itself an efficient cause of effects. "With regard to the effect of time," he said,⁷ "though the continuance of time may do much in those operations which are extremely slow, where no change, to our observation, had appeared to take place, yet, where it is not in the nature of things to produce the change in question, the unlimited course of time would be no more effectual than the moment by which we measure events in our observations." The warning was not heeded: men seemed to imagine that, if only time enough were given for it, effects, for which no adequate cause could be assigned, might be supposed to come gradually of themselves. Aimless movement was supposed, if time enough were allowed for it, to produce an ordered world. It might as well be supposed that if a box full of printers' types were stirred up long enough with a stick, they could be counted on to arrange themselves in time in the order in which they stand, say, in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." They will never do so, though they be stirred to eternity. Dr. J. W. Dawson⁸ points out the exact difficulty, when he remarks that "the necessity for indefinitely protracted time does not arise from the facts, but from the attempt to explain the facts without any adequate cause, and to appeal to an infinite series of chance interactions apart from a designed plan, and without regard to the consideration, that we know of no way in which, with any conceivable amount of time, the first living and organized beings could be spontaneously produced from dead matter." Nothing could be more certain than that what chance cannot begin the production of in a moment, chance cannot complete the production of in an eternity. The analysis of the complete effect into an infinite series of parts, and the distribution of these parts over an infinite series of years, leaves the effect as unaccounted for as ever. What is needed to account for it is not time in any extension, but an adequate cause. A mass of iron is made no more self-supporting by being forged into an illimitable chain formed of innumerable infinitesimal links. We may cast our dice to all eternity with no more likelihood than at the first throw of ever turning up double-sevens. 

It is not, however, the force of such reasoning but the pressure of hard facts which is revolutionizing the conceptions of biologists to-day as to the length of the period during which man has existed on earth. It is not possible to enumerate here all the facts which are cooperating to produce a revised and greatly reduced estimate of this period. First among them may doubtless be placed the calculations of the life-period of the globe itself which have been made by the physicists with ever increasing confidence. Led by such investigators as Lord Kelvin, they have become ever more and more insistent that the time demanded by the old uniformitarian and new biological speculator is not at their disposal. The publication in the seventh decade of the past century of Lord Kelvin's calculations, going to show that the sun had not been shining sixty millions of years, already gave pause to the reckless drafts which had been accustomed to be made on time; and the situation was rendered more and more acute by subsequent revisions of Lord Kelvin's work, progressively diminishing this estimate. Sir Archibald Geikie complains that "he [Lord Kelvin] has cut off slice after slice from the allowance of time which at first he was prepared to grant for the evolution of geological history," until he has reduced it from forty to twenty millions of years, "and probably much nearer twenty than forty."9 This estimate of the period of the sun's light would allow only something like six millions of years for geological time, only some one-sixteenth of which would be available for the cænozoic period, of which only about one-eighth or forty thousand years or so could be allotted to the pleistocene age, in the course of which the remains of man first appear.¹⁰ Even this meager allowance is cut in half by the calculation of Professor Tait;¹¹ while the general conclusions of these investigators have received the support of independent calculations by Dr. George H. Darwin and Professor Newcomb; and more recently still Mr. T. J. J. See of the Naval Observatory at Washington has published a very pretty speculation in which he determines the total longevity of the sun to be only thirty-six millions of years, thirty-two of which belong to its past history.¹²

It is not merely the physicists, however, with whom the biological speculators have to do: the geologists themselves have turned against them. Recent investigations may be taken as putting pre-Quaternary man out of the question (the evidence was reviewed by Sir John Evans, in his address at the Toronto meeting of the British Association, August 18, 1897). And revised estimates of the rate of denudation, erosion, deposition of alluvial matter in deltas, or of stalagmitic matter in the floors or caves have greatly reduced the exaggerated conception of its slowness, from which support was sought for the immensely long periods of time demanded. The post-glacial period, which will roughly estimate the age of man, it is now pretty generally agreed, "cannot be more than ten thousand years, or probably not more than seven thousand" in length.¹³ In this estimate both Professor Winchell¹⁴ and Professor Salisbury¹⁵ agree, and to its establishment a great body of evidence derived from a variety of calculations concur. If man is of post-glacial origin, then, his advent upon earth need not be dated more than five or six thousand years ago; or if we suppose him to have appeared at some point in the later glacial period, as Professor G. F. Wright does, then certainly Professor Wright's estimate of sixteen thousand to twenty thousand years is an ample one. 

The effect of these revised estimates of geological time has been greatly increased by growing uncertainty among biologists themselves, as to the soundness of the assumptions upon which was founded their demand for long periods of time. These assumptions were briefly those which underlie the doctrine of evolution in its specifically Darwinian form; in the form, that is to say, in which the evolution is supposed to be accomplished by the fixing through the pressure of the environment of minute favorable variations, arising accidentally in the midst of minute variations in every direction indifferently. But in the progress of biological research, the sufficiency of this "natural selection" to account for the development of organic forms has come first to be questioned, and then in large circles to be denied.¹⁶ In proportion, however, as evolution is conceived as advancing in determined directions, come the determination from whatever source you choose;¹⁷ and in proportion as it is conceived as advancing onwards by large increments instead of by insensible changes;¹⁸ in that proportion the demand on time is lessened and even the evolutionary speculator feels that he can get along with less of it. He is no longer impelled to assume behind the high type of man whose remains in the post-glacial deposits are the first intimation of the presence of man on earth, an almost illimitable series of lower and ever lower types of man through which gradually the brute struggled up to the high humanity, records of whose existence alone have been preserved to us.¹⁹ And he no longer requires to postulate immense stretches of time for the progress of this man through paleolithic, neolithic and metal-using periods, for the differentiation of the strongly marked characteristics of the several races of man, for the slow humanizing of human nature and the slower development of those powers within it from which at length what we call civilization emerged. Once allow the principle of modification by leaps, and the question of the length of time required for a given evolution passes out of the sphere of practical interest. The height of the leaps becomes a matter of detail, and there is readily transferred to the estimation of it the importance which was formerly attached to the estimation of the time involved. Thus it has come about, that, in the progress of scientific investigation, the motive for demanding illimitable stretches of time for the duration of life, and specifically for the duration of human life on earth, has gradually been passing away, and there seems now a very general tendency among scientific investigators to acquiesce in a moderate estimate - in an estimate which demands for the life of man on earth not more than, say, ten or twenty thousand years. 

If the controversy upon the antiquity of man is thus rapidly losing all but a historical interest, that which once so violently raged upon the unity of the race may be said already to have reached this stage. The question of the unity of the human race differs from the question of its antiquity in that it is of indubitable theological importance. It is not merely that the Bible certainly teaches it, while, as we have sought to show, it has no teaching upon the antiquity of the race. It is also the postulate of the entire body of the Bible's teaching - of its doctrine of Sin and Redemption alike: so that the whole structure of the Bible's teaching, including all that we know as its doctrine of salvation, rests on it and implicates it. There have been times, nevertheless, when it has been vigorously assailed, from various motives, from within as well as from without the Church, and the resources of Christian reasoning have been taxed to support it. These times have now, however, definitely passed away. The prevalence of the evolutionary hypotheses has removed all motive for denying a common origin to the human race, and rendered it natural to look upon the differences which exist among the various types of man as differentiations of a common stock. The motive for denying their conclusiveness having been thus removed, the convincing evidences of the unity of the race have had opportunity to assert their force. The result is that the unity of the race, in the sense of its common origin, is no longer a matter of debate; and although actually some erratic writers may still speak of it as open to discussion, they are not taken seriously, and practically it is universally treated as a fixed fact that mankind in all its varieties is one, as in fundamental characteristics, so also in origin. 

In our natural satisfaction over this agreement between Scripture and modern science with respect to the unity of humanity, we must not permit ourselves to forget that there has always nevertheless existed among men a strong tendency to deny this unity in the interests of racial pride. Outside of the influence of the Biblical revelation, indeed, the sense of human unity has never been strong and has ordinarily been non-existent.²⁰ The Stoics seem to have been the first among the classical peoples to preach the unity of mankind and the duty of universal justice and philanthropy founded upon it. With the revival of classical ideas which came in with what we call the Renaissance, there came in also a tendency to revive heathen polygenism, which was characteristically reproduced in the writings of Blount and others of the Deists. A more definite co-Adamitism, that is to say the attribution of the descent of the several chief racial types to separate original ancestors, has also been taught by occasional individuals such, for example, as Paracelsus. And the still more definite pre-Adamitism, which conceives man indeed as a single species, derived from one stock, but represents Adam not as the root of this stock, but as one of its products, the ancestor of the Jews and white races alone, has always found teachers, such as, for example, Zanini. The advocacy of this pre-Adamitic theory by Isaac de la Peyrère in the middle of the seventeenth century roused a great debate which, however, soon died out, although leaving echoes behind it in Bayle, Arnold, Swedenborg. A sort of pre-Adamitism has continued to be taught by a series of philosophical speculators from Schelling down, which looks upon Adam as the first real man, rising in developed humanity above the low, beastlike condition of his ancestors. In our own day George Catlin²¹ and especially Alexander Winchell²² have revived in its essentials the teaching of de la Peyrère. "Adam," says Professor Winchell, "is descended from a black race, not the black race from Adam." The advancing knowledge of the varied races of man produced in the latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier nineteenth century a revival of co-Adamitism (Sullivan, Crueger, Ballenstedt, Cordonière, Gobineau) which was even perverted into a defense of slavery (Dobbs, Morton, Nott, and Gliddon). It was in connection with Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind" that Agassiz first published his theory of the diverse origin of the several types of man, the only one of these theories of abiding interest because the only one arising from a genuinely scientific impulse and possessing a really scientific basis. Agassiz's theory was the product of a serious study of the geographical distribution of animate life, and one of the results of Agassiz's classification of the whole of animate creation into eight well-marked types of fauna involving, so he thought, eight separate centers of origin. Pursuant to this classification he sought to distribute mankind also into eight types, to each of which he ascribed a separate origin, corresponding with the type of fauna with which each is associated. But even Agassiz could not deny that men are, despite their eightfold separate creation, all of one kind: he could not erect specific differences between the several types of man.²³ The evidence which compelled him to recognize the oneness of man in kind remains in its full validity, after advancing knowledge of the animal kingdom and its geographical distribution²⁴ has rendered Agassiz's assumption of eight centers of origination (not merely distribution) a violent hypothesis; and the entrance into the field of the evolutionary hypothesis has consigned all theories formed without reference to it to oblivion. Even some early evolutionists, it is true, played for a time with theories of multiplex times and places where similar lines of development culminated alike in man (Haeckel, Schaffhausen, Caspari, Vogt, Büchner), and perhaps there is now some sign of the revival of this view; but it is now agreed with practical unanimity that the unity of the human race, in the sense of its common origin, is a necessary corollary of the evolutionary hypothesis, and no voice raised in contradiction of it stands much chance to be heard.²⁵ 

It is, however, only for its universal allowance at the hands of speculative science that the fact of the unity of the human race has to thank the evolutionary hypothesis. The evidence by which it is solidly established is of course independent of all such hypotheses. This evidence is drawn almost equally from every department of human manifestation, physiological, psychological, philological, and even historical. The physiological unity of the race is illustrated by the nice gradations by which the several so-called races into which it is divided pass into one another; and by their undiminished natural fertility when intercrossed; by which Professor Owen was led to remark that "man forms one species, and . . . differences are but indicative of varieties" which "merge into each other by easy gradations."26 It is emphasized by the contrast which exists between the structural characteristics, osteological, cranial, dental, common to the entire race of human beings of every variety and those of the nearest animal types; which led Professor Huxley to assert that "every bone of a Gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished from the corresponding bones of a Man; and that, in the present creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges over the gap between Homo and Troglodytes."27 The psychological unity of the race is still more manifest. All men of all varieties are psychologically men and prove themselves possessors of the same mental nature and furniture. Under the same influences they function mentally and spiritually in the same fashion, and prove capable of the same mental reactions. They, they all, and they alone, in the whole realm of animal existences manifest themselves as rational and moral natures; so that Mr. Fiske was fully justified when he declared that though for zoölogical man the erection of a distinct family from the chimpanzee and orang might suffice, "on the other hand, for psychological man you must erect a distinct kingdom; nay, you must even dichotomize the universe, putting Man on one side and all things else on the other."28 Among the manifestations of the psychological peculiarities of mankind, as distinguished from all other animate existences, is the great gift of speech which he shares with no other being: if all human languages cannot be reduced to a single root, they all exhibit a uniquely human faculty working under similar laws, and bear the most striking testimony to the unity of the race which alone has language at its command. The possession of common traditions by numerous widely separated peoples is only a single one of many indications of a historical intercommunion between the several peoples through which their essential unity is evinced, and by which the Biblical account of the origination of the various families of man in a single center from which they have spread out in all directions is powerfully supported.²⁹

The assertion of the unity of the human race is imbedded in the very structure of the Biblical narrative. The Biblical account of the origin of man (Gen. i. 26-28) is an account of his origination in a single pair, who constituted humanity in its germ, and from whose fruitfulness and multiplication all the earth has been replenished. Therefore the first man was called Adam, Man, and the first woman, Eve, "because she was the mother of all living" (Gen. iii. 20); and all men are currently spoken of as the "sons of Adam" or "Man" (Deut. xxxii. 8; Ps. xi. 4; I Sam. xxvi. 19; I Kings viii. 39; Ps. cxlv. 12; etc.). The absolute restriction of the human race within the descendants of this single pair is emphasized by the history of the Flood in which all flesh is destroyed, and the race given a new beginning in its second father, Noah, by whose descendants again "the whole earth was overspread" (Gen. ix. 19), as is illustrated in detail by the table of nations recorded in Genesis x. A profound religious-ethical significance is given to the differentiations of the peoples, in the story of the tower of Babel in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, in which the divergences and separations which divide mankind are represented as the product of sin: what God had joined together men themselves pulled asunder. Throughout the Scriptures therefore all mankind is treated as, from the divine point of view, a unit, and shares not only in a common nature but in a common sinfulness, not only in a common need but in a common redemption. 

Accordingly, although Israel was taught to glory in its exaltation by the choice of the Lord to be His peculiar people, Israel was not permitted to believe there was anything in itself which differentiated it from other peoples; and by the laws concerning aliens and slaves was required to recognize the common humanity of all sorts and conditions of men; what they had to distinguish them from others was not of nature but of the free gift of God, in the mysterious working out of His purpose of good not only to Israel but to the whole world. This universalism in the divine purposes of mercy, already inherent in the Old Covenant and often proclaimed in it, and made the very keynote of the New - for which the Old was the preparation - is the most emphatic possible assertion of the unity of the race. Accordingly, not only do we find our Lord Himself setting His seal upon the origination of the race in a single pair, and drawing from that fact the law of life for men at large (Matt. xix. 4); and Paul explicitly declaring that "God has made of one every nation of men" and having for His own good ends appointed to each its separate habitation, is now dealing with them all alike in offering them a common salvation (Acts xvii. 26 ff.); but the whole New Testament is instinct with the brotherhood of mankind as one in origin and in nature, one in need and one in the provision of redemption. The fact of racial sin is basal to the whole Pauline system (Rom, v. 12 ff.; I Cor. xv. 21 f.), and beneath the fact of racial sin lies the fact of racial unity. It is only because all men were in Adam as their first head that all men share in Adam's sin and with his sin in his punishment. And it is only because the sin of man is thus one in origin and therefore of the same nature and quality, that the redemption which is suitable and may be made available for one is equally suitable and may be made available for all. It is because the race is one and its need one, Jew and Gentile are alike under sin, that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in the matter of salvation either, but as the same God is Lord of all, so He is rich in Christ Jesus unto all that call upon Him, and will justify the uncircumcision through faith alone, even as He justifies the circumcision only by faith (Rom. ix. 22-24, 28 ff.; x. 12). Jesus Christ therefore, as the last Adam, is the Saviour not of the Jews only but of the world (John iv. 42; I Tim. iv. 10; I John iv. 14), having been given to this His great work only by the love of the Father for the world (John iii. 16). The unity of the human race is therefore made in Scripture not merely the basis of a demand that we shall recognize the dignity of humanity in all its representatives, of however lowly estate or family, since all bear alike the image of God in which man was created and the image of God is deeper than sin and cannot be eradicated by sin (Gen. v. 3; ix. 6; I Cor. xi. 7; Heb. ii. 5 ff.); but the basis also of the entire scheme of restoration devised by the divine love for the salvation of a lost race. 

So far is it from being of no concern to theology, therefore, that it would be truer to say that the whole doctrinal structure of the Bible account of redemption is founded on its assumption that the race of man is one organic whole, and may be dealt with as such. It is because all are one in Adam that in the matter of sin there is no difference, but all have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. iii. 22 f.), and as well that in the new man there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all and in all (Col. iii. 11). The unity of the old man in Adam is the postulate of the unity of the new man in Christ.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Princeton Theological Review, ix. 1911, pp. 1-25. 

"Origin of Species," ed. 1, p. 287.

Address as President of the Geological Section of the British Association, Dover meeting, September, 1899: Science for October 13, 1899. 

Revue Mensuelle of the Paris School of Anthropology, for January 15, 1897. 

Silliman Lectures at Yale, for 1908. 

Nature, October 2, 1873, pp. 462-463; cf. "Darwinism," 1889, p. 456. 

"Theory of the Earth," ii. p. 205. 

"Relics of Primeval Life," 1897, p. 323. 

Loc. cit., p. 519.

10 Cf. the estimates of G. F. Wright, "Records of the Past," vii. 1908, p. 24. He suggests for post-Tertiary time, say 50,000 years; and adds that, even if this be doubled, there could be assigned to the post-glacial period only some 10,000 years. 

"Recent Advances in Physical Science," 1876, pp. 167-168. 

On the so-called "Planetesimal Hypothesis" of Professors Chamberlin and Moulton, which does not presuppose a molten sun and earth, these calculations which proceed on the basis of the "cooling-globe hypothesis" are of course without validity. And in recent years a somewhat despairing appeal has been made to the behavior of radium to suggest that all calculations based on rate of waste are valueless. 

Cf. especially articles in the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1903 (lx. pp. 572-582). 

American Geologist, September, 1902, p. 193. 

"The Glacial Geology of New Jersey" (Volume V of the Final Report of the State Geologist), 1902, p. 194. 

Cf. V. L. Kellogg, "Darwinism To-day," 1907; R. Otto, "Naturalism and Religion," 1907; E. Wasmann, "Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklungstheorie," ed. 3, 1906; James Orr, "God's Image in Man," 1905; E. Dennert, "Vom Sterbelager des Darwinismus," 1903. 

That "orthogenesis" is a fact is much more widely recognized than is the validity of Eimer's special mode of accounting for it. 

The recognition of the reality of these saltations - or "mutations," as De Vries inadequately terms them - is again largely independent of any particular theory with reference to them. 

Cf. Hubrecht in De Gids for June, 1896; Otto, "Naturalism and Religion," 1907, p. 110; Orr, "God's Image in Man," 1905, p. 134. E. D. Cope, "The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution," 1896, thinks there is evidence enough to constitute two species of the genus homo - Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, to the latter of which he assigns a greater number of simian characteristics than exist in any of the known races of the Homo sapiens. But he requires to add (p. 170): "There is still, to use the language of Fraipont and Lohest, 'an abyss' between the man of Spy and the highest ape" - although, on his own account he adds, surely unwarrantably, "though, from a zoological point of view, it is not a wide one." In point of fact the earliest relics of man are relics of men, with all that is included in that, and there lies between them and all other known beings a hitherto unbridged "abyss." 

20 Cf. H. Bavinck, "The Philosophy of Revelation," 1909, pp. 137ff.

"O-kee-pa," London, 1867: he referred the North American Indians to an antediluvian species, which he called Anthropus Americanus.

"Preadamites," Chicago, 1880.

Similarly Heinrich Schurtz, while leaving the descent of men from a single pair an open question, affirms that it is a fact that "humanity forms one great unity."

It was Wallace's "Geographical Distribution of Animals" which struck the first crushing blow.

Klaatsch wishes to postulate two distinct stems for man (now mingled together): see on his views, Keith in Nature, December 15, 1910.

E. Burgess, "What is Truth? An Enquiry concerning the Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race," Boston [1871], p. 185.

"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," 1864, p. 104.

"Through Nature to God," 1899, p. 82.

Cf. the discussion in the seventh lecture of Bavinck's "Philosophy of Revelation," 1909.

On the Biblical Notion of Renewal¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The terms "renew," "renewing," are not of frequent occurrence in our English Bible. In the New Testament they do not occur at all in the Gospels, but only in the Epistles (Paul and Hebrews), where they stand, respectively, for the Greek terms avnakaino,w (II Cor. iv. 16, Col. iii. 10) with its cognates, avnakaini,zw (Heb. vi. 6) avnaneo,omai (Eph. iv. 23), and avnakai,nwsij (Rom. xii. 2, Tit. iii. 5). If we leave to one side II Cor. iv. 16 and Heb. vi. 6, which are of somewhat doubtful interpretation, it becomes at once evident that a definite theological conception is embodied in these terms. This conception is that salvation in Christ involves a radical and complete transformation wrought in the soul (Rom. xii. 2, Eph. iv. 23) by God the Holy Spirit (Tit. iii. 5, Eph. iv. 24), by virtue of which we become "new men" (Eph. iv. 24, Col. iii. 10), no longer conformed to this world (Rom. xii. 2, Eph. iv. 22, Col. iii. 9), but in knowledge and holiness of the truth created after the image of God (Eph. iv. 24, Col. iii. 10, Rom. xii. 2). The conception, it will be seen, is a wide one, inclusive of all that is comprehended in what we now technically speak of as regeneration, renovation and sanctification. It embraces, in fact, the entire subjective side of salvation, which it represents as a work of God, issuing in a wholly new creation (II Cor. v. 17, Gal. vi. 15, Eph. ii. 10). What is indicated is, therefore, the need of such a subjective salvation by sinful man, and the provision for this need made in Christ (Eph. iv. 20, Col. iii. 11, Tit. iii. 6). 

The absence of the terms in question from the Gospels does not in the least argue the absence from the teaching of the Gospels of the thing expressed by them. This thing is so of the essence of the religion of revelation that it could not be absent from any stage of its proclamation. That it should be absent would require that sin should be conceived to have wrought no subjective injury to man, so that he would need for his recovery from sin only an objective cancelling of his guilt and reinstatement in the favor of God. This is certainly not the conception of the Scriptures in any of their parts. It is uniformly taught in Scripture that by his sin man has not merely incurred the divine condemnation but also corrupted his own heart; that sin, in other words, is not merely guilt but depravity: and that there is needed for man's recovery from sin, therefore, not merely atonement but renewal; that salvation, that is to say, consists not merely in pardon but in purification. Great as is the stress laid in the Scriptures on the forgiveness of sins as the root of salvation, no less stress is laid throughout the Scriptures on the cleansing of the heart as the fruit of salvation. Nowhere is the sinner permitted to rest satisfied with pardon as the end of salvation; everywhere he is made poignantly to feel that salvation is realized only in a clean heart and a right spirit. 

In the Old Testament, for example, sin is not set forth in its origin as a purely objective act with no subjective effects, or in its manifestation as a series of purely objective acts out of all relation to the subjective condition. On the contrary, the sin of our first parents is represented as no less corrupting than inculpating; shame is as immediate a fruit of it as fear (Gen. iii. 7). And, on the principle that no clean thing can come out of what is unclean (Job xiv. 4), all that are born of woman are declared "abominable and corrupt," to whose nature iniquity alone is attractive (Job xv. 14-16). Accordingly, to become sinful, men do not wait until the age of accountable action arrives. Rather, they are apostate from the womb, and as soon as they are born go astray, speaking lies (Ps. lviii. 3): they are even shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin (Ps. li. 5). The propensity (rc,yE) of their heart is evil from their youth (Gen. viii. 21), and it is out of the heart that all the issues of life proceed (Prov. iv. 23, xx. 11). Acts of sin are therefore but the expression of the natural heart, which is deceitful above all things and desperately sick (Jer. xvii. 9). The only hope of an amendment of the life, lies accordingly in a change of heart; and this change of heart is the desire of God for His people (Deut. v. 29) and the passionate longing of the saints for themselves (Ps. li. 10). It is, indeed, wholly beyond man's own power to achieve it. As well might the Ethiopian hope to change his skin and the leopard his spots as he who is wonted to evil to correct his ways (Jer. xiii. 23); and when it is a matter of cleansing not of hands but of heart - who can declare that he has made his heart clean and is pure from sin (Prov. xx. 9)? Men may be exhorted to circumcise their hearts (Deut. x. 16, Jer. iv. 4), and to make themselves new hearts and new spirits (Ezek. xviii. 31); but the background of such appeals is rather the promise of God than the ability of man (Deut. v. 29, Ezek. xi. 19, cf. Keil in loc.). It is God alone who can "turn" a man "a new heart" (I Sam. x. 9), and the cry of the saint who has come to understand what his sin means, and therefore what cleansing from it involves, is ever, "Create (ar'B') in me a new heart, O God, and renew (vd;j') a steadfast spirit within me " (Ps. li. 10[12]). The express warrant for so great a prayer is afforded by the promise of God who, knowing the incapacity of the flesh, has Himself engaged to perfect His people. He will circumcise their hearts, that they may love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul; and so may live (Deut. xxx. 6). He will give them a heart to know Him that He is the Lord; that so they may really be His people and He their God (Jer. xxiv. 7). He will put His law in their inward parts and write it in their heart so that all shall know Him (Jer. xxxi. 33, cf. xxxii. 39). He will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in His statutes and keep his ordinances and do them, and so be His people and He their God (Ezek. xi. 19). He will give them a new heart and take away the stony heart out of their flesh; and put His Spirit within them and cause them to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments and do them: that so they may be His people and He their God (Ezek. xxxvi. 26, cf. xxxvii. 14). Thus the expectation of a new heart was made a substantial part of the Messianic promise, in which was embodied the whole hope of Israel. 

It does not seem open to doubt that in these great declarations we have the proclamation of man's need of "renewal" and of the divine provision for it as an essential element in salvation.² We must not be misled by the emphasis placed in the Old Testament on the forgiveness of sins as the constitutive fact of salvation, into explaining away all allusions to the cleansing of the heart as but figurative expressions for pardon. Pardon is no doubt frequently set forth under the figure or symbol of washing or cleansing: but expressions such as those which have been adduced go beyond this. When, then, it is suggested³ that Psalm li, for example, "contains only a single prayer, namely, that for forgiveness"; and that "the cry, 'Create in me a clean heart' is not a prayer for what we call renewal" but only for "forgiving grace," we cannot help thinking the contention an extravagance, - an extravagance, moreover, out of keeping with its author's language elsewhere, and indeed in this very context where he speaks quite simply of the pollution as well as the guilt of sin as included in the scope of the confession made in this psalm.⁴ The word "create" is a strong one and appears to invoke from God the exertion of His almighty power for the production of a new subjective state of things: and it does not seem easy to confine the word "heart" to the signification "conscience" as if the prayer were merely that the conscience might be relieved from its sense of guilt. Moreover, the parallel clause, "Renew a steadfast spirit within me," does not readily lend itself to the purely objective interpretation.⁵ That the transformation of the heart promised in the great prophetic passages must also mean more than the production of a clear conscience, is equally undeniable and indeed is not denied. When Jeremiah (xxxi. 31-33), for example, represents God as declaring that what shall characterize the New Covenant which He will make with the House of Israel, is that He will put His law in the inward parts of His people and write it in their hearts, he surely means to say that God promises to work a subjective effect in the hearts of Israel, by virtue of which their very instincts and most intimate impulses shall be on the side of the law, obedience to which shall therefore be but the spontaneous expression of their own natures.⁶ 

It is equally important to guard against lowering the conception of the Divine holiness in the Old Testament until the demand of God that His people shall be holy as He is holy,⁷ and the provisions of His Grace to make them holy by an inner creative act, are robbed of more or less of their deeper ethical meaning. Here, too, some recent writers are at fault, speaking at times almost as if holiness in God were merely a sort of fastidiousness, over against which is set not so much all sin as uncleanness, as all uncleanness, as in this sense sin.⁸ The idea is that what this somewhat squeamish God did not find agreeable those who served Him would discover it well to avoid; rather than that all sin is necessarily abominable to the holy God and He will not abide it in His servants. This lowered view is sometimes even pushed to the extreme of suggesting⁹ that "it is nowhere intimated that there is any danger to the sinner because of his uncleanness;" if he is "cut off" that is solely on account of his disobedience in not cleansing himself, not on account of the uncleanness itself. The extremity of this contention is its sufficient refutation. When the sage declares that no one can say "I have made my heart clean, I am pure from sin" (Prov. xx. 9), he clearly means to intimate that an unclean heart is itself sinful. The Psalmist in bewailing his inborn sinfulness and expressing his longing for truth in the inward parts and wisdom in the hidden parts, certainly conceived his unclean heart as properly sinful in the sight of God (Ps. li). The prophet abject before the holy God (Isa. vi) beyond question looked upon his uncleanness as itself iniquity requiring to be taken away by expiatory purging. It would seem unquestionable that throughout the Old Testament the uncleanness which is offensive to Jehovah is sin considered as pollution, and that salvation from sin involves therefore a process of purification as well as expiation. 

The agent by whom the cleansing of the heart is effected is in the Old Testament uniformly represented as God Himself, or, rarely, more specifically as the Spirit of God, which is the Old Testament name for God in His effective activity. It has, indeed, been denied that the Spirit of God is ever regarded in the Old Testament as the worker of holiness.¹⁰ But this extreme position cannot be maintained.¹¹ It is true enough that the Spirit of God comes before us in the Old Testament chiefly as the Theocratic Spirit endowing men as servants of the Kingdom, and after that as the Cosmical Spirit, the principle of all world-processes; and only occasionally as the creator of new ethical life in the individual soul.¹² But it can scarcely be doubted that in Ps. li. 11 [13] God's Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God's holiness, is conceived in that precise manner, and the same is true of Psalm cxliii. 10 (cf. Isa. lxiii. 10, 11 and see Gen. vi. 3, Neh. ix. 20, I Sam. x. 6, 9).¹³ It is chiefly, however, in promises of the future that this aspect of the Spirit's work is dwelt upon.¹⁴ The recreative activity of the Spirit of God is even made the crowning Messianic blessing (Isa. xxxii. 15, xxxiv. 16, xliv. 3, on the latter of which see Giesebrecht, "Die Berufsbegabung," etc., p. 144, lix. 21, Ezek. xi. 19, xviii. 31, xxxvi. 27, xxxvii. 14, xxxix. 29, Zech. xii. 10) ; and this is as much as to say that the promised Messianic salvation included in it provision for the renewal of men's hearts as well as for the expiation of their guilt.¹⁵ 

It would be distinctly a retrogression from the Old Testament standpoint, therefore, if our Lord - Himself, in accordance with Old Testament prophecy (e. g., Isa. xi. l, xlii.l, lxi.1), endowed with the Spirit (Mt. iii. 16, iv. 1, xii. 18, 28, Mk. i. 10, 12, Lk. iii. 22, iv. 1, 14, 18, x. 21, Jno. i. 32, 33) above measure (Jno. iii. 34)¹⁶ - had neglected the Messianic promise of spiritual renewal. In point of fact, He began His ministry as the dispenser of the Spirit (Mt. iii. 11, Mk. i. 8, Lk. iii. 16, Jno. i. 33). And the purpose for which He dispensed the Spirit is unmistakably represented as the cleansing of the heart. The distinction of Jesus is, indeed, made to lie precisely in this, - that whereas John could baptise only with water, Jesus baptised with the Holy Spirit: the repentance which was symbolized by the one was wrought by the other. And this repentance (meta,noia) was no mere vain regret for an ill-spent past (metame,leia), or surface modification of conduct, but a radical transformation of the mind which issues indeed in "fruits worthy of repentance" (Lk. iii. 8) but itself consists in an inward reversal of mental attitude. 

There is little subsequent reference in the Synoptic Gospels, to be sure, to the Holy Spirit as the renovator of hearts. It is made clear, indeed, that He is the best of gifts and that the Father will not withhold Him from those that ask Him (Lk. xi. 13), and that He abides in the followers of Jesus and works in and through them (Mt. x. 20, Mk. xiii. 11, Lk. xii. 12); and it is made equally clear that He is the very principle of holiness, so that to confuse His activity with that of unclean spirits argues absolute perversion (Mt. xii. 31, Mk. iii. 29, Lk. xii. 10). But these two things do not happen to be brought together in these Gospels.¹⁷ 

In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, the testimony of the Baptist is followed up by the record of the searching conversation of our Lord with Nicodemus, in which Nicodemus is rebuked for not knowing - though "the teacher of Israel" - that the Kingdom of God is not for the children of the flesh but only for the children of the Spirit (cf. Mt. iii. 9). Nicodemus had come to our Lord as to a teacher, widely recognized as having a mission from God. Jesus repels this approach as falling far below recognizing Him for what He really was and for what he had really come to do. As a divinely sent teacher He solemnly assures Nicodemus that something much more effective than teaching is needed: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew he cannot see the Kingdom of God" (iii. 3). And then, when Nicodemus, oppressed by the sense of the profundity of the change which must indeed be wrought in man if he is to be fitted for the Kingdom of God, despairingly inquires "How can this be?" our Lord explains equally solemnly that it is only by a sovereign, recreating work of the Holy Spirit, that so great an effect can be wrought: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God" (iii. 5). Nor, he adds, ought such a declaration to cause surprise: what is born of the flesh can be nothing but flesh; only what is born of the Spirit is spirit. He closes the discussion with a reference to the sovereignty of the action of the Spirit in regenerating men: as with the wind which blows where it lists, we know nothing of the Spirit's coming except Lo, it is here! (iii. 8). About the phrase, "Born of water and the Spirit" much debate has been had; and various explanations of it have been offered. The one thing which seems certain is that there can be no reference to an external act, performed by men, of their own will: for in that case the product would not be spirit but flesh, neither would it come without observation. Is it fanciful to see here a reference back to the Baptist's, "I indeed baptise with water; He baptises with the Holy Spirit"? The meaning then would be that entrance into the Kingdom of God requires, if we cannot quite say not only repentance but also regeneration, yet at least we may say both repentance and regeneration. In any event it is very pungently taught here that the precondition of entrance into the Kingdom of God is a radical transformation wrought by the Spirit of God Himself.¹⁸ 

Beyond this fundamental passage there is little said in John's Gospel of the renovating activities of the Spirit. The communication of the Spirit of xx. 22 seems to be an official endowment; and although in vii. 39 the allusion appears to be to the gift of the Spirit to believers at large, the stress seems to fall rather on the blessing they bring to others by virtue of this endowment, than on that they receive themselves. There remains only the great promise of the Paraclete. It would probably be impossible to attribute more depth or breadth of meaning than rightfully belongs to them, to the passages which embody this promise (xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7, 13). But the emphasis appears to be laid in them upon the illuminating (cf. also Lk. i. 15, 41, 67, ii. 25, 26; Mt. xxii. 43) more than upon the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, although assuredly the latter are not wholly absent (xvi. 7-11). 

Elsewhere in John, although apart from any specific reference to the Spirit as the agent, repeated expression is given to the fundamental conception of renewal. Men lie dead in their sins and require to be raised from the dead if they are to live (xi. 25, 26); it is the prerogative of the Son to quicken whom He will (v. 21); it is impossible for men to come to the Son, unless they be drawn by the Father (vi. 44); being in the Son it is only of the Father that they can bear fruit (xv. 1). Similarly in the Synoptics there is lacking nothing to this teaching, except the specific reference of the effects to the Holy Spirit. What is required of men is nothing less than perfection even as the heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. v. 48 - the New Testament form of the Old Testament "Ye shall be holy for I am holy, Jehovah your God," Lev. xix. 2). And this perfection is not a matter of external conduct but of internal disposition. One of the objects of the "Sermon on the Mount" is to deepen the conception of righteousness and to carry back both sin and righteousness into the heart itself (Mt. v. 20). Accordingly, the external righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is pronounced just no righteousness at all; it is the cleansing merely of the outside of the cup and of the platter (Mt. xxiii. 25), and they are therefore but as whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful but inwardly are full of dead men's bones (Mt. xxiii. 27, 28). True cleansing must begin from within; and this inward cleansing will cleanse the outside also (Mt. xxiii. 26, xv. 11). The fundamental principle is that every tree brings forth fruit according to its nature, whether good or bad; and therefore the tree must be made good and its fruit good, or else the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt (Mt. vii. 17, xii. 33, xv. 11, Mk. vii. 15, Lk. vi. 43, xi. 34). So invariable and all-inclusive is this principle in its working, that it applies even to the idle words which men speak, by which they may therefore be justly judged: none that are evil can speak good things, "for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaketh" (Mt. xii. 34). Half-measures are therefore unavailing (Mt. vi. 21) ; a radical change alone will suffice - no mere patching of the new on the old, no pouring of new wine into old bottles (Mt. ix. 16, 17, Mk. ii. 21, 22, Lk. v. 36, 39). He who has not a wedding-garment - the gift of the host - even though he be called shall not be chosen (Mt. xxii. 11, 12). 

Accordingly when - in the Synoptic parallel to the conversation with Nicodemus - the rich young ruler came to Jesus with his heart set on purchase (as a rich man's heart is apt to be set), pleading his morality, Jesus repelled him and took occasion to pronounce upon not the difficulty only but the impossibility of entrance into the Kingdom of heaven on such terms (Mt. xix. 23, Mk. x. 23, Lk. xviii. 24). The possibility of salvation, He explains, just because it involves something far deeper than this, rests in the hands of God alone (Mt. xix. 26, Mk. x. 27, Lk. xviii. 27). Man himself brings nothing to it; the Kingdom is received in naked helplessness (Mt. xix. 21||). It is not without significance that, in all the Synoptics, the conversation with the rich young ruler is made to follow immediately upon the incident of the blessing of the little children (Mt. xix. 13 ||). When our Lord says, with reference to these children (they were mere babies, Lk. xviii. 15),¹⁹ that, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," he means just to say that the kingdom of heaven is never purchased by any quality whatever, to say nothing now of deed: whosoever enters it enters it as a child enters the world, - he is born into it by the power of God. In these two incidents, of the child set in the midst and of the rich young ruler, we have, in effect, acted parables of the new birth; they exhibit to us how men enter the kingdom and set the declaration made to Nicodemus (Jno. iii. 1 sq.) before us in vivid object-lesson. And if the kingdom can be entered thus only in nakedness as a child comes into the world, all stand before it in like case and it can come only to those selected therefor by God Himself: where none have a claim upon it the law of its bestowment can only be the Divine will (Mt. xi. 27, xx. 15).²⁰ 

The broad treatment characteristic of the Gospels only partly gives way as we pass to the Epistles. Discriminations of aspects and stages, however, begin to become evident; and with the increased material before us we easily perceive lines of demarcation which perhaps we should not have noted with the Gospels only in view. In particular we observe two groups of terms standing over against one another, describing, respectively, from the manward and from the Godward side, the great change experienced by him who is translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God's love (Col. i. 13). And within the limits of each of these groups, we observe also certain distinctions in the usage of the several terms which make it up. In the one group are such terms as metanoei/n with its substantive meta,noia, and its cognate metame,lesqai, and evpistre,fein and its substantive evpistrofh,. These tell us what part man takes in the change. The other group includes such terms as gennhqh/nai e;nwqen or evk tou/ qeou/ or evk tou/ pneu,matoj( palingenesi,a( avnagenna?n( avpokuei/sqai( ananeou/sqai, avnakainou/sqai( avnakai,nwsij. These tell what part God takes in the change. Man repents, makes amendment, and turns to God. But it is by God that men are renewed, brought forth, born again into newness of life. The transformation which to human vision manifests itself as a change of life (evpistrofh,) resting upon a radical change of mind (meta,noia), to Him who searches the heart and understands all the movements of the human soul is known to be a creation (kti,zein) of God, beginning in a new birth from the Spirit (gennhqh/nai a;nwqen evk tou/ pneu,matoj) and issuing in a new divine product (poi,hma), created in Christ Jesus, into good works prepared by God beforehand that they may be walked in (Eph. ii. 10). 

There is certainly synergism here; but it is a synergism of such character that not only is the initiative taken by God (for "all things are of God," II Cor. v. 18, cf. Heb. vi. 6), but the Divine action is in the exceeding greatness of God's power, according to the working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead (Eph. i. 19). The "new man" which is the result of this change is therefore one who can be described no otherwise than as "created" (ktisqe,nta) in righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph. iv. 24), after the image of God significantly described as "He who created him" (tou/ kti,santoj auvto,n, Col. iii. 10), - that is not He who made him a man, but He who has made him by an equally creative efflux of power this new man which he has become.²¹ The exhortation that we shall "put on" this new man (Eph. iv. 24, cf. iii. 9, 10), therefore does not imply that either the initiation or the completion of the process by which the "new creation" (kainh. kti,sij; II Cor. v. 17, Gal. vi. 15) is wrought lies in our own power; but only urges us to that diligent cooperation with God in the work of our salvation, to which He calls us in all departments of life (I Cor. iii. 9), and the classical expression of which in this particular department is found in the great exhortation of Phil. ii. 12, 13 where we are encouraged to work out our own salvation thoroughly to the end, with fear and trembling, on the express ground that it is God who works in us both the willing and doing for His good pleasure. The express inclusion of "renewal" in the exhortation (Eph. iv. 23 avnaneou/sqai; Rom. xii. metamorfou/sqe th|/ avnakainw,sei) is indication enough that this "renewal" is a process wide enough to include in itself the whole synergistic "working out" of salvation (katerga,zesqe, Phil. ii. 12). But it has no tendency to throw doubt upon the underlying fact that this "working out" is both set in motion (to. qe,lein) and given effect (to. evnergei/n), only by the energizing of God (o[ evnergw/n evn u`mi/n), so that all (ta. pa,nta) is from God (evk tou/ qeou/, II Cor. v. 18). Its effect is merely to bring "renewal" (avnakai,nwsij) into close parallelism with "repentance" (meta,noia) - which itself is a gift of God (II Tim. ii. 25, cf. Acts v. 31, xi. 18) as well as a work of man - as two names for the same great transaction, viewed now from the Divine, and now from the human point of sight. 

It will not be without interest to observe the development of metanoei/n( meta,noia into the technical term to denote the great change by which man passes from death in sin into life in Christ.²² Among the heathen writers, the two terms metame,lesqai( metame,leia and metanoei/n, meta,noia, although no doubt affected in their coloring by their differing etymological suggestions, and although metanoei/n, meta,noia seems always to have been the nobler term, were practically synonymous. Both were used of the dissatisfaction which is felt in reviewing an unworthy deed; both of the amendment which may grow out of this dissatisfaction. Something of this undiscriminating usage extends into the New Testament. In the only three instances in which metame,lesqai occurs in the Gospels (Mt. xxi. 29, 32, xxvii. 3, cf. Heb. vii. 21 from Old Testament), it is used of a repentance which issued in the amended act; while in Lk. xvii. 3, 4 (but there only) metanoei/n may very well be understood of a repentance which expended itself in regret. Elsewhere in the New Testament metame,lesqai is used in a single instance only (except Heb. vii. 21 from Old Testament) and then it is brought into contrast with meta,noia as the emotion of regret is contrasted with a revolution of mind (II Cor. vii. 8 sq.). The Apostle had grieved the Corinthians with a letter and had regretted it (metemelo,mhn); he had, however, ceased to regret it (metame,lomai), because he had come to perceive that their grief had led the Corinthians to repent of their sin (meta,noia), and certainly the salvation to which such a repentance tends is not to be regretted (avmetame,lhton). Here metame,lesqai is the painful review of the past; but so little is meta,noia this, that it is presented as a result of sorrow, - a total revolution of mind traced by the Apostle through the several stages of its formation in a delicate analysis remarkable for its insight into the working of a human soul under the influence of a strong revulsion (verse 11). Its roots were planted in godly sorrow, its issue was amendment of life, its essence consisted in a radical change of mind and heart towards sin. In this particular instance it was a particular sin which was in view; and in heathen writers the word is commonly employed of a specific repentance of a specific fault. In the New Testament this, however, is the rarer usage.²³ Here it prevailingly stands for that fundamental change of mind by which the back is turned not upon one sin or some sins, but upon all sin, and the face definitely turned to God and to His service, - of which therefore a transformed life (evpistrofh,) is the outworking.²⁴ It is not itself this transformed life, into which it issues, any more than it is the painful regret out of which it issues. No doubt, it may spread its skirts so widely as to include on this side the sorrow for sin and on that the amendment of life; but what it precisely is, and what in all cases it emphasises, is the inner change of mind which regret induces and which itself induces a reformed life. Godly sorrow works repentance (II Cor. vii. 10) : when we "turn" to God we are doing works worthy of repentance (Acts iii. 19, xxvi. 20, cf. Lk. iii. 8). 

It is in this, its deepest and broadest sense, that meta,noia corresponds from the human side to what from the divine point of sight is called avnakai,nwsij; or, rather, to be more precise, that meta,noia is the psychological manifestation of avnakai,nwsij. This "renewal" (avnakainou/sqai( avnakai,nwsij( avnaneou/sqai) is the broad term of its own group. It may be, to be sure, that palingenesi,a should take its place by its side in this respect. In one of the only two passages in which it occurs in the New Testament (Mt. xix. 28) it refers to the repristination not of the individual, but of the universe, which is to take place at "the end": and this usage tends to stamp upon the word the broad sense of a complete and thoroughgoing restoration. If in Tit. iii. 5 it is applied to the individual in such a broad sense, it would be closely coextensive in meaning with the avnakai,nwsij by the side of which it stands in that passage, and would differ from it only as a highly figurative differs from a more literal expression of the same idea.²⁵ Our salvation, the Apostle would in that case say, is not an attainment of our own, but is wrought by God in His great mercy, by means of a regenerating washing, to wit, a renewal by the Holy Spirit. 

The difficulty we experience in confidently determining the scope of palingenesi,a, arising from lack of a sufficiently copious usage to form the basis of our induction, attends us also with the other terms of its class. Nevertheless it seems tolerably clear that over against the broader "renewal "expressed by avnakainou/sqai and its cognates and perhaps also by palingenesi,a, avnagenna/n (I Pet. i. 23) and with it, its synonym avpokuei/sqai (James i. 18) are of narrower connotation. We have, says Peter, in God's great mercy been rebegotten, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by means of the Word of the living and abiding God. It is in accordance with His own determination, says James, that we have been brought forth by the Father of Lights, from whom every good gift and every perfect boon comes, by means of the Word of truth. We have here an effect, the efficient agent in working which is God in His unbounded mercy, while the instrument by means of which it is wrought is "the word of good-tidings which has been preached" to us, that is to say, briefly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The issue is, equally briefly, just salvation. This salvation is characteristically described by Peter as awaiting its consummation in the future, while yet it is entered upon here and now not only (verse 4 sq.) as a "living hope" which shall not be put to shame (because it is reserved in heaven for us, and we meanwhile are guarded through faith for it by the power of God), but also in an accordant life of purity as children of obedience who would fain be like their Father and as He is holy be also ourselves holy in all manner of living. James intimates that those who have been thus brought forth by the will of God may justly be called "first fruits of His creatures," where the reference assuredly is not to the first but to the second creation, that is to say, they who have already been brought forth by the word of truth are themselves the product of God's creative energy and are the promise of the completed new creation when all that is shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Rom. viii. 19 sq., Mt. xix. 28). 

The new birth thus brought before us is related to the broader idea of "renewal" (avnakai,nwsij) as the initial stage to the whole process. The conception is not far from that embodied by our old Divines in the term "effectual calling" which they explained to be "by the Word and Spirit"; it is nowadays perhaps more commonly but certainly both less Scripturally and less descriptively spoken of as "conversion." It finds its further explanation in the Scriptures accordingly not under the terms evpistre,fein( evpistrofh,, which describe to us that in which it issues, but under the terms kale,w( klh/sij²⁶ which describe to us precisely what it is. By these terms, which are practically confined to Paul and Peter, the follower of Christ is said to owe his introduction into the new life to a "call" from God - a call distinguished from the call of mere invitation (Mt. xxii. 14), as "the call according to purpose" (Rom. viii. 28), a call which cannot fail of its appropriate effect, because there works in it the very power of God. The notion of the new birth is confined even more closely still to its initial step in our Lord's discourse to Nicodemus, recorded in the opening verses of the third chapter of John's Gospel. Here the whole emphasis is thrown upon the necessity of the new birth and its provision by the Holy Spirit. No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he be born again; and this new birth is wrought by the Spirit. Its advent into the soul is unobserved; its process is inscrutable; its reality is altogether an inference from its effects. There is no question here of means. That the evx u[datoj of verse 5 is to be taken as presenting the external act of baptism as the proper means by which the effect is brought about, is, as we have already pointed out, very unlikely. The axiom announced in verse 6 that all that is born of flesh is flesh and only what is born of the Spirit is spirit seems directly to negative such an interpretation by telling us flatly that we cannot obtain a spiritual effect from a physical action. The explanation of verse 8 that like the wind, the Spirit visits whom He will and we can only observe the effect and say Lo, it is here! seems inconsistent with supposing that it always attends the act of baptism and therefore can always be controlled by the human will. The new birth appears to be brought before us in this discussion in the purity of its conception; and we are made to perceive that at the root of the whole process of "renewal" there lies an immediate act of God the Holy Spirit upon the soul by virtue of which it is that the renewed man bears the great name of Son of God. Begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (Jno. i. 13), his new life will necessarily bear the lineaments of his new parentage (I Jno. iii. 9, 10; v. 4, 18): kept by Him who was in an even higher sense still begotten of God, he overcomes the world by faith, defies the evil one (who cannot touch him), and manifests in his righteousness and love the heritage which is his (I Jno. ii. 29, iv. 7, v. 1). Undoubtedly the Spirit is active throughout the whole process of "renewal"; but it is doubtless the peculiarly immediate and radical nature of his operation at this initial point which gives to the product of His renewing activities its best right to be called a new creation (II Cor. v. 17, Gal. vi. 15), a quickening (Jno. v. 21, Eph. ii. 5), a making alive from the dead (Gal. iii. 21). 

We perceive, then, that the Scriptural phraseology lays before us, as its account of the great change which the man experiences who is translated from what the Scriptures call darkness to what they call God's marvellous light (Eph. v. 8, Col. i. 13, I Pet. ii. 9, I Jno. ii. 8) a process; and a process which has two sides. It is on the one side a change of the mind and heart, issuing in a new life. It is on the other side a renewing from on high issuing in a new creation. But the initiative is taken by God: man is renewed unto repentance: he does not repent that he may be renewed (cf. Heb. vi. 6). He can work out his salvation with fear and trembling only because God works in him both the willing and the doing. At the basis of all there lies an enabling act from God, by virtue of which alone the spiritual activities of man are liberated for their work (Rom. vi. 22, viii. 2). From that moment of the first divine contact the work of the Spirit never ceases: while man is changing his mind and reforming his life, it is ever God who is renewing him in true righteousness. Considered from man's side the new dispositions of mind and heart manifest themselves in a new course of life. Considered from God's side the renewal of the Holy Spirit results in the production of a new creature, God's workmanship, with new activities newly directed. We obtain thus a regular series. At the root of all lies an act seen by God alone, and mediated by nothing, a direct creative act of the Spirit, the new birth. This new birth pushes itself into man's own consciousness through the call of the Word, responded to under the persuasive movements of the Spirit; his conscious possession of it is thus mediated by the Word. It becomes visible to his fellow-men only in a turning to God in external obedience, under the constant leading of the indwelling Spirit (Rom. viii. 14). A man must be born again by the Spirit to become God's son. He must be born again by the Spirit and Word to become consciously God's son. He must manifest his new spiritual life in Spirit-led activities accordant with the new heart which he has received and which is ever renewed afresh by the Spirit, to be recognized by his fellow-men as God's son. It is the entirety of this process, viewed as the work of God on the soul, which the Scriptures designate "renewal." 

It must not be supposed that it is only in these semi-technical terms, however, that the process of "renewal" is spoken of in the Epistles of the New Testament any more than in the Gospels. There is, on the contrary, the richest and most varied employment of language, literal and figurative, to describe it in its source, or its nature, or its effects. It is sometimes suggested, for example, under the image of a change of vesture (Eph. iv. 24, Col. iii. 9, 10, cf. Gal iii. 27, Rom. xiii. 14): the old man is laid aside like soiled clothing, and the new man put on like clean raiment. Sometimes it is represented, in accordance with its nature, less figuratively, as a metamorphosis (Rom. xii. 2): by the renewing of our minds we become transformed beings, able to free ourselves from the fashion of this world and prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. Sometimes it is more searchingly set forth as to its nature as a reanimation (Jno. v. 21, Eph. ii. 4-6, Col. ii. 12, 13, Rom. vi. 3, 4): we are dead through our trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh; God raises us from this death and makes us sit in the heavenly places with Christ. Sometimes with less of figure and with more distinct reference to the method of the divine working, it is spoken of as a recreation (Eph. ii. 10, iv. 24, Col. iii. 10), and its product, therefore, as a new creature (II Cor. v. 17, Gal. vi. 15): we emerge from it as the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Sometimes with more particular reference to the nature and effects of the transaction, it is defined rather as a sanctification, a making holy (a`gia,zw, I Thess. v. 23, Rom. xv. 16, Rev. xxii. 11; a`gni,zw, I Pet. i. 22; a`giasmo,j, I Thess. iv. 3, 7, Rom. vi. 19, 22, Heb. xii. 14, II Thess. ii. 13, I Pet. i. 2; cf. Ellicott, on I Thess. iv. 3, iii. 13): and those who are the subjects of the change are, therefore, called "saints" (a[gioi, e. g., Rom. viii. 27, I Cor. vi. 1, 2, Col. i. 12). Sometimes again, with more distinct reference to its sources, it is spoken of as the "living" (Gal. ii. 20, Rom. vi. 9, 10, Eph. iii. 17) or "forming" (Gal. iv. 19, cf. Eph. iii. 17, I Cor. ii. 16, II Cor. iii. 8) of Christ in us, or more significantly (Rom. viii. 9, 10, Gal. iv. 6) as the indwelling of Christ or the Spirit in us, or with greater precision as the leading of the Spirit (Rom. viii. 14, Gal. v. 18): and its subjects are accordingly signalized as Spiritual men, that is, Spirit-determined, Spirit-led men (pneumatikoi,, I Cor. ii. 15, iii. 1, Gal. vi. 1, cf. I Pet. ii. 5), as distinguished from carnal men, that is, men under the dominance of their own weak, vicious selves (yucikoi,, I Cor. ii. 14, Jude 19, sarkikoi,, I Cor. iii. 3). None of these modes of representation more clearly define the action than the last mentioned. For the essence of the New Testament representation certainly is that the renewal which is wrought upon him who is by faith in Christ, is the work of the Spirit of Christ, who dwells within His children as a power not themselves making for righteousness, and gradually but surely transforms after the image of God, not the stream of their activities merely, but themselves in the very centre of their being. 

The process by which this great metamorphosis is accomplished is laid bare to our observation with wonderful clearness in Paul's poignant description of it, in the seventh chapter of Romans. We are there permitted to look in upon a heart into which the Spirit of God has, intruded with His transforming power. Whatever peace it may have enjoyed is broken up. All its ingrained tendencies to evil are up in arms against the intruded power for good. The force of evil habit is so great that the Apostle, in its revelation to him, is almost tempted to despair. "O wretched man that I am," he cries, "who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" Certainly not himself. None knows better than he that with man this is impossible. But he bethinks himself that the Spirit of the most high God is more powerful than even ingrained sin; and with a great revulsion of heart he turns at once to cry his thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This conflict he sees within him, he sees now to bear in it the promise and potency of victory; because it is the result of the Spirit's working within him, and where the Spirit works, there is emancipation from the law of sin and death. The process may be hard - a labor, a struggle, a fight; but the end is assured. No matter how far from perfect we yet may be, we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if the Spirit of God dwells in us; and we may take heart of faith from that circumstance to mortify the deeds of the body and to enter upon our heritage as children of God. Here in brief compass is the Apostle's whole doctrine of renewal. Without holiness we certainly shall not see the Lord: but he in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, is already potentially holy; and though we see not yet what we shall be, we know that the work that is begun within us shall be completed to the end. The very presence of strife within us is the sign of life and the promise of victory. 

The church has retained, on the whole, with very considerable constancy the essential elements of this Biblical doctrine of "renewal." In the main stream of Christian thought, at all events, there has been little tendency to neglect, much less to deny it, at least theoretically. In all accredited types of Christian teaching it is largely insisted upon that salvation consists in its substance of a radical subjective change wrought by the Holy Spirit, by virtue of which the native tendencies to evil are progressively eradicated and holy dispositions are implanted, nourished and perfected. 

The most direct contradiction which this teaching has received in the history of Christian thought was that given it by Pelagius at the opening of the fifth century. Under the stress of a one-sided doctrine of human freedom, in pursuance of which he passionately asserted the inalienable ability of the will to do all righteousness, Pelagius was led to deny the need and therefore the reality of subjective operations of God on the soul ("grace" in the inner sense) to secure its perfection; and this carried with it as its necessary presupposition the denial also of all subjective injury wrought on man by sin. The vigorous reassertion of the necessity of subjective grace by Augustine put pure Pelagianism once for all outside the pale of recognized Christian teaching; although in more or less modified or attentuated forms, it has remained as a widely spread tendency in the churches, conditioning the purity of the supernaturalism of salvation which is confessed. 

The strong emphasis laid by the Reformers upon the objective side of salvation, in the enthusiasm of their rediscovery of the fundamental doctrine of justification, left its subjective side, which was not in dispute between them and their nearest opponents, in danger of falling temporarily somewhat out of sight. From the comparative infrequency with which it was in the first stress of conflict insisted on, occasion, if not given, was at least taken, to represent that it was neglected if not denied. Already in the first generation of the Reformation movement, men of mystical tendencies like Osiander arraigned the Protestant teaching as providing only for a purely external salvation. The reproach was eminently unjust, and although it continues to be repeated up to to-day, it remains eminently unjust. Only among a few Moravian enthusiasts, and still fewer Antinomians, and, in recent times, in the case of certain of the Neo-Kohlbrüggian party, can a genuine tendency to neglect the subjective side of salvation be detected. With all the emphasis which Protestant theology lays on justification by faith as the root of salvation, it has never failed to lay equal emphasis on sanctification by the Spirit as its substance. Least of all can the Reformed theology with its distinctive insistence upon "irresistible grace" - which is the very heart of the doctrine of "renewal" - be justly charged with failure to accord its rights to the great truth of supernatural sanctification. The debate at this point does not turn on the reality or necessity of sanctification, but on the relation of sanctification to justification. In clear accord with the teaching of Scripture, Protestant theology insists that justification underlies sanctification, and not vice versa. But it has never imagined that the sinner could get along with justification alone. It has rather ever insisted that sanctification is so involved in justification that the justification cannot be real unless it be followed by santification. There has never been a time when it could not recognize the truth in and (when taken out of its somewhat compromising context) make heartily its own such an admirable statement of the state of the case as the following:27 - "However far off it may be from us or we from it, we cannot and ought not to think of our salvation as anything less than our own perfected and completed sinlessness and holiness. We may be, to the depths of our souls, grateful and happy to be sinners pardoned and forgiven by divine grace. But surely God would not have us satisfied with that as the end and substance of the salvation He gives us in His Son. Jesus Christ is the power of God in us unto salvation. It does not require an exercise of divine power to extend pardon; it does require it to endow and enable us with all the qualities, energies, and activities that make for, and that make holiness and life. See how St. Paul speaks of it when he prays, That we may know the exceeding greatness of God's power to usward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which he wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead." 

LITERATURE: - The literature of the subject is copious but also rather fragmentary. The best aid is afforded by the discussions of the terms employed in the Lexicons and of the passages which fall in review in the Commentaries: after that the appropriate sections in the larger treatises in Biblical Theology, and in the fuller Dogmatic treatises are most valuable. The articles of J. V. Bartlet in Hastings' B. D. on "Regeneration" and "Sanctification" should be consulted, - they also offer a suggestion of literature; as do also the articles, "Bekehrung," "Gnade," "Wiedergeburt" in the several editions of Herzog. There are three of the prize publications of the Hague Society which have a general bearing on the subject: G. W. Semler's and S. K. Theoden van Velzen's "Over de voortdurende Werking des H. G.," (1842) and E. I. Issel's "Der Begriff der Heiligkeit im N. T.," (1887). Augustine's Anti-Pelagian treatises are fundamental for the dogmatic treatment of the subject; and the Puritan literature is rich in searching discussions, - the most outstanding of which are possibly: Owen, "Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit" ("Works": Edinburgh, 1852, v. iii.); T. Goodwin, "The Work of the Holy Ghost in our Salvation" ("Works": Edinburgh, 1863, v. vi.); Charnock, "The Doctrine of Regeneration," Phil. 1840; Marshall, "The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification," London [1692], Edinburgh, 1815; Edwards, "The Religious Affections." Cf. also Köberle, "Sünde und Gnade im relig. Leben des Volkes Israel bis auf Christum," 1905; Vömel, "Der Begriff der Gnade im N. T.," 1903; J. Kuhn: "Die christl. Lehre der gottlichen Gnade" (Part I) 1868; A. Dieckmann, "Die christl. Lehre von der Gnade," 1901; Storr, "De Spiritus Sancti in mentibus nostris efficientia," 1779; J. P. Stricker, "Diss. Theol. de Mutatione homini secundum Jesu et App. doct. subeunda," 1845. - P. Gennrich, "Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt: die christl. Zentrallehre in dogmengeschichtlicher und religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung," 1907; and "Wiedergeburt und Heiligung mit Bezug auf die gegenwärtigen Strömungen des religiösen Lebens," 1908; H. Bavinck, "Roeping en Wedergeboorte," 1903; J. T. Marshall, art. "Regeneration" in Hastings' ERE v. x.

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, v, ix, 1911, pp. 242-267. 

"The necessity of a change of disposition for the reception of salvation is indicated (Jer. xxxi. 33, Ezek. xxxvi. 35)" - König, "Offenbarunaabegriff d.A. T.," II, p. 398, note. "Indications are not wholly lacking that some of the prophets, at least, believed man unable to make himself acceptable before God . . . It is God who cleanses the heart and life by purging away the dross (Isa. i. 25, vi. 7, Jer. xxxi. 31-34, xxxiii. 8)" - J. M. P. Smith, "Biblical Ideas of Atonement," 1909, p. 28. "Ezekiel is even so bold as to declare that we amend our lives because God gives us a new heart and a new spirit (xi. 19) "- Expository Times, Feb. 1908, p. 240).

Cf. A. B. Davidson, "Theology of the O. T.," p. 232.

P. 234; cf. in general p. 244: There is, therefore, both guilt and pollution to be removed in the realization in Israel of the life of God. Similarly Delitzsch in loc.: "the prayer for justification is followed by the prayer for renewing."

Baethgen's comment on the verse runs: "The singer knows that for the steadfastness of heart sought in verse 8, there is needed a new creation, a rebirth. ar'B' in the Kal is always used only of the divine production. The heart is the central organ of the whole religious moral life; the parallel x;Wr is its synonym. Steadfast (!wkn) the spirit is called so far as it does not hesitate between good and evil."

Cf. e. g., A. B. Davidson, "Hastings' BD," i, pp. 514 sq.: "Jehovah will make a new covenant with Israel, that is, forgive their sins and write His law on their hearts - the one in His free grace, the other by His creative act"; also iv, p. 119a, and the fine exposition of Ezek. xxxvi. 17-38 in the "Theology of the O. T.," p. 343. On the other hand Giesebrecht, "Handkom. Jer.," p. 171 thinks "Jeremiah has not yet advanced to the 'new heart' (Ezek. xi. 19, xxxvi. 26 sq., Ps. li. 12); what he is thinking of is an inner influence on the heart by divine power, so that it attains a new attitude to the contents of the law." But this divine power is certainly conceived as creative. "The prophets," says Gunkel, "Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes," 1909, p. 77, "were convinced that God Himself must interfere in order to produce the ideal condition which He demands. The ideal kingdom in which dwell piety and righteousness cannot, therefore, be a result of the natural development of the people, but it can come into existence only by an act of God, by a miracle, by the outpouring of the divine Spirit."

Cf. Dillmann, "Alttest. Theologie," pp. 421-422.

E. g., A. B. Davidson, "Theology of O. T.," pp. 348 sq.

Ibid., pp. 352-353, against Riehm.

Cf. e. g., Beversluis, "De heilige Geest en zijne Werkingen," 1896, p. 38: "Although the spirit of God may, no doubt, be brought into connection with a moral renewing (in Ezek. xxxvi. 27) nevertheless an ethical operation of the Spirit of God is nowhere taught in the Old Testament."

Cf. e. g., Swete, "Hastings' BD.," ii, pp. 403-404; and Davidson, ibid., iv, p. 119a: "Later prophets perceive that man's spirit must be determined by an operation of God who will write His law on it (Jer. xxxi. 33), or who will put His own Spirit within him as the impulsive principle of his life (Isa. xxxii. 15, Ezek. xxxvi. 26 ff.)."

Cf. The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Oct. 1895, pp. 669 sq.

As even Gunkel allows, "Die Wirkungen, &c2.," p. 77: "On the other hand the Spirit appears as the principle of religion and morality in Ezek. xxxvi. 27; Isa. xxviii. 6; xxxii. 15 sq., with which Zech. xii. 10 may be compared. To these may be added the passages, not cited by Wendt, Isa. xi. 2 and Ps. li. 13; cxliii. 10, the two last of which have far the most significance for our problem, because they present the doctrine of the Spirit in its relation to the life of pious individuals" (cf. pp. 78 and 79). Delitzsch, on Ps. li. 12, 13, thinks it nevertheless a mistake to take "the Holy Spirit" here as "the Spirit of grace" as distinct from the "Spirit of office." David, he says, is thinking of himself as king, as Israelite, and as man, without distinguishing between them: the Spirit in his mind is that with which he was anointed (I Sam. xvi. 13); and he speaks of His total effects without differentiation.

Cf. Gunkel, as cited, p. 78, and Delitzsch on Ps. li. 12, 13; also Dalman, "Words of Jesus," p. 296: "Jeremiah and Ezekiel recognized a miraculous transformation in the heart of the people of the future."

Cf. in general, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Oct. 1895, art. "The Spirit of God in the O. T.," pp. 679 ff.

For on the whole it seems best so to understand this verse.

See in general, however, Bruce, "The Kingdom of God," p. 259.

Cf. Wendt, "The Teaching of Jesus," E. T., ii, 91: "Jesus here at the outset declares, in the only passage in the Fourth Gospel where the conception of the Kingdom of God is directly mentioned, that a complete new birth, taking place from the commencement, and, indeed, a birth from the Spirit of God, is indispensably necessary in order both to seeing (that is, experiencing) and to entering the Kingdom of God (vss. 3 and 5)."

Cf. "Hastings' DCG.," art. "Children."

Cf. Wendt, as cited, p. 54-55 note.

Cf. Lightfoot in loc.

Cf. Trench, "Synonyms of the N. T.," §lxix. Also Effie Freeman Thompson, Ph.D., "METANOEW and METAMELEI in Greek Literature until 100 A.D.," 1908, p. 29 especially the summary of New Testament usage pp. 28-29: metanoei/n is not used in the New Testament of the intellect or sensibilities but always of voluntative action; and prevailingly not of spe~ific but of generic choice.

Lk. xvii. 3, 4, Acts viii. 22, II Cor. vii. 9, 10, xii. 21, Heb. xii. 17; cf. also Rev. ii. 5, 5, 16, 21, 22, iii. 3, 19.

Mt. iii. 2, iv. 17, xi, 20, 21, xii. 41, Mk. i. 15, vi. 12, Lk. x. 13, xi. 32, xiii. 3, 5, xv. 7. 10, xvi. 30, Acts ii. 38, iii. 19, xvii. 30, xxvi. 20, Mt. iii. 8, 11, Mk. i. 4, Lk, iii. 3, 8, v. 32, xv. 7, xxiv. 47, Acts v. 31, xi. 18, xiii. 24, xix. 4, xxvi. 20, Rom. ii. 4, II Tim. ii. 25, Heb. vi. 1, 6, II Pet. iii. 9, Rev. ix. 20, 21, xvi. 9, 11, cf. ii. 5, 5, 16, 21, 22, iii. 3, 19.

So e. g., Weiss in loc.

Cf. "Hastings' B. D.," iv, 57 b.

W. P. Du Bose, "The Gospel in the Gospels," p. 175.

The Person of Christ

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Article "Person of Christ" from The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, James Orr, General editor, v. 4, pp. 2338-2348. Pub. Chicago, 1915, by Howard-Severance Co.

It is the purpose of this article to make as clear as possible the conception of the Person of Christ, in the technical sense of that term, which lies on - or, if we prefer to say so, beneath - the pages of the New Testament. Were it its purpose to trace out the process by which this great mystery has been revealed to men, a beginning would need to be taken from the intimations as to the nature of the person of the Messiah in Old Testament prophecy, and an attempt would require to be made to discriminate the exact contribution of each organ of revelation to our knowledge. And were there added to this a desire to ascertain the progress of the apprehension of this mystery by men, there would be demanded a further inquiry into the exact degree of understanding which was brought to the truth revealed at each stage of its revelation. The magnitudes with which such investigations deal, however, are very minute; and the profit to be derived from them is not, in a case like the present, very great. It is, of course, of importance to know how the person of the Messiah was represented in the predictions of the Old Testament; and it is a matter at least of interest to note, for example, the difficulty experienced by Our Lord's immediate disciples in comprehending all that was involved in His manifestation. But, after all, the constitution of Our Lord's person is a matter of revelation, not of human thought; and it is pre-eminently a revelation of the New Testament, not of the Old Testament. And the New Testament is all the product of a single movement, at a single stage of its development, and therefore presents in its fundamental teaching a common character. The whole of the New Testament was written within the limits of about half a century; or, if we except the writings of John, within the narrow bounds of a couple of decades; and the entire body of writings which enter into it are so much of a piece that it may be plausibly represented that they all bear the stamp of a single mind. In its fundamental teaching, the New Testament lends itself, therefore, more readily to what is called dogmatic than to what is called genetic treatment; and we shall penetrate most surely into its essential meaning if we take our start from its clearest and fullest statements, and permit their light to be thrown upon its more incidental allusions. This is peculiarly the case with such a matter as the person of Christ, which is dealt with chiefly incidentally, as a thing already understood by all, and needing only to be alluded to rather than formally expounded. That we may interpret these allusions aright, it is requisite that we should recover from the first the common conception which underlies them all.

I. THE TEACHING OF PAUL

We begin, then, with the most didactic of the New Testament writers, the apostle Paul, and with one of the passages in which he most fully intimates his conception of the person of his Lord, Phil. ii. 5-9. Even here, however, Paul is not formally expounding the doctrine of the Person of Christ; he is only alluding to certain facts concerning His person and action perfectly well known to his readers, in order that he may give point to an adduction of Christ's example. He is exhorting his readers to unselfishness, such unselfishness as esteems others better than ourselves, and looks not only on our own things but also on those of others. Precisely this unselfishness, he declares, was exemplified by Our Lord. He did not look upon His own things but the things of others; that is to say, He did not stand upon His rights, but was willing to forego all that He might justly have claimed for Himself for the good of others. For, says Paul, though, as we all know, in His intrinsic nature He was nothing other than God, yet He did not, as we all know right well, look greedily on His condition of equality with God, but made no account of Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient up to death itself, and that, the death of the cross. The statement is thrown into historical form; it tells the story of Christ's life on earth. But it presents His life on earth as a life in all its elements alien to His intrinsic nature, and assumed only in the performance of an unselfish purpose. On earth He lived as a man, and subjected Himself to the common lot of men. But He was not by nature a man, nor was He in His own nature subject to the fortunes of human life. By nature He was God; and He would have naturally lived as became God - 'on an equality with God.' He became man by a voluntary act, 'taking no account of Himself,' and, having become man, He voluntarily lived out His human life under the conditions which the fulfilment of His unselfish purpose imposed on Him.

The terms in which these great affirmations are made deserve the most careful attention. The language in which Our Lord's intrinsic Deity is expressed, for example, is probably as strong as any that could be devised. Paul does not say simply, "He was God." He says, "He was in the form of God," employing a turn of speech which throws emphasis upon Our Lord's possession of the specific quality of God. "Form" is a term which expresses the sum of those characterizing qualities which make a thing the precise thing that it is. Thus, the "form" of a sword (in this case mostly matters of external configuration) is all that makes a given piece of metal specifically a sword, rather than, say, a spade. And "the form of God" is the sum of the characteristics which make the being we call "God," specifically God, rather than some other being - an angel, say, or a man. When Our Lord is said to be in "the form of God," therefore, He is declared, in the most express manner possible, to be all that God is, to possess the whole fulness of attributes which make God God. Paul chooses this manner of expressing himself here instinctively, because, in adducing Our Lord as our example of self-abnegation, his mind is naturally resting, not on the bare fact that He is God, but on the richness and fulness of His being as God. He was all this, yet He did not look on His own things but on those of others.

It should be carefully observed also that in making this great affirmation concerning Our Lord, Paul does not throw it distinctively into the past, as if he were describing a mode of being formerly Our Lord's, indeed, but no longer His because of the action by which He became our example of unselfishness. Our Lord, he says, "being," "'existing," "subsisting" "in the form of God" - as it is variously rendered. The rendering proposed by the Revised Version margin, "being originally," while right in substance, is somewhat misleading. The verb employed means "strictly 'to be beforehand,' 'to be already' so and so" (Blass, "Grammar of NT Greek," English translation, 244), "to be there and ready," and intimates the existing circumstances, disposition of mind, or, as here, mode of subsistence in which the action to be described takes place. It contains no intimation, however, of the cessation of these circumstances or disposition, or mode of subsistence; and that, the less in a case like the present, where it is cast in a tense (the imperfect) which in no way suggests that the mode of subsistence intimated came to an end in the action described by the succeeding verb (cf. the parallels, Lk. xvi. 14, 23; xxiii. 50; Acts ii. 30; iii. 2; II Cor. viii. 17; xii. 16; Gal. i. 14). Paul is not telling us here, then, what Our Lord was once, but rather what He already was, or, better, what in His intrinsic nature He is; he is not describing a past mode of existence of Our Lord, before the action he is adducing as an example took place - although the mode of existence he describes was Our Lord's mode of existence before this action - so much as painting in the background upon which the action adduced may be thrown up into prominence. He is telling us who and what He is who did these things for us, that we may appreciate how great the things He did for us are.

And here it is important to observe that the whole of the action adduced is thrown up thus against this background - not only its negative description to the effect that Our Lord (although all that God is) did not look greedily on His (consequent) being on an equality with God; but its positive description as well, introduced by the " but . . . ." and that in both of its elements, not merely that to the effect (ver. 7) that 'he took no account of himself' (rendered not badly by the Authorized Version, He "made himself of no reputation"; but quite misleading by the Revised Version, He "emptied himself"), but equally that to the effect (ver. 8) that "he humbled himself." It is the whole of what Our Lord is described as doing in vs. 6-8, that He is described as doing despite His "subsistence in the form of God." So far is Paul from intimating, therefore, that Our Lord laid aside His Deity in entering upon His life on earth, that he rather asserts that He retained His Deity throughout His life on earth, and in the whole course of His humiliation, up to death itself, was consciously ever exercising self-abnegation, living a life which did not by nature belong to Him, which stood in fact in direct contradiction to the life which was naturally His. It is this underlying implication which determines the whole choice of the language in which Our Lord's earthly life is described. It is because it is kept in mind that He still was "in the form of God," that is, that He still had in possession all that body of characterizing qualities by which God is made God, for example, that He is said to have been made, not man, but "in the likeness of man," to have been found, not man, but "in fashion as a man"; and that the wonder of His servanthood and obedience, the mark of servanthood, is thought of as so great. Though He was truly man, He was much more than man; and Paul would not have his readers imagine that He had become merely man. In other words, Paul does not teach that Our Lord was once God but had become instead man; he teaches that though He was God, He had become also man.

An impression that Paul means to imply, that in entering upon His earthly life Our Lord had laid aside His Deity, may be created by a very prevalent misinterpretation of the central clause of his statement - a misinterpretation unfortunately given currency by the rendering of the English Revised Version: "counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself," varied without improvement in the American Revised Version to: "counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself." The former (negative) member of this clause means just: He did not look greedily upon His being on an equality with God; did not "set supreme store" by it (see Lightfoot on the clause). The latter (positive) member of it, however, cannot mean in antithesis to this, that He therefore "emptied himself," divested Himself of this, His being on an equality with God, much less that He "emptied himself," divested Himself of His Deity ("form of God") itself, of which His being on an equality with God is the manifested consequence. The verb here rendered "emptied" is in constant use in a metaphorical sense (so only in the New Testament: Rom. iv. 14; I Cor. i. 17; ix. 15; II Cor. ix. 3) and cannot here be taken literally. This is already apparent from the definition of the manner in which the "emptying" is said to have been accomplished, supplied by the modal clause which is at once attached: by "taking the form of a servant." You cannot "empty" by "taking" - adding. It is equally apparent, however, from the strength of the emphasis which, by its position, is thrown upon the "himself." We may speak of Our Lord as "emptying Himself" of something else, but scarcely, with this strength of emphasis, of His "emptying Himself" of something else. This emphatic "Himself," interposed between the preceding clause and the verb rendered "emptied," builds a barrier over which we cannot climb backward in search of that of which Our Lord emptied Himself. The whole thought is necessarily contained in the two words, "emptied Himself," in which the word "emptied" must therefore be taken in a sense analogous to that which it bears in the other passages in the New Testament where it occurs. Paul, in a word, says here nothing more than that Our Lord, who did not look with greedy eyes upon His estate of equality with God, emptied Himself, if the language may be pardoned, of Himself; that is to say, in precise accordance with the exhortation for the enhancement of which His example is adduced, that He did not look on His own things. 'He made no account of Himself,' we may fairly paraphrase the clause; and thus all question of what He emptied Himself of falls away. What Our Lord actually did, according to Paul, is expressed in the following clauses; those now before us express more the moral character of His act. He took "the form of a servant," and so was "made in the likeness of men." But His doing this showed that He did not set overweening store by His state of equality with God, and did not account Himself the sufficient object of all the efforts. He was not self-regarding: He had regard for others. Thus He becomes our supreme example of self-abnegating conduct.

The language in which the act by which Our Lord showed that He was self-abnegating is described, requires to be taken in its complete meaning. He took "the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men," says Paul. The term "form" here, of course, bears the same full meaning as in the preceding instance of its occurrence in the phrase "the form of God." It imparts the specific quality, the whole body of characteristics, by which a servant is made what we know as a servant. Our Lord assumed, then, according to Paul, not the mere state or condition or outward appearance of a servant, but the reality; He became an actual "servant" in the world. The act by which He did this is described as a "taking," or, as it has become customary from this description of it to phrase it, as an "assumption." What is meant is that Our Lord took up into His personality a human nature; and therefore it is immediately explained that He took the form of a servant by "being made in the likeness of men." That the apostle does not say, shortly, that He assumed a human nature, is due to the engagement of his mind with the contrast which he wishes to bring out forcibly for the enhancement of his appeal to Our Lord's example, between what Our Lord is by nature and what He was willing to become, not looking on His own things but also on the things of others. This contrast is, no doubt, embodied in the simple opposition of God and man; it is much more pungently expressed in the qualificative terms, "form of God" and "form of a servant." The Lord of the world became a servant in the world; He whose right it was to rule took obedience as His life-characteristic. Naturally therefore Paul employs here a word of quality rather than a word of mere nature; and then defines his meaning in this word of quality by a further epexegetical clause. This further clause - "being made in the likeness of men" - does not throw doubt on the reality of the human nature that was assumed, in contradiction to the emphasis on its reality in the phrase "the form of a servant." It, along with the succeeding clause - "and being found in fashion as a man" - owes its peculiar form, as has already been pointed out, to the vividness of the apostle's consciousness, that he is speaking of one who, though really man, possessing all that makes a man a man, is yet, at the same time, infinitely more than a man, no less than God Himself, in possession of all that makes God God. Christ Jesus is in his view, therefore (as in the view of his readers, for he is not instructing his readers here as to the nature of Christ's person, but reminding them of certain elements in it for the purposes of his exhortation), both God and man, God who has "assumed" man into personal union with Himself, and has in this His assumed manhood lived out a human life on earth.

The elements of Paul's conception of the person of Christ are brought before us in this suggestive passage with unwonted fulness. But they all receive endless illustration from his occasional allusions to them, one or another, throughout his Epistles. The leading motive of this passage, for example, reappears quite perfectly in II Cor. viii. 9, where we are exhorted to imitate the graciousness of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who became for our sakes (emphatic) poor - He who was (again an imperfect participle, and therefore without suggestion of the cessation of the condition described) rich - that we might by His (very emphatic) poverty be made rich. Here the change in Our Lord's condition at a point of time perfectly understood between the writer and his readers is adverted to and assigned to its motive, but no further definition is given of the nature of either condition referred to. We are brought closer to the precise nature of the act by which the change was wrought by such a passage as Gal. iv. 4. We read that "When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law." The whole transaction is referred to the Father in fulfilment of His eternal plan of redemption, and it is described specifically as an incarnation: the Son of God is born of a woman - He who is in His own nature the Son of God, abiding with God, is sent forth from God in such a manner as to be born a human being, subject to law. The primary implications are that this was not the beginning of His being; but that before this He was neither a man nor subject to law. But there is no suggestion that on becoming man and subject to law, He ceased to be the Son of God or lost anything intimated by that high designation. The uniqueness of His relation to God as His Son is emphasized in a kindred passage (Rom. viii. 3) by the heightening of the designation to that of God's "own Son," and His distinction from other men is intimated in the same passage by the declaration that God sent Him, not in sinful flesh, but only "in the likeness of sinful flesh." The reality of Our Lord's flesh is not thrown into doubt by this turn of speech, but His freedom from the sin which is associated with flesh as it exists in lost humanity is asserted (cf. II Cor. v. 21). Though true man, therefore (I Cor. xv. 21; Rom. v. 21; Acts xvii. 31), He is not without differences from other men; and these differences do not concern merely the condition (as sinful) in which men presently find themselves; but also their very origin: they are from below, He from above - 'the first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven' (I Cor. xv. 47). This is His peculiarity: He was born of a woman like other men; yet He descended from Heaven (cf. Eph. iv. 9; Jn. iii. 13). It is not meant, of course, that already in heaven He was a man; what is meant is that even though man He derives His origin in an exceptional sense from heaven. Paul describes what He was in heaven (but not alone in heaven) - that is to say before He was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh (though not alone before this) - in the great terms of "God's Son," "God's own Son," "the form of God," or yet again in words whose import cannot be mistaken, 'God over all' (Rom. ix. 5). In the last cited passage, together with its parallel earlier in the same epistle (Rom. i. 3), the two sides or elements of Our Lord's person are brought into collocation after a fashion that can leave no doubt of Paul's conception of His twofold nature. In the earlier of these passages he tells us that Jesus Christ was born, indeed, of the seed of David according to the flesh, that is, so far as the human side of His being is concerned, but was powerfully marked out as the Son of God according to the Spirit of Holiness, that is, with respect to His higher nature, by the resurrection of the dead, which in a true sense began in His own rising from the dead. In the later of them, he tells us that Christ sprang indeed, as concerns the flesh, that is on the human side of His being, from Israel, but that, despite this earthly origin of His human nature, He yet is and abides (present participle) nothing less than the Supreme God, "God over all [emphatic], blessed forever." Thus Paul teaches us that by His coming forth from God to be born of woman, Our Lord, assuming a human nature to Himself, has, while remaining the Supreme God, become also true and perfect man. Accordingly, in a context in which the resources of language are strained to the utmost to make the exaltation of Our Lord's being clear - in which He is described as the image of the invisible God, whose being antedates all that is created, in whom, through whom and to whom all things have been created, and in whom they all subsist - we are told not only that (naturally) in Him all the fulness dwells (Col. i. 19), but, with complete explication, that 'all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily' (Col. ii. 9) ; that is to say, the very Deity of God, that which makes God God, in all its completeness, has its permanent home in Our Lord, and that in a "bodily fashion," that is, it is in Him clothed with a body. He who looks upon Jesus Christ sees, no doubt, a body and a man; but as he sees the man clothed with the body, so he sees God Himself, in all the fulness of His Deity, clothed with the humanity. Jesus Christ is therefore God "manifested in the flesh" (I Tim. iii. 16), and His appearance on earth is an "epiphany" (II Tim. i. 10), which is the technical term for manifestations on earth of a God. Though truly man, He is nevertheless also our "great God" (Tit. ii. 13).

II. TEACHING OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

The conception of the person of Christ which underlies and finds expression in the Epistle to the Hebrews is indistinguishable from that which governs all the allusions to Our Lord in the Epistles of Paul. To the author of this epistle Our Lord is above all else the Son of God in the most eminent sense of that word; and it is the Divine dignity and majesty belonging to Him from His very nature which forms the fundamental feature of the image of Christ which stands before his mind. And yet it is this author who, perhaps above all others of the New Testament writers, emphasizes the truth of the humanity of Christ, and dwells with most particularity upon the elements of His human nature and experience.

The great Christological passage which fills chap. ii of the Epistle to the Hebrews rivals in its richness and fulness of detail, and its breadth of implication, that of Phil. ii. It is thrown up against the background of the remarkable exposition of the Divine dignity of the Son which occupies chap. i (notice the "therefore" of ii. 1). There the Son had been declared to be "the effulgence of his (God's) glory, and the very image of his substance, through whom the universe has been created and by the word of whose power all things are held in being; and His exaltation above the angels, by means of whom the Old Covenant had been inaugurated, is measured by the difference between the designations "ministering spirits" proper to the one, and the Son of God, nay, God itself (i. 8, 9), proper to the other. The purpose of the succeeding statement is to enhance in the thought of the Jewish readers of the epistle the value of the salvation wrought by this Divine Saviour, by removing from their minds the offence they were in danger of taking at His lowly life and shameful death on earth. This earthly humiliation finds its abundant justification, we are told, in the greatness of the end which it sought and attained. By it Our Lord has, with His strong feet, broken out a pathway along which, in Him, sinful man may at length climb up to the high destiny which was promised him when it was declared he should have dominion over all creation. Jesus Christ stooped only to conquer, and He stooped to conquer not for Himself (for He was in His own person no less than God), but for us.

The language in which the humiliation of the Son of God is in the first instance described is derived from the context. The establishment of His Divine majesty in chap. i had taken the form of an exposition of His infinite exaltation above the angels, the highest of all creatures. His humiliation is described here therefore as being "made a little lower than the angels" (ii. 9). What is meant is simply that He became man; the phraseology is derived from Ps. viii., Authorized Version, from which had just been cited the declaration that God has made man (despite his insignificance) "but a little lower than the angels," thus crowning him with glory and honor. The adoption of the language of the psalm to describe Our Lord's humiliation has the secondary effect, accordingly, of greatly enlarging the reader's sense of the immensity of the humiliation of the Son of God in becoming man: He descended an infinite distance to reach man's highest conceivable exaltation. As, however, the primary purpose of the adoption of the language is merely to declare that the Son of God became man, so it is shortly afterward explained (ii. 14) as an entering into participation in the blood and flesh which are common to men: "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same." The voluntariness, the reality, the completeness of the assumption of humanity by the Son of God, are all here emphasized. The proximate end of Our Lord's assumption of humanity is declared to be that He might die; He was "made a little lower than the angels . . . because of the suffering of death" (ii. 9); He took part in blood and flesh in order "that through death . . ." (ii. 14). The Son of God as such could not die; to Him belongs by nature an "indissoluble life" (vii. 16 m.). If he was to die, therefore, He must take to Himself another nature to which the experience of death were not impossible (ii. 17). Of course it is not meant that death was desired by Him for its own sake. The purpose of our passage is to save its Jewish readers from the offence of the death of Christ. What they are bidden to observe is, therefore, Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death, 'crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God the bitterness of death which he tasted might redound to the benefit of every man' (ii. 9), and the argument is immediately pressed home that it was eminently suitable for God Almighty, in bringing many sons into glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect (as a Saviour) by means of suffering. The meaning is that it was only through suffering that these men, being sinners, could be brought into glory. And therefore in the plainer statement of verse 14 we read that Our Lord took part in flesh and blood in order "that through death he might bring to nought him that has the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage"; and in the still plainer statement of verse 17 that the ultimate object of His assimilation to men was that He might "make propitiation for the sins of the people." It is for the salvation of sinners that Our Lord has come into the world; but, as that salvation can be wrought only by suffering and death, the proximate end of His assumption of humanity remains that He might die; whatever is more than this gathers around this.

The completeness of Our Lord's assumption of humanity and of His identification of Himself with it receives strong emphasis in this passage. He took part in the flesh and blood which is the common heritage of men, after the same fashion that other men participate in it (ii. 14); and, having thus become a man among men, He shared with other men the ordinary circumstances and fortunes of life, "in all things" (ii. 17). The stress is laid on trials, sufferings, death; but this is due to the actual course in which His life ran - and that it might run in which He became man - and is not exclusive of other human experiences. What is intended is that He became truly a man, and lived a truly human life, subject to all the experiences natural to a man in the particular circumstances in which He lived.

It is, not implied, however, that during this human life - "the days of his flesh" (v. 7) - He had ceased to be God, or to have at His disposal the attributes which belonged to Him as God. That is already excluded by the representations of chap. i. The glory of this dispensation consists precisely in the bringing of its revelations directly by the Divine Son rather than by mere prophets (i. 1), and it was as the effulgence of God's glory and the express image of His substance, upholding the universe by the word of His power, that this Son made purification of sins (i. 3). Indeed, we are expressly told that even in the days of the flesh, He continued still a Son (v. 8), and that it was precisely in this that the wonder lay: that though He was and remained (imperfect participle) a Son, He yet learned the obedience He had set Himself to (cf. Phil. ii. 8) by the things which He suffered. Similarly, we are told not only that, though an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, He possessed "the power of an indissoluble life" (vii. 16 m.), but, describing that higher nature which gave Him this power as an "eternal Spirit" (cf. "spirit of holiness," Rom. i. 4), that it was through this eternal Spirit that He could offer Himself without blemish unto God, a real and sufficing sacrifice, in contrast with the shadows of the Old Covenant (ix. 14). Though a man, therefore, and truly man, sprung out of Judah (vii. 14), touched with the feeling of human infirmities (iv. 15), and tempted like as we are, He was not altogether like other men. For one thing, He was "without sin" (iv. 15; vii, 26), and, by this characteristic, He was, in every sense of the words, separated from sinners. Despite the completeness of His identification with men, He remained, therefore, even in the days of His flesh different from them and above them.

III. TEACHING OF OTHER EPISTLES

It is only as we carry this conception of the person of Our Lord with us - the conception of Him as at once our Supreme Lord, to whom our adoration is due, and our fellow in the experiences of a human life - that unity is induced in the multiform allusions to Him throughout, whether the Epistles of Paul or the Epistle to the Hebrews, or, indeed, the other epistolary literature of the New Testament. For in this matter there is no difference between those and these. There are no doubt a few passages in these other letters in which a plurality of the elements of the person of Christ are brought together and given detailed mention. In I Pet. iii. 18, for instance, the two constitutive elements of His person are spoken of in the contrast, familiar from Paul, of the "flesh" and the "spirit." But ordinarily we meet only with references to this or that element separately. Everywhere Our Lord is spoken of as having lived out His life as a man; but everywhere also He is spoken of with the supreme reverence which is due to God alone, and the very name of God is not withheld from Him. In I Pet. i. 11 His preëxistence is taken for granted; in Jas. ii. 1 He is identified with the Shekinah, the manifested Jehovah - 'our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glory'; in Jude verse 4 He is "our only Master [Despot] and Lord"; over and over again He is the Divine Lord who is Jehovah (e. g., I Pet. ii. 3, 13; II Pet. iii. 2, 18); in II Pet. i. 1, He is roundly called "our God and Saviour." There is nowhere formal inculcation of the entire doctrine of the person of Christ. But everywhere its elements, now one and now another, are presupposed as the common property of writer and readers. It is only in the Epistles of John that this easy and unstudied presupposition of them gives way to pointed insistence upon them.

IV. TEACHING OF JOHN

In the circumstances in which he wrote, John found it necessary to insist upon the elements of the person of Our Lord - His true Deity, His true humanity and the unity of His person - in a manner which is more didactic in form than anything we find in the other writings of the New Testament. The great depository of his teaching on the subject is, of course, the prologue to his Gospel. But it is not merely in this prologue, nor in the Gospel to which it forms a fitting introduction, that these didactic statements are found. The full emphasis of John's witness to the twofold nature of the Lord is brought out, indeed, only by combining what he says in the Gospel and in the Epistles. "In the Gospel," remarks Westcott (on Jn. xx. 31), "the evangelist shows step by step that the historic Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God (opposed to mere 'flesh'); in the Epistle he re-affirms that the Christ, the Son of God, was true man (opposed to mere 'spirit'; I Jn. iv. 2)." What John is concerned to show throughout is that it was "the true God" (I Jn. v. 20) who was "made flesh" (Jn. i. 14); and that this 'only God' (Jn. i. 18, Revised Version, margin "God only begotten") has truly come "in . . . flesh" (I Jn. iv. 2). In all the universe there is no other being of whom it can be said that He is God come in flesh (cf. II Jn. ver. 7, He that "cometh in the flesh," whose characteristic this is). And of all the marvels which have ever occurred in the marvelous history of the universe, this is the greatest - that 'what was from the beginning' (I Jn. ii. 13, 14) has been heard and gazed upon, seen and handled by men (I Jn. i. 1).

From the point of view from which we now approach it, the prologue to the Gospel of John may be said to fall into three parts. In the first of these, the nature of the Being who became incarnate in the person we know as Jesus Christ is described; in the second, the general nature of the act we call the incarnation; and in the third, the nature of the incarnated person.

John here calls the person who became incarnate by a name peculiar to himself in the New Testament - the " Logos" or "Word." According to the predicates which he here applies to Him, he can mean by the "Word" nothing else but God Himself, "considered in His creative, operative, self-revealing, and communicating character," the sum total of what is Divine (C. F. Schmid). In three crisp sentences he declares at the outset His eternal subsistence, His eternal intercommunion with God, His eternal identity with God: 'In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God' (Jn. i. 1). "In the beginning," at that point of time when things first began to be (Gen. i. 1), the Word already "was." He antedates the beginning of all things. And He not merely antedates them, but it is immediately added that He is Himself the creator of all that is: 'All things were made by him, and apart from him was not made one thing that hath been made' (i. 3). Thus He is taken out of the category of creatures altogether. Accordingly, what is said of Him is not that He was the first of existences to come into being - that 'in the beginning He already had come into being' - but that 'in the beginning, when things began to come into being, He already was.' It is express eternity of being that is asserted: "the imperfect tense of the original suggests in this relation, as far as human language can do so, the notion of absolute, supra-temporal existence" (Westcott). This, His eternal subsistence, was not, however, in isolation: "And the Word was with God." The language is pregnant. It is not merely coexistence with God that is asserted, as of two beings standing side by side, united in a local relation, or even in a common conception. What is suggested is an active relation of intercourse. The distinct personality of the Word is therefore not obscurely intimated. From all eternity the Word has been with God as a fellow: He who in the very beginning already "was," "was" also in communion with God. Though He was thus in some sense a second along with God, He was nevertheless not a separate being from God: "And the Word was" - still the eternal "was" - "God." In some sense distinguishable from God, He was in an equally true sense identical with God. There is but one eternal God; this eternal God, the Word is; in whatever sense we may distinguish Him from the God whom He is "with," He is yet not another than this God, but Himself is this God. The predicate "God" occupies the position of emphasis in this great declaration, and is so placed in the sentence as to be thrown up in sharp contrast with the phrase "with God," as if to prevent inadequate inferences as to the nature of the Word being drawn even momentarily from that phrase. John would have us realize that what the Word was in eternity was not merely God's coeternal fellow, but the eternal God's self.

Now, John tells us that it was this Word, eternal in His subsistence, God's eternal fellow, the eternal God's self, that, as "come in the flesh," was Jesus Christ (I Jn. iv. 2). "And the Word became flesh" (Jn. i. 14), he says. The terms he employs here are not terms of substance, but of personality. The meaning is not that the substance of God was transmuted into that substance which we call "flesh." "The Word" is a personal name of the eternal God; "flesh" is an appropriate designation of humanity in its entirety, with the implications of dependence and weakness. The meaning, then, is simply that He who had just been described as the eternal God became, by a voluntary act in time, a man. The exact nature of the act by which He "became" man lies outside the statement; it was matter of common knowledge between the writer and the reader. The language employed intimates merely that it was a definite act, and that it involved a change in the life-history of the eternal God, here designated "the Word." The whole emphasis falls on the nature of this change in His life-history. He became flesh. That is to say, He entered upon a mode of existence in which the experiences that belong to human beings would also be His. The dependence, the weakness, which constitute the very idea of flesh, in contrast with God, would now enter into His personal experience. And it is precisely because these are the connotations of the term "flesh" that John chooses that term here, instead of the more simply denotative term "man." What he means is merely that the eternal God became man. But he elects to say this in the language which throws best up to view what it is to become man. The contrast between the Word as the eternal God and the human nature which He assumed as flesh, is the hinge of the statement. Had the evangelist said (as he does in I Jn. iv. 2) that the Word 'came in flesh,' it would have been the continuity through the change which would have been most emphasized. When he says rather that the Word became flesh, while the continuity of the personal subject is, of course, intimated, it is the reality and the completeness of the humanity assumed which is made most prominent.

That in becoming flesh the Word did not cease to be what He was before entering upon this new sphere of experiences, the evangelist does not leave, however, to mere suggestion. The glory of the Word was so far from quenched, in his view, by His becoming flesh, that he gives us at once to understand that it was rather as "trailing clouds of glory" that He came. "And the Word became flesh," he says, and immediately adds: "and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth" (i. 14). The language is colored by reminiscences from the Tabernacle, in which the Glory of God, the Shekinah, dwelt. The flesh of Our Lord became, on its assumption by the Word, the Temple of God on earth (cf. Jn. ii. 19), and the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. John tells us expressly that this glory was visible, that it was precisely what was appropriate to the Son of God as such. "And we beheld his glory," he says; not divined it, or inferred it, but perceived it. It was open to sight, and the actual object of observation. Jesus Christ was obviously more than man; He was obviously God. His actually observed glory, John tells us further, was a "glory as of the only begotten from the Father." It was unique; nothing like it was ever seen in another. And its uniqueness consisted precisely in its consonance with what the unique Son of God, sent forth from the Father, would naturally have; men recognized and could not but recognize in Jesus Christ the unique Son of God. When this unique Son of God is further described as "full of grace and truth," the elements of His manifested glory are not to be supposed to be exhausted by this description (cf. ii. 11). Certain items of it only are singled out for particular mention. The visible glory of the incarnated Word was such a glory as the unique Son of God, sent forth from the Father, who was full of grace and truth, would naturally manifest.

That nothing should be lacking to the declaration of the continuity of all that belongs to the Word as such into this new sphere of existence, and its full manifestation through the veil of His flesh, John adds at the close of his exposition the remarkable sentence: 'As for God, no one has even yet seen him; God only begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father - He hath declared him' (i. 18 m.). It is the incarnate Word which is here called 'only begotten God.' The absence of the article with this designation is doubtless due to its parallelism with the word "God" which stands at the head of the corresponding clause. The effect of its absence is to throw up into emphasis the quality rather than the mere individuality of the person so designated. The adjective "only begotten" conveys the idea, not of derivation and subordination, but of uniqueness and consubstantiality: Jesus is all that God is, and He alone is this. Of this 'only begotten God' it is now declared that He "is" - not "was," the state is not one which has been left behind at the incarnation, but one which continues uninterrupted and unmodified - "into" - not merely "in" - "the bosom of the Father" - that is to say, He continues in the most intimate and complete communion with the Father. Though now incarnate, He is still "with God" in the full sense of the external relation intimated in i. 1. This being true, He has much more than seen God, and is fully able to "interpret" God to men. Though no one has ever yet seen God, yet he who has seen Jesus Christ, "God only begotten," has seen the Father (cf. xiv. 9; xii. 45). In this remarkable sentence there is asserted in the most direct manner the full Deity of the incarnate Word, and the continuity of His life as such in His incarnate life; thus He is fitted to be the absolute revelation of God to man.

This condensed statement of the whole doctrine of the incarnation is only the prologue to a historical treatise. The historical treatise which it introduces, naturally, is written from the point of view of its prologue. Its object is to present Jesus Christ in His historical manifestation, as obviously the Son of God in flesh. "These are written," the Gospel testifies, "that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (xx. 31) ; that Jesus who came as a man (i. 30) was thoroughly known in His human origin (vii. 27), confessed Himself man (viii. 40), and died as a man dies (xix. 5), was, nevertheless, not only the Messiah, the Sent of God, the fulfiller of all the Divine promises of redemption, but also the very Son of God, that God only begotten, who, abiding in the bosom of the Father, is His sole adequate interpreter. From the beginning of the Gospel onward, this purpose is pursued: Jesus is pictured as ever, while truly man, yet manifesting Himself as equally truly God, until the veil which covered the eyes of His followers was wholly lifted, and He is greeted as both Lord and God (xx. 28). But though it is the prime purpose of this Gospel to exhibit the Divinity of the man Jesus, no obscuration of His manhood is involved. It is the Deity of the man Jesus which is insisted on, but the true manhood of Jesus is as prominent in the representation as in any other portion of the New Testament. Nor is any effacement of the humiliation of His earthly life involved. For the Son of man to come from heaven was a descent (iii. 13), and the mission which He came to fulfil was a mission of contest and conflict, of suffering and death. He brought His glory with Him (i. 14), but the glory that was His on earth (xvii. 22) was not all the glory which He had had with the Father before the world was, and to which, after His work was done, He should return (xvii. 5). Here too the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. In any event, John has no difficulty in presenting the life of Our Lord on earth as the life of God in flesh, and in insisting at once on the glory that belongs to Him as God and on the humiliation which is brought to Him by the flesh. It is distinctly a duplex life which he ascribes to Christ, and he attributes to Him without embarrassment all the powers and modes of activity appropriate on the one hand to Deity and on the other to sinless (Jn. viii. 46; cf. xiv. 30; I Jn. iii. 5) human nature. In a true sense his portrait of Our Lord is a dramatization of the God-man which he presents to our contemplation in his prologue.

V. TEACHING OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

The same may be said of the other Gospels. They are all dramatizations of the God-man set forth in thetical exposition in the prologue to John's Gospel. The Gospel of Luke, written by a known companion of Paul, gives us in a living narrative the same Jesus who is presupposed in all Paul's allusions to Him. That of Mark, who was also a companion of Paul, as also of Peter, is, as truly as the Gospel of John itself, a presentation of facts in the life of Jesus with a view to making it plain that this was the life of no mere man, human as it was, but of the Son of God Himself. Matthew's Gospel differs from its fellows mainly in the greater richness of Jesus' own testimony to His Deity which it records. What is characteristic of all three is the inextricable interlacing in their narratives of the human and Divine traits which alike marked the life they are depicting. It is possible, by neglecting one series of their representations and attending only to the other, to sift out from them at will the portrait of either a purely Divine or a purely human Jesus. It is impossible to derive from them the portrait of any other than a Divine-human Jesus if we surrender ourselves to their guidance and take off of their pages the portrait they have endeavored to draw. As in their narratives they cursorily suggest now the fulness of His Deity and now the completeness of His humanity and everywhere the unity of His person, they present as real and as forcible a testimony to the constitution of Our Lord's person as uniting in one personal life a truly Divine and a truly human nature, as if they announced this fact in analytical statement. Only on the assumption of this conception of Our Lord's person as underlying and determining their presentation, can unity be given to their representations; while, on this supposition, all their representations fall into their places as elements in one consistent whole. Within the limits of their common presupposition, each Gospel has no doubt its own peculiarities in the distribution of its emphasis. Mark lays particular stress on the Divine power of the man Jesus, as evidence of His supernatural being; and on the irresistible impression of a veritable Son of God, a Divine being walking the earth as a man, which He made upon all with whom He came into contact. Luke places his Gospel by the side of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the prominence it gives to the human development of the Divine being whose life on earth it is depicting and to the range of temptation to which He was subjected. Matthew's Gospel is notable chiefly for the heights of the Divine self-consciousness which it uncovers in its report of the words of Him whom it represents as nevertheless the Son of David, the Son of Abraham; heights of Divine self-consciousness which fall in nothing short of those attained in the great utterances preserved for us by John. But amid whatever variety there may exist in the aspects on which each lays his particular emphasis, it is the same Jesus Christ which all three bring before us, a Jesus Christ who is at once God and man and one individual person. If that be not recognized, the whole narrative of the Synoptic Gospels is thrown into confusion; their portrait of Christ becomes an insoluble puzzle; and the mass of details which they present of His life-experiences is transmuted into a mere set of crass contradictions.

VI. TEACHING OF JESUS

1. The Johannine Jesus. - The Gospel narratives not only present us, however, with dramatizations of the God-man, according to their authors' conception of His composite person. They preserve for us also a considerable body of the utterances of Jesus Himself, and this enables us to observe the conception of His person which underlay and found expression in Our Lord's own teaching. The discourses of Our Lord which have been selected for record by John have been chosen (among other reasons) expressly for the reason that they bear witness to His essential Deity. They are accordingly peculiarly rich in material for forming a judgment of Our Lord's conception of His higher nature. This conception, it is needless to say, is precisely that which John, taught by it, has announced in the prologue to his Gospel, and has illustrated by his Gospel itself, compacted as it is of these discourses. It will not be necessary to present the evidence for this in its fulness. It will be enough to point to a few characteristic passages, in which Our Lord's conception of His higher nature finds especially clear expression.

That He was of higher than earthly origin and nature, He repeatedly asserts. "Ye are from beneath," he says to the Jews (viii. 23), "I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world" (cf. xvii. 16). Therefore, He taught that He, the Son of Man, had "descended out of heaven" (iii. 13), where was His true abode. This carried with it, of course, an assertion of preëxistence; and this preëxistence is explicitly affirmed: "What then," He asks, "if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?" (vi. 62). It is not merely preëxistence, however, but eternal preëxistence which He claims for Himself: "And now, Father," He prays (xvii. 5), "glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (cf. ver. 24); and again, as the most impressive language possible, He declares (viii. 58 A.V.): "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am," where He claims for Himself the timeless present of eternity as His mode of existence. In the former of these two last-cited passages, the character of His preëxistent life is intimated; in it He shared the Father's glory from all eternity ("before the world was"); He stood by the Father's side as a companion in His glory. He came forth, when He descended to earth, therefore, not from heaven only, but from the very side of God (viii. 42; xvii. 8). Even this, however, does not express the whole truth; He came forth not only from the Father's side where He had shared in the Father's glory; He came forth out of the Father's very being - "I came out from the Father, and am come into the world" (xvi. 28; cf. viii. 42). "The connection described is internal and essential, and not that of presence or external fellowship" (Westcott). This prepares us for the great assertion: "I and the Father are one" (x. 30), from which it is a mere corollary that "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9; cf. viii. 19; xii. 45).

In all these declarations the subject of the affirmation is the actual person speaking: it is of Himself who stood before men and spoke to them that Our Lord makes these immense assertions. Accordingly, when He majestically declared, "I and the Father are" (plurality of persons) "one" (neuter singular, and accordingly singleness of being), the Jews naturally understood Him to be making Himself, the person then speaking to them, God (x. 33; cf. v. 18; xix. 7). The continued sameness of the person who has been, from all eternity down to this hour, one with God, is therefore fully safeguarded. His earthly life is, however, distinctly represented as a humiliation. Though even on earth He is one with the Father, yet He "descended" to earth; He had come out from the Father and out of God; a glory had been left behind which was yet to be returned to, and His sojourn on earth was therefore to that extent an obscuration of His proper glory. There was a sense, then, in which, because He had "descended," He was no longer equal with the Father. It was in order to justify an assertion of equality with the Father in power (x. 25, 29) that He was led to declare: "I and my Father are one" (x. 30). But He can also declare "The Father is greater than I" (xiv. 28). Obviously this means that there was a sense in which He had ceased to be equal with the Father, because of the humiliation of His present condition, and in so far as this humiliation involved entrance into a status lower than that which belonged to Him by nature. Precisely in what this humiliation consisted can be gathered only from the general implication of many statements. In it He was a "man" : 'a man who hath told you the truth, which I have heard from God' (viii. 40), where the contrast with "God" throws the assertion of humanity into emphasis (cf. x. 33). The truth of His human nature is, however, everywhere assumed and endlessly illustrated, rather than explicitly asserted. He possessed a human soul (xii. 27) and bodily parts (flesh and blood, vi. 53 ff.; hands and side, xx. 27); and was subject alike to physical affections (weariness, iv. 6, and thirst, xix. 28, suffering and death), and to all the common human emotions - not merely the love of compassion (xiii. 34; xiv. 21; xv. 8-13), but the love of simple affection which we pour out on "friends" (xi. 11; cf. xv. 14, 15), indignation (xi. 33, 38) and joy (xv. 11; xvii. 13). He felt the perturbation produced by strong excitement (xi. 33; xii. 27; xiii. 21), the sympathy with suffering which shows itself in tears (xi. 35), the thankfulness which fills the grateful heart (vi. 11, 23; xi. 41). Only one human characteristic was alien to Him: He was without sin: "the prince of the world," He declared, "hath nothing in me" (xiv. 30; cf. viii. 46). Clearly Our Lord, as reported by John, knew Himself to be true God and true man in one indivisible person, the common subject of the qualities which belong to each.

2. The Synoptic Jesus. - (a) Mk. xiii. 32: The same is true of His self-consciousness as revealed in His sayings recorded by the synoptists. Perhaps no more striking illustration of this could be adduced than the remarkable declaration recorded in Mk. xiii. 32 (cf. Mt. xxiv. 36): 'But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, nor yet the Son, but the Father.' Here Jesus places Himself, in an ascending scale of being, above "the angels in heaven," that is to say, the highest of all creatures, significantly marked here as supramundane. Accordingly, He presents Himself elsewhere as the Lord of the angels, whose behests they obey: "The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity" (Mt. xiii. 41), "And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Mt. xxiv. 31; cf. xiii. 49; xxv. 31; Mk. viii. 38). Thus the "angels of God" (Lk. xii. 8, 9; xv. 10) Christ designates as His angels, the "kingdom of God" (Mt. xii. 28; xix. 24; xxi. 31, 43; Mk. and Lk. often) as His Kingdom, the "elect of God" (Mk. xiii. 20; Lk. xviii. 7; cf. Rom. viii. 33; Col. iii. 12; Tit. i. 1) as His elect. He is obviously speaking in Mk. xiii. 22 out of a Divine self-consciousness: "Only a Divine being can be exalted above angels" (B. Weiss). He therefore designates Himself by His Divine name, "the Son," that is to say, the unique Son of God (ix. 7; i. 11), to claim to be whom would for a man be blasphemy (Mk. xiv. 61, 64). But though He designates Himself by this Divine name, He is not speaking of what He once was, but of what at the moment of speaking He is: the action of the verb is present, "knoweth." He is claiming, in other words, the supreme designation of "the Son," with all that is involved in it, for His present self, as He moved among men: He is, not merely was, "the Son." Nevertheless, what He affirms of Himself cannot be affirmed of Himself distinctively as "the Son." For what He affirms of Himself is ignorance - "not even the Son" knows it; and ignorance does not belong to the Divine nature which the term "the Son" connotes. An extreme appearance of contradiction accordingly arises from the use of this terminology, just as it arises when Paul says that the Jews "crucified the Lord of glory" (I Cor. ii. 8), or exhorts the Ephesian elders to "feed the church of God which he purchased with his own blood" (Acts xx. 28 m.); or John Keble praises Our Lord for "the blood of souls by Thee redeemed." It was not the Lord of Glory as such who was nailed to the tree, nor have either "God" or "souls" blood to shed.

We know how this apparently contradictory mode of speech has arisen in Keble's case. He is speaking of men who are composite beings, consisting of souls and bodies, and these men come to be designated from one element of their composite personalities, though what is affirmed by them belongs rather to the other; we may speak, therefore, of the "blood of souls" meaning that these "souls," while not having blood as such, yet designate persons who have bodies and therefore blood. We know equally how to account for Paul's apparent contradictions. We know that he conceived of Our Lord as a composite person, uniting in Himself a Divine and a human nature. In Paul's view, therefore, though God as such has no blood, yet Jesus Christ who is God has blood because He is also man. He can justly speak, therefore, when speaking of Jesus Christ, of His blood as the blood of God. When precisely the same phenomenon meets us in Our Lord's speech of Himself, we must presume that it is the outgrowth of precisely the same state of things. When He speaks of "the Son" (who is God) as ignorant, we must understand that He is designating Himself as "the Son" because of His higher nature, and yet has in mind the ignorance of His lower nature; what He means is that the person properly designated "the Son" is ignorant, that is to say with respect to the human nature which is as intimate an element of His personality as is His Deity.

When Our Lord says, then, that "the Son knows not," He becomes as express a witness to the two natures which constitute His person as Paul is when he speaks of the blood of God, or as Keble is a witness to the twofold constitution of a human being when he speaks of souls shedding blood. In this short sentence, thus, Our Lord bears witness to His Divine nature with its supremacy above all creatures, to His human nature with its creaturely limitations, and to the unity of the subject possessed of these two natures.

(b) Other passages: Son of Man and Son of God: All these elements of His personality find severally repeated assertions in other utterances of Our Lord recorded in the Synoptics. There is no need to insist here on the elevation of Himself above the kings and prophets of the Old Covenant (Mt. xii. 41 ff.), above the temple itself (Mt. xii. 6), and the ordinances of the Divine Law (Mt. xii. 8) ; or on His accent of authority in both His teaching and action, His great "I say unto you" (Mt. v. 21, 22), 'I will; be cleansed' (Mk. i. 41; ii. 5; Lk. vii. 14) ; or on His separation of Himself from men in His relation to God, never including them with Himself in an "Our Father," but consistently speaking distinctively of "my Father" (e. g., Lk. xxiv. 49) and "your Father" (e. g., Mt. v. 16); or on His intimation that He is not merely David's Son but David's Lord, and that a Lord sitting on the right hand of God (Mt. xxii. 44); or on His parabolic discrimination of Himself a Son and Heir from all "servants" (Mt. xxi. 33 ff.); or even on His ascription to Himself of the purely Divine functions of the forgiveness of sins (Mk. ii. 8) and judgment of the world (Mt. xxv. 31), or of the purely Divine powers of reading the heart (Mk. ii. 8; Lk. ix. 47), omnipotence (Mt. xxiv. 30; Mk. xiv. 62) and omnipresence (Mt. xviii. 20; xxviii. 10). These things illustrate His constant assumption of the possession of Divine dignity and attributes; the claim itself is more directly made in the two great designations which He currently gave Himself, the Son of Man and the Son of God. The former of these is His favorite self-designation. Derived from Dan. vii. 13, 14, it intimates on every occasion of its employment Our Lord's consciousness of being a supramundane being, who has entered into a sphere of earthly life on a high mission, on the accomplishment of which He is to return to His heavenly sphere, whence He shall in due season come back to earth, now, however, in His proper majesty, to gather up the fruits of His work and consummate all things. It is a designation, thus, which implies at once a heavenly preëxistence, a present humiliation, and a future glory; and He proclaims Himself in this future glory no less than the universal King seated on the throne of judgment for quick and dead (Mk. viii. 31; Mt. xxv. 31). The implication of Deity imbedded in the designation, Son of Man, is perhaps more plainly spoken out in the companion designation, Son of God, which Our Lord not only accepts at the hands of others, accepting with it the implication of blasphemy in permitting its application to Himself (Mt. xxvi. 63, 65; Mk. xiv. 61, 64; Lk. xxii. 29, 30), but persistently claims for Himself both, in His constant designation of God as His Father in a distinctive sense, and in His less frequent but more pregnant designation of Himself as, by way of eminence, "the Son." That His consciousness of the peculiar relation to God expressed by this designation was not an attainment of His mature spiritual development, but was part of His most intimate consciousness from the beginning, is suggested by the sole glimpse which is given us into His mind as a child (Lk. ii. 49). The high significance which the designation bore to Him is revealed to us in two remarkable utterances preserved, the one by both Matthew (xi. 27 ff.) and Luke (x. 22 ff.), and the other by Matthew (xxviii. 19).

(c) Mt. xi. 27; xxviii. 19: In the former of these utterances, Our Lord, speaking in the most solemn manner, not only presents Himself, as the Son, as the sole source of knowledge of God and of blessedness for men, but places Himself in a position, not of equality merely, but of absolute reciprocity and interpenetration of knowledge with the Father. "No one," He says, "knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son . . ." varied in Luke so as to read: "No one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son . . ." as if the being of the Son were so immense that only God could know it thoroughly; and the knowledge of the Son was so unlimited that He could know God to perfection. The peculiarly pregnant employment here of the terms "Son" and "Father" over against one another is explained to us in the other utterance (Mt. xxviii. 19). It is the resurrected Lord's commission to His disciples. Claiming for Himself all authority in heaven and on earth - which implies the possession of omnipotence - and promising to be with His followers 'alway, even to the end of the world' which adds the implications of omnipresence and omniscience - He commands them to baptize their converts 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.' The precise form of the formula must be carefully observed. It does not read: 'In the names' (plural) - as if there were three beings enumerated, each with its distinguishing name. Nor yet: 'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' as if there were one person, going by a threefold name. It reads: 'In the name [singular] of the Father, and of the [article repeated] Son, and of the [article repeated] Holy Ghost,' carefully distinguishing three persons, though uniting them all under one name. The name of God was to the Jews Jehovah, and to name the name of Jehovah upon them was to make them His. What Jesus did in this great injunction was to command His followers to name the name of God upon their converts, and to announce the name of God which is to be named on their converts in the threefold enumeration of "the Father" and "the Son" and "the Holy Ghost." As it is unquestionable that He intended Himself by "the Son," He here places Himself by the side of the Father and the Spirit, as together with them constituting the one God. It is, of course, the Trinity which He is describing; and that is as much as to say that He announces Himself as one of the persons of the Trinity. This is what Jesus, as reported by the Synoptics, understood Himself to be.

In announcing Himself to be God, however, Jesus does not deny that He is man also. If all His speech of Himself rests on His consciousness of a Divine nature, no less does all His speech manifest His consciousness of a human nature. He easily identifies Himself with men (Mt. iv. 4; Lk. iv. 4), and receives without protest the imputation of humanity (Mt. xi. 19; Lk. vii. 34). He speaks familiarly of His body (Mt. xxvi. 12, 26; Mk. xiv. 8; xiv. 22; Lk. xxii. 19), and of His bodily parts - His feet and hands (Lk. xxiv. 39), His head and feet (Lk. vii. 44-46), His flesh and bones (Lk. xxiv. 39), His blood (Mt. xxvi. 28, Mk. xiv. 24; Lk. xxii. 20). We chance to be given indeed a very express affirmation on His part of the reality of His bodily nature; when His disciples were terrified at His appearing before them after His resurrection, supposing Him to be a spirit, He reassures them with the direct declaration: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having" (Lk. xxiv. 39). His testimony to His human soul is just as express: "My soul," says He, "is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" (Mt. xxvi. 38; Mk. xiv. 34). He speaks of the human dread with which He looked forward to His approaching death (Lk. xii. 50), and expresses in a poignant cry His sense of desolation on the cross (Mt. xxvii. 46; Mk. xv. 34). He speaks also of His pity for the weary and hungering people (Mt. xv. 32; Mk. viii. 2), and of a strong human desire which He felt (Lk. xxii. 15). Nothing that is human is alien to Him except sin. He never ascribes imperfection to Himself and never betrays consciousness of sin. He recognizes the evil of those about Him (Lk. xi. 13; Mt. vii. 11; xii. 34, 39; Lk. xi. 29), but never identifies Himself with it. It is those who do the will of God with whom He feels kinship (Mt. xii. 50), and He offers Himself to the morally sick as a physician (Mt. ix. 12). He proposes Himself as an example of the highest virtues (Mt. xi. 28 ff.) and pronounces him blessed who shall find no occasion of stumbling in Him (Mt. xi. 6).

These manifestations of a human and Divine consciousness simply stand side by side in the records of Our Lord's self-expression. Neither is suppressed or even qualified by the other. If we attend only to the one class we might suppose Him to proclaim Himself wholly Divine; if only to the other we might equally easily imagine Him to be representing Himself as wholly human. With both together before us we perceive Him alternately speaking out of a Divine and out of a human consciousness; manifesting Himself as all that God is and as all that man is; yet with the most marked unity of consciousness. He, the one Jesus Christ, was to His own apprehension true God and complete man in a unitary personal life.

VII. THE TWO NATURES EVERYWHERE PRESUPPOSED

There underlies, thus, the entire literature of the New Testament a single, unvarying conception of the constitution of Our Lord's person. From Matthew where He is presented as one of the persons of the Holy Trinity (xxviii. 19) - or if we prefer the chronological order of books, from the Epistle of James where He is spoken of as the Glory of God, the Shekinah (ii. 1) - to the Apocalypse where He is represented as declaring that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (i. 8, 17; xxii. 13), He is consistently thought of as in His fundamental being just God. At the same time from the Synoptic Gospels, in which He is dramatized as a man walking among men, His human descent carefully recorded, and His sense of dependence on God so emphasized that prayer becomes almost His most characteristic action, to the Epistles of John in which it is made the note of a Christian that He confesses that Jesus Christ has come in flesh (I Jn. iv. 2) and the Apocalypse in which His birth in the tribe of Judah and the house of David (v. 5; xxii. 16), His exemplary life of conflict and victory (iii. 21), His death on the cross (xi. 8) are noted, He is equally consistently thought of as true man. Nevertheless, from the beginning to the end of the whole series of books, while first one and then the other of His two natures comes into repeated prominence, there is never a question of conflict between the two, never any confusion in their relations, never any schism in His unitary personal action; but He is obviously considered and presented as one, composite indeed, but undivided personality. In this state of the case not only may evidence of the constitution of Our Lord's person properly be drawn indifferently from every part of the New Testament, and passage justly be cited to support and explain passage without reference to the portion of the New Testament in which it is found, but we should be without justification if we did not employ this common presupposition of the whole body of this literature to illustrate and explain the varied representations which meet us cursorily in its pages, representations which might easily be made to appear mutually contradictory were they not brought into harmony by their relation as natural component parts of this one unitary conception which underlies and gives consistency to them all. There can scarcely be imagined a better proof of the truth of a doctrine than its power completely to harmonize a multitude of statements which without it would present to our view only a mass of confused inconsistencies. A key which perfectly fits a lock of very complicated wards can scarcely fail to be the true key.

VIII. FORMULATION OF THE DOCTRINE

Meanwhile the wards remain complicated. Even in the case of our own composite structure, of soul and body, familiar as we are with it from our daily experience, the mutual relations of elements so disparate in a single personality remain an unplumbed mystery, and give rise to paradoxical modes of speech, which would be misleading, were not their source in our duplex nature well understood. We may read, in careful writers, of souls being left dead on battlefields, and of everybody's immortality. The mysteries of the relations in which the constituent elements in the more complex personality of Our Lord stand to one another are immeasurably greater than in our simpler case. We can never hope to comprehend how the infinite God and a finite humanity can be united in a single person; and it is very easy to go fatally astray in attempting to explain the interactions in the unitary person of natures so diverse from one another. It is not surprising, therefore, that so soon as serious efforts began to be made to give systematic explanations of the Biblical facts as to Our Lord's person, many one-sided and incomplete statements were formulated which required correction and complementing before at length a mode of statement was devised which did full justice to the Biblical data. It was accordingly only after more than a century of controversy, during which nearly every conceivable method of construing and misconstruing the Biblical facts had been proposed and tested, that a formula was framed which successfully guarded the essential data supplied by the Scriptures from destructive misconception. This formula, put together by the Council of Chalcedon, 451 A.D., declares it to have always been the doctrine of the church, derived from the Scriptures and Our Lord Himself, that Our Lord Jesus Christ is "truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and Only-begotten, God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ." There is nothing here but a careful statement in systematic form of the pure teaching of the Scriptures; and therefore this statement has stood ever since as the norm of thought and teaching as to the person of the Lord. As such, it has been incorporated, in one form or another, into the creeds of all the great branches of the church; it underlies and gives their form to all the allusions to Christ in the great mass of preaching and song which has accumulated during the centuries; and it has supplied the background of the devotions of the untold multitudes who through the Christian ages have been worshippers of Christ.

LITERATURE. - The appropriate sections in the treatises on the Biblical theology of the New Testament; also A. B. Bruce, "The Humiliation of Christ," 2d ed., Edinburgh, 1881; R. L. Ottley, "The Doctrine of the Incarnation," London, 1896; H. C. Powell, "The Principle of the Incarnation," London, 1896; Francis J. Hall, "The Kenotic Theory," New York, 1898; C. A. Briggs, "The Incarnation of the Lord," New York, 1902; G. S. Streatfeild, "The Self-Interpretation of Jesus Christ," London, 1906; B. B. Warfield, "The Lord of Glory," New York, 1907; James Denney, "Jesus and the Gospel," London, 1908; M. Lepin, "Christ and the Gospel: or, Jesus the Messiah and Son of God," Philadelphia, 1910; James Stalker, "The Christology of Jesus," New York, 1899; D. Somerville, "St. Paul's Conception of Christ," Edinburgh, 1897; E. H. Gifford, "The Incarnation: a Study of Phil. ii. 5-11," London, 1897; S. N. Rostron, "The Christology of St. Paul," London, 1912; E. Digges La Touche, "The Person of Christ in Modern Thought," London, 1912.

[NOTE. - In this article the author has usually given his own translation of quotations from Scripture, and not that of any particular VS.]

The Plan of Salvation

by Benjamin B. Warfield

Table of Contents:

Part I - Differing Conceptions

Part II - Autosoterism

Part III - Sacerdotalism

Part IV - Universalism

Part V - Calvinism

Part I - Differing Conceptions

THE SUBJECT to which our attention is to be directed in this series of lectures is ordinarily spoken of as "The Plan of Salvation." Its more technical designation is, "The Order of Decrees." And this technical designation has the advantage over the more popular one, of more accurately defining the scope of the subject matter. This is not commonly confined to the process of salvation itself but is generally made to include the entire course of the divine dealing with man which ends in his salvation. Creation is not uncommonly comprehended in it, and of course the fall, and the condition of man brought about by the fall. This portion of the subject matter may, however, certainly with some propriety, be looked upon as rather of the nature of a presupposition, than as a substantive part of the subject matter itself; and no great harm will be done if we abide by the more popular designation. Its greater concreteness gives it an advantage which should not be accounted small; and above all it has the merit of throwing into emphasis the main matter, salvation. The series of the divine activities which are brought into consideration are in any event supposed to circle around as their center, and to have as their proximate goal, the salvation of sinful man. When the implications of this are fairly considered it may not seem to require much argument to justify the designation of the whole by the term, "The Plan of Salvation."

It does not seem necessary to pause to discuss the previous question whether God, in his saving activities, acts upon a plan. That God acts upon a plan in all his activities, is already given in Theism. On the establishment of a personal God, this question is closed. For person means purpose: precisely what distinguishes a person from a thing is that its modes of action are purposive, that all it does is directed to an end and proceeds through the choice of means to that end. Even the Deist, therefore, must allow that God has a plan. We may, no doubt, imagine an extreme form of Deism, in which it may be contended that God does not concern himself at all with what happens in his universe; that, having created it, he turns aside from it and lets it run its own course to any end that may happen to it, without having himself given a thought to it. It is needless to say, however, that no such extreme form of Deism actually exists, though, strange to say, there are some, as we shall have occasion to observe, who appear to think that in the particular matter of the salvation of man God does act much after this irresponsible fashion.

What the actual Deist stands for is law. He conceives that God commits his universe, not to unforeseen and unprepared caprice, but to law; law which God has impressed on his universe and to the guidance of which he can safely leave his universe. That is to say, even the Deist conceives God to have a plan; a plan which embraces all that happens in the universe. He differs with the Theist only as to the modes of activity by which he conceives God to carry out this plan. Deism involves a mechanical conception of the universe. God has made a machine, and just because it is a good machine, he can leave it to work out, not its, but his ends. So we may make a clock and then, just because it is a good clock, leave it to tick off the seconds, and point out the minutes, and strike the hours, and mark off the days of the month, and turn up the phases of the moon and the accompanying tides; and if we choose, we may put in a comet which shall appear on the dial but once in the life of the clock, not erratically, but when and where and how we have arranged for it to appear. The clock does not go its own way; it goes our way, the way which we have arranged for it to go; and God's clock, the universe, goes not its way but his way, as he has ordained for it, grinding out the inevitable events with mechanical precision.

This is a great conception, the Deist conception of law. It delivers us from chance. But it does so, only to cast us into the cogged teeth of a machine. It is, therefore, not the greatest conception. The greatest conception is the conception of Theism, which delivers us even from law, and places us in the immediate hands of a person. It is a great thing to be delivered from the inordinate realm of aimless chance. The goddess Tyche, Fortuna, was one of the most terrible divinities of the old world, quite as terrible as and scarcely distinguishable from Fate. It is a great thing to be under the control of intelligent purpose. But it makes every difference whether the purpose is executed by mere law, acting automatically, or by the everpresent personal control of the person himself There is nothing more ordinate than the control of a person, all of whose actions are governed by intelligent purpose, directed to an end.

If we believe in a personal God, then, and much more if, being Theists, we believe in the immediate control by this personal God of the world he has made, we must believe in a plan underlying all that God does, and therefore also in a plan of salvation. The only question that can arise concerns not the reality but the nature of this plan. As to its nature, however, it must be admitted that a great many differing opinions have been held. Indeed pretty nearly every possible opinion has been announced at one time or another, in one quarter or another. Even if we leave all extra-Christian opinions to one side, we need scarcely modify this statement. Lines of division have been drawn through the Church; parties have been set over against parties; and different types of belief have been developed which amount to nothing less than different systems of religion, which are at one in little more than the mere common name of Christian, claimed by them all.

It is my purpose in this lecture to bring before us in a rapid survey such of these varying views as have been held by large parties in the Church, that some conception may be formed of their range and relations. This may be most conveniently done by observing, in the first instance at least, only the great points of difference which separate them. I shall enumerate them in the order of significance, proceeding from the most profound and far-reaching differences which divide Christians to those of less radical effect.

1. The deepest cleft which separates men calling themselves Christians in their conceptions of the plan of salvation, is that which divides what we may call the Naturalistic and the Supernaturalistic views. The line of division here is whether, in the matter of the salvation of man, God has planned simply to leave men, with more or less completeness, to save themselves, or whether he has planned himself to intervene to save them. The issue between the naturalist and the supernaturalist is thus the eminently simple but quite absolute one: Does man save himself or does God save him?

The consistently naturalistic scheme is known in the history of doctrine as Pelagianism. Pelagianism in its purity, affirms that all the power exerted in saving man is native to man himself. But Pelagianism is not merely a matter of history, nor does it always exist in its purity. As the poor in earthly goods are always with us, so the poor in spiritual things are also always with us. It may indeed be thought that there never was a period in the history of the Church in which naturalistic conceptions of the process of salvation were more wide-spread or more radical than at present. A Pelagianism which out pelagianizes Pelagus himself in the completeness of its naturalism is in fact at the moment intensely fashionable among the self-constituted leaders of Christian thought. And everywhere, in all communions alike, conceptions are current which assign to man, in the use of his native powers at least the decisive activity in the saving of the soul, that is to say, which suppose that God has planned that those shall be saved, who, at the decisive point, in one way or another save themselves.

These so-called intermediate views are obviously, in principle, naturalistic views, since (whatever part they permit God to play in the circumstantials of salvation) when they come to the crucial point of salvation itself they cast man back upon his native powers. In so doing they separate themselves definitely from the supernaturalistic view of the plan of salvation and, with it, from the united testimony of the entire organized Church. For, however much naturalistic views have seeped into the membership of the churches, the entire organized Church--Orthodox Greek, Roman Catholic Latin, and Protestant in all its great historical forms, Lutheran and Reformed, Calvinistic and Arminian--bears its consentient, firm and emphatic testimony to the supernaturalistic conception of salvation. We shall have to journey to the periphery of Christendom, to such sects of doubtful standing in the Christian body as, say, the Unitarians, to find an organized body of Christians with aught but a supernaturalistic confession.

This confession, in direct opposition to naturalism, declares with emphasis that it is God the Lord and not man himself who saves the soul; and, that no mistake may be made, it does not shrink from the complete assertion and affirms, with full understanding of the issue, precisely that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God. Here, then, is the knife-edge which separates the two parties. The supernaturalist is not content to say that some of the power which is exerted in saving the soul; that most of the power that is exerted in saving the soul, is from God. He asserts that all the power that is exerted in saving the soul is from God, that whatever part man plays in the saving process is subsidiary, is itself the effect of the divine operation and that it is God and God alone who saves the soul. And the supernaturalist in this sense is the entire organized Church in the whole stretch of its official testimony.

2. There exist, no doubt, differences among the Supernaturalists, and differences which are not small or unimportant. The most deeply cutting of these separates the Sacerdotalists and the Evangelicals. Both sacerdotalists and evangelicals are supernaturalists. That is to say, they agree that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God. They differ in their conception of the manner in which the power of God, by which salvation is wrought, is brought to bear on the soul. The exact point of difference between them turns on the question whether God, by whose power alone salvation is wrought, saves men by dealing himself immediately with them as individuals, or only by establishing supernatural endowed instrumentalities in the world by means of which men may be saved. The issue concerns the immediacy of the saving operations of God: Does God save men by immediate operations of his grace upon their souls, or does he act upon them only through the medium of instrumentalities established for that purpose?

The typical form of sacerdotalism is supplied by the teaching of the Church of Rome. In that teaching the church is held to be the institution of salvation, through which alone is salvation conveyed to men. Outside the church and its ordinances salvation is not supposed to be found; grace is communicated by and through the ministrations of the church, otherwise not. The two maxims are therefore in force: Where the church is, there is the Spirit; outside the church there is no salvation. The sacerdotal principle is present, however, wherever instrumentalities through which saving grace is brought to the soul are made indispensable to salvation; and it is dominant wherever this indispensability is made absolute. Thus what are called the Means of Grace are given the "necessity of means," and are made in the strict sense not merely the sine quibius non, but the actual quibus of salvation.

Over against this whole view evangelicalism, seeking to conserve what it conceives to be only consistent supernaturalism, sweeps away every intermediary between the soul and its God, and leaves the soul dependent for its salvation on God alone, operating upon it by his immediate grace. It is directly upon God and not the means of grace that the evangelical feels dependent for salvation; it is directly to God rather than to the means of grace that he looks for grace; and he proclaims the Holy Spirit therefore not only able to act but actually operative where and when and how he will. The Church and its ordinances he conceives rather as instruments which the Spirit uses than as agents which employ the Holy Spirit in working salvation. In direct opposition to the maxims of consistent sacerdotalism, he takes therefore as his mottoes: Where the Spirit is, there is the church; outside the body of the saints there is no salvation.

In thus describing evangelicalism, it will not escape notice that we are also describing Protestantism. In point of fact the whole body of Confessional Protestantism is evangelical in its view of the plan of salvation, inclusive alike of its Lutheran and Reformed, of its Calvinistic and Arminian branches. Protestantism and evangelicalism are accordingly conterminous, if not exactly synonymous designation. As all organized Christianity is clear and emphatic in its confession of a pure supernaturalism, so all organized Protestantism is equally clear and emphatic in its confession of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism thus comes before us as the distinctively Protestant conception of the plan of salvation, and perhaps it is not strange that, in its immediate contradiction of sacerdotalism, the more deeply lying contradiction to naturalism which it equally and indeed primarily embodies is sometimes almost lost sight of. Evangelicalism does not cease to be fundamentally antinaturalistic, however, in becoming antisacerdotal: its primary protest continues to be against naturalism, and in opposing sacerdotalism also it only is the more 'Consistently supernaturalistic, refusing to admit any intermediaries between the soul and God, as the sole source of salvation. That only is true evangelicalism, therefore, in which sounds clearly the double confession that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, and that God in his saving operations acts directly upon the soul.

3. Even so, however, there remain differences, many and deep-reaching, which divide Evangelicals among themselves. All evangelicals are agreed that all the power exerted in salvation is from God, and that God works directly upon the soul in his saving operations. But upon the exact methods employed by God in bringing many sons into glory they differ much from one another. Some evangelicals have attained their evangelical position by a process of modification, in the way of correction, applied to a fundamental sacerdotalism, from which they have thus won their way out. Naturally elements of this underlying sacerdotalism have remained imbedded in their construction, and color their whole mode of conceiving evangelicalism. There are other evangelicals whose conceptions are similarly colored by an underlying naturalism, out of which they have formed their better confession by a like process of modification and correction. The former of these parties is represented by the evangelical Lutherans, who, accordingly delight to speak of themselves as adherents of a "conservative Reformation"; that is to say, as having formed their evangelicalism on the basis of the sacerdotalism of the Church of Rome, out of which they have, painfully perhaps, though not always perfectly, made their way. The other party is represented by the evangelical Arminians, whose evangelicalism is a correction in the interest of evangelical feeling of the underlying semi-pelagianism of the Dutch Remonstrants. Over against all such forms there are still other evangelicals whose evangelicalism is more the pure expression of the fundamental evangelical principle, uncolored by intruding elements from without.

Amid this variety of types it is not easy to fix upon a principle of classification which will enable us to discriminate between the chief forms which evangelicalism takes by a clear line of demarcation. Such a principle, however, seems to be provided by the opposition between what we may call the Universalistic and the Particularistic conceptions of the plan of salvation. All evangelicals agree that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, and that this saving power is exerted immediately upon the soul. But they differ as to whether God exerts this saving power equally, or at least indiscriminately, upon all men, be they actually saved or not, or rather only upon particular men, namely upon those who are actually saved. The point of division here is whether God is conceived to have planned actually himself to save men by his almighty and certainly efficacious grace, or only so to pour out his grace upon men as to enable them to be saved, without actually securing, however, in any particular cases that they shall be saved.

The specific contention of those whom I have spoken of as universalistic is that, while all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, and this power is exerted immediately from God upon the soul, yet all that God does, looking to the salvation of men, he does for and to all men alike, without discrimination. On the face of it this looks as if it must result in a doctrine of universal salvation. If it is God the Lord who saves the soul, and not man himself; and if God the Lord saves the soul by working directly upon it in his saving grace; and then if God the Lord so works in his saving grace upon all souls alike; it would surely seem inevitably to follow that therefore all are saved. Accordingly, there have sometimes appeared earnest evangelicals who have vigorously contended precisely on these grounds that all men are saved: salvation is wholly from God, and God is almighty, and as God works salvation by his almighty grace in all men, all men are saved. From this consistent universalism, however, the great mass of evangelical universalists have always drawn back, compelled by the clearness and emphasis of the Scriptural declaration that, in point of fact, all men are not saved. They have found themselves therefore face to face with a great problem; and various efforts have been made by them to construe the activities of God looking to salvation as all universalistic and the issue as nevertheless particularistic; while yet the fundamental evangelical principle is preserved that it is the grace of God alone which saves the soul. These efforts have given us especially the two great schemes of evangelical Lutheranism and evangelical Arminianism, the characteristic contention of both of which is that all salvation is in the hands of God alone, and all that God does, looking to salvation, is directed indiscriminately to all men, and yet not all but some men only are saved.

Over against this inconsistent universalism, other evangelicals contend that the particularism which attaches to the issue of the saving process, must, just because it is God and God alone who saves, belong also to the process itself. In the interests of their common evangelicalism, in the interests also of the underlying supernaturalism common to all Christians, neither of which comes to its rights otherwise-nay, in the interests of religion itself-they plead that God deals throughout the whole process of salvation not with men in the mass but with individual men one by one, upon each of whom he lays hold with his grace, and each of whom he by his grace brings to salvation. As it is he who saves men, and as he saves them by immediate operations on their hearts, and as his saving grace is his almighty power effecting salvation, men owe in each and every case their actual salvation, and not merely their general opportunity to be saved, to him. And therefore, to him and to him alone belongs in each instance all the glory, which none can share with him. Thus, they contend, in order that the right evangelical ascription, Soli Deo gloria, may be true and suffer no diminution in meaning or in force, it is necessary to understand that it is of God that each one who is saved has everything that enters into salvation and, most of all, the very fact that it is he who enters into salvation. The precise issue which divides the universalists and the particularists is, accordingly, just whether the saving grace of God, in which alone is salvation, actually saves. Does its presence mean salvation, or may it be present, and yet salvation fail?

4. Even the Particularists, however, have their differences. The most important of these differences divides between those who hold that God has in view not all but some men, namely those who are actually saved, in all his operations looking toward the salvation of men; and those who wish to discriminate among God's operations in this matter and to assign only to some of them a particularistic which they assign to others a universalistic reference. The latter view is, of course, an attempt to mediate between the particularistic and the universalistic conceptions, preserving particularism in the processes as well as in the issue of salvation sufficiently to hang salvation upon the grace of God alone and to give to him all the glory of the actual salvation; while yet yielding to universalism so much of the process of salvation as its adherents think can be made at all consistent with this fundamental particularism.

The special one of the saving operations which is yielded by them to universalism is the redemption of the sinner by Christ. This is supposed to have in the plan of God, not indeed an absolute, but a hypothetical reference to all men. All men are redeemed by Christ-that is, if they believe in him. Their believing in him is, however, dependent on the working of faith in their hearts by God, the Holy Spirit, in his saving operations designed to give effect to the redemption of Christ. The scheme is therefore known not merely by the name of its author, as Amyraldianism, but also, more descriptively, as Hypothetical Redemptionism, or, more commonly, as Hypothetical Universalism. It transfers the question which divides the particularist and the universalist with respect to the plan of salvation as a whole, to the more specific question of the reference of the redeeming work of Christ. And the precise point at issue comes therefore to be whether the redemptive work of Christ actually saves those for whom it is wrought, or only opens a possibility of salvation to them. The hypothetical universalist, holding that its reference is to all men indifferently and that not all men are saved, cannot ascribe to it a specifically saving operation and are therefore accustomed to speak of it as rendering salvation possible to all, as opening the way of salvation to men, as removing all the obstacles to the salvation of men, or in some other similar way. On the other hand, the consistent particularist is able to look upon the redemption wrought by Christ as actually redemptive, and insists that it is in itself a saving act which actually saves, securing the salvation of those for whom it is wrought.

The debate comes thus to turn upon the nature of the redemptive work of Christ; and the particularists are able to make it very clear that whatever is added to it extensively is taken from it intensively. In other words, the issue remains here the same as in the debate with the general universalism of the Lutheran and the Arminian, namely, whether the saving operations of God actually save; though this issue is here concentrated upon a single one of these saving operations. If the saving operations of God actually save, then all those upon whom he savingly operates are saved, and particularism is given in the very nature of the case; unless we are prepared to go the whole way with universalism and declare that all men are saved. It is thus in the interests of the fundamental supernaturalistic postulate by which all organized Christianity separates itself from mere naturalism, that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God-and of the great evangelical ascription, of Soli Deo gloria, as well-that the consistent particularist contends that the reference of the redemption of Christ cannot be extended beyond the body of those who are actually saved, but must be held to be only one of the operations by which God saves those whom he saves, and not they themselves. Not only, then, they contend, must we give a place to particularism in the process as well as in the issue of salvation, but a place must be vindicated for it in all the processes of salvation alike. It is God the Lord who saves; and in all the operations by which he works salvation alike, he operates for and upon, not all men indifferently, but some men only, those namely whom he saves. Thus only can we preserve to him his glory and ascribe to him and to him only the whole work of salvation.

5. The differences which have been enumerated exhaust the possibilities of differences of large moment within the limits of the plan of salvation. Men must be either Naturalists or Supematuralists; Supematuralists either Sacerdotalists or Evangelicals; Evangelicals either Universalistic or Particularistic; Particularists must be particularistic with respect to only some or with respect to all of God's saving operations. But the consistent particularists themselves find it still possible to differ among themselves, not indeed upon the terms of the plan of salvation itself, upon which they are all at one, but in the region of the presuppositions of that plan; and for the sake of completeness of enumeration it is desirable that this difference, too, should be adverted to here. It does not concern what God has done in the course of his saving operations; but passing behind the matter of salvation, it asks how God had dealt in general with the human race, as a race, with respect to its destiny. The two parties here are known in the history of thought by the contrasting names of Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians or Infralapsarians. The point of difference between them is whether God, in his dealing with men with reference to their destiny, divides them into two classes merely as men, or as sinners. That is to say, whether God's decree of election and preterition concerns men contemplated merely as men, or contemplated as already sinful men, a massa corrupta.

The mere putting of the question seems to carry its answer with it. For the actual dealing with men which is in question, is, with respect to both classes alike, those who are elected and those who are passed by, conditioned on sin: we cannot speak of salvation any more than of reprobation without positing sin. Sin is necessarily precedent in thought, not indeed to the abstract idea of discrimination, but to the concrete instance of discrimination which is in question, a discrimination with regard to a destiny which involves either salvation or punishment. There must be sin in contemplation to ground a decree of salvation, as truly a decree of punishment. We cannot speak of a decree discriminating between men with reference to salvation and punishment, therefore, without positing the contemplation of men as sinners as its logical prius.

The fault of the division of opinion now in question is that it seeks to lift the question of the discrimination on God's part between men, by which they are divided into two classes, the one the recipients of his undeserved favor, and the other the objects of his just displeasure, out of the region of reality; and thus loses itself in mere abstractions. When we bring it back to earth we find that the question which is raised amounts to this: whether God discriminates between men in order that he may save some; or whether he saves some in order that he may discriminate between men. Is the proximate motive that moves him an abstract desire for discrimination, a wish that he may have some variety in his dealings with men; and he therefore determines to make some of the objects of his ineffable favor and to deal with others in strict accordance with their personal deserts, in order that he may thus exercise all his faculties? Or is it the proximate motive that moves him an unwillingness that all mankind should perish in their sins; and, therefore, in order to gratify the promptings of his compassion, he intervenes to rescue from their ruin and misery an innumerable multitude which no man can number-as many as under the pressure of his sense of right he can obtain the consent of his whole nature to relieve from the just penalties of their sin-by an expedient in which his justice and mercy meet and kiss each other? Whatever we may say of the former question, it surely is the latter which is oriented aright with respect to the tremendous realities of human existence.

One of the leading motives in the framing of the supralapsarian scheme, is the desire to preserve the particularistic principle throughout the whole of God's dealings with men; not with respect to man's salvation only, but throughout the entire course of the divine action with respect to men. God from creation itself, it is therefore said, deals with men conceived as divided into two classes, the recipients respectively of his undeserved favor and of his well-merited reprobation. Accordingly, some supralapsarians place the decree of discrimination first in the order of thought, precedent even to the decree of creation. All of them place it in the order of thought precedent to the decree of the fall. It is in place therefore to point out that this attempt to particularize the whole dealing of God with men is not really carried out, and indeed cannot in the nature of the case be carried out. The decree to create man, and more particularly the decree to permit the man whose creation is contemplated to fall into sin, are of necessity universalistic. Not some men only are created, nor some men created differently from others; but all mankind is created in its first head, and all mankind alike. Not some men only are permitted to fall; but all men and all men alike. The attempt to push particularism out of the sphere of the plan of salvation, where the issue is diverse (because confessedly only some men are saved), into the sphere of creation or of the fall, where the issue is common (for all men are created and all men are fallen), fails of the very necessity of the case. Particularism can come into question only where the diverse issues call for the postulation of diverse dealings looking toward the differing issues. It cannot then be pushed into the region of the divine dealings with man prior to man's need of salvation and God's dealings with him with reference to a salvation which is not common to all. Supralapsarianism errs therefore as seriously on the one side as universalism does on the other. Infralapsarianism offers the only scheme which is either self-consistent or consistent with the facts.

It will scarcely have escaped notice that the several conceptions of the nature of the plan of salvation which we have passed in review do not stand simply side by side as varying conceptions of that plan, each making its appeal in opposition to all the rest. They are related to one another rather as a progressive series of corrections of a primal error, attaining ever more and more consistency in the embodiment of the one fundamental idea of salvation. If, then, we wish to find our way among them it must not be by pitting them indiscriminately against one another, but by following them regularly up the series. Supernaturalism must first be validated as against Naturalism, then Evangelicalism as against Sacerdotalism, then Particularism as against Universalism; and thus we shall arrive at length at the conception of the plan of salvation which does full justice to its specific character. It is to this survey that attention will be addressed in the succeeding lectures.

The accompanying diagram will exhibit in a synoptical view the several conceptions which have been enumerated in this lecture, and may facilitate the apprehension of their mutual relations.

Part II - Autosoterism

THERE ARE fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism. "The principle of heathenism," remarks Dr. Herman Bavinek, "is, negatively, the denial of the true God, and of the gift of his grace; and, positively, the notion that salvation can be secured by man's own power and wisdom. 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name.' Gen. 11:4. Whether the works through which heathenism seeks the way of salvation bear a more ritual or a more ethical characteristic, whether they are of a more positive or of a more negative nature, in any case man remains his own saviour; all religions except the Christian are autosoteric. . . And philosophy has made no advance upon this: even Kant and Schopenhauer, who, with their eye on the inborn sinfulness of man recognize the necessity of a regeneration, come in the end to an appeal to the will, the wisdom and the power of man."

It was quite apposite, therefore, when Jerome pronounced Pelagianism, the first organized system of self-salvation taught in the Church, the "heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno." It was in effect the crystallization in Christian forms of the widely diffused Stoic ethics, by which the thought of men had been governed through the whole preceding history of the Church. Around the central principle of the plenary ability of the human will, held with complete confidence and proclaimed, not in the weak negative form that obligation is limited by ability, but in the exultant positive form that ability is fully competent to all obligation, Pelagius, no mean systematizer, built up a complete autosoteric system. On the one side this system was protected by the denial of any "fall" suffered by mankind in its first head, and accordingly of any entail of evil, whether of sin or mere weakness, derived from its past history. Every man is born in the same condition in which Adam was created; and every man continues throughout life in the same condition in which he is born. By his fall Adam at most has set us a bad example, which, however, we need not follow unless we choose; and our past sins, while of course we may be called to account for them and must endure righteous punishment on their account, cannot in any way abridge or contract our inherent power of doing what is right. "I say," declares Pelagius, "that man is able to be without sin, and that he is able to keep the commandments of God." And this ability remains intact after not only Adam's sin but any and every sin of our own. It is, says Julian of Eclanum, "just as complete after sins as it was before sins." At any moment he chooses, therefore, any man can cease all sinning and from that instant onward be and continue perfect. On the other hand, this round assertion of entire ability to fulfill every righteousness is protected by the denial of all "grace," in the sense of inward help from God. As such help from God is not needed, neither is it given; every man in the most absolute sense works out his own salvation: whether with fear and trembling or not, will depend solely on his particular temperament. To be sure the term grace" is too deeply imbedded in the Scriptural representations to be altogether discarded. The Pelagians therefore continued to employ it, but they explained it after a fashion which voided it of its Scriptural pregnancy. By "grace" they meant the fundamental endowment of man with his inalienable freedom of will, and along with that, the inducements which God has brought to bear on him to use his freedom for good.

The Pelagian scheme therefore embraces the following points. God has endowed man with an inalienable freedom of will, by virtue of which he is fully able to do all that can be required of him. To this great gift God has added the gifts of the law and the gospel to illuminate the way of righteousness and to persuade man to walk in it; and even the gift of Christ to supply an expiation for past sins for all who will do righteousness, and especially to set a good example. Those who, under these inducements and in the power of their ineradicable freedom, turn from their sins and do righteousness, will be accepted by the righteous God and rewarded according to their deeds.

This was the first purely autosoteric scheme published in the Church, and it is thoroughly typical of all that has succeeded it from that day to this.

In the providence of God the publication of this autosoteric scheme was met immediately by an equally clear and consistently worked-out assertion of the doctrine of "grace," so that the great conflict between grace and free will was fought out for the Church once for all in those opening years of the fifth century. The champion of grace in this controversy was Augustine, whose entire system revolved around the assertion of grace as the sole source of all good in man as truly and as completely as did that of Pelagius around the assertion of the plenary ability of the unaided will to work all righteousness. The reach of Augustine's assertion is fairly revealed by the demands of the Council of Carthage of A. D. 417-418, which refused to be satisfied by anything less than an unequivocal acknowledgment that "we are aided by the grace of God, through Christ, not only to know but also to do what is right, in each single act, so that without grace we are unable to have, think, speak, or do anything pertaining to piety." The opposition between the two systems was thus absolute. In the one, everything was attributed to man; in the other, everything was ascribed to God. In them, two religions, the only two possible religions at bottom, met in mortal combat: the religion of faith and the religion of works; the religion which despairs of self and casts all its hope on God the Saviour, and the religion which puts complete trust in self; or since religion is in its very nature utter dependence on God, religion in the purity of its conception and a mere quasi-religious moralism. The battle was sharp, but the issue was happily not doubtful. In the triumph of Augustinianism it was once for all settled that Christianity was to remain a religion, and a religion for sinful men, needing salvation, and not rot down into a mere ethical system, fitted only for the righteous who need no salvation.

But, as we have been told that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, so the Church soon found that religion itself can be retained only at the cost of perpetual struggle. Pelagianism died hard; or rather it did not die at all, but only retired more or less out of sight and bided its time; meanwhile vexing the Church with modified forms of itself, modified just enough to escape the letter of the Church's condemnation. Into the place of Pelagianism there stepped at once Semi-pelagianism; and when the controversy with Semi-pelagianism had been fought and won, into the place of Semi-pelagianism there stepped that semi-semi-pelagianism which the Council of Orange betrayed the Church into, the genius of an Aquinas systematized for her, and the Council of Trent finally fastened with rivets of iron upon that portion of the church which obeyed it. The necessity of grace had been acknowledged as the result of the Pelagian controversy: its preveniency, as the result of the Semi-pelagian controversy: but its certain efficacy, its "irresistibility" men call it, was by the fatal compromise of Orange denied, and thus the conquering march of Augustinianism was checked and the pure confession of salvation by grace alone made forever impossible within that section of the Church whose proud boast is that it is semper eadem. It was no longer legally possible, indeed, within the limits of the Church to ascribe to man, with the Pelagian, the whole of salvation; nor even, with the Semi- pelagian, the initiation of salvation. But neither was it any longer legally possible to ascribe salvation so entirely to the grace of God that it could complete itself without the aid of the discredited human will-its aid only as empowered and moved by prevenient grace indeed, but not effectually moved, so that it could not hold back and defeat the operations of saving grace.

The gravitation of this Synergistic system is obviously downward, and therefore we cannot be surprised to learn that it easily fell away into that express Semi-pelagianism which, despite its official condemnation by the Church, seems to have formed the practical faith of most men throughout the Middle Ages, and in which the determining act in salvation is assigned, not to the grace of God conveying salvation, but to the consent of the will, giving to the almighty grace of God its efficacy. Here is a work-salvation as truly though not as grossly as in pure Pelagianism itself; and accordingly, throughout the Middle Ages, Legalism reigned supreme, a legalism which wrought precisely the same effects as are so vividly described by Heinrich Weinel, as manifesting themselves in the Jewish circles from which the Apostle Paul sprung. "He only can be happy under a dispensation of law," says Weinel, "who can live a life-long lie. . . . But proud, downright, consistent natures cannot be put off with a lie. If they are unable to resist, they die of the lie; if they are strong, it is the lie that dies. The lie inherent in the law was the presumption that it could be fulfilled. Every one of Paul's associates understood that the commandment could not be kept, but they did not own it to themselves. The elder behaved in presence of the younger as if it could be kept; one believed it on the strength of another, and did not acknowledge the impossibility to himself. They blinded themselves to their own sin by comparing themselves with other just men, and had recourse to remote ages to Enoch and Noah and Daniel, in order to produce advocates for their souls. They hoped God would allow the good works of the saints to cover their deficiencies, and they did not forget occasionally to pray for mercy, yet, on the whole they kept up the lie and went on as if they were well."

This is a true picture of the Middle Ages. Men knew very well that they could not earn for themselves salvation even under the incitement of the grace of God; they knew very well that they failed in their "good works," at every stage; and yet they kept the ghastly fiction up. Were there no strong men "to kill the lie"? Strong men rose here and there, a Gottschalk in the ninth century, a Bradwardine, a Wyclif in the fourteenth, a Huss in the fifteenth, a belated Jansen in the seventeenth; but, despite their protests, the lie still lived on until at last the really strong man came in Martin Luther, and the lie died. The Augustianianism that had been repressed in the Church of Rome could not be suppressed. The Church had bound itself in that it might not contain it. There was nothing for it then but that it should burst the bounds of the Church and flow out from it. The explosion came in what we call the Reformation. For the Reformation is nothing other than Augustianianism come to its rights: the turning away from all that is human to rest on God alone for salvation.

Accordingly, nothing is more fundamental in the doctrine of the Reformers than the complete inability of man and his absolute need of divine grace;" and against nothing do the Reformers set their faces more firmly than the ascription to man of native power to good. To Luther, Pelagianism was the heresy of heresies, from the religious point of view equivalent to unbelief, from the ethical point of view to mere egotism. It was "for him the comprehensive term for all that which he particularly wishes to assault in the Catholic Church." His treatise De Servo Arbitrio written against Erasmus' Pelagianising exaltation of human ability, was esteemed by him the only one of his books, except the Catechism, in which he could find nothing to correct. "As to the doctrine of free will as preached before Luther and other Reformers appeared," writes Calvin, "What effect could it have but to fill men with an overweening opinion of their own virtue, swelling them out with vanity, and leaving no room for the grace and assistance of the Holy Spirit." "When we tell a man," he writes again, "to seek righteousness and life outside of himself, that is in Christ only, because he has nothing in himself but sin and death, a controversy immediately arises with reference to the freedom and power of the will. For if man has any ability of his own to serve God, he does not obtain salvation entirely by the grace of Christ, but in part bestows it on himself. Though we deny not that man acts spontaneously and of free will when he is guided by the Holy Spirit, we maintain that his whole nature is so imbued with depravity that of himself, he possesses no ability to act aright."

It was not long, however, before, even in these circles of realized Augustinianism, in which the ascription of salvation to God alone was something like a passion, the old leaven of self-salvation began to work again. It was in no less a person than Philip Melanchthon that this new "falling from grace entered into the thought of the Reformation, though in his teaching it made but little progress. Three periods are distinguishable in the development of his doctrine. In the first of these he was as pure an Augustinian as Luther or Calvin himself. In the second, commencing in 1527, he begins to go to school to Aristotle in his general doctrine of the will. In the third, from 1532 on, he allows the will of man, though only as a purely formal power, some place in the very process of salvation: it can put the spiritual affections created solely by the Holy Spirit in chains or on the throne. From this beginning, synergism rapidly took form in the Lutheran Church. It met with opposition, it is true: the old Lutherans, an Amsdorf, a Flacius, a Wigand, a Brenz were all fully convinced Augustinians. But the opposition was not as hearty as it might have been had the controversy with the Calvinists not been at its height. Even Brenz permitted Strigel to taunt him at the Weimar Disputation with his predestinationism, without boldly taking the offensive. And so Andrea could corrupt Luther's doctrine at the Conference at Mompelgard, 1586, without rebuke; Aegidius Hunnius could teach openly the resistibility of grace; and John Gerhard could condition election on the foresight of faith. When Melanchthon toyed with such ambiguous phrases as "God draws the willing to him," "Free will is man's power to apply himself to grace, he was playing with fire. A hundred years later the Saxon theologians, Hoe van Hohenegg and Polycarp Leyser at the Leipzig Conference of March 1631 could confidently present as Lutheran doctrine the declaration that "God certainly chose us out of grace in Christ; but this took place according to his foresight of who would truly and constantly believe in Christ; and whom God foresaw that they would believe, those he predestined and elected to make blessed and glorious." The wonder-working grace of God which raises the dead that Luther so passionately proclaimed, was now put wholly at the disposal of that will of man which Luther declared to be utterly enslaved to sin and capable of moving in good part only as it is carried along and borne forward by grace.

Nor have things bettered with the passage of the years. It is one of the best esteemed Lutheran teachers of our own day Wilhelm Schmidt, Professor of Theology at Breslau, who tells us that "the divine purpose and love is able to realize itself only with and very precisely through the will of the being to whom it is directed;" and "in one word there exists over against God's holy decrees a freedom established by himself, against which they are often enough shattered, and may indeed in every individual case be shattered." Accordingly he is not content to reject the praedestinatio stricte dicta of the Calvin- ists, but equally repudiates the praedestinatio late dicta of the old Lutheran divines, that teaches a decree of God by which all men are designated to salvation by an antecedent will, while by a consequent will all those are set apart and ordained to salvation, who, God foresees, "will finally believe in Christ." For, says he, "with the divine, that is to say, the infallible foresight of them, the decisions of man cease to be free." Thus not only is the divine predestination but also the divine foresight sacrificed on the altar of human freedom, and the conclusion of the whole matter is enunciated in the words: "All men are, so far as concerns God, written in the Book of Life (benevolentia universalis) but who of them all stays written in it, is finally determined only at the end of the day." The result cannot be known beforehand, even by God. It is not enough that redemption should engage the will, so that we may say that there is no redemption "except the sinner very energetically cooperate with it," even if this be interpreted to mean, "permits himself to be redeemed. "We must go on and say that "redemption must fail of its end and remain without effect, however much the divine will of love and counsel of salvation might wish otherwise, if effect is not given it by man's inwardly bringing it to pass that, out of his own initiative, he grasps the rescuing hand and does repentance, breaks with his sin and leads a righteous life. "When Schmidt comes, therefore to speak of the Application of Salvation by the Holy Spirit, he is explicit in denying to the Holy Spirit any power to produce salvation in an unwilling soul. "Even the Holy Spirit," he tells us, "can in the presence of the free will that belongs to man as such by nature, compel no one to accept salvation. Even he can accomplish his saving purpose with us only if we do not obstruct, do not withdraw from, do not oppose his work for us. All this stands in our power and he is helpless (ohnmachtig) with respect to it if we misuse it. . . . He who wills not to be saved cannot be helped even by the Holy Spirit.

Self-assertion could scarcely go further; not even in those perhaps stirring but certainly somewhat blustering verses by W. E. Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever Gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

This is of course Pelagianism unashamed-unless we should prefer to call it sheer heathenism. And yet it is cited with warm approval by an esteemed minister of the Church of Scotland, writing in quite its spirit on the great subject of "Election." He uses it indeed immediately to support a cheerful assertion of the fundamental Pelagian principle that ability limits obligation: "That conscious life which speaks saying, 'Thou oughtest,' wakes a no less certain echo within, which says, 'Because I ought I can.' That 'can' abides forever, however enfeebled it may become. "Pelagius could ask nothing more.

It may be inferred from such a phenomenon as that which has been mentioned that the Reformed Churches, though retaining their Augustinian confession as the Lutheran could not, and sloughing off the Arminian Semi-pelagianism which rose in the early seventeenth century to vex them as the Lutherans could not their synergism, have yet in our own day become honeycombed with the same Pelagianizing conceptions. This is so far true that we are met on all hands to-day, even in the Reformed Churches, with the most unmeasured assertions of human independence, and of the uncontrollableness and indeed absolute unpredictableness of the action of the human will. The extremes to which this can go are fairly illustrated by certain, no doubt somewhat incidental, remarks made by Dr. David W. Forrest in the unhappy book which he calls, certainly very misleadingly, "The Authority of Christ" (1906). In his hands human freedom has grown so all-powerful as fairly to abolish not only the common principles of evangelical religion but all faith in divine providence itself. He has adopted in effect a view of free agency which reserves to man complete independence and excludes all divine control or even foresight of human action. Unable to govern the acts of free agents, God is reduced to the necessity of constantly adjusting himself to them. Accordingly God has to accept in his universe much that he would much prefer should not be there. There is, for example, the whole sphere of the accidental. If we cooperate with others in dangerous employments, or, say, go out seeking pleasure with a shooting party, we may be killed by an unskillful act of a fellow workman or by the random shot of a careless marksman. God is helpless in the matter, and there will be no use in appealing to him with regard to it. For, says

Dr. Forrest, God could only prevent the bad workman or marksman from causing death to others by depriving him of his freedom to shape his own course. There is in a word no providential control whatever of the acts of free agents. Accordingly, Dr. Forrest tells us, a wise man will not be surprised that tragic cruelties should occur in the world, which seem almost un-alleviatedly wrong: "he will recognize the possibilities of man's freedom in defying God's will, both by the infliction of suffering and by the refusal to be taught by suffering." Nor can God's grace intervene to cure the defects of his providence. Human free will interposes an effectual barrier to the working of his grace; and God has no power to overcome the opposition of the human heart. "There is no barrier to the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the heart," remarks Dr. Forrest with the air of making a great confession, "except that created by the refusal of the heart to welcome him," obviously only another way of saying that the heart's refusal is an insuperable barrier to the entrance of the Holy Spirit into it. Accordingly, the progress of his kingdom in the world could not be forecast in its details by our Lord, but lay in his mind only as outlined in its general features. "He saw," says Dr. Forrest, "that 'conversion' had its human factor as well as its divine; and that the mighty works of God might be rendered impossible by man's perversities of unbelief. Hence the detailed course of the kingdom in the world was an inscrutable thing. . . . "Even in the Church itself the divine purpose may fail, despite the presence in the Church of the Spirit of God promised to it: for, though the Spirit will not fail to guide the Church, the Church may fail to "fulfill the conditions under which it could avail itself of the Spirit's guidance. "So zealous, in a word, is Dr. Forrest to emanci- pate man from the dominion of God that he goes near to placing God under the dominion of man. The world God has created has escaped beyond its tether; there is nothing for God to do but to accept it as he finds it and adjust himself as best he may to it. It was told to Thomas Carlyle once that Margaret Fuller had announced in her solemn way, "I accept the universe," "Gad, she'd better," was the simple comment of the sage. Is the Lord God Almighty in the same case?

If this be in any degree the case with God, why, of course there can be no talk of God's saving man. If man is to be saved at all, though it is questionable whether "saving" is the right word to use here, it is clear that he must "save" himself. If we can still speak of a plan of salvation on God's part, that plan must be reduced just to keeping the way of salvation open, that man, who is the master of his own destiny, may meet with no hindrance when he chooses to walk in it. In very truth, this is the conception of "salvation" which in the widest circles is now confidently proclaimed. This is the hinge, indeed, on which turns the entire thought of that New Protes- tantism which has arisen in our day, repudiating the Reformation and all its works as mere medievalism, and attaching itself rather to the Enlightenment, as the birth of a new world, a new world in which rules just Man, the Lord of all. "Rationalism" we have been accustomed to call the whole movement, and as phase of it follows phase of it, in the Rationalismus Vulgaris of Wegscheider, we will say; in Kant and his followers; in the post-Kantian Schools; and now in our "New Protestantism" we must at least accord it the praise of breeding marvelously true to type.

Profound thinkers like Kant and perhaps we may say, even more, spiritually minded thinkers like Rudolf Eucken, may be incapable of the shallow estimate of human nature which sees in it nothing but good. But even the perception of the radical evil of human nature cannot deliver them out of the fixed circle of thought which asserts human ability for the whole sphere of human obligation, however that ability be construed. "How it is possible for a naturally bad man to make himself a good" man, exclaims Kant; "entirely baffles our thought, for how can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?" But he is, despite the perceived impossibility of it, able to rest in the solution, or rather no solution, of the weak, "It must be possible for us to become better, even if that which we are able to do should be of itself insufficient, and all that we could do was to make ourselves receptive for a higher assistance of an inscrutable kind. "Beyond a similar appeal to an inscrutable mystical power flowing through the life of the man who strives to help himself, even a Rudolf Eucken does not get. And so our most modern thought only reproduces the ancient Pelagianism, with a less profound sense of the guilt and a little deeper sense of the difficulties which evil has brought upon man. Of expiation it will hear nothing; and while it makes a place for aid, it must be an aid which flows into the soul in response to and along the lines of its own creative efforts.

Outside the deeper philosophies even this falls away, and the shallowest forms of Pelagianism stalk abroad with utter freedom from all sense of insufficiency. The most characteris- tic expression of this general point of view is given, perhaps, in the current adduction of the parable of the Prodigal Son as embodying not merely the essence but the entirety of the gospel. Precious as this parable is for its great message that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, when it is perverted from the purpose for which it was spoken and made to stand for the whole gospel (corruptio optimi pessima), it becomes the instrument for tearing down the entire fabric of Christianity. There is no atonement in this parable, and indeed no Christ in even the most attenuated function which could possibly be ascribed to a Christ. There is no creative grace in this parable; and indeed no Holy Spirit in any operation the most ineffective that could be attributed to him. There is no seeking love of God in this parable: the father in the parable pays absolutely no attention to his errant son, just lets him alone, and apparently feels no concern about him. Considered as a pictorial representation of the gospel, its teaching is just this, and nothing more: that when anyone, altogether of his own motion, chooses to get up and go back to God, he will be received with acclamation. It is certainly a very flattering gospel. It is flattering to be told that we can get up and go to God whenever we choose, and that nobody is going to pester us about it. It is flattering to be told that when we choose to go back to God we can command a handsome reception, and no questions asked. But is this the gospel of Jesus Christ? Is the whole teaching of Jesus Christ summed up in this: that the gates of heaven stand open and anybody can go in whenever he pleases? That is, however, what the entire body of modern Liberal theologians tell us: our Harnacks and Boussets and their innumerable disciples and imitators.

"Innumerable" disciples and imitators, I say: for surely this teaching has overspread the world. We are told by Erich Schader that during his professorial life no student has ever come before him on the mind of whom the presentation of the two parables of the Pharisee and the Publican praying in the temple and of the Lost Son, in the sense that the forgiveness of God is conditioned by nothing and no atonement is needed, has not made for a longer or shorter time a great and deep impression. It is a Pelagianism, you see, which out-pelagianizes Pelagius. For Pelagius had some recognition of the guilt of sin, and gave some acknowledgement of the atoning work of Christ in making expiation for this guilt. And this theology does neither. With no real sense of guilt, and without the least feeling for the disabilities which come from sin, it complacently puts God's forgiveness at the disposal of whosoever will deign to take it from his hands. The view of God which is involved, some one has not inaptly if a little bitingly called "the domestic animal conception of God." As you keep sheep to give you wool, and cows to give you milk, so you keep God to give you forgiveness. What is meant is grimly illustrated by the story of poor Heinrich Heine, writhing on his bed of agony, who, asked by an officious visitor if he had hope of the forgiveness of his sins, replied with a glance upwards of mocking bitterness," Why, yes, certainly: that's what God is for." That's what God is for! It is thus that our modern Liberal theology thinks of God. He has but one function and comes into contact with man at but one point: he exists to forgive sins.

In somewhat the same spirit we hear ringing up and down the land the passionate proclamation of what its adherents love to call a "whosoever will gospel." It is no doubt the univer- sality of the gospel-offer which is intended to be emphasized. But do we not shoot beyond the mark when we seem to hang salvation purely on the human will? And should we not stop to consider that, if so we seem to open salvation to "whosoever will" on the one hand, on the other we open it only to "whosoever will"? And who, in this world of death and sin, I do not say merely will, but can, will the good? Is it not forever true that grapes are not gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles; that it is only the good tree which brings forth good fruit while the evil tree brings forth always and everywhere only evil fruit? It is not only Hannah More's Black Giles the Poacher who may haply "find it difficult to repent when he will." It is useless to talk of salvation being for "whosoever will" in a world of universal "won't." Here is the real point of difficulty: how, where, can we obtain the will? Let others rejoice in a "whosoever will gospel": for the sinner who knows himself to be a sinner, and knows what it is to be a sinner, only a "God will" gospel will suffice. If the gospel is to be committed to the dead wills of sinful men, and there is nothing above and beyond, who then can be saved?

As a recent writer, who makes no great claims to special orthodoxy but has some philosophical insight points out, "the self that is to determine is the same as the self that is to be determined"; "the self which according to Pelagius is to make one good is the bad self that needs to be made good." "The disease is in the will, not in some part of ourselves other than the will which the will can control. How can the diseased will provide the cure?" "The seat of the problem is our wills; we could be good if we would, but we won't; and we can't begin to will it, unless we will so to begin, that is, unless we already will it. 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank my God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' I am told to repent if I would be forgiven; but how can I repent? I only do what is wrong because I like it, and I can't stop liking it or like something else better because I am told to do so, nor even because it is proved that it would be better for me. If I am to be changed, something must lay hold of me and change me. " "Can peach renew lost bloom?" asks Christina G. Rossetti, more poetically, but with the same pungent point:

Can peach renew lost bloom,
Or violet lost perfume,
Or sullied snow tum white as over-night?
Man cannot compass it, yet never fear;
The leper Naaman
Shows what God will and can.
God who worked then is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow.
God who worked then is working now.

It is only in the loving omnipotence and omnipotent love of God that a sinner can trust. "Christ" cries Charles H. Spurgeon, "is not 'mighty to save' those who repent, but is able to make men repent. He will carry those to heaven who believe; but he is moreover mighty to give men new hearts, and to work faith in them. He is mighty to make the man who hates holiness, love it, and to constrain the despiser of his name to bend the knee before him. Nay, this is not all the meaning, for the divine power is equally seen in the after- work. . . . He is mighty to keep his people holy after he has made them so, and to preserve them in fear and love, until he consummates their spiritual existence in heaven."

If it were not so, the case of the sinner were desperate. It is only in almighty grace that a sinner can hope; for it is only almighty grace that can raise the dead. What boots it to send the trumpeter crying amid the serried ranks of the dead: "The gates of heaven stand open: whosoever will may enter in"? The real question which presses is, Who will make these dry bones live? As over against all teaching that would tempt man to trust in himself for any, even the smallest part, of his salvation, Christianity casts him utterly on God. It is God and God alone who saves, and that in every element of the saving process. "If there be but one stitch," says Spurgeon aptly, "in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we ourselves are to put in, we are lost."

Part III - Sacerdotalism

IT IS THE consistent testimony of the universal Church that salvation is from God, and from God alone. The tendency constantly showing itself in all branches of the Church alike to conceive of salvation as, in one way or another, to a greater or less degree, from man, is thus branded by the entire Church in its official testimony as a heathen remainder not yet fully eliminated from the thinking and feeling of those who profess and call themselves Christians. The incessant reappearance of this tendency in one or another form throughout the Church is evidence enough, however, of the difficulty which men feel in preserving in its purity the Christian ascription of salvation to God alone. And this difficulty obtrudes itself in another way in a great and far-reaching difference which has arisen in the organized testimony of the Church itself with respect to the mode of the divine operation in working salvation in men.

Though salvation is declared to be wholly of God, who alone can save, it has yet been taught in a large portion of the Church, (up to today in the larger portion of the Church), that God in working salvation does not operate upon the human soul directly but indirectly; that is to say, through instrumentalities which he has established as the means by which his saving grace is communicated to men. As these instrumentalities are committed to human hands for their administration, a human factor is thus intruded between the saving grace of God and its effective operation in the souls of men; and this human factor indeed, is made the determining factor in salvation. Against this Sacerdotal system, as it is appropriately called, the whole Protestant Church, in all its parts, Lutheran and Reformed, Calvinistic and Arminian, raises its passionate protest. In the interests of the pure supernaturalism of salvation it insists that God the Lord himself works by his grace immediately on the souls of men, and has not suspended any man's salvation upon the faithfulness or caprice of his fellows. In the words of old John Hooper, it condemns as "an ungodly opinion" the notion "that attributeth the salvation of man unto the receiving of an external sacrament," "as though God's Holy Spirit could not be carried by faith into the penitent and sorrowful conscience except it rid always in a chariot and external sacrament. "In opposition to this "ungodly opinion" Protestantism suspends the welfare of the soul directly, without any intermediaries at all, upon the grace of God alone.

The sacerdotal principle finds very complete expression in the thoroughly developed and logically compacted system of the Church of Rome. According to this system God the Lord does nothing looking to the salvation of men directly and immediately: all that he does for the salvation of men he does through the mediation of the Church, to which, having endowed it with powers adequate to the task, he has committed the whole work of salvation. "It is hardly incorrect to say," remarks Dr. W. P. Paterson in expounding the doctrine of the Church of Rome on this point, "that in the Roman Catholic conception the central feature of the Christian religion is the supernatural institution which represents Christ, which carries on his work, and which acts as the virtual mediator of the blessings of salvation. Its vocation or commission is nothing less than the perpetuation of the work of the Redeemer. It does not, of course, supersede the work of Christ. Its pre-supposition is that Christ, the Eternal Son of God, laid the foundation of its work in his incarnation and his atoning death; that from him come ultimately all power, authority and grace; and that as from him all spiritual blessing proceeds, so to him belongs all the glory. But in the present dispensation, the Church, in large measure, has taken over the work of Christ. It is in a real sense, a reincarnation of Christ to the end of the continuation and completion of his redemptive mission. Through his Church he continues to execute the offices of a Prophet, of a Priest, and of a King. His prophetic office it perpetuates by witnessing to the truth once delivered to the saints, and by interpreting and determining doctrine with an infallible authority that carries the same weight and assurance as his own original revelation. It succeeds him on earth in the exercise of the priestly office. It represents him so completely in the priestly function of mediation between God and man, that even as there is none other name given among men than that of Jesus, whereby we must be saved, so there is no covenanted salvation outside the visible organization of which he is the unseen Head. It is further conceived that it represents him as sacrificing priest by the perpetual repetition in the Mass of the oblation which he once offered on the cross. In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, it is taught, 'that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner on the altar of the cross; and this sacrifice is truly propitiatory.' And, finally, it administers the kingly power of Christ on earth. It has an absolute claim to the obedience of its members in all matters of faith and duty, with the right and duty to punish the disobedient for the breach of its laws, and to coerce the contumacious."

In one word, the Church in this system is conceived to be Jesus Christ himself in his earthly form, and it is therefore substituted for him as the proximate object of the faith of Christians. "The visible Church," says Mohler, "is the Son of God, as he continuously appears, ever repeats himself, and eternally renews his youth among men in human form. It is his perennial incarnation." It is to the Church, then, that men must look for their salvation; it is from the Church and its ordinances alone that salvation is communicated to men; in a word it is to the Church rather than to Christ or to the grace of God that the salvation of men is immediately ascribed. Only "through the most holy sacraments of the Church," it is declared plainly, is it, "that all true justice either begins; or being begun is increased; or being lost, is repaired." "The radical religious defect of the conception," comments Dr. Paterson justly, "is that it makes the sinner fall into the hand of man, rather than into the hand of the all-merciful God. We look to God for salvation, and we are referred to an institution, which in spite of its lofty claims, is too manifestly leavened and controlled by the thoughts of men like ourselves." And again: "The radical error of the Roman system was that the visible Church, which is human as much as it is divine, and which has become increasingly human, had largely thrust itself in the place of God and of the Saviour: and to the deeper religious insight it appeared that men were being invited and required to make the unsatisfactory venture of entrusting themselves to provisions and laws of human origin as the condition of attaining to the divine salvation. It was felt that the need of the soul was to press past the insecure earthly instrument, with its mediatorial claims and services, to the promises of God and to a finished work of the divine Saviour, and to look to God for the better assurance of truth and salvation which is given inwardly by the Holy Spirit of God. The Protestant revision, in short, was more than justified by the religious need of basing salvation on a purely divine foundation, and of dispensing with ecclesiastical machinery which was largely human in its origin and conception." The question which is raised in sacerdotalism, in a word, is just whether it is God the Lord who saves us, or it is men, acting in the name and clothed with the powers of God, to whom we are to look for salvation. This is the issue which divides sacerdotalism and evangelical religion.

The essence of the sacerdotal scheme as it regards the actual salvation of individual men, may perhaps be fairly expressed by saying that, according to it, God truly desires (or, as the cant phrase puts it, wills by an antecedent conditional will) the salvation of all men, and has made adequate provision for their salvation in the Church with its sacramental system: but he commits the actual work of the Church and its sacramental system to the operation of the second causes through which the application of grace through the Church and its sacramental system is effected. As this system of second causes has not been instituted with a view to the conveying of the sacraments to particular men or to the withholding of them from particular men, but belongs to his general provision for the government of the world, the actual distribution of the grace of God through the Church and the sacraments lies outside the government of his gracious will. Those who are saved by obtaining the sacraments, and those who are lost by missing the sacraments, are saved or are lost therefore, not by the divine appointment, but by the natural working of second causes. God's antecedent conditional will that all should be saved, that is, on the condition of their receiving grace through the sacraments distributed under the government of second causes, is supplanted by a consequent absolute will of salvation, therefore, only in the case of those who, he foresees, will under the government of second causes, actually receive the sacraments and the grace which is conveyed by them. Thus, it is supposed, God is relieved from all responsibility with regard to the inequality of the distribution of saving grace. By his antecedent conditional will he wills the salvation of all. That all are not saved is due to the failure of some to receive the requisite grace through the sacraments. And their failure to receive the sacraments and the grace conveyed in them is due solely to the action of the second causes to which the distribution of the sacraments has been committed, that is, to the working of a general cause, quite independent of God's antecedent will of salvation. This seems to satisfy the minds of the sacerdotal reasoners. To the outsider it seems to mean only that God, having made certain general provisions for salvation, commits the salvation of men to the working of the general system of second causes; that is to say, he declines to be concerned personally about the salvation of men and leaves men to "nature" for the chances of their salvation.

The whole matter is very precisely expounded by an acute Jesuit writer, William Humphrey S. J. , with particular reference to the special case of infants dying unbaptized (and, therefore, inevitably lost), which is looked upon apparently as a peculiarly hard case, requiring very careful treatment. It will repay us to follow his exposition.

"The order of thought," he tells us, "is as follows. Consequent on prevision of original sin, and the infection of the whole human race therewith, through the free transgression of Adam, its progenitor and head, God in his mercy wills the restoration of the whole human race. To this end he destines from eternity, and promises, and sends in the fulness of time, his Incarnate Son, with nature assumed from the same human race. He wills that this Incarnate Son, who is the Christ, should exhibit full satisfaction for all sins. This satisfaction, as foreseen, he accepts. At the appointed time, the Christ actually offers it for all human sins. 'God sent his Son that the world should be saved by him.' 'He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.' In the restored human race all are comprehended, even those who die in infancy, before use of reason. In the will of redemption all these infants, therefore, are comprehended. In the divine will that accepts the satisfaction, and in the human will of Christ which offers satisfaction, for all human sins, there is also an acceptance and offering of satisfaction for the original sin wherewith all these infants are infected. Hence, in view and in virtue of the merits and blood-shedding of Christ, God institutes for all these infants a sacrament, by means of which there might be applied to every one of them the merits and satisfaction of Christ. All these provisions have, by their nature, been ordained by God for the salvation of infants.

"A will of salvation which is such as this is, is no mere complacence in the goodness of the object regarded by itself; and, in this case, complacence in the goodness of salvation. It is on the part of God, an active and operative will of the salvation of infants. To all and every one of them this will of redemption is related.

"God wills to effect application of the sacrament of baptism, not by himself immediately, but by means of second causes; and through these second causes not to all infants by absolute will, but to all infants in so far as second causes, disposed in accordance with his universal and ordinary providence, do act under it.

"Among these second causes are, in the first place, the free wills of human beings, on which application of the sacrament, in the case at least of very many infants, is dependent. These human wills God anticipates, excites and inclines by his precepts, counsels, and aids, both of the natural order and of the supernatural order. He thus provides that through the diligence and solicitude of those concerned; through their obedience and cooperation with grace received; through congruous merits and good works; through the alms-deeds and the prayers especially of the parents, and of those to whose guardianship the little ones have been confided, and through the apostolic labors of his ministers, the infants should be brought to the grace of baptism. As in the natural order, so also in the supernatural order of sanctification and eternal salvation, God wills to provide for infants through other human beings, and in accordance with the demands of the general laws of divine providence.

"In this way the divine will of salvation acts on the wills of men to procure the salvation of at least many infants who, nevertheless, by fault of men are not saved. With regard to these infants, the antecedent will of God is an active will, that they should be saved; although it is not absolute, but under condition, that men on their part should second the divine will, as they can and ought to do, and although, consequently on contrary action on the part of men, God permits death in original sin, and, on prevision of this, does not will with a consequent will the salvation of those infants.

"Besides the wills of the human beings, which are in the moral order, and are free; there are also second causes of the physical order, and these are not free. These causes contribute, in accordance with the common and ordinary laws of providence, to render bestowal of baptism either possible or impossible. The course of these causes, and the universal laws by which they are governed, God, consequently to original sin, wills to remain such as they now are. God has not restored the preternatural state of immortality, even after the redemption of the human race by Christ had been decreed and effected. Hence, in accordance with the ordinary course of these laws, there follows the death of many infants before use of reason; and this sometimes independently of all exercise of will, and free action, of human beings.

"With this natural course of events, there is thoroughly consistent an antecedent conditional will in God of the salvation of all these infants. The condition under which he wills the application to them of baptism is-so far as the general order, which has been justly and wisely instituted, permits.

"If God had willed this order of physical causes of itself to the end that infants should die in original sin he certainly could not be said to will the salvation of these infants. God has not however instituted that order to this end nor does he so direct it by his will. He wills it for other ends, and those most wise ends.

"Hence, God does not directly intend the consequent death of infants in sin. He only permits it, in as much as he does not will to hinder, for all infants, the natural demands of physical laws, by a change of the general order, or through continual miracles.

"Such a permission proves only, that there is not in God an absolute will of the salvation of these infants. It in no way proves that there is not in God a conditional will of the salvation of all of them.

"In short, God wills the salvation of all infants who die in original sin by an antecedent will, in accordance with his common providence. In his common providence God predefines for everything a certain end, he conceives and prepares sufficient means in order to the obtaining of that end, he leaves everything to use these means, in accordance with the demand of its nature. That is to say, he leaves natural and necessary causes to act naturally and necessarily, contingent causes to act contingently, and free causes to act freely."

But enough! The whole scheme is now certainly before us; and the whole scheme (generalizing from the particular instance treated) obviously is just this: that God has made sufficient provision for the salvation of all men, placed this provision in the world under the government of the ordinary course of nature, and left the actual salvation of men to work itself out in accordance with this ordinary course of nature. It is a kind of Deistic conception of the plan of salvation: God introduces into the concourse of causes by which the world is governed a new set of causes, working confluently in with them, making for salvation, and then leaves to the inter-working of these two sets of causes the grinding out of the actual results. He will not "change the general order"; and he will not inwork in the general order by "continuous miracles." He just commits salvation to the general order as actually established. This obviously is at best to attribute the salvation of the individual to God, only in the sense in which you attribute to God every other event which befalls him; it takes place under the operation of general laws. There is no special supernaturalism in his salvation, though he be saved by the operation of specially supernatural instrumentalities inserted into the order of the world. God retires behind his works, and man, if he be saved at all, is saved by law.

If we ask therefore why, on this scheme, one man is saved rather than another, we must answer, Because the sacraments come to one and not to the other. If we ask why the sacraments come to one rather than to another, we must answer, Because the general order of providence, wisely and justly instituted for the government of the world, permits them to come to the one and not to the other; and the free agents involved, under the command of God, freely concur to that end in the one case and not in the other. If we ask whether it is not God who has so disposed providence as to produce these precise effects, we must answer, No, for the general order of providence was instituted for the general wise government of the world and these particular effects are merely incidental to it. If we press on and ask, Could not God have so arranged his general providence as to have produced better results, and could he not so govern the world as to secure all else he wished and yet the salvation of men in greater numbers and with more particularity of choice on his part, we are dumb. For there is a manifest subjection of God's activities here to the working of the instrumentalities which he has ordained; there is a manifest subordination of God in his operations to second causes; or, to put it in another way, there is a manifest removal of man in the matter of his salvation from the direct control of God and the commitment of him instead to the tender mercies of a mechanism.

The explanation of Christianity in terms of sacerdotalism is unfortunately not confined in our day to the old unreformed Church from which Protestantism broke forth, precisely that it might escape from dependence on the Church rather than on God alone in the matter of salvation. A very influential, (perhaps presently the most influential, and certainly to the onlooker, the most conspicuous) party in the great Protestant Church of England, and, following it, large parties in its daughter Churches, have revived it in more or less completeness of expression and certainly with no hesitancy of assertion. It is common nowadays to hear men referred by Anglican writers to the Church rather than directly to God for salvation; and to have the Church defined for them as the "extension of the incarnation." "To anyone who thinks carefully, and believes in the Incarnation," we are told by an influential clergyman of the Church of England, with all the accent of conviction, "it is evident that the Church, the Body of Christ, ever united with her divine Head, holds in herself the forces of his life," and therefore is "equipped," not merely to speak for its Lord, but prevalently "to apply to the individual soul the grace won for his Church by our blessed Redeemer, and residing in that Body because ever united to the Head." The whole sacerdotal system is wrapped up in that statement. The Church, Mr. Darwell Stone tells us, is a visible society, the work of which is twofold, corresponding to the work of the Lord, as expressed in John 1:17: "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ": "the Church, as his mystical body and his organ in the world, is the teacher of truth and the storehouse of grace." "Since the day of Pentecost the day of creation of the Christian Church," he further explains, "the ordinary way in which God bestows grace on the souls of men is through the glorified humanity of our Lord, and the work of God the Holy Ghost. The closest means of union with the glorified humanity of Christ, and the most immediate mode of contact with God the Holy Ghost, are in the mystical body of Christ, that is the Church, and are open to men in the use of the sacraments. Thus the Christian Church is the channel of grace." From this beginning Mr. Stone goes on to expound the sacerdotal system in a manner indistinguishable from its ordinary exposition in the Church of Rome.

We will ask, however, an American divine to explain to us the sacerdotal system as it has come to be taught in the Protestant Episcopal Churches. "Man," we read in Dr. A. G. Mortimer's "Catholic Faith and Practice," "having fallen before God's loving purpose could be fulfilled, he must be redeemed, bought back from his bondage, delivered from his sin, reunited once more to God, so that the Divine Life might flow again in his weakened nature" (p. 65). "By his life and death Christ made satisfaction for the sins of all men, that is, sufficient for all mankind, for through the Atonement sufficient grace is given to every soul for its salvation; but grace, though sufficient, if neglected, becomes of no avail" (p. 82) "The Incarnation and the Atonement affected humanity as a race only. Some means, therefore, was needed to transmit the priceless gifts which flowed from them to the individuals of which the race was comprised, not only at the time when our Lord was on earth, but to the end of the world. For this need, therefore, our Lord founded the Church" (p.84). "Thus the Church became the living agent by which the graces and blessings, which flowed from Christ were dispensed to each individual soul which would appropriate them" (p.84). "The Church claims not only to be the teacher of the truth and the guide in morals, but . . the dispenser of that grace which enables us to fulfil her laws" (p. 100), "the dispenser of that grace which alone can enable man to believe what is true, to do what is right, and to attain his true end, to serve God acceptably here, and to live with God happily hereafter" (p. 114). "The chief means of grace are the Sacraments" (p. 120). "They are the channels by which the spiritual gift is conveyed to our souls. . . . The Christian Sacraments, therefore, do not merely signify grace; they actually confer it. Hence they are called 'effectual' signs of grace. Their action is ex opere operato" (p. 122). "Baptism is absolutely necessary to salvation, for a person can have no life who has not been born. This is called the 'necessitas medii,' since Baptism is the means by which the supernatural life is given to the soul and the individual is incorporated into Christ." "Without the help of (the Eucharist), salvation would be so difficult to attain as to be practically impossible" (p. 127). Here obviously is as express a sacerdotalism as that of the Church of Rome itself, from which, indeed, it has been simply borrowed. The Church has completely taken the place of the Spirit of God as the proximate source of grace, and the action of the divine Spirit in applying salvation is postponed to and made subject to the operations of the Church through its ordinances. Thus the soul is removed from immediate dependence on God and taught rather to come to the Church and to expect all endowments of grace directly from it.

A modified and much milder form of sacerdotalism is inherent in Confessional Lutheranism, and is continually rising to more or less prominence in certain phases of Lutheran thought, thus creating a high church party in the Lutheran Church also. It has been the boast of Lutheranism that it represents, in distinction from Calvinism, a "conservative" reformation. The boast is justified, as on other grounds, so also on this, that it has incorporated into its confessional system the essence of the sacerdotalism which characterized the teaching of the old Church. Confessional Lutheranism, like Romanism, teaches that the grace of salvation is conveyed to men in the means of grace, otherwise not. But it makes certain modifications in the sacerdotal teaching which it took over from the old Church, and these modifications are of such a far-reaching character as to transform the whole system. We do not commonly hear in Lutheran sacerdotalism much of "the Church," which is the very cor cordis of Roman sacerdotalism: what we hear of instead is "the means of grace." Among these means of grace" the main stress is not laid upon the sacraments, but on "the Word," which is defined as the chief "means of grace." And the means of grace are not represented as acting ex opere operato but it is constantly declared that they are effective only to faith. I do not say the scheme is a consistent one: in point of fact it is honeycombed with inconsistencies. But it remains sufficiently sacerdotal to confine the activities of saving grace to the means of grace, that is to say, to the Word and sacraments, and thus to interpose the means of grace between the sinner and his God. The central evil of sacerdotalism is therefore present in this scheme in its full manifestation, and wherever it is fully operative we find men exalting the means of grace and more or less forgetting the true agent of all gracious operations, the Holy Spirit himself, in their absorption with the instrumentalities through which alone he is supposed to work. It is in a truly religious interest, therefore, that the Reformed, as over against the Lutherans, insist with energy that, important as are the means of grace, and honored as they must be by us because honored by God the Holy Spirit as the instruments by and through which he works grace in the hearts of men, yet after all the grace which he works by and through them he works himself not out of them but immediately out of himself, extrinsecus accedens.

There are three aspects of the working of the sacerdotal system which must be kept clearly in view, if we wish to appraise with any accuracy the injury to the religious interests which it inevitably works. These have been more or less expressly alluded to already, but it seems desirable to call particular attention to them formally and together.

In the first place, the sacerdotal system separates the soul from direct contact with and immediate dependence upon God the Holy Spirit as the source of all its gracious activities. It interposes between the soul and the source of all grace a body of instrumentalities, on which it tempts it to depend; and it thus betrays the soul into a mechanical conception of salvation. The Church, the means of grace, take the place of God the Holy Spirit in the thought of the Christian, and he thus loses all the joy and power which come from conscious direct communion with God. It makes every difference to the religious life, and every difference to the comfort and assurance of the religious hope, whether we are consciously dependent upon instrumentalities of grace, or upon God the Lord himself, experienced as personally present to our souls, working salvation in his loving grace. The two types of piety, fostered by dependence on instrumentalities of grace and by conscious communion with God the Holy Spirit as a personal Saviour, are utterly different, and the difference from the point of view of vital religion is not favorable to sacerdotalism. It is the interests of vital religion, therefore, that the Protestant spirit repudiates sacerdotalism. And it is this repudiation which constitutes the very essence of evangelicalism. Precisely what evangelical religion means is immediate dependence of the soul on God and on God alone for salvation.

In the second place, sacerdotalism deals with God the Holy Spirit, the source of all grace, in utter neglect of his personality, as if he were a natural force, operating, not when and where and how he pleases, but uniformly and regularly wherever his activities are released. It speaks of the Church as the "institute of salvation," or even as "the storehouse of salvation" with apparently complete unconsciousness that thus it is speaking of salvation as something which may be accumulated or stored for use as it may be needed. The conception is not essentially different from that of storing electricity, say, in a Leyden jar, whence it can be drawn upon for use. How dreadful the conception is may be intimated by simply speaking of it with frankness under its true forms of expression: it is equivalent to saying that saving grace, God the Holy Spirit, is kept on tap, and released at the Church's will to do the work required of it. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that no heresy could be more gross than that heresy which conceives the operations of God the Holy Spirit under the forms of the action of an impersonal, natural force. And yet it is quite obvious that at bottom this is the conception which underlies the sacerdotal system. The Church, the means of grace, contain in them the Holy Spirit as a salvation-working power which operates whenever and wherever it, we can scarcely say he, is applied.

And this obviously involves, in the third place, the subjection of the Holy Spirit in his gracious operations to the control of men. Instead of the Church and the sacraments, the means of grace, being conceived, as they are represented in the Scriptures, and as they must be thought of in all healthful religious conceptions of them, as instrumentalities which the Holy Spirit uses in working salvation, the Holy Spirit is made an instrument which the Church, the means of grace, use in working salvation. The initiative is placed in the Church, the means of grace, and the Holy Spirit is placed at their disposal. He goes where they convey him; he works when they release him for work; his operations wait on their permission; and apart from their direction and control he can work no salvation. It ought to be unnecessary to say that this is a degrading conception of the modes of activity of the Holy Spirit. Its affinities are not with religion in any worthy sense of that word, which implies personal relations with a personal God, but with magic. At bottom, it conceives of the divine operations as at the disposal of man, who uses God for his own ends; and utterly forgets that rather God must be conceived as using man for his ends.

It is to break away from all this and to turn to God the Holy Spirit in humble dependence upon him as our gracious Saviour, our personal Lord and our holy Governor and Leader, that evangelicalism refuses to have anything to do with sacerdotalism and turns from all the instrumentalities of salvation to put its sole trust in the personal Saviour of the soul.

Part IV - Universalism

THE EVANGELICAL note is formally sounded by the entirety of organized Protestantism. That is to say, all the great Protestant bodies, in their formal official confessions, agree in confessing the utter dependence of sinful man upon the grace of God alone for salvation, and in conceiving this dependence as immediate and direct upon the Holy Spirit, acting as a person and operating directly on the heart of the sinner. It is this evangelical note which determines the peculiarity of the piety of the Protestant Churches. The characteristic feature of this piety is a profound consciousness of intimate personal communion with God the Saviour, on whom the soul rests with immediate love and trust. Obviously this piety is individualistic to the core, and depends for its support on an intense conviction that God the Lord deals with each sinful soul directly and for itself. Nevertheless, in odd contradiction to this individualistic sentiment which informs all truly evangelical piety, there exists in Protestantism a widespread tendency to construe the activities of God looking to salvation not individualistically but universally, to assert, in one word, that all that God does looking toward the salvation of sinful man, he does not to or for individual men but to or for all men alike, making no distinctions. This is the characteristic contention of what we know as Evangelical Arminianism and of Evangelical Lutheranism and is the earnest conviction of large bodies of Protestants gathered in many communions, under many names.

On the face of it, it would seem that if it is God the Lord and he alone who works salvation, by an operation of his grace immediately upon the heart, (which is the core of the evangelical confession); and if all that God does looking to the salvation of men he does to and for all men alike, (which is the substance of the universalistic contention); why, then, all men without exception must be saved. This conclusion, it would seem, can be escaped only by relaxing in one way or another the stringency of one or the other of the assumed premises. It must either be held that it is not God and God alone who works salvation, but that the actual enjoyment of salvation hangs at a decisive point upon something in man, or something done by man (and then we have fallen out of our evangelicalism into the mere naturalism of autosoterism); or it must be held that God's gracious activities looking to salvation are not after all absolutely universal in their operation (and then we have fallen away from our asserted universalism); or else it would seem inevitable that we should allow that all men are saved. Consistent evangelicalism and consistent universalism can coexist only if we are prepared to assert the salvation by God's almighty grace of all men without exception.

Accordingly, there has always existed a tendency in those evangelical circles which draw back more or less decisively from ascribing a thoroughgoing particularism to God in the distribution of his grace, to assume the actual salvation of all men, provided, that is, that their sense of the complete dependence of the sinner upon God for salvation is strong and operative. Among the condemnations of errors included in the Summa Confessionis et Conclusionum of the Synod held at Debreezen on February 24, 1567, we find a clause directed against what are there called the "Holopraedestinani," which runs as follows: "The Holy Scripture refutes by these reasons also the Holopraedestinani, that is, those who imagine that the whole world is elected and that a universal predestination follows from the universal promise; and teaches that predestination is of a few, and is particular, and that the number of the elect is certain, and their catalogue extends to their very hairs. For the very hairs of your head are all numbered.' . . . But it does not at all follow from this doctrine that God is partial or a respecter of persons." Who these sixteenth century Holopraedestinani were we have not been careful to inquire; but certainly, from that time to this, there have never lacked those who in the interest of protecting God from the charge of "partiality or respect of persons" have been inclined to hold that he has chosen all men to salvation and through his almighty grace brings them all to that blessed goal.

The most recent and perhaps the most instructive instances of this tendency are provided by two divines of the Church of Scotland of our own day, Dr. William Hastie, late Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow and Dr. William P. Paterson, now holding the Chair of Divinity, the Chair of Chalmers and Flint, in the University of Edinburgh. In his admirable Croall lectures on "The Theology of the Reformed Churches in its Fundamental Principles," Dr. Hastie announces that "the word of the eternal hope seems to me the latest message of the Reformed Theology;" and Dr. Paterson takes up the hint and enlarges on it in the excellent chapter on "The Testimony of the Reformed Churches" included in his Baird Lecture on "The Rule of Faith. "Dr. Paterson considers that Calvinism contains in itself elements "which are mutually repulsive," in its "doctrine of everlasting punishment" on the one hand, and its "doctrine of election and irresistible grace" on the other. Relief might no doubt be had, "when thought rebels against making God responsible" for the everlasting punishment of some "by a doctrine of reprobation," by taking refuge in "an Arminian or semi-Arminian type of thought." This relief would be purchased, however, at the too dear cost of abandonment of concinnity of thought, and of falling away from faithfulness to the evangelical principle, which is the core of Christianity. There remains, then, according to Dr. Paterson, no other way but to discard the doctrine of everlasting punishment, and to "resolve reprobation into a temporary lack of privilege and of spiritual attainment." And he somewhat complacently remarks that "it is a curious circumstance that, while Calvinism has become unpopular chiefly because of its identification with a grim and remorseless doctrine of eternal punishment, it is the only system which contains principles-in its doctrines of election and irresistible grace-that could make credible a theory of universal restoration."

What Dr. Paterson says in these last words is true enough: but it is true only because, when rightly considered, Calvinism, with its doctrines of election and irresistible grace, is the only system which can make credible the salvation of any sinner: since in these doctrines alone are embodied in its purity the evangelical principles that salvation is from God alone and from him only in the immediate working of his grace. Whether this grace in God's unspeakable mercy is granted to some men only or is poured out on all men alike, is a different question to be determined on its own grounds. And this question is certainly not to be facilely resolved by the simple assumption that God's mercy must be poured out on all alike, since otherwise not all men can be saved. The fundamental presupposition of such an assumption is no other than that God owes all men salvation, that is to say, that sin is not really sin and is to be envisaged rather as misfortune than as ill-desert.

That it is this low view of sin which is really determinative of the whole direction of Dr. Paterson's thought at this point becomes immediately apparent upon attending to the terms of his argument. "It has been customary to say," he reasons, "that as there would have been no injustice in the punishment of all guilty beings, there can be none in the punishment of some guilty beings out of the number. Those who are saved are saved because of the mercy of God, while those who are lost perish because of their sins. This is as true as to say that those sick persons who are saved by the skill and devotion of a physician owe their lives to him, and that those that die perish of their diseases; but in that case the physician does not escape censure if it can be shown that it was in his power to have treated and saved those who died. It is therefore impossible to say that the doctrine of the divine love is not affected, since on Calvinistic principle it is in the power of God to deal with all in the same way in which he has dealt with the rest. For ex hypothesi it is in the power of God, in virtue of the principle of irresistible grace, to save even the worst, and if nevertheless there is a part of the human race which is consigned to everlasting punishment, it seems to be only explicable on the assumption that the divine love is not perfect, because it is not an all-embracing and untiring love."

Is it, then. inconceivable that the divine hand might be held back from saving all by something other than lack of power? The whole matter of the ill-desert of sin and the justice of God responding in hot indignation to this ill-desert, is left out of Dr. Paterson's reasoning. If the case were really as he represents it and men in their mere misery, appealing solely to God's pity, lay before the divine mind, it would be inexplicable that he did not save all. The physician who, having the power to treat and cure all his patients, arbitrarily discriminates between them and contents himself with ministering to some of them only; would justly incur the reprobation of men. But may not the judge, having the mere power to release all his criminals, be held back by higher considerations from releasing them all? It may be inexplicable why a physician in the case supposed should not relieve all; while the wonder may be in the case of the judge rather how he can release any. The love of God is in its exercise necessarily under the control of his righteousness; and to plead that his love has suffered an eclipse because he does not do all that he has the bare power to do, is in effect to deny to him a moral nature. The real solution to the puzzle that is raised with respect to the distribution of the divine grace is, then, not to be sought along the lines either of the denial of the omnipotence of God's grace with the Arminians, or of the denial of the reality of his reprobation with our neo-universalists, but in the affirmation of his righteousness. The old answer is after all the only sufficient one: God in his love saves as many of the guilty race of man as he can get the consent of his whole nature to save. Being God and all that God is, he will not permit even his ineffable love to betray him into any action which is not right. And it is therefore that we praise him and trust him and love him. For he is not part God, a God here and there, with some but not all the attributes which belong to true God: he is God altogether, God through and through, all that God is and all that God ought to be.

Meanwhile, it is not the consistent universalism that demands the actual salvation of all sinners, which has been embraced by the mass of universalizing Protestants. For one thing, the Scriptures are too clear to the contrary to permit the indulgence of this pleasant dream: it is all too certain that all men are not saved, but at the last day there remain the two classes of the saved and the lost, each of which is sent to the eternal destiny which belongs to it. The great problem requires to be faced by universalizing evangelicalism, therefore, of how it is God and God alone who saves the soul, and all that God does looking towards the saving of the soul he does to and for all men alike, and yet all men are not saved. Their attempts to solve this problem have given us the doctrinal constructions known as Evangelical Lutheranism and Evangelical Arminianism, both of which profess to combine an express evangelicalism and an express universalism, and yet to provide for the diverse issues of salvation and damnation. That these systems have succeeded in solving this (let us say it frankly, insoluble) problem, we of course do not believe; and the element in the problem which suffers in the forcible adjustments which they propose, is in both cases the evangelical element. But it is nevertheless to be frankly recognized that both systems profess to have found a solution and are therefore emphatic in their professions of both a pure evangelicalism and a complete universalism in the operation of God looking to salvation. It will be worth our while to make this clear to ourselves. In doing so, however, we shall choose statements from which we may learn something more of the spirit and points of view of these great systems than the particular facts which are more immediately engaging our attention.

How deeply embedded the evangelical conviction is in the consciousness of evangelical Arminianism we may learn from an instructive enunciation of it by Dr. Joseph Agar Beet. This enunciation occurs in a context in which Dr. Beet is with some heat repelling the doctrine of unconditional election. "This terrible error," he says, "prevalent a century ago, is but an overstatement of the important Gospel truth that salvation is, from the earliest turning to God to final salvation, altogether a work of God in man, and a merciful accomplishment of a purpose of God before the foundation of the world." "In our rejection of this doctrine of unconditional election and predestination, we must remember that salvation, from the earliest good desires to final salvation, is the accomplishment of a divine purpose of mercy formed before the foundation of the world." In rejecting the doctrine of unconditional election, Dr. Beet is thus careful to preserve the evangelicalism which, he recognizes, lies at its center; and thus he gives us a definition of evangelicalism from the Wesleyan standpoint. It proves to be just that all the saving process is from God, and that all the power exerted in saving the soul is God's. It may please us in passing to ask whether this evangelicalism is really separable from the doctrine of unconditional election from which Dr. Beet wishes to separate it; and to note that he himself appears to recognize that in the minds of some at least the two must go together. But what it particularly behooves us to observe now is the emphasis with which, as a Wesleyan, Dr. Beet bears his testimony to the general evangelical postulate. Whether he gives validity to this postulate in all his thinking is of course a different matter.

From the Lutheran side the consciousness of the evangelical principle is equally prominent. Indeed the Evangelical Lutheran is very apt to look upon evangelicalism as his own peculiar possession, and to betray a certain measure of surprise when he finds it in the hands of others also. A. J. Haller, writing in Zahn and Burger's Magazine, expresses himself in the following emphatic language: "That salvation is not acquired by man by means of any activity of his own, but is given him by God's grace, that I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him of my own reason or power, but the Holy Spirit has called me, enlightened, sanctified and preserved me, this is assuredly the alpha and omega of all evangelical belief, and is not denied even by either Calvinists or Methodists." The purity of this evangelical confession must be frankly recognized, even though we cannot avoid cherishing misgivings whether it is permitted to condition all of the thought of its author, misgivings which are indeed immediately justified when we find him going on to speak of regeneration, and speaking of it after a fashion which is in spirit less evangelical than sacerdotal, and indeed is not untouched by the naturalism which usually accompanies this type of sacerdotalism. He is sure that regeneration is monergistic, but also that it is the effect of baptism as its producing cause; and he is very much concerned to defend this conception from the charge of magical working. "It might be called magical," he remarks, "if it were maintained that men were completely transformed in regeneration, with no subsequent demand made upon them for any ethical self-determination. That, however, an absolutely new power is created in them by God, the saving or condemning action of which depends on their subsequent or contemporary determination (Entscheidung), this has as little to do with magic as the belief that in the Lord's Supper Christ's body and blood are certainly and truly given for blessing to some, for judgement to others."

A passage like this reveals the difficulty a Lutheran who wishes to abide by his official confession has in giving effect to his evangelical profession. He may declare that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, but this is crossed by his sacerdotal consciousness that grace is conveyed by the means of grace, otherwise not. The grace of regeneration, for example, is conveyed ordinarily (some say only) by baptism. And this grace of regeneration is the monergistic operation of God. Even so, however, it cannot be said that the effect is all of God. For, in the first place, whether it takes effect at all, is dependent on the attitude of the recipient. He cannot cooperate with God in producing it; but he can fatally resist. And therefore Baier carefully defines: "God produces in the man who is baptized and who does not resist the divine grace, the work of regeneration or renovation through the Sacrament, in the very act itself (hoc actu ipso)." And then, in the second place, whether this gift of regeneration proves a blessing or a curse to the recipient depends on how he takes it and deals with it. "An absolutely new power is created in him by God," says Haller, "the action of which, whether for blessing or cursing, is dependent on the subject's subsequent, or even already presently operative decision." This carries with it, naturally, what is here covered up, that this self-determination of the recipient is his natural self-determination. For if it were itself given in the new power communicated in regeneration, then it were inconceivable that it could act otherwise than for blessing. Whether man is saved or not, depends therefore in no sense on the monergistic regeneration wrought by God in his baptism. It depends on how man receives this "new power communicated to him and how he uses it. And thus we are back on the plane of pure naturalism.

We may more than question therefore whether the cherished evangelicalism of the Wesleyan and Lutheran constructions is not more theoretical than practical; though meanwhile we must recognize that they at least postulate the evangelical principle in theory.

It is, however, the universalistic note which is the characteristic note of these constructions. As Professor Henry C. Sheldon of Boston University declares: "Our contention is for the universality of the opportunity of salvation, as against an exclusive and unconditioned choice of individuals to eternal life." There is to be noted in this declaration, (I) the conscious stress on universalism as the characteristic note of Wesleyanism, and (2) the consequent recognition that all that God does looking toward salvation is to afford an opportunity of salvation; so that what is actually contended is not that God does not save some only but that he really saves none,-he only opens a way of salvation to all and if any are saved they must save themselves. So inevitable is it that if we assert that all that God does looking to salvation he does to and for all alike and yet that not all are saved, we make all that he does fall short of actual salvation: no one must receive more than he who receives the least.

Perhaps, however, the essential universalistic note of the whole Arminian construction never received a stronger assertion than in the creed of the Evangelical Union body, the so-called Morrisonians, the very reason of the existence of which is to raise protest against the unconditionality of election. Its positive creed in itself sums up in what it calls the "three universalities": "the love of God the Father in the gift and sacrifice of Jesus to all men everywhere without distinction, exception or respect of persons; the love of God the Son, in the gift and sacrifice of himself as a true propitiation for the sins of the world; the love of God the Holy Spirit, in his personal and continuous work of applying to the souls of all men the provisions of divine grace. "Certainly if God is to be declared to love all men alike, the Son to have made propitiation for the sins of all men alike, and the Holy Spirit to have applied the benefits of that propitiation to all men alike, nothing is left but to assert that therefore all men alike are saved; or else to assert that all that God can do for sinful man cannot avail to save him and he must just be left to save himself. And where then is our evangelicalism, with its great affirmation that it is God the Lord and he alone with his almighty grace who saves the soul?

A lurid light is thrown upon the real origin of these vigorous assertions of the universalism of God's saving activities by some remarks of a sympathetic historian in accounting for the rise of the Morrisonian sect. "Of the movement now to engage our attention," he remarks, "nothing is truer than that it was the genuine offspring of its age. During the thirties of the last century the legislatures of our country were made to recognize the rights of man as they had never done before. In politics the long night of privilege was far spent, and the dawn of a new age was beginning to appear. Brotherhood, equality and fair play were clamoring loudly at every closed door, and refusing to be turned away. A corresponding claim, quite independent of politics, was being made in the name of Christian theology. Here also it has demanded that doors of privilege be thrown open. Freedom for all, food for all, education for all, and salvation for all were now coming to be the national watchwords." Words could scarce be chosen which could more sharply present the demand for "the three universalities" as the mere clamoring of the natural heart for the equal distribution of the goods of the other life as of this, as, in other words, but the religious aspect of the "leveling" demand which has filled our modem life. The cry, "Give us all an equal chance!" may have its relative justification when it is the expression of the need of men perishing under the heel of vested privilege. But what shall we say of it when it is but the turbulent self-assertion of a mob of criminals, assailing a court of justice, whence is dispensed not "chances" to escape just penalties, but wisely directed clemency, having in view all rights involved? Surely the evil desert of sin, the just government of God, and the unspeakable grace of salvation are all fatally out of mind when men reason as to the proper procedure of God in bringing sinners to salvation by the aid of analogies derived from the leveling politics of the day. Shall we not fix it once for all in our minds that salvation is the right of no man; that a "chance" to save himself is no "chance" of salvation for any; and that, if any of the sinful race of man is saved, it must be by a miracle of almighty grace, on which he has no claim, and, contemplating which as a fact, he can only be filled with wondering adoration of the marvels of the inexplicable love of God? To demand that all criminals shall be given a "chance" of escaping their penalties, and that all shall be given an "equal chance," is simply to mock at the very idea of justice, and no less, at the very idea of love.

The universalism of all the divine operations looking to salvation is as vigorously asserted in the Lutheran scheme as in the Arminian, but with, if possible, even less logical success-on the supposition, that is, that the evangelical principle of dependence on God alone for salvation is to be preserved. Indeed the leaven of sacerdotalism taken over by Lutheranism from the old church, in its doctrine of the means of grace, from the first fatally marred even the purity of its universalism, transmuting it into a mere indiscrimination, which is something very different; and has among the modern Lutherans given rise to very portentious developments.

The old Lutheranism, alleging that the honor of God required that he should do all that he does looking to the salvation of man to and for all men alike, asserted that therefore Christ has died to take away the sin of the whole world, and, provision having been made in the means of grace for the effective application of his sacrifice to all men, these means of grace (with the mind especially on the proclamation of the gospel in which they culminate), have actually been conveyed to all men without exception. Of course it is not in point of fact true that the gospel has been actually proclaimed to all men without exception; and an effort was accordingly made to cover up the manifest falsity of the assertion by substituting for it the essentially different proposition that at three historical stages (namely, at the time of Adam, at the time of Noah, and at the time of the apostles), the gospel has been made known to all men then living, "and," it is added, "if it became universal in those three generations then it has also come indirectly to their successors." The futility of this expedient to conceal the circumstance that in point of fact the gospel has not actually been conveyed to every single man who has ever lived (and nothing less than this can satisfy the demands of the case), is too manifest to require pointing out; and we cannot be surprised that the contention itself has ceased to be made. "More recent orthodox theologians in our church," the historian (the Norwegian divine, Lars Nielsen Dahle) goes on to tell us, "say simply that the universality of the call is a necessary presupposition, a postulate which must be assumed on the ground of the testimony of Scripture regarding God's universal saving-will on the one hand, and of the Scripturally established truth on the other that this saving will cannot be realized for the individual unless God's call actually reaches him; but how this happens, we cannot say, for it is a fact that at the present day it has only reached comparatively few, or at most a minority of mankind." Thus Professor Johnson writes: "The universality of this call of grace we must, in opposition to every particularistic view of it, maintain as a postulate of the faith, even if we are unable to show how it actually does reach every individual." It is an unsolved mystery.

The Lutherans, therefore, in attempting both to tie saving grace to the means of grace and to give it an actually universal diffusion, have brought themselves into a difficulty at this point from which the Wesleyans, who make the universality of the sacrificial work of Christ and the consequent gift of sufficient grace independent of all earthly transactions so that men are all born in a state of redemption and grace, are free. The ultimate solution which has been found by modem Lutheranism, in which Dahle himself concurs, consists in the invention of a doctrine of the extension of human probation into the next world, the famous doctrine miscalled that of a "second probation," for it is not a doctrine of a second probation for any man but only the doctrine that every man that lives must have the gospel presented winningly to him, if not in this life then in the life to come. By the invention of this doctrine the Lutherans have provided themselves for the first time with a true universalism of grace. There is confessionally no direct Biblical support for the doctrine: it is simply a postulate of the universalism of God's will of salvation in connection with the confinement of grace to the means of grace. The Scriptures teach that no man can be saved without a knowledge of Jesus Christ in his saving work. This is transmuted into its opposite that no man can be lost without a knowledge of Christ in his saving work; and then in the interests of this proposition provision is made for every man to be brought face to face with the offer of the gospel under favorable circumstances, if not in this world, then in the next. No doubt some such invention was necessary if the Lutheran premises were to be sustained. But one would think that the necessity for such an invention in order to sustain these premises were a sufficient indication that these premises were best abandoned.

Having by this invention avoided the fact that the provision for salvation is in point of fact not universal, the Lutherans have by no means escaped from their difficulties. They are faced with the even greater difficulty, common to them and the Wesleyans, of accounting for the failure of God's grace, now safely conveyed to all men, to work the salvation of all men. And here there is no outlet but that of the Wesleyans, namely to bring in surreptitiously the discredited naturalism, and to attribute the difference in the effects of grace to men's differences in dealing with grace. The Lutherans have their own way, however, of introducing this naturalism. They are emphatic that man, being dead in sin, cannot cooperate with the grace of God, a difficulty got over by Arminianism by the postulation of a graciously restored ability for all men, earned for them by the sacrifice of Christ and applied to them automatically. But they suppose that, though dead in sin, man can resist, and successfully resist, almighty grace. Resistance is, however, itself an activity: and the successful resistance of an almighty recreative power, is a pretty considerable activity-for a dead man. It all comes back, therefore, to the Pelagian ground that, at the decisive point, the salvation of man is in his own power: men are saved, or men are not saved, according to natural differences in men. Thus the grace of God is fundamentally denied and salvation is committed, in the last analysis, to man himself.

The upshot of the whole matter is that the attempt to construe the gracious operations of God looking to salvation universally, inevitably leads by one path or another to the wreck of the evangelical principle, on the basis of which all Protestant Churches, (or rather, let us say, of the supernaturalistic principle, on the basis of which all Christian Churches,) professedly unite. Whether this universalism takes a sacerdotal form or a form which frees itself from all entanglement with earthly transactions, it ends always and everywhere by transferring the really decisive factor in salvation from God to man. This is not always clearly perceived or frankly admitted. Sometimes, however, it is. Professor W. F. Steele of the University of Denver, for example, clearly perceives and frankly admits it. To him there can be no talk of "almighty grace." Occupying a position which is practically (whatever we may say of it theoretically) indistinguishable from the bumptious naturalism of Mr. W. E. Henley, the first article of his creed is a hearty belief in the almightiness of man in his sphere of moral choices. "When one says," he tells us, "'I believe in God, the Father Almighty,' he means it with reserve for in the domain of man's moral choices under grace, man himself is almighty, according to God's self-limitation in making man in his image and after his likeness." God himself, he goes on to declare, has a creed which begins: "I believe in man, almighty in his choices." Obviously a man in this mood is incapable of religion, the very essence of which is the sense of absolute dependence on God, and is altogether inhibited from evangelicalism, which consists in humble resting on God and God alone for salvation. Instead of the real Gloria Soli Deo ringing in his heart, he proudly himself seizes the helm and proclaims himself, apart from God, the master of his own destiny. Moralism has completely extruded religion. Did not Luther have precisely the like of this in mind when he satirically describes the moralist of his day in these striking words: "Here we are always wanting to turn the tables and do good of ourselves to that poor man, our Lord God, from whom we are rather to receive it"?

The antipathy which is widely felt to the fundamental evangelical postulate which brings the soul into immediate contact with God and suspends all its health on the immediate operations of God, finds an odd illustration in Albrecht Ritschl's teaching that the direct object even of justification is not the individual but the Christian society; and that "it is passed on to the individual only as the result of his taking place in the Christian fellowship and sharing in its life. "This is, of course, only another, and very much poorer way of asserting the principle of the general universalistic construction: God does not in any stage of the saving process deal directly with individuals: he has always and everywhere the mass in view: and it is the part of the individual himself by his own act to lay hold of the salvation thus put at the general disposal. How different Luther with his: "it is not needful for thee to do this or that. Only give the Lord God the glory, take what he gives thee, and believe what he tells thee." The issue is indeed a fundamental one and it is closely drawn. Is it God the Lord that saves us, or is it we ourselves? And does God the Lord save us, or does he merely open the way to salvation, and leave it according to our choice, to walk in it or not? The parting of the ways is the old parting of the ways between Christianity and autosoterism. Certainly only he can claim to be evangelical who with full consciousness rests entirely and directly on God and on God alone for his salvation.

The Plan of Salvation - Part V - Calvinism

AS OVER AGAINST all attempts to conceive the operations of God looking to salvation universalistically, that is as directed to mankind in the mass, Calvinism insists that the saving operations of God are directed in every case immediately to the individuals who are saved. Particularism in the processes of salvation becomes thus the mark of Calvinism. As supernaturalism is the mark of Christianity at large, and evangelicalism the mark of Protestantism, so particularism is the mark of Calvinism. The Calvinist is he who holds with full consciousness that God the Lord, in his saving operations, deals not generally with mankind at large, but particularly with the individuals who are actually saved. Thus, and thus only, he contends, can either the supernaturalism of salvation which is the mark of Christianity at large and which ascribes all salvation to God, or the immediacy of the operations of saving grace which is the mark of evangelicalism and which ascribes salvation to the direct working of God upon the soul, come to its rights and have justice accorded it. Particularism in the saving processes, he contends, is already given in the supernaturalism of salvation and in the immediacy of the operations of the divine grace; and the denial of particularism is constructively the denial of the immediacy of saving grace, that is, of evangelicalism, and of the supernaturalism of salvation, that is, of Christianity itself. It is logically the total rejection of Christianity.

The particularism of the saving operations of God which is thus the mark of Calvinism, it is possible, however, to apply more or less fully (or, shall we say, with more or less discernment?) in our thought of the activities of God relatively to his sinful creatures (or shall we say, broadly, relatively to his creatures?). Thus differing varieties of Calvinism have emerged in the history of thought. As they are distinguishable from one another by the place they give to particularism in the operations of God, that is as much as to say they are distinguished from one another by the place they give to the decree of election in the order of the divine decrees.

Some are so zealous for particularism that they place discrimination at the root of all God's dealings with his creatures. That he has any creatures at all they suppose to be in the interest of discrimination, and all that he decrees concerning his creatures they suppose he decrees only that he may discriminate between them. They therefore place the decree of "election" by which men are made to differ, in the order of decrees, logically prior to the decree of creation itself, or at any rate prior to all that is decreed concerning man as man; that is to say, since man's history begins with the fall, prior to the decree of the fall itself. They are therefore called Supralapsarians, that is, those who place the decree of election in the order of thought prior to the decree of the fall."

Others, recognizing that election has to do specifically with salvation, (that is to say, that it is the logical prius, not of creation or of the providential government of the world, but of the salvation of sinful man), conceive that the principle of particularism, in the sense of discrimination, belongs in the sphere of God's soteriological, not in that of his cosmical creation. They therefore think of "election" as the logical prius not of creation, or of the fall, but of those operations of God which concern salvation. The place they give it in the order of decrees is therefore at the head of those decrees of God which look to salvation. This implies that it falls into position in the order of thought, consequently upon the decrees of creation and the fall, which refer to all men alike, since all men certainly are created and certainly have fallen; and precedently to the decrees of redemption and its application, since just as certainly all men are not redeemed and brought into the enjoyment of salvation. They are from this circumstance called Sublapsarians or Infralapsarians, that is, those who, in the arrangement of the decrees in logical order, conceive the place of the decree of election to be logically after that of the fall.

There are others, however, who, affected by what they deem the Scriptural teaching concerning the universal reference of the redemption of Christ, and desirous of grounding the universal offer of salvation in an equally universal provision, conceive that they can safely postpone the introduction of the particularistic principle to a point within the saving operations of God themselves, so only they are careful to introduce it at a point sufficiently early to make it determinative of the actual issue of the saving work. They propose therefore to think of the provision of salvation in Christ as universal in its intent; but to represent it as given effect in its application to individuals by the Holy Spirit only particularistically. That is to say, they suppose that some, not all, of the divine operations looking to the salvation of men are universalistic in their reference, whereas salvation is not actually experienced unless not some but all of them are operative. As the particular saving operation to which they ascribe a universalistic reference is the redemption of Christ, their scheme is expressed by saying that it introduces the decree of election, in the order of thought, at a point subsequent to the decree of redemption in Christ. They may therefore be appropriately called Post-redemptionists, that is, those who conceive that the decree of election is logically postponed to the decree of redemption. In their view redemption has equal reference to all men, and it is only in the application of this redemption to men that God discriminates between men, and so acts, in this sense, particularistically.

It is obvious that this is the lowest point in the order of decrees at which the decree of election can be introduced and the particularistic principle be retained at all. If the application of the redemption of Christ by the Holy Spirit be also made universalistic, that is to say, if the introduction of the particularistic principle be postponed to the actual issue of the saving process, then there is obviously no particularism at all in the divine operations looking to salvation. "Election" drops out of the scheme of the divine decrees altogether, unless we prefer to say, as it has been cynically phrased, that God is careful to elect to salvation only those who, he foresees, will in the use of their own free will elect themselves. All Calvinists must therefore be either Supralapsarians or Sub- (or Infra-) lapsarians, or, at least, Post-redemptionists which is also to be Anteapplicationist.

Nevertheless, we do not reach in the Post-redemptionists,conceived purely from the point of view of this element of their thought, the lowest possible, or the lowest actual, variety of Calvinists. Post-redemptionists may differ among themselves, if not in the position in the order of decrees of the decree of election (for still further to depress its position in that order would be to desert the whole principle of particularism and to fall out of the category of Calvinists), yet in their mode of conceiving the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit in applying redemption, under the government of the decree of election; and as to the role of the human spirit in receiving redemption. A party has always existed even among Calvinists which has had so large an interest in the autonomy of the human will, that it has been unwilling to conceive of it as "passive" with respect to that operation of God which we call regeneration, and has earnestly wished to look upon the reception of salvation as in a true sense dependent on the will's own unmoved action. They have, therefore, invented a variety of Calvinism which supposes that it is God indeed who selects those who shall savingly be brought to Christ, and that it is the Holy Spirit who, by his grace, brings them infallibly to Christ,(thus preserving the principle of particularism in the application of salvation), but which imagines that the Holy Spirit thus effectually brings them to Christ, not by an almighty, creative action on their souls, by which they are made new creatures, functioning subsequently as such, but purely by suasive operations, adapted in his infallible wisdom to the precise state of mind and heart of those whom he has selected for salvation, and so securing from their own free action, a voluntary coming to Christ and embracing of him for salvation. There is no universalism here; the particularism is express. But an expedient has been found to enable it to be said that men come voluntarily to Christ, and are joined to him by a free act of their own unrenewed wills, while only those come whom God has selected so to persuade to come (he who knows the heart through and through) that they certainly will come in the exercise of their own free will. This type of thought has received the appropriate name of "Congruism," because the principle of its contention is that grace wins those to whom it is "congruously" offered, that is to say, that the reason why some men are saved and some are not lies in the simple fact that God the Holy Spirit operates in his gracious suasion on some in a fashion that is carefully and infallibly adapted by him to secure their adhesion to the gospel, and does not operate on others with the same careful adaptation.

A warning must, however, be added to the effect that the designation "Congruists" is so ambiguous that there exists another class bearing this name, who are as definitely antiCalvinistic as those we have in mind are, by intention, Calvinistic in their conception. The teaching of these is that God the Holy Spirit accords his suasive influences to all alike, making no distinction; but that this universalistically conceived grace of the Holy Spirit takes effect only according as it proves to be actually congruous or incongruous to the state of mind and heart of those to whom it equally is given. Here it is not the sovereign choice of God, but a native difference in men, which determines salvation, and we are on expressly autosoteric ground. The danger of confusing the Calvinistic "Congruists" with this larger, and definitely anti-Calvinistic party, has led to the habit of speaking of the Calvinistic Congruists rather by the name of their most distinguished representative, (who, indeed, introduced this mode of thinking into the Calvinistic churches), Claude Pajon, Professor in the Theological School at Saumur in France in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was his predecessor and teacher in the same school, Moses Amyraut, who first formulated in the Reformed Churches the Post- redemptionist scheme, of which Pajonism is a debased form. Thus the school of Saumur has the bad eminence of having originated, and furnished from the names of its professors the current designations of, the two most reduced forms of Calvinism, Amyraldianism or Hypothetical Universalism as it is otherwise called, and Pajonism, or Congruism as it is designated according to its nature.

We have thus had brought before us four forms of Calvinism; and these, as we believe, exhaust the list of possible general types: Supralapsarianism, Sub- (or Infra-)lapsarianism, Post-redemptionism (otherwise called Amyraldianism, or Hypothetical Universalism), and Pajonism (otherwise called Congruism). These are all forms of Calvinism, because they give validity to the principle of particularism as ruling the divine dealings with man in the matter of salvation; and, as we have seen, the mark of Calvinism is particularism. If now, particularism were not only the mark of Calvinism but also the substance of Calvinism, all four of these types of Calvinism, preserving as they all do the principle of particularism, might claim to be not only alike Calvinistic, but equally Calvinistic, and might even demand to be arranged in the order of excellence according to the place accorded by each in its construction to the principle of particularism and the emphasis placed on it. Particularism, however, though the distinguishing mark of Calvinism, by which it may be identified as over against the other conceptions of the plan of salvation, in comparison with which we have brought it, does not constitute its substance; and indeed, although strenuously affirmed by Calvinism, is not affirmed by it altogether and soley for its own sake. The most consistent embodiment of the principle of particularism is not therefore necessarily the best form of Calvinism; and the bare affirmation of the principle of particularism though it may constitute one so far a Calvinist, does not necessarily constitute one a good Calvinist. No one can be a Calvinist who does not give validity to the principle of particularism in God's operations looking to the salvation of man; but the principle of particularism must not be permitted, as Pharaoh's lean kine devoured all the fat cattle of Egypt, to swallow up all else that is rich and succulent and good in Calvinism, nor can the bare affirmation of particularism be accepted as an adequate Calvinism.

Post-redemptionism, therefore (although it is a recognizable form of Calvinism, because it gives real validity to the principle of particularism), is not therefore necessarily a good form of Calvinism, an acceptable form of Calvinism, or even a tenable form of Calvinism. For one thing, it is a logically inconsistent form of Calvinism and therefore an unstable form of Calvinism. For another and far more important thing, it turns away from the substitutive atonement, which is as precious to the Calvinist as is his particularism, and for the safeguarding of which, indeed, much of his zeal for particularism is due. I say, Post-redemptionism is logically inconsistent Calvinism. For, how is it possible to contend that God gave his Son to die for all men, alike and equally; and at the same time to declare that when he gave his Son to die, he already fully intended that his death should not avail for all men alike and equally, but only for some which he would select (which, that is, because he is God and there is no subsequence of time in his decrees, he had already selected) to be its beneficiaries? But as much as God is God, who knows all things which he intends from the beginning and all at once, and intends all things which he intends from the beginning and all at once, it is impossible to contend that God intends the gift of his Son for all men alike and equally and at the same time intends that it shall not actually save all but only a select body which he himself provides for it. The schematization of the order of decrees presented by the Amyraldians, in a word, necessarily implies a chronological relation of precedence and subsequence among the decrees, the assumption of which abolishes God, and this can be escaped only by altering the nature of the atonement. And therefore the nature of the atonement is altered by them, and Christianity is wounded at its very heart.

The Amyraldians "point with pride" to the purity of their confession of the doctrine of election, and wish to focus attention upon it as constituting them good Calvinists. But the real hinge of their system turns on their altered doctrine of the atonement, and here they strike at the very heart of Calvinism. A conditional substitution being an absurdity, because the condition is no condition to God, if you grant him even so much as the poor attribute of foreknowledge, they necessarily turn away from a substitutive atonement altogether. Christ did not die in the sinner's stead, it seems, to bear his penalties and purchase for him eternal life; he died rather to make the salvation of sinners possible, to open the way of salvation to sinners, to remove all the obstacles in the way of salvation of sinners. But what obstacle stands in the way of the salvation of sinners, except just their sin? And if this obstacle (their sin) is removed, are they not saved? Some other obstacles must be invented, therefore, which Christ may be said to have removed (since he cannot be said to have removed the obstacle of sin) that some function may be left to him and some kind of effect be attributed to his sacrificial death. He did not remove the obstacle of sin, for then all those for whom he died must be saved, and he cannot be allowed to have saved anyone. He removed, then, let us say, all that prevented God from saving men, except sin; and so he prepared the way for God to step in and with safety to his moral government to save men. The atonement lays no foundation for this saving of men: it merely opens the way for God safely to save them on other grounds.

We are now fairly on the basis of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement; and this is in very truth the highest form of doctrine of atonement to which we can on these premises attain. In other words, all the substance of the atonement is evaporated, that it may be given a universal reference. And, indeed, we may at once recognize it as an unavoidable effect of universalizing the atonement that it is by that very act eviscerated. If it does nothing for any man that it does not do for all men why, then, it is obvious that it saves no man; for clearly not all men are saved. The things that we have to choose between, are an atonement of high value, or an atonement of wide extension. The two cannot go together. And this is the real objection of Calvinism to this compromise scheme which presents itself as an improvement on its system: it universalizes the atonement at the cost of its intrinsic value, and Calvinism demands a really substitutive atonement which actually saves. And as a really substitutive atonement which actually saves cannot be universal because obviously all men are not saved, in the interests of the integrity of the atonement it insists that particularism has entered into the saving process prior, in the order of thought, to the atonement.

As bad Calvinism as is Amyraldianism, Pajonism is, of course, just that much worse. Not content with destroying the whole substance of the atonement, by virtue of which it is precious, ("Who loved me, and gave himself up for me") it proceeds to destroy also the whole substance of that regeneration and renovation by which, in the creative work of the Spirit, we are made new creatures. Of what value is it that it should be confessed that it is God who determines who shall be saved, if the salvation that is wrought goes no deeper than what I can myself work, if I can only be persuaded to do it? Here there is lacking all provision not only for release from the guilt of sin, but also for relief from its corruption and power. There is no place left for any realizing sense of either guilt or corruption; there is no salvation offered from either the outraged wrath of a righteous God or the ingrained evil of our hearts: after all is over, we remain just what we were before. The prospect that is held out to us is nothing less than appalling; we are to remain to all eternity fundamentally just our old selves with only such amelioration of our manners as we can be persuaded to accomplish for ourselves. The whole substance of Christianity is evaporated, and we are invited to recognize the shallow remainder as genuine Calvinism, because, forsooth, it safeguards the sovereignty of God. Let it be understood once for all that the completest recognition of the sovereignty of God does not suffice to make a good Calvinist. Otherwise we should have to recognize every Mohammedan as a good Calvinist. There can be no Calvinism without a hearty confession of the sovereignty of God; but the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God of itself goes only a very little way toward real Calvinism. Pajon himself, the author of Calvinistic Congruism, advanced in his fundamental thought but little beyond a high variety of Deism.

It seems particularly worth while to make these things explicit, because there is perhaps nothing which more prejudices Calvinism in the general mind than the current identification of it with an abstract doctrine of sovereignty, without regard to the concrete interests which this sovereignty safeguards. In point of fact the sovereignty of God for which Calvinism stands is not only the necessary implicate of that particularism without which a truly religious relation between the soul and its God cannot exist; but is equally the indispensable safeguard of that complementary universalism of redemption equally proclaimed in the Scripture in which the wideness of God's mercy comes to manifestation. It must be borne well in mind that particularism and parsimony in salvation are not equivalent conceptions; and it is a mere caricature of Calvinistic particularism to represent it as finding its center in the proclamation that there are few that are saved." What particularism stands for in the Calvinistic system is the immediate dealing of God with the individual soul; what it sets itself against is the notion that in his saving processes God never comes directly into contact with the individual-is never to be contemplated as his God who saves him-but does all that he does looking to salvation only for and to men in the mass. Whether in dealing with the individual souls of men, he visits with his saving grace few or many, so many that in our imagination they may readily pass into all, does not lie in the question. So far as the principles of sovereignty and particularism are concerned, there is no reason why a Calvinist might not be a universalist in the most express meaning of that term, holding that each and every human soul shall be saved; and in point of fact some Calvinists (forgetful of Scripture here) have been universalists in this most express meaning of the term. The point of insistence in Calvinistic particularism is not that God saves out of the sinful mass of men only one here and there, a few brands snatched from the burning, but that God's method of saving men is to set upon them in his almighty grace, to purchase them to himself by the precious blood of his Son, to visit them in the inmost core of their being by the creative operations of his Spirit, and himself, the Lord God Almighty, to save them. How many, up to the whole human race in all its representatives, God has thus bought and will bring into eternal communion with himself by entering himself into personal communion with them, lies, I say, quite outside the question of particularism. Universalism in this sense of the term and particularism are so little inconsistent with one another that it is only the particularist who can logically be this kind of a universalist.

And something more needs to be said-Calvinism in point of fact has as important a mission in preserving the true universalism of the gospel (for there is a true universalism of the gospel) as it has in preserving the true particularism of grace. The same insistence upon the supernuralistic and the evangelical principles, (that salvation is from God and from God alone, and that God saves the soul by dealing directly with it in his grace) which makes the Calvinist a particularist, makes him also a universalist in the scriptural sense of the word. In other words the sovereignty of God lays the sole foundation, for a living assurance of the salvation of the world. It is but a spurious universalism which the so-called universalistic systems offer: a universalism not of salvation but, at the most, of what is called the opportunity, the chance, of salvation. But what assurance can a universal opportunity, or a universal chance, of salvation (if we dare use such words) give you that all, that many, that any indeed, will be saved? This universal opportunity, chance, of salvation has, after two thousand years, been taken advantage of only by a pitiable minority of those to whom it has been supposed to be given. What reason is there to believe that, though the world should continue in existence for ten billions of billions of years, any greater approximation to a completely saved world will be reached than meets our eyes today, when Christianity, even in its nominal form, has conquered to itself, I do not say merely a moiety of the human race, but I say merely a moiety of those to whom it has been preached? If you wish, as you lift your eyes to the far horizon of the future, to see looming on the edge of time the glory of a saved world, you can find warrant for so great a vision only in the high principles that it is God and God alone who saves men, that all their salvation is from him, and that in his own good time and way he will bring the world in its "entirety to the feet of him whom he has not hesitated to present to our adoring love not merely as the Saviour of our own souls, but as the Saviour of the world; and of whom he has himself declared that he has made propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of the world. Calvinism thus is the guardian not only of the particularism which assures me that God the Lord is the Saviour of my soul, but equally of the universalism by which I am assured that he is also the true and actual Saviour of the world. On no other ground can any assurance be had either of the one or of the other. But on this ground we can be assured with an assurance which is without flaw, that not only shall there be saved the individual whom God visits with his saving grace, but also the world which he enters with his saving purpose, in all the length and breadth of it.

The redemption of Christ, if it is to be worthily viewed, must be looked at not merely individualistically, but also in its social, or better in its cosmical relations. Men are not discrete particles standing off from one another as mutually isolated units. They are members of an organism, the human race; and this race itself is an element in a greater organism which is significantly termed a universe. Of course the plan of salvation as it lies in the divine mind cannot be supposed to be concerned, therefore, alone with individuals as such: it of necessity has its relations with the greater unities into which these individuals enter as elements. We have only partially understood the redemption in Christ, therefore, when we have thought of it only in its modes of operation and effects on the individual. We must ask also how and what it works in the organism of the human race, and what its effects are in the greater organism of the universe. Jesus Christ came to save men, but he did not come to save men each as a whole in himself out of relation to all other men. In saving men, he came to save mankind; and therefore the Scriptures are insistent that he came to save the world, and ascribe to him accordingly the great title of the Saviour of the world. They go indeed further than this: they do not pause in expanding their outlook until they proclaim that it was the good pleasure of God "to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth." We have not done justice to the Biblical doctrine of the plan of salvation therefore so long as we confine our attention to the modes of the divine operation in saving the individual, and insist accordingly on what we have called its particularism. There is a wider prospect on which we must feast our eyes if we are to view the whole land of ' salvation. It was because God loved the world, that he sent his only-begotten Son; it was for the sins of the world that Jesus Christ made propitiation; it was the world which he came to save; it is nothing less than the world that shall be saved by him.

What is chiefly of importance for us to bear in mind here, is that God's plan is to save, whether the individual or the world, by process. No doubt the whole salvation of the individual sinner enters into the full enjoyment of this accomplished salvation only by stages and in the course of time. Redeemed by Christ, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, justified through faith, received into the very household of God as his sons, led by the Spirit into the flowering and fruiting activities of the new life, our salvation is still only in process and not yet complete. We still are the prey of temptation; we still fall into sin; we still suffer sickness, sorrow, death itself. Our redeemed bodies can hope for nothing but to wear out in weakness and to break down in decay in the grave. Our redeemed souls only slowly enter into their heritage. Only when the last trump shall sound and we shall rise from our graves, and perfected souls and incorruptible bodies shall together enter into the glory prepared for God's children, is our salvation complete.

The redemption of the world is similarly a process. It, too, has its stages: it, too, advances only gradually to its completion. But it, too, will ultimately he complete; and then we shall see a wholly saved world. Of course it follows, that at any stage of the process, short of completeness, the world, as the individual, must present itself to observation as incompletely saved. We can no more object the incompleteness of the salvation of the world today to the completeness of the salvation of the world, than we can object the incompleteness of our personal salvation today (the remainders of sin in us, the weakness and death of our bodies) to the completeness of our personal salvation. Every thing in its own order: first the seed, then the blade, then the full corn in the ear. And as, when Christ comes, we shall each of us be like him, when we shall see him as he is, so also, when Christ comes, it will be to a fully saved world, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, in which dwells righteousness.

It does not concern us at the moment to enumerate the stages through which the world must pass to its complete redemption. We do not ask how long the process will be; we make no inquiry into the means by which its complete redemption shall be brought about. These are topics which belong to Eschatology and even the lightest allusion to them here would carry us beyond the scope of our present task. What concerns us now is only to make sure that the world will be completely saved; and that the accomplishment of this result through a long process, passing through many stages, with the involved incompleteness of the world's salvation through extended ages, introduces no difficulty to thought. This incompleteness of the world's salvation through numerous generations involves, of course, the loss of many souls in the course of the long process through which the world advances to its salvation. And therefore the Biblical doctrine of the salvation of the world is not "universalism" in the common sense of that term. It does not mean that all men without exception are saved. Many men are inevitably lost, throughout the whole course of the advance of the world to its complete salvation, just as the salvation of the individual by process means that much service is lost to Christ through all these lean years of incomplete salvation. But as in the one case, so in the other, the end is attained at last: there is a completely saved man and there is a completely saved world. This may possibly be expressed by saying that the Scriptures teach an eschatological universalism, not an each- and-every universalism. When the Scriptures say that Christ came to save the world, that he does save the world, and that the world shall be saved by him, they do not mean that there is no human being whom he did not come to save, whom he does not save, who is not saved by him. They mean that he came to save and does save the human race; and that the human race is being led by God into a racial salvation: that in the age-long development of the race of men, it will attain at last to a complete salvation, and our eyes will be greeted with the glorious spectacle of a saved world. Thus the human race attains the goal for which it was created, and sin does not snatch it out of God's hands: the primal purpose of God with it is fulfilled; and through Christ the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny.

Now, it cannot be imagined that the development of the race to this, its destined end, is a matter of chance; or is committed to the uncertainties of its own determination. Were that so, no salvation would or could lie before it as its assured goal. The goal to which the race is advancing is set by God: it is salvation. And every stage in the advance to this goal is, of course, determined by God. The progress of the race is, in other words, a God-determined progress, to a God-determined end. That being true, every detail in every moment of the life of the race is God-determined; and is a stage in its God- determined advance to its God-determined end. Christ has been made in very truth Head over all things for his Church: and all that befalls his Church, everything his Church is at every moment of its existence, every "fortune," as we absurdly call it, through which his Church passes, is appointed by him. The rate of the Church's progress to its goal of perfection, the nature of its progress, the particular individuals who are brought into it through every stage of its progress: all this is in his divine hands. The Lord adds to the Church daily such as are being saved. And it is through the divine government of these things, which is in short the leading onwards of the race to salvation, that the great goal is at last attained. To say this is, of course, already to say election and reprobation. There is no antinomy, therefore, in saying that Christ died for his people and that Christ died for the world. His people may be few today: the world will be his people tomorrow. But it must be punctually observed that unless it is Christ who, not opens the way of salvation to all, but actually saves his people, there is no ground to believe that there will ever be a saved world. The salvation of the world is absolutely dependent (as is the salvation of the individual soul) on its salvation being the sole work of the Lord Christ himself, in his irresistible might. It is only the Calvinist that has warrant to believe in the salvation whether of the individual or of the world. Both alike rest utterly on the sovereign grace of God." All other ground, is shifting sand.

THE END

The Polemics of Infant Baptism¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The question of the Subjects of Baptism is one of that class of problems the solution of which hangs upon a previous question. According as is our doctrine of the Church, so will be our doctrine of the Subjects of Baptism. If we believe, with the Church of Rome, that the Church is in such a sense the institute of salvation that none are united to Christ save through the instrumentality of her ordinances, then we shall inevitably determine the proper subjects of her ordinances in one way. If, on the other hand, we believe, with the Protestant bodies, that only those already united to Christ have right within His house and to its privileges, we shall inevitably determine them in another way. All Protestants should easily agree that only Christ's children have a right to the ordinance of baptism. The cleavage in their ranks enters in only when we inquire how the external Church is to hold itself relatively to the recognition of the children of Christ. If we say that its attitude should be as exclusive as possible, and that it must receive as the children of Christ only those whom it is forced to recognize as such, then we shall inevitably narrow the circle of the subjects of baptism to the lowest limits. If, on the other hand, we say that its attitude should be as inclusive as possible, and that it should receive as the children of Christ all whom, in the judgment of charity, it may fairly recognize as such, then we shall naturally widen the circle of the subjects of baptism to far more ample limits. The former represents, broadly speaking, the Puritan idea of the Church, the latter the general Protestant doctrine. It is on the basis of the Puritan conception of the Church that the Baptists are led to exclude infants from baptism. For, if we are to demand anything like demonstrative evidence of actual participation in Christ before we baptize, no infant, who by reason of years is incapable of affording signs of his union with Christ, can be thought a proper subject of the rite. 

The vice of this system, however, is that it attempts the impossible. No man can read the heart. As a consequence, it follows that no one, however rich his manifestation of Christian graces, is baptized on the basis of infallible knowledge of his relation to Christ. All baptism is inevitably administered on the basis not of knowledge but of presumption. And if we must baptize on presumption, the whole principle is yielded; and it would seem that we must baptize all whom we may fairly presume to be members of Christ's body. In this state of the case, it is surely impracticable to assert that there can be but one ground on which a fair presumption of inclusion in Christ's body can be erected, namely, personal profession of faith. Assuredly a human profession is no more solid basis to build upon than a divine promise. So soon, therefore, as it is fairly apprehended that we baptize on presumption and not on knowledge, it is inevitable that we shall baptize all those for whom we may, on any grounds, fairly cherish a good presumption that they belong to God's people - and this surely includes the infant children of believers, concerning the favor of God to whom there exist many precious promises on which pious parents, Baptists as fully as others, rest in devout faith. 

To this solid proof of the rightful inclusion of the infant children of believers among the subjects of baptism, is added the unavoidable implication of the continuity of the Church of God, as it is taught in the Scriptures, from its beginning to its consummation; and of the undeniable inclusion within the bounds of this Church, in its pre-Christian form, as participants of its privileges, inclusive of the parallel rite of circumcision, of the infant children of the flock, with no subsequent hint of their exclusion. To this is added further the historical evidence of the prevalence in the Christian Church of the custom of baptizing the infant children of believers, from the earliest Christian ages down to to-day. The manner in which it is dealt with by Augustine and the Pelagians in their controversy, by Cyprian in his letter to Fidus, by Tertullian in his treatise on baptism, leaves no room for doubt that it was, at the time when each of these writers wrote, as universal and unquestioned a practice among Christians at large as it is to-day - while, wherever it was objected to, the objection seems to have rested on one or the other of two contrary errors, either on an overestimate of the effects of baptism or on an underestimate of the need of salvation for infants. 

On such lines as these a convincing positive argument is capable of being set forth for infant baptism, to the support of which whatever obscure allusions to it may be found in the New Testament itself may then be summoned. And on these lines the argument has ordinarily been very successfully conducted, as may be seen by consulting the treatment of the subject in any of our standard works on systematic theology, as for example Dr. Charles Hodge's.² It has occurred to me that additional support might be brought to the conclusions thus positively attained by observing the insufficiency of the case against infant baptism as argued by the best furnished opponents of that practice. There would seem no better way to exhibit this insufficiency than to subject the presentation of the arguments against infant baptism, as set forth by some confessedly important representative of its opponents, to a running analysis. I have selected for the purpose the statement given in Dr. A. H. Strong's "Systematic Theology."3 What that eminently well-informed and judicious writer does not urge against infant baptism may well be believed to be confessedly of small comparative weight as an argument against the doctrine and practice. So that if we do not find the arguments he urges conclusive, we may well be content with the position we already occupy. 

Dr. Strong opens the topic, "The Subjects of Baptism,"4 with the statement that "the proper subjects of baptism are those only who give credible evidence that they have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, - or, in other words, have entered by faith into the communion of Christ's death and resurrection" - a statement which if, like the ordinary language of the Scriptures, it is intended to have reference only to the adults to whom it is addressed, would be sufficiently unexceptionable; but which the "only" advertises us to suspect to be more inclusive in its purpose. This statement is followed at once by the organized "proof that only persons giving evidence of being regenerated are proper subjects of baptism." This proof is derived: 

(a) From the command and example of Christ and his apostles, which show: First, that those only are to be baptized who have previously been made disciples. . . . Secondly, that those only are to be baptized who have previously repented and believed. . . . 

(b) From the nature of the church - as a company of regenerate persons. . . . 

(c) From the symbolism of the ordinance - as declaring a previous spiritual change in him who submits to it. 

Each of these items is supported by Scripture texts, though some of them are no doubt sufficiently inapposite. As, for example, when only John iii. 5 and Rom. vi. 13 - neither of which has anything to do with the visible Church - are quoted to prove that the visible Church (of which baptism is an ordinance) is "a company of regenerate persons"; or as when Matt. xxviii. 19 is quoted to prove that baptism took place after the discipling, as if the words ran maqhteu,santej bapti,zete, whereas the passage, actually standing maqhteu/sate bapti,zontej, merely demands that the discipling shall be consummated in, shall be performed by means of baptism; or as when Acts x. 47, where the fact that the extraordinary power of the Holy Spirit had come upon Cornelius is pleaded as reason why baptism should not be withheld from him,⁵ and Rom, vi. 2-5, which only develops the spiritual implication of baptism, are made to serve as proofs that the symbolism of the ordinance declares always and constantly a "previous" spiritual change. Apart from the Scriptural evidence actually brought forward, moreover, the propositions, in the extreme form in which they are stated, cannot be supported by Scripture. The Scriptures do not teach that the external Church is a company of regenerate persons - the parable of the tares for example declares the opposite: though they represent that Church as the company of those who are presumably regenerate. They do not declare that baptism demonstrates a "previous" change - the case of Simon Magus, Acts viii. 13, is enough to exhibit the contrary: though they represent the rite as symbolical of the inner cleansing presumed to be already present, and consequently as administered only on profession of faith. 

The main difficulty with Dr. Strong's argument, however, is the illegitimate use it makes of the occasional character of the New Testament declarations. He is writing a "Systematic Theology" and is therefore striving to embrace the whole truth in his statements: he says therefore with conscious reference to infants, whose case he is soon to treat, "Those only are to be baptized who have previously repented and believed," and the like. But the passages he quotes in support of this position are not drawn from a "Systematic Theology" but from direct practical appeals to quite definite audiences, consisting only of adults; or from narratives of what took place as the result of such appeals. Because Peter told the men that stood about him at Pentecost, "Repent ye and be baptized," it does not follow that baptism might not have been administered by the same Peter to the infants of those repentant sinners previous to the infants' own repentance. Because Philip baptized the converts of Samaria only after they had believed, it does not follow that he would not baptize their infants until they had grown old enough to repeat their parents' faith, that they might, like them, receive its sign. 

The assertion contained in the first proof is, therefore, a non sequitur from the texts offered in support of it. There is a suppressed premise necessary to be supplied before the assumed conclusion follows from them, and that premise is that the visible Church consists of believers only without inclusion of their children - that Peter meant nothing on that day of Pentecost when he added to the words which Dr. Strong quotes: "Repent ye and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins" - those other words which Dr. Strong does not quote: "For to you is the promise and to your children" (Acts ii. 38, 39). This suppressed premise Dr. Strong adjoins in the second item of proof which he adduces; but we must observe that it is not a second item; but a necessary element in the first item which without it is invalid. In a word, when we correct the Scripture he adduces and the illegitimate use he makes of Scripture, Dr. Strong's whole argument reduces to the one item of the "nature of the Church, as a company of regenerate persons." It is only on the ground that this is the true idea of the Church that the passages quoted to prove that baptism is to be administered "only" to such as have previously repented and believed, and those quoted to prove that the symbolism of the ordinance declares a "previous" spiritual change in him who submits to it, will justify the "only" and "previous" in which lies their point. The validity of the proof he offers thus depends on the truth of the assertion that the Church consists of regenerate persons; and whether this be true or not we need not here stay to examine: certainly the texts he adduces in proof of it, as already intimated, make no approach to establishing it. We rest securely in the result that according to Dr. Strong's argument as well as our own conviction, the subjects of baptism are the members of the visible Church: and who those are, will certainly be determined by our theory of the nature of the Church. 

A page or two further on⁶ he takes up the question of "Infant Baptism" ex professo. This "we reject and reprehend," he tells us, and that for the following reasons, viz.: 

(a) Infant baptism is without warrant, either express or implied, in the Scripture.... 

(b) Infant baptism is expressly contradicted [by Scriptural teaching]. . . . 

(c) The rise of infant baptism in the history of the church is due to sacramental conceptions of Christianity, so that all arguments in its favor from the writings of the first three centuries are equally arguments for baptismal regeneration. . . . 

(d) The reasoning by which it is supported is unscriptural, unsound, and dangerous in its tendency. . . . 

(e) The lack of agreement among pedobaptists as to the warrant for infant baptism and as to the relation of baptized infants to the church, together with the manifest decline of the practice itself, are arguments against it. . . . 

(f) The evil effects of infant baptism are a strong argument against it. 

Here is quite a list of arguments. We must look at the items one by one. 

(a) When we ask after a direct Scriptural warrant for infant baptism, in the sense which Dr. Strong has in mind in the first of these arguments, we, of course, have the New Testament in view, seeing that it is only in the new dispensation that this rite has been ordained. In this sense of the words, we may admit his first declaration - that there is no express command that infants should be baptized; and with it also his second - that there is in Scripture no clear example of the baptism of infants, that is, if we understand by this that there is no express record, reciting in so many words, that infants were baptized. When he adds to these, however, a third contention, that "the passages held to imply infant baptism contain, when fairly interpreted, no reference to such a practice," we begin to recalcitrate. If it were only asserted that these passages contain no such stringent proof that infants were baptized as would satisfy us on the point in the absence of other evidence, we might yield this point also. But it is too much to ask us to believe that they contain "no reference to the practice" if "fairly interpreted." What is a "fair" interpretation? Is it not an interpretation which takes the passages as they stand, without desire to make undue capital of them one way or the other? Well, a fair interpretation of these passages, in this sense, might prevent paedobaptists from claiming them as a demonstrative proof of infant baptism, and it would also certainly prevent anti-paedobaptists from asserting that they have "no reference to such a practice." It should lead both parties to agree that the passages have a possible but not a necessary reference to infant baptism - that they are neutral passages, in a word, which apparently imply infant baptism, but which may be explained without involving that implication if we otherwise know that infant baptism did not exist in that day. Fairly viewed, in other words, they are passages which will support any other indications of infant baptism which may be brought forward, but which will scarcely suffice to prove it against evidence to the contrary, or to do more than raise a presumption in its favor in the absence of other evidence for it. For what are these passages? The important ones are Acts xvi. 15, which declares that Lydia was "baptized and her household," and Acts xvi. 33, which declares that the jailer was "baptized and all his," together with I Cor. i. 16, "And I baptized also the household of Stephanas." Certainly at first blush we would think that the repeated baptism of households without further description, would imply the baptism of the infants connected with them. It may be a "fair" response to this that we do not know that there were any infants in these households - which is true enough, but not sufficient to remove the suspicion that there may have been. It may be a still "fairer" reply to say that whether the infants of these families (if there were infants in them) were baptized or not, would depend on the practice of the apostles; and whatever that practice was would be readily understood by the first readers of the Acts. But this would only amount to asking that infant baptism should not be founded solely on these passages alone; and this we have already granted. 

Neither of these lines of argument is adduced by Dr. Strong. They would not justify his position - which is not that the baptism of infants cannot be proved by these passages, but much more than this - that a fair interpretation of them definitely excludes all reference to it by them. Let us see what Dr. Strong means by a "fair" interpretation. To the case of Lydia he appends "cf. 40," which tells us when Paul and Silas were loosed from prison "they entered into the house of Lydia, and when they had seen the brethren they comforted them and departed" - from which, apparently, he would have us make two inferences, (1) that these "brethren" constituted the household of Lydia that was baptized, and (2) that these "brethren" were all adults. In like manner to the case of the jailer he appends the mystic "cf. 34," which tells us that the saved jailer brought his former prisoners up into his house and set meat before them and "rejoiced greatly, having believed, with all his house, on God" - from which he would apparently have us infer that there was no member of the household, baptized by Paul, who was too young to exercise personal faith. So he says with reference to I Cor. i. 16, that "I Cor. xvi. 15 shows that the whole family of Stephanas, baptized by Paul, were adults." Nevertheless, when we look at I Cor. xvi. 15, we read merely that the house of Stephanas were the first fruits of Achaia and that they had set themselves to minister unto the saints - which leaves the question whether they are all adults or not just where it was before, that is, absolutely undetermined. 

Nor is this all. To these passages Dr. Strong appends two others, one properly enough, I Cor. vii. 14, where Paul admonishes the Christian not to desert the unbelieving husband or wife, "for the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; else were your children unclean; but now are they holy." This is doubtless a passage similar to the others; a passage certainly which does not explicitly teach infant baptism, but equally certainly which is not inconsistent with it - which would, indeed, find a ready explanation from such a custom if such a custom existed, and therefore stands as one of the passages which raise at least a suspicion that infant baptism underlies the form of expression - since the holiness of the children is taken for granted in it and the sanctification of the unbelieving partner inferred from it - but is yet no doubt capable of an explanation on the supposition that that practice did not exist and is therefore scarcely a sure foundation for a doctrine asserting it. Dr. Strong is, however, not satisfied with showing that no stringent inference can be drawn from it in favor of infant baptism. He claims it as a "sure testimony," a "plain proof" against infant baptism, on the grounds that the infants and the unbelieving parent are put by it in the same category, and (quoting Jacobi) that if children had been baptized, Paul would certainly have referred to their baptism as a proof of their holiness. And this in the face of the obvious fact that the holiness of the children is assumed as beyond dispute and in no need of proof, doubt as to which would be too horrible to contemplate, and the sanctification of the husband or wife inferred from it. Of course, it is the sanctity or holiness of external connection and privilege that is referred to, both with reference to the children and the parent; but that of the one is taken for granted, that of the other is argued; hence it lies close to infer that the one may have had churchly recognition and the other not. Whether that was true or not, however, the passage cannot positively decide for us; it only raises a suspicion. But this suspicion ought to be frankly recognized. 

The other passage which is adjoined to these is strangely found in their company, although it, too, is one of the "neutral texts." It is Matt. xix. 14: "Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me; for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven." What has this to do with baptism? Certainly nothing directly; only if it be held indirectly to show that infants were received by Christ as members of His Kingdom on earth, that is, of His Church, can it bear on the controversy. But notice Dr. Strong's comment: "None would have 'forbidden,' if Jesus and his disciples had been in the habit of baptizing infants." Does he really think this touches the matter that is raised by this quotation? Nobody supposes that "Jesus and his disciples" were in the habit of baptizing infants; nobody supposes that at the time these words were spoken, Christian baptism had been so much as yet instituted. Dr. Strong would have to show, not that infant baptism was not practised before baptism was instituted, but that the children were not designated by Christ as members of His "Kingdom," before the presumption for infant baptism would be extruded from this text. It is his unmeasured zeal to make all texts which have been appealed to by paedobaptists - not merely fail to teach paedobaptism - but teach that children were not baptized, that has led him so far astray here. 

We cannot profess to admire, then, the "fair" interpretations which Dr. Strong makes of these texts. No one starting out without a foregone conclusion could venture to say that, when "fairly interpreted," they certainly make no reference to baptism of infants. Nevertheless, I freely allow that they do not suffice, taken by themselves, to prove that infants were baptized by the apostles - they only suggest this supposition and raise a presumption for it. And, therefore, I am prepared to allow in general the validity of Dr. Strong's first argument - when thus softened to reasonable proportions. It is true that there is no express command to baptize infants in the New Testament, no express record of the baptism of infants, and no passages so stringently implying it that we must infer from them that infants were baptized. If such warrant as this were necessary to justify the usage we should have to leave it incompletely justified. But the lack of this express warrant is something far short of forbidding the rite; and if the continuity of the Church through all ages can be made good, the warrant for infant baptism is not to be sought in the New Testament but in the Old Testament, when the Church was instituted, and nothing short of an actual forbidding of it in the New Testament would warrant our omitting it now. As Lightfoot expressed it long ago, "It is not forbidden" in the New Testament to "baptize infants, - therefore, they are to be baptized."7 Dr. Strong commits his first logical error in demanding express warrant for the continuance of a longsettled institution, instead of asking for warrant for setting it aside. 

(b) If thus the first argument is irrelevant as a whole as well as not very judiciously put in its details, is not its failure well atoned for in the second one? His second argument undertakes to show that "infant baptism is expressly contradicted" by Scriptural teaching. Here, at length, we have the promise of what was needed. But if we expect stringent reason here for the alteration of the children-including covenant, we shall be sadly disappointed. Dr. Strong offers four items. First, infant baptism is contradicted "by the Scriptural prerequisites of faith and repentance, as signs of regeneration," which is valid only on the suppressed assumption that baptism is permissible only in the case of those who prove a previous regeneration - which is the very point in dispute. Secondly, "by the Scriptural symbolism of the ordinance." "As we should not bury a person before his death, so we should not symbolically bury a person by baptism until he has in spirit died to sin." Here not only that the symbolism of baptism is burial is gratuitously assumed, but also that this act, whatever be its symbolism, could be the symbol only of an already completed process in the heart of the recipient - which again is the very point in dispute. Thirdly, "by the Scriptural constitution of the church" - where again the whole validity of the argument depends on the assumption that infants are not members of the Church - the very point in dispute. These three arguments must therefore be thrown at once out of court. If the Scriptures teach that personal faith and repentance are prerequisites to baptism, if they teach that one must have previously died to sin before he is baptized, if they teach that the visible Church consists of regenerate adults only - why, on any of these three identical propositions, each of which implies all the others, of course infants may not be baptized - for this again is but an identical proposition with any of the three. But it is hardly sound argumentation simply to repeat the matter in dispute in other words and plead it as proof. 

The fourth item is more reasonable - "By the Scriptural prerequisites for participation in the Lord's Supper. Participation in the Lord's Supper is the right only of those who can 'discern the Lord's body' (I Cor. xi. 29). No reason can be assigned for restricting to intelligent communicants the ordinance of the Supper, which would not equally restrict to intelligent believers the ordinance of Baptism." Hence Dr. Strong thinks the Greek Church more consistent in administering the Lord's Supper to infants. It seems, however, a sufficient answer to this to point to the passage quoted: the express declaration of Scripture, that those who are admitted to the Lord's Supper - a declaration made to those who were already, baptized Christians - should be restricted to those who discern the Lord's body, is a sufficient Scriptural reason for restricting participation in the Lord's Supper to intelligent communicants; while the absence of that Scripture restriction in its case is a sufficient Scriptural reason for refusing to apply it to baptism. If we must support this Scriptural reason with a purely rational one, it may be enough to add that the fact that baptism is the initiatory rite of the Church supplies us with such a reason. The ordinances of the Church belong to the members of it; but each in its own appointed time. The initiatory ordinance belongs to the members on becoming members, other ordinances become their right as the appointed seasons for enjoying them roll around. We might as well argue that a citizen of the United States has no right to the protection of the police until he can exercise the franchise. The rights all belong to him: but the exercise of each comes in its own season. It is easily seen by the help of such examples that the possession of a right to the initiatory ordinance of the Church need not carry with it the right to the immediate enjoyment of all church privileges: and thus the challenge is answered to show cause why the right to baptism does not carry with it the right to communion in the Lord's Supper.⁸ With this challenge the second argument of Dr. Strong is answered, too. 

(c) The third argument is really an attempt to get rid of the pressure of the historical argument for infant baptism. Is it argued that the Christian Church from the earliest traceable date baptized infants? - that this is possibly hinted in Justin Martyr, assumed apparently in Irenaeus, and openly proclaimed as apostolical by Origen and Cyprian while it was vainly opposed by Tertullian? In answer it is replied that all these writers taught baptismal regeneration and that infant baptism was an invention coming in on the heels of baptismal regeneration and continued in existence by State Churches. There is much that is plausible in this contention. The early Church did come to believe that baptism was necessary to salvation; this doctrine forms a natural reason for the extension of baptism to infants, lest dying unbaptized they should fail of salvation. Nevertheless, the contention does not seem to be the true explanation of the line of development. First, it confuses a question of testimony to fact with a question of doctrine. The two - baptismal regeneration and infant baptism - do not stand or fall together, in the testimony of the Fathers. Their unconscious testimony to a current practice proves its currency in their day; but their witness to a doctrine does not prove its truth. We may or may not agree with them in their doctrine of baptismal regeneration. But we cannot doubt the truth of their testimony to the prevalence of infant baptism in their day. We admit that their day is not the apostles' day. We could well wish that we had earlier witness. We may be sure from the witness of Origen and Cyprian that they were baptized in their infancy - that is, that infant baptism was the usual practice in the age of Irenaeus - a conclusion which is at once strengthened by and strengthens the witness of Irenaeus. But the practice of the latter half of the second century need not have been the practice of the apostles. A presumption is raised, however - even though so weak a one that it would not stand against adverse evidence. But where is the adverse evidence? Secondly, Dr. Strong's view reverses the historical testimony. As a matter of history it was not the inauguration of the practice of infant baptism which the doctrine of baptismal regeneration secured, but the endangering of it. It was because baptism washed away all sin and after that there remained no more laver for regeneration, that baptism was postponed. It is for this reason that Tertullian proposes its postponement. Lastly, though the historical evidence may not be conclusive for the apostolicity of infant baptism, it is in that direction and is all that we have. There is no evidence from primitive church history against infant baptism, except the ambiguous evidence of Tertullian; so that our choice is to follow history and baptize infants or to reconstruct by a priori methods a history for which we have no evidence. 

(d) Dr. Strong's fourth item is intended as a refutal of the reasoning by which the advocates of paedobaptism support their contention. As such it naturally takes up the reasoning from every kind of sources and it is not strange that some of the reasoning adduced in it is as distasteful to us as it is to him. We should heartily unite with him in refusing to allow the existence of any power in the Church to modify or abrogate any command of Christ. Nor could we find any greater acceptability than he does in the notion of an "organic connection" between the parent and the child, such as he quotes Dr. Bushnell as advocating. Nevertheless we can believe in a parent acting as representative of the child of his loins, whose nurture is committed to him; and we can believe that the status of the parent determines the status of the child - in the Church of the God whose promise is "to you and your children," as well as, for example, in the State. And we can believe that the Church includes the minor children of its members for whom they must as parents act, without believing that it is thereby made a hereditary body. I do not purpose here to go over again the proofs, which Dr. Hodge so cogently urges, that go to prove the continuity of the Church through the Old and New dispensations - remaining under whatever change of dispensation the same Church, with the same laws of entrance and the same constituents. The antithesis which Dr. Strong adduces - that "the Christian Church is either a natural, hereditary body, or it was merely typified by the Jewish people" - is a false antithesis. The Christian Church is not a natural, hereditary body and yet it is not merely the antitype of Israel. It is, the apostles being witnesses, the veritable Israel itself. It carried over into itself all that was essentially Israelitish - all that went to make up the body of God's people. Paul's figures of the olive tree in Romans and of the breaking down of the middle wall of partition in Ephesians, suffice to demonstrate this; and besides these figures he repeatedly asserts it in the plainest language. 

So fully did the first Christians - the apostles - realize the continuity of the Church, that they were more inclined to retain parts of the outward garments of the Church than to discard too much. Hence circumcision itself was retained; and for a considerable period all initiates into the Church were circumcised Jews and received baptism additionally. We do not doubt that children born into the Church during this age were both circumcised and baptized. The change from baptism superinduced upon circumcision to baptism substituted for circumcision was slow, and never came until it was forced by the actual pressure of circumstances. The instrument for making this change and so - who can doubt it? - for giving the rite of baptism its right place as the substitute for circumcision, was the Apostle Paul. We see the change formally constituted at the so-called Council of Jerusalem, in Acts xv. Paul had preached the gospel to Gentiles and had received them into the Church by baptism alone, thus recognizing it alone as the initiatory rite, in the place of circumcision, instead of treating as heretofore the two together as the initiatory rites into the Christian Church. But certain teachers from Jerusalem, coming down to Antioch, taught the brethren "except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses ye cannot be saved." Paul took the matter before the Church of Jerusalem from which these new teachers professed to emanate; and its formal decision was that to those who believed and were baptized circumcision was not necessary. 

How fully Paul believed that baptism and circumcision were but two symbols of the same change of heart, and that one was instead of the other, may be gathered from Col. ii. 11, when, speaking to a Christian audience of the Church, he declares that "in Christ ye were also circumcised " - but how? - "with a circumcision not made with hands, in putting off the body of the flesh," - that is, in the circumcision of Christ. But what was this Christ-ordained circumcision? The Apostle continues: "Having been buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." Hence in baptism they were buried with Christ, and this burial with Christ was the circumcision which Christ ordained, in the partaking of which they became the true circumcision. This falls little, if any, short of a direct assertion that the Christian Church is Israel, and has Israel's circumcision, though now in the form of baptism. Does the view of Paul, now, contradict the New Testament idea of the Church, or only the Baptist idea of the Church? No doubt a large number of the members of the primitive Church did insist, as Dr. Strong truly says, that those who were baptized should also be circumcised: and no doubt, this proves that in their view baptism did not take the place of circumcision. But this was an erroneous view: is represented in the New Testament as erroneous; and it is this exact view against which Paul protested to the Church of Jerusalem and which the Church of Jerusalem condemned in Acts xv. Thus the Baptist denial of the substitution of baptism for circumcision leads them into the error of this fanatical, pharisaical church-party! Let us take our places in opposition, along with Paul and all the apostles. 

Whether, then, that the family is the unit of society is a relic of barbarism or not, it is the New Testament basis of the Church of God. God does make man the head of the woman - does enjoin the wife to be in subjection to her husband - and does make the parents act on behalf of their minor children. He does, indeed, require individual faith for salvation; but He organizes His people in families first; and then into churches, recognizing in their very warp and woof the family constitution. His promises are all the more precious that they are to us and our children. And though this may not fit in with the growing individualism of the day, it is God's ordinance. 

(e) Dr. Strong's fifth argument is drawn from the divergent modes in which paedobaptists defend their position and from the decline among them of the practice of the rite. Let us confess that we do not all argue alike or aright. But is not this a proof rather of the firm establishment in our hearts of the practice? We all practise alike; and it is the propriety of the practice, not the propriety of our defense of it, that is, after all, at stake. But the practice is declining, it is said. Perhaps this is true. Dr. Vedder's statistics seem to show it. But if so, does the decline show the practice to be wrong, or Christians to be unfaithful? It is among paedobaptists that the decline is taking place - those who still defend the practice. Perhaps it is the silent influence of Baptist neighbors; perhaps it is unfaithfulness in parents; perhaps the spread of a Quakerish sentiment of undervaluation of ordinances. Many reasons may enter into the account of it. But how does it show the practice to be wrong? According to the Baptist reconstruction of history, the Church began by not baptizing infants. But this primitive and godly practice declined - rapidly declined - until in the second century all infants were baptized and Tertullian raised a solitary and ineffectual voice crying a return to the older purity in the third. Did that decline of a prevalent usage prove it to be a wrong usage? By what logic can the decline in the second century be made an evidence in favor of the earlier usage, and that of the nineteenth an evidence against it? 

(f) We must pass on, however, to the final string of arguments, which would fain point out the evil effects of infant baptism. First, it forestalls the act of the child and so prevents him from ever obeying Christ's command to be baptized - which is simply begging the question. We say it obeys Christ's command by giving the child early baptism and so marking him as the Lord's. Secondly, it is said to induce superstitious confidence in an outward rite, as if it possessed regenerating efficacy; and we are pointed to frantic mothers seeking baptism for their dying children. Undoubtedly the evil does occur and needs careful guarding against. But it is an evil not confined to this rite, but apt to attach itself to all rites - which need not, therefore, be all abolished. We may remark, in passing, on the unfairness of bringing together here illustrative instances from French Catholic peasants and High Church Episcopalians, as if these were of the same order with Protestants. Thirdly, it is said to tend to corrupt Christian truth as to the sufficiency of Scripture, the connection of the ordinances, and the inconsistency of an impenitent life with church membership, as if infant baptism necessarily argued sacramentarianism, or as if the churches of other Protestant bodies were as a matter of fact more full of "impenitent members" than those of the Baptists. This last remark is in place also, in reply to the fourth point made, wherein it is charged that the practice of infant baptism destroys the Church as a spiritual body by merging it in the nation and in the world. It is yet to be shown that the Baptist churches are purer than the paedobaptist. Dr. Strong seems to think that infant baptism is responsible for the Unitarian defection in New England. I am afraid the cause lay much deeper. Nor is it a valid argument against infant baptism, that the churches do not always fulfill their duty to their baptized members. This, and not the practice of infant baptism, is the fertile cause of incongruities and evils innumerable. 

Lastly, it is urged that infant baptism puts "into the place of Christ's command a commandment of men, and so admit[s] . . . the essential principle of all heresy, schism, and false religion" - a good, round, railing charge to bring against one's brethren: but as an argument against infant baptism, drawn from its effects, somewhat of a petitio principii. If true, it is serious enough. But Dr. Strong has omitted to give the chapter and verse where Christ's command not to baptize infants is to be found. One or the other of us is wrong, no doubt; but do we not break an undoubted command of Christ when we speak thus harshly of our brethren, His children, whom we should love? Were it not better to judge, each the other mistaken, and recognize, each the other's desire to please Christ and follow His commandments? Certainly I believe that our Baptist brethren omit to fulfill an ordinance of Christ's house, sufficiently plainly revealed as His will, when they exclude the infant children of believers from baptism. But I know they do this unwittingly in ignorance; and I cannot refuse them the right hand of fellowship on that account. But now, having run through these various arguments, to what conclusion do we come? Are they sufficient to set aside our reasoned conviction, derived from some such argument as Dr. Hodge's, that infants are to be baptized? A thousand times no. So long as it remains true that Paul represents the Church of the Living God to be one, founded on one covenant (which the law could not set aside) from Abraham to to-day, so long it remains true that the promise is to us and our children and that the members of the visible Church consist of believers and their children - all of whom have a right to all the ordinances of the visible Church, each in its appointed season. The argument in a nutshell is simply this: God established His Church in the days of Abraham and put children into it. They must remain there until He puts them out. He has nowhere put them out. They are still then members of His Church and as such entitled to its ordinances. Among these ordinances is baptism, which standing in similar place in the New Dispensation to circumcision in the Old, is like it to be given to children.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Presbyterian Quarterly, xiii. 1899, pp. 313-334. 

"Systematic Theology," iii. 1874, pp. 548ff.

1886, pp. 534 ff. 

P. 530. 

This interpretation of Acts x. 47 must certaintly greatly embarrass Dr. Strong when he comes to interpret the case of the Samaritans in Acts viii. For the same falling of the Holy Ghost which was poured out on Cornelius and his friends and exhibited itself in "speaking with tongues and magnifying God" (Acts x. 46); and was made by Peter the plea why water should not be forbidden for baptizing them; not only did not precede baptism in the case of the Samaritans, but actually did not take place until a considerably later date. The Samaritans are baptized, Acts viii. 12; but the Holy Ghost had not been received by them, Acts viii. 16, and was not received until Peter and John visited them and laid their hands on them (Acts viii. 17). If the case of Cornelius proves that baptism is not administered until after the Holy Ghost is received, that of the Samaritans proves that it precedes the gift of the Holy Ghost. In truth neither passage proves the one or the other, this outpouring of the Holy Ghost referring to the charismata. 

P. 534. 

"Horæ Hebraicæ et Talmudicæ," on Matt. iii. 6 (Pitman edition of his "Works," xi. 1823, p. 58).

Cf. Cotton Mather, as quoted in Hodge, op. cit., iii. 1874, p. 572.

The Power of God unto Salvation

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

I. The Revelation of Man, Hebrews 2:6-9

II. The Saving Christ, 1 Timothy 1:15

III. The Argument from Experience, Romans 5:1-2

IV. The Paradox of Omnipotence, Mark 10:27

V. The Love of the Holy Ghost, James 4:5

VI. The Leading of the Spirit, Romans 8:14

VII. Paul's Earliest Gospel, 1 Thessalonians 1:2, 4; 5:9, 24

VIII. False Religion and the True, Acts 22:23

Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work 1903

I

THE REVELATION OF MAN

"But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor; Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that He subjected all things unto him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor." - Heb. 2:6-9. (R.V.)

THESE words form the beginning of a marvelous passage the subject of which is "Christ our Representative." That He might become our Representative, the inspired writer teaches, it was needful that He should identify Himself with us. Therefore it was that He became man.

Language had been exhausted to exhibit the divine dignity of our Representative. In contrast with those men of God, the prophets, in whom God dwelt and through whom God spoke, He is called a Son through whom the worlds were made and by the word of whose power all things are upheld; who is the effulgence of God's glory and the very impression of His substance. In contrast with the most exalted of the creatures of God, the angels, He is given the more excellent name of the Son of God, His firstborn, whom all the angels of God shall worship; nay, He is given the name of the almighty and righteous God Himself, of the eternal Lord, who in the beginning laid the foundations of the earth and framed the heavens, and who shall abide the same when heaven and earth wax old and pass away.

Language is now exhausted to emphasize the perfection of the identification of this divine being with the children of men, when He who by nature was thus infinitely exalted above angels was made, like man, "a little lower than the angels . . . because of the suffering of death." "It behooved Him," we are told, "in all things to be made like unto His brethren"; and "since then the children are sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same," in order "that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The emphasis is upon the completeness of the identification of the Son of God with the sons of men, that by His sufferings many sons might be brought unto glory. And the implication is that as He was thus so completely identified with us for His work, so we are equally completely identified with Him in the fruits of that work. He shared with us our estate that we might share His merit with Him.

There is a great deal more precious truth in this passage than we can profitably attempt to consider in a single discourse. The whole gospel of the grace of God is in it. I have chosen its initial words for my text, and I purpose to ask you to fix your attention on its initial thought - the perfect identification of Christ with man. And even this in only one of its aspects, viz.: the consequent revelation of man which is brought us by the man Christ Jesus. Because our Lord is the Son of God, the impressed image of God's substance - as the stamp of a seal is the impressed image of the seal - His advent into our world was the supreme revelation of God. But, equally, because of His perfect identification with the children of men, partaking of their blood and flesh, and made in all things like unto men, He stands before us also as the perfect revelation of man. It behooves us to look with wondering eyes upon Him whom to see is to see the Father also, that we may learn to know God - the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who "so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." It may also behoove us to look upon Him who is not ashamed to call us brethren, that we may learn to know man - the man that God made in His own image, and whom He would rescue from his sin by the gift of His Son.

The text assuredly fully justifies us in looking upon Christ as the revelation of man. It begins, as you observe, by adducing the language of the eighth Psalm, in which God is adoringly praised for His goodness to man in endowing him, despite his comparative insignificance, with dominion over the creatures. The psalmist is contemplating the mighty expanse of the evening sky, studded with its orbs of light, among which the moon marches in splendor; and he is filled with a sense of the greatness of the God the work of whose hands all this glory is. "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, who hast set Thy glory upon the heavens!" He is lost in wonder that such a God can bear in mind so weak a thing as man. "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" But his wonder and adoration reach their climax as he recounts how the Author of all this magnificent universe has not only considered man, but made him lord of it all. In an inextinguishable burst of amazed praise he declares: "Thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and crownedst him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet" He enumerates the minor elements of man's strange dominion, emphasizing its completeness and all-inclusiveness. "All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas." Nothing is omitted So the praise returns upon itself and the Psalm closes with the repeated and now justified exclamation, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" It is a hymn, you observe, of man's dignity and honor and dominion. God is praised that He has dealt in so wondrous a fashion with mortal man, born from men, that He has elevated him to a position but little lower than that of the angels, crowned him with glory and honor, and given him dominion over all the works of His hands.

Now, observe how the author of this epistle deals with the Psalm. He adduces it as authoritative Scripture declaring indisputable fact. "One hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor; Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet." He expounds its meaning accurately. "For in that He subjected all things unto him, He left nothing that is not subject to him." And then he argues thus: "But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor." That is, of course, in Jesus only as yet do we see in actual possession and exercise, in its completeness and perfection, that majesty and dominion which the inspired psalmist attributes to man. God has expressly subjected all things to man; man has obviously not entered into his dominion; but the man Jesus has. Therefore it is to Him that we are to look if we would see man as man, man in the possession and use of all those faculties, powers, dignities for which he was destined by his Creator. In this way the author of this epistle presents Jesus before us as the pattern, the ideal, the realization of man. Looking upon Him, we have man revealed to us.

I beg you to keep fully in mind that our Lord's adaptation to reveal to us what man is, is based by the author of this epistle solely on the perfection of His identification with us in His incarnation. To the author of this epistle, our Lord in His own proper person is beyond all comparison with man. As God's own Son, the effulgence of His glory and the impressed image of His substance, He is beyond comparison even with prophets and infinitely above angels. He became identified with us by an act of humiliation and for an assigned cause, viz.: for the sake "of the suffering of death," that is, in order that He might be able to undertake and properly to fulfill His high-priestly work - as we are immediately instructed in detail. This act of humiliation is expressed here, for the sake of giving point to the argument, in language derived from the Psalm: "He hath been made a little lower than the angels." Observe, then, the pregnant difference which emerges in the use of this phrase of man and of our Lord. That man was made but little lower than the angels marks the height of his exaltation: "Thou didst make him a little lower than the angels, Thou didst crown him with glory and honor." That our Lord was made a little lower than the angels, marks the depth of His humiliation: "We behold Jesus, who hath been made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death." So wide is the interval that stretches between Him and man. He stoops to reach the exalted heights of man's as yet unattained glory.

But the perfection of His identification with us consisted just in this, that He did not, when He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, assume merely the appearance of man or even merely the position and destiny of man, but the reality of humanity. Note the stress laid in the passage, on the reality of the humanity which our Lord assumed, when, as the inspired writer pointedly declares, He was made like to His brethren in all things. He was made like them in their physical nature: as they were "sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same." He was made like them in their psychical nature: as they suffered and were tempted, He also "Himself hath suffered being tempted." Jesus Christ is presented before us here as a true and real man, possessed of every faculty and capacity that belongs to the essence of our nature: as a veritable "son of man," born of a woman, and brother to all those whom He came to succor. It is because He was in this true and complete sense what He so loved to call Himself, the Son of man - doubtless with as full reference to the eighth Psalm as to Daniel's great apocalypse - that He reveals to us in His own life and conduct what man was intended to be in the plan of God.

We must keep these great facts in mind that we may preserve the point of view of the inspired writer, as we strive to follow him in looking upon Jesus as the representative man, in whose humanity man is revealed to us. He is not the representative man in the sense that man is all that He is. When He entered the sphere of human life, by the assumption of a human nature, He did not lay aside His Godhead. He is, while being all that man is, infinitely more. He is God as well as man. He is not the representative man in the sense that in Him the age-long process of man's creation was first completed that His exalted humanity is the goal toward which nature had been all through the aeons travailing, till now at last in Him the man-child comes to a tardy birth. He is the revelation of man only in the sense that when we turn our eyes toward Him, we see in the quality of His humanity God's ideal of man, the Creator's intention for His creature; while by contrast with Him we may learn the degradation of our sin; and happily also we may see in Him what man is to be, through the redemption of the Son of God and the sanctification of the Spirit. Let us think a little on these things.

And, first, in the quality of Christ's manhood we may see the perfect man, the revelation of what man is in God's idea of him, of what the Creator intended him to be.

And what is the quality of Jesus' manhood? There is no other word to express it except the great word perfection. Sin? We cannot think of it in connection with Him. Those who companied with Him testify that He was "without blemish and without spot"; that "He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." The author of our epistle declares that He was "separate from sinners," that He was, in the midst of temptation, "without sin." The story of His life and sayings leaves us without trace of acknowledgment of fault on His own part, without betrayal of consciousness of unworthiness, without the slightest hint of inner conflict with sinful impulses.

And if the quality of His excellence is too positive to permit us even to speak of sin in connection with it, it is equally too universal to admit of adequate characterization. The excellences of the best of men may usually be condensed in a single outstanding virtue or grace by which each is peculiarly marked. Thus we speak of the faith of Abraham, the meekness of Moses, the patience of job, the boldness of Elijah, the love of John. The perfection of Jesus defies such particularizing characterization. All the beauties of character which exhibit themselves singly in the world's saints and heroes, assemble in Him, each in its perfection and all in perfect balance and harmonious combination. If we ask what manner of man He was, we can only respond, No manner of man, but rather, by way of eminence, the man, the only perfect man that ever existed on earth, to whom gathered all the perfections proper to man and possible for man, that they might find a fitting home in His heart and that they might play brightly about His person. If you would know what man is, in the height of His divine idea, look at Jesus Christ.

Is it not well for the world once to have seen such a man? How easy it is to accuse nature of our faults, to confront God with what we have wrought, and to seek to roll upon our Creator the responsibility for the creatures which our own deeds have made us. How easy to look upon corruption as the inevitable incident of existence for such beings as men; and to speak of sin as only the mark of our humanity. How easily a cynical temper waxes within us as we mix with men in the world's marts and tread with them the devious paths of life. We mark their ways and ask, waiting, like Pilate, for no answer, Who shall show us any good? How easily our ideals themselves sink to what we fancy the level of human powers. We note the aims of those who strive about us. We note the aims of the great figures which flit across the pages of history, commanding the acclamation of all the ages. We look within at the seething caldron of passions and impulses of our own souls. Do not all these voices call us to one natural, one unavoidable issue? If in the far distance we faintly discover hanging above us the beckoning glimmer of some star of heaven - what is poor wingless man, that he should hope to rise to grasp it? Is it not the part of wisdom, as well as the demand of nature, that worms shall crawl? Is it not folly unspeakable for such as we to attempt to mount the skies ? But we see Jesus, and the scales fall from our eyes; in Him we perceive what man is in his idea, and what it may be well for him to seek to become.

The man Jesus stands before us as the revelation of man's native dignity, capacities, and powers. He exhibits to us what man is in the idea of his Maker. He uncovers to our view, in their perfection and strength, those qualities and forces of good, the ruins of which only we may see in our fellow-men, and enables us to admire, honor, love, and hope for them, because they still possess such qualities and capacities though in ruins. To look upon Him is to ennoble and elevate our ideals of life; the sight of Him forbids us to forget our higher nature and higher aspirations; it quickens in us our dead longings to be like Him, men after God's plan and heart, rather than after our own corrupt impulses. It is well for the world once to have seen such a man.

Once and once only. Ah, there is the pity of it, and there is the despair of it! In no other than in Him has the ideal ever been realized And the more we look upon His perfections the more we perceive, as in no other light, how far short of the ideal man have been our highest imaginations. For we need to note, secondly, that in the light of Jesus' perfect manhood we have, by contrast, revealed to us what man is in his sin and depravity, what he has made himself in his rebellion from good and from God.

The Greeks had a proverb: "By the straight is judged both the straight and the crooked; the rule is singly the test of both" And so it is. Wherever the straight is brought to light, there inevitably is also the crookedness of the crooked made visible. Let the builder hang his plumb-line, with whatever careless intent, over any wall; and if the wall be not straight, every wayfarer may perceive it. Let the carpenter lay his straightedge alongside of any board, and every crook and bend is brought to the instant observation of all. This is what is meant when the Scriptures tell us that by the law is the knowledge of sin. For the law is for moral things what the plumb-line and the straight-edge are for physical things: it is the rule by which our hearts are measured and in the presence of which what we really are is made manifest. We may sin and scarcely know we sin, until the straight-edge of the law is brought against us. Oh, how we fall away from its line of rectitude!

Now, our blessed Saviour, as the perfect one, full of righteousness and holiness, is the embodiment of the law in life. And more perfectly and vividly than any law - though that law be holy and just and good - does His presence among men measure men and reveal what men are. The presence of any good man in our midst acts, in its due proportion, as such a measure. And, therefore, from the beginning of the world men have been stung by the presence of a good man among them to hatred of him, and have evilly entreated and persecuted him. He is a standing accusation of their sins. "There is certainly;" says Miss Yonge in The Heir of Redcliffe - that uplifting story which has been such a factor in the lives of such men as Mr. William Morris and Dr. A. Kuyper - "there is certainly a 'tyrannous hate' in the world for unusual goodness, which is a rebuke to it." But no man ever so feels his utter depravity as when he thinks of himself as standing by the side of Jesus. In this presence, even what we had fondly looked upon as our virtues hide their faces in shame and cry, Depart from us, for we are sinful in thy sight, O Lord.

Lay open the narrative in these gospels, of how the Son of man went about among men, in the days of His sojourn here below. Note on the one hand the ever-growing glory of that revelation of a perfect life. And note on the other hand the ever-increasing horror of the accompanying revelation of human weakness and human depravity. It could not be otherwise. When we see Jesus, it must be in the brightness of His unapproachable splendor that we see those about Him: as it is in the light of the sun that we see the forms and colors and characters of all objects on which it turns its beams. Especially when we see Him in conflict with His enemies, as we cannot avoid being moved with amazement by the spectacle of His utter perfection; so must we, in that light, be shocked by the spectacle of the utter depravity of men. Men are revealed in this presence in their true, their fundamental tones of nature with a vivid completeness in which they are never seen elsewhere.

Now, such a crisis as this, Jesus is bringing into the life of every man upon whom the light of His knowledge shines. No man can escape the test. Christ Jesus has come into the world and He confronts every one with the spectacle of His perfect humanity. When men are least thinking of Him, lo! there He is by their side. Every time His name is mentioned in the assemblies of men, every time His image rises in a brooding human heart, the crisis comes again to human souls. They may not realize it; they may prefer otherwise; they may determine otherwise. But they are being tried and tested against their wills every moment they live in His presence. Some, like the priests, burn with rage at every thought of the supreme claim He makes upon their homage, and refuse with all violence to have this man to rule over them. Others, like Pilate, yield a languid and chill recognition to His goodness and worth, yet choose the pursuit of pleasure or gain above the service of Him. Others, like the mob, may in easy indifference prefer some other leader, though he be a robber and a murderer. Thus a crisis is brought by His presence to every heart; and a revelation of man in his true depravity is the result. As He moves through the world the whole race lies at His feet self-condemned. We shudder as, in the light of His brightness, we see man as he is.

Yet we have the word of Jesus Himself for it that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Let us turn our eyes away, then, from the terrible spectacle of a race revealed in its sin to observe, in the third place, that in the perfection of Christ's manhood we have the revelation of what man may become by the redemption of the Son of God and the sanctification of the Spirit.

We observe that the element of promise is made very prominent in the text and in the wider passage of which the text is a part. Mark those words of hope, "Not yet." "We see not yet all things subjected to him." The psalmist's ascription is then yet to be fulfilled in man himself. In Jesus' dominion, and in Jesus' perfection, we are to see only the earnest and the pledge. When He entered through sufferings into glory, it was in the process of bringing many sons unto glory. If He is the sanctifier, they are the sanctified; and He is not ashamed to call them brethren. If He became like them in order that He might die in their behalf; this death was to be accomplished in order that He might, by making propitiation for their sins, deliver them from their bondage. In a word, we are to look upon Jesus in His perfect manhood as our forerunner. In His perfection we are to see the revelation of what we too shall be when He shall have perfected His work in us as He has already perfected it for us.

Let us bless God for these precious assurances. Without them the sight of Jesus could but bring us despair. Men speak of Him, indeed, as our example; and we praise God that He has given us such an example - we bless His holy name that He has permitted the world to see one such man. But if He were only our example, as we looked upon Him and saw His perfection and by contrast saw our depravity, who would not cry that this example is too high, we cannot attain unto it!

I fear we do not always consider with what limitations mere example is hedged about. Limitations of space. How narrow a circle can really feel the uplift of even the most moving personal example. At the best, only those who cluster most nearly round the figure of a good man, however impressive, can be much affected by his example. Limitations of time. How soon the force of the mightiest personality is drowned in the stream of the years. As the flood of days falls over it how rapidly it becomes at best a story - an empty name. Could Jesus have declared that it was expedient for Him to go away, if it were only or chiefly as an example that He came into the world? Would not it have been rather expedient that He should have lived through all the ages, and kept His living example as a living force before the eyes of men for all time and in every land? Limitations of power. The most inspiring example cannot change the heart, cannot impart new life to a dead soul. At best it can but deflect the direction of powers already existent and operative. We thank God that Christ is our example, that we see in Him all that we fain would be. But we thank Him that He is much more than our example; that He is our life as well. It is only because He is our life, that as our example He can be our hope and joy.

With Him as only our example we could see in His perfect manhood only what we ought to be, ought but cannot. Hopeless gloom would inevitably settle upon our souls. With Him as our life, who has died for our sins and purchased the sanctifying Spirit for us, we see in His perfect manhood what we are to be. Do we peer into that mysterious future, with doubt if not dismay? We have the precious assurance based upon His perfected work of propitiation and purchase: "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him." "We shall be like Him." Our hearts take courage, and we rest on this word. We shall be like Him! "We all remember," says Bishop Gore, "the pathetic words of Simmias in the argument with Socrates about the immortality of the soul. 'I dare say,' he says, 'that you, Socrates, feel as I do, how very hard and almost impossible is the attainment of any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has ascertained one of two things: either he should discover and learn the truth about them; or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft on which he sails through life - not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him.' 'Some word of God': it has come to us; crowning the legitimate efforts, supplying the inevitable deficiencies of human reasoning; satisfying all the deepest aspirations of the heart and conscience. It has come to us, and not as a mere spoken message, but as an incarnate person, at first to attract, to alarm, to subdue us; afterwards, when we are His servants, to guide, to discipline, to enlighten, to enrich us, till that which is perfect is come, and that which is in part shall be done away." Aye, this is it which meets every longing of our hearts. We shall be like Him when we see Him as He is.

Oh, toil-worn pilgrim, weary with your burden, would you know the glory in store for you? Look at Jesus: you shall be like Him. Are you tempted to despair? Do you shrink from an endless future in which you shall remain for ever yourself? Look at Jesus: not as you are, but like what He is, you are to be. If we can but attain to such a hope, heaven bursts at once upon our souls. To be like Jesus! Is this not a glory, in the presence of which all other glories fade away by reason of the glory that is surpassing? When we look at Jesus, we may not - we cannot afford to - forget that we are looking at that which, by the grace of God, we may and shall become.

And you, in whose veins the pulses of youth are still beating, whose hearts are high as you look out upon the still untrodden fields of life - fields which you doubt not you are to subdue you, all of you, no doubt, have your ideals and your heroes. Some figure rises before your eyes, now as I speak to you, whom you would fain be like - a soldier, a thinker, some master of assemblies, some leader of men, some lord of finance. Or, perhaps, your gentler blood throbs with exhilarated longing as you fancy yourself repeating in your own life the strivings or the accomplishments of some noble woman of history or of romance-some high-minded Hypatia, some patient Griselda, some devoted Saint Catharine - a Florence Nightingale, an Elizabeth Fry, a Dora Pattison, a Frances Havergal. What would it be to you to have an angel visitant stand suddenly by your side - as long ago there stood suddenly by Mary, most blessed of women, one with the greeting on his lips of "Hail Mary! thou that art highly favored!" - and say, "Your wish is granted; this - all this - you shall be!" Are we so blind that we do not see that this, and more, is just what has come to us? All these heroes of our hearts, great and inspiring as they are, are but men and women like ourselves, touched with our faults, our failings, our sins. Partial and incomplete, alike in themselves and in their accomplishments, they can provide us with but stepping-stones to higher things. The one perfect man, the one perfect model of life, stands before us in Christ Jesus. And the voice comes to us - not the voice of an angel only, but God's own voice of power - proclaiming, Ye shall be like Him!

Could there be another proclamation of equal encouragement, of equal strengthening? Up, brethren, let us take Him, the perfect One, for our model; let us nurse our longing to be like Him; and let us go forth to the work of life buoyant with the joy of this greatest of hopes, this most precious of assurances - We shall be like Him; what He is, that shall we also become! In the strength of this great hope let us live our life out here below, and in its joyful assurance let us, when our time comes to go, enter eagerly into our glory.

II
THE SAVING CHRIST

"Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." - 1 Tim. 1:15. (R. V.)

IN these words we have the first of a short series of five "faithful sayings," or current Christian commonplaces, incidentally adduced by the apostle Paul in the course of his letters to his helpers in the gospel - Timothy and Titus - i.e., in what we commonly call his Pastoral Epistles. They are a remarkable series of five "words," and their appearance on the face of these New Testament writings is almost as remarkable as their contents.

Consider what the phenomenon is that is brought before us in these "faithful sayings." Here is the apostle writing to his assistants in the proclamation of the gospel, little more than a third of a century, say, after the crucifixion of his Lord - scarcely thirty-three years after he had himself entered upon the great ministry that had been committed to him of preaching to the Gentiles the words of this life. Yet he is already able to remind them of the blessed contents of the gospel message in words that are the product of Christian experience in the hearts of the community. For just what these "faithful sayings" are, is a body of utterances in which the essence of the gospel has been crystallized by those who have tasted and seen its preciousness. Obviously the days when this gospel was brought as a novelty to their attention are past. The church has been founded, and in it throbs the pulses of a vigorous life. The gospel has been embraced and lived; it has been trusted and not found wanting; and the souls that have found its blessedness have had time to frame its precious truths into formulas. Formulas, I do not say, merely, that have passed from mouth to mouth, and been enshrined in memory after memory until they have become proverbs in the Christian community. Formulas rather, which have embedded themselves in the hearts of the whole congregation, have been beaten there into shape, as the deeper emotions of redeemed souls have played round them, and have emerged again suffused with the feelings which they have awakened and satisfied, and molded into that balanced and rhythmic form which is the hallmark of utterances that come really out of the living and throbbing hearts of the people.

If we were to judge of the spiritual attainments of the primitive Church solely by these specimens of its Christian thought, we should assuredly conceive exceedingly highly of them. Where can we go to find a truer or deeper insight into the heart of the gospel - a richer or fuller expression of all that the religious life at its highest turns upon? Certainly not to the apocryphal fragments of so-called "utterances of Jesus" raked out of the trash-heaps of some Oxyrhynchus or other. But just as truly not to the authentic remains of the early ages of the Church; which witness, indeed, to a living, vitalizing Christianity ordering all its life, but which distinctly reach to no such level of Christian thinking and feeling as these fragments point to. We are thus bidden to remember that in these five "sayings" we have, not the total product of the Christian thought of the age, perhaps not even a fair sample of it, but such items of it only as commended themselves to the mind and heart of a Paul, and rose joyously to his lips when he would fain exhort his fellows in the gospel to embrace and live by its essence. They come to us accordingly not merely as valuable fragments of the Christian thinking of the first period - of absorbing interest as they would be even from that point of view - but with the imprimatur of the apostle upon them as consonant with the mind of the Holy Spirit. They are dug from the mine of the Christian heart indeed, but they come to us stamped in the mintage of apostolic authority. The primitive Christian community it may have been that gave them form and substance, but it is the apostle who assures us that they are "faithful sayings, and worthy of all acceptation."

And surely, when we come to look narrowly at the particular one of these "sayings" which we have chosen as our text, it is a great assertion that it brings us - an assertion which, if it be truly a "faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation," is well adapted to become even in this late and, it would fain believe itself, more instructed age, the watchword of the Christian Church and of every Christian heart. On the face of it, you will observe, it simply announces the purpose or, we may perhaps say, the philosophy, of the incarnation: "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." But it announces the purpose of the incarnation in a manner that at once attracts attention. Even the very language in which it is expressed is startling, meeting us here in the midst of one of Paul's letters. For this is not Pauline phraseology that stands before us here; as, indeed, it professes not to be - for does not Paul tell us that he is not speaking in his own person, but is adducing one of the jewels of the Church's faith? At all events, it is the language of John that here confronts us, and whoever first cast the Church's heart-conviction into this compressed sentence had assuredly learned in John's school. For to John only belongs this phrase as applied to Christ: "He came into the world." It is John only who preserves the Master's declarations: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world"; "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness." It is he only who, adopting, as is his wont, the very phraseology of his Master to express his own thought, tells us in his prologue that "the true Light - that lighteth every man - was coming into the world," but though He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, yet the world knew Him not.

Hence emerges a useful hint for the interpretation of our passage. For in the Johannean phraseology which we have before us here - though certainly not in the Johannean phraseology only - the term "the world" does not express a purely local idea, but is suffused with a deep ethical significance. When we read accordingly of Christ Jesus coming into the "world," we are not reading of a mere change of place on the part of our Lord - of a mere descent on His part from heaven to earth, as we may say. We are reading of the light coming into the darkness: "the world" is the sphere of darkness and shame and sin. It is, in a word, the great ethical contrast that is intended to be brought prominently before us, and in this lies the whole point of the incarnation as conceived by John, and as embodied in our passage. Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, came into "the world" - into the realm of evil and the kingdom of sin. In our present passage this idea is enhanced by the sharp collocation with it of the term "sinners." For, in the original, the word "sinners" stands next to the word "world," with the effect of throwing the strongest possible emphasis on the ethical connotation. This is the faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that the apostle commends to us - that "Christ Jesus came into the world, sinners to save." What else, indeed, could He have come into "the world," the sphere of evil, for - except to save sinners?

Surely, there meets us here a point that is worthy of our closest attention. We might have heard of Christ coming into the world, if the term could be taken in a merely local sense, with but a languid interest. But when we catch the ethical import of the term an explanation is at once demanded. What could such an one as Christ have to do in coming to such a place as the world? The incongruity of the thing requires accounting for. It is much as if we saw a fellow Christian in some compromising position. We might meet with him here, there, and elsewhere, and no remark be aroused. But by some chance swing of the shutter as we pass by we see him standing in the midst of a drinking-saloon; we see him emerge from the door of a well-known gambling hell, or of some dreadful abode of shame. At once the need of an explanation rises within our puzzled minds, and the whole stress of the situation turns on the explanation. What was his purpose there? we anxiously inquire. So it is with Christ Jesus coming into the world; and so we feel in proportion as we realize the ethical contrariety suggested by the term. Thus it comes about that the primary emphasis of the passage is felt to rest on the account it gives of the situation it brings before us - on its explanation of how it happens that Christ Jesus could and did come into the world.

We despair of finding an English phraseology which will reproduce with exactitude the nice distribution of the stress. Suffice it to say that the strong emphasis falls on the fact that it was specifically to save sinners that Christ Jesus came, and that the way for this strength of emphasis is prepared by the use of phraseology which implies that there was no other conceivable end that He could have had in view in coming into such a place as the world except to deal with sinners, of which the world consists. He might indeed have come to judge the world; and in contrast with that the emphasis falls on the word "to save." But He could not conceivably, being what He was, the Holy One and the just, have come to such a place as the world is - the seat of shame and evil - save to deal with sinners. The essence of the whole declaration, therefore, is found in the joyful cry that it was specifically to save sinners that Christ Jesus came into this world of evil. And if that be true - simply true, broadly true, true just as it stands, and in all the, reach of its meaning - why, then, from that alone we may learn what man is and what God is - what Christ Jesus is and His work in this world of ours - what hopes may illumine our darkness here below, and what joys shall be ours when this darkness passes away.

It would naturally be impossible for us to dip out all the fullness of such a great declaration in a half-hour's meditation. It will be profitable for us, accordingly, to confine ourselves to bringing as clearly before us as may prove to be practicable two or three of its main implications. And may God the Holy Spirit help us to read it aright and to apply its lessons to our souls' welfare!

First of all, then, let us observe that this "faithful saying" takes us back into the counsels of eternity and reveals to us the ground, in the decree of God, for the gift of His Son to the world, and the end sought to be obtained by His entrance into the likeness of sinful flesh. "Faithful is the saying;" says the apostle, "and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world in order to save sinners." That is to say, the occasion of the incarnation is rooted in sin, and, the end of it is found in salvation from sin. And that is to say again, translating these facts into the terms of the decree, that the determination of God to send His Son and the determination of the Son to come into the world are grounded, in the counsel of God, on the contemplated fact of sin, and have as their design to provide a remedy for sin.

This, it need hardly be said, is in accordance with the uniform representation of Scripture. Scripture always speaks of the incarnation as the hinge of a great remedial scheme. Our Lord Himself, in language closely parallel to that before us, says, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." And everywhere in Scripture the incarnation is conceived distinctly, if we may be permitted the use of these technical terms, soteriologically rather than ontologically, or even cosmologically. Under the guidance of Scripture, and preeminently of our present passage, therefore, we must needs deny that the proximate account of the incarnation is to be sought either ontologically or ethically in God, or in the nature of the Logos, or in the idea of creation, or in the character of man as created; and affirm that it is to be found only in the needy condition of man as a sinner before the face of a holy and loving God.

The incarnation, to be sure, is so stupendous an event that it is big with consequences, and reaches out on every side to relations that may seem at first glance even to stand in opposition to its fundamental principle. It is certainly true that all that is, is the product of God's power, and, as coming from Him, has somewhat of God in it and may be envisaged by us as a vehicle of the Divine. And surely it is only true that He has imprinted Himself on the works of His hands; and that, as the Author of all, He will not be content with the product of His power until it has been made to body forth all His perfections; and it cannot be wrong to say that so far as we can see it is only in an incarnation that He could manifest Himself perfectly to His creatures. A similar remark will apply naturally at once also to the Logos as the Revealer, who must be supposed to desire to make known to man all that God is, and preeminently His love, which undoubtedly lies at the basis of the incarnation, and may be properly represented as its very principle and impulsive cause. Nor can it be doubted that only in his union with God in Christ, which is the result of Christ's incarnated work, does man reach his true destiny - the destiny designed for him from the beginning of the world, and without which in prospect, so far as we can see, man would never have been created at all.

But it is of the utmost importance for us to observe that these truths, great and fundamental as they are, yet do not penetrate to the basal fact as to the end of the incarnation. Nor can they safely be treated atomistically as so many independent truths unrelated to one another or to the real principle of the incarnation. They rather form parts of one complete sphere of truth whose center lies in the soteriological incarnation of the Bible. And only as each finds its proper place as a segment of this sphere of truth formed about that great fact does it possess validity, or even attain the height of its own idea. It is only, for example, because Christ Jesus came to save sinners that all that God is is manifested in Him, that love finds its completest exhibition in Him, that through Him at last man attains his primal destiny. Eliminate sin as the proximate occasion and redemption as the prime end of the incarnation, and none of these other effects will follow from it at all, or at least not in the measure of their rights. So that it is only true to say that in order that each may attain its proper place in our contemplation, as we seek to gather together the ends served by the incarnation, it is essential that they be conceived not apart from salvation from sin, the primary end of the incarnation, as its substitutes, but along with it, as its complements.

But this great declaration not only takes us back into the counsels of the eternal God that we may learn what from the ages of ages He purposed for sinful man, but it also throws an intense emphasis on the nature of the work which the incarnate Son of God came to perform. We require only to adjust the stress that falls on the separate words a little more precisely to catch a new meaning in its inspiring words, which declare that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

What, after all, are we looking for in Christ? Perhaps very divergent replies might be returned to this query did we but probe our hearts deeply enough and question our hopes resolutely enough. At all events, from the very earliest ages of Christianity, men have approached Him with very varied needs prominent in their minds, and have sought in Him satisfaction for very diverse necessities. They have felt the need of a teacher, an example, a revealer of God, a manifestation of the Divine love, an unveiling of the mysteries of the spiritual world, or of the life that lies beyond the grave. Or they have felt the need of a protector, a strong governor on whose arm they could rest, a bulwark against the evils of this life, and a tower of strength for their support and safety, whether in this life or in that to come. Or they have felt the need of a ransom from sin, of a redeemer, an expiation, a reconciler with God, a sanctifier. In the opulent provision for all that man can require made in the work of the Son of man, we can find all this, and more, in Him. But it makes every difference where, amid the rich profusion of His mercies, we discover the center of gravity of the benefits conferred on us, and what we ascribe more to the periphery.

In particular, in the first age of the gospel declaration it appealed to men more especially along three lines of deeply felt needs. Some, oppressed chiefly by their sense of the ignorance of God and of spiritual realities in which they had languished in the days of their heathendom, and dazzled by the light of the glorious gospel He brought to them, looked to Christ most eagerly as the Logos, the great Revealer, who had brought the knowledge of God to them, and with the knowledge of God the knowledge of themselves also as the sons of God. Others, oppressed rather by the miseries of life, turned from the dreadful physical and social conditions in which humanity itself had nearly been ground out of them, to hail in Christ the founder of a new social order; and permitted their quickened hopes to play almost exclusively round the promises of the kingdom He had come to establish and the joys it would bring. We call the one class "Gnostics" and the other "Chiliasts"; and by the very attribution to them of these party names indicate our clear perception that in neither of these channels did the great stream of Christian faith run. For from the beginning it has been true of Christians at large that the evils they have looked to Christ primarily to be relieved from have been neither intellectual nor social, but rather distinctly moral and spiritual. There have arisen from time to time one-sided and insufficient modes of expressing even this deeper longing and truer trust in Christ. Early Christians were apt, for example, to speak of themselves too exclusively as under bondage to Satan, and to look to Christ as a ransom to Satan for their release. But, however strangely they may now and again have expressed themselves, the essence of the matter lay clearly revealed in their thought - this, namely, in the words of the text, that Christ Jesus had come into the world to save sinners; that sin is the evil from which we need deliverance, and that it was to redeem from sin that the Son of God left His throne and companied with wicked men for a season.

The two thousand years of Christian life that have been lived since the gospel of salvation was brought into the world have not availed to eliminate from His Church these insufficient conceptions of our Lord's work. Even in this twentieth century of ours there still exist Christian intellectualists as extreme as any Gnostic of old: men who look to Christ for nothing but instruction, manifestation, revelation, teaching, example; and who still discover the essence of Christianity in the higher and better knowledge it brings of what is true and good and beautiful. And by their side there still exist to-day Christian socialists as extreme as any Chiliast of old: men whose whole talk is of the amelioration of life brought about by Christ, of the salvation of society, of the establishment on Christian principles of a new social order and the upbuilding of a new social structure; and whose prime hope in Christ is for the relief of the distresses of life and the building up of a kingdom of well-being in the world.

We shall be in no danger, of course, of neglecting the truth that is embodied in the intellectualistic and the socialistic gospels. Christ is our Prophet and our King. He did come to make us know what God is, and what His purposes of mercy are to men; and where the light of that knowledge is shut out from men's sight how great is the darkness and how great is the misery of that darkness! He is our wisdom, our teacher beyond compare. So far from minimizing either the extent or the value of His revelations, we must rather acknowledge that we cannot magnify them enough. And Christ did come to implant in human society a new principle of social health and organization, and the leaven which He has thus imbedded in the mass is working, and is destined to continue to work, every conceivable improvement in the structure of society until the whole is leavened. In a word, Christ did come to found a kingdom, and in that kingdom men shall dwell together in amity and peace, and love shall be its law, and happiness its universal condition. It is with no desire to minimize the intellectual and social blessings that Christ has brought the world, therefore, that we would insist that the center of His work lies elsewhere. We all the more heartily hail Him as our Prophet and our King, that we must insist that He is also, and above all, our Priest. He has saved us from ignorance; He has saved us from pain; but these are not the evils on which the hinge of His saving work turns. Above all and before all He has saved us from sin. "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

And it is only by saving us from sin, we must further remark, that He saves us from ignorance and from misery. There is a high and true sense, valid here too, in the saying that faith precedes reason: that it is only he that is in Christ Jesus who can know God and acquire any effective insight into spiritual truth. And equally in that other maxim that the regeneration of the individual is the condition of the regeneration of society: that it is only he that is in Christ Jesus who can have added to him even these lesser benefits. Apart from the central salvation from sin, knowledge can but puff up, and society at best is a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones. And it is only by His prime work of saving from sin - that sin which is the root of all our ignorance and of all our bitterness alike - that He makes the tree good that its fruits may be good also. In the penetrating declaration of our text, therefore, we perceive the heart of Christianity uncovered for us. The saying that it was to save sinners that Christ Jesus came into the world is a faithful one, and worthy of all acceptation. And that means that it is not the primary function of Christianity in the world to educate men, though we shall not get along without teaching; or to ameliorate their physical and social condition, though we shall not get along without charity; but to proclaim salvation from sin. It exists in the world not for making men wise, nor for making them comfortable, but for saving them from sin. That done and all is done - each result following in its due course. That not done, and nothing is done. All the wisdom of the ages, all the delights of life, are of no avail so long as we are oppressed with sin. The core of the gospel is assuredly that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

We need, however, once more to adjust the emphasis more precisely in order to gain the whole message of our passage. What Paul declares to be a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, is that Christ Jesus came to save sinners. Put the emphasis now on the one word "save" - Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

Not, then, merely to prepare salvation for them; to open to them a pathway to salvation; to remove the obstacles in the way of their salvation; to proclaim as a teacher a way of salvation; to introduce as a ruler conditions of life in which clean living becomes for the first time possible; to bring motives to holy action to bear upon us; to break down our enmity to God by an exhibition of His seeking love; to manifest to us what sin is in the sight of God, and how He will visit it with His displeasure. All these things He undoubtedly does. But all these things together touch but the circumference of His work for man. Under no interpretation of the nature or reach of His work can it be truly said that Christ Jesus came to do these things. For that we must penetrate deeper, and say with the primitive Church, in this faithful saying commended to us by the apostle, that Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

We must take the great declaration in the height and depth of its tremendous meaning. Jesus did all that is included in the great word "save." He did not come to induce us to save ourselves, or to help us to save ourselves, or to enable us to save ourselves. He came to save us. And it is therefore that His name was called Jesus - because He should save His people from their sins. The glory of our Lord, surpassing all His other glories to usward, is just that He is our actual and complete Saviour; our Saviour to the uttermost. Our knowledge, even though it be His gift to us as our Prophet, is not our saviour, be it as wide and as deep and as high as it is possible to conceive. The Church, though it be His gift to us as our King, is not our saviour, be it as holy and true as it becomes the Church, the bride of the Lamb, to be. The reorganized society in which He has placed us, though it be the product of His holy rule over the redeemed earth, is not our saviour, be it the new Jerusalem itself, clothed in its beauty and descended from heaven. Nay, let us cut more deeply still. Our faith itself, though it be the bond of our union with Christ through which we receive all His blessings, is not our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord. Nothing that we are and nothing that we can do enters in the slightest measure into the ground of our acceptance with God. Jesus did it all. And by doing it all He has become in the fullest and widest and deepest sense the word can bear - our Saviour. For this end did He come into the world-to save sinners; and nothing short of the actual and complete saving of sinners will satisfy the account of His work given by His own lips and repeated from them by all His apostles.

It is in this great fact, indeed, that there lies the whole essence of the gospel. For let us never forget that the gospel is not good advice, but good news. It does not come to us to make known to us what we must do to earn salvation for ourselves, but proclaiming to us what Jesus has done to save us. It is salvation, a completed salvation, that it announces to us; and the burden of its message is just the words of our text - that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Now Paul could never write of this tremendously moving truth in a cold and dry spirit. There was nothing that so burned in his soul as his profound sense of his indebtedness to his Redeemer for his entire salvation. We cannot be surprised, therefore, to note that as he repeats these great words, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," his thought reverts at once to his own part in this great salvation; and he cries aloud with swelling heart, "Of whom I am chief." Says an old Anglican writer: "The apostle applies the worst word in the text to himself." But we must punctually note, Paul is not, therefore, boasting of his sin. He is, on the contrary, glorying in his salvation. If Christ came just to save sinners, he says, in effect, Why that means me; for that is what I am. There is a sense, then, no doubt, in which he can be said to be glad that he can claim to be a sinner. Not because he delights in wickedness, but because that places him within the reach of the mission of Him who Himself declared that He came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Paul knows there is deep-seated evil within him; he knows his own inability to remedy it - for does not that long life of legalistic struggle, when after the straitest sect of his religion he lived a Pharisee, witness to his agonizing efforts to heal his deadly hurt? In Christ Jesus, who came to save sinners, he sees the one hope of sinners like himself; and with deep revulsion of feeling he takes his willing place among sinners that he may take his place also among saved sinners. His only comfort in life and death is found in the fact that Christ Jesus came just to save sinners.

Brethren, it is there only also that our comfort can be found, whether for life or for death. Perhaps even yet we hardly know, as we should know, our need of a saviour. Perhaps we may acknowledge ourselves to be sinners only in languid acquiescence in a current formula. Such a state of self-ignorance cannot, however, last for ever. And some day - probably it has already come to most of us - some day the scales will fall from our eyes, and we shall see ourselves as we really are. Ah, then, we shall have no difficulty in placing ourselves by the apostle's side, and pronouncing ourselves, in the accents of the deepest conviction, the chief of sinners. And, then, our only comfort for life and death, too, will be in the discovery that Christ Jesus came into the world just to save sinners. We may have long admired Him as a teacher sent from God, and have long sought to serve Him as a King re-ordering the world; but we shall find in that great day of self-discovery that we have never known Him at all till He has risen upon our soul's vision as our Priest, making His own body a sacrifice for our sin. For such as we shall then know ourselves to be, it is only as a Saviour from sin that Christ will suffice; and we will passionately make our own such words as these that a Christian singer has gut into our mouths: -

"I sought thee, weeping, high and low,
I found Thee not; I did not know
I was a sinner-even so,
I missed Thee for my Saviour.

"I saw Thee sweetly condescend
Of humble men to be the friend,
I chose Thee for my way, my end,
But found Thee not my Saviour,

"Until upon the cross I saw
My God, who died to meet the law
That man had broken; then I saw
My sin, and then my Saviour.

"What seek I longer? let me be
A sinner all my days to Thee,
Yet more and more, and Thee to me
Yet more and more my Saviour.

* * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * *

"Be Thou to me my Lord, my Guide,
My Friend, yea, everything beside;
But first. last, best, whate'er betide
Be Thou to me my Saviour!"

III
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." - Rom. 5: 1-2 (A.V.).

THE subject of these two verses is the Christian's peace and joy. You will observe that the apostle does not argue that a Christian ought to have peace and joy. He does not exhort Christians to seek to attain peace and joy. He does not expound the nature of a Christian's peace and joy. He does something far more striking. He assumes the Christian's peace and joy as a fact of experience, the unquestionable reality of which may stand as a common ground of reasoning between him and his readers. He thus represents peace and joy as a special characteristic of Christians, recognized as such by all - peace of heart as a present possession, and joy over the great hope which is theirs for the future. "We have;" says he, "peace with God, and we rejoice over the hope of the glory of God."

Upon this fact, adduced here just because it is a universally acknowledged and undeniable fact, that the Christian enjoys this peace with God and with happy lips exults over the hope of glory, the apostle founds an argument. Let us recall the place of the passage in the general disposition of the matter in the epistle. In the opening chapters was exhibited the necessity of a justification by faith and not by works. Then the nature and working of this method of salvation was expounded. Then the apostle begins a series of arguments designed to show that this is indeed God's method of saving men. The first proof that he offers is drawn from the case of Abraham, and operates to show that God has always so dealt with His people: for that Abraham, the father of the faithful, was justified by faith and not by works the Scriptures expressly testify, saying that "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him unto righteousness:" This is the immediately preceding section to our present passage. In the immediately succeeding section he appeals to the analogy of God's dealings with men in other matters. It was by the trespass of one that men were brought into sin and death - does it not comport with God's methods that by the righteousness of one men should be brought into justification and life? Our present passage lies between, and constitutes an intermediate argument that justification by faith is God's own method of saving sinners.

This argument, you will observe, is drawn from the experience of Paul's Christian readers. They had made trial of this method of salvation; they had sought justification, not on the ground of works of righteousness which they could do, but out of faith. And the turmoil of guilty dread before God which filled their hearts had sunk into a sweet sense of peace, and the future to which they had hitherto looked shudderingly forward in fearful expectation of judgment had taken on a new aspect - they "exult in hope of the glory of God." It is on this, their own experience, that the apostle fixes their eyes. They have sought justification out of faith; they have reaped the fruits of justification in peace and joy. Can they doubt the reality of the middle term, of that justification that mediates between their faith and their peace and joy? As well tell the famishing wanderer that the pool into which he has dipped his cup is but a mirage of the desert, when from it the refreshing fluid is already pouring over his parched tongue, and bringing life and vigor into every languid member. "It is because we have been justified," says the apostle - and here is the emphasis, "the triumphant emphasis," as the great German commentator H. A. W. Meyer puts it - "it is because we have been really and actually justified out of faith, that we have this peace with God, and are able to exult in the hope of the glory of God." Thus the apostle argues back from their conscious peace and joy to the reality of the justification out of which they grow.

It is very interesting to observe this prominent use in the reasoning of the apostle Paul of what we have learned to call "the argument from experience." Some appear to fancy this argument one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth century; others look upon it with suspicion as if its use were an innovation of dangerous tendency. No doubt, like other forms of argumentation, it is liable to misuse. It is to misuse it to confound it with proof by experiment. By his use of the argument from experience Paul is far from justifying those who will accept as true only those elements of the Christian faith the truth of which they can verify by experiment. There is certainly an easily recognizable difference between trusting God for the future because we have known His goodness in the past, and casting ourselves from every pinnacle of the temple of truth in turn to see whether He has really given His angels charge concerning us, according to His word.

And what misuse of this argument could be more fatal than to make it carry the whole weight of the evidences of our religion, or even, as has sometimes been done, to attempt to enhance its value by disparaging all other methods of proof? Such an exaggeration of its importance is a symptom of that unhappy subjectivity in religion unfortunately growing in our modern Church, which betrays its weakened hold upon the objective truth and reality of Christianity by its neglect or even renunciation of the objective proofs of its truth. No wonder when men find the philosophical principles or critical postulates to which they have committed their thinking, working their way subtilely but surely into every detail of their thought, and gradually taking from them their confidence in those supernatural facts on which Christianity rests - no wonder, I say, that in such circumstances they should despairingly declare that the essence of Christianity is independent of its supposed supernatural history, and is vindicated by the imminent experiences of their own souls. Needless to say that the essence of Christianity which in their view is proved by their experiences is not the Christianity of Christ and His apostles, but the philosophical faith of their own preconceptions. And needless to say that this despairing and exclusive use of the argument from experience has no analogy in the usage of Paul. With him, it takes its place among the other arguments, and is not permitted to take the place of the rest. He appeals first to God's announced intention from the beginning so to deal with His people, and to the historic fact of His so dealing with them. And he appeals last to the analogy of His dealings with men in other matters. Between these he places the argument from experience, and twines the strong cord of his proof from the three fibers of God's express promise, our experience, and the analogy of His working. When we unite the Scriptural, experiential, and analogical arguments we are followers of Paul.

Such a use of the argument from experience by Paul, though it may interest us, certainly cannot surprise us. It is no unwonted thing with Paul. It constantly appears in his writings as a capital argument, and such was his confidence in it that he did not hesitate at times to stake much upon its validity. It is to this argument, for example, that he appeals when he cries to the foolish Galatians: "This only would I know from you, Received ye the Spirit by works of law or by the hearing of faith?" They had received the Spirit - of that he and they alike were sure. And they had sought Him, not by law-works, but by faith. That, too, they knew very well. Were they so foolish as to be unable to draw the inference thrust upon them - that the seeking that found was the true and right seeking? The apostle will then draw it for them. "He therefore that supplieth the Spirit to you, and worketh powers in you, doeth He it by law-works or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness. Ye perceive, therefore, that they which be of faith, the same are Abraham's sons."

An humbler servant of Christ than Paul, and a far earlier one, had, indeed, long before pressed this argument with matchless force. Blind unbelief alone could say to him who once was blind but now could see: "This man is not from God. Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner." The one, the sufficient answer was: "Whether He be a sinner, I know not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see. . . . Why herein is the marvel, that ye know not whence He is, and yet He opened mine eyes!" Greater marvel than the opening of the eyes of one born blind that men should shut their eyes to who, and what, and whence He is, who opens blind eyes! "If this man were not from God, He could do nothing!"

What, after all, is this "argument from experience" but an extension of our Lord's favorite argument from the fruits to the tree which bears the fruits? He who is producing the fruits of the Spirit has received the Spirit; he who has reaped the fruits of justification has received justification; and he who has obtained these fruits by the seeking of faith knows that he has obtained out of his faith the justification of which they are the fruits; and may know, therefore, that the way of faith is the right and true way of obtaining justification. We must not pause in the midst of the argument and refuse to draw the final conclusion. If the presence of the fruits of justification proves we are justified, the presence of the justification, thus proved, proves that justification is found on the road by which we reached it. This is the apostle's argument.

That the argument is valid it is not easy to doubt. It is one of those practical appeals which carry conviction even to minds which do not care to investigate the grounds of their validity. Nevertheless its validity has its implications, and this is as much as to say that it rests on presuppositions without which it would not be valid. Men may draw water from a well and be assured that it comes to them through the action of the pump, without at all understanding, or stopping to consider, the theory of suction by which the pump acts. But no pump will yield water if it be not constructed in accordance with the principles of suction. And it seems accordingly important that the principles of suction should be understood. Our understanding of these principles not only increases the intelligence but also adds to the confidence with which we accredit the refreshing floods to its gift. In a somewhat analogous way it will repay us to investigate the validity of the apostle's argument from experience, and to seek to bring clearly before us the presuppositions on which its validity rests and the lines of reasoning on which its conclusions may be justified. It will surely grow in force to us in proportion to the clearness with which its implications are apprehended.

These implications or presuppositions are, speaking broadly, two. In the first place, it is implied in the validity of this argument - so immediately and inevitably recognized - that there is a natural adaptation in this mode of salvation - the mode of justification by faith - for the production of peace and joy in the heart of the sinner that embraces it. And in the second place, it is implied in the validity of this argument that the deliverances of the human conscience are but the shadows of the divine judgment: that its imperatives repeat the demands of God's righteousness, and its satisfaction argues the satisfaction of the divine justice. Let us look at these implications in turn.

First, let us inquire if there is not necessarily implied a natural adaptation in justification by faith to produce peace and joy in the sinner.

We have sought, let us say, justification out of faith. We have peace and joy. Here are two facts. We may look at them separately. What is to unite them in our apprehension? What warrants us to infer from the mere fact that we have peace and joy that this peace and joy are the product of the justification that we have sought out of faith, and therefore argue the reality of that justification and the success of our seeking it by faith?

Is it merely that the peace and joy have succeeded in the sequence of time the seeking by faith? What is to assure us that this is not a mere post hoc and no propter hoc at all? Is it then merely the universality of the experience - our observation that all such seekers have proved to be finders? Is a Christian to base his peace and joy, then, on another's finding? Nay, on the invariableness of such finding by others? Who will assure him of this invariableness? Who will assure him that the next seeker may not fail to find? That in the next village such seekers may not as invariably fail as among his own acquaintances they have invariably found? That his partial observation, in a word, is the norm of fact? Must he wait to base his confidence and hope on the collection and tabulation of a body of statistics?

For the validity of the argument it is obvious that there must be some more immediate and obvious vinculum between the seeking and finding than mere observed sequence, some natural connection between the justification sought by faith and the peace and joy which have come to the seeker - level to the apprehension of all, and pointing each one directly to his justification, as the source of his peace and joy, in so clear and convincing a way that he needs must find the account of his inward peace in the reality of his outward justification. Does any such connection exist?

Something of this connection will no doubt be supplied by the fact that these Christians who now enjoy this peace and joy have been seekers of peace and joy by other methods than through faith, and have not found; and only upon laying aside their feverish efforts at self-salvation and upon seeking through faith, have they found The contrast of these diverse experiences counts for much, and assures them that the blessed fruits of justification ripen in the heart only when justification is sought through faith; that they do not grow on the tree of works. Were this not the experience of Christians, the apostle's whole argument would fail. That argument has, therefore, a double edge; it as much implies that peace and joy do not come through works as that they do come through faith. What he is attempting to prove is just that justification comes out of faith and not out of works; and the experience it rests upon must be an experience, therefore, of not finding as truly as an experience of finding. This double experience, then, we say, will go far toward connecting the peace and joy which Christians possess, with a justification specifically by faith as its root and source.

It will go far toward it, but it will not go the whole way. The connection so found is still only an empirical one. Even if it should prove universal it might still be accidental. A deeper fact must lie behind, creating a more necessary connection; or rather, let us say, giving a rational account of this experience. That deeper fact must lie in some inherent difference in the modes of seeking; that is, it can only lie in the natural adaptation of the mode of salvation set forth in the term "justification by faith" for the production of peace and joy in the heart of the sinner who embraces it - a natural adaptation absent from works. In other words, the connection will fully emerge only on the discovery of the fact that peace and joy are the natural, or, indeed, the necessary fruits of seeking salvation in the method proclaimed by the apostle.

In order to make this plain, we have only to formulate clearly the question on the decision of which it is suspended. It is this: Whether there is an adaptation in the method of salvation proclaimed by Paul for the production of such effects as peace and joy: or whether the peace and joy which follow the trial of this mode of salvation arise within the heart wholly unrelated with, and pointing in no wise back to, the justification of which they are the fruits. In other words, whether men find peace and joy on seeking justification through faith only because the Holy Spirit works these sentiments in some mysterious way in their hearts - causing them to spring up within them on His almighty fiat as flowers growing on no stalk; or whether the Spirit's fecundating power causes them to grow visibly upon the stem of justification by faith itself. We cannot doubt, following Paul, which is the true alternative.

The sense of peace that steals into the heart, the exulting joy which cannot keep silence on the lips of him who seeks his justification out of faith, are indeed the work of the Holy Spirit. Apart from His vitalizing operations even the saved soul might remain dark and the redeemed lips dumb. But they do not, therefore, hang in the air without cognizable ground or source. The Holy Spirit does not here, any more than in other spheres of his activity, work irrational effects. There is a rational account to be given of this peace and joy as well as a spiritual one. The mode of justification propounded by God through the apostle is one which is adapted to the actual condition of man; one which is calculated to satisfy his conscience, to allay his remorseful sense of guilt, to supply him a rational ground of conviction of acceptance with God, and to quicken in him a happy, hopeful outlook upon the future. And it is because this mode of justification is thus calculated to provide a solid ground for peace and joy to the rational understanding that those who seek justification thus and not otherwise acquire, under the quickening influences of the Spirit, a sense of peace with God and a joyful outlook of hope for the future.

No more here than elsewhere does the Spirit of all order work a blind, an ungrounded, an irrational set of emotions in the heart. Did He so, they would scarcely be probative of anything. A set of emotions arising in the soul, no one knows whence, no one knows on what grounds, especially if they were persistent, and in proportion as they were violent, would only vex the soul and cast it into inquietude. It is only because these Spirit-worked emotions of peace and joy attach themselves rationally to the mode of justification by faith that they can point to it as their source, and prove that they who have sought their justification by faith have surely found. The probative power of the actual peace and joy received by the means of this justification is thus dependent upon the rational adaptability of this method of salvation to produce, in those who make trial of it, peace of heart and joy in the prospect of the future. The gist of the whole matter, then, is that this mode of justification may be recognized as supplying the only true and actual justification, because it alone, among all the methods by which men have sought to obtain peace with God, is calculated to satisfy their consciences and to furnish to them a rational ground of hope of acceptance.

How many other ways there are in which men have sought and continue to seek peace! And how little they avail! Let them seek by works - at the best, they can but cry at the last that they are unprofitable servants. The perfect obedience which their hearts tell them, in a voice which will not be gainsaid, is due from them, they know also that they have not rendered, that they cannot render. And the dreadful load of guilt with which their past offenses have burdened their souls, and which their present sins are continually increasing, weighs down their spirits in hopeless despair. While walking this treadmill road of works no peace can possibly visit their hearts; no exultation in the prospective goal can attend their steps. Present anguish, despairing desperation - these are their only possible heritage.

Let them, then, despairingly recognize the hopelessness of a work-righteousness for such creatures as men, and abase themselves in rueful sorrow before God, confessing the blackness of their sin and the utterness of their helplessness, and pleading God's mercy as their only hope. Can remorse, as it bites back upon the soul in memory of its deeds of shame, atone for guilt incurred - condone for continued incompleteness of obedience? Is it not rather the heart rising up against itself in self-disgust, accusing itself before the holy and just God, and dragging away its refuges of lies that it may see the sword of vengeance hanging over it? How can the awakened sense of sin instill peace into the soul? Or the soul's own fierce condemnation of itself open out before it vistas of exulting hope? When our hearts condemn us it is our despair to know that God is greater than our hearts - greater in His flaming hatred of sin, in the strictness of His inquisition, in the certain vengeance of His justice.

Well, then, may God be bribed? Let us heap up our votive offerings upon His altar. Let us continually sing His praises before men - something after the fashion of those Ephesians who stood in the theater and "all with one voice, about the space of two hours, cried out, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians!'" Let us devote our lives to His service in a perfection of obedience which we know we cannot render, or in an exquisite minuteness of self-torture which we hope He may accept in lieu of obedience. Can we believe that God will accept these in place of His due? Let us drown His altars in the blood of bulls and goats; or - for such is the wont of men seeking to still the accusing voice within them - let us slash our flesh and mingle our own blood with that of the sacrifices. Let us even - for this, too, men have done in their agony of remorse in every corner of this globe - give the fruit of our bodies for the sins of our souls, "making our son or our daughter pass through the fire to Moloch." Or, since those days are passed, and the fires on the world's altars are quenched, let us offer up our own lives to God, starving within us all natural affections, stifling all proper emotions, and painfully immolating ourselves on a daily altar of ascetic observance. Can we believe that thus the righteous anger of the holy and righteous One against our sins will be appeased so that He will satisfy Himself with our imperfect obedience? We know that the judgment of God is true; and that He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, even though we writhe in fear before His face and strive to cloud his eyes to its enormity.

But why need we multiply words? Such expedients men have always tried, and such expedients men are everywhere trying, in their despairing search for peace. Every such expedient conceivable men have tried - we have tried - and peace has not been attained. We look in dread about us, and clearly see that every avenue of escape is closed.

Every avenue of escape is closed. All but one. If - if an adequate atonement might be made for sin; if a perfect obedience could be rendered to the law; and if this atonement and this obedience should be made ours: then, but only then, could hope awake in our dead souls, could peace once more steal into our troubled hearts. Now, it is just this that Paul offers to a despairing world in the proclamation of justification by faith. It is a proclamation of "justification," you will observe, not a proclamation of escape from sin's penalty - not even a proclamation of simple pardon of sin, or of the eradication of sin - but specifically a proclamation of "justification." It appeals as such to the judgment of conscience, and works its effect in the realm of conscience. Paul does not deny man's guilt - he asserts man's guilt. He does not outrage conscience by proclaiming pardon without expiation of guilt - he proclaims the indefeasible need of expiation. He does not insult intelligence by representing that sinful man can offer the expiation that is required and at the same time acquire merit for reward - he proclaims the helplessness of humanity in its estate of condemnation. He empties us of all righteousness which we may claim, or which we may seek to acquire by our deeds, and proclaims with piercing clearness that by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. And then he turns and points to a wonderful spectacle of the Son of God, become man, taking His place at the head of His people, presenting an infinite sacrifice for their sins in His own body on the tree, working out a perfect righteousness in their stead in the myriad deeds of love and right that filled His short but active life; and offering this righteousness, this righteousness of God, provided by God and acceptable to God, to the acceptance of the world.

Here is a mode of salvation which is indeed calculated to still the gnawing sense of guilt and quiet the fear of wrath. And a capital proof of its truth is that it does at last supply a basis, on which resting, men can believe that they are accepted with God; that it lays a foundation, on which building, men can at length feel peace of heart and entertain hope for the future. In effect the apostle says to his readers: "You have tried every way of making your peace with God: only in this way have you found one which satisfied your consciences. The righteousness of Christ, laid hold of by faith, evidently suffices for all your needs. Resting upon it, your guilty fears subside and you feel safe at last. Thus, and thus alone, you see that God may be just (as you know Him to be unfailingly) and yet the justifier of such sinners as you know yourselves to be."

And you will observe how Paul not only says this in effect in this appeal to his readers' experience, but the whole trend of the epistle up to this point is calculated to give force to the appeal and to evoke an immediate and deep response. For what is that proof, with which the epistle opens, that all men are sinners and under the condemnation of the law, so that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against them as workers of iniquity, but a faithful probing of conscience, awakening it to a sense of guilt and a consciousness of helplessness? And what is that exposition of God's mode of justification by means of a righteousness provided by Christ and laid hold of by faith, but a loving presentation of the sacrifice and work of Christ to the apprehension of faith? And what is that exposition of the acceptance of Abraham, the father of the faithful, but a gracious assurance that it is thus that God deals mercifully with his children? And what, now, is this appeal to their own experience as they have humbly sought God's forgiveness and acceptance in Christ, by simple faith in Him, but an assault on their hearts, that they may be forced to realize for themselves and confess to their fellow-men all the satisfaction they have found in believing in Christ?

Paul's words, says Jerome, are not like the words of other men, "they have hands and feet"; they are living things and tug at our very heart strings. But they are not less, but more, logical arguments for that; and we perceive that in his present argument it is to this feeling of satisfaction in the man who has sought his justification by believing in Christ that the apostle appeals in proof of the reality and truth of the justification sought. His argument is from the internal peace to the external peace. You have sought justification out of faith, he says; you have appropriated the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His righteousness; you rest on Him and interpose Him between you and God. Your conscience says, It is enough. For the first time you find satisfaction - your guilty fears subside and a sense of peace and exulting joy in the future prospect take their place. Is not this new-found satisfaction of conscience a proof of the reality of the justification you sought? This is Paul's argument.

But once more we need to pause and ask, How is the argument valid? External peace with God is inferred here from internal peace of conscience. What warrants such a tremendous inference? Is it so certain that because the qualms of our conscience are satisfied, therefore the demands of God's justice are satisfied? Here lies the deepest foundation of the argument; and it is important for us to realize fully this second of the implications which we have pointed out as necessarily lying at its basis. Its validity rests, as we have said, on the assumption that the human conscience is the shadow of God's judgment; that its deliverances repeat the demands of God's righteousness; and that its satisfaction, therefore, argues the satisfaction of God's justice.

But here again, tremendous as the assumption is, we suppose it needs only to be clearly stated to be already accepted. For what is the question that is raised but, Whether the appeasing effect of Christ's blood of expiation is confined to the human conscience solely, while what we may call the divine conscience - God's sense of right - is left unaffected by it? And what is this question but this deeper one, Whether our moral sense is so out of analogy with God's moral sense that what fully meets and satisfies that moral indignation which rises in us on the realization of sin as sin, stands wholly out of relation with God's moral indignation at the spectacle of sin? Can this be a matter of doubt? Certainly it is to be hoped not. For so to affirm would obviously be to confound all our moral judgments. Not merely would it dethrone conscience from her empire over our lives and thoughts, but it would reduce unhappy man to a state far worse than that of the unreflecting brutes.

Far better to have no sense of right and wrong than to be cursed with a faculty as sensitive to moral distinctions as the needle is to the magnetic currents, and yet so wayward in its movements as to lead us continually astray, and bite back upon us with the bitterest remorse when perchance we have earned the praise of God. At the best, conscience would sink into the voice of hereditary custom; and what we call the right would be transmuted into the habitual, what has been found expedient in the present constitution of society. Its opposite would be equally right in a differently constituted social order - as Mr. Darwin tells us, indeed, affirming that were men organized according to the social order of, say, bees, what we fondly dream is the voice of God within us guarding the sacred boundary-lines that separate the domains of eternal right and wrong, would speak in opposite tones, requiring, with its categorical imperative, what it now brands as sin, and scourging us away from what we now look upon as right, with all its machinery of instinctive shrinking, sense of guilt, burning shame, and biting remorse.

Thus, as you will observe, all of what men call morality perishes out of the earth - the convenient and expedient take its place. And with it perishes also all that men call religion: for a God requiring we know not and cannot know what - who may be most deeply offended when we most sincerely strive to please Him - whose judgments of right and wrong are so out of analogy with ours that His most burning wrath may be stirred by our highest holiness, and His most gracious good pleasure evoked by what causes us the most agonizing regret, is clearly not a God whom such creatures as men may serve; nay, is clearly to us no God at all. The truth of our moral sense and blank atheism are the only alternatives. That men may remain men, as it is necessary that what they must believe to be true, is true; so it is necessary that what they must believe to be right, is right. The eternally ineradicable distinction of right and wrong, the changeless and sensitive truth of the human conscience to this distinction - these are the conditions, on the one hand, of human sanity; and the essential postulates, on the other, of all religion.

We need not fear to allow, therefore, that the validity of our sense of peace in the justification of faith rests on the correspondence between the moral sense of man and the moral sense of God. Without that correspondence no valid peace could ever, on any ground, visit the human heart. And a peace which is as deeply grounded as the reality of this correspondence, is rooted so profoundly in the nature of man that humanity itself must perish before that peace can be taken away. If there be a God at all, the author of our moral nature, it is just as certain as His existence that the moral judgment which He has implanted in us is true to the pole in the depths of His own moral being; that its deliverances as to right and wrong are but the transcripts of His own moral judgments; that it is rightly called the voice of God within us, and we may hearken to its decisions not so much with confidence that they will be confirmed in the forum of heaven as with the assurance that they are but the echoes of the divine judgment. We may confidently adopt, therefore, the strong language of Dr. Shedd, and say: "What, therefore, conscience affirms, in the transgressor's case, God affirms, and is the first to affirm. What, therefore, conscience feels in respect of the sinner's transgression, God feels, and is the first to feel. What, therefore, conscience requires in order that it may cease to punish the guilty spirit, God requires, and is the first to require. . . . The subjective in man is shaped by the objective in God, and not the objective in God by the subjective in man. The consciousness of the conscience is the reflex of the consciousness of God."

The sense of guilt by which the awakened conscience accuses us, speeding on into remorse, is thus perceived to be but the echo of God's judgment against sin. But this could not be if an appeased conscience were not the echo of God's judgment of justification. For, if conscience could cease to accuse while God continued to condemn, it would no longer be true that an accusing conscience is the sign of the condemnation of God, and a sense of guilt the reflex of His overhanging wrath. Conscience is, therefore, a mirror, placed in the human breast, upon which man may read the reflection of God's judgment upon his soul. When frowns of a just wrath conceal His face the clouds gather upon its polished surface; and surely when these clouds pass away, and the unclouded sun gleams upon us from the mirror, it cannot be other than the reflection of God's smile.

We seem now to have probed Paul's argument to the bottom. Man's conscience is but the reflection of God's judgment upon the soul. What satisfies man's conscience satisfies God's justice. The presentation to faith of an expiating and obedient Son of God, becoming man to take our place and stead before the law of God, and paying the penalty of our sin and keeping the probation due from us, satisfies the human conscience. The peace that steals into the heart of him who rests upon the Saviour in faith, and the joy that exults upon his lips as he contemplates the day when he shall stand in Him before the judgment seat of God - being but the rejoicing cry of the satisfied conscience is to us the proof that God's wrath is really appeased, His condemnation reversed, and His face turned upon us in loving acceptance of us in His beloved Son. Surely, then, this experience of peace and joy is an irrefutable proof that this and no other is the just God's mode of justifying the sinner.

And now, men and brethren, what shall we do in the presence of these things? What but, first of all, follow the example of those old copyists who have transmitted to us the sacred text, and transmute Paul's appeal to the fact that Christians have peace and joy into an exhortation to ourselves to enter into this our peace and joy? By God's unspeakable grace the tidings of this gospel have come unto us. How Jesus Christ, who Himself was rich, has come into this poor world of ours that by His poverty we might be made rich it has all been made known to us. And by God's superabounding grace in the Holy Spirit the ears of our hearts have been opened to the blessed proclamation. We have heard and believed. So, then, "having been justified by faith, let us have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have obtained access into this grace in which we stand; and let us exult in the hope of the glory of God!"

Has the argument as we have probed it seemed long - too long for despairing feet to follow? Has its depth seemed too profound for the plummet of weak faith to sound? Blessed be God, it is not by following the argument of the apostle, by sounding the depths of his thought, that we are to enter into our peace; but by believing in Jesus Christ our Redeemer. We may drink at this fountain though we know not how the bubbling water forces its way to the surface - nor have time to investigate it, nor minds, mayhap, to comprehend it. Here is the water, and it is here to drink - living water - and whoso drinks of it shall never thirst, but it shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life. Let us thank God that He has not suspended our salvation on understanding; and even if we understand not, and our minds go halting as they strive to think His thoughts after Him, let us yet believe and enter into our peace.

And having once entered into our peace, let us turn and look with new eyes upon this life which we are living in the flesh. These difficulties, these dangers, these trials, these sufferings, how hard they have been to bear! We have deserved no better, but - nay, therefore - how hard they have been to bear! But we have been justified by faith - actually and truly justified by faith and now we have peace with God. What a new aspect is taken by the trials and sufferings of life! They are no longer our fate, hard and grinding; they are no longer our punishment, better than which is not to be expected - for ever. They come from the hand of a reconciled God, from the hand of our Father. What one of them has not its meaning, its purpose, its freightage of mercy and of good? Shall we not follow the apostle here, and, as we find that peace with God has stolen into our hearts and that we are exulting in the hope of future glory, let that glory gild also our present pathway? Shall we not turn with new courage, nay, even with joy, to the sufferings of this present life, crying with him: "And not only so, but we also rejoice in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience triedness, and triedness hope, and hope putteth not to shame, because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us!"

What new light this is to shine on the weary pathway of God's saints! Says one of these saints, a follower of Paul in the sharpness of his afflictions as well as in the comfort he drew from them: "The Christian who lives not according to nature, but according to grace, should learn to give thanks to God for all things in Jesus Christ, as His holy and loving word commands us. And that is no more than right. For if we believe that when we were the enemies of God he gave His Son for us, to reconcile us to Himself, how should we not believe that all which He appoints for us after that not only comes not from His wrath, but comes really and literally from His love? And if God in afflicting us does not stop short at indifference, but goes the length of tenderness, is it not right that we in receiving our troubles should not stop short at patience, but go the length of thankfulness? As for myself," he adds, "in my short and scanty experience of the life of faith, I have often found that if resignation does not go so far as that, it does not give to our sufferings that sweetness which the Scripture promises." Here is the marvel of the Christian life. Not patience in afflictions merely, but thankfulness for them, says Adolph Monod, is our duty, nay, our privilege. Exult in joy over them, cries Paul; rejoice in them because we recognize in them but the "growing-pains" by which we are attaining "unto a full-grown man - unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of man in craftiness, after the wiles of error; but dealing truly in love, may grow up in all things into Him which is the Head, even Christ."

And then the future! We used to look forward to it, perhaps, with nameless dread, with fearful expectation of judgment. What a glory has been thrown upon it by our new standpoint! We are no longer at enmity with God: we are at peace with God. Our conscience tells us that: we gaze on Christ and His sacrifice, and we know that God also sees it, and seeing it cannot condemn him who is in Christ. And when did Almighty God begin anything which He did not finish? And such a beginning! A beginning in indescribable, in inconceivable love. Our hearts are fairly dragged out of us in wondering love as we follow Paul's a fortiori argument. "For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath by Him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled with God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life."

What means this peace in my heart? It means that the sense of guilt is allayed, that I am justified before God by the death of His dear Son. What means this justification with God? It means much more - that I shall be saved, by the life of His Son, from wrath. Much more! It is then much more than certain! Shall we not exult? Shall we not say with the apostle: "Much more being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life, and not only so, but also as those that rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation"? Do we face the future now, then, with calmness? Ah, no! that would imply doubt. Do we face it, then, with courage? No; that would imply danger. Let us with the apostle face it with exultation, as becomes those who rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received this reconciliation; as becomes those who, having been justified by faith, have peace with God, through Jesus Christ, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

IV
THE PARADOX OF OMNIPOTENCE

"All things are possible with God."-Mark x. 27 (R. V.).

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES tells us that some ideas are so great that when they once find entrance into a human mind they permanently stretch it, and leave it for ever afterwards bigger. Surely this declaration of our Lord's embodies one of these mind-expanding ideas. For we must observe that its astounding declaration is not a mere hyperbole of careless speech, the negligent exaggeration of a proposition which has only relative validity. It is the well-weighed and precise assertion of a great fact. It does not mean merely that God is greater than man, and may accordingly be believed to be capable of doing some things which man cannot do. It means just what its startling words declare: that "all things" - taking the term in its unlimited absoluteness - that "all things are possible with God." Perhaps the conception is too large to find entrance into our minds at all. Perhaps none of us will fail to trim it down on this side or that in order to make it fit our several capacities of belief. But surely if it once gets into the mind, in the fullness of its meaning, it cannot fail permanently to enlarge it, to revolutionize all its points of view, and to raise it to a higher plane of both thought and feeling.

We may assure ourselves of the absoluteness of the meaning which our Lord intended to inject into the words by attending to the circumstances in which He announced them. The rich young ruler had come to Him, seeking eternal life; not with the simple-hearted trustfulness of a little child, nor yet with the self-despair of the publican who could only smite his breast and cry, "God be merciful to me, a sinner"; but, led by a rich man's instinct, with his thoughts bent on purchase. "Good Teacher," he asked, "what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus had probed his heart by setting a price on future blessedness which the young man was loath to pay: "Go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give it to the poor; and come, follow Me." And when, with his countenance fallen, the young man had turned sorrowfully away, the great teacher improved the occasion for the instruction of His followers. "How hardly," he exclaimed, "shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" Perceiving the amazement of His disciples, He repeated the declaration, and this time, if we may trust the form in which the words have come to us in some of the oldest documents, in that universalized sense which is attached to them, in any event, in the sequel: "Children, how hard it is to enter into the kingdom of God!" And then, reverting for a moment to the specific case which was the occasion of the remark, and devoting Himself to driving home the impression which it was His prime object to make on their hearts, He gave utterance to that extraordinary comparison which has confounded the minds of His followers from that time until to-day: "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

We all know how men have labored to rid this limitless assertion of the human impossibility of salvation of its necessary meaning. Some have thought to lessen at least the extremity of the affirmation by reading "cable" instead of "camel" - under the impression, apparently, that as a "cable" has some relation to the thread that would pass through a needle's eye, extreme difficulty might be expressed by it indeed, but not absurd impossibility. Others would have us believe that our Lord but "paltered here in a double sense," and had in mind not a real needle's eye, but some narrow gateway in Jerusalem, through which a camel could squeeze itself only with difficulty, and with the loss of whatever load it might essay to carry with it. All such emasculating interpretations, however, are shattered by our Lord's own explanation of His words. For when He observed His astonished disciples - who certainly understood Him to assert an unconditioned impossibility - asking wonderingly among themselves, "Who then can be saved?" He turned to them and said - what? "It is indeed difficult, but not impossible"? "I did but jest in ambiguous words; I meant, not an actual needle's eye, but that narrow passage you know of in Jerusalem"? No, but directly and emphatically this: "With men it is impossible."

It was an absolute impossibility He meant to affirm. Men can no more press themselves into the kingdom of heaven than a camel can force himself through a needle's eye. His solution of the paradox turns on no attenuation of the meaning the language is fitted to convey, but on a lofty appeal to the omnipotence of God. "With men it is impossible," he affirms; "but," he graciously adds, "not with God: for all things are possible with God." This special case of the impossible He meets by referring it to the general fact of the divine almightiness. This generalized enunciation of the divine almightiness is therefore to be taken in the height of its meaning. It is not to be weakened into the mere affirmation that God is very strong and can do things which man cannot understand. It is the ringing assertion of the true omnipotence of God. It is the grand announcement that the impossible constitutes the very sphere of the divine operation.

Nor have the followers of Jesus ever feared to take Him at His word. The heathen, the unbeliever, the infidel might scoff at the preachment, which has been to the Greeks of every age alike foolishness, and to the Jews a stumbling-block. But the offensive facts of this great gospel have ever been boldly proclaimed on the faith of a God to whom nothing is impossible. The incarnation, the redemption, the resurrection, the descent of the Spirit, regeneration, the entempling of God within the heart of man - these things may be pronounced by men preposterously impossible. Our fiery Tertullians have shown no wish to minimize their preposterous impossibility. They have rather drawn out in detail all the incredibilities, all the absurdities that may be thought to be inherent in them. Could the omnipotent God indeed be inclosed in a woman's womb? Could the infinite God really be pillowed on an earthly mother's breast? Could the omniscient God actually lisp in the prattle of a child? Could the self-existent One really die? The All-blessed hang a bruised and wounded sufferer upon the accursed cross? Do dead men ever rise again? Can they whose flesh has been dissolved in the corruption of the grave, take on again the firmness and freshness of youthful life? Can one who Himself died on a cross, between two thieves, be indeed the Life of the world? He who could not save Himself, can He really save others? Can a splash of water on the forehead wash away sin? Absurdities, impossibilities, enough! "I believe," cries Tertullian, "though they be impossible." And myriads have since boldly echoed his faithful cry.

Nay, the fervid old saint would turn the tables upon the objector. "I believe," he cries, "not merely though they be impossible: I believe because they are impossible!" For the impossible is the very sphere of God's activity; and we most readily credit the divine interposition in matters beyond the power of man. It is human to err: God's hand is seen when man waxes infallible. Man can slay: when dead men rise again we must needs perceive the finger of God. If water will not cleanse the soul, then it must be God who cleanses it in baptism. When those who are dead in trespasses and sins walk in newness of life we cannot choose but see displayed the power of God. Man's despair is indeed God's opportunity; and the things which are impossible to man are the very things which would be like God, which would be worthy of God, and which we should expect God to do. Tell me that God has left His throne to do what I am each day doing for myself, and what I am entirely competent to do for myself, and how can I believe? But tell me that God has descended from heaven to work what were impossible to His suffering creatures - then indeed I may believe the word. It is because man cannot save himself, that I may believe that God has intervened to save him. It is because man cannot cleanse his soul, that I can believe that God will interfere to cleanse it. It is because this world lies dead and corrupted in its sin, that I can believe that God will implant in it a germ of life which shall grow until it leavens the whole mass. It is because there are so many things impossible to poor puny man, that our hearts bound with joy at our Saviour's declaration that "all things are possible with God."

Now we must not fail to take very careful note that the matter which Jesus had in immediate mind when He made this great declaration was the salvation of the soul. "Good Teacher," was the young ruler's question, "what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" "Who then can be saved?" was the astounded question of the disciples, to which Jesus directly addressed His reply: "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God." These words are, therefore, a direct assertion of the impossibility to man of salvation - of the "inheriting of eternal life," of "entering the kingdom of God," of "being saved," as it is variously called in the context - and the casting of man, therefore, for all his hope, on the God whose almighty power alone can do the impossible.

Speaking in theological language, here is then the sharpest possible enunciation of the doctrine of "inability." Man is unable to do anything that he may inherit eternal life, enter the kingdom of God, obtain salvation. These things are not merely difficult to him - to be done at all only at the cost of some great effort, some supreme expenditure of energy. They are impossible to him, as impossible as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle; and are, therefore, not to be done by him at all. An astonishing doctrine, men are accustomed to declare - rendering salvation hopeless to man. This, we must observe, is just what the disciples of Jesus said when He announced it to them. "And they were astonished exceedingly," we read, "saying among themselves, Then who can be saved?" We need not be surprised that a teaching which was a "hard saying" to the closest companions of Jesus still arouses hesitation in the minds of men. And our answer must still be the same which Jesus addressed to His astonished disciples; not an attempt to explain away the difficulty, not a minimizing of it, but a calm reiteration of the fact "With men it is impossible."

Jesus does not stop here to tell us why it is impossible with men. He merely asseverates the fact. The incident which gave rise to His remarks and which determined their form may, indeed, help us a little way into the problem. Obviously the rich young man did not lack any human endowment. He had intellect to know the commandments of God; he had freedom of will to keep them; he had the moral sanity that comes from an upright life; he had the beauty of character that calls out the love of good men - "and Jesus," we are told, "looking upon him, loved him." Surely here is one, who, were it possible to man at all, might be expected to do what was necessary to inherit eternal life: one who, if any might, might well ask in some perplexity, "What lack I yet?" Nevertheless there was a fatal lack - not resident in his fundamental being as such by which he was a man, but in his ingrained disposition by which he was the man he was. And this prevented him from estimating at their true relative values the riches of this earth and the treasures in heaven; rendering it, as Jesus says, "impossible" for him to enter into the kingdom of God. And like him, every son of man, though possessed of treasures of knowledge and crowned with the most striking virtues, will be found to lack the power to put in their relatively proper places the things of God and the things of this world. With one it is riches, with another it is pride, with another it is ease, with another ambition, that has taken possession of the soul. With all there is real inability to rid themselves of "whatsoever they have" and turn single-heartedly to God.

If we probe deeply enough we shall find the root of this inability in sin - in a sin distorted vision, feeling, judgment - in a word, in a sin deformed soul, to which it is just as impossible "to be perfect" as it is for the lame leg not to limp or the misshapen pupil not to see awry. And therefore theologians are accustomed to say that the correct formula for human inability while it certainly is not that man is unable to perform the right which he wills just as certainly will not transmute the cannot into a mere will not, but will recognize a true inability even to will the right; a true inability rooted in a heart too corrupt to appreciate, desire or go out in an active inclination toward "the good." What is in itself corrupt cannot but be corrupted in all its activities.

Of all this, however, our Saviour says nothing in this context. It was not the uncovering to His disciples of the source of human inability in human sin to which He was here addressing Himself. He was occupying Himself entirely with the far more pressing task of detaching their hearts from trust in themselves and casting them upon God. Therefore He contents Himself with the emphatic assertion of the bare fact of human inability, and, fixing that with His pointed illustration well in their minds, directs them at once, in strong contrast, to the plenary ability of God. His sharp asservation had wrought its work by arousing excessive astonishment in the minds of His hearers. The proof of its working came out in their wondering demand, "Then who can be saved?" No explanation follows: simply the calm reiteration of the astonishing declaration, "With men it is impossible." But therewith a call to them to raise their eyes, therefore, above man: "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God."

These words constitute, therefore, the core of the whole conversation. To them everything else had been leading up. And it was that He might assert them with due force and fix them in the hearts of His disciples with absolute firmness that everything else had been spoken. The great lesson that the Saviour was seeking to read His disciples was not that of human inability, but that of the divine ability. Human inability is dwelt upon only that in contrast with it the divine ability might be thrown out in strong emphasis. That man cannot save himself He would have them know; but the great truth on which He would have their minds rest was not that man cannot save himself, but that God can save him. Therefore everything is so ordered - incident and subsequent conversation alike - as to fix attention first on the helplessness of man, and then, by a powerful revulsion, to throw a tremendous emphasis on the almighty salvation of God. "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God." Here, and here only, He would say, can you establish your feet, can you safely cast your hope.

It is almost impertinent to stop to admire the dialectic skill with which the desired impression is made. Our hearts cry out at once for the preciousness of the assurance that is given. We are men; and, like men, have been and are prone to think we can do "some good thing" by which we may earn eternal life. None know better than we how hard it is to be weaned from self-trust; how persistently we cherish the hope that thus, or thus, we may win for ourselves a title to bliss. But none know better than we the inevitable bitterness of the ensuing disappointment. It may be that, like the rich young ruler, we have kept the commandments from our youth up. It has not satisfied our hearts. We still are asking in unstilled longing, "What lack I yet? What good thing shall I do?" Nor is the longing ever thus satisfied. We may have piled Pelion on Ossa in our insatiable search after service. The ends of the earth may know our voice. And yet we may be pursued with the inextinguishable conviction that though we may preach to others we may yet ourselves be castaways. Though we may have bestowed all our goods to feed the poor, and though we may have even given our bodies to be burned, it profits us nothing. Still the cry rises in our soul, "What lack I yet? What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?"

We cannot still our craving with such things as these. Despair ever treads hard on hope, and the conviction is never shaken within us that by the work of the hands shall no flesh be justified. Earth's altars are the proof at once of the universal longing for salvation, and of the universal despair of salvation. No offering has been too precious to be immolated in expiation of sin; and none has been so precious as to take away the consciousness of sin. Else would they not have long since ceased to be offered? Least of all can we Christians, in whom the sense of sin has been quickened by the revelation of the righteously loving God in the face of Jesus Christ, ever still our hearts' despair with any deed of our own hands. If in times of forgetfulness we have been tempted to think well of ourselves and of our claims on God, it has required but a glance at Jesus and at our hearts in contrast with Him to awake us to a deeper sense of our unworthiness and helplessness. And when the veil is thus lifted, and we see ourselves in this true light, our temptation is not that we may hope to be saved without Him, but that we can scarcely hope to be saved with Him.

Let each of us to-day look within his own heart; let each of us permit to roll before the mind's eye the history of his soul's struggles - its hopes, its fears, its despairs. How much of it is a history of doubt, discouragement, and despondency! We know we cannot save ourselves. Our best efforts - have they not always ended in disillusionment? Our best hopes - have they not always gone out in failure? Our best determinations - have they not always sunk in gloom? Salvation - do we not ourselves know that it is impossible with men? Is it possible even with God? Then comes, like balm to our bruised hearts, our Lord's gracious assurance, "It is impossible with men, but not with God: for all things are possible with God." What an assurance! We are to trust in God for the salvation of our souls not because their salvation is easy. So soon as our eyes are open to what sin is, and to what God is, and to what we are, we know it is not easy. We are to trust in God for the salvation of our souls because He is one who does the impossible.

Do we clearly see that salvation is impossible to us, that a load of guilt rests upon us which we can never expiate? Our Saviour says, not that we are mistaken, not that if we will but try hard enough we may roll off the burden. No; He does not mock our despair. He fully recognizes the impossibility which our hearts have found. He says, "It is impossible with men, but not with God: for all things are possible with God." Thus He places the rock under our feet - the rock of the omnipotence of God. To nothing less than omnipotence can we trust to do this impossible thing. But we may well believe that there is no impossible to it. And resting on it our fretted souls may at last find peace.

It was, thus, that He might give us hope in the highest concerns that may awaken our anxieties, that our Lord enunciated in this startling manner the great fact of the divine omnipotence: "All things are possible with God." But the enunciation itself is quite general, and we should be wrong not to take comfort from the great truth here brought home to our hearts, in lesser affairs also. It is not so set forth as to suggest that it has no further application than that which Jesus gives it in this passage. On the contrary, this application is put forward as only a single instance under the general law. It is because "all things are possible with God" that we are bidden to be of good cheer with reference to eternal life, though to win it is obviously impossible with men. The fundamental proposition which our Lord emphasizes, therefore, is the broad and general declaration of the divine omnipotence. And He but teaches us how to take our practical comfort out of it when He applies it to calm our fears as to the possibility of salvation.

In how many other concerns of life do we need to find comfort in a similar application! We men are but puny creatures. We prate about being the architects of our own fortunes, the carvers of our own destinies, the masters of circumstance, who mold the world itself to our liking. We are but as children whistling to keep our courage up. There is none of us so young, so untried as not already to have learned that all things are not possible with men. In what bitter experiences this knowledge has come to us let each one's heart tell him to-day. Happy is he who has not been forced to learn it in wringings of soul and through blinding tears. We are set in this world in a vortex of forces. They beat, they seize upon us from every side; they whirl us this way and that, and drive us headlong often whither we would not. How often, when we would fain hew our passage through them, we stand blankly in the face of the impossible! How often, when the fight has been fought and the last possible blow has been struck, we stand aghast before obvious failure, and can but lift weak hands of prayer through the darkness up to God! Ah, it is in times like these that we may taste the sweetness of the great assurance of our Saviour: "All things are possible with God." How great, how inestimable a privilege to have the omnipotent God for our refuge!

And let us not fancy that the divine omnipotence is not available to us for such things as these: the grief that crushes our spirit, the failure that blackens our future, the disappointment that makes us at last see that the great design shall lie unfinished, and our lives be for ever incomplete. There is abroad among us far too much of a spurious spiritualism, which would look upon the common affairs of life, as it is pleased to call them - our human joys and hopes and fears and sorrows - as beneath the notice of God; and would steel our hearts in a Stoic's indifference to them. Our blessed Saviour's life among men rebukes so cold-hearted an attitude. He came burdened with the great task of the salvation of a world, but found no human pain and no human sorrow too trivial to pierce His heart with sympathetic pangs, too insignificant to call out His helping hand. "He went about doing good." No sick appealed to Him in vain, no weary came to Him without finding rest. He sighed over every human suffering; He wept with those who mourned; He bore the burdens of all. In His life He revealed the limitless breadth of the divine compassion which grieves with all the sorrows of men; and in His teaching He instructed us to flee to God for needed aid in every time of trouble.

The very hairs of our head, He told us, are all numbered, so that not one of them shall fall to the ground without His knowledge and permission. If in this world we are immersed in a perfect cyclone of forces, driving us this way and that, there is One ever by our side who shall be to us "as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest." We may be weak, but He is strong; and He has bidden us to put our trust in Him, and promised that we shall not be made ashamed. On the omnipotence of God alone can we depend in the midst of the trials of this life as truly as for the hope of the life to come. And what gives the Christian his stability and peace in the strifes and conflicts of the world is naught else than that he feels beneath him the everlasting arms. It is only because he knows that the God to whom all things are possible rules in heaven and on earth, that he can commit his ways to Him, and be assured that all things shall indeed work together for good to those that love Him. The Christian's strength amid the evils of life is drawn from no lesser source than trust in the omnipotence of his God

And all this has a very special application to the enheartening of those who have become fellow-workers with God in the salvation of the world. If disappointment and discouragement lie ever in wait for all who would fain do somewhat in the world, surely this is in a very especial sense true of those whose hearts are set upon the rescue of their fellow-men from the dominion of sin. He who would in any measure depend on an arm of flesh in this warfare is foredoomed to a very speedy despair. He may meet with little positive opposition or direct resistance. But oh, the dead weight of passive indifference which he will be sure to encounter! No wonder if the plaint of the prophet early becomes his own: "Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" It will not be strange if he should experience periods of the deepest depression as he more and more realizes that he is crying into deaf ears and seeking to arouse to activity dead hearts. As the servant of the Lord God Almighty it will be strange, however, if he permits his natural sense of insufficiency to grow into a settled habit of despondency, and prosecutes his work under the shadow of an unhoping gloom. Let him, indeed, cry, "Lord, who is sufficient for these things?" Let him remember that even a Paul can do no more than plant, and even an Apollos can do no more than water. But let him remember also that the Lord both can and will give the increase: that the God whom he serves is the omnipotent God whose voice can wake even the dead, and that with Him "all things are possible."

And when we raise our eyes from the narrow circles of our own labors, and survey the progress of the gospel in the world, what shall we say then? Two thousand years have slipped away since Jesus laid the great commission upon the hearts of His people: "Go, disciple all the nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you!" We shall not permit ourselves to forget the enthusiasm, the splendid courage, the high hopes, the steadfast labor which many of His choicest servants have brought to the fulfillment of this commandment. Every land and clime has heard their cry and has been watered with their blood. Not least in our own day have the hosts of the Lord risen against the mighty; have His children flung themselves with a holy joy into the great task for which the Church exists. Yet the work still lags. As we stand to-day and survey the heathen world, how little seems accomplished! Surely we shall long since have concluded that the task is impossible that no man and no body of men are really competent to turn the world upside down!

But we cannot give way to despair. As we come to know more fully the greatness of the masses of heathendom, and the depths into which they have sunk, and the ingrainedness of their points of view and inherited modes of thinking, we may indeed despair of men. We may readily enough perceive that no human power can avail to reverse the currents of centuries and to eradicate the evil habits of ages. But we cannot despair of God. "With men it is impossible," we may well say; but we must quickly add, "but not with God: for all things are possible with God." Resting on the divine omnipotence, we may well be sure that even this desert shall blossom like a rose, and may - not only in hope, but in firm expectation - await the fulfillment of the promises. And now, once occupying this position, how full the very air is of promise! Our eyes have seen the divine omnipotence at work, here and there, in the midst of the encircling gloom. Souls have been born again; Christian lives have shed a broad beam of light into the darkness; churches have been planted; Christian virtues have flourished where erstwhile only pagan vices were visible; the streaks of the dawn are appearing; the very air is palpitant with its prediction of the coming day. Our hope is set on the God who does great things without number. And this too will He in His own good time perform--for all things are possible with God.

Nor is the matter altered when we come nearer home and contemplate the heathen masses which crowd the narrow streets of our great cities. It is one of the signs of our times that the "slums;" as we call them, have come forth to the observation of the world. And as they are brought more fully to public view the sight is not encouraging. Here the Christian worker comes to close quarters with vice and misery. Here his heart sinks within him at the manifest magnitude of the task that is set before him. Here he is gravely tempted to despair as he realizes more and more sharply the inadequacy of human methods and human powers to reach the root of the evil whose dreadful fruits daily smite him in the face. How easy it is to let the great hope die within us and seek to content ourselves with some lesser endeavor! This immense mass of corrupting humanity - we cannot lift it bodily to a higher plane. Shall we not be satisfied to attack the fringes of the evil, and be content with some less, indeed, but at least possible, accomplishment? There is, after all, we may say, only so much spiritual power in the world; why dissipate it in a Quixotic endeavor to reach the core of the evil, and not rather expend it wisely and warily in correcting at least some of its more menacing fruits? "There is, after all, only so much spiritual power in the world!" My brethren, it is an atheistic lie! The spiritual power in the world is the power of the omnipotent Jehovah. It does not waste with use; it does not recoil before the magnitude of any task. Rightly do you perceive such undertakings as these to be beyond the power of men: "with men they are impossible." But it is not so with God: "For all things are possible with God." Let us then face with fresh boldness this impossibility: there are no impossibilities with Him whose strength shall be in our right arm, mighty to tear down the strongholds of iniquity.

Ah, I know whither your hearts are wandering, my brethren! Yes, the blessed assurance is for this, too. Our battle with sin is not all with the sin that is without us. Christianity has come not only into the world, but into our hearts as well; and the promise of conquest over sin is not merely for the world, but also for our individual souls. Does the victory lag here also? Are we tempted from time to time to despair here too, as we are made to realize our proneness to evil, our ineradicable readiness to forget our good profession, lay down our arms, and give up the fight against temptation and transgression? Ah, who of us has not long since learned of the conquest over sin in the heart - that with men it is impossible? Let us learn also, with reference to it, too, that it is not so with God, "for all things are possible with God." I grant you that only He who does the impossible can cleanse the heart from its ingrained corruption, and can free the life from its continual sinning. But the God whom Jesus proclaims to us, in whom we may put our trust, is a God who does the impossible. And when we are tempted to despair, and are ready to yield the battle with the cry that it is impossible, let us raise our eyes to Him to whom there is no such thing as the impossible. And, believing His word, let us go on in His strength to the assured victory.

"O Lord God of Hosts,
Who is a mighty one like unto Thee,
O Jah?
And thy faithfulness is round about Thee!

* * * * * * *

Thou hast a mighty arm:
Strong is Thy hand, and high is Thy right hand.
Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of Thy throne:
Mercy and truth go before Thy face.
Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound:
That walk in the light of Thy countenance, O Lord!"

V
THE LOVE OF THE HOLY GHOST

"Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?"-James iv. 5. (A. V.)

THE translators have found some difficulty in rendering this verse. The form in which I have just read it, is that given it by our Authorized Version. I am not sure that it will at once convey the meaning. The Revised Version, in text and margin, presents several renderings. Among them there is one which expresses much more clearly what seems to me to be the meaning of the original. It is this: "Or think ye that the Scripture saith in vain, That Spirit which He made to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto jealous envy?" It is a declaration, on the basis of Old Testament teaching, of the deep yearning which the Holy Spirit, which God has caused to dwell in us, feels for our undivided and unwavering devotion.

In the context James had been speaking of the origin of the unseemly quarrels which even in that early day, it seems, marred the life of Christians. He traces them to greediness for the pleasures of this world, and consequent envy toward those who are better placed, or more fortunate in the pursuit of worldly goods. Then he turns suddenly to administer a sorrowful rebuke to the gross inconsistency of such envious rivalry in grasping after the pleasures of this world, for men who possess the inestimable treasure of God's love. It is at once observable on reading over the passage that its whole phraseology is colored by the underlying presentation of the relation of the Christian to God under the figure of marriage.

The Christian is the bride of God. And therefore any commerce with the world is unfaithfulness. There is not room in this relation for two loves. To love the world in any degree is a breach of our vows to our one husband, God. Hence the exclamation of "Adulteresses!" which springs to James' lips when he thinks of Christians loving the world. Hence his indignant outcry, "Know ye not that love of the world is enmity with God?" and his sweeping explanation, "Whosoever, therefore, has it in his mind to be a lover of the world is thereby constituted an enemy of God." We cannot have two husbands; and to the one husband to whom our vows are plighted, all our love is due. To dally with the thought of another lover is already unfaithfulness. On the other side, God is the husband of the Christian's soul. And He loves it with that peculiar, constant, changeless love with which one loves what the Scripture calls his own body (Eph. v. 28). Is the soul faithful to Him? Who can paint, then, the delight He takes in it? Is it unfaithful, turning to seek its pleasure in the love of the world? Then the Scripture tells us that it is with jealous yearning that God, its lawful husband, looks upon it. Does it, after unfaithfulness, turn again to its rightful lord? It cannot draw nearer to Him than He is ready to draw to it; and it no sooner humbles itself before Him than He exalts it.

The general meaning of the text is thus revealed to us as a strong asseveration of the love of God for His people, set forth under the figure of a faithful husband's yearning love for his erring bride. James presents this asseveration of God's love for His people, we will observe, as the teaching of Scripture; that is, since he was in the act of penning the earliest of New Testament books, as the teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures. The mode in which he makes this appeal to Scripture is perhaps worthy of incidental remark. "Or think ye that it is an empty saying of Scripture?" The question is a rhetorical one, and amounts to the strongest assertion that from James' point of view no saying of Scripture could be empty. He would confound his readers by adducing the tremendous authority of Scripture in support of his declaration; and therein he reveals to us the attitude of humble submission toward the Scripture word which characterizes all the writers of the New Testament.

It was not, however, the doctrine of inspiration which was then engaging his thought. He sends us to these inspired Scriptures rather for the doctrine of God's unchanging love toward His sinful people. And we will surely have no difficulty in recalling numerous Old Testament passages in which the Lord has been pleased graciously to express His love for His people under the figure of the love of a husband for his chosen bride; or in which He has been pleased to make vivid to us His sense of the injury done to His love by the unfaithfulness of His people, by attributing to Himself the burning jealousy of a loving husband toward the tenderly cherished wife who has wandered from the path of fidelity. Already this representation underlies expressions which occur in the Pentateuch, and indeed it is enshrined for us in the fabric of the Ten Commandments themselves, where God announces Himself as a jealous God who will visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those that hate Him, while yet He shows mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. In the later pages of the Old Testament psalmists vie with prophets in developing the figure in every detail of its application. Throughout all, the complaint of the Lord is: "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel, saith the Lord" (Jer. iii. 20). Throughout all, He pleads His changeless though outraged love for them. If He threatens that He will judge them as women that break wedlock are judged, and will bring upon them the blood of fury and jealousy (Ezek. xvi. 38), He adds: "Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant. Then shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed . . . when I have forgiven thee all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. xvi. 60-63). Throughout all, thus, there throbs the expression of that deep, appropriating love to which punishment is strange work, and which yearns to recover the fallen and restore them to favor and honor. Its hopes run forward in anticipation to that happy day when the wandering one shall listen once again to the alluring words of love spoken to her heart, and once more turn and call the Lord Ishi, "My husband." "And in that day," the Lord hastens to declare, "in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the land, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto Me for ever; yea I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord" (Hosea 11. 18-20).

In its general meaning, thus, our text is general Bible-teaching. It announces nothing which had not been the possession of God's people concerning His love for them from the days of old. Its message to us is just the common message of the whole Scripture revelation, in Old and New Testament alike. But it has its own peculiarities in expressing this one great common message of God's yearning love for His people. And possibly there may be found a special lesson for us in these peculiarities.

The first of them which claims our attention is the intense energy of the expression which is used here to declare the love of God for his erring people. He is said to "yearn for us, even unto jealous envy."

Modes of speech sufficiently strong had been employed in the prophets of the Old Testament, in the effort to communicate to men the vehemence of God's grief over their sin and the ardor of His longing to recover them to Himself. The simple attribution of the passion of jealousy to Him one would fancy a representation forcible enough. And this representation is heightened in every conceivable way. Even in Exodus (xxxiv. 14) we meet it in the strengthened form which declares that the very name of God is Jealous - "for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" - as if this were the characteristic emotion which expressed His very being. Nahum tells us that "the Lord is a jealous God and avengeth; the Lord avengeth and is full of wrath " (Nahum i. 2). And in Zechariah we read that the Lord is "jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and He is jealous for her with great fury" (Zech. viii. 2).

But the language of James has an intensity which rises above all Old Testament precedent Not only does the verb he uses express the idea of eager longing as strongly as it is possible to express it; but its already strong emphasis is still further enhanced by an adverbial addition which goes beyond all usage. The verb is that which is employed by the Greek translators of the Forty-second Psalm: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God." So, with the thirst of the famishing hart for water - so, says James, does God pant after His people whose minds wander from Him. The adverb is one which often occurs in the classics to express the feeling which one is apt to cherish toward a rival; but it is not the ordinary active word for jealousy which is frequently elsewhere applied to God in the Scriptures, but a term of deeper passion which is never elsewhere applied to God, and which is expressive rather of the envious emotion which tears the soul as it contemplates a rival's success. So, with this sickening envy, says James, God contemplates our dallying with the world and the world's pleasures. He envies the world our love - the love due to Him, pledged to Him, but basely withdrawn from Him and squandered upon the world. The combined expression is, you will see, astonishingly intense. God is represented as panting, yearning, after us, even unto not merely jealousy, but jealous envy. Such vehemence of feeling in God is almost incredible; and some commentators, indeed, refuse to believe that it can be ascribed to Him and declare the anthropomorphism involved to be altogether too extreme.

Let us not, however, refuse the blessed assurance that is given us. It is no doubt hard to believe that God loves us. It is doubtless harder to believe that He loves us with so ardent a love as is here described. But He says that He does. He declares that when we wander from Him and our duty toward Him, He yearns after us and earnestly longs for our return; that He envies the world our love and would fain have it turned back to Himself. What can we do but admiringly cry, Oh, the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God which passes knowledge! There is no language in use among men which is strong enough to portray it. Strain the capacity of words to the utmost and still they fall short of expressing the jealous envy with which He contemplates the love of His people for the world, the yearning desire which possesses Him to turn them back to their duty to Him. It is this inexpressibly precious assurance which the text gives us; let us, without doubting, embrace it with hearty faith.

Another peculiarity of the text lies in the clearness with which it distributes the object of this great love of God into individuals.

When the Scriptures make use of the figure of marriage to reveal God's love to His people, it is commonly His people as a body which they have in mind. It is, in the Old Testament, the "house of Israel" whom Jehovah has chosen to be His wife; in the New Testament it is the church which is the bride, the Lamb's wife. Individuals, as members in particular of the body of Israel or of the church, partake of its fortunes, share in the love poured out upon it, and contribute by their lives to the foulness of its sin or to the beauty of its holiness. It is only as the members are holy that the church can be that glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish, which Christ is to present to Himself at the last day. But, though the individuals thus share in the love and glory of the church, it is the church itself and not the individual which is prevailingly represented as the bride of the Lamb. Only occasionally, in the application of the figure, do the individuals seem to be prominently in mind (Ps. lxxiii. 27; Rom. vii. 4).

In our present passage, however, the reference is directed to the individual and not to the church as a body. It is the individual Christian who is in covenant vows to God, and who is forgetting these vows, when in the prosecution of his pleasures he strives and fights his fellow-man, instead of depending on God's love to fulfill all his wants. It is the individual who is warned that he is guilty of spiritual adultery when he permits the least shade of love of the world to enter his heart; and that the cherishing of such love even in thought is an act of enmity against God. It is the individual who is assured that God jealously envies the world the love which He gives it, and yearns after the return of His love to Him, the Lord, who "longeth for him even unto jealous envy."

This clear individualization of the great truth which the passage enshrines is surely fraught with a very precious message to us. Not the church merely - we might believe that, knowing ourselves only as unworthy members of what is in idea a glorious church: not the church merely, but you and I are, each, declared to be covenanted with the Lord in the bonds of this holy and intimate relationship, the recipients of His loving care as His bride, nay, the objects of His changeless and yearning affection. Surely this too is an inexpressibly precious assurance, which we would fain, without doubting, embrace with hearty faith.

A third peculiarity of the text lies in its direct attribution of this appropriating love of God for His chosen ones to God the Holy Spirit.

In this the text is almost unique in the whole range of Scripture. In the Old Testament it is Jehovah, the covenant God, who represents the covenanted union between Israel and Himself under the figure of a marriage. It is Jehovah whose name is Jealous; and whose jealousy burns unto envy as he contemplates the unfaithfulness of Israel. In the New Testament it is prevailingly Christ, the Lamb, who has taken the Church unto Himself as His bride; and who loves and cherishes His Church as a husband loves and cherishes his wife. But in our present passage it is specifically God the Holy Spirit who is represented as the subject of this envious jealousy and this yearning affection. "Or think ye that it is a vain and empty saying of Scripture, that the Spirit which He made to dwell in us yearneth jealously?"

And surely it is a great gain from the point of view of the Christian life to have this explicit revelation of the heart of the indwelling Spirit. What James tells us is that it is God the Holy Spirit, whom God has caused to dwell within us, who is the subject of the unchanging love of God's people which is expressed in these words of unexampled strength, as a yearning after us even to jealous envy. Surely this too is an inexpressibly precious assurance which we would fain, without doubting, embrace with hearty faith.

And now let us try to realize, in the simplest possible way, what is involved for us in this precious assurance.

Primarily, then, as we have seen, James makes known to us here the precious fact that the Holy Spirit loves us.

It is easy to say that this is so far from being a new fact to which the Christian consciousness is unwonted, that it is necessarily implicated in the fundamental Christian postulate that God is love. As the Godhead is one and cannot be divided, so each person of the Godhead must be the love that God is. The Father is no more love, and the Son is no more love, than the Spirit is love; and when we confess that God is love, we confess by necessary implication that the Holy Spirit, who is God, is Himself love. But it will be far more to the point for us to ask ourselves in all seriousness if we have been in the habit of realizing to ourselves the blessed fact that the Holy Spirit loves us. This does not seem to be a form of gratulation in which Christians are accustomed to felicitate themselves.

Our prayers, our jubilations, thank God, also our hearts, are full of the precious facts that the Father loves us and the Son loves us. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." "God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ." "The love of Christ which passeth knowledge." "Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God." "Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us." "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" It is in such texts as these that the Christian soul finds the heavenly manna, on which it feeds and grows strong. It is with these glorious truths - that God the Father loves us, that Christ the Saviour loves us - that we comfort one another in times of darkness and trial; it is these glorious truths that we whisper to our own souls in their moments of weakness and dismay. We never let them escape us. We dare never let them escape us. For to lose hold of them is to feel the light fade from life and the dense darkness of hopeless agony settle down on the heart.

But do we so constantly remember that the Holy Spirit loves us? Do we comfort ourselves so often and so fully with this great fact? We feel the lift of John's appeal: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." We feel the force of Paul's declaration that "the love of Christ constraineth us." But do we feel equally the force of Paul's similar appeal: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God"? Are we equally impelled to a life of single-hearted devotion to God by James' challenge: "Or think ye that it is a vain and empty saying of Scripture, that the Spirit which God hath made to dwell in us yearneth after us even unto jealous envy"? Oh, does it not too often pass over our minds as if it were really a vain and empty saying? The love of the Spirit! The yearning, jealous love of the Holy Ghost for our souls! May it come to mean much to us and be ever in our hearts to strengthen and comfort them.

Doubtless the comparative infrequency with which we meditate upon the love which the Holy Ghost bears to us is due partly to the infrequency with which the love of the Spirit is expressly mentioned in Scripture. It is also, however, due partly, doubtless, to our not habitually connecting in our minds the work of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of men with its motive in His ineffable love for us.

We ascribe to God, the Father, the plan of salvation; and to God, the Son, the impetration of redemption under that plan; and to God, the Holy Ghost, the application to the souls of sinners of the redemption procured by the Son. We recognize the necessity of the office-work of each person of the blessed Trinity if souls are to be saved. And, if we face the point now and then, we recognize that each step in the blessed progress of salvation is equally the pure outflow of the incredible love of God - the striving of the Holy Ghost with the sinner in bringing salvation to fruition in the heart, no less than the humiliation of the Son of God even unto the death of the cross, or the gift by the Father of His only begotten to suffer and die for a lost world. But we are accustomed in our thought of it to connect the saving work of the Father and the Son with the love which dictated it. We are accustomed to say to ourselves with never ceasing wonder that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son," that "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And we, perhaps, are not so much accustomed to connect in thought the saving work of the Holy Spirit with the love which no less dictated it. We are, perhaps, not so much accustomed to say to ourselves that herein is love manifested, that the Spirit of all holiness is willing to visit such polluted hearts as ours, and even to dwell in them, to make them His home, to work ceaselessly and patiently with them, gradually wooing them - through many groanings and many trials - to slow and tentative efforts toward good; and never leaving them until, through His constant grace, they have been won entirely to put off the old man and put on the new man and to stand new creatures before the face of their Father God and their Redeemer Christ. Surely herein is love! But we are perhaps too little accustomed to remind ourselves explicitly of it.

Yet what immense riches of comfort and joy this great truth has in it for our souls! Were the work of the application of Christ's redemption to us performed by some mere servant-agent, indifferent to us, and intent only on perfunctorily fulfilling the task committed to him, we might well tremble for our salvation. We know our hearts. We know how sluggish they are in yielding to the drawings of the Spirit. We know how slow they are to forsake sin; how determined they are to cling to their darling iniquities. Ah, well may James declare that our pleasures have taken up arms and pitched their camps in our members, ready for "war to the knife," as we say, with every good impulse; and Paul, in like manner, that the law in our members arrays itself in war against the new desires implanted in the mind by the Spirit, so that in view of this condition he is impelled to cry out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver us from the body of this death! Surely the heart of every one of us has often echoed that cry of natural despair. Were these hearts of ours committed to the molding of one who wrought with us only under a sense of duty and not as upheld by untiring love toward us, what hope of the issue could we cherish? There is no possible deed of ingratitude, opposition, rejection toward the Spirit's work in us of which we have not been guilty. Can we hope that He will bear with us? It is only such love that He cherishes toward us - the model of that love which Paul so sympathetically describes, that suffereth long, is not provoked, beareth all things, hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things that could possibly outlive our shameful disregard and our terrible backsliding. It is only because the Spirit which He hath caused to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto jealous envy, that He is able to continue His gracious work of drawing our souls to God amid the incredible oppositions which we give to His holy work.

And here we must not omit to take particular notice of another aspect of the same great fact, as James brings it before us. Observe how he here designates the Spirit, whose great love he has portrayed. It is as the "Spirit whom God has caused to dwell within us." It is He, the indwelling Spirit, who, we are told, yearns for us with envious jealousy whenever the world obtains a hold upon our hearts.

God in heaven loves us; and it is because God in heaven loves us that He has given His Son to die for us. Christ on the cross - nay, rather, Christ who once hung on the cross, but is now seated at the right hand of God, a Prince and a Saviour - loves us; and it is because Christ loves us that He died for us, and is now become head over all things for His Church, that all things may work together for good to those who love Him. But the Spirit in our hearts also loves us. Infinite love is above us; infinite love is around us; and, praise be to God! infinite love dwells in us. See how close the love of God is brought to us. It is made to throb in our very hearts; to be shed abroad within us; and to work subtly upon us, drawing us to itself, from within.

In the light of this great truth we may perhaps better understand the meaning of Paul when, depicting the conflict going on within the heart of the newborn man, he declares that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, as if the Spirit were part of our very being - the only part of our being which lusts against evil, "that we may not do the things that we would." And again in its light, we may perhaps understand somewhat better that other great passage in which Paul declares that when we pray the Holy Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Our prayers may be feeble because our hatred against sin is weak. But there is One within us, who loves us with an imperishable love and hates sin with a perfect hatred; and His groans of longing for our release from the bondage of sin reinforce our weak cries. His unutterable groans for us sinners are the measure of His unutterable love for us sinners.

And let us not fail to gather the full gracious meaning of the word "dwell" here. It is the word to denote permanent habitation in contradistinction from temporary sojourning. God has caused the Spirit of love not to visit our hearts merely, but to abide there; not to tarry there for a season merely, tentatively, as it were, and on trial, but to make His home there, to "settle" there, to establish His permanent dwelling there. "Think ye," asks James, "that it is a vain and empty saying of Scripture, that the Spirit which God hath caused to settle permanently in our hearts as His home, yearneth after us with jealous envy?"

Ah, when God has covenanted with the soul, it is with no half-heartedness! When He represents Himself as having taken us to Himself as a husband takes a wife in the bonds of a holy covenant, it is no temporary union which He has in mind. He leaves no prudent way of escape open to Himself. With Him the covenant is for ever. He sends the Spirit into our hearts - to make His home there. And it is because, on His part, the covenant is an eternal covenant, and He takes up His abode within us for ever, that, when we treat it with levity and lightly break its bonds, He yearneth after us with jealous envy, and cannot be content until He has won us absolutely back to Himself and has eradicated from our hearts every particle of longing for the world and its sinful pleasures. What a great, what an enheartening truth we have here! God dwells within us, dwells there permanently, and this indwelling God loves us, loves us with such changeless love that even our insults to His love are met by Him only with yearning after us even unto jealous envy.

How deeply we are touched by the stories, which reach us from time to time of the persistent love of a father for a wandering son, or of a brother for a sinful brother, or of a friend for a friend who has fallen into evil courses; of how it follows the reckless sinner into all his wicked associations, enters the saloon with him, the gambling hell, the brothel; argues, pleads, uses kindly violence, seeks every mode of restoration possible with unwearied patience and persistency, is not cast off by curses or by blows, or by any evil entreatment, but pursues with constancy and unfailing tact and tender perseverance its one changeless purpose of rescue. Here is the faint reflection of the Holy Spirit's love for our souls.

See us steeped in the sin of the world; loving evil for evil's sake, hating God and all that God stands for, ever seeking to drain deeper and deeper the cup of our sinful indulgence. The Spirit follows us unwaveringly through all. He is not driven away because we are sinners. He comes to us because, being sinners, we need Him. He is not cast off because we reject His loving offices. He abides with us because our rejection of Him would leave us helpless. He does not condition His further help upon our recognizing and returning His love. His continuance with us is conditioned only on His own love for us. And that love for us is so strong, so mighty, and so constant that it can never fail. When He sees us immersed in sin and rushing headlong to destruction, He does not turn from us, He yearns for us with jealous envy.

It is in the hands of such love that we have fallen. And it is because we have fallen into the hands of such love that we have before us a future of eternal hope. When we lose hope in ourselves, when the present becomes dark and the future black before us, when effort after effort has issued only in disheartening failure, and our sin looms big before our despairing eyes; when our hearts hate and despise themselves, and we remember that God is greater than our hearts and cannot abide the least iniquity; the Spirit whom He has sent to bring us to Him still labors with us, not in indifference or hatred, but in pitying love. Yea, His love burns all the stronger because we so deeply need His help: He is yearning after us with jealous envy.

Among the legends which popular fancy has woven around the memory of Francis of Assisi, we are told that he was riding along one day in the first joy of his new-found peace, his mind possessed with a desire to live over again the life of absolute love which his Divine master had lived in the earth. Suddenly, "at a turn in the road, he found himself face to face with a leper. The frightful malady had always inspired in him an invincible repulsion. He could not control a movement of horror, and by instinct he turned his horse in another direction." Then came the quick revulsion of feeling. "He retraced his steps and, springing from his horse, he gave to the astounded sufferer all the money that he had; and then kissed his hand, as he would have done to a priest." A new era in his spiritual life had dawned. He visited the lazaretto itself and with largesses of alms and kindly words sought to bring some brightness of the outside world into that gloomy retreat. Still his love grew stronger. The day came when he made the great renunciation and stood before men endued with naught but the love of Christ. Now no temporary lazaretto contented him. He must dwell there as a permanent sunbeam to the distressed. He came now with empty hands, but with a heart full to overflowing with compassion. "Taking up his abode in the midst of the afflicted he lavished upon them a most touching care, washing and wiping their sores, all the more gentle and radiant as the sores were more repulsive."

It is not given to man, of course, even to comprehend, much less to embody in a legend like this, all the richness of God's mysterious love for sinners. But in such legends as this we may catch some faint shadow of what the Spirit's love for us means. No leprous sores can be as foul in the eyes of the daintiest bred as sin is foul in the eyes of the Holy Ghost. We cannot conceive of the energy of His shrinking from its polluting touch. Yet He comes into the foul lazaretto of our hearts and dwells there - permanently lives there; not for Himself, or for any good to accrue to Himself; but solely that He may cleanse us and fit us to be what He has made us, the Bride, the Lamb's wife.

Could there be presented to us a more complete manifestation of the infinite love of God than is contained in this revelation of the love of the Spirit for us? God is love. Does not this greatest of all revelations take on a new brightness and a new force to move our souls when we come to realize that not only is the Father love, and the Son love, but the Spirit also is love; and so wholly love that, despite the foulness of our sin, He yearneth for us even unto jealous envy?

Could there be given us a higher incentive to faithfulness to God than is contained in this revelation of the love of the Spirit for us? Are our hearts so hard that they are incapable of responding to the appeal of such a love as this? Can we dally with the world, seek our own pleasures, forget our duty of love to God, when the Spirit which He hath made to dwell in us is yearning after us even unto jealous envy?

Could there be afforded us a deeper ground of encouragement in our Christian life than is contained in this revelation of the love of the Spirit for us? Is hope so dead within us that it is no longer possible for us to rest with confidence upon such love? Can we doubt what the end shall be - despite all that the world can do to destroy us, and the flesh and the devil - when we know that the Spirit which He hath made to dwell in us is yearning after us even unto jealous envy?

Could there, then, be granted us a firmer foundation for the holy joy of Christian assurance than is contained in this revelation of the love of the Spirit for us? Is faith grown so weak that it cannot stay itself on the almighty arm of God? Surely, surely, though our hearts faint within us, and the way seems dark, and there are lions roaring in the path, we shall be able to look past them all to the open gates of pearl beyond, whensoever we remember that the Spirit which He hath made to dwell within us is yearning after us even unto jealous envy!

VI
THE LEADING OF THE SPIRIT

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." - Rom. viii. 14. (R. V.)

THESE words constitute the classical passage in the New Testament on the great subject of the "leading of the Holy Spirit." They stand, indeed, almost without strict parallel in the New Testament. We read, no doubt, in that great discourse of our Lord's which John has preserved for us, in which, as He was about to leave His disciples, He comforts their hearts with the promise of the Spirit, that "when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth." But this "guidance into truth" by the Holy Spirit is something very different from the "leading of the Spirit " spoken of in our present text; and it is appropriately expressed by a different term. We read also in Luke's account of our Lord's temptation that He was "led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil," where our own term is used. But though undoubtedly this passage throws light upon the mode of the Spirit's operation described in our text, it can scarcely be looked upon as a parallel passage to it. The only other passage, indeed, which speaks distinctly of the "leading of the Spirit" in the sense of our text is Gal. v. 18, where in a context very closely similar Paul again employs the same phrase: "But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law." It is from these two passages primarily that we must obtain our conception of what the Scriptures mean by "the leading of the Holy Spirit."

There is certainly abundant reason why we should seek to learn what the Scriptures mean by "spiritual leading." There are few subjects so intimately related to the Christian life, of which Christians appear to have formed, in general, conceptions so inadequate, where they are not even positively erroneous. The sober-minded seem often to look upon it as a mystery into which it would be well not to inquire too closely. And we can scarcely expect those who are not gifted with sobriety to guide us in such a matter into the pure truth of God. The consequence is that the very phrase, "the leading of the Spirit," has come to bear, to many, a flavor of fanaticism. Many of the best Christians would shrink with something like distaste from affirming themselves to be "led by the Spirit of God"; and would receive with suspicion such an averment on the part of others, as indicatory of an unbalanced religious mind. It is one of the saddest effects of extravagance in spiritual claims that, in reaction from them, the simple-minded people of God are often deterred from entering into their privileges. It is surely enough, however, to recall us to a careful searching of Scripture in order to learn what it is to be "led by the Spirit of God," simply to read the solemn words of our text: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." If the case be so, surely it behooves all who would fain believe themselves to be God's children to know what the leading of the Spirit is.

Let us, then, commit ourselves to the teaching of Paul, and seek to learn from him what is the meaning of this high privilege. And may the Spirit of truth here too be with us and guide us into the truth.

Approaching the text in this serious mood, the first thing that strikes us is that the leading of the Spirit of God of which it speaks is not something peculiar to eminent saints, but something common to all God's children, the universal possession of the people of God.

"As many as are led by the Spirit of God," says the apostle, "these are sons of God." We have here in effect a definition of the sons of God. The primary purpose of the sentence is not, indeed, to give this definition. But the statement is so framed as to equate its two members, and even to throw a stress upon the coextensiveness of the two designations. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these and these only are sons of God." Thus, the leading of the Spirit is presented as the very characteristic of the children of God. This is what differentiates them from all others. All who are led by the Spirit of God are thereby constituted the sons of God; and none can claim the high title of sons of God who are not led by the Spirit of God. The leading of the Spirit thus appears as the constitutive fact of sonship. And we dare not deny that we are led by God's Spirit lest we therewith repudiate our part in the hopes of a Christian life. In this aspect of it our text is the exact parallel of the immediately preceding declaration, which it thus takes up and repeats: "But if any one hath not the Spirit of Christ, that one is not His."

It is obviously a mistake, therefore, to look upon the claim to be led by God's Spirit as an evidence of spiritual pride. It is rather a mark of spiritual humility. This leading of the Spirit is not some peculiar gift reserved for special sanctity and granted as the reward of high merit alone. It is the common gift poured out on all God's children to meet their common need, and is the evidence, therefore, of their common weakness and their common unworthiness. It is not the reward of special spiritual attainment; it is the condition of all spiritual attainment. In its absence we should remain hopelessly the children of the devil; by its presence alone are we constituted the children of God. It is only because of the Spirit of God shed abroad in our hearts that we are able to cry, Abba, Father.

We observe, therefore, next that the end in view in the spiritual leading of which Paul speaks is not to enable us to escape the difficulties, dangers, trials or sufferings of this life, but specifically to enable us to conquer sin.

Had the former been its object, it might indeed have been a special grace granted to a select few of God's children, and its possession might have separated them from among their brethren as the peculiar favorites of the Deity. Since, however, the latter is its object, it is the appropriate gift of all those who are sinners, and is the condition of their conquest over the least of their sins. In the preceding context Paul discovers to us our inherent sin in all its festering rottenness. But he discovers to us also the Spirit of God as dwelling in us and forming the principle of a new life. It is by the presence of the Spirit within us alone that the bondage in which we are by nature held to sin is broken; that we are emancipated from sin and are no longer debtors to live according to the flesh. This new principle of life reveals itself in our consciousness as a power claiming regulative influence over our actions; leading us, in a word, into holiness.

If we consider our life of new obedience from the point of view of our own activities, we may speak of ourselves as fighting the good fight of faith; a deeper view reveals it as the work of God in us by His Spirit. When we consider this Divine work within our souls with reference to the end of the whole process we call it sanctification; when we consider it with reference to the process itself, as we struggle on day by day in the somewhat devious and always thorny pathway of life, we call it spiritual leading. Thus the "leading of the Holy Spirit" is revealed to us as simply a synonym for sanctification when looked at from the point of view of the pathway itself, through which we are led by the Spirit as we more and more advance toward that conformity to the image of His Son, which God has placed before us as our great goal.

It is obvious at once then how grossly it is misconceived when it is looked upon as a peculiar guidance granted by God to His eminent servants in order to insure their worldly safety, worldly comfort, even worldly profit. The leading of the Holy Spirit is always for good; but it is not for all goods, but specifically for spiritual and eternal good. I do not say that the good man may not, by virtue of his very goodness, be saved from many of the sufferings of this life and from many of the failures of this life. How many of the evils and trials of life are rooted in specific sins we can never know. How often even failure in business may be traced directly to lack of business integrity rather than to pressure of circumstances or business incompetency is mercifully hidden from us. Nor do I say that the gracious Lord has no care for the secular life of His people. But it surely is obvious that the leading of the Spirit spoken of in the text is not in order to guide men into secular goods; and it is not to be inferred to be absent when trials come - sufferings, losses, despair of this world. It is specifically in order to guide them into eternal good; to make them not prosperous, not free from care or suffering, but holy, free from sin. It is not given us to save us from the consequences of our business carelessnesses or incompetences, to take the place of ordinary prudence in the conduct of our affairs. It is not given us to preserve us from the necessity of strenuous preparation for the tasks before us or from the trouble of rendering decision in the difficult crises of life. It is given specifically to save us from sinning; to lead us in the paths of holiness and truth.

Accordingly, we observe next that the spiritual leading of which Paul speaks is not something sporadic, given only on occasion of some special need of supernatural direction, but something continuous, affecting all the operations of a Christian man's activities throughout every moment of his life.

It has but one end in view, the saving from sin, the leading into holiness; but it affects every single activity of every kind - physical, intellectual, and spiritual - bending it toward that end. Were it directed toward other ends, we might indeed expect it to be more sporadic. Were it simply the omniscience of God placed at the disposal of His favorites, which they might avail themselves of in times of perplexity and doubt, it might well be occasional and temporary. But since it is nothing other than the power of God unto salvation, it must needs abide with the sinner, work constantly upon him, enter into all his acts, condition all his doings, and lead him thus steadily onward toward the one great goal.

It is easy to estimate, then, what a perversion it is of the "leading of the Spirit" when this great saving energy of God, working continually in the sinner, is forgotten, and the name is accorded to some fancied sporadic supernatural direction in the common offices of life. Let us not forget, indeed, the reality of providential guidance, or imagine that God's greatness makes Him careless of the least concerns of His children. But let us much more not forget that the great evil under which we are suffering is sin, and that the great promise which has been given us is that we shall not be left to wander, self-directed, in the paths of sin into which our feet have strayed, but that the Spirit of holiness shall dwell within us, breaking our bondage and leading us into that other pathway of good works, which God has afore prepared that we should walk in them.

All of this will be powerfully supported and the subject perhaps somewhat further elucidated if we will seek now to penetrate a little deeper into the inmost nature of the work of the Holy Spirit which Paul calls here a "leading," by attending more closely to the term which he has chosen to designate it when he calls it by this name. This term, as those skilled in such things tell us, is one which throws emphasis on three matters: on the extraneousness of the influence under which the movement suggested takes place; on the completeness of the control which this influence exerts over the action of the subject led; and on the pathway over which the resultant progress is made. Let us glance at each of these matters in turn.

One is not led when he goes his own way. It is only when an influence distinct from ourselves determines our movements that we can properly be said to be led. When Paul, therefore, declares that the sons of God are "led by the Spirit of God," he emphasizes, first of all, the distinction between the leading Spirit and the led sons of God. As much as this he declares with great emphasis - that there is a power within us, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. And he identifies this extraneous power with the Spirit of God. The whole preceding context accentuates this distinction, inasmuch as its entire drift is to paint the conflict which is going on within us between our native impulses which make for sin, and the intruded power which makes for righteousness. Before all else, then, spiritual leading consists in an influence over our actions of a power which is not to be identified with ourselves - either as by nature or as renewed - but which is declared by the apostle Paul to be none other than the Spirit of God Himself.

We thoroughly misconceive it, therefore, if we think of spiritual leading as only a conquest of our lower impulses by our higher nature, or even as a conquest by our regenerated nature of the remnants of the old man lingering in our members. Both of these conquests are realities of the Christian life. The child of God will never be content to be the slave of his lower impulses, but will ever strive, and with ultimate success, to live on the plane of his higher endowments. The regenerated soul will never abide the remnants of sin that vex his members, but will have no rest until he eradicates them to the last shred. But these victories of our nobler selves - natural or gracious - over what is unworthy within us, do not so much constitute the essence of spiritual leading as they are to be counted among its fruits. Spiritual leading itself is not a leading of ourselves by ourselves, but a leading of us by the Holy Ghost. The declaration of its reality is the declaration of the reality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart, and of the subjection of the activities of the Christian heart and life to the control of this extraneous power. He that is led by the Spirit of God is not led by himself or by any element of his own nature, native or acquired, but is led by the Holy Ghost. He has ceased to be what the Scriptures call a "natural man," and has become what they call a "spiritual man"; that is, to translate these terms accurately, he has ceased to be a self-led man and has become a Spirit-led man - a man led and determined in all his activities by the Holy Ghost. It is this extraneousness of the source of these activities which Paul emphasizes first of all when he declares that the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God.

The second matter which is emphasized by his declaration is the controlling power of the influence exerted on the activities of God's children by the Holy Spirit. One is not led, in the sense of our text, when he is merely directed in the way he should go, guided, as we may say, by one who points out the path and leads only by going before in it; or when he is merely upheld while he himself finds or directs himself to the goal.

The Greek language possesses words which precisely express these ideas, but the apostle passes over these and selects a term which expresses determining control over our actions. Some of these other terms are used elsewhere in the Scriptures to set forth appropriate actions of the Spirit with reference to the people of God. For example, our Lord promised His disciples that when the Spirit of Truth should come; He should guide them into all the truth. Here a term is employed which does not express controlling leading, but what we may perhaps call suggestive leading. It is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament of God's guidance of His people, and once, at least, of the Holy Spirit: "Teach us to do Thy will, for Thou art my God; let Thy good Spirit guide us in the land of uprightness." But the term which Paul employs in our text is a much stronger one than this. It is not the proper word to use of a guide who goes before and shows the way, or even of a commanding general, say, who leads an army. It has stamped upon it rather the conception of the exertion of a power of control over the actions of its subject, which the strength of the led one is insufficient to withstand.

This is the proper word to use, for example, when speaking of leading animals, as when our Lord sent His disciples to find the ass and her colt and commanded them "to loose them and lead them to Him" (Matt. xxi. 2); or as when Isaiah declares in the Scripture which was being read by the Eunuch of Ethiopia whom Philip was sent to meet in the desert, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter." It is applied to the conveying of sick folk - as men who are not in a condition to control their own movements; as, for example, when the good Samaritan set the wounded traveler on his own beast and led him to an inn and took care of him (Luke x. 34); or when Christ commanded the blind man of Jericho "to be led unto Him" (Luke xviii. 40). It is most commonly used of the enforced movements of prisoners; as when we are told that they led Jesus to Caiaphas to the palace (John xviii. 28); or when we are told that they seized Stephen and led him into the council (Acts vi. 12); or that Paul was provided with letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, "that if he found any that were of the Way, he might lead them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts ix. 2). In a word, though the term may, of course, sometimes be used when the idea of force retires somewhat into the background, and is commonly so used when it is transferred from external compulsion to internal influence - as, for example, when we are told that Barnabas took Paul and led him to the apostles (Acts ix. 2), and that Andrew led Simon unto Jesus (John i. 42) - yet the proper meaning of the word includes the idea of control, and the implication of prevailing determination of action never wholly leaves it.

Its use by Paul on the present occasion must be held, therefore, to emphasize the controlling influence which the Holy Spirit exercises over the activities of the children of God in His leading of them. That extraneous power which has come into our hearts making for righteousness, has not come into them merely to suggest to us what we should do - merely to paint out to us from within the way in which we ought to walk - merely to rouse within us and keep before our minds certain considerations and inducements toward righteousness. It has come within us to take the helm and to direct the motion of our frail barks on the troubled sea of life. It has taken hold of us as a man seizes the halter of an ox to lead it in the way which he would have it go; as an attendant conducts the sick in leading him to the physician; as the jailer grasps the prisoner to lead him to trial or to the jail. We were slaves to sin; a new power has entered into us to break that bondage - but not that we should be set, rudderless, adrift on the ocean of life; but that we should be powerfully directed on a better course, leading to a better harbor.

Accordingly Paul, when he declares that we have been emancipated from the law of sin and of death by the advent of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus into our hearts, does not leave it so, as if emancipation were all. He adds, "Accordingly then, we are bound." Though emancipated, still bound! We are bound; but no longer to the flesh, to live after the flesh, but to the Spirit, to live after the Spirit. He hastens, indeed, to point out that this is no hard bondage, but a happy one; that sons is a name better fitted to express its circumstances than "slaves" - that it includes childship and heirship to God and with Christ. But all this blessed assurance operates to exhibit the happy estate of the service into which we have been brought, rather than to alter the nature of it as service. The essence of the new relation is that it also is one of control, though a control by a beneficent and not a cruel power. We do not at all catch Paul's meaning therefore, unless we perceive the strong emphasis which lies on this fact - that those who are led by the Spirit of God  are under the control of the Spirit of God. The extraneous power which has come into us, making for righteousness, comes as a controlling power. The children of God are not the directors of their own activities; there is One that dwells in them who is not merely their guide, but their governor and strong regulator. They go, not where they would, but where He would; they do not what they might wish, but what He determines. This it is to be led by the Spirit of God.

It is to be observed, however, on the other hand, that although Paul uses a term here which emphasizes the controlling influence of the Spirit of God over the activities of God's children, he does not represent the action of the Spirit as a substitute for their activities. If one is not led, in the sense of our text, when he is merely guided, it is equally true that one is not led when he is carried. The animal that is led by the attendant, the blind man that is led to Christ, the prisoner that is led to jail - each is indeed under the control of his leader, who alone determines the goal and the pathway; but each also proceeds on that pathway and to that goal by virtue of his own powers of locomotion.

There was a word lying at the apostle's hand by which he could have expressed the idea that God's children are borne by the Spirit's power to their appointed goal of holiness, apart from any activities of their own, had He elected to do so. It is employed by Peter when he would inform us how God gave His message of old to His prophets. "For no prophecy," he tells us, "ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being borne by the Holy Ghost." This term, "borne," emphasizes, as its fundamental thought, the fact that all the power productive of the motion suggested is inherent in, and belongs entirely to, the mover. Had Paul intended to say that God's children are taken up as it were in the Spirit's arms and borne, without effort on their own part, to their destined goal, he would have used this word. That he has passed over it and made use of the word "led" instead, indicates that, in his teaching, the Holy Spirit leads and does not carry God's children to their destined goal of holiness; that while the Spirit determines both the end and the way toward it, His will controlling their action, yet it is by their effort that they advance to the determined end.

Here, therefore, there emerges an interesting indication of the difference between the Spirit's action in dealing with the prophet of God in imparting through him God's message to men, and the action of the same Spirit in dealing with the children of God in bringing them into their proper holiness of life. The prophet is "borne" of the Spirit; the child of God is "led." The prophet's attitude in receiving a revelation from God is passive, purely receptive; he has no part in it, adds nothing to it, is only the organ through which the Spirit delivers it to men; he is taken up by the Spirit, as it were, and borne along by Him by virtue of the power that resides in the Spirit, which is natural to Him, and which, in its exercise, supersedes the natural activities of the man. Such is the import of the term used by Peter to express it. On the other hand, the son of God is not purely passive in the hands of the sanctifying Spirit; he is not borne, but led - that is, his own efforts enter into the progress made under the controlling direction of the Spirit; he supplies, in fact, the force exerted in attaining the progress, while yet the controlling Spirit supplies the entire directing impulse. Such is the import of the term used by Paul to express it. Therefore no prophet could be exhorted to work out his own message with fear and trembling; it is not left to him to work it out - the Holy Spirit works it out for him and communicates it in all its rich completeness to and through him. But the children of God are exhorted to work out their own salvation in fear and trembling because they know the Spirit is working in them both the willing and the doing according to His own good pleasure.

In order to appreciate this element of the apostle's teaching at its full value it is perhaps worth while to observe still further that in his choice of a term to express the nature of the Spirit's action in leading God's children the apostle avoids all terms which would attribute to the Spirit the power employed in making progress along the chosen road. Not only does he not represent us as being carried by the Spirit; he does not even declare that we are drawn by Him. There was a term in common use which the apostle could have used had he intended to express the idea that the Spirit drags, by physical force as it were, the children of God onward in the direction in which He would have them go. This term is actually used when the Saviour declares that no man can come unto Him except the Father draw him (John vi. 44) - which is as much as to say that men in the first instance do not and cannot come to Christ by virtue of any powers native to themselves, but require the action upon them of a power from without, coming to them, drawing their inert, passive weight to Christ, if they are to be brought to Him at all. We can identify this act of drawing - "dragging" would perhaps express the sense of the Greek term none too strongly - with that act which we call, in our theological analysis, regeneration, and which we explain in accordance with the import of this term, as the monergistic act of God, impinging on a sinner who is and remains, as far as this act is concerned, purely passive, and therefore does not move, but is moved.

Such, however, is not the method of the Spirit's leading of which Paul speaks in our text. This is not a drawing or dragging of a passive weight toward a goal which is attained, if attained at all, only by virtue of the power residing in the moving Spirit; but a leading of an active agent to an end determined indeed by the Spirit, and along a course which is marked out by the Spirit, but over which the soul is carried by virtue of its own power of action and through its own strenuous efforts. If we are not borne by the Spirit out of our sin into holiness with a smooth and easy movement, almost unnoted by us or noted only with the languid pleasure with which a child resting peacefully on its mother's breast may note its progress up some rough mountain road, so neither are we dragged by the Spirit as a passive weight over the steep and rugged path. We are led. We are under His control and walk in the path in which He sets our feet. It is His part to keep us in the path and to bring us at length to the goal. But it is we who tread every step of the way; our limbs that grow weary with the labor; our hearts that faint, our courage that fails - our faith that revives our sinking strength, our hope that instills new courage into our souls - as we toil on over the steep ascent.

And thus it is most natural that the third matter to which Paul's declaration that we are led by the Spirit of God directs our attention concerns the pathway over which our progress is made.

One is not led who is unconscious of the road over which he advances; such a one is rather carried. He who is led treads the road himself, is aware of its roughness and its steepness, pants with the effort which he expends, is appalled by the prospect of the difficulties that open out before him, rejoices in the progress made, and is filled with exultant hope as each danger and obstacle is safely surmounted. He who is led is in the hands of an extraneous power, of a power which controls his actions; but the pathway over which he is thus led is trodden by his own efforts - by his own struggles it may be - and the goal that is attained is attained at the cost of his own labor.

When Paul chooses this particular term, therefore, and declares that the sons of God are led by the Spirit, he is in no way forgetful of the arduous nature of the road over which they are to advance, or of the strenuous exertion on their own part by which alone they may accomplish it. He strengthens and comforts them with the assurance that they are not to tread the path alone; but he does not lull them into inertness by suggesting that they are not to tread it. The term he employs avouches to them the constant and continuous presence with them of the leading Spirit, not merely setting them in the right path, but keeping them in it and leading them through it; for it designates not an impulse which merely initiates a movement in a given direction, but a continuous influence unbrokenly determining a movement to its very goal. But his language does not promise them relief from the weariness of the journey, alleviation of the roughness of the road, freedom from difficulty or danger in its course, or emancipation from the labor of travel. That they have been placed in the right path, that they will be kept continuously in it, that they will attain the goal - of this he assures them; for this it is to be led of the Spirit of God, a power not ourselves controlling our actions, prevalently directing our movement to an end of His choice. But He does not encourage us to relax our own endeavors; for he who is led, even though it be by the Spirit of God, advances by virtue of his own powers and his own efforts. In a word, Paul chooses language to express the action of the Spirit on the sons of God which is in perfect harmony with his exhortation to the children of God to which we have already alluded - to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling because they know it is God that is working in them both the willing and the doing according to His own good pleasure.

What a strong consolation for us is found in this gracious assurance - poor, weak children of men as we are! To our frightened ears the text may come at first as with the solemnity of a warning: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these and these only are sons of God." Is there not a declaration here that we are not God's children unless we are led by God's Spirit? Knowing ourselves, and contemplating the course of our lives and the character of our ambitions, dare we claim to be led by the Spirit of God? Is this life - this life that I am living in the flesh - is this the product of the Spirit's leading? Shall not despair close in upon me as I pass the dreadful judgment on myself that I am not led by God's Spirit, and that I am, therefore, not one of His sons? Let us hasten to remind ourselves, then, that such is not the purport nor the purpose of the text. It stands here not in order to drive us to despair, because we see we have sin within us; but to kindle within us a great fire of hope and confidence because we perceive we have the Holy Spirit within us.

Paul, as we have seen, does not forget the sin within us. Who has painted it and its baleful power with more vigorous touch? But neither would he have us forget that we have the Holy Spirit within us, and what that blessed fact, above all blessed facts, means. He would not have us reason that because sin is in us we cannot be God's children; but in happy contradiction to this, that because the Holy Spirit is in us we cannot but be God's children. Sin is great and powerful; it is too great and too powerful for us; but the Holy Ghost is greater and more powerful than even sin. The discovery of sin in us might bring us to despair did not Paul discern the Holy Spirit in us - who is greater than sin - that he may quicken our hope.

This declaration that frightens us is not written, then, to frighten, but to console and to enhearten. It stands here for the express purpose of comforting those who would despair at the sight of their sin. Is there a conflict of sin and holiness in you? asks Paul. This very fact that there is conflict in you is the charter of your salvation. Where the Holy Spirit is not, there conflict is not; sin rules undisputed lord over the life. That there is conflict in you, that you do not rest in complacency in your sin, is a proof that the Spirit of God is within you, leading you to holiness. And all who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. This is the purport of the message of the text to us. Paul points us not to the victory of good over evil, but to the conflict of good with evil - not to the end but to the process - as the proof of childship to God. The note of the passage is, thus, not one of fear and despair, but one of hope and triumph. "If God be for us who can be against us?" - that is the query the apostle would have ring in our hearts. Sin has a dreadful grasp upon us; we have no power to withstand it. But there enters our hearts a power not ourselves making for righteousness. This power is the Spirit of the most high God. "If God be for us who can be against us?" Let our hearts repeat this cry of victory to-day.

And as we repeat it, let us go onward, in hope and triumph, in our holy efforts. Let our slack knees be strengthened and new vigor enter our every nerve. The victory is assured. The Holy Spirit within us cannot fail us. The way may be rough; the path may climb the dizzy ascent with a rapidity too great for our faltering feet; dangers, pitfalls are on every side. But the Holy Spirit is leading us. Surely, in that assurance, despite dangers and weakness, and panting chest and swimming head, we can find strength to go ever forward.

In these days, when the gloom of doubt if not even the blackness of despair, has settled down on so many souls, there is surely profit and strength in the certainty that there is a portal of such glory before us, and in the assurance that our feet shall press its threshold at the last. In this assurance we shall no longer beat our disheartened way through life in dumb despondency, and find expression for our passionate but hopeless longings only in the wail of the dreary poet of pessimism: - 

"But if from boundless spaces no answering voice shall start,
Except the barren echo of our ever yearning heart -
Farewell, then, empty deserts, where beat our aimless wings,
Farewell, then, dream sublime of uncompassable things."

We are not, indeed, relieved from the necessity for healthful effort, but we can no longer speak of "vain hopes." The way may be hard, but we can no longer talk of "the unfruitful road which bruises our naked feet." Strenuous endeavor may be required of us, but we can no longer feel that we are "beating aimless wings," and can expect no further response from the infinite expanse than "a sterile echo of our own eternal longings." No, no - the language of despair falls at once from off our souls. Henceforth our accents will be borrowed rather from a nobler "poet of faith," and the blessing of Asher will seem to be spoken to us also: -

"Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
There is none like unto God, O Jeshuran,
Who rideth upon the heavens for thy help,
And in His excellency on the skies.
The eternal God is thy dwelling-place,
And underneath are the everlasting arms."

VII
PAUL'S EARLIEST GOSPEL

"We give thanks to God always for you all, . . . knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election. . . . For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that . . . we should live together with Him. . . . Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it" - 1 Thes. i. 2,4; v. 9, 24. (R. V.)

I HAVE put together here passages from the beginning and the end of the First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, because, when taken together, these passages afford a succinct statement of the gospel which Paul preached to the Thessalonians, and on the basis of which that apostolic church was built up. It may be of special interest to note Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians because it gives what we may call his primitive gospel. In observing it we are contemplating the teaching of Paul at the beginning of his career.

This first letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest writing that has come down to us from Paul's pen. Is it perhaps also, we may possibly ask, a little crude and unformed in its presentation of Paul's gospel? A glance at the text is enough to reassure us. The gospel Paul preached to the Thessalonians is the same gospel that he preached to the Romans, and the same gospel that he laid upon the hearts of his helpers, Timothy and Titus, to preach when he should no longer be with them. There is no lack of firmness in the lines of it as they are drawn here; no faltering in the expression of the details. We cannot, then, approach its consideration in a purely historical spirit. The gospel Paul preached in those early days to the Thessalonians is the gospel which he preached ever after and is still preaching to-day to the world. It is the gospel that he commends to us as well as to the Thessalonians, and we may without hesitation take it to ourselves as the very gospel of God.

The external history of the carrying of the gospel to the Thessalonians is soon told. Paul had come among them filled with a very vivid sense of his divine mission, in response to the cry of the Macedonian man to come over and help the Greek peoples. He was, more immediately, fresh from the persecution at Philippi, and was pressed in spirit from his experience there (ii. 2). Waxing bold in God he had proclaimed, perhaps with unusual fervor - certainly not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance (i. 5) - the pure gospel of God's grace; and had not only adorned the doctrine he preached by a life of self-denial for its sake (ii. 9), but also commended it by a loving eagerness and tender pertinacity in enforcing it on the attention of his hearers. Looking back on it all, he describes his yearning after their souls in the beautiful similes of a nursing mother cherishing her children (ii. 7), and of a watchful father consoling and encouraging and testifying to his sons (ii. 11). The Thessalonians had received this gospel, pressed upon them with such affectionate assiduity, with exceptional readiness and exceptional zeal (i. 6, 9; ii. 15). They had recognized the word of the message as what it really was, not the word of man, but the word of God, and had set themselves to obey its commands. As fruitage of their faith the apostle perceives with joy the Christian graces their lives had from the first exhibited - their work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope (i. 3, 8; iv. 9).

In writing back to them to strengthen them in face of the persecution which had meanwhile fallen upon them, and to exhort them to a continuous advance in their Christian life, Paul naturally makes much of the gospel which had wrought so powerfully among them. He calls it affectionately his gospel (i. 4), and reverentially God's gospel (ii. 2), which was his therefore only because, as God's minister in the gospel of Christ (v. 2), he had been approved to be intrusted with it (ii. 4). It is not to himself - his eloquence, the winningness of his appeal, the force of his argumentation, the clearness of his presentation in preaching it - but to the gospel itself with which he was armed, that he ascribes the revolution that had been wrought in the lives of the Thessalonians. He was God's minister in the gospel of Christ indeed, but the gospel was itself God's own word, and it was it that energized, as the word of God, in them that believed (ii. 13). The whole value of his mission, he gives us to understand over and over again, resided just in the gospel he preached - the glad tidings which he was the instrument in bringing to men.

Now, in the words which we have culled out of this epistle for our text, we have this blessed gospel succinctly summarized. The core of it consisted, it is plain, in one and only one simple proclamation; a proclamation, however, which when duly apprehended is not less tremendous in its import and implications than it is simple in its form - the proclamation, to wit, of "salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us that we should live together with Him"; or, as in another passage (i. 10) it is even more concisely summed up, the proclamation of "Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath." "Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath!" Let us lay that sentence well to mind, for in that one sentence is contained the whole essence of Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians, and the whole essence of his gospel to us.

The whole essence, we say, though not, of course, the entire structure of it. For, as we have hinted, there are tremendous implications involved in this simple proclamation. And these implications Paul did not leave to the inferences of his disciples to work out, but made them rather the subject of explicit instruction. There is, for example, a whole doctrine of sin implied, and a whole doctrine of redemption, and a whole doctrine of the application of redemption to sinful men, and of the relation of God's activities to the activities of man in the saving process. For, be it observed, to say that the core of Paul's gospel consisted in the simple proclamation of Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath - of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that we should live with Him - is not the same as to say that he preached Jesus simpliciter. He did not preach Jesus simpliciter. He preached, as he elsewhere puts it, Jesus as crucified (1 Cor. ii. 2). And the very essence of his proclamation as a gospel consists in just this, that it was not Jesus as man or even as God-man merely that he held up to men's adoring gaze, but Jesus "our deliverer from the coming wrath," Jesus "who died for us that we should live with Him," that he offered to their trusting faith. And this mode of presenting Jesus has, as we say, its tremendous implications - implications of such import that without them the proclamation would be vain, and therefore of such importance as to be made by Paul the subject of explicit and eager teaching.

It will doubtless be of interest, and certainly it is of importance to us in our spiritual apprehension of the truth, to try to draw out somewhat fully the essential characteristics of Paul's gospel as exhibited in this his earliest presentation of it in written form.

The first thing that strongly impresses us, if we scrutinize it closely, is that it is emphatically a gospel of deliverance from sin.

It is a gospel of salvation; and just because it is a gospel of salvation, behind it there lies the deepest possible sense of sin - active in the apostle's mind as the basis of his whole gospel, and frankly presupposed as also lying in his readers' minds as a fundamental conviction, the point of entrance, indeed, of his gospel into their hearts. This background of sin is manifested in the words which we have taken as our text, in a double implication. First, there is the contrast drawn in the declaration, "For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation." Here we see the background of sin as guilt set before us. Those who do not obtain this salvation remain under the wrath of God; and the condition of man wherefrom he requires salvation is therefore a condition of wrath-deserving sin. Again, there is the contrast underlying the declaration, "Faithful is He who calleth you, who will also do it" - for this great assertion is made to comfort those who despair of attaining a blameless life in God's sight. We see here the background of sin as pollution, producing inability to good. It is only in that God who in this crisp proverb is declared not only the caller, but the doer - the one who emphatically performs - that man can trust for the cleansing of his heart. In both aspects of it - guilt and pollution - sin lies everywhere presupposed as the primary condition of Paul's gospel.

Not least do we perceive its shadow, of course, in that most pregnant of all the declarations of the epistle - that which sums up Paul's gospel in the proclamation of "Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath." It is clear that before all else this preacher is impressed with the fact that the wrath of God hangs imminent over mankind, and that the great black cloud of sin rests loweringly over the entire world It is because of this sense of sin that the need of deliverance looms so big in his mind; and that it is such good news, such glad tidings to his heart that Jesus is our deliverer from the coming wrath - that in His death and resurrection we have salvation from the wrath that otherwise would be appointed to us. All Paul's gospel thus rests on sin as its precedent occasion and the measure of its need, and the measure, therefore, of its preciousness.

Now it may well be that this sense of sin that supplied to Paul the dark background against which the glory of the gospel was thrown out, is not so deep or so poignant in our modern world as it was to him or even to his hearers. We hear a good deal, at all events, to-day of the "vanishing sense of sin"; and indeed, when we look around us, we see influences enough at work which must tend to dull men's feeling of the depth and heinousness of sin. Is it, perchance, merely unwitting error into which we fall because of our as yet insufficient knowledge or wisdom? Is it possibly merely the mark of our finiteness, the indication that we are not as yet all that we are hereafter to be? Is it perhaps but the effect of our insufficient adjustment to our environment, that will pass away as we fit ourselves more perfectly into our place? Is it perhaps just the mark of our advancing evolution to the perfection toward which we are constantly progressing - the condition of our advance, because the galling of the imperfections yet remaining and the incitement to effort for their removal? So men to-day talk mildly of what to the apostle was sin in all the hideous suggestions of that word - rotting corruption of heart, throwing itself up in an unclean and polluted life on the one hand; remorseful guilt in the sight of a holy God, entailing His wrath and His wrath's inevitable punishment on the other. And we shall never understand or participate in this gospel which Paul preached to the Thessalonians, and through them to us, until we feel with him the fact and the horror and the helplessness and the hopelessness of the sin that lies as its prime presupposition at its base.

We must note then, secondly, that just because Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians was emphatically a gospel of deliverance from sin, it was as emphatically an ethical gospel - a gospel of righteousness and holiness of life.

In Paul's own summary of it, in the second epistle, this characteristic is thrown forward into very special prominence. The salvation which he makes the substance of his proclamation he there describes as finding its whole sphere just in "sanctification of the Spirit," that is, in the work of the Holy Spirit framing the life into holiness. This note is equally a fundamental note of this first epistle. It is just because of their Christian graces - the revolution thus wrought in their lives - that Paul thanks God in behalf of his converts (i. 3). It is that God may establish their hearts unblamable before our God and Father - that they may be sanctified wholly, and in spirit and in soul and in body be preserved blameless (v. 23) - that he offers his most fervent prayers for them. He declares with strong asseveration that it is the will of God for them that they should abstain from fleshly lusts and be sanctified - for, he explains with insistent iteration, "God called us not for uncleanness but in sanctification" (iv. 8). It is the holy walk alone, he declares, that is pleasing to God (iv. i); and nothing can exhibit more plainly one's ignorance of God, he intimates, than that he should walk in uncleanness - for, says the apostle, God is our judge in all these things, and of this he had faithfully forewarned his readers and testified (iv. 6, 7). Thus the very essence of their calling is made to consist in holiness of life, and Paul obviously looks upon their holiness as the direct result of their salvation, or, let us say rather, as the very matter of their salvation. Their salvation consists just in holiness, and in so far as it exists at all it is manifested in the sanctification in which it consists.

So far, then, is Paul from lending any countenance to that odd fancy which has shown itself here and there through all the ages - that would look upon religion and morality in divorce, and esteem the one possible in the absence of the other - that he absolutely identifies the two in his gospel. This, of course, implies that with him religion is something more than a mere sentiment of awe in the presence of a superhuman power; and morality something more than mere external conformity to a standard of human custom or to laws of life of human exactment. To understand his standpoint we must apprehend all that is meant by religion conceived as communion with the holy God in Christ Jesus the righteous one, and by morality conceived as Godlikeness, as conformity to the likeness of God's own Son. He was not proclaiming an abstract "religion"; he was proclaiming the concrete religion of salvation from the wrath of God through Jesus Christ, and as this salvation is from sin it necessarily is unto holiness - that holiness without which no one shall see God. But we must not, on the other hand, suppose that Paul conceived this salvation and holiness as working its whole process all at once; or looked upon his converts, if believers at all, as wholly free from sin. Nothing is clearer than his solicitude for them as viatores who have not yet attained the goal; nothing is more striking than his tenderness with them in their remaining sin, and the zeal of his exhortations to them to go on to perfection.

We have not reached the bottom of the matter, therefore, until we observe, again, that Paul's gospel of salvation from sin, which he preached to the Thessalonians, was emphatically an eschatological gospel.

As we have seen, Paul was under no illusions, nor did he permit his readers to remain under any illusions, as to the nature of the life they had been leading in the world, or as to the need that they had of "salvation" with reference to this their life in this world - if they would at all be well-pleasing to God. The change that had come over them, the new life that had become theirs when "they turned unto God from idols to serve the living and true God" - their "work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope" - formed the very matter of his thanksgiving to God in their behalf. And one of the chief objects of his writing to them now was strenuously to urge them to increase and abound in love to one another (iii. 11), to abound more and more in the holy walk which alone is pleasing to God (iv. 7); and to press on their consciences the fact that the will of God toward them was their sanctification and His call to them was unto sanctification (iv. 3, 7); and at the same time to comfort them, in their sense of hopeless shortcoming, with the assurance of the faithfulness and ability of the God who had called them to complete the good work unto the end (iv. 23).

Nevertheless this strong insistence upon the salvation of their earthly life to holiness by no means exhausted his saving message; nor did it constitute its primary element. His eye is set steadily not upon the present, but upon the future. Even this holiness of life on which he lays such stress is, indeed, not looked upon as primarily for this life, but rather as having its chief significance for the life to come. This is distinctly its reference, for example, in Paul's fervent prayers for their perfecting in holiness and in his comforting promises concerning it. We read, "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all men, . . . to the end He may stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints" (iii. 12, 13). We read, "And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it" (vs. 23, 24). Thus their very sanctification, on which he lays such stress and in which he makes the very matter of their "salvation" to consist, is yet looked upon by him not in and for itself, but as a means to an end - as a preparation for something to come - in which something to come their real salvation finds its culmination and its crown.

It is emphatically, therefore, an eschatological salvation that Paul preached to the Thessalonians. And accordingly this epistle that he writes to them is a markedly eschatological epistle. His mind was set upon the future, and he kept his readers' minds also set upon the future. The salvation he was proclaiming to them was a matter not of present fruition, but distinctly of hope. To arm themselves for the temptations of life they are to put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation (iii. 8). What he desires in them, then, is an attitude not of attainment, but of expectation. When they turned unto God from idols it was to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven (i. 10). Whatever comes to them here and now, therefore, in the way of enjoyment of this salvation is prelibation only. The realization belongs not here, but yonder; not now, but in the time to come.

The hinge of the whole proclamation turns, in a word, on a doctrine of wrath to come, which impends over all, deliverance from which can be had only in Jesus Christ - in His death in our behalf and His resurrection as the firstfruits of those that sleep. Accordingly the very core of Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians is summed up, as we have seen, in the proclamation of Jesus our deliverer from the wrath to come. And when the apostle would encourage his readers in the prospect of that dread coming of the Lord as a thief in the night, bringing sudden destruction, as travail upon a woman with child, on all who have not obeyed His gospel, it is in the carefully chosen words, "For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that we should live with Him." The salvation they hoped for is thus set pointedly over against the wrath appointed for mankind outside its reach; and it is set forth most sharply as distinctly an eschatological salvation.

Accordingly, also, nothing that in this world befalls those who are appointed to the obtaining of this salvation can mar their joy in believing. Not a life of suffering and persecution. Indeed, to that too they are appointed (ii. 3). And whatever may be the distress and the affliction that assault them here, there remains a far more exceeding weight of glory in store for them hereafter. And not death itself. For death itself is but a sleep for those who believe that Christ died and rose again, and that God will bring them with Him. And when He shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, they shall rise from the dead to be henceforth for ever with the Lord

This is a gospel, obviously, then, not of temporal salvation from present-day evils, but of eternal salvation from the endless burnings of the wrath of God against sin; not of temporal salvation to present-day excellences, but of eternal salvation to everlasting glory. We have heard a good deal of late of very different import. We have been repeatedly told that our concern is not to be with heaven, but with earth; that we should not talk of saving our souls, but rather, simply, of saving our lives; that to get the life right is the main thing, and conduct should be the one end of our endeavor. Let us, it is said, take pains with our adjustments here and see to it that our lives are clean and our activities determined by altruistic, motives; and what then remains of duty to man or of hopes or fears with which he need concern himself? Such a gospel is plainly out of all relation with Paul's gospel. So far from beginning and ending with this life, Paul treats this life as but the "suburb of the life elysian, whose portal we call death." To him the real life is there; we are here but pilgrims with no abiding city, and should live as becomes those whose citizenship is elsewhere - in the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. To him all that enters into this life is but a preparation for the life to come, and should be consciously looked upon as such and dealt with as such; certainly not as unimportant, but as finding its importance not in itself, but in its relations to the eternity of bliss or woe, in comparison with which this little stretch of time in which the drama of the earthly life is played out is as nothing.

We cannot feel surprise, then, when we observe, once more, that Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians is distinctly a heterosoteric gospel - that is to say, a gospel that offers us salvation in and by the work of another; and does not simply propose for us a way in which we may save ourselves.

Had he in mind merely some amelioration of the conditions of life in this world - some better adjustment of society and of the individual life with respect to the several duties that press on it in its surroundings - it might have been more possible for him to look to man himself, in his native powers of conscience and sensibility and will, to work the necessary change; though for Paul, with his deep view of sin and of the paralysis that sin induces in all activities toward God, even this would have been really impossible. But when our eye is set not merely upon the adjustments of this life, but upon salvation from the dreadful wrath of God that burns against our sin conceived as guilt, what hope can be placed in man himself, or any power he may be thought to possess, to work out deliverance? Accordingly, Paul preaches a gospel not fundamentally of effort from within, but of deliverance from without. Its core, its substance, as we have repeatedly pointed out, lies in the great proclamation of "Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath," or, more fully stated, in the offer of "salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us that we should live with Him."

It is not merely a salvation, then, that Paul preaches, but above everything else, a Saviour; and the whole nerve of his gospel lies in the assumption that salvation to us men, immersed in sin and cowering under the righteous wrath of God, were impossible save through this Saviour. Therein, indeed, lies its whole character as a gospel, good news, glad tidings. To us, helpless and hopeless in our sins, unable to free ourselves from either the tyranny or curse of sin, Paul comes proclaiming a deliverer, in whose hands lies salvation. For, as we have already said, it is not Jesus simpliciter that constitutes the substance of Paul's gospel, but, as he phrases it elsewhere, Jesus as crucified (1 Cor. ii. 2) - Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath - salvation through Jesus Christ, who died for us that we should live together with Him.

It does not fall in Paul's way in this brief epistle to give any very full description of how Jesus saves from wrath. But enough is dropped incidentally to assure us of the outlines of His doctrine even here. Clearly the stress is thrown not on our Lord's person, but on His work. Not, of course, as if His person were treated as of no importance. He is ever "the Lord" to Paul (i. 6; ii. 15; iv. 1, 2, 15, 16, 17; v. 2, 12, 28), and that in the most exalted sense; or, with loving appropriation, "our Lord" (i. 2; iii. 11, 13; v. 9, 24, 28). He is God's unique Son (i. 10), in whom all Christian graces move as their sphere (i. 3; iii. 8; iv. 1, 2), and who along with God is the determiner of the ways of men (iii. 11), and from whom grace is invoked for men (iii. 13; v. 28). But the entire stress of the proclamation is thrown on His having become our deliverer from the coming wrath specifically through His work on our behalf - and more particularly by His death for us (v. 10). With His death the resurrection of Christ is connected as the object of faith for believers (i. 10; iv. 14); and with these His second coming from heaven, to close the drama on earth with a final assize, is associated as the object of the Christian's loving expectation (i. 10; ii. 19; iii. 13; iv. 14, 15, 17; v. 2, 23), since in it his salvation will be completed. But it is especially the death of Christ that is signalized as the hinge of His saving grace. He died for us that we should live with Him (v. 10). It is that He died and rose again that we must believe (iv. 14) if we are to be brought with Him at the last day. It was, in a word, in His death that He, whom God has raised from the dead and who now sits in heaven waiting until the time of His return shall arrive - the day of the Lord, which shall come not when men expect it, but when it suits His ends - has accomplished our salvation, our deliverance from the wrath to come.

And it is precisely at this point that we reach the center of the center, the heart of the heart of Paul's gospel. The glad tidings he bore to the Thessalonians were tidings of death - of a hideous death, a death which he can think of only with horror and with reprobation of those who inflicted it. "Who hath killed the Lord," he says - instinctively arranging the words so as to bring out the enormity of the deed: "who it was who the very Lord Himself have killed, Jesus, and also the prophets" - when his indignation arises against the Jews who are piling up their sins always, and over whom the wrath of God is, he says, hanging like a surcharged cloud ready to burst. But it was a death, on the other hand, that in another aspect of it was a glorious death - a death for us by which we are saved from death, and Christ is made our deliverer. "He died for us that we should live with Him!" There is the very kernel of Paul's gospel.

It will scarcely require emphasizing, therefore, that Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians was, further, emphatically a supernaturalistic gospel.

A gospel that comes proclaiming salvation to sinful men by the death of the Son of God - slain, indeed, by the wicked hands of men to their own undoing, but slain, on the other hand, in His own purpose, for the deliverance of His people from the coming wrath - must needs be supernaturalistic to the core. And so it is in every item of Paul's representation of it. The deliverance which it proclaims is a deliverance more especially, not from earthly ills or even from earthly suffering, but from the wrath to come. And as Paul tears aside the veil that hides the future, he tears aside with it the veil that covers the vast reaches of the heavenly places, and bids us raise our eyes from the earth and the forces that operate in the ordinary events of the earth, and look up to that broader stage where the drama of eternity is being played. The very eschatological character of the deliverance which he is announcing involves an emphasis on the supernatural which is almost extreme. Hence we are bidden to seek not on earth but in heaven for our deliverer (i. 10); whence also He is to come in His own time - with all His saints - and those that have fallen asleep in Jesus are to rise, to be caught up on the clouds and to meet Him in the air as He descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God. There is surely no chariness of the supernatural in the painting of this scene; and this is the scene of the final act in the drama of salvation.

But no less really supernaturalistic is Paul's conception of those processes in the working out of the deliverance which appeal less to the outward eye as the wonderful works of God; but to his inner apprehension clearly evinced themselves as nevertheless equally of God. How is this tremendous deliverance, for example, made the possession of men? How was it that he himself and these Thessalonian Christians to whom he was writing were made sharers in this great deliverance? To Paul this too was directly of God. He conceived it, in his gospel, as just as supernatural an occurrence as the blast of the trumpet of God itself, at that day, which shall raise the dead. This is, indeed, suggested to us in the words we have taken as our text; or, to speak more correctly, it is the open assertion of every one of the clauses which we have brought together in the text. It is, for example, to God that he gives thanks for the Christian virtues of his converts. Why? He tells us himself. It is because the very fact that they are Christians at all, that they received the gospel he brought to them, as well as all the subsequent fruits of their new lives, are proof of their election thereunto. Wherefrom it is easy to infer that in his view it is of God alone that man believes in the gospel of deliverance through His dear Son. Again, when he would prepare his readers for the prospect of the sudden coming of Christ as avenger upon those who are not in Him, he does it, not by pointing to anything that they can do for themselves to escape the impending doom, but by assuring them that they have been appointed of God not to wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation. And, once again, when he would encourage them, in their known shortcomings, yet to hope for a blameless standing before the judgment seat of God, he does it, not by appealing to their own powers of will and action, and so stirring them up to new endeavors, but by pointing to God: "Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it." In each and every case, in fine, it is to God that he raises their eyes as to the author of all that is good within them, as well as of all that is good in store for them. That they are in Christ at all is of God; that they shall abide in Him is of God; that they shall be fit to receive the reward in the end is of God. It is all of God and nothing at all of it is of themselves. From this plane of high supernaturalism in the application of the salvation wrought by the death of Christ the apostle departs in no single word in the whole epistle.

Participation in this salvation is certainly suspended on the proclamation and acceptance of the gospel. The very ground of Paul's thanks to God in behalf of the Thessalonians is that they had accepted the gospel (i. 2, 6; ii. 13). The very ground of his joy in being approved of God to be intrusted with this gospel turns on the inestimable importance of its proclamation; and Paul spared himself in nothing that he might proclaim it and proclaim it in its purity and with eager zeal (ii. 1). He distinctly declares, indeed, that the salvation of men depends on the gospel reaching them, and makes it accordingly one of the chief counts in his terrible arraignment of the Jews that they showed themselves haters of men in forbidding him to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved (ii, 16). Obviously, where the gospel is not conveyed, there is no salvation; where the gospel, though conveyed, is not accepted, there is no salvation.

But it does not at all follow, and Paul does not permit his readers for a moment to imagine that in his view it followed, that nothing is implied in its acceptance beyond opportunity to hear the gospel and a native movement of the natural will toward its acceptance. To him, on the contrary, man as a sinner is not an accepter of the gospel proclamation. That he ever accepts it is due proximately to a "call" from God - a call that operates within, at the center of his activities; and ultimately to his selection by God to be a recipient of His grace. Accordingly, it is God that Paul thanks for the entrance of his readers into the Christian life and hope, and it is to His election that he traces the fact of their acceptance of the gospel (ii. 2). And he emphatically declares that it is God that called His converts into His own kingdom and glory (ii. 13) - into His own kingdom and glory, as one would say, Who else can have the power to dispose of these but He? (iv. 7). Accordingly, too, Paul points his readers to this God who has called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification, as to one who employs a mode of action which will not let his purpose in the call fail: "Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it." This "caller," in other words, is emphatically also the "performer."

So little does there lie in Paul's mind a sense of inconsistency between the two ideas of salvation coming to men through their acceptance of the truth and salvation communicated to men by the appointment of God, that in the central passage of all, in which the terms of his gospel are most fully set forth, he brings the two ideas together in the most significant manner. Fear not, he says, for God appointed us, "not unto wrath, but" - you will observe he does not say simply "but unto salvation," but, bringing out our personal act in receiving it, "but unto the obtaining, the acquisition of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." It is our "acquisition" this salvation; and it comes to none who do not receive it. But that we acquire it, that we receive it by whatever subjective act, is only because of our appointment thereunto by God; or, as Paul puts it in the parallel passage in the second epistle, because "God has chosen us from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto He called us through the gospel unto the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thes. ii. 13).

Thus, whenever Paul touches on the matter, he takes us at once back to God, and exhibits in the fullest light the inherent supernaturalism of His gospel. It is a gospel of salvation by the mighty power of God, prepared for in our eternal election, applied in our effectual call, completed by a prevalent keeping, and issuing at last in entrance into glory - all through the constant work of God, the faithful performer.

It is plain, therefore, that Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians was a gospel in which all the glory is given to God.

Its note from beginning to end is the note of soli Deo gloria. It is God, we repeat, whom he thanks for every Christian grace that he discovers in his readers. It is to God that he ascribes their very acceptance of the gospel that was offered them - to God who "called" them into His own kingdom and glory. It is to God that he ascribes every step they take in the life of holiness into which they have been called. It is to God that he prays that they may be perfected in their sanctification, and presented blameless before the throne of judgment at the last day. It is to God that he ascribes their keeping until that dread event. It is on God's faithfulness - the faithfulness of Him that calls - that he hangs all his and his converts' hopes of escaping the wrath they know they deserve: "Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it."

It is all of God; nothing is, in the ultimate analysis, of man. Man provides only the sinner to be saved: God provides the entire salvation. And though it is a man that God saves, and though He saves him, therefore, as a man, and as a man in the full exercise of all his activities that belong to him as a man - so that he is saved by the acceptance of the truth, in a life of holiness, through a perseverance in sanctification to the end - yet it is always and ever God to whom the acceptance, the walk, the endurance is due; who, in a word, is working at every step and in every stage both the willing and the doing in accordance with His own good pleasure. The details of God's modes of operation in bringing the vessels of His election, whom He has appointed not to wrath but to the obtaining of salvation, to entrance into His own kingdom and glory, are indeed little dwelt upon here. We hear of the Holy Spirit as the agent in performing the work, certainly (iv. 8; i. 5, 6; [v.19]), but only incidentally, without pause for explanation. But the fact of the dependence of the whole process of salvation on the loving will of the Father, who selects and calls and sanctifies and glorifies whom He will, is the underlying assumption in every allusion. The soli Deo gloria sounds from end to end of the epistle as its dominant note.

And therefore, finally, the gospel of Paul to the Thessalonians is emphatically a gospel of faith, a gospel of trust.

The terms "believe" and "faith" do not occur with any especial frequency in this epistle (i. 7; ii. 10, 13; iv. 4; i. 3, 8; iii. 2, 5; vi. 10; v. 8). But the thing is a fundamental note of the whole letter. Just because the whole of salvation as proclaimed in Paul's gospel, in each of its steps and stages, runs back to God as its author and furtherer, a continual sense of humble dependence on God and of loving trust in Him is by it formed and fostered in every heart into which it makes entrance. Under the teachings of this gospel the eye is withdrawn from self and the face turned upward in loving gratitude to God, the great giver.

Now this attitude of trust and dependence on God is just the very essence of religion. In proportion as any sense of self-sufficiency or any dependence on self enters the heart, in that proportion religion is driven from it. And what other attitude is becoming or, indeed, possible in weak and sinful man? Can he wrest salvation from the unwilling hands of God? Can he retain it in his powerless grasp when once it is given him? No. If he is to be saved at all, it must be God that saves him; and the beginning and middle and end of his salvation must be alike of God. Every sinner, when once aroused to the sense of his sin, knows this for himself - knows it in the times of his clearest vision and deepest comprehension with a poignancy that drives him to despair. Paul's gospel meets the sinner's need; it provides a salvation from without, every step of which is of God. And it meets also the highest aspirations of the saint as well: for it justifies and strengthens his instinctive attitude of trust and his ineradicable conviction of dependence on the God of all grace. In one word, Paul's gospel to the Thessalonians, being through and through a gospel of trust, reveals itself to us as a gospel, as the only gospel, in which religion comes to its rights and by which the heart is drawn upward to the great heart of God, and is immovably attached to it in adoring love.

Oh, brethren, was this gospel for the Thessalonians only? Or shall we not hearken to it as also a gospel for us, to-day? Are we not, in our native condition, in like case with those to whom Paul first taught it? We look within us, and what do we see there but foul corruption, festering to spiritual death? We raise our eyes to heaven, and what do we observe there but the wrath of God turned against every doer of iniquity? We cast our eyes forward and peer into the future, and what can we discern as the closing scene of this drama of time in which our parts are cast but a dread day of judgment, when we shall receive the due reward of our wicked hearts and evil deeds? Does not the cry rise to the lips of each of us as that scene takes form more and more sharply in our vision, -

That fearful day, that day of speechless dread,
When Thou shalt come, to judge the quick and dead -
I shudder to foresee,
Oh, God, what then shall be?"

Oh, what glad tidings it is to hear of "Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath" - of a salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has died for us that we should live with Him, to which, rather than to this impending wrath, God has appointed us!

God has appointed us! Let us note that clause - for, ah, do we not know that it is not to this that we have appointed ourselves? Does not the proof of this lie all around us? Did we turn ourselves from our sins, or did we not rather delight ourselves in them? Was it we who sought out the ways of peace and joy, or did we not from the beginning scorn them and love rather the pursuit of evil? Can we even to-day keep our feet from falling? Oh, how we slip! Nay, how we willfully turn aside to do our own deeds! When we observe our ways, do we not know that it is not in us to attain the good? Let us hear, then, the rest of this gospel: "Faithful is He that calleth you, and it is He who will also do it." As it is He that has given His Son to die for us; as it is He who has appointed us to salvation in Him; as it is He that has called us into communion with His holy life; so it is He who will complete the work He has begun in us - it is He that will bring us in gladness to the goal. Let us trust, then, in Him! Let us trust, then, in Him! For it is in this trust - this trust in God, who is at once our Saviour and our salvation - that begins and centers and ends all our personal religion; that begins and centers and ends all our rational hope; that begins and centers and ends all our salvation. It is He that saves us and not we ourselves. Let us trust, then, in Him! Let us trust in Him!

VII
FALSE RELIGIONS AND THE TRUE

"What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you." - Acts xvii. 23. (R. V.)

THESE words give the gist of Paul's justly famous address at Athens before the court of the Areopagus. The substance of that address was, to be sure, just what the substance of all his primary proclamations to Gentile hearers was, namely, God and the judgment. The necessities of the case compelled him to approach the heathen along the avenue of an awakened conscience. They had not been prepared for the preaching of Jesus by a training under the old covenant, and no appeals to prophecy and its fulfillment could be made to them. God and the judgment necessarily constituted, therefore, the staple of his proclamation to them; and so typical an instance as this address to the Areopagus could not fail to exhibit the characteristics of its class with especial purity.

Nevertheless, the peculiar circumstances in which it was delivered have imprinted on this address also a particular character of its own. Paul spoke it under a specially poignant sense of the depths of heathen ignorance and of the greatness of heathen need. The whole address palpitates with his profound feeling of the darkness in which the heathen world is immersed, and his eager longing to communicate to it the light intrusted to his care. All that goes before the words selected for the text and all that comes after serve but to enhance their great declaration - build for it, as it were, but a lofty platform upon which it is raised to fix the gaze of men. Out of it all Paul fairly shouts this one essential message to the whole unbelieving world: "What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you."

Let us consider for a little while the circumstances in which the address was delivered. Summoned by a supernatural vision, Paul had crossed the sea and brought the gospel into Europe. Landing in Macedonia, he had preached in its chief cities, meeting on the one hand with great acceptance, and arousing on the other the intensest opposition. He had been driven from city to city until the brethren had at last fled with him to the sea and, hurrying him upon a ship, had conveyed him far to the south and, at last, landed him at Athens. There they left him - alone but in safety - and returned to Macedonia to send his companions to him.

Meanwhile Paul awaited their coming at Athens. Athens! mother of wisdom, mistress of art; but famous, perhaps, above all its wisdom and above all its art for the intensity of its devotion to the gods. Paul had had a missionary's experience with idolatry, in its grosser and more refined forms alike; he had been forced into contact with it throughout his Asian work. Even so, Athens seems to have been a revelation to him - a revelation which brought him nothing less than a shock. Here he was literally in the thick of it. No other nation was so given over to idolatry as the Athenians. One writer tells us that it was easier to find a god in populous Athens than a man; another, scarcely exaggerating, declares that the whole city was one great altar, one great sacrifice, one great votive offering. The place seemed to Paul studded with idols, and the sight of it all brought him a paroxysm of grief and concern.

He was in Athens, as it were, in hiding. But he could not keep silence. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and there preached to the Jews and those devout inquirers who were accustomed to visit the synagogues of the Jews in every city. But this did not satisfy his aroused zeal. He went also to the market place - that agora which the public teachers of the city had been wont to frequent for the propagation of their views - and there, like them, every day, he argued with all whom he chanced to meet. Among these he very naturally encountered certain adherents of the types of philosophy then dominant - the Epicurean and Stoic - and in conflict with them he began to attract attention.

He was preaching, as was his wont, "Jesus" and the "resurrection" - doubtless much as he preached them in his recorded address, to which all this led up. Some turned with light contempt away from him and called him a mere smatterer; others, with perhaps no less contempt, nevertheless took him more seriously and anxiously asked if he were not "a proclaimer of alien divinities." This was an offense in Athens; and so they brought him to the Areopagus. He was not formally arraigned for trial - there was only set on foot something like a preliminary official inquiry; and the question put to him is oddly compounded of courteous suggestion and authoritative demand. They said: "May we be allowed to know what this new teaching is that is talked of by thee? For thou dost bring certain strange things to our ears; and it is our wish to know what these things may be." The hand is gloved, but you see the iron showing through. It was to Paul, however, only another opportunity; and in the conscious authority of his great mission he stood forth in the midst of the court and began to speak.

We must bear in mind that Paul was put to the question on the general charge that he was "a proclaimer of strange deities." He had no intention whatever of denying this general allegation. He was rather firmly determined to seize this opportunity yet once more to proclaim a Deity evidently unknown to the Athenians. And this, in fact, he proceeded at once to do. But he did it after a fashion which disarmed the complaint; which enlisted the Athenians themselves as unwilling indeed, but nevertheless real, worshipers of the God he proclaimed; and which powerfully pried at their consciences as well as appealed to their intelligences and even their national pride to give wings to his proclamation.

The hinge on which the whole speech turns is obviously Paul's deep sense of the darkness of heathen ignorance. As our Saviour said to the Samaritan woman, so Paul, in effect, says to the Athenian jurists and philosophers, "You worship you know not what." The altar at Athens which he signalizes as especially significant of heathen worship is precisely the altar inscribed "To a Not known God." The whole course of their heathen development he characterizes as a seeking of God, if by any chance - "in the possible hope at least that" - they may touch Him as a blind man touches with his hands fumblingly what he cannot see - and so doubtfully find Him; nay, shortly and crisply, as " times of ignorance." The very purpose of his proclamation of his gospel among them is to bring light into this darkness, to make them to know the true nature and the real modes of working, the all-inclusive plan and the decisive purpose of the one true God. Therefore it is simply true to say that the hinge on which the whole speech turns is the declaration that the heathen are steeped in ignorance and require, above all things, the light of divine instruction.

But when we have said this we have not said all. After all, it is not quite a blank ignorance that Paul ascribes to the Athenians. He institutes a certain connection between what they worship and the God he was commending to them. He does not wholly scoff at their religion, though he certainly sharply reprobates and deeply despises the modes in which it expresses itself. He does not entirely condemn their worship even of a not-known god; he rather makes it a point of attachment for proclaiming the higher worship of the known God of heaven and earth which he is recommending to them. There is, in a word, a certain amount of recognition accorded by him to their religious feelings and aspirations.

It is accordingly not all a scoff when he tells them that he perceives that they are apparently "very religious." The word he employs is no doubt sometimes used in a bad sense, and accordingly is frequently translated here by the ill-savored word "superstitious." So our English version translates it: "I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious" or "somewhat superstitious," as the Revised Version puts it. But it is scarcely possible to believe that Paul uses it in this evil sense here. It means in itself nothing but "divinity-fearing" - not exactly "God-fearing," though generally equivalent to that, because it has a hint in it of the gods many and lords many of the heathen. It easily, therefore, lends itself to a bad sense, and is often, as we have seen, so used. But as often it is used in a perfectly good sense, as equivalent simply to "religious," and surely it is so used here. Paul is not charging his hearers with superstition; he is recognising in them a religious disposition. He chooses a term, indeed, of somewhat non-committal character - which would not say too much - which might be taken perhaps as bearing a subtle implication of incomplete approval: but a word by which he expresses at least no active disapproval and even a certain measure of active approval. Paul, in fine, commends the religiousness of the Athenians.

The forms in which this religiousness expressed itself he does not commend. The sight of them, indeed, threw him into a paroxysm of distress, if not of indignation. He could not view without disgust and horror the degradation of their worship. In one sense we may say that it reached its lowest level in this altar, "To a Not-known God." For what could be worse than the superstitious dread which, after cramming every corner of the city with altars to every conceivable divinity, was not yet satisfied, but must needs feel blindly out after still some other power of earth or air or sky to which to immolate victims or before which to cringe in unintelligent fear? But in another aspect it may even have seemed to Paul that in this altar might rather be seen the least degraded expression of the religious aspirations of the Athenians. Where every definite trait given to their conceptions of divinity was but a new degradation of the idea of the divine, there is a certain advantage attaching to vagueness. At least no distinctive foulness was attributed to a god confessedly unknown. Perhaps just because of its undifferentiation and indefiniteness it might therefore seem a purer symbol of that seeking after God for which God had destined all nations when He appointed to them the ordained times and limits of their habitation, if by any chance they might feel Him and so find Him. Surely the forms they gave to the gods they more definitely conceived, the characters they ascribed to them, the functions they assigned them, and the legendary stories of their activities which they wove around them, sufficiently evinced that in them the Athenians had not so much as fumblingly touched God, much less found Him. A worship offered to "an unknown god" was at least free from the horror of definitely conceiving God as corruptible men and birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things.

In any event, behind the worship, however ill conceived, Paul sees and recognizes the working of that which he does not shame to call religion. Enshrined within his general condemnation of the heathenism of the Athenians there lies thus a recognition of something not to be condemned - something worthy of commendation rather - fit even on his lips to bear the name of "religion." All this is implied in the words we have chosen as our text, and it is therefore that we have said of them that they give us the gist of the whole address. "What ye thus not knowing adore," says Paul, "that it is that I am proclaiming to you." It will repay us, probably, to probe the matter a little in the way of its wider applications.

First, then, we say there is given in the apostolic teaching a certain recognition to the religion of the heathen.

We do not say, mark you, that a recognition is given to the heathen religions. That is something very different. The heathen religions are uniformly treated as degrading to man and insulting to God. The language of a recent writer which declares that man's "most unfortunate things" are his religions - nay, that man's religions are "among his worst crimes" - is thoroughly justified by the apostolic attitude toward them. Read but the account given at the end of the first chapter of Romans of the origin of these religions in the progressive degradation of man's thought of God, as man's repeated withdrawals from God and God's repeated judicial blindings of man interwork to the steady destruction of all religious insight and all moral perception alike, and from this observe how the writers of the New Testament conceived of the religions which men have in the procession of the ages formed for themselves.

Nor is it to be imagined that only the more degraded of the popular superstitions were in the apostle's mind when he painted this dreadful picture of the fruits of human religious thinking. In an almost contemporary epistle he calmly passes his similar judgment on all the philosophies of the world. Not by all its wisdom, he tells us, has the world come to know God, but in these higher elaborations also, becoming vain in its imaginations, its foolish heart has only become darkened. In a somewhat later epistle he sums up his terrible estimate of the religious condition of the Gentiles in that dreadful declaration that "they walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart."

This is what the apostle thought - not of some heathen, but of heathen as such, in their religious life - not of the degraded bushmen of Australia or Africa or New Guinea, but of the philosophic minds of Greece and Rome in the palmiest days of their intellectual development and ethical and aesthetic culture; of the Socrateses and Platos and Aristotles and Epictetuses and Marcus Aureliuses of that ancient world, which some would have us look upon as so fully to have found God as veritably to have taken heaven by storm and to have entered it by force of its own attainments. To him it was, on the contrary, in his briefest phrase, "without hope and without God."

Nevertheless, alongside of and in the very midst of this sweeping and unmitigated condemnation of the total religious manifestation of heathendom there exists an equally constant and distinct recognition of the reality and value of religion even among the heathen. It does not seem ever to have occurred to the writers of the New Testament to doubt that religion is as universal as intelligence itself; or to question the reality or value of this universal religiousness. To them man, as such, appears to be esteemed no more a reasonable creature than a religious animal; and they appeal to his religious instinct and build upon it expectations of a response to their appeal, with the same confidence which they show when they make their appeal to his logical faculty. They apparently no more expect to find a man without religion than they expect to find a man without understanding, and they seem to attach the same fundamental value to his inherent religiousness as to his inherent rationality.

In this the passage that is more particularly before us to-day is thoroughly representative of the whole New Testament. Paul, it is seen at once, does not here in any way question the fact that the Athenians are religious, any more than he questions that they are human beings. He notes, rather, with satisfaction that they are very especially religious. "I perceive that ye are in all things exceedingly divinity-fearing." There is a note of commendation in that which is unmistakable. Nor does he betray any impulse to denounce their religious sentiment as intrinsically evil. On the contrary, he takes it frankly as the basis of his appeal to them. In effect, he essays merely to direct and guide its functioning, and in so doing recognizes it as the foundation of all the religious life which he would, as the teacher of Christianity to them, fain see developed in and by them. In the same spirit he always deals with what we may call the inherent religiousness of humanity. Man, as such, in his view is truly and fundamentally religious.

Now this frank recognition, or, we might better say, this emphatic assertion of the inherent religiousness of humanity, constitutes a fact of the first importance in the biblical revelation. It puts the seal of divine revelation on the great fundamental doctrine that there exists in man a notitia Dei insita - a natural knowledge of God, which man can no more escape than he can escape from his own humanity. Endowed with an ineradicable sense of dependence and of responsibility, man knows that Other on which he depends and to whom he is responsible in the very same act by which he knows himself. As he can never know himself save as dependent and responsible, he can never know himself without a consciousness of that Other Not-self, on whom he is dependent and to whom he is responsible; and in this co-knowledge of self and Over-not-self is rooted the whole body of his religious conceptions, religious feelings, and religious actions-which are just as inevitable functionings of his intellect, sensibility, and will as any actions of those faculties, the most intimate and immediate we can conceive of. Thus man cannot help being religious; God is implicated in his very first act of self-consciousness, and he can avoid thinking of God, feeling toward Him, acting with respect to Him, only by avoiding thinking, feeling, and acting with respect to self.

How he shall conceive God - what notion he shall form, that is, of that Over-not-self in contrast with which he is conscious of dependence and responsibilty; how he shall feel toward God - that is, toward that Over-not-self, conceived after this fashion or that; how he shall comport himself toward God - that is, over against that Over-not-self, so and not otherwise conceived, and so and not otherwise felt toward: these questions, it is obvious, raise additional problems, the solution of which must wait upon accurate knowledge of the whole body of conditions and circumstances in which the faculties of intellect, feeling, and will function in each given case. But that in his very first act of consciousness of self as a dependent and responsible and not as a self-centered and self-sufficient being, man is brought into contact with the Over-not-self on which he is dependent and to which he is responsible; and must therefore form some conception of it, feel in some way toward it, and act in some manner with respect to it, is as certain as that he will think and feel and act at all.

That man is a religious being, therefore, and will certainly have a religion, is rooted in his very nature, and is as inevitable as it is that man will everywhere and always be man. But what religion man will have is no more subject to exact a priori determination than is the product of the action of his faculties along any other line of their functioning. Religion exists and must exist everywhere where man lives and thinks and feels and acts; but the religions that exist will be as varied as the idiosyncrasies of men, the conditions in which their faculties work, the influences that play on them and determine the character of their thoughts and feelings and deeds.

Bearing this in mind, we shall not be surprised to note that along with the recognition of the religiousness of man embodied in the apostolic teaching, there is equally prominent in it, as we have said, the unwavering assertion of the absolute necessity of religious instruction for the proper religious development of man.

The whole mission of the apostle is founded upon, or, more properly speaking, is the appropriate expression of, this point of sight. Nor could he be untrue to it on an occasion like that which is more particularly engaging our attention to-day. We observe, then, as we have already pointed out, that though he commends the Athenians for their God-fearingness and finds in their altar to a "not-known god" a point of attachment for his proclamation of the true God; he does not for a moment suggest that their native religiousness could be left safely to itself to blossom into a fitting religious life; or that his proclamation of the known God of heaven and earth possessed only a relative necessity for them.

Clearly he presents the necessity rather as absolute. God had for a time, no doubt, left the nations of the world to the guidance of their own religious nature, that they might seek after Him in the possible expectation at least of finding Him. But on God's part this was intended rather as a demonstration of their incapacity than as a hopeful opportunity afforded them; and in its results it provides an empirical proof of the absolute necessity of His interference with direct guidance.

Accordingly the apostle roundly characterizes the issue of all heathen religious development, inclusive of that in Athens itself, the seat of the highest heathen thinking on divine things, as just bald ignorance. That the world by its wisdom knows not God and lies perishing in its ignorance is the most fixed element of his whole religious philosophy.

What is involved here is, of course, the whole question of the necessity of "special revelation." It is a question which has been repeatedly fought out during the course of Christian history. In the eighteenth century, for example, it was this very issue that was raised in the sharpest possible form by the deistic controversy. A coterie of religious philosophers, possessing an eye for little in man beyond his logical understanding, undertook to formulate what they called the "natural religion." This they then set over against the supernatural religion, which Christianity professed to be, as the religion of nature in contrast with the religion of authority - authority being prejudged to be in this sphere altogether illegitimate. The result was certainly instructive. Bernard Pünger is not a jot too severe when he remarks of this boasted "natural religion" of the Deists, that it deserves neither element of its designation. "It is," he declares, "neither religion nor natural, but only an extremely artificial abstraction of theologians and philosophers. It is no religion, for nowhere, in no spot, in either the old or new world, has there ever existed even the smallest community which recognized this 'natural religion.' And it is not natural; for no simple man ever arrived of himself at the ideas of this 'natural religion."'

And when it was thus at last formulated by the philosophers of the eighteenth century, it proved no religion even to them. A meager body of primary abstract truth concerning God and His necessary relations to man was the entire result. This formed, indeed, an admirable witness to the rational rooting of these special truths concerning God and our relations to Him in the very nature of man as a dependent and responsible being; and this the Christian thinker may well view with satisfaction. It may be taken as supplying him also with a demonstration, once for all, that an adequate body of religious truth can never be obtained by the artificial process of abstracting from all the religions of the world the elements held in common by them all, and labeling this "natural religion." Neither in religion nor in any other sphere of life can the maxim be safely adopted that the least well-endowed member of a coterie shall be crowned king over all. Yet obviously that is the result of proceeding by what is called "the consensus method" in seeking a norm of religious truth.

Taught wisdom by experience like this, our more modern world has found a new method of ridding itself of the necessity of revelation. The way was pointed out to it by no less a genius than Friedrich Schleiermacher himself. Led no doubt by the laudable motive of seeking a place for religion unassailable on the shallow ground of intellectualistic criticism, he relegated it in its origin exclusively to the region of feeling. In essence he said, religion is the immediate feeling of absolute dependence.

He calls it an "immediate feeling" or an "immediate self-consciousness" just in order to eliminate from it every intellectual element. That is to say, he wishes to distinguish between two forms of self-consciousness or feeling, the one mediated by the perception of an object and the other not so mediated, but consisting in an immediate and direct sensation, abstracted from every intellectual representation or idea; and in this latter class of feelings he places that feeling of absolute dependence with which he identifies religion. Religion, therefore, it is argued, is entirely independent of every intellectual conception; it is rooted in a pure feeling or immediate consciousness which enters into and affects all of our intellectual exercises, but is itself absolutely independent of them all, and persists the same through whatever intellectual conceptions we may form of the object of our worship or through whatever actions we may judge appropriate to the service of that object thus or otherwise conceived.

Upon the basis of this mode of conceiving religion we have been treated of late to innumerable paeans to religion as a primal force running through all the religions; and are being constantly exhorted to recognize as absolutely immaterial what forms it takes in its several manifestations, and to greet it as subsisting equally valid and equally noble beneath all its forms of manifestation indifferently, because in itself independent of them all. It is thus only the common cry that echoes all around us which Père Hyacinthe repeats in his passionate declaration: "It is not true that all religions are false except one only."

Only a few years ago when a professor was being inducted into a new chair of the History of Religion established in one of the oldest of the Reformed schools, he took up the same cry with much the same passion, and professed himself able to feel brotherhood with every form of religion - except that perhaps which arrogated to itself to be the only legitimate form. "When the history of religions," he eloquently said, "places in our hands the religious archives of humanity it is surely our duty rather to garner these treasures than to proclaim Christianity the only good, the only true one among the religions of men. 'We also, we also are the offspring of God,' the poet Aratus cried three centuries before Christ. Let us pause before this cry of the human soul and let us contemplate with attention the luminous web in which the history of this divine sonship has been woven by universal worship. When we have opened, with the same respect which we demand for our own, the sacred books of other peoples, when we have observed them clinging, as to their most holy possessions, to their sublime traditions, in which are enshrined the mother-thoughts of all true religion - lavishing their genius in exalting them, sacrificing their fortunes in defending them, exiling themselves to the most distant lands and sinking into the burning sands in propagating them, accepting death itself in order to preserve them - our hearts, moved with surprise and brotherly sympathy, will repudiate for ever the Pharisaic pride which treats as heathen or as uncircumcised all God's creatures which are without the sacred pale of the elect." "Men of all nations," he tells us, "and of all tongues-whether savage or civilized, whether ignorant or instructed, whether Parsi or Christian - though God may have been revealed to them diversely, though they may be looking up to Him through variously-colored glasses - are yet all looking nevertheless up to the same God, by whatever liturgical name He may be known to them - and it is to Him that all their prayers alike are ascending. And to all of them," he adds, "I feel myself a brother - except to the hypocrite." "No one," he concludes, "who has ever felt echoing in his heart the murmur of this universal worship will ever be able to return to the sectarian apologetics with which the unhappiness of the times inspired the Jews after the exile, and which from Judaism has passed into the Church of Christ."

I have not thus adverted to this eloquent address because it is especially extreme in its assertions. It is not. Rather, let it be said, it enunciates with unusual balance and moderation views common to a large part of the modern world. It is on this very account that I have adduced its presentation of this very widespread conception because it affords us a very favorable opportunity to observe it at its best, touched with fervor and announced with winning eloquence of speech. Even in it, however, we may perceive the portentous results to which the whole conception of religion as an "immediate feeling" may take us - nay, must inevitably carry us. If what it tells us be true, it obviously is of no importance whatever with what conceptions religion may be connected. So only the religious sentiment be present, all that enters into the essence of religion is there; and one may call himself Brahmin or Mohammedan, Parsi or Christian, and may see God through whatever spectacles and name Him by whatever designation he will, and yet be and remain alike, and alike, validly, religious. We may justly look upon this inevitable result of the identification of religion with an "immediate feeling" as its sufficient refutation.

In no event could it be thought difficult, however, to exhibit the untenability of this entire conception. We should probably only need to ask, How could an abstract feeling of dependence, with no implication whatever of the object on which the dependence leans, possess any distinctively religious quality whatever? It would appear too clear to require arguing that the whole religious quality of a feeling of dependence, recognized as religious, must be derived necessarily from the nature of the object depended upon - viz., God. If we conceive that object as something other than God, then the feeling of dependence ceases to be in any intelligible sense religious. It is assuredly only on God that a specifically religious feeling can rest.

Schleiermacher himself appears to have felt this. And accordingly he distinguished between the feeling of dependence in general and the feeling of absolute dependence in particular; and on the supposition that absolute dependence can be felt only toward the Absolute, confined the religious feeling to it. Here there appears to be a subintroduction of the idea of God; and therefore a veiled admission that we have in this "feeling of absolute dependence" not an "immediate feeling," but a feeling mediated by an idea, to wit, the idea of God. Thus the whole contention is, in principle, yielded; and we revert to the more natural and only valid ground - that all their quality is supplied to feelings by the objects to which they are directed, and that, therefore, the nature of our conceptions so far from having nothing, has everything, to do with religion.

I recall with great vividness of memory a striking picture I once saw, painted by that weird Russo-German genius Sasha Schneider, in order to illustrate religion conceived as the feeling of absolute dependence, and at the same time to express the artist's repugnance to it and scorn of it. It has seemed to me to provide us with a most striking parable. He figures a man stripped naked and laden down with chains, head bowed, in every trait dejection, every fiber of every muscle relaxed, every line a line of hopelessness and despair. The ground on which he stands is the earth itself, fashioned, however, into the hideous presentment of a monstrous form, so painted as to give it the texture of hard, black, iron-like stone. The horizon that stretches around the figure and seems to bend in upon him consists of two great iron-like arms ending in dreadfully protuberant fingers, which appear about to close in on his limbs; while just before him heavy shoulders rise slightly into a low forbidding hillock, and between them thrusts forward the hard mound of a scarce-distinguishable head, lit by two malevolent eyes, like low volcano-fires glaring up upon their victim. Thus is set forth the artist's conception of religious sentiment as the "feeling of absolute dependence."

Yes - but we then must add, there are two points that require criticism in the conception presented. First, in this figure of a despondent man, the artist has, after all, painted not the feeling of dependence, but rather the feeling of helplessness. These are very different things. And in their difference we touch, as I think, the very heart of the error we are seeking to unmask. A feeling of dependence, properly so-called, necessarily implies an object: helplessness - yes, that may exist without an object, but not dependence. He that depends must, needs have somewhat on which to depend. A feeling of dependence is unthinkable apart from the object on which the dependence rests. In picturing for us abject "helplessness," then, the artist has not at all pictured for us "dependence." The former is passive, the latter is active, and the abjectness that belongs to the one is not at all inherent in the other. Secondly, even so, the artist has not been able to get along without an object. He has painted this dejected man: there he stands before us the very picture of helplessness. But the artistic sense is not satisfied: and so he throws around him these hideous encircling arms; he sets upon him this baleful gaze. He must suggest, after all, an object toward which the feeling of dependence he is endeavoring to depict turns. But why this hideous object? Only to justify the abjectness of the figure he has painted. From which we may learn at once that the character of the feeling - all that gives quality and meaning to it - is, after all, necessarily dependent on the nature of the object to which it is referred

And so, if we mistake not, Sasha Schneider's picture is itself the sufficient refutation of the whole conception of religion we are discussing. Given no object, the figure of helplessness remains inexplicable and meaningless and will result in nothing. Given a monstrous object, it develops at once into a figure of abject misery. Given a glorious object - a God of righteousness and goodness - and only then does it develop into a figure of that dependence which we call religion. And if we require an earthly image of this feeling of dependence, let us find it in an infant on its mother's bosom, looking up in confidence and trust into a face on which it perceives the smiles of goodness and love. Even the heathen poet tells us that the happy infant laughs as it sees the smile of love on the mother's countenance. It is in such scenes as this that the true earthly portrait of the absolute dependence, which is religion is to be found.

But it is neither to logical analysis nor to the artistic instinct of a Sasha Schneider that we need to turn to-day to assure ourselves that this whole construction of religion as independent of knowledge is impossible. For surely it is obvious that it is the very antipodes of Paul's view of the matter. This we have already sufficiently pointed out, and need only now to remind ourselves of it.

Perhaps it is enough for this purpose simply to ask afresh how Paul dealt with the religiousness of the Athenians, notable as they were among all nations for their religiousness. Assuredly he did not withhold due recognition from it "O men of Athens," he cried, "I perceive that in all things ye are exceedingly religious." But did he account this exceeding religiousness enough for their needs? As he went about the streets of Athens and beheld the great city studded with idols - one great sanctuary, as it were - did he reason within himself that the forms of manifestation were of no importance, that through and beneath them we should rather perceive that pure impulse to worship which sustained and gave vitality and value to them all; and, observing in it the essence of all religions alike, recognize it as enough?

Our text gives us the emphatic answer: "What ye, thus, in ignorance adore, that it is that I declare unto you." The whole justification of his mission hangs on the value he attaches to knowledge as the informing principle of all right, of all valid, of all availing religion. And if we care to follow Paul we must for our part also, once and for all, renounce with the strongest emphasis all attempts to conceive the native religious impulse as capable in sinful man of producing religious phenomena which can be recognized as well pleasing in the sight of God.

No doubt we shall be under manifold temptations to do otherwise. Our modern atmosphere is charged to saturation with temptations to do otherwise. Let us all the more carefully arm ourselves against them. In warning us against this overestimate of natural religions Paul may perhaps be allowed to give us also a name for it, by the employment of which we may possibly be able to put a new point on our self-admonitions. He calls it, as we have seen, in the case of the Athenians, by a term of somewhat peculiar flavor. "Divinity-fearing" we bunglingly translate it - that is, so to say, "generally Divinity-fearing," without too close inquisition into which divinity it is that we fear or what is the character of the service that we render it. "Deisidaimonism" is the Greek term he makes use of. It is an uncouth term. But, then, it is not a very lovely thing it designates. And perhaps, in the absence of a good translation, we may profitably adopt the Greek term to-day, with all its uncouthness of sound and its unlovely association, and so enable ourselves to make a recognizable distinction between that general natural religiosity and its fruits which we may call "deisidaimonism" and true religion, which is the product of the saving truth of God operating upon our native religious instincts and producing through them phenomena which owe all their value to the truth that gives them form.

Ah, brethren, let us avoid "deisidaimonism" in all its manifestations! As you look out over the heathen world with its lords many and gods many, and see working in every form of faith the same religious impulses, the same religious aspirations, producing in varying measure indeed, but yet everywhere, to some extent, the same civilizing and moralizing effects - are you perhaps sometimes tempted to pronounce it enough; possibly adding something about the special adaptation of the several faiths to the several peoples, or even something about the essential truth underlying all religions? This is "deisidaimonism." And on its basis the whole missionary work of the Church is an impertinence, the whole history of the Church a gigantic error; the great commission itself a crime against humanity - launching the Christian world upon a fool's errand, every step of which has dripped with wasted blood. Surely the proclamation of the gospel is made, then, mere folly and the blood of the martyrs becomes only the measure of the narrow fanaticism of earlier and less enlightened times.

It is possible, however, that your temptation does not come to you in such a crass shape. Perhaps it may whisper to you only something about the narrowness of sectarianism within the limits of Christianity - of the folly of contentions over what we may at the moment be happening to call "the truth." Look, it may say - do you not see that under every faith the religious life flourishes? Why lay stress then on creed? Creeds are divisive things; away with them! Or at least let us prune all their distinctive features away, and give ourselves a genial and unpolemic Christianity, a Christianity in which all the stress is laid on life, not dogma, the life of the spirit in its aspirations toward God, or perchance, even the life of external activities in the busy fulfillment of the duties of life. This too, you observe, is "deisidaimonism." Embark once on that pathway and there is no logical and - oh, the misfortune of it! - no practical stopping-point until you have evaporated all recognizable Christianity away altogether and reduced all religion to the level of man's natural religiosity. A really "undogmatic Christianity" is just no Christianity at all.

Let us not for an instant suppose, to be sure, that religion is a matter of the intellect alone or chiefly. But in avoiding the Scylla of intellectualism let us not run into the Charybdis of mere naturalism. All that makes the religion we profess distinctively Christian is enshrined in its doctrinal system. It is therefore that it is a religion that can be taught, and is to be taught - that is propagated by what otherwise would be surely, in the most literal sense, the foolishness of preaching. Mere knowledge, indeed, does not edify; it only puffs up. But neither without knowledge can there be any edification; and the purer the knowledge that is propagated by any church the purer, the deeper, the more vital and the more vitalizing will be the Christianity that is built up under that church's teaching. Let us renounce, then, in this sphere, too, all "deisidaimonism," and demand that our church shall be the church of a creed and that that creed shall be the pure truth of God - all of it and nothing but it. Only so can we be truly, purely, and vitally Christian.

And what shall we say of "deisidaimonism" in the personal religious life? Ah, brethren, there is where its temptations are the most subtle and its assaults the most destructive! How easy it is to mistake the currents of mere natural religious feeling, that flow up and down in the soul, for signs that it is well with us in the sight of God! Happy the man who is born with a deep and sensitive religious nature! But shall that purely natural endowment save him? There are many who have cried, Lord, Lord, who shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven. Not because you are sensitive and easily moved to devotion; not because your sense of divine things is profound or lofty; not because you are like the Athenians, by nature "divinity-fearing"; but because, when the word of the Lord is brought to you, and Jesus Christ is revealed in your soul, under the prevailing influence of the Holy Ghost, you embrace Him with a hearty faith - cast yourself upon His almighty grace for salvation, and turning from your sins, enter into a life of obedience to Him - can you judge yourself a Christian. Religious you may be, and deeply religious, and yet not a Christian. How instructive that when Paul himself preached in "deisidaimonistic " Athens, where religiosity ran riot, no church seems to have been founded. We have only the meager result recorded that "there were some men that clave unto him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others along with them." The natively religious are not, therefore, nearer to the kingdom of God.

But, thank God, the contrary is also true. Those who have no special native religious endowments are not, therefore, excluded from the kingdom of God. We may rightly bewail our coldness: we may rightly blame ourselves that there is so little response in our hearts to the sight of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, or even to the manifestation of His unspeakable love in the death of His Son. Oh, wretched men that we are to see that bleeding love and not be set on fire with a flame of devotion! But we may be all the more thankful that it is not in our frames and feelings that we are to put our trust. Let us abase ourselves that we so little respond to these great spectacles of the everlasting and unspeakable love of God But let us ever remember that it is on the love of God and not on our appreciation of it that we are to build our confidence. Jesus our Priest and our Sacrifice, let us keep our eyes set on Him! And though our poor sinful hearts so little know how to yield to that great spectacle the homage of a suitable response, His blood will yet avail even for us.

"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling "

here - and let us bless God for it - here is the essence of Christianity. It is all of God and nothing of ourselves.

Predestination

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Article "Predestination," from A Dictionary of the Bible, ed. by James Hastings, v. 4, pp. 47-63.
Pub. N. Y. 1909, by Charles Scribner's Sons.

I. THE TERMS

THE words 'predestine,' 'predestinate,' 'predestination' seem not to have been domiciled in English literary use until the later period of Middle English (they are all three found in Chaucer: "Troylous and Cryseyde," 966; "Orisoune to the Holy Virgin," 69; translation of "Boethius," b. 1, pr. 6, l. 3844; the Old English equivalent seems to have been 'forestihtian,' as in Ælfric's "Homilies," ii. 364, 366, in renderings of Rom. i. 4, viii. 30). 'Predestine,' 'predestination' were doubtless taken over from the French, while 'predestinate' probably owes its form directly to the Latin original of them all. The noun has never had a place in the English Bible, but the verb in the form 'predestinate' occurs in every one of its issues from Tindale to the Authorized Version. Its history in the English versions is a somewhat curious one. It goes back, of course, ultimately to the Latin 'prædestino' (a good classical but not pre-Augustan word; while the noun 'prædestinatio' seems to be of Patristic origin), which was adopted by the Vulgate as its regular rendering of the Greek proori,zw, and occurs, with the sole exception of Acts iv. 28 (Vulgate decerno), wherever the Latin translators found that verb in their text (Rom. i. 4, viii. 29, 30, I Cor. ii. 7, Eph. i. 5, 11). But the Wyclifite versions did not carry 'predestinate' over into English in a single instance, but rendered in every case by 'before ordain' (Acts iv. 28 'deemed'). It was thus left to Tindale to give the word a place in the English Bible. This he did, however, in only one passage, Eph. i. 11, doubtless under the influence of the Vulgate. His ordinary rendering of proori,zw is 'ordain before' (Rom. viii. 29, Eph. i. 5; cf.. I Cor. ii. 7, where the 'before' is omitted apparently only on account of the succeeding preposition into which it may be thought, therefore, to coalesce), varied in Rom. viii. 30 to 'appoint before'; while, reverting to the Greek, he has 'determined before' at Acts iv. 28 and, following the better reading, has 'declared' at Rom. i. 4. The succeeding English versions follow Tindale very closely, though the Genevan omits 'before' in Acts iv. 28 and, doubtless in order to assimilate it to the neighbouring Eph. i. 11, reads 'did predestinate' in Eph. i. 5. The larger use of the word was due to the Rhemish version, which naturally reverts to the Vulgate and reproduces its prædestino regularly in 'predestinate' (Rom. i. 4, viii. 29, 30, I Cor. ii. 7, Eph. i. 5, 11; but Acts iv. 28 'decreed'). Under this influence the Authorized Version adopted 'predestinate' as its ordinary rendering of proori,zw (Rom. viii. 29, 30, Eph. i. 5, 11), while continuing to follow Tindale at Acts iv. 28 'determined before,' I Cor. ii. 7 'ordained,' as well as at Rom. i. 4 'declared,' in margin 'Greek determined.' Thus the word, tentatively introduced into a single passage by Tindale, seemed to have intrenched itself as the stated English representative of an important Greek term. The Revised Version has, however, dismissed it altogether from the English Bible and adopted in its stead the hybrid compound 'foreordained' as its invariable representative of proori,zw (Acts iv. 28, Rom. viii. 29, 30, I Cor. ii. 7, Eph. i. 5, 11), - in this recurring substantially to the language of Wyclif and the preferred rendering of Tindale. None other than a literary interest, however, can attach to the change thus introduced: 'foreordain' and 'predestinate' are exact synonyms, the choice between which can be determined only by taste. The somewhat widespread notion that the seventeenth century theology distinguished between them, rests on a misapprehension of the evidently carefully-adjusted usage of them in the Westminster Confession, iii. 3 ff. This is not, however, the result of the attribution to the one word of a 'stronger' or to the other of a 'harsher' sense than that borne by its fellow, but a simple sequence of a current employment of 'predestination' as the precise synonym of 'election,' and a resultant hesitation to apply a term of such precious associations to the foreordination to death. Since then the tables have been quite turned, and it is questionable whether in popular speech the word 'predestinate' does not now bear an unpleasant suggestion.

That neither word occurs in the English Old Testament is due to the genius of the Hebrew language, which does not admit of such compound terms. Their place is taken in the Old Testament, therefore, by simple words expressive of purposing, determining, ordaining, with more or less contextual indication of previousness of action. These represent a variety of Hebrew words, the most explicit of which is perhaps rc;y" (Ps. cxxxix. 16, Isa. xxii. 11, xxxvii. 26, xlvi. 11), by the side of which must be placed, however, #[;y" (Isa. xiv. 24, 26, 27, xix. 12, xix. 17, xxiii. 9, Jer. xlix. 20, l. 45), whose substantival derivative hc.[e (Job xxxviii. 2, xlii. 3, Jer. xxiii. 19, Prov. xix. 21, Ps. xxxiii. 11, cvii. 11, Isa. xiv. 26, xlvi. 10, 11, Ps. cvi. 13, Isa. v. 19, xix. 17, Jer. xlix. 20, l. 45, Mic. iv. 12) is doubtless the most precise Hebrew term for the Divine plan or purpose, although there occurs along with it in much the same sense the term hb'v'j'm; (Jer. xviii. 11, xxix. 11, xlix. 30, 1. 45, Isa. lv. 8, Jer. li. 29, Mic. iv. 12, Ps. xcii. 6, a derivative of bv;x' (Gen. l. 20, Mic. ii. 3, Jer. xviii. 11, xxvi. 3, xxix. 11, xxxvi. 3, xlix. 50, l. 45, Lam. ii. 8). In the Aramaic portion of Daniel (iv. 14 (17), 21 (24) the common later Hebrew designation of the Divine decree (used especially in an evil sense) hr'zEG. occurs: and qx is occasionally used with much the same meaning (Ps. ii. 7, Zeph. ii. 2, Ps. cv. 10 = I Chron. xvi. 17, Job xxiii. 14). Other words of similar import are ~m;z' (Jer. iv. 28, li. 12, Lam. ii. 19, Zee. i. 6, viii. 14, 15) with its substantive hM'zIm. (Job xlii. 2, Jer. xxiii. 20, xxx. 24, li. 11); #pex' (Ps. cxv. 3, cxxxv. 6, Prov. xxi. 1, Isa. Iv. 11, Jon. i. 14, Judg. xiii. 23, Isa. ii. 25, Isa. liii. 10) with its substantive #p,xe (Isa. xlvi. 10, xliv. 28, xlviii. 14, liii. 10); #r;x' (Job xiv. 5, Isa. x. 22, 23, xxviii. 22, Dan. ix. 26, 27, xi. 36); %t;x' (Dan. ix. 24); (I Sam. xii. 22, I Chron. xvii. 27, II Sam. vii. 29). To express that special act of predestination which we know as 'election,' the Hebrews commonly utilized the word rx;B' (of Israel, Deut. iv. 37, vii. 6, 7, x. 15, xiv. 2, Isa. xli. 8, 9, xliii. 10, 30, xliv. l, 2, Jer. xxxiii. 24; and of the future, Isa. xiv. 1, lxv. 9, 15, 22; of Jehovah's servant, xlii. 1, xlix. 7; of Jerusalem, Deut. xii. 14, 18, 26, xiv. 25, xv. 20, xvi. 7, 15, 16, xvii. 8, 10, xviii. 6, xxxi. 11, Jos. ix. 27, I Kings viii. 44, 48, xi. 13, 32, 36, xiv. 21, II Kings xxi. 7, xxiii. 27) with its substantive ryxB' (exclusively used of Jehovah's 'elect,' II Sam. xxi. 6, I Chron, xvi. 13, Ps. lxxxix. 4, cv. 6, 43, cvi. 5, 23, Isa. xlii. 1, xliii. 20, xlv. 4, lxv. 9, 15, 22), and occasionally the word [d;y" in a pregnant sense (Gen. xviii. 19, Amos. iii. 2, Hos. xiii. 5, cf. Ps. i. 6, xxxi. 8(7), xxxvii. 18, Isa. lviii. 3); while it is rather the execution of this previous choice in an act of separation that is expressed by lyD[b.hi (Lev. xx. 24, xx. 26, I Kings viii. 53).

In the Greek of the New Testament the precise term proori,zw (Acts iv. 28, I Cor. ii. 7, Rom. viii. 29, 30, Eph. i. 5, 11) is supplemented by a number of similar compounds, such as prota,ssw (Acts xvii. 26); proti,qhmi (Eph. i. 9) with its more frequently occurring substantive, pro,qesij (Rom. viii. 28, ix: 11, Eph. i. 11, iii. 11, II Tim. i. 9); proetoima,zw (Rom. ix. 23, Eph. ii. 10) and perhaps proble,pw in a similar sense of providential pre-arrangement (Heb. xi. 40), with which may be compared also proei/don (Acts ii. 31, Gal. iii. 8); progignw,skw (Rom. viii. 29, xi. 2, I Pet. i. 20) and its substantive pro,gnwsij (I Pet. i. 2, Acts ii. 23); proceiri,zw (Acts xxii. 14, iii. 20) and proceirotone,w (Acts x. 41). Something of the same idea is, moreover, also occasionally expressed by the simple o`ri,zw (Luke xxii. 22, Acts xvii. 26, 31, ii. 23, Heb. iv. 7, Acts x. 42), or through the medium of terms designating the will, wish, or good-pleasure of God, such as boulh, (Luke vii. 30, Acts ii. 23, iv. 28, xiii. 36, xx. 27, Eph. i. 11, Heb. vi. 17, cf. bou,lhma Rom. ix. 19 and bou,lomai Heb. vi. 17, Jas. i. 18, II Pet. iii. 9), qe,lhma (e. g., Eph. i. 5, 9, 11, Heb. x. 7, cf. qe,lhsij Heb. ii. 4, qe,lw, e. g., Rom. ix. 18, 22), euvdoki,a (Luke ii. 14, Eph. i. 5, 9, Phil. ii. 13, cf. euvdoke,w Luke. xii. 32, Col. i. 19, Gal. i. 15, I Cor. i. 21). The standing terms in the New Testament for God's sovereign choice of His people are evkle,gesqai, in which both the composition and voice are significant (Eph. i. 4, Mark xiii. 20, John xv. 16 twice, 19, I Cor. i. 27 twice, Jas. ii. 5; of Israel, Acts xiii. 17; of Christ, Luke ix. 35; of the disciples, Luke vi. 13, John vi. 70, xiii. 18, Acts i. 2; of others, Acts i. 24, xv. 7), evklekto,j (Matt. [xx. 16] xxii. 14, xxvi. 22, 24, 31, Mark xiii. 20, 22, 27, Luke xviii. 7, Rom. viii. 33, Col. iii. 12, II Tim. ii. 10, Tit. i. 1, I Pet. i. 1, [ii. 9], Rev. xvii. 14; of individuals, Rom. xvi. 13, II John i. 13; of Christ, Luke xxiii. 35, John xiii. 18; of angels, I Tim. v. 21), evklogh, (Acts ix. 15, Rom. ix. 11. xi. 5, 7, 28, I Thes. i. 4, II Pet. i. 10), - words which had been prepared for this New Testament use by their employment in the Septuagint - the two former to translate rx;B' and ryxiB'. In II Thes. ii. 13 ai`re,omai is used similarly.

II. PREDESTINATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

No survey of the terms used to express it, however, can convey an adequate sense of the place occupied by the idea of predestination in the religious system of the Bible. It is not too much to say that it is fundamental to the whole religious consciousness of the Biblical writers, and is so involved in all their religious conceptions that to eradicate it would transform the entire scriptural representation. This is as true of the Old Testament as of the New Testament, as will become sufficiently manifest by attending briefly to the nature and implications of such formative elements in the Old Testament system as its doctrines of God, Providence, Faith, and the Kingdom of God.

Whencesoever Israel obtained it, it is quite certain that Israel entered upon its national existence with the most vivid consciousness of an almighty personal Creator and Governor of heaven and earth. Israel's own account of the clearness and the firmness of its apprehension of this mighty Author and Ruler of all that is, refers it to His own initiative: God chose to make Himself known to the fathers. At all events, throughout the whole of Old Testament literature, and for every period of history recorded in it, the fundamental conception of God remains the same, and the two most persistently emphasized elements in it are just those of might and personality: before everything else, the God of Israel is the Omnipotent Person. Possibly the keen sense of the exaltation and illimitable power of God which forms the very core of the Old Testament idea of God belongs rather to the general Semitic than to the specifically Israelitish element in its religion; certainly it was already prominent in the patriarchal God-consciousness, as is sufficiently evinced by the names of God current from the beginning of the Old Testament revelation, - El, Eloah, Elohim, El Shaddai, - and as is illustrated endlessly in the Biblical narrative. But it is equally clear that God was never conceived by the Old Testament saints as abstract power, but was ever thought of concretely as the all-powerful Person, and that, moreover, as clothed with all the attributes of moral personality, - pre-eminently with holiness, as the very summit of His exaltation, but along with holiness, also with all the characteristics that belong to spiritual personality as it exhibits itself familiarly in man. In a word, God is pictured in the Old Testament, and that from the beginning, purely after the pattern of human personality, - as an intelligent, feeling, willing Being, like the man who is created in His image in all in which the life of a free spirit consists. The anthropomorphisms to which this mode of conceiving God led were sometimes startling enough, and might have become grossly misleading had not the corrective lain ever at hand in the accompanying sense of the immeasurable exaltation of God, by which He was removed above all the weaknesses of humanity. The result accordingly was nothing other than a peculiarly pure form of Theism. The grosser anthropomorphisms were fully understood to be figurative, and the residuary conception was that of an infinite Spirit, not indeed expressed in abstract terms nor from the first fully brought out in all its implications, but certainly in all ages of the Old Testament development grasped in all its essential elements. (Cf. the art. GOD).

Such a God could not be thought of otherwise than as the free determiner of all that comes to pass in the world which is the product of His creative act; and the doctrine of Providence (hD'quP.) which is spread over the pages of the Old Testament fully bears out this expectation. The almighty Maker of all that is is represerited equally as the irresistible Ruler of all that He has made: Jehovah sits as King for ever (Ps. xxix. 10). Even the common language of life was affected by this pervasive point of view, so that, for example, it is rare to meet with such a phrase as 'it rains' (Amos iv. 7), and men by preference spoke of God sending rain (Ps. ixv. 9f., Job xxxvi. 27, xxxviii. 26). The vivid sense of dependence on God thus witnessed extended throughout every relation of life. Accident or chance was excluded. If we read here and there of a hr,q.mi it is not thought of as happening apart from God's direction (Ruth ii. 3, I Sam. vi. 9, xx. 26, Eccl. ii. 14, cf. I Kings xxii. 34, II Chron. xviii. 33), and accordingly the lot was an accepted means of obtaining the decision of God (Jos. vii. 16, xiv. 2, xviii. 6, I Sam. x. 19, Jon. i. 7), and is didactically recognized as under His control (Prov. xvi. 33). All things without exception, indeed, are disposed by Him, and His will is the ultimate account of all that occurs. Heaven and earth and all that is in them are the instruments through which He works His ends. Nature, nations, and the fortunes of the individual alike present in all their changes the transcript of His purpose. The winds are His messengers, the flaming fire His servant: every natural occurrence is His act: prosperity is His gift, and if calamity falls upon man it is the Lord that has done it (Amos iii. 5, 6, Lam. iii. 33-38, Isa. xlvii. 7, Eccl. vii. 14, Isa. liv. 16). It is He that leads the feet of men, wit they whither or not; He that raises up and casts down; opens and hardens the heart; and creates the very thoughts and intents of the soul. So poignant is the sense of His activity in all that occurs, that an appearance is sometimes created as if everything that comes to pass were so ascribed to His immediate production as to exclude the real activity of second causes. It is a grave mistake, nevertheless, to suppose that He is conceived as an unseen power, throwing up, in a quasi-Pantheistic sense, all changes on the face of the world and history. The virile sense of the free personality of God which dominates all the thought of the Old Testament would alone have precluded such a conception. Nor is there really any lack of recognition of 'second causes,' as we call them. They are certainly not conceived as independent of God: they are rather the mere expression of His stated will. But they are from the beginning fully recognized, both in nature - with respect to which Jehovah has made covenant (Gen. viii. 21, 22, Jer. xxxi. 35, 36, xxxiii. 20, 25, Ps. cxlviii. 6, cf. Jer. v. 22, Ps. civ. 9, Job xxxviii. 10, 33, xiv. 5), establishing its laws (tAQxu Job xxviii. 25, 28, Isa. xl. 12, Job xxxviii. 8-11, Prov. viii. 29, Jer. v. 22, Ps. civ. 9, xxxiii. 7, Isa. xl. 26) - and equally in the higher sphere of free spirits, who are ever conceived as the true authors of all their acts (hence God's proving of man, Gen. xxii. 1, Ex. xvi. 4, xx. 20, Deut. viii. 2, 16, xiii. 3, Judg. iii. 1, 4, II Chron. xxxii. 31). There is no question here of the substitution of Jehovah's operation for that of the proximate causes of events. There is only the liveliest perception of the governing hand of God behind the proximate causes, acting through them for the working out of His will in every detail. Such a conception obviously looks upon the universe teleologically: an almighty moral Person cannot be supposed to govern His universe, thus in every detail, either unconsciously or capriciously. In His government there is necessarily implied a plan; in the all-pervasiveness and perfection of His government is inevitably implied an all-inclusive and perfect plan: and this conception is not seldom explicitly developed.

It is abundantly clear on the face of it, of course, that this whole mode of thought is the natural expression of the deep religious consciousness of the Old Testament writers, though surely it is not therefore to be set aside as 'merely' the religious view of things, or as having no other rooting save in the imagination of religiously-minded men. In any event, however, it is altogether natural that in the more distinctive sphere of the religious life its informing principle of absolute dependence on God should be found to repeat itself. This appears particularly in the Old Testament doctrine of faith, in which there sounds the keynote of Old Testament piety, - for the religion of the Old Testament, so far from being, as Hegel, for example, would affirm, the religion of fear, is rather by way of eminence the religion of trust. Standing over against God, not merely as creatures, but as sinners, the Old Testament saints found no ground of hope save in the free initiative of the Divine love. At no period of the development of Old Testament religion was it permitted to be imagined that blessings might be wrung from the hands of an unwilling God, or gained in the strength of man's own arm. Rather it was ever inculcated that in this sphere, too, it is God alone that lifts up and makes rich, He alone that keeps the feet of His holy ones; while by strength, it is affirmed, no man shall prevail (I Sam. ii. 9). 'I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies' is the constant refrain of the Old Testament saints (Gen. xxxii. 10); and from the very beginning, in narrative, precept and prophetic declaration alike, it is in trust in the unmerited love of Jehovah alone that the hearts of men are represented as finding peace. Self-sufficiency is the characteristic mark of the wicked, whose doom treads on his heels; while the mark of the righteous is that he lives by his faith (Hab. ii. 4). In the entire self-commitment to God, humble dependence on Him for all blessings, which is the very core of Old Testament religion, no element is more central than the profound conviction embodied in it of the free sovereignty of God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, in the distribution of His mercies. The whole training of Israel was directed to impressing upon it the great lesson enunciated to Zerubbabel, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts' (Zech. iv. 6) - that all that comes to man in the spiritual sphere, too, is the free gift of Jehovah.

Nowhere is this lesson more persistently emphasized than in the history of the establishment and development of the kingdom of God, which may well be called the cardinal theme of the Old Testament. For the kingdom of God is consistently represented, not as the product of man's efforts in seeking after God, but as the gracious creation of God Himself. Its inception and development are the crowning manifestation of the free grace of the Living God working in history in pursuance of His loving purpose to recover fallen man to Himself. To this end He preserves the race in existence after its sin, saves a seed from the destruction of the Flood, separates to Himself a family in Abraham, sifts it in Isaac and Jacob, nurses and trains it through the weakness of its infancy, and gradually moulds it to be the vehicle of His revelation of redemption, and the channel of Messianic blessings to the world. At every step it is God, and God alone, to whom is ascribed the initiative; and the most extreme care is taken to preserve the recipients of the blessings consequent on His choice from fancying that these blessings come as their due, or as reward for aught done by themselves, or to be found in themselves. They were rather in every respect emphatically not a people of their own making, but a people that God had formed that they might set forth His praise (Isa. xliii. 21). The strongest language, the most astonishing figures, were employed to emphasize the pure sovereignty of the Divine action at every stage. It was not because Israel was numerous, or strong, or righteous, that He chose it, but only because it pleased Him to make of it a people for Himself. He was as the potter, it as the clay which the potter moulds as he will; it was but as the helpless babe in its blood cast out to die, abhorred of man, which Jehovah strangely gathers to His bosom in unmerited love (Gen. xii. 1, 3, Deut. vii. 6-8, ix. 4-6, x. 15, 16, I Sam. xii. 22, Isa. xli. 8, 9, xliii. 20, xlviii. 9-11, Jer. xviii. 1 f., xxxi. 3, Hos. ii. 20, Mal. i. 2, 3). There was no element in the religious consciousness of Israel more poignantly realized, as there was no element in the instruction they had received more insisted on, than that they owed their separation from the peoples of the earth to be the Lord's inheritance, and all the blessings they had as such received from Jehovah, not to any claim upon Him which they could urge, but to His own gracious love faithfully persisted in in spite of every conceivable obstacle.

In one word, the sovereignty of the Divine will as the principle of all that comes to pass, is a primary postulate of the whole religious life, as well as of the entire world-view of the Old Testament. It is implicated in its very idea of God, its whole conception of the relation of God to the world and to the changes which take place, whether in nature or history, among the nations or in the life-fortunes of the individual; and also in its entire scheme of religion, whether national or personal. It lies at the basis of all the religious emotions, and lays the foundation of the specific type of religious character built up in Israel.

The specific teaching of the Old Testament as to predestination naturally revolves around the two foci of that idea which may be designated general and special, or, more properly, cosmical and soteriological predestination; or, in other words, around the doctrines of the Divine Decree and the Divine Election. The former, as was to be expected, is comparatively seldom adverted to - for the Old Testament is fundamentally a soteriological book, a revelation of the grace of God to sinners; and it is only at a somewhat late period that it is made the subject of speculative discussion. But as it is implied in the primordial idea of God as an Almighty Person, it is postulated from the beginning and continually finds more or less clear expression. Throughout the Old Testament, behind the processes of nature, the march of history and the fortunes of each individual life alike, there is steadily kept in view the governing hand of God working out His preconceived plan - a plan broad enough to embrace the whole universe of things, minute enough to concern itself with the smallest details, and actualizing itself with inevitable certainty in every event that comes to pass.

Naturally, there is in the narrative portions but little formal enunciation of this pervasive and all-controlling Divine teleology. But despite occasional anthropomorphisms of rather startling character (as, e.g., that which ascribes 'repentance' to God, Gen. vi. 6, Joel ii. 13, Jon. iv. 2, Jer. xviii. 8, 10, xxvi. 3, 13), or rather, let us say, just because of the strictly anthropomorphic mould in which the Old Testament conception of God is run, according to which He is ever thought of as a personal spirit, acting with purpose like other personal spirits, but with a wisdom and in a sovereignty unlike that of others because infinitely perfect, these narrative portions of the Old Testament also bear continual witness to the universal Old Testament teleology. There is no explicit statement in the narrative of the creation, for example, that the mighty Maker of the world was in this process operating on a preconceived plan; but the teleology of creation lies latent in the orderly sequence of its parts, culminating in man for whose advent all that precedes is obviously a preparation, and is all but expressed in the Divine satisfaction at each of its stages, as a manifestation of His perfections (cf. Ps. civ. 31). Similarly, the whole narrative of the Book of Genesis is so ordered - in the succession of creation, fall, promise, and the several steps in the inauguration of the kingdom of God - as to throw into a very clear light the teleology of the whole world-history, here written from the Divine standpoint and made to centre around the developing Kingdom. In the detailed accounts of the lives of the patriarchs, in like manner, behind the external occurrences recorded there always lies a Divine ordering which provides the real plot of the story in its advance to the predetermined issue. It was not accident, for example, that brought Rebecca to the well to welcome Abraham's servant (Gen. xxiv), or that sent Joseph into Egypt (Gen. xlv. 8,1. 20; 'God meant [bvx] it for good'), or guided Pharaoh's daughter to the ark among the flags (Ex. ii), or that, later, directed the millstone that crushed Abimelech's head (Judg. ix. 53), or winged the arrow shot at a venture to smite the king in the joints of the harness (I Kings xxii. 34). Every historical event is rather treated as an item in the orderly carrying out of an underlying Divine purpose; and the historian is continually aware of the presence in history of Him who gives even to the lightning a charge to strike the mark (Job xxxvi. 32).

In the Psalmists and Prophets there emerges into view a more abstract statement of the government of all things according to the good-pleasure of God (Ps. xxxiii. 11, Jer. x. 12, li. 15). All that He wills He does (Ps. cxv. 3, cxxxv. 6), and all that comes to pass has pre-existed in His purpose from the indefinite past of eternity ('long ago' Isa. xxii. 11, 'of ancient times' Isa. xxxvii. 26 = II Kings xix. 25), and it is only because it so pre-existed in purpose that it now comes to pass (Isa. xiv. 24, 27, xlvi. 11, Zech. i. 6, Job xlii. 2, Jer. xxiii. 20, Jon. i. 14, Isa. xl. 10). Every day has its ordained events (Job xiv. 5, Ps. cxxxix. 16). The plan of God is universal in its reach, and orders all that takes place in the interests of Israel - the Old Testament counterpart to the New Testament declaration that all things work together for good to those that love God. Nor is it merely for the national good of Israel that God's plan has made provision; He exercises a special care over every one of His people (Job v. 15 f., Ps. xci, cxxi, lxv. 3, xxxvii, xxvii. 10, 11, cxxxix. 16, Jon. iii. 5, Isa. iv. 3, Dan. xii. 1). Isaiah especially is never weary of emphasizing the universal teleology of the Divine operations and the surety of the realization of His eternal purpose, despite the opposition of every foe (xiv. 24-27, xxxi. 2, xl. 13, lviii. 8-11) - whence he has justly earned the name of the prophet of the Divine sovereignty, and has been spoken of as the Paul, the Augustine, the Calvin of the Old Testament.

It is, however, especially in connexion with the Old Testament doctrine of the Wisdom (hm'k.x') of God, the chief depository of which is the so-called Ḥokhmah literature, that the idea of the all-inclusive Divine purpose (hc'[; and tAbv'x}m;) in which lies predetermined the whole course of events - including every particular in the life of the world (Amos iii. 7) and in the life of every individual as well (Ps. cxxxix. 14-16, Judg. i. 2) - is speculatively wrought out. According to this developed conception, God, acting under the guidance of all His ethical perfections, has, by virtue of His eternal wisdom, which He 'possessed in the beginning of his way' (Prov. viii. 22), framed 'from everlasting, from the beginning,' an all-inclusive plan embracing all that is to come to pass; in accordance with which plan He now governs His universe, down to the least particular, so as to subserve His perfect and unchanging purpose. Everything that God has brought into being, therefore, He has made for its specific end (Prov. xvi. 4, cf. iii. 19, 20, Job xxviii. 23, xxxviii, xli, Isa. xl. 12f., Jer. x. 12, 13); and He so governs it that it shall attain its end, - no chance can escape (Prov. xvi. 33), no might or subtlety defeat His direction (Prov. xxi. 30, 31, xix. 21, xvi. 9, cf. Isa. xiv. 24, 27, Jer. x. 23), which leads straight to the goal appointed by God from the beginning and kept steadily in view by Him, but often hidden from the actors themselves (Prov. xx. 24, cf. iii. 6, xvi. 1-9, xix. 21, Job xxxviii. 2, xlii. 3, Jer. x. 23), who naturally in their weakness cannot comprehend the sweep of the Divine plan or understand the place within it of the details brought to their observation - a fact in which the Old Testament sages constantly find their theodicy. No different doctrine is enunciated here from that which meets us in the Prophets and Psalmists, - only it is approached from a philosophical-religious rather than from a national-religious view-point. To prophet and sage alike the entire world - inanimate, animate, moral - is embraced in a unitary teleological world-order (Ps. xxxiii. 6, civ. 24, cxlviii. 8, Job ix. 4, xii. 13, xxxvii); and to both alike the central place in this comprehensive world-order is taken by God's redemptive purpose, of which Israel is at once the object and the instrument, while the savour of its saltness is the piety of the individual saint. The classical term for this all-inclusive Divine purpose (hc'[e) is accordingly found in the usage alike of prophet, psalmist, and sage, - now used absolutely of the universal plan on which the whole world is ordered (Job xxxviii. 2, xlii. 3, cf. Delitzsch and Budde, in loc.), now, with the addition of 'of Jehovah,' of the all-comprehending purpose, embracing all human actions (Prov. xix. 21 and parallels; cf. Toy, in loc.), now with explicit mention of Israel as the centre around which its provisions revolve (Ps. xxxiii. 11, cvii. 11, cf. Delitzsch, in loc.; Isa. xiv. 26, xxv. 1, xlvi. 10, 11), and anon with more immediate concern with some of the details (Ps. cvi. 13, Isa. v. 19, xix. 17, Jer. xlix. 20, 1. 45, Mic. iv. 12).

There seems no reason why a Platonizing colouring should be given to this simple attributing to the eternal God of an eternal plan in which is predetermined every event that comes to pass. This used to be done, e. g., by Delitzsch (see, e. g., on Job xxviii. 25-28, Isa. xxii. 11; "Biblical Psychology," I. ii.), who was wont to attribute to the Biblical writers, especially of the "Ḥokhmah" and the latter portion of Isaiah, a doctrine of the pre-existence of all things in an ideal world, conceived as standing eternally before God at least as a pattern if not even as a quasi-objective mould imposing their forms on all His creatures, which smacked more of the Greek Academics than of the Hebrew sages. As a matter of course, the Divine mind was conceived by the Hebrew sages as eternally contemplating all possibilities, and we should not do them injustice in supposing them to think of its 'ideas' as the causa exemplaris of all that occurs, and of the Divine intellect as the principium dirigens of every Divine operation. But it is more to the point to note that the conceptions of the Old Testament writers in regard to the Divine decree run rather into the moulds of 'purpose' than of 'ideas,' and that the roots of their teaching are planted not in an abstract idea of the Godhead, but in the purity of their concrete theism. It is because they think of God as a person, like other persons purposeful in His acts, but unlike other persons all-wise in His planning and all-powerful in His performing, that they think of Him as predetermining all that shall come to pass in the universe, which is in all its elements the product of His free activity, and which must in its form and all its history, down to the least detail, correspond with His purpose in making it. It is easy, on the other hand, to attribute too little 'philosophy' to the Biblical writers. The conception of God in His relation to the world which they develop is beyond question anthropomorphic; but it is no unreflecting anthropomorphism that they give us. Apart from all question of revelation, they were not children prattling on subjects on which they had expended no thought; and the world-view they commend to us certainly does not lack in profundity. The subtleties of language of a developed scholasticism were foreign to their purposes and modes of composition, but they tell us as clearly as, say, Spanheim himself ("Decad. Theol." vi. § 5), that they are dealing with a purposing mind exalted so far above ours that we can follow its movements only with halting steps, - whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are not as our ways (Isa. lv. 8; cf. xl. 13, 28, xxviii. 29, Job xi. 7 f., Ps. xcii. 5, cxxxix. 14 f., cxlvii. 5, Eccl. iii. 11). Least of all in such a theme as this were they liable to forget that infinite exaltation of God which constituted the basis on which their whole conception of God rested.

Nor may they be thought to have been indifferent to the relations of the high doctrine of the Divine purpose they were teaching. There is no scholastic determination here either; but certainly they write without embarrassment as men who have attained a firm grasp upon their fundamental thought and have pursued it with clearness of thinking, no less in its relations than in itself; nor need we go astray in apprehending the outlines of their construction. It is quite plain, for example, that they felt no confusion with respect to the relation of the Divine purpose to the Divine foreknowledge. The notion that the almighty and all-wise God, by whom all things were created, and through whose irresistible control all that occurs fulfils the appointment of His primal plan, could govern Himself according to a foreknowledge of things which - perhaps apart from His original purpose of present guidance - might haply come to pass, would have been quite contradictory to their most fundamental conception of God as the almighty and all-sovereign Ruler of the universe, and, indeed, also of the whole Old Testament idea of the Divine foreknowledge itself, which is ever thought of in its due relation of dependence on the Divine purpose. According to the Old Testament conception, God foreknows only because He has pre-determined, and it is therefore also that He brings it to pass; His foreknowledge, in other words, is at bottom a knowledge of His own will, and His works of providence are merely the execution of His all-embracing plan. This is the truth that underlies the somewhat incongruous form of statement of late becoming rather frequent, to the effect that God's foreknowledge is conceived in the Old Testament as 'productive.' Dillmann, for example, says ("Handbuch der alttestamentlichen Theologie," p. 251): 'His foreknowledge of the future is a productive one; of an otiose foreknowledge or of a præscientia media . . . there is no suggestion.' In the thought of the Old Testament writers, however, it is not God's foreknowledge that produces the events of the future; it is His irresistible providential government of the world He has created for Himself: and His foreknowledge of what is yet to be rests on His pre-arranged plan of government. His 'productive foreknowledge' is but a transcript of His will, which has already determined not only the general plan of the world, but every particular that enters into the whole course of its development (Amos iii. 7, Job xxviii. 26, 27), and every detail in the life of every individual that comes into being (Jer. i. 5, Ps. cxxxix. 14-16, Job xxiii. 13, 14).

That the acts of free agents are included in this 'productive foreknowledge,' or rather in this all-inclusive plan of the life of the universe, created for the Old Testament writers apparently not the least embarrassment. This is not because they did not believe man to be free, - throughout the whole Old Testament there is never the least doubt expressed of the freedom or moral responsibility of man, - but because they did believe God to be free, whether in His works of creation or of providence, and could not believe He was hampered or limited in the attainment of His ends by the creatures of His own hands. How God governs the acts of free agents in the pursuance of His plan there is little in the Old Testament to inform us; but that He governs them in even their most intimate thoughts and feelings and impulses is its unvarying assumption: He is not only the creator of the hearts of men in the first instance, and knows them altogether, but He fashions the hearts of all in all the changing circumstances of life (Ps. xxxiii. 15); forms the spirit of man within him in all its motions (Zech. xii. 1); keeps the hearts of men in His hands, turning them whithersoever He will (Prov. xxi. 1); so that it is even said that man knows what is in his own mind only as the Lord reveals it to him (Amos iv. 13). The discussion of any antinomy that may be thought to arise from such a joint assertion of the absolute rule of God in the sphere of the spirit and the freedom of the creaturely will, falls obviously under the topic of Providential Government rather than under that of the Decree: it requires to be adverted to here only that we may clearly note the fact that the Old Testament teachers, as they did not hesitate to affirm the absolute sway of God over the thoughts and intents of the human heart, could feel no embarrassment in the inclusion of the acts of free agents within the all-embracing plan of God, the outworking of which His providential government supplies.

Nor does the moral quality of these acts present any apparent difficulty to the Old Testament construction. We are never permitted to imagine, to be sure, that God is the author of sin, either in the world at large or in any individual soul - that He is in any way implicated in the sinfulness of the acts performed by the perverse misuse of creaturely freedom. In all God's working He shows Himself pre-eminently the Holy One, and prosecutes His holy will, His righteous way, His all-wise plan: the blame for all sinful deeds rests exclusively on the creaturely actors (Ex. ix. 27, x. 16), who recognize their own guilt (II Sam. xxiv. 10, 17) and receive its punishment (Eccl. xi. 9 compared with xi. 5). But neither is God's relation to the sinful acts of His creatures ever represented as purely passive: the details of the doctrine of concursus were left, no doubt, to later ages speculatively to work out, but its assumption underlies the entire Old Testament representation of the Divine modes of working. That anything - good or evil - occurs in God's universe finds its account, according to the Old Testament conception, in His positive ordering and active concurrence; while the moral quality of the deed, considered in itself, is rooted in the moral character of the subordinate agent, acting in the circumstances and under the motives operative in each instance. It is certainly going beyond the Old Testament warrant to speak of the 'all-productivity of God,' as if He were the only efficient cause in nature and the sphere of the free spirit alike; it is the very delirium of misconception to say that in the Old Testament God and Satan are insufficiently discriminated, and deeds appropriate to the latter are assigned to the former. Nevertheless, it remains true that even the evil acts of the creature are so far carried back to God that they too are affirmed to be included in His all-embracing decree, and to be brought about, bounded and utilized in His providential government. It is He that hardens the heart of the sinner that persists in his sin (Ex. iv. 21, vii. 3, x. 1, 27, xiv. 4, 8, Deut. ii. 30, Jos. xi. 20, Isa. lxiii. 17); it is from Him that the evil spirits proceed that trouble sinners (I Sam. xvi. 14, Judg. ix. 23, I Kings xxii, Job i.); it is of Him that the evil impulses that rise in sinners' hearts take this or that specific form (II Sam. xxiv. 1). The philosophy that lies behind such representations, however, is not the pantheism which looks upon God as the immediate cause of all that comes to pass; much less the pandaimonism which admits no distinction between good and evil; there is not even involved a conception of God entangled in an undeveloped ethical discrimination. It is the philosophy that is expressed in Isa. xlv. 5 f., 'I am the LORD, and there is none else; beside me there is no God. . . . I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I am the LORD that doeth all these things'; it is the philosophy that is expressed in Prov. xvi. 4, 'The LORD hath made everything for its own end, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.' Because, over against all dualistic conceptions, there is but one God, and He is indeed GOD; and because, over against all cosmotheistic conceptions, this God is a PERSON who acts purposefully; there is nothing that is, and nothing that comes to pass, that He has not first decreed and then brought to pass by His creation or providence. Thus all things find their unity in His eternal plan; and not their unity merely, but their justification as well; even the evil, though retaining its quality as evil and hateful to the holy God, and certain to be dealt with as hateful, yet does not occur apart from His provision or against His will, but appears in the world which He has made only as the instrument by means of which He works the higher good.

This sublime philosophy of the decree is immanent in every page of the Old Testament. Its metaphysics never come to explicit discussion, to be sure; but its elements are in a practical way postulated consistently throughout. The ultimate end in view in the Divine plan is ever represented as found in God alone: all that He has made He has made for Himself, to set forth His praise; the heavens themselves with all their splendid furniture exist but to illustrate His glory; the earth and all that is in it, and all that happens in it, to declare His majesty; the whole course of history is but the theatre of His self-manifestation, and the events of every individual life indicate His nature and perfections. Men may be unable to understand the place which the incidents, as they unroll themselves before their eyes, take in the developing plot of the great drama: they may, nay, must, therefore stand astonished and confounded before this or that which befalls them or befalls the world. Hence arise to them problems - the problem of the petty, the problem of the inexplicable, the problem of suffering, the problem of sin (e. g., Eccl. xi. 5). But, in the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His eternal plan; nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its peculiar fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His praise. This is the Old Testament philosophy of the universe - a world-view which attains concrete unity in an absolute Divine teleology, in the compactness of an eternal decree, or purpose, or plan, of which all that comes to pass is the development in time.

Special or Soteriological Predestination finds a natural place in the Old Testament system as but a particular instance of the more general fact, and may be looked upon as only the general Old Testament doctrine of predestination applied to the specific case of the salvation of sinners. But as the Old Testament is a distinctively religious book, or, more precisely, a distinctively soteriological book, that is to say, a record of the gracious dealings and purposes of God with sinners, soteriological predestination naturally takes a more prominent place in it than the general doctrine itself, of which it is a particular application. Indeed, God's saving work is thrown out into such prominence, the Old Testament is so specially a record of the establishment of the kingdom of God in the world, that we easily get the impression in reading it that the core of God's general decree is His decree of salvation, and that His whole plan for the government of the universe is subordinated to His purpose to recover sinful man to Himself. Of course there is some slight illusion of perspective here, the materials for correcting which the Old Testament itself provides, not only in more or less specific declarations of the relative unimportance of what befalls man, whether the individual, or Israel, or the race at large, in comparison with the attainment of the Divine end; and of the wonder of the Divine grace concerning itself with the fortunes of man at all (Job xxii. 3 f., xxxv. 6 f., xxxviii, Ps. viii. 4): but also in the general disposition of the entire record, which places the complete history of sinful man, including alike his fall into sin and all the provisions for his recovery, within the larger history of the creative work of God, as but one incident in the greater whole, governed, of course, like all its other parts, by its general teleology. Relatively to the Old Testament record, nevertheless, as indeed to the Biblical record as a whole, which is concerned directly only with God's dealings with humanity, and that, especially, a sinful humanity (Gen. iii. 9, vi. 5, viii. 21, Lev. xviii. 24, Deut. ix. 4, I Kings viii. 46, Ps. xiv. 1, li. 5, cxxx. 3, cxliii. 2, Prov. xx. 9, Eccl. vii. 20, Isa. i. 4, Hos. iv. 1, Job xv. 14, xxv. 4, xiv. 4), soteriological predestination is the prime matter of importance; and the doctrine of election is accordingly thrown into relief, and the general doctrine of the decree more incidentally adverted to. It would be impossible, however, that the doctrine of election taught in the Old Testament should follow other lines than those laid down in the general doctrine of the decree, - or, in other words, that God should be conceived as working in the sphere of grace in a manner that would be out of accord with the fundamental conception entertained by these writers of the nature of God and His relations to the universe.

Accordingly, there is nothing concerning the Divine election more sharply or more steadily emphasized than its graciousness, in the highest sense of that word, or, in other terms, its absolute sovereignty. This is plainly enough exhibited even in the course of the patriarchal history, and that from the beginning. In the very hour of man's first sin, God intervenes sua sponte with a gratuitous promise of deliverance; and at every stage afterwards the sovereign initiation of the grace of God - the Lord of the whole earth (Ex. xix. 5) - is strongly marked, as God's universal counsel of salvation is more and more unfolded through the separation and training of a people for Himself, in whom the whole world should be blessed (Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14): for from the beginning it is plainly indicated that the whole history of the world is ordered with reference to the establishment of the kingdom of God (Deut. xxxii. 8, where the reference seems to be to Gen. xi). Already in the opposing lines of Seth and Cain (Gen. iv. 25, 26) a discrimination is made; Noah is selected as the head of a new race, and among his sons the preference is given to Shem (Gen. ix. 25), from whose line Abraham is taken. Every fancy that Abraham owed his calling to his own desert is carefully excluded, - he was 'known' of God only that in him God might establish His kingdom (Gen. xviii. 19); and the very acme of sovereignty is exhibited (as St. Paul points out) in the subsequent choice of Isaac and Jacob, and exclusion of Ishmael and Esau; while the whole Divine dealing with the patriarchs - their separation from their kindred, removal into a strange land, and the like - is evidently understood as intended to cast them back on the grace of God alone. Similarly, the covenant made with Israel (Ex. xix-xxiv) is constantly assigned to the sole initiative of Divine grace, and the fact of election is therefore appropriately set at the head of the Decalogue (Ex. xx. 2; cf. xxxiv. 6, 7); and Israel is repeatedly warned that there was nothing in it which moved or could move God to favour it (e. g., Deut. iv. 37, vii. 7, viii. 17, ix. 4, x. 11, Ezk. xvi. 1 f., Amos ix. 7). It has already been pointed out by what energetic figures this fundamental lesson was impressed on the Israelitish consciousness, and it is only true to say that no means are left unused to drive home the fact that God's gracious election of Israel is an absolutely sovereign one, founded solely in His unmerited love, and looking to nothing ultimately but the gratification of His own holy and loving impulses, and the manifestation of His grace through the formation of a heritage for Himself out of the mass of sinful men, by means of whom His saving mercy should advance to the whole world (Isa. xl, xlii, lx, Mic. iv. 1, Amos iv. 13, v. 8, Jer. xxxi. 37, Ezk. xvii. 22, xxxvi. 21, Joel ii. 28). The simple terms that are employed to express this Divine selection - 'know' ([d;y"), 'choose' (rx;B') - are either used in a pregnant sense, or acquire a pregnant sense by their use in this connexion. The deeper meaning of the former term is apparently not specifically Hebrew, but more widely Semitic (it occurs also in Assyrian; see the Dictionaries of Delitzsch and Muss-Arnolt sub. voc., and especially Haupt in "Beiträge zur Assyriologie," i. 14, 15), and it can create no surprise, therefore, when it meets us in such passages as Gen. xviii. 19 (cf. Ps. xxxvii. 18 and also i. 6, xxxi. 8; cf. Baethgen and Delitzsch in loc.), Hos. xiii. 5 (cf. Wunsche in loc.) in something of the sense expressed by the scholastic phrase, nosse cum affectu et effectu; while in the great declaration of Amos iii. 2 (cf. Baur and Gunning in loc.), 'You only have I known away from all the peoples of the earth,' what is thrown prominently forward is clearly the elective love which has singled Israel out for special care. More commonly, however, it is rx;B that is employed to express God's sovereign election of Israel: the classical passage is, of course, Deut. vii. 6, 7 (see Driver in loc., as also, of the love underlying the 'choice,' at iv. 37, vii. 8), where it is carefully explained that it is in contrast with the treatment accorded to all the other peoples of the earth that Israel has been honoured with the Divine choice, and that the choice rests solely on the unmerited love of God, and finds no foundation in Israel itself. These declarations are elsewhere constantly enforced (e. g., iv. 37, x. 15, xiv. 2), with the effect of throwing the strongest possible emphasis on the complete sovereignty of God's choice of His people, who owe their 'separation' unto Jehovah (Lev. xx. 24, 26, I Kings viii. 33) wholly to the wonderful love of God, in which He has from the beginning taken knowledge of and chosen them.

It is useless to seek to escape the profound meaning of this fundamental Old Testament teaching by recalling the undeveloped state of the doctrine of a future life in Israel, and the national scope of its election, - as if the sovereign choice which is so insisted on could thus be confined to the choice of a people as a whole to certain purely earthly blessings, without any reference whatever to the eternal destiny of the individuals concerned. We are here treading very close to the abyss of confusing progress in the delivery of doctrine with the reality of God's saving activities. The cardinal question, after all, does not concern the extent of the knowledge possessed by the Old Testament saints of the nature of the blessedness that belongs to the people of God; nor yet the relation borne by the election within the election, by the real Israel forming the heart of the Israel after the flesh, to the external Israel: it concerns the existence of a real kingdom of God in the Old Testament dispensation, and the methods by which God introduced man into it. It is true enough that the theocracy was an earthly kingdom, and that a prominent place was given to the promises of the life that now is in the blessings assured to Israel; and it is in this engrossment with earthly happiness and the close connexion of the friendship of God with the enjoyment of worldly goods that the undeveloped state of the Old Testament doctrine of salvation is especially apparent. But it should not be forgotten that the promise of earthly gain to the people of God is not entirely alien to the New Testament idea of salvation (Matt. vi. 37, I Tim. iv. 8), and that it is in no sense true that in the Old Testament teaching, in any of its stages, the blessings of the kingdom were summed up in worldly happiness. The covenant blessing is rather declared to be life, inclusive of all that that comprehensive word is fitted to convey (Deut. xxx. 15; cf. iv. 1, viii. 1, Prov. xii. 28, viii. 35); and it found its best expression in the high conception of 'the favour of God' (Lev. xxvi. 11, Ps. iv. 8, xvi. 2, 5, lxiii. 4); while it concerned itself with earthly prosperity only as and so far as that is a pledge of the Divine favour. It is no false testimony to the Old Testament saints when they are described as looking for the city that has the foundations and as enduring as seeing the Invisible One: if their hearts were not absorbed in the contemplation of the eternal future, they were absorbed in the contemplation of the Eternal Lord, which certainly is something even better; and the representation that they found their supreme blessedness in outward things runs so grossly athwart their own testimony that it fairly deserves Calvin's terrible invective, that thus the Israelitish people are thought of not otherwise than as a 'sort of herd of swine which (so, forsooth, it is pretended) the Lord was fattening in the pen of this world' ("Inst." ii. x. 1). And, on the other hand, though Israel as a nation constituted the chosen people of God (I Chron. xvi. 13, Ps. lxxxix. 4, cv. 6, 13, cvi. 5), yet we must not lose from sight the fact that the nation as such was rather the symbolical than the real people of God, and was His people at all, indeed, only so far as it was, ideally or actually, identified with the inner body of the really 'chosen' - that people whom Jehovah formed for Himself that they might set forth His praise (Isa. xliii. 20, lxv. 9, 15, 22), and who constituted the real people of His choice, the 'remnant of Jacob' (Isa. vi. 13, Amos ix. 8-10, Mal. iii. 10; cf. I Kings xix. 18, Isa. viii. 18). Nor are we left in doubt as to how this inner core of actual people of God was constituted; we see the process in the call of Abraham, and the discrimination between Isaac and Ishmael, between Jacob and Esau, and it is no false testimony that it was ever a 'remnant according to the election of grace' that God preserved to Himself as the salt of His people Israel. In every aspect of it alike, it is the sovereignty of the Divine choice that is emphasized, - whether the reference be to the segregation of Israel as a nation to enjoy the earthly favour of God as a symbol of the true entrance into rest, or the choice of a remnant out of Israel to enter into that real communion with Him which was the joy of His saints, - of Enoch who walked with God (Gen. v. 22), of Abraham who found in Him his exceeding great reward (Gen. xv. 1), or of David who saw no good beyond Him, and sought in Him alone his inheritance and his cup. Later times may have enjoyed fuller knowledge of what the grace of God had in store for His saints - whether in this world or that which is to come; later times may have possessed a clearer apprehension of the distinction between the children of the flesh and the children of the promise: but no later teaching has a stronger emphasis for the central fact that it is of the free grace of God alone that any enter in any degree into the participation of His favour. The kingdom of God, according to the Old Testament, in every circle of its meaning, is above and before all else a stone cut out of the mountain 'without hands' (Dan. ii. 34, 44, 45).

III. PREDESTINATION AMONG THE JEWS

The profound religious conception of the relation of God to the works of His hands that pervades the whole Old Testament was too deeply engraved on the Jewish consciousness to be easily erased, even after growing legalism had measurably corroded the religion of the people. As, however, the idea of law more and more absorbed the whole sphere of religious thought, and piety came to be conceived more and more as right conduct before God instead of living communion with God, men grew naturally to think of God more and more as abstract unapproachableness, and to think of themselves more and more as their own saviours. The post-canonical Jewish writings, while retaining fervent expressions of dependence on God as the Lord of all, by whose wise counsel all things exist and work out their ends, and over against whom the whole world, with every creature in it, is but the instrument of His will of good to Israel, nevertheless threw an entirely new emphasis on the autocracy of the human will. This emphasis increases until in the later Judaism the extremity of heathen self-sufficiency is reproduced, and the whole sphere of the moral life is expressly reserved from Divine determination. Meanwhile also heathen terminology was intruding into Jewish speech. The Platonic pro,noia, pronoei/n, for example, coming in doubtless through the medium of the Stoa, is found not only in Philo (peri. pronoi,aj), but also in the Apocryphal books (Wis. vi. 7, xiv. 3, xvii. 2, III Mac. iv. 21, v. 30, IV Mac. ix. 24, xiii. 18, xvii. 22; cf. also Dan. vi. 18, Septuagint 19); the perhaps even more precise as well as earlier evfora/n occurs in Josephus (BJ II. viii. 14), and indeed also in the Septuagint, though here doubtless in a weakened sense (II Mac. xii. 22, xv. 2, cf. III Mac. ii. 21, as also Job xxxiv. 24, xxviii. 24, xxii. 12, cf. xxi. 16; also Zech. ix. 1); while even the fatalistic term ei`marme,nh| is employed by Josephus (BJ II. viii. 14; Ant. XIII. v. 9, XVIII. i. 3) to describe Jewish views of predestination. With the terms there came in, doubtless, more or less of the conceptions connoted by them.

Whatever may have been the influences under which it was wrought, however, the tendency of post-canonical Judaism was towards setting aside the Biblical doctrine of predestination to a greater or less extent, or in a larger or smaller sphere, in order to make room for the autocracy of the human will, the twvr, as it was significantly called by the Rabbis (Bereshith Rabba, c. 22). This disintegrating process is little apparent perhaps in the Book of Wisdom, in which the sense of the almightiness of God comes to very strong expression (xi. 22, xii. 8-12). Or even in Philo, whose predestinarianism (de Legg. Allegor. i. 15, iii. 24, 27, 28) closely follows, while his assertion of human freedom (Quod Deus sit immut. 10) does not pass beyond that of the Bible: man is separated from the animals and assimilated to God by the gift of 'the power of voluntary motion' and suitable emancipation from necessity, and is accordingly properly praised or blamed for his intentional acts; but it is of the grace of God only that anything exists, and the creature is not giver but receiver in all things; especially does it belong to God alone to plant and build up virtues, and it is impious for the mind, therefore, to say 'I plant'; the call of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob was of pure grace without any merit, and God exercises the right to 'dispose excellently,' prior to all actual deeds. But the process is already apparent in so early a book as Sirach. The book at large is indeed distinctly predestinarian, and such passages as xvi. 26-30, xxiii. 20, xxxiii. 11-13, xxxix. 20, 21 echo the teachings of the canonical books on this subject. But, while this is its general character, another element is also present: an assertion of human autocracy, for example, which is without parallel in the canonical books, is introduced at xv. 11-20, which culminates in the precise declaration that 'man has been committed to the hand of his own counsel' to choose for himself life or death. The same phenomena meet us in the Pharisaic Psalms of Solomon (B.C. 70-40). Here there is a general recognition of God as the great and mighty King (ii. 34, 36) who has appointed the course of nature (xviii. 12) and directs the development of history (ii. 34, ix. 4, xvii. 4), ruling over the whole and determining the lot of each (v. 6, 18), on whom alone, therefore, can the hope of Israel be stayed (vii. 3, xvii. 3), and to whom alone can the individual look for good. But, alongside of this expression of general dependence on God, there occurs the strongest assertion of the moral autocracy of the human will: 'O God, our works are in our own souls' election and control, to do righteousness or iniquity in the works of our hand' (ix. 7).

It is quite credible, therefore, when Josephus tells us that the Jewish parties of his day were divided, as on other matters, so on the question of the Divine predestination - the Essenes affirming that fate ( ei`marme,nh|, Josephus' affected Graecizing expression for predestination) is the mistress of all, and nothing occurs to men which is not in accordance with its destination; the Sadducees taking away 'fate' altogether, and considering that there is no such thing, and that human affairs are not directed according to it, but all actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the causes of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly; while the Pharisees, seeking a middle ground, said that some actions, but not all, are the work of 'fate,' and some are in our own power as to whether they are done or not (Ant. XIII. v. 9). The distribution of the several views among the parties follows the general lines of what might have been anticipated - the Essenic system being pre-eminently supranaturalistic, and the Sadducean rationalistic, while there was retained among the Pharisees a deep leaven of religious earnestness tempered, but not altogether destroyed (except in the extremest circles), by their ingrained legalism. The middle ground, moreover, which Josephus ascribes to the Pharisees in their attempt to distribute the control of human action between 'fate' and 'free will,' reflects not badly the state of opinion presupposed in the documents we have already quoted. In his remarks elsewhere (BJ ii. viii. 14; Ant. XVIII. i. 3) he appears to ascribe to the Pharisees some kind of a doctrine of concursus also - a kra/sij between 'fate' and the human will by which both co-operate in the effect: but his language is obscure, and is coloured doubtless by reminiscences of Stoic teaching, with which philosophical sect he compares the Pharisees as he compares the Essenes with the Epicureans.

But whatever may have been the traditional belief of the Pharisees, in proportion as the legalistic spirit which constituted the nerve of the movement became prominent, the sense of dependence on God, which is the vital breath of the doctrine of predestiriation, gave way. The Jews possessed the Old Testament Scriptures in which the Divine lordship is a cardinal doctrine, and the trials of persecution cast them continually back upon God; they could not, therefore, wholly forget the Biblical doctrine of the Divine decree, and throughout their whole history we meet with its echoes on their lips. The laws of nature, the course of history, the varying fortunes of individuals, are ever attributed to the Divine predestination. Nevertheless, it was ever more and more sharply disallowed that man's moral actions fell under the same predetermination. Sometimes it was said that while the decrees of God were sure, they applied only so long as man remained in the condition in which he was contemplated when they were formed; he could escape all predetermined evil by a change in his moral character. Hence such sayings as, 'The righteous destroy what God decrees' (Tanchuma on ~yrbd); 'Repentance, prayer, and charity ward off every evil decree' (Rosh-hashana). In any event, the entire domain of the moral life was more and more withdrawn from the intrusion of the decree; and Cicero's famous declaration, which Harnack says might be inscribed as a motto over Pelagianism, might with equal right be accepted as the working hypothesis of the later Judaism: 'For gold, land, and all the blessings of life we have to return thanks to God; but no one ever returned thanks to God for virtue' (de Nat. Deorum, iii. 36). We read that the Holy One determines prior to birth all that every one is to be - whether male or female, weak or strong, poor or rich, wise or silly; but one thing He does not determine - whether he is to be righteous or unrighteous; according to Deut. xxx. 15 this is committed to one's own hands. Accordingly, it is said that 'neither evil nor good comes from God; both are the results of our deeds' (Midrash rab, on har, and Jalkut there); and again, 'All is in the hands of God except the fear of God' (Megilla 25a); so that it is even somewhat cynically said, 'Man is led in the way in which he wishes to go' (Maccoth 10); 'If you teach him right, his God will make him know' (Isa. xxviii. 26; Jerusalem Challah i. 1). Thus the deep sense of dependence on God for all goods, and especially the goods of the soul, which forms the very core of the religious consciousness of the writers of the Old Testament, gradually vanished from the later Judaism, and was superseded by a self-assertiveness which hung all good on the self-determination of the human spirit, on which the purposes of God waited, or to which they were subservient.

IV. PREDESTINATION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament teaching starts from the plane of the Old Testament revelation, and in its doctrines of God, Providence, Faith, and the Kingdom of God repeats or develops in a right line the fundamental deliverances of the Old Testament, while in its doctrines of the Decree and of Election only such advance in statement is made as the progressive execution of the plan of salvation required.

In the teaching of our Lord, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, for example, though there is certainly a new emphasis thrown on the Fatherhood of God, this is by no means at the expense of His infinite majesty and might, but provides only a more profound revelation of the character of 'the great King' (Matt. v. 35), the 'Lord of heaven and earth' (Matt. xi. 25, Luke x. 21), according to whose good pleasure all that is comes to pass. He is spoken of, therefore, specifically as the 'heavenly Father' (Matt. v. 48, vi. 14, 26, 32, xv. 13, xviii. 35, xxiii. 9, cf. v. 16, 45, vi. 1, 9, vii. 11, 21, x. 32, 33, xii. 50, xvi. 17, xviii. 14, 19, Mark xi. 25, 26, Luke xi. 13) whose throne is in the heavens (Matt. v. 34, xxiii. 22), while the earth is but the footstool under His feet. There is no limitation admitted to the reach of His power, whether on the score of difficulty in the task, or insignificance in the object: the category of the impossible has no existence to llim 'with whom all things are possible' (Matt. xix. 26, Mark x. 27, Luke xviii. 27, Matt. xxii. 29, Mark xii. 24, xiv. 36), and the minutest occurrences are as directly controlled by Him as the greatest (Matt. x. 29, 30, Luke xii. 7). It is from Him that the sunshine and rain come (Matt. v. 45); it is He that clothes with beauty the flowers of the field (Matt. vi. 28), and who feeds the birds of the air (Matt. vi. 26); not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him, and the very hairs of our heads are numbered, and not one of them is forgotten by God (Matt. x. 29, Luke xii. 6). There is, of course, no denial, nor neglect, of the mechanism of nature implied here; there is only clear perception of the providence of God guiding nature in all its operations, and not nature only, but the life of the free spirit as well (Matt. vi. 6, viii. 13, xxiv. 22, vii. 7, Mark xi. 23). Much less, however, is the care of God thought of as mechanical and purposeless. It was not simply of sparrows that out Lord was thinking when He adverted to the care of the heavenly Father for them, as it was not simply for oxen that God was caring when He forbade them to be muzzled as they trod out the corn (I Cor. ix. 9); it was that they who are of more value than sparrows might learn with what confidence they might depend on the Father's hand. Thus a hierarchy of providence is uncovered for us, circle rising above circle, - first the wide order of nature, next the moral order of the world, lastly the order of salvation or of the kingdom of God, - a preformation of the dogmatic, schema of providentia generalis, specialis, and specialissima. All these work together for the one end of advancing the whole world-fabric to its goal; for the care of the heavenly Father over the works of His hand is not merely to prevent the world that He has made from falling into pieces, and not merely to preserve His servants from oppression by the evil of this world, but to lead the whole world and all that is in it onwards to the end which He has appointed for it, - to that paliggenesi,a of heaven and earth to which, under His guiding hand, the whole creation tends (Matt. xix. 28, Luke xx. 34).

In this divinely-led movement of 'this world' towards 'the world that is to come,' in which every element of the world's life has part, the central place is naturally taken by the spiritual preparation, or, in other words, by the development of the Kingdom of God which reaches its consummation in the 'regeneration.' This Kingdom, our Lord explains, is the heritage of those blessed ones for whom it has been prepared from the foundations of the world (Matt. xxv. 34, cf. xx. 23). It is built up on earth through a 'call' (Matt. ix. 13, Mark ii. 17, Luke v. 32), which, however, as mere invitation is inoperative (Matt. xxii. 2-14, Luke xiv. 16-23), and is made effective only by the exertion of a certain 'constraint' on God's part (Luke xiv. 23), - so that a distinction emerges between the merely 'called' and the really 'chosen' (Matt. xxii. 14). The author of this 'choice' is God (Mark xiii. 20), who has chosen His elect (Luke xviii. 7, Matt. xxiv. 22, 24, 31, Mark xiii. 20-22) before the world, in accordance with His own pleasure, distributing as He will of what is His own (Matt. x.14, 15); so that the effect of the call is already predetermined (Matt. xiii), all providence is ordered for the benefit of the elect (Matt. xxiv. 22), and they are guarded from falling away (Matt. xxiv. 24), and, at the last day, are separated to their inheritance prepared for them from all eternity (Matt. xxv. 34). That, in all this process, the initiative is at every point taken by God, and no question can be entertained of precedent merit on the part of the recipients of the blessings, results not less from the whole underlying conception of God in His relation to the course of providence than from the details of the teaching itself. Every means is utilized, however, to enhance the sense of the free sovereignty of God in the bestowment of His Kingdom; it is 'the lost' whom Jesus comes to seek (Luke xix. 10), and 'sinners' whom He came to call (Mark ii. 17); His truth is revealed only to 'babes' (Matt. xi. 25, Luke x. 21), and He gives His teaching a special form just that it may be veiled from them to whom it is not directed (Mark iv. 11), distributing His benefits, independently of merit (Matt. xx. 1-16), to those who had been chosen by God therefor (Mark xiii. 20).

In the discourses recorded by St. John the same essential spirit rules. Although, in accordance with the deeper theological apprehension of their reporter, the more metaphysical elements of Jesus' doctrine of God come here to fuller expression, it is nevertheless fundamentally the same doctrine of God that is displayed. Despite the even stronger emphasis thrown here on His Fatherhood, there is not the slightest obscuration of His infinite exaltation: Jesus lifts His eyes up when He would seek Him (xi. 41, xvii. 1); it is in heaven that His house is to be found (xiv. 2); and thence proceeds all that comes from Him (i. 51, iii. 13, vi. 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 49, 50, 58); so that God and heaven come to be almost equivalent terms. Nor is there any obscuration of His ceaseless activity in governing the world (v. 17), although the stress is naturally thrown, in accordance with the whole character of this Gospel, on the moral and spiritual side of this government. But the very essence of the message of the Johannine Jesus is that the will (qe,lhma) of the Father (iv. 34, v. 30, vi. 38, 39, 40, vii. 17, ix. 31, cf. iii. 8, v. 21, xvii. 24, xxi. 22, 23) is the principle of all things; and more especially, of course, of the introduction of eternal life into this world of darkness and death. The conception of the world as lying in the evil one and therefore judged already (iii. 18), so that upon those who are not removed from the evil of the world the wrath of God is not so much to be poured out as simply abides (iii. 36, cf. I John iii. 14), is fundamental to this whole presentation. It is therefore, on the one hand, that Jesus represents Himself as having come not to condemn the world, but to save the world (iii. 17, viii. 12, ix. 5, xii. 47, cf. iv. 42), and all that He does as having for its end the introduction of life into the world (vi. 33, 51); the already condemned world needed no further condemnation, it needed saving. And it is for the same reason, on the other hand, that He represents the wicked world as incapable of coming to Him that it might have life (viii. 43, 21, xiv. 17, x. 33), and as requiring first of all a 'drawing' from the Father to enable it to come (vi. 44, 65); so that only those hear or believe on Him who are 'of God' (viii. 47, cf. xv. 19, xvii. 14), who are 'of his sheep' (x. 26).

There is undoubtedly a strong emphasis thrown on the universality of Christ's mission of salvation; He has been sent into the world not merely to save some out of the world, but to save the world itself (iii. 16, vi. 51, xii. 47, xvii. 21, cf. i. 29, I John iv. 14, ii. 2). But this universality of destination and effect by which it is 'the world' that is saved, does not imply the salvation of each and every individual in the world, even in the earlier stages of the developing salvation. On the contrary, the saving work is a process (xvii. 20); and, meanwhile, the coming of the Son into the world introduces a crisis, a sifting by which those who, because they are 'of God,' 'of his sheep,' are in the world, but not of it (xv. 19, xvii. 14), are separated from those who are of the world, that is, of their father the devil (viii. 44), who is the Prince of this world (xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11). Obviously, the difference between men that is thus manifested is not thought of as inhering, after a dualistic or semi-Gnostic fashion, in their very natures as such, or as instituted by their own self-framed or accidentally received dispositions, much less by their own conduct in the world, which is rather the result of it, - but, as already pointed out, as the effect of an act of God. All goes back to the will of God, to accomplish which, the Son, as the Sent One, has come; and therefore also to the consentient will of the Son, who gives life, accordingly, to whom He will (v. 21). As no one can come to Him out of the evil world, except it be given him of the Father (vi. 65, cf. vi. 44), so all that the Father gives Him (vi. 37, 39) and only such (vi. 65), come to Him, being drawn thereunto by the Father (vi. 44). Thus the Son has 'his own in the world' (xiii. 1), His 'chosen ones' (xiii. 18, xv. 16, 19), whom by His choice He has taken out of the world (xv. 19, xvii. 6, 14, 16); and for these only is His high-priestly intercession offered (xvii. 9), as to them only is eternal life communicated (x. 28, xvii. 2, also iii. 15, 36; v. 24, vi. 40, 54, viii. 12). Thus, what the dogmatists call gratia præveniens is very strikingly taught; and especial point is given to this teaching in the great declarations as to the new birth recorded in John iii, from which we learn that the recreating Spirit comes, like the wind, without observation, and as He lists (iii. 8), the mode of action by which the Father 'draws' men being thus uncovered for us. Of course this drawing is not to be thought of as proceeding in a manner out of accord with man's nature as a psychic being; it naturally comes to its manifestation in an act of voluntary choice on man's own part, and in this sense it is 'psychological' and not 'physical'; accordingly, though it be God that 'draws,' it is man that 'comes' (iii. 21, vi. 35, 41, xiv. 6). There is no occasion for stumbling therefore in the ascription of 'will' and 'responsibility' to man, or for puzzling over the designation of 'faith,' in which the 'coming' takes effect, as a 'work' of man's (vi. 29). Man is, of course, conceived as acting humanly, after the fashion of an intelligent and voluntary agent; but behind all his action there is ever postulated the all-determining hand of God, to whose sovereign operation even the blindness of the unbelieving is attributed by the evangelist (xii. 39 f.), while the receptivity to the light of those who believe is repeatedly in the most emphatic way ascribed by Jesus Himself to God alone. Although with little use of the terminology in which we have been accustomed to expect to see the doctrines of the decree and of election expressed, the substance of these doctrines is here set out in the most impressive way.

From the two sets of data provided by the Synoptists and St. John, it is possible to attain quite a clear insight into the conception of predestination as it lay in our Lord's teaching. It is quite certain, for example, that there is no place in this teaching for a 'predestination' that is carefully adjusted to the foreseen performances of the creature; and as little for a 'decree' which may be frustrated by creaturely action, or an 'election' which is given effect only by the creaturely choice: to our Lord the Father is the omnipotent Lord of heaven and earth, according to whose pleasure all things are ordered, and who gives the Kingdom to whom He will (Luke xii. 32, Mark xi. 26, Luke x. 21). Certainly it is the very heart of our Lord's teaching that the Father's good-pleasure is a good pleasure, ethically right, and the issue of infinite love; the very name of Father as the name of God by preference on His lips is full of this conception; but the very nerve of this teaching is, that the Father's will is all-embracing and omnipotent. It is only therefore that His children need be careful for nothing, that the little flock need not fear, that His elect may be assured that none of them shall be lost, but all that the Father has given Him shall be raised up at the last day. And if thus the elective purpose of the Father cannot fail of its end, neither is it possible to find this end in anything less than 'salvation' in the highest sense, than entrance into that eternal life to communicate which to dying men our Lord came into the world. There are elections to other ends, to be sure, spoken of: notably there is the election of the apostles to their office (Luke vi. 13, John vi. 70); and Christ Himself is conceived as especially God's elect one, because no one has the service to render which He has (Luke ix. 35, xxiii. 35). But the elect, by way of eminence; 'the elect whom God elected,' for whose sake He governs all history (Mark xiii. 20); the elect of whom it was the will of Him who sent the Son, that of all that He gave Him He should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day (John vi. 39); the elect whom the Son of Man shall at the last day gather from the four winds, from the uttermost parts of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven (Mark xiii. 27): it would be inadequate to suppose that these are elected merely to opportunities or the means of grace, on their free cultivation of which shall depend their undecided destiny; or merely to the service of their fellowmen, as agents in God's beneficent plan for the salvation of the race. Of course this election is to privileges and means of grace; and without these the great end of the election would not be attained: for the 'election' is given effect only by the 'call,' and manifests itself only in faith and the holy life. Equally of course the elect are 'the salt of the earth' and 'the light of the world,' the few through whom the many are blessed; the eternal life to which they are elected does not consist in or with the silence and coldness of death, but only in and with the intensest activities of the conquering people of God. But the prime end of their election does not lie in these things, and to place exclusive stress upon them is certainly to gather in the mint and anise and cummin of the doctrine. That to which God's elect are elected is, according to the teaching of Jesus, all that is included in the idea of the Kingdom of God, in the idea of eternal life, in the idea of fellowship with Christ, in the idea of participation in the glory which the Father has given His Son. Their choice, and the whole development of their history, according to our Lord's teaching, is the loving work of the Father: and in His keeping also is the consummation of their bliss. Their segregation, of course, leaves others not elected, to whom none of their privileges are granted; from whom none of their services are expected; with whom their glorious destiny is not shared. This, too, is of God. But this side of the matter, in accordance with Jesus' mission in the world as Saviour rather than as Judge, is less dwelt upon. In the case of neither class, that of the elect as little as that of those that are without, are the purposes of God wrought out without the co-operation of the activities of the subjects; but in neither case is the decisive factor supplied by these, but is discoverable solely in the will of God and the consonant will of the Son. The 'even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight' (Matt. xi. 26, Luke x. 21), is to our Lord, at least, an all-sufficient theodicy in the face of all God's diverse dealings with men.

The disciples of Jesus continue His teaching in all its elements. We are conscious, for example, of entering no new atmosphere when we pass to the Epistle of James. St. James, too, finds his starting-point in a profound apprehension of the exaltation and perfection of God, - defining God's nature, indeed, with a phrase that merely repeats in other words the penetrating declaration that 'God is light' (I John i. 5), which, reflecting our Lord's teaching, sound the keynote of the beloved disciple's thought of God (Jas. i. 17), - and particularly in a keen sense of dependence on God (iv. 15, v. 7), to which it was an axiom that every good thing is a gift from Him (i. 17). Accordingly, salvation, the pre-eminent good, comes purely as His gift, and can be ascribed only to His will (i. 18); and its exclusively Divine origin is indicated by the choice that is made of those who receive it - not the rich and prosperous, who have somewhat perhaps which might command consideration, but the poor and miserable (ii. 5). So little does this Divine choice rest on even faith, that it is rather in order to faith (ii. 5), and introduces its recipients into the Kingdom as firstfruits of a great harvest to be reaped by God in the world (i. 18).

Similarly, in the Book of Acts, the whole stress in the matter of salvation is laid on the grace of God (xi. 23, xiii. 43, xiv. 3, 26, xv. 40, xviii. 27); and to it, in the most pointed way, the inception of faith itself is assigned (xviii. 27). It is only slightly varied language when the increase in the Church is ascribed to the hand of the Lord (xi. 21), or the direct act of God (xiv. 27, xviii. 10). The explicit declaration of ii. 47 presents, therefore, nothing peculiar, and we are fully prepared for the philosophy of the redemptive history expressed in xiii. 48, that only those 'ordained to eternal life' believed - the believing that comes by the grace of God (xviii. 27), to whom it belongs to open the heart to give heed to the gospel (xvi. 14), being thus referred to the counsel of eternity, of which the events of time are only the outworking.

The general philosophy of history thus suggested is implicit in the very idea of a promissory system, and in the recognition of a predictive element in prophecy, and is written large on the pages of the historical books of the New Testament. It is given expression in every declaration that this or that event came to pass 'that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets,' - a form of statement in which our Lord had Himself betrayed His teleological view of history, not only as respects details (John xv. 25, xvii. 12), but with the widest reference (Luke xxi. 22), and which was taken up cordially by His followers, particularly by Matthew (i. 22, ii. 15, 23, iv. 14, viii. 17, xii. 17, xiii. 35, xxi. 4, xxvi. 56, John xii. 38, xviii. 9, xix. 24, 28, 36). Alongside of this phrase occurs the equally significant 'dei/ of the Divine decree,' as it has been appropriately called, by which is suggested the necessity which rules over historical sequences. It is used with a view now to Jesus' own plan of redemption (by Jesus Himself, Luke ii. 49, iv. 43, ix. 22, xiii. 33, xvii. 25, xxiv. 7, John iii. 14, x. 16, xii, 34; by the evangelist, Matt. xvi. 21), now to the underlying plan of God (by Jesus, Matt. xxiv. 6, Mark xiii. 7, 10, Luke xxi. 9; by the writer, Matt. xvii. 10, Mark ix. 11, Acts iii. 21, ix. 16), anon to the prophetic declaration as an indication of the underlying plan (by Jesus, Matt. xxvi. 56, Luke xxii. 37, xxiv. 26, 44; by the writer, John xx. 9, Acts i. 16, xvii. 3). This appeal, in either form, served an important apologetic purpose in the first proclamation of the gospel; but its fundamental significance is rooted, of course, in the conception of a Divine ordering of the whole course of history to the veriest detail.

Such a teleological conception of the history of the Kingdom is manifested strikingly in the speech of St. Stephen (Acts vii.), in which the developing plan of God is rapidly sketched. But it is in such declarations as those of St. Peter recorded in Acts ii. 23, iv. 28 that the wider philosophy of history comes to its clearest expression. In them everything that had befallen Jesus is represented as merely the emerging into fact of what had stood beforehand prepared for in 'the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,' so that nothing had been accomplished, by whatever agents, except what 'his hand and his counsel has foreordained to come to pass.' It would not be easy to frame language which should more explicitly proclaim the conception of an all-determining decree of God governing the entire sequence of events in time. Elsewhere in the Petrine discourses of Acts the speech is, coloured by the same ideas: we note in the immediate context of these culminating passages the high terms in which the exaltation of God is expressed (iv. 24 f.), the sharpness with which His sovereignty in the 'call' (proskale,omai) is declared (ii. 39), and elsewhere the repeated emergence of the idea of the necessary correspondence of the events of time with the predictions of Scripture (i. 16, ii. 24, iii. 21). The same doctrine of predestination meets us in the pages of St. Peter's Epistles. He does, indeed, speak of the members of the Christian community as God's elect (I i. 1, ii. 9, v. 13, II i. 10), in accordance with the apostolic habit of assuming the reality implied in the manifestation; but this is so far from importing that election hangs on the act of man that St. Peter refers it directly to the elective foreknowledge of God (I i. 2), and seeks its confirmation in sanctification (II i. 10), - even as the stumbling of the disobedient, on the other hand, is presented as a confirmation of their appointment to disbelief (I ii. 8). The pregnant use of the terms 'foreknow' (proginw,skw) and 'foreknowledge' (pro,gnwsij) by St. Peter brought to our attention in these passages (Acts ii. 23, I Pet. i. 2, 20), where they certainly convey the sense of a loving, distinguishing regard which assimilates them to the idea of election, is worthy of note as another of the traits common to him and St. Paul (Rom. viii. 29, xi. 2, only in the New Testament). The usage might be explained, indeed, as the development of a purely Greek sense of the words, but it is much more probably rooted in a Semitic usage, which, as we have seen, is not without example in the Old Testament. A simple comparison of the passages will exhibit the impossibility of reading the terms of mere prevision (cf. Cremer sub voc., and especially the full discussion in K. Müller's "Die Gottliche Zuvorersehung und Erwahlung," etc. pp. 38 f., 81 f.; also Gennrich, "Theol. Studien und Kritiken," 1898, 382-395; Pfleiderer, "Urchristenthum," 289, "Paulinismus," 268; and Lorenz, "Lehrsystem," etc. 94).

The teaching of St. John in Gospel and Epistle is not distinguishable from that which he reports from his Master's lips, and need not here be reverted to afresh. The same fundamental view-points meet us also in the Apocalypse. The emphasis there placed on the omnipotence of God rises indeed to a climax. There only in the New Testament (except II Cor. vi. 18), for example, is the epithet pantokra,twr ascribed to Him (i. 8, iv. 8, xi. 17, xv. 3, xvi. 7, 14, xix. 6, 15, xxi. 22, cf. xv. 3, vi. 10); and the whole purport of the book is the portrayal of the Divine guidance of history, and the very essence of its message that, despite all surface appearances, it is the hand of God that really directs all occurrences, and all things are hastening to the end of His determining. Salvation is ascribed unvaryingly to the grace of God, and declared to be His work (xii. 10, xix. 1). The elect people of God are His by the Divine choice alone: their names are from the foundation of the world written in the Lamb's Book of Life (xiii. 8, xvii. 8, xx. 12-15, xxi. 27), which is certainly a symbol of Divine appointment to eternal life revealed in and realized through Christ; nor shall they ever be blotted out of it (iii. 5). It is difficult to doubt that the destination here asserted is to a complete salvation (xix. 9), that it is individual, and that it is but a single instance of the completeness of the Divine government to which the world is subject by the Lord of lords and King of kings, the Ruler of the earth and King of the nations, whose control of all the occurrences of time in accordance with His holy purposes it is the supreme object of this book to portray.

Perhaps less is directly said about the purpose of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews than in any other portion of the New Testament of equal length. The technical phraseology of the subject is conspicuously absent. Nevertheless, the conception of the Divine counsel and will underlying all that comes to pass (ii. 10), and especially the entire course of the purchase (vi. 17, cf. x. 5-10, ii. 9) and application (xi. 39, 31, ix. 15) of salvation, is fundamental to the whole thought of the Epistle; and echoes of the modes in which this conception is elsewhere expressed meet us on every hand. Thus we read of God's eternal counsel (boulh,, vi. 17) and of His precedent will (qe,lhma, x. 10) as underlying His redemptive acts; of the enrolment of the names of His children in heaven (xii. 23); of the origin in the energy of God of all that is good in us (xiii. 21); and, above all, of a 'heavenly call' as the source of the whole renewed life of the Christian (iii. 1, cf. ix. 15).

When our Lord spoke of 'calling' (kale,w, Matt. ix. 13, Mark ii. 17, Luke v. 32, and, parabolically, Matt. xxii. 3, 4, 8, 9, Luke xiv. 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 24; klhto,j, Matt. xxii. 14 [xx. 16]) the term was used in the ordinary sense of 'invitation,' and refers therefore to a much broader circle than the 'elect' (Matt. xxii. 14); and this fundamental sense of 'bidding' may continue to cling to the term in the hands of the evangelists (Matt. iv. 21, Mark i. 20, cf. Luke xiv. 7, John ii. 2), while the depth of meaning which might be attached to it, even in such a connotation, may be revealed by such a passage as Rev. xix. 9 'Blessed are they which are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' On the lips of the apostolic writers, however, the term in its application to the call of God to salvation took on deeper meanings, doubtless out of consideration of the author of the call, who has but to speak and it is done (cf. Rom. iv. 17). It occurs in these writers, when it occurs at all, as the synonym no longer of 'invitation,' but rather of 'election' itself; or, more precisely, as expressive of the temporal act of the Divine efficiency by which effect is given to the electing decree. In this profounder sense it is practically confined to the writings of St. Paul and St. Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews, occurring elsewhere only in Jude 1, Rev. xvii. 14, where the children of God are designated the 'called,' just as they are (in various collocations of the term with the idea of election) in Rom. i. 6, 7, I Cor. i. 2, Rom. viii. 28, I Cor. i. 24 (cf. Rom. i. 1, I Cor. i. 1). Klhto,j, as used in these passages, does not occur in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but in iii. 1 Kaiwis occurs in a sense indistinguishable from that which it bears in St. Paul (Rom. xi. 29, I Cor. i. 26, Eph. i. 18, iv. 1, 4, Phil. iii. 14, II Thes. i. 11, II Tim. i. 9) and St. Peter (II Pet. i. 10); and in ix. 15 (cf. special applications of the same general idea, v. 4, xi. 8), klh/sij bears the same deep sense expressed by it in St. Paul (Rom. viii. 30 twice, ix. 11, 24, I Cor. i. 9, vii. 15, 17, 18 twice, 20, 21, 22 twice, 24, Gal. i. 6, 15, v. 8, 13, Eph. iv. 1, 4, Col. iii. 15, I Thes. ii. 12, iv. 7, v. 24, II Thes. ii. 14, II Tim. i. 9) and in St. Peter (I i. 15, ii. 9, 21, iii. 9, v. 10, II i. 3, cf. proskale,w, Acts ii. 39, and in the language of St. Luke, Acts xiii. 2, xvi. 10). The contrast into which the 'called' (iii. 1) are brought in this Epistle with the 'evangelized' (iv. 2, 6), repeating in other terms the contrast which our Saviour institutes between the 'elect' and 'called' (Matt. xxii. 14), exhibits the height of the meaning to which the idea of the 'call' has climbed. It no longer denotes the mere invitation, - that notion is now given in 'evangelize,' - but the actual ushering into salvation of the heirs of the promise, who are made partakers of the heavenly calling, and are called to the everlasting inheritance just because they have been destined thereunto by God (i. 14), and are enrolled in heaven as the children given to the Son of God (ii. 13).

It was reserved, however, to the Apostle Paul to give to the fact of predestination its fullest New Testament presentation. This was not because St. Paul exceeded his fellows in the strength or clearness of his convictions, but because, in the prosecution of the special task which was committed to him in the general work of establishing Christianity in the world, the complete expression of the common doctrine of predestination fell in his way, and became a necessity of his argument. With him, too, the roots of his doctrine of predestination were set in his general doctrine of God, and it was fundamentally because St. Paul was a theist of a clear and consistent type, living and thinking under the influence of the profound consciousness of a personal God who is the author of all that is and, as well, the upholder and powerful governor of all that He has made, according to whose will, therefore, all that comes to pass must be ordered, that he was a predestinarian; and more particularly he too was a predestinarian because of his general doctrine of salvation, in every step of which the initiative must be taken by God's unmerited grace, just because man is a sinner, and, as a sinner, rests under the Divine condemnation, with no right of so much as access to God, and without means to seek, much less to secure, His favour. But although possessing no other sense of the infinite majesty of the almighty Person in whose hands all things lie, or of the issue of all saving acts from His free grace, than his companion apostles, the course of the special work in which St. Paul was engaged, and the exigencies of the special controversies in which he was involved, forced him to a fuller expression of all that is implied in these convictions. As he cleared the whole field of Christian faith from the presence of any remaining confidence in human works; as he laid beneath the hope of Christians a righteousness not self-wrought but provided by God alone; as he consistently offered this God-provided righteousness to sinners of all classes without regard to anything in them by which they might fancy God could be moved to accept their persons, - he was inevitably driven to an especially pervasive reference of salvation in each of its elements to the free grace of God, and to an especially full exposition on the one hand of the course of Divine grace in the several acts which enter into the saving work, and on the other to the firm rooting of the whole process in the pure will of the God of grace. From the beginning to the end of his ministry, accordingly, St. Paul conceived himself, above everything else, as the bearer of a message of undeserved grace to lost sinners, not even directing his own footsteps to carry the glad tidings to whom he would (Rom. i. 10, I Cor. iv. 19, II Cor. ii. 12), but rather led by God in triumphal procession through the world, that through him might be made manifest the savour of the knowledge of Christ in every place - a savour from life unto life in them that are saved, and from death unto death in them that are lost (II Cor. ii. 15, 16). By the 'word of the cross' proclaimed by him the essential character of his hearers was thus brought into manifestation, - to the lost it was foolishness, to the saved the power of God (I Cor. i. 18): not as if this essential character belonged to them by nature or was the product of their own activities, least of all of their choice at the moment of the proclamation, by which rather it was only revealed; but as finding an explanation only in an act of God, in accordance with the working of Him to whom all differences among men are to be ascribed (I Cor. iv. 7) - for God alone is the Lord of the harvest, and all the increase, however diligently man may plant and water, is to be accredited to Him alone (I Cor. iii. 5 f.).

It is naturally the soteriological interest that determines in the main St. Paul's allusions to the all-determining hand of God, - the letters that we have from him come from Paul the evangelist, - but it is not merely a soteriological conception that he is expressing in them, but the most fundamental postulate of his religious consciousness; and he is accordingly constantly correlating his doctrine of election with his general doctrine of the decree or counsel of God. No man ever had an intenser or more vital sense of God, - the eternal (Rom. xvi. 26) and incorruptible (i. 23) One, the only wise One (xvi. 27), who does all things according to His good-pleasure (I Cor. xv. 38, xii. 18, Col. i. 19), and whose ways are past tracing out (Rom. xi. 33); before whom men should therefore bow in the humility of absolute dependence, recognizing in Him the one moulding power as well in history as in the life of the individual (Rom. ix.). Of Him and through Him and unto Him, he fervently exclaims, are all things (Rom. xi. 36, cf. I Cor. viii. 6); He is over all and through all and in all (Eph. iv. 6, cf. Col. i. 16); He worketh all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. i. 11): all that is, in a word, owes its existence and persistence and its action and issue to Him. The whole course of history is, therefore, of His ordering (Acts xiv. 16, xvii. 26, Rom. i. 18 f., iii. 25, ix-xi, Gal. iii. iv.), and every event that befalls is under His control, and must be estimated from the view-point of His purposes of good to His people (Rom. viii. 28, I Thes. v. 17, 18), for whose benefit the whole world is governed (Eph. i. 22, I Cor. ii. 7, Col. i. 18). The figure that is employed in Rom. ix. 22 with a somewhat narrower reference, would fairly express St. Paul's world-view in its relation to the Divine activity: God is the potter, and the whole world with all its contents but as the plastic clay which He moulds to His own ends; so that whatsoever comes into being, and whatsoever uses are served by the things that exist, are all alike of Him. In accordance with this world-view St. Paul's doctrine of salvation must necessarily be interpreted; and, in very fact, he gives it its accordant expression in every instance in which he speaks of it.

There are especially three chief passages in which the apostles so fully expounds his fundamental teaching as to the relation of salvation to the purpose of God, that they may fairly claim our primary attention.

(a) The first of these - Rom. viii. 29, 30 - emerges as part of the encouragement which the apostle offers to his readers in the sad state in which they find themselves in this world, afflicted with fears within and fightings without. He reminds them that they are not left to their weakness, but the Spirit comes to their aid: 'and we know,' adds the apostle, - it is no matter of conjecture, but of assured knowledge, 'that with them that love God, God co-operates with respect to all things for good, since they are indeed the called according to [His] purpose.' The appeal is obviously primarily to the universal government of God: nothing takes place save by His direction, and even what seems to be grievous comes from the Father's hand. Secondarily, the appeal is to the assured position of his readers within the fatherly care of God: they have not come into this blessed relation with God accidentally or by the force of their own choice; they have been 'called' into it by Himself, and that by no thoughtless, inadvertent, meaningless, or changeable call; it was a call 'according to purpose,' - where the anarthrousness of the noun throws stress on the purposiveness of the call. What has been denominated 'the golden chain of salvation' that is attached to this declaration by the particle 'because' can therefore have no other end than more fully to develop and more firmly to ground the assurance thus quickened in the hearts of the readers: it accordingly enumerates the steps of the saving process in the purpose of God, and carries it thus successively through the stages of appropriating foreknowledge, - for 'foreknow' is undoubtedly used here in that pregnant sense we have already seen it to bear in similar connexions in the New Testament, - predestination to conformity with the image of God's Son, calling, justifying, glorifying; all of which are cast in the past tense of a purpose in principle executed when formed, and are bound together as mutually implicative, so that, where one is present, all are in principle present with it. It accordingly follows that, in St. Paul's conception, glorification rests on justification, which in turn rests on vocation, while vocation comes only to those who had previously been predestinated to conformity with God's Son, and this predestination to character and destiny only to those afore chosen by God's loving regard. It is obviously a strict doctrine of predestination that is taught. This conclusion can be avoided only by assigning a sense to the 'foreknowing' that lies at the root of the whole process, which is certainly out of accord not merely with its ordinary import in similar connexions in the New Testament, nor merely with the context, but with the very purpose for which the declaration is made, namely, to enhearten the struggling saint by assuring him that he is not committed to his own power, or rather weakness, but is in the sure hands of the Almighty Father. It would seem little short of absurd to hang on the merely contemplative foresight of God a declaration adduced to support the assertion that the lovers of God are something deeper and finer than even lovers of God, namely, 'the called according to purpose,' and itself educing the joyful cry, 'If God is for us, who is against us?' and grounding a confident claim upon the gift of all things from His hands.

(b) The even more famous section, Rom. ix, x, xi, following closely upon this strong affirmation of the suspension of the whole saving process on the predetermination of God, offers, on the face of it, a yet sharper assertion of predestination, raising it, moreover, out of the circle of the merely individual salvation into the broader region of the historical development of the kingdom of God. The problem which St. Paul here faces grew so directly out of his fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone, with complete disregard of all question of merit or vested privilege, that it must have often forced itself upon his attention, - himself a Jew with a high estimate of a Jew's privileges and a passionate love for his people. He could not but have pondered it frequently and deeply, and least of all could he have failed to give it treatment in an Epistle like this, which undertakes to provide a somewhat formal exposition of his whole doctrine of justification. Having shown the necessity of such a method of salvation as he proclaimed, if sinful men were to be saved at all (i. 18-iii. 20), and then expounded its nature and evidence (iii. 21-v. 21), and afterwards discussed its intensive effects (vi. 1-viii. 39), he could not fail further to explain its extensive effects especially ,when they appeared to be of so portentous a character as to imply a reversal of what was widely believed to have been God's mode of working heretofore, the rejection of His people whom He foreknew, and the substitution of the alien in their place. St. Paul's solution of the problem is, briefly, that the situation has been gravely misconceived by those who so represent it; that nothing of the sort thus described has happened or will happen; that what has happened is merely that in the constitution of that people whom He has chosen to Himself and is fashioning to His will, God has again exercised that sovereignty which He had previously often exercised, and which He had always expressly reserved to Himself and frequently proclaimed as the principle of His dealings with the people emphatically of His choice. In his exposition of this solution St. Paul first defends the propriety of God's action (ix. 6-24), then turns to stop the mouth of the objecting Jew by exposing the manifested unfitness of the Jewish people for the kingdom (ix. 30-x. 21), and finally expounds with great richness the ameliorating circumstances in the whole transaction (xi. 1-36). In the course of his defence of God's rejection of the mass of contemporary Israel, he sets forth the sovereignty of God in the whole matter of salvation - 'that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth' -with a sharpness of assertion and a clearness of illustration which leave nothing to be added in order to throw it out in the full strength of its conception. We are pointed illustratively to the sovereign acceptance of Isaac and rejection of Ishmael, and to the choice of Jacob and not of Esau before their birth and therefore before either had done good or bad; we are explicitly told that in the matter of salvation it is not of him that wills, or of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy, and that has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens; we are pointedly directed to behold in God the potter who makes the vessels which proceed from His hand each for an end of His appointment, that He may work out His will upon them. It is safe to say that language cannot be chosen better adapted to teach predestination at its height.

We are exhorted, indeed, not to read this language in isolation, but to remember that the ninth chapter must be interpreted in the light of the eleventh. Not to dwell on the equally important consideration that the eleventh chapter must likewise be interpreted only in the light of the ninth, there seems here to exhibit itself some forgetfulness of the inherent continuity of St. Paul's thought, and, indeed, some misconception of the progress of the argument through the section, which is a compact whole and must express a much pondered line of thought, constantly present to the apostle's mind. We must not permit to fall out of sight the fact that the whole extremity of assertion of the ninth chapter is repeated in the eleventh (xi. 4-10); so that there is no change of conception or lapse of consecution observable as the argument develops, and we do not escape from the doctrine of predestination of the ninth chapter in fleeing to the eleventh. This is true even if we go at once to the great closing declaration of xi. 32, to which we are often directed as to the key of the whole section - which, indeed, it very much is: 'For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.' On the face of it there could not readily be framed a more explicit assertion of the Divine control and the Divine initiative than this; it is only another declaration that He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and after the manner and in the order that He will. And it certainly is not possible to read it as a declaration of universal salvation, and thus reduce the whole preceding exposition to a mere tracing of the varying pathways along which the common Father leads each individual of the race severally to the common goal. Needless to point out that thus the whole argument would be stultified, and the apostle convicted of gross exaggeration in tone and language where otherwise we find only impressive solemnity, rising at times into natural anguish. It is enough to observe that the verse cannot bear this sense in its context. Nothing is clearer than that its purpose is not to minimise but to magnify the sense of absolute dependence on the Divine mercy, and to quicken apprehension of the mystery of God's righteously loving ways; and nothing is clearer than that the reference of the double 'all' is exhausted by the two classes discussed in the immediate context, - so that they are not to be taken individualistically but, so to speak, racially. The intrusion of the individualistic-universalistic sentiment, so dominant in the modern consciousness, into the interpretation of this section, indeed, is to throw the whole into inextricable confusion. Nothing could be further from the nationalistic-universalistic point of view from which it was written, and from which alone St. Paul can be understood when he represents that in rejecting the mass of contemporary Jews God has not cast off His people, but, acting only as He had frequently done in former ages, is fulfilling His promise to the kernel while shelling off the husk. Throughout the whole process of pruning and ingrafting which he traces in the dealings of God with the olive-tree which He has once for all planted, St. Paul sees God, in accordance with His promise, saving His people. The continuity of its stream of life he perceives preserved throughout all its present experience of rejection (xi. 1-10); the gracious purpose of the present confinement of its channel, he traces with eager hand (xi. 11-15); he predicts with confidence the attainment in the end of the full breadth of the promise (xi. 15-32), - all to the praise of the glory of God's grace (xi. 33-36). There is undoubtedly a universalism of salvation proclaimed here; but it is an eschatological, not an individualistic universalism. The day is certainly to come when the whole world - inclusive of all the Jews and Gentiles alike, then dwelling on the globe - shall know and serve the Lord; and God in all His strange work of distributing salvation is leading the course of events to that great goal; but meanwhile the principle of His action is free, sovereign grace, to which alone it is to be attributed that any who are saved in the meantime enter into their inheritance, and through which alone shall the final goal of the race itself be attained. The central thought of the whole discussion, in a word, is that Israel does not owe the promise to the fact that it is Israel, but conversely owes the fact that it is Israel to the promise, - that 'it is not the children of the flesh that are the children of God, but the children of the promise that are reckoned for a seed' (ix. 8). In these words we hold the real key to the whole section; and if we approach it with this key in hand we shall have little difficulty in apprehending that, from its beginning to its end, St. Paul has no higher object than to make clear that the inclusion of any individual within the kingdom of God finds its sole cause in the sovereign grace of the choosing God, and cannot in any way or degree depend upon his own merit, privilege, or act.

Neither, with this key in our hand, will it be possible to raise a question whether the election here expounded is to eternal life or not rather merely to prior privilege or higher service. These too, no doubt, are included. But by what right is this long section intruded here as a substantive part of this Epistle, busied as a whole with the exposition of 'the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,' if it has no direct concern with this salvation? By what chance has it attached itself to that noble grounding of a Christian's hope and assurance with which the eighth chapter closes? By what course of thought does it reach its own culmination in that burst of praise to God, on whom all things depend, with which it concludes? By what accident is it itself filled with the most unequivocal references to the saving grace of God 'which hath been poured out on the vessels of his mercy which he afore prepared for glory, even on us whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles'? If such language has no reference to salvation, there is no language in the New Testament that need be interpreted of final destiny. Beyond question this section does explain to us some of the grounds of the mode of God's action in gathering a people to Himself out of the world; and in doing this, it does reveal to us some of the ways in which the distribution of His electing grace serves the purposes of His kingdom on earth; reading it, we certainly do learn that God has many ends to serve in His gracious dealings with the children of men, and that we, in our ignorance of His multifarious purposes, are not fitted to be His counsellors. But by all this, the fact is in no wise obscured that it is primarily to salvation that He calls His elect, and that whatever other ends their election may subserve, this fundamental end will never fail; that in this, too, the gifts and calling of God are not repented of, and will surely lead on to their goal. The difficulty which is felt by some in following the apostle's argument here, we may suspect, has its roots in part in a shrinking from what appears to them an arbitrary assignment of men to diverse destinies without consideration of their desert. Certainly St. Paul as explicitly affirms the sovereignty of reprobation as of election, - if these twin ideas are, indeed, separable even in thought: if he represents God as sovereignly loving Jacob, he represents Him equally as sovereignly hating Esau; if he declares that He has mercy on whom He will, he equally declares that He hardens whom He will. Doubtless the difficulty often felt here is, in part, an outgrowth of an insufficient realization of St. Paul's basal conception of the state of men at large as condemned sinners before an angry God. It is with a world of lost sinners that he is representing God as dealing; and out of that world building up a Kingdom of Grace. Were not all men sinners, there might still be an election, as sovereign as now; and there being an election, there would still be as sovereign a rejection: but the rejection would not be a rejection to punishment, to destruction, to eternal death, but to some other destiny consonant to the state in which those passed by should be left. It is not indeed, then, because men are sinners that men are left unelected; election is free, and its obverse of rejection must be equally free: but it is solely because men are sinners that what they are left to is destruction. And it is in this universalism of ruin rather than in a universalism of salvation that St. Paul really roots his theodicy. When all deserve death it is a marvel of pure grace that any receive life; and who shall gain say the right of Him who shows this miraculous mercy, to have mercy on whom He will, and whom He will to harden?

(c) In Eph. i. 1-12 there is, if possible, an even higher note struck. Here, too, St. Paul is dealing primarily with the blessings bestowed on his readers, in Christ, all of which he ascribes to the free grace of God; but he so speaks of these blessings as to correlate the gracious purpose of God in salvation, not merely with the plan of operation which He prosecutes in establishing and perfecting His kingdom on earth, but also with the all-embracing decree that underlies His total cosmical activity. In opening this circular letter, addressed to no particular community whose special circumstances might suggest the theme of the thanksgiving with which he customarily begins his letters, St. Paul is thrown back on what is common to Christians; and it is probably to this circumstance that we owe the magnificent description of the salvation in Christ with which the Epistle opens, and in which this salvation is traced consecutively in its preparation (vv. 4, 5), its execution (6, 7), its publication (8-10), and its application (11-14), both to Jews (11, 12) and to Gentiles (13, 14). Thus, at all events, we have brought before us the whole ideal history of salvation in Christ from eternity to eternity - from the eternal purpose as it lay in the loving heart of the Father, to the eternal consummation, when all things in heaven and earth shall be summed up in Christ. Even the incredible profusion of the blessings which we receive in Christ, described with an accumulation of phrases that almost defies exposition, is less noticeable here than the emphasis and reiteration with which the apostle carries back their bestowment on us to that primal purpose of God in which all things are afore prepared ere they are set in the way of accomplishment. All this accumulation of blessings, he tells his readers, has come to them and him only in fulfilment of an eternal purpose - only because they had been chosen by God out of the mass of sinful men, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him, and had been lovingly predestinated unto adoption through Jesus Christ to Him, in accordance with the good-pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace. It is therefore, he further explains, that to them in the abundance of God's grace there has been brought the knowledge of the salvation in Christ, described here as the knowledge of the mystery of the Divine will, according to His good-pleasure, which He purposed in Himself with reference to the dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in the universe in Christ, - by which phrases the plan of salvation is clearly exhibited as but one element in the cosmical purpose of God. And thus it is, the apostle proceeds to explain, only in pursuance of this all-embracing cosmical purpose that Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, have been called into participation of these blessings, to the praise of the glory of God's grace, - and of the former class, he pauses to assert anew that their call rests on a predestination according to the purpose of Him that works all things according to the counsel of His will. Throughout this elevated passage, the resources of language are strained to the utmost to give utterance to the depth and fervour of St. Paul's conviction of the absoluteness of the dominion which the God, whom he describes as Him that works all things according to the counsel of His will, exercises over the entire universe, and of his sense of the all-inclusive perfection of the plan on which He is exercising His world-wide government - into which world-wide government His administration of His grace, in the salvation of Christ, works as one element. Thus there is kept steadily before our eyes the wheel within wheel of the all-comprehending decree of God: first of all, the inclusive cosmical purpose in accordance with which the universe is governed as it is led to its destined end; within this, the purpose relative to the kingdom of God, a substantive part, and, in some sort, the hinge of the world-purpose itself; and still within this, the purpose of grace relative to the individual, by virtue of which he is called into the Kingdom and made sharer in its blessings: the common element with them all being that they are and come to pass only in accordance with the goodpleasure of His will, according to His purposed good-pleasure, according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the counsel of His will; and therefore all alike redound solely to His praise.

In these outstanding passages, however, there are only expounded, though with special richness, ideas which govern the Pauline literature, and which come now and again to clear expression in each group of St. Paul's letters. The whole doctrine of election, for instance, lies as truly in the declaration of II Thes. ii. 13 or that of II Tim. i. 9 (cf. II Tim. ii. 19, Tit. iii. 5) as in the passages we have considered from Romans (cf. I Cor. i. 26-31) and Ephesians (cf. Eph. ii. 10, Col. i. 27, iii. 12, 15, Phil. iv. 3). It may be possible to trace minor distinctions through the several groups of letters in forms of statement or modes of relating the doctrine to other conceptions; but from the beginning to the end of St. Paul's activity as a Christian teacher his fundamental teaching as to the Christian calling and life is fairly summed up in the declaration that those that are saved are God's 'workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God afore prepared that they should walk in them' (Eph. ii. 10).

The most striking impression made upon us by a survey of the whole material is probably the intensity of St. Paul's practical interest in the doctrine - a matter fairly illustrated by the passage just quoted (Eph. ii. 10). Nothing is more noticeable than his zeal in enforcing its two chief practical contents - the assurance it should bring to believers of their eternal safety in the faithful hands of God, and the ethical energy it should arouse within them to live worthily of their vocation. It is one of St. Paul's most persistent exhortations, that believers should remember that their salvation is not committed to their own weak hands, but rests securely on the faithfulness of the God who has called them according to His purpose (e. g., I Thes. v. 24, I Cor. i. 8 f., x. 13, Phil. i. 6). Though the appropriation of their salvation begins in an act of faith on their own part, which is consequent on the hearing of the gospel, their appointment to salvation itself does not depend on this act of faith, nor on any fitness discoverable in them on the foresight of which God's choice of them might be supposed to be based, but (as I Thes. ii. 13 already indicates) both the preaching of the gospel and the exercise of faith consistently appear as steps in the carrying out of an election not conditioned on their occurrence, but embracing them as means to the end set by the free purpose of God. The case is precisely the same with all subsequent acts of the Christian life. So far is St. Paul from supposing that election to life should operate to enervate moral endeavour, that it is precisely from the fact that the willing and doing of man rest on an energizing willing and doing of God, which in turn rest on His eternal purpose, that the apostle derives his most powerful and most frequently urged motive for ethical action. That tremendous 'therefore,' with which at the opening of the twelfth chapter of Romans he passes from the doctrinal to the ethical part of the Epistle, - from a doctrinal exposition the very heart of which is salvation by pure grace apart from all works, and which has just closed with the fullest discussion of the effects of election to be found in all his writings, to the rich exhortations to high moral effort with which the closing chapters of this Epistle are filled, - may justly be taken as the normal illation of his whole ethical teaching. His Epistles, in fact, are sown (as indeed is the whole New Testament) with particular instances of the same appeal (e. g., I Thes. ii. 12, II Thes. ii. 13-15, Rom. vi, II Cor. v. 14, Col. i. 10, Phil. i. 21, ii. 12, 13, II Tim. ii. 19). In Phil. ii. 12,13 it attains, perhaps, its sharpest expression: here the saint is exhorted to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, just because it is God who is working in him both the willing and the doing because of His 'good-pleasure'- obviously but another way of saying, 'If God is for us, who can be against us?'

There is certainly presented in this a problem for those who wish to operate in this matter with an irreconcilable 'either, or,' and who can conceive of no freedom of man which is under the control of God. St. Paul's theism was, however, of too pure a quality to tolerate in the realm of creation any force beyond the sway of Him who, as he says, is over all, and through all, and in all (Eph. iv. 6), working all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. i. 11). And it must be confessed that it is more facile than satisfactory to set his theistic world-view summarily aside as a 'merely religious view,' which stands in conflict with a truly ethical conception of the world - perhaps even with a repetition of Fritzsche's jibe that St. Paul would have reasoned better on the high themes of 'fate, free-will, and providence' had he sat at the feet of Aristotle rather than at those of Gamaliel. Antiquity produced, however, no ethical genius equal to St. Paul, and even as a teacher of the foundations of ethics Aristotle himself might well be content to sit rather at his feet; and it does not at once appear why a so-called 'religious' conception may not have as valid a ground in human nature, and as valid a right to determine human conviction, as a so-called 'ethical' one. It can serve no good purpose even to proclaim an insoluble antinomy here: such an antinomy St. Paul assuredly did not feel, as he urged the predestination of God not more as a ground of assurance of salvation than as the highest motive of moral effort; and it does not seem impossible for even us weaker thinkers to follow him some little way at least in looking upon those twin bases of religion and morality - the ineradicable feelings of dependence and responsibility - not as antagonistic sentiments of a hopelessly divided heart, but as fundamentally the same profound conviction operating in a double sphere. At all events, St. Paul's pure theistic view-point, which conceived God as in His providential concursus working all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. i. 11) in entire consistency with the action of second causes, necessary and free, the proximate producers of events, supplied him with a very real point of departure for his conception of the same God, in the operations of His grace, working the willing and the doing of Christian men, without the least infringement of the integrity of the free determination by which each grace is proximately attained. It does not belong to our present task to expound the nature of that Divine act by which St. Paul represents God as 'calling' sinners 'into communion with his Son,' itself the first step in the realization in their lives of that conformity to His image to which they are predestinated in the counsels of eternity, and of which the first manifestation is that faith in the Redeemer of God's elect out of which the whole Christian life unfolds. Let it only be observed in passing that he obviously conceives it as an act of God's almighty power, removing old inabilities and creating new abilities of living, loving action. It is enough for our present purpose to perceive that even in this act St. Paul did not conceive God as dehumanizing man, but rather as energizing man in a new direction of his powers; while in all his subsequent. activities the analogy of the concursus of Providence is express. In his own view, his strenuous assertion of the predetermination in God's purpose of all the acts of saint and sinner alike in the matter of salvation, by which the discrimination of men into saved and lost is carried back to the free counsel of God's will, as little involves violence to the ethical spontaneity of their activities on the one side, as on the other it involves unrighteousness in God's dealings with His creatures. He does not speculatively discuss the methods of the Divine providence; but the fact of its universality - over all beings and actions alike - forms one of his most primary presuppositions; and naturally he finds no difficulty in postulating the inclusion in the prior intention of God of what is subsequently evolved in the course of His providential government.

V. THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION

A survey of the whole material thus cursorily brought before us exhibits the existence of a consistent Bible doctrine of predestination, which, because rooted in, and indeed only a logical outcome of, the fundamental Biblical theism, is taught in all its essential elements from the beginning of the Biblical revelation, and is only more fully unfolded in detail as the more developed religious consciousness and the course of the history of redemption required.

The subject of the DECREE is uniformly conceived as God in the fulness of His moral personality. It is not to chance, nor to necessity, nor yet to an abstract or arbitrary will, - to God acting inadvertently, inconsiderately, or by any necessity of nature, - but specifically to the almighty, all-wise, all-holy, all-righteous, faithful, loving God, to the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that is ascribed the predetermination of the course of events. Naturally, the contemplation of the plan in accordance with which all events come to pass calls out primarily a sense of the unsearchable wisdom of Him who framed it, and of the illimitable power of Him who executes it; and these attributes are accordingly much dwelt upon when the Divine predestination is adverted to. But the moral attributes are no less emphasized, and the Biblical writers find their comfort continually in the assurance that it is the righteous, holy, faithful, loving God in whose hands rests the determination of the sequence of events and all their issues. Just because it is the determination of God, and represents Him in all His fulness, the decree is ever set forth further as in its nature eternal, absolute, and immutable. And it is only an explication of these qualities when it is further insisted upon, as it is throughout the Bible, that it is essentially one single composite purpose, into which are worked all the details included in it, each in its appropriate place; that it is the pure determination of the Divine will - that is, not to be confounded on the one hand with an act of the Divine intellect on which it rests, nor on the other with its execution by His power in the works of creation and providence; that it is free and unconditional - that is, not the product of compulsion from without nor of necessity of nature from within, nor based or conditioned on any occurrence outside itself, foreseen or unforeseen; and that it is certainly efficacious, or rather constitutes the unchanging norm according to which He who is the King over all administers His government over the universe. Nor is it to pass beyond the necessary implications of the fundamental idea when it is further taught, as it is always taught throughout the Scriptures, that the object of the decree is the whole universe of things and all their activities, so that nothing comes to pass, whether in the sphere of necessary or free causation, whether good or bad, save in accordance with the provisions of the primal plan, or more precisely save as the outworking in fact of what had lain in the Divine mind as purpose from all eternity, and is now only unfolded into actuality as the fulfilment of His all-determining will. Finally, it is equally unvaryingly represented that the end which the decreeing God had in view in framing His purpose is to be sought not without but within Himself, and may be shortly declared as His own praise, or, as we now commonly say, the glory of God. Since it antedates the existence of all things outside of God and provides for their coming into being, they all without exception must be ranked as means to its end, which can be discovered only in the glory of the Divine purposer Himself. The whole Bible doctrine of the decree revolves, in a word, around the simple idea of purpose. Since God is a Person, the very mark of His being is purpose. Since He is an infinite Person, His purpose is eternal and independent, all-inclusive and effective. Since He is a moral Person, His purpose is the perfect exposition of all His infinite moral perfections. Since He is the personal creator of all that exists, His purpose can find its final cause only in Himself.

Against this general doctrine of the decree, the Bible doctrine of ELECTION is thrown out into special prominence, being, as it is, only a particular application of the general doctrine of the decree to the matter of the dealings of God with a sinful race. In its fundamental characteristics it therefore partakes of all the elements of the general doctrine of the decree. It, too, is necessarily an act of God in His completeness as an infinite moral Person, and is therefore eternal, absolute, immutable - the independent, free, unconditional, effective determination by the Divine will of the objects of His saving operations. In the development of the idea, however, there are certain elements which receive a special stress. There is nothing that is more constantly emphasized than the absolute sovereignty of the elective choice. The very essence of the doctrine is made, indeed, to consist in the fact that, in the whole administration of His grace, God is moved by no consideration derived from the special recipients of His saving mercy, but the entire account of its distribution is to be found hidden in the free counsels of His own will. That it is not of him that runs, nor of him that wills, but of God that shows mercy, that the sinner obtains salvation, is the steadfast witness of the whole body of Scripture, urged with such reiteration and in such varied connexions as to exclude the possibility that there may lurk behind the act of election considerations of foreseen characters or acts or circumstances - all of which appear rather as results of election as wrought out in fact by the providentia specialissima of the electing God. It is with no less constancy of emphasis that the roots of the Divine election are planted in His unsearchable love, by which it appears as the supreme act of grace. Contemplation of the general plan of God, including in its provisions every event which comes to pass in the whole universe of being during all the ages, must redound in the first instance to the praise of the infinite wisdom which has devised it all; or as our appreciation of its provisions is deepened, of the glorious righteousness by which it is informed. Contemplation of the particular element in His purpose which provides for the rescue of lost sinners from the destruction due to their guilt, and their restoration to right and to God, on the other hand draws our thoughts at once to His inconceivable love, and must redound, as the Scriptures delight to phrase it, to the praise of His glorious grace. It is ever, therefore, specifically to the love of God that the Scriptures ascribe His elective decree, and they are never weary of raising our eyes from the act itself to its source in the Divine compassion. A similar emphasis is also everywhere cast on the particularity of the Divine election. So little is it the designation of a mere class to be filled up by undetermined individuals in the exercise of their own determination; or of mere conditions, or characters, or qualities, to be fulfilled or attained by the undetermined activities of individuals, foreseen or unforeseen; that the Biblical writers take special pains to carry home to the heart of each individual believer the assurance that he himself has been from all eternity the particular object of the Divine choice, and that he owes it to this Divine choice alone that he is a member of the class of the chosen ones, that he is able to fulfil the conditions of salvation, that he can hope to attain the character on which alone God can look with complacency, that he can look forward to an eternity of bliss as his own possession. It is the very nerve of the Biblical doctrine that each individual of that enormous multitude that constitutes the great host of the people of God, and that is illustrating the character of Christ in the new life now lived in the strength of the Son of God, has from all eternity been the particular object of the Divine regard, and is only now fulfilling the high destiny designed for him from the foundation of the world.

The Biblical writers are as far as possible from obscuring the doctrine of election because of any seemingly unpleasant corollaries that flow from it. On the contrary, they expressly draw the corollaries which have often been so designated, and make them a part of their explicit teaching. Their doctrine of election, they are free to tell us, for example, does certainly involve a corresponding doctrine of preterition. The very term adopted in the New Testament to express it - evkle,gomai, which, as Meyer justly says (Eph. i. 4), 'always has, and must of logical necessity have, a reference to others to whom the chosen would, without the evklogh,, still belong' - embodies a declaration of the fact that in their election others are passed by and left without the gift of salvation; the whole presentation of the doctrine is such as either to imply or openly to assert, on its every emergence, the removal of the elect by the pure grace of God, not merely from a state of condemnation, but out of the company of the condemned - a company on whom the grace of God has no saving effect, and who are therefore left without hope in their sins; and the positive just reprobation of the impenitent for their sins is repeatedly explicitly taught in sharp contrast with the gratuitous salvation of the elect despite their sins. But, on the other hand, it is ever taught that, as the body out of which believers are chosen by God's unsearchable grace is the mass of justly condemned sinners, so the destruction to which those that are passed by are left is the righteous recompense of their guilt. Thus the discrimination between men in the matter of eternal destiny is distinctly set forth as taking place in the interests of mercy and for the sake of salvation: from the fate which justly hangs over all, God is represented as in His infinite compassion rescuing those chosen to this end in His inscrutable counsels of mercy to the praise of the glory of His grace; while those that are left in their sins perish most deservedly, as the justice of God demands. And as the broader lines of God's gracious dealings with the world lying in its iniquity are more and more fully drawn for us, we are enabled ultimately to perceive that the Father of spirits has not distributed His elective grace with niggard hand, but from the beginning has had in view the restoration to Himself of the whole world; and through whatever slow approaches (as men count slowness) He has made thereto - first in the segregation of the Jews for the keeping of the service of God alive in the midst of an evil world, and then in their rejection in order that the fulness of the Gentiles migh the gathered in, and finally through them Israel in turn may all be saved - has ever been conducting the world in His loving wisdom and His wise love to its destined goal of salvation, - now and again, indeed, shutting up this or that element of it unto disobedience, but never merely in order that it might fall, but that in the end He might have mercy upon all. Thus the Biblical writers bid us raise our eyes, not only from the justly condemned lost, that we may with deeper feeling contemplate the marvels of the Divine love in the saving of sinners not better than they and with no greater claims on the Divine mercy; but from the relatively insignificant body of the lost, as but the prunings gathered beneath the branches of the olive-tree planted by the Lord's own hand, to fix them on the thrifty stock itself and the crown of luxuriant leafage and ever more richly ripening fruit, as under the loving pruning and grafting of the great Husbandman it grows and flourishes and puts forth its boughs until it shall shade the whole earth. This, according to the Biblical writers, is the end of election; and this is nothing other than the salvation of the world. Though in the process of the ages the goal is not attained without prunings and fires of burning, - though all the wild-olive twigs are not throughout the centuries grafted in, - yet the goal of a saved world shall at the end be gloriously realized. Meanwhile, the hope of the world, the hope of the Church, and the hope of the individual alike, is cast solely on the mercy of a freely electing God, in whose hands are all things, and not least the care of the advance of His saving grace in the world. And it is undeniable that whenever, as the years have passed by, the currents of religious feeling have run deep, and the higher ascents of religious thinking have been scaled, it has ever been on the free might of Divine grace that Christians have been found to cast their hopes for the salvation alike of the world, the Church, and the individual; and whenever they have thus turned in trust to the pure grace of God, they have spontaneously given expression to their faith in terms of the Divine election.

LITERATURE. - The Biblical material can best be surveyed with the help of the Lexicons on the terms employed (especially Cremer), the commentaries on the passages, and the sections in the several treatises on Biblical Theology dealing with this and cognate themes; among these last, the works of Dillmann on the Old Testament, and Holtzmann on the New Testament, may be especially profitably consulted. The Pauline doctrine has, in particular, been made the subject of almost endless discussion, chiefly, it must be confessed, with the object of softening its outlines or of explaining it more or less away. Perhaps the following are the more important recent treatises: - Poelman, "de Jesu Apostolorumque, Pauli præsertim, doctrina de prædestinatione divina et morali hominis libertate," Gron. 1851; Weiss, "Predestinationslehre des Ap. Paul.," in "Jahrbb. f. D. Theol." 1857, p. 54f.; Lamping, "Pauli de prædestinatione decretorum enarratio," Leov. 1858; Goens, "Le rôle de la liberté humaine dans la prédestination Paulinienne," Lausanne, 1884; Ménégoz, "La prédestination dans la théologie Paulinienne," Paris, 1885; Dalmer, "Zur Paulinischen Erwählungslehre," in "Greifswälder Studien," Gütersloh, 1895. The publication of Karl Müller's valuable treatise on "Die Göttliche Zuvorersehung und Erwählung," etc. (Halle, 1892), has called out a new literature on the section Rom. ix-xi, the most important items in which are probably the reprint of Beyschlag's "Die Paulinische Theodicee" (1896, first published in 1868), and Dalmer, "Die Erwählung Israels nach der Heilsverkündigung des Ap. Paul." (Gütersloh, 1894), and Kühl, "Zur Paulinischen Theodicee," in the "Theologische Studien," presented to B. Weiss (Gottingen, 1897). But of these only Goens recognizes the double predestination; even Müller, whose treatise is otherwise of the first value, argues against it, and so does Dalmer in his very interesting discussions; the others are still less in accordance with their text (cf. the valuable critical note on the recent literature in Holtzmann's "N. T. Theologie," ii. 171-174).

Discussions of the doctrine of post-Canonical Judaism may be found in Hamburger, "Real-Encyc." ii. 102 f., article "Bestimmung"; F. Weber, "Jüd. Theol." 148 ff., 205 ff.; Schürer, HJP 11. ii. 14 f. (cf. p. 2 f., where the passages from Josephus are collected); Edersheim, "Life and Times of Jesus," i. 316 ff., article "Philo" in Smith and Wace, 383 a, and "Speak. Com." on Ecclesiasticus, pp. 14, 16; Ryle and James, "Psalms of Solomon" on ix. 7 and Introd.; Montet, "Origines des partissaducéen et pharisien," 258 f.; Holtzmann, "N. T. Theologie," i. 32, 55; P. J. Muller, "De Godsleer der middeleeuwische Joden," Groningen, 1898; further literature is given in Schürer. - For post-Canonical Christian discussion, see the literature at the end of article ELECTION in the present work, v. i. p. 681.

Predestination in the Reformed Confessions¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

[within bracketed notes: WC=Westminster Confession]

What we call the Reformation was fundamentally, when looked at from a spiritual point of view, a great revival of religion; when looked at from the theological point of view, a great revival of Augustinianism.² It was the one just because it was the other. Revolting from the domination of ecclesiastical machinery, men found their one haven of rest in the sovereignty of God. The doctrine of Predestination was therefore the central doctrine of the Reformation.³ In the Romish system the idea of predestination has no place, and interest in any opinions that may be held concerning it is in that communion at best but languid. Therefore Perrone, after explaining the difference between the views of the Augustinianizing Thomists and the semi-Pelagianizing Jesuits, can complacently add: "Each school has its own reasons for holding to its opinion: the Church has never wished to compose this controversy: therefore every one may, with safety to the faith, adhere to whichever opinion he is most disposed to and thinks best adapted to solve the difficulties of unbelievers and heretics."4 The matter was very different with the Reformers. To them the doctrine of predestination was given directly in their consciousness of dependence as sinners on the free mercy of a saving God: it therefore was part of the content of their deepest religious consciousness. Calvin is historically thoroughly justified in his remark that "no one who wishes to be thought pious will dare to deny simpliciter the predestination by which God adopts some into the hope of life and adjudicates others to eternal death."5 In very fact, all the Reformers were at one in this doctrine, and on it as a hinge their whole religious consciousness as well as doctrinal teaching turned. The fact is so obvious as to compel recognition even in unsympathetic circles. Thus, for instance, the late Dr. Philip Schaff, though adjusting his language with perhaps superfluous care so as to exhibit his doctrinal disharmony with the Reformers, is yet forced to give explicit recognition to the universal enthusiasm with which they advocated the strictest doctrine of predestination. "All the Reformers of the sixteenth century," he says,⁶ "including even the gentle Melanchthon and the compromising Bucer, under a controlling sense of human depravity and saving grace, in extreme antagonism to Pelagianism and self-righteousness, and, as they sincerely believed, in full harmony not only with the greatest of the fathers, but also with the inspired St. Paul, came to the same doctrine of a double predestination which decides the eternal destiny of all men. Nor is it possible to evade this conclusion," he justly adds, "on the two acknowledged premises of Protestant orthodoxy - namely, the wholesale condemnation of men in Adam, and the limitation of saving grace to the present world."7 

Scarcely was the Reformation established, however, before the purity of its confession of the predestination of God began to give way. The first serious blow to it was given by the defection of Melanchthon to a synergistic conception of the saving act. As a result of the consequent controversies, the Lutheran Churches were misled into seeking to define predestination as having sole reference to salvation, denying its obverse of reprobation. "First of all," says the "Formula of Concord" (1576), "it ought to be most accurately observed that there is a distinction between the foreknowledge and the predestination or eternal election of God. . . . This foreknowledge of God extends both to good and evil men; but nevertheless is not the cause of evil, nor is it the cause of sin. . . . But the predestination or eternal election of God extends only to the good and beloved children of God, and this is the cause of their salvation."8 The grave inconsequence of this construction, of course, speedily had its revenge; and typical Lutheranism rapidly sank to the level of Romish indifference to predestination altogether, and of the Romish explanation of it as ex prævisa fide.⁹ Meanwhile the Reformed continued to witness a better profession; partly, no doubt, because of the greater depth of religious life induced in them by the severity of the persecutions they were called upon to undergo; and partly, no doubt, because of the greater height of religious thinking created in them by the example and impulse of their great leader - at once, as even Renan has been compelled to testify, the best Christian of his day and the greatest religious thinker of the modern world. The first really dangerous assault on what had now become distinctively the Reformed doctrine of predestination was delayed till the opening of the seventeenth century. In the meantime, though, no doubt, many individual Reformed thinkers had been more or less affected by a Lutheran environment, as in the lands of German speech, or by Romish remainders, as in England, as well as no doubt by the everywhere present rationalizing spirit which ever lays its stress on man's autocracy; yet the Reformed Churches had everywhere compacted their faith in numerous creeds, in which the Reformed consciousness had expressed itself on the whole with remarkable purity. These now served as a barrier to the new attacks, and supplied strongholds in which the Reformed consciousness could intrench itself for future influence. The Arminian assault was therefore successfully met. And although, ever since, the evil seed then sown has produced a continuous harvest of doubt and dispute in the Reformed Churches; until to-day - in a new age of syncretism of perhaps unexampled extension - it threatens to eat out all that is distinctive in the Reformed Confessions: nevertheless the Reformed sense of absolute dependence on the God of grace for salvation remains till today the dominant element in the thought of the Reformed Churches, and its theological expression in the complete doctrine of prædestinatio duplex retains its place in the hearts as well as in the creeds of a multitude of Reformed Christians throughout the world. 

The numerous Reformed creeds, representing the convictions of Christian men of very diverse races during a period of a century and a half (1523-1675), while on the whole falling behind the works of the great dogmaticians in the ability and fullness with which they set forth the Reformed system,¹⁰ nevertheless form a very remarkable series of documents when looked at as the consistent embodiment of such a doctrine as the Reformed doctrine of predestination. For their own sakes, and for the sake of the great doctrine which they so persistently maintained in the face of so many disintegrating influences and such determined assaults, they are well worth our study. And this primary impulse to turn to them is powerfully reenforced in our own day by the circumstance that recent appeals to them seem to suggest that they have been but little investigated by the men of our generation; so that their message to us is in danger of being widely misapprehended, and sometimes, it must be confessed, even seriously misrepresented. There is a certain timeliness, therefore, as well as inherent propriety in, at this juncture, drawing out from the Reformed creeds their teaching as to predestination, and noting the essential harmony in their presentation of this great doctrine. Assuredly by such a survey the doctrine will be more deeply rooted in our thinking and love. It is possible that we may incidentally learn how to esteem the teaching on this great subject of what may well be spoken of as the consummate flower of the Reformed symbols - that Westminster Confession which it has been our happiness as Presbyterians to inherit. And along with this, we may perhaps also learn what estimate to place on the attempts which are now making more or less to eliminate from that Confession its testimony to this great central Reformed doctrine. It will probably not be deemed impertinent if we prefix to the extracts taken from the Confessions a brief running account of the documents and their general attitude to the subject under discussion, such as may serve as a kind of introduction to reading intelligently their own words. 

I 

The Reformed Confessions begin, of course, with the symbolical writings of Zwingli and his Swiss coadjutors, and pass thence to those produced by Calvin and his pupils, and so on to the later documents, the work of the Reformed theologians of the latter part of the sixteenth and of the seventeenth centuries. 

Zwingli himself produced four works of this character. These are the Sixty-seven Articles or Conclusions of Zurich (1523), the Ten Bernese Theses (1528), the System of Faith ("Fidei ratio"), prepared to be presented at the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the Exposition of the Christian Faith, addressed to Francis I, and published by Bullinger after Zwingli's death (1531). These present the Reformed faith in the first stage of its affirmation. The former two contain, indeed, only the simplest and briefest assertion of the primary elements of Protestant practice in opposition to the most prominent evils of the Romish Church: the latter two are more elaborate expositions of the Protestant belief, but are essentially of an apologetic order. No one of these documents treats professedly of predestination or election, though of course they all rest on the convictions in these matters that characterized Zwingli's thought, and in the two more elaborate documents allusions to them naturally appear. These are more direct and full in the "Fidei ratio," and occur in it in connection with the treatment of the Fall, Redemption, and especially of the Church - about which last topic the controversy with Rome of course especially raged. In the "Expositio fidei christianæ" they occur most pointedly in connection with the treatment of Good Works. In mass they are not copious, but they constitute a very clear and a tolerably full outline of the Reformed doctrine on the subject. God, we are told, has freely made appointment concerning all things, and that by a decree which is eternal and independent of all that is outside of Himself: in this decree is included the fall of man along with all else that comes to pass: and, as well, the election in Christ of some - whom He will - to eternal life; these constitute His Church, properly so called, known certainly from all eternity by Him, but becoming known to themselves as God's elect only through the witness of the Spirit in due time in their hearts, and the testimony of their good works which are the product and not the foreseen occasion of their election; and by these only are they differentiated in the external Church from the reprobates who with them may be included in its bounds. 

Meanwhile the Reformation was spreading to other localities, and in proportion as the same need was felt for an expression of the principles of the new faith which had produced the Zwinglian articles, similar articles were being elsewhere produced. The so-called Tetrapolitan Confession of 1530 owed its origin, indeed, rather to a specific demand - to the need of a witness to the faith of the four imperial cities to be presented, like Zwingli's "Fidei ratio," at the Diet of Augsburg; and its form and general contents were determined by the desire of its authors (Bucer, with the aid of Capito and Hedio) to assimilate the expression of their faith to the Lutheran Confession presented at that Diet. It contains no separate section on predestination, nor, indeed, does it anywhere make any clear allusion to it, though the conceptions on this matter animating the Reformed Churches seem to underlie the sections on Justification and Good Works. Very similar were the circumstances in which the Bohemian Confessions (1535 and 1575) were framed: and the results are much the same. The earliest Basle Confession, prepared by Oecolampaclius and Myconius (1534), on the other hand, besides asserting the universal government of God, gives a brief paragraph in its exposition of the doctrine of God to the subject of predestination: this affirms simply that "God before He had created the world had elected all those to whom He would give eternal salvation" - a sentence worthy of our note chiefly because it is the earliest instance in the Reformed Confessions of a separate paragraph devoted to this great subject.¹¹ What is known as the Second Basle, or more properly as the First Helvetic, Confession, prepared in 1536, under the unionistic influences of the Strasburg Reformers (Bucer and Capito), and in anticipation of a General Council - and therefore under much the same conditions that gave birth to the Tetrapolitan Confession - like that document omits all direct reference to the subject of predestination. The Confessions of Poland (1570), and Hungary, prepared under much the same conditions, exhibit much the same sparingness of speech on the subject. Of these only the Hungarian (1557-1558) adverts to it at all, and that most explicitly only to defend God against the charge of "respect of persons." Even so, however, it tells us that all things are eternally disposed by God; and that God's election is eternal, entirely gratuitous, and therefore freely disposed according only to His own will; and that it leaves aside vessels of wrath to the endless doom justly due to their sins. 

As the Reformed consciousness took firmer form in the passage of time, however, this tendency to pass lightly over the subject naturally passed more and more away. Something of the early apologetical tone in dealing with predestination doubtless still clings to the Second Helvetic Confession, which was composed by Bullinger in 1562 for his own private use, and on its publication in 1566 was rapidly very widely adopted throughout the Reformed world. Winer¹² certainly goes too far when he affirms that its presentation of predestination is so remarkable a "softening of the dogma" that "this Confession might be placed in the borderland of Predestinarianism." It is muchmore accurate to say with Müller that the Reformed doctrine is set forth here very clearly in its peculiarity, but with an effort to avoid giving offense: and that it is dominated not so much by doctrinal obscurity as by an ethical-practical intent. 13 The doctrine is here at length: and it is carefully and soundly stated: but there is, no doubt, apparent in its whole treatment a certain defensive attitude which seems more intent to guard it from attack than to bring out all its content with clearness and force. God is said to have determined its end to every creature and to have ordained along with the end at the same time the means by which it shall be attained. He is certainly not the author of sin, with which He is connected only as permitting it for high ends, when He could have prevented it if He had so chosen, and thus as utilizing it in the execution of His plans. His providence is accordingly over all, though nothing finds its evil in His providence. The predestination of His saints to be saved in Christ is eternal, particular, on the ground of no foreseen merit, and assured of its end: and the election of saints to life implies the desertion of a body of reprobates. Who is elect is only a posteriori discoverable through men's relation to Christ; we are to judge of others in this matter with charity and are to hope well of all, numbering none rashly among the reprobates: of our own election and therefore certain salvation we may, on the other hand, be assured if we know ourselves to be in Christ and bear fruitage in a holy life. The whole substance of the doctrine clearly is here, though the stress is laid continually on its aspects as seen sub specie temporis rather than æternitatis. 

The case is little different with the Heidelberg Catechism, which doubtless owes it only to its purpose as a document meant as practical milk for babes more than theological meat for mature Christians, that it has very little directly to say about so high a mystery. It is nevertheless pervaded from beginning to end with an underlying presupposition of it, and hints of the doctrine emerge oftener than is always recognized, and that both in its general and special aspects. These hints once or twice rise to explicit assertions, and when they do they leave nothing to be desired in the way of sharpness of conception. It is naturally under the doctrine of providence that general predestination is most clearly alluded to: the Eternal Father is said to uphold and govern the universe "by His eternal counsel and providence," and that effectively for His ends - "so governing all creatures that . . . all things come not by chance but by His Fatherly hand" (Ques. 26, 27). Special predestination, equally naturally, is most directly adduced in connection with the doctrine of the Church (Ques. 54): we are to believe concerning the Church "that out of the whole human race, the Son of God, by His Spirit and word, gathers into the unity of true faith, defends and preserves for Himself a communion elected to eternal life": and further, each of us is to believe that he is "and shall ever remain a living member of the same." Here the facts of election and perseverance are explicitly asserted. Elsewhere we are taught that our comfort in looking for the coming of Christ the Lord is derived from the fact that He will "cast all His and our enemies into eternal damnation, and will take us together with all the elect to Himself into heavenly joy and glory" (Ques. 52); and similar comforting allusions to election are found elsewhere (Ques. 1, 31). 

Among later documents something of the circumspection which was the natural product in the first age of unionistic efforts on the one hand, and of desire to shield the infant Churches from powerful enemies on the other, appears again in a somewhat different form in what are usually called the Brandenburg Confessions. These are the Confession of Sigismund (1614), the Leipzig Colloquy (1631), and above all the Declaration of Thorn (1645). These are historically especially interesting as exhibiting the general firmness with which on the whole the Reformed held to and asserted the essentials of their doctrine in the most untoward circumstances. The Confession of Sigismund (1614) is a purely personal statement of the Elector's faith, published on his conversion from the Lutheranism in which he had been bred. He explicitly confesses, under a sense of its great importance - as the basis on which rest "not only all the other Articles, but also our salvation" itself - the eternal and gratuitous election of God - the eternal ordination of His chosen ones, without respect to worthiness, merit or works in them, to everlasting life and all the means thereto: as also the corresponding fact of an eternal preterition of the rest and their preparation for the punishment which is their due. Great stress is laid on the justice of the judgment of God in reprobation, and there is perhaps some failure in nice discrimination between what is known among theologians as "negative" and "positive" reprobation: the interest of Sigismund turning rather on vindicating God from the reproach of taking pleasure in the death of sinners and claiming for Him a universal love for the world. The statement of the Reformed doctrine at the Leipzig Colloquy (1631) was for the avowed purpose of establishing as near an agreement with Lutheran modes of statement as could be attained without the surrender of essential truth, and the forms of statement are naturally deeply colored by this unionistic purpose. Nevertheless the entire substance of the doctrine is fairly preserved. A free, eternal election of not all but some men, particularly designed, on the ground of nothing foreseen in them, to the sole reception of the efficacious means of grace is asserted: and along with it, the corresponding eternal reprobation of the rest. Great care is taken to free God from constructive blame for the death of the wicked, and in the language in which this is done there is perhaps, as in the Confession of Sigismund, an insufficient discrimination between negative and positive reprobation. 

By far the most interesting of the three Brandenburg statements, however, is the Declaration presented at the Colloquy of Thorn (1645). Here many of the conditions which accompanied the statement of Protestant belief at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 were substantially reproduced. Reformed doctrine was above all things to be so set forth as to attach itself to whatever latent elements of the truth might be discoverable in Romish thought. The chief points of difference from the earlier situation are due to the later date and changed times; at this period the Reformed had not only come to full consciousness of their faith, but had tasted its preciousness in times of persecution and strife. It is interesting to observe the means taken in these circumstances to commend the Reformed doctrine to Romish sympathy. Briefly they consisted in setting it forth as simply "Augustinianism." No separate caption is devoted to predestination or to election. All that is said on these topics is subsumed quite Augustine-wise under the caption "De gratia." This caption is developed in eight calmly written paragraphs which, beginning with redemption of the helpless sinner through the sole grace of God in Christ, carries him through the stages of the ordo salutis - effectual calling, justification, sanctification, perseverance, final reward - all of the pure grace of God - to end in the reference of all to God's eternal purpose in election. This is followed by eighteen further paragraphs in which the whole doctrine of grace, as before positively developed, is guarded from misapprehension, and defense is offered against calumnies. Only the two last of these paragraphs concern the doctrine of election. The whole is closed with a direct appeal to Augustine and a challenge to the followers of Thomas Aquinas to recognize the Reformed doctrine as none other than that taught them by their master. 

The Thoruniensian theologians thus put themselves forward distinctly as "Augustinians" and asked to be judged as such. It is nevertheless in substance a very thoroughly developed Reformed doctrine that they express under this "Augustinian" form. In their fundamental statement they refer all of God's saving activities to His eternal election as their source; deny that it itself rests on anything foreseen in its object, and derive it from mere and undeserved grace alone; and connect with it the ordination of all the means by which the predestined salvation is attained: nor do they shrink from explicitly placing over against it the preterition of the rest. In the additional paragraphs the sure issue of election in eternal life is renewedly insisted on (11), as well as the origin of the election in mere grace (17), and the fixedness of the number of the elect (17). On the other hand, some subtlety is expended in the closing paragraph on the exposition of the relation of the eternal decrees of election and reprobation to the actual character of men. It is denied that these decrees are "absolute" in the sense that they are "without any respect to faith and unbelief, to good and evil works." It is denied also, however, that faith and good works are the cause or reason of election, and doubtless by implication (though this is not said in so many words) that unbelief and sin are the cause or reason of the involved preterition. What is affirmed is that faith and good works are foreseen in the elect as "means of salvation foreordained in them by God." And that "not only original sin, but also, so far as adults are concerned, unbelief and contumacious impenitence, are not properly speaking foreordained of God, but foreseen and permitted in the reprobates themselves as the cause of desertion and damnation, and reprobated by the justest of judgments." The natural meaning of this language yields a sound Reformed sense. So far as it concerns the elect, indeed, none other is capable of being drawn from it. There is an unfortunately ambiguous use of language, however, with reference to the reprobates - as, indeed, even in the use made of the technical term "decretum absolutum" - that may easily mislead, and that the reader finds himself fearing was intentionally adopted to wrap the Reformed doctrine at this point so far in a cloud. There can be indeed no other meaning attributed to the denial that unbelief and impenitence in the reprobate are "properly foreordained"; seeing that in the Reformed conception, fully shared by these theologians, God has foreordained all that comes to pass: and while no Reformed theologian would doubt that their own unbelief and impenitence are the "meritorious cause of the desertion and damnation" of the reprobate, yet the ambiguity of the language that follows - "and are reprobated by the justest of judgments" - certainly opens the way to some misconception. The suspicion can scarcely be avoided that the Thoruniensian theologians purposely used language here capable of a double sense. While naturally suggesting an interpretation consonant with sovereign preterition (negative reprobation), it is liable to be misread as if allowing that negative reprobation itself (preterition) found a meritorious cause in men's sins, which themselves lay wholly outside the foreordination (decree) of God. 

It is worthy of note that in the midst of this gingerly treatment of the matter of reprobation, these theologians yet manage to let fall a phrase in passing which betrays their Declaration into an extremity of doctrine at another point to which no other formally framed Reformed Confession commits itself.¹⁴ The Declaration of Thorn in effect is the only formal Reformed Confession which asserts or implies that some of those who die in infancy are reprobated. This it does by the insertion into the clause dealing with this topic of the words "so far as adults are concerned." In "reprobation" (whatever that means with them - whether both "negative" and "positive" reprobation, or only the latter - makes no difference in the present matter), they say, God acts on the foresight not only of original sin, "but also, so far as adults are concerned, of unbelief," etc. God then "reprobates" not only adults on account of their sins, original and actual, but also infants on account of original sin alone. It is exceedingly interesting to observe a body of over-cautious men thus so intent on avoiding Scylla as to run straight into Charybdis. The reason, however, is not far to seek. They were primarily intent on vindicating themselves as "Augustinians" in the forum of the Romish judgment: they wished, that is, to appeal to the sympathies of the professed followers of Augustine in the Roman communion:15 while excessively careful, therefore, with respect to the whole matter of the prædestinatio duplex they felt no reason, as professed children of the durus pater infantum, to fear with respect to the fate of infants. The circumstances in which the Declaration was formed, in other words, is responsible for its weaknesses in both directions. Another instance of the ambiguous use of language in the interests of their desire to come forward as simply followers of Augustine is afforded by their treatment of "perseverance" (11): in this they oddly interchange the terms "justified," "regenerate," "elect." It can scarcely be thought that they really meant to teach that the justified may "fall from grace," or that the "regenerate" are different from "the elect" - their concatenation of the "golden chain" of salvation in their fundamental statement of faith forbids that: but it is obvious that their language here is open to that misinterpretation, and we fear it must be judged that it was intended to be so in deference to current "Augustinian" modes of expression in this matter. The similar obscuration of the distinction between the voluntas beneplaciti and voluntas signi (6) has its cause in the same effort. The Declaration of Thorn, in a word, while it approves itself as a soundly Reformed document, has been drawn up with an occasional over-subtle use of language which seems intended to obscure the truth that its authors nevertheless flattered themselves was expressed: and which is therefore liable to obscure it - to other readers than those whose eyes it was first intended to blind. 

The Confessions which we have thus passed in review include, it will doubtless have been observed, especially German ones. Their peculiarities, however, have no national root: they are due rather to the fact, on the one hand, that this group of Confessions embraces the earliest, tentative efforts at creed-making in the Reformed Churches, and, on the other, that the circumstances in which the German Reformed Churches were placed made them the especial prey of unionistic efforts and apologetical temptations. It is scarcely fair to expect of documents framed, as the most of the documents of this class were, expressly to commend themselves to those of other faiths, quite the same sharpness of outline that might well be looked for elsewhere. Taken as a whole and judged from the point of view of the circumstances of their origin, this is an excellent body of Reformed documents, surprisingly true to the faith of the Reformed Churches: it is, after all, rather in language than in substance that they create difficulties. Meanwhile, however, there were other Reformed Confessions being framed under other stars, and in them the Reformed conceptions came, speaking generally of them as a class, to purer because less embarrassed expression. This series begins with the Confessional writings of John Calvin. It is not to be inferred, however, either that Calvin's teaching exercised no influence on the matter or phrasing of the Confessions already adduced, or that it introduced into the Reformed Churches any new attitude toward the doctrine of predestination. On the contrary, the commanding influence of Calvin penetrated to every corner of the Reformed Churches, and is traceable in all the creedal statements framed subsequently to his appearance at Geneva. And, on the other hand, in his doctrine of predestination he proclaimed nothing not common to all the Reformed leaders. So far from advancing in it beyond the teaching of Zwingli, Zwingli's modes of expression on this high mystery seemed rather to Calvin extreme and paradoxical, if not even lacking in discretion.¹⁶ So closely do his modes of expression regarding it resemble those of Bucer that the latest student of his doctrine of predestination¹⁷ is inclined to believe that he derived it from Bucer. Even Bullinger, through whatever pathway of doubt and hesitation, came ultimately to full agreement with him.¹⁸ Indeed, his doctrine of predestination was so little a peculium of Calvin's that it was originally, as we have seen, not even a specialty of the Reformed, but rather constituted the very hinge of the Reformation: and it was Luther and Melanchthon and Bucer and Peter Martyr who first put it forward as the determining element in the Reformation platform. What is due to Calvin is, at most, only the final establishment of the clear, cogent, and consistent expression of it in the Reformed creeds. His systematic genius perceived from the first its central importance to the system of truth on which the Reformation was based; and he grasped it with such full and clear apprehension, that in his own writings and wherever his influence dominated it was no longer easily possible to falter either in its apprehension or its statement, and efforts to speak softly regarding it or to pare it down to fit the desires of men measurably ceased. It is on this account only that in the Confessions that derive most directly from Calvin we see the whole Reformed doctrine of predestination come most fully and consistently to its rights. 

Calvin was himself the author of a considerable number of documents of symbolical character: and although the place given in them to the doctrine of predestination varies widely according to the circumstances of each case, the doctrine embodied in those which give it any full expression appears in a singularly pure form. Even the first edition of the "Institutes," published in 1536, might fairly be so far counted among the symbolical books as its publication was determined by apologetic need, and its primary purpose was to testify to the world what the faith of the French Protestants really was. In it no separate treatment was accorded to predestination and what is said on this topic emerges only incidentally, very much as in Zwingli's "System of Faith," and as in that document also most fully in connection with the doctrine of the Church. But this incidental treatment is full enough to show that there was already present to Calvin's mind all the substance of the doctrine as elsewhere developed by him. His first formal exposition of it, under its own separate caption, occurs, however, not in the "Institutes," but in the earliest of his formal symbolical writings, the "Instruction and Confession of Faith in Use in the Church of Geneva," published in April, 1537. In this document the whole of Calvin's doctrine of predestination is set forth in clear if succinct outline. The starting-point is taken in the observed actual separation of mankind into the two classes of the saved and lost. This distinction is carried back at once to the secret eternal counsel of God, in which some are predestinated to be His children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom, while others are left to the just punishment of their sins. The reason why God has so discriminated between men is declared to be inscrutable by mortals, and men are dissuaded from prying into it: it is enough for us, we are told, to know that His action here, too, is holy and just, and therefore redounds to His praise. For the rest, it is for us to seek the certitude of our faith in the contemplation, not of election but of Christ, whom having we have all. On quite similar lines runs the much more meager teaching of the "Genevan Catechism" of 1545, in which there occur no separate questions and answers consecrated specifically to predestination, but only incidental allusions to the subject in the answers given under the topics of Providence and the Church. God, it is taught, is the Lord and governor of all things, "to whose empire all things are subject and whose nod they obey" - even the devil and godless men, all of whom are the ministers of His will, and are compelled even against their plans "to execute what has seemed good to Him." The Church, it is taught, is "the body and society of believers whom the Lord has predestinated to eternal life," all of whom, therefore, because elected of God, He justifies and sanctifies and will glorify. In similar fashion even the "Consensus Tigurinus" of 1549, which concerns itself formally with nothing but the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, alludes, nevertheless, to election - teaching that it is only to the elect that the sacraments actually convey grace - "for," it continues, "just as God enlightens unto faith no others than those whom He has foreordained to life, so by the hidden power of His Spirit He brings it about that the elect receive what is offered in the sacraments." 

It is however, of course, chiefly in the "Genevan Consensus," called out in 1552 by the attacks on the doctrine of predestination made by Bolsec, that we find the fullest statement of Calvin's doctrine of predestination which has a claim to symbolical authority. This document is not in form a Confession, but is rather a polemical treatise written in Calvin's own name and given symbolical significance only by its publication in the name of the pastors of Geneva as a fair exposition of the Genevan doctine. It is wholly devoted to the defense of Calvin's teaching on predestination, and bears the significant title: "Of the eternal predestination of God by which out of men He has elected some to salvation and left others to their destruction," - in which, as we perceive, the prædestinatio gemina is made the very core of the doctrine. One needs to read but a little way into the treatise to perceive how strongly and indeed even passionately Calvin insisted upon this point. The reason for this is that he looked upon election not merely as the warrant for assurance of faith, but especially as the support and stay of the alone-efficiency of God in salvation: and that he perceived, with the clearness of vision eminently characteristic of his genius, that for the protection of monergistic salvation and the exclusion of the evil leaven of synergism, the assertion of the prædestinatio gemina is absolutely essential. In this we see accordingly the real key to the insistence on "sovereign reprobation" in the Calvinian formularies: the conviction had become a part of the very substance of Calvin's thought that "election itself unless opposed to reprobation will not stand" - that "the discriminating grace of God" was virtually set aside as the alone cause of salvation if it were not confessed that the segregation of some to receive the just award of their sins is as truly grounded in His holy will as salvation itself in His will of grace. The extended discussion and even the polemic form of this treatise enabled Calvin powerfully to commend his doctrine to every reader, and to fortify it by full expositions of Scripture: and doubtless it is to the influence of the "Consensus of Geneva" that much of the consistency with which the locus on predestination was treated in subsequent Calvinistic formularies is traceable.¹⁹ The very qualities which gave it its great influence, however, render it difficult to extract it briefly, and we may account ourselves fortunate that we have, through a discovery by the Brunswick editors of a brief series of "articles on predestination" in Calvin's hand, a succinct statement from himself of his whole doctrine, to which, though we have no evidence that they were ever given symbolical authority, we may fairly go as to a summary of his teaching. In these he affirms that God did not create man without having previously determined upon his destiny; that therefore the fall was included in God's eternal decree; and with it, the discrimination between the elect and reprobate portions of fallen mankind; which discrimination has no other cause than God's mere will: and therefore the choice of the elect cannot rest on foreseen faith, which is rather the gift of God in the execution of His decree of salvation, granted therefore to the elect and withheld from the reprobate: as is also the gift of Christ. Rising next to the general decree, he affirms that the will of God is the first and supreme cause of all things, and yet God is not in any sense the author of sin, which is offensive to Him and will receive His punishment, though He certainly makes use of all sinners too in executing His holy purposes. 

There is also a series of Confessions from Calvin's hand in which a somewhat less prominent place and thorough statement are given to predestination, though certainly there is no faltering in the conception of it which is suggested when it is alluded to. Among these would be numbered the earliest Confession of the Genevan Church (1536), if we could attribute it in whole or in part to Calvin: it is ordinarily, however, and apparently justly, assigned to Farel. In it there is no separate treatment accorded to predestination, but the keynote of Calvin's theology is firmly struck in the attribution of all good in man to the grace of God - in the acknowledgment and confession that "all our blessings are received from the mercy of God alone, without any consideration of worthiness in us or merit of our works - for to them is due no return except eternal confusion." There is here presented in a single clause the entire premise on which rests Calvin's prædestinatio gemina. A Confession put by Calvin into the mouths of the students of Geneva, dating from 1559, may, however, be properly taken as a typical instance of this class. It is naturally reminiscent of the Genevan Catechism of 1545. Stress is laid in it on the divine government of the invisible spirits - whose differing fates are traced back to the divine appointment, and whose entire conduct is kept under the divine control, for the working out of His ends. In regard to special predestination emphasis is thrown on the divine origin of faith, which is confessed to be "a special gift, which is not communicated save to the elect, who have been predestinated before the creation of the world to the inheritance of salvation without any respect to their worthiness or virtue." To the same class belong also the three Confessions which Calvin prepared for the French Churches. The earliest and shortest of these is that which he seems to have drawn up in 1557 for the Church at Paris in vindication of itself against the calumnies that had been brought against it. In this there is only a brief confession that it is "of the mercy of God alone that the elect are delivered from the common perdition," and that the faith by which alone we are saved is itself a free and special gift granted by God to those to whom it seems good to Him to give it, and conveyed to them by the secret grace of the Holy Spirit. The Confession which he wrote to be presented in the name of the French Churches to Maximilian and the German Diet of 1562 is only a little more explicit. In this man's entire dependence on the undeserved mercy of God for salvation - offering no plea to God except his misery - is adverted to, and it is then affirmed that therefore the goodness of God displayed to us proceeds solely from His eternal election of us according to His sovereign good pleasure: comfort is found in this display of the divine goodness, but the fanaticism is repelled that we may rest on our election in such sort that we may neglect the means. 

The third of the French Confessions drafted by Calvin after enlargement at the Synod of Paris, 1559, became the national Confession of the French Reformed Churches, and is therefore of far more significance than its predecessors. It is also somewhat fuller than they are, though following much the same line of thought. It confesses with all Calvin's clearness the universal Lordship of God and His admirable mode of serving Himself with devils and evil men, without the least participation in their evil: it draws the Christian man's comfort from the assurance of the sure protection of God over His people: it describes election as the eternal, immutable decree of God, proceeding on no foresight of works, by which He has determined to withdraw His chosen ones from the universal corruption and condemnation in which all men are plunged - "leaving," it is significantly added, "the rest in this same corruption and condemnation, to manifest in them His justice, as in the former He makes the riches of His mercy to shine forth." Of quite similar character to the Gallican Confession is the Belgic Confession (1561), the composition of the martyr hand of Guido de Brès, but in the section (16) on election somewhat revised by Francis Junius. In its statement of general predestination, indeed (13), even the language recalls that of the French Confession, whose statement it may be said only to repeat in an enriched form. The article on election, on the other hand, is somewhat less full than that in the Gallican Confession, but teaches the same type of doctrine: it is essentially an assertion of the prædestinatio bipartita as a manifestation at once of the divine mercy and justice. 

Meanwhile across the Channel also the same influences were working. In England from 1536, when the Ten Articles - essentially Romish in contents - were published, the Reforming party were slowly working their way to a better faith, until, having at length found themselves, they published the Forty-two Edwardian Articles in 1553; of these the Elizabethan Thirty-nine Articles (1563-1571) are merely a slight revision, and in the article on Predestination a simple repetition. These "Articles of the Church of England" were prepared by a commission under the headship of Cranmer, to whom the chief share in their authorship seems to belong: but in the seventeenth Article, on Predestination, the influence of Peter Martyr seems distinctly traceable, and, whoever may have drawn it up, it may fairly be attributed in its substance ultimately to him. It confines itself to a statement of the gracious side of predestination - "predestination to life" and it consists of two parts, in the former of which "predestination to life" is defined, and in the latter of which the use of the doctrine is expounded. The definition of "predestination to life" is made to rest on an "election" here assumed as having antecedently taken place; and to include God's eternal and "constant" (that is, unchangeable) counsel, secret to us, negatively to deliver His elect from curse and damnation, and positively to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation. The stress is therefore laid precisely on the doctrine of "perseverance," and the surety of the whole ordo salutis for those so predestinated is adduced in detail in support of its general assertion. The definition is remarkable not so much for what it asserts as for what it omits, and in what it omits not so much for what it rejects as for what, though omitting, it presupposes. The exposition of the proper use of the doctrine includes a description of its effect in establishing and confirming the faith of those who use it in a godly manner, and a warning against its abuse by the carnal and merely curious; the whole closing with an exhortation quite in Calvin's manner to make the revealed rather than the secret will of God our guide to life. The whole is not only soundly Reformed but distinctly Calvinian in substance: but its peculiar method of dealing with the more fundamental aspects of the doctrine by way of allusion, as to things fully understood and presupposed, lays it especially open to misunderstandings and wrestings, and we cannot feel surprise that throughout its whole history it has been subjected to these above most other creedal statements. 

In the sister Church of Scotland, in the meantime, a Confession was hastily put together by Knox and his coadjutors and adopted by Parliament in 1560, which became the legal Confession of the Reformed Church of Scotland when that Church was established in 1567. This Confession contains an Article headed "Of Election" (8), but its doctrine of predestination must be gathered not merely from the somewhat meager statements of that Article, but also from other allusions under the captions especially of Providence and the Church. It asserts the universal rule of God's providence, directing all things "to sik end, as his Eternall Wisdome, Gudnes, and Justice hes appoynted them, to the manifestatioun of his awin glorie." It traces all our salvation to "the eternall and immutable decree of God." It declares that it is of the mere grace of God that we have been elected in Christ Jesus, before the foundations of the world were laid: and that our faith in Him is wrought solely by the Holy Ghost, who works in the hearts of the elect of God, and to whom is to be attributed not only faith, but all our good works. The invisible or true Church consists, it affirms, only of God's elect, but embraces the elect of all ages: while in the visible Church "the Reprobate may be joyned in the society of the Elect, and may externally use with them the benefites of the worde and Sacraments." The whole Reformed doctrine of predestination may indeed be drawn from this Confession: but, it must be allowed, it is not set forth in all its elements in explicit statements. In this respect the earlier creed of the English Church of Geneva (1558), which is thought also to have come from the hands of Knox, is more precise: and indeed this creed differs from all other Reformed creeds in the circumstance - unimportant but interesting - that in setting forth the double predestination it speaks of the foreordination to death first: "God, of the lost race of Adam, hath ordained some as vessels of wrath to damnation; and hath chosen others as vessels of His mercy to be saved." By the side of the Scotch Confession it is not unfair to place also as a witness to the Confessional doctrine of Reformed Scotland so widely used a Catechism as that of John Craig, which was endorsed by the General Assembly of 1590, and for a half century or more was the spiritual food on which the youth of Scotland was fed. In this admirable document the Calvinian doctrine of predestination is set forth with a completeness and crispness of expression that leaves nothing to be desired. 

The subsequent history of the Confessional statement of predestination in England supplies a very interesting demonstration of the necessity of embodying in it, after Calvin's manner, the clear assertion of the prædestinatio bipartita, if the very essence of the doctrine is to be preserved. As long as a thorough Calvinism was dominant in the Church of England the inadequacy of the statement of predestination in the Thirty-nine Articles was, if not unremarked, at least the source of no danger to sound doctrine. Men in sympathy with the doctrine set forth readily read in the statement all its presuppositions and all its implications alike. Nobody of this class would question, for example, that in the mention in the last clause of "that will of God which we have expressly declared to us in the Word of God," that other will of God, hidden from us but ordering all things, was assumed - especially as, earlier in the statement, "His counsel, secret to us," is mentioned. Nobody would doubt that in "the predestination to life of those whom God hath chosen in Christ" specific individuals, the especial objects of God's electing grace, were expressly intended. Nobody would doubt that in the assertion of their choice "out of mankind," and predestination to deliverance from curse and damnation, it was peremptorily implied that there was a remainder of mankind left behind and hence predestinated unto the curse and damnation from which these were delivered. Nobody would doubt that in the assertion that these were by God's constant decree predestinated to be brought by Christ to everlasting salvation, the certitude of their actual salvation was asserted. But as soon as men in influential positions began to fall away from this Calvinistic faith, it was speedily discovered that something more than presupposition however clear, or implication however necessary; was needed in a Confessional statement which should serve as a barrier against serious error and a safeguard to essential truth. 

The evil came, in the Church of England, naturally on the heels of a renewed assertion of sacerdotalism and sacramental grace: and it entrenched itself primarily under a plea of "Augustinianism," in distinction from "Calvinism." The high doctrine of Augustine as to the grace of the sacrament of baptism was appealed to, and his distinction between the regenerate and the elect revived; the inference was drawn that participation in grace is no warrant of final salvation, and election to grace no proof of predestination to glory; and this wedge was gradually driven in until the whole Reformed system was split up. Appeal was vainly made to the declarations of the Articles - they proved too indefinite to serve the purpose. After a sharp conflict it became very evident that what was needed was a new Confessional statement in which the essential elements of the doctrine should be given explicit assertion. It was this that was attempted in what is known as "The Lambeth Articles," prepared by William Whittaker, and set forth with the approval of the archbishops and certain other ecclesiastics, in the hope of leading the thought of the Church back to better channels. It was, however, now too late. The evil leaven had eaten too deeply to be now suddenly checked. It was easy to cry out that the very attempt to frame new Articles was a demonstration that the Calvinists were introducing new doctrine. The authority of the new Articles was, moreover, not complete. They were virulently assaulted. And in the failure to establish them as a Church formulary the cause of consistent Calvinism was for the time lost in the Church of England. Meanwhile better things were to be hoped of Ireland, and when, under the leading of Usher, a series of Articles were framed for that Church the lesson taught by the course of events in the sister Church of England was taken to heart and the chapter "Of God's Eternal Decree and Predestination" was strengthened by the incorporation into it, along with the essence of the English Articles, also the new matter of the Lambeth Articles. The curb thus laid upon the inroads of error in Ireland, however, it became one of the chief objects of the English party to destroy; and this ultimately they were enabled to do and the Articles of the Church of England were quietly substituted for those of the Church of Ireland in that land also. Thus the Calvinism of the Irish Church also was fatally wounded. 

The whole object and intent of the Lambeth Articles (1595) was to conserve the threatened Calvinism of the Church of England: they do not constitute a complete creed, nor even a complete statement of the doctrine of predestination and its necessary implications. They were intended merely so to supplement the statement of the Thirty-nine Articles as to guard the Reformed doctrine from undermining and destruction. They confine themselves, therefore, to asserting clearly and without unnecessary elaboration the prædestinatio gemina, the independence of the divine decree of election on foreseen merit in man, the definite number of the elect; the assured final condemnation of the reprobate; the perseverance of the saints; the assurance of faith; the particularity of grace; the necessity of grace to salvation; and the impotency of the natural will to salvation. Not all of these paragraphs are incorporated into that one of the Irish Articles (1615) headed "Of God's Eternal Decree and Predestination," but only such as naturally fall under that caption, while the others are utilized in other portions of the document. This particular Article is disposed in seven paragraphs. In the first a clear assertion is made of God's general decree, with a careful guarding of it against current calumnies: this is original with this document. The second paragraph sets forth in language derived from the Lambeth Articles the special decree of predestination - the prædestinatio bipartita. The third paragraph defines "predestination to life" in language derived from the Articles of the Church of England. The fourth explains the cause of predestination to life as, negatively, nothing in man, and, positively, the good pleasure of God alone: it is taken from the Lambeth Articles. The fifth expounds the relation of predestination to the means of grace, and is taken from the Articles of the Church of England, with the addition of a clause from the Lambeth Articles covering the fate of the reprobate. The last two paragraphs are taken with modifications from the Articles of the Church of England and set forth the use of doctrine. The whole constitutes the high-water mark of the Confessional expression of this high mystery up to this time attained in the Reformed Churches. Nothing before it had been so prudently and so thoroughly compacted. It was rightly taken by the Westminster divines as the point of departure for the formation of their own chapter on this locus, and to its admirable guidance is largely due the greatness of the success of the Westminster men in dealing with this mystery in such combined faithfulness and prudence. 

It was not, however, only in Britain that the Reformed were called upon to defend the treasures of truth that had been committed to them, from the inroads of that perpetual foe of the grace of God which is entrenched in the self-sufficiency of the natural heart. The rise of the Arminian party in Holland was the most serious direct assault as yet suffered by the Reformed theology. It was met by the Dutch Calvinists with a successful application of the expedient, an unsuccessful attempt to apply which in somewhat similar circumstances in England gave birth to the Lambeth Articles - by the publication, to wit, of Articles supplementary to the accepted Confession of the Church, which should more specifically guard the controverted points. The product of this counter-movement in the Dutch Churches is the Canons of Dort, published authoritatively in 1619 as the finding of the National Synod with the aid of a large body of foreign assessors, representative practically of the whole Reformed world. The Canons of Dort not only, therefore, were set forth with legal authority in the Netherlands, but possessed the moral authority of the decrees of practically an Ecumenical Council throughout the whole body of Reformed Churches. Their form is largely determined by the Remonstrance to which they are formally a reply: it is therefore, for example, that they are divided into five heads; and the whole distribution of the matter, as well as the especial points on which they touch, is due to the occasion of their origin. But for the points of doctrine with which they deal they provide a singularly well-considered, prudent, and restrained Reformed formulary. The first head of doctrine deals directly with predestination, the rest with the connected points of particular redemption, inability, irresistible grace, and perseverance. The matter under each head is disposed in two parts, in the former of which the doctrine concerned is positively set forth, while in the latter the corresponding errors that had been vexing the Churches are named and refuted. 

The head on Predestination contains eighteen paragraphs in its positive portion, followed by nine more in the negative part. The starting-point is taken from a broad statement of the doctrine of original sin and man's universal guilt (§ 1). Then the provisions for man's salvation are adduced - the gift of Christ, the proclamation of the gospel, the gift of faith (§§ 2-6) - and it is pointed out that the gospel has actually been sent not to all men, but only to those "whom God will and at what time He pleaseth" (§ 3), and that faith is not in the power of all, but is again the gift of God to whom He pleases. Thus the obvious distinction existing among men is traced back to the divine will, and ascribed to "that decree of election and reprobation revealed in the word of God" (§ 6). The way being thus prepared, election is next defined (§ 7) and the details of the doctrine developed (§§ 7-14); after which reprobation is defined and guarded (§§ 15-16); and the whole concludes with a section on the destiny of children dying in infancy (§ 17), and another on the proper attitude of mind in the face of these holy mysteries (§ 18). The definition of election emphasizes its eternity, immutability, and absolute freedom. Its object is said to be fallen men, and its end redemption, with all the means of grace adjoined. The unity of the decree of election and of the means of salvation is asserted (§ 8). Its relation to all good motives in the creature is carefully explained as not that of effect but of cause (§§ 9, 10). Its particularity and unchangeableness are emphasized (§ 11). Finally, the use of the doctrine, in the attainment of assurance, as an incitement to good works, and for the comforting of the people of God, is adverted to (§§ 12-14). The decree of reprobation is then brought in as "peculiarly tending to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election" and carefully defined (§ 15); and men are warned against misusing it so as to beget within themselves an ill-founded despair (§ 16). Little of importance is added to this positive statement in the sections on "the rejection of errors." These take up, one by one, the subtle Remonstrant statements and lay them by the adduction of appropriate Scriptures; they result only in strengthening and sharpening the positive propositions already asserted - particularly those that concern the immutability of God's electing counsel; its entire independence of foreseen faith or dispositions or works as causes or occasions; and its complete sovereignty in all its relations. The whole constitutes the fullest and one of the most prudent and satisfactory expositions of the Reformed doctrine of predestination ever given wide symbolical authority. 

The Canons of Dort were adopted by the French Synods of 1620 and 1623; but soon afterward the French Churches were disturbed by the unsettling teachings of the school of Saumur. These teachings did not, indeed, trench upon the doctrine of predestination in its essence. Amyraut, to whom it fell among the innovating divines to deal with this matter, leaves nothing to be desired in his express loyalty to the definitions that had been the guides and guards of Reformed theology from the beginning: he copiously defended the whole Reformed doctrine as expressed by Calvin. The following is the way his position is set down in the "Declaration of the Faith of Moses Amyraut with reference to the Errors of the Arminians":20 

In the second article, what the Arminians defend is that God, having decreed from all eternity to offer one and the same grace to all men, that they might in the powers of free will either receive or repudiate it; and having foreseen who would accept it and who would reject it; out of that foresight elected those whom He foresaw would make a good use of that grace and reprobated the rest. Thus, in their view, election is grounded in foresight of faith. 

The orthodox, on the other hand, hold, that although God decreed that all men indifferently should be invited to faith, He nevertheless in His eternal counsel separates a given (certum) number of men from the rest, to be granted a singular grace, by means of which they may obey that invitation, and thus be led to salvation; while all the rest, they hold, are passed by by Him in the dispensation of that grace (cæteros omnes ab eo in dispensatione illius gratiæ prætermissos esse). They add further that the reason why God has so acted is to be traced solely to His most free good pleasure, and that there was no reason or cause of any kind whatsoever in those whom He elected why they should be elected; and there existed in those whom He reprobated no cause why they should be reprobated which did not equally exist in the others. So that election and reprobation are equally absolute and neither rests on the prevision of anything (nec ulla rei cuiusquam prævisione nitatur). 

Amyraut embraces the same doctrine with the rest of the orthodox and has both explained and confirmed it with unrefuted reasons, drawn especially from the ninth chapter of Romans, in the thirteenth chapter of his "Defense of Calvin." 

The point where the new French teachings affected the Reformed doctrine of predestination, therefore, was not in its substance, but in its relations - and more especially its relation in the ordo decretorum to the decree of the gift of Christ. Amyraut, desiring to teach a universal atonement, wished to place the decree of election in the order of thought subsequent instead of prior to the decree to give Christ to make satisfaction for sin, which satisfaction should therefore be conditional - to wit, on the faith which is the free gift of God to His elect. It was to meet this point of view, among other novelties broached by the Salmurian school, that at the beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century the "Helvetic Formula of Consent" was drawn up by Heidegger with the assistance of Turretin and Gernler (1675). Its prime object in the "Canons" that concern predestination, therefore, is to defend the Calvinistic order of decrees: this is set forth there with careful precision and emphasis, and the universalism of Amyraut's construction of the gift of Christ explicitly opposed and refuted. But in stating and arguing its case, the whole doctrine of election is very carefully restated, including the details of its eternity, its absoluteness, its independence on foresight of aught in man moving thereunto, its particularity and unchangeableness, and its implication of a reprobate mass left outside the reach of saving grace by the mere fact of election. The statement may well be looked upon as a typical statement of the Calvinistic position, embodying all the points which, in the course of a century and a half of creed-making, it had been found necessary to emphasize in order to bring out the doctrine in its full outline and to protect it from insidious undermining. 

It is in the midst or, more precisely, near the end of this series of creedal expressions of the Reformed doctrine of predestination that the Westminster Confession takes its place. Subsequent in date to all of them, with the single exception of the Swiss Form of Consent, it gathers up into itself the excellences of all. More particularly it is founded upon the Irish Articles of 1615, which in turn were compounded of the English Articles and the Lambeth Articles; and through them it goes back respectively to the thought especially of Peter Martyr and of John Calvin. There is nothing in it which is not to be found expressly set forth in the writings of these two great teachers: and it gives their teachings form under the guidance of the best Confessional statements precedent to its own origin. It quite deserves the high praises it has received from the hand of one of the greatest and most deservedly honored of the fathers of the modern Presbyterian Church, who speaks of it with reiterated emphasis not only as "the best and fullest expression" of the Reformed system, but as "the ablest and ripest product of that Great Reformation, which was so fruitful in symbolic literature."21 

II 

After this introductory survey of their general character, we are now prepared to set out the text of the Confessional statements of the doctrine of predestination in the Reformed Churches. We shall extract the sections specifically devoted to the subject at large, but only so much of other matter as seems needful for understanding the nature of the Confessional recognition that is really given the doctrine. The Confessions are, in general, arranged in the order in which they have been mentioned in the preceding description of them. 

ZWINGLI'S FIDEI RATIO (1530)²² 

Secondly. I know that that Supreme Divinity who is my God has freely made appointment concerning all things, so that His counsel does not depend on the occasioning of any creature,[WC III. i. a; ii.] since it is peculiar to marred human wisdom to determine on precedent discussion or example. But God, who from eternity to eternity contemplates all that is with a single and simple regard, has no need of any ratiocination, or expectation of acts, but, equally wise, prudent, and good, freely determines and disposes concerning all things-seeing that all that is is His[WC III. ii.] Hence, though He knowingly and purposely in the beginning made the man who should fall, He yet equally determined to clothe His own Son in human nature, that He might repair the fall. . . . 

Thirdly. . . . The election of God, however, stands and remains firm, since those whom He elected before the constitution of the world He so elected as to choose to Himself through His Son; for He is as holy and just as He is good and merciful.[WC III. v. a.] All His works therefore savor of mercy and justice. Election therefore properly savors of both. It is of His goodness that He has elected whom He will;[WC III. v. a.] but it is of His justice that He has adopted His elect to Himself and joined them to Him through His Son as a victim offered to satisfy Divine justice for us. . . . 

Sixthly. Of the Church, then, we think as follows: The term Church is variously used in the Scriptures. For those elect ones whom God has destined to eternal life.[WC III. v. a.] It is concerning this Church that Paul speaks when he says that it has no spot or wrinkle. This Church is known to God alone; for He only, according to the word of Solomon, knows the hearts of the sons of men. But, nevertheless, those who are members of this Church know themselves, since they have faith, to be elect and members of this first Church;[WC III. viii.] but they are ignorant with regard to other members. For it is thus written in the Acts: "And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." Those, then, who believe are ordained to eternal life. But who truly believes no one knows but the one who believes. He then is certain that he is elected of God. For, according to the word of the Apostle, he has the Spirit as a pledge, by whom he is sponsored and sealed, and knows himself to be free and made a son of the family and not a slave. For that Spirit cannot deceive. As He declares God to be our Father, we call on Him as Father with assurance and boldness, being firmly persuaded that we shall obtain an eternal inheritance because we are sure that the Spirit of God has been poured out into our hearts. It is certain, then, that he who is thus assured and secure is elect; for those who believe are ordained to eternal life.[WC III. viii.] There are, however, many elect who have not faith. For the holy qeoto,koj, John, Paul - were they not elect while they were still infants or children, and even before the constitution of the world? Nevertheless, they did not know this, either from faith or from revelation. Matthew, Zacchaeus, the Thief, and the Magdalene - were they not elect before the constitution of the world, though they were ignorant of the fact until they were illuminated by the Spirit and drawn to Christ by the Father? From them, then, we may learn that this first Church is known to God only, and that those only who have firm and unwavering faith know that they are members of this Church. But, once again, the term Church is used universally of all who are enrolled in the name of Christ - that is, who have given in their names to Christ, a good part of whom have openly acknowledged Christ by confession or participation in the Sacraments while still in heart they are either alienated from Him or ignorant of Him. We believe therefore that all those who have confessed the name of Christ belong to this Church. Thus Judas was of the Church of Christ, and all those that draw back from Christ. For Judas was thought by the Apostles to be not less of Christ's Church than Peter or John, since he was no less so. But Christ knew who were His and who was the devil's. There is, then, this visible Church in this world, however unfit, and all who confess Christ are in it, though many of them are reprobates.[WC III. iii.; vii.] For Christ depicted that charming allegory of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise and five foolish. And this Church is sometimes called elect, although it is not that first Church which is without spot; but since it is, according to man's judgment, the Church of God, on account of public confession, it is therefore called elect. For we judge those to be believers and elect who give in their names to Christ. So Peter spoke when he said, " To the elect who are scattered abroad in Pontus," etc. There by the name of elect he means all who were of the churches to which he was writing, not those only who were properly God's elect: for as they were unknown to Peter, he was not able to write to them. Finally, the word Church is used for any particular congregation of this universal and visible Church. . . . 

ZWINGLI'S EXPOSITIO CHR. FIDEI (1531)²³ 

[103] It is therefore by the grace and goodness of God alone, which He has abundantly poured out on us in Christ, that eternal bliss is attained. What, then, shall we say of the passage of Scripture adduced above, in which a reward is promised for a draught of cold water and the like? This to wit: That the election of God is free and gratuitous; for He elected us before the constitution of the world, before we were born. God therefore did not elect us on account of works, but He elected us before the creation of the world.[WC III. v.] Our works therefore have no merit. But when He promises a reward for works it is after a human manner of speech; "for," says Augustine, "what wilt Thou, O good God, remunerate except Thine own work? For since it is Thou that workest in us both the willing and the doing, what is left for us to claim for ourselves? For . . ." etc. 

THE TETRAPOLITAN CONFESSION (1530)²⁴ 

III. Of Justification and Faith. . . . For since it is our righteousness and eternal life to know God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ; and it is so impossible for this to be the work of flesh and blood that it is needful for it to be born again anew; and we cannot come to the Son except by the Father's drawing, nor know the Father except by the Son's revelation; and Paul has written so expressly that it is not of us nor of works: - it is clear enough that our works can help nothing at all toward our becoming righteous from the unrighteous ones which we were born; because that, as we are by nature children of wrath and therefore unrighteous, so we avail to do nothing righteous or acceptable to God, but the beginning of all our righteousness and salvation must needs come from the mercy of God, who out of His grace (dignatione) alone and the contemplation of the death of His Son offers in the first instance the doctrine of truth and His Gospel, sending those who shall proclaim it; and then, since the natural man is not at all able, as Paul says, to perceive the things of God (I Cor. ii.), makes at the same time to arise in the darkness of our hearts the ray of His light, so that we may now have faith in the proclaimed Gospel, being persuaded of its truth by the supreme Spirit, and forthwith may, enjoying the testimony of this Spirit, call upon God in filial confidence, and say, Abba, Father, obtaining thereby sure salvation according to that saying, "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved." 

IV. Of Good Works proceeding out of Faith through Love. But we are unwilling that these things should be so understood as if we placed salvation and righteousness in the slothful thoughts of the mind, or in faith destitute of love, which is called fides informis; seeing that we are sure that no one can be righteous or be saved unless he loves God supremely and imitates Him zealously. For whom He foreknew, the same He also predestinated to become conformed to the image of His Son, to wit, as in the glory of a blessed life, so also in the cultivation of innocence and consummate righteousness, for we are His workmanship, created unto good works.[WC III. vi.] But no one is able to love God above all things, and to emulate Him with worthy zeal, except he do indeed know Him and receive the promise of all good things from Him. . . . 

FIRST BOHEMIAN CONFESSION (1535)²⁵ 

III. . . . Hence also they teach that there belong to this one God, supreme power, wisdom and goodness. There also belong to Him alone those most excellent works, suitable to no other than Him. These are the works of creation, redemption, conservation or sanctification. They teach, moreover, that this only true God, in one essence of divinity and blessed trinity of persons, is to be ever adored, venerated and worshiped with supreme reverence, honor and praise as the supreme Lord and King of all things, regnant eternally: and from His hand alone are all things to be looked for and sought. . . . 

VI. . . . They teach, moreover, that through Christ men are mercifully justified freely by faith in Christ, and obtain salvation and remission of sins, apart from all human work and merit. Likewise they teach that His death and blood alone is sufficient for abolishing and expiating all the sins of all men. . . . They likewise teach that no one can have this faith by his own power, will or choice; since it is the gift of God who, where and when it seems good to Him, works it in man through the Holy Spirit.[WC III. vi. b.] . . . 

VIII. Concerning the Holy Catholic Church, they teach first of all that the head and foundation of the Church is Christ the Lord by His own merit, grace and truth, in whom it is built up by the Holy Spirit, the Word and Sacraments. . . . 

SECOND BOHEMIAN CONFESSION (1575)²⁶ 

III. . . . And so He is the perfect Mediator, Advocate, and Intercessor with God the Father, Reconciler, Redeemer and Saviour of our Church, which by His Holy Spirit He collects, conserves, protects, and rules until the number of God's elect shall be completed.[WC III. vi. b.] . . . 

XI. . . . But such a company of good and bad men is called and is the Catholic, Christian and Holy Church, only with respect to the good fishes and wheat - that is, the elect children of God and true and faithful Christians, all of whom as a whole and without exception are holy with a holiness imputed in Christ and begun in them by the Holy Spirit; and these only God deigns to call His sheep, the community of whom is really the bride of Christ, the house of God, the pillar and ground of the truth, the mother of all the faithful and the sole ark, outside of which there is no salvation. . . .  

FIRST BASLE OR MÜHLHAUSEN CONFESSION (1534)²⁷ 

II. Of Creation and Providence. We believe that God created all things by His Eternal Word, that is, by His only begotten Son; and sustains and animates all things by His Spirit, His own power: and therefore that God, as He created, so oversees and governs all things. Gen. i. 1; John i. 3; I Chron. xxix. 11, 12; Acts ii. 23. 

III. Of Predestination. Hereupon we confess that God, before He had created the world, had elected all those to whom He would give the inheritance of eternal salvation[WC III. v. a.] Rom. viii. 29, 30, ix. 11-13, xi. 5, 7; Eph. i. 4-6. . . . 

VI. And although man by the same fall became liable to damnation and inimical to God, God nevertheless never ceased to care for the human race. This is witnessed by the patriarchs; the promises before and after the flood; the law likewise given by God to Moses; and the holy prophets. Rom. v. 16; Gen. xii. 1, xiv. 19, 20, xv. 1; Gen. iii. 15, xxi. 12, xxvi. 3, 4, 24, xxviii. 13, 14, 15. 

FIRST HELVETIC OR SECOND BASLE CONFESSION (1536)²⁸ 

9. Free Will. Thus, we attribute free will to man in such a manner that though we are conscious of both knowing and willing to do good and evil, we are able indeed of our own motion to do the evil, but are unable to embrace and pursue the good, except as illuminated by the grace of Christ and impelled by His Spirit. For God it is who works in us both the willing and the doing, according to His good pleasure[WC III. vi.] And it is from God that salvation comes, from us perdition. Phil. ii.; Hos. xiii. 

10. The Eternal Counsel of God Concerning the Reparation of Man. For this man, therefore, devoted by his fault to damnation, and incurring righteous indignation, God the Father has nevertheless never ceased to care. And this is made plain by the primal promises, and by the whole law (which arouses and does not extinguish sin) and by Christ who was ordained and set forth for this very purpose. Eph. i. ; Rom. vii. 

THE HUNGARIAN CONFESSION (1557-1558)²⁹ 

Out of the Word of God we call Him Father, God and Jehovah, having life in Himself, existent from none, wanting all beginning, who from eternity without any beginning or change begot out of His own hypostasis as it were the character and splendor of His glory, the only begotten Son - through whom He from eternity foreknew and disposed all things,[WC III. i. a.] and in the beginning created, and conserves them, and saves His elect by justifying them, but condemns the impious.[WC III. iii.] . . . 

Thirdly, [eternity] is used of a continuous time - that is, of the period in which the world was created, of the days in which the world was made. Hence it is said: He elected us before times eternal, that is, He elected before the seven days of creation, before creation, from eternity (Eph. i. 2, 3, 5; II Tim. i. 2, 3).[WC III. v.] Fourthly, it is used of the infinite salvation of the pious and the torment of the impious: and this salvation and condemnation, though they have a beginning in the elect and the vessels of wrath, nevertheless want an end. . . . 

As it is impossible that things that are in direct repugnance to one another and are mutually destructive can be the efficient and formal cause of their contraries; as light is not the cause of darkness, nor heat of cold (Psalms 5, 46, 61, 66, 80, 84, 114, 135); so it is impossible for God, who is Light, Righteousness, Truth, Wisdom, Goodness, Life, to be the cause of darkness, sin and falsehood, ignorance, blindness, malice, and death; but Satan and men are the cause of all these. For God cannot ex se and per se do things that He prohibits and on account of which He condemns.[WC III. i. b.] . . . 

As He who justly renders to those who work equally an equal reward, and who gives to the undeserving, out of grace and voluntarily, what He will, is not a respecter of persons; so God had acted justly, if out of debt, according to justice and His own law, He had rendered death and condemnation as the stipend of sin to all who deserve it. And on the other hand, when for the sake of His son, out of the plenitude of His grace and in His freedom of will, He gives to the undeserving righteousness and life,[WC III. v.] this is not prosopoliptis, that is, He is not a respecter of persons, as it is said: "Take what is thine and what thou hast deserved and go: Is it not lawful for me to do what I please with my own? Is it not thy eye that is evil? not my eye, because I am good" (Matt. xx.). . . . 

We confess Christ . . . as Redeemer for these reasons. . . . Then, too, that He might make satisfaction for the life-giving mercy of God by the omnipotence of the same Word and only begotten Son of God, according to the eternal election made from eternity in Christ (Eph. i).[WC III. v.]

SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION (1562, 1566)³⁰ 

VI. Of the Providence of God. By the providence of this wise, eternal and omnipotent God, we believe that all things in heaven and in earth and among all the creatures are conserved and governed. . . . Meanwhile, however, we do not despise the means by which divine providence operates, as if they were useless. . . . For God, who has determined its own end to everything,[WC III. i. a.] has ordained both the principle and the means by which it shall attain its end. The Gentiles attribute things to blind fortune or uncertain chance. . . . 

VIII. Of Man's Fall, Sin, and the Cause of Sin. . . . We condemn, moreover, Florinus and Blastus, against whom also Irenæus wrote, and all who make God the author of sin. . . . There is enough vice and corruption in us for it to be by no means necessary for God to infuse into us new and increased depravity. Accordingly when God is said in Scripture to harden, to blind, and to give over to a reprobate mind, it is to be understood that He does this by a righteous judgment, as a just judge and avenger. In fine, whenever God is said or seems to do any evil in Scripture, it is not so said because it is not man that does the evil, but because God, who could prevent it if He wished, in just judgment permits it to be done and does not prevent it; or because He has made a good use of the evil of men, as in the case of the sins of Joseph's brethren; or because He reins in the sins, that they may not break out too widely and riot.[WC III. i. b.] St. Augustine, in his "Enchiridion," says: "In a marvelous and ineffable way, that does not take place apart from His will, which yet takes place against His will. For it would not be done, if He did not permit it to be done. Nor is it unwillingly that He permits it but willingly. Neither would the Good One permit evil to be done, were not the Omnipotent One able to bring good out of the evil." 

Remaining questions - whether God willed Adam to fall, or impelled him to his fall, or why He did not prevent his fall, and the like, we account (except, perhaps, when the improbity of heretics or other importunate men compel them too to be explained out of God's Word, as has been done not seldom by pious doctors of the Church) among those curious inquiries which the Lord prohibits, lest man should eat of the forbidden fruit and his transgression be punished; but things that take place are certainly not evil with respect to the providence of God, God's will and power, but with respect to Satan and our will in opposition to God's will[WC III. i. b.] . . . 

X. Of the Predestination of God and the Election of the Saints. God has from eternity freely and of His mere grace, with no respect of men, predestinated or elected the saints whom He will save in Christ,[WC III. v. a.] according to that saying of the Apostle: "God hath chosen us in Himself before the foundations of the world were laid" (Eph. i. 4) ; and again: "Who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given unto us through Jesus Christ before times eternal, but is now made manifest by the appearance of our Saviour Jesus Christ" (II Tim. i. 9, 10). 

Therefore, not without means,[WC III. vi. a.] though not on account of any merit of ours, but in Christ and on account of Christ, God elected us; so that those who are now ingrafted into Christ by faith the same also are elect;[WC III. viii.] but they are reprobates, who are without Christ, according to that saying of the Apostle: "Prove yourselves whether you are in faith. Know ye not your own selves that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (II Cor. xiii. 5). 

In fine, the saints are elected by God in Christ to a sure end, which very end the Apostle sets forth when he says:[WC III. v. a.] "He has chosen us in Him that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love; and He has predestinated us that He might adopt us through Jesus Christ to Himself to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Eph, i. 4, 5, 6). 

And although God knows who are His,[WC III. iv.] and mention is now and then made of the fewness of the elect, we must nevertheless hope well of all, and not rashly number any among the reprobates. Paul certainly says to the Philippians: "I give thanks for you all" (and he is speaking of the whole Philippian Church), "that you have come into the fellowship of the Gospel, being persuaded that He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it, as it is right for me to think this of you all" (Phil. i. 3-7). 

And when the Lord was asked (Luke xiii.) whether there are few that shall be saved, the Lord does not say in reply that few or more are to be saved or lost, but rather exhorts that each should strive to enter in at the strait gate, as if He should say, It is not for you to inquire curiously about these things, but rather to endeavor to enter heaven by the straight path.[WC III. viii.] 

Wherefore we do not approve of the wicked speeches of some who say, "Few are elected, and as it does not appear whether I am in that number of the few, I will not defraud my nature." Others say, "If I be predestinated or elected by God, nothing can hinder me from a salvation already certainly decreed, no matter what I may ever commit; but if I be in the number of the reprobate no faith or repentance either will help me, since the appointment of God cannot be changed: therefore all teachings and admonitions are useless." For to these that saying of the Apostles is opposed: "The servant of the Lord must be apt to teach, instructing them that are contrary minded, if at any time God will give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, that they may escape from the snare of the devil who are held captive by him to his will" (II Tim. ii. 24-26). 

But Augustine also, in his work on the "Blessing of Perseverance," shows that there are to be preached both the grace of free election and predestination, and salutary admonitions and doctrines. We, therefore, condemn those who seek outside of Christ whether they are elect and what God had decreed concerning them from all eternity.[WC III. viii. a.] 

For the preaching of the Gospel must be heard and faith be given it: and it is to be held indubitable that thou art elect if thou believest and art in Christ. For the Father has laid bare to us in Christ the eternal sentence of His predestination, as we have just shown from the Apostle (II Tim. i.).[WC III. viii. a.] There is to be taught, therefore, and considered before all things, how great the love of the Father toward us is that is revealed to us in Christ; and what the Lord preaches to us daily in the Gospel must be heard - how He calls and says: "Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28) ; "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten for the world, that every one who believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John iii. 16); again: "It is not the will of the Father that any one of these little ones should perish" (Matt. xviii. 14). 

Let Christ then be the mirror in which we contemplate our predestination. We shall have a sufficiently clear and sure witness that we are written in the Book of Life, if we participate in Christ, and He is ours in true faith, and we His. Let it console us in the temptation of predestination, than which there is scarcely any more perilous, that the promises of God to believers are universal and that He Himself has said: "Ask and ye shall find. Every one that asketh, receiveth" (Luke xi. 9, 10):[WC III. viii.] in fine, that we pray with the whole Church of God: "Our Father which art in Heaven": and that we are ingrafted into the body of Christ by baptism, and are repeatedly fed in the Church with His body and blood to life eternal. Confirmed by these things we are commanded, according to this Precept of Paul, "to work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. ii. 12). 

XIII. Of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . For God has from eternity predestinated to save the world through Christ, and has manifested this His predestination and eternal counsel to the world through the Gospel (II Tim. i. 9, 10). Whence it is clear that the evangelical religion and doctrine is the most ancient of all, among all that have ever been, are or shall be. And hence we say that they all err dreadfully and speak unworthily of the eternal counsel of God, who describe the evangelical doctrine and religion as lately arisen and a faith scarcely thirty years old. 

HEIDELBERG CATECHISM (1563)³¹ 

I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him (1). 

The eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that in them is, who likewise upholds and governs the same by His eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ His Son my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil He sends upon me in this vale of tears, He will turn to my good; for He is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father (26). 

[The providence of God is] the almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand (27).[WC III. i.] 

[Christ] is ordained [verordnet] of God the Father, and anointed with the Holy Ghost, to be our Chief Prophet and Teacher, who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption. . . . (31). 

I look for the selfsame One . . . to come again as Judge from heaven; who shall cast all His and my enemies into everlasting condemnation, but shall take me, with all His chosen ones, to Himself, into heavenly joy and glory (52). 

The Son of God from the beginning of the world to its end, by His Spirit and Word, out of the whole human race, gathers, protects and preserves for Himself unto eternal life, in the unity of the true faith, an elected communion;[WC III. v.] and I am and ever shall remain a living member of the same (54 - Definition of the "Holy Catholic Christian Church"). 

ANHALT REPETITION (1581)³²

.     .     .     .     .

BRANDENBURG CONFESSIONS³³ 

1. The Confession of Sigismund (1614) 

In the Article on eternal election or predestination to eternal life His Electoral Highness acknowledges and confesses that it is the most comfortable of all, on which chiefly rest not only all other Articles, but also our blessedness - that, to wit, God the Almighty, out of His pure grace and mercy, without any respect to man's worthiness, merit or works,[WC III. v. b.] before the foundations of the world were laid, ordained and elected to eternal life all who constantly believe in Christ,[WC III. v. a.] knows also and acknowledges them as His, and as He has loved them from eternity, so endows them also out of pure grace with justifying faith and strong endurance to the end, so that no one shall pluck them out of the hand of Christ and no one separate them from His love, and all things, good and bad alike, must work together for good to them, because they are called according to the purpose.[WC III. vi. a, b.] Likewise also that God has, according to His strict righteousness, eternally passed by all who do not believe in Christ, and prepared them for the everlasting fire of hell, as it stands expressly written:[WC III. vii. a, b.] "He who does not believe in the Son is judged already," "He who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides (and therefore it is already) on him" - not as if God were a cause of the sinner's destruction, not as if He had pleasure in the sinner's death, not as if He were an author and inciter of sin,[WC III. i. b.] not as if He did not wish all to be saved, for the contrary is to be found everywhere in the Holy Scriptures; but that the cause of sin and destruction is to be sought only in Satan and the godless, who are repudiated to damnation on account of their unbelief and disobedience to God. And moreover that of no man's salvation is it to be doubted so long as the means of salvation are used, because it is not known to any man at what time God will mightily call His own, or who will hereafter believe or not, since God is not limited to any time and does all things according to His pleasure. And, on the other hand, His Electoral Highness rejects all and every of such partly blasphemous and partly dangerous opinions and assertions as that we must climb up into heaven and there search out in a special register or in God's secret treasury and council chamber who are predestinated to eternal life and who not; for God has sealed the Book of Life, and no creature can pry into it (II Tim. ii. 19). Likewise [he rejects] that God has elected some, propter fidem prævisam, on account of foreseen faith, which is Pelagian;[WC III. v. b.] and that He does not desire the greater part to be saved, but condemns them absolutely, nakedly, without any cause, and therefore not on account of sin, for certainly the righteous God has never determined on damnation except for sin,[WC III. vii. b.] and therefore the decree of reprobation to damnation is not to be regarded as an absolutum decretum, a free, naked decree, as the Apostle says of the rejected Jews: "Behold the branches were broken off on account of their unbelief." Again [he rejects], that the elect may live just as they choose, and, on the other hand, nothing can help those that are not elect, no Word, no Sacrament, no piety; for certainly from the Word of God it is clear that no good tree brings forth evil fruit, and that God has elected us that we should be holy and unblamable before Him in love (Eph. i. 4); and that whoever abides as a good branch in the vine of Christ brings forth much fruit; and that whosoever does not abide in Him shall be cut off as a branch and wither, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they must burn, as Christ the Lord Himself says (John xv. 5-6). 

2. The Leipzig Colloquy (1631) 

And although the doctrine of eternal election is not expressly treated in the Augsburg Confession, nevertheless it has seemed wise to the theologians of both sides to set forth their doctrine and meaning on this point also, concerning which there has been hitherto much strife. The Brandenburgan and Hessian theologians declare therefore the following to be their unanimous doctrine and belief, to wit: 

That God chose from eternity in Jesus Christ out of the lost race of man, not all, but some men,[WC III. v. a.] whose number and names are known to Him alone,[WC III. iv.] whom He in His own time, through the power and operation of His Word and Spirit, illuminates and renews to faith in Christ; and also enlightens in the same faith to the end and finally makes eternally blessed through faith.[WC III. vi.] 

That He moreover found or foresaw no cause or occasion or precedent means or condition of such choice in the elect themselves - whether their good works or their faith or even the first holy inclination or emotion or consent to faith, but that all that is good in them flows originally from the pure free grace of God which is eternally ordained and given to them alone in Jesus Christ.[WC III. v. b.]

That also God from eternity ordained and reprobated those who persevere in their sins and unbelief to eternal damnation,[WC III. viii.] not out of such an absolutum decretum, or naked will and decree, as if God either from eternity ordains or in time creates the greater part of the world or any men, without regard to their sins and unbelief, to eternal damnation, or to the cause thereof; but the reprobation as well as the damnation takes place out of His just judgment, the cause of which is in man himself, to wit, his sin, impenitence and unbelief;[WC III. vii. b.] that therefore the entire fault and cause of the reprobation and damnation of the unbelieving is in themselves; the entire cause, however, of the election and blessedness of believers is alone the pure and mere grace of God in Jesus Christ,[WC III. v. a.] according to the word of the Lord: "O Israel! thou dost bring thyself into unhappiness: thy salvation, however, stands in me alone." 

That, therefore, further, each should be assured of and should know his election and blessedness, not a priori from the hidden counsel of God, but only a posteriori from the revealed Word of God, and from his faith and the fruits of his faith in Christ;[WC III. viii.] and that it does not at all follow, as the wicked world mockingly misrepresents this high Article, and much less can it be taught, that "whoever is elected may persevere in his godlessness as long as he chooses, and nevertheless he must be saved," while "whoever is not elected, even though he should believe in Christ and live a godly life, must nevertheless be damned." 

If, however, any would search and pry more deeply into this high mystery and seek for other reasons besides God's free, gracious, and righteous will why God has nevertheless actually brought to faith only some from among men who are alike by nature, and all of whom He could assuredly by His Almightiness have brought to faith and salvation, while on the other hand He has left the rest in their sins and voluntary, obstinate impenitence and unbelief: - then they [the Brandenburg and Hessian theologians] say with the Apostle: "Who art thou, O man, that would dispute with God? Has not the potter power, out of one impure mass of sin, to make one vessel to honor of pure grace, and another to dishonor of just judgment? O the depth of the riches and knowledge of God! How inconceivable are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways! Who has become His counselor? Or who has known His mind? Or who has given to Him first that it may be recompensed to him?" 

34 On the other hand the Saxon theologians declare themselves in the following fashion: 

1. That God from eternity, and before the foundation of the world was laid, elected in Christ not all, but some men to eternal blessedness. 

2. That the number and names of the elect are known to God alone, as the Lord says: "He knows His sheep," and, as St. Paul says: "God knows His own." 

3. That God from eternity elected those of whom He saw that they in time would, through the power and operation of His Word and Spirit, believe in Christ and persevere in their faith to the end; and although the elect may for a while fall away from the grace of God, yet it is impossible that this should happen finaliter and persistently. 

4. That God, in election, found no cause or occasion of such election in the elected themselves, not even a first holy inclination, emotion or consent to faith; but that all that is good in the elect flows originally from the pure free grace of God, which is given them in Christ from eternity. 

5. That God from eternity ordained to eternal damnation and reprobation those only whom He knew would persevere in their sins and unbelief. 

6. That this reprobation has not at all taken place out of an absolutum decretum or naked decree and will, as if God had condemned any one out of His sole pleasure, without regard to man's unbelief. For there was no such naked decree in God, by virtue of which He has either from eternity ordained or in time created either the greater part of mankind or even only a single man to eternal damnation or to the cause thereof. 

7. That, however, although so many men are eternally lost and condemned, this happens certainly out of the just judgment of God; but the cause of this condemnation is in the men themselves, to wit, in their dominating sins, their unbelief and impenitence; that therefore the entire fault and cause of the reprobation and condemnation is in themselves, while the entire cause of the election and blessedness of believers is the pure and mere grace of God in Jesus Christ, according to the Word of the Lord: "O Israel! thou dost bring thyself into unhappiness; thy salvation, however, stands in me alone" (Hos. xiii.). 

8. That each one should and may be assured of his election and blessedness, not a priori out of the hidden counsel of God, but only a posteriori, out of the revealed Word of God and out of his faith in Christ; and that it does not at all follow as the wicked world mockingly misrepresents this high Article, and much less can or should it be taught that "Whoever is elected may persevere in his godlessness as long as he chooses, and nevertheless he must and will be saved," while "Whoever is not elected must therefore be damned, although he ever so surely believes in Christ or lives ever so godly a life." 

9. That in this high mystery of election there are many questions mooted by men which we in this mortality cannot understand, nor answer otherwise than out of St. Paul: "Who art thou, O man, that disputest with God?" (Rom. ix.). Again: "O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How inconceivable are His judgments and how unsearchable His waysl Who has become His counselor? And who has known His mind? Or who has given to Him that it may be recompensed him?" (Rom. xi.). 

10. Concerning all this the Saxon theologians have declared themselves, that they also further hold as correct and accordant with the Holy Scriptures all that is taught concerning this Article in the Book of Concord. And that God in particular chose us in Christ, out of grace indeed, but in such a manner that He foresaw who would believe in Christ perseveringly and in verity, and whom God foresaw that they would so believe, them He also ordained and elected to make blessed and glorious. 

3. The Declaration of Thorn (1645) 

Of Grace. 1. From sin and death there is no redemption or justification through the powers of nature, or through the righteousness of the law, but only through the grace of God in Christ, who has redeemed us, when dead in sins, from wrath and the curse, by making full satisfaction by the unique sacrifice of His death and the merit of His perfect obedience for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world: 

2. Who has efficaciously called us, when redeemed, by the Word of the gospel and the Spirit of grace, out of the kingdom of sin and death into the kingdom of grace and life; and has sealed us by the sacraments of grace: 

3. Who justifies us or absolves us from sins and adopts us as sons, when we are called and are sincerely repentant, on account of the merit of Christ alone, apprehended by a living faith; and of mere grace imparted to believers, as members of Christ: 

4. And likewise by the Spirit of love poured out into our hearts, daily more and more renews us to a sincere zeal for holiness and new obedience, and sanctifies us or makes us righteous and holy: 

5. Who, finally, will by the same grace eternally glorify us, persevering to the end of life in faith and love, as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, not out of any merit but out of the grace promised in Christ: 

6. And so also will paternally, on account of Christ, reward our good works, done by the grace of the Spirit in faith in Christ and in love, with a most abundant, nay infinite reward, beyond and above their merit: 

7. Even as[WC III. vi.] He has from eternity elected us in Christ, not out of any foreseen faith or merit of works or disposition,[WC III. v. b.] but out of mere and undeserved grace,[WC III. v. a.] as well to that same grace of redemption, vocation, justification, adoption and persevering sanctification which He has given in time,[WC III. vi. b.] as to the crown of eternal life and the glory[WC III. v. a.] which is to be participated in by these means.[WC III. vi. a.] 

8. The rest, who hold back the truth in unrighteousness and contumaciously spurn the offered grace of Christ, being rejected in righteous judgment.[WC III. vii.] 

From this doctrine of grace, in which the whole system of our salvation is contained, thus summarily set forth: 

1. We hope it is manifest that we by no means accord with Socinus, who blasphemously denies and oppugns the satisfaction and merit of Christ, and therefore the very redemption made in His blood. 

2. We deny, however, that beyond the death of Christ any, even the least part, of our redemption and salvation can be attributed to sacrifices, or merits, or satisfactions, whether of saints or of ourselves. 

3. We deny also that unregenerate men, by any merit of congruity, if they do what is in them to do, dispose themselves to the first grace of vocation. 

4. Nor do we suspend the efficacy of the grace of vocation on the free will of man, as if it were not God by His special grace but man by his own will that makes himself to differ. 

5. Yet we are falsely accused as if we denied the sufficiency for all of the death and merit of Christ, or diminished its power, when rather we teach the same that the Council of Trent set forth, Sess. 6, Cap. 3, to wit: "Although Christ died for all, all nevertheless do not receive the benefit of His death, but those only to whom the merit of His passion is communicated." The cause or fault, moreover, why it is not communicated to all we confess to be by no means in the death or merit of Christ, but in men themselves. 

6. We are also falsely accused: As if we taught that not all those who are called by the Word of the gospel are called seriously and sincerely or sufficiently by God for repentance and salvation, but the most only simulatingly and hypocritically by a mere external will signi, with which no internal will beneplaciti is present, as from one who does not will the salvation of all. We most solemnly protest that we are very far removed from such an opinion, distorted against us from the ill-understood or perhaps even ill-considered words of some, and that we attribute to the Thrice-blessed God supreme verity and sincerity in all His sayings and doings, and above all in the Word of the grace that calls to salvation, and do not imagine any contradictory wills in Him. 

7. As if we denied all inherent righteousness to believers, and held that they are justified by an external imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone, which is without any internal renovation. When rather we teach that righteousness is imputed only to those that repent and believe in Christ with true faith, and at the same time by the same faith contrite hearts are vivified by the Holy Spirit, are excited to ardent love for Christ and zeal for new obedience, are cleansed from depraved passions and so the righteousness and holiness of a new life are begun and daily advanced. This only we add, that in this inherent righteousness of our own, because it is imperfect in this life, no one can stand before the just judgment of God, or trust in it, so as to be justified or absolved by it from liability to death, but through and on account of the perfect righteousness and merit of Christ alone, apprehended by a living faith. 

8. As if we imagined that a man is justified by faith only, which is without works and which only believes that sins are remitted to it for Christ's sake, although it abides without any repentance for them; when rather we confess that such a faith is wholly false, and that a man is not only not justified by it, but is even more gravely condemned on account of it, as transforming the grace of God into license for sinning. What we say is that that is true justifying faith which embraces with a practical or fiducial assent the promises of the Gospel, by which remission and life in Christ are offered to the repentant, and applies it to oneself by a truly contrite heart, and which is therefore efficacious through love. We say that only it justifies; not because it is alone, but because only it apprehends the promise of the Gospel and therefore the very righteousness of Christ, through and on account of which alone we are freely, without any merit of our own, justified. 

9. As if by this doctrine we took away zeal for good works, or denied their necessity; when rather it is manifest from what has already been said, that neither justifying faith nor justification itself can possibly exist in adults without sanctification and zeal in good works. And in this sense we acknowledge that they are altogether necessary for salvation, although not as meritorious causes of justification or salvation. 

10. As if we held that the precepts of Christ can in no way be kept by believers; when rather we teach that they not only can be kept, not indeed in men's own powers, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but also that they ought altogether to be kept by all, and that not merely by an inefficacious vow or purpose, but also by the deed itself, and that by the sincere and persevering effort of a whole life. Nevertheless, they are not and cannot be kept in this life by any one so perfectly that we can by our works satisfy the law of God and fulfill it in all respects, but have need daily to ask humbly of God, out of a sense of our imperfection and weakness, forgiveness of varied lapses and derelictions. 

11. As if we held that the justified cannot even for a moment lose God's grace or the assurance of it, or the Holy Spirit Himself, though they indulge themselves in sinful pleasures; when on the contrary we teach that even the regenerate, as often as they fall into sins against their conscience, and for as long as they continue in them, do not for that time retain either living faith or the justifying grace of God, or yet the assurance of it or the Holy Spirit, but incur new liability to wrath and eternal death, and will certainly, moreover, be damned, unless they are again renewed to repentance by the operation of the special grace of God (which we do not doubt will take place in the case of the elect).[WC III. vi.] 

12. We deny, furthermore, that faith in Christ justifies only dispositively, preparatively, initially, because, to wit, it disposes to love and other virtues, that is to say, to inherent righteousness. 

13. We deny also that by that inherent righteousness of our own, we are so justified that we are absolved from liability to death by and on account of it before the judgment of God, are adopted as sons and are pronounced worthy of eternal life; in which forensic sense the word Justification is used by the Holy Ghost in this doctrine. For although there is a sound sense in which it may be said that believers are justified, that is, are made righteous and holy, by love and other infused virtues, this righteousness nevertheless is imperfect in this life and can never stand, as aforesaid, before the severe judgment of God; and this alone is what is under consideration in this doctrine. 

14. Hence, also, we do not agree with those who teach that the regenerate by good works make satisfaction to the justice of God for their sins, and properly merit remission or life, and that indeed out of condignity, or out of the intrinsic worthiness of their works, or their equality with the rewards: every covenant, moreover, or promise, as some wish, being excluded. 

15. Nor yet with those who teach that the regenerate can keep the law of God perfectly in this life, with a perfection not only of parts but also of degrees, so that they live without any sin, such as is in itself and its own nature mortal: and even that they can do works of supererogation transcending the perfection of the law, and by them merit not for themselves only but for others as well. 

16. Nor yet with those who teach that no one without special revelation can certainly know that he has obtained the grace of God with such certitude that he cannot be mistaken; and that all ought to be always in doubt of grace. We, on the other hand, although we confess that even believers and the justified ought not rashly and securely to presume on the grace of God, and are afflicted often with various troubles and doubts, nevertheless teach out of the Scriptures that they both can and ought to strive for and by the help of the Divine grace attain in this life that certitude in which the Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are sons and heirs of God: and this testimony cannot be false, though not all who boast of the Spirit of God really have this testimony.[WC III. viii.] 

17. Finally we teach indeed that not all men are elect, and that those who are elected are elected not out of a foreseen merit of works or a foreseen disposition to faith in them, or assent of will, but out of mere grace in Christ;[WC III. v. a. and b.] and that moreover the number of the elect and of the saved is certain with God.[WC III. iv.] 

18. Meanwhile we affirm that an opinion alien to our thought is attributed to us by those who accuse us, as if we held that eternal election and reprobation is made absolutely, without any respect to faith or unbelief, or to good or evil works: whereas on the contrary we rather hold that - in election faith and obedience are foreseen in those to be elected, not indeed as cause or reason of their election, but certainly as means of salvation foreordained in them by God;[WC III. vi.] in reprobation on the other hand, not only original sin, but also, so far as adults are concerned, unbelief and contumacious impenitence are not, properly speaking, foreordained by God, but foreseen and permitted in the reprobates themselves as the meritorious cause of desertion and damnation, and reprobated by the justest of judgments.[WC III. vii.] 

Accordingly on this sublime mystery of predestination, we clearly hold the same opinion which in the first instance Augustine of old asserted out of the Scriptures against Pelagius; and which the greatest doctors of the Roman Church themselves, especially the followers of Thomas Aquinas, retain to-day. 

FIRST GENEVAN CONFESSION (1536)³⁵ 

X. All our Good by the Grace of God. And finally that all the praise and glory may be rendered to God (as is due), and that we may be able to have true peace and quiet in our consciences, we acknowledge and confess that we receive all the blessings now recited from the mercy of God alone, without any consideration of our worthiness or the merit of our works, to which is due no return except eternal confusion; that, nevertheless, our Lord, having received us in His goodness into communion with His Son Jesus, has works which make us pleasant and acceptable with faith - not at all because they merit it, but only because, not imputing to us the imperfection that is in them, He sees in them nothing except what proceeds from His Spirit. 

GENEVAN CONFESSION (1537)³⁶ 

The Apprehension of Christ by Faith. As the merciful Father offers us His Son in the Word of the gospel, so we embrace Him by faith and recognize Him as given to us. Without doubt the Word of the gospel calls all into participation of Christ, but multitudes, blinded and hardened by unbelief, reject this singular grace. Believers only, therefore, enjoy Christ, and they receive Him as sent to them, and do not reject Him as given to them: and follow Him as called by Him. 

Election and Predestination. In such a difference it is necessary to consider the great secret of the counsel of God: for the seed of God's Word takes root and fructifies in those alone whom the Lord, by His eternal election, has predestined to be His children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom.[WC III. v.] To all others, who are reprobated by the same counsel of God before the constitution of the world,[WC III. iii.] the clear and evident publication of truth can be nothing else but the savor of death unto death. Now the reason why the Lord shows mercy towards the ones and exercises the rigor of His judgment towards the others must be left to be known by Him alone; the which He has willed should be concealed from us and not without very good reason. For neither would the rudeness of our minds permit us to endure so much clarity, nor our littleness permit us to understand so much wisdom. And in fact all who seek to raise themselves to it and are unwilling to repress the temerity of their spirits, experience the truth of what Solomon says (Prov. xxv.) - that he who would search into God's majesty will be oppressed by His glory. Let us only be assured of this - that the dispensation of the Lord, although it is concealed from us, is nevertheless holy and just: for had He willed to destroy the whole human race He had the right to do it, and in those whom it withdraws from perdition, we can contemplate nothing but His sovereign goodness.[WC III. v.] Therefore, let us recognize the elect to be vessels of His mercy (as they truly are), and the reprobates to be vessels of His wrath, which nevertheless is only just.[WC III. v. vi. vii.] Let us take from the one and the other alike ground and matter for the proclamation of His glory. And on the other hand also let us not, in order to confirm the certitude of our faith, seek (as many are accustomed to do) to penetrate into the heavens and to search out what God has from eternity determined to do concerning us (which cogitation can only agitate us with miserable anxiety and perturbation): but let us be content with the testimony by which He has sufficiently and amply confirmed this certitude to us.[WC III. viii. a.] For as in Christ all those are chosen who have been foreordained to life before the foundations of the world were laid, so He is presented to us as the seal of our election if we receive and embrace Him by faith. For what is it that we seek in election except that we may participate in eternal life? And this we have in Christ: for from the beginning He has the life, and He is proposed to us for life, to the end that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life. Since then in possessing Christ by faith we possess also life in Him we have no need to search further into the counsel of God; for Christ is not only a mirror in which the will of God is represented to us, but also a pledge by which it is as it were sealed and confirmed to us.[WC III. viii.] 

GENEVAN CATECHISM (1545)³⁷ 

Q. But why do you call God [in the Apostles' Creed] Creator, when to preserve and conserve the creatures in their condition is much more grand than once to have created them? 

A. It is certainly not intended by this particular that God has so once created His works that afterwards He has laid aside care for them. But rather it is so to be understood as that the world, as it was once created by Him, so now is conserved by Him; and that neither the world nor anything else stands except so far as it is sustained by His power and, as it were, His hand. Moreover, since He thus has all things in His hands, He is constituted thereby the Supreme Governor and Lord of all. Therefore, from His being the Creator of heaven and earth, it is proper to gather that He it is alone who, in His wisdom, kindness, power, rules the whole course and order of nature; who is the author at once of drought, of hail and other storms, and as well of the calm; who in His goodness fertilizes the earth and again makes it barren by withdrawing His hand; from whom proceed both health and sickness; to whose empire, in fine, all things are subject and whose nod they obey. 

Q. What are we to think, however, of the godless and of devils - shall we say that they, too, are subject to Him? 

A. Though He does not govern them by His Spirit, He nevertheless coerces them by His power as by a bit, so that they are not even able to move, except so far as He permits to them. He makes them also the ministers of His will, so that they are compelled, unwillingly and against their counsel, to execute what has seemed good to Him.[WC III. i.] 

Q. What good do you derive from the knowledge of this? 

A. Very much. For it would go ill with us if anything was permitted to the devils and godless men apart from the will of God; and therefore we should never be of peaceful minds if we thought ourselves exposed to their license. But we may rest in peace now. that we know that they are governed by the will of God and are held as it were in bounds, so as to be capable of nothing except by His permission: especially since God Himself undertakes to be our Tutor and the Captain of our salvation. . . . 

Q. What is the Church? 

A. The body and society of believers whom God has predestinated to eternal life.[WC III. iii. a.] 

Q. Is it necessary to believe this head [of the Creed]? 

A. Assuredly: unless we wish to make Christ's death otiose and to bring to naught all that has been heretofore set forth. For the one issue of it all is that there may be a Church. . . . 

Q. Well, then, in what sense do you call the Church holy? 

A. Because, to wit, whomsoever God has elected, them He justifies and builds up in holiness and innocence of life; by which His glory shines forth in them (Rom. viii. 30).[WC III. vi. b.] And it is this that Paul means when he admonishes us that Christ has sanctified the Church which He has redeemed so that it may be glorious and free from every spot (Eph. v. 25). . . . 

Q. But may not this Church be otherwise known than simply believed in by faith? 

A. There is certainly also a visible Church of God, which is marked out for us by certain notes and signs; but here we properly treat of the congregation of those whom He has adopted unto salvation by His hidden election. And that is not constantly perceptible to the eyes nor recognizable by signs. 

CONSENSUS TIGURINUS (1549)³⁸ 

XVI. [Not all who participate in a sacrament partake also in the reality.] Moreover, we sedulously teach that God does not exert His power promiscuously in all who receive the sacraments, but only in the elect. For just as He enlightens unto faith no others than those whom He has foreordained to life, so by the hidden power of His Spirit He brings it about that the elect receive what is offered in the sacraments.[WC III. vi. b.] 

[Calvin's Exposition of the Heads of the Consensus] 

What we say about its not being all promiscuously, but only the elect to whom has come the inner and efficacious operation of the Spirit, that profit by the sacraments, is too clear to need a long discussion. For if any one wishes the effect to be common to all, apart from the passages of Scripture which refute that view, experience itself sets it aside. Therefore, as the external voice in itself by no means penetrates the heart of man, but out of many auditors only those come to Christ who are drawn inwardly by the Father: according to the saying of Isaiah, that no others believed his preaching except those to whom the grace of the Lord is revealed: so it lies in the free and gracious will of the same God to give to whom He will to profit by the use of signs. But we do not in so speaking mean that anything of the nature of the sacraments is changed, but that their integrity remains to them. For Augustine, when he restricted the effects of the Holy Supper to the body of the Church, that is, to the predestinated who are already in part justified, and now being justified and yet to be glorified, did not evacuate or diminish its power, considered in itself alone, with respect to the reprobate; but only denied that the fruit of it is equally common to all. But since there is no obstacle in the way of the reception of Christ by the reprobates except their own unbelief, the whole fault also resides in them. In fine, the representation of the sign is unavailing to no one, except him who wilfully and malignantly deprives himself. For it is very true that each receives from the signs only so much fruit as the vessel of his faith will hold. And we justly repudiate that Sorbonnic invention that the sacraments of the new law profit all who do not interpose the obstacle of a mortal sin. For it, is clearly an insipid superstition to attribute to them a virtue which the merely external use of them conveys, like a canal, into the soul. And if faith must needs intervene as a means, no sane man will deny that the same God who takes away our weakness by His succor, also gives the faith which, borne up by suitable supports, mounts to Christ and becomes possessed of His favors. And beyond all controversy this certainly must needs be - that as it does not suffice for the sun to shine and to send down its rays from heaven unless first eyes are given us to enjoy its light, so the Lord will vainly shine in His eternal signs unless He makes us seeing. Yea, as the heat of the sun, which in the living and breathing body gives life, in the corpse begets a foul odor, so the sacraments, when the spirit of faith is not present, are certain to breathe a mortifying rather than a vitalizing odor. . . . 

CONSENSUS GENEVENSIS (1552)³⁹ 

The consent of the pastors of the Church of Geneva concerning the eternal Predestination of God, by which He has chosen from men some to salvation and has left others to their own destruction:[WC III. iii.] likewise concerning the Providence by which He governs human things: set forth by John Calvin [Title]. 

The free election of God, by which He adopts to Himself out of the lost and condemned race of men whom He will, has been taught by us here not less reverently and soberly than sincerely and without dissimulation, and has been peacefully received by the people [p. 218]. . . . And the subject is worthy of receiving the most studious attention of the children of God, that they may not be ignorant of the origin of their heavenly birth. For there are some who would foolishly blot out the election of God because the Gospel is called the power of God to every one that believes. And yet it should have come into their mind whence faith arises. The Scriptures certainly everywhere proclaim that God gives His Son those who were His own; that He calls those whom He had chosen; and that it is those whom He has adopted to Himself as sons that He regenerates by His Spirit: in fine, that those who believe are the men whom He has taught inwardly, and to whom His power has been revealed. Wherefore whoever holds that faith is the earnest and pledge of free adoption will confess that it flows from the eternal fountain of divine election. Nevertheless it is not from the secret counsel of God that the knowledge of salvation is to be sought by us. Life is set before us in Christ, who not only reveals Himself, but offers Himself to be enjoyed, in the Gospel. Upon this mirror let the gaze of faith be fixed; and let it not desire to penetrate whither access is not open [p. 219].[WC III. viii.] . . . As to the providence of God by which the world is ruled, this ought to be settled and confessed among all the godly - that there is no reason why men should ascribe to God a share in their sins or involve Him in any way with them in bearing the blame:[WC III. i. b.] but whereas the Scriptures teach that the reprobate are also instruments of God's wrath, whom He partly makes teachers of patience to the faithful, and partly inflicts such punishments on as they deserve, this profane trifler contends that nothing is done righteously by God unless the reason for it lies plainly before our eyes. For taking away all discrimination between remote and proximate causes, he will not suffer the afflictions laid on holy Job to be thought the work of God, lest He should be made equally guilty with the devil and with the Chaldean and Sabæan plunderers [p. 220]. ["Dedicatory Address to the Syndics and Senate of Geneva"] 

. . . Albert Pighius has endeavored . . . in the same book to establish the free will of man and to overturn the secret counsel of God by which He elects some to salvation and destines others to eternal destruction [p. 221].[WC III. iii.] . . . Both [Pighius and Georgius] imagine that it is placed within our freedom for each of us to introduce himself into the grace of adoption: and that it does not depend on the counsel of God who are elect or reprobate,[WC III. iii.] but each determines by his own will either fortune for himself: that some believe the Gospel, others remain unbelieving - that this discrimination does not arise out of the free election of God, or out of His secret counsel, but only out of the individual will of each. . . . [Pighius] further pronounces all those to think unworthily concerning God, and to attribute to Him a rigor alien to His justice and goodness, who teach that some are positively and absolutely (præcise et absolute) elected, others destinated to destruction [p. 222].[WC III. iv.] . . . It is the figment of Georgius that there has been no predestination to salvation of this or that one,[WC III. iv.] but God has determined a time in which He would save the whole world. . . . Thus he slips away confidently, as if it were plainly established by no Scriptural passage that some have been elected by God to salvation with the preterition of the rest [pp. 222 f.].[WC III. iii.] . . . What is thought by us the "Institutes" sufficiently fully testify, though I should add nothing further. At the outset I would beg my readers to bear in mind what I there suggest: That this subject is not, as it wrongly seems to some, a wordy and thorny speculation which fruitlessly wearies the mind, but a discussion solid and eminently adapted to the advancement of godliness, because it admirably builds up faith, and trains us to humility, and rouses us to admiration of the immense goodness of God toward us and excites us to its praise. For there is no means better adapted to build up faith than hearing that that election which the Spirit of God seals upon our hearts stands in the eternal and immutable good pleasure of God, and cannot therefore be the prey of any earthly storms, of any Satanic assaults, of any vacillation of the flesh.[WC III. v.] For our salvation is at length made sure to us when we find its cause in the bosom of God. For thus in apprehending by faith the life manifested in Christ it is permitted to see far off, under the guidance of the same faith, from what fountain that life proceeded. Our assurance of salvation is founded in Christ, and rests on the promises of the Gospel. But this is no weak support, when now we hear that that we believe in Christ is a Divine gift to us; because we were both ordained before the beginning of the world to faith and elected to the inheritance of eternal life. Hence that inexpugnable security - because the Father who gave us to His Son as a peculiar possession is stronger than all and will not suffer us to be plucked out of His hand [p.223] . . . . Let those clamor who will: we shall ever set forth the praise of the doctrine we teach of the free election of God, because except through it believers will never sufficiently understand how great the goodness of God has been towards them when they were effectually called to salvation. . . . If we are not ashamed of the Gospel, what is openly set forth in it we must needs confess - that, to wit, God by His eternal good pleasure, which hangs on no other cause, destined to salvation those whom it seemed good to Himself, with the rejection of the rest,[WC III. iii.] and that those whom He blessed with this gratuitous adoption He illuminates by His Spirit that they may receive the life offered in Christ; while the rest are so willingly unbelievers that they remain in darkness, destitute of the light of faith [p. 224]. . . . But in a matter so difficult and recondite nothing is better than to be soberly discreet. Who denies it? But it is likewise to be looked to that it shall be the best kind of sobriety. . . . Is this a Christian simplicity - to avoid as noxious what God makes known? Of this, they say, we may be ignorant without loss. As if our heavenly Teacher were not the best judge of what and how much it were well to know [p. 226]. . . . 

And that none might attribute it to faith that one is preferred to another he [Augustine] affirms that those are not chosen who have believed: but rather that they may believe. . . . Again, in another place ("Ad Bonif.," ep. 106): "Who created the reprobate except God? And why except because He would? Why did He will it? Who art thou, O man, who repliest against God?" . . . But as, in tracing the beginning of election from the free will of God, he establishes reprobation in His mere will, so he teaches that the surety of our salvation also is founded in nothing else [p. 228].[WC III. v.] . . . 

The salvation of believers hangs on the eternal election of God, of which no cause can be adduced except His gratuitous good pleasure. . . . There is certainly a mutual relation between the elect and reprobate, so that election . . . cannot stand unless we confess that God segregated definite men, whoever it seemed good to Him, from others. And this is expressed by the word Predestinating.[WC III. iv.] . . . But to make faith the cause of election is altogether absurd[WC III. v.] . . . "Paul asserts [says Augustine] that it is the fruit of divine election and its effect that we begin to be holy. They then act very preposterously who subordinate election to faith."[WC III. v.] . . . And Paul again confesses that God was moved by nothing extrinsic, but Himself was to Himself the author and cause, when He chose those as yet not created to confer on them afterward faith: "According to His purpose," says he, "who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will" [p. 231].[WC III. v.] . . . Now, when He pronounces that He will cast out none from their number, but rather life is kept in security for all, until He shall raise them up at the last day, who does not see that final (as it is commonly called) perseverance is similarly ascribed to the election of God? It can happen that some fall away from faith; but those who have been given to Him by the Father, Christ asserts to be beyond the danger of destruction. . . . Neither should it be lightly passed by that he makes God more powerful than all adversaries whatever, that our certainty of salvation may not be less than our reverence for the power of God. Hence, amidst such violent assaults, such various dangers, so many tempests and storms, the perpetuity of our condition stands nevertheless in this - that God will constantly preserve by the power of His arm what He has decreed in Himself concerning our salvation [p. 235][WC III. vi.] . . . 

[Pighius'] last admonition is, That nothing be admitted alien to God's infinite goodness, and by which odium rather than love would be awakened towards Him. And so he drives with full sail against God, if from their creation He destines any to destruction. Nevertheless, even if this whole doctrine should be suppressed, occasion would nevertheless never be lacking to the reprobate for either holding God in hatred or assailing Him with their sacrileges. . . . Now let those who can bear to be taught in God's school not refuse to hear with me what Paul declares plainly and with no ambiguities. He places before us the two sons of Isaac who, though both were begotten in the sacred house, almost the very temple of God, were nevertheless separated to dissimilar lots by God's oracle. The cause of this discrimination, which might otherwise have been sought in the deserts of each, he assigns to the hidden counsel of God, "That the purpose of God might stand." We hear it established by God that of the two twins He should elect one only. . . . Since Paul commends grace for this very thing, that by the rejection of the other, one was chosen, certainly what Pighius has fabricated of a universal grace falls. Paul does not simply teach that in order that election might stand Jacob was appointed heir of life, but that his brother was rejected and the right of primogeniture conferred on him[WC III. iii. vii.] It does not escape me here what some other dogs bark out, what also the ignorant mutter - that the passages cited by Paul do not treat either of eternal life or of eternal destruction. If these men, however, held the true principles of theology which ought to be trite to all Christians, they would have spoken a little more modestly. . . . The objection is that this is to be referred to the land of Canaan; and it is of this that Malachi spoke. And this would be worth listening to if God were fattening the Jews in the land of Canaan like pigs in a sty. But the meaning of the prophet is very different. For God had promised that land to Abraham as an outer symbol of a better inheritance. . . . In a word [the prophet] holds the land of Canaan as the sacred habitation of God [pp. 237 f.] . . . Add that if God foresees anything in His elect, by which He discriminates them from the reprobate,[WC III. v.] Paul's argument would have been meaningless, that it was when the brothers were not yet born that it was said, of Him that calleth and not of works, The older shall serve the younger. . . . And since Paul assumes as confessed what is incredible to these good theologians, "that," namely, "all are equally unworthy, the corruption of nature is alike in all," he serenely concludes thence that it is by His own free counsel that God elects whomsoever He has elected, and not those whom He foresaw would be obedient children to Him.[WC III. v.] In a word, Paul is considering what the nature of man would be without God's election; these men are dreaming of God's foresight of what would never have been in man until He made it [p. 239]. . . . If Pighius commends the patience of God, I assert: Nevertheless in the meanwhile this remains settled - that the reprobate are separated out by the counsel of God for this end - that He may show forth His power in them.[WC III. vii.] And that that is not at all different from the meaning of Paul is apparent from his next illation: "Whom He will He hardens." . . . Yet the Scripture is looking especially at the beginning of the thing with which it is dealing so as to ascribe it to God only [pp. 241 f.]. . . . It is to be held, therefore, that the meaning of Paul (Rom. ix. 21) is: That God the Maker of men forms out of the same lump that is taken in hand to honor or to dishonor, according to His will; since He has elected some, not yet born, gratuitously to life, leaving others to their own destruction, seeing that all are obnoxious to it by nature.[WC III. iii. vii.] For while Pighius denies any relation of the election of grace with hatred of the reprobate, I confess this really to exist, so that to the free love in which the elect are embraced, there corresponds in equal and common relation a just severity toward the reprobate (in causa pari et communi) [p. 245].[WC III. iii. vii.] . . . In what sense the Hebrews speak of "vessels" or "instruments," no one who is moderately instructed in the Scriptures will be ignorant. When we hear of "instruments," then God must needs go before as the head and author of the whole, then His hand is the director. But why are they called vessels of wrath, except because He exercises toward them the just severity from which He abstains with reference to others?[WC III. vii.] And why were they made vessels of wrath? Paul answers, In order that God might show His wrath and power in them.[WC III. vii.] He says, "Prepared for destruction"; whence and how, except from their first origin and by nature? - since certainly the nature of the whole human race was vitiated in the person of Adam: not that the higher counsel of God did not precede: but because from this fountain flowed the curse of God and the destruction of the human race. For it is testified that God prepared the vessels of mercy for glory. If this is special to the elect, it is certain that the rest were fitted for destruction, because to be left to their own nature was to be devoted to certain destruction. For the nonsense of some, "That they were fitted by their own proper wickedness," is so absurd as not to deserve notice. It is certainly true that the reprobate procure to themselves the wrath of God by their depravity, and collect it on their heads with daily acceleration. But that here a discrimination which proceeds from the hidden judgment of God is dealt with by Paul is confessed. He says also, "The riches of God's grace are manifested," while on the other hand "vessels of wrath" rush to destruction. Here certainly we do not hear of what Pighius prates of - "That grace is equal to all"; but that the goodness of God is better illustrated, because He endures vessels of wrath and suffers them to come to their own end. . . . Neither otherwise can that inviolable covenant of God stand, "I am a jealous God, showing mercy to a thousand generations; a severe avenger to the third and fourth generation," than by the Lord's decreeing by His own will to whom He will grant His grace and whom He wills to remain devoted to eternal death[WC III. iii.] . . . Here certainly a distinction is made among men: and it is not made on the ground of the merits of each, but on the ground of the covenant made with the fathers [p. 246] . . . . The truth of that saying of Augustine ("De prædest. sanct.," i. 2) is apparent, "Those are converted whom He Himself has wished to be converted, and these He not only from unwilling makes willing, but also from wolves sheep, from persecutors martyrs, reforming them by His mighty grace." If man's wickedness be set in opposition, it would be more mighty than the grace of God . . . if the affirmation should not be true, "He will have mercy on whom He has mercy." And Paul's interpretation leaves no doubt. For after saying (Rom. xi. 7) that the election of God was fixed, he adds, "The rest were blinded, that the prophecy might be fulfilled." I concede that the blinding was voluntary and I ascribe it gladly to their own fault (Augustine, "De bono persev.," 12). But I hear who they are that Paul excepts, - to wit, those whom it seemed good to the Lord to choose. Why, however, did He choose these rather than those? . . . He accuses them, to be sure, as they deserve. But it is wrong and foolish for any to infer from this that the origin of their hardening lies in their own wickedness, as if there were no more occult cause of this very wickedness, viz., the corruption of nature; and as if, again, they did not remain sunk in this corruption for no other reason than because in the hidden counsel of God before they were born they were not destroyed as reprobates! [pp. 247 f.] . . . This is the sum: If we admit the Spirit of God who spoke by the Apostles to be the interpreter of the Prophet, the hidden and incomprehensible judgment of God is to be adored in its blinding the greater part of men, lest "seeing they should see." Let there be a cessation here of all the reasonings that can come into our minds. For if we stick fast in man, this certainly will be first: That the Lord gives freely to those that seek: and the rest languish in their need, the remedy for which they do not ask. But unless what Augustine says comes to our aid - that it is due to the Divine goodness not only that it is opened to those that knock, but also that we knock and seek - it is not yet sufficiently known to us what the need is under which we labor. And if we come to the matter of help - experience evinces that that power of the Spirit by which is brought about what needs to be brought about is not free to all. Let no one deceive himself with empty flatteries. Those who come to Christ were already God's sons in His heart while they were yet in themselves enemies: and it was because they were foreordained to life that they were given to Christ [p. 249].[WC III. vi.] . . . It is not at all remarkable that Pighius should mix up everything so indiscriminately (to use his own word) in the judgments of God, when he does not discriminate between proximate and remote causes. Let men look around, hither, thither, they yet do not discover how to transfer the fault of their destruction: because its proximate cause resides in themselves. Even though they complain that the wound is inflicted on them from without, the interior apprehension of their mind will still hold them convinced that the evil had its origin in the voluntary defection of the first man. . . . If nothing then forbids either the first origin of ruin to have begun from Adam, or each of us to discern its proximate cause in himself, what stands in the way of the secret counsel of God, by which the fall of man was foreordained, being afar off adored by our faith with proper sobriety: while yet we behold as appears more closely the whole human race bound in the person of Adam to the guilt of eternal death and thus subjected to death? [pp. 252 f.] . . . [Pighius] assaults that appearance of repugnancy (as it is called) in our opinion: that inasmuch as God decreed in Himself, before Adam's creation, what should happen to him and his posterity, the destruction of the reprobate ought not to be imputed to sin; because it would be absurd to make the effect prior to its own cause. But I affirm both of those things which Pighius attacks to be true. For so far as the dissidence between these two opinions which he pretends is concerned, there certainly is none. We say that man was created in such a state that he cannot complain of his Maker. God foresaw Adam's fall, and assuredly it was not against His will that He suffered him to fall. What is gained by tergiversation here? Yet Pighius makes denial: "because the before-conceived counsel concerning the salvation of all remains stable." As if no solution was at hand: salvation was not destined for all, otherwise than if they should stand in their first condition. For no sane person will concede that there was a simple and absolute decree of God that all should attain to salvation. For it was sufficient for the just damnation of man that, when he was placed in the way of salvation, he voluntarily fell from it. Yet it could not be otherwise. What then? Is he thereby freed from fault, though the seat of it all was his own will? . . . The same also [as Augustine teaches] we too teach: that as we are all together lost in Adam, it is by the just judgment of God that those who perish, perish; and yet at the same time we confess that whatever loss befell Adam was divinely ordained [pp. 253 f.].... So again the promises which incite all to salvation do not show simply and absolutely what God has determined in His hidden counsel, but what He is prepared to do for all who have been brought to faith and repentance. But thus a double will is attributed to God, who is so little variable that not even the least shadow is cast upon Him. What would it be but to mock men, Pighius asks, if God professes to will what He does not will? But if these two things be read in conjunction, as they ought to be, "I desire that the sinner should be converted and live" - that calumny is easily done away. God demands conversion of us: and whenever He finds it, the promised reward of life is bestowed. Therefore God is said to desire life along with repentance: and it is because He desires it that He invites all to it by His Word. But that does not conflict with His hidden counsel, by which He has decreed to convert only His elect. Neither is it right to think Him variable, because He, as Legislator, publishes to all the external doctrine of life. In this prior mode He calls all to life: but in that other mode He leads whom He will, as a father regenerating by His spirit, His children alone [pp. 256 f.]. . . . Neither, assuredly, do I send men off to the hidden election of God that they may look open-mouthed for salvation thence: but I exhort them to flee straight to Christ in whom the salvation is set forth for us which otherwise would have lain hidden in God. For whosoever does not walk in the lowly path of faith - to him the election of God is nothing but a deadly labyrinth. Therefore that the remission of our sins may be assured to us, that our consciousness may rest in confidence of eternal life, that we may boldly call upon God as Father, our beginning is not at all to be made from God's determination concerning us before the creation of the world; but from the revelation of His fatherly love to us in Christ and Christ's daily preaching to us by the Gospel. There is nothing higher to be sought by us than that we should be God's children. But the mirror of free adoption, in which alone we attain so great a good - its pledge and earnest - is the Son, who came forth to us from the Father's bosom, in order that He might ingraft us into His body and so make us heirs of the heavenly kingdom [p. 261]. . . . This then is the way in which God governs His own; this the manner in which He completes the work of His grace in them. But for why He takes them by the hand, there is another higher cause: it is His eternal purpose by which He has destined them to life [p. 262].[WC III. vi.] . . . But as Christ will recompense to the elect the reward of righteousness, so I by no means deny that what will then be visited on the reprobate will be the penalties of their own impiety and iniquities. Neither will it be possible to elicit from our doctrine that God by His eternal counsel chose to life whom it seemed good to Him and left the others to destruction;[WC III. iii.] any such thing as that there are no penalties established for evil works and no reward set for good. We shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that each may receive according to what he has done in his body, whether good or bad. But whence comes the righteousness and holiness which shall then receive the crown, except from the regeneration unto newness of life which God works in them by His-Spirit? And whence the gift of regeneration but from free adoption? . . . But the fault of our damnation resides so in ourselves that it is improper to bring alien colors to obliterate it. . . . How preposterously Pighius takes away the remote by throwing forward the proximate cause! [p. 263]. . . . The Sorbonnic Sophists prate of an ordinate will of God and another absolute one. This blasphemy, from which pious ears justly recoil, would seem plausible to Pighius and his like. But I contend on the contrary that there is so little anything inordinate in God, that there rather flows from Him whatever there is of order in the heavens and the earth. Though then we do carry forward the will of God to the supremest degree, so that it is superior to all reason, far be it from us to imagine that He wills anything except with the highest reason: we believe in all simplicity that He has in His own right so much power that it behooves us to be content with His nod alone. ... [But] did ever this monstrosity come into my mind, that God had no reason for His counsel? As I hold God to be the Ruler of the whole world, who governs and directs all things by His incomprehensible and wonderful counsel, how can any one gather from my words that He is carried hither and thither by chance, or does what He does in blind rashness? . . . The Lord has, as the reason for all His works, His own glory [pp. 264 f.] . . . There is another objection of the same nature: I deny that the elect are distinguished from the reprobate through any respect to their own deserts, since the grace of God makes, not finds, them worthy of adoption, as Augustine often says.[WC III. v.] Elsewhere I deny that any injustice is done to the reprobate, since they deserve to perish. Here Pighius tumultuously vaunts himself with outspread wings: I do not, it seems, understand myself or remember what I have already said. I am so far from thinking it necessary to expend many words in my defense that it irks me to advert to it even briefly. That God prefers some to others and chooses some while passing by others - this discrimination does not hang on the worthiness or unworthiness of men.[WC III. iii. v. vii.] Therefore it is wrong to say that those are reprobated who are worthy of eternal destruction. Although, however, in the former case there is no comparison made between the persons, and the reward of life is not afforded to worthiness, in the second case, on the contrary, the same condition is not determined for all. Add that Augustine, when he had somewhere written: "That salvation fails for no one who is worthy of it"; afterwards, in his "Retractationes," so modifies this as to exclude works and to refer acceptable worthiness to the free vocation of God. But Pighius insists "That if it be true, as I teach, that those who perish are destined to death by the eternal decree of God, the reason of which is not apparent, then they are made, are not found, worthy of destruction." I reply that there are three things here to be considered: first, that the eternal predestination of God by which, before Adam fell, He decreed what was to be, with reference to the whole human race and with reference to each and every man, was fixed and determined;[WC III. i.] next, that Adam himself was sentenced to death on account of the desert of his fall; last, that the whole of his progeny was so condemned in his fallen and lost person, that God grants the honor of adoption to those whom He freely chooses from among them. No one of these have I imagined or fabricated. Neither is it my present concern to prove any of them - this I seem to myself already to have done. I need only relieve myself of Pighius' calumny, who proudly triumphs over me as ten times over vanquished - as if these things could not be conciliated in any way whatever. Whenever predestination is discussed I have always taught and teach still to-day, that the start must be taken from this - that all the reprobate are justly left in death, since they died and were condemned in Adam;[WC III. vii.] that they justly perish, because they are by nature children of wrath; and therefore no one can have against God any ground of complaint of too much rigor, since they bear their guilt included in themselves. And, when we come to speak of the first man, that he, though he was created perfect, fell of his own accord; and thence it has come about that by his own fault destruction has fallen on him and his; although, of course, Adam did not fall and destroy himself and his posterity without the knowledge and thus the ordination of God, yet that in no respect operates either for alleviating his fault or for implicating God in the crime. For we must always consider that he of his own accord deprived himself of the rectitude which he had received from God, that of his own accord he gave himself into servitude to sin and Satan, that of his own accord he precipitated himself into destruction. The sole excuse alleged is that he could not escape what was decreed by God. But a voluntary transgression is enough and more than enough for guilt. And neither is the secret counsel of God, but the unobstructed will of man, the proper and genuine cause of sin. The silly complaint of Medea is justly derided in the old poet. . . . When she is conscious of her perfidy and barbarous cruelty, when the shame of her impurity smites her, she absurdly turns to occasions far remote. . . . But as to God's having knowingly and willingly suffered man to fall, the reason may be hidden, it cannot be uujust. . . . I so say that He ordained it as not to allow that He was the proper author of it [pp. 266-268].[WC III. i. b.] . . . After Paul had taught that out of the lost mass God chose and reprobated whom it seemed good to Him, he so little set forth why and how He did it that he rather in the greatest awe broke forth into that cry: "O, the height!" (Rom. xi. 33)[WC III. vii.] ... Although meanwhile I do not in the least disapprove of what Augustine says in the twelfth book of his "De genesi ad literam" (A, c. 4 to c. 8), when he is adjusting all to fear and reverence toward God; yet the other part, that God chooses whom He will out of the condemned seed of Adam, and reprobates whom He will, as it is far better fitted to exercise faith, so is it more likely to produce better fruit [p. 269].[WC III. viii.] . . . Assuredly as the stupidity and ingratitude of men who withdraw themselves from the help of God can never be sufficiently condemned, so is it an intolerable insult to Christ to say that the elect are saved by Him provided that they take good care of themselves: throwing thus an ambiguity over Christ's protection, which He affirms is inexpugnable to the devil and all the machinations of hell. . . . If, then, eternal life is certain to all the elect, if no one can pluck them away, if they can be snatched away by no violence and by no assault, if their salvation stands in the invincible might of God, with what face does Pighius dare to break this fixed certitude? [p. 272] . . . If Pighius asks what is the source of my knowledge of my election - Christ is to me equal to a thousand witnesses; for when we find ourselves in His body, our salvation rests in a secure and quiet position as if it were already placed in heaven [p. 273]. 

[Georgius] thinks that he argues acutely when he says (Rom. viii. 32): "Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. It is therefore necessary for those who would remove the reprobate from participation in Christ to place them outside of the world." Let us not now avail ourselves of the common solution - that "Christ suffered sufficiently for all, efficaciously for the elect alone." This great absurdity, by which the monk has obtained the plaudits of his companions, has no weight at all with me. Throughout what regions of the world soever the elect may be dispersed, John extends to them the expiation of Christ, completed by His death. There is nothing in this inconsistent with reprobates being mingled in the world with the elect. There is also no place for controversy with respect to Christ's having come to expiate the sins of the whole world (John v. 15). But at once this solution meets us: "That whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but have eternal life." For assuredly what we are now discussing is not what is the nature of Christ's power, or what its inherent value; but to whom He offers Himself to be enjoyed. And if possession stands in faith and faith flows from the Spirit of adoption, it follows that he only is enrolled in the number of God's children who is to be a sharer in Christ. Neither indeed does John the Evangelist set forth anything else as the office of Christ than by His death to gather together into one the children of God. Whence we conclude, that though a reconciliation is offered by Him for all, nevertheless the benefit of being gathered into the company of life belongs to the elect. But when I say that it is offered for all, I do not mean that that ambassage by which God reconciles the world to Himself (as Paul witnesses, II Cor, v. 18) extends to all: it is not even sealed, as is imagined, indifferently in the hearts of those to whom it does extend [P. 285].[WC III. vi. b.] . . . 

For we do not fancy that the elect under the continuous direction of the Spirit keep a straight course: nay, we say that they often slip, wander, fall and are almost separated from the way of salvation. But because the protection of God by which they are defended is the most powerful of all things, it is impossible for them to fall into utter ruin. . . . We must confess that only those whom God illuminates by His Spirit believe; we must confess in fine that election only is the mother of faith [p. 289]. 

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When I have said that the providence of God is to be considered together with its means, this is the sense: If any one has carried aid to those in extremity of need, this is not a human deliverance, but a divine one through the hand of man. The sun rises daily, but it is God that sends light on the world. The earth produces its fruits, but it is God that supplies the bread and into the bread instills strength for our nourishment. In a word, since the lower causes are accustomed, like a veil, to hide God from our sight, we should penetrate with the eye of faith higher, so as to discern the hand of God operating in His instruments [p. 298]. . . . In the first place, we must perceive how the will of God is the cause of all things that take place in the world, while yet God is not the author of the evil things.[WC III. i. b.] I will not say with Augustine what I nevertheless freely allow was truly said by him, that there is in sin or in evil nothing positive. For this is a subtlety which to many is not satisfying. I assume for myself, however, another principle: That things done by men wrongly and unrighteously are right and righteous works of God [p. 299]. . . . That God directs by His counsel things which seem especially fortuitous, the Scriptures plainly testify when they say, "The lot is cast into the lap, but the determination of the events comes from God" (Prov. xvi: 33). Similarly, if a branch broken from a tree or an axe slipping unintentionally from the hand of a man shall smite the head of a passer-by, Moses testifies (Deut. xix. 5) that God has done it purposely, because He wished the man to be killed. . . . But because the Stoic necessity appears to be established after this fashion, the doctrine is odious to many, even though they do not dare to condemn it as false. This was an ancient calumny, by which Augustine complains (Lib. 2 of "Ad Bonif.," c. 5) that he was unjustly burdened: it ought now to be obsolete. It is certainly highly unworthy of men of probity and ingenuousness, who are adequately instructed. What the notion of the Stoics was is well known. They wove their fate out of the Gordian knot of causes, in which, since they involved God Himself, they invented "golden chains," as the fables put it, by which they bound God and so subjected Him to the lower causes. . . . Let us leave the Stoics, then, to their fate; for us the free will of God is the governor of all things.[WC III. i.] But to take contingency out of the world is clearly absurd. I omit the distinctions that are employed in the schools. What I set forth will in my judgment be simple and not at all strained, and also suited for the usage of life. What God has determined is in such a manner of necessity to come to pass that, nevertheless, it is not absolutely (præcise) and in its own nature (suapte natura) a necessity. I have a familiar illustration in the bones of Christ. That Christ assumed a body in all things like to ours the Scriptures testify. Accordingly no sane person will hesitate to confess that His bones were breakable. But it appears to me another and separate question, Whether any bone of His could be broken. For that all should remain whole and uninjured must necessarily be because it was so determined in the fixed decree of God. I am not speaking thus, certainly, because I object to the received forms of speech, concerning necessitas secundum quid and necessitas absoluta, or concerning necessitas consequentis and consequentiæ; but only that no subtleties may stand in the way of my readers - even the least cultivated ones - recognizing the truth of what I say. If, then, we consider the nature of Christ's bones, they were breakable; but if, on the other hand, that decree of God which was manifested in its own time, they are no more subject to breaking than the angels are to human sorrows. Accordingly, then, as it is proper for us to consider the divinely determined order of nature, I by no means reject contingency as respects our perception.[WC III. i. b.] And we must keep in memory what I have already laid down, that when God exercises His power through means and lower causes, it is not to be separated from them. It is a drunken notion to say that God has decreed what shall be, and therefore it is superfluous to interpose our care and effort. On the contrary, since He prescribes to us what to do and wills that we shall be the instruments of His power, let us not deem it lawful for us to separate what He has joined together.[WC III. i. b.] . . . Therefore, so far as concerns the future, since the issues of things are as yet hidden from us, each one ought to be as intent on his duty as if nothing had been determined in any direction. Or to speak more properly, each of us ought so to hope for success in all that he undertakes at the command of God, that in the matters of which he is ignorant he conciliates contingency with the sure providence of God. . . . In a word, as the providence of God rightly understood does not tie our hands, so it not only does not impede prayer, but rather establishes it. . . . There is no exhortation more conducive to patience than our knowledge that nothing comes to pass fortuitously, but that that which has seemed good to God has taken place. Meanwhile, it does not follow that the fault of adverse things is not borne by our ignorance, or rashness, or thoughtlessness, or some other vice [pp. 299 f.]. . . . The sum, however, comes to this: Although men wanton like beasts untamed and coerced by no bonds; they are, nevertheless, governed by a secret bit, so that they cannot move even a finger except for the accomplishment rather of God's than of their own work [p. 301].[WC III. i.] . . . And what Satan works is affirmed by the Scriptures to be the work of God in another aspect, inasmuch, that is, as God, by holding him bound to obedience to His providence, turns him whither He will, and thus applies his activity to His own uses [p. 302]. Considering these things honestly and soberly, there will be no doubt but that the supreme and especial cause of all things is the will of God.[WC III. i.] . . . We should keep in mind indeed what I have before said: that God does nothing without the best reason: though since His will is the surest rule of righteousness, it ought to be to us, so to speak, the chief reason of all reasons. . . . That Sorbonnic doctrine, accordingly, in which the Papal theologians take such pride, which attributes potentia absoluta to God, I detest. For it would be easier to tear away the sun's light from its heat, or its own heat from the fire, than to separate God's power from His righteousness [p. 305]. . . . 

Since then it is from a righteous cause, though one unknown to us, that there proceed from the Lord the things that men perpetrate in their wickedness - although His will is the first cause of all things, I deny nevertheless that He is the author of sin.[WC III. i. b.] Assuredly that diversity of causes which I have posited is not to be permitted to fall into forgetfulness - that there is a proximate and also a remote cause - that we may understand how great the difference is between the signal providence of God and turbulent impetuses of men. It is indeed to load us with a base and ungenerous calumny to argue that God is made the author of sin if His will is the cause of all that is done. For when a man acts unrighteously under the incitement of ambition or avarice or lust or any other depraved affection, though God works by a righteous though hidden judgment through his hand, the name of sin cannot square with Him. Sin in man is constituted by perfidy, cruelty, pride, intemperance, envy, blind self-love, or some such depraved desire. Nothing of this kind is found in God. Shimei assaults his king with monstrous petulance. The sin is clear. God uses such a minister for the just humiliation of David, and thus castigates him with such a rod. Who will accuse Him of sin? The Arabs and Sabaeans make prey of the substance of others. The crime of robbery is manifest. By their violence God exercises the patience of His servant. Let there emerge from the affair the heroic confession, "Blessed be the name of the Lord," rather than profane revilings be heard. In fine, God's way of working in the sins of men is such that, when we come to Him, every spot is wiped away by His eternal purity [p. 307]. . . . There is no reason, therefore, why any one should drag God into participation in the sin, whenever any conjunction is apparent between His secret counsel and the open vice of men. Let there come to our minds continually that saying of Augustine: "Accordingly the works of God are great, exquisite in all His will, so that in a marvelous and ineffable fashion that is not done apart from His will which yet is done against His will, since it would not be done if He did not permit it: and He does not permit it unwillingly but willingly." And from this too is refuted ("Enchir, ad Laur.," c. 100) the ignorance or else the wickedness of those who deny that the nature of God would be simple, if another will be attributed to Him besides that which is revealed by Him in the Law. Some also ask in derision, If there be any will in God which is not revealed in the Law by what name shall it be called? But those must be without understanding to whom the numerous Scriptural references which proclaim with marveling the profound abyss of God's judgments signify nothing. . . . The Scriptures are full of such examples. Shall we, therefore, impute the fault of the sins to God, or fabricate in Him a double will, so that He is at odds with Himself? But as I have already shown that He wills the same thing along with the wicked and profane but after a different manner; so we must now hold that He wills in the same manner things that are different in kind. . . . For the will by which He prescribes what shall be done and by which He avenges transgressions of His law is one and simple [pp. 308 f.]. 

CALVIN'S ARTICLES ON PREDESTINATION⁴⁰ 

Before the first man was created God, by an eternal decree, determined what He willed should come to pass with reference to the whole human race.[WC III. i. iii.] 

By this hidden decree of God it was decided that Adam should fall from the perfect state of his nature and should draw all his posterity into the guilt of eternal death.[WC III. i.] 

On the same decree hangs the discrimination between the elect and the reprobate: for some He has adopted to Himself to salvation; others He has destined to eternal destruction.[WC III. iii.] 

Although the reprobate are vessels of the just vengeance of God, and again the elect are vessels of mercy, nevertheless no other cause of the discrimination is to be sought in God than His mere will, which is the supreme rule of righteousness.[WC III. iii. v. vii.] 

Although it is by faith that the elect obtain the grace of adoption, election nevertheless does not hang on faith, but is prior to it in time and in order.[WC III. v. b.] 

Inasmuch as the origination and perseverance of faith flow from the gratuitous election of God, so none others are truly illuminated unto faith, neither are any others endued with the Spirit of regeneration except those whom God has chosen:[WC III. vi. c.] but the reprobate must needs remain in their blindness or fall away from faith, if perchance there be any in them.[WC III. vi. c.] 

Although we are chosen in Christ, nevertheless that the Lord considers us among His own is prior in order to His making us members of Christ.[WC III. v. vi.] 

Although the will of God is the supreme and first cause of all things and God holds the devil and all the impious subject to His will, God nevertheless cannot be called the cause of sin, nor the author of evil, neither is He open to any blame.[WC III. i.]

Although God is truly hostile to sin and condemns all iniquity in men, because it is offensive to Him, nevertheless it is not merely by His bare permission, but by His will and secret decree that all things that are done by men are governed. 

Although the devil and reprobates are God's servants and instruments to carry out His secret decisions, nevertheless in an incomprehensible manner God so works in them and through them as to contract no stain from their vice, because their malice is used in a just and righteous way for a good end, although the manner of it is often hidden from us.[WC III. i. b.]

They act ignorantly and calumniously who say that God is made the author of sin, if all things come to pass by His will and ordinance; because they make no distinction between the open depravity of men and the hidden appointments of God.[WC III. i. b.]

GENEVAN STUDENTS' CONFESSION (1559)⁴¹

I confess also that God created not only the visible world, that is, the heavens and the earth and all that in them is, but also the invisible spirits, some of whom have continued in their obedience, while others by their own fault have fallen into perdition: and that the perseverance which was in the angels came from the gratuitous election of God, who continued His love and goodness to them, giving them unchangeable constancy to persist ever in good.[WC III. iii.] Accordingly I detest the error of the Manichees who imagined that the devil was evil by nature, and even had his origin and principle of himself. 

I confess that God has so created the world as at the same time to be its perpetual Governor: so that nothing takes place or can occur except by His counsel and providence.[WC III. i. a.] And although the devil and wicked men labor to throw everything into confusion, as do even the faithful by their sins, they cannot pervert the right order. I acknowledge that God, nevertheless, being the supreme Prince and Lord of all, turns the evil to good and disposes and directs all things, whatever they be, by a secret curb in a marvelous fashion, which it behooves us to adore in all humility, since we cannot comprehend it.[WC III. i. b.] . . . 

I confess that we are made sharers in Jesus Christ and all His benefits by faith in the Gospel, when we are assured of a right certitude of the promises which are contained in it: and as this surpasses all our powers, that we are not able to attain it except by the Spirit of God; and so, that it is a special gift, which is not communicated except to the elect, who have been predestinated before the creation of the world to the inheritance of salvation, without any regard to their worthiness or virtue.[WC III. v. vi.] 

CONFESSION FOR THE CHURCH AT PARIS (1557)⁴² 

We believe that it is of the mercy of God alone that the elect are delivered from the common perdition into which all men are plunged:[WC III. v.] and first of all that Jesus Christ, without whom we are all lost, has been given to us as a redeemer, to bring us righteousness and salvation. . . . We believe that it is by faith only that we are made sharers in this righteousness, and also that we are illuminated unto faith by the secret grace of the Holy Spirit [seeing that we are elect in Jesus Christ],⁴³ so that it is a free and special gift which God grants to those whom it seems good to Him, and that not only to introduce them into the right path, but also to cause them to continue in it to the end.[WC III. vi.] 

CONFESSION FOR THE FRENCH CHURCHES, TO BE PRESENTED TO THE EMPEROR (1562)⁴⁴ 

Thence [from original sin], we conclude that the source and origin of our salvation is the pure mercy of God: for He cannot find in us any worthiness by which He might be led to love us. We also, being evil trees, are not able to bring forth good fruit, and thus we are not able to prevent God in acquisition or to merit favor in His sight: but He looks on us in pity to show us mercy and has no other occasion to exercise His compassion on us except our miseries[WC III. v.] Accordingly we hold that this kindness which He displays toward us proceeds solely from His having chosen us before the creation of the world, and we seek no reason for His having so done outside of Himself and His good pleasure.[WC III. v. vi.] And here is our first foundation, that we are acceptable to God because it has pleased Him to adopt us as His children before we were born, and thus He has by a singular privilege withdrawn us from the common curse into which all men are plunged.[WC III. v. vi.] 

But as the counsel of God is inaccessible, we confess that to obtain salvation we must needs come to the means which God has ordained: we are not of the number of those fantastics who, under the shadow of the eternal predestination of God, take no account of walking in the right path to the life that is promised us; but above all things we hold that to be the avowed children of God, and to have the right certitude, we must needs believe in Jesus Christ, because it is in Him alone that we must needs seek the whole substance of our salvation.[WC III. viii.]

THE FRENCH CONFESSION (1559)⁴⁵ 

VIII. We believe that not only did He create all things, but that He governs and directs them, disposing and ordering, according to His will, all that which comes to pass in the world - not that He is the author of evil or that the guilt of it can be imputed to Him, seeing that His will is the sovereign and infallible rule of all right and justice;[WC III. i. b.] but He has admirable means of so making use of devils and sinners that He knows how to turn to good the evil that they do, and of which they bear the blame.[WC III. i. b.] And thus, while we confess that nothing takes place without the providence of God, we humbly bow before the secrets that are hidden from us without inquiring beyond our measure; but rather applying to our benefit what is revealed to us in Holy Scripture for our peace and safety: inasmuch as God, who has all things subject to Him, watches over us with a paternal care, so that not a hair of our head shall fall without His will.[WC III. viii.] And yet He holds the devils and all our enemies in restraint so that they can do us no injury without His leave. . . . 

XII. We believe that out of this universal corruption and condemnation wherein all men are plunged God withdraws those whom, in His eternal and immutable counsel, He has chosen, of His own goodness and mercy alone, in our Lord Jesus Christ, without respect to their works,[WC III. iii. v.] leaving the rest in this same corruption and condemnation to manifest in them His justice, as in the former He makes the riches of His mercy to shine forth.[WC III. iii. vii.] For the ones are not better than the others until God distinguishes them according to His immutable counsel, which He has determined in Christ Jesus before the creation of the world;[WC III. iii.] neither is it possible for anyone to obtain that good for himself by his own strength, seeing that by nature we cannot have a single good motion, of either feeling or thought, until God has prevented us and disposed us to it.[WC III. v. vi.] 

THE BELGIC CONFESSION (1561)⁴⁶ 

Art. XIII. We believe that this good God, after He had created all things, did not abandon them to chance or fortune, but directs and governs them in such manner, according to His holy will, that nothing happens in this world without His appointment;[WC III. i. a.] although nevertheless God is not the author of nor chargeable with the evil that occurs: for His power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible that He ordains and executes His work well and righteously even when the devil and wicked men act unrighteously.[WC III. i. b.] And as to what He does surpassing human understanding, we will not curiously inquire into it farther than our capacity will admit of, but in all humility and reverence adore the righteous judgments of God which are hidden from us, contenting ourselves that we are disciples of Christ, to learn only when He reveals to us by His Word and not transgressing these limits.[WC III. viii.] This doctrine affords us an unspeakable consolation, since we are taught by it that nothing can befall us by chance, but by the ordinance of our good heavenly Father, who watches in our behalf with a paternal care, holding all His creatures subject to Him; so that not a hair of our head (for they are all numbered) nor even a sparrow can fall to the ground without the will of our Father. In whom we trust, knowing that He holds the devils in restraint, and all our enemies, and that they cannot injure us without His permission and good will.[WC III. v. vi. vii.] 

Art. XVI. We believe that, the whole race of Adam being thus precipitated into perdition and ruin, by the sin of the first man, God hath manifested Himself such an one as He is, that is to say merciful and righteous: merciful in delivering and saving from this perdition those whom in His eternal and immutable counsel He has elected and chosen by His pure goodness, in Jesus Christ our Lord, without any regard to their works; righteous in leaving the rest in their ruin and fall wherein they have precipitated themselves[WC III. v. vi. vii.] [47 Thus He declares Himself a merciful and clement God to those whom He saves, since He owed them nothing; as likewise He declares Himself a righteous judge by the manifestation of His just severity towards the rest.[WC III. v. vi. vii.] Nor does He do the latter any injustice. For that He saves some is not because they are better than the rest, for all were sunk into certain ruin, and God distinguishes and frees them according to His eternal and immutable counsel which was established in Jesus Christ before the world was created.[WC III. v. vi. vii.] No one, then, according to this judgment, can attain to this glory of himself, since of ourselves we are not capable of thinking any good thing, unless God precedes us by His grace and mere goodness, so corrupt is our nature.] 

CONFESSION OF THE ENGLISH CONGREGATION AT GENEVA (1558)⁴⁸ 

I believe and confesse my Lord God eternal, infinite, unmeasurable, incomprehensible and invisible . . . who by his Almightie power and wisdome hath not onlie of nothing created Heaven, Earth, and all thinges therein conteined . . . but also by his Fatherly Providence governeth, mainteineth and preserveth the same, according to the purpose of his will.[WC III. i.] . . . I believe also and confesse Jesus Christ . . . who giving us that by grace which was his by nature, made us through faith the children of God . . . who . . . will come in the same visible forme in the which hee ascended, with an unspeakable Majestie, power and companie, to separate the lambes from the goates, the elect from the reprobate; so that none, whether he be alive then, or dead before, shall escape his judgement . . . yet notwithstanding it is not sufficient to believe that God is Omnipotent and mercifull, that Christ hath made satisfaction, or that the Holy Ghoste hath this power and effect, except we do apply the same benefits to our selves, who are Gods elect. I believe therefore and confesse one holy Church . . . which Church is not seene to mans eye, but only knowne to God, who of the lost sonnes of Adam hath ordeined some as vessels of wrath to damnation; and hath chosen others as vessels of his mercy to bee saved,[WC III. iii.] the which also in due time hee calleth to integrity of life and Godly conversation, to make them a glorious Church to himselfe[WC III. vi. b.] . . . with full assurance that although this roote of sinne lie hid in us, yet to the elect it shall not bee imputed. . . . 

THE SCOTCH CONFESSION (1560)⁴⁹ 

Art. I. We confesse and acknawledge ane onelie God, to whom onelie we must cleave, whom onelie we must serve, whom onelie we must worship, and in whom onelie we put our trust. . . . Be whom we confesse and beleve all thingis in hevin and eirth, aswel Visible as Invisible, to have been created, to be reteined in their being, and to be ruled and guyded be his inscrutable Providence, to sik end, as his Eternall Wisdome, Gudnes, and Justice hes appoynted them, to the manifestatioun of his awin glorie[WC III. i. a.] . . . Art. III. . . . deith everlasting hes had, and sall have power and dominioun over all that have not been, ar not, or sal not be regenerate from above: quhilk regeneratioun is wrocht be the power of the holie Gost, working in the hartes of the elect of God, ane assured faith in the promise of God, reveiled to us in his word, be quhilk faith we apprehend Christ Jesus, with the graces and benefites promised in him.[WC III. vi.] . . . Art. VII. We acknawledge and confesse, that this maist wonderous conjunction betwixt the God-head and the man-head in Christ Jesus, did proceed from the eternall and immutable decree of God, from quhilk al our salvatioun springs and depends.[WC III. v.] Art. VIII. For that same eternall God and Father, who of meere grace elected us in Christ Jesus his Sonne, befoir the foundatioun of the warld was laide, appointed him to be our Head, our Brother, our Pastor, and great Bischop of our sauls[WC III. vi.] . . . And for this cause, ar we not affrayed to cal God our Father, not sa meikle because he hes created us, quhilk we have common with the reprobate; as for that, that he hes given to us his onely Sonne, to be our brother, and given unto us grace, to acknawledge and imbrace him for our onlie Mediatour, as before is said. . . . Art. XIII. . . . the cause of gude warkis, we confesse to be not our free wil, bot the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who dwelling in our hearts be trewe faith, bringis furth sik warkis, as God hes prepared for us to walke in[WC III. vi. b.] . . . For how soone that ever the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, quhilk Gods elect children receive be trew faith, taks possession in the heart of ony man, so soone dois he regenerate and renew the same man.[WC III. vi. b.] . . . Art. XVI. As we beleve in ane God, Father, Sonne, and haly Ghaist; sa do we maist constantly beleeve, that from the beginning there hes bene, and now is, and to the end of the warld sall be, ane Kirk, that is to say, ane company and multitude of men chosen of God, who richtly worship and imbrace him be trew faith in Christ Jesus, quha is the only head of the same Kirk, quhilk alswa is the bodie and spouse of Christ Jesus, quhilk Kirk is catholike, that is, universal, because it conteinis the Elect of all ages, of all realmes, nations, and tongues[WC III. vi. b.] . . . This Kirk is invisible, knawen onelie to God, quha alane knawis whome he hes chosen;[WC III. iv.] and comprehends as weill (as said is) the Elect that be departed, commonlie calld the Kirk Triumphant, and they that zit live and fecht against sinne and Sathan as sall live hereafter. Art. XVII. The Elect departed are in peace and rest fra their labours . . . they are delivered fra all feare and torment, and all temptatioun, to quhilk we and all Goddis Elect are subject in this life, and therfore do beare the name of the Kirk Militant: As contrariwise,[WC III. vi.] the reprobate and unfaithfull departed have anguish, torment, and paine, that cannot be expressed.[WC III. vii.] . . . Art. XXV. Albeit that the Worde of God trewly preached, and the Sacraments richtlie ministred, and Discipline executed according to the Worde of God, be the certaine and infallible Signes of the trew Kirk, we meane not that everie particular persoun joyned with sik company, be ane elect member of Christ Jesus: For we acknawledge and confesse, that Dornell, Cockell, and Caffe may be sawen, grow, and in great aboundance lie in the middis of the Wheit, that is, the Reprobate may be joyned in the societie of the Elect, and may externally use with them the benefites of the worde and Sacraments. . . . Bot sik as continew in weil doing to the end, bauldely professing the Lord Jesus, we constantly beleve, that they sall receive glorie, honor, and immortality, to reigne for ever in life everlasting with Christ Jesus, to whose glorified body all his Elect sall be made lyke, when he sall appeir againe in judgement.[WC III. vi.] . . . 

CRAIG'S CATECHISM (1581)⁵⁰ 

Q. What is the Church which we confess here? 

A. The whole company of Gods elect called and sanctified.[WC III. vi.] 

Q. Why is the Church onely knowne to us by Faith? 

A. Because it containeth onely God's elect, which are onely knowne to himselfe.[WC III. iv.]

Q. When and how may we know them? 

A. When we see the fruites of election and holines in them.[WC III. viii.] . . . 

Q. Out of what fountaine doth this our stabilitie flow? 

A. Out of God's eternall and constant election in Christ.[WC III. vi.] 

Q. By what way commeth this election to us? 

A. By His effectuall calling in due time.[WC III. vi.] 

Q. What worketh this effectuall calling in us? 

A. The obedience of faith.[WC III. vi.] ... 

Q. May not this scale bee abolished through sinne? 

A. No, for these giftes are without repentaunce. 

Q. But many fall shamefullie from God. 

A. The spirit of adoption raiseth all the chosen againe. 

Q. But many are never raised againe? 

A. These were never the chosen of God. . . . 

Q. Where should we begin our triall? 

A. At the fruites of faith and repentance. Because they are best knowne to our selves and others. 

Q. What if we begin at election? 

A. Then we shall wander in darkenes[WC III. viii.] . . . 

THE ENGLISH ARTICLES (1553)⁵¹

XVII. Of Predestination and Election 

Predestination to life, is the euerlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundacions of the worlde were laied) he hath constantlie decreed by his owne judgemente secrete to vs, to deliuer from curse, and damnation those whom he hath chosen⁵² out of mankinde, and to bring them to euerlasting saluation by Christ, as vesselles made to honour:[WC III. v.] whereupon,⁵³ soche as haue so excellent a benefite of GOD geuen unto theim⁵⁴ be called, according to Goddes purpose, by his spirite, woorking in due seasone, thei through grace obeie the calling, thei be justified frely, thei be made sonnes⁵⁵ by adoptione, thei bee made like the image of Goddes⁵⁶ oneley begotten sonne Jesu Christe, thei walke religiouslie in goode woorkes, and at length by Goddes mercie, thei atteine to euerlasting felicitie.[WC III. vi. b.]  

As the Godlie consideration of predestination, and our election in Christe is ful of swete, pleasaunte, and vnspeakable coumfort to godlie persones, and soche as feele in themselues the woorking of the spirite of Christe, mortifying the workes of the flesh, and their earthlie membres, and drawing vp their minde to high and heauenly thinges, aswel because it doeth greatly stablish and confirme their faith of eternal saluation to be enioied through Christe, as because it doeth feruentlie kindle their loue towardes Godde:[WC III. viii.] So for curious, and carnall persones lacking the Spirite of Christ, to haue continuallie before their yies the sentence of Goddes predestination, is a moste daungerous dounefall, whereby the Deuill maie⁵⁷ thrust them either into desperation, or into a rechielesnesse of most vncleane liuing, no lesse perilous then desperation.[WC III. viii.] 

Furthermore [although the Decrees of predestination are vnknowne unto us, yeat]⁵⁸ we must receiue Goddes promises, in soche wise as thei bee generallie set foorth to vs in holie Scripture, and in our doinges that wille of Godde is to be folowed, whiche we haue expresselie declared vnto us in the woorde of Godde. 

THE LAMBETH ARTICLES (1595)⁵⁹

1. God from eternity hath predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death.[WC III. iii.] 

2. The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life is not the foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything that is in the persons predestinated, but the will of God's good pleasure alone.[WC III. v. b.] 

3. There is a predefined and certain number of the predestinated, which can neither be increased nor diminished.[WC III. iv.] 

4. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall necessarily be condemned for their sins.[WC III. vii.] 

5. A true, lively and justifying faith, and the sanctifying Spirit of God is not extinguished, falleth not away, vanisheth not in the elect, either finally or totally.[WC III. vi.] 

6. A man truly believing, that is endowed with justifying faith, is certain with the assurance of faith, of the forgiveness of his sins and his everlasting salvation by Christ.[WC III. vi.] 

7. Saving grace is not given, is not communicated, is not granted to all men, whereby they may be saved if they will.[WC III. vi.] 

8. No one can come unto Christ unless it be given unto him and unless the Father draw him. And all men are not drawn by the Father that they may come unto the Son. 

9. It is not placed within the will and power of every man to be saved. 

THE IRISH ARTICLES (1615)⁶⁰ 

Of God's Eternal Decree and Predestination 

11. God from all eternity did, by his unchangeable counsel, ordain whatsoever in time should come to pass;[WC III. i. a.] yet so, as thereby no violence is offered to the wills of the reasonable creatures, and neither the liberty nor the contingency of the second causes is taken away, but established rather.[WC III. i. b.] 

12. By the same eternal counsel God hath predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death:[WC III. iii.] of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished.[WC III. iv.] 

13. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, he hath constantly decreed in his secret counsel to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor.[WC III. v. a.] 

14. The cause moving God to predestinate unto life, is not the foreseeing of faith, or perseverance, or good works, or of anything which is in the person predestinated, but only the good pleasure of God himself.[WC III. v. b.] For all things being ordained for the manifestation of his glory, and his glory being to appear both in the works of his mercy and of his justice, it seemed good to his heavenly wisdom to choose out a certain number toward whom he would extend his undeserved mercy, leaving the rest to be spectacles of his justice.[WC III. iii. v.] 

15. Such as are predestinated unto life be called according unto God's purpose (his spirit working in due season), and through grace they obey the calling, they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.[WC III. vi.] But such as are not predestinated to salvation shall finally be condemned for their sins.[WC III. vii.]

16. The godlike consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things: as well because it doth greatly confirm and establish their faith of eternal salvation, to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love toward God; and, on the contrary side, for curious and carnal persons lacking the spirit of Christ to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination is very dangerous.[WC III. viii.]

17. We must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth unto us in holy Scripture; and in our doings that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.[WC III. viii.] 

WESTMINSTER CONFESSION (1647)

III. Of God's Eternal Decree 

1. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. 

2. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. 

3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. 

4. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. 

5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace. 

6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. 

7. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice. 

8. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation, to all that sincerely obey the gospel. 

WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM (1647)

12. God's decrees are the wise, free, and holy acts of the counsel of His will, whereby, from all eternity, He hath, for His own glory, unchangeably foreordained whatsoever comes to pass in time, especially concerning angels and men. 

13. God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of His mere love, for the praise of His glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, hath elected some angels to glory; and in Christ hath chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to His sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of His own will (whereby He extendeth or withholdeth favor as He pleaseth), hath passed by, and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of His justice. 

14. God executeth His decrees in the works of creation and providence; according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will. 

WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM (1648)

7. The decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsel of His will, whereby, for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. 

20. God . . . out of His mere good pleasure from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life. 

CANONS OF DORT (1618-1619)⁶¹

First Head of Doctrine: Of Divine Predestination 

1. As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are obnoxious to eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish, and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin, according to the words of the Apostle (Rom. iii. 19), "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God"; (ver. 23) "for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"; and (vi. 23) "for the wages of sin is death." 

2. But "in this the love of God was manifested, that He sent His only begotten Son into the world," "that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (I John iv. 9; John iii. 16). 

3. And that men may be brought to believe, God mercifully sends the messengers of these most joyful tidings to whom He will, and at what time He pleaseth; by whose ministry men are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified. "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?" (Rom. x. 14, 15). 

4. The wrath of God abideth upon those who believe not this gospel; but such as receive it, and embrace Jesus the Saviour by a true and living faith, are by Him delivered from the wrath of God and from destruction, and have the gift of eternal life conferred upon them. 

5. The cause or guilt of this unbelief, as well as of all other sins, is nowise in God, but in man himself: whereas faith in Jesus Christ, and salvation through Him is the free gift of God, as it is written, "By grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God" (Eph. ii. 8); and, "Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him," etc. (Phil. i. 29). 

6. That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God's eternal decree.[WC III. iii.] "For known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world" (Acts xv. 18; Eph. i. 11). According to which decree He graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe; while He leaves the non-elect in His just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy.[WC III. iii. v. vii.] And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God, which, though men of perverse, impure, and unstable minds wrest it to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation.[WC III. viii.] 

7. Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, He hath, out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of His own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom He from eternity appointed the Mediator and head of the elect, and the foundation of salvation.[WC III. v. a.]

This elect number, though by nature neither better nor more deserving than others, but with them involved in one common misery, God hath decreed to give to Christ to be saved by Him, and effectually to call and draw them to His communion by His Word and Spirit; to bestow upon them true faith, justification, and sanctification; and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of His Son, finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy, and for the praise of the riches of His glorious grace:[WC III. vi.] as it is written, "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. i. 4-6). And elsewhere, "Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified" (Rom. viii. 30). 

8. There are not various decrees of election, but one and the same decree respecting all those who shall be saved both under the Old and New Testament; since the Scripture declares the good pleasure, purpose, and counsel of the divine will to be one, according to which He hath chosen us from eternity, both to grace and to glory, to salvation and the way of salvation, which He hath ordained that we should walk therein.[WC III. vi.] 

9. This election was not founded upon foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition in man, as the prerequisite, cause, or condition on which it depended; but men are chosen to faith and to the obedience of faith, holiness, etc.[WC III. v. b.] Therefore election is the fountain of every saving good; from which proceed faith, holiness, and the other gifts of salvation, and finally eternal life itself, as its fruits and effects, according to that of the Apostle: "He hath chosen us [not because we were, but] that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love" (Eph. i. 4).[WC III. vi.] 

10. The good pleasure of God is the sole cause of this gracious election; which doth not consist herein that God, foreseeing all possible qualities of human actions, elected certain of these as a condition of salvation, but that He was pleased out of the common mass of sinners to adopt some certain persons as a peculiar people to Himself,[WC III. v. b.] as it is written, "For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil," etc., "it was said [namely, to Rebecca] the elder shall serve the younger; as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Rom. ix. 11-13); and, "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts xiii. 48). 

11. And as God Himself is most wise, unchangeable, omniscient, and omnipotent, so the election made by Him can neither be interrupted nor changed, recalled nor annulled; neither can the elect be cast away, nor their number diminished.[WC III. iv.] 

12. The elect, in due time, though in various degrees and in different measures, attain the assurance of this their eternal and unchangeable election, not by inquisitively prying into the secret and deep things of God, but by observing in themselves, with a spiritual joy and holy pleasure, the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the Word of God; such as a true faith in Christ, filial fear, a godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc.[WC III. viii.] 

13. The sense and certainty of this election afford to the children of God additional matter for daily humiliation before Him, for adoring the depth of His mercies, and rendering grateful returns of ardent love to Him who first manifested so great love toward them.[WC III. viii.] The consideration of this doctrine of election is so far from encouraging remissness in the observance of the divine commands or from sinking men into carnal security, that these, in the just judgment of God, are the usual effects of rash presumption or of idle and wanton trifling with the grace of election, in those who refuse to walk in the ways of the elect.[WC III. viii.] 

14. As the doctrine of divine election by the most wise counsel of God was declared by the Prophets, by Christ Himself, and by the Apostles, and is clearly revealed in the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament, so it is still to be published in due time and place in the Church of God, for which it was peculiarly designed, provided it be done with reverence, in the spirit of discretion and piety, for the glory of God's most holy name, and for enlivening and comforting His people, without vainly attempting to investigate the secret ways of the Most High.[WC III. viii.] 

15. What peculiarly tends to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election is the express testimony of sacred Scripture, that not all, but some only, are elected, while others are passed by in the eternal decree; whom God, out of His sovereign, most just, irreprehensible and unchangeable good pleasure, hath decreed to leave in the common misery into which they have wilfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion; but permitting them in His just judgment to follow their own way; at last, for the declaration of His justice, to condemn and punish them forever, not only on account of their unbelief, but also for all their other sins.[WC III. vii.] And this is the decree of reprobation which by no means makes God the author of sin (the very thought of which is blasphemy),[WC III. i. b..] but declares Him to be an awful, irreprehensible, and righteous judge and avenger. 

16. Those who do not yet experience a lively faith in Christ, an assured confidence of soul, peace of conscience, an earnest endeavor after filial obedience, and glorying in God through Christ, efficaciously wrought in them, and do nevertheless persist in the use of the means which God hath appointed for working these graces in us, ought not to be alarmed at the mention of reprobation, nor to rank themselves among the reprobate, but diligently to persevere in the use of means, and with ardent desires devoutly and humbly to wait for a season of richer grace. Much less cause have they to be terrified by the doctrine of reprobation, who, though they seriously desire to be turned to God, to please Him only, and to be delivered from the body of death, cannot yet reach that measure of holiness and faith to which they aspire; since a merciful God has promised that He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed. But this doctrine is justly terrible to those who, regardless of God and the Saviour Jesus Christ, have wholly given themselves up to the cares of the world and the pleasures of the flesh, so long as they are not seriously converted to God.[WC III. viii.] 

17. Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy. 

18. To those who murmur at the free grace of election, and just severity of reprobation, we answer with the Apostle: "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" (Rom. ix. 20); and quote the language of our Saviour: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" (Matt. xx. 15). And therefore with holy adoration of these mysteries, we exclaim, in the words of the Apostle: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen." (Rom. xi. 33-36). 

Rejection of the Errors 

By which the Belgian Churches have for some time been troubled. Having set forth the orthodox doctrine of Election and Reprobation, the Synod rejects the errors of those -

1. Who teach, "that the will of God concerning the salvation of those who shall believe and who shall persevere in faith and the obedience of faith, is the whole and entire decree of election to salvation, and that there is nothing else revealed in the Word of God concerning this decree." For these impose on the simple-minded, and manifestly contradict the Holy Scriptures, which testify that God not only wills to save those who shall believe, but also has from eternity chosen some designated individuals to whom in distinction from the rest He will in time give faith and perseverance; as it is written, "I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me" (John xvii. 6); again, "And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts xiii. 48); and, "He chose us before the foundations of the world were laid, that we should be holy," etc. (Eph. i. 4).[WC III. v.] 

2. Who teach, "That God's election to eternal life is various (multiplex); one general and indefinite, the other particular and definite; and the latter again either incomplete, revocable, nonperemptory, or conditioned, or else complete, irrevocable, peremptory, or absolute." Again, "That the one election is to faith, the other to salvation; so that the election to justifying faith can exist without a peremptory election to salvation." For this is a fancy of the human mind excogitated aside of the Scriptures, corrupting the doctrine of election and dissolving that golden chain of salvation: "Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified" (Rom. viii. 30).[WC III. vi.]

3. Who teach, "That the good pleasure and purpose of God, of which the Scriptures make mention in the doctrine of election, does not consist in this - That God has chosen certain particular individuals in distinction from others, but in this - That out of all possible conditions (among which are the works of the law), or out of the whole order of things, God has chosen the act of faith, ignoble though it be in itself, and the imperfect obedience of faith, to be the condition of salvation; and has determined graciously to take it for perfect obedience and to account it worthy of the reward of eternal life." For by this pernicious error the good pleasure of God and the merit of Christ are set aside, and men are called away from the verity of gratuitous justification and the simplicity of the Scriptures to useless questionings; and the saying of the Apostle is falsified, "God called us with a holy calling; not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (II Tim. i. 9).[WC III. iv. v. vi.]

4. Who teach, "That in the election to faith it is presupposed as a condition that a man shall rightly use the light of nature, that he shall be upright, childlike, humble, with a disposition to eternal life, seeing that election measurably depends on these things." For they savor of Pelagius and openly charge the Apostle with falsehood when he writes: "We once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest: but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, quickened us together with Christ, by whose grace ye are saved, and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: for by grace have ye been saved through faith (and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God), not of works that no man should glory" (Eph. ii. 3-9).[WC III. v.] 

5. Who teach, "That incomplete and non-peremptory election of particular persons to salvation takes place out of foreseen faith, repentance, holiness, and piety in its beginnings and in its earlier stages; while complete and peremptory election is out of final perseverance in foreseen faith, repentance, holiness, and piety: and that this is the gracious and evangelical worthiness, on account of which he who is elected is more worthy than he who is not elected; and that accordingly faith, the obedience of faith, holiness, piety, and perseverance are not the fruits or effects of an immutable election to glory, but conditions and indispensable causes, absolutely prerequisite in those to be elected, and foreseen as if actually present." Because this is repugnant to the whole of Scripture, which continually presses upon our ears and hearts such sayings as these: "Election is not of works, but of Him that calleth " (Rom. ix. 11); "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts xiii. 48); "He chose us in Himself that we might be holy" (Eph. i. 4); "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" (John xv. 16); "If of grace, it is no longer of works" (Rom. xi. 6); "Herein is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son" (I John iv. 10).[WC III. v.]

6. Who teach, "That it is not every election to salvation that is immutable, but, no decree of God standing in the way, some of the elect can perish and do eternally perish." By which crass error, they alike make God mutable and subvert the consolation of the saints derived from the constancy of their election, and contradict the Holy Scriptures, which say: "It is not possible for the elect to be led astray" (Matt. xxiv. 24); "Christ does not lose those given Him by the Father" (John vi. 39); "God also glorifies those whom He has predestinated, called and justified" (Rom. viii. 30).[WC III. iv.] 

7. Who teach, "That there is in this life no fruit, no sense, no certitude of immutable election except out of a mutable and contingent condition." For besides the absurdity of speaking of an uncertain certitude, the experience of the saints stands opposed to this; for they exult with the Apostle in the sense of their election, and celebrate this gift of God, rejoicing with the disciples according to Christ's admonition, that "their names are written in heaven" (Luke x. 20): and in fine oppose their sense of election to the fiery darts of diabolic temptations, asking, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" (Rom. viii. 33).[WC III. viii.] 

8. Who teach, "That God has not out of His mere will decreed to leave anyone in the fall of Adam and in the common state of sin and damnation, or to pass anyone by in the communication of the grace necessary for faith and conversion." For this declaration stands, "He hath mercy on whom He will; and whom He will He hardeneth" (Rom. ix. 18); and this, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matt. xiii. 11); again, "I glorify Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and hast revealed them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight" (Matt. xi. 25-26).[WC III. iii. iv. vii.] 

9. Who teach, "That the reason why God sends the gospel to this rather than to that nation, is not the mere and sole good pleasure of God but because the one nation is better and more worthy than the other to whom the gospel is not communicated." For Moses contradicts, thus addressing the people of Israel: "Behold, unto the Lord thy God belongeth the heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that therein is; only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you, above all peoples, as at this day" (Deut. x. 14, 15); and Christ: "Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, because if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes" (Matt. xi. 21).[WC III. v. vi. vii.] 

Conclusion

And this is the perspicuous, simple, and ingenuous declaration of the orthodox doctrine . . . and the rejection of the errors, with which the Belgic Churches have for some time been troubled. This doctrine the Synod judges to be drawn from the Word of God, and to be agreeable to the confession of the Reformed Churches. Whence it clearly appears that some, whom such conduct by no means became, have violated all truth, equity, and charity, in wishing to persuade the public: "That the doctrine of the Reformed Churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion;[WC III. viii.] that it is an opiate administered by the flesh and the devil;[WC III. viii.] and the stronghold of Satan where he lies in wait for all, and from which he wounds multitudes, and mortally strikes through many with the darts both of despair and security;[WC III. viii.] that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical;[WC III. i. b.] that it is nothing more than an interpolated Stoicism, Manicheism, Libertinism, Turcism;[WC III. i. b; viii.] that it renders men carnally secure, since they are persuaded by it that nothing can hinder the salvation of the elect, let them live as they please;[WC III. viii.] and therefore that they may safely perpetrate every species of the most atrocious crimes;[WC III. viii.] and that, if the reprobate should even perform truly all the works of the saints, their obedience would not in the least contribute to their salvation; that the same doctrine teaches that God, by a mere arbitrary act of His will, without the least respect or view to any sin, has predestinated the greatest part of the world to eternal damnation, and has created them for this very purpose: that in the same manner in which election is the fountain and cause of faith and good works, reprobation is the cause of unbelief and impiety; that many children of the faithful are torn, guiltless, from their mothers' breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell: so that neither baptism nor the prayers of the Church at their baptism can at all profit them"; and many other things of the same kind which the Reformed Churches not only do not acknowledge, but even detest with their whole soul. 

FORMULA CONSENSUS HELVETICA (1675)⁶²

IV. God, before the foundations of the world were laid, formed in Christ Jesus, our Lord, pro,qesin aivw,nion, an eternal purpose (Eph. iii. 11), in which, from the mere good pleasure of His will, without any foresight of the merit of works or of faith,[WC III. v. b.] to the praise of His glorious grace He elected a certain and definite number[WC III. iv.] of men lying in the same mass of corruption and in common blood and therefore corrupted by sin, to be led in time to salvation by Christ, the sole Surety and Mediator, and through His merit, by the mighty power of the regenerating Holy Spirit, to be called efficaciously, regenerated, and gifted with faith and repentance.[WC III. vi.] And thus, determining to illustrate His glory, God decreed, first, to create man perfect, then to permit his fall, and finally to have mercy on some from the fallen, and therefore to elect these, but to leave the rest in the corrupt mass and finally to devote them to eternal destruction.[WC III. vi. vii.]

V. Moreover, in that gracious decree of divine election Christ Himself also is included, not as the meritorious cause or the foundation preceding election itself, but as Himself also foreknown before the foundations of the world were laid as evklekto,j, elect (I Pet. ii. 4, 6), and therefore primarily the chosen mediator for its execution and our first-born brother, whose precious merit God willed to use for conferring on us salvation with the preservation of His justice. For the Holy Scriptures not only testify that election was made according to the mere good pleasure of the divine counsel and will (Matt. xi. 26; Eph. i. 5, 9); but also derive the destination and gift of Christ, our Mediator, from the zealous love of God the Father to the world of the elect.[WC III. vi.] 

VI. Wherefore we cannot give our suffrages to the opinion of those who teach that God, moved by filanqrwpi,a, or a sort of peculiar love for the lapsed human race, to a "previous election," intended by a certain conditioned will, velleity, or first mercy, the salvation of all and each, on a condition certainly, namely that they believe; appointed Christ as Mediator for all and each of the lapsed; and finally elected some, considered not simply as sinners in the first Adam but as redeemed in the second Adam - that is, appointed that the saving gift of faith should be bestowed upon them in time;[WC III. vi. b.] and that in this latter act alone "election properly so called" is completed. For these and all similar things are no ordinary deflections from the u`potupw,sei of sound words concerning divine election. The Scriptures certainly restrict the purpose of God to show mercy to men - not assuredly to all and each - but to the elect alone;[WC III. vi. b.] with the exclusion of the reprobate by name[WC III. vi. b.] - as in the case of Esau, whom God pursued with an eternal hatred (Rom. ix. 11). The same Holy Scriptures bear witness that the counsel and will of God do not change, but stand immovably, and that God in the heavens does what He wishes (Isa. xlvii. 10; Ps. cxv. 3).[WC III. iv.] Assuredly God is far removed from all human imperfection such as manifests itself in inefficacious affections and desires, rashness, repentance and change of counsel.[WC III. iv.] The appointment also of Christ as Mediator proceeds from one and the same election, equally with the salvation of those that were given to Him for a possession and an avnafai,retoj inheritance, and does not underlie it as its basis. 

XIII. As Christ was elected from eternity as the Head, Prince and Owner of all those who are saved in time by His grace: so also was He made in time the Surety of the New Covenant for those only who were given to Him by eternal election as a people of possession, His seed and inheritance.[WC III. vi. b.] Certainly it was for the elect alone that by the determinate counsel of the Father and His own intention He encountered a dreadful death, these only that He restored to the bosom of the paternal grace, these only that He reconciled to the offended God the Father, and freed from the curse of the law.[WC III. vi. b.] For our Jesus saves His people from sins (Matt. i. 21), giving His life as the redemption price for His many sheep (Matt. xx. 24, 28; cf. John x. 15), who listen to His voice (John x. 27, 28), and for these alone also, as a divinely called priest, does He intercede, the world being set aside (John xvii. 9; Isa. lxvi. 22). Accordingly in the death of Christ the elect only, who in time are made new creatures, and for whom He was substituted in His death as a piacular victim, are regarded as having died with Him, and as justified from sin (II Cor. v. 17):[WC III. vi. b.] and the will of Christ who dies so panarmonikw/j agrees and amicably conspires with the counsel of the Father, who gives none others but the elect to be redeemed by Him, as well as with the operation of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies and seals to a vital hope of eternal life none others but the elect, that the equal perifori,a of the Father's electing, the Son's redeeming, and the Holy Spirit's sanctifying is manifest.[WC III. vi. b.] 

III We cannot allow ourselves space to draw out in detail the harmony of the Reformed creeds in their doctrine of predestination; or even to exhibit with any fullness the combined faithfulness and discretion which characterizes them in dealing with this high mystery, which their authors felt to lie at the root of their whole system of faith, as of the whole course of the divine activities. He who will read over the series of documents, however cursorily, cannot fail to observe these things for himself. We permit ourselves, in concluding, only a few summary remarks. 

1. We observe, then, that the fact of Absolute Predestination is the common presupposition of the whole body of Reformed creeds. There are a very few of them, to be sure, chiefly early brief declarations of the primary Protestant program, which lack direct allusion to it. These are such as the Sixty-seven Articles of Zurich (1523), the Ten Bernese Theses (1528), the Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), the First Helvetic (1536) and First Bohemian (1535) and the Polish or Sendomir (1570) Confessions. Even in their cases, however, the fact of predestination is often felt to lie very close in the background (as, for example, in the instances of the Sixty-seven Articles - of which the Bernese Theses are little more than an excerpt - and the Tetrapolitan Confession): and the omission of mention of it is always apparently the result of the special nature and purpose of the formulary. There are certain others of the Reformed Confessions in which predestination is adverted to, as it were, only incidentally - no separate paragraph being consecrated to its statement and formal development. This is the case with such documents as Zwingli's "Fidei ratio" (1530) and "Expositio christianae fidei" (1531), the Genevan Catechism (1545), the Consensus Tigurinus (1549), the short creeds prepared by Calvin for the Students of Geneva (1559), the Church of Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), as well as the Confession of the English Exiles in Geneva (1558) and the Heidelberg Catechism ( 1563), to which may be added the Second Bohemian Confession (1575). The circumstance that the majority of these formularies come directly from the hand of Zwingli or Calvin himself, while the Confession of the English Exiles was written by Knox, and the Heidelberg Catechism reflects the teachings of Calvin's pupil and defender, Ursinus, already makes it clear that the lack in them of a separate treatment of predestination is due to no underestimation of the doctrine itself. This is further borne out by the circumstance that the doctrine, though adverted to only incidentally, is dealt with in these formularies with firmness and clearness and altogether in the spirit of the most advanced Reformed teaching. It seems only an accident of their form, therefore, to be explained ordinarily⁶³ from the practical end held in view in their composition, leading to emphasis being laid especially on the subjective side of religious truth, that a more formal treatment of predestination was not given in these formularies also. The separation off of the topic for distinct formal assertion and treatment is found first in the First Basle or Mühlhausen Confession (1534), after which the Genevan Confession of 1537 soon follows; in the more elaborate later Confessions it is regular. 

It is worth noting, however, that, in accordance with the prevailing soteriological interest in which the Confessions were composed, the treatment of General Predestination or the Decree of God is much less usual and full than that of Special Predestination or Election and Reprobation. Not rarely allusion to it fails altogether, and when it is adverted to its adduction is often purely incidental, in connection, say, with the doctrine of Providence: as a rule it is only in the more developed and extended creeds that it is set forth explicitly or with any fullness. The Westminster Shorter Catechism is perhaps unique in giving the preference to a statement of General Predestination (Q. 8) and stating Special Predestination only incidentally (Q. 20). How General Predestination is commonly dealt with may be observed by noting its treatment in Zwingli's "Fidei ratio" (1530), the Hungarian Confession (1557), the Second Helvetic Confession (1562), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Sigismund's Confession (1614); and among the Calvinian creeds, especially of course in the Genevan Consent, which devotes a long separate discussion to Providence (1552), but along with it also Calvin's Articles (15-), the Genevan Students' Confession (1559), the Confession of the English Exiles (1558), the Gallican Confession (1559), and the Belgic (1561) and the Scotch Confessions (1560), and especially the Irish Articles (1615), from which the Westminster Confession directly derives. It will be observed, in glancing over the treatment in these documents, that, on the one side, especial care is taken to guard against the supposition that God, by virtue of His universal decree, is therefore chargeable with the authorship of or moral responsibilty for sin; and, on the other, the strongest stress is laid upon the confidence which the child of God may cherish in all the untoward circumstances of life that everything that occurs is yet but the outworking of a Father's purpose and will always conduce to good to those who are His. Even in dealing with God's General Predestination, therefore, though before all, of course, the motive is to do justice to the very idea of God as the Personal Author and Governor of all, and to the Scriptural revelation concerning the universal reach of His purpose, yet the practical interests of the ethical construction of sin and of the comfort of the saints largely condition and control the presentation of the doctrine. Thus it happens that the fact of General Predestination is commonly presupposed or incidentally alluded to rather than the doctrine fully expounded. 

2. It is to be observed, next, that the whole body of these Confessions are remarkably at one in their doctrine as to the nature of Predestination. Little space is occupied, it is true, with guarding the doctrine of General Predestination from the perversion of either the coarse suspension of it on foresight or the more subtle entanglement of it with a scientia media - though Zwingli's "Fidei ratio" (1530) already strikes a clear note here. As General Predestination is itself largely dealt with only by presupposition and allusion, so are naturally all questions concerning its nature. With reference to Special or Soteriological Predestination, however, the case is different. Its absoluteness and independence of all foreseen grounds or conditions are copiously and emphatically asserted; the matter is treated not only positively but negatively; every conceivable ground in the creature for the decree is mentioned in detail and expressly excluded. There is no variation in this matter from Zwingli to the Swiss Form of Consent. To all alike the Divine Predestination as applied to the destiny of man is an eternal, absolute, independent, most free, immutable purpose of God, for which no cause can be assigned except His gratuitous good pleasure; and in which no change can be imagined, just because it is the purpose of the immutable God. Therefore these Confessions are also at one in proclaiming the particularity of the election of God. According to them all, it deals, not with a variable class, but with specific individuals which are particularly and unchangeably designed. This is the clear assertion not only of what may be looked upon as the stricter Calvinistic formularies, but also of those which were laboring most heavily in the Unionistic currents. It is not merely the Swiss Form of Consent which declares that God "elected a certain and definite number," or the Lambeth and Irish Articles and Canons of Dort which assert that predestination has predefined a certain number, known only to God indeed, but capable neither of increase nor diminution: the Second Helvetic Confession (1562) also with equal conviction affirms that God knows who are His; the theologians at the Leipzig Colloquy insist that both the number and names of His elect are known to God; the authors of the Declaration of Thorn assert that the number of the elect is certain with God. 

Nor is there any difference among these Confessions in their conception of election as in its very nature - as indeed it is ex vi termini - an act specifically of discrimination. To one and all alike the elect are a body of individuals, particularly and individually set upon by the inscrutable love of God, and by this act of free and independent choice separated from others who are thus passed by in the electing grace, and accordingly left unchosen, unelected, and therefore unblessed by the series of acts of divine grace which follow upon election and give it effect. In other words, for all these creeds alike discrimination constitutes the very essence of Soteriological Predestination. That is to say, it is a prædestinatio gemina that they teach: and that again is to say that they are at one in the conception of the necessary implication in the sovereignty of election, of a sovereign preterition as well. 

It is true enough, no doubt, that they do not all explicitly define the doctrine of sovereign preterition. We have seen that there are some of them which do not give more than a merely incidental treatment or even a mere reference to predestination at large; and others even which do not directly allude to it at all: while yet it is clear that the doctrine of predestination is a fundamental postulate of them all. Similarly, among those in which predestination is alluded to or even somewhat fully set forth, there are some which do not allude to its darker side of reprobation, or, if they allude to it, pass it by with a mere allusion. There is, for example, no explicit reference to reprobation in the following Confessions, to wit: Zwingli's Exposition of the Christian Faith (1531), the First Basle Confession (1534), the Genevan Catechism (1545), Calvin's creeds composed for the Genevan Students (1559), the Church at Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), the English Articles (1553), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Second Bohemian Confession (1575). It will be noted at once that some of these come from the hand of Zwingli or Calvin himself, neither of whom certainly had any desire to minimize the importance of conceiving predestination as distinctively an act of discrimination; and further, that in no one of them is election itself treated otherwise than by incidental allusion, except in the English Articles (1553) and the First Basle Confession (1534) - in the latter of which a single sentence only is given to it. Clearly the omission of allusion to reprobation is not to be interpreted in such instances as arguing any chariness as to the doctrine: it may rather be supposed to be omitted just because it is so fully presupposed. To these creeds are to be added certain others in which reprobation, though alluded to, receives no direct treatment, and is thus, while clearly presupposed, yet left without definition and guarding. These are Zwingli's "Fidei ratio" (1530), the Scotch Confession (1560), and the Second Helvetic Confession (1562). These belong, with respect to the doctrine of reprobation, in a class similar to that occupied with reference to the general doctrine of predestination by the creeds which allude to it without expounding it: and it is to be noted that the authors of these creeds - Zwingli, Knox, and Bullinger, in his later years when under the influence of Peter Martyr - cannot be suspected of any hesitation concerning the truth or importance of the prædestinatio gemina. Obviously the omission fully to define it is to be sought in these cases, therefore, not in doubt as to the doctrine, much less in denial of it, but, on the one hand, in such confidence in the implication of preterition in the very idea of election as seemed to render its separate statement unnecessary, and, on the other, in such engrossment with the practical aspects of the gracious side of the doctrine as led to passing lightly over all that is not immediately utilizable by the simplest Christian consciousness. 

There is, therefore, a grave overstatement involved in, for example, Dr. Schaff's representation that "the Thirty-nine Articles, the Heidelberg Catechism, and other German Reformed Confessions, indorse merely the positive part of the free election of believers, and are wisely silent concerning the decree of reprobation, leaving it to theological science and private opinion":64 and much more in the heightened form which he gives this representation later,⁶⁵ when he says that "the most authoritative" of the Reformed Creeds, "as the Helvetic Confession of Bullinger, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Brandenburg Confessions (also the Scotch Confession of 1560) teach only the positive and comforting part of predestination, and ignore or deny a separate decree of reprobation; thus taking the ground practically that all that are saved are saved by the free grace of God, while all that are lost are lost by their own guilt." Of denial of the doctrine there can be no question here: it was certainly not denied by the authors of the documents which omit to mention it or mention it only allusively; men such as Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Ursinus, Bullinger (at the close of his life) not only held but strenuously defended it. Of "ignoring" it, in any proper sense of that word, there can be no more question. Only in the case of the Brandenburg Confessions (which are assuredly as far as possible from ignoring it) can we speak even of an attempt to soften the statement of the doctrine: and the attempt in that case proceeded only by focusing attention on "positive reprobation" (concerning which some things are denied which no one of the Reformed wished to affirm of it) and withdrawing it from "negative reprobation" (of which some of the things denied of "positive reprobation" are affirmed by the Reformed system) - with the effect of betraying to the informed reader a wish to distract attention from controverted points rather than to deny any item of the Reformed faith. It is plausible only with reference to the English Articles to talk of a purposed ignoring: and even there doubtless only plausible. The broad fact is simply that the doctrine of reprobation fails to receive explicit treatment in a few of the Reformed creeds, just as predestination itself does; and that this simple omission to treat it is best explicable in the one case as in the other from the scope and special object of the creeds in question, and from the confidence of their writers in the necessary implication of the omitted doctrine in what is said. Similarly it is left unnoted in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, after the most explicit insistence on it in the Confession of Faith and the Larger Catechism - for no other reason, of course, than the different specific objects and audiences held in view in the several cases. 

Certainly reprobation is treated as an essential part of the doctrine of predestination in all the Reformed creeds in which it is dealt with at all. These include not merely certain of Calvin's own compositions - the Genevan Confession (1537), the Genevan Consensus (1552), Calvin's Articles (15-), the Gallican Confession (1559); and certain others that may be thought to derive in a special way from him - the Confession of the English Exiles (1558), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Lambeth (1595) and Irish Ariticles (1615), the Canons of Dort (1618) and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675); but even such creeds as the Hungarian (1557) and the Brandenburg Confessions, Sigismund's (1614), the Leipzig Colloquy (1631) and the Declaration of Thorn (1645) which, with all their effort to soften the expression of the doctrine in its harder-looking features, do not dream of denying, ignoring, or doubting that it is, as the obverse of election, an essential element of the doctrine of predestination. In all these documents reprobation is treated as involved in the very definition of predestination as a soteriological decree, or in the doctrine of "election" itself as a selection out of a mass. It is not treated with equal detail, however, in them all. It is especially to the Genevan Confession (1537), the Genevan Consensus (1552), the Articles of Calvin (15-), the Gallican and Belgic Confessions (1559 and 1561), the Lambeth and Irish Articles (1595 and 1615), the Westminster Confession (1646), the Canons of Dort (1618), and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675) - together with the softened Brandenburg Confessions - that we must go to find its full exposition. There is, nevertheless, no reason, and indeed no room, to fancy that those documents which speak less fully of the doctrine, or do not even allude to it, occupy any other attitude towards it than the common Reformed attitude, revealed in the Confessions in which it is explicitly mentioned or fully developed. It is rather to be presumed that the common doctrine is presupposed when it does not come to explicit mention: and every indication in the creeds themselves bears this presumption out. 

This constancy of the testimony of the Reformed Confessions to the prædestinatio gemina - that is, to the reality of a sovereign preterition by the side of and forming the foil of sovereign election - may well seem to be remarkable in the face of the universal condemnation it provoked from the controversialists of other communions. From the publication of the Form of Concord the confessional Lutheran doctrine involved the denial of a predestination to death: and Lutheran controversialists were not backward in assaulting the Reformed doctrine as in its very essence horrible. In Anglican circles, along another pathway, essentially the same result was reached: and even the best of the adherents of the new Anglicanism adopted as their own Hooker's construction of an absolute will in God for salvation but "an occasioned will" for destruction, and made it the reproach of Calvinists that they taught "one irrespective predestination" to death as to life. No doubt individual theologians were more or less affected by the very iteration and violence of these assaults; and there arose inevitably Lutheranizers and Anglicanizers among the teachers of the Reformed Churches. The peculiarities of the Brandenburg Confessions, for example, no doubt find their explanation in the sharpness of the conflict on German ground. But doubtless the explanation of the constancy of the Reformed testimony to the prædestinatio gemina is also in part to be traced to the very sharpness of this conflict. The denial of sovereign preterition was thereby clearly branded as a Lutheran error or as quasi-Augustinian Anglicanism. For the preservation of the Reformed doctrine its affirmation was clearly exhibited to be essential. Thus it became more and more impossible to omit it; and after the rise of the Remonstrant controversy, quite impossible. It was therefore that even the Brandenburg Confessions assert reprobation as an integral part of the doctrine of predestination, and only strive to save appearances by obscuring the distinction between negative and positive reprobation and making denials with reference to "reprobation" which apply only to the former. It was therefore, also, that in the effort to save the Calvinism of the British Churches, the prædestinatio bipartita was thrown up into high relief in the Lambeth and Irish Articles and the Westminster formularies. Hard experience had made Calvin's judgment, that without preterition election itself cannot stand, the deep conviction of the whole Reformed Church: and whether at Dort or Zurich, London or Dublin, the essence of the Calvinistic contention was found in the free discrimination among men which was attributed to God: in the confession that He chooses not all but some men to life and destines the rest, therefore, to destruction. The Confession of the English Exiles at Geneva (1558) is unique in stating this act of discrimination so as to throw the predestination to death in the foreground: "God of the lost sons of Adam hath ordained some as vessels of wrath to damnation; and hath chosen others as vessels of His mercy to be saved." But this is indicatory only of the clearness with which discrimination was grasped as the core of the matter. The rest follow the opposite and more natural form of statement, but are no less intent on tracing to God the actual distinction in destiny which Scripture and observation alike forced on the recognition of every thoughtful student whether of the Book or of mankind. 

3. We must not fail next to observe in passing, though we shall not dwell upon it, the unanimity of these Confessions in construing the decree of God as a unit; that is to say, in recognizing the election to salvation as involving a predestination of all the means thereof, and correspondingly the act of preterition as involving the foreordination of all that is consequent thereto. Sometimes the unity of the decree is asserted in so many words; it is affirmed that it was in the "same decree" by which men were segregated to salvation that the means by which they should be made partakers of this salvation were ordained for them. At other times the matter is treated only by enunciating the natural sequence of things; ordination to an end implying ordination of the means to that end. But without exception the destination of men to salvation and the destination to them of the means thereto are treated as inseparably united. 

4. It is, however, of more immediate interest to observe the attitude of the Reformed Confessions with respect to the object of Predestination. Here we are met by a greater apparent diversity than obtains in the other matters that have attracted our attention. Of the three great parties that grew up among the Reformed with reference to the object of predestination (in the sense of Soteriological Predestination) - the Supralapsarian, Infralapsarian, and Salmurian, conceiving the object of predestination respectively as unfallen, fallen, and redeemed mankind - the first and third receive no support from the Confessions. Yet all the Confessions are not Infralapsarian: nor is their attitude precisely the same towards Supralapsarianism and Salmurianism. Some of them are explicitly Infralapsarian, and none exclude, much less polemically oppose, Infralapsarianism. None of them are explicitly Supralapsarian: many, however, leave the question between Supra- and Infralapsarianism entirely to one side, and thus open the way equally to both; and none are polemically directed against Supralapsarianism. Not only are none explicitly Salmurian, on the other hand, but those prepared after the rise of Salmurianism firmly close the door to it, while earlier ones certainly do not open it, and leave room for it, if at all, only uncertainly and by doubtful inference from chance expressions which have no direct reference to the point in controversy and are flexible to other constructions. 

The explicitly Infralapsarian Confessions include the Genevan Consent (1552), the Hungarian Confession (1557), that of the English Exiles at Geneva (1558), the Gallican (1559) and Belgic (1561) Confessions, the Canons of Dort (1618) and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675), together with the Articles framed at the Leipzig Colloquy (1631). These explicitly declare that the discrimination which God made among men was made in massa corrupta: it is for them certain that it was out of the lost race of man that God chose some to eternal life, leaving the rest to the just recompense of their sins. By their side we may perhaps place some others, such as the Genevan Confession of 1537 and the creeds prepared by Calvin for the Genevan Students (1559), the Church at Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), the Confession of Sigismund (1614) and the Declaration of Thorn (1645), and perhaps also, though with less confidence, the Second Helvetic Confession (1562) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), as Confessions which, while not clearly implying Infralapsarianism, yet seem more or less to speak out of an underlying but not expressed Infralapsarian consciousness: this is, however, a matter of mere tone and manner, and is of course much too subtle to insist upon. In such formularies, on the other hand, as Zwingli's "Fidei ratio" (1530), the First Basle or Mühlhausen Confession (1534), the Genevan Catechism (1545), the Zurich Consent (1549), the English (1553), Lambeth (1595) and Irish (1615) Articles, and the Scotch Confession (1560), the lines are so drawn that it is impossible to discover that there is advantage given to either party to the debate over the other: in the case of the Westminster Confession, which shares this peculiarity with them, we know that this was the result of a settled policy, and it may have been the same in some of the others also (as in Calvin's Articles, in view of Beza's views known to him, and in the Lambeth and Irish Articles). In view of these facts, it is hardly possible to speak of the Reformed creeds at large as distinctly Infralapsarian, though Dr. Schaff's language affirming that "all the Reformed Confessions . . . keep within the limits of infralapsarianism"66 may, so far, be adopted as well-chosen and expressive of the true state of the case. Some Reformed Confessions explicitly define Infralapsarianism: none assert anything which is not consonant with Infralapsarianism. On the other hand, nothing is affirmed in the majority of the Confessions inconsistent with Supralapsarianism either; and this majority includes several of the most widely accepted documents. The Westminster Confession in its careful avoidance of raising the distinction throws itself, therefore, into a class with the majority of its companion Confessions, inclusive of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession, which are certainly the most widely accepted of Continental formularies, and of the entire British tradition. It is a noteworthy fact that it is particularly the Genevan creeds and those formed under the Genevan influence which are explicitly Infralapsarian; while it is along the line of German Reformed and British influence that the distinction is avoided, or at least not adverted to. This is probably in part due to the prosecution of the debate between the parties, with most vigor among the French-speaking Calvinists and in Holland. But the effect is to throw the Westminster Confession at this point into companionship with the documents which have been often treated as presenting the "milder" Calvinism, but which would certainly be more properly described as at this point setting forth rather a more generic Calvinism. It is certainly a remarkable instance of the irresponsibility of polemics to hear, as we have recently been forced often to hear, adduced as a mark of hyper-Calvinism a feature of the Westminster method of dealing with predestination which it shares with the Second Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the Confession of Sigismund and the Declaration of Thorn, the Thirty-nine Articles and the early Scotch Confession. 

We restrain ourselves, however, from entering here into a comparison of the Westminster Confession with its sister documents and illustrating from them its especial type of Calvinistic teaching. It has been, to be sure, one of the chief ends we have had in view, in calling attention just at this time to the doctrine of Predestination as expressed in the Reformed creeds, to further an intelligent estimate of the teaching of the Westminster Standards on this great topic, by throwing upon it the light of its historical enunciation in the Reformed Churches. But we must rest content for the present with the general results that the whole body of Reformed creeds, including the Westminster Standards, are remarkably at one in their conceptions of this high mystery; and that the Westminster Standards in their exposition of its elements receive the support of the entire body of the Reformed creeds at every salient point. To facilitate a rough estimate of the nature and amount of the support it thus receives from them, we have marked by footnote references to the Westminster Confession the passages in them which present especially close parallels with the sections in the chapter in that formulary which deals with the decree of God. Later, we hope to return to the matter. For the present it may safely be left to the general impression which the mere reading over of the documents will inevitably make.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xii. 1901, pp. 49-128. 

Of course the term is here used of the Augustinian doctrine of grace, and not of the ecclesiastical system which finds its roots also in him. 

Cf. E. F. Karl Müller, "Symbolik," 1896, p. 75. What are called the formal and material principles of Protestantism belong only to developed Protestantism. The sole doctrine that from the beginning was common to all the Reformers, and that really constituted the formative principle of Protestantism, was that of predestination. It is really this that Möhler, no less than Schweizer, sees, when he seeks to trace back the contrast between Romanism and Protestantism to the emphasis on the freedom of the human will on the one side and on the sole activity of God on the other. 

"Tractatus de Deo uno," § 411, in his " Prælectiones theologicæ," i. 1861, p. 342. Yet, one remembers Gottschalk and Jansen. 

"Institutes," III. xxi. 5. 

"Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, p. 451. 

We should carefully note here the testimony to the necessary implication of the doctrine of "double predestination" in the evangelical system (in the doctrines of original sin and of the confinement of redemption to this life); and as well to the religious root of the doctrine - a matter of fact which Dr. Schaff repeatedly recognizes, as e.g. p. 454. It has become customary in some quarters, however, to represent it as rather a speculative than a religious doctrine. Thus Gooszen discriminates Calvinism properly so called from what he deems the milder teachings of Bullinger and the Heidelberg Catechism as the intellectualistic-speculative tendency from the soteriological-Biblical tendency: and Calvin is treated in many quarters as the reintroducer of nominalistic speculation into Protestant thought. Nothing could be more mistaken. "This," says Müller (as cited, p. 481, note 39), pointedly, "is not the language of nominalism but of faith."

Article xi. 

This result is reached as early as Hutter (1610), in whose "Compendium" it is baldly taught that God has elected men respectu prævisæ fidei. 

Cf. Schweizer, "Die Glaubenslehre der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche," § 15 (i. 1844, p. 84). So of the relation of creeds and theologians in general, Dean Stanley, Contemporary Review, xxiv. 1874, p. 499. The Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and the Formula Consensus Helvetica form exceptions in this regard.

A separate paragraph, not article: it appears as a distinct paragraph under the general caption "Of God." The Latin translation in ordinary use erects it into a separate "Disputation" - the Third.

"Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the Various Communities of Christendom" (E.T.), 1873, p. 168. 

Op. cit., p. 407.

The only other exception is, indeed, the "Consensus Genevensis," which is in form a polemic defense by Calvin of his doctrine of predestination against the assaults of Pighius and Georgius Siculus. In it we read (Niemeyer, "Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum," 1840, p. 263): "If neither original sin suffices for Pighius for the condemnation of man, nor any place is given to the secret judgment of God, what will he do with regard to infant children who have been taken from this life before they could perform any such work (of charity), on account of their age? The circumstance of birth and death was certainly the same for infants who died at Sodom and at Jerusalem, nor was there any difference in their works; why will Christ at the last day segregate from some that stand at His right hand, others at His left? Who does not adore here the wonderful judgment of God, which has brought it about that some should be born at Jerusalem whence they might soon pass to a better life, while it separated others to be born at Sodom the gate of hell?" (Cf. p. 287.) 

The Augustinianism of Augustine is of course a different matter from that of the Romish "Augustinians." The prædestinatio duplex and the distinction between the two wills in God are both explicitly taught by Augustine. If it had been to Augustine himself that the Thoruniensian divines were appealing, their finesse here would have been unnecessary.

"Zwingli's little book ["On Providence"] ... is so full of hard paradoxes that it is as far as possible removed from that moderation which I have employed." - Calvin to Bullinger, in "Opera Calvini," ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, xiv. 1875, col. 253. 

Scheibe, "Calvins Prädestinationslehre," 1897. 

See Herzog-Hauck, "Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche," ed. 3, iii. 1897, pp. 545-546, where the development, or perhaps we would better say, the librations of Bullinger's doctrine are briefly sketched. Even in the "Decades," however, Bullinger clearly defines predestination as duplex, or, as it is more accurately phrased, gemina (Parker Society edition, iv. 1851, pp. 185-186 (serm. iv.); cf. pp. 33-34 (serm. i.).

Cf. an interesting instance of its influence in that direction in the letter of Bartholomew Traheron to Bullinger, "Zurich Letters," First Series, i. p. 325, cf. 327 (cf. Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, pp. 630, 631).

Saumurii, 1646, pp. 6, 7.

Henry Boynton Smith, in "Faith and Philosophy," 1877, pp. 103, 147, 283. The passages in which those expressions occur are worth reading as models of the justly fervent praise which the Westminster Standards evoke from competent readers. 

Translated from the text in Niemeyer, "Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum," 1840, pp. 18 ff.

Published by Bullinger, after Zwingli's death. Translated from the text in Niemeyer, p. 58. 

Translated from the text in Niemeyer, pp. 746f. 

From the text in Niemeyer, pp. 789, 793 f., 796.

Niemeyer, pp. 828, 836.

Niemeyer, pp. 79-80; 87-89. 

Niemeyer, p. 117, cf. 107. 

Niemeyer, pp. 542, 547, 549. The title in Niemeyer reads: "The true Confession derived from the Word of God and set forth and published with one consent, in the Synod of Czenger: I. On the one and only God ... IX. On respect of persons in God because He saves some and hardens others." 

Niemeyer, pp. 474 f., 477 ff., 481 ff., 489 f.; Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," iii. 1878, pp. 244 f., 247 ff., 252 ff., 260 ff. 

Schaff, at the questions noted (iii. pp. 307 ff.). The English translation of the (German) Reformed Church of the United States is used, except in the extract from Q. 54, which is translated afresh from the German, in order to bring out the strength of the language, which is perhaps somewhat obscured in the above-mentioned translation. 

Not a Reformed creed, but represents the milder "Lutheranism in opposition to the Flacian party" (Schaff). See Schaff, i. pp. 563 f. 

From the texts in Niemeyer: pp. 650-651, 664-666, 673-677. 

This Lutheran statement is inserted here for purposes of comparison: Niemeyer, pp. 666 f.

Probably composed by Farel, though possibly with the help of Calvin ("Opera Calvini," ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, ix. 1870, col. 698). There is no article on predestination: but all the glory of salvation is ascribed to God. 

From the French text ("Opera Calvini," xxii. 1880, coll. 46 f.). 

From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 128 f., 135 f. 

From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 195, 209f.

The Consensus Genevensis is written, not in compressed form, but in a diffuse and argumentative style and occupies nearly one hundred octavo pages in Niemeyer's "Collectio confessionum" (pp. 218-310). Nothing will be attempted here beyond presenting a few extracts, which it is hoped will give the substance of its teaching. 

From the text in "Opera Calvini," ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, ix. 1870, coll. 713 f. The date is not known. 

"Opera Calvini," ix. coll. 721-726. 

"Opera Calvini," ix. coll. 716 f. 

This clause is omitted in Bonnet's text ("Lettres de Calvin," ii. 1854, p. 154). 

"Opera Calvini," ix. coll. 756 f. 

From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 316, 317 f. 

From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 367 f., 370 f. 

The remainder (in square brackets) is not found in the French, nor in the Latin of 1612: it is printed by Niemeyer from the Latin version of Festus Hommius, made in 1618. 

From the text in Dunlop, "A Collection of Confessions of Faith," ii. 1722, pp. 3-9. 

From the text in Schaff, iii. 1878, pp. 439 ff. 

From Bonar's "Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation," 1866, pp. 207, 253-255. 

Taken from Hardwick's "History of the Articles of Religion," ed. 3, 1876, pp. 310ff. 

"in Christ" subsequently added (1563, 1571). 

"Wherefore" later. 

Altered later into: "they which be indued with so excellent a benefite of God." 

"of God" added later. 

Later: "his." 

Later: "doth." 

Subsequently omitted (1563, 1571). 

From the Latin text in Hardwick, p. 363. 

Text in Schaff, Hardwick, and others.

This translation is that of the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America as given by Schaff, except in the "Rejection of Errors," which is from the Latin text given by Schaff : iii. pp. 581 ff., 556 ff., and 576. 

From the text in Niemeyer, pp. 731-734, with the aid of the English translation given by A. A. Hodge, in his "Outlines of Theology," appendix.

In the case of the Zurich Consent (1549), of course, its scope did not allow more than an incidental allusion.

"Creeds of Christendom," i. 1877, p. 454. 

P. 635.

As cited, p. 635: "Even," he specifies, "the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and the Helvetic Consensus Formula." 

The Prodigal Son

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

Luke xv. 11-32

I WISH to speak to you to-day of the parable of the prodigal son, or, as it is becoming very common to call it, perhaps with greater exactness, the parable of the lost son. I shall not read it to you again. It has already been read in the lesson for the day. And in any event it is too familiar to require that you should be reminded even of the minuter details of the narrative. Probably no passage of the Scriptures is more widely known or more universally admired. The conversation and literature of devotion are full of allusions to it. And in the conversation and literature of the world it has far from an unhonoured place.

It owes the high appreciation it has won, no doubt, in large part to the exquisiteness of its literary form. From this point of view it fully deserves not only the measured praise of a Grotius, but the enthusiastic exclamations of a Trench. It is "the finest of Christ's parables, filled with true feeling, and painted in the most beautiful colours." It is "the pearl and crown of all the parables of Scripture." Nothing could exceed the chaste perfection of the narrative, the picturesque truth of its portraiture, the psychological delicacy of its analysis. Here is a gem of story-telling, which must be pronounced nothing less than artistically perfect, whether viewed in its general impression, or in the elaboration of its details. We must add to its literary beauty, however, the preciousness of the lesson it conveys before we account for the place it has won for itself in the hearts of men. In this setting of fretted gold, a marvel of the artificer, there lies a priceless jewel; and this jewel is displayed to such advantage by its setting that men cannot choose but see and admire.

Indeed, we may even say that the universal admiration the parable commands has finished by becoming in some quarters a little excessive. The message which the parable brings us is certainly a great one. To lost sinners like you and me, assuredly few messages could appeal with more overwhelming force. Our hearts are wrung within us as we are made to realize that our Father in heaven will receive our wandering souls back with the joy with which this father in the parable received back his errant son. But it is an exaggeration to represent this message as all the Gospel, or even as the core of the Gospel; and to speak of this parable therefore, as it has become widely common to speak of it, as "the Gospel in the Gospel," or even as the summation of the Gospel. It is not that. There are many truths which it has no power to teach us that are essential to the integrity of the Gospel: nay, the very heart of the Gospel is not in it. And, therefore, precious as this parable is to us, and priceless as is its message, there are many other passages of Scripture more precious still, because their message enters more deeply into the substance of the Gospel. Take this passage for example: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Or this passage: "God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.'' Or even this short passage: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." All these are more precious passages than the parable of the lost son, not merely because they tell us more fully what is contained in the Gospel, but because they uncover to us, as it does not, what lies at the heart of the Gospel.

It is important that we should recognize this. For the exaggerated estimate which has been put upon this parable has borne bitter fruit in the world. Beginning with an effort to read into it all the Gospel, or at least the essence of the Gospel, it has ended by reading out of the Gospel all that is not in the parable. And thus this parable, the vehicle of a priceless message, has been transformed into the instrument of a great wrong. The worst things are often the corruption of the best: and the attempt to make the parable of the lost son the norm of the Gospel has resulted, I will not say merely in the curtailment of the Gospel,—I will say rather in the evisceration of the Gospel. On this platform there take their stand to-day a growing multitude the entire tendency and effect of all of whose efforts it is to eliminate from Christianity all that gives it value in the world, all that makes it that religion which has saved the world, and to reduce it to the level of a merely natural religion. ''The Christianity of the prodigal son is enough for us," they declare: and they declare this with gusto because, to put it briefly, they do not like the Christianity of the Bible or the Christianity of Christ, and are happy not to find them in the parable of the lost son.

Now, let us recognize frankly at the outset, that the reason why these new teachers of an unchristian Christianity do not find Christianity in the parable of the lost son is, briefly, because this parable does not set forth Christianity, but only a small fragment of Christian teaching. The turn they have given to affairs is therefore merely the nemesis that treads on the heels of the mistaken attempts to read a full Christianity into this parable. The parable was not given to teach us Christianity, in its essence or its sum. It was given to teach us one single truth: a truth of the utmost value, not only full of emotional power, but, when placed in its relation to other truths, of the highest doctrinal significance; but not in itself sufficient to constitute Christianity, or even to embody its essence. How little what this parable teaches us can be conceived as of itself Christianity may easily be made plain by simply enumerating some of the fundamental elements of Christianity which receive no expression in it: and this negative task seems to be made incumbent on us at the outset of any study of the parable by the circumstance of its perversion to the uses of the propaganda of unbelief.

We observe, then, in the first place, that there is no atonement in this parable. And indeed it is precisely because there is no atonement in this parable that it has been seized upon by the modern tendency to which we have alluded, as the norm of the only Christianity it will profess. For nothing is more characteristic of this new type of Christianity than that it knows and will know nothing of an atonement. The old Socinians were quick to perceive this feature of the parable, and to make use of it in their assault upon the doctrine of Christ's satisfaction for sin. See, they cried, the father in the parable asks no satisfaction before he will receive back his son: he rather sees him afar off and runs to meet him and gives him a free and royal welcome. The response is no doubt just that other Scriptures clearly teach the atonement of which no hint is given here; and that we have no "right to expect that every passage in Scripture, and least of all these parables, which exist under necessary limitations in their power of setting forth the truth, shall contain the whole circle of Christian doctrine." This answer is sufficient against the Socinian who appealed to Scripture as a whole and required to be reminded that we "must consider not what one Scripture says, but what all." But it scarcely avails against our modern enthusiast who either professedly or practically would fain make this parable the embodiment of all the Christianity he will profess. For him, Christianity must do without an atonement, because it is quite obvious that there is no atonement in this parable.

Nor is that more than the beginning of the matter. It must do without a Christ as well. For, we must observe, the parable has as little of Christ in it as it has of an atonement. The Socinians neglected to take note of this. In their zeal to point out that there is no trace in the parable of a satisfaction offered to the Father by which alone He might be enabled to receive back the sinner, they failed to note that neither is there trace in it of any mission of a Son at all—even merely to plead with the wanderer, make known the Father's continued love to him, and win him back to his right relation to the Father. That much of a mission of Christ they themselves confessed. But it is as absent from the parable as is the expiating Christ of the Evangelicals. In truth, there is in the parable no trace whatsoever of a Christ, in any form of mission. From all that appears from the narrative, the errant son was left absolutely alone in his sin, until, wholly of his own motion, he conceived the idea of returning to the Father. If its teaching is to be the one exclusive source of our Christianity we must content ourselves therefore with a Christianity without Christ.

Nor is even this by any means all. For, as has no doubt been noted already, there is as little trace of the saving work of the Holy Spirit in the parable as of that of Christ. The old Pelagians were as quick to see this as were the Socinians later to observe the absence of any hint of a sacrificial atonement. See, they said, the prodigal moves wholly of his own power: there is no efficient grace here, no effectual calling, no regeneration of the Spirit. And there is not. If this parable is to constitute our Christianity, then our Christianity must do without these things.

And doing without these things, it must do without a Holy Spirit altogether. For there is not the slightest hint of a Holy Spirit in any conceivable activity he may be thought to employ in the whole parable. Reduce the mode and effect of His operation to the most attenuated possible. Allow Him merely to plead with men from without the penetralium of their personality, to exercise influences upon them only of the nature of persuasion, such as men can exercise upon one another—still there is no hint of such influences here. From all that appears, the prodigal suo motu turned to the Father and owed to no one so much as a suggestion, much less assistance, in his resolve or its execution. If our Christianity is to be derived from this parable only, we shall have to get along without any Holy Spirit.

And even this is only the beginning. We shall have to get along also without any God the Father. What! you say,—the whole parable concerns the father! But what a father is this? It is certainly not the Father of the Christian revelation and not the Father of the Christian heart. He permits his son to depart from him without apparent emotion; and so far as appears he endures the absence of his son without a pang,—making not the slightest endeavour to establish or maintain communication with him or to recover him either to good or to himself. If he manifests joy at the happy return of the son after so many days, there is not the least evidence that in all the intervening time he had expended upon him so much as a single message, much less brought to bear upon him the smallest inducement to return. In other words. what we know as the "seeking love of God" is absolutely absent from the dealing of the father with the son as here depicted: that is, the love of God which most nearly concerns you and me as sinners is conspicuous only by its absence. In this respect the parable stands in its suggestions below the companion parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. When the shepherd lost his sheep, he left the ninety and nine in the wilderness and went after the lost one until he found it. When the woman lost her coin, she lit a candle and swept the house and sought diligently until she found it. But in the parable of the lost son, the father is not pictured as doing anything of the sort. The son leaves him and the son returns to him; and meanwhile the father, so far as appears, goes about his own affairs and leaves the son to go about his. So clear is it that this parable was not intended to embody the whole Gospel and does not contain even its essence. For what is the essence of the Gospel if it is not the seeking love of God?

The commentators, of course, have not left it so. Determined to get the Gospel out of the parable, they diligently go to work first to put it in. Thus one, in depicting the father's state of mind, grows eloquent in his description of his yearning love. "He has not forgotten his son, though he has forgotten him. He has been thinking of him during the long period of his absence. Probably he often cast glances along the road to see if perchance the erring one was returning, thinking he saw him in every stranger who made his appearance. He has continued looking, longing, till hope deferred has made the heart sick and weary to despair." Now no doubt the father felt all this. Only the parable does not tell us so. And it would not have omitted to tell us so, if this state of mind on the father's part entered into the essence of its teaching. The fact is that this commentator is rewriting the parable. He is not expounding the parable we have, but composing another parable, a different parable with different lessons. Our Lord, with His exquisitely nice adjustment of every detail of this parable to His purpose, we may be sure, has omitted nothing needed for the most poignant conveyance of the meaning He intended it to convey. That the expositor feels it necessary to insert all this merely proves that he is bent on making the parable teach something foreign to it as it stands. What he has especially in mind to make it teach proves, as we read on, to be the autonomy of the human will. The lost thing, in the case of this parable, is a man: and because he is a man, and no lifeless thing nor an unthinking beast, we are told, he cannot, like the coin and the sheep, be sought. He must be left alone, to return, if return he ever does, wholly of his own motion and accord. Therefore, for sooth, the father's solicitude can only take the form of a waiting! Seeking love can be expended on a coin or a sheep, but not, it seems, on a man. In the case of a man, waiting love is all that is in place, or is possible. Is this the Gospel? Is this the Gospel even of these three parables? When we were told of the shepherd seeking his sheep, of the woman searching for her coin, was it of sheep and coins that the Master would have His hearers think? Does God care for oxen, or was it not altogether for our sakes that these parables too were spoken?

Into such self-contradictions, to say nothing of oppositions to the very cor cordis of the Gospel, do we fall when we refuse to be led by the text and begin to twist it like a nose of wax to the teaching of our own lessons. The fact is, the parable teaches us none of these things and we must not bend or break it in a vain effort to make it teach them. Even when another commentator more modestly tells us that the two earlier parables—those of the lost sheep and the lost coin—set forth mainly the seeking love of God; while the third—that of the lost son—"describes rather the rise and growth, responsive to that love, of repentance in the heart of man"; he has gone far beyond his warrant. Why say this parable teaches the rise and growth of repentance "responsive to the seeking love of God"? There is no seeking love of God in the parable's picture of the relation of the father to the lost son, as indeed had just been allowed, in the assignment of the teaching as to that to the preceding parables. But why say even that it describes "the rise and growth of repentance"? It does of course describe the path which one repentant sinner's feet trod as he returned to his father: and so far as the case of one may be the case of all, we may therefore be said to have here, so far as the narrative goes, a typical instance. But there is no evidence that this description was intended as normative, and certainly no ground for finding in this the purpose of the parable. That purpose the text itself places elsewhere; and our wisdom certainly lies in refusing to turn the parable into allegory, reading into it all sorts of lessons which we fancy we may see lurking in its language here and there. We are safest in strictly confining ourselves to reading out of it the lesson it was designed to teach. This lesson was certainly not "the growth and course of sin" and "the growth and course of repentance"; but simply that "there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." The exquisite surety of our Lord's touch as He paints the career of the unhappy man whose fortunes He employs to point His moral may tempt us to look upon the vivid picture He draws as the normative instance of sin and repentance: and surely there is no reason why we should not recognize that the picture thus brought before us corresponds with remarkable closeness to the great drama of human sin and repentance. But one must be on his guard against being led astray here. After all, the descriptions and analyses in the parable are determined directly by the requirements of the story, not by those of the history of the sinful soul over against its God; and we must beware of treating the parable as if its details belonged less to the picture than to something else which it seems to us adapted to illustrate. The only safe course is strictly to confine ourselves to the lesson the parable was framed to teach.

This is not to say, however, that this lesson is so single and simple that we can derive no teaching from the parable beyond what is compressible into a single proposition. It undoubtedly has its main lesson; but it could not well teach that lesson without teaching along with it certain subsidiary ones, closely connected with it as corollaries and supports, or at least implicated in the manner in which it is taught. Only, we must be very wary that we do not either on the one hand confuse these subsidiary things with the main lesson of the parable, or on the other read into it lessons of our own, fancifully derived from its mere forms of expression. We may perhaps illustrate what we mean and at the same time gather the teaching we may legitimately derive from the parable by asking ourselves now seriously what we do really learn from it.

And here, beginning at the extreme circumference of what we may really affirm we learn from this parable, I think we may say that we may derive from it, in the first place,—in its context, in the way it is introduced and in its relation to the fellows-parables coupled with it—one of those subtle evidences of the deity of our Lord which are strewn through the Synoptic Gospels. Although it leads us away from our main course, it behoves us to pause and take note of this, in view of the tendency lingering in some quarters to deny to the Synoptic Gospels a doctrine of the deity of Christ, and especially to the Jesus of the Synoptics any real divine consciousness. It would seem impossible for the unprejudiced reader to glance over these parables in their setting without feeling that both the evangelist and the Master as reported by him speak here out of an underlying consciousness of His divine claims and estate. For, note the occasion out of which these parables arose and the immediate end to which they are directed. The publicans and sinners were flocking to the gracious preaching of Jesus, and Jesus was so far from repelling them, that He welcomed them to Him and mixed in intimate intercourse with them. This the Pharisees and Scribes made the subject of unpleasant remark among themselves. And our Lord spoke these parables in defence of Himself against their attack. But now note how He defends Himself. By parables of a good shepherd seeking his lost sheep; of a distressed woman seeking her lost coin; of a deserted father receiving back his wayward child. We surely do not need to argue that the good shepherd, the distressed woman, the deserted father stands in each instance for God. Jesus Himself tells us this in His application: ''I say unto you" (and we must not miss here the slight but majestic intimation of the dignity of His person) "that there shall be joy in heaven"; "Likewise, I say unto you there is joy before the angels of God." Yet these parables are spoken to vindicate not God's, but Jesus' reception of sinners. The underlying assumption that Jesus' action and God's action are one and the same thing is unmistakable: and no reader fails tacitly to recognize Jesus Himself under the good shepherd and the distressed woman and the deserted father. In Him and His action men may see how things are looked upon in heaven. The lost, when they come to Him, are received because this is heaven's way; and since this is heaven's way, how could He do otherwise? This is not a mere appeal, as some have supposed, to the sympathy of heaven: as if He would say to the objector, "I have not your sympathy in this, but heaven is on my side!" Nor is it a mere appeal to a future vindication: as if He would say, "Now you condemn, but you will see it differently after a while." It is a defence of His conduct by reference of it to its true category. These publicans and sinners—why, they are His lost ones: and does not in every sphere of life he who loses what he values welcome its recovery with joy? Throughout the whole discussion there throbs thus the open implication that He bears the same relation to these sinners that the shepherd does to the sheep lost from the flock, the woman does to a coin lost from her store, the father does to a wandering child. And what is this but an equally open implication that He is in some mysterious way that Divine Being against whom all sin is committed, away from whose smile all sinners have turned, and back to whom they come when, repenting of their sin, they are recovered to good and to God?

In these parables, then, we see Jesus teaching with authority. And His divine voice is heard in them also rebuking sin. For the next thing, perhaps, which it behoves us to take notice of is the rebuke that sounds in them of the sin of spiritual pride and jealousy. This rebuke of course culminates in the portrait of the elder son and his unsympathetic attitude towards the rejoicing over his brother's return home, which occupies the latter part of the parable of the lost son. This episode has given the expositors much trouble; but this has been occasioned solely by their failure to apprehend aright the purpose of the parable. It is in truth an integral part of the parable, without which the parable would be incomplete.

In the former two parables—those of the lost sheep and the lost coin—Jesus was directly justifying Himself for "receiving sinners and eating with them." His justification is, shortly, that it is precisely the lost who require His attention: He came to seek and to save the lost. But these parables run up into a higher declaration: the declaration that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents rather than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. This high note then becomes the dominant note of the discourse: and it is to illustrate it and to give it vividness and force in the consciousness of His hearers that the third parable—that of the lost son—is spoken. This third parable has not precisely the same direct apologetic purpose, therefore, which dominates the other two. It becomes more didactic and as such more of a mirror to reflect the entire situation and to carry home to the questioners the whole involved truth. Its incidents are drawn from a higher plane of experience and the action becomes more complex, by which a more varied play of emotion is allowed and a more complicated series of lessons is suggested. It is, therefore, not content, like the former parables, merely to illustrate the bare fact that joy accompanies the finding of the lost, with the implication that as sinners are what is lost to God, it is their recovery which causes Him joy. It undertakes to take up this fact, already established by the preceding parables, and to fix it in the heart as well as in the mind by summoning to its support the deepest emotions of the human soul, relieving at the same time the free play of these emotions from all interference from the side of a scrupulous sense of justice.

It is this latter function which the episode of the elder brother subserves; and it appears therefore not as an excrescence upon the parable, but as an essential element in it. Its object is to hold up the mirror of fact to the Pharisaic objectors that they may see their conduct and attitude of mind in their true light. Their moving principle was not, as they fancied, a zeal for righteousness which would not have sin condoned, but just a mean-spirited jealousy which was incapable of the natural response of the human spirit in the presence of a great blessing. They are like some crusty elder brother, says our Lord, who, when the long-lost wanderer comes contritely home, is filled with bitter jealousy of the joyful reception he receives rather than with the generous delight that moves all human hearts at the recovery of the lost.

The effect, you see, is to place the Pharisaic objectors themselves in the category of sinners, side by side with the outcasts they had despised; to probe their hard hearts until they recognized their lost estate also; and so to bring them as themselves prodigals back in repentance to the Father's house. That they came back the parable does not say. It leaves them in the midst of bitter controversy with the Father because He is good. And here emerges a wonderful thing. That "seeking love" which is not signalized in the parable with reference to the lost—the confessedly lost—son, is brought before us in all its beautiful appeal with reference to these yet unrepentant elder brothers. For, you will observe, the father does not wait for the elder brother to come into the house to him; he goes out to him. He speaks soothing words to him in response to his outpouring of bitterness and disrespect. When, in outrageous words, this son celebrates his own righteousness and accuses the father of hardness and neglect, refusing indeed in his wrath to recognize his relationship either with him or his: the father responds with mild entreaties, addressing him tenderly as "child," proffering unbroken intercourse with him, endowing him with all his possessions,—in a word, pleading with him as only a loving father can. Did the elder son hearken to these soft reproofs and yield to this endearing appeal? It was for the Pharisees to answer that question. Our Lord leaves it there. And the effect of the whole is to show them that, contrary to their assumption, the Father in heaven has no righteous children on earth; that His grace is needed for all, and most of all for those who dream they have no need of it. By thus skilfully dissecting, under the cover of the sour elder brother, the state of mind of the Pharisaic objectors, our Lord breaks down the artificial distinction by which they had separated themselves from their sinful brethren, and in doing so breaks down also the barriers which held their sympathies back and opens the way to full appreciation by them of the joy He would have them feel in the recovery of the lost. Was there one among them with heart yet open to the appeal of the seeking God, surely he smote his breast as he heard these poignant closing words of the parable and cried, no longer in the voice of a Pharisee, but in the voice of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Surely, like one of their own number only a few years later, the scales fell from his eyes and he confessed himself not only a sinner, but even the chief of sinners.

It would not be quite exact perhaps to say that the parable rebukes spiritual pride and jealousy as well as proclaims the joy in heaven over the recovery of the lost. Its lesson is one; and its one lesson is only thrown into a clearer light by the revelation of the dreadfulness of its contrast in jealousy of the good fortune of the saved. When all are in equal need of salvation, where is there room for censorious complaint of the goodness of God? This levelling effect of the parable raises the question whether there is not contained in it some hint of the universalism of the Gospel. Surely through and through its structure sounds the note of, ''For there is no difference!" No difference between the publicans and sinners on the one side, and the Pharisees and the Scribes on the other. The Pharisees themselves being judges, this were equivalent to no difference between Jew and Gentile. Were not the publicans to them as heathen men? And was not "sinners" just the name by which they designated the Gentiles? If their scrupulous attention to the law did not raise them above all commerce or comparison with sinners, what profit was there in being a Jew? We certainly do not purpose to say with some that Jesus was teaching a universal religion without knowing it: and we certainly do not discover here the germ of a universal religion in this—that Jesus meant to teach that nothing lies between the sinner and his recovery to God but an act of the sinner's own will, an act to which every sinner is ever competent, at all times and in all circumstances. And yet it seems not improper to perceive in the levelling effect of the implied inclusion of the Pharisees them selves in the one great class of sinners a hint of that universalism which Jesus gave His Gospel when He proclaimed Himself the Saviour of all who believe on Him.

But, however this may be, we approach nearer to the great lesson of the parable when we note that there is certainly imbedded in its teaching that great and inexpressibly moving truth that there is no depth of degradation, return from which will not be welcomed by God. A sinner may be too vile for any and every thing else; but he cannot be too vile for salvation. We observe at any rate that our Lord does not hold His hand when He comes to paint the degradation of sinners, through His picture of the degradation into which the lost son had sunk. No depths are left beneath the depths which He here portrays for us. This man had dealt with his inheritance with the utmost recklessness. He had wasted the whole of it until he was left stripped bare of all that he had brought from his father's house. Nor was there anything to take its place. The country in which he had elected to dwell was smitten, throughout its whole extent, with a biting famine. In all its length and breadth there was nothing on which a man might have. The prodigal was reduced to "bend and pray and fawn" at the feet of a certain citizen of that dread land; and was sent by him out into the barren fields—to feed swine! To a Jew, degradation could not be more poignantly depicted. Yes, it could: there was one stage worse and that stage was reached. The lost son not only herded the swine; he herded with them. "He was fain to fill his belly from the husks that the swine did eat." Not with the same quality of food, observe, but from the swine's own store—for "no man gave unto him." In this terrible description of extreme degradation there may be a side glance at the actual state of the publicans, our Lord's reception of and association with whom was such an offence to the Jewish consciousness. For did not they not merely serve against their own people those swines of Gentiles, but actually feed themselves at their trough? But however this may be, it is clear that our Lord means to paint degradation in its depths. He does not spare the sinners with whom He consorted. His defence for receiving them does not turn upon any failure to recognize or feel their true quality; any representation of them as not so bad after all; as if they had been painted blacker than they were, and were nice enough people to associate with if only we were not so fastidious. He says rather that they are bad past expression and past belief. His defence is that they can be saved; and that He is here to save them. Lost? Yes, they are lost; and there is no reason why we should not take the word at the top—or rather at the bottom—of its meaning: this is the parable of the lost son. But Jesus is the Saviour of the lost; and there is none so lost that he may not be found by Him, and, being found by Him, be also found in Him. Oh, no! Jesus does not rejoice in sinners: it is not sin He loves nor sinners as sinners. What He rejoices in is the rescue of sinners from their sin. And the deeper the sin the greater the rescue and the greater the joy. "I say unto you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." "I say unto you, there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, rather than over ninety and nine just persons, such as have no need of repentance."

It is in this great declaration that the real purport of the parable is expressed. This parable was spoken to teach us, to put it briefly, that God in heaven rejoices over the repentance of every sinner that repents. It is a commentary therefore on those great passages which tell us that God would have no man perish, but all to come to Him and live; and it is more than a commentary on these passages, inasmuch as it throws the emphasis upon the positive side and tells us of the joy that God feels at the repentance of every sinner who repents. To the carrying of this great message home to our hearts all the art of the parable is directed, and it is our wisdom to read it simply to this end. We need not puzzle ourselves over the significance, then, of this detail or that, as if we were bound or indeed permitted to discover, allegorically, some spiritual meaning in each turn of the story. The most of these find their account in the demands of the story itself and enter into its lesson only as contributory details, adding vividness and truth to the illustration.

Thus, for instance, if we ask why there are only two sons in the parable, while there were ten pieces of silver in the preceding one, and a hundred sheep in the first one; the answer is that just two sons were needed to serve Jesus' purpose of illustrating the contrast between the Pharisees and Scribes on the one side and the publicans and sinners on the other; his purpose not being at all to indicate proportion of numbers, but difference in status and conduct. In the former parables the suggestion of comparative insignificance was requisite to bring out the full lesson; in this, the contrast of character serves His purpose. If again it is asked why it is the younger son who becomes a prodigal, the answer is that the propriety of the story demands it. It would be inconceivable that the older son, who according to custom was the co-possessor and heir of the fundamental estate, should have asked or received an inheritance apart from it. But the thing was not unnatural, and doubtless not unusual, in a younger son, who was to be portioned off in any event in the end, and was only asking that he might not wait on his father's death, but might be permitted to "set up for himself" at once. We cannot therefore with confidence discover the beginnings of the prodigal's downfall in his request that his inheritance might be told off to him, or wonder overmuch why the father so readily granted this request. It is tempting, no doubt, to see in the wish of the son to  set up for himself" a hint of a heart already little at one with the law and custom of the father's house. But such allegorizing is dangerous, especially when not suggested by any hint in the language of the narrative or necessarily contained in the situation depicted. It is customary to speak of the younger son as a young man. It may be so. But the narrative does not say so. He may have been in middle life; and it may well have seemed to all concerned that a desire on his part to begin to build up his own house was altogether right and fitting. The separation of his goods from his father's at all events appears in the parable only as the precedent condition of his spending them, not as the beginning of his downfall.

We need not go further, however, into detail. Enough that the story has a single point. And that point is the joy of the father at the return of the son, a joy which is the expression, not of the natural love of the father for a son, but of the overwhelming emotion of mingled relief and thankfulness and overmastering rapture which fills the heart of a father on the recovery of a lost son. The point of the narrative is not, then, that this prodigal is a son, though that underlies and gives its verisimilitude to the picture. The point is that this son is a prodigal. It is because he has been lost and is now found that the joy of the father is so great. The elder son is a son too; and the father loves him also. Let him who doubts it read again the exquisite narrative of the father's tender and patient dealings with him. There is not in all literature a more beautiful picture of parental affection pleading with unfilial passion. This father knew perfectly how to fulfil the injunction later laid down by the apostle Paul: "And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord." From this point of view that soothing admonition, "Child, thou" (the emphasis on the "thou" must not be neglected) "art always with me; and all that is mine is thine; but it was meet to make merry and be glad, because this thy brother was dead and is alive, and was lost and is found"—is simply perfect. So clear is it that the lesson of the parable does not turn on the prodigal's being a son, but on this son being a prodigal.

In other words, its lesson is not that God loves His children, but that God loves sinners. And thus this parable is seen ranging with the preceding ones. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, have only this one thing in common, that they are lost; and the three parables unite in commending the one common lesson to us, that as men rejoice in the recovery of what is lost, so God rejoices in the recovery of sinners—since sinners are the things that to Him are lost. We must not, then, use this parable to prove that God is a father, or draw inferences from it as if that were its fundamental teaching. It does not teach that. What it teaches is that God will receive the returning sinner with the same joy that the father in the parable received the returning prodigal; because as this son was to that father's heart above all other things that he had lost, his lost one, and his return was therefore above all other things that might have been returned to him his recovery; so sinners are above all else that God has lost in the world His lost ones, and their return to Him above all other restorations that may be made to Him His recovery. The vivid picture of the father not staying to receive the returning son, but, moved with compassion as he spied him yet a great way off, running out to meet him and falling on his neck and kissing him in his ecstasy again and again; cutting short his words of confession with the command that the best robe be brought to clothe him, and shoes for his blistered feet, and a ring for his finger, and the order that the fatted calf be killed and the feast be spread, and the music and the dance be prepared—because, as he says, "This my son was dead and is alive, was lost and is found"—all this in the picture is meant to quicken our hearts to some apprehension of the joy that fills God's heart at the return of sinners to Him.

O brethren, our minds are dulled with much repetition, and refuse to take the impression our Lord would make on them. But even we—can we fail to be moved with wonder to-day at this great message, that God in heaven rejoices—exults in joy like this human father receiving back his son—when sinners repent and turn to Him? On less assurance than that of Jesus Christ Himself the thing were perhaps incredible. But on that assurance shall we not take its comfort to our hearts? We are sinners. And our only hope is in one who loves sinners; and has come into the world to die for sinners. Marvel, marvel beyond our conception; but, blessed be God, as true as marvellous. And when we know Him better, perhaps it may more and more cease to be a marvel. At least, one of those who have known Him best and served Him most richly in our generation, has taught us to sing thus of His wondrous death for us:

That He should leave His place on high.
And come for sinful man to die,
You count it strange?—so do not I,
Since I have known my Saviour.

Nay, had there been in all this wide
Wide world no other soul beside
But only mine, then He had died
That He might be its Saviour

Then had He left His Father's throne.
The joy untold, the love unknown,
And for that soul had given His own.
That He might be its Saviour!

Is that too high a flight for us—that passion of appropriation by which the love of Jesus for me—my own personal soul—is appreciated so fully that it seems natural to us that He, moved by that great love that was in Him for me—even me—should leave His throne that He might die for me,—just me,—even were there none else beside? At least we may assent to the dispassionate recognition that in the depths of our parable is hidden the revelation of that fundamental characteristic of Jesus Christ by virtue of which He did become the Saviour at least of sinners. And seeing this and knowing ourselves to be sinners, we may acknowledge Him afresh to-day as our Saviour, and at least gratefully join in our passionate sinner's prayer:

And oh! that He fulfilled may see
The travail of His soul in me,
And with His work contented be.
As I am with my Saviour!

Yea, living, dying, let me bring
My strength, my solace from this spring,
That He who lives to be my King,
Once died to be my Saviour!

The Prophesies of St. Paul¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

I. - I AND II THESSALONIANS 

The whole teaching, whether oral or written, of the Apostles of the New Testament, was essentially prophetic. St. Paul, in entire harmony with the Old Testament conception, defines a prophet to be one who "knows mysteries and knowledge" (I Cor. xiii. 2) and "speaks to men edification and exhortation and consolation" (I Cor. xiv. 3). This is a fair description of his own work; his Epistles are full of mysteries and knowledge, and speak to men edification, strengthening, and comfort. Among the mysteries which they declare - the word, we must remember, does not denote something inherently inscrutable, but only something as yet unknown and needing to be revealed - there are not lacking some that have to do with the future. We may properly speak, therefore, of Paul's prophecies, even in that narrow sense in which the word is popularly used, and which makes it synonymous with predictions. It is in this sense, indeed, although under a mild protest, that we use it in these papers. Our purpose is to study the predictions of Paul. 

We begin with his earliest writings, the Epistles to the Thessalonians, which were written at Corinth in A.D. 52 and 53. As is well known to every careful reader of the New Testament, these Epistles are also the richest in predictions of all Paul's writings. It is not too much to say that their main burden is the Coming of the Lord. To explanations concerning this, their only didactic portions are given; and, in the first Epistle at least, a constant allusion to it is woven like a golden thread throughout its whole texture, and each section, whatever its subject, is sure to reach its climax in a reference to it (i. 10; ii. 19; iii. 13; v. 23). This seems strange to some. And it has been suggested, either that the Apostle in his early ministry made more of the Second Advent in his teaching than growing wisdom permitted him to do later; or else, that at this particular period, amid the special trials of his work - the persecutions in Macedonia, the chill indifference at Athens, the discouragements that met him at Corinth - he had his heart turned more than was usual with him to the blessed consolation of a Christian's expectation of the coming glory. Both of these explanations are entirely gratuitous. A sufficient reason for this marked peculiarity lies at the hand of all in that other fact that distinguishes these letters from all their fellows - they are the only letters that have come down to us, which were addressed to an infant community just emerged from heathenism. 

For it is undeniable that the staple of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles was God and the Judgment. When addressing Jews he could appeal to prophecy, and he preached Jesus to them as Him whom all the prophets pointed unto, the Messiah whom God had graciously promised. But with Gentiles he could appeal only to conscience; and he preached Jesus to them as Him through whom God would judge the world in righteousness, whereof He hath given assurance to all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead. The address on the Areopagus, which was delivered only a few months before I Thessalonians was written, admirably illustrates how the Apostle tried to reach the consciences of his heathen hearers; and the totality of the message delivered in it was God (Acts xvii. 24-29) and the Judgment (Acts xvii. 30, 31). But if Christ coming for judgment was thus the very centre and substance of Paul's proclamation to the Gentiles, it would not be strange if he had dwelt upon it to the Thessalonians also. And that he had preached just in this strain to them, when, so shortly before writing this letter, he was with them, he tells us himself (I Thess. i. 9, 10). For, what he chiefly thanks God for in their case is that they "turned unto God from idols" in order to do two things: - "serve the living and true God," and "await patiently His Son from the heavens, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath." The parallel with the speech on Mars' Hill is precise; it almost looks as if the Apostle had repeated at Athens the sermon that had been so effective at Thessalonica. 

But we not only learn thus how it happens that Paul dwells so much on the Second Advent when writing to the Thessalonians, but we learn also what is much more important, - how he himself thought of the Advent and in what aspect he proclaimed it. Plainly to him it was above all things else the Judgment. It was the Judgment Day that he announced in its proclamation; and this was the lever with which he prized at Gentile consciences. "The day in which God will judge the world in righteousness" was what he proclaimed to the Athenians, and that it was just this that was in mind.in I Thess. i. 10 is evident from the office assigned to the expected Jesus, - "the Deliverer from the coming wrath." In harmony with this, every passage in which the Second Advent is adverted to in these Epistles conceives of it pointedly as the Judgment Day. The Apostle's eager desire for the purity and sanctification of his readers is always referred to the Advent: he wishes to have them to boast of before the Lord Jesus at His coming (I Thess. ii. 19), - he prays that their hearts may be established unblameworthy in holiness before God at the coming of our Lord Jesus (I Thess. iii. 13), - he beseeches the God of peace to preserve them in their whole being and all their faculties blameless, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Thess. v. 23), - he declares that the Day of the Lord will bring sudden destruction upon the wicked (I Thess. v. 3), and will draw a sharp line in justice between the good and bad (II Thess. i. 9). He speaks of the Advent freely as the "Day of the Lord" (I Thess. v. 2, 4; II Thess. i. 10), a term which from Joel down had stood in all prophecy as the synonym of the final judgment. 

The most important passage in this point of view is II Thess. i. 6-10, where the matter is not only treated at large, but the statements are explicit. Here the declaration is distinctly made that "at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven (evn th/ avpokalu,yei) together with the angels of His power, in a fire of flame," God will justly recompense affliction to those who persecuted the Thessalonians, and rest or relief to them. Both the statement of what is to occur and the definition of the time when it is to occur are to be here observed; and as the one can refer to nothing else than the distribution of rewards and punishments for the deeds done in the body, so the other can have no other reference than to the act of the coming of Christ. Both matters are made even plainer by what follows. The Apostle proceeds to declare broadly that this revelation of Jesus of which he is speaking is as one giving vengeance to those ignorant of God and those disobedient to the gospel - a vengeance that comes in the way of justice, and consists in eternal destruction away from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might. And so closely and even carefully is the time defined, that to the exact statement that all this occurs at the revelation of Christ from heaven, it is added at the end, that this "eternal destruction" takes place whenever (o[tan) the Lord gloriously comes, - "at that day." Unless the Apostle is here representing the persecutors of the Thessalonians as partakers in the horrors of the punitive side of the Second Advent because he expected and here asserts that the Advent was to come before that generation passed away - and this will not satisfy the general representation of verses 8 seq. - it is certain that he here thinks of the Advent, considered as an act and not as a state, as the last judgment itself, when 

"Nil inultum remanebit." 

In this case it would presuppose a general resurrection. 

That Paul had a resurrection in mind as accompanying the Second Advent is certain from another important passage (I Thess. iv. 13-18). The Thessalonians did not doubt that Jesus had risen from the dead (v. 14); but they had not realized even in thought all the consequents of this great fact. Like certain at a somewhat later date at Corinth, they did not understand that all men that die rise again by virtue of Christ's conquest of death. And thus, as they saw one and another of their own number "fall on sleep," they sorrowed inordinately over them, like the rest that have no hope. It is not exactly clear what they thought of the state of the dead, - whether they conceived of them as with Christ indeed, in Paradise, but condemned to an eternity of shade existence, separated from the body for ever, which seems to have been the case with their Corinthian fellow-errorists, - or whether they fancied that with the cessation of bodily activity, the whole life went out, as may be hinted in the sad words that they sorrowed as the rest who have no hope (v. 13). In either case the Apostle brings them quick consolation in the glad announcement that the resurrection of Christ implies that of those who have fallen asleep; and that, raised through Jesus, God will bring them with Him at His coming (v. 14). With this assurance he makes Christ's coming doubly precious to them. Then proceeding to more minute details, he declares that those who are alive and are left unto the coming of the Lord shall in no wise be beforehand with those who have fallen asleep; for the Lord will come with a shout, and with an archangel's voice, and with a blast of the trumpet of God, which will pierce even into the grave. Thus the rising of Christ's dead is secured before He reaches the earth; and only after they have joined the throng, are the living along with them to be caught up in (or on) clouds unto His meeting, - into the air, to " swell the triumph of His train." "So," adds the Apostle, "we shall be always with the Lord" (v. 17). Dire, then, as the coming will be to those who know not God and who obey not the gospel, it will be bliss unspeakable to those in Christ; and as the results, on the one side, are "eternal destruction away from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might" (II Thess. i. 9) ; so on the other they will be eternal dwelling with the Lord (I Thess. iv. 17). It goes without saying that the Apostle has the believing dead only in his mind in our present passage (iv. 16). How could he in such a passage speak of any other? But is not the parallel too close for us not to suspect that, as in the one case both the living and dead in Christ shall partake in the bliss and the living shall not precede the dead, so in the other the living who are left unto the Coming shall not precede those who have passed away, in receiving the terrible doom, and that the blare of the trumpet of God veritably 

"Coget omnes ante thronum "? 

Or is it more probable that Paul believed and taught that the Lord would certainly come before that generation passed away? There is no room to doubt that the Thessalonians expected the Advent in their own time. Their feelings towards death (I Thess. iv. 13 seq.) would be otherwise inexplicable. And it is worthy of note that the Apostle does not correct them in this belief. He points out to them that to fall asleep was not to miss the glory of the Advent, but that whether they waked or slept they should live together with their Lord (I Thess. v. 10). But he says no word that would declare them mistaken in expecting to live until "that day." On the contrary, he expresses himself in terms that left the possibility open that the Lord might come while they were still alive and left on the earth (I Thess. iv. 15, 17). This was far from asserting that the Lord would come in that generation; but, in the connexion in which the words stand, they would have been impossible had the Apostle felt justified in asserting that He would not come. And this appears to be the exact difference between the attitude of the Thessalonians and that of Paul; they confidently expected the Lord in their own day - he was in complete uncertainty when He would come. That He would assuredly come, to bring sudden destruction (I Thess. v. 3) upon all appointed unto wrath (v. 9) and rest and salvation to those in Christ, he was sure; but the times and seasons he knew perfectly were hidden in the Father's power (I Thess. v. 1). He might come soon - when He did come, it would be, he knew, with the unexpectedness of a thief in the night (I Thess. v. 2). But meanwhile, whether it found him waking or sleeping was of no moment; and though it became him to watch (I Thess. v. 6), yet the watch was to be not a nervous expectancy, but a quiet and patient waiting (I Thess. i. 10, avname,nein, cf. Judith viii. 17). But if, just because the "when" was unknown, the Apostle could not confidently expect the Lord in his own time, the categorical assertion that the Advent would bring "eternal destruction away from the face of the Lord" (II Thess. i. 9) to the special persecutors of the Thessalonians, rests on his view of the Advent as synchronous with the final judgment and presupposes a general resurrection. 

The very moderation of the Apostle's attitude made it difficult for the excited Thessalonians to yield themselves to his leading. Certainly his first letter did not allay their fanaticism. Things went rather from bad to worse, and so certain were they that the Lord was coming at once, that they fell an easy prey to every one who should cry "Lo, here! " or "Lo, there!" and even, apparently from this cause, began to neglect their daily business and became mere busybodies, refusing to work, and eating the bread of others. The Apostle sternly rebukes their disorder, and commands that they work with quietness; and with a view to preserving them from sudden agitation whenever any one chose to declare "The day of the Lord is upon us!" he points out certain events that must come before the Lord. That this practical, ethical purpose was the occasion of the important revelation in II Thess. ii. 1-12, the Apostle tells us himself (ii. 2). And a simple glance at his words is enough to expose the almost ludicrous inappropriateness of the contention of some that the error of the Thessalonians was not feverish expectancy of the Lord's coming, but the belief that the day of the Lord had already come and had brought none of the blessings they had expected from it, - not the Lord Himself, nor their resurrected friends, - nothing of all that the Apostle had taught and they had hoped.² What the Apostle says is that he wishes to save them from being suddenly shaken from their senses or troubled by any statement from any quarter, as that the day of the Lord was upon them. The passage is parallel to and probably founded upon the words of our Lord in His warning to His disciples not to be led astray or deceived by any "who should say, 'Lo, here is the Christ!' or 'Here!"' (Mt. xxiv. 23), and is already a valuable indication that throughout this whole section Paul has the great apocalyptic discourse of Jesus in mind and is to be interpreted from it. 

The impression has become very widespread that, owing to the lack on our part of the previous information to which Paul alludes as given by him on a former occasion to the Thessalonians (verses 5 and 6), the interpretation of this prophecy must remain for all time a sealed riddle to us. That two important events, called by Paul "the apostasy," and "the revelation of the man of sin," the latter of which was at the time deterred by something else mysteriously designated "the restraint," or "the restrainer," were to take place before the coming of the Lord - this, we are told, is all that we can know, and any effort to obtain any defined outlines for the misty shapes thus barely named to us only succeeds in bringing the dense darkness in which they are steeped into tangibility and visibility. We find it difficult to believe the matter so hopeless. On the contrary, the broad outlines, at least, of the prophecy appear to us sufficiently clear; and we believe that a sound method of study will give the humble student who is willing to put a stern check on his imagination and follow the leading of the exegetical hints alone, an adequately exact understanding of its chief details. 

First of all, we must try to keep fresh in our minds the great principle that all prophecy is ethical in its purpose, and that this ethical end controls not only what shall be revealed in general, but also the details of it and the very form which it takes. Next, we must not fail to observe that our present prophecy is not independent of previous ones, - that its roots are in Daniel, and from beginning to end it is full of allusions to our Lord's great apocalyptic discourse. Still again, we must bear in mind that it comes from a hand which throughout these Epistles preserves an attitude of uncertainty of the " times and seasons," and so expresses himself as to imply that he believed that the Lord might come, in despite of all these preliminary events, in his own day. 

If, holding fast to these principles, we approach the prophecy itself, we observe first of all, that although the three things - the Apostasy, the Revelation of the Man of Sin, and the Coming of the Lord - are brought together, they are not declared to be closely connected, or immediately consecutive to one another. The mere "and" of verse 3 reveals nothing beyond the simple fact that both of those events must come to pass before the Lord comes. So too for all that the prophecy tells us, both of these evil developments might come and pass away, and be succeeded by ages on ages which in turn might pass away, and yet men be able to say, "Where is the promise of His coming?" To point to the declaration in verse 8, that "the Lord Jesus shall destroy" the lawless one - almost, "blow him away" - "with the breath of His mouth and abolish him with the manifestation of His presence," as proving that he will still be lording it on earth when the Lord comes to his destruction, is to neglect the apparent indications of the context. For this assertion does not go, in either vividness or literality of expression, beyond what is stated just before of the generation then living (II Thess. i. 7, 9); and it is inserted here not as a chronological detail - and is out of place (cf. verses 9, seq.) if considered a chronological detail - but as part of the description of the lawless one, and for the ethical purpose of keeping in the mind of the reader his judgment by God and his final fate. In a word, this statement only declares of the Man of Sin what was just before declared of the lesser enemies of the Gospel, and what was in I Thess. v. 3 seq. declared of all to whom wrath is appointed - that he shall meet with destruction at the Second Coming of the Lord. The revelation of the Man of Sin is not, then, necessarily to be sought at the end of time: we know of it, only that it will succeed the removal of the "restraint," and precede, by how much we are not told, the coming of the Lord. 

We cannot fail to observe, however, next, that in his description of the Man of Sin, the Apostle has a contemporary, or nearly contemporary phenomenon in mind. The withholding power is already present. Although the Man of Sin is not yet revealed, as a mystery his essential "lawlessness" is already working - "only until the present restrainer be removed from the midst." He expects him to sit in "the temple of God," which perhaps most naturally refers to the literal temple in Jerusalem, although the Apostle knew that the out-pouring of God's wrath on the Jews was close at hand (I Thess. ii. 16). And if we compare the description which the Apostle gives of him with our Lord's address on the Mount of Olives (Mt. xxiv.), to which, as we have already hinted, Paul makes obvious allusion, it becomes at once in the highest degree probable that in the words, "he that exalteth himself against all that is called God, or is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the sanctuary of God showing himself that he is God," Paul can have nothing else in view than what our Lord described as "the abomination of desolation which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place" (Mt. xxiv. 15); and this our Lord connects immediately with the beleaguering of Jerusalem (cf. Luke xxi. 20). This obvious parallel, however, not only places the revelation of the Man of Sin in the near future, but goes far towards leading us to his exact identification. Our Lord's words not only connect him with the siege of Jerusalem, but place him distinctly among the besiegers; and, led by the implication of the original setting of the phrase (in Dan. xi. 36) which Paul uses, we cannot go far wrong in identifying him with the Roman emperor. 

Whether a single emperor was thought of or the line of emperors, is a more difficult question. The latter hypothesis will best satisfy the conditions of the problem; and we believe that the line of emperors, considered as the embodiment of persecuting power, is the revelation of iniquity hidden under the name of the Man of Sin. With this is connected in the description certain other traits of Roman imperialism - more especially the rage for deification, which, in the person of Caligula, had already given a foretaste of what was to come. It was Nero, then, the first persecutor of the Church, - and Vespasian the miracle-worker,³ - and Titus, who introduced his divine-self and his idolatrous insignia into the Holy of Holies, perhaps with a directly anti-Christian intent,⁴ - and Domitian, - and the whole line of human monsters whom the world was worshipping as gods, on which, as a nerve-cord of evil, these hideous ganglia gathered, - these and such as these it was that Paul had in mind when he penned this hideous description of the son of perdition, every item of which was fulfilled in the terrible story of the emperors of Rome. 

The restraining power, on this hypothesis, appears to be the Jewish state. For the continued existence of the Jewish state was both graciously and naturally a protection to Christianity, and hence a restraint on the revelation of the persecuting power. Graciously, it was God's plan to develop Christianity under the protection of Judaism for a short set time, with the double purpose of keeping the door of salvation open to the Jews until all of their elect of that generation should be gathered in and the apostasy of the nation should be rendered doubly and trebly without excuse, and of hiding the tender infancy of the Church within the canopy of a protecting sheath until it should grow strong enough to withstand all storms. Naturally, the effect of the continuance of Judaism was to conceal Christianity from notice through a confusion of it with Judaism - to save it thus from being declared an illicit religion -- and to enable it to grow strong under the protection accorded to Jewish worship. So soon as the Jewish apostasy was complete and Jerusalem given over to the Gentiles - God deserting the temple which was no longer His temple to the fury of the enemies, of those who were now His enemies - the separation of Christianity from Judaism, which had already begun, became evident to every eye; the conflict between the new faith and heathenism culminating in and now alive almost only in the Emperor-worship, became intense; and the persecuting power of the empire was inevitably let loose. Thus the continued existence of Judaism was in the truest sense a restraint on the persecution of Christians, and its destruction gave the signal for the lawless one to be revealed in his time.

If the masculine form of "the restrainer" in verse 7 demands interpretation as a person - which we more than doubt - it might possibly be referred without too great pressure to James of Jerusalem, God's chosen instrument in keeping the door of Christianity open for the Jews and by so doing continuing and completing their probation. Thus he may be said to have been the upholder of the restraining power, the savour of the salt that preserved the Christians from persecution, and so in a high sense the restrainer. 

Finally, in this interpretation, the apostasy is obviously the great apostasy of the Jews, gradually filling up all these years and hastening to its completion in their destruction. That the Apostle certainly had this rapidly completing apostasy in his mind in the severe arraignment that he makes of the Jews in I Thess. ii. 14-16, which reached its climax in the declaration that they were continually filling up more and more full the measure of their sins, until already the measure of God's wrath was prematurely (e;fqasen) filled up against them and was hanging over them like some laden thunder-cloud ready to burst and overwhelm them, - adds an additional reason for supposing his reference to be to this apostasy - above all others, "the" apostasy - in this passage. 

We venture to think that the core of this interpretation may be accounted very probable, - so much of it as this: that the Apostle had in view in this prophecy a development in the immediate future closely connected with the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem, although not as if that were the coming of Christ for which he was patiently waiting, but rather in full recognition of its being only the culmination of the Jewish apostasy and the falling of God's wrath upon them to the uttermost. When he declares that these events must precede the coming of Christ, this no doubt was clear evidence that the Advent was not to be looked for immediately; but was in no wise inconsistent with uncertainty whether it would come during that generation or not. As a matter of mere fact the growing apostasy of the Jews was completed - the abomination of desolation had been set up in the sanctuary - Jerusalem and the temple, and the Jewish state were in ruins - Christianity stood naked before her enemies - and the persecuting sword of Divus Caesar was unsheathed and Paul had himself felt its keenness: all the prophecy had been fulfilled before two decades had passed away. 

Let us gather up for the close, in brief recapitulation, the events which Paul predicts in these two Epistles. First of all, and most persistently of all, he predicts the coming of the Lord from heaven unto judgment, with its glorious accompaniments of hosts of angels, the shout, the voice of the archangel and the blast of the trumpet of God that awake the dead. Thus, he predicts the resurrection of Christ's dead to partake in the glory of His coming. Then, he foretells the results of the judgment - eternal destruction from the face of God for the wicked, and everlasting presence with the Lord for His own. Of the time of the Advent the Apostle professes ignorance; he only knows that it will come unexpectedly. But he does know that before it the apostasy of the Jews must be completed, and the persecuting power of the Roman state be revealed. This apostasy and its punishment he sees is immediately ready for completion (I Thess. ii. 16). Finally, he mentions having previously foretold the persecutions under which the Thessalonians were already suffering (I Thess. iii. 4). 

II. - THE EPISTLES TO THE GALATIANS, CORINTHIANS, AND ROMANS 

When we pass from the Epistles to the Thessalonians to the next group of letters - those to the Galatians, Corinthians and Romans, all four of which were written in the course of a single year, some five years later (A.D. 57-58) - we are at once aware of a great diminution in the allusions to the future. Galatians contains rather more matter than both letters to the Thessalonians, but does not contain a single prediction; and the much longer letter to the Romans, while alluding now and then to what the future was to bring forth, contains no explicit mention of the Second Advent. The first letter to the Corinthians is three times as long as both letters to the Thessalonians, but contains rather less predictive matter. We should not be far wrong if we estimated that these four letters, in about nine times the space, give us about as much eschatological matter as the two letters to the Thessalonians. 

The contrast exists in nothing else, however, except the mere matter of amount. The two groups of letters are thoroughly at one in their teaching as to the future - at one, but not mere repetitions of one another. This group is continually supplying what almost seems to be explanations and extensions of the revelations in Thessalonians, so that it exhibits as great an advance in what is revealed as decrease in the relative amount of space given to revelations. So clear is it that the Apostle's preaching to all heathen communities was in essence the same, and that all grew up to the stature of manhood in Christ through practically the same stages, that we may look upon the Thessalonian letters as if they had been addressed to the infancy of every Church, and treat those at present before us as if they were intended to supplement them. This is probably the true account of the very strong appearance of being supplementary and explanatory to those in the letters to Thessalonica, which the predictions in this group of letters are continually presenting. 

In these as in those, the Second Advent is represented primarily and most prominently in the aspect of judgment - as the last judgment. Here, too, the desire for moral perfection is referred constantly to it, as for example in I Cor. i. 8 cf. 7, where the actual moment in mind is that of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mutual glorying of the Apostle and his readers in each other is to be "in the day of our Lord Jesus" (I Cor. i. 8). This is the day of punishment also: the incestuous man is delivered now unto Satan to be punished in the flesh in order that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (I Cor. v. 5) ; and in exactly similar wise, those who are visited with bodily ills for unworthy partaking of the Lord's Supper, receive this chastening that they may not be condemned with the world (I Cor. xi. 32). The sanction of the anathema pronounced against all who do not love the Lord is Maranatha - "the Lord cometh!" (I Cor. xvi. 22). His coming is indeed so sharply defined as the time of judging, in the mind of Paul, that he advises his readers to "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come" (I Cor. iv. 5). The connotation of "the day of the Lord" was to him so entirely judgment, that the word "day" had come to mean judgment to him, and he actually uses it as its synonym, speaking of a "human day," for "human judgment" (I Cor. iv. 3). Of like import is the representation of the second coming as the great day of revelation of character. Of the builders on the edifice of God's Church it is declared that "each man's work shall be made manifest by 'the day."' "For the day is revealed in fire, and each man's work, of what sort it is, - the fire itself shall test." "If any man's work abideth, he shall receive reward; if any man's work is burned up, he shall be mulcted, but himself shall be saved, but so as through fire" (I Cor. iii. 13-15). It is scarcely an extension of this teaching to declare openly that when the Lord comes, He "will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall his praise come to each from God" (I Cor. iv. 5). 

In the light of this it is evident what time the Apostle has in mind when he declares that "all of us must needs be made manifest⁵ before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each may receive the things [done] through the body according to what he practised, whether good or bad" (II Cor. v. 10); and which day to him was "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ" - "the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Rom. ii. 16, 5). Yet, in this last passage it is beyond all question that the Apostle has in mind the final judgment, when God "will render to every man according to his works," and the two verses which have been adduced are respectively the opening and closing verse of the splendid passage in which Paul gives us his fullest description of the nature and standards of the awful trial to which all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether those who have law or those who have no law, are summoned "in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel through Christ Jesus." Elsewhere in Romans, where judgment necessarily holds an important place in the general argument, the wrath of God is kept hanging over ungodliness and unrighteousness (i. 18; iii. 5; v. 9) and the coming judgment is held before the eyes of the reader (iii. 6; xiv. 10). 

For the realization of such a judgment scene (Rom. ii. 5-16; II Cor. v. 10; Rom. xiv. 10), a resurrection is presupposed, and the reference of the Apostle is obvious when he expresses his confidence that "He who raised up Jesus shall raise up us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you" (II Cor. iv. 14; cf. v. 10; also I Cor. vi. 14). In this compressed sentence, there is pointed out the relation of our resurrection both to the judgment (parasth/sei, cf. Col. i. 22) as preceding and in order to it, and to the resurrection of Christ (su.n  vIhsou/, cf. the use of sunegei,rw in Col. ii. 12; iii. 1) as included in it as a necessary result and part of it. The latter matter is made very plain by the remarkably simple way in which Jesus is declared in Rom. i. 4 to have been marked out as the Son of God "by the resurrection of the dead" - a phrase which has no meaning except on the presupposition that the raising of Jesus was the beginning of the resurrection of the dead and part and parcel of it (cf. also Rom. vi. 4; viii. 11, etc.). 

At this point our attention is claimed by that magnificent combined argument and revelation contained in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians, which has been the instruction and consolation of the saints through all Christian ages. The occasion which called it forth was singularly like and singularly unlike that which gave rise to the parallel revelation in I Thessalonians. As in the one Church so in the other, there were those who failed to grasp the great truth of the Resurrection, and laid their dead away without hope of their rising again. But in Thessalonica this was due to sorrowing ignorance; in Corinth, to philosophizing pride of intellect. And in the one case, the Apostle meets it with loving instruction; in the other, with a brilliant refutation which confounds opposition, and which, although carrying a tender purpose buried in its bosom, as all the world has felt, yet flashes with argument and even here and there burns with sarcasm. The Corinthian errorists appear to have been spiritualistic philosophizers, perhaps of the Platonic school, who, convinced of the immortality of the soul, thought of the future life as a spiritual one in which men attained perfection apart from, perhaps largely because separate from, the body. They looked for and desired no resurrection; and their formula, perhaps somewhat scoffingly and certainly somewhat magisterially pronounced, was: "There is no rising again of dead men." It is instructive to observe how the Apostle meets their assertion. They did not deny the resurrection of Christ (I Cor, xv. 2, 11) - probably explaining it as a miracle like the reanimation of Lazarus. Yet the Apostle begins by laying firm the proofs of Christ's resurrection (xv. 1-11), and doing this in such a way as to suggest that they needed primary instruction. He "makes known to them," rather than reminds them of the Gospel which he and all the Apostles preached and all Christians believed. With this opening sarcasm, he closes the way of retreat through a denial of the resurrection of Christ, and then presses as his sole argument the admitted fact that Christ had risen. How could they deny that dead men rise, when Christ, who was a dead man, had risen? If there is no resurrection of dead men, then not even is Christ risen. It is plain that their whole position rested on the assertion of the impossibility of resurrection; to which it was a conclusive reply that they confessed it in one case. Having uncovered their logical inconsistency, Paul leaves at once the question of fact and presses at length the hideous corollaries that flow from their denial of the possibility of dead men rising, through its involved denial that Jesus, the dead man, had risen - aiming, no doubt, at arousing a revulsion against a doctrine fruitful of such consequences (xv. 14-34). 

Having thus moved his readers to shame, he proceeds to meet squarely their real objection to the resurrection, by a full explanation of the nature of the resurrection-body (xv. 35-50), to which he adjoins a revelation concerning the occurrences of the last day (xv. 51-58). To each of these we should give a moment's attention. 

The intimate connexion of our resurrection with that of Christ, which we have seen Paul everywhere insisting upon, would justify the inference that the nature of our resurrection-bodies was revealed to men in His resurrection-body, that was seen and handled of men for forty days. This is necessarily implied in the assumption that underlies the argument at I Cor. xv. 12 sq., and is almost openly declared at verse 49; II Cor. iv. 14; Rom. viii. 11. In our present passage, however, the Apostle reserves this for the last, and begins by setting forth from natural analogies the possibility of a body being truly one's own body and yet differing largely from that which has hitherto been borne. This is an assertion of sameness and difference. At verse 42 he proceeds to explain the differences in detail. As the change in the form of expression advises us, the enumeration divides itself into two parts at the end of verse 43 - the former portion describing in threefold contrast, the physical, and the latter in a single pregnant phrase the moral difference. On the one hand the new bodies that God will give us will no longer be liable to corruption, dishonour or weakness. On the other, they will no longer be under the power of the only partially sanctified human nature, but rather will be wholly informed, determined and led by the Holy Ghost (verse 44). That this is the meaning of the much disputed phrase: "It is sown a natural (psychic) body, it is raised a spiritual (pneumatic) body," is demonstrable from the usage of the words employed. It is plain matter of fact that "psychic" in the New Testament naturally means and is uniformly used to express "self-led" in contrast to "God-led," and therefore, unconverted or unsanctified; while "pneumatic" never sinks in the New Testament so low in its connotation as the human spirit, but always (with the single exception of Eph. vi. 12, where superhuman evil spirits are in mind) refers to "Spirit" in its highest sense, - the Holy Ghost.⁶ In this compressed phrase, thus, the Apostle declares that in this life believers do not attain to complete sanctification (Rom. vii. 14-viii. 11), but groan in spirit awaiting the redemption of the body (Rom. viii. 23, vii. 24); while in the heavenly life even their bodies will no longer retain remainders of sin, but will be framed by (Rom. viii. 11), filled with, and led by the Holy Ghost. The incomparable importance of this moral distinction over the merely physical ones is illustrated by the Apostle's leaving them to devote the next five verses to the justification of this, closing (verse 50) with a chiasmic recapitulation in which he pointedly puts the moral difference first: "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." For, that "flesh and blood" must here be understood ethically and not physically is already evident from the preceding context and is put beyond question by the settled ethical sense of the phrase - which is, of course, used in the New Testament also only in its established ethical sense, and could not be used otherwise without misleading the reader. All crass inferences that have been drawn from it, therefore, in a physical sense are illegitimate to start with, and are negatived to end with by the analogy of Christ's resurrection-body, which we have seen Paul to understand to be a case under the rule, and which certainly had flesh and bones (Luke xxiv. 39). Paul does not deny to our resurrection-body, therefore, materiality, which would be a contradictio in adjecto; he does not deny "flesh" to it, - which he hints, rather, will be its material, though of "another" kind than we are used to (verse 39) ; he denies to it  "fleshliness" in any, even the smallest degree, and weakness of any and every sort. In a word, he leaves it human but makes it perfect. 

After so full an explanation of the nature of the resurrection-body, it was inevitable that deeper questions should arise concerning the fate of those found by the advent still clothed in their bodies of humiliation. Hence a further revelation was necessary beyond what had been given to the Thessalonians, and the Apostle adds to that, that those found living shall be the subjects of an instantaneous change which will make them fit companions for the perfected saints that have slept. For when the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised incorruptible, they too in the twinkling of an eye shall be "changed." And the change is for them as for the dead a putting on of incorruption and of immortality. The spectacle of these multitudes, untouched by death, receiving their perfect and immortal bodies is the great pageant of the conquest of death, and the Apostle on witnessing it in spirit cannot restrain his shout of victory over that whilom enemy of the race, whose victory is now reversed and the sinews of whose fatal sting wherewith it had been wont to slay men are now cut. So complete is Christ's conquest that it looses its hold over its former victims and the men still living cannot die. The rapidity of action on "the great day" is also worth notice. The last trump sounds - the dead spring forth from the grave - the living in the twinkling of an eye are changed - and all together are caught up into the air to His meeting, - or ever the rushing train of angels that surround their Lord and ours can reach the confines of the earth. Truly events stay not, when the Lord comes. 

Important as these revelations are, they become almost secondary when compared with the contents of that wonderful passage I Cor. xv. 20-28, the exceeding richness of which is partially accounted for by the occasion of its utterance. It comes in the midst of Paul's effort to move his readers by painting the terrible consequences of denial of the possibility of resurrection, involving denial of the fact that Christ has risen. He feels the revulsion he would beget in them, and relieves his overburdened heart by suddenly turning to rest a moment on the certainty of Christ's rising, and to sweep his eye over all the future, noting the effects of that precious fact up to the end. He begins by reasserting the inclusion of our resurrection in that of Christ, who was but the first-fruits of those asleep, and then justifies it by an appeal to the parallel of Adam's work of destruction, declaring, apparently, that as physical death came upon all men through Adam's sin, so all men shall be rescued from its bondage by Christ's work of redemption. The context apparently confines the word "death" in these verses to its simple physical sense, while on the contrary the "all" of both clauses seems unlimited, and the context appears to furnish nothing to narrow its meaning to a class. They thus assert the resurrection of all men without distinction as dependent on and the result of Christ's work, just as all men, even the redeemed, taste of death as the result of Adam's sin. "But" the Apostle adds, returning to the Christian dead, "this resurrection though certain, is not immediate; each rises in his own place in the ranks - Christ is the first-fruits, then His own rise at His coming; then is the end" (verses 23, 24). The interminable debates that have played around the meaning of this statement are the outgrowth of strange misconceptions. Because the resurrection of the wicked is not mentioned it does not at all follow that it is excluded; the whole section has nothing to do with the resurrection of the wicked (which is only incidentally included and not openly stated in the semi-parenthetic explanations of verses 21 and 22), but, like the parallel passage in I Thessalonians, confines itself to the Christian dead. Nor is it exegetically possible to read the resurrection of the wicked into the passage as a third event to take place at a different time from that of the good, as if the Apostle had said: "Each shall rise in his own order; Christ the first-fruits, - then Christ's dead at His coming, - then, the end of the resurrection, namely of the wicked." The term "the end," is a perfectly definite one with a set and distinct meaning, and from Matthew (e.g. xxiv. 6, cf. 14) throughout the New Testament, and in these very epistles (I Cor. i. 8; 11 Cor. i. 13, 14), is the standing designation of the "end of the ages," or the "end of the world." It is illegitimate to press it into any other groove here. Relief is not however got by varying the third term, so as to make it say that "then comes the end, accompanied by the resurrection of the wicked," for this is importing into the passage what there is absolutely nothing in it to suggest. The word ta,gma does not in the least imply succession; but means "order" only in the sense of that word in such phrases as "orders of society." Neither does the "they that are Christ's" prepare the mind to expect a statement as to " those who are not Christ's," any more than in Rom. ix. 6, when we hear of "Israel," and "those of Israel," we expect immediately to hear of " those not of Israel." The contrast is entirely absorbed by the "Christ" of the preceding clause, and only the clumsiness of our English gives a different impression. Not only, however, is there no exegetical basis for this exposition in this passage; the whole theory of a resurrection of the wicked at a later time than the resurrection of the just is excluded by this passage. Briefly, this follows from the statement that after the coming of Christ, "then comes the end" (verse 24). No doubt the mere word "then" (ei=ta) does not assert immediateness, and for ought necessarily said in it, "the end" might be only the next event mentioned by the Apostle, although the intervening interval should be vast and crowded with important events. But the context here necessarily limits this "then" to immediate subsequence. 

Exegetically this follows, indeed, from the relation of verse 28 to 23b, for the long delay asserted in which it assigns the reason: Christ's children rise not with Him, because death is the last enemy to be conquered by Him, and their release from death cannot, therefore, come until all His conquests are completed. The matter can be reduced, however, to the stringency of a syllogism. "The end" is declared to take place "whenever Christ giveth over (the immediateness is asserted by the present) the kingdom to God"; and this occurs "whenever He shall have conquered" all His enemies, the last of which to be conquered is death (verse 26). Shortly, then, the end comes so soon as death is conquered. But death is already conquered when it is forced to loose its hold on Christ's children; and that is at the Parousia (ver. 23). If any should think to escape this, as if it were an inference, it would be worth while to glance at verse 54, where it is, as we have seen, asserted that the victory over death is complete and his sting destroyed at the Second Advent, and that the rising of Christ's dead is a result of this completed conquest. The end then is synchronous with the victory over death, which itself is synchronous with the second coming, and if the wicked rise at all (which verses 21, 22 assert), it is all one whether we say they rise at the Advent or at the end, since these two are but two names for the same event. Of this, indeed, Paul's language elsewhere should have convinced us: "who shall also confirm you unto the end, unaccusable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Cor. i. 8), "I hope ye will acknowledge unto the end, . . . that we are your glorying even as ye are also ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus" (II Cor. i. 14). So then, the Second Advent is represented to be itself "THE END." 

With the emergence of this fact, the importance of our present passage is revealed. It is immediately seen to open to us the nature of the whole dispensation in which we are living, and which stretches from the First to the Second Advent, as a period of advancing conquest on the part of Christ. During its course He is to conquer "every rulership and every authority and power" (verse 24), and "to place all His enemies under His feet" (verse 25), and it ends when His conquests complete themselves by the subjugation of the "last enemy," death. We purposely say, period of "conquest," rather than of "conflict," for the essence of Paul's representation is not that Christ is striving against evil, but progressively (e;scatoj, verse 26) overcoming evil, throughout this period. A precious passage in the Epistle to the Romans (xi. 25 sq., cf. verse 15) draws the veil aside to gladden our eyes with a nearer view of some of these victories; telling us that "the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brought into" the Church, and after that "all Israel shall be saved," and by their salvation great blessings, - such a spiritual awakening as can only be compared to "life from the dead" - shall be brought to all God's people. There may be some doubt as to the exact meaning of these phrases. The "fulness of the Gentiles," however, in accordance with the usual sense of the genitive with "pleroma," and the almost compulsion of the context, should mean, not the Gentile contingent to the elect, but the whole body of the Gentiles.⁷ And "Israel" almost certainly means not the true but the fleshly "Israel." In this case, the prophecy promises the universal Christianization of the world,-at least the nominal conversion of all the Gentiles and the real salvation of all the Jews. In any understanding of it, it promises the widest practicable extension of Christianity, and reveals to us Christ going forth to victory. But in this, which seems to us the true understanding, it gives us a glimpse of the completion of His conquest over spiritual wickedness, and allows us to see in the spirit the fulfilment of the prayer, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth even as it is in heaven." It is natural to think that such a victory cannot be wrought until the end is hastening - that with its completion nothing will remain to be conquered but death itself. But the Apostle does not tell us this,⁸ and we know not from him how long the converted earth is to await its coming Lord. 

An even more important fact faces us in the wonderful revelation we have been considering (I Cor. xv. 20-28): the period between the two advents is the period of Christ's kingdom, and when He comes again it is not to institute His kingdom, but to lay it down (verses 24, 28). The completion of His conquest, which is marked by conquering "the last enemy," death (verse 28), which in turn is manifest when the just arise and Christ comes (verses 54, 23), marks also the end of His reign (verse 25) and the delivery of the kingdom to God, even the Father (verse 24). This is indubitably Paul's assertion here, and it is in perfect harmony with the uniform representation of the New Testament, which everywhere places Christ's kingdom before and God's after the Second Advent. The contrast in Mt. xiii. 41 and 43 is not accidental. We cannot enter into the many deep questions that press for discussion when this ineffable prediction is even approached. Suffice it to say that when we are told that Jesus holds the kingship for a purpose (verse 25), namely the completion of His mediatorial work, and that when it is accomplished He will restore it to Him who gave it to Him (verse 28), and thus the Father will again become "all relations among all creations," - nothing is in the remotest way suggested inconsistent with the co-equal Deity of the Son with the Father and His eternal co-regnancy with Him over the universe. Manifestly we must distinguish between the mediatorial kingship which Jesus exercises by appointment of His Father, and the eternal kingship which is His by virtue of His nature, and which is one with God's own. 

As to the duration of Christ's kingdom - or in other words the length of time that was to elapse before the Lord came - Paul says nothing in this passage. Nor does he anywhere in these Epistles speak more certainly about it than in those to the Thessalonians (I Cor. i. 7; xi. 26). He so expresses himself as to leave the possibility open that the Lord might come in his own time (I Cor. xv. 51); but he makes it a matter for experience to decide whether He will or not (II Cor. v. 1, eva,n with the subjunctive, cf. verse 3 sq.). It is only through misunderstanding that passages have been adduced as asserting a brief life for the world. When (I Cor. x. 11) the "ends of the ages" are said to have already come, a technical term is used which declares that after this present inter-adventual period there remains no further earthly dispensation, but nothing is implied as to the duration of these "last times" (acharith hayyamim). So, when (I Cor. vii. 25-29) the Corinthians are advised to refrain from earthly entanglements because of "the impending distress," which should shortly tear asunder every human tie, there is nothing to show that the Apostle had the Second Advent in mind, and everthing in the Neronian persecution and the wars of succession and the succeeding trials to Christians to fully satisfy the prediction.⁹ The very difficult passage at Rom. xiii. 11-14 appears also to have been misapplied to the advent by the modern exegesis. Its obvious parallels are Eph. v. 1-14 and I Thess. v. 1-11. The whole gist of the passage turns on moral awaking; and the word "salvation" appears to refer to the consummation of salvation in a subjective rather than objective sense (Rom. x. 10; II Thess. ii. 13) ; while the aorist, "When we believed," seems not easily to lend itself to furnishing a terminus a quo for the calculation of time, but rather to express the act by which their salvation was brought closer. So that the meaning of the passage would seem to be: "Fulfil the law of love, I say. I appeal to you for renewed efforts by your knowledge of the time: that it is high time for you at length to awake out of sleep. Long ago when you believed, you professed to have come out of darkness into light, and to have shaken yourselves free from the inertia as well as deeds of the night. Now salvation is closer to us than it was when we made that step. Having begun, we have advanced somewhat towards the goal. The night of sin in which the call for repentance found us is passing away. Let us take off at length our night-clothes, and buckle on the armour for the good fight - yea, let us rid ourselves of all that belongs to the night, and put on the Lord Jesus Himself." If this understanding is correct, the Apostle does not count the days and assert that the time that had elapsed since his conversion had nearly run the sands of all time out, but rather appeals to his readers to renew their strenuous and hearty working out of their salvation by the encouragement that they had already progressed somewhat on the road, and could more easily and hopefully take a second step. 

There remain two very interesting passages (II Cor. v. 1-10; Rom. viii. 18-25) which give us an insight as no others do into the Apostle's personal feelings towards this life, death, and the Advent. Nowhere else are the trials under which he suffered life so clearly revealed to us as in the opening chapters of II Corinthians. Amid them all, the very allusions to which, lightly touched as they are, appal us, the Apostle is upheld by the greatness of his ministry and the greatness of his hope. Though his outward man is worn away - what then? He need not faint, for his inward man is renewed day by day, and this affliction is light compared with the eternal weight of glory in store for him. He longs for the rest of the future life (cf. also Rom. vii. 25); but he shrinks from death. He could desire rather to be alive when the Lord comes, and that he might put on "the house from God, the dwelling not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," over this "earthly tent-dwelling" which he now inhabits. He only desires - does not expect this; he does not at all know whether he shall be found not naked when the putting-on time comes. But he longs for relief from the burdens of life, that somehow this mortality may be swallowed up of life. And when he bethinks him that to be at home in the body is to be abroad from the Lord, the other world is so glorious to him that he is not only willing but even desires ("rather," verse 8) to enter it even "naked" - he is well pleased to go abroad from the body and go home to the Lord. Like Bunyan and the sweet singer, Paul, looking beyond the confines of earth, can only say, "Would God that I were there!" This longing for relief from earthly life is repeated in Romans (vii. 25), and the groaning expectation of the consummation as the swallowing up of corruption in incorruption is attributed in the wonderful words of Romans viii. 18 sq. to the whole of the lower creation. All nature, says Paul, travails in the same longing. And the consummation brings not only relief to Christ's children, who have received the firstfruits of the Spirit, in the redemption of the body, but also deliverance and renovation to all nature as well. This noble conception was implied already in the teaching of the Old Testament, not only in its declaration that the world was cursed for man's sake (Rom. viii. 20), but in the prediction of a new heavens and a new earth (verse 21). Paul here simply takes his position in the company of the prophets.

The glories of the future world find comparative expression again in I Cor. xiii. 10-13 as not only spiritual but eternal and perfect. There are besides two rapid allusions to future glories which are so slightly touched on in contexts of stinging satire as not fully to explain themselves. The one reminds the saints that they shall judge the world and angels (I Cor. vi. 2, 3), and the other assumes that at some time or other, they are to come to a kingship (I Cor. iv. 8). Out of our present epistles alone the time and circumstances when these promises shall be fulfilled can scarcely be confidently asserted. We can only say that if the reigning of the saints refers to a co-reigning with Christ (cf. II Tim. ii. 12), it must be fulfilled before Christ lays down His kingdom. And in like manner the judging must come before the Advent, unless it refers only to the part the saints take in the last judgment scene (cf. Mt. xix. 28; xxv. 31). The Apostle expects his readers to understand his allusions out of knowledge obtained elsewhere than in these epistles. Perhaps he has in mind such "words of the Lord" as are recorded in Luke xxii. 29, 30. For us, the whole matter may rest for the present sub judice.

III.- THE LATER EPISTLES

The distribution of the predictive passage through the letters written by St. Paul during his first imprisonment, - Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians (A.D. 62 and 63), - is analogous to what we have observed in the preceding group. In the more theological and polemical letters, as there, so here, such passages are few, while in the more practical and personal letters they are comparatively numerous. The Second Advent is not directly mentioned at all in Ephesians, and only once, and then very incidentally, in Colossians; while, although the brief and purely occasional letter to Philemon naturally enough contains no allusions to the future, the Epistle to the Philippians, which resembles in general manner and contents the letters to the Corinthians and Thessalonians, like them too is full of them. The nature of the eschatological matter which is found in each epistle is in striking harmony with its purpose and general character: in Ephesians and Colossians it is confined to allusions, sometimes somewhat obscure, to eschatological facts which are introduced usually with a theological or polemic object; in Philippians, where Paul pours out his heart, it is free and rich, and usually has a direct personal design of encouragement or consolation. In all these epistles alike, however, it is introduced only incidentally - no section has it as its chief end to record the future; but in Philippians it is more fully and lovingly dwelt upon, in Ephesians and Colossians more allusively touched. It is not surprising, under such circumstances, that very little is revealed to us concerning the future in these epistles beyond what was already contained in the earlier letters, the teaching of which most commonly furnishes the full statement of the facts here briefly referred to. Now and then, however, they cast a ray of light on points or sides of the truth which were not before fully illuminated, and thus enable us to count distinct gains from their possession. Nowhere are they out of harmony with what the earlier epistles have revealed.

The eschatological contents of the twin letters, Ephesians and Colossians, will illustrate all this very sharply. Much is made in them of an inheritance of hope laid up in heaven for the saints in light (Eph. i. 14, cf. ii. 7 ; Col. i. 12, i. 5 : cf. iii. 24). The time of its realization is when Christ our life shall be manifested, at which time we also shall be manifested with Him in glory (Col. iii. 4). It is clearly presupposed that the reception of the inheritance is conditioned on a previous judgment. We must be made meet for it by the Father, by a deliverance from the power of darkness and translation into the kingdom of Him by whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins (Col. i. 12). Whatsoever good thing each one does, the same he shall certainly receive from the Lord (Eph. vi. 8). The inheritance itself is thus a recompense for our service here (Col. iii. 24). Judgment again is implied in the constant undertone of allusion to a presentation of us by God or Christ, pure and blameless and unaccusable at once before Christ and in Christ (Eph. i. 22; Col. i. 22, 28). But if Christ is thus the judge, we naturally enough are to live our life here in His fear (Eph. v. 21). The resurrection of the saints is implied now and then (Col. ii. 12, 13; cf. Eph. v. 23), and once asserted in the declaration that Christ has become "the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Col. i. 18). The nature of this inter-adventual period is explained with apparent reference to some such teaching as is given in I Cor. xv. 25, to be a period of conflict (Eph. vi. 12), and its opening days are hence said to be evil (Eph. v. 16), though, no doubt, the evil will decrease as conflict passes into victory. The enemies of the Lord are named as principalities and powers, and their subjugation was potentially completed at His death and resurrection (Col. ii. 15). The actual completion of the victory and subjection of all things to the Son is briefly re-stated in each epistle. In the one it is declared that God has purposed with reference to the dispensation of the fulness of the times (i.e. this present dispensation of the ends of the ages, I Cor. x. 11) to gather again all things as under one head in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon earth (Eph. i. 10). In the other it is said that it was the Father's good pleasure that all the fulness should dwell in the Son, and that through Him all things should be reconciled to Him, whether things upon the earth or things in the heavens, and that this reconciliation should be wrought by His blood outpoured on the cross (Col. i. 19). The only difference between such statements and such a one as II Cor. v. 19 is that these deal with the universe, while that treats only of man, and hence these presuppose the full teaching implied in I Cor. xv. 10-28 and Rom. viii. 18-25, and sum up in a single pregnant sentence the full effects of the Saviour's work. The method of Christ's attack on the principalities and powers and world-rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness, and the means by which He will work His victory, are declared at Eph. vi. 12; from which we learn - as we might have guessed from Rom. xi. 25, sq. - that Christians are His soldiers in this holy war, and it is through our victory that His victory is known. It is easy to see that there is nothing new in all this, and yet there is much that has the appearance of being new. We see everything from a different angle; the light drops upon it from a new point, and the effect is to bring out new relations in the old truths and give us a feeling of its substantialness. We become more conscious that we are looking at solid facts, with fronts and backs and sides, standing each in due and fixed relations to all. 

The Epistle to the Philippians differs from the others of its group only in dwelling more lingeringly on the matters it mentions, and thus transporting us back into the full atmosphere of Corinthians and Thessalonians. Here, too, Paul thinks of the advent chiefly in the aspect of the judgment at which we are to receive our eternal approval and reward or disapproval and rejection. He is sure that He who began a good work in His readers will perfect it, until the day of Jesus Christ (i. 6); he prays that they may be pure and void of offence against the day of Christ (i. 10); he desires them to complete their Christian life that he may have whereof to glory in the day of Christ that he did not run in vain, neither labour in vain (ii. 16). These sentences might have come from any of the earlier epistles. The events of the day of the Lord are detailed quite in the spirit of the earlier epistles in iii. 20, 21. Our real home, the commonwealth in which is our citizenship, is heaven, from whence we patiently await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation so that it shall be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself. These two verses compress within their narrow compass most of the essential features of Paul's eschatology: Christ's present enthronement as King of the state in which our citizenship is, in heaven, from whence we are to expect Him to return in due time; our resurrection and the nature of our new bodies on the one side as no longer bodies of humiliation, on the other as like Christ's resurrection body, and hence glorious; Christ's conquest of all things to Himself, and last of all of death, in our resurrection, of which, therefore, all His other conquests are a guerdon. 

The description of our resurrection bodies as conformed to Christ's glorified body is important in itself, and all the more so as it helps us to catch the meaning of the almost immediately preceding statement (iii. 10 sq.) of Paul's deep desire "to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, becoming conformed unto His death, if by any means he may attain to the resurrection of the dead." It has become somewhat common to see in this passage a hint that Paul knew only of a resurrection of the redeemed, and himself expected to rise only in case he was savingly united to Christ. This exposition receives, no doubt, some colour from the phraseology used; but when we observe the intensely moral nature of the longing, as expressed in the immediately subsequent context, we cannot help limiting the term "resurrection from the dead" here, by the added idea of resurrection to glory, and the full statement of verse 21 inevitably throws back its light upon it. It is not mere resurrection that Paul longs for; he gladly becomes conformed to Christ in His death that he may be conformed to Him in His resurrection also, and the gist of the whole passage is bound up in this idea of conformity to Christ, with which it opens (verse 10) and with which it closes (verse 21). To think of two separate resurrections here - of the just and the unjust - in the former of which Paul desires to rise, is to cut the knot, not untie it. Nothing in the language suggests it - the "resurrection from the dead" is as unlimited¹⁰ as the "death" that precedes it. Nothing in the context demands or even allows it. Nothing anywhere in Paul's writings justifies it. It is inconsistent with what we have found Paul saying about the Second Advent and its relation to the end, at I Cor. xv. 20-28. And finally it is contradicted by his explicit statements concerning the general resurrection, in the discourses in Acts which are closest in time to the date of these letters, and which ought to be considered along with them, especially Acts xxiv. 15, where in so many words the resurrection is made to include both the just and unjust (cf. xxiii. 6; xxvi. 8, 23; xxviii. 20). The limitation which the context supplies in our present passage is not that of class, much less that of time, but that of result; Paul longs to be conformed to Christ in resurrection as in death - he is glad to suffer with Him that he may be also glorified together with Him. Yea, he counts his sufferings but refuse, if he may gain Christ and be found in Him, clothed in the righteousness which is by faith. This is the ruling thought which conditions the statements of verse 11, and is openly returned to at verse 21. 

The mention of the subjection of all things to Christ in verse 21, which recalls the teaching of I Cor. xv. 20-28 again, was already prepared for by the account of the glory which God gave the Son as a reward for His work of suffering, in ii. 9-11. There His supreme exaltation is stated to have been given Him of God for a purpose - that all creation should be subjected to Him, should bow the knee to His Name and confess Him to be Lord to the glory of God the Father. The completion of this purpose Paul here (iii. 21) asserts Christ to have the power to bring about, but nothing is implied in either passage as to the rapidity of its actual realization. 

Some have thought, however, that in this epistle also Paul expresses his confidence that all should be fulfilled in his own time. Plainly, however, the reference of the completion of our moral probation, or of our victory over the present humiliation, to the Second Advent goes no further than to leave the possibility of its coming in our generation open (i. 6; iii. 21), and the latter at least is conditioned by the desire for a good resurrection, which is earnestly expressed immediately before. "The Lord is at hand" (iv. 5) would be more to the point, if its reference to time and the Second Advent were plainer. But although it was early so understood (e. g., by Barnabas), it can hardly be properly so taken. It is, indeed, scarcely congruous to speak of a person as near in time; we speak of events or actions, times or seasons as near, meaning it temporally; but when we say a person is near, we mean it inevitably of a space-relation. And the connexion of the present verse points even more strongly in the same direction. Whether we construe it with what goes before, or with what comes after - whether we read "Let your gentleness be known to all men, [for] the Lord is near," or "The Lord is near, [therefore] be anxious for nothing, but in everything . . . let your requests be made known unto God," - the reference to God's continual nearness to the soul for help is preferable to that to the Second Advent. And if, as seems likely, the latter connexion be the intended one, the contextual argument is pressing. The fact that the same phrase occurs in the Psalter in the space-sense, and must have been therefore in familiar use in this sense by Paul and his readers alike, while the asyndetic, proverbial way in which it is introduced here gives it the appearance of a quotation, adds all that was needed to render this interpretation of it here certain. 

The Apostle's real feelings towards the future life are clearly exposed to us in the touching words of i. 21 sq., the close resemblance of which to II Cor. v. 1-10 is patent. Here he does not refer in the remotest way to a hope of living to see the advent, but begins where he ended in II Corinthians, with the assertion of his personal preference for death rather than life, because death brought the gain of being with Christ, "which is far better." Even the "naked" intermediate state of the soul, between death and resurrection, is thus in Paul's view to be chosen rather than a life at home in the body but abroad from the Lord. Yet he does not therefore choose to die: "but what if to live in the flesh - this means fruit of my work?" he pauses to ask himself, and can but answer that he is in a strait betwixt the two, and finally that since to die is advantageous to himself alone, while to live is more needful for his converts, he knows he shall abide still a while in this world. To him, too, man here is but 

"a hasty traveller
Pesting between the present and the future,
That baits awhile in this dull fleshly tavern"; 

and yet, though this tent-dwelling is seen by him in all its insufficiency and inefficiency, like the good Samaritan he is willing to prolong his stay in even so humble a caravanserai (iii. 21) for the succouring of his fellows - nay, like the Lord Himself, he counts the glory of the heavenly life not a thing to be graspingly seized, so long as by humbling himself to the form of a tenant here he may save the more. The spirit that was in Christ dwelt within him. 

The eschatology of the Pastoral Epistles - I Timothy, Titus, and II Timothy (A.D. 67, 68) - the richest depository of which is the Second Epistle to Timothy, is indistinguishable from that of the other Pauline letters. In these letters again the Second Advent is primarily and most prominently conceived as the closing act of the world, the final judgment of men, and therefore the goal of all their moral endeavours. Timothy is strenuously exhorted "to keep the commandment," that is, the evangelical rule of life, "spotless and irreproachable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Tim. vi. 14). All of Paul's confidence is based on his persuasion that Jesus Christ, the abolisher of death and bringer of life and incorruption to light through the Gospel, is able to guard his deposit¹¹ "against that day" (II Tim. i. 12), and that there is laid up for him the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give him at that day (II Tim. iv. 8). "And not to me only," he adds, as if to guard against his confidence seeming one personal to himself, "but also to all them that have loved His appearing." Though at that day the Lord will render to Alexander according to his works (II Tim. iv. 14), he will grant mercy to Onesiphorus (II Tim. i. 16) ; and in general he will attach to godliness the promise both of the life that now is and that which is to come (I Tim. iv. 8). 

It follows, therefore, that for all those in Christ the Second Advent is a blessed hope to be waited for with patience, but also with loving desire and longing. Christians are described as those that love Christ's appearing (II Tim. iv. 8), and the hope of it is blessed (Titus ii. 13) because it is the epiphany of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, even as the former coming was the epiphany of His grace (Titus ii. 13, cf. 11). It is implied that as the grace so the glory is for Christ's children. What this glory consists in is not, however, very sharply defined. It is the deposit of life and incorruption that the Saviour holds in trust for His children (II Tim. i. 12). It is the crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge will bestow upon them (II Tim. iv. 8). It is freedom from all iniquity (Titus ii. 14). It is the actual inheritance of the eternal life now hoped for (Titus iii. 7). But all this is description rather than definition. Nothing is said of resurrection except that they gravely err who think it already past (II Tim. ii. 18), nothing of the new bodies to be given to the saints, or of any of the glories that accompany the final triumph. What is said describes only the full realization of what is already enjoyed in its first fruits here or what comes in some abundance in the imperfect intermediate state. 

For the glories of the advent do not blind Paul to the bliss of a Christian's hope in "this world," whether in the body or out of the body. In the fervid music of a Christian hymn the Apostle assures his son Timothy of his own steadfast faith in the faithful saying (II Tim. ii. 11-13): - 

"If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him;
If we endure we shall also reign with Him;
If we shall deny Him, He will also deny us;
If we are faithless - He abideth faithful,
For He cannot deny Himself." 

And death itself, he says, can but "save him into Christ's heavenly kingdom" (II Tim. iv. 18). The partaking in Christ's death and life in this passage seems to be meant ethically; and the co-regnancy with the Lord that is promised to the suffering believer apparently concerns the being with Christ in the heavenly kingdom, - whether in the body or abroad from the body. Thus the Apostle is not here contemplating the glories of the advent, but comforting and strengthening himself with the profitableness of godliness in its promise of the life that now is, under the epiphany of God's grace, when we can be but looking for the epiphany of His glory. That he expects death (for now he was sure of death, II Tim. iv. 6) to introduce him into Christ's heavenly kingdom advertises to us that that kingdom is now in progress, and II Tim. iv. 1 is in harmony with this just because it tells us nothing at all of the time of the kingdom.¹² 

About Christ's reign and work as king - in other words, concerning the nature of this period in which we live - these epistles are somewhat rich in teaching. These "latter times" or "last days"13 - for these are, according to the fixed usage of the times, the designations under which the Apostle speaks of the dispensation of the Spirit, - are not to be an age of idleness or of sloth among Christians; but, in harmony with the statements of the earlier letters, which represented it as a time of conflict with and conquest of evil, it is here pictured as a time in which apostasies shall occur (I Tim. iv. 1), and false doctrines flourish along with evil practices (II Tim. iii. 1, sq.), when the just shall suffer persecution, and evil men and impostors wax worse and worse (II Tim. iii. 13), and, even in the Church, men shall not endure sound doctrine, but shall introduce teachers after their own lusts (II Tim. iv. 3 sq.). It would be manifestly illegitimate to understand these descriptions as necessarily covering the life of the whole dispensation on the earliest verge of which the prophet was standing. Some of these evils had already broken out in his own times, others were pushing up the ground preparatory to appearing above it themselves. It is historically plain to us, no doubt, that they suitably describe the state of affairs up to at least our own day. But we must remember that all the indications are that Paul had the first stages of "the latter times" in mind, and actually says nothing to imply either that the evil should long predominate over the good, or that the whole period should be marked by such disorders. 

When the Lord should come, he indeed keeps as uncertain in these epistles as in all his former ones. In II Timothy he expects his own death immediately, and he contemplates it with patience and even joy, no longer with the shrinking expressed in II Corinthians. It is all the more gratuitous to insist here that the natural reference of Timothy's keeping the faith to the advent as the judgment (I Tim. vi. 14), implies that he confidently expected that great closing event at once or very soon. On the contrary it is reiterated in the same context that God alone knows the times and seasons, in the assertion that God would show the epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ "in His own times." Beyond this the Apostle never goes; and it is appropriate that in his earliest and latest epistles especially he should categorically assert the absolute uncertainty of the time of the consummation (I Thess. v. 1; I Tim. vi. 15). Surely an intense personal conviction that the times and seasons were entirely out of his knowledge can alone account for so consistent an attitude of complete uncertainty. 

It appears to be legitimate to affirm in the light of the preceding pages that it is clear that there is such a thing as a Pauline eschatology; a consistent teaching on the last things which runs through the whole mass of his writings, not filling them, indeed, as some would have us believe, but appearing on their surface like daisies in a meadow - here in tolerable profusion, there in quite a mass, there scattered one by one at intervals of some distance - everywhere woven into it as constituent parts of the turf carpeting. The main outlines of this eschatology are repeated over and over again, and exhibited from many separate points of view, until we know them from every side and are confident of their contour and exact nature. Details are added to the general picture by nearly every letter; and each detail falls so readily into its place in the outline as to prove both that the Apostle held a developed scheme of truth on this subject, and that we are correctly understanding it. A general recapitulation of the broadest features of his doctrine will alone be necessary in closing. 

Paul, then, teaches that as Jesus has once come in humiliation, bringing grace into the world, and God has raised Him to high exaltation and universal dominion in reward for His sufferings and in order to the completion of His work of redemption; so when He shall have put all His enemies under His feet, He shall come again to judgment in an epiphany of glory, to close the dispensation of grace and usher in the heavenly blessedness. The enemies to be conquered are principalities and powers and world-rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness; this whole period is the period of advancing conquest and will end with the victory over the last enemy, death, and the consequent resurrection of the dead. In this advancing conquest Christ's elect are His soldiers, and the conversion of the world - first of the Gentiles, then of the Jews - marks the culminating victory over the powers of evil. How long this conflict continues before it is crowned with complete victory, how long the supreme and sole kingship of Christ endures before He restores the restored realm to His father, the Apostle leaves in complete uncertainty. He predicts the evil days of the opening battle, the glad days of the victory; and leaves all questions of times and seasons to Him whose own times they are. At the end, however, are the general resurrection and the general judgment, when the eternal rewards and punishments are awarded by Christ as judge, and then, all things having been duly gathered together thus again under one head by Him, he subjects them all to God that He may once more become "all relations among all creations." That the blessed dead may be fitted to remain for ever with the Lord, He gives them each his own body, glorified and purified and rendered the willing organ of the Holy Ghost. Christ's living, though they die not, are "changed" to a like glory. Not only man, but all creation feels the renovation and shares in the revelation of the sons of God, and there is a new heaven and a new earth. And thus the work of the Redeemer is completed, the end has come, and it is visible to men and angels that through Him in whom it was His pleasure that all the fulness should dwell, God has at length reconciled all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross - through Him, whether things upon the earth or things in the heavens - yea, even us, who were in times past alienated and enemies, hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present us holy and without blemish and unreproachable before Him.

Endnotes:

From The Expositor, 3d ser. v. iv, 1886, pp. 30-44, 131-148, 439-452. 

This curious misinterpretation is founded on a pressure of the verb evne,sthken, ii. 2, in forgetfulness of three things. (1) That this verb is a compound of i[sthmi, not of eivmi,, and means, not "is in progress," but "is upon us," in the two senses of "to threaten," and "to be actual" (especially in the participle). While it may mean "to be present," therefore, it need not mean it, and is not likely to in such a case. (2) That the clause "either by spirit or by word, or by letter as if from us," is an essential part of the context, the omission of which falsifies the text. What the Apostle says is not "be not troubled - as that the day of the Lord," etc. but "be not troubled by any statement as that the day of the Lord is upon us!" - something essentially different, which excludes the above interpretation. (3) That the broad context renders this explanation impossible and meaningless. 

Tac., "Hist.," iv. 82; Suet., "Vesp.," 7; Dio Cass., lxvi. 8. 

Sulp. Sev., "Sacr. Hist.," ii. 30, §§ 6. 7. 

fanerwqh/nai, cf. fanero,n, I Cor. iii. 13; fanerw,sei, I Cor. iv. 5. 

This is gradually becoming recognized by the best expositors. Compare the satisfactory article on pneumatiko,j in the third edition of Cremer'a "Biblico-Theological Lexicon of N. T. Greek," with the very unsatisfactory one in the second edition. He now tells us that the word is used "in profane Greek only in a physical or physiological sense, commonly the former; - in biblical Greek only in a religious, that is religio- or soteriologico-psychological sense = belonging to the Holy Ghost or determined by the Holy Ghost," p. 675, cf. p. 676. (The reader needs to be warned that he will find no hint of Cremer's entire rewriting of this article, in the Supplement to their edition of Cremer's Lexicon issued by T. & T. Clark this year.) So Meyer's latest view (to which he did not correct the Commentary throughout) is given in his Com. on I Cor., E. T., p. 298, note: "Pneumatiko,j" is nowhere "in the New Testament the opposite of material, but of natural (I Pet. ii. 5 not excluded); and the pneu/ma to which pneumatiko,j refers is always (except Eph. vi. 12, where it is the diabolic spirit-world that is spoken of) the Divine pneu/ma." The italics are his own. 

The exegetical question really turns on the sense to be given to  vIsrah,l in xi. 26. If to. plh,rwma tw/n evqnw/n in verse 25, means "those of the Gentiles who go towards filling up the kingdom," then pa/j  vIsrah,l of verse 26, must of necessity be the spiritual Israel, distinguished from  vIsrah,l of verse 25, by the inclusive pa/j. Then the sense would be that "hardening has befallen Israel" temporarily - viz. until the Gentile contingent comes in, - and thus ("in this way," the most natural sense of ou;twj), ALL Israel shall be saved; - not part only, but all. So that the passage continues to justify the temporary rejection of Israel by its gracious purpose, viz. that thus the Gentiles receive their calling, and all God's children, out of every nation, are saved. On the other hand if, as is most natural and usual, tw/n evqnw/n is genitive of what is filled up, so that the phrase means, the whole body of the Gentiles, then there is no thought to carry over from it to condition pa/j  vIsrah,l in verse 26, and it naturally follows in sense the  vIsrah,l of verse 25. The sense then is that which is suggested in the text. That  vIsrah,l of verse 26 is the fleshly Israel seems to follow from the succeeding context, as well as from the difficulty of taking the words in two different senses in so narrow a context. But if so, this carries the meaning of the "fulness of the Gentiles" with it, and the interpretation given in the text is the only admissible one. 

I shall not deny that the zwh. evk nekrw/n of ver. 15 may mean the general resurrection, but it is an unexampled phrase for this conception and cannot be asserted to mean it. Nor in this context is it natural to so understand it. 

The reference of the phrase, "for the fashion of this world passeth away" (verse 31) is not to the broad but the narrow context, justifying the immediately preceding statement, that those who use the world should be as those not using it. It is but equivalent to the line, "This world is all a fleeting show," and is parallel to I John ii. 17. Although it may have some reference to the Second Advent, as the day of renovation, it does not affect verses 20 and 29. 

On evxana,stasij, see Meyer in loc. 

th.n paraqh,khn mou = "what I have entrusted to him." 

Notice that the correct translation is: "I charge thee before God and Christ Jesus who shall judge the quick and the dead, and by His appearing and by His kingdom." Each item is adduced entirely separately; the Apostle is accumulating the incitements to action, not giving a chronological list, which, in any case, the passage does not furnish. 

evn u`ste,roiv kairoi/j, I Tim. iv. 1; evn evsca,taij h`me,raij, II Tim. iii. 1. 

The Real Problem of Inspiration¹

by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A great deal is being said of late of "the present problem of inspiration," with a general implication that the Christian doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures has been brought into straits by modern investigation, and needs now to adapt itself to certain assured but damaging results of the scientific study of the Bible. Thus, because of an assumed "present distress," Canon Cheyne, in a paper read at the English Church Congress of 1888, commended a most revolutionary book of Mr. R. F. Horton's, called "Inspiration and the Bible,"2 which explains away inspiration properly so called altogether, as the best book he could think of on the subject. And Mr. Charles Gore defends the concessive method of treating the subject of inspiration adopted in "Lux Mundi," by the plea that the purpose of the writers of that volume "was 'to succour a distressed faith,' by endeavoring to bring the Christian creed into its right relation to the modern growth of knowledge, scientific, historical, critical."3 On our side of the water, Dr. Washington Gladden has published a volume which begins by presenting certain "new" views of the structure of the books of the Bible as established facts, and proceeds to the conclusion that: "Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration nor the theory of plenary inspiration can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given to that word." Accordingly he recommends that under the pressure of these new views we admit not only that the Bible is not "infallible," but that its laws are "inadequate" and "morally defective," and its untrustworthiness as a religious teacher is so great that it gives us in places "blurred and distorted ideas about God and His truth.”⁴ And Prof. Joseph H. Thayer has published a lecture which represents as necessitated by the facts as now known, such a change of attitude towards the Bible as will reject the whole Reformed doctrine of the Scriptures in favor of a more "Catholic" view which will look upon some of the history recorded in the Bible as only "fairly trustworthy," and will expect no intelligent reader to consider the exegesis of the New Testament writers satisfactory.⁵ A radical change in our conception of the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God is thus pressed upon us as now necessary by a considerable number of writers, representing quite a variety of schools of Christian thought.

Nevertheless the situation is not one which can be fairly described as putting the old doctrine of inspiration in jeopardy. The exact state of the case is rather this: that a special school of Old Testament criticism, which has, for some years, been gaining somewhat widespread acceptance of its results, has begun to proclaim that these results having been accepted, a "changed view of the Bible" follows which implies a reconstructed doctrine of inspiration, and, indeed, also a whole new theology. That this changed view of the Bible involves losses is frankly admitted. The nature of these losses is stated by Dr. Sanday in a very interesting little book⁶ with an evident effort to avoid as far as possible "making sad the heart of the righteous whom the Lord hath not made sad," as consisting chiefly in making "the intellectual side of the connection between Christian belief and Christian practice a matter of greater difficulty than it has hitherto seemed to be," in rendering it "less easy to find proof texts for this or that," and in making the use of the Bible so much less simple and less definite in its details that "less educated Christians will perhaps pay more deference to the opinion of the more educated, and to the advancing consciousness of the Church at large." If this means all that it seems to mean, its proclamation of an indefinite Gospel eked out by an appeal to the Church and a scholastic hierarchy, involves a much greater loss than Dr. Sanday appears to think - a loss not merely of the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of the Scriptures, but with it of all that that doctrine is meant to express and safeguard - the loss of the Bible itself to the plain Christian man for all practical uses, and the delivery of his conscience over to the tender mercies of his human instructors, whether ecclesiastical or scholastic. Dr. Briggs is more blunt and more explicit in his description of the changes which he thinks have been wrought. " I will tell you what criticism has destroyed," he says in an article published a couple of years ago. "It has destroyed many false theories about the Bible; it has destroyed the doctrine of verbal inspiration; it has destroyed the theory of inerrancy; it has destroyed the false doctrine that makes the inspiration depend upon its attachment to a holy man."7 And he goes on to remark further "that Biblical criticism is at the bottom" of the "reconstruction that is going on throughout the Church" - "the demand for revision of creeds and change in methods of worship and Christian work." It is clear enough, then, that a problem has been raised with reference to inspiration by this type of criticism. But this is not equivalent to saying that the established doctrine of inspiration has been put in jeopardy. For there is criticism and criticism. And though it may not be unnatural for these scholars themselves to confound the claims of criticism with the validity of their own critical methods and the soundness of their own critical conclusions, the Christian world can scarcely be expected to acquiesce in the identification. It has all along been pointing out that they were traveling on the wrong road; and now when their conclusions clash with well-established facts, we simply note that the wrong road has not unnaturally led them to the wrong goal. In a word, it is not the established doctrine of inspiration that is brought into distress by the conflict, but the school of Old Testament criticism which is at present fashionable. It is now admitted that the inevitable issue of this type of criticism comes into collision with the established fact of the plenary inspiration of the Bible and the well-grounded Reformed doctrine of Holy Scripture based on this fact.⁸ The cry is therefore, and somewhat impatiently, raised that this fact and this doctrine must "get out of the way," and permit criticism to rush on to its bitter goal. But facts are somewhat stubborn things, and are sometimes found to prove rather the test of theories which seek to make them their sport.

Nevertheless, though the strain of the present problem should thus be thrown upon the shoulders to which it belongs, it is important to keep ourselves reminded that the doctrine of inspiration which has become established in the Church, is open to all legitimate criticism, and is to continue to be held only as, and so far as, it is ever anew critically tested and approved. And in view of the large bodies of real knowledge concerning the Bible which the labors of a generation of diligent critical study have accumulated, and of the difficulty which is always experienced in the assimilation of new knowledge and its correlation with previously ascertained truth, it is becoming to take this occasion to remind ourselves of the foundations on which this doctrine rests, with a view to inquiring whether it is really endangered by any assured results of recent Biblical study. For such an investigation we must start, of course, from a clear conception of what the Church doctrine of inspiration is, and of the basis on which it is held to be the truth of God. Only thus can we be in a position to judge how it can be affected on critical grounds, and whether modern Biblical criticism has reached any assured results which must or may "destroy" it.

The Church, then, has held from the beginning that the Bible is the Word of God in such a sense that its words, though written by men and bearing indelibly impressed upon them the marks of their human origin, were written, nevertheless, under such an influence of the Holy Ghost as to be also the words of God, the adequate expression of His mind and will. It has always recognized that this conception of co-authorship implies that the Spirit's superintendence extends to the choice of the words by the human authors (verbal inspiration⁹), and preserves its product from everything inconsistent with a divine authorship - thus securing, among other things, that entire truthfulness which is everywhere presupposed in and asserted for Scripture by the Biblical writers (inerrancy). Whatever minor variations may now and again have entered into the mode of statement, this has always been the core of the Church doctrine of inspiration. And along with many other modes of commending and defending it, the primary ground on which it has been held by the Church as the true doctrine is that it is the doctrine of the Biblical writers themselves, and has therefore the whole mass of evidence for it which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as doctrinal guides. It is the testimony of the Bible itself to its own origin and character as the Oracles of the Most High, that has led the Church to her acceptance of it as such, and to her dependence on it not only for her doctrine of Scripture, but for the whole body of her doctrinal teaching, which is looked upon by her as divine because drawn from this divinely given fountain of truth.

Now if this doctrine is to be assailed on critical grounds, it is very clear that, first of all, criticism must be required to proceed against the evidence on which it is based. This evidence, it is obvious, is twofold. First, there is the exegetical evidence that the doctrine held and taught by the Church is the doctrine held and taught by the Biblical writers themselves. And secondly, there is the whole mass of evidence - internal and external, objective and subjective, historical and philosophical, human and divine - which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as doctrinal guides. If they are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true, and is to be accepted and acted upon as true by us all. In that case, any objections brought against the doctrine from other spheres of inquiry are inoperative; it being a settled logical principle that so long as the proper evidence by which a proposition is established remains unrefuted, all so-called objections brought against it pass out of the category of objections to its truth into the category of difficulties to be adjusted to it. If criticism is to assail this doctrine, therefore, it must proceed against and fairly overcome one or the other element of its proper proof. It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides. If a fair criticism evinces that this is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, then of course it has "destroyed" the doctrine which is confessedly based on that supposition. Failing in this, however, it can "destroy" the doctrine, strictly speaking, only by undermining its foundation in our confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture as a witness to doctrine. The possibility of this latter alternative must, no doubt, be firmly faced in our investigation of the phenomena of the Bible; but the weight of the evidence, be it small or great, for the general trustworthiness of the Bible as a source of doctrine, throws itself, in the form of a presumption, against the reality of any phenomena alleged to be discovered which make against its testimony. No doubt this presumption may be overcome by clear demonstration. But clear demonstration is requisite. For, certainly, if it is critically established that what is sometimes called, not without a touch of scorn, "the traditional doctrine," is just the Bible's own doctrine of inspiration, the real conflict is no longer with "the traditional theory of inspiration," but with the credibility of the Bible. The really decisive question among Christian scholars (among whom alone, it would seem, could a question of inspiration be profitably discussed), is thus seen to be, "What does an exact and scientific exegesis determine to be the Biblical doctrine of inspiration?"

THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION CLEAR

The reply to this question is, however, scarcely open to doubt. The stricter and the more scientific the examination is made, the more certain does it become that the authors of the New Testament held a doctrine of inspiration quite as high as the Church doctrine. This may be said, indeed, to be generally admitted by untrammeled critics, whether of positive or of negative tendencies. Thus, for instance - to confine our examples to a few of those who are not able personally to accept the doctrine of the New Testament writers - Archdeacon Farrar is able to admit that Paul " shared, doubtless, in the views of the later Jewish schools - the Tanaim and Amoraim - on the nature of inspiration. These views . . . made the words of Scripture coextensive and identical with the words of God."10 So also Otto Pfleiderer allows that Paul "fully shared the assumption of his opponents, the irrefragable authority of the letter as the immediately revealed Word of God."11 Similarly, Tholuck recognizes that the application of the Old Testament made by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "rests on the strictest view of inspiration, since passages where God is not the speaker are cited as words of God or of the Holy Ghost (i. 6, 7, 8, iv. 4, 7, vii. 21, iii. 7, x. 15)."12 This fact is worked out also with convincing clearness by the writer of an odd and sufficiently free Scotch book published a few years ago,¹³ who formulates his conclusion in the words: "There is no doubt that the author of Hebrews, in common with the other New Testament writers, regards the whole Old Testament as having been dictated by the Holy Ghost, or, as we should say, plenarily, and, as it were, mechanically inspired." And more recently still Prof. Stapfer, of Paris,¹⁴ though himself denying the reality not only of an infallibility for the Bible, but also of any inspiration for it at all, declaring that " the doctrine of an Inspiration distinct from Revelation and legitimating it, is an error" - yet cannot deny that Paul held a different doctrine - a doctrine which made the Old Testament to him the divine Word and the term, "It is written," equivalent to "God says."15

A detailed statement of the evidence is scarcely needed to support a position allowed by such general consent. But it will not be improper to adjoin a brief outline of the grounds on which the general consent rests. In the circumstances, however, we may venture to dispense with an argument drawn up from our own point of view,¹⁶ and content ourselves with an extract from the brief statement of the grounds of his decision given by another of those critical scholars who do not believe the doctrine of plenary inspiration, but yet find themselves constrained to allow that it is the doctrine of the New Testament writers. Richard Rothe¹⁷ seeks, wrongly, to separate Christ's doctrine of the Old Testament from that of the apostles; our Lord obviously spoke of the Scriptures of His people out of the same fundamental conception of their nature and divinity as His apostles. But he more satisfactorily outlines the doctrine of the apostles as follows:

"We find in the New Testament authors the same theoretical view of the Old Testament and the same practice as to its use, as among the Jews of the time in general, although at the same time in the handling of the same conceptions and principles on both sides, the whole difference between the new Christian spirit and that of contemporary Judaism appears in sharp distinctness. Our authors look upon the words of the Old Testament as immediate words of God, and adduce them expressly as such, even those of them which are not at all related as direct sayings of God. They see nothing at all in the sacred volume which is simply the word of its human author and not at the same time the very Word of God Himself. In all that stands 'written' God Himself speaks to them, and so entirely are they habituated to think only of this that they receive the sacred Word written itself, as such, as God's Word, and hear God speaking in it immediately, without any thought of the human persons who appear in it as speaking and acting. The histarical conception of their Bible is altogether foreign to them. Therefore they cite the abstract h` grafh, or ai` grafai, or grafai. a`gi,ai (Rom. 1. 2), or again ta. i`era. gra,mmata (2 Tim. iii. 15), without naming any special author, as self-evidently God's Word, e.g., John vii. 38, x. 35, xix. 36, 37, xx. 9; Acts i. 16; James ii. 8; Rom. ix. 17; Gal. iii. 8, 22, iv. 30; 1 Pet. ii. 6; 2 Pet. i. 20, etc. ; and introduce Old Testament citations with the formulas, now that God (Matt. i. 22, ii. 15; Acts iv. 25, xiii. 34; Rom. i. 2), now that the Holy Spirit (Acts i. 16, xxviii. 25; Heb. iii. 7, ix. 8, x. 15; cf. also Acts iv. 25; 1 Pet. i. 11; 2 Pet. i. 20) so speaks or has spoken. The Epistle to the Hebrews unhesitatingly adduces with a o` qeo.j le,gei and the like, even passages in which God is spoken of expressly in the third person (i. 6, 7, 8 seq., iv. 4, 7, vii. 21, x. 30), and even (i. 10) cites a passage in which in the Old Testament text God Himself (according to the view of the author it is, however, the Son of God) is addressed, as a word spoken by God. In 2 Tim. iii. 16 the i`era. gra,mmata (verse 15) are expressly called qeo,pneusta, however the sentence may be construed or expounded; and however little a special theory of the inspiration of the Bible can be drawn from an expression of such breadth of meaning, nevertheless this datum avails to prove that the author shared in general the view of his Jewish contemporaries as to the peculiar character of the Old Testament books, and it is of especial importance inasmuch as it attributes the inspiration, without the least ambiguity, directly to the writings themselves, and not merely to their authors, the prophets. No doubt, in the teaching of the apostles the conception of prophetic inspiration to which it causally attributes the Old Testament, has not yet the sharp exactness of our ecclesiastical dogmatic conception; but it stands, nevertheless, in a very express analogy with it. . . . Moreover, it must be allowed that the apostolical writers, although they nowhere say it expressly, refer the prophetic inspiration also to the actus scribendi of the Biblical authors. The whole style and method of their treatment of the Old Testament text manifestly presupposes in them this view of this matter, which was at the time the usual one in the Jewish schools. With Paul particularly this is wholly incontrovertibly the case. For only on that view could he, in such passages as Rom. iv. 23, 24, xv. 4; 1 Cor. ix. 10, x. 11 - in which he distinguishes between the occurrence of the Old Testament facts and the recording of them - maintain of the latter that it was done with express teleological reference to the needs of the New Testament believers, at least so far as the selection of the matter to be described is concerned; and only on that view could he argue on the details of the letter of the Old Testament Scriptures, as he does in Gal. iii. 15, 16. We can, moreover, trace the continuance of this view in the oldest post-apostolical Church. . . . So far as the Old Testament is concerned, our ecclesiastical-dogmatic doctrine of inspiration can, therefore, in very fact, appeal to the authority, not indeed of the Redeemer Himself - for He stands in an entirely neutral attitude towards it - but no doubt of the apostles."

A keen controversialist like Rothe does not fail, of course - as the reader has no doubt observed - to accompany his exposition of the apostolic doctrine with many turns of expression designed to lessen its authority in the eyes of the reader, and to prepare the way for his own refusal to be bound by it; but neither does he fail to make it clear that this doctrine, although it is unacceptable to him, is the apostles' doctrine. The apostles' doctrine, let it be observed that we say. For even so bald a statement as Rothe's will suffice to uncover the fallacy of the assertion, which is so often made, that the doctrine of verbal inspiration is based on a few isolated statements of Scripture to the neglect, if not to the outrage, of its phenomena - a form of remark into which even so sober a writer as Dr. W. G. Blaikie has lately permitted himself to fall.¹⁸ Nothing, obviously, could be more opposite to the fact. The doctrine of verbal inspiration is based on the broad foundation of the carefully ascertained doctrine of the Scripture writers on the subject. It is a product of Biblical Theology. And if men will really ask, not, "What do the creeds teach? What do the theologians say? What is the authority of the Church? but, What does the Bible itself teach us?" and "fencing off from the Scriptures all the speculations, all the dogmatic elaborations, all the doctrinal adaptations that have been made in the history of doctrine in the Church," "limit themselves strictly to the theology of the Bible itself " - according to the excellent programme outlined by Dr. Briggs¹⁹ - it is to the doctrine of verbal inspiration, as we have seen, that they must come. It is not Biblical criticism that has "destroyed" verbal inspiration, but Dr. Briggs' scholastic theories that have drawn him away in this matter from the pure deliverances of Biblical Theology.²⁰

Much more, of course, does such a statement as even Rothe's uncover the even deeper error of the assertion latterly becoming much too common, that, the doctrine of verbal inspiration, as a recent writer puts it,²¹ "is based wholly upon an a priori assumption of what inspiration must be, and not upon the Bible as it actually exists." It is based wholly upon an exegetical fact. It is based on the exegetical fact that our Lord and His apostles held this doctrine of Scripture, and everywhere deal with the Scriptures of the Old Testament in accordance with it, as the very Word of God, even in their narrative parts. This is a commonplace of exegetical science, the common possession of the critical schools of the left and of the right, a prominent and unmistakable deliverance of Biblical Theology. And on the establishment of it as such, the real issue is brought out plainly and stringently. If criticism has made such discoveries as to necessitate the abandonment of the doctrine of plenary inspiration, it is not enough to say that we are compelled to abandon only a "particular theory of inspiration," though that is true enough. We must go on to say that that "particular theory of inspiration" is the theory of the apostles and of the Lord, and that in abandoning it we are abandoning them as our doctrinal teachers and guides, as our "exegetes," in the deep and rich sense of that word which Dr. Vincent vindicates for it.²² This real issue is to be kept clearly before us, and faced courageously. Nothing is gained by closing our eyes to the seriousness of the problem which we are confronting. Stated plainly it is just this: Are the New Testament writers trustworthy guides in doctrine? Or are we at liberty to reject their authority, and frame contrary doctrines for ourselves? If the latter pathway be taken, certainly the doctrine of plenary inspiration is not the only doctrine that is "destroyed," and the labor of revising our creeds may as well be saved and the shorter process adopted of simply throwing them away: No wonder we are told that the same advance in knowledge which requires a changed view of the Bible necessitates also a whole new theology. If the New Testament writers are not trustworthy as teachers of doctrine and we have to go elsewhere for the source and norm of truth as to God and duty and immortality, it will not be strange if a very different system of doctrine from that delivered by the Scriptures and docilely received from them by the Church, results.

And now, having uncovered the precise issue which is involved in the real problem of inspiration, let us look at it at various angles and thus emphasize in turn two or three of the more important results that spring from it.

I
MODIFICATIONS OF THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE UNDERMINE THE AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES

First, we emphasize the fact that, this being the real state of the case, we cannot modify the doctrine of plenary inspiration in any of its essential elements without undermining our confidence in the authority of the apostles as teachers of doctrine.

Logically, this is an immediate corollary of the proposition already made good. Historically, it is attested by the driftage of every school of thought which has sought to find a ground of faith in any lower than the Church's doctrine of a plenarily inspired Bible. The authority which cannot assure of a hard fact is soon not trusted for a hard doctrine. Sooner or later, in greater or less degree, the authority of the Bible in doctrine and life is replaced by or subordinated to that of reason, or of the feelings, or of the "Christian consciousness" - the "conscious experience by the individual of the Christian faith" or of that corporate Christian consciousness which so easily hardens into simple ecclesiastical domination. What we are to accept as the truth of God is a comparatively easy question, if we can open our Bibles with the confident belief that what we read there is commended to us by a fully credible "Thus saith the Lord." But in proportion as we allow this or that element in it not to be safeguarded to us by this divine guarantee, do we begin to doubt the trustworthiness of more and more of the message delivered, and to seek other grounds of confidence than the simple "It is written" which sufficed for the needs of our Lord and His apostles. We have seen Dr. Sanday pointing to "the advancing consciousness of the Church at large," along with the consensus of scholars, as the ground of acceptance of doctrines as true, which will be more and more turned to when men can no longer approach the Bible so simply as heretofore. This is the natural direction in which to look, for men trained to lay that great stress on institutional Christianity which leads Mr. Gore to describe the present situation as one in which "it is becoming more and more difficult to believe in the Bible without believing in the Church."23 Accordingly Dr. Sterrett also harmonizes his Hegelianism and Churchliness in finding the ground of Christian certitude in the "communal Christian consciousness," which is defined as the Church, as "objective, authoritative reason for every Christian," to which he must subordinate his individual reason.²⁴ Men of more individualistic training fall back rather on personal reason or the individual "Christian consciousness"; but all alike retire the Bible as a source of doctrine behind some other safeguard of truth.

It may not be without interest or value to subject the various pathways which men tread in seeking to justify a lower view of Scripture than that held and taught by the New Testament writers, to a somewhat close scrutiny, with a view to observing how necessarily they logically involve a gradual undermining of the trustworthiness of those writers as teachers of doctrine. From the purely formal point of view proper to our present purpose, four types of procedure may be recognized.

CHRIST VERSUS THE APOSTLES

1. There is first, that, of which Richard Rothe is an example, which proceeds by attempting to establish a distinction between the teaching of Christ and the teaching of His apostles, and refusing the latter in favor of the former.

As we have already remarked, this distinction cannot be made good. Rothe's attempt to establish it proceeds on the twofold ground, on the one hand, of an asserted absence from our Lord's dealings with the Scriptures of those extreme facts of usage of it as the Word of God, and of those extreme statements concerning its divine character, on the ground of which in the apostles' dealing with it we must recognize their high doctrine of Scripture; and on the other hand, of an asserted presence in Christ's remarks concerning Scripture of hints that He did not share the conception of Scripture belonging to contemporary Judaism, which conception we know to have been the same high doctrine that was held by the apostles. He infers, therefore, that the apostles, in this matter, represent only the current Jewish thought in which they were bred, while Christ's divine originality breaks away from this and commends to us a new and more liberal way.

But in order to make out the first member of the twofold ground on which he bases this conclusion, Rothe has to proceed by explaining away, by means of artificial exegetical expedients, a number of facts of usage and deliverances as to Scripture, in which our Lord's dealings with Scripture culminate, and which are altogether similar in character and force to those on the basis of which he infers the apostles' high doctrine. These are such passages as the quotation in Matt. xix. 4, 5, of Adam's words as God's Word, which Lechler appeals to as decisive just as Rothe appeals to similar passages in the epistles - but which Rothe sets aside in a footnote simply with the remark that it is not decisive here; the assertion in John x. 35, that the "Scripture cannot be broken," which he sets aside as probably not a statement of Christ's own opinion but an argumentum ad hominem, and as in any case not available here, since it does not explicitly assert that the authority it ascribes to Scripture is due "to its origination by inspiration " - but which, as Dr. Robert Watts has shown anew,²⁵ is conclusive for our Saviour's view of the entire infallibility of the whole Old Testament; the assertion in Matt. v. 18 (and in Luke xvi. 17) that not "one jot or one tittle (ivw/ta e]n h' mi,a kerai,a) shall pass away from the law till all be fulfilled," which he sets aside with the remark that it is not the law-codex, but the law itself, that is here spoken of, forgetful of the fact that it is the law itself as written that the Lord has in mind, in which form alone, moreover, do "yodhs and horns" belong to it; the assertion in Matt. xxii. 43, that it was "in the Spirit" that David called the Messiah, "Lord," in the one hundredth and tenth Psalm, which he sets aside with the remark that this does prove that Jesus looked upon David as a prophet, but not necessarily that he considered the one hundred and tenth Psalm inspired, as indeed he does not say gra,fei but kalei/ - forgetful again that it is to the written David alone that Christ makes His appeal and on the very language written in the Psalm that He founds His argument.

No less, in order to make out the second member of the ground on which he bases his conclusion, does Rothe need to press passages which have as their whole intent and effect to rebuke the scribes for failure to understand and properly to use Scripture, into indications of rejection on Christ's part of the authority of the Scriptures to which both He and the scribes appealed. Lest it should be thought incredible that such a conclusion should be drawn from such premises, we transcribe Rothe's whole statement.

"On the other hand, we conclude with great probability that the Redeemer did not share the conception of His Israelitish contemporaries as to the inspiration of their Bible, as stated above, from the fact that He repeatedly expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner usual among them of looking upon and using the sacred books. He tells the scribes to their face that they do not understand the Scriptures (Matt. xxii. 29; Mark xii. 24), and that it is delusion for them to think to possess eternal life in them, therefore in a book (John v. 39), even as He also (in the same place) seems to speak disapprovingly of their searching of the Scriptures, because it proceeds from such a perverted point of view."26

Thus Jesus' appeal to the Scriptures as testifying to Him, and His rebuke to the Jews for not following them while professing to honor them, are made to do duty as a proof that He did not ascribe plenary authority to them.²⁷

Furthermore, Rothe's whole treatment of the matter omits altogether to make account of the great decisive consideration of the general tone and manner of Christ's allusions and appeal to the Scriptures, which only culminate in such passages as he has attempted to explain away, and which not only are inconsistent with any other than the same high view of their authority, trustworthiness and inspiration, as that which Rothe infers from similar phenomena to have been the conception of the apostles, but also are necessarily founded on it as its natural expression. The distinction attempted to be drawn between Christ's doctrine of Holy Scripture and that of His apostles is certainly inconsistent with the facts.

But we are more concerned at present to point out that the attempt to draw this distinction must result in undermining utterly all confidence in the New Testament writers as teachers of doctrine. So far as the apostles are concerned, indeed, it would be more correct to say that it is the outgrowth and manifestation of an already present distrust of them as teachers of doctrine. Its very principle is appeal from apostolic teaching to that of Christ, on the ground that the former is not authoritative. How far this rejection of apostolic authority goes is evidenced by the mode of treatment vouchsafed to it. Immediately on drawing out the apostles' doctrine of inspiration, Rothe asks, "But now what dogmatic value has this fact?

And on the ground that "by their fruits ye shall know them," he proceeds to declare that the apostles' doctrine of Scripture led them into such a general use and mode of interpretation of Scripture as Rothe deems wholly unendurable.²⁸ It is not, then, merely the teaching of the apostles as to what the Scriptures are, but their teaching as to what those Scriptures teach, in which Rothe finds them untrustworthy. It would be impossible but that the canker should eat still more deeply.

Nor is it possible to prevent it from spreading to the undermining of the trustworthiness of even the Lord's teaching itself, for the magnifying of which the distinction purports to be drawn. The artificial manner in which the testimony of the Lord to the authority of the Scriptures is explained away in the attempt to establish the distinction, might be pleaded indeed as an indication that trust in it was not very deeply rooted. And there are other indications that had the Lord been explained to be of the apostles' mind as to Scripture, a way would have been found to free us from the duty of following His teaching.²⁹ For even His exegesis is declared not to be authoritative, seeing that "exegesis is essentially a scientific function, and conditioned on the existence of scientific means, which in relation to the Old Testament were completely at the command of Jesus as little as of His contemporaries"; and the principle of partial limitation at least to the outlook of His day which is involved in such a statement is fully accepted by Rothe.³⁰ All this may, however, be thought more or less personal to Rothe's own mental attitude, whereas the ultimate undermining of our Lord's authority as teacher of doctrine, as well as that of His apostles, is logically essential to the position assumed.

This may be made plain at once by the very obvious remark that we have no Christ except the one whom the apostles have given to us. Jesus Himself left no treatises on doctrine. He left no written dialogues. We are dependent on the apostles for our whole knowledge of Him, and of what He taught. The portraiture of Jesus which has glorified the world's literature as well as blessed all ages and races with the revelation of a God-man come down from heaven to save the world, is limned by his followers' pencils alone. The record of that teaching which fell from His lips as living water, which if a man drink of he shall never thirst again, is a record by his followers' pens alone. They have painted for us, of course, the Jesus that they knew, and as they knew Him. They have recorded for us the teachings that they heard, and as they heard them. Whatever untrustworthiness attaches to them as deliverers of doctrine, must in some measure shake also our confidence in their report of what their Master was and taught.

But the logic cuts even deeper. For not only have we no Christ but Him whom we receive at the apostles' hands, but this Christ is committed to the trustworthiness of the apostles as teachers. His credit is involved in their credit. He represents His words on earth as but the foundation of one great temple of doctrine, the edifice of which was to be built up by Him through their mouths, as they spoke moved by His Spirit; and thus He makes Himself an accomplice before the fact in all they taught. In proportion as they are discredited as doctrinal guides, in that proportion He is discredited with them. By the promise of the Spirit, He has forever bound His trustworthiness with indissoluble bands to the trustworthiness of His accredited agents in founding His Church, and especially by that great promise recorded for us in John xvi. 12-15: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you." Says Dr. C. W. Hodge:31

"It is impossible to conceive how the authority of the Master could be conveyed to the teaching of the disciples more emphatically than is here done by Christ. He identifies His teaching and the teaching of the Spirit as parts of one whole; His teaching is carrying out My teaching, it is calling to remembrance what I have told you; it is completing what I have begun. And to make the unity emphatic, He explains why He had reserved so much of His own teaching, and committed the work of revelation to the Spirit. He, in His incarnation and life, comprised all saving truth. He was the revealer of God and the truth and the life. But while some things He had taught while yet with them, He had many things to say which must be postponed because they could not yet bear them. . . . If Christ has referred us to the apostles as teachers of the truths which He would have us know, certainly this primary truth of the authority of the Scriptures themselves can be no exception. All questions as to the extent of this inspiration, as to its exclusive authority, as to whether it extends to words as well as doctrines, as to whether it is infallible or inerrant, or not, are simply questions to be referred to the Word itself."

In such circumstances the attempt to discriminate against the teaching of the apostles in favor of that of Christ, is to contradict the express teaching of Christ Himself, and thus to undermine our confidence in it. We cannot both believe Him and not believe Him. The cry, "Back to Christ!" away from all the imaginations of men's hearts and the cobweb theories which they have spun, must be ever the cry of every Christian heart. But the cry, "Back to Christ!" away from the teachings of His apostles, whose teachings He Himself represents as His own, only delivered by His Spirit through their mouths, is an invitation to desert Christ Himself. It is an invitation to draw back from the Christ of the Bible to some Christ of our own fancy, from the only real to some imaginary Christ. It is to undermine the credit of the whole historical revelation in and through the Christ of God, and to cast us for the ascertainment and authentication of truth on the native powers of our own minds.

ACCOMMODATION OR IGNORANCE?

2. Another method is that of those who seek to preserve themselves from the necessity of accepting the doctrine of inspiration held by the writers of the New Testament, by representing it as merely a matter of accommodation to the prejudices of the Jews, naturally if not necessarily adopted by the first preachers of the Gospel in their efforts to commend to their contemporaries their new teaching as to the way of life.

This position is quite baldly stated by a recent Scotch writer, to whose book, written with a frank boldness, a force and a logical acumen which are far above the common, too little heed has been paid as an indication of the drift of the times.³² Says Mr. James Stuart:

"The apostles had not merely to reveal the Gospel scheme of salvation to their own and all subsequent ages, but they had to present it in such a form, and support it by such arguments, as should commend it to their more immediate hearers and readers. Notwithstanding its essentially universal character, the Gospel, as it appears in the New Testament, is couched in a particular form, suited to the special circumstances of a particular age and nation. Before the Gospel could reach the hearts of those to whom it was first addressed, prejudices had to be overcome, prepossessions had to be counted on and dealt with. The apostles, in fact, had just to take the men of their time as they found them, adapting their teaching accordingly. Not only so, but there is evidence that the apostles were themselves, to a very great extent, men of their own time, sharing many of the common opinions and even the common prejudices, so that, in arguing ex concessis, they were arguing upon grounds that would appear to themselves just and tenable. Now one of the things universally conceded in apostolic times was the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament; another was the legitimacy of certain modes of interpreting and applying the Old Testament. The later Jews, as is well known, cherished a superstitious reverence and attached an overwhelming importance to the letter of the Old Testament, which they regarded as the 'Word of God' in the fullest and most absolute sense that can possibly be put upon such an expression. The doctors taught and the people believed that the sacred writings were not only inspired, but inspired to the utmost possible or conceivable extent. In the composition of Scripture, the human author was nowhere, and the inspiring Spirit everywhere; not the thoughts alone, but the very words of Scripture were the Word of God, which He communicated by the mouth of the human author, who merely discharged the duty of spokesman and amanuensis, so that what the Scripture contains is the Word of God in as complete and full a sense as if it had been dictated by the lips of God to the human authors, and recorded with something approaching to perfect accuracy. . . . Such being the prevalent view of the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament writings, what could be more natural than that the apostles should make use of these writings to enforce and commend their own ideas? And if the Old Testament were to be used for such a purpose at all, evidently it must be used according to the accepted methods; for to have followed any other - assuming the possibility of such a thing - would have defeated the object aimed at, which was to accommodate the Gospel to established prejudices."

Now, here too, the first remark which needs to be made is that the assertion of "accommodation" on the part of the New Testament writers cannot be made good. To prove "accommodation," two things need to be shown: first, that the apostles did not share these views, and, secondly, that they nevertheless accommodated their teaching to them. "Accommodation" properly so called cannot take place when the views in question are the proper views of the persons themselves. But even in the above extract Mr. Stuart is led to allow that the apostles shared the current Jewish view of the Scriptures, and at a later point³³ he demonstrates this in an argument of singular lucidity, although in its course he exaggerates the character of their views in his effort to fix a stigma of mechanicalness on them. With what propriety, then, can he speak of "accommodation" in the case? The fact is that the theory of "accommodation" is presented by Mr. Stuart only to enable him the more easily to refuse to be bound by the apostolic teaching in this matter, and as such it has served him as a stepping stone by which he has attained to an even more drastic principle, on which he practically acts: that whenever the apostles can be shown to agree with their contemporaries, their teaching may be neglected. In such cases, he conceives of the New Testament writers "being inspired and guided by current opinion,"34 and reasons thus:35

"Now it is unquestionable that the New Testament writers in so regarding the Old Testament were not enunciating a new theory of inspiration or interpretation, they were simply adopting and following out the current theory. . . . In matters of this kind . . . the New Testament writers were completely dominated by the spirit of the age, so that their testimony on the question of Scripture inspiration possesses no independent value." "If these popular notions were infallibly correct before they were taken up and embodied in the New Testament writings, they are infallibly correct still; if they were incorrect before they were taken up and embodied in the New Testament writings, they are incorrect still."36

This is certainly most remarkable argumentation, and the principle asserted is probably one of the most singular to which thinking men ever committed themselves, viz., that a body of religious teachers, claiming authority for themselves as such, are trustworthy only when they teach novelties. It is the apotheosis of the old Athenian and new modern spirit, which has leisure and heart "for nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing." Nevertheless, it is a principle far from uncommon among those who are seeking justification for themselves in refusing the leadership of the New Testament writers in the matter of the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures. And, of late, it is, of course, taking upon itself in certain quarters a new form, the form imposed by the new view of the origin of Christian thought in Hellenic sources, which has been given such vogue by Dr. Harnack and rendered popular in English-speaking lands by the writings of the late Dr. Hatch. For example, we find it expressed in this form in the recent valuable studies on the First Epistle of Clement of Rome, by Lic. Wrede.³⁷ Clement's views of the Old Testament Scriptures are recognized as of the highest order; he looks upon them as a marvelous and infallible book whose very letters are sacred, as a veritable oracle, the most precious possession of the Church. These high views were shared by the whole Church of his day, and, indeed, of the previous age: "The view which Clement has of the Old Testament, and the use which he makes of it, show in themselves no essential peculiarities in comparison with the most nearly related Christian writings, especially the Pauline epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of Barnabas." And yet, according to Wrede, this view rests on "the Hellenistic conception of inspiration, according to which the individual writers were passive instruments of God."38 Whether, however, the contemporary influence is thought to be Jewish or Greek, it is obvious that the appeal to it in such matters has, as its only intention, to free us from the duty of following the apostles and can have as its only effect to undermine their authority. We may no doubt suppose at the beginning that we seek only to separate the kernel from the husk; but a principle which makes husk of all that can be shown to have anything in common with what was believed by any body of contemporaries, Hebrew or Greek, is so very drastic that it will leave nothing which we can surely trust. On this principle the Golden Rule itself is not authoritative, because something like it may be found in Jewish tradition and among the heathen sages. It certainly will not serve to make novelty the test of authority.

From the ethical point of view, however, this theory is preferable to that of "accommodation," and it is probable that part, at least, of the impulse which led Mr. Stuart to substitute it for the theory of "accommodation," with which he began, arose from a more or less clear perception of the moral implications of the theory of "accommodation." Under the impulse of that theory he had been led to speak of the procedure of the apostles in such language as this: "The sole principle that regulates all their appeals to the Old Testament, is that of obtaining, at whatever cost, support for their own favorite ideas."39 Is it any wonder that the reaction took place and an attempt was made to shift the burden from the veracity to the knowledge of the New Testament writers?⁴⁰ In Mr. Stuart's case we see very clearly, then, the effect of a doctrine of "accommodation" on the credit of the New Testament writers. His whole book is written in order to assign reason why he will not yield authority to these writers in their doctrine of a sacrificial atonement. This was due to their Jewish type of thought. But when the doctrine of accommodation is tried as a ground for the rejection of their authority, it is found to cut too deeply even for Mr. Stuart. He wishes to be rid of the authority of the New Testament writers, not to impeach their veracity; and so he discards it in favor of the less plausible, indeed, but also less deeply cutting canon, that the apostles are not to be followed when they agree with contemporary thought, because in these elements they are obviously speaking out of their own consciousness, as the products of their day, and not as proclaimers of the new revelation in Christ. Their inspiration, in a word, "was not plenary or universal - extending, that is, to all matters whatever which they speak about - but partial or special, being limited to securing the accurate communication of that plan of salvation which they had so profoundly experienced, and which they were commissioned to proclaim."41 In all else "the New Testament writers are simply on a level with their contemporaries." It may not be uninstructive to note that under such a formula Mr. Stuart not only rejects the teachings of these writers as to the nature and extent of inspiration, but also their teaching as to the sacrificial nature of the very plan of salvation which they were specially commissioned to proclaim. But what it is our business at present to point out is that the doctrine of accommodation is so obviously a blow at not only the trustworthiness, but the very veracity of the New Testament authors, that Mr. Stuart, even after asserting it, is led to permit it to fall into neglect.

And must it not be so? It may be easy indeed to confuse it with that progressive method of teaching which every wise teacher uses, and which our Lord also employed (John xvi. 12 seq.); it may be easy to represent it as nothing more than that harmless wisdom which the apostle proclaimed as the principle of his life, as he went about the world becoming all things to all men. But how different it is from either! It is one thing to adapt the teaching of truth to the stage of receptivity of the learner; it is another thing to adopt the errors of the time as the very matter to be taught. It is one thing to refrain from unnecessarily arousing the prejudices of the learner, that more ready entrance may be found for the truth; it is another thing to adopt those prejudices as our own, and to inculcate them as the very truths of God. It was one thing for Paul to become "all things to all men" that he might gain them to the truth; it was another for Peter to dissemble at Antioch, and so confirm men in their error. The accommodation attributed to the New Testament writers is a method by which they did and do not undeceive but deceive; not a method by which they teach the truth more winningly and to more; but a method by which they may be held to have taught along with the truth also error. The very object of attributing it to them is to enable us to separate their teaching into two parts - the true and the false; and to justify us in refusing a part while accepting a part at their hands. At the best it must so undermine the trustworthiness of the apostles as deliverers of doctrine as to subject their whole teaching to our judgment for the separation of the true from the false; at the worst, it must destroy their trustworthiness by destroying our confidence in their veracity. Mr. Stuart chose the better path; but he did so, as all who follow him must, by deserting the principle of accommodation, which leads itself along the worse road. With it as a starting point we must impeach the New Testament writers as lacking either knowledge or veracity.

TEACHING VERSUS OPINION

3. A third type of procedure, in defense of refusal to be bound by the doctrine of the New Testament writers as to inspiration, proceeds by drawing a distinction between the belief and the teaching of these writers; and affirming that, although it is true that they did believe and hold a high doctrine of inspiration, yet they do not explicitly teach it, and that we are bound, not by their opinions, but only by their explicit teaching.

This appears to be the conception which underlies the treatment of the matter by Archdeacon (then Canon) Farrar, in his "Life and Work of St. Paul." Speaking of Paul's attitude towards Scripture, Dr. Farrar says:42

"He shared, doubtless, in the views of the later Jewish schools - the Tanaim and Amoraim - on the nature of inspiration. These views, which we find also in Philo, made the words of Scripture coextensive and identical with the words of God, and in the clumsy and feeble hands of the more fanatical Talmudists often attached to the dead letter an importance which stifled or destroyed the living sense. But as this extreme and mechanical literalism - this claim to absolute infallibility even in accidental details and passing allusions - this superstitious adoration of the letters and vocables of Scripture, as though they were the articulate vocables and immediate autograph of God - finds no encouragement in any part of Scripture, and very distinct discouragement in more than one of the utterances of Christ, so there is not a single passage in which any approach to it is dogmatically stated in the writings of St. Paul."

This passage lacks somewhat more in point of clearness than it does in point of rhetorical fire. But three things seem to be sufficiently plain: (1) That Dr. Farrar thinks that Paul shared the views of the Tanaim, the Amoraim and Philo as to the nature of inspiration. (2) That he admits that these views claimed for Scripture "absolute infallibility even in accidental details and passing allusions." (3) That nevertheless he does not feel bound to accept this doctrine at Paul's hands, because, though Paul held it, he is thought not to have "dogmatically stated" it.

Now, the distinction which is here drawn seems, in general, a reasonable one. No one is likely to assert infallibility for the apostles in aught else than in their official teaching. And whatever they may be shown to have held apart from their official teaching, may readily be looked upon with only that respect which we certainly must accord to the opinions of men of such exceptional intellectual and spiritual insight. But it is more difficult to follow Dr. Farrar when it is asked whether this distinction can be established in the present matter. It does not seem to be true that there are no didactic statements as to inspiration in Paul's letters, or in the rest of the New Testament, such as implicate and carry into the sphere of matters taught, the whole doctrine that underlies their treatment of Scripture. The assertion in the term "theopneustic" in such a passage as II Tim. iii. 16, for example, cannot be voided by any construction of the passage; and the doctrine taught in the assertion must be understood to be the doctrine which that term connoted to Paul who uses it, not some other doctrine read into it by us.

It is further necessary to inquire what sources we have in a case like that of Paul, to inform us as to what his opinions were, apart from and outside of his teachings. It might conceivably have happened that some of his contemporaries should have recorded for us some account of opinions held by him to which he has given no expression in his epistles; or some account of actions performed by him involving the manifestation of judgment - somewhat similar, say, to Paul's own account of Peter's conduct in Antioch (Gal. ii. 11 seq.). A presumption may be held to lie also that he shared the ordinary opinions of his day in certain matters lying outside the scope of his teachings, as, for example, with reference to the form of the earth, or its relation to the sun; and it is not inconceivable that the form of his language, when incidentally adverting to such matters, might occasionally play into the hands of such a presumption. But it is neither on the ground of such a presumption, nor on the ground of such external testimony, that Dr. Farrar ascribes to him views as to inspiration similar to those of his Jewish contemporaries. It is distinctly on the ground of what he finds on a study of the body of official teaching which Paul has left to us. Dr. Farrar discovers that these views as to the nature of Scripture so underlie, are so assumed in, are so implied by, are so interwoven with Paul's official teaching that he is unwillingly driven to perceive that they were Paul's opinions. With what color of reason then can they be separated from his teaching?

There is raised here, moreover, a very important and far-reaching question, which few will be able to decide in Dr. Farrar's sense. What is taught in the New Testament? And what is the mode of its teaching? If we are to fall in with Dr. Farrar and say that nothing is taught except what is "dogmatically stated" in formal didactic form, the occasional character of the New Testament epistles would become a source of grave loss to us, instead of, as it otherwise is, a source of immense gain; the parabolic clothing of much of Christ's teaching would become a device to withhold from us all instruction on the matters of which the parables treat; and all that is most fundamental in religious truth, which, as a rule, is rather assumed everywhere in Scripture as a basis for particular applications than formally stated, would be removed out of the sphere of Biblical doctrine. Such a rule, in a word, would operate to turn the whole of Biblical teaching on its head, and to reduce it from a body of principles inculcated by means of examples into a mere congeries of instances hung in the air. The whole advance in the attitude of Dogmatics towards the Scriptures which has been made by modern scholarship is, moreover, endangered by this position. It was the fault of the older dogmatists to depend too much on isolated proof-texts for the framing and defense of doctrine. Dr. Farrar would have us return to this method. The alternative, commended justly to us by the whole body of modern scholarship, is, as Schleiermacher puts it, to seek "a form of Scripture proof on a larger scale than can be got from single texts," to build our systematic theology, in a word, on the basis, not of the occasional dogmatic statements of Scripture alone, taken separately and, as it were, in shreds, but on the basis of the theologies of the Scripture - to reproduce first the theological thought of each writer or group of writers and then to combine these several theologies (each according to its due historical place) into the one consistent system, consentaneous parts of which they are found to be.⁴³ In rejecting this method, Dr. Farrar discredits the whole science of Biblical Theology. From its standpoint it is incredible that one should attribute less importance and authoritativeness to the fundamental conceptions that underlie, color and give form to all of Paul's teaching than to the chance didactic statements he may have been led to make by this or that circumstance at the call of which his letters happened to be written. This certainly would be tithing mint and anise and cummin and omitting the weightier matters of the law.

That this mode of presenting the matter must lead, no less than the others which have already come under review, to undermining the authority. of the New Testament writers as deliverers of doctrine, must already be obvious. It begins by discrediting them as leaders in doctrinal thought and substituting for this a sporadic authority in explicit dogmatic statements. In Dr. Farrar's own hands it proceeds by quite undermining our confidence in the apostles as teachers, through an accusation lodged against them, not only of holding wrong views in doctrine, but even of cherishing as fundamental conceptions theological fancies which are in their very essence superstitious and idolatrous; and in their inevitable outcome ruinous to faith and honor. For Dr. Farrar does not mince matters when he expresses his opinion of that doctrine of inspiration - in its nature and its proper effects - which Philo held and the Jewish Rabbis and in which Paul, according to his expressed conviction, shared. "To say that every word and sentence and letter of Scripture is divine and supernatural, is a mechanical and useless shibboleth, nay, more, a human idol, and (constructively, at least) a dreadful blasphemy." It is a superstitious - he tells us that he had almost said fetish-worshiping - dogma, and "not only unintelligible, but profoundly dangerous." It "has in many ages filled the world with misery and ruin," and "has done more than any other dogma to corrupt the whole of exegesis with dishonest casuistry, and to shake to its centre the religious faith of thousands, alike of the most ignorant and of the most cultivated, in many centuries, and most of all in our own."44 Yet these are the views which Dr. Farrar is forced to allow that Paul shared! For Philo "held the most rigid views of inspiration"; than him indeed "Aqiba himself used no stronger language on the subject"45 - Aqiba, "the greatest of the Tanaites";⁴⁶ and it was the views of the Tanaim, Amoraim and Philo, which Dr. Farrar tells us the apostle shared. How after this Dr. Farrar continues to look upon even the "dogmatic statements" of Paul as authoritative, it is hard to see. By construction he was a fetish worshiper and placed Scripture upon an idol's pedestal. The doctrines which he held and which underlie his teaching were unintelligible, useless, idolatrous, blasphemous and profoundly dangerous, and actually have shaken to its centre the religious faith of thousands. On such a tree what other than evil fruits could grow?

No doubt something of this may be attributed to the exaggeration characteristic of Dr. Farrar's language and thought. Obviously Paul's view of inspiration was not altogether identical with that of contemporary Judaism; it differed from it somewhat in the same way that his use of Scripture differed from that of the Rabbis of his day. But it is one with Philo's and Aqiba's on the point which with Dr. Farrar is decisive: alike with them he looked upon Scripture as "absolutely infallible, even in accidental details and passing allusions," as the very Word of God, His "Oracles," to use his own high phrase, and therefore Dr. Farrar treats the two views as essentially one. But the situation is only modified, not relieved, by the recognition of this fact.

In any event the pathway on which we enter when we begin to distinguish between the didactic statements and the fundamental conceptions of a body of incidental teaching, with a view to accepting the former and rejecting the latter, cannot but lead to a general undermining of the authority of the whole. Only if we could believe in a quite mechanical and magical process of inspiration (from believing in which Dr. Farrar is no doubt very far) by which the subject's "dogmatical statements" were kept entirely separate from and unaffected by his fundamental conceptions, could such an attitude be logically possible. In that case we should have to view these "dogmatical statements" as not Paul's at all, standing, as they do ex hypothesi, wholly disconnected with his own fundamental thought, but as spoken through him by an overmastering spiritual influence; as a phenomenon, in a word, similar to the oracles of heathen shrines, and without analogy in Scripture except perhaps in such cases as that of Balaam. In proportion as we draw back from so magical a conception of the mode of inspiration, in that proportion our refusal of authority to the fundamental conceptions of the New Testament writers must invade also their "dogmatical statements." We must logically, in a word, ascribe like authority to the whole body of their teaching, in its foundation and superstructure alike, or we must withhold it in equal measure from all; or, if we withhold it from one and not the other, the discrimination would most naturally be made against the superstructure rather than against the foundation.

FACTS VERSUS DOCTRINE

4. Finally, an effort may be made to justify our holding a lower doctrine of inspiration than that held by the writers of the New Testament, by appealing to the so-called phenomena of the Scriptures and opposing these to the doctrine of the Scriptures, with the expectation, apparently, of justifying a modification of the doctrine taught by the Scriptures by the facts embedded in the Scriptures.

The essential principle of this method of procedure is shared by very many who could scarcely be said to belong to the class who are here more specifically in mind, inasmuch as they do not begin by explicitly recognizing the doctrine of inspiration held by the New Testament writers to be that high doctrine which the Church and the best scientific exegesis agree in understanding them to teach.⁴⁷ Every attempt to determine or modify the Biblical doctrine of inspiration by an appeal to the actual characteristics of the Bible must indeed proceed on an identical principle. It finds, perhaps, as plausible a form of assertion possible to it in the declaration of Dr. Marvin R. Vincent⁴⁸ that "our only safe principle is that inspiration is consistent with the phenomena of Scripture" - to which one of skeptical turn might respond that whether the inspiration claimed by Scripture is consistent with the phenomena of Scripture after all requires some proof, while one of a more believing frame might respond that it is a safer principle that the phenomena of Scripture are consistent with its inspiration. Its crudest expression may be seen in such a book as Mr. Horton's "Inspiration and the Bible," which we have already had occasion to mention. Mr. Horton chooses to retain the term, "inspiration," as representing "the common sense of Christians of all ages and in all places" as to the nature of their Scriptures,⁴⁹ but asserts that this term is to be understood to mean just what the Bible is - that is to say, whatever any given writer chooses to think the Bible to be. When Paul affirms in II Tim. iii. 16 that every Scripture is "inspired by God," therefore, we are not to enter into a philological and exegetical investigation to discover what Paul meant to affirm by the use of this word, but simply to say that Paul must have meant to affirm the Bible to be what we find it to be. Surely no way could be invented which would more easily enable us to substitute our thought for the apostles' thought, and to proclaim our crudities under the sanction of their great names. Operating by it, Mr. Horton is enabled to assert that the Bible is "inspired," and yet to teach that God's hand has entered it only in a providential way, by His dealings through long ages with a people who gradually wrought out a history, conceived hopes, and brought all through natural means to an expression in a faulty and often self-contradictory record, which we call inspired only "because by reading it and studying it we can find our way to God, we can find what is His will for us and how we can carry out that will."50 The most naive expression of the principle in question may be found in such a statement as the following, from the pen of Dr. W. G. Blaikie: "In our mode of dealing with this question the main difference between us is, that you lay your stress on certain general considerations, and on certain specific statements of Scripture. We, on the other hand, while accepting the specific statements, lay great stress also on the structure of Scripture as we find it, on certain phenomena which lie on the surface, and on the inextricable difficulties which are involved in carrying out your view in detail."51 This statement justly called out the rebuke of Dr. Robert Watts,⁵² that "while the principle of your theory is a mere inference from apparent discrepancies not as yet explained, the principle of the theory you oppose is the formally expressed utterances of prophets and apostles, and of Christ Himself."

Under whatever safeguards, indeed, it may be attempted, and with whatever caution it may be prosecuted, the effort to modify the teaching of Scripture as to its own inspiration by an appeal to the observed characteristics of Scripture, is an attempt not to obtain a clearer knowledge of what the Scriptures teach, but to correct that teaching. And to correct the teaching of Scripture is to proclaim Scripture untrustworthy as a witness to doctrine. The procedure in question is precisely similar to saying that the Bible's doctrine of creation is to be derived not alone from the teachings of the Bible as to creation, but from the facts obtained through a scientific study of creation; that the Bible's doctrine as to man is to be found not in the Bible's deliverances on the subject, but "while accepting these, we lay great stress also on the structure of man as we find him, and on the inextricable difficulties which are involved in carrying out the Bible's teaching in detail"; that the Bible's doctrine of justification is to be obtained by retaining the term as commended by the common sense of the Christian world and understanding by it just what we find justification to be in actual life. It is precisely similar to saying that Mr. Darwin's doctrine of natural selection is to be determined not solely by what Mr. Darwin says concerning it, but equally by what we, in our own independent study of nature, find to be true as to natural selection. A historian of thought who proceeded on such a principle would scarcely receive the commendation of students of history, however much his writings might serve certain party ends. Who does not see that underlying this whole method of procedure - in its best and in its worst estate alike - there is apparent an unwillingness to commit ourselves without reserve to the teaching of the Bible, either because that teaching is distrusted or already disbelieved; and that it is a grave logical error to suppose that the teaching of the Bible as to inspiration can be corrected in this way any otherwise than by showing it not to be in accordance with the facts? The proposed method, therefore, does not conduct us to a somewhat modified doctrine of inspiration, but to a disproof of inspiration; by correcting the doctrine delivered by the Biblical writers, it discredits those writers as teachers of doctrine.

Let it not be said that in speaking thus we are refusing the inductive method of establishing doctrine. We follow the inductive method. When we approach the Scriptures to ascertain their doctrine of inspiration, we proceed by collecting the whole body of relevant facts. Every claim they make to inspiration is a relevant fact; every statement they make concerning inspiration is a relevant fact; every allusion they make to the subject is a relevant fact; every fact indicative of the attitude they hold towards Scripture is a relevant fact. But the characteristics of their own writings are not facts relevant to the determination of their doctrine. Nor let it be said that we are desirous of determining the true, as distinguished from the Scriptural, doctrine of inspiration otherwise than inductively. We are averse, however, to supposing that in such an inquiry the relevant "phenomena" of Scripture are not first of all and before all the claims of Scripture and second only to them its use of previous Scripture. And we are averse to excluding these primary "phenomena" and building our doctrine solely or mainly upon the characteristics and structure of Scripture, especially as determined by some special school of modern research by critical methods certainly not infallible and to the best of our own judgment not even reasonable. And we are certainly averse to supposing that this induction, if it reaches results not absolutely consentaneous with the teachings of Scripture itself, has done anything other than discredit those teachings, or that in discrediting them, it has escaped discrediting the doctrinal authority of Scripture.

Nor again is it to be thought that we refuse to use the actual characteristics of Scripture as an aid in, and a check upon, our exegesis of Scripture, as we seek to discover its doctrine of inspiration. We do not simply admit, on the contrary, we affirm that in every sphere the observed fact may throw a broad and most helpful light upon the written text. It is so in the narrative of creation in the first chapter of Genesis; which is only beginning to be adequately understood as science is making her first steps in reading the records of God's creative hand in the structure of the world itself. It is preeminently so in the written prophecies, the dark sayings of which are not seldom first illuminated by the light cast back upon them by their fulfillment. As Scripture interprets Scripture, and fulfillment interprets prediction, so may fact interpret assertion. And this is as true as regards the Scriptural assertion of the fact of inspiration as elsewhere. No careful student of the Bible doctrine of inspiration will neglect anxiously to try his conclusions as to the teachings of Scripture by the observed characteristics and "structure" of Scripture, and in trying he may and no doubt will find occasion to modify his conclusions as at first apprehended. But it is one thing to correct our exegetical processes and so modify our exegetical conclusions in the new light obtained by a study of the facts, and quite another to modify, by the facts of the structure of Scripture, the Scriptural teaching itself, as exegetically ascertained; and it is to this latter that we should be led by making the facts of structure and the facts embedded in Scripture co-factors of the same rank in the so-called inductive ascertainment of the doctrine of inspiration. Direct exegesis after all has its rights: we may seek aid from every quarter in our efforts to perform its processes with precision and obtain its results with purity; but we cannot allow its results to be "modified" by extraneous considerations. Let us by all means be careful in determining the doctrine of Scripture, but let us also be fully honest in determining it; and if we count it a crime to permit our ascertainment of the facts recorded in Scripture to be unduly swayed by our conception of the doctrine taught in Scripture, let us count it equally a crime to permit our ascertainment of its doctrine to be unduly swayed or colored by our conception of the nature of the facts of its structure or of the facts embedded in its record. We cannot, therefore, appeal from the doctrine of Scripture as exegetically established to the facts of the structure of Scripture or the facts embedded in Scripture, in the hope of modifying the doctrine. If the teaching and the facts of Scripture are in harmony the appeal is useless. If they are in disharmony, we cannot follow both - we must choose one and reject the other. And the attempt to make the facts of Scripture co-factors of equal rank with the teaching of Scripture in ascertaining the true doctrine of inspiration, is really an attempt to modify the doctrine taught by Scripture by an appeal to the facts, while concealing from ourselves the fact that we have modified it, and in modifying corrected it, and, of course, in correcting it, discredited Scripture as a teacher of doctrine.

Probably these four types of procedure will include most of the methods by which men are to-day seeking to free themselves from the necessity of following the Scriptural doctrine of inspiration, while yet looking to Scripture as the source of doctrine. Is it not plain that on every one of them the outcome must be to discredit Scripture as a doctrinal guide? The human mind is very subtle, but with all its subtlety it will hardly be able to find a way to refuse to follow Scripture in one of the doctrines it teaches without undermining its authority as a teacher of doctrine.

II
IMMENSE WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE FOR THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE

It is only to turn another face of the proposition with which we are dealing towards us, to emphasize next the important fact, that, the state of the case being such as we have found it, the evidence for the truth of the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of Scripture is just the whole body of evidence which goes to show that the apostles are trustworthy teachers of doctrine.

Language is sometimes made use of which would seem to imply that the amount or weight of the evidence offered for the truth of the doctrine that the Scriptures are the Word of God in such a sense that their words deliver the truth of God without error, is small. It is on the contrary just the whole body of evidence which goes to prove the writers of the New Testament to be trustworthy as deliverers of doctrine. It is just the same evidence in amount and weight which is adduced in favor of any other Biblical doctrine. It is the same weight and amount of evidence precisely which is adducible for the truth of the doctrines of the Incarnation, of the Trinity, of the Divinity of Christ, of Justification by Faith, of Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, of the Resurrection of the Body, of Life Everlasting. It is, of course, not absurdly intended that every Biblical doctrine is taught in the Scriptures with equal clearness, with equal explicitness, with equal frequency. Some doctrines are stated with an explicit precision that leaves little to systematic theology in its efforts to define the truth on all sides, except to repeat the words which the Biblical writers have used to teach it - as for example the doctrine of Justification by Faith. Others are not formulated in Scripture at all, but are taught only in their elements, which the systematician must collect and combine and so arrive finally at the doctrine - as for example the doctrine of the Trinity. Some are adverted to so frequently as to form the whole warp and woof of Scripture - as for example the doctrine of redemption in the blood of Christ. Others are barely alluded to here and there, in connections where the stress is really on other matters - as for example the doctrine of the fall of the angels. But however explicitly or incidentally, however frequently or rarely, however emphatically or allusively, they may be taught, when exegesis has once done its work and shown that they are taught by the Biblical writers, all these doctrines stand as supported by the same weight and amount of evidence - the evidence of the trustworthiness of the Biblical writers as teachers of doctrine. We cannot say that we will believe these writers when they assert a doctrine a hundred times and we will not believe them if they assert it only ten times or only once; that we will believe them in the doctrines they make the main subjects of discourse, but not in those which they advert to incidentally; that we will believe them in those that they teach as conclusions of formal arguments, but not in those which they use as premises wherewith to reach those conclusions; that we will believe them in those they explicitly formulate and dogmatically teach, but not in those which they teach only in their separate parts and elements. The question is not how they teach a doctrine, but do they teach it; and when that question is once settled affirmatively, the weight of evidence that commends this doctrine to us as true is the same in every case; and that is the whole body of evidence which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. The Biblical doctrine of inspiration, therefore, has in its favor just this whole weight and amount of evidence. It follows on the one hand that it cannot rationally be rejected save on the ground of evidence which will outweigh the whole body of evidence which goes to authenticate the Biblical writers as trustworthy witnesses to and teachers of doctrine. And it follows, on the other hand, that if the Biblical doctrine of inspiration is rejected, our freedom from its trammels is bought logically at the somewhat serious cost of discrediting the evidence which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. In this sense, the fortunes of distinctive Christianity are bound up with those of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration.

Let it not be said that thus we found the whole Christian system upon the doctrine of plenary inspiration. We found the whole Christian system on the doctrine of plenary inspiration as little as we found it upon the doctrine of angelic existences. Were there no such thing as inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us in the generally trustworthy reports of the teaching of our Lord and of His authoritative agents in founding the Church, preserved in the writings of the apostles and their first followers, and in the historical witness of the living Church. Inspiration is not the most fundamental of Christian doctrines, nor even the first thing we prove about the Scriptures. It is the last and crowning fact as to the Scriptures. These we first prove authentic, historically credible, generally trustworthy, before we prove them inspired. And the proof of their authenticity, credibility, general trustworthiness would give us a firm basis for Christianity prior to any knowledge on our part of their inspiration, and apart indeed from the existence of inspiration. The present writer, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, desires to repeat here what he has said on every proper occasion - that he is far from contending that without inspiration there could be no Christianity. "Without any inspiration," he added, when making this affirmation on his induction into the work of teaching the Bible⁵³ - "without any inspiration we could have had Christianity; yea, and men could still have heard the truth and through it been awakened, and justified, and sanctified, and glorified. The verities of our faith would remain historically proven to us - so bountiful has God been in His fostering care - even had we no Bible; and through those verities, salvation." We are in entire harmony in this matter with what we conceive to be the very true statement recently made by Dr. George P. Fisher, that "if the authors of the Bible were credible reporters of revelations of God, whether in the form of historical transactions of which they were witnesses, or of divine mysteries that were unveiled to their minds, their testimony would be entitled to belief, even if they were shut up to their unaided faculties in communicating what they had thus received."54 We are in entire sympathy in this matter, therefore, with the protest which Dr. Marcus Dods raised in his famous address at the meeting of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches at London, against representing that "the infallibility of the Bible is the ground of the whole Christian faith."55 We judge with him that it is very important indeed that such a misapprehension, if it is anywhere current, should be corrected. What we are at present arguing is something entirely different from such an overstrained view of the importance of inspiration to the very existence of Christian faith, and something which has no connection with it. We do not think that the doctrine of plenary inspiration is the ground of Christian faith, but if it was held and taught by the New Testament writers, we think it an element in the Christian faith; a very important and valuable element;⁵⁶ an element that appeals to our acceptance on precisely the same ground as every other element of the faith, viz., on the ground of our recognition of the writers of the New Testament as trustworthy witnesses to doctrine; an element of the Christian faith, therefore, which cannot be rejected without logically undermining our trust in all the other elements of distinctive Christianity by undermining the evidence on which this trust rests. We must indeed prove the authenticity, credibility and general trustworthiness of the New Testament writings before we prove their inspiration; and even were they not inspired this proof would remain valid and we should give them accordant trust. But just because this proof is valid, we must trust these writings in their witness to their inspiration, if they give such witness; and if we refuse to trust them here, we have in principle refused them trust everywhere. In such circumstances their inspiration is bound up inseparably with their trustworthiness, and therefore with all else that we receive on trust from them.

On the other hand, we need to remind ourselves that to say that the amount and weight of the evidence of the truth of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration is measured by the amount and weight of the evidence for the general credibility and trustworthiness of the New Testament writers as witnesses to doctrine, is an understatement rather than an overstatement of the matter. For if we trust them at all we will trust them in the account they give of the person and in the report they give of the teaching of Christ; whereupon, as they report Him as teaching the same doctrine of Scripture that they teach, we are brought face to face with divine testimony to this doctrine of inspiration. The argument, then, takes the form given it by Bishop Wordsworth: "The New Testament canonizes the Old; the INCARNATE WORD sets His seal on the WRITTEN WORD. The Incarnate Word is God; therefore, the inspiration of the Old Testament is authenticated by God Himself."57 And, again, the general trustworthiness of the writers of the New Testament gives us the right and imposes on us the duty of accepting their witness to the relation the Holy Ghost bears to their teaching, as, for example, when Paul tells us that the things which they uttered they uttered "not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit; joining Spirit-given things with Spirit-given things" (I Cor. ii. 13), and Peter asserts that the Gospel was preached by them "in the Holy Spirit" (I Peter i. 12); and this relation asserted to exist between the Holy Ghost and their teaching, whether oral or written (I Cor. xiv. 37; II Thess. ii. 15, iii. 6-14), gives the sanction of the Holy Ghost to their doctrine of Holy Scripture, whatever that is found to be. So that, even though we begin on the lowest ground, we may find ourselves compelled to say, as Bishop Wilberforce found himself compelled to say: "In brief, my belief is this: The whole Bible comes to us as 'the Word of God' under the sanction of God, the Holy Ghost."58 The weight of the testimony to the Biblical doctrine of inspiration, in a word, is no less than the weight to be attached to the testimony of God - God the Son and God the Spirit.

But our present purpose is not to draw out the full value of the testimony, but simply to emphasize the fact that on the emergence of the exegetical fact that the Scriptures of the New Testament teach this doctrine, the amount and weight of evidence for its truth must be allowed to be the whole amount and weight of the evidence that the writers of the New Testament are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. It is not on some shadowy and doubtful evidence that the doctrine is based - not on an a priori conception of what inspiration ought to be, not on a "tradition" of doctrine in the Church, though all the a priori considerations and the whole tradition of doctrine in the Church are also thrown in the scale for and not in that against this doctrine; but first on the confidence which we have in the writers of the New Testament as doctrinal guides, and ultimately on whatever evidence of whatever kind and force exists to justify that confidence. In this sense, we repeat, the cause of distinctive Christianity is bound up with the cause of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. We accept Christianity in all its distinctive doctrines on no other ground than the credibility and trustworthiness of the Bible as a guide to truth; and on this same ground we must equally accept its doctrine of inspiration. "If we may not accept its account of itself," asks Dr. Purves, pointedly, "why should we care to ascertain its account of other things?"59

III
IMMENSE PRESUMPTION AGAINST ALLEGED FACTS CONTRADICTORY OF THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE

We are again making no new affirmation but only looking from a slightly different angle upon the same proposition with which we have been dealing from the first, when we emphasize next the fact, that the state of the case being as we have found it, we approach the study of the so-called "phenomena" of the Scriptures with a very strong presumption that these Scriptures contain no errors, and that any "phenomena" apparently inconsistent with their inerrancy are so in appearance only: a presumption the measure of which is just the whole amount and weight of evidence that the New Testament writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine.

It seems to be often tacitly assumed that the Biblical doctrine of inspiration cannot be confidently ascertained until all the facts concerning the contents and structure and characteristics of Scripture are fully determined and allowed for. This is obviously fallacious. What Paul, for example, believed as to the nature of Scripture is obviously an easily separable question from what the nature of Scripture really is. On the other hand, the assumption that we cannot confidently accept the Biblical doctrine of inspiration as true until criticism and exegesis have said their last word upon the structure, the text, and the characteristics of Scripture, even to the most minute fact, is more plausible. But it is far from obviously true. Something depends upon our estimate of the force of the mass of evidence which goes to show the trustworthiness of the apostles as teachers of truth, and of the clearness with which they announce their teaching as to inspiration. It is conceivable, for example, that the force of the evidence of their trustworthiness may be so great that we should be fully justified in yielding implicit confidence to their teaching, even though many and serious difficulties should stand in the way of accepting it. This, indeed, is exactly what we do in our ordinary use of Scripture as a source of doctrine. Who doubts that the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation present difficulties to rational construction? Who doubts that the doctrines of native demerit and total depravity, inability and eternal punishment raise objections in the natural heart? We accept these doctrines and others which ought to be much harder to credit, such as the Biblical teaching that God so loved sinful man as to give His only-begotten Son to die for him, not because their acceptance is not attended with difficulties, but because our confidence in the New Testament as a doctrinal guide is so grounded in unassailable and compelling evidence, that we believe its teachings despite the difficulties which they raise. We do not and we cannot wait until all these difficulties are fully explained before we yield to the teaching of the New Testament the fullest confidence of our minds and hearts. How then can it be true that we are to wait until all difficulties are removed before we can accept with confidence the Biblical doctrine of inspiration? In relation to this doctrine alone, are we to assume the position that we will not yield faith in response to due and compelling evidence of the trustworthiness of the teacher, until all difficulties are explained to our satisfaction? - that we must fully understand and comprehend before we will believe? Or is the point this - that we can suppose ourselves possibly mistaken in everything else except our determination of the characteristics and structure of Scripture and the facts stated therein? Surely if we do not need to wait until we understand how God can be both one and three, how Christ can be both human and divine, how man can be both unable and responsible, how an act can be both free and certain, how man can be both a sinner and righteous in God's sight, before we accept, on the authority of the teaching of Scripture, the doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of man's state as a sinner, of God's eternal predestination of the acts of free agents, and of acceptance on the ground of Christ's righteousness, because of the weight of the evidence which goes to prove that Scripture trustworthy as a teacher of divine truth; we may on the same compelling evidence accept, in full confidence, the teaching of the same Scripture as to the nature of its own inspiration, prior to a full understanding of how all the phenomena of Scripture are to be adjusted to it.

No doubt it is perfectly true and is to be kept in mind that the claim of a writing to be infallible may be mistaken or false. Such a claim has been put forth in behalf of and by other writings besides the Bible, and has been found utterly inconsistent with the observed characteristics of those writings. An a priori possibility may be asserted to exist in the case of the Bible, that a comparison of its phenomena with its doctrine may bring out a glaring inconsistency. The test of the truth of the claims of the Bible to be inspired of God through comparison with its contents, characteristics and phenomena, the Bible cannot expect to escape; and the lovers of the Bible will be the last to deny the validity of it. By all means let the doctrine of the Bible be tested by the facts and let the test be made all the more, not the less, stringent and penetrating because of the great issues that hang upon it. If the facts are inconsistent with the doctrine, let us all know it, and know it so clearly that the matter is put beyond doubt. But let us not conceal from ourselves the greatness of the issues involved in the test, lest we approach the test in too light a spirit, and make shipwreck of faith in the trustworthiness of the apostles as teachers of doctrine, with the easy indifference of a man who corrects the incidental errors of a piece of gossip. Nor is this appeal to the seriousness of the issues involved in any sense an appeal to deal deceitfully with the facts concerning or stated in the Bible, through fear of disturbing our confidence in a comfortable doctrine of its infallibility. It is simply an appeal to common sense. If you are told that a malicious lie has been uttered by some unknown person you may easily yield the report a languid provisional assent; such things are not impossible, unfortunately in this sinful world not unexampled. But if it is told you of your loved and trusted friend, you will probably demand the most stringent proof at the point of your walking stick. So far as this, Robert Browning has missed neither nature nor right reason, when he makes his Ferishtah point out how much more evidence we require in proof of a fact which brings us loss than what is sufficient to command

The easy acquiescence of mankind
In matters nowise worth dispute."

If it is right to test most carefully the claim of every settled and accepted faith by every fact asserted in rebuttal of it, it must be equally right, nay incumbent, to scrutinize most closely the evidence for an asserted fact, which, if genuine, wounds in its vitals some important interest. If it would be a crime to refuse to consider most carefully and candidly any phenomena of Scripture asserted to be inconsistent with its inerrancy, it would be equally a crime to accept the asserted reality of phenomena of Scripture, which, if real, strike at the trustworthiness of the apostolic witness to doctrine, on any evidence of less than demonstrative weight.

But we approach the consideration of these phenomena alleged to be inconsistent with the Biblical doctrine of inspiration not only thus with what may be called, though in a high sense, a sentimental presumption against their reality. The presumption is an eminently rational one, and is capable of somewhat exact estimation. We do not adopt the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of Scripture on sentimental grounds, nor even, as we have already had occasion to remark, on a priori or general grounds of whatever kind. We adopt it specifically because it is taught us as truth by Christ and His apostles, in the Scriptural record of their teaching, and the evidence for its truth is, therefore, as we have also already pointed out, precisely that evidence, in weight and amount, which vindicates for us the trustworthiness of Christ and His apostles as teachers of doctrine. Of course, this evidence is not in the strict logical sense "demonstrative;" it is "probable" evidence. It therefore leaves open the metaphysical possibility of its being mistaken. But it may be contended that it is about as great in amount and weight as "probable" evidence can be made, and that the strength of conviction which it is adapted to produce may be and should be practically equal to that produced by demonstration itself. But whatever weight it has, and whatever strength of conviction it is adapted to produce, it is with this weight of evidence behind us and with this strength of conviction as to the unreality of any alleged phenomena contradictory of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration, that we approach the study of the characteristics, the structure, and the detailed statements of the Bible. Their study is not to be neglected; we have not attained through "probable" evidence apodeictic certainty of the Bible's infallibility. But neither is the reality of the alleged phenomena inconsistent with the Bible's doctrine, to be allowed without sufficient evidence. Their reality cannot be logically or rationally recognized unless the evidence for it be greater in amount and weight than the whole mass of evidence for the trustworthiness of the Biblical writers as teachers of doctrine.

It is not to be thought that this amounts to a recommendation of strained exegesis in order to rid the Bible of phenomena adverse to the truth of the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. It amounts to a recommendation of great care in the exegetical determination of these alleged phenomena; it amounts to a recommendation to allow that our exegesis determining these phenomena is not infallible. But it is far from recommending either strained or artificial exegesis of any kind. We are not bound to harmonize the alleged phenomena with the Bible doctrine; and if we cannot harmonize them save by strained or artificial exegesis they would be better left unharmonized. We are not bound, however, on the other hand, to believe that they are unharmonizable, because we cannot harmonize them save by strained exegesis. Our individual fertility in exegetical expedients, our individual insight into exegetical truth, our individual capacity of understanding are not the measure of truth. If we cannot harmonize without straining, let us leave unharmonized. It is not necessary for us to see the harmony that it should exist or even be recognized by us as existing. But it is necessary for us to believe the harmony to be possible and real, provided that we are not prepared to say that we clearly see that on any conceivable hypothesis (conceivable to us or conceivable to any other intelligent beings) the harmony is impossible - if the trustworthiness of the Biblical writers who teach us the doctrine of plenary inspiration is really safeguarded to us on evidence which we cannot disbelieve. In that case every unharmonized passage remains a case of difficult harmony and does not pass into the category of objections to plenary inspiration. It can pass into the category of objections only if we are prepared to affirm that we clearly see that it is, on any conceivable hypothesis of its meaning, clearly inconsistent with the Biblical doctrine of inspiration. In that case we would no doubt need to give up the Biblical doctrine of inspiration; but with it we must also give up our confidence in the Biblical writers as teachers of doctrine. And if we cannot reasonably give up this latter, neither can we reasonably allow that the phenomena apparently inconsistent with the former are real, or really inconsistent with it. And this is but to say that we approach the study of these phenomena with a presumption against their being such as will disprove the Biblical doctrine of inspiration - or, we may add (for this is but the same thing in different words), correct or modify the Biblical doctrine of inspiration - which is measured precisely by the amount and weight of the evidence which goes to show that the Bible is a trustworthy guide to doctrine.

The importance of emphasizing these, as it would seem, very obvious principles, does not arise out of need for a very great presumption in order to overcome the difficulties arising from the "phenomena" of Scripture, as over against its doctrine of inspiration. Such difficulties are not specially numerous or intractable. Dr. Charles Hodge justly characterizes those that have been adduced by disbelievers in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, as "for the most part trivial," "only apparent," and marvelously few "of any real importance." They bear, he adds, about the same relation to the whole that a speck of sandstone detected here and there in the marble of the Parthenon would bear to that building.⁶⁰ They do not for the most part require explaining away, but only to be fairly understood in order to void them. They constitute no real strain upon faith, but when approached in a candid spirit one is left continually marveling at the excessive fewness of those which do not, like ghosts, melt away from vision as soon as faced. Moreover, as every student of the history of exegesis and criticism knows, they are a progressively vanishing quantity. Those which seemed most obvious and intractable a generation or two ago, remain to-day as only too readily forgotten warnings against the ineradicable and inordinate dogmatism of the opponents of the inerrancy of the Bible, who over-ride continually every canon of historical and critical caution in their eager violence against the doctrine that they assail. What scorn they expressed of "apologists" who doubted whether Luke was certainly in error in assigning a "pro-consul" to Cyprus, whether he was in error in making Lysanias a contemporary tetrarch with the Herodian rulers, and the like. How easily that scorn is forgotten as the progress of discovery has one by one vindicated the assertions of the Biblical historians. The matter has come to such a pass, indeed, in the progress of discovery, that there is a sense in which it may be said that the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible can now be based, with considerable confidence, on its observed "phenomena." What marvelous accuracy is characteristic of its historians! Dr. Fisher, in a paper already referred to, invites his readers to read Archibald Forbes' article in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1892, on "Napoleon the Third at Sedan," that they may gain some idea of how the truth of history as to the salient facts may be preserved amid "hopeless and bewildering discrepancies in regard to details," in the reports of the most trustworthy eye-witnesses. The article is instructive in this regard. And it is instructive in another regard also. What a contrast exists between this mass of "hopeless and bewildering discrepancies in regard to details," among the accounts of a single important transaction, written by careful and watchful eye-witnesses, who were on the ground for the precise purpose of gathering the facts for report, and who were seeking to give an exact and honest account of the events which they witnessed, and the marvelous accuracy of the Biblical writers! If these "hopeless and bewildering discrepancies" are consistent with the honesty and truthfulness and general trustworthiness of the uninspired writers, may it not be argued that the so much greater accuracy attained by the Biblical writers when describing not one event but the history of ages - and a history filled with pitfalls for the unwary - has something more than honesty and truthfulness behind it, and warrants the attribution to them of something more than general trustworthiness? And, if in the midst of this marvel of general accuracy there remain here and there a few difficulties as yet not fully explained in harmony with it, or if in the course of the historical vindication of it in general a rare difficulty (as in the case of some of the statements of Daniel) seems to increase in sharpness, are we to throw ourselves with desperate persistency into these "last ditches" and strive by our increased msistence upon the impregnability of them to conceal from men that the main army has been beaten from the field? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that these difficulties, too, will receive their explanation with advancing knowledge? And is it not the height of the unreasonable to treat them like the Sibylline books as of ever-increasing importance in proportion to their decreasing number? The importance of keeping in mind that there is a presumption against the reality of these "inconsistent phenomena," and that the presumption is of a weight measurable only by the weight of evidence which vindicates the general trustworthiness of the Bible as a teacher of doctrine, does not arise from the need of so great a presumption in order to overcome the weight of the alleged opposing facts. Those facts are not specially numerous, important or intractable, and they are, in the progress of research, a vanishing quantity.

The importance of keeping in mind the principle in question arises rather from the importance of preserving a correct logical method. There are two ways of approaching the study of the inspiration of the Bible. One proceeds by obtaining first the doctrine of inspiration taught by the Bible as applicable to itself, and then testing this doctrine by the facts as to the Bible as ascertained by Biblical criticism and exegesis. This is good logical procedure; and in the presence of a vast mass of evidence for the general trustworthiness of the Biblical writings as witnesses of doctrine, and for the appointment of their writers as teachers of divine truth to men, and for the presence of the Holy Spirit with and in them aiding them in their teaching (in whatever degree and with whatever effect) - it would seem to be the only logical and proper mode of approaching the question. The other method proceeds by seeking the doctrine of inspiration in the first instance through a comprehensive induction from the facts as to the structure and contents of the Bible, as ascertained by critical and exegetical processes, treating all these facts as co-factors of the same rank for the induction. If in this process the facts of structure and the facts embedded in the record of Scripture - which are called, one-sidedly indeed but commonly, by the class of writers who adopt this procedure, "the phenomena" of Scripture - alone are considered, it would be difficult to arrive at a precise doctrine of inspiration, at the best: though, as we have already pointed out, a degree and kind of accuracy might be vindicated for the Scriptures which might lead us to suspect and to formulate as the best account of it, some divine assistance to the writers' memory, mental processes and expression. If the Biblical facts and teaching are taken as co-factors in the induction, the procedure (as we have already pointed out) is liable to the danger of modifying the teaching by the facts without clear recognition of what is being done; the result of which would be the loss from observation of one main fact of errancy, viz., the inaccuracy of the teaching of the Scriptures as to their own inspiration. This would vitiate the whole result: and this vitiation of the result can be avoided only by ascertaining separately the teaching of Scripture as to its own inspiration, and by accounting the results of this ascertainment one of the facts of the induction. Then we are in a position to judge by the comparison of this fact with the other facts, whether this fact of teaching is in accord or in disaccord with those facts of performance. If it is in disaccord, then of course this disaccord is the main factor in the case: the writers are convicted of false teaching. If it is in accord, then, if the teaching is not proved by the accord, it is at least left credible, and may be believed with whatever confidence may be justified by the evidence which goes to show that these writers are trustworthy as deliverers of doctrine. And if nice and difficult questions arise in the comparison of the fact of teaching with the facts of performance, it is inevitable that the relative weight of the evidence for the trustworthiness of the two sets of facts should be the deciding factor in determining the truth. This is as much as to say that the asserted facts as to performance must give way before the fact as to teaching, unless the evidence on which they are based as facts outweighs the evidence on which the teaching may be accredited as true. But this correction of the second method of procedure, by which alone it can be made logical in form or valid in result, amounts to nothing less than setting it aside altogether and reverting to the first method, according to which the teaching of Scripture is first to be determined, and then this teaching to be tested by the facts of performance.

The importance of proceeding according to the true logical method may be illustrated by the observation that the conclusions actually arrived at by students of the subject seem practically to depend on the logical method adopted. In fact, the difference here seems mainly a difference in point of view. If we start from the Scripture doctrine of inspiration, we approach the phenomena with the question whether they will negative this doctrine, and we find none able to stand against it, commended to us as true, as it is, by the vast mass of evidence available to prove the trustworthiness of the Scriptural writers as teachers of doctrine. But if we start simply with a collection of the phenomena, classifying and reasoning from them, whether alone or in conjunction with the Scriptural statements, it may easily happen with us, as it happened with certain of old, that meeting with some things hard to be understood, we may be ignorant and unstable enough to wrest them to our own intellectual destruction, and so approach the Biblical doctrine of inspiration set upon explaining it away. The value of having the Scripture doctrine as a clue in our hands, is thus fairly illustrated by the ineradicable inability of the whole negative school to distinguish between difficulties and proved errors. If then we ask what we are to do with the numerous phenomena of Scripture inconsistent with verbal inspiration, which, so it is alleged, "criticism" has brought to light, we must reply: Challenge them in the name of the New Testament doctrine, and ask for their credentials. They have no credentials that can stand before that challenge. No single error has as yet been demonstrated to occur in the Scriptures as given by God to His Church. And every critical student knows, as already pointed out, that the progress of investigation has been a continuous process of removing difficulties, until scarcely a shred of the old list of "Biblical Errors" remains to hide the nakedness of this moribund contention. To say that we do not wish to make claims "for which we have only this to urge, that they cannot be absolutely disproved," is not to the point; what is to the point is to say, that we cannot set aside the presumption arising from the general trustworthiness of Scripture, that its doctrine of inspiration is true, by any array of contradictory facts, each one of which is fairly disputable. We must have indisputable errors - which are not forthcoming.

The real problem brought before the Churches by the present debate ought now to be sufficiently plain. In its deepest essence it is whether we can still trust the Bible as a guide in doctrine, as a teacher of truth. It is not simply whether we can explain away the Biblical doctrine of inspiration so as to allow us to take a different view from what has been common of the structure and characteristics of the Bible. Nor, on the other hand, is it simply whether we may easily explain the facts, established as facts, embedded in Scripture, consistently with the teaching of Scripture as to the nature, extent and effects of inspiration. It is specifically whether the results proclaimed by a special school of Biblical criticism - which are of such a character, as is now admitted by all, as to necessitate, if adopted, a new view of the Bible and of its inspiration - rest on a basis of evidence strong enough to meet and overcome the weight of evidence, whatever that may be in kind and amount, which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as teachers of doctrine. If we answer this question in the affirmative, then no doubt we shall have not only a new view of the Bible and of its inspiration but also a whole new theology, because we must seek a new basis for doctrine. But if we answer it in the negative, we may possess our souls in patience and be assured that the Scriptures are as trustworthy witnesses to truth when they declare a doctrine of Inspiration as when they declare a doctrine of Incarnation or of Redemption, even though in the one case as in the other difficulties may remain, the full explanation of which is not yet clear to us. The real question, in a word, is not a new question but the perennial old question, whether the basis of our doctrine is to be what the Bible teaches, or what men teach. And this is a question which is to be settled on the old method, viz., on our estimate of the weight and value of the evidence which places the Bible in our hands as a teacher of doctrine.

Endnotes:

From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, v. iv, 1893. pp. 177-221.

"Inspiration and the Bible." An Inquiry. By Robert F. Horton, M.A., Late Fellow of New College, Oxford. Fourth Edition. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.

"Lux Mundi." Tenth Edition. London: John Murray, 1890. P. xi.

"Who Wrote the Bible?" A Book for the People. By Washington Gladden. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891. See pp. 61 (cf. pp. 57, 92 seq.), 21, 25,154 (cf. pp. 105, 166, 37, etc.).

"The Change of Attitude Towards the Bible." A lecture, etc. By Joseph Henry Thayer, Professor in Harvard University. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891. See pp. 9, 10, 22, 52, 65.

"The Oracles of God " (Longmans, 1891), pp. 5, 45, 76.

The article appeared in The Christian Union, but we quote it from Public Opinion, vol. x. No. 24 (March 25, 1891), p. 576.

This remark, of course, does not imply that there are none who assert that the results of this type of criticism leave "inspiration" untouched. Dr. Driver does not stand alone when he says, in the Preface to his "Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament": "Criticism in the hands of Christian scholars does not banish or destroy the inspiration of the Old Testament; it presupposes it" (p. xix). But Prof. Driver would be the last to maintain that the "inspiration" which criticism leaves to the Old Testament is what the Church has understood by the plenary inspiration of the Bible. Accordingly, Prof. Robertson speaks directly to the point when he remarks in the Preface to his "Early Religion of Israel" (p. xi), that "such scholars would do an invaluable service to the Church, at the present time, if they would explain what they mean by inspiration in this connection." The efforts to do this, on our side of the water, are not reassuring. On the relation of the new views to inspiration see the lucid statement by Dr. E. C. Bissell in The Hartford Seminary Record, n. 1.

It ought to be unnecessary to protest again against the habit of representing the advocates of "verbal inspiration" as teaching that the mode of inspiration was by dictation. The matter is fully explained in the paper: "Inspiration." By Profs. A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1881, pp. 19 seq.

"Life of Paul," i. 49.

"Paulinism," i. 88.

"Old Testament in the New," Bibliotheca Sacra, xi. 612.

"Principles of Christianity," by James Stuart (1888), p. 346.

"Seance de Rentree des Cours de la Faculte de TheologieProtestante de Paris, le Mardi 3 Novembre," 1891. Leçon d'Ouverture de M. le Prof. Edm. Stapfer. Paris: Fischbacher, 1891. Pp. 26, 42.

Compare also Kuenen, "Prophets," p. 449; Reuss, "History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age," i. p. 352 seq.; Riehm, "Der Lehrbegr. des Hebräerbriefes," i. pp. 173, 177, etc.

Those who wish to see a very conclusive and thorough statement of Paul's doctrine of inspiration should consult Dr. Purves's paper on "St. Paul and Inspiration," published in The Presbyterian and Reformed Rev., January, 1893. For our Lord's doctrine, see Dr. Caven's paper on "Our Lord's Testimony to the Old Testament," in the number of the Review for July, 1892.

"Zur Dogmatik," p. 177 seq.

"Letter to the Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D.," etc. Edinburgh, 1890.

"The Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology in the Union Theological Seminary," New York (1891), pp. 5, 6.

The substance of some of the preceding paragraphs was printed in The Homiletical Review for May, 1891, under the title of "The Present Problem of Inspiration."

"Exegesis." An Address delivered at the Opening of the Autumn Term of Union Theological Seminary, September 24, 1891. By Marvin R. Vincent, D.D., Professor of Sacred Literature. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1891. P. 40.

Op. cit., p. 5 seq.

"Lux Mundi." American Ed. New York: John W. Lovell Co. P. 283.

"Reason and Authority in Religion." By J. MacBride Sterrett, D.D., Professor in Seabury Divinity School. New York: T. Whittaker, 1891. P. 176.

"Faith and Inspiration." The Carey Lectures for 1884. By Robert Watts, D.D. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1885. P. 139. "The sole question is: What, according to the language employed by Him, was His estimate of the Old Testament Scripture? It will be observed that He does not single out the passage on which He bases His argument, and testify of it that it is unbreakable, making its infallibility depend on His authority. Stated formally, His argument is as follows: Major - The Scripture cannot be broken. Minor - 'I said ye are God's,' is written in your law, which is Scripture. Conclusion - 'I said ye are God's' cannot be broken.... He argues the infallibility of the clause on which He founds His argument from the infallibility of the record in which it occurs. According to His infallible estimate, it was sufficient proof of the infallibility of any sentence or phrase of a clause, to show that it constituted a portion of what the Jews called 'the Scripture' (h` grafh,)."

"Zur Dogmatik," p. 177.

Compare Meyer, in loc. (E. T., i. p. 262, note) : "Even Rothe . . . takes dokei/te in the sense of a delusion, namely, that they possessed eternal life in a book. Such explanations are opposed to the high veneration manifested by Jesus towards the Holy Scriptures, especially apparent in John. . . ."

Op. cit., pp. 181, 182.

Op. cit., pp. 174, 175.

Even on an extreme Kenotic view, it is, however, not so certain that error should be attributed to the God-man. Prof. Gretillat, of Neuchatel, a Kenotist of the type of Gess and his own colleague Godet, is able to teach that "by reason of the relation which unites the intelligence with the will," our Lord must needs be free not only from sin, but also from all error (Exposé de Theol. Syst., iv. 288). Tholuck occupied a position similar to Rothe's; yet he reminds us that: "Proofs might be brought to show that, even in questions pertaining to learned exegesis" - which are such as our Lord needed to learn as a man - "such as those concerning the historical connection of a passage, the author and age of a book, an original spiritual discernment without the culture of the schools may often divine the truth" ("Citations of the Old Testament in the New," tr. in Bibliotheca Sacra, xi. p. 615).

Sermon on "The Promise of the Spirit," in the volume: "Princeton Sermons." By the Faculty of the Seminary. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1893. P. 33. The whole of this noble sermon should be read.

"The Principles of Christianity." Being an Essay towards a More Correct Apprehension of Christian Doctrine, Mainly Soteriological. By James Stuart, M.A. London: Williams & Norgate, 1588. P. 67 seq.

P. 345 seq.

P. 213.

Pp. 348, 349.

P. 70. The immediate reference of these last words is to matters of criticism and exegesis; but according to the contextual connection they would also be used of matters of inspiration.

"Untersuchungen zum ersten Klemensbriefe." Von Lic. Theol. W. Wrede, Privatdocent der Theologie in Gottingen. Gottingen: Vanderhoeck dc Ruprecht's Verlag, 1891. Pp. 60, 75 seq.

Compare the review of Wrede by Prof. H. M. Scott, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, January, 1893, p. 163.

P. 66.

P. 353.

P. 258.

Op. cit., Vol. i. p. 49.

The present writer has tried to state the true relations of Systematic and Biblical theology in a discussion of "The Idea of Systematic Theology Considered as a Science" (Inaugural Address), pp. 22-28. A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1888. He ventures to refer the reader to it.

"Inspiration." A Clerical Symposium. By the Rev. Archdeacon Farrar and others. London: James Nisbet and Co., 1888. 2d ed. Pp. 219, 241.

"History of Interpretation." Bampton Lectures. By F. W. Farrar, D.D. London: Macmillan, 1880. P. 147.

P. 71.

On the contrary these writers usually minimize the Biblical definition of inspiration. Thus Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, who is immediately to be quoted (op. c. p. 15), tells us "Scripture does not define the nature and extent of its own inspiration. The oft-quoted passage of II Tim. iii. 16 really gives us no light on that point . . . The passage does indeed point out certain effects which attend the use of inspired writings . . . But after all, we are no nearer than ever to an answer to the question, What is inspiration? . . . So that we must fall back on the facts, on the phenomena of the Bible as we have it." But the deck is not cleared by such remarks; after all, Paul does assert something by calling the Scriptures Theopneustic, and what the thing is that he asserts in the use of this predicate, is not discoverable from an examination into what the Scriptures are, but only by an examination into what Paul means; but what Paul understands by theopneustic, Dr. Vincent makes no effort to investigate. This whole procedure is typical. Thus, for example, the Rev. J. Paterson Smyth, in his recent book, "How God Inspired the Bible" (p. 64), proceeds in an exactly similar manner. "Our theory of inspiration must be learned from the facts presented in the Bible, and in order to be correct it must be consistent with all these facts . . . I want to find out what I can about inspiration. God has nowhere revealed to me exactly what it is. He has told me it is a divine influence, an in-breathing of the Holy Ghost on the spirit of the ancient writers. But I cannot tell how much that means or what effects I should expect from it. I have, therefore, no way of finding out except by examining the phenomena presented by the Bible itself." This method amounts simply to discarding the guidance of the doctrine of Scripture in favor of our own doctrine founded on our examination of the nature of Scripture. Mr. Smyth cannot close his eyes to certain outstanding facts on the surface of Scripture, indicatory of the doctrine as to Scripture held by the Biblical writers (pp. 36 and 106), though he makes no effort to collect and estimate all such phenomena. And when he realizes that some may be affected even by his meagre statement of them so far as to say that "the strong expressions just here quoted from some of the Bible writers, and even from our Lord Himself, convince me that the theory of verbal inspiration is most probably true," he has only such an answer as the following: "Well, reader, you will find a good many thoughtful people disagreeing with you. Why? Because, while fully receiving these arguments as a proof of God's inspiration of the Bible, they have looked a little further than the surface to judge how much God's inspiration implies, and they cannot believe from their examination of Scripture that it implies what is known as verbal inspiration" (p. 109). Mr. Smyth means by "verbal inspiration" the theory of mechanical dictation. But putting that aside as a man of straw, what it is difficult for us to understand is how "thoughtful people" can frame a theory of inspiration after only such shallow investigation of the Scriptural doctrine of inspiration, and how "thoughtful people" can assign their inability to believe a doctrine, an inability based on their own conception of what Scripture is, as any proof that that doctrine is not taught by the "strong expressions" of the Bible writers and the Lord Himself. Is it any more rationalistic to correct the Scriptural doctrine of the origin of the universe from our investigations of the nature of things, than it is to correct the Scriptural doctrine of inspiration from our investigations of the nature of Scripture?

Mag. of Christian Lit., April, 1892.

Op. cit., p. 5.

Op. cit., p. 240.

"A Letter to the Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D." By William G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Macniven & Wallace, 1890. P. 5.

"A Letter to the Rev. Prof. William G. Blaikie, D.D., LL.D." By Robert Watts, D.D., LL.D. Edinburgh: R. W. Hunter, 1890. P. 30.

"Discourses Occasioned by the Inauguration of Benj. B. Warfield, D. D., to the Chair of New Testament Exegesis and Literature in the Western Theological Seminary, April 25, 1880." Pittsburgh, 1880. P. 46. Cf. "Inspiration." By Prof. A. A. Hodge and Prof. B. B. Warfield. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1881. Pp. 7, 8 (also in The Presbyterian Review for April, 1881). Also, "The Inspiration of the Scriptures." By Francis L. Patton, D.D. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869. Pp. 22, 23, 54.

The Congregationalist, Nov. 3, 1892; The Magazine of Christian Literature, Dec., 1892, p. 236, first column. This whole column should be read; its statement and illustration are alike admirable.

This address may be most conveniently consulted in The Expositor for October, 1888, pp. 301, 302. In expressing our concurrence with portions of this address and of Dr. Fisher's papers just quoted, we are not to be understood, of course, as concurring with their whole contents.

How important and valuable this element of the Christian faith is, it is not the purpose of this paper to point out. Let it suffice here to say briefly that it is (1) the element which gives detailed certitude to the delivery of doctrine in the New Testament, and (2) the element by which the individual Christian is brought into immediate relation to God in the revelation of truth through the prophets and apostles. The importance of these factors in the Christian life could not be overstated. The importance of the recognition of plenary inspiration to the preservation of sound doctrine is negatively illustrated by the progress of Rationalism, as thus outlined briefly by Dr. Charles Hodge ("Syst. Theol.," iii. p. 195): "Those who admitted the divine origin of the Scriptures got rid of its distinctive doctrines by the adoption of a low theory of inspiration and by the application of arbitrary principles of interpretation. Inspiration was in the first instance confined to the religious teachings of the Bible, then to the ideas or truths, but not to the form in which they were presented, nor to the arguments by which they were supported . . . In this way a wet sponge was passed over all the doctrines of redemption and their outlines obliterated." It looks as if the Church were extremely slow in reading the most obvious lessons of history.

Wordsworth, "On the Canor," p. 51, Am. Ed.

"Life of the Rt. Rev. S. Wilberforce, D.D.," Vol. III. p. 149.

"St. Paul and Inspiration." Inaugural Address, etc. A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1892. P. 52. Presbyterian and Reformed Review, January, 1893, p. 21.

"Systematic Theology," i. pp. 169, 170: We have purposely adduced this passage here to enable us to protest against the misuse of it, which, in the exigencies of the present controversy, has been made, as if Dr. Hodge was in this passage admitting the reality of the alleged errors. The passage occurs in the reply to objections to the doctrine, not in the development of the doctrine itself, and is of the nature of an argumentum ad hominem. How far Dr. Hodge was from admitting the reality of error in the original Biblical text may be estimated from the frequency with which he asserts its freedom from error in the immediately preceding context -pp. 152, 155, 163 (no less than three times on this page), 165, 166, 169 (no less than five times).

"Redeemer" and "Redemption"1

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

There is no one of the titles of Christ which is more precious to Christian hearts than "Redeemer." There are others, it is true, which are more often on the lips of Christians. The acknowledgment of our submission to Christ as our Lord, the recognition of what we owe to Him as our Saviour, - these things, naturally, are most frequently expressed in the names we call Him by. "Redeemer," however, is a title of more intimate revelation than either "Lord" or "Saviour." It gives expression not merely to our sense that we have received salvation from Him, but also to our appreciation of what it cost Him to procure this salvation for us. It is the name specifically of the Christ of the cross. Whenever we pronounce it, the cross is placarded before our eyes and our hearts are filled with loving remembrance not only that Christ has given us salvation, but that He paid a mighty price for it. 

It is a name, therefore, which is charged with deep emotion, and is to be found particularly in the language of devotion. Christian song is vocal with it. How it appears in Christian song, we may see at once from old William Dunbar's invocation, "My King, my Lord, and my Redeemer sweit." Or even from Shakespeare's description of a lost loved-one as "The precious image of our dear Redeemer." Or from Christina Rossetti's, 

"Up Thy Hill of Sorrows
Thou all alone,
Jesus, man's Redeemer,
Climbing to a Throne." 

Best of all perhaps from Henry Vaughan's ode which he inscribes "To my most merciful, my most loving, and dearly loved REDEEMER; the ever blessed, the only HOLY and JUST ONE, JESUS CHRIST, The Son of the living God, and the Sacred Virgin Mary," and in which he sings to 

"My dear Redeemer, the world's light,
And life too, and my heart's delight." 

Terms of affection gather to it. Look into your hymns. Fully eight and twenty of those in our own "Hymnal" celebrate our Lord under the name of "Redeemer."2

Let our whole soul an offering be
To our Redeemer's Name;
While we pray for pardoning grace,
Through our Redeemer's Name;
Almighty Son, Incarnate Word,
Our Prophet, Priest, Redeemer, Lord;
To that dear Redeemer's praise
Who the covenant sealed with blood;
O for a thousand tongues to sing
My dear Redeemer's praise;
To our Redeemer's glorious Name
Awake the sacred song;
Intercessor, Friend of sinners,
Earth's Redeemer, plead for me;
All hail, Redeemer, hail,
For Thou hast died for me;
Let us learn the wondrous story
Of our great Redeemer's birth;
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid;
My dear Redeemer and my Lord;
All glory, laud and honor
To Thee Redeemer, King;
Your Redeemer's conflict see;
Maker and Redeemer,
Life and Health of all;
Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed
His tender, last farewell;
Here the Redeemer's welcome voice
Spreads heavenly peace around;
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood;
The slain, the risen Son,
Redeemer, Lord alone;
The path our dear Redeemer trod
May we, rejoicing, tread;
Till o'er our ransomed nature
The Lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss returns to reign;
O the sweet wonders of that cross
Where my Redeemer loved and died;
Once, the world's Redeemer, dying,
Bore our sins upon the Tree;
Redeemer, come: I open wide
My heart to thee;
I know that my Redeemer lives;
For, every good
In the Redeemer came;
A heart resigned, submissive, meek,
My great Redeemer's throne;
Jesus, merciful Redeemer;
Father, and Redeemer, hear. 

From our earliest childhood the preciousness of this title has been impressed upon us. In "The Shorter Catechism," as the most precise and significant designation of Christ, from the point of view of what He has done for us, it takes the place of the more usual "Saviour," which never occurs in that document. Thus there is permanently imprinted on the hearts of us all, the great fact that "the only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ"; through whom, in the execution of His offices of a Prophet, of a Priest, and of a King, God delivers us out of the estate of sin and misery and brings us into an estate of salvation.³ The same service is performed for our sister, Episcopalian, communion by its "Book of Common Prayer." The title "Redeemer " is applied in it to Christ about a dozen times:4 

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world;
Our blessed Saviour and Redeemer;
Joyfully receive Him for our Redeemer;
Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer;
The merits of our Saviour and Redeemer;
O Lord, our Saviour and Redeemer;
Jesus Christ, our only Saviour and Redeemer;
Our Redeemer and the author of everlasting life;
Our Redeemer and the author of everlasting life;
O Lord our strength and our Redeemer;
Only Mediator and Redeemer. 

This constant pregnant use of the title "Redeemer" to express our sense of what we owe to Christ, has prevailed in the Church for, say, a millennium and a half. It comes with a little shock of surprise to learn that it has not always prevailed. In the first age of the Church, however, the usage had not become so characteristic of Christians as to stamp itself upon their literary remains. So far as appears, the first occurrence of the epithet "Redeemer" as applied to Christ in extant Christian literature is in Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew," which was written about the middle of the second century.⁵ And it does not seem to occur frequently for a couple of centuries more. This is not to say that it was not in use among Christians during this early period. When Eusebius opens the tenth Book of his "Church History" with the words, "Thanks for all things be given unto God the omnipotent Ruler and King of the universe, and the greatest thanks to Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer of our souls," it is quite clear that he is not describing Christ by an unwonted name. Even more clear is it that Justin is not inventing a new name for Christ when he tells Trypho that Christians depend upon Jesus Christ to preserve them from the demons which they had served in the time of their heathenism, "for we call Him Helper and Redeemer, the power of whose hame even the demons do fear." Indeed, he explicitly tells us that the Christians were accustomed to employ this name of Christ: "we call Him Redeemer" he says. Nevertheless it seems hardly likely that so little trace of the use of this designation would have been left in the extant literature of the day, if it had occupied then quite the place it has occupied in later ages. This applies also to the New Testament. For, despite the prominence in the New Testament of the idea of redemption wrought by Christ, the designation "Redeemer" is not once applied to Christ in the New Testament. The word "Redeemer" occurs, indeed, only a single time in the New Testament, and then as a title of Moses, not of Christ, - although it is applied to Moses only as a type of Christ and presupposes its employment of Christ.⁶ 

The comparative rarity of the use of this title of Christ in the first age of the Church is probably due, in part at least, to the intense concreteness of the Greek term (Lutrwth,j) which our "Redeemer" represents, and the definiteness with which it imputes a particular function to our Lord, as Saviour. This gave it a sharply analytical character, which, perhaps, militated against its adoption into wide devotional use until the analytical edges had been softened a little by habit. A parallel may perhaps be found in the prevalence in the New Testament of the locution, "He died in our behalf" over the more analytically exact, "He died in our stead." The latter occurs; occurs frequently enough to show that it expresses the fact as it lay in the minds of the New Testament writers. But these writers expressed themselves instinctively rather in the former mode because it was a more direct expression of the sense of benefit received, which was the overpowering sentiment which filled their hearts. That Christ died instead of them was the exact truth, analytically stated; that He died for their sake was the broad fact which suffused their hearts with loving emotion. 

The word "Redeemer" is of course of Latin origin, and we owe it, together with its cognates "redemption," "redeem," "redeemed," to the nomenclature of Latin theology, and ultimately to the Latin Bible. These Latin words, however, do not, at their best, exactly reproduce the group of Greek words which they represent in the New Testament, although they are underlaid by the same fundamental idea of purchase. Etymologically, redimo, 'redeem,' means to buy back, while the Greek term which it renders in the New Testament (lutrou/sqai) means rather to buy out, or, to employ its exact equivalent, to ransom. Our English word "ransom" is, of course, philologically speaking, only a doublet of "redemption." But, in losing the significant form of that word, it has more completely than that word lost also the suggestion that the purchase which it intimates is a re-purchase. It might have been better, therefore, if, instead of "redemption," "to redeem," "redeemed," "redeemer," we had employed as the representatives of the Greek terms (lutrou/sqai( lu,trwsij( avpolu,trwsij( lutrwth,j) "ransom," "to ransom," "ransomed," "ransomer." 

Of these, only the noun, "ransom" has actually a place in the English New Testament, - in the great passage in which our Lord Himself declares that He "came, not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mt. xx. 28 = Mk. x. 45), and in its echo in the scarcely less great declaration of Paul that the one mediator between God and men, Himself man, Christ Jesus, "gave Himself a ransom for all" (I Tim. ii. 6). Nevertheless these terms, emphatically defining, like the Greek terms which they represent, the work of Christ in terms of ransoming, have made a place for themselves in the language of Christian devotion only a little inferior to that of those which somewhat less exactly define it in terms of redeeming. The noun of agent, "Ransomer," is used, it is true, comparatively rarely; although its use, as a designation of Christ, seems actually to have preceded in English literature that of "Redeemer," or even of its forerunner, the now obsolete "Redemptor." The earliest citation for "Redeemer" given by the "Oxford Dictionary," at all events, comes from the middle of the fifteenth century⁷ - of "Redemptor" from the late fourteenth⁸ - while "Ransomer" is cited from the "Cursor Mundi," some half a century earlier: "Christ and king and ransconer . . ." "Ransomer" is found side by side with "Redeemer" in William Dunbar's verses at the opening of the sixteenth century: "Thy Ransonner with woundis fyve"; and is placed literally by its side by John Foxe in the "Book of Martyrs" in the middle of that century, apparently as more closely defining the nature of the saving act of Him whom Foxe calls "the onlie sauior, redeemer and raunsomer of them which were lost in Adam our forefather." 

The other forms have, however, been more widely used in all ages of English literature. The character of their earlier use may be illustrated again from William Dunbar who tells us that "the heaven's king is clad in our nature, Us from the death with ransom to redress"; or from a couple of very similar instances from even earlier verses. In one, Christ is described as Him "that deyid up on the rood, To raunsoun synfull creature."9 In the other He is made Himself to say 

"Vpon a crosse nayled I was for the,
Soffred deth to pay the rawnison."10 

Milton, our theological poet by way of eminence, not only speaks of Christ as, in rising, raising with Himself, "His brethren, ransom'd with His own dear life," but discriminatingly describes Him as "man's friend, his mediator, his design'd both ransom and redeemer voluntarie." "We learn with wonder," says Cowper, almost in Milton's manner, "how this world began, who made, who marr'd, and who has ransom'd man." Or, coming at once to our own days Tennyson can put upon the lips of a penitent sinner, the desire to minister (as he expresses it) "to poor sick people, richer in His eyes who ransom'd us, and haler too, than I" Let us appeal, however, again to our hymns. 

Surprisingly few instances appear, in the hymns gathered in our own "Hymnal" at least, of the use of the noun "ransom," for which direct warrant is given in the text of our English New Testament. Only, it appears, these three:11 

Father of heaven, whose love profound
A ransom for our souls hath found;
I'd sing the precious blood He spilt
My ransom from the dreadful guilt
Of sin and wrath divine;
Jesus, all our ransom paid,
All Thy Father's will obeyed,
Hear us, Holy Jesus. 

But as over against the dozen times that the word "redeemed" occurs¹² in this "Hymnal" we have counted no fewer than twenty-two times in which the word "ransomed" occurs. In a couple of these instances, the two words stand together:13 

He crowns thy life with love,
When ransomed from the grave;
He that redeemed my soul from hell,
Hath sovereign power to save.
And when, redeemed from sin and hell,
With all the ransomed throng I dwell. 

The others run as follows:14 

Then be His love in Christ proclaimed
With all our ransomed powers;
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like me His praise should sing;
Sing on your heavenly way,
Ye ransomed sinners, sing;
Ye ransomed from the fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace;
Bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide;
One, the light of God's own presence
O'er His ransomed people shed;
A wretched sinner, lost to God,
But ransomed by Emanuel's blood;
Thy ransomed host in glory;
My ransomed soul shall be
Through all eternity
Offered to thee;
Our ransomed spirits rise to Thee;
Let none whom He hath ransomed fail to greet Him;
When we, a ransomed nation,
Thy scepter shall obey;
Till o'er our ransomed nature
The Lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss returns to reign;
Till all the ransomed number
Fall down before the throne;
Blessed are the sons of God,
They are bought with Christ's own blood,
They are ransomed from the grave;
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved to sin no more;
Thy blood, O Lord, was shed
That I might ransomed be;
Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul He leadeth;
His laud and benediction
Thy ransomed people raise. 

It does not appear, then, that Christian emotion would have found any more difficulty in gathering about the term "ransom" and its derivatives, and consecrating them as the channel of its expression, than it has found in gathering around and consecrating "redeem" and its derivatives. Had these terms taken their proper place in our English New Testament as the exact renderings of the Greek terms now less precisely rendered by "redeem" and its derivatives, and had they from the English New Testament entered into our familiar Christian speech, there is no reason to doubt that "Christ our Ransomer" would now be as precious to the Christian heart as " Christ our Redeemer" is. There is certainly no one who will not judge with old John Brown that "a Ransomer," especially one who has ransomed us "at such a rate," "will be most tender" of His ransomed ones;¹⁵ and His ransomed ones, realizing what His ransoming of them involved, may be trusted - if we may take the language of our hymns as indications - to speak of Him with the deepest gratitude and love. Nor should we consider it a small gain that then the sense of the New Testament representations would have been conveyed to us more precisely and with their shades of meaning and stresses of emphasis more clearly and sharply presented. After all is said, the New Testament does not set forth the saving work of Christ as a redemption, but as a ransoming; and does not present Him to us therefore so much as our Redeemer as our Ransomer; and it is a pity that we have been diverted by the channels through which we have historically received our religious phraseology from the adoption and use in our familiar speech of the more exact terminology. 

One of the gains which would have accrued to us had this more exact terminology become our current mode of speech concerning our Lord's saving action, is that we should then have been measurably preserved from a danger which has accompanied the use of "redeem" and its derivatives to describe it - a danger which has nowadays become very acute - of dissipating in our thought of it all that is distinctive in our Lord's saving action. We are not saying, of course, that "ransom," any more than other terms, is immune from that disease of language by which, in the widening application of terms, they suffer a progressive loss of their distinctive meaning. But "ransom" has, in point of fact, retained with very great constancy its intrinsic connotation of purchase. It may possibly be that, in an extreme extension of its application, it is occasionally employed in the loose sense of merely "to rescue." The "Standard Dictionary" gives that as one of its definitions, marking it as "archaic"; though the "Oxford Dictionary" supplies no citations supporting it. At all events, the word does not readily lend itself to evacuating extensions of application; and when we say "to ransom" our minds naturally fix themselves on a price paid as the means of the deliverance intimated. The word is essentially a modal word; it emphasizes the means by which the effect it intimates is accomplished, and does not exhaust itself merely in declaring the effect. The same, of course, may be said in principle of "redeem." But this word has suffered far more from attrition of meaning than "ransom," and indeed had already lost the power inevitably to suggest purchase before it was adopted into specifically Christian use. We shall not forget, of course, what we have just noted, that "ransom" and "redeem" are at bottom one word; that they are merely two English forms of the Latin redimo. It is, no doubt, inexact, therefore, to speak of the usage of the Latin redimo and its derivatives as if it belonged to the early history of "redeem" more than to that of "ransom." Nevertheless it is convenient and not really misleading to do so, when we have particularly in mind the use of the two words in Christian devotional speech. "To redeem" has come into our English New Testament and our English religious usage in direct and continuous descent from its previous usage in Latin religious speech and the Latin Bible; while "to ransom" has come in from without, bringing with it its own set of implications, fixed through a separate history. And what needs to be said is that "to ransom" has quite firmly retained its fixed sense of securing a release by the payment of a price, while "to redeem" had already largely lost this sense when it was first applied in the Latin New Testament to render Greek terms, the very soul of which was this intimation of the payment of a price, and needed to reacquire this emphasis through the influence of these terms shining through it; and that it moreover continues to be employed in general usage today in very wide and undistinctive senses which naturally react more or less injuriously upon the particular meaning which it is employed in Christian usage to convey.¹⁶

The Latin verb redimo already in its classical usage was employed not only, in accordance with its composition, in the sense of "to buy back," and not merely more broadly in the sense of "to buy," - whether to "buy off" or "to buy up"; but, also in more extended applications still, in the senses simply of "to release" or "rescue," "to acquire" or "obtain," or even "to obviate" or "avert." It had acquired, indeed, a special sense of "to undertake," "to contract," "to hire" or "to farm." In accordance with this special sense, its derivative, redemptor, in all periods of the language, was used, as the synonym of the less common conductor, of a contractor, undertaker, purveyor, farmer, - as when Cicero speaks of the redemptor who had contracted to build a certain column, or Pliny of the redemptor who farmed the tolls of a bridge. When Christ was called the Redemptor, then, there was some danger that the notion conveyed to Latin ears might be nearer that which is conveyed to us by a Sponsor or a Surety (the seventeenth century divines spoke freely of Christ as our "Undertaker") than that of a Ransomer; and this danger was obviated only by the implication of the Greek terms which this and its companion Latin terms represented and by which, and the contexts natural to them, they were held to their more native significance, not, indeed, of buying back, but of buying off. The persistence of the secular use of these terms, parallel with the religious, but with a more or less complete neglect of their original implication of purchase - through the whole period of their use in Latin, and later of the use of their descendants in English - has constituted a perpetual danger that they would, by assimilation, lose their specific implication of purchase in their religious usage also. Obviously in these circumstances they cannot throw up an effective barrier against the elimination from them of the idea of purchase even in their religious applications, on the setting in of any strong current of thought and feeling in that direction. Men who have ceased to think of the work of Christ in terms of purchasing, and to whom the whole conception of His giving His life for us as a ransom, or of His pouring out His blood as a price paid for our sins, has become abhorrent, feel little difficulty, therefore, in still speaking of Him as our Redeemer, and of His work as a Redemption, and of the Christianity which He founded as a Redemptive Religion. The ideas connected with purchase are not so inseparably attached to these terms in their instinctive thought that the linguistic feeling is intolerably shocked by the employment of them with no implication of this set of ideas. Such an evacuation of these great words, the vehicles thus far of the fundamental Christian confession, of their whole content as such, is now actually going on about us. And the time may be looked forward to in the near future when the words "Redeemer" "redemption" "redeem" shall have ceased altogether to convey the ideas which it has been thus far their whole function in our religious terminology to convey. 

What has thus been going on among us has been going on at a much more rapid pace in Germany, and the process has reached a much more advanced stage there than here. German speech was much less strongly fortified against it than ours. It has been the misfortune of the religious terminology of Germany, that the words employed by it to represent the great ransoming language of the New Testament are wholly without native implication of purchase. Redeem, redemption, Redeemer, at least in their fundamental etymological suggestion, say purchase as emphatically as the Greek terms, built up around the notion of ransom, which they represent; and they preserve this implication in a large section of their usage. The German erlösen, Erlösung, Erlöser, on the contrary, contain no native suggestion of purchase whatever; and are without any large secular usage in which such an implication is distinctly conveyed.¹⁷ They mean in themselves just deliver, deliverance, Deliverer, and they are employed nowhere, apart from their religious application, with any constant involvement of the mode in which the deliverance is effected. One of their characteristic usages, we are told by Jacob Grimm, is as the standing expression in the Märchen for the act of disenchanting (equivalent to entzaubern) ; in such phrases, for example, as "the princess is now erlöst," "the serpent can be erlöst by a kiss," "at twelve o'clock they were all erlöst."18 If you will turn over the pages of the brother Grimm's "Kinder und Haus-Märchen," you will come about the middle of the book upon the tale of "The King of the Golden Mountain," and may read in it of how a young merchant's son comes one day to a magnificent castle and finds in it nothing but a serpent. "The serpent, however," we read on, "was a bewitched maiden, who rejoiced when she saw him and said to him, 'Art thou come, my Erlöser? I have already waited twelve years for thee, this kingdom is bewitched and thou must erlösen it."' A still more instructive passage may be met with a few pages earlier, in the tale of "The Lark." There, when the traveller found himself in the clutches of a lion, he begged to be permitted to ransom (loskaufen) himself with a great sum, and so to save (retten) himself; but the lion himself, who was, of course, an enchanted prince, was - at the proper time and by the proper means - neither ransomed nor saved, but simply erlöst. Erlösen, Erlösung, Erlöser of themselves awaken in the consciousness of the hearer no other idea than that of deliverance; and although, in religious language, they may have acquired suggestions of purchase by association - through their employment as the representatives of the Greek terms of ransoming and the contexts of thought into which they have thus been brought, - these do not belong to them intrinsically and fall away at once when external supports are removed.

We cannot feel surprise accordingly, when we meet in recent German theological discussion - as we repeatedly do - an express distinction drawn between Loskaufung, "ransoming," as a narrow term intimating the manner in which a given deliverance is effected, and Erlösung, "deliverance," as a broad term, declaring merely the fact of deliverance, with no intimation whatever of the mode by which it is effected. Thus, for example, Paul Ewald commenting on Eph. i. 7, remarks¹⁹ that there is no reason why avpolu,trwsij should be taken there as meaning, "ransoming" (Loskaufung), rather than "in the more general sense of Erlösung," that is to say, of "deliver ance." Similarly A. Seeberg speaks²⁰ of avpolu,trwsij as having lost in the New Testament its etymological significance, and come to mean, as he says, "nothing more than Erlösung," that is, "deliverance." And again G. Hollmann declares²¹ that the Hebrew verb hd'p' while meaning literally "to ransom" (loskaufen), yet, in the majority of the passages in which it occurs, means simply "to liberate," "to deliver" (befreien, erlösen); that is to say, "to free," "to liberate," and not "to ransom," are in his mind synonymous with erlösen. We are not concerned for the moment with the rightness, or the wrongness, of the opinions expressed by these writers with respect to the meaning of the Biblical terms which they are discussing. What concerns us now is only that, in endeavoring to fix their meaning, these writers expressly discriminate the term erlösen from loskaufen, and expressly assign to it the wide meaning "to deliver," and thus bring it into exact synonymy with such other non-modal words as "to free," "to liberate." We may speculate as to what might have been the effect on the course of German religious thought if, from the beginning, some exact reproductions of the Greek words built up around the idea of ransom - such as say loskaufen, Loskaufung, Loskaufer, - had been adopted as their representatives in the pages of the German New Testament, and, consequent upon that, in the natural expression of the religious thought and feeling of German Christians. But we can scarcely doubt that it has been gravely injurious to it, that, in point of fact, a loose terminology, importing merely deliverance, has taken the place of the more exact Greek terms, in the expression of religious thought and feeling; and thus German Christians have been habituated to express their conceptions of Christ's saving act in language which left wholly unnoted the central fact that it was an act of purchase. 

The way to the reversion which has thus taken place of late in German religious speech, from the narrower significance which had long been attached in Christian usage to the word Erlösen, "ransoming," to its wider, native sense, "deliverance," was led - like the way to so many other things which have acted disintegratingly upon Christian conceptions - by Schleiermacher. So, at least, Julius Kaftan tells us. "Schleiermacher," says he,²² "explained the peculiar nature of Christianity by means of the notion of Erlösung. Christianity is the religion in which every thing is related to the Erlösung accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth. It dates from this that the word is employed by us in a comprehensive sense. We say of the Lord that He is our Erlöser. We sum up what He has brought us in this word, Erlösung." Kaftan himself is of the opinion that justice is scarcely done to the definition of Christianity when it is thus identified with Erlösung, deliverance, taken in the wide, undifferentiated sense given it by Schleiermacher, and after him by the so-called "Liberal theology." A closer definition, he thinks, is needed. But it is very significant that he seeks this closer definition by emphasizing not the mode in which the deliverance is wrought, but rather the thing from which the deliverance is effected. "The word Erlösung," he says, "is of a formal nature. That it may have its full sense, there must be added that from which we are erlöst." This he declares is, in the Christian, the New Testament conception, the world. And so, he goes on to assert with great emphasis, "The fundamental idea of Christianity is Erlösung from the world." 

We are not concerned here with the justice of the opinion thus expressed. We are not even concerned for the moment with the assimilation which results from this opinion of Christianity with certain other religions, the fundamental idea of which is deliverance from the world. We pause only in passing to note that Kaftan explicitly admits that it was "the history of religion which opened his eyes to the fact that in Christianity as in other religions of deliverance (Erlösungsreligionen) Erlösung from the world is the chief and fundamental conception." What we are for the moment interested in is the clearness with which Kaftan ascribes to the word Erlösung the wide sense of "deliverance," with no implication whatever of "ransoming." Christianity, it is said, like other religions of high grade, is an Erlösungsreligion, a religion of deliverance. "We have today," we read,²³ "attained a wider survey of the religious life of humanity, a wider one, I mean, than that of the older teachers. We have learned that even outside of Christianity, whether really or supposedly, there is something like Erlösung (deliverance.) From this the arrangement has resulted, in the classification of religions, that we designate the highest stage of the religious life, that of the spiritual religions, also that of the Erlösungsreligionen (religions of deliverance)." That is to say, there is a class of religions, - no doubt, it embraces only the highest, the spiritual, religions, - which may justly be called Erlösungsreligionen, religions of deliverance, and Christianity belongs to this class. When we speak of Erlösung with reference to Christianity, we mean the same kind of a thing which we mean when we speak of it with reference to these other religions. As one of the Erlösungsreligionen (religions of deliverance) Christianity like the rest offers man deliverance. In point of fact, the deliverance which Christianity offers, according to Kaftan, is just a subjective change of mind and heart; he can write currently such a phrase as "Erlösung oder Wiedergeburt" (deliverance or regeneration.²⁴) Erlösung (deliverance) in other words, as applied to describe the benefits conferred by Christianity, has come to mean for him just the better ethical life of Christians. 

The classification of religions of which Kaftan avails himself in this discussion is derived ultimately from Hermann Siebeck, whose "Hand-book of the Philosophy of Religion" enjoys great vogue among Germans of Ritschlian tendency. This classification has not, however, commended itself universally. Many, like C. P. Tiele for example, strongly object to the distinguishing of a class of Erlösungsreligionen (religions of deliverance), which is placed at the apex of the series of religions. In reality, they say, all religions are Erlösungsreligionen (religions of deliverance). Precisely what religion is, always and everywhere, is a means of deliverance from some evil or other, felt as such. Does not the proverb say, not lehrt beten - a sense of need is the mother of all religion?²⁵ The designation Erlösungsreligionen (religions of deliverance) has, however, evidently come to stay, whether it be taken discriminatingly as the designation of a particular class of religions, or merely descriptively as a declaration of the essential nature of all religions. And it is rapidly becoming the accepted way of speaking of Christianity to call it an Erlösungsreligion - a religion of deliverance, - whether it is meant thereby to assign it to a class or merely to indicate its nature. The point to be noted is that Erlösung is employed in these phrases in its looser native sense of deliverance, not in its narrower, acquired sense of ransoming. When Christianity is declared to be an Erlösungsreligion all that is meant is that it offers like all other religions, or very eminently like some other religions, a deliverance of some kind or other to men. 

What gives this importance for us, is that these phrases have passed over from German into English, partly through the translation into English of the German books which employ them, partly by the adoption of the phrases themselves by native English writers for use in their own discussions. And in passing over into English, these phrases have not been exactly rendered with a care to reproducing their precise sense in unambiguous English, but have been mechanically transferred into what are supposed to be the corresponding conventional English equivalents for the terms used.²⁶ Thus we have learned in these last days to speak very freely of "redemptive religions" or "religions of redemption," and it has become the fashion to describe Christianity as a "redemptive religion" or a "religion of redemption," - while yet the conception which lies in the mind is not that of redemption in the precise sense, but that of deliverance in its broadest connotation. This loose German usage has thus infected our own, and is cooperating with the native influences at work in the same direction, to break down the proper implications of our English redemptive terminology.²⁷ 

You see, that what we are doing today as we look out upon our current religious modes of speech, is assisting at the death bed of a word. It is sad to witness the death of any worthy thing, - even of a worthy word. And worthy words do die, like any other worthy thing - if we do not take good care of them. How many worthy words have already died under our very eyes, because we did not take care of them! Tennyson calls our attention to one of them. "The grand old name of gentleman," he sings, "defamed by every charlatan, and soil'd with all ignoble use." If you persist in calling people who are not gentlemen by the name of gentleman, you do not make them gentlemen by so calling them, but you end by making the word gentleman mean that kind of people. The religious terrain is full of the graves of good words which have died from lack of care - they stand as close in it as do the graves today in the flats of Flanders or among the hills of northern France. And these good words are still dying all around us. There is that good word "Evangelical." It is certainly moribund, if not already dead. Nobody any longer seems to know what it means. Even our Dictionaries no longer know. Certainly there never was a more blundering, floundering attempt ever made to define a word than "The Standard Dictionary's" attempt to define this word; and the "Century Dictionary" does little better. Adolf Harnack begins one of his essays with some paragraphs animadverting on the varied and confused senses in which the word "Evangelical" is used in Germany.²⁸ But he betrays no understanding whatever of the real source of a great part of this confusion. It is that the official name of the Protestant Church in a large part of Germany is "The Evangelical Church." When this name was first acquired by that church it had a perfectly defined meaning, and described the church as that kind of a church. But having been once identified with that church, it has drifted with it into the bog. The habit of calling "Evangelical" everything which was from time to time characteristic of that church or which any strong party in that church wished to make characteristic of it - has ended in robbing the term of all meaning. Along a somewhat different pathway we have arrived at the same state of affairs in America. Does anybody in the world know what "Evangelical" means, in our current religious speech? The other day, a professedly evangelical pastor, serving a church which is certainly committed by its formularies to an evangelical confession, having occasion to report in one of our newspapers on a religious meeting composed practically entirely of Unitarians and Jews, remarked with enthusiasm upon the deeply evangelical character of its spirit and utterances. 

But we need not stop with "Evangelical." Take an even greater word. Does the word "Christianity" any longer bear a definite meaning? Men are debating on all sides of us what Christianity really is. Auguste Sabatier makes it out to be just altruism; Josiah Royce identifies it with the sentiment of loyalty; D. C. Macintosh explains it as nothing but morality. We hear of Christianity without dogma, Christianity without miracle, Christianity without Christ. Since, however, Christianity is a historical religion, an undogmatic Christianity would be an absurdity; since it is through and through a supernatural religion, a non-miraculous Christianity would be a contradiction; since it is Christianity, a Christless Christianity would be - well, let us say lamely (but with a lameness which has perhaps its own emphasis), a misnomer. People set upon calling unchristian things Christian are simply washing all meaning out of the name. If everything that is called Christianity in these days is Christianity, then there is no such thing as Christianity. A name applied indiscriminately to everything, designates nothing. 

The words "Redeem," "Redemption," "Redeemer" are going the same way. When we use these terms in so comprehensive a sense - we are following Kaftan's phraseology - that we understand by "Redemption" whatever benefit we suppose ourselves to receive through Christ, - no matter what we happen to think that benefit is - and call Him "Redeemer" merely in order to express the fact that we somehow or other relate this benefit to Him - no matter how loosely or unessentially - we have simply evacuated the terms of all meaning, and would do better to wipe them out of our vocabulary. Yet this is precisely how modern Liberalism uses these terms. Sabatier, who reduces Christianity to mere altruism, Royce who explains it in terms of loyalty, Macintosh who sees in it only morality - all still speak of it as a "Redemptive Religion," and all are perfectly willing to call Jesus still by the title of "Redeemer," - although some of them at least are quite free to allow that He seems to them quite unessential to Christianity, and Christianity would remain all that it is, and just as truly a "Redemptive Religion," even though He had never existed. 

I think you will agree with me that it is a sad thing to see words like these die like this. And I hope you will determine that, God helping you, you will not let them die thus, if any care on your part can preserve them in life and vigor. But the dying of the words is not the saddest thing which we see here. The saddest thing is the dying out of the hearts of men of the things for which the words stand. As ministers of Christ it will be your function to keep the things alive. If you can do that, the words which express the things will take care of themselves. Either they will abide in vigor; or other good words and true will press in to take the place left vacant by them. The real thing for you to settle in your minds, therefore, is whether Christ is truly a Redeemer to you, and whether you find an actual Redemption in Him, - or are you ready to deny the Master that bought you, and to count His blood an unholy thing? Do you realize that Christ is your Ransomer and has actually shed His blood for you as your ransom? Do you realize that your salvation has been bought, bought at a tremendous price, at the price of nothing less precious than blood, and that the blood of Christ, the Holy One of God? Or, go a step further: do you realize that this Christ who has thus shed His blood for you is Himself your God? So the Scriptures teach:29

The blood of God outpoured upon the tree!
So reads the Book. O mind, receive the thought,
Nor helpless murmur thou hast vainly sought
Thought-room within thee for such mystery.
Thou foolish mindling! Do'st thou hope to see
Undazed, untottering, all that God hath wrought?
Before His mighty "shall," thy little "ought"
Be shamed to silence and humility!
Come mindling, I will show thee what 'twere meet
That thou shouldst shrink from marvelling, and flee
As unbelievable, - nay, wonderingly,
With dazed, but still with faithful praises, greet:
Draw near and listen to this sweetest sweet, -
Thy God, 0 mindling, shed His blood for thee!

Endnotes:

From The Princeton Theological Review, vol. xiv, 1916, pp. 177-201. Opening Address, delivered in Miller Chapel, Princeton Theological Seminary, September 17, 1915. Some references and explanatory notes have been added.

The references are (by Hymns and Verses): 52. 3; 54. 2; 59. 2; 73. 3; 147.1; 148. 1; 150. 3; 162. 4; 172. 6; 190. 1,5; 197.1; 216. 1; 218. 1; 239. 3; 276. 1; 293. 3; 300. 1; 311.2; 331. 3; 401.4; 445.3; 454.3; 476.5; 555. 1; 569.3; 593.2;649.2; 651.1.

Questions, 20 and 21.

According to the concordance of the (American) "Book of Common Prayer," published by the Rev. J. Courtney Jones, 1898. The actual number, as will be seen, is eleven.

"Dial.," 30. 3: "For we call Him Helper (Bohqo,n) and Redeemer (Lutrwth,n), the power of whose name even the Demons do fear"; cf. 83.3 Justin is applying to Christ the language of Pa. xviii. 14 (LXX: E. V. xix. 14). Lutrwth,j occurs in the LXX only at Pa. xviii. 14 and Ps. hcvii. (lxxviii) 35.

Acts vii. 35; cf. H. A. W. Meyer and J. A. Alexander in loc. Christ is called "Deliverer" only once in the New Testament (Rom. xi. 26) and then by an adaptation of an Old Testament passage.

1432-1450, tr. Higden (Rolls) viii, 201: 'A man . . . havynge woundes in his body lyke to the woundes of Criste, seyenge that he was redemer of man."'

"1377, Langland: 'And after his resurrecioun Redemptor was his name."'

"Oxford Dictionary," sub voc.: "1414, Brampton, Penit. Ps. (Percy Society), 28."

"Political Poems," etc. (ed. Furnivale), p. 111.

59. 1; 159. 2; 227. vi, 1. The verb "ransom," of course, also occurs (e. g. 141. 6); see below, note 14, for the form "ransomed."

Redeemed, 55. 5; 88. 2; 130. 4; 150. 4; 172. 3; 236. 4; 336. 1; 383. 5; 396. 2; 453. 5; 546. 1; 642. 1. Consult, however, the following also: Redeeming, 81.1; 179. 3; 223. 5; 332. 2; 402. 2; 441. 4; 470. 2; 609. 1; Redemption, 141. 4; 152. 2; 258. 4; 259. 1; 264. 1; 265. 4; 394. 1; 395. 1; 406. 2; 435. 4.

130. 4; 453. 5.

132. 4; 134. 1; 154. 4; 157. 4; 189. 4; 303. 2; 325. 2; 354. 4; 375. 4; 390. 4; 395. 5; 399. 2; 401. 4; 420. 3; 421. 1; 441. 3; 444. 1; 512. 2; 636. 4.

John Brown, "Life of Faith in Time of Trial and Affliction," etc., 1678 (ed. 1726, p. 161; ed. 1824, p. 129): "And sure a Ransomer who hath purchased many persons to himself, at such a Rate, will be most tender of them, and will not take it well, that any wrong them."

When R. C. Trench, "The Study of words," ed. 15, 1874, p. 312, counsels the school-teacher to insist both on the idea of purchase, and on that of purchasing back, in all usages of Redemption, he is indulging in an etymological purism which the general use of the word will not sustain.

Kluge, in his etymological dictionary of the German language, under "er-," tells us it is the new-high-German equivalent of the old-high-German "ir-," "ar-," "ur-," and refers us to the emphasized "ur-" for information. Under that form, he tells us that "er-" is the unemphasized form of the prefix, and adds: "The prefix means aus, ursprünglich, anfänglich." Thus it appears that erlösen is a weaker way of saying auslösen; and the usage bears that out, auslösen tending to suggest "extirpation," erlösen, "deliverance." By this feeling, apparently, G. Hollmann, "Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu," 1901, pp. 108-109, is led to parallel Auslösung with Loskaufung as strong terms in contrast with Erlösung paralleled with Befreiung. The Greek equivalents of erlösen and auslösen are avpolu,ein and evklu,ein, both of which are found in the New Testament, but elsewhere in senses more significant for our purposes. In the Iliad avpolu,ein (like the simple lu,ein) bears even the acquired sense of "to ransom." It is interesting to note that in Job xix. 25, for "my Redeemer" (laeGO), the LXX reads o` evklu,ein me.

"Deutsches Wörterbuch," iii, 1862, sub voc.

"Kommentar zum N. T. herausgegeben von T. Zahn," x, 1905, p. 7 note. So also Zahn himself in vol. vi1-2z, p. 181, note 52 (cf. also p. 179, note 50): "Accordingly, lu,trwsij, Loskaufung, Lev. xxv. 48, Plut. "Aratus," 11; in the wider sense, 'deliverance,' Erlösung, Ps. cx. (cxi.) 9, Lk. i. 68, ii. 38, Heb. ix. 12; 1 Clem. xii. 7."

"Der Tod Christi," etc., 1905, p. 218.

"Die Bedeutung des Todes Jesu," etc., 1901, pp. 102, 108-109.

Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1908, 18, p. 238.

P. 239.

"Dogmatik3-4," p. 459.

According to Rudolf Eucken, "Christianity and the New Idealism," E. T., 1909, p. 115, "That which drives men to religion is the break with the world of their experience, the failure to find satisfaction in what this world offers or is able to offer." It is probably something like this that Henry Osborn Taylor, "Deliverance," 1915, p. 5, means, when he says: "Evidently every 'religion' is a means of adjustment or deliverance." According to this all religions represent efforts of men to adjust themselves "to the fears and hopes of their natures," thus attaining peace or even "freedom of action in which they accomplish their lives." This "adjustment," Taylor speaks of as a "deliverance," that is to say, no doubt, deliverance from the discomfort of non-adjustment with its clogging effects on life. In this view religion is deliverance from conscious maladjustment of life. The implication is, apparently, that all men are to this extent conscious of being out of joint, in one way or another, with themselves or the universe in which they live, and struggle after adjustment. Thus religion arises, or rather the various religions, since they differ much both in the maladjustments they feel and their methods of correcting them. And there are even modes of adjustment which have been tried that cannot be called "religions."

Thus, for example, Paul Wernle writes, "Die Anfänge unserer Religion1," p. 106, of Paul's view of Christianity: "Es war ihm ganz Erlösungareligion "; "Jesus Erlöser, nicht Gesetzgeber, das war seine Parole." W. M. Macgregor, "Christian Freedom," 1914, p. 85, knowing what he is about, rightly translates: "To Paul Christianity was altogether a religion of deliverance." But the English translation of Wernle's book ("The Beginnings of Christianity," 1903, i, p. 176) renders: "Christianity was entirely a religion of redemption for him": "Jesus the Redeemer, not the lawgiver, was his watchword." This is, of course, a truer description of Paul's actual point of view; but it is not what Wernle means to say of him. Similarly Rudolf Eucken constantly speaks of Christianity as an "ethical" or "moral" "Erlösungsreligion" and of the particular "Erlösungstat" to which, as such, it points us (e. g. "Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart4-5," 1912, pp.124,126,129). His translators ("Chriatianity and the New Idealism," 1909, pp. 114, 117, 119, 120) render as constantly "the religion of moral redemption," "act of redemption," although Eucken has no proper "redemption" whatever in mind, - as indeed the adjective "ethical," "moral " shows sufficiently clearly. An ethical revolution may be a deliverance but it is not properly a "redemption."

For example, on the basis of this note: "Beyschlag ('N. T. Theol.' II. 157) frankly takes avpolutrou/n( evlenqerou/n( evxairei/n (Gal. i. 4), avgora,zein as synonymous," W. M. Macgregor, "Christian Freedom," 1914, p. 276. He retires into the background of all of them, all other notion than that of "Emancipation," that is, the notion of the weakest and least modal of them all.

"Aus Wissenschaft und Leben," 1911, ii, pp. 213 ff.

Acts xx. 28, "Feed the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood." The reading "God" is, as F. J. A. Hort says, "assuredly genuine," and the emphasis upon the blood being His own is very strong. There is no justification for correcting the text conjecturally, as Hort does, to avoid this. If the reading "Lord " were genuine, the meaning would be precisely the same: "Lord " is not a lower title than "God." in such connections. I Cor. ii. 8, "They would not have crucified the Lord of Glory," is an exact parallel.

A Review of Lewis Sperry Chafer's "He That Is Spiritual"

Benjamin B. Warfield

The following review appeared in The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (April, 1919).

Mr. Chafer is in the unfortunate and, one would think, very uncomfortable condition of having two inconsistent systems of religion struggling together in his mind. He was bred an Evangelical, and, as a minister of the Presbyterian Church, South, stands committed to Evangelicalism of the purest water. But he has been long associated in his work with a coterie of "Evangelists" and "Bible Teachers," among whom there flourishes that curious religious system (at once curiously pretentious and curiously shallow) which the Higher Life leaders of the middle of the last century brought into vogue; and he has not been immune to its infection.

These two religious systems are quite incompatible. The one is the product of the Protestant Reformation and knows no determining power in the religious life but the grace of God; the other comes straight from the laboratory of John Wesley, and in all its forms modifications and mitigations alike remains incurably Arminian subjecting all gracious workings of God to human determining. The two can unite as little as fire and water.

Mr. Chafer makes use of all the jargon of the Higher Life teachers. In him, too, we hear of two kinds of Christians whom he designates respectively "carnal men" and "spiritual men," on the basis of a misreading of I Cor. ii. 9 ff (pp. 8, 109, 146); and we are told that the passage from the one to the other is at our option, whenever we care to "claim" the higher degree "by faith" (p. 146). With him, too, thus, the enjoyment of every blessing is suspended on our "claiming it" (p. 129).

We hear here, too, of "letting" God (p. 84), and, indeed, we almost hear of "engaging" the Spirit (as we engage, say, a carpenter) to do work for us (p. 94); and we do explicitly hear of "making it possible for God" to do things (p. 148), a quite terrible expression. Of course, we hear repeatedly of the duty and efficacy of "yielding" and the act of "yielding ourselves" is quite in the customary manner discriminated from "consecrating" ourselves (p. 84), and we are told, as usual, that by it the gate is opened into the divinely appointed path (pp. 91, 49). The quietistic phrase "not by trying but by a right adjustment," meets us (p. 39), and naturally such current terms as "known sin" (p. 62), "moment by moment triumph" (pp. 34, 60), "the life that is Christ" (p. 31), "unbroken walk in the Spirit" (pp. 53, 113), "unbroken victory" (p. 96), even Pearsall Smith's famous "at once": the Christian may realize at once the heavenly virtues of Christ" (p. 30, the italics his). It is a matter of course after this that we are told that it is not necessary for Christians to sin (p. 125) the emphasis repeatedly thrown on the word "necessary" leading us to wonder whether Mr. Chafer remembers that according to the Confession of Faith to which, as a Presbyterian minister, he gives his adhesion, it is in the strictest sense of the term not necessary for anybody to sin, even for the "natural man" (ix, I).

Although he thus serves himself with their vocabulary, and therefore of course repeats the main substance of their teaching, there are lengths, nevertheless, to which Mr. Chafer will not go with his Higher Life friends. He quite decidedly repels, for example, the expectation of repetitions of the "Pentecostal manifestations" (p. 47), and this is the more notable because in his expositions of certain passages in which the charismatic Spirit is spoken of he has missed that fact, to the confusion of his doctrine of the Spirit's modes of action. With equal decisiveness he repels "such man-made, unbiblical terms as 'second blessing,' 'a second work of grace,' 'the higher life,' and various phrases used in the perverted statements of the doctrines of sanctification and perfection" (pp. 31, 33), including such phrases as "entire sanctification" and "sinless perfection" (pp. 107, 139). He is hewing here, however, to a rather narrow line, for he does teach that there are two kinds of Christian, the "carnal" and the "spiritual," and he does teach that it is quite unnecessary for spiritual men to sin and that the way is fully open to them to live a life of unbroken victory if they choose to do so.

Mr. Chafer opens his book with an exposition of the closing verses of the second and the opening verses of the third chapters of I Corinthians. Here he finds three classes of men contrasted, the "natural" or unregenerated man, and the "carnal" and "spiritual" men, both of whom are regenerated, but the latter of whom lives on a higher plane. "There are two great spiritual changes which are possible to human experience," he writes (p. 8), "the change from the 'natural' man to the saved man, and the change from the 'carnal' man to the 'spiritual' man. The former is divinely accomplished when there is a real faith in Christ; the latter is accomplished when there is a real adjustment to the Spirit. The 'spiritual' man is the divine ideal in life and ministry, in power with God and man, in unbroken fellowship and blessing." This teaching is indistinguishable from what is ordinarily understood by the doctrine of a "second blessing," "a second work of grace," "the higher life."

The subsequent expositions only make the matter clearer. In them the changes are rung on the double salvation, on the one hand from the penalty of sin, on the other from the power of sin "salvation into safety" and "salvation into sanctity" (p. 109). And the book closes with a long-drawn-out "analogy" between these two salvations. This "analogy" is announced with this statement: "The Bible treats our deliverance from the bond-servitude to sin as a distinct form of salvation and there is an analogy between this and the more familiar aspect of salvation which is from the guilt and penalty of sin" (p. 141). It ends with this fuller summary:

"There are a multitude of sinners for whom Christ has died who are not now saved. On the divine side, everything has been provided, and they have only to enter by faith into His saving grace as it is for them in Christ Jesus. Just so, there are a multitude of saints whose sin-nature has been perfectly judged and every provision made on the divine side for a life of victory and glory to God who are not now realizing a life of victory. They have only to enter by faith into the saving grace from the power and dominion of sin. . . Sinners are not saved until they trust the Saviour, and saints are not victorious until they trust the Deliverer. God has made this possible through the cross of His Son. Salvation from the power of sin must be claimed by faith" (p. 146).

No doubt what we are first led to say of this is that here is the quintessence of Arminianism. God saves no one He only makes salvation possible for men. Whether it becomes actual or not depends absolutely on their own act. It is only by their act that it is made possible for God to save them. But it is equally true that here is the quintessence of the Higher Life teaching, which merely emphasizes that part of this Arminian scheme which refers to the specific matter of sanctification. "What He provides and bestows is in the fullest divine perfection; but our adjustment is human and therefore subject to constant improvement. The fact of our possible deliverance which depends on Him alone, does not change. We will have as much at any time as we make it possible for Him to bestow" (p. 148).

When Mr. Chafer repels the doctrine of "sinless perfection" he means, first of all, that our sinful natures are not eradicated. Entering the old controversy waged among perfectionists between the "Eradicationists" and "Suppressionists," he ranges himself with the latter, only preferring to use the word "control." "The divine method of dealing with the sin-nature in the believer is by direct and unceasing control over that nature by the indwelling Spirit" (p. 134). One would think that this would yield at least a sinlessness of conduct; but that is to forget that, after all, in this scheme the divine action waits on man's. "The Bible teaches that, while the divine provision is one of perfection of life, the human appropriation is always faulty and therefore the results are imperfect at best" (p. 157). God's provisions only make it possible for us to live without sinning. The result is therefore only that we are under no necessity of sinning. But whether we shall actually sin or not is our own affair. "His provisions are always perfect, but our appropriation is always imperfect." "What he provides and bestows is in the fullest divine perfection, but our adjustment is human. . . The fact of our possible deliverance, which depends on Him alone, does not change. We will have as much at any time as we make it possible for Him to bestow" (pp. 118, 149).

Thus it comes about that we can be told both that "the child of God and citizen of heaven may live a superhuman life, in harmony with his heavenly calling by an unbroken walk in the Spirit," that "more Christians may realize at once the heavenly virtues of Christ" (p. 39); and that, in point of fact, he does nothing of the kind, that "all Christians do sin" (p. 111). A possibility of not sinning which is unillustrated by a single example and will never be illustrated by a single example is, of course, a mere postulate extorted by a theory. It is without practical significance a universal effect is not accounted for by its possibility.

Mr. Chafer conducts his discussion of these "two general theories as to the divine method of dealing with the sin-nature in believers" on the presumption that "both theories cannot be true, for they are contradictory" (p. 135). "The two theories are irreconcilable," he says (p. 139). "We are either to be delivered by the abrupt removal of all tendency to sin and so no longer need the enabling power of God to combat the power of sin, or we are to be delivered by the immediate and constant power of the indwelling Spirit." This irreducible "either-or" is unjustified. In point of fact, both "eradication" and "control" are true. God delivers us from our sinful nature not indeed by "abruptly" but by progressively eradicating it, and meanwhile controlling it. For the new nature which God gives us is not an absolutely new "somewhat" alien to our personality, inserted into us, but our old nature itself remade a veritable recreation, or making of all things new. Mr. Chafer is quite wrong when he says: "Salvation is not a so-called 'change of heart.' It is not a transformation of the old; it is a regeneration, or creation, of something wholly new, which is possessed in conjunction with the old so long as we are in the body" (p. 113). That this furnishes out each Christian with two conflicting natures does not appal him. He says, quite calmly: "The unregenerate have but one nature, while the regenerate have two" (p. 116). He does not seem to see that thus the man is not saved at all; a different, newly created, man is substituted for him. When the old man is got rid of and that the old man has to be ultimately got rid of he does not doubt the saved man that is left is not at all the old man that was to be saved but a new man that has never needed any saving.

It is a temptation to a virtuoso in the interpretation of Scripture to show his mettle on hard places and in startling results. Mr. Chafer has not been superior to this temptation. Take but one example. "All Christian love," he tells us (p. 40) "according to the Scriptures, is distinctly a manifestation of divine love through the human heart" a quite unjustified assertion. But Mr. Chafer is ready with an illustration. "A statement of this is found," he declares, "at Rom. v, 5, because 'the love of God is shed abroad (lit., gushes forth) in our hearts by (produced, or caused by) the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us.'" Then he comments as follows: "This is not the working of the human affection; it is rather the direct manifestation of the 'love of God' passing through the heart of the believer out from the indwelling Spirit. It is the realization of the last petition of the High Priestly prayer of our Lord: 'That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them' (John xvii, 26). It is simply God's love working in and through the believer. It could not be humanly produced, or even imitated, and it of necessity goes out to the objects of divine affection and grace, rather than to the objects of human desire. A human heart cannot produce divine love, but it can experience it. To have a heart that feels the compassion of God is to drink of the wine of heaven."

All this bizarre doctrine of the transference of God's love, in the sense of His active power of loving, to us, so that it works out from us again as new centres, is extracted from Paul's simple statement that by the Holy Spirit which God has given us His love to us is made richly real to our apprehension! Among the parenthetical philogical comments which Mr. Chafer has inserted into his quotation of the text, it is a pity that he did not include one noting that ekgeo is not eiskeo, and that Paul would no doubt have used eiskeo, had he meant to convey that idea.

A haunting ambiguity is thrust upon Mr. Chafer's whole teaching by his hospitable entertainment of contradictory systems of thought. There is a passage near the beginning of his book, not well expressed it is true, but thoroughly sound in its fundamental conception, in which expression is given to a primary principle of the Evangelical system, which, had validity been given to it, would have preserved Mr. Chafer from his regrettable dalliance with the Higher Life formulas. "In the Bible," he writes, "the divine offer and condition for the cure of sin in an unsaved person is crystallized into the one word, 'believe'; for the forgiveness of sin with the unsaved is only offered as an indivisible part of the whole divine work of salvation. The saving work of God includes many mighty undertakings other than the forgiveness of sin, and salvation depends only upon believing. It is not possible to separate some one issue from the whole work of His saving grace, such as forgiveness, and claim this apart from the indivisible whole. It is, therefore, a grievous error to direct an unsaved person to seek forgiveness of his sins as a separate issue. A sinner minus his sins would not be a Christian; for salvation is more than subtraction, it is addition. 'I give unto them eternal life.' Thus the sin question with the unsaved will be cured as a part of, but never separate from, the whole divine work of salvation, and this salvation depends upon believing" (p. 62).

If this passage means anything, it means that salvation is a unit, and that he who is united to Jesus Christ by faith receives in Him not only justification salvation from the penalty of sin but also sanctification salvation from the power of sin both "safety" and "sanctity." These things cannot be separated, and it is a grievous error to teach that a true believer in Christ can stop short in "carnality," and, though having the Spirit with him and in him, not have Him upon him to use a not very lucid play upon prepositions in which Mr. Chafer indulges.

In his attempt to teach this, Mr. Chafer is betrayed (p. 29) into drawing out a long list of characteristics of the two classes of Christians, in which he assigns to the lower class practically all the marks of the unregenerate man. Salvation is a process; as Mr. Chafer loyally teaches, the flesh continues in the regenerate man and strives against the Spirit he is to be commended for preserving even to the Seventh Chapter of Romans its true reference but the remainders of the flesh in the Christian do not constitute his characteristic. He is in the Spirit and is walking, with however halting steps, by the Spirit, and it is to all Christians, not to some, that the great promise is given, "Sin shall not have dominion over you," and the great assurance is added, "Because ye are not under the law but under grace."

He who believes in Jesus Christ is under grace, and his whole course, in its process and in its issue alike, is determined by grace, and therefore, having been predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son, he is surely being conformed to that image, God Himself seeing to it that he is not only called and justified but also glorified. You may find Christians at every stage of this process, for it is a process through which all must pass; but you will find none who will not in God's own good time and way pass through every stage of it. There are not two kinds of Christians, although there are Christians at every conceivable stage of advancement towards the one goal to which all are bound and at which all shall arrive.

Princeton.
Benjamin B. Warfield.

The Right of Systematic Theology

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

1897

INTRODUCTION
by the
Rev. Professor James Orr, D.D.
Edinburgh

Systematic theology has fallen on evil days. To her may be applied, with scarcely a change of word, what Kant in the Preface to his famous Critique says of metaphysics: "Time was when she was the queen of all the sciences, and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honour. Now it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her, and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba - 

'Modo maxima rerum,
Tot generis, natisque potens . . .
Nunc trahor exul, inops.'"1

But a subsequent sentence also of this great thinker may be applied to theology: "For it is in reality vain," he says, "to profess indifference in regard to such inquiries, the object of which cannot be indifferent to humanity. Besides, these pretended indifferents, however much they may try to disguise themselves by the assumption of a popular style and by changes on the language of the schools, undoubtedly fall into [theological] declarations and propositions, which they profess to regard with so much contempt."

The grounds on which a denial of the right of Systematic Theology to exist is base are various, but they may at bottom all be reduced to one - the denial of the existence of an adequate foundation on which such a structure can be reared. Whether it be that the human faculties are held to be constitutionally incompetent to such a true knowledge of God and His ways as is presupposed in theology; or that the nature of religion, as lying in sentiment or emotion, is thought to preclude the element of knowledge - otherwise, indeed, than as the poetic vesture in which religious emotions transiently clothe themselves; or that there is lacking in reason or revelation a reliable source from which the desiderated knowledge may be obtained; or that the data in Scripture or religious facts on which theology has hitherto been supposed to rest have been rendered insecure or swept away by modern doubt and criticism - the result is the same, that theology has not a trustworthy foundation on which to build, and that, in consequence, it is an illegitimate pretender to the name of science. For it will be conceded that this last and highest branch of theological discipline proposes nothing less to itself than the systematic exhibition and scientific grounding of what true knowledge we possess of God and His character and His ways of dealing with the world and men; and if no such knowledge really exists, - if what men have is at best vague yearnings, intuitions, aspirations, guesses, imaginings, hypotheses, about God, assuming this name to be itself anything more than a symbol of the dim feeling of the mystery at the root of the universe, - if these emotional states and the conceptions to which they give rise are ever changing with men's changeful fancies and the varying stages of culture, - then it is as vain to attempt to construct a science of theology out of such materials as it would be to weave a solid tissue out of sunbeams, or erect a temple out of the changing shapes and, hues of cloudland. A "Science of Religions" might still exist to investigate the psychological laws involved in religious phenomena and their mocking illusions, and "dogmatics" might remain as a study and criticism of the Church's historical creeds; but an independent "Science of Theology," as a body of natural and revealed truth about God, and His purposes and dealings, would no more have any place.

We shall not anticipate Dr. Warfield's able discussion of the objections to Systematic Theology in the succeeding pages by going at any length into the subject here, but would only observe that, divested of irrelevancies, the issue resolves itself ultimately into the one question of the fact, nature, and verifiableness of the historical Christian revelation. The time is past when men's minds were captivated by the idea of a "Natural Religion" consisting of a few simple articles drawn from, and capable of proof by, reason apart from supernatural revelation - that favourite dream of the Deists and eighteenth-century illuminists; and while the "speculative" theory which would render theology independent of history by resolving its essential doctrines into metaphysical ideas has still its advocates, its sceptre is long broken in the domain of really serious theology. There remains as a source of theological knowledge the positive revealing and redeeming acts and words of God which constitute the subject-matter of historical revelation, though it may be contended that these stand in no antagonism to the conclusions of sound reason reflecting on the structure of the universe, or pondering the deeper questions of origin and destiny, but rather are in truest consonance with the latter, and furnish reason with a light to help it on its way. The chief danger, accordingly, in which theology at present stands arises from the mode in which these historical foundations of revelation are being critically and sceptically assailed, - a process which has already gone to sufficiently extreme lengths with respect to the Old Testament, and is now being applied to subvert faith in such vital facts as the resurrection of our Lord, and the miraculous context of the life bf Christ generally, in the New. It is in this part of the apologetic field, probably, that a new decisive battle will have to be fought in the interests of the possibility of theology; and it is satisfactory to observe that one result of the critical movement itself has been to impress on many minds the impossibility of eliminating the supernatural factor from the explanation of the history either of Israel or of Christ. When we read this article of Dr. Warfield's, on its first appearance, some months ago, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, it seemed to us that a special service would be rendered by its publication and circulation in a separate form, and we heartily rejoice that the same thought has independently occurred to others, and that the idea has now taken shape in this little volume. Apart from its other merits, the article will be found exceedingly informatory as to the tendency and bearings of certain recent interesting movements in Continental theology.

THE RIGHT
OF
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY

The question of the right of such a thing as Systematic Theology to exist may be regarded as a question in general philosophy or as one within the limits of the theological disciplines themselves. If the former alternative be taken, we are confronted at once with such problems as these: Does God exist? May God be known? Have we trustworthy means of learning concerning Him, His nature, His works, His purposes? In other words, all the great questions with which Apologetics busies itself immediately loom before us. Theology is the science of God, and the right of a science of God to exist will depend on a favourable solution of such problems. They are, therefore, in every sense of the words, the fundamental problems with which the theologian has to deal. If we pass them by at present, it is because of no underestimation of their supreme importance. We may fairly be allowed, however, to assume at this point, the existence and the knowableness of God and the accessibility of credible sources of knowledge of Him - in a word, the possibility and right of a theology, generically so called. This is after all not a very large assumption to make. It amounts only to asking to be permitted to raise a question to be discussed between men professing to be Christians, instead of one in debate between the Christian and non-Christian worlds. 

The question, then, that we propose to consider lies within the limits of the theological disciplines. It assumes the right of theology at large, and inquires concerning the right of Systematic Theology in particular. He who says "Systematic Theology" says theological discipline, and calls to mind its correlates in the other theological disciplines. We may not find that the distinction is kept carefully in mind by all who raise objection to the right of Systematic Theology. We shall certainly find, on the contrary, that many of the objections urged against it would, if valid, cut deeper still and destroy Christianity itself. But this is a common incident in debate. And the clear recognition at the outset of the limits of the discussion will conduce to a proper estimate of those forms of objection to Systematic Theology in the mouths of Christian men, which, if really insisted upon, would render Christianity itself nugatory. Such arguments prove so much that for Christian men they prove nothing at all. They are disproved, in other words, by the whole mass of evidence which gives us Christianity. 

We are accustomed to regard theology as the queen of the sciences, and Systematic Theology as queen among the theological disciplines. But these are not days in which lofty claims are readily allowed; and we need not be surprised to discover that those which Systematic Theology advances are not permitted to pass unchallenged. It is little that her sister theological disciplines are sometimes found resisting her high pretensions and declaring that they will no longer have her to rule over them: although no more here than elsewhere is the spectacle of conflict between sisters edifying, nor more here than elsewhere is it likely that a family will add much to its strength by becoming divided against itself. Systematic Theology may look on with an amused tolerance and a certain older-sister's pleased recognition of powers just now perhaps a little too conscious of themselves, when the new discipline of Bible Theology, for example, tosses her fine young head and announces of her more settled sister that her day is over. But these words have a more ominous ring in them when the lips that frame them speak no longer as a sister's but as an enemy's, and the meaning injected into them threatens not merely dethronement but destruction. The right of Systematic Theology to reign is not the only thing that is brought into question in these days: its very right to exist is widely challenged. There are few phenomena in the theological world which are more striking indeed than the impatience which is exhibited on every hand with the effort to define truth and to state with precision the doctrinal presuppositions and contents of Christianity. 

The basis of this impatience is often a mere latitudinarian indifferentism, which finds its expression in neglect of formulated truth, and is never weary of girding at what it represents as the hairsplitting ingenuity of theologians and the unprofitableness of theological discussion. But this indifference is at root dislike; and the easy affirmation that doctrines are useless passes very readily into the heated assertion that they are noxious. Now, the contemptuous smile gives way to the flush of anger, and instead of an unconcerned expression of the opinion that theology is a more or less amiable weakness, we have the passionate assertion that theology is killing religion. 

A certain relief often comes with the outbreak of open war. Dead indifference is frequently more difficult to deal with than the most lively assault. This is doubtless true in the present case also. It is not hard to show the folly of theological indifferentism: but just because it is indifferent, indifferentism is apt to pay little attention to our exhibition of its folly. If we only could get it to care! But let us reduce it to ever so much absurdity - it calmly goes on in indifference. This indifference to its own refutation by no means extends, however, to its own propagation. It has developed, on the contrary, a most widespread, persistent, and earnest propagandism. We cannot escape its wooing. Turn where we may, we are met with appeals, suggestions, assaults. The air is full of it. It presides over great religious enterprises; it colours the daily life and thought of social intercourse; it entrenches itself behind philosophical barriers; it finds a voice for itself in the lightest of current literature. It may not be surprising that it is the dominant note among the purveyors to the mere amusement of an idle hour, though the seriousness is worthy of note with which it is commended to us alike in even such novels of contemplation as Lanoe Falconer's Cecilia de Noël, and such novels of adventure as Dr. Conan Doyle's Micah Clark. It certainly is not surprising that a bright Jewish writer like Mr. Zangwill² should include among the sparkling stories which he has gathered into his King of the Schnorrers a pathetic appeal to us to recognise that all the differences which divide Jew and Gentile, Romanist and Protestant, fade into nothingness before the spectacle of human suffering and in presence of "the eternal mystery" of death.³ But we cannot miss its significance when, in the midst of the stirrings of soul with which we read of the doings in dear Drumtochty of those men of sturdy hearts whom "Ian Maclaren" has taught us to love, we find it slowly borne in upon us that the main purpose of this evangelical minister is to wring from us the confession that the Christianity approved of Rousseau is good enough for the world.⁴ Much of even the professed literature of religion and its reflection on platform and in too many pulpits enforces the same lesson. When we read good Georgie Hesperton's description of the "conference at Honchester," we find ourselves recalling many another conference which it would fit without the need of her finessing. "Of course" - so runs her picture - "there was a tremendous crowd on the day when the Imperial High Commissioner gave his address, and everybody was so delighted with it. I am afraid I do not exactly remember what his subject was, but I know he said it seemed probable that nothing in particular was true, but that people could go on believing whatever they liked, which did just as well. And all the bishops said it was perfectly satisfactory. I hear his address is to be printed as a sort of tract, and no doubt you will read it; it was very earnest and convincing."5 The whole mass of popular religious literature seems surcharged with attacks on "Intellectualism" and "Dogmatism," and glowing with highly-coloured portraitures of "good Christians" of every name and no name, of every faith and no faith, under each of which stands the legend written that since good Christians arise under every form of faith or no faith alike, it cannot be of much importance what men believe. "Let others wrangle over this or that," is the common cry - "it is all of no consequence: let us leave them to their disputes and for ourselves be Christians." The late Professor John Stuart Blackie's lines quite embody the sentiment of the hour - 

Creeds and confessions! High Church or the Low!
I cannot say; but you would vastly please us
If with some pointed Scripture you could show
To which of these belonged the Saviour, Jesus
I think to all or none. Not curious creeds
Or ordered forms of churchly rule He taught,
But soul of love that blossomed into deeds,
With human good and human blessing fraught.
On me nor priest nor presbyter nor pope,
Bishop nor dean, may stamp a party name;
But Jesus with His largely human scope
The service of my human life may claim.
Let prideful priests do battle about creeds,
The church is mine that does most Christ-like deeds."

The inconsequence of this reasoning is, of course, colossal, and the line of thought that is thus lightly adopted, when pushed to its legitimate conclusion, would obviously banish Christianity from the earth. For if doctrine be of no value, because some, who theoretically deny or neglect it, nevertheless exhibit the traits of a good life, what truth will remain to which we can attach importance? It would not be difficult to discover good men who deny severally every doctrine of even the most attenuated Christianity; and we should soon find ourselves forced to allow that not only those doctrines which divide Christian sects, but those also which constitute the very elements of Christianity, are of no real moment. But let us ask a brilliant young French theologian to make this clear to us. Says M. Henri Bois:6 

    Doctrine is of little importance, what is of importance is life, we are told. But, it being admitted that life is the essential thing - a matter which is as incontestable as it is uncontested, and which, when it is admitted, saves us from Intellectualism in the only censurable sense of the word - the question is precisely whether certain doctrines are not necessary for the production and maintenance of a certain life. Doctrines are not life! Assuredly not. No one ever said they were. But does it follow from that that they are not indispensable to life? Doctrines are not the cause of life! On that we are agreed. Does it follow from that that they are not one of the conditions of life?

    Here recourse is had to a notable argument. Such and such a great Christian is adduced who does not profess some doctrines which we profess. And at once the consequence is drawn to the uselessness of these doctrines. You see this scholar, as pious as he is learned: he rejects these doctrines, and that does not prevent him from being pious. Therefore these doctrines serve no purpose - or else, you must refuse to see a Christian in your brother, you must anathematise him, condemn him. 

    It will be wise to observe whither this argument leads. Apply it well, and it will not be easy to discover what it will leave subsisting: for, after all, who of us does not know rationalists who lead a life as moral and spiritual as some evangelicals - sometimes more so? Therefore, since it is conduct, life, sentiment, which is of supreme importance, there is no need to be evangelical. More than that, who of us does not know free-thinkers, unbelievers, superior in morality at least, if we hesitate to say in spirituality, to such and such Christians? Therefore, there is no need to be a Christian. 

    "Well, yes," our honourable opponents will reply, "there is no need to be a Christian, in the sense you mean; there is no need to be evangelical in the sense you mean - that is, in the doctrinal sense. True religion is life." - And then, if you press them, they will tell you with a fine sir that they know perfectly what they mean by "life," however little you may believe it. Well, tell us, then, what it is, if you know it, we reply; communicate your happy knowledge to us! - But take good care! If you open your month you will become at once Intellectualists - Intellectualists on your own account! 

    This exaggerated aversion to Intellectualism leads logically to rendering incapable of transmission and to isolating in the silence of the individual consciousness, a life which doctrines alone have rendered possible, and which without them would not exist.

In one word, the whole latitudinarian position is built up upon the fancy that the product of the religious sentiment is Christianity; and it is destined to a rude awakening whenever it discovers that religious sentiment is the natural possession of man, and performs its appropriate work in every atmosphere, and under the tutelage of every faith. The fetish-worshipper, no less than the vested priest serving at some gorgeous altar at Rome or Moscow, possesses his religious nature, and may through it attain a high degree of religious development. If, then, we take the ground that nothing is needed but a deep religious sentiment and its fruits, we have cut up Christianity, in any intelligible sense, by the roots. So poor Francis W. Newman found when in his half-taught zeal he stood before the Moslem carpenter at Aleppo,⁷ and his heart was forced to recognise in him a man of deeper religious nature and of higher religious attainments than he himself possessed - he who had come to teach to him and such as him the "true religion." With the premises which had taken possession of his mind, what could he do but what he did - give distinctive Christianity up? What, after all, is peculiar to Christianity is not the religious sentiment and its working, but its message of salvation - in a word, its doctrine. To be indifferent to doctrine is thus but another way of saying we are indifferent to Christianity. 

It is, of course, easy to say that in reasoning thus we have pressed the latitudinarian idea to an unwarrantable extreme. It is quite possible to look with indifference upon doctrinal differences within the limits of essential Christianity, without thinking of no consequence those great fundamental truths which constitute essential Christianity. But the answer is equally easy. To refuse to follow the latitudinarian idea to this extreme is to abandon altogether the principle of the uselessness, the indifference of doctrines. If there be some doctrines to which, as Christian men, we cannot be indifferent, then it is no longer true that doctrines as such are matters of indifference. There may be some doctrines which we esteem as less important than others, or even as of no importance in the framing of a specifically Christian life; but so long as there remain others, the maintenance of which we esteem essential to the very existence of Christianity, our attitude towards doctrine as such cannot be that of amused contempt. The very centre of the debate is now shifted. And so little can doctrine be neglected on this new ground, that a serious attempt becomes at once imperative to distinguish between essential and unessential doctrines. Men may conceivably differ as to the exact point at which the line of discrimination between these classes should be drawn. But the very attempt to draw it implies that there are doctrines which are useful, important, necessary. And the admission of this yields the whole point in debate. If there be any doctrines, however few, which justly deserve the name of essential doctrines, and stand at the root of the Christian life as its conditions, foundations, or presuppositions, it surely becomes the duty as well as the right of the Christian man to study them, to seek to understand them in themselves and in their relations, to attempt to state them with accuracy and to adjust their statement to the whole body of known truth - in a word, the right and function of Systematic Theology is vindicated. 

The extent of this Systematic Theology may remain an open question; but a content is already vindicated for it, and a place and function among the necessary theological disciplines, so soon as the conception of "essential doctrines," however limited, once emerges into thought. He who goes only so far, in a word, becomes at once an "Intellectualist" in the only sense in which the Systematic Theologian is an Intellectualist - that is, he recognises that Christianity is truth as well as life, and as such addresses itself to the intelligence of men, and has claims upon their belief as well as upon their obedience. He becomes at once a "Dogmatist" in the only sense in which the Systematic Theologian is a Dogmatist - that is, he recognises the objective validity of a body of religious truth and its imperative claims upon all for acceptance, and is therefore prepared to press this truth upon the attention of all alike as the condition of their religious life. In fine, he who only goes so far becomes in spite of himself, himself a Systematic Theologian: and once having come to look upon any doctrines as "essential," and to attempt to set them forth in an orderly manner, he will hardly fail gradually to enlarge the circle of truths which he will admit to his systematic treatment. Let us say that only the "essential" doctrines are to be included: but surely, in a systematic treatment of these, we cannot exclude the statement and development of those other truths which, while not "essential" in and of themselves, are yet necessary to the integrity and stability of these "essential" doctrines, and so are, in a secondary and derived sense, themselves "essential." And so on in the tertiary and quaternary rank. Thus the body of doctrine will grow until it will be hard if we do not find ourselves at last in possession of a pretty complete Systematic Theology. 

It would seem, then, that a mere doctrinal indifferentism cannot sustain itself as over against the claims of Systematic Theology. If the right of theology to exist is to be denied, it must be on some more positive ground than that which merely affirms that doctrines lack all significance. It is only when the widely diffused dislike of doctrines takes the more directly polemic form of declaring them not merely useless but actively noxious, that the real controversy begins. And of late this stronger assertion has become exceedingly common. Christ, we are told, did not come to teach a doctrine or to institute a hierarchy; He came to found a religion. To His simple followers, to whose pious hearts His holy living communicated a deep religious impulse, the elaborate ecclesiastical machinery of Rome was no more foreign than the equally elaborate theological constructions of the dogmatists. In their toils faith is imprisoned, straitened, petrified: if it is ever to regain its freedom and flexibility, its primitive fecundity and power of reproduction, it must be stripped of all the artificial envelopes in which it has been swathed by the perverse ingenuity of men, and permitted once more to work on men in its naked simplicity, as faith and not dogma. Theology is killing religion, we are told; and the hope of the future rests on our killing theology first that religion may live. 

There are naturally many forms taken by this somewhat violent hostility to doctrine - or to "dogma," as its opponents like to call it - and many grounds on which it seeks to support itself. No doubt it is often only the expression of an innate antipathy to clear thinking and of a not very rare incapacity for truth - a sort of colour-blindness to truth. The late Mr. James Anthony Froude, for example, suffering from what Mr. Andrew Lang speaks of as his "lamented and constitutional inaccuracy,"8 exhibited a similar antipathy to formulated truth in the spheres in which he dealt. "Truth itself," he wrote, "becomes distasteful to me when it comes in the shape of a proposition. Half the life is struck out of it in the process."9 How much more trustworthy he would have been as a historian if he could only have had more taste for exact fact! There are many theologians to whom truth in propositional form is in like manner distasteful, and half, or all, its life seems dissipated, for the same reason - because they too are afflicted with a lamentable and constitutional inaccuracy. No wonder that upon such minds exact statement seems to act like an irritant, and theology appears to be an enemy of religion. Men like these must be classified as deficients; and we can no more yield the right of theology in obedience to their outcries than the physicist can consent to refuse all discussion of colour to please the colour-blind, or the musician all study of harmony lest he should bore those who have no ear for music. Men who have no faculty for truth will always consider an appeal to truth an evil. But the assault upon doctrinal Christianity is far from being confined to those whom we must believe to possess reason, indeed, for they too are men, but who seem very chary of using it. On the contrary, it is being carried on to-day by the very leaders of Christian thought - by men whose shining intellectual gifts are equalled only by their trained dialectical skill and the profundity of their theological learning. "Theology is killing religion" is not merely the wail of those who are incapable of theology and would nevertheless fain preserve their religion. It is the reasoned assertion of masters of theological science whose professed object is to preserve Christianity in its purity and save it from the dangers which encompass it in this weak and erring world. It is a position, therefore, which deserves our most respectful consideration, and if we still feel bound to refuse it, we owe it to ourselves to give a reason for the faith that is in us. 

There are two chief points of view from which the right of doctrinal Christianity is denied by leading theologians of our day. The watchword of one of these schools of thought is that Christianity consists of facts, not dogmas: that of the other is that Christianity consists of life, not doctrine. Let us see in turn what is meant by these phrases and what is to be said with reference to the modes of conceiving Christianity which they represent. 

Christianity, then, we are told, consists of facts, not of dogmas. What we rest upon for our salvation is not a body of theories, intellectual constructions, speculative ideas, but a series of mighty acts of God, by which He has entered into the course of human history and wrought powerfully for the salvation of our lost race. Thus, He chose for Himself a people in Abraham and gradually moulded them into a matrix in which salvation might be prepared for all the world; and when the fulness of time had come, He descended into their midst in the person of His Son, was born of a woman, lived and suffered and died for our salvation, and having died for our sins, rose again for our justification, and now ever lives to make intercession for us. This - this mighty series of divine acts - this is Christianity: by the side of these facts all human theories are only so many impertinences. It is not by any theory of the person of Christ that we are saved - it is by the great fact of the incarnation: it is not by any theory of the atonement that we are saved - it is by the great fact of Christ's death for us; it is not by any theory of His heavenly high-priesthood that we are saved, but by the great fact that He sits at the right hand of the Majesty on High and reigns over all things for His Church. Let us, then, renounce all our wire-drawn theories and take our stand once for all upon these great facts which really constitute Christianity. Christianity consists of these facts, not of dogmas: and it is the sole business of the theologian to establish these facts, not to invent dogmas.¹⁰ In this, moreover, he will be imitating the writers of Scripture: for "the Bible simply recounts the facts without pretending to the least shadow of authority."11

The truth that underlies these representations is very obvious; and we cannot wonder that they have exercised an influence far beyond the limits of the class of thinkers whose watchword they are intended to justify. Accordingly nothing has become more common of late than an appeal from the doctrines of Christianity to its facts. All revelation is reduced to the patefaction of God in the series of His great redemptive acts, to the exclusion - entire or partial - of revelation by word, which is sometimes represented, indeed, as in the nature of the case impossible. Churches are exhorted to lay aside their "theological" creeds and adopt "religious" ones - that is, creeds which consist in the mere enumeration of the great facts which lie at the basis of Christianity, the advocates of this procedure usually having something like the Apostles' Creed in mind. In still broader circles, it has become very customary to distinguish between what is called the fact and the theory when dealing with special doctrines, and to profess belief in the fact of sin, of the incarnation, of the atonement, and the like, while despairing of discovering any tenable explanation of them. A recent example of this now fashionable mode of dealing with fundamental elements of Christianity may be found in the essay on the Atonement which was contributed to the volume called Faith and Criticism, by Dr. R. F. Horton, of London - a brilliant preacher, who, however, must not be taken too seriously as a theologian.¹² Such a mental attitude, as Dr. James Denney points out,¹³ in a striking passage in the lectures which he recently delivered before the students of the Chicago Theological Seminary, is certainly not easy to understand, and cannot possibly be final: but it is an attitude in which not only do many acquiesce to-day, but some even seem to glory. Dr. John Watson, for example, in a delightful "little book on religion," in which, like Mr. Horton, he emphasises the importance of Christ's death for salvation, yet seems to take considerable pride and to find great comfort in the idea that it is entirely inexplicable how His death could make for salvation. "Had one questioned the little band that evening," - the evening of the last supper, - he says in his customarily striking way, "how Christ's death would be of any good unto them or the world, then it is probable that St. John himself had been silent. Much has been written since by devout scholars, and some of their words have helped and some have hindered, and the reason of the great mystery of sacrifice has not yet been declared. . . . There is one modern crucifixion which is perfectly satisfying because it leaves everything beyond Jesus and the soul to the imagination. It is a space of black darkness, with some dim strokes of light, and as you try to pierce the gloom they suggest the form of a crucified Man. The face is faintly visible and a ray from the forehead striking downwards reveals a kneeling figure at the foot of the cross. Within the secret place of this mystery the human soul and Jesus meet and become one."14 Is it, then, indeed true that Christianity loves darkness more than light, and thrives best where it is least understood? 

If, indeed, it were necessary to distinguish, as sharply as this theory bids us, between the doctrines and facts of Christianity, there is none who would not find the essence of Christianity in the facts. The fact of the incarnation, the atonement, the heavenly high-priesthood - here undoubtedly is the centre of Christianity, about which its doctrines revolve. And if it were possible not merely to distinguish between them, but to separate the doctrines from the facts, then of course it would be to the facts alone that we could flee. We may cherish doubts as to the value of facts without their interpreting doctrines, but we cannot but be sure that doctrines to which no facts correspond can be nothing other than myths - let us say it frankly, lies. It is to the force of this suggestion that the representations under discussion owe their influence. But the antithesis thus drawn is a wholly false one. No one would contend that Christianity consists in doctrines as distinguished from facts, far less that it consists in doctrines wholly unrelated to facts. But neither ought anyone contend that it consists in facts as distinguished from doctrines, and far less that it consists in facts as separated from doctrines. What Christianity consists in is facts that are doctrines, and doctrines that are facts. Just because it is a true religion, which offers to man a real redemption that was really wrought out in history, its facts and doctrines entirely coalesce. All its facts are doctrines and all its doctrines are facts. The incarnation is a doctrine: no eye saw the Son of God descend from heaven and enter the virgin's womb: but if it be not a true fact as well, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins. The resurrection of Christ is a fact: an occurrence in time level to the apprehension of men and witnessed by their adequate testimony: but it is at the same time the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. Dr. James Orr, in his noble Kerr Lectures, brings out the truth here in a most satisfactory manner.¹⁵ He says: 

Christianity, it will be here said, is a fact-revelation - it has its centre in a living Christ and not in a dogmatic creed. And this in a sense is true. . . . The gospel is no mere proclamation of "eternal truths," but the discovery of a saving purpose of God for mankind, executed in time. But the doctrines are the interpretation of the facts. The facts do not stand blank and dumb before us, but have a voice given to them and a meaning put into them. They are accompanied by living speech, which makes their meaning clear. When John declares that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh and is the Son of God, he is stating a fact, but he is none the less enunciating a doctrine. When Paul affirms, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," he is proclaiming a fact, but he is at the same time giving an interpretation of it. 

It will be of use to us to consider for a moment the effect of the sharp antithesis which is drawn in the declaration that Christianity does not consist in dogmas, but in facts. What is a fact that is wholly separated from what is here called "dogma"? If doctrines which stand entirely out of relation to facts are myths, lies, facts which have no connection with what we call doctrine could have no meaning to us whatsoever. It is what we call doctrine which gives all their significance to facts. A fact without doctrine is simply a fact not understood. That intellectual element brought by the mind to the contemplation of facts, which we call "doctrine," "theory," is the condition of any proper comprehension of facts. It constitutes the elements of what the Herbartians call "apperception," and by means of it alone is a fact capable of passing into our minds as a force and in any measure influencing our thought and life. And therefore Dr. James Denney, in the passage to which we have already had occasion to allude, - where he is expressing his surprise that anyone should seem to glory and triumph in inability to discover the theory of a fact fundamental to Christianity - adds with the most complete justice:16 

A fact of which there is absolutely no theory is a fact which stands out of relation to everything in the universe, a fact which has no connection with any part of our experience; it is a blank unintelligibility, a rock in the sky, a mere irrelevance in the mind of man. There is no such thing conceivable as a fact of which there is no theory, or even a fact of which we have no theory; such a thing could not enter our world at all; if there could be such a thing, it would be so far from having the virtue in it to redeem us from sin that it would have no interest for us and no effect upon us at all. 

So closely welded are those intellectual elements - those elements of previous knowledge, or of knowledge derived from other sources - to facts as taken up into our minds in the complex act of apperception, that possibly we have ordinarily failed to separate them, and consequently, in our worship of what we call so fluently "the naked facts," have very little considered what a bare fact is, and what little meaning it could have for us. M. Naville has sought to illustrate the matter by an incident from his own experience. Even, he says¹⁷ 

absurd credulity - e.g. in Fracastorius' De Sympathiâ, cap. i., and the Alchemy Book - even to that of your modern agriculturists, relating their own facts and swearing against each other like ships' crews. Oh! it is the relations of the facts - not the facts, friend!" From the point of view of the historian, Professor Woodrow Wilson (The Century Magazine, September 1895, pp. 787, 788) speaks to somewhat the same effect: "'Give us the facts, and nothing but the facts,' is the sharp injunction of our age to its historians. Upon the face of it, an eminently reasonable requirement. To tell the truth, simply, openly, without reservation, is the unimpeachable first principle of all right living; and historians have no licence to be quit of it. Unquestionably they must tell us the truth." . . . But "an interesting circumstance thus comes to light. It is nothing less than this, that the facts do not of themselves constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation of what things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings of facts as suggest meanings."

    The things which we ourselves see have their meaning and their import only through the adjunction of ideas taken upon testimony. One day, at Paris, I saw on the quay which runs alongside the, Tuileries, the Emperor Napoleon III. pass by in a cabriolet which he himself was driving. Here is a fact which I verified for myself. But let us reduce this fact to the elements of personal perception, separated from the ideas which came from another source. I saw a large building: how did I know that this building bore the name of the Tuileries, and that it was the residence of the sovereign of France? By the testimony of others. I saw a man pass: how did I know that this man was called Napoleon III. and that he was the Emperor of the French. By testimony. If I reduce the fact to the data of my personal perceptions, here is what is left: I saw, near a large building, a man who drove a cabriolet - nothing more. The facts that pass under our eyes have their meaning and value only by the intervention of ideas which we owe to the affirmations of our fellows." 

If, then, we are to affirm that Christianity consists of facts, wholly separated from those ideas by which these facts obtain their significance and meaning and which it pleases us to call "dogmas" - what shall we do but destroy all that we know as Christianity altogether? The great facts that constitute Christianity are just as "naked" as any other facts, and are just as meaningless to us as any other facts, until they are not only perceived but understood, i.e. until not only they themselves but their doctrinal significance is made known to us. The whole Christianity of these facts resides in their meaning, in the ideas which are involved in them, but which are not independently gathered from them by each observer, but are attributed to them by those who interpret them to us - in a word, in the doctrines accompanying them. For what are the great facts that constitute Christianity? Strip them free from "dogma," from that interpretation which has transformed them into doctrine, and what have we left at the most but this: that once upon a time a man was born, who lived in poverty and charity, died on the cross and rose again. An interesting series of facts, no doubt, with elements of mystery in them, of the marvellous, of the touching; but hardly in their naked form constituting what we call Christianity. For that they require to receive their interpretation. This man was the Son of God, we are told; He came in the flesh to save sinners; He gave Himself to death as a propitiation for their sins; and He rose again for their justification. Now, indeed, we have Christianity. But it is not constituted by the "bare facts," but by the facts as interpreted, and indeed by the facts as thus interpreted, and not otherwise. Give the facts no interpretation, and we cannot find in them what we can call Christianity; give them a different interpretation, and we shall have something other than Christianity. Christianity is constituted, therefore, not by the facts, but by the "dogmas" - i.e. by the facts as understood in one specific manner. Surely it is of importance, therefore, to the Christian man to investigate this one Christian interpretation of the great facts that constitute Christianity: and this is the task of Systematic Theology. 

We must not fail to emphasise that the conclusion at which we have thus arrived implies that there lies at the basis of Christianity not only a series of great redemptive facts, but also an authoritative interpretation of those facts. Amid the perhaps many interpretations possible to this series of facts, who will help us to that one through which alone they can constitute Christianity? In the ordinary affairs of life we are enabled to arrive at the true interpretation of the facts that meet us, by the explanations of those who have knowledge of their meaning and who have a claim upon our belief when they explain them to us. For example, in the instance cited from M. Naville, he could be assured that the man he saw driving the cabriolet was Napoleon III. by anyone whose knowledge of the Emperor he could trust. These great facts of Christianity - is there anyone who has knowledge of their meaning and who has a right to our belief when he explains them to us? who, in a word, has authority to declare to the world what this series of great facts means, or in other words, what Christianity is? It is evident that we are face to face here with an anxious question. And it means nothing less than this, that the existence of a doctrinal authority is fundamental to the very existence of Christianity. We find that doctrinal authority ultimately, of course, in Christ. In Him we discern one in whose knowledge of the meaning of the great series of Christian facts in which He was chief actor, we can have supreme confidence; and to whom, with the apostles whom He appointed to teach all nations, we may safely go for the interpretation of the Christian facts. In the teachings of Christ and His apostles, therefore, we find authoritative Christian doctrine - "dogma" in the strictest sense of the word: and this "dogma" enters into the very essence of Christianity.¹⁸ 

But we are told, as may perhaps be remembered, that the Bible does not contain "dogmas." M. Astié, for example, has allowed himself to affirm, in a passage already quoted, that "he Bible simply recounts the facts without pretending to the least shadow of authority." It is a question of fact; and every Bible reader may be trusted to resolve it for himself.¹⁹ Obviously the Bible does not give us a bare list of "naked facts"; but a rich account and development of significant facts held in a special meaning - of facts understood and interpreted. With the interpretation of these facts, rather than with their mere record, a large part of the Bible is solely employed, as, for example, the epistles of Paul: and even when the immediate object is the record of the facts themselves, they are not set down nakedly, but in a distinct doctrinal context. Dr. James Denney is thoroughly justified in his rebuke to expositors who would neglect this context:20 -

"A mere exegete is sometimes tempted," he says, "to read New Testament sentences as if they had no context but that which stands before him in black and white; they had from the very beginning, and have still, another context in the minds of Christian readers which it is impossible to disregard. They are not addressed to minds in the condition of a tabula rasa; if they were, they could hardly be understood at all; they were addressed to minds that had been delivered - as Paul says to the Romans; a church, remember, to which he was personally a stranger - to a type or mould of teaching; such minds have in this a criterion and a clew to the intention of a Christian writer; they can take a hint, and read into brief words the fulness of Christian truth. I have no doubt that it was in this way such expressions were interpreted as we find all through the New Testament: 'Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many'; 'He loosed us from our sins by His blood'; 'Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world'; 'He is the propitiation for our sins.' To say that words like these express a fact but not a theory - a fact as opposed to a theory - is to say they mean nothing whatever. A member of the apostolic Church would be conscious of their meaning without any conscious effort; what they suggested to him would be precisely that truth which is so distasteful to many of those who plead for the fact as against 'theory,' that in Christ's death our condemnation was endured by Him. This theory is the fact; there is nothing else in these various expressions either to accept or to contest." 

If there be any justice in these remarks at all - and surely their justice lies on their face - it would be truer to say of the Bible that it contains nothing but "dogmas," than to say that it contains only "facts" and no "dogmas": all the facts given to us by Scripture are given as "dogmas," that is, as facts that have a specific meaning for our souls. Doubtless part of the extremity of such deliverances as M. Astié's is due to a failure on the part of their authors to strip the Christian facts bare enough. It is the fact as interpreted and not the naked fact itself that they call the fact. But it will scarcely do to prove that Christianity consists in facts to the exclusion of "dogmas," by calling all the dogma's which enter into the essence of Christianity facts. No doubt they are facts, but not in the sense intended by these writers; and thus the whole centre of the debate would be shifted. The contention would no longer be that no "dogmas" enter into the essence of Christianity, but merely that only such "dogmas" enter into the essence of Christianity as are rooted in fact, to the exclusion of such as have no basis in fact-in other words, of myths and fies. This no one will dispute. But it does not avail to show that Christianity consists of facts and not dogmas, but only that the dogmas which enter into Christianity are true. 

The antipathy to external authority in religion is much too deeply rooted, however, to die with the mere exhibition of the necessity of interpretation to render facts of any import or value t0 man. There are some to whom it will still seem that the necessity of interpretation may be allowed, and yet the existence of an external doctrinal authority be denied. M. Rivier may be taken as an example of this type of thought. "Certainly," he says²¹ -

Certainly to verify a historical fact is far from comprehending its religious and supernatural sense. An event whose significance remains foreign to us cannot have the least direct importance for our salvation, even though it may be ineffably rich in divine lessons and in religious motives. In order that we may know God, it evidently is not sufficient that he should act, it is necessary further that He should speak. 

So far, everything runs along satisfactorily: it is just the contention we have been making. But M. Rivier proceeds at once to take the significance out of his admission. "Only," he continues, and the word "only" is ominous -

Only it is necessary that he should speak to us. For we could never recognise His activity in a historical fact unless its explication made us personally verify a divine element in it. Now this interpretation God commonly gave, according to the biblical narratives, to the witnesses of the events. Whilst we, in order to understand these facts, are to be reduced to the more or less exact report of their authentic interpretation!" 

"Therefore," comments M. Henry Bois, with his inimitable point²² - 

    Therefore, in what the Bible and history transmit to us, there is nothing but the raw facts for us to take into consideration. The rest is of no value: it is of little consequence to us what God has said to others; that alone is of consequence to us which has been said to us. . . Nevertheless, it is allowed that the facts without ideas are of no value for salvation. . . . Consequently what history and the Bible transmit to us has no value for salvation: value resides principally, fundamentally, in what God says to us, at present, in our revelations, in our illuminations, in our fantasies, in our dreams. For having wished to discard the apostolic explications of the historic fact, we find ourselves quite naturally brought to discarding the historical fact itself. 

    And, indeed, we shall ask M. Rivier: Why this different mode of treating the fact and the idea? "In order that we may know God, it evidently is not sufficient that He should act: it is necessary further that He should speak. Only it is necessary that He should speak to us." So far so good. But why not say also: "Only it is necessary that He should act for us, by us, and in us"? It is of no use to make God speak historically? Be it so. But why make Him act historically? Are we to be reduced to the more or less exact and more or less authentic reports of the facts of which certain men were witnesses many centuries ago? No, it is necessary that God should act for us and in us. The apostolic interpretation of the Christian facts is given us by tradition, that fatal tradition, that nightmare of so-called independent minds? It is true. But by what, then, if you please, are you furnished with the facts, if not by this same tradition? You declare that tradition reporting ideas needs later commentaries, and you exclaim, "Is the latest commentary too clothed with a divine authority?" We should like you to tell us if tradition reporting facts has no need of criticism: will criticism, perchance, then be clothed with a divine authority?

    In short, he who says fact, history, says at the same time witness, tradition, authority. The more authority, the more tradition - the more fact.

We could scarcely have a neater or completer refutation by the method of reduction to absurdity. The pity is that everybody does not see that the reduction is to absurdity. For the absurd position to which M. Bois would thus drive M. Rivier, that very position is voluntarily assumed by others. Would M. Bois show that by parity of reasoning with that by which M. Rivier would refuse to be bound by the doctrines of the Bible, the facts, too, may be refused? Undoubtedly, replies, for example, Mr. G. Frommel: religion cannot consist of, or rest upon, external facts any more than upon external doctrines:23 -

By their very nature historical facts lack the special evidence which is indispensable for faith. The most certain of them are only probable. Their probability, by the accumulation of evidences and the weight of the testimony, may increase until it grazes certitude, but it never attains it. The best evidenced historical facts rest on intermediary witnesses, with regard to whom doubt remains permissible. Were they even absolutely proved, they would remain in essence incapable of forming authority for faith, the object of which cannot in any case be a historical fact - and, above all, not a past fact - and which demands for its establishment the discernment in history of a divine activity, the initiative and permanent character of which forms upon one a directly accessible impression.

That is to say, past facts can enter into the essence of Christianity just as little as past dogmas: the essence of Christianity must be found wholly in what is present to the soul here and now. In reducing to absurdity the position of those who cry that Christianity consists of facts, not dogmas, M. Bois has only driven them to the position of another class who equally refuse to allow the validity of Christian doctrine; those whose cry is that Christianity consists in life, not doctrine. This position comes before us thus as the logical outcome of the demands of those who will have Christianity consist only of facts, and not at all of dogmas. 

Before we turn to the consideration of this new position, however, there is an extreme form of the contention that Christianity consists of facts, not doctrines, which claims our attention. This is that curious religious positivism which has gained such vogue of late through the vigour of the followers of Albrecht Ritschl, and which occupies a sort of transitional position between the type of thought which declares that Christianity consists in facts, not dogmas, and that which represents it as consisting in life, not doctrine. The extremity of this position resides in the circumstance that, while it agrees in general that Christianity consists not in dogmas but facts, it reduces these facts to a single fact: Christianity consists, it says in effect, in one sole fact. 

That no dogmas lie at the root or enter into the essence of Christianity, the proper Ritschlite is perfectly assured. Religion is one thing, he tells us, and metaphysics is another; and Christianity is in essence religion, while dogmas are metaphysical products. The service which Jesus did the world was not that He presented it with a revealed metaphysic, but that He gave it a religion. The metaphysical element came into historical Christianity when, in its advance from its primitive centre and from its primitive simplicity, it came into contact with and bondage to the Greek mind, which at once seized upon it and, according to the inherent Greek tendency, philosophised it, and thus wrought out what we call the fundamental Christian dogmas. These, therefore, so far from being essential to Christianity, are corruptions of Christianity. And if we would have Christianity in its purity, we must strip off from it every remnant of "Greek dogma," or, to speak more broadly, every "metaphysical" element which has in the course of the ages attached itself to it. More, if we would save Christianity from entire destruction in the searching criticism of these modern times, we must separate from it those metaphysical accretions by its connection and consequent confusion with which it is brought into conflict with modern knowledge. If it is to be entangled with an outworn metaphysics, it cannot live in the light of modern thought. But let it be freed from all such entangling alliances, we are told, and stand forth in its purity as a simple religion, and philosophy and science will find that, as Satan found with Christ, they "have nothing in it." The effect desired to be obtained by this sharp distinction between the religious and the metaphysical, it will be seen, is the security of Christianity in the forum of the world's thought. The whole realm of the metaphysical is at once abandoned to the world, while that of the purely religious alone is retained for Christianity; and the two spheres are represented practically as mutually exclusive. Religion cannot properly intrude into the region of metaphysics, and metaphysics cannot invade the region of pure religion. Thus Christianity will be safe from attack on this side. But it is not only on the side of metaphysics that Christianity is attacked in these days. It is attacked also on the side of history. It is not only her "dogmas" that are assaulted, but also her "facts." When we yield up her "dogmas" to the mercy of the metaphysician, are we to defend at all hazards her "facts"? Is Christianity to be represented as standing or falling with them? No, says the Ritschlite. Christianity has no more need of its so-called "facts" than of its so-called "dogmas"; one fact alone will suffice for it, the one great fact of Christ. Let historical criticism do its worst, let it evaporate into the mist of myth every fact on which men have been accustomed to found Christianity, Christianity will remain untouched: it is constituted by this one fact only - Jesus Christ. 

Such, then, is the Ritschlite position, in, at least, its most characteristic form. That there are elements of truth and power in it is obvious on the face of the statement. It is much to protest against the identification of Christianity with the changing metaphysics of the schools; and it is undeniable that Christianity has often been confounded by the Hegelian with his Hegelianism, by the Aristotelian with his Aristotelianism, by the Platonist with his Platonism, and has thus been subjected to unwarranted suspicion and distrust. It is something also to realise that Christianity may survive the loss of many of her "facts"; that though her history is true and is worthy of her, and being worthy of her, is part of her being and one of her supports and stays, yet she does not draw all her sap from this one root. Above all, it is a great thing to have our eyes focused on Jesus Christ as the great, the constitutive fact of Christianity, about whom all else gathers, from whom all else receives its significance, whom to have is indeed to have all. Through its insistence on such points as these, Ritschlism has often wrought a good work in the theological circles of Germany, and earned for itself a good degree. But, unfortunately, the theory it has put forward goes in its logical implications fatally beyond insistence on such points as these. 

It is hard to take seriously the sharp discrimination that is proposed between religious and metaphysical knowledge; and it is hard to take patiently the complacent abandonment of the whole body of Christian doctrine which is proposed on the basis of this distinction. One is tempted to look upon it all as "playing to the galleries," as merely a clumsy flattery offered to the tendencies of an age essentially positivist. In an era when even our psychologists seek to steer clear of metaphysics, it is possibly not to be wondered at that a theology also should be attempted which shall be free from "metaphysical" conceptions. And certainly it can not be wondered at that the failure is even more complete. M. Fouillée warns us that if we question those who reject "metaphysics" we shall very quickly discover that they reject it in the name of a metaphysical system, which naturally is their own²⁴ It is so in the present case also. The whole Ritschlite system is the outgrowth of metaphysical theories drawn from Kant through the mediation of Lotze. On the basis of these metaphysical theories, we are asked to eviscerate Christianity of its whole, doctrinal content as being mixed with metaphysical elements! Nor do we, in saying the "whole doctrinal content" of Christianity, overstate the matter. For what truth concerning God and the soul can come to expression without involving metaphysical conceptions? Every religious truth, however primary, contains a metaphysical element. M. Bois is therefore within the limits of fact when he says²⁵ that -

Those who thus repel metaphysics do not understand themselves. For if it is certain that all that is metaphysical is not on that account religious, it is no less certain that all that is religious is on that account metaphysical. If you wish to be rid of metaphysics at any cost, abstain from speaking of God. Whoever says, "I believe in God," deals with metaphysics.

It must be admitted, however, that the Ritschlites, having placed their brand upon metaphysics in religion, do make the boldest possible effort to cleanse their skirts of it altogether. And herein, for us, lies their severest reproach. For at the bidding of this theory, some have not hesitated to discard the most elementary truths of religion. M. Bois says that we cannot even say, "I believe in God," without a tinge of metaphysics. We fully believe it. And the Ritschlite perceives it also, and actually raises the question whether we may validly even say so much as this, "I believe in God!" What do we, after all, as Christian men, know of God, it is asked. That he is infinite? Certainly not. That He is a person? No. That he exists? Not even this. We only know that he is, as Ritschl himself once put it, a "Hülfsvorstellung" - a useful postulate for the validating of our practical ends.²⁶ "God, in other words" - as Dr. Denney²⁷ brings out Ritschl's idea -

God, in other words, is a necessary assumption of the Christian's view of man's chief end; but, scientifically, - in its bearing on the interpretation of nature and history, for example, - it may be left an open question whether there be a God or not.

In similar spirit, Herrmann teaches that for "the maintaining of the impulse of religious faith," "it does not matter whether our conception of the world is theistic, pantheistic, or materialistic."28 This is what we may come to when we refuse every metaphysical element in religion, and insist that all we need know of God is what is involved in the residuum of religious knowledge. It is the old idea of regulative truth brought back, in the extreme form which includes the implication that what is postulated as true for the needs of our practical life may in the sphere of theoretical knowledge be at the same time recognised as false.²⁹ 

And this mode of dealing with the foundations of Christianity is carried by this school, also, as we have said, into the domain of "facts." Dr. Denney quotes³⁰ a characteristic example from Harnack when dealing with the miracles of Jesus. "The historian," says Harnack,³¹ 

is not in a position to reckon with a miracle as a certainly given historical event; for in doing so he destroys that very method of looking at things on which all historical investigation rests. Every single miracle remains, historically, entirely dubious: and no summation of the dubious can ever amount to a certainty. If, in spite of this, the historian convinces himself that Jesus Christ has done what is extraordinary, and even in the strict sense miraculous, he argues from an ethico-religious impression which he has received of this person, to a supernatural power belonging to Him. This inference belongs itself to the domain of religious faith. We may conceive, however, a strong religious faith in the teleological reign of the divine and the good in the world, which does not need such an inference.

That is to say, as Dr. Denney points out, "since it belongs to the domain of religious faith, it cannot belong to the domain of assured fact," and it is only to those of little faith that the supernatural power and miracles of Jesus are not matters of indifference. From passages like this we may begin to learn the real import of the constant Ritschlite appeal to the historical Jesus - that fervent and devout appeal to the very central fact of Christianity which gives their writings such attractiveness to us all. 

By the emphasis which they place upon the "historical Christ," who, according to them, is the one great constitutive fact of Christianity, the Ritschlites intend first of all to exclude from consideration the exalted Christ - the Christ who, according to His promise, is with His followers always, even to the end of the world, the living source of all their strength and the fountain of all their life. For this school of  thought, which piques itself on its positivism, has no greater antipathy to what it calls, "metaphysics" in religion than to what it calls "mysticism." It would indeed be introducing, "metaphysical" elements to conceive of Jesus, dead for two thousand years, yet ruling the world from the throne of God and instilling life by some magical process into the hearts of men. No! we can know nothing but the "historical Christ," the Christ who lived and died in Galilee, and by His life of pure faith has left an indelible impression upon the world. He, at least, is a fact; and a fact of such magnitude that face to face with Him we cannot escape the conviction which was the spring of His life and which, from the spectacle of His life, is communicated to us, that there is a God who loves us, and that we are not merely the "step-children of time." 

Yet we must guard ourselves from supposing that this historical Christ to which we have thus been pointed is the Christ of the historical documents which have preserved the memory of His life and deeds to us. For, by the emphasis which they place on the "historical Christ," the Ritschlites intend, in the next place, to exclude all "unhistorical" elements from the picture they would bring before us. It is not the Christ of legend to which they would direct our eyes, but the Christ of sober history: and they are willing to relegate to the domain of legend all that the most exigent criticism would ask of them. It is not the Christ who was born of a virgin, who was welcomed by angels, who wrought wonders, who, having died for our sins, rose again from the dead and ascended in bodily form into heaven - it is not this Christ who, according to them, is the one great constitutive fact of Christianity. It is the Christ of critical history: of whom we can say but this - that He lived and died and left behind Him the aroma of a life of faith. This is the one fact of which Christianity consists. We cannot rid ourselves of the impression which this historical figure makes upon us, of the lesson of faith which His life teaches us: in its light we can walk our allotted pathway in life and see the hand of Jesus' God in the events that befall us, and so live, like Jesus, in communion with the God of providence: the religion of Jesus is thus ours, and we are Christians. Who Jesus was, what He was, what He did - all this is indifferent to us: His life of love in the world has begotten religion in our souls; and this is enough. It is to this that the Ritschlite point of view would reduce the "historical Christ" - the one fact that constitutes Christianity. And if we find it hard to take patiently their complacent abandonment of the whole sum of Christian doctrine on the plea that it is metaphysical, shall we not find it impossible to take patiently their equally complacent abandonment of the whole series of Christian facts, on the ground that it is unhistorical? 

The inconsistency of the Ritschlite procedure here has often been commented on. First, in their anti-metaphysical bias, they insist on the historical character of Christianity: Christianity is not metaphysics but fact: it is to the historical Christ, and not to the Christ of theological construction, that we are to go - the Christ that actually lived and died in Galilee, not the Christ of the Nicene Greeks or of the scholastics. And then this historical Christ Himself is calmly handed over to the tender mercies of unbelieving critics, with permission to do with Him what they list. It is more to our present purpose, however, to note the effect of this double dealing, in the evaporation of the whole essence of Christianity. We all desire a Christianity which is secure from the assaults of the unbelieving world, whether those assaults are made in the name of philosophy and science, or in the name of history and criticism. But this security is to be sought and can be found only in a Christianity whose facts and doctrines are so intrenched against the inevitable assault that, whatever else falls, they shall stand. What fatuity it is to seek it rather by yielding to the assault all it chooses to demand, and contracting Christianity into dimensions too narrow to call out the world's antipathy and too weak to invite its attack. Such an eviscerated Christianity may no longer be worth the world's notice, and by that same token is no longer worth the Christian's preservation. It has been reduced to a vanishing point, and is ready to pass away. It is entirely fatuous to suppose that the spheres of religion and thought, of religion and history, can be kept apart: what is true in metaphysics is true in religion, and what is true in religion is true in history, or, in one word, we shall profess ourselves willing to confess a false religion. We may acquiesce in the implications of the persistent activity of our religious sentiment. Let metaphysics decide the problems of being as it may, let criticism decide the problems of history as it may, man is a religious animal. But to say that the special form and direction which have been given to the action of this religious sentiment by a specific body of convictions and a specific body of facts are independent of philosophical and historical determinations, passes beyond the apparent absurdity of paradox into the actually absurd. It sounds very well to ask, as M. Lobstein asks³² -

To declare that the full and complete satisfaction of the needs of the conscience and the aspirations of the heart is involved in the solution of a problem of historical criticism of whatever importance - is this not to cast souls into trouble and to expose them to the lose of that crown which they are exhorted to hold fast?

But. it is surely one thing for the soul to be sure with an immovable surety that the conceptions - that is, the "dogmas" - and the facts that underlie its faith and are implicated in it cannot be shaken by any criticism whatever: and quite another thing for one to imagine that he can lightly surrender them at the demand of any criticism you will and yet retain his faith undiminished. Accordingly, M. Bois justly fixes his eye on the extremity of M. Lobstein's language: that faith cannot depend on the solution of a problem of historical criticism, no matter what its importance may be - 

"Will it be indifferent, then, to the Christian faith," he demands,³³ "for it to be demonstrated that we do not possess a single authentic writing of Paul's that the Fourth Gospel is the work of a forger, and that the Synoptics are only a tissue of legends and traditions without the least historical value? Will it, then, be indifferent to the Christian faith for it to be proved to us, for example, that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead or even that He never existed? We should very much like to know what will remain to Christianity when there have been excluded from it the ideas (since metaphysics must be excluded) and the facts (since we must be independent of historical criticism). Note that thus the person of Christ is completely eliminated from Christianity, and it is reduced to vague, obscure, doubtful sentiment - to sentiment in its pure estate. On the other side, do we not know that the school of Ritschl does not wish to hear the mystical union spoken of, that is to say, internal, personal. and living relations between the soul and its Saviour? What then is left of Christianity? Nothing at all - except, perhaps, the maxim of certain mediæval monks: Bene dicere de priore, facere officium suum taliter qualiter, sinere mundum ire quomodo vadit. In all ways, the reaction against intellectualism, pushed to the complete proscription of doctrine, of metaphysics, brings us to nihilism in the matter of religion." 

Thus we see that the Ritschlian tendency also reduces itself to absurdity in the extremes to which it must go in order to save its principle. For to these extremes it must, go or else admit a metaphysical, a truly dogmatic element at the very heart of Christianity. Recoil from them ever so slightly, and the centre of the debate is at once shifted: we no longer are discussing whether "dogma" enters into the essence of Christianity, but what "dogmas" may be rightly recognised as holding that position. Jesus Christ alone constitutes Christianity; in Him is included all that can be asked for, for the perfect religion. So be it. What Jesus Christ? The Jesus of the Gospels? Or the Jesus of Strauss? The Logos Jesus of John's Gospel? The heavenly Jesus of the Apocalypse? Or the purely earthly Jesus of Pfleiderer and Renan? Or even perchance the entirely imaginary Jesus of Pierson and Naber and Loman? It is an insult to our intelligence to tell us that it makes no difference to Christianity how these queries be answered. But the first beginnings of an answer to them introduce the dogmatic element. From which it follows at once that Christianity cannot exist without the dogma which it is the business of Systematic Theology to investigate and state. As M. Henri Bois³⁴ eloquently puts it 

    Christianity is the person of Jesus Christ. Still we must enter into relations with this person. In order that two moral subjects should communicate with one another there must needs be manifestations between them. A person manifests himself clearly to us only by his acts and his words; and he has value for us only as we form for ourselves a certain idea of him. Christianity is therefore essentially, above all, a person; but on pain of reducing it to a magic, which would no longer possess any ethical and, consequently, no longer possess any religious quality, we must needs grant that Christianity, precisely because it is essentially a person, is also a body of facts and of ideas.

    For the contemporaries of Jesus Christ, who could see and hear Him, the teaching that fell from His lips, and the deeds performed by Him, constituted this necessary middle term between Jesus Christ and them. For us, with no wish certainly to deny the personal, present, and living relations of Jesus Christ with the soul of the redeemed, we cannot, without opening the door to the most dangerous mysticism, reduce Christianity to these relations, in derogation of the acts and revelations of the historical Christ, which we have neither seen nor heard, but which have been transmitted to us by tradition, by the Bible; this would be equivalent to cutting down the tree at its roots, under pretext of being thus better able to gather its fruit. 

On pain, then, of cutting down Christianity at its roots, under the pretext that we shall thus be better able to gather its fruits, we must admit a doctrinal element at its very basis. Christianity consists not merely of "Jesus Christ," but of that Jesus Christ which the apostles give us - in a word, of the Jesus of the apostolical "dogma," and not of any Jesus we may choose to fancy in this nineteenth century of ours.³⁵ Are there "metaphysical" elements in this apostolical dogma? Then metaphysical elements enter into the very essence of Christianity. Are there traces of Greek thought perhaps in these apostolical interpretations of the Christian facts? Of what importance is that to us? M. Bois says truly -

Whether there be in these interpretations Greek elements or not, is a very secondary question, and one wholly without the importance that it is sought to give it. There is no good reason known to us for rejecting a teaching of St. Paul's or of St. John's, under the pretext that it has a Hellenic colour." 

The apostolic interpretation is an inseparable element in the fundamental fact-basis of Christianity; and it cannot be rejected because a part of the providentially formed peculiarity of the apostolic mode of thought is distasteful to us.³⁶ Call it metaphysical, call it Greek, if you will. But remember that it is of the essence of Christianity. 

By no means, the answer comes back to us at once: Christianity is a life, not a doctrine; he is a Christian man in whom this life is implanted; and the Bible itself is in the first instance a means of grace, not a text-book of theology. Thus we are brought back once more to that extremest of all anti-doctrinal positions which proposes a Christianity which shall be independent of both facts and doctrines. We have already had a glimpse of it now and again; and it is probably clear by this time that, if the onset on doctrinal Christianity is to succeed at all, it must be under this banner. It is towards it indeed that every other tendency of thought inevitably drifts, as it seeks to defend an anti-doctrinal position. According to its mode of thinking, the sole immediate purpose of the Bible is to quicken life, not to satisfy curiosity, and we divert it from its proper use when we go to it as anything else than the living and abiding word through which we are begotten again - than the implanted word which is able to save our souls. When it has performed this function its immediate employment is at an end; its dogmas and its facts may alike be passed by in indifference when we possess the life - that Christ-life which, being once formed in us, surely renders us superior to all extraneous aid. And for the inception of this life we cannot be dependent on any book or on any dogmas or facts whatever, laid hold of by the intellect and embraced in knowledge. Its source can only be the Fountain of Life - our living and loving God Himself; and He cannot be supposed to grant it only to shining intellectual gifts, or to exceptional intellectual opportunities, or to the knowledge which is the fruit of these things. The poorest is as the richest before Him, and poverty of understanding is no bar to His grace; while that poverty of spirit which is seldom, conjoined with great knowledge - for knowledge rather puffeth up - is precious in His sight. Christianity is ill-conceived if it is thought to consist in or to rest upon either facts or dogmas; it is a life, and for this life we depend solely on God, the ever-living Source of all life.³⁷

It will go without saying that a manner of thinking like this, which has commended itself to a multitude of the leading minds of our time, and which has extended its influence so far beyond the circle of its own proper adherents that it may be truly said to have coloured all modern religious thought, has much to say for itself. We need only turn over in our minds its characteristic modes of expression to find enshrined in them the deepest truths of Christianity. It is true that Christianity is a life, the life that is lived in communion with the Son of God, the life that is hid with Christ in God, the life of which it must be said that it is not we that live it, but Christ that lives it in us. The whole series of Christian facts, the whole body of Christian doctrines, do exist only in order to this life. Christ did not come into the world, die, and rise again, merely that He might insert so many marvellous facts into the dull course of natural history: the constitution of the facts, the beautifying of the historical sequence, was not the end of His action; it was to save the souls of men, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. And no single Christian doctrine has been revealed to men merely as a tenet in philosophy, to make them wise; each and every one is sent to them as a piece of glad tidings, that they may be made wise unto salvation. Yet though all Christian knowledge is thus only in order to life, and terminates on life, it is not in the power of all knowledge to give life. We live by the power of the Son of God, by virtue of a vital relation of our souls to Him; and it is only because of the indwelling of the Spirit of God in our hearts that our ears are open to the truth, or that our souls are amenable to its discipline. This Christian life that we live is not the creation of the doctrines or of the facts of Christianity; it is the working of the Spirit of God, who, abiding within us, becomes to us a second and higher self. These are the fundamental elements of the gospel of Christ; and we count it a most happy thing that they are emphasised as the school of thought which we have now under view emphasises them. Above all, we rejoice that in the face of a positivist and materialistic age there have arisen men who so boldly proclaim the reality of the divine life, the actual presence of God in men, and the prevalent work of the Spirit in the heart. To the Ritschlite, of the extremer sort, at least, it is as if there were no Holy Spirit; the spirit of the Christian community - i.e., the general influence that exhales from Christians as a body - takes its place; it is as if there were no divine power within us working for righteousness; all that is allowed is a simply human ethicism, supported by a bare belief in a loving Providence - a bare belief which cannot reach the height of theoretical knowledge. But the very core of the teaching now engaging our attention is the great conception of the indwelling God; and we are profoundly grateful to it for making Christian mysticism once more a power in the world. 

With the heartiest recognition, however, of the precious elements of truth which are embraced in this mode of thought, and of the service it has rendered in emphasising them, we may still be unable to allow that it is able to do justice to Christianity, or even to those special elements of Christianity which it thus has taken up, when, in its preoccupation with the sharp separation which it institutes between life and doctrine, it declares that Christianity consists wholly in life, and not at all in doctrine. It may possibly conduce to a clearer understanding of what the real implications of this contention are, if we will select some fair representative of the school of thought whose watchword it forms, and seek through him to learn its fundamental ideas. Fortunately this has been rendered especially easy by the recent publication, on the part of the learned Professor of Reformed Theology at Paris, Professor Auguste Sabatier, of certain documents apparently designed precisely to serve as a manifesto of his school.³⁸ In the discussion which necessarily arose among French Protestants around such utterances, the chief burden in behalf of the essential doctrines of Christianity was borne at first by the venerable Professor Frederic Godet,³⁹ from whose expositions of Scripture we have all profited, and more latterly by the brilliant young professor of Montauban, from whom we have already quite largely quoted in this paper, Professor Henri Bois.⁴⁰ During the course of the controversy the postulates and implications of the mode of conceiving Christianity advocated by Professor Sabatier have naturally been brought under a very searching light, with the result of exhibiting in the clearest way their utter inability to do justice to, or even to preserve the essence of, Christianity. 

At the bottom of all M. Sabatier's religious thinking there proves to lie a crass philosophical empiricism, or, to be more precise, the empiricism of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Out of this empiricism there springs immediately the fundamental principle of his theory of knowledge, which is none other than the ordinary postulate of the sensational school - now being anew pressed upon our acceptance by certain of our physiological psychologists⁴¹ - that sensation lies behind, and is the source of all knowledge. In its strictness, M. Sabatier's contention is that "feeling comes first in time as well as in value: ideas come only afterwards, and ideas cannot produce feeling, or, if they can produce it, this happens so imperfectly and so rarely that we need not take account of this in the role of ideas."42 On the other hand, sensation does produce ideas, and all our ideas rest ultimately on and are the product of sensation: "our ideas are only the algebraic notation of our impressions and of our movements."43 When carried over into the sphere of religion, this philosophical theory of knowledge becomes M. Sabatier's fundamental theological postulate. As sensation is the mother of ideas, so the Christian life is the mother of Christian doctrine. Life, then, is before doctrine, not merely in importance, but in time: and doctrine is only a product of the Christian life. It follows, of course, at once that God does not reveal Himself except through and by means of the Christian life: there is and cannot be any such thing as an "objective revelation." "God reveals Himself only in and by piety," and it "is faith that produces dogmas." A Christian life is first quickened in man: that Christian life effloresces into Christian action; and one form of action being intellectual action, Christian action ultimates among other things in Christian thought, knowledge, doctrine. As M. Dandiran puts it clearly⁴⁴ -

We need a dogmatic; there is a Christian verity in Christianity; there is a Christian philosophy; it is the most extensive of all philosophies. Only, instead of placing it at the beginning, I place it at the end; instead of making it precede the Christian life, we make it proceed from the Christian life. This is the difference between us and our opponents, but it is great enough to make us say, Here are two opposed theologies.

All Christian doctrine being thus but the manifestation of precedent Christian life, doctrine will, of course, vary as the Christian life varies. And here M. Sabatier brings in and operates with the conception of evolution - the evolution of religion, and with it the evolution of religious thought, and finally of Christian dogmas. In the course of human development, which has proceeded always naturally and normally, man has disengaged himself little by little from animalism and gradually created himself man. In the course of this upward growth he has slowly attained the free life of the spirit: his first religious stage was that of egoism, corresponding to the religions of nature; then came the stage of moralism; and lastly, the stage of "the consciousness of Christ, in which a new relation springs up between God and man, the relation of love." Thus as the religion of law succeeded the nature religions, the religion of love has succeeded the religion of law. But the stream still flows on; and as the stream of spiritual life still flows on, inevitably the stream of religious ideas dependent on the spiritual life also flows on, and our doctrines vary, age by age, in spite of ourselves. The children may speak the words of the fathers, but they cannot mean them in the same sense. The river of the underlying spiritual life, and the river of intellectual concepts and doctrinal ideas dependent on the fluctuations of the spiritual life, inevitably flow on for ever. 

This is, then, what M. Sabatier means when he says that Christianity is a life, not a doctrine. And it is quite clear that, when taken in its entirety, the theory amounts to the formal renunciation of Christianity as anything else than one stage in the religious development of humanity, having, like all other stages of religious development, in its life its relative fitness and value, and in its teachings its relative truth - relative to the times and the men to which it belongs and which have given it birth; but possessing as little absoluteness of value or truth as any stage of religious development which has preceded it. Religion, too, he tells us, is "subject to the law of transformation which dominates the manifestations of human life and that life itself"; and it is therefore folly for orthodoxy to wish to "elevate to the absolute what was born in time and must necessarily be subject to modification if it is to live in time":45 we cannot bar the course of a river by building a dam across it. Thus, in M. Sabatier's conception everything is in a flux; and the doctrines which Christianity proclaims, and even the form of life which underlies them and of which they are the expression, are only one evanescent moment in the ceaseless advance of mankind. As M. Godet has eloquently put it, from this point of view⁴⁶ - 

This religion is, like all those that have preceded it, only a temporary form of human development - "one of the day's works of humanity," as Lerminier said - a simple product of consciousness and reason on the road of indefinite progress, a form of the religious life of which it cannot be affirmed any more confidently than it may of all its predecessors, that it is the last. One who was in some sort the representative of this point of view - M. Scherer - expressed it thus: "Christianity, the fruit of a long elaboration of the human consciousness, destined to prepare for other elaborations, represents only one of the phases of the universal transformation." This is to proclaim, as sharply as possible, the perpetual banishment of authority in matters of faith. An authority intervening in this continuous work would mark in it a point of arrest, and would become a fetter upon the spontaneous progress which is looked upon as the supreme law of history. From this point of view the sacred books of the Christians have no other kind of value for religious thought than that which may be possessed for philosophical thought by the treatises of Aristotle or the dialogues of Plato: interesting documents, no doubt, they could have no authority.

That M. Sabatier has admitted to his mind such implications of his theory of evolution as applied to religion, inclusive of Christianity, as are here suggested, such sentences as the following assure us: -

    The transformation of religious ideas does not always take place in a violent fashion. It is more frequently insensible, but it never pauses, whatever precautions may be taken or whatever barriers may be thrown up against it. The river of the spiritual life flows on continuously.

    The sons pronounce the same words with the fathers, but they no longer understand them in the same way.

    We continually speak of the inspiration of the prophets and apostles, of expiation, of the Trinity, of the divinity of Christ, of miracles, but we understand them, peu ou prou, otherwise than our fathers. The river flows on for ever." 

It is this last remark which gave occasion to the following eloquent comment of M. Godet's:47 -

You drop this phrase as in passing; but it rouses much thought. . . . What river flows thus continually on? No doubt that of doctrinal ideas, of intellectual concepts; that is [according to your conception] the "essentially variable element." It flows on continually, this doctrinal river, transforming itself, purifying itself, spiritualising itself, from its source on the shores of the Lake of Gennesaret to its present mouth on the Boulevarde Arago. And who are these fathers of whom you speak, and with whom we are no longer in accord, we their children of the nineteenth century? Luther and Calvin? I comfort myself. Augustine and Athanasius, Polycarp and Ignatius? I still comfort myself. St. John, St. Paul? Now I do not so easily comfort myself. Jesus Christ! This time I do not comfort myself at all, and I even tremble, although fear is forbidden us. What! we understand the inspiration of the prophets and apostles otherwise than He did? Ah, well, pass on! But expiation, the meaning of His own death? He made a very close connection between His outpoured blood and the remission of our sins. That is to be corrected! The Trinity! The conception of God, whom He called His Father and of whom He said: "No one knows the Son except the Father; neither the Father except the Son and him to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him!" The divinity of the Son? The conception which, according to the narrative of His disciples, He has given as of His own person! Miracles? Those facts which He considered the witnesses of the Father in His behalf, but which we know to-day to have been only the beneficent and natural effects of His personality! Yea, peu ou prou, we understand all this - and much else besides, of which I do not here speak - otherwise than He did. And when all this "Hebrew sediment" has been cast away so as to save only the "vital germ," what we have left is "the consciousness of the Son of God, which has been placed in the midst of history and in the bosom of humanity, as a power of life capable of engendering life after itself." For me, what strikes me in all this, is that in place of possessing, as I believe I do, a fulness in the Christ of the Gospels, I see form itself before me a void in which there disappears the Jesus of the Church, the Jesus of Jesus Himself.

It will, of course, go without saying, that M. Sabatier makes a vigorous effort to escape from this empty void to which his theory inevitably conducts him. Despite the necessary implications of his conception that Christianity is but one of the passing phases of the religious life of the race, and its doctrines but the evanescent expression of this passing phase, and Christ Himself but the earliest typical form of this new phase of religious life, M. Sabatier cannot refrain from speaking of the religion of love, with which he identifies Christianity, as the perfect and definitive religion, and of Christ as having perfectly realised this perfect religion in His own life. But if ever an illogical thinker was fairly scourged out of his inconsistencies, we may believe that M. Sabatier's incoherences of this kind have been cured by M. Bois' lash. M. Bois refuses to believe that, on the theory of religious evolution put forth by M. Sabatier, there can be any necessity or place for such a one as Christians recognising Christ at all. "Is it," he asks,⁴⁸ 

that evolution was not sufficient to guarantee the transformation of the religion of law into the religion of love? Why did the Spirit of God, enveloping, penetrating humanity, need anything else than His own universal and continuous action to reveal to us the true way? What necessity could there have been for Jesus Christ to come into the world? You tell me that Jesus Christ was simply the first man in whom evolution introduced the transformation of the religion of law into the religion of love. I reply, In that case it is evident that Jesus Christ represents the lowest degree of the religion of love: evolution has long ago passed Him; we are superior to Him by nineteen centuries of evolution. You wish to say that Jesus Christ perfectly realised the principle of love: That is inconceivable. How can we admit that the highest degree of the religion of love appeared suddenly in a people still entirely immersed in the religion of law? Natura non facit saltus. If Jesus Christ actually realised love perfectly, He must have been the end-term of an anterior evolution. It would be necessary to trace this evolution - not an easy task; and then it would be necessary to explain by evolution the spectacle which the nineteen centuries of Christianity present to us: evolution would demand that you should show us a new principle of subjective religion taking the place of the principle of love. But M. Sabatier does not desire this, since he declares that the religion of love is the perfect and definitive religion. 

    The perfect and definitive religion! . . . a definitive, unchangeable religion! Have we read aright? Then religion is not after all "subject to the law of transformation which dominates the manifestations of the human life and that life itself." . . . The contradiction is flagrant. In order to justify the incomprehensible arrest which evolution underwent when it attained Christ, the ingenious critic declares: "It is very evident that we are morally able to conceive of nothing above the religion of love." A good reason, indeed! We, religious men of the nineteenth century, we cannot conceive anything better - that is very possible; but what of our descendants of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? And then, methinks, this is strange language from the pen of our author, and shows a singular forgetfulness of his own theories. We are morally able to conceive of nothing above the religious experiences, that we are having or have had? Ah, it is too plain. Or, does M. Sabatier renounce his theory, according to which the idea, the conception, follows on the experience? We cannot conceive anything above the experience we have had - because we have had only this experience. But when our posterity have had another experience (it is not my affair how; we know from other passages that religious experience is a kind of inexplicable, spontaneous generation), they will without trouble conceive something superior to the religion of the men of the nineteenth century. By what right do you erect into a universal law your personal faculty of conceiving or not conceiving that empirical product of the exercise and habitudes of your own thought? By what right do you affirm that our successors will not have experiences superior to ours? No experience permits you such an affirmation. 

    . . . It does not seem to me that our subtle theoriser can escape from the objection drawn from his own premises to his own point of view. If continuous transformation is the universal law, if religion itself has evolved during so many centuries, we cannot see why religion should suddenly become immutable and definitive - we do not see why Jesus Christ should occupy the preponderant place which Christians attribute to Him. M. Sabatier affirms that it is because in Christ and by Christ religion attained a certain point of moral perfection; but how do we know that we have not advanced far beyond what was for him morality and religion? And otherwise, this does not remove the contradiction. . . . If we place ourselves at the point of view of M. Sabatier's theory of evolution, that theory absolutely interdicts that any symbol whatsoever, any religious word whatsoever, even Jesus Christ, should preserve an eternal value. The river flows on continuously - the river of life, the river of doctrine, the river of the word. What remains permanent? Logically, nothing! 

But if M. Sabatier occasionally thus involves himself in contradiction - whenever, namely, he speaks of Christ and Christianity in the traditional manner, instead of according to the demands of his theory; in the manner, that is, we may be permitted to believe, in which he learned to speak of them before he had worked his theory out, and which still occasionally tends to usurp its wonted place upon his lips - at other times, as we have seen, he frankly follows the implications of his theory to the legitimate result of really conceiving distinctive Christianity as of no importance to the Christian life. This comes out curiously even in utterances, the fervour, and breadth of whose piety are apt to veil their, extremity from the hasty reader. Take, for example, the following beautiful passage from his Discourse on the Evolution of Dogmas, where he is pleased to imagine⁴⁹ 

"in one of our churches a great crowd come together for worship. There are, perhaps, in this auditory," he continues, "poor old women, very ignorant and possibly superstitious, men of the middle class with a tincture of literature, scholars and philosophers who have conned Kant and Hegel, possibly even professors of theology, penetrated to the marrow with the critical spirit. All bow themselves in spirit and adore; all speak the same language learned in infancy; all repeat with heart and lips, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty!' I do not know if there is on earth a more touching spectacle, anything more like heaven. All these spirits, so different from one another and perhaps incapable of understanding each other in the region of the intellect, really commune with one another; one identical religious sentiment penetrates them and animates them. The moral unity of which Jesus spoke when He said, That they may be one as we are one,' is for the moment realised on earth. But do you suppose that the same image is awakened in all these spirits by this one word 'God,' pronounced by all these lips? The poor old woman, who still remembers the pictures in the big Bible, has a glimpse of the figure of the eternal Father with a great white beard and bright and burning eyes like coals of fire. Her next neighbour would smile at this simple anthropomorphism. He has the Deistic idea, rationally established in his philosophical course at college. This notion in turn would appear rude to the disciple of Kant, who knows that all positive ideas of God are contradictory, and who, to escape from contradiction, takes refuge in that of the Unknowable. For all, however, the doctrine of God subsists, and it is because it is still living that it lends itself to so many different interpretations; but it is living - let it be well remarked - only because it serves to express a piety felt in common by all these believers." 

A true and affecting picture, we will all say, of the condition of Christianity in the world to-day, gathering in of every kind in order to elevate and purify their partial or wrong impressions of God, and teach to all who and what really is the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Only this is not M. Sabatier's conception of the import of the scene he has brought so vividly before us. To him it is not a picture of Christian imperfections, passing away and to pass away for each of the worshippers as he better learns to know Christ. It is a picture of what is normal in the Christian life, and what most nearly approaches the heavenly state. It is the fulfilment of Jesus' prayer for Christian unity: a unity which exists and flourishes in the presence of the most extreme differences in even the most fundamental conceptions of religion. In a word, M. Sabatier places before us here only another picturesque plea for the extremest religious indifferentism. And therefore the rebuke which was administered to it by the late Professor Charles Bois⁵⁰ was fully deserved: -

"I avow myself," says M. Bois, "not to have thoroughly understood how M. Sabatier can go into ecstasies over the communion of  the souls which compose his assembly of superstitious devotees, deists, Hegelians, worshippers of the Unknowable - all repeating the 'I believe in God, the Father Almighty,' all prostrating themselves before Him, all united in a moral and religious communion which can be compared to the communion of the Father and the Son, and in which we can see realised Jesus' prayer, 'That they may be one as we are one.' What idea does M. Sabatier have of the union of the Father and the Son? What! they are one as the Father and Son are one - they are morally and religiously one, these men, one of whom believes in a God who concerns Himself about him, enters into the details of his life, knows his prayers and answers them; another of whom holds such belief to be superstitious, and believes only in a God who directs the universe by general laws promulgated once for all, without special care for individuals; a third of whom thinks he can affirm nothing of God without contradiction, unless we limit ourselves to calling Him the Unknowable; a fourth of whom, a pupil of Hegel, does not even believe that God knows Himself, and confesses only that He exists! All these worshippers are religiously one! But if they should discover to one another, I do not say the bottom of their thoughts, but the bottom of their hearts, they would perceive as great a contradiction between their sentiments as between their convictions. Their communion is only apparent - it is only in ritual, in formula. And this is just the least touching and the least admirable thing in the world." 

In fine, the goal to which M. Sabatier's theories have conducted him, is just the proper latitudinarianism of the day. The outcome of his theorising is only to supply a reasoned basis to the unreasoning indifferentism that vexes our time: and we may best look upon his work as an attempt to justify this indifferentism by placing beneath it a philosophical foundation, in a theory of religious knowledge and a theory of religious evolution. Its meaning to us will be, therefore, simply that if doctrinal indifferentism is to stand, this is the basis on which it must build itself; but, on the other hand; if, as we have seen, indifferentism cannot remain Christian except at the coat of admitting the claims of Christian doctrine and providing for the essential work of that doctrine in forming a distinctively Christian life, then, for the Christian man, this rational basis for indifferentism must fall with it. The arguments against M. Sabatier's theories, in other words, are the arguments against indifferentism in religion; these arguments, indeed, impinge more sharply against his theories than against unreasoned indifferentism, in so far as the points on which they especially impinge were latent in it and are the explicit postulates of his theories. 

Indifferentism, we will remember, does not precisely condemn Christian doctrine; it only neglects it. And, true to his indifferentist results, M. Sabatier does not deny the possibility or the right or even the necessity of Christian doctrines, or even of Christian dogmatics. He confesses that a living religion must needs express itself in appropriate religious thinking, and in those doctrines which embody this thinking. For him this. is only a special case under the general rule that faith without works is dead. No faith is a living faith which does not produce doctrine. It is not then exactly against the possibility or right of Christian doctrine that he protests: it is only its usefulness that he denies.⁵¹ He conceives it not as the former and director of faith, the occasion of, its rise and determiner of its form, but as the product of faith, and therefore as only the manifestation and index of the underlying life. Life does not, therefore, fluctuate, and the nature of faith change, according to doctrine; but doctrine fluctuates according to the life-movements of which it is only a reflection. And since life is movement, and vitality may be measured by richness of vital motion, it follows that changeableness in doctrine is not an evil, but a sign of abounding life. The more unstable a doctrine is, the more living it is: a really living Christianity, we are told; renders its doctrinal product peculiarly supple and malleable.⁵² In this, as it seems, we reach the very apotheosis of religious indifferentism. We are prepared in its light not only to look upon variations in doctrine with indifference; we shall anxiously seek for them as the mark of a deep and rich religious life. Periods of doctrinal unrest and uncertainty will become to us eras of faith, and periods of doctrinal stability - which we have hitherto called ages of faith - will seem to us to be times of deadness in religion. 

It is of the greatest importance for us, however, to observe that these results are not dependent on M. Sabatier's theory of evolution in religion. That theory serves only to introduce order into the variations of doctrine consequent on the multiform activities of religious life: to postulate for them a goal, and to lay down for them a course through history. The results in question are the direct outgrowth of the fundamental postulate of the whole school of thought of which M. Sabatier is so brilliant a representative, and must follow from its principle that life proceeds and determines doctrine, when proclaimed in the exclusive sense in which this school of thought proclaims it, independently of all further hypotheses which individuals may call in to complete their world-view. For if we are to define religion in this exclusive sense as a feeling, and to define Christianity as a religion in terms of the religious feeling alone, we have certainly identified Christianity with the religious sentiment, and have failed to institute any essential distinction between it and other religions, the products like it of the religious sentiment. The most that could be said on this ground, would be that in what we call Christianity the religious feeling first comes to its rights, and for the first time expresses itself fully and freely in accordance with its truth. But even so, Christianity is represented as essentially one with all other religions, differing from them only as the perfect differs from the imperfect. All religions at once take their places as relatively true: they stand no longer in opposition to Christianity, as the false to the true, but in a hierarchy of relatively partial or complete. And above all, we lack all ground from this standpoint for declaring that in Christianity the religious feeling has at length succeeded in producing her perfect work: it may be as yet her masterpiece; but what is to assure us that in the coming ages there may not spring out of her depths some consummate flower of religion as much surpassing Christianity as Christianity surpasses Fetishism? On this postulate, we cannot get beyond the judgment that Christianity is the purest and truest product of the religious feeling as yet known to us. Now, no one doubts, of course, that religion is, among other things, a feeling: nor need we doubt that the implications of this feeling if fully drawn out and stated would give us a theology, - and a theology, let us say it frankly at once, which would be true, and would enter into Christianity as the fundamental element of its doctrinal system. And no one doubts that Christianity, as a religion, is also, among other things, a feeling - a specific form which the religious feeling common to all men takes: or that, if the implication of this specific form of religious feeling which Christianity is were all brought out and stated, we should have a specifically Christian theology. But the very enunciation of these facts involves recognising that behind the specific form of religious feeling which Christianity is, there are implications which are not common to it and other forms of religious feeling, and which have determined the religious feeling into this specific form. It might be conceivable that these implications should come to our knowledge only subsequently to Christianity, and as a result of an analysis of the Christian phenomena; but in the order of thought and of nature they are in any case precedent to Christianity and the producing causes of the specific form which the religious feeling takes in it. 

Now, the pressing question is, What produces the specific form of the religious feeling which is distinctive of Christianity? Why is it that the Christian man feels, religiously speaking, specifically differently from the Buddhist, the Shamanist, the Fetish-worshipper? The old answer was that the difference in the form which the religious sentiment takes in the diverse religions arises from the difference in the religious conceptions characteristic of these religions; and we do not see that any better answer has been or can be offered. There is something that is common to all religions, and this common element arises from the action of the religious nature of man: it suffices to prompt to a religion, and it will secure that man, so long as he remains man, will remain a religious being, accessible to religious ideas and to religious training. What, however, is distinctive of the several religions arises from differences between them in religious conceptions, which mould and direct the action of the religions feeling into this channel or that, If this be so, a religion independent of conceptions, "dogmas," would be confined to a religion of nature, and could possess nothing. not common to all religions; and to proclaim Christianity independent of doctrine would be simply to cast off distinctive Christianity and revert to the fundamental natural religion. The only way in which Christianity is distinguished from other religions is through the different religious conceptions which animate it and which form for it a specific type of religious experience and religious life. But if this is so, then it is not: true that life precedes doctrine in the sense intended by this school of thought: doctrine precedes life, and is the cause of the specific form which the religious life takes in Christianity, that is, of distinctive Christianity itself. To be indifferent to this doctrine, as if it. were only an index of the life flowing on steadily beneath it and independently of it, is therefore to be indifferent to distinctive Christianity itself.⁵³

Of course, there is a sense less exclusive than that in which the school of thought at, present under discussion uses the phrase, in which it is true that life precedes doctrine. We not only have no desire to deny, we rather wish to proclaim, the great truth involved in the watchword of the greatest of the fathers⁵⁴ and schoolmen, Credo ut intelligam, and adopted by the Reformers in the maxim of Fides præcedit rationem, and before the Reformers or schoolmen or fathers, proclaimed by Paul in the immortal words that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually judged" (1 Cor. ii. 14). None but the Christian man can understand Christian truth; none but the Christian man is competent to state Christian doctrine. There is a low ground on which this obvious proposition may be defended, which even Aristotle was able to formulate: e[kastoj kri<nei kalw/j a[ gi,nwskei( kai. tou,twn evsti.n avgaqo.j krith,j \ kaqV e[kaston avra o` pepaideume,noj( avplw/j dVo, peri. pa/n pepaideume,noj. But Paul has taught the Christian a much higher doctrine. It is only through the guidance of the Holy Ghost, dwelling within us, that we can reach to the apprehension of the deep things of God. Were this all that were meant by the assertion that life must precede doctrine, we would give it our heartiest assent. And so far as this assertion may be thought to mean that doctrine alone cannot produce life, we would welcome it, as has already been said, with acclamations. There is no creative power in doctrines, however true; and they will pass over dead souls, leaving them as inert as they found them: it is the Creator Spiritus alone who is competent to quicken dead souls into life; and without Him there has never been, and never will be, one spark of life produced by all the doctrines in the world. But this is not what is intended by the watchword that life precedes doctrine. What is meant by it is that the Christian life blooms and flourishes wholly independently of Christian conceptions, and that it is indifferent to the Christian life whether these conceptions - however fundamental - are known or not. Against this we protest with all the energy possible, and pronounce its proclamation a blow at distinctive Christianity itself. We fully accord, therefore, with M. Bois' strong words:55 

    We conclude, then, that in religion the idea precedes life, knowledge precedes feeling (which does not at all prevent a certain knowledge following life). Even if we admit that it is feeling which constitutes the essence of religion - a feeling of dependence, of love or of fear - it is still necessary for the feeling, no matter what it is, to have an object, known and thought. We are not able to love or fear what we have no knowledge of. We are not able to love what we do not think worthy of love, nor to fear what we do not think an occasion of fear. We are not able to feel dependent on something of whose existence we are ignorant. If religion is a feeling, this feeling supposes a certain knowledge which explains and justifies it; it is illusory and is condemned as such by conscience and reason, which command us to repel it and to eliminate it, if it has no object or if its object is not known. To make religion a feeling without precedent knowledge is to make it an illusion or a disease: its history is no more than the history of an illusion or of a disease, and the science which can be made of it is only a section of mental pathology. 

    But this is not all. We refuse to make religion consist solely and essentially in a feeling. . . . Thought is not an epiphenomenon superadded to piety; it forms an integral part of it. Doctrines are not something external and posterior to religion: they are an essential element of it. . . . Intellect and will have part in religion as well as feeling⁵⁶ - all the human faculties concur in it. . . . Without conscious ideas there might be obscure feeling, blind passion, fatalism, magic, all you wish: there would not be either morality or religion. Should there be emotions and feelings without ideas, those feelings and emotions would be neither moral nor religious.

But in proportion as we allow that feeling without a known object is blind and meaningless to us - and would be suggestive of disease rather than of the divine - in that proportion we give a place to doctrine at the root of religion, and to Christian doctrine at the root of the Christian religion. As is the underlying conception, so, then, is the feeling: and it becomes of the first importance for the Christian man rightly to conceive these fundamental ideas which give form and direction to the life. The right conception of these ideas it is the task of Systematic Theology to investigate and secure: and thus the right and function of Systematic Theology is already vindicated. 

It will add greatly to the confidence with which we recognise this fundamental place of Christian truth with reference to Christian life, to remind ourselves that such was evidently the conception of the founders of the Christian religion concerning the relations of doctrine and life. This fact is written large over the Epistles of Paul, for example, by the very distribution he makes of his matter: it is ever first the doctrine and then the life with him. The transition at the opening of the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is a typical example of his practice in this regard. Eleven chapters of doctrinal exposition had preceded; five chapters of precepts are to succeed: and he passes from the one to the other with what has been called his "tremendous therefore": "I beseech you therefore, brethren" - "therefore," because all this is so. In these "tremendous therefores" is revealed Paul's conception of the relation between truth and life. The same conception, it need scarcely be said, was that of his Master before him. How much Jesus makes of the Father's Word which had been given to Him and which He had given to His followers, that they might know the truth and have eternal life, and that His joy might be fulfilled in them! His prayer for them was that they might be sanctified by the truth which God's Word was. There is, of course, clear recognition that faith rests upon a moral basis and is not to be compelled by the mere exhibition of truth. Gregory of Nazianzen did not go beyond the teaching of the founders of Christianity in his prescription how to become a theologian: "Keep the commandments; conduct is the ladder to theory - pra/xij evpi,basij qewri,aj." Our Lord Himself declared, "If any one willeth to do the will of Him that sent Me, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself," - that is, it is only in the good ground of a good heart that even the good seed of the gospel can produce fruit. But nowhere did He or any of His apostles ever teach that the good seed is unnecessary for the harvest - that the unsowed soil, however good, is competent of itself to produce the golden return. Knowledge of God's will with them was ever the condition of doing God's will, and lay at the root of all good conduct and true religion in the world. 

And from that day to this, this has been the fundamental conception of the Christian religion among its adherents. The meaning of this is delightfully set forth at the opening of that eloquent book, Dr. James Macgregor's The Apology of the Christian Religion. Other religions have sought to propagate themselves in various ways, but this is what is characteristic and peculiar to Christianity: it made its appeal from the first to men's reasons.⁵⁷

"No other religion," says Dr. Macgregor, "has ever seriously set itself . . . to reason the sinful world out of worldliness into godliness. The aspect of the new religion thus appearing towards the freedom of the human soul, in addressing itself to the reason in order to reach the man in his conscience and his heart, struck the intelligent heathens as a presumptive evidence of truth and divinity, since reason is 'the door' (John x. 1 sq.) - the lawful way - of seeking to win and to control the manhood. And that aspect was given to the religion from the beginning by the author of it." 

Christianity has thus from the beginning ever come to men as the rational religion, making its appeal primarily to the intellect. It has thus ever evinced itself not merely, as Dr. Macgregor puts it, preeminently as the apologetical religion, but also preeminently as the doctrinal religion. Above all other religions, it consists in doctrines; it has truth to offer to men's acceptance, and by their acceptance of this truth it seeks to rule their lives and save their souls.⁵⁸

How else, indeed, would it propagate itself in the world? We may speak of "spiritual contagion" and of the hidden work of the Spirit of God in the heart; and each phrase enshrines a precious fact without which Christianity could not live in the world. Christianity does propagate itself from soul to soul, as the prairie fire leaps from spear to spear of the tall grass: our Lord Himself tells us that the seed are the children of the kingdom. And all the religious life in the world is the creation of the Spirit of God: the kingdom of God is like leaven hidden in the meal, and works silently and unobservedly from within till the whole mass is leavened. But the commission that the Master has given us was not to depend on "spiritual contagion," but to sow the seed which is the Word of God: nor has He promised that the Spirit should work His wonders of grace apart from that Word. The commission is, Go, preach: and the promise is to him that heareth and obeyeth. Are we, after all, to suppose that this great duty laid on His followers is a mere "spiritual exercise" of no value beyond themselves - a kind of spiritual gymnastics for the manifestation and strengthening of their own faith? Is the foolishness of preaching after all a useless evil, inflicted on men? Was Paul mistaken when he declared that Christ had sent him forth above all, to preach the gospel? We may think as we will; but it is very evident that the founders of Christianity earnestly believed, not that the so-called Word of God is the product of faith and its only use is to witness to the faith that lies behind it and gives it birth, but that the veritable Word of God is the seed of faith, that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, or, in other words, that behind the Christian life stands the doctrine of Christ, intelligently believed. When, for example, the apostle asks the Galatians, "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" he intimates with entire distinctness that it is in connection with the truth of God offered to faith that the Holy Spirit is given; and therefore elsewhere, although the gospel is naught save as it is attended with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power - and Paul may plant and Apollos may water in vain if God do not Himself give the increase - yet this very gospel itself and its preaching is called the "power of God unto salvation" (Rom. i. 16; 1 Cor. i. 24). 

In insisting, therefore, on the primacy of Christian doctrine, and on the consequent right and duty to ascertain and accurately to state this doctrine - which is the task of Systematic Theology - we have the consciousness of being imitators of Paul even as he was of Christ. How much the apostle made, not merely of the value of doctrine as the condition of life, but of the importance of sound doctrine! His boast, we will remember, is that he is not of the many who corrupt the truth, but that he, at least, has preached the whole counsel of God. He is not content that Jesus Christ should be preached, but insists on a special doctrine of Christ - Jesus Christ and Him as crucified. He even pronounces those that preach any other gospel than that he preached accursed: and we should carefully note that this curse falls not on teachers of other religions, but on preachers of what we might speak of to-day as different forms of Christianity. In a word, in all his teaching and in all his practice alike, Paul impresses upon us the duty and the supreme importance of preserving that purity of doctrine which it is the aim of Systematic Theology in its investigation into Christian truth to secure. 

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD. Princeton, N.J.

Endnotes:

"So lately the greatest woman in the world, powerful in so many sons-in-law and children . . . not I am dragged away an exile, destitute."

Mr. Claude G. Montefiori, for example, tells us that modern "Judaism teaches that God looks to character and conduct, and to these only, in His capacity as Judge. The religious dogmas which a man happens to he taught and to believe are of no account or importance in this regard: the good life is all. 'The righteous of all nations shall have a share in the world to come;' that, according to the Jewish divine, is the doctrine of the Talmud and of modern Judaism" (The Jewish Quarterly Review, January 1898, p. 202; cf. pp. 210, 211).

The story referred to is that entitled "A Tragi-Comedy of Creeds," p. 176 sq. of the volume. It is only another form of the celebrated apologue of the "Three Rings" which Lessing made the core of his Nathan the Wise, concerning which it is worth while to consult Cairns' Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, Lecture v. ii. ad finem.

Let it not be thought that we do injustice to this delightful and profoundly religious writer. An editorial in The British Weekly for October 31, 1896, puts most strikingly just what we conceive the attitude of his stories towards Christianity to be: "A parallel of profound interest is to be found in the place assigned to religion by the older sentimentalists and the new. The position of Ian Maclaren and Mr. Barrie seems to us exactly to coincide with Rousseau's. Rousseau always professed to be religious. He thought there was a certain want of moral depth and grandeur wherever religion was left out, and he would probably have said that this was necessary, for without religion the loftiest reaches of conduct were a form of insanity. At the close of his life Rousseau rejoiced that he had remained faithful to the prejudices of his childhood, and that he had continued a Christian up to the point of membership in the Universal Church. The words in italics precisely describe the religion that is glorified in Ian Maclaren's books. He is not unjust to Evangelicalism, and one of his noblest characters is Burnbrae, a Free Church elder. But he lingers with most love and understanding on the Moderates--Drumsheugh, Dr. Davidson, Dr. Maclure, sud James Soutar. Maclure, who has the best means of knowing, declares that if there be a judgment, and books be opened, there will be one for Drumtochty, and the bravest page in it will be Drumsheugh's. There is very little sympathy here for modernity; the ministers who talk about two Isaiahs are laughed at. But there is just as little sympathy for extreme Evangelicalism. Plymouthism is treated as if it were hypocrisy of the grossest kind, and high Calvinism as almost too monstrous to be mentioned. The particular forms in which the religion of revivals expresses itself are described with evident dislike. All this is, of course, Ian Maclaren's limitation. We should not care to lend him our cherished volumes of the Earthen Vessel. Still the heart of things is here. ' Say the NAME,' that is enough - the name of Jesus, in which every knee shall bow. Beyond that nothing is needed to create the noblest character. Mr. Barrie does not glorify Moderatism, but, like Ian Maclaren, he declines a dogmatic religion, and is gently apologetic or humorous when speaking of what goes beyond the essence. Therein he differs from George Macdonald, whose books are full of theologoumena, and have suffered in consequence. But they side with Rousseau, who was wont to insist that the Christianity which appeals only to the moral conscience is alone comformable to the Spirit of Christ. Conduct, character - these were with him and are with them the great results and tests of true religion."

Jane Barlow's Maureen's Fairing, p. 148.

Le Dogma Grec (Paris, 1893), pp. 40-42. We shall have occasion during the course of this paper to draw very largely from two admirable books by Prof. Henri Boie - his Le Dogma Grec and his De la Connaisaance Religieuse. Let us express here our appreciation of the value of these works as well as our indebtedness to them.

The striking scene is described in Phases of Faith (London, 1870), p. 32. The reader of Mr. James Macdonald's Religion and Myth (London, 1893) will feel that Mr. Macdonald has gone through some such experience, in a less acute form, as Mr. Newman's. He, too, has discovered that even the lowest savages have a religious consciousness, and exercise religious faith and enjoy religious certitude, and is led by it to a theory of the origin of Christianity which amounts to pure naturalism. Cf. J. Macbride Sterrett's Reason and Authority in Religion for some good remarks on this point.

"In Mr. Froude's wine there were no dregs. To the last he had the same captivating power, despite his lamented and constitutional inaccuracy" (Andrew Lang, The Cosmopolitan (magazine), September 1895, p. 576). 

"The Fortnightly Review, about which you ask, is an advanced radical publication. Many good men write in it. But it is too doctrinaire for my taste. The formulas of advanced English politicians are as stiff and arrogant as the formulas of theology. Truth itself becomes distasteful to me when it comes in the shape of a proposition. Half the life is struck out of it in the process" (J. A. Froude, letter to Gen. Cluseret, in The Independent, August 8, 1895).

"La théologie doit peutêtre se borner à constater des faits" (Stapfer, Jésus de Nazareth et le développement de sa penaée sur luimême, p. 156; quoted by H. Bois, Le Dogme Grec, p. 225). 

"La Bible raconte simplement les faits, sans prétendre à la moindre ombre d'autorité" (Astié, in Évangile et Liberté, Dec. 26, 1890; quoted by H. Bois, De la Connaiasance Religieuse, p. 342).

Faith and Criticism. Essays by Congregationalists. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1893. V. The Atonement, pp. 188, 222, 237: "It is the object of the present essay to advocate this sobriety of assertion in dealing with the question of the atonement. It may be a duty on the one hand to maintain that the death of Christ is the means by which sin is pardoned and reconciliation between God and man effected; and yet, on the other, to own that no real explanation of it can be found." "The New Testament has no theory about the atonement . . . nor is the case fully stated when we deny that the New Testament contains a theory; there is a strong reason for suspecting that the several New Testament writers . . . differed," etc. 

Studies in Theology, p. 106: "In spite, too, of confident assertions to the contrary," he adds, "this distinction of fact and theory - this pleading for the fact as opposed to the theory - is very far from finding support in the New Testament. For my own part, I have no doubt the New Testament does contain a theory, or, as I should prefer to say, a doctrine of the atonement," etc. One may suspect that Dr. Denney had precisely Mr. Horton's essay in mind in penning this portion of his discussion; certainly he traverses with very great convincingness the contentions and illustrations alike put forward by Dr. Horton. The statement in the late Dr. Henry B. Smith's System of Christian Theology, p. 480, may well be compared. "When we say that the death of Christ was instead of our punishment, and that it made expiation for our sins, we are not stating theories but revealed facts. . . . We do not suppose that anything which can properly be called a theory is involved in any one of the points that we have presented in respect to the doctrine of sacrifices."

The Upper Room. London, 1895, p. 75. "A mystic," says Dr, Watson, admiringly (p. 60), "gathers truth as a plant absorbs the light, in silence and without effort." It is certainly easy enough to refuse to make the requisite effort to obtain the truth: and were it only indubitable that thus the truth would be absorbed, the pathway to knowledge would be royal indeed. It seems to be the characteristic of our modern mystics, however, to stop short of obtaining the truth and to proclaim it to be unnecessary, if indeed not positively undesirable.

Cf. Dr. James Orr's The Christian View of God and the World, p. 25.

Studies in Theology, p. 106. Cf. the remark of Coleridge, in Anima Poetae, p. 125: "'Facts-stubborn facts! None of your theory!' A most entertaining and instructive essay might be written on this text, and the sooner the better. Trace it from the most

Le témoignage du Christ et l'unité du monde Chrétien, pp. 293, 294; quoted by H. Bois, De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 343. "

Cf. M. Henri Bois, Le Dogme Grec, pp. 110-117: "Christianity is, therefore, without being this exclusively, a combination of facts and ideas. . . . The fact does not suffice. The fact by itself is nothing, serves no purpose. That it should avail anything, there is needed the interpretation of the fact, the idea. . . Who will tell us in what the true interpretation of the Christian fact consists? . . . Jesus Christ Himself and those whom He Himself chose, prepared and inspired to make Him known to the world. . . . The mission of the apostles was to recount and interpret the Christian facts to the world. . . . If God wrought certain definite acts for the whole of humanity together, it seems to us altogether natural that He should have given also, in a definite fashion, by His Son, Jesus Christ, Author of these acts, and by the apostles, witnesses of these acts, formed in the school of Christ and penetrated by His Spirit, an interpretation of these acts, valid for all humanity. God acted once for all, in a definite fashion: but the first essential sense of this act does not change, since the act itself, the past act, remains accomplished, immutable. There are therefore definitive ideas by the aide of definitive facts. . . . We affirm, therefore, that the writings of the witnesses of the Christian facts, their accounts and their interpretations, have authority." 

Prof. Henry Wace, in his Bampton Lectures on The Foundations of Faith (p. 121), neatly exhibits the nature of the frequent assertion that the Bible contains no "dogmas" in a characteristic incident or two. "It is the favourite contention of those who impugn the faith of the Church," he says, "that the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is purely moral and independent of theology. 'It is undeniable,' says the author of Supernatural Religion, with characteristic strength of assertion, 'that the earliest teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospel which can be regarded as in any degree historical is pure morality, almost, if not quite, free from theological dogmas. Morality was the essence of His system; theology was an afterthought.' Two pages later this writer states with perfect correctness, but with complete unconsciousness of inconsistency, that Christ's system 'confined itself to two fundamental principles, love to God and love to man.' But is there no theology involved in teaching love to God? No theology in the belief that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, and that in spite of all the difficulties, perplexities, and cruelties of the world, He is worthy of the whole love and trust of our hearts! Why, this is the very theological problem which has racked the heart and brain of man from the dawn of religious thought to the present moment. On these two commandments - to which, in the curious phrase just quoted, Christ's system is said to have 'confined itself,' as though they were slight or simple - on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. They are the germ from which has sprung the whole theological thought of the Christian Church, and to which it returns; and no theologian can wish to do more than to deepen his own apprehension of them and to strengthen their hold upon others. With similar inconsistency, M. Rénan declares that 'we should seek in vain for a theological proposition in the gospel,' and yet states elsewhere that 'a lofty notion of the Divinity was in some sort the germ of our Lord's whole being.' 'God,' he adds, 'is in Him; He feels Himself in communion with God; and He draws from His heart that which bespeaks of His Father.' These are strange inconsistencies. But there is nothing, perhaps, more fitted to warn a thoughtful mind, at the threshold of sceptical speculations, of their essential shallowness, than the manner in which the vastest conceptions and the profoundest problems are thus passed over, as it were, dryshod by such writers as have just been quoted." The fine passage on pp. 194-198 on the influence of doctrine on life should also be read.

Studies in Theology, pp. 119, 120. Cf. the wise remarks of Dr. Cairns, ápropos of Semler, in his Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, Lecture v. ii., near the beginning.

Étude sur la révélation chrétiene, p. 44; quoted in H. Bois' Le Dogme Grec, p. 114. 

Le Dogme Grec, p. 114 sq.

La Crise du protestantisme, in Évangile et Liberté, 27th May, 1892; quoted by Henri Bois, Le Dogme Grec, p. 72.

Interrogez ceux qui rejettent la métaphysique; vous reconnaîtrez bien vite qu'ils la rejettent an nom d'un systéme métaphysique, qui est naturellement le leur" (Alf. Fouillée, L'Avenir de la metaphysique fondée sur l'expérience, p. 275; quoted by H. Bois, Le Dogme Grec, p. 51, note).

Le Dogma Grec, pp. 51, 52.

Prof. Otto Ritschl thinks that his father's former employment of the term Hülfsvorstellung in this connection ought not to be remembered against him. But with the excision of the term we do not see that the conception has been changed. God still remains for Ritschl and Ritschlism a heuristic postulate. The case is the same, of course, with the Deity of Christ and its implications, as for example, His pre-existence, which Ritschl similarly spoke of as a Hülfslinie for the traditional conception, - comparing it thus with the imaginary lines assumed in geometrical reasonings, which have no reality, and are intended to have none. We note Prof. Otto Ritschl's welcome declaration that it might as well be asserted of his father that he denied the existence of God and taught atheism, as that he did not intend to teach the Deity of Christ as a reality; and we rejoice in this testimony to Ritschl's personal faith in two matters which do indeed stand for him in similar relations. We rejoice, too, in the concessions which Ritschlites have been led to make in the matter of the proper Deity of Christ (see them exhibited in Orr, as cited, p. 448 sq.). But we are not here concerned with Ritschl's personal convictions, nor with the indications in his followers of a not unnatural recoil from the full rigour of his teaching, but with the logical implications of that teaching itself. And there is after all a considerable difference between God as a working hypothesis and the avlhqino.j qeo,j of the New Testament. For one thing, those to whom God is a working hypothesis are apt to conceive of Him as their creature who cannot be permitted to wander from the place and function He was called into being to fill and serve. The extremity of this feeling was startlingly exhibited by Heine, who, when asked in his anguish whether he had hope of forgiveness, replied, "Oh, certainly: that is what God is for." The distance between this attitude and the Christian conception of God is measured by the contrast between looking upon God as existing for us and realising that we exist only for Him. 

Studies in Theology, p. 8; cf. Orr, Christian View, etc., p. 45.

See Orr, Christian View of God and the World, pp. 46 sq. 

Cf. Orr, as above, p. 29: "Under the plea of expelling metaphysics from theology, the tendency is at present to revive this distinction in a form which practically amounts to the resuscitation of the old doctrine of a 'double truth' - the one religious, the other philosophical; and it is not held necessary that even where the two overlap they should always be found in agreement." 

Studies in Theology, p. 12. 

Dogmengeschichte, Ed. 1, i 50, note 4; cf. E. T. i., p. 65, note 3, where, however, the concluding words are quite different: "This conclusion itself belongs to the province of religious faith: though there has seldom been a strong faith that would not have drawn it." The German of Ed. 1 (which alone is accessible to us as we write) runs: "Dieser Schluss gehört selbst dem Gebiet des religiösen Glaubens an. Es lässt sich aber ein starker religiöser Glaube an die Herrschaft und Zwecksetzung des Göttlichen und Guten in der Welt denken, welcher eines solchen Schlusses nicht bedarf."

Quoted by H. Bois, Le Dogme Grec, p. 54.

Le Dogme Grec, p. 54.

Le Dogme Grec, p. 107.

"I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him as crucified," said the apostle, defining a special doctrine of Jesus as the essence of Christianity. 

Dr. E. L. Hicks' suggestive paper on "St. Paul and Hellenism," which opens the fourth volume of the Oxford Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, will well repay consulting on this matter. "Greek thought," he says, "had provided for St. Paul a vocabulary, and a set of ideas as well as phrases, wherein to express his doctrine - a doctrine in nowise borrowed from Hellenic thought, but which could hardly be made intelligible to the minds of his time, or to our own minds to-day, unless Greek thought had prepared the human mind for such grand and far-reaching ideas: o` ga.r filo,sofoj sunoptko,j tij." "The influence of Hellenism began, in fact, with the first preaching of the gospel; and St. Paul is the foremost representative of the process. That influence was of course indirect and unconscious, and did not involve any deliberate adoption of Hellenic practices, but it had been a leaven working in the Church from the first."

Cf. Dr. Orr's discussion of this mode of statement in his Christian View, etc., pp. 18 sq.

Especially his La Vie Intime des Dogma et leur Puissance d'Évolution, and his Essai d'une Théorie Critique de la Connaissance Religieuse. 

Papers in the Chrétien Évangelique for 1891 and 1892. 

Especially in his Le Dogme Grec and his De la Connaissance Religieuse. In the latter work, pp. 5 sq., M. Bois gives an exact account of the primary literature in the controversy. An interesting narrative of the early stages of the controversy was given by the late Professor Gretillat in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review for July 1892 and July 1893.

"The tendency of physiological psychology is to make feeding the origin of intellect on the one hand, and of will on the other. . . Sensation is the feeling that points towards the intellect. Desire is the feeling that points towards the will." - W. T. Harris. 

H. Bois, De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 34. 

E. Gounelle, in the Montauban Revue de Théologie, May 1895, p. 299.

In Évangile et Liberté, Sept. 4, 1891; quoted by H. Bois in Le Dogme Grec, p. 28.

Citations in A. Bois' De la Connaissance Religieuse, pp. 204, 205. 

Chrétien Évangelique, April 20, 1891, pp. 148, 149; quoted by H. Bois, De la Connaissance Religieuse, pp. 348, 349.

Revue Chrétienne, April 1892, p. 262; quoted by H. Bois, De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 208, where the above clauses from M. Sabatier will be found also.

De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 203.

Quoted in M. Henri Bois' De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 35.

Definition et Rôle de Dogme in the Revue Théologique, 1890, p. 166, quoted by H. Bois, De la Con. Relig. p. 36.

It must be confessed that the writers of this school are not always entirely consistent with themselves on this point. When M. Sabatier (De la Vie Intime des Dogmes, pp. 25, 26) says: "In suppressing Christian dogma, we suppress Christianity; in casting off absolutely all religious doctrine, we kill religion itself. . . . A religious life: which does not express itself would not he aware of itself, would not communicate itself" - he is still speaking on the lines of his theory. But M. Aetié (La Fin desa Dogmes, in Revue de théologie et de philosophie, July 1891, pp. 372, 374) seems to pass beyond its bounds when he writes: "A development of dogma is indispensable, of the very first necessity. Practical piety by itself is insufficient . . . Christian feeling, which is, of course, the first factor, on pain of lapsing into fanaticism, into subjective fantasy, needs a Christian reason to give it tone, to lend it steadiness." Here is a use to which dogmas can be put. Cf. H. Bois, Le Dogme Grec, p. 34, and his criticism in De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 23 sq.: "M. Sabatier's affirmation comes to this obvious assertion: religion, if it is not known, will not be known: But of what advantage is it to this life itself to be known?" etc.

 Cf. above, p. 445, and cf. H. Boise, De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 215 and note.

Cf. Prof. Orr 's remarks on the relation of ideas to religion, Christian View, etc., pp. 18 sq.

Animus humanus, nisi per fidem donum spiritus hauserit, habebit quidem naturam Deum intelligendi sed lumen scientisæ non habebit" (Hilary of Poictiers. De Trinitate, ii. 34). "Sic accepite, sic credite, ut mereamini intelligere: fides enim debet præcedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei præmium " (Auguatine, Sermones de verb Dom.).

Henri Bois, De la Connaissance Religieuse, p. 31.

Cf. Dr. Ladd's definition of religion: "Religion, subjectively considered, may be defined as an attitude of mind - intellect, feeling, and will - towards Other Being, on which I recognise my dependence for my being and my well-being, and to which I feel myself somehow responsible in the way of control" (The New World, Sept. 1895, p. 415). So also Prof. Laidlaw (The Bible Doctrine of Man, ed. 2, p. 130): "It is evident, on a general review of the facts, that we cannot assign religion to any single faculty or power in man as its exclusive function. The intellect, the affections, and the will are seen to be all concerned in it." He refers to Alliott's Psychology and Theology, pp. 54-69, for good remarks on the subject.

Compare also Dr. James Orr's remarks, The Christian View, etc., p. 23: "If there is a religion in the world which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say it is the religion of Jesus Christ. It has been frequently remarked that in pagan religions the doctrinal element is at a minimum, the chief thing there is the performance of a ritual. But this is precisely where Christianity distinguishes itself from other religions - it does contain doctrine. It comes to men with definite, positive teaching; it claims to be the truth; it bases religion on knowledge, though a knowledge which is only attainable under moral conditions."

It is probably, then, not mere accident that in Rom. vii. 28 it is from the nou/j - the "mind" - that the conquest of Christianity over the life proceeds outwardly to the members. Christianity makes its appeal to the "mind" and secures the affection of the "inward man" first, and thence advances to victory over the "flesh" and "members." Accordingly it is by the "renewing of their mind (tou/ noo,j)" that sinners are to be so metamorphosed as to be no longer fashioned according to the world, but to prove the will of God (Rom. xii. 2). Compare the rich expressions of Eph. iv. 18-24. The noëtic root of salvation is continually insisted on in the Scriptures.

The Risen Jesus

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

A Sermon from

The Saviour of the World:
Sermons preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.
New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913.

2 Timothy ii. 8—Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.

The opening verses of the second chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy are in essence a comprehensive exhortation to faithfulness. The apostle Paul was lying imprisoned at Rome, with expectation of no other issue than death. The infant Church had fallen upon perilous times. False teachers were assailing the very essence of the Gospel. Defection had invaded the innermost circle of the apostle's companions. Treachery had attacked his own person. Over against all these dreadful manifestations of impending destruction, he strenuously exhorts his own son in faith, Timothy, to steadfast faithfulness. Faithfulness to himself, faithfulness to the cause he had at heart, faithfulness to the truth as he preached it, faithfulness to Jesus Christ, their common Redeemer and Lord.

The temptations to unfaithfulness by which Timothy was assailed were very numerous and very specious. Many good men had fallen and were falling victims to them. The perverted teachings of the errorists of the day were urged with a great show of learning and with eminent plausibility. And they were announced with a fine scorn which openly declared that only dull wits could rest in the crude ideas with which Paul had faced the world—and lost. The sword of persecution had been ruthlessly unsheathed, and sufferings and a cruel death watched in the way of those who would fain walk in the path Paul had broken out. It seemed as if the whole fabric which the apostle had built up at such cost of labour and pain was about to fall about his ears.

Paul does not for a moment, however, lose courage, either for himself, or for his faithful followers. But neither does he seek to involve Timothy unwittingly in the difficulties and dangers in which he found himself. He rather bids him first of all to count the whole cost. And then he points him to a source of strength which will supply all his needs. We called the passage an exhortation. We might better call it, more specifically, an encouragement. And the encouragement culminates in a very remarkable sentence. This sentence is pregnant enough to reveal at once the central thought of Paul's Gospel and the citadel of his own strength. Amid all the surrounding temptations, all the encompassing dangers, Paul bids Timothy to bear in mind, as the sufficing source of abounding strength, the great central doctrine,—or rather, let us say, the great central fact—of his preaching, of his faith, of his life. And he enunciates this great fact, in these words: Jesus Christ raised from the dead, of the seed of David.

It is, of course, to the glorified Jesus that Paul directs his own and Timothy's gaze. Or, to be more specific, it is to the regal lordship of the resurrected Jesus that he points as the Christian's strength and support. The language is compressed to the extremity of conciseness. It is difficult to convey its full force except in diluted paraphrase. Paul bids Timothy in the midst of all the besetting perplexities and dangers which encompassed him to strengthen his heart by bearing constantly in remembrance, not Jesus Christ simpliciter, but Jesus Christ conceived specifically as the Lord of the Universe, who has been dead, but now lives again and abides for ever in the power of an endless life; as the royal seed of David ascended in triumph to His eternal throne. It is not from the exaltation of Jesus alone, let us observe, that Paul draws and would have Timothy draw strength to endure in the crisis which had fallen upon their lives. It is to the contrast between the past humiliation and the present glory of the exalted Lord that he directs his eyes. He does not say simply, "Bear in mind that Jesus Christ sits on the throne of the universe and all things are under His feet," although, of course, it is the universal dominion of Jesus which gives its force to the exhortation. He says, "Bear in mind that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, of the seed of David—that it is He that died who, raised from the dead, sits as eternal king in the heavens." No doubt a part of the apostle's object in his allusion to the past humiliation of the exalted Lord is to constitute a connection between Jesus Christ and his faithful followers, that they may become imitators of Him. They, the viatores, may see in Him, the consummator one who like them had Himself been viator, and may be excited to follow after Him that they too may in due time become consummatores. But the nerve of the exhortation, obviously, does not lie in this, as the very language in which it is couched sufficiently avouches. How could Timothy imitate our Lord in being of the seed of David? How could he imitate Him by ascending the throne of the universe? Fundamentally the apostle is pointing to Christ not as our example, but as our almighty Saviour. He means to adduce the great things about Him. And the central one of the great things he adduces about Him is that He has been raised from the dead.

It is not to be overlooked, of course, that Paul adverts to the resurrection of Christ here with his mind absorbed not so much in the act of His rising as in its issues. "Bear in mind," he says, "Jesus Christ, as one who has been raised from the dead": that is to say, as one who could not be holden of the grave, but has burst the bonds of death, and lo! He lives for evermore. But neither can it be overlooked that it is specifically to the resurrection, which is an act, that he adverts; and that he adverts to it in such a manner as to make it manifest that the fact of the resurrection of Christ held a place in his Gospel which deserves to be called nothing less than central. The exalted Christ is conceived by him distinctly as the resurrected Jesus; and it is clear that, had there been no resurrection of Jesus, Paul would not have known how to point Timothy to the exalted Christ as the source of his strength to face with courage the hardships and defeats of life. From this great fact, he derives, therefore, the very phraseology with which he exhorts Timothy, with rich reference to all that is involved in Christ our Forerunner, to die with his Lord that he might also live with Him, to endure with Him that he might also reign with Him. To Paul, it is clear, the resurrection of Christ was the hinge on which turned all his hopes and all his confidence, in life and also in death.

Now, there is a sense in which it is of no special importance to lay stress on the place which the resurrection of Christ held in Paul's thought and preaching. In this sense, to wit: that nobody doubts that it was central to Paul's Gospel. It would seem impossible, in fact, to read the New Testament and miss observing that not only to Paul, but to the whole body of the founders of Christianity, the conviction of the reality of Christ's bodily resurrection entered into the very basis of their faith. The fact is broadly spread upon the surface of the New Testament record. Our Lord Himself deliberately staked His whole claim to the credit of men upon His resurrection. When asked for a sign He pointed to this sign as His single and sufficient credential. The earliest preachers of the Gospel conceived witnessing to the resurrection of their Master to be their primary function. The lively hope and steadfast faith which sprang up in them they ascribed to its power. Paul's whole gospel was the gospel of the Risen Saviour: to His call he ascribed his apostleship; and to His working, all the manifestation of the Christian faith and life.

There are in particular two passages in Paul's Epistles, which reveal, in an almost startling way, the supreme place which was ascribed to the resurrection of Christ by the first believers in the Gospel.

In a context of very special vigour he declares roundly that "if Christ hath not been raised" the apostolic preaching and the Christian faith are alike vanity, and those who have believed in Christ lie yet unrelieved of their sins. His meaning is that the resurrection of Christ occupied the centre of the Gospel which was preached alike by him and all the apostles, and which had been received by all Christians. If, then, this resurrection should prove to be not a real occurrence, the preachers of the Gospel are convicted of being false witnesses of God, the faith founded on their preaching is proved an empty thing, and the hopes conceived on its basis are rendered void. Here Paul implicates with him the whole Christian community, teachers and taught alike, as suspending the truth of Christianity on the reality of the resurrection of Christ. And so confident is he of universal agreement in the indispensableness of this fact to the integrity of the Christian message, that he uses it for his sole fulcrum for prying back the doctrine of the resurrection of believers into its proper place in the faith of his sceptical readers. "If dead men are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised," is his sole argument. And he plies this argument with the air of a man who knows full well that no one who calls himself a Christian will tolerate that conclusion. The fact that Christ has been raised lay firmly embedded in the depths of the Christian consciousness.

In some respects even more striking are the implications of such phraseology as meets us in another passage. Here the apostle is contrasting all the "gains" of the flesh with the one great "gain" of the spirit—Christ Jesus the Lord. As over against "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, his Lord," he declares that he esteems "all things" as but refuse,—the heap of leavings from the feast which is swept from the table for the dogs,—if only he may "gain Christ and be found in Him," if only, he repeats, he may "know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed into His death; if by any means he may attain to the resurrection from the dead." The structure of the sentence requires us to recognize the very essence of the saving efficacy of Christ as resident in "the power of His resurrection." It is through the power exerted by His resurrection that His saving work takes effect on men. That is to say, Paul discovers the centre of gravity of the Christian hope no less than of the Christian faith in the fact of the resurrection of Christ. And of the Christian life as well. From the great fact that Christ has risen from the dead, proceed all the influences by which Christians are made in life and attainments, here and hereafter, like Him.

In the face of such evidence, spread broadcast over the New Testament, no one has been able to question that the founders of Christianity entrenched themselves in the fact of Christ's resurrection as the central stronghold of their hope, faith, and proclamation. We do not need to lay stress, therefore, on this implication in such a passage as that before us, as if we were seeking proof for a doubtful or even for a doubted fact. The importance of our laying stress on its implication here and its open assertion throughout the New Testament, is that we may be able to estimate the real significance of a very wide-spread tendency which has arisen in our own time to question the importance of this event on which the founders of Christianity laid such great emphasis, and to which they attached such palmary consequence. If nobody doubts that the first preachers of the Gospel esteemed the resurrection of Christ the foundation-stone of their proclamation, the chief stay of their faith and hope alike, there are nevertheless many who do not hesitate to declare roundly that the first preachers of the Gospel were grossly deceived in so esteeming it. This is an inevitable sequence, indeed, of the chariness with respect to the supernatural which so strongly characterizes our modern world. The "unmiraculous Christianity" which has, in one or another of its modes of conception, grown so fashionable in our day, as it could scarcely allow that the most stupendous of all miracles really lay at the basis of Christianity in its historical origins, so cannot possibly allow that confidence in the reality of this stupendous miracle lies to-day at the foundation of the Christian's life and hope. To allow these things would be to confess that Christianity is through and through a supernatural religion—supernatural in its origin, supernatural in its sanctions, supernatural in its operations in the world. And then,—what would become of "unmiraculous Christianity"?

Accordingly, we have now for more than a whole generation, been told over and over again, and with ever-increasing stridency of voice, that it makes no manner of difference whether Jesus rose from the dead or not. The main fact, we are told, is not whether the body that was laid in the tomb was resuscitated. Of what religious value, we are asked, can that purely physical fact be to any man? The main fact is that Jesus—that Jesus who lived in the world a life of such transcendent attractiveness, going about doing good, and by His unshaken and unshakable faith in providence revealed to men the love of a Father-God,—this Jesus, though He underwent the inevitable experience of change which men call death, yet still lives. Lives!—lives in His Church; or at least lives in that heaven to which He pointed us as the home of our Father, and to which we may all follow Him from the evils of this life; or in any event lives in the influence which His beautiful and inspiring life still exerts upon His followers and through them in the world. This, this, we are told, is the fact of real religious value; the only fact upon which the religious emotions can take hold; by which the religious life can be quickened and through which we may be impelled to religious effort and strengthened in religious endurance.

The beauty of the language in which these assertions are clothed and the fervour of religious feeling with which it is suffused, must not be permitted to blind us to the real issue that is raised by them. This is not whether our faith is grounded in a mere resuscitation of a dead man two thousand years ago; or rather in a living Lord reigning in the heavens. It is not the peculiarity of this new view that it focuses men's eyes on the glorified Jesus and bids them look to Him for their inspiration and strength. That is what the apostles did, and what all, since the apostles, who have followed in their footsteps, have done. Paul did not say to Timothy merely, "Remember that Jesus Christ, when He died, rose again from the dead,"—although to have said that would have been to have said much. Directing Timothy's eyes to the glorified Jesus, reigning in power in the heavens, he said, "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David." It is not, then, the peculiarity of this new view that it has discovered the living and reigning Christ . The living and reigning Christ has always been the object of the adoring faith of Christians. It is its peculiarity that it neglects or denies the resurrected Christ.

It does not pretend that in neglecting or denying the resurrected Christ it does not break with the entirety of historical Christianity. It freely allows that the apostles firmly beheved in a resurrected Christ, and that, following the apostles. Christians up to to-day have firmly believed in a resurrected Christ. And it freely allows that this firm belief in a resurrected Christ has been the source of much of the enthusiasm of Christian faith and of the Christian propaganda through all the ages. But it hardily affirms that this emphasis on the resurrected Christ nevertheless involves a gross confusion—no less a confusion than that of the kernel with the husk. And it stoutly maintains that the time has come to shell off the husk and keep the kernel only. Religious belief, we are told, cannot possibly rest on or be inseparably connected with a mere occurrence in time and space. What others have seen in a different age from ours—what is that to us? That Jesus rose from the dead two thousand years ago and was seen of men—how can that concern us to-day? All that can possibly be of any significance to us is that He was "not swallowed up in death, but passed through suffering and death to glory, that is, to life, power, and honour." "Faith has nothing to do with the knowledge of the form in which Jesus lives, but only with the conviction that He is the living Lord."

Here now is a brand-new conception of the matter, standing in express contrast, and in expressly acknowledged contrast, with the conception of the founders, and hitherto of the whole body of the adherents, of Christianity. It is the outgrowth, as we have already hinted, of a distaste for the supernatural. To get rid of the supernatural in the origins of Christianity, its entire historical character is surrendered. The Christianity now to be proclaimed is to be confessedly a "new Christianity"—a different Christianity from any which has ever heretofore existed on the face of the earth. And its novelty consists in this, that it is to have no roots in historical occurrences of any kind whatsoever. Religious belief, we are told, must be independent of all mere facts.

We must not forget that the professed purpose of this new determination of the relation of Christianity to fact is to save Christianity. If Christianity is independent of all historical facts, why, it is clear that it cannot be assailed through the medium of historical criticism. Let criticism reconstruct the historical circumstances which have been connected with its origin as it may; it cannot touch this Christianity which stands out of relation with all historical occurrences whatever. Doubtless it would be a great relief to many minds to be emancipated from all fear of historical criticism. But it is certainly a great price we are asked to pay for this emancipation. The price indeed is no less an one than Christianity itself. For the obvious effect of the detachment of Christianity from all historical fact is to dismiss Christianity out of the realm of fact.

Christianity is a "historical religion," and a "Christianity" wholly unrelated to historical occurrences is just no Christianity at all. Religion,—yes, man may have religion without historical facts to build upon, for man is a religious animal and can no more escape from religion than he can escape from any other of his persistent instincts. He may still by the grace of God know something of God and the soul, moral responsibility and immortality. But do not even the heathen know the same? And what have we more than they? We may still call by the name of "Christianity" the tattered rags of natural religion which may be left us when we have cast away all the facts which constitute Christianity,—the age-long preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God; the Incarnation of the Son of God; His atoning death on the Cross; His rising again on the third day and His ascension to heaven; the descent of the Spirit on the Pentecostal birthday of the Church. But to do so is to outrage all the proprieties of honest nomenclature. For "Christianity" is not a mere synonym of "religion," but is a specific form of religion determined in its peculiarity by the great series of historical occurrences which constitute the redemptive work of God in this sinful world, among which occurrences the resurrection of Christ holds a substantial and in some respects the key position.

The impossibility of sustaining anything which can be called "Christianity" without embracing in it historical facts, may be illustrated by the difficulty in carrying out their programme which is experienced by men who talk of freeing Christianity from its dependence on facts. For do they not bid us to abstract our minds, indeed, from that imagined resuscitation that occurred in Palestine (if it occurred at all) two thousand years ago, but to focus them nevertheless on the living Jesus, who has survived death and still lives in heaven? Do they forget that when they say "Jesus" they already say "history"? Who is this "Jesus" who still lives in heaven, and the fact of whose still living in heaven, having passed through death, is to be our inspiration? Did He once live on earth? And, living on earth, did He not manifest that unwavering faith in providence which reveals the Father-God to us? Otherwise what is it to us that He "still" lives in heaven? To be free from the entanglements of history; to be immune from the assaults of historical criticism; it is not enough to cease to care for such facts as His resurrection: we must cease to care for the whole fact of Jesus. Jesus is a historical figure. What He was, no less than what He did, is a matter of historical testimony. When we turn our backs on historical facts as of no significance to our "Christianity," we must turn our backs as well on Jesus—any Jesus we choose to rescue for ourselves from the hands of historical criticism. He who would have a really "unhistorical Christianity" must know no Jesus whether on earth or in heaven. And surely a Christianity without Jesus is just no Christianity at all.

Christianity then stands or falls with the historical facts which, we do not say merely accompanied its advent into the world, but have given it its specific form as a religion. These historical facts constitute its substance, and to be indifferent to them is to be indifferent to the substance of Christianity. In these circumstances it is a dangerous proceeding to declare this or that one of them of no significance to the Christian religion. Especially is it a dangerous proceeding to single out for this declaration, one in which the founders of Christianity discovered so much significance as they discovered in the resurrection of Christ. When Paul says to us, not "Remember Jesus Christ enthroned in heaven," but "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David," we surely must pause before we allow ourselves to say, "It is of no importance whether He rose from the dead or not." And if we pause and think but a moment, we certainly shall not fail to set our seal to Paul's judgment of the significance of His rising from the dead to the Christian religion. For once let us cast our minds over the real place which the resurrection of Christ holds in the Christian system and we shall not easily escape the conviction that this fact is fundamental to its entire message.

Let us recall in rapid survey some of the various ways in which the resurrection of Jesus evinces itself as lying at the basis of all our hope and of all the hope of the world.

It is natural to think, first of all, of the place of this great fact in Christian apologetics. Opinions may conceivably differ whether it would have been possible to believe in Christianity as a supernaturally given religion if Christ had remained holden of the grave. But it is scarcely disputable that the fact that He did rise again, being once established, supplies an irrefragable demonstration of the supernatural origin of Christianity, of the validity of Christ's claim to be the Son of God, and of the trustworthiness of His teaching as a Messenger from God to man. In the light of this stupendous miracle, all hesitation with respect to the supernatural accompaniments of the life that preceded it, or of the succeeding establishment of the religion to which its seal had been set,—nay, of the whole preparation for the coming of the Messenger of God who was to live and die and rise again, and of the whole issue of His life and death and resurrection—becomes at once unreasonable and absurd. The religion of Christ is stamped at once from heaven as divine, and all marks of divinity in its preparation, accompaniments, and sequences become at once congruous and natural. From the empty grave of Jesus the enemies of the cross turn away in unconcealable dismay. Christ has risen from the dead! After two thousand years of the most determined assault upon the evidence which establishes it, that fact stands. And so long as it stands, Christianity too must stand as the one supernatural religion. The resurrection of Christ is the fundamental apologetical fact of Christianity.

But it holds no more fundamental place in Christian apologetics than in the revelation of life and immortality which Christianity brings to a dying world. By it the veil was lifted and men were permitted to see the reality of that other world to which we are all journeying. The whole relation they bore to life and death, and the life beyond death, was revolutionized to those who saw Him and companied with Him after He had risen from the dead. Death had no longer any terrors for them: they no longer needed to believe, they knew, that there was life on the other side of death, that the grave was but a sojourning place, and, though their earthly tentdwelling were dissolved, they had a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And we who have come later may see with their eyes and handle with their hands the Word of Life. We can no longer speak of a bourne from which no traveller e'er returns. The resurrection of Christ has broken the middle wall of partition down and only a veil now separates earth from heaven. That He who has died has been raised again and ever lives in the completeness of His humanity is the fundamental fact in the revelation of the Christian doctrine of immortality.

Equally fundamental is the place which Christ's resurrection occupies relatively to our confidence in His claims, His teachings, and His promises. The Lord of Life could not succumb to death. Had he not risen, could we have believed Him when He "made Himself equal with God"? By His resurrection He set a seal on all the instructions which He gave and on all the hopes which He awakened. Had the one sign which He chose failed, would not His declarations have all failed with it? Is it nothing to us that He who said, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest"; who has promised to be with those who trust Him "always even unto the end of the world ; who has announced to us the forgiveness of sins; has proved that He has power to lay down His life and to take it again? Whether is it easier to say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or "I will arise and walk"? That He could not be holden of death, but arose in the power of a deathless life, gives us to know that the Son of Man has power to forgive sins.

And there is a yet deeper truth: the resurrection of Christ is fundamental to the Christian's assurance that Christ's work is complete and His redemption is accomplished. It is not enough that we should be able to say, "He was delivered up for our trespasses." We must be able to add, "He was raised for our justification." Else what would enable us to say. He was able to pay the penalty He had undertaken? That He died manifests His love and His willingness to save. It is His rising again that manifests His power and His ability to save. We cannot be saved by a dead Christ, who undertook but could not perform, and who still lies under the Syrian sky, another martyr of impotent love. To save, He must pass not merely to but through death. If the penalty was fully paid, it cannot have broken Him, it must needs have been broken upon Him. The resurrection of Christ is thus the indispensable evidence of His completed work, of His accomplished redemption. It is only because He rose from the dead that we know that the ransom He offered was sufficient, the sacrifice was accepted, .and that we are His purchased possession. In one word, the resurrection of Christ is fundamental to the Christian hope and the Christian confidence.

It is fundamental, therefore, to our expectation of ourselves rising from the dead. Because Christ has risen, we no more judge that "if one died for all, then all died," "that the body of sin might be done away," than that having died with Him "we shall also hve with Him." His resurrection drags ours in its train. In His rising He conquered death and presented to God in His own person the first-fruits of the victory over the grave. In His rising we have the earnest and pledge of our rising: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will He bring with Him." Had Christ not risen could we nourish so great a hope? Could we believe that what is sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption; what is sown in dishonour shall be raised in glory; what is sown in weakness shall be raised in power; what is sown a body under the dominion of a sinful self shall be raised a body wholly determined by the spirit of God?

Last of all, to revert to the suggestion of the words of Paul with which we began, in the resurrection of Christ we have the assurance that He is the Lord of heaven and earth whose right it is to rule and in whose hands are gathered the reins of the universe. Without it we could believe in His love: He died for us. We could believe in His continued life beyond the tomb: who does not live after death? It might even be possible that we should believe in His victory over evil: for it might be conceived that one should be holy, and yet involved in the working of a universal law. But had he not risen, could we believe Him enthroned in heaven. Lord of all? Himself subject to death; Himself the helpless prisoner of the grave; does He differ in kind from that endless procession of the slaves of death journeying like Him through the world to the one inevitable end? If it is fundamental to Christianity that Jesus should be Lord of all; that God should have highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess Him Lord: then it is fundamental to Christianity that death too should be subject to Him and it should not be possible for Him to see corruption. This last enemy too He must needs, as Paul asserts, put under His feet; and it is because He has put this last enemy under His feet that we can say with such energy of conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,—not even death itself: and that nothing can harm us and nothing take away our peace.

O the comfort, O the joy, O the courage, that dwells in the great fact that Jesus is the Risen One, of the seed of David; that as the Risen One He has become Head over all things; and that He must reign until He shall have put all things under His feet. Our brother, who has like us been acquainted with death,—He it is who rules over the ages, the ages that are past, and the ages that are passing, and the ages that are yet to come. If our hearts should fail us as we stand over against the hosts of wickedness which surround us, let us encourage ourselves and one another with the great reminder: Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David!

Some Thoughts on Predestination

by Rev. B. B. WARFIELD

[This essay was originally published in The Christian Workers Magazine, Dec. 1916, pp. 265-267]

A great man of the last generation began the preface of a splendid little book he was writing on this subject, with the words: "Happy would it be for the church of Christ and for the world, if Christian ministers and Christian people could be content to be disciples-learners." He meant to intimate that if only we were all willing to sit simply at the feet of the inspired writers and take them at their word, we should have no difficulties with Predestination. The difficulties we feel with regard to Predestination are not derived from the Word. The Word is full of it, because it is full of God, and when we say God and mean God—God in all that God is—we have said Predestination.

Our difficulties with Predestination arise from a, no doubt not unnatural, unwillingness to acknowledge ourselves to be wholly at the disposal of another. We wish to be at our own disposal. We wish "to belong to ourselves," and we resent belonging, especially belonging absolutely, to anybody else, even if that anybody else be God. We are in the mood of the singer of the hymn beginning, "I was a wandering sheep," when he declares of himself, "I would not be controlled." We will not be controlled. Or, rather, to speak more accurately, we will not admit that we are controlled.

I say that it is more accurate to say that we will not admit that we are controlled. For we are controlled, whether we admit it or not. To imagine that we are not controlled is to imagine that there is no God. For when we say God, we say control. If a single creature which God has made has escaped beyond his control, at the moment that he has done so he has abolished God. A God who could or would make a creature whom he could not or would not control, is no God. The moment he should make such a creature he would, of course, abdicate his throne. The universe he had created would have ceased to be his universe; or rather it would cease to exist-for the universe is held together only by the control of God.

Even worse would have happened, indeed, than the destruction of the universe. God would have ceased to be God in a deeper sense than that he would have ceased to be the Lord and Ruler of the world. He would have ceased to be a moral being. It is an immoral act to make a thing that we cannot or will not control. The only justification for making anything is that we both can and will control it. If a man should manufacture a quantity of an unstable high-explosive in the corridors of an orphan asylum, and when the stuff went off should seek to excuse himself by saying that he could not control it, no one would count his excuse valid. What right had he to manufacture it, we should say, unless he could control it? He relieves himself of none of the responsibility for the havoc wrought, by pleading inability to control his creation.

To suppose that God has made a universe-or even a single being-the control of which he renounces, is to accuse him of similar immorality. What right has he to make it, if he cannot or will not control it? It is not a moral act to perpetrate chaos. We have not only dethroned God; we have demoralized him.

Of course, there is no one that thinks at all who will imagine such a vanity. We take refuge in a vague antinomy. We fancy that God controls the universe just enough to control it, and that he does not control it just enough not to control it. Of course God controls the universe, we perhaps say-in the large; but of course he does not control everything in the universe-in particular.

Probably nobody deceives himself with such palpable paltering in a double sense. If this is God's universe, if he made it and made it for himself, he is responsible for everything that takes place in it. He must be supposed to have made it just as he wished it to be-or are we to say that he could not make the universe he wished to make, and had to put up with the best he could do?

And he must be supposed to have made it precisely as he wished it to be, not only statically but dynamically considered, that is, in all its potentialities and in all its developments down to the end. That is to say, he must be supposed to have made it precisely to suit himself, as extended not only in space but in time. If anything occurs in it as projected through time—just as truly as if anything is found in it as extended in space—which is not just as he intended it to be-why, then we must admit that he could not make such a universe as he would like to have, and had to put up with the best he could get. And, then, he is not God. A being who cannot make a universe to his own liking is not God. A being who can agree to make a universe which is not to his liking, most certainly is not God.

But though such a being obviously is not God, he does not escape responsibility for the universe which he actually makes -whether as extended in space or in time-and that in all its particulars. The moment this godling (not now God) consented to put up with the actual universe-whether as extended in space or as projected through time, including all its particulars without exception-because it was the best he could get, it became his universe. He adopted it as his own, and made it his own even in those particulars which in themselves he would have liked to have otherwise. These particulars, as well as all the rest, which in themselves please him better, have been determined on by him as not only allowable, but as actually to exist in the universe which, by his act, is actually realized.

That is to say they are predestinated by him, and because predestinated by him actually appear in the universe that is made. We have got rid of God, indeed; but we have not got rid of the Predestination, to get rid of which we have been willing to degrade our God into a godling.

We have passed insensibly from the idea of control to the idea of Predestination. That is because there is no real difference between the two ideas at bottom. If God controls anything at all, of course he has intended to control it before he controls it. Exactly the control which he exerts, of course he has intended to exert all long.

No one can imagine so inadvertent a God, that he always acts "on the spur of the moment," so to speak, with no manner of intention determining his action. Providence and Predestination are ideas which run into one another. Providence is but Predestination in its execution; Predestination is but Providence in its intention. When we say the one, we say the other, and the common idea which gives its content to both is control.

It is purely this idea of control which people object to when they say they object to Predestination; not the idea of previousness, but purely the idea of control. They would object just as much if the control was supposed to be exercised without any previous intention at all.

They ought to object much more. For a control exercised without intention would be a blind control. It would have no end in view to justify it; it would have no meaning; it would be sheerly irrational, immoral, maddening. That is what we call Fate. Say intention, however, and we say person; and when we say person we say purpose. A meaning is now given to the control that is exercised; an end is held before it.

And if the person who exercises the control be an intelligent being, the end will be a wise end; if he be a moral being it will be a good end; if he be infinitely wise and holy, just and good, it will be an infinitely wise and holy, just and good end, and it will be wrought out by means as wise and holy, just and good as itself.

To say Predestination is to say all this. It is to introduce order into the universe. It is to assign an end and a worthy end to it. It enables us to speak of a far off divine event to which the whole creation is moving. It enables us to see that whatever occurs, great or small, has a place to fill in this universal teleology; and thus has significance given it, and a juustification supplied to it. To say Predestination is thus not only to say God; it is also to say Theodicy.

No matter what we may say of Predestination in moments of puzzlement, as we stand in face of the problems of life—the problem of the petty, the problem of suffering, the problem of sin—it is safe to say that at the bottom of our minds we all believe in it. We cannot help believing in it—if we believe in God; and that, in its utmost extension, as applying to everything about us which comes to pass.

Take any occurrence that happens, great or small-the fall of an empire or the fall of a sparrow, which our Lord himself tells us never once happens "without our Father." It surely cannot be imagined that God is ignorant of its happening-nay, even if it be so small a thing as the fall of a pin.

God assuredly is aware of everything that happens in his universe. There are no dark corners in it into which his all-seeing eye cannot pierce; there is nothing that occurs in it which is hidden from his universal glance. But certainly neither can it be imagined that anything which occurs in his universe takes him by surprise. Assuredly God has been expecting it to happen, and in happening it has merely justified his anticipations.

Nor yet can he be imagined to be indifferent to its happening, as if, though he sees it coming, he does not care whether it happens or not. That is not the kind of God our God is; he is a God who infinitely cares, cares even about the smallest things. Did not our Savior speak of the sparrows and the very hairs of our heads to teach us this?

Well, then, can it be imagined that, though infinitely caring, God stands impotently over against the happenings in his universe, and cannot prevent them? Is he to be supposed to be watching from all eternity things which he does not wish to happen, coming, coming, ever coming, until at last they come-and he is unable to stop them?

Why, if he could not prevent their happening any other way he need not have made the universe; or he might have made it differently. There was nothing to require him to make this universe-or any universe at all-except his own good pleasure; and there is nothing to compel him to allow anything which he does not wish to happen, to occur in the universe which he has made for his own good pleasure.

Clearly things cannot occur in God's universe, the occurrence of which is displeasing to him. He does not stand helplessly by, while they occur against his wish. Whatever occurs has been foreseen by him from all eternity, and it succeeds in occurring only because its occurrence meets his wish.

It may not be apparent to us what wish of his it meets, what place it fills in the general scheme of things to which it is his pleasure to give actuality, what its function is in his all-inclusive plan. But we know that it could not occur unless it had such a function to perform, such a place to fill, a part to play in God's comprehensive plan.

And knowing that, we are satisfied.. Unless, indeed, we cannot trust God with his own plan, and feel that we must insist that he submit it to us, down to the last detail, and obtain our approval of it, before he executes it.

Least of all will the religious man doubt the universal Predestination of God. Why, what makes him a religious man is, among other things, that he sees God in everything.

A glass window stands before us. We raise our eyes and see the glass; we note its quality, and observe its defects; we speculate on its composition. Or we look straight through it on the great prospect of land and sea and sky beyond. So there are two ways of looking at the world. We may see the world and absorb ourselves in the wonders of nature. That is the scientific way. Or we may look right through the world and see God behind it. That is the religious way.

The scientific way of looking at the world is not wrong any more than the glass-manufacturer's way of looking at the window. This way of looking at things has its very important uses. Nevertheless the window was placed there not to be looked at but to be looked through; and the world has failed of its purpose unless it too is looked through and the eye rests not on it but on its God. Yes, its God; for it is of the essence of the religious view of things that God is seen in all that is and in all that occurs. The universe is his, and in all its movements speaks of him, because it does only his will.

If you would understand the religious man's conception of the relation of God to his world, observe him on his knees. For prayer is the purest expression of religion and in prayer we see religion come to its rights.

Did ever a man pray thus: "O God, Thou knowest that I can do as I choose and Thou canst not prevent me, Thou knowest that my fellowmen are, like me, beyond Thy control, Thou knowest that nature itself goes its own way and Thou canst but stand helplessly by and watch whither it tends"?

No, the attitude of the-soul in prayer is that of entire dependence for itself, and of complete confidence in God's all-embracing government. We ask him graciously to regulate our own spirit, to control the acts of our fellowmen, and to direct the course of the whole world in accordance with his holy and beneficent will. And we do right. Only, we should see to it that we preserve this conception of God in his relation to his world, when we rise from our knees; and make it the operative force of our whole life.

I know, it is true, an eminent theologian who will shake his head at this. God cannot control the acts of free agents, he says, and it is folly to ask him to do so. If we go gunning with an unskillful friend, he may awkwardly shoot us; and it is useless to ask God to protect us; he simply cannot do it. If we are at work at a dangerous machine by the side of a careless companion, he may destroy us at any moment, and it is useless to ask God to avert the mishap; God cannot do it.

If this were so, we certainly would be in a parlous case. Or rather the world would long ago have broken down into chaos.

Every religious man knows full well that it is not so. Every religious man knows that God can and will and does control everything that he has made in all their actions, and that therefore-despite all adverse appearances-it is all well with the world.

All well with the world, which is moving steadily forward in its established orbit; and all well with us who put our trust in God. For has he not himself told us that all things-all things, mind you-are working together for good to those that love him? And how, pray, could that be, except that they all do his bidding in all their actions?

The Spirit of God in the Old Testament¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The doctrine of the Spirit of God is an exclusively Biblical doctrine. Rückert tells us that the idea connoted by the term is entirely foreign to Hellenism, and first came into the world through Christianity.² And Kleinert, in quoting this remark, adds that what is peculiarly anti-heathenish in the conception is already present in the Old Testament.³ It would seem, then, that what is most fundamental in the Biblical doctrine of the Spirit of God is common to both Testaments.

The name meets us in the very opening verses of the Old Testament, and it appears there as unannounced and unexplained as in the opening verses of the New Testament. It is plain that it was no more a novelty in the mouth of the author of Genesis than in the mouth of the author of Matthew. But though it is common to both Testaments, it is not equally common in all parts of the Bible. It does not occur as frequently in the Old Testament as in the New. It is found as often in the Epistles of Paul as in the whole Old Testament. It is not as pervasive in the Old Testament as in the New. It fails in no New Testament book, except the three brief personal letters Philemon and II and III John. On the other hand, in only some half of the thirty-nine Old Testament books is it clearly mentioned,⁴ while in as many as sixteen all definite allusion to it seems to be lacking.⁵ The principle which governs the use or disuse of it does not lie on the surface. Sometimes it may, perhaps, be partly due to the nature of the subject treated. But if mention of the Spirit of God fails in Leviticus, it is made in Numbers; if it fails in Joshua and Ruth, it is made in Judges and Samuel; if it fails in Ezra, it is made in Nehemiah; if it fails in Jeremiah, it is made in Isaiah and Ezekiel; if it fails in seven or eight of the minor prophets, it is made in the remaining four or five. Whether it occurs in an Old Testament book seems to depend on a number of circumstances which have little or no bearing on the history of the doctrine. We need only note that the name "Spirit of God" meets us at the very opening of revelation, and it, or its equivalents, accompanies us sporadically throughout the volume. The Pentateuch and historical books provide us with the outline of the doctrine; its richest depositories among the prophets are Isaiah and Ezekiel, from each of which alone probably the whole doctrine could be derived.⁶

In passing from the Old Testament to the New, the reader is conscious of no violent discontinuity in the conception of the Spirit which he finds in the two volumes. He may note the increased frequency with which the name appears on the printed page. But he would note this much the same in passing from the earlier to the later chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. He may note an increased definiteness and fulness in the conception itself. But something similar to this he would note in passing from the Pentateuch to Isaiah, or from Matthew to John or Paul. The late Professor Smeaton may have overstated the matter in his interesting Cunningham Lectures on "The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit." "We find," he says, "that the doctrine of the Spirit taught by the Baptist, by Christ and by the Apostles, was in every respect the same as that with which the Old Testament church was familiar. We nowhere find that their Jewish hearers on any occasion took exception to it. The teaching of our Lord and His Apostles never called forth a question or an opposition from any quarter - a plain proof that on this question nothing was taught by them which came into collision with the sentiments and opinions which up to that time had been accepted, and still continued to be current among the Jews." Some such change in the conception of God doubtless needs to be recognized as that which Dr. Denney describes in the following words: "The Apostles were all Jews, - men, as it has been said, with monotheism as a passion in their blood.⁷ They did not cease to be monotheists when they became preachers of Christ, but they instinctively conceived God in a way in which the old revelation had not taught them to conceive him. . . . Distinctions were recognized in what had once been the bare simplicity of the Divine nature. The distinction of Father and Son was the most obvious, and it was enriched, on the basis of Christ's own teaching, and of the actual experience of the Church, by the further distinction of the Holy Spirit."8 But if there be any fundamental difference between the Old and the New Testament conceptions of the Spirit of God, it escapes us in our ordinary reading of the Bible, and we naturally and without conscious straining read our New Testament conceptions into the Old Testament passages.

We are, indeed, bidden to do this by the New Testament itself. The New Testament writers identify their "Holy Spirit" with the "Spirit of God" of the older books. All that is attributed to the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, is attributed by them to their personal Holy Ghost. It was their own Holy Ghost who was Israel's guide and director and whom Israel rejected when they resisted the leading of God (Acts vii. 51). It was in Him that Christ (doubtless in the person of Noah) preached to the antediluvians (I Pet. iii. 18). It was He who was the author of faith of old as well as now (II Cor. iv. 13). It was He who gave Israel its ritual service (Heb. ix. 8). It was He who spoke in and through David and Isaiah and all the prophets (Matt. xxii. 43, Mark xii. 36, Acts i. 16, xxviii. 25, Heb. iii. 7, x. 15). If Zechariah (vii. 12) or Nehemiah (ix. 20) tells us that Jehovah of Hosts sent His word by His Spirit by the hands of the prophets, Peter tells us that these men from God were moved by the Holy Ghost to speak these words (II Pet. i. 21), and even that it was specifically the Spirit of Christ that was in the prophets (I Pet. i. 11). We are assured that it was in Jesus upon whom the Holy Ghost had visibly descended, that Isaiah's predictions were fulfilled that Jehovah would put His Spirit upon his righteous servant (Isa. xlii. 1) and that (Isa. lxi. 1) the Spirit of the Lord Jehovah should be upon Him (Matt. xii. 18, Luke iv. 18, 19). And Peter bids us look upon the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as the accomplished promise of Joel that God would pour out His Spirit upon all flesh (Joel ii. 27, 28, Acts ii. 16).⁹ There can be no doubt that the New Testament writers identify the Holy Ghost of the New Testament with the Spirit of God of the Old.

This fact, of course, abundantly justifies the instinctive Christian identification. We are sure, with the surety of a divine revelation, that the Spirit of God of the Old Testament is the personal Holy Spirit of the New. But this assurance does not forestall the inquiry whether this personal Spirit was so fully revealed in the Old Testament that those who were dependent on that revelation alone, without the inspired commentary of the New, were able to know Him as He is known to us who enjoy the fuller light. The principle of the progressive delivery of doctrine in the age-long process of God's self-revelation, is not only a reasonable one in itself and one which is justified by the results of investigation, but it is one which is assumed in the Scriptures themselves as God's method of revealing Himself, and which received the practical endorsement of our Saviour in His manner of communicating His saving truth to men. The question is still an open one, therefore, how much of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as it lies in its completeness in the pages of the New Testament had already been made the property of the men of the old dispensation; in other words, what the Old Testament doctrine of the Spirit of God is. We may not find this inconsistent with the fuller New Testament teaching, but we may find it fall short of the whole truth revealed in the latter days in God's Son.

The deep unity between the New and Old Testament conceptions lies, in one broad circumstance, so upon the surface of the two Testaments that our attention is attracted to it at the outset of any investigation of the material. In both Testaments the Spirit of God appears distinctly as the executive of the Godhead. If in the New Testament God works all that He does by the Spirit, so in the Old Testament the Spirit is the name of God working. The Spirit of God is in the Old Testament the executive name of God - "the divine principle of activity everywhere at work in the world."10 In this common conception lies doubtless the primary reason why we pass from one Testament to the other without sense of discontinuity in the doctrine of the Spirit. The further extent in which this unity may be traced will depend on the nature of the activities which are ascribed to the Spirit in both Testaments.

The Old Testament does not give us, of course, an exhaustive record of all God's activities. It is primarily an account of God's redemptive work prior to the coming of the Messiah - of the progress, in a word, so far, of the new creation of grace built upon the ruins of the first creation, a short account of which is prefixed as background and basis. In the nature of the case, we learn from the Old Testament of those activities of God only which naturally emerge in these accounts; and accordingly the doctrine of the Spirit of God as the divine principle of activity, as taught in the Old Testament, is necessarily confined to the course of divine activities in the first and the initial stages of the second creation. In other words, it is subsumable under the two broad captions of God in the world, and God in His people. It is from this that the circumstance arises which has been frequently noted, that, after the entrance of sin into the world, the work of the Spirit of God on men's spirits is always set forth in the Old Testament in the interests and in the spirit of the kingdom of God.¹¹ The Old Testament is concerned after the sin of man only with the recovery of man; it traces the preparatory stages of the kingdom of God, as God laid its foundations in a chosen nation in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. The segregation of Israel and the establishment of the theocracy thus mark the first steps in the new creation; and following this course of divine working, the doctrine of the Spirit in the new creation as taught in the Old Testament naturally concerns especially the activities of God in the establishment and development of the theocracy and in the preparation of a people to enjoy its blessings. In other words, it falls under the two captions of His national, or rather churchly, and of His individual work. Thus the Old Testament teaching concerning the Spirit, brings before us three spheres of His activity, which will correspond broadly to the conceptions of God in the world, God in the theocracy, and God in the soul.

Broadly speaking, these three spheres of the Spirit's activity appear successively in the pages of the Old Testament. In these pages the Spirit of God is introduced to us primarily in His cosmical, next in His theocratic, and lastly in His individual relations.¹² This is, of course, due chiefly to the natural correspondence of the aspects of His activity which are presented with the course of history, and is not to be taken so strictly as to imply that the revelations relative to each sphere of His working occur exclusively in a single portion of the Old Testament. It supplies us, however, not only with the broad outlines of the historical development of the doctrine of the Spirit in the Old Testament, but also with a logical order of presentation for the material. Perhaps we may also say, in passing, that it suggests a course of development of the doctrine of the Spirit which is at once most natural and, indeed, rationally inevitable, and, as Dr. Dale points out,¹³ closely correspondent with what have come to be spoken of as the "traditional" dates attributed to the books of the Old Testament. These books, standing as they stand in this dating, are in the most natural order for the development of this doctrine.

THE COSMICAL SPIRIT

I. The Spirit of God is first brought before us in the Old Testament, then, in His relations to the first creation, or in what may be called his cosmical relations. In this connection He is represented as the source of all order, life and light in the universe. He is the divine principle of all movement, of all life and of all thought in the world. The basis of this conception is already firmly laid in the first passage in which the Spirit of God is mentioned (Gen. i. 2). In the beginning, we are told, God created the heavens and the earth. And then the process is detailed by which the created earth, at first waste and void, with darkness resting upon the face of the deep, was transformed by successive fiats into the ordered and populous world in which we live. As the ground of the whole process, we are informed that "the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters," as much as to say that the obedience, and the precedent power of obedience, of the waste of waters to the successive creative words - as God said, Let there be light; Let there be a firmament; Let the waters be gathered together; Let the waters and the earth bring forth - depended upon the fact that the Spirit of God was already brooding upon the formless void. To the voice of God in heaven saying, Let there be light! the energy of the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters responded, and lo! there was light. Over against the transcendent God, above creation, there seems to be postulated here God brooding upon creation, and the suggestion seems to be that it is only by virtue of God brooding upon creation that the created thing moves and acts and works out the will of God. The Spirit of God, in a word, appears at the very opening of the Bible as God immanent; and, as such, is set over against God transcendent. And it is certainly very instructive to observe that God is conceived as immanent already in what may be called the formless world-stuff which by His immanence in it alone it constituted a stuff from which on the divine command an ordered world may emerge.¹⁴ The Spirit of God thus appears from the outset of the Old Testament as the principle of the very existence and persistence of all things, and as the source and originating cause of all movement and order and life. God's thought and will and word take effect in the world, because God is not only over the world, thinking and willing and commanding, but also in the world, as the principle of all activity, executing: this seems the thought of the author of the Biblical cosmogony.¹⁵

A series of Old Testament passages range themselves under this conception and carry it forward. It is by the Spirit of God, says Job, that the heavens are garnished (xxvi. 13). Isaiah compares the coming of the God of vengeance, repaying fury to His adversaries and recompense to His enemies, to the bursting forth "of a pent-in stream which the Spirit of Jehovah driveth" (lix. 19) ; and represents the perishing of flesh as like the withering of the grass and the fading of the flower when "the Spirit of Jehovah bloweth upon it" (xl. 7). In such passages the Spirit appears as the principle of cosmical processes. He is also the source of all life, and, as such, the executor of Him with whom, as the Psalmist says, is the fountain of life (Ps. xxxvi. 10 [9]). The Psalmist accordingly ascribes the being of all creatures to Him: "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created" (Ps. civ. 30). "The Spirit of God hath made me," declares Job, "and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life" (xxxiii. 4). Accordingly he represents life to be due to the persistence of the Spirit of God in his nostrils (xxvii. 3), and therefore its continuance to be dependent upon the continuance of the Spirit with man: "If He set His heart upon man, if He gather unto Himself His Spirit and His breath all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust" (xxxiv. 14, 15, cf. xii. 10). He is also the source of all intellectual life. Elihu tells us that it is not greatness, nor years, but the Spirit of God that gives understanding: "There is a Spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding" (Job xxxii. 8) - a thought which is probably only expressed in another way in Prov. xx. 27, which declares that the spirit of man is "the lamp of the Lord, searching all the innermost parts of the belly." That the Spirit is the source also of all ethical life seems to follow from the obscure passage, Genesis vi. 3: "And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh." Apparently there is here either a direct threat from Jehovah to withdraw that Spirit by virtue of which alone morality could exist in the world, or else a threat that He will, on account of their sin, withdraw the Spirit whose presence gives life so that men may no longer be upheld in their wicked existence, but may sink back into nothingness. In either case ethical considerations come forward prominently, - the occasion of the destruction of mankind is an ethical one, and the gift of life appears as for ethical ends. This, however, is an element in the conception of the Spirit's work which comes to clear enunciation only in another connection.

It would not be easy to overestimate the importance of the early emergence of this doctrine of the immanent Spirit of God, side by side with the high doctrine of the transcendence of God which pervades the Old Testament. Whatever tendency the emphasis on the transcendence of God might engender towards Deistic conceptions would be corrected at once by such teaching as to the immanent Spirit; while in turn any tendencies to Pantheistic or Cosmotheistic conceptions which it might itself arouse would be corrected not only by the prevailing stress upon the divine transcendence, but also by the manner in which the immanence of God is itself presented. For we cannot sufficiently admire the perfection with which, in delivering the doctrine of the immanent Spirit, all possibility is excluded of conceiving of God as entangled in creation - as if the Spirit of God were merely the physical world-spirit, the proper ground rather than effecting cause of cosmical activities. In the very phraseology of Genesis i. 2, for example, the moving Spirit is kept separate from the matter to which He gives movement; He broods over rather than is merged in the waste of waters; He acts upon them and cannot be confounded with them as but another name for their own blind surging. So in the 104th Psalm (verses 29, 30) the creative Spirit is sent forth by God, and is not merely an alternative name for the unconscious life-ground of nature. It is a thing which is given by God and so produces life (Isa. xlii. 5). Though penetrating all things (Ps. cxxxix. 7) and the immanent source of all life-activities (Ps. civ. 30), it is nevertheless always the personal cause of physical, psychical and ethical activities. It exercises choice. It is not merely the general ground of all such activities; it is the determiner as well of all the differences that exist among men. So, for example, Elihu appeals to the Spirit of understanding that is in him (Job xxxii. 8). It is not merely the ground of the presence of these powers; it is also to it that their withdrawal is to be ascribed (Isa. xl. 7, Gen. vi. 3). Nor are its manifestations confined altogether to what may be called natural modes of action; room is left among them for what we may call truly supernatural activity (I Kgs. xviii. 12, II Kgs. ii. 16, cf. II Kgs. xix. 7, Isa. xxxvii. 7). All nature worship is further excluded by the clearness of the identification of the Spirit of God with the God over all. Thus the unity of God was not only preserved but emphasized, and men were taught to look upon the emergence of divine powers and effects in nature as the work of His hands. "Whither shall I go," asks the Psalmist, "from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence" (Ps. cxxxix. 7)? Here the spiritual presence of God is obviously the presence of the God over all in His Spirit. "Who hath . . . meted out heaven with a span? . . . Who hath meted out the Spirit of Jehovah, or being his counsellor hath taught him?" asks Isaiah (xl. 12, 13) in the same spirit. Obviously the Spirit of God was not conceived as the impersonal ground of life and understanding, but as the personal source of all that was of being, life and light in the world, not as apart from but as one with the great God Almighty in the heavens. And yet, as immanent in the world, He is set over against God transcendent in a manner which prepares the way for His hypostatizing and so for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

It requires little consideration to realize how greatly the Old Testament conception of God is enriched by this teaching. In particular, it behooves us to note how, side by side with the emphasis that is laid upon God as the maker of all things, this doctrine lays an equal emphasis on God as the upholder and governor of all things. Side by side with the emphasis which is laid on the unapproachable majesty of God as the transcendent Person, it lays an equal emphasis on God as the immanent agent in all world changes and all world movements. It thus lays firmly the foundation of the Christian doctrine of Providence - God in the world and in history, leading all things to their destined goal. If without God there was not anything made that has been made, so without God's Spirit there has not anything occurred that has occurred.

THE THEOCRATIC SPIRIT

II. All this is still further emphasized in the second and predominant aspect in which the Spirit of God is brought before us in the Old Testament, viz., in His relations to the second creation.

1. Here, primarily, He is presented as the source of all the supernatural powers and activities which are directed to the foundation and preservation and development of the kingdom of God in the midst of the wicked world. He is thus represented as the theocratic Spirit as pointedly as He is represented as the world-spirit. We are moving here in a distinctly supernatural atmosphere and the activities which come under review belong to an entirely supernatural order. There are a great variety of these activities, but they have this in common: they are all endowments of the theocratic organs with the gifts requisite for the fulfilment of their functions.¹⁶

There are, for example, the supernatural gifts of strength, resolution, energy, courage in battle which were awakened in chosen leaders for the service of God's people. Thus we are told that the Spirit of Jehovah came upon Othniel to fit him for his work as judge of Israel (Judg. iii. 10), and clothed itself with Gideon (vi. 34), and came upon Jephthah (xi. 29), and, most remarkably of all, came mightily upon and moved Samson, endowing him with superhuman strength (xiii. 25, xiv. 6, 19, xv. 14). Similarly the Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul (I Sam. xi. 6) and upon David (I Sam. xvi. 13), and clothed Amasai (I Chron. xii. 18). Then, there are the supernatural gifts of skill by which artificers were fitted to serve the kingdom of God in preparing a worthy sanctuary for the worship of the King. There were, for instance, those whom Jehovah had filled with the spirit of wisdom and who were, therefore, wise-hearted to make Aaron's sacred garments (Ex. xxviii. 3). And especially we are told that Jehovah had filled Bezalel "with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship" (Ex. xxxi. 3 f. cf. xxxv. 31): - and that he should therefore preside over the work of the wise-hearted, in whom the Lord had put wisdom, for the making of the tabernacle and its furniture. Similarly when the temple came to be built, the pattern of it, we are told, was given of Jehovah "by his Spirit" to David (I Chron. xxviii. 12). Quite near to these gifts, but on a higher plane, lies the supernatural gift of wisdom for the administration of judgment and government. Moses was so endowed. And, therefore, the seventy elders were also endowed with it, to fit them to share his cares: "And I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee," said Jehovah, "and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee" (Num. xi. 17, 25).¹⁷ It is in this sense also, doubtless, that Joshua is said to have been full of the Spirit of wisdom (Num. xxvii. 18, Deut. xxxiv. 9).¹⁸ In these aspects, the gift of the Spirit, appearing as it does as an endowment for office, is sometimes sacramentally connected with symbols of conference: in the case of Joshua with the laying on of hands (Deut. xxxiv. 9), in the cases of Saul and David with anointing (I Sam. x. 1, xvi. 13). Possibly its symbolical connection in Samson's case with Nazaritic length of hair may be classed in the same general category.

Prominent above all other theocratic gifts of the Spirit, however, are the gifts of supernatural knowledge and insight, culminating in the great gift of Prophecy. This greatest of gifts in the service of the Kingdom of God is sometimes very closely connected with the other gifts which have been mentioned. Thus the presence of the Spirit in the seventy elders in the wilderness, endowing them to share the burden of judgment with Moses, was manifested by prophetic utterance (Num. xi. 25). The descent of the Spirit upon Saul was likewise manifested by his prophesying (I Sam. x. 6, 10). Sometimes the Spirit's presence in the prophet even manifests itself in the production in others of what may be called sympathetic prophecy accompanied with ecstasy. Instances occur in the cases of the messengers sent by Saul and of Saul himself, when they went to apprehend David (I Sam. xix. 20, 23); and in these cases the phenomenon served the ulterior purpose of a protection for the prophets.¹⁹ In the visions of Ezekiel the presence of the inspiring Spirit is manifested in physical as well as in mental effects (Ezek. iii. 12, 14, 24, viii. 3, xi. 1, 5, 24, xxxvii. 1). Thus clear it is that all these work one and the same Spirit.

In all cases, however, Prophecy is the free gift of the Spirit of God to special organs chosen for the purpose of the revelation of His will. It is so represented in the cases of Balaam (Num. xxiv. 2), of Saul (I Sam. x. 6), of David (I Sam. xvi. 13), of Azariah the son of Oded (II Chron. xv. 1), of Jahaziel the son of Zechariah (II Chron. xx. 14), of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada (II Chron. xxiv. 20). To Hosea, "the man that hath the Spirit" was a synonym for "prophet" (ix. 7). Isaiah (xlviii. 16) in a somewhat puzzling sentence declares, "The Lord God hath sent me and His Spirit," which seems to conjoin the Spirit either with Jehovah as the source of the mission, or else with the prophet as the bearer of the message; and, in either case, refers the prophetic inspiration to the Spirit. A very full insight into the nature of the Spirit's work in prophetic inspiration is provided by the details which Ezekiel gives of the Spirit's mode of dealing with him in communicating his visions. While the richness of the prophetic endowment is indicated to us by Micah (iii. 8): "But I truly am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin." There are, however, two passages that speak quite generally of the whole body of prophets as Spirit-led men, which, in their brief explicitness, deserve to be called the classical passages as to prophetic inspiration. In one of these, - the great psalm-prayer of the Levites recorded in the ninth chapter of Nehemiah, - God is first lauded for "giving His good Spirit to instruct" His people, by the mouth of Moses; and then further praised for enduring this people through so many years and "testifying against them by His Spirit through His prophets" (Neh. ix. 20, 30). Here the prophets are conceived as a body of official messengers, through whom the Spirit of God made known His will to His people through all the ages. In exactly similar wise, Zechariah testifies that the Lord of Hosts had sent His words "by His Spirit by the hand of the former prophets" (Zech. vii. 12). These are quite comprehensive statements. They include the whole series of the prophets, and they represent them as the official mouthpieces of the Spirit of God, serving the people of God as His organs.²⁰

It is sufficiently clear that an official character attaches to all the manifestations of what we have called the theocratic Spirit. The theocratic Spirit appears to be represented as the executive of the Godhead within the sacred nation, the divine power working in the nation for the protection, governing, instruction and leading of the people to its destined goal. The Levitic prayer in the ninth chapter of Nehemiah traces the history of God's people with great fulness; and all through this history represents God as not only looking down from heaven upon His people, leading them, but, as it were, working within them, inspiring organs for their government and instruction. - "clothing Himself with these" organs as the media of His working, as the expressive Hebrew sometimes suggests (Judges vi. 34, I Chron. xii. 18, II Chron. xxiv. 20). The aspect in which the theocratic Spirit seems to be conceived is as God in His people, manifesting Himself through inspired instruments in supernatural leading and teaching. Very illuminating as to the mode of His working are the instructions given to Zerubbabel through the prophets Zechariah and Haggai. He - and, with him, all the people of the land - is counseled to be strong and of good courage, "for I am with you, saith the Lord of Hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, and my Spirit abideth among you: fear ye not" (Hag. ii. 5). "This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Zech. iv. 6). The mountains of opposition are to be reduced to a plain; but not by armed force. The symbol of the source of strength is the seven lamps burning brightly by virtue of perennial supplies from the living olives growing by their side; thus, by a hidden, divine supply of deathless life, the Church of God lives and prospers in the world. Not indeed as if God so inhabited Israel, that all that the house of Israel does is of the Lord. "Shall it be said, O house of Israel, Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? - are these his doings? Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?" (Micah ii. 7). The gift of the Spirit is only for good. But there is very clearly brought before us here the fact and the mode of God's official inspiration. The theocratic Spirit represents, in a word, the presence of God with His people. And in the Old Testament teaching concerning it, is firmly laid the foundation of the Christian doctrine of God in the Church, leading and guiding it, and supplying it with all needed instruction, powers and graces for its preservation in the world.

We must not omit to observe that in this higher sphere of the theocratic Spirit, the freedom and, so to speak, detachment of the informing Spirit is even more thoroughly guarded than in the case of His cosmical relations. If in the lower sphere the Spirit hovered over rather than was submerged in matter, so here He acts upon His chosen organs in the same sense from without, so that it is impossible to confound His official gifts with their native powers, however exalted. The Spirit here, too, is given by God (Num. xi. 29, Isa. xlii. 1). God puts it on men or fills men with it (Num. xi. 25, Ex. xxviii. 3, xxxi. 3); or the Spirit comes (Jud. iii. 10, xi. 29), comes mightily (xiv. 6, 19, etc., I Sam. xi. 6) upon men, falls on them (Ezek. xi. 5), breaks in upon them, seizes them violently, as it were, and puts them on as a garment (Judg. vi. 34). And this is no less true of the prophets than of the other organs of the Spirit's theocratic work: they are all the instruments of a mighty power, which, though in one sense it is conceived as the endowment of the theocratic people, in another sense is conceived as seizing upon its organs from without and above. And "because it is thus fundamentally a power seizing man powerfully, often violently," it is often replaced by the locution, "the hand of Jehovah,"21 which is, in this usage, the equivalent of the Spirit of Jehovah (II Kgs. iii. 15, Ezek. i. 3, iii. 14, 22, xxxiii. 22, xxxvii. 1, xl. 1). The intermittent character of the theocratic gifts still further emphasized their gift by a personal Spirit working purposively. They were not permanent possessions of the theocratic organs, to be used according to their own will, but came and went according to the divine gift.²² The theocratic gifts of the Spirit are, in a word, everywhere emphatically gifts from God as well as of God; and every tendency to conceive of them as formally the result of a general inspiration of the nation instead of a special inspiration of the chosen organs is rebuked by every allusion to them. God working in and through man, by whatever variety of inspiration, works divinely and from above. He is no more merged in His church than in the creation, but is, in all His operations alike, the free, transcendent Spirit, dividing to each man severally as He will.

The representations concerning the official theocratic Spirit culminate in Isaiah's prophetic descriptions of the Spirit-endowed Messiah:

"And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit: and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins" (Isa. xi. 1 sq.).

"Behold my servant whom I uphold; my chosen in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. . . . He shall bring forth judgment in truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law. Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he that spread abroad the earth and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it and Spirit to them that walk therein; I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images" (Isa. xlii. 1 sq.).

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me" - this is the response of the Messiah to such gracious promises - "because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good-tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil of gladness for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified" (Isa. lxi. 1 sq.).

No one will fail to observe in these beautiful descriptions of the endowments of the Messiah, how all the theocratic endowments which had been given separately to others unite upon Him; so that all previous organs of the Spirit appear but as partial types of Him to whom as we are told in the New Testament, God "giveth not the Spirit by measure" (John iii. 34). Here we perceive the difference between the Messiah and other recipients of the Spirit. To them the Spirit had been "meted out" (Isa. xl. 13), according to their place and function in the development of the kingdom of God; upon Him it was poured out without measure. By Him, accordingly, the kingdom of God is consummated. The descriptions of the spiritual endowments of the Messiah are descriptions also, as will no doubt have been noted, of the consummated kingdom of God. His endowment also was not for himself but for the kingdom; it, too, was official. Nevertheless, it was the source in Him of all personal graces also, the opulence and perfection of which are fully described. And thus He becomes the type not only of the theocratic work of the Spirit, but also of His work upon the individual soul, perfecting it after the image of God.

THE INDIVIDUAL SPIRIT

2. And this brings us naturally to the second aspect in which the Spirit is presented to us in relation to the new creation - His relation to the individual soul, working inwardly in the spirits of men, fitting the children of God for the kingdom of God, even as, working in the nation as such, He, as theocratic Spirit, was preparing God's kingdom for His people. In this aspect He appears specifically as the Spirit of grace. As He is the source of all cosmical life, and of all theocratic life, so is He also the source of all spiritual life. He upholds the soul in being and governs it as part of the great world He has created; He makes it sharer in the theocratic blessings which He brings to His people; but He deals with it, too, within, conforming it to its ideal. In a word, the Spirit of God, in the Old Testament, is not merely the immanent Spirit, the source of all the world's life and all the world's movement; and not merely the inspiring Spirit, the source of His church's strength and safety and of its development in accordance with its special mission; He is as well the indwelling Spirit of holiness in the hearts of God's children. As Hermann Schultz puts it: "The mysterious impulses which enable a man to lead a life well-pleasing to God, are not regarded as a development of human environment, but are nothing else than 'the Spirit of God.' which is also called as being the Spirit peculiarly God's - His Holy Spirit."23

We have already had occasion to note that these personal effects of the Spirit's work are sometimes very closely connected with others of His operations. Already as the immanent Spirit of life, indeed, as we saw, there did not lack a connection of His activity with ethical considerations (Gen. vi. 3). We will remember, too, that Nehemiah recalls the goodness - i.e., possibly the graciousness - of the Spirit, when He came to instruct Israel in the person of Moses in the wilderness: "Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them" (Neh. ix. 20).²⁴ When the Spirit came upon Saul, endowing him for his theocratic work, it is represented as having also a very far-reaching personal effect upon him. "The Spirit of the Lord will come mightly upon thee," says Samuel, "and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man" (I Sam. x. 6). "And it was so" adds the narrative, "that when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him a new heart," or, as the Hebrew has it, "turned him a new heart." Possibly such revolutionary ethical consequences ordinarily attended the official gift of the Spirit, so that the gloss may be a true one which makes II Peter i. 21 declare that they were "holy men of God" who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.²⁵

At all events this conception of a thorough ethical change characterises the Old Testament idea of the inner work of the Spirit of Holiness, as He first comes to be called in the Psalms and Isaiah (Ps. li. 11; Isa. lxiii. 10, 11 only).²⁶ The classical passage in this connection is the Fifty-first Psalm - David's cry of penitence and prayer for mercy after Nathan's probing of his sin with Bathsheba. He prays for the creation within him of a new heart and the renewal of a right spirit within him; and he represents that all his hopes of continued power of new life rest on the continuance of God's holy Spirit, or of the Spirit of God's holiness, with him. Possibly the Spirit is here called holy, primarily, because He is one who cannot dwell in a wicked heart; but it seems also to be implicated that David looks upon Him as the author within him of that holiness without which he cannot hope to see the Lord. A like conception meets us in another Psalm ascribed to David, the One Hundred and Forty-third "Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy Spirit is good; lead me in the land of uprightness." The two conceptions of the divine grace and holiness are also combined by Isaiah in an account of how Israel had been, since the days of Moses, dealing ungratefully with God, and, by their rebellion, grieving "the Holy Spirit whom He had graciously put in the midst of them" (Isa. ixiii. 10, 11).²⁷ The conception may primarily be that the Spirit given to guide Israel was a Spirit of holiness in the sense that He could not brook sin in those with whom He dealt, but the conception that He would guide them in ways of holiness underlies that.

This aspect of the work of the Spirit of God is most richly developed, however, in prophecies of the future. In the Messianic times, Isaiah tells us, the Spirit shall be poured out from on high with the effect that judgment shall dwell in the wilderness and righteousness shall abide in the peaceful field (Isa. xxxii. 15). It is in such descriptions of the Messianic era as a time of the reign of the Spirit in the hearts of the people, that the opulence of His saving influences is developed. It is He who shall gather the children of God into the kingdom, so that no one shall be missing (Isa. xxxiv. 16). It is He who, as the source of all blessings, shall be poured out on the seed with the result that it shall spring up in the luxuriant growth and bear such rich fruitage that one shall cry 'I am the Lord's,' and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall write on his hand, 'Unto the Lord,' and shall surname himself by the name of Israel (Isa. xliv. 3 sq.). It is His abiding presence which constitutes the preeminent blessing of the new covenant which Jehovah makes with His people in the day of redemption: "And as for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord: my Spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever" (Isa. lix. 21). The gift of the Spirit as an abiding presence in the heart of the individual is the crowning Messianic blessing. To precisely the same effect is the teaching of Ezekiel. The new heart and new spirit is one of the burdens of his message (xi. 19, xviii. 31, xxxvi. 26) : and these are the Messianic gifts of God to His people through the Spirit. God's people are dead; but He will open their graves and cause them to come up out of their graves: "And I will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live" (xxxvii. 14). They are in captivity; he will bring them out of captivity: "Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God" (xxxix. 29). Like promises appear in Zechariah: "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and supplication; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced" (xii. 10). It is the converting Spirit of God that is spoken of. One thing only is left to complete the picture, - the clear declaration that, in these coming days of blessing, the Spirit hitherto given only to Israel shall be poured out upon the whole world. This Joel gives us in that wonderful passage which is applied by Peter to the out-pouring begun at Pentecost: "And it shall come to pass afterward," says the Lord God through His prophet, "that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; . . . and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit. . . . And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered" (ii. 28-32).

In this series of passages, the indwelling Spirit of the New Testament is obviously brought before us - the indwelling God, author of all holiness and of all salvation. Thus there are firmly laid by them the foundations of the Christian doctrine of Regeneration and Sanctification, - of God in the soul quickening its powers of spiritual life and developing it in holiness. Nor can it be a ground of wonder that this aspect of His work is less frequently dwelt upon than His theocratic activities; nor that it is chiefly in prophecies of the future that the richer references to it occur.²⁸ This was the time of theocratic development; the old dispensation was a time of preparation for the fulness of spiritual graces. It is rather a ground of wonder that even in few and scattered hints and in prophecies of the times of the Spirit yet to come, such a deep and thorough grasp upon His individual work should be exhibited.

By its presentation of this work of the Spirit in the heart, the Old Testament completes its conception of the Spirit of God - the great conception of the immanent, inspiring, indwelling God. In it the three great ideas are thrown prominently forward, of God in the world, God in the Church, God in the soul: the God of Providence, the immanent source of all that comes to pass, the director and governor of the world of matter and spirit alike; the God of the Church, the inspiring source of all Church life and of all Church gifts, through which the Church is instructed, governed, preserved and extended; and the God of grace, the indwelling source of all holiness and of all religious aspirations, emotions and activities. Attention has already been called to the great enrichment which was brought to the general conception of God by this doctrine of the Spirit of God in its first aspect. The additional aspects in which He is presented in the pages of the Old Testament of course still further enrich and elevate the conception. By throwing a still stronger emphasis on the personality of the Spirit they made even wider the great gulf that already yawned between all Pantheising notions and the Biblical doctrine of the Personal God, the immanent source of all that comes to pass. And they bring out with great force and clearness the conceptions of grace and holiness as inherent in the idea of God working, and thus operate to deepen the ethical conception of the Divine Being. It is only as a personal, choosing, gracious and holy God, who bears His people on His heart for good, and who seeks to conform them in life and character to His own holiness - that we can conceive the God of the Old Testament, if we will attend to its doctrine of the Spirit. Thus the fundamental unity of the conception with that of the Holy Ghost of the New Testament grows ever more obvious, the more attentively it is considered. The Spirit of God of the Old Testament performs all the functions which are ascribed to the Holy Ghost of the New Testament, and bears all the same characteristics. They are conceived alike both in their nature and in their operations. We cannot help identifying them.

Such an identification need not involve, however, the assertion that the Spirit of God was conceived in the Old Testament as the Holy Ghost is in the New, as a distinct hypostasis in the divine nature. Whether this be so, or, if so in some measure, how far it may be true, is a matter for separate investigation. The Spirit of God certainly acts as a person and is presented to us as a person, throughout the Old Testament. In no passage is He conceived otherwise than personally - as a free, willing, intelligent being. This is, however, in itself only the pervasive testimony of the Scriptures to the personality of God. For it is equally true that the Spirit of God is everywhere in the Old Testament identified with God. This is only its pervasive testimony to the divine unity. The question for examination is, how far the one personal God was conceived of as embracing in His unity hypostatical distinctions. This question is a very complicated one and needs very delicate treatment. There are, indeed, three questions included in the general one, which for the sake of clearness we ought to keep apart. We may ask, May the Christian properly see in the Spirit of God of the Old Testament the personal Holy Spirit of the New? This we may answer at once in the affirmative. We may ask again, Are there any hints in the Old Testament anticipating and adumbrating the revelation of the hypostatic Spirit of the New? This also, it seems, we ought to answer in the affirmative. We may ask again, Are these hints of such clearness as actually to reveal this doctrine, apart from the revelation of the New Testament? This should be doubtless answered in the negative. There are hints, and they serve for points of attachment for the fuller New Testament teaching. But they are only hints, and, apart from the New Testament teaching, would be readily explained as personifications or ideal objectivations of the power of God. Undoubtedly, side by side with the stress put upon the unity of God and the identity of the Spirit with the God who gives it, there is a distinction recognized between God and His Spirit - in the sense at least of a discrimination hetween God over all and God in all, between the Giver and the Given, between the Source and the Executor of the moral law. This distinction already emerges in Genesis i. 2; and it (does not grow less observable as we advance through the Old Testament. It is prominent in the standing phrases by which, on the one hand, God is spoken of as sending, putting, placing, pouring, emptying His Spirit upon man, and on the other the Spirit is spoken of as coming, resting, falling, springing upon man. There is a sort of objectifying of the Spirit over against God in both cases; in the former case, by sending Him from Himself God, as it were, separates Him from Himself; in the latter, He appears almost as a distinct person, acting sua sponte. Schultz does not hesitate to speak of the Spirit even in Genesis i. 2 as appearing "as very independent, just like a hypostasis or person."29 Kleinert finds in this passage at least a tendency towards hypostatizing - though he thinks this tendency was not subsequently worked out.³⁰ Perhaps we are warranted in saying as much as this - that there is observable in the Old Testament, not, indeed, an hypostatizing of the Spirit of God, but a tendency towards it - that, in Hofmann's cautious language, the Spirit appears in the Old Testament " as somewhat distinct from the 'I' of God which God makes the principle of life in the world."31 A preparation, at least, for the full revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament is observable;³² points of connection with it are discoverable; and so Christians are able to read the Old Testament without offence, and to find without confusion their own Holy Spirit in its Spirit of God.³³

More than this could scarcely be looked for. The elements in the doctrine of God which above all others needed emphasis in Old Testament times were naturally His unity and His personality. The great thing to be taught the ancient people of God was that the God of all the earth is one person. Over against the varying idolatries about them, this was the truth of truths for which Israel was primarily to stand; and not until this great truth was ineffaceably stamped upon their souls could the personal distinctions in the Triune-God be safely made known to them. A premature revelation of the Spirit as a distinct hypostasis could have wrought nothing but harm to the people of God. We shall all no doubt agree with Kleinert³⁴ that it is pragmatic in Isidore of Pelusium to say that Moses knew the doctrine of the Trinity well enough, but concealed it, through fear that Polytheism would profit by it. But we may safely affirm this of God the Revealer, in the gradual delivery of the truth concerning Himself to men. He reveals the whole truth, but in divers portions and in divers manners: and it was incident to the progressive delivery of doctrine that the unity of the Godhead should first be made the firm possession of men, and the Trinity in that unity should be unveiled to them only afterwards, when the times were ripe for it. What we need wonder over is not that the hypostatical distinctness of the Spirit is not more clearly revealed in the Old Testament but that the approaches to it are laid so skillfully that the doctrine of the hypostatical Holy Spirit of the New Testament finds so many and such striking points of attachment in the Old Testament, and yet no Israelite had ever been disturbed in repeating with hearty faith his great Sch'ma, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. vi. 4). Not until the whole doctrine of the Trinity was ready to be manifested in such visible form as at the baptism of Christ - God in heaven, God on earth and God descending from heaven to earthcould any part of the mystery be safely uncovered.

There yet remains an important query which we cannot pass wholly by. We have seen the rich development of the doctrine of the Spirit in the Old Testament. We have seen the testimony the Old Testament bears to the activity of the Spirit of God throughout the old dispensation. What then is meant by calling the new dispensation the dispensation of the Spirit? What does John (vii. 39) mean by saying that the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified? What our Lord Himself, when he promised the Comforter, by saying that the Comforter would not come until He went away and sent Him (John xvi. 7) ; and by breathing on His disciples, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" (John xx. 22)? What did the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost mean, when He came to inaugurate the dispensation of the Spirit? It cannot be meant that the Spirit was not active in the old dispensation. We have already seen that the New Testament writers themselves represent Him to have been active in the old dispensation in all the varieties of activity with which He is active in the new. Such passages seem to have diverse references. Some of them may refer to the specifically miraculous endowments which characterized the apostles and the churches which they founded.³⁵ Others refer to the world-wide mission of the Spirit, promised, indeed, in the Old Testament, but only now to be realized. But there is a more fundamental idea to be reckoned with still. This is the idea of the preparatory nature of the Old Testament dispensation. The old dispensation was a preparatory one and must be strictly conceived as such. What spiritual blessings came to it were by way of prelibation.³⁶ They were many and various. The Spirit worked in Providence no less universally then than now. He abode in the Church not less really then than now. He wrought in the hearts of God's people not less prevalently then than now. All the good that was in the world was then as now due to Him. All the hope of God's Church then as now depended on Him. Every grace of the godly life then as now was a fruit of His working. But the object of the whole dispensation was only to prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh. He kept the remnant safe and pure; but it was primarily only in order that the seed might be preserved. This was the fundamental end of His activity, then. The dispensation of the Spirit, properly so-called, did not dawn until the period of preparation was over and the day of outpouring had come. The mustard seed had been preserved through all the ages only by the Spirit's brooding care. Now it is planted, and it is by His operation that it is growing up into a great tree which shades the whole earth, and to the branches of which all the fowls of heaven come for shelter. It is not that His work is more real in the new dispensation than in the old. It is not merely that it is more universal. It is that it is directed to a different end - that it is no longer for the mere preserving of the seed unto the day of planting, but for the perfecting of the fruitage and the gathering of the harvest. The Church, to use a figure of Isaiah's, was then like a pent-in stream; it is now like that pent-in stream with the barriers broken down and the Spirit of the Lord driving it. It was He who preserved it in being when it was pent in. It is He who is now driving on its gathered floods till it shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. In one word, that was a day in which the Spirit restrained His power. Now the great day of the Spirit is come.

Endnotes:

From The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, v. vi, 1895, pp. 665-687.

"Korinthierbriefe " i, p. 80.

Article, "Zur altest. Lehre vom Geiste Gottes," in the " Jahrbb. für deutsch. Theologie " for 1867, i, p. 9.

These are Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, II Chronicles, Nehemiah, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Micah, Haggai, Zechariah. Deuteronomy and I Chronicles may be added, although they do not contain the explicit phrase, "the Spirit of God" or "the Spirit of Jehovah."

These are Leviticus, Joshua, Ruth, Ezra, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Hosea,Amos,Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah. Proverbs, Daniel and Malachi may, for one reason or another, remain unclassified.

"There is one writer of the Old Testament, in whom all lines and rays of this development come together, and who so stood in the matter of time and of inner manner that they had to come together in this point of unity, if the Old Testament had otherwise found such. This is Ezekiel" (Kleinert, op. cit. p. 45). "Isaiah has scattered throughout his prophecies allusions to the Spirit so manifold and various in express descriptions and in brief turns of phrase, that it might not be difficult to put together from his words, the complete doctrine of the Spirit" (Smeaton, "Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," p. 35).

Fairbairn, "Christ in Modern Theology," p. 377.

James Denney, "Studies in Theology," p. 70.

Cf. also the promise of Ezek. xxxvi. 27 and I Thea. iv. 8 (see Toy, "Quotationa in the New Testament," p. 202). Cf. also Luke i. 17.

These words are C. F. Schmid's ("Biblical Theology of the New Testamant,' Div. ii. §24, p. 145, E. T.). Cf. Smeaton, op. cit. p. 36: "Events occurring in the moral government of God, are (in the Old Testament) also ascribed to the Spirit as the Executive of all the divine purposes."

Kleinert, op. cit., p. 30: "The Old Testament everywhere knows only of an influence of the Divine Spirit upon the human Spirit in the interest and sphere of the Kingdom of God, which is in Israel and is to come through Israel." Hävernick, "Theologie des alten Testaments" p. 77: "Of a communication of the Spirit in the narrower sense, after the entrance of sin, there can be question only in the Theocracy." Oehler, "Biblical Theology of the Old Testament," §65: "But the Spirit as hwhy xWr, or to express it more definitely hw"hoy> vd,qo x;Wr only acts within the sphere of revelation. It rules within the Theocracy."

For example, in the Pentateuch His working is perhaps exclusively cosmical and theocratic-official, (Oehler, op. cit. §65); while His ethical work in individuals, is throughout the Old Testament, more a matter of prophecy than of present enjoyment (Dale, "Christian Doctrine," p. 317).

Dale, "Christian Doctrine," p. 318. A striking passage both for its presentation of this fact and for its unwillingness to accept its implications.

Cf. Schultz, "Old Testament Theology," E. T. ii, 184: "Over the lifeless and formless mass of the world-matter this Spirit broods like a bird on its nest, and thus transmits to it the seeds of life, so that afterwards by the word of God it can produce whatever God wills."

Compare some very instructive words as to this account of creation, by the Rev. John Robson, D.D. of Aberdeen (The Expository Times, July, 1894, vol. v. No. 10, pp. 467, sq.): "The divine agents in creation are brought before us in the opening of the Book of Genesis, and in the opening of the Gospel of John. The object of John in his Gospel is to speak of Jesus Christ, the Word of God; and so he refers only to His agency in the work of creation. The object of Moses in Genesis is to tell the whole divine agency in that work; so in his narrative we have the work of the Spirit recognized. But he does not ignore the Word of God; he begins his account of each epoch or each day of creation with the words, 'And God said.' We do not find in Genesis the theological fulness that we do in subsequent writers in the Bible; but we do find in it the elements of all that we subsequently learn or deduce regarding the divine agency in creation. . . . Two agents are mentioned: 'The Spirit of God brooding on the surface of the waters,' and at each new stage of creative development, the Word of God expressed in the words 'God said.' . . . There is thus the Spirit of God present as a constant energy, and there is the Word of God giving form to that energy, and at each new epoch calling new forma into being."

Oehler, "Old Testament Theology," §65: "But the Spirit as hwhy xWr, or to express it more definitely hw"hoy> vd,qo x;Wr only acts within the sphere of revelation. It rules within the theocracy (Isa. lxiii. 11, Hag. ii. 5, Neh. ix. 20) but not as if all citizens of the Old Testament Theocracy as such participated in this Spirit, which Moses expresses as a wish (Num. xi. 29), but which is reserved for the future community of salvation (John iii. 1). In the Old Testament the Spirit's work in the divine kingdom is rather that of endowing the organs of the theocracy with the gifts required for their calling, and those gifts of office in the Old Testament are similar to the gifts of grace in the New Testament, I Cor. xii. ff."

The idea of communicating to others the Spirit already resting on one occurs again in II Kings ii. 9, 15, of the communication of Elijah's Spirit (of Prophecy) I Elisha. Cf. Oehler, " Biblical Theology of the Old Testament," §65.

Cf. the prayer and endowment of Solomon, in I Kgs. iii.

Compare the cases of the communication of the Spirit, in a different way, in Num. xi. 17, 25, 26 and II Kgs. ii. 9, 15 - already mentioned.

In such passages as Gen. xli. 38, Dan. iv. 8, ix. 18 and v. 11, 14, we have "the Spirit of the Gods" as the equivalent of "the Spirit of God" on the lips of heathen.

Cf. Orelli, "The Old Testament Prophecy," etc., E. T. p. 11, and also Oehler, "Biblical Theology of Old Testament," §65 ad fin.

Cf. A. B. Davidson, (The Expositor, July, 1895, p. 1): "The view that prevailed among the people - and it seems the view of the Old Testament writers themselves - appears to have been this: the prophet did not speak out of a general inspiration of Jehovah, bestowed upon him once for all, as, say, at his call; each particular word that he spoke, whether a prediction or a practical counsel, was due to a special inspiration, exerted on him for the occasion." The statement might well have been stronger.

Op. cit. ii, p. 203. The passage is cited for its main idea: we demur, of course, to some of its implications.

In Num. xiv. 24 we are told that Caleb followed the LORD fully, "because he had another spirit in him," from that which animated his rebellious fellows. Possibly the Spirit of the Lord may be intended.

Exceptions are found, of course; such as the cases of Balaam, Samson, etc. Cf. H. G. Mitchell, "Inspiration in the Old Testament," in Christian Thought for December 1893, p. 190.

Cf. F. H. Woods, in The Expository Times, July, 1895, p. 462-463: "It may be extremely difficult to say what was the precise meaning which prophet or psalmist attached to the phrases, 'the Spirit of God' and 'the Spirit of Holiness.' But such language, at any rate, shows that they realised the divine character of that inward power which makes for holiness and truth. 'Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not the Spirit of Thy holiness from me' (Ps. li. 11). 'And now the Lord God hath sent me, and His Spirit' (Isa. xlviii. 16). 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith Jehovah of Hosts' (Zech. iv. 6). In such passages as these we can see the germ of the fuller Christian thought."

Cf. Psalm cvi. 13.

See such wonder, nevertheless, expressed by Dr. Dale, in a striking passage in his "Christian Doctrine," p. 317.

Op. cit. ii. p. 184. a

Op. cit. pp. 55-56.

"Schriftbeweis," i. p. 187.

Cf. Oehler, op. cit. §65, note 5. He looks on Isa. xliii. 16 as implying personality and reminds us that the Old Testament prepared the way for the œconomic Trinity of the new. Cf. also Dale, "Christian Doctrine," p. 317.

Cf. Dr. Hodge's admirable summary statement: "Even in the first chapter of Genesis, the Spirit of God is represented as the source of all intelligence, order and life in the created universe; and in the following books of the Old Testament He is represented as inspiring the prophets, giving wisdom, strength and goodness to statesmen and warriors, and to the people of God. This Spirit is not an agency but an agent, who teaches and selects; who can be sinned against and grieved; and who in the New Testament is unmistakably revealed as a distinct person. When John the Baptist appeared, we find him speaking of the Holy Spirit as of a person with whom his countrymen were familiar, as an object of Divine worship and the giver of saving blessings. Our divine Lord also takes this truth for granted, and promised to send the Spirit as a Paraclete, to take his place, to instruct, Comfort and strengthen them; whom they were to receive and obey. Thus, without any violent transition, the earliest revelations of this mystery were gradually umfolded, until the triune God, Father, Son and Spirit, appears in the New Testanient as the universally recognized God of all believers" (Charles Hodge, "Systematic Theology," i, p. 447).

Op. cit. p. 56.

Cf. Redford, "Vox. Dei.," p. 236.

Smeaton (Op. cit. p. 49) comments on John vii. 37 sq. thus: "But the apostle adds that 'the Spirit was not yet' because Christ's glorification had not yet arrived. He does not mean that the Spirit did not yet exist - for all Scripture attests His eternal preexistence - nor that His regenerative efficacy was still unknown - for countless millions had been regenerated by His power since the first promise in Eden - but that these operations of the Spirit had been but an anticipation of the atoning gift of Christ rather than a GIVING. The apostle speaks comparatively, not absolutely." Compare further the eloquent words on page 53 with the quotation there from Goodwin.

The Task and Method of Systematic Theology

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from The American Journal of Theology, xiv. 1910, pp. 192-205.

By "Systematic Theology" is meant that department or section of theological science which is concerned with setting forth systematically, that is to say, as a concatenated whole, what is known concerning God. Other departments or sections of theological science undertake other tasks. Whether such a being as God exists needs to be ascertained, and if such a being exists, whether He is knowable; whether such creatures as men are capable of knowing Him, and, if so, what sources of information concerning Him are accessible. This is the task of apologetical theology. These matters being determined, it is necessary to draw out from the sources of information concerning God which are accessible to us, all that can be known of God. This is the task of exegetical theology. A critical survey of previous attempts to draw from the sources of information concerning God what may be known of God, with an estimate of the results of these attempts and of their testing in life, is next incumbent on us. This is the task of historical theology. Finally we must inquire into the use of this knowledge of God and the ways in which it may be best applied to human needs. This is the task of practical theology. Among these various departments or sections of theological science there is obviously place for, or rather there is positively demanded, yet another, the task of which is to set forth in systematic formulation the results of the investigations of exegetical theology, clarified and enforced by the investigations of historical theology, which are to be applied by practical theology to the needs of man. Here the warrant of systematic theology, its task, and its encyclopedic place are at once exhibited. It is the business of systematic theology to take the knowledge of God supplied to it by apologetical, exegetical, and historical theology, scrutinize it with a view to discovering the inner relations of its several elements, and set it forth in a systematic presentation, that is to say, as an organic whole, so that it may be grasped and held in its entirety, in the due relation of its parts to one another and to the whole, and with a just distribution of emphasis among the several items of knowledge which combine to make up the totality of our knowledge of God. 

It is clear at once that "systematic theology" forms the central, or perhaps we may better say the culminating, department of theological science. It is the goal to which apologetical, exegetical, and historical theology lead up; and it provides the matter which practical theology employs. What is most important in the knowledge of God - which is what theology is - is, of course, just the knowledge of God; and that is what systematic theology sets forth. Apologetical theology puts us in the way of obtaining knowledge of God. Exegetical theology gives us this knowledge in its disjecta membra. Historical theology makes us aware how it has been apprehended and transmuted into life. Practical theology teaches us how to propagate it in the world. It is systematic theology which spreads it before us in the form most accessible to our modes of conception, pours it, so to speak, into the molds of our minds, and makes it our assured possession that we may thoroughly understand and utilize it. There is nothing strange, therefore, in the common manner of speech by which systematic theology absorbs into itself all theology. In point of fact, theology, as the science of God, comes to itself only in systematic theology; and if we set systematic theology over against other theological disciplines as a separable department of theological science, this is not that we divide the knowledge of God up among these departments, retaining only some of it - perhaps a small or a relatively unimportant portion - for systematic theology; but only that we trace the process by which the knowledge of God is ascertained, clarified, and ordered, up through the several stages of the dealing of the human mind with it until at last, in systematic theology, it stands before our eyes in complete formulation. 

The choice of the term "systematic theology" to designate this department of theological science has been made the occasion of some criticism, and its employment has been accornpanied by some abuse. It is, no doubt, capable of being misunderstood and misused, as what term is not? It ought to be unnecessary to explain that its employment is not intended to imply that other departments of theological science are prosecuted in an unsystematic manner, that is to say, in a disorderly way and to no safe results. Nor ought it to be necessary to protest against advantage being taken of the breadth of the term "systematic," in its popular usage, to subsume under it a series of incongruous disciplines which have nothing in common except that they are all systematically pursued. What the term naturally designates is that department of theological science in which the knowledge of God is presented as a concatenated system of truth; and it is not merely the natural but the perfectly explicit and probably the best designation of this department of theological science. At all events none of its synonyms which have from time to time been in use-such as theoretical, thetical, methodical, scholastic, didactic, dogmatic theology - seems to possess any advantage over it. 

The most commonly employed of these synonyms, since its introduction by Lucas Friedrich Reinhard in his "Synopsis theologicae dogmaticae," 1660, has been "dogmatic theology." This designation differs from "systematic theology" by laying stress upon the authority which attaches to the several doctrines brought together in the presentation, rather than upon the presentation of them in a system. A dogma is, briefly, an established truth, authoritative and not to be disputed. The ground of its authoritativeness is indifferent to the term itself, and will vary with the point of view of the dogmatician. The Romanist will find it in the decrees of the Church, by which the several dogmas are established. The Protestant will find it in the declarations of Scripture: "Verbum Dei," say the Smalkald Articles, "condit articulos fidei, et praeterea nemo, ne angelus quidem." "Moderns" will attenuate it into whatever general considerations exist to commend the propositions in question to our credit, and will not pause until they have transmuted dogmas into - to put it shortly - just our "religious beliefs." "A dogma," says Dr. A. J. Headlam, "means a truth to be believed"; and it is the task of dogmatics, according to him, "to investigate, to expound, and to systematize those truths about God and human destiny, whether derived from nature or revelation, which should be believed" - a definition which, if taken literally, might seem to imply that there are some "truths" about God and human destiny - whether derived from nature or from revelation - which should not be believed. This ambiguity in the connotation of the term "dogma" is fatal to the usefulness of its derivative "dogmatic" as a designation of a department of theological science. It undertakes to tell us nothing of the department to which it is applied but the nature of the elements with which it deals; and it leaves us in uncertainty what the nature of these elements is, whether established truths or only "religious beliefs." 

"Systematic theology" is attended with no such drawbacks. It properly describes the department to which it is attached, according to its own nature: it is the department in which the truths concerning God, given to us by the other departments of theological science, are systematized and presented in their proper relations to one another and to the whole of which they form parts. The authority of the truths with which it deals does not constitute its peculiarity as a department of theological science. These truths were just as authoritative as presented by exegetical theology one by one to our separate consideration, as when presented by systematic theology to our view in their concatenation with one another into a consistent whole. Their authority was not bestowed on them by their systematization; and they do not wait until presented by systematic theology to acquire authority. What constitutes the peculiarity of this department of theological science is that in it these truths are presented not one by one in isolation, but in a mutually related body - in a system. What more truly descriptive name for it could be invented than just "systematic theology"? 

There are some, no doubt, to whom it may seem presumptuous to attempt to systematize our knowledge of God. If we possess any knowledge of God at all, however, the attempt to systematize it is a necessity of the human spirit. If we know so much as two facts concerning God, the human mind is incapable of holding these facts apart; it must contemplate them in relation to one another. Systematization is only a part of the irrepressible effort of the intelligence to comprehend the facts presented to it, an effort which the intelligence can escape only by ceasing to be intelligence. It may systematize well, or ill; but systematize it must whenever it holds together, in its unitary grasp, more facts than one. Wherever God is in any degree known by a being of a systematically working mind, therefore, there is a theology in the express sense of that word, that is, a "systematic theology." Only the atheist or the agnostic on the one side, the idiot or the lunatic on the other, can be without such a theology. If there is a God; if anything whatever is known of this God; if the being possessing this knowledge is capable of orderly thought - a theology in this sense is inevitable. It is but the reflection in the orderly working intelligence of God perceived as such; and it exists, therefore, wherever God is perceived and recognized. Doubt and hesitation before the task of systematizing our knowledge of God - be that knowledge great or small - is therefore not an effect of reverence, but an outgrowth of that agnostic temper which lurks behind much modern thinking. 

The leaven of agnosticism underlying much of modern thought to which allusion has just been made, manifests itself more distinctly in the continuous attempt, which is more or less deliberately made, to shift the object of the knowledge which systematic theology systematizes from God to something else, deemed more capable of being really known by or more accessible to such beings as men. Theology, ex vi verbi, is the systematized knowledge of God; and if God exists and any knowledge of Him whatever is accessible to us, there must be such a thing as a systematic knowledge of Him, and it would seem that this would be the proper connotation of the term "theology." Nevertheless, we are repeatedly being told that theology is not the science of God, its object-matter being God in His existence and activities, but the science of religion or of faith, its object-matter being the religious phenomena manifested by humanity at large, or observable in the souls of believers. A whole generation of theologians, having the courage of their convictions, accordingly almost ceased to speak of "systematic theology," preferring some such name as the "science of faith" (Glaubenslehre). It was Schleiermacher, of course, who gave this subjective twist to what he still spoke of as "Dogmatics." Dogmas to him were no longer authoritative propositions concerning God, but "conceptions of the states of the Christian religious consciousness, set forth in formal statement"; and dogmatics was to him accordingly nothing more than the systematic presentation of the body of such dogmas in vogue in any given church at any given time. Accordingly he classified it frankly, along with "Church Statistics," under the caption of "The Historical Knowledge of the Present Situation of the Church." Undoubtedly it is very desirable to know what the Church at large, or any particular branch of the Church, believes at any given stage of its development. But this helps us to a better knowledge of the Church, not of God; and by what right the formulated results of such a historical inquiry can be called "dogmatics" or "systematic theology" simpliciter and not rather, historically, "the dogmatic system of the German Lutheran Church in the year 1821," or "the doctrinal belief of the American Baptists of 1910," it would be difficult to explain. The matter is not in principle altered if the end set before us is to delineate, not the doctrinal beliefs of a particular church at a particular time, but the religious conceptions of humanity at large. We are still moving in the region of history, and the results of our researches will be that we shall know better, not God, but man - man in his religious nature and in the products of his religious activities. After all, the science of religion is something radically different from systematic theology. We cannot thus lightly renounce the knowledge of the most important object of knowledge in the whole compass of knowledge. Over against the world and all that is in the world, including man and all that is in man, and all that is the product of man's highest activities, intellectual and, in the noblest sense the word may bear, spiritual, there after all stands God; and He - He Himself, not our thought about Him or our beliefs concerning Him, but He Himself - is the object of our highest knowledge. And to know Him is not merely the highest exercise of the human intellect; it is the indispensable complement of the circle of human science, which, without the knowledge of God, is fatally incomplete. It was not without reason that Augustine renounced the knowledge of all else but God and the soul; and that Calvin declares the knowledge of God and ourselves the sum of all useful knowledge. Without the knowledge of God it is not too much to say we know nothing rightly, so that the renunciation of the knowledge of God carries with it renunciation of all right knowledge. It is this knowledge of God which is designated by the appropriate term "theology," and it, as the science of God, stands over against all other sciences, each having its own object, determining for each its own peculiar subject-matter. 

Theology being, thus, the systematized knowledge of God, the determining question which divides theologies concerns the sources from which this knowledge of God is derived. It may be agreed, indeed, that the sole source of all possible knowledge of God is revelation. God is a person; and a person is known only as he expresses himself, which is as much as to say only as he makes himself known, reveals himself. But this agreement is only formal. So soon as it is asked how God reveals Himself, theology is set over against theology in ineradicable opposition. The hinge on which the controversy particularly turns is the question whether God has revealed Himself only in works, or also in word: ultimately whether He has made Himself known only in the natural or also in a supernatural revelation. Answer this question as we may, we shall still have a theology, but according to our answer, so will be our theology, not merely in its contents but in its very method. By revelation may be meant nothing more than the evolution of religious ideas in the age-long thinking of the race, conceived (whether pantheistically or more or less theistically) as the expression of the divine mind in the forms of human thought. In that case, the work of systematic theology follows the lines of the psychology and phenomenology of religion; its task is to gather out and to cast into a systematic statement the metaphysical implications of the results of these departments of investigation. Or revelation may be summed up in the impression made by the phenomenon of Jesus on the minds of His believing followers. Then, what theology has to do is to unfold the ideas of God which are involved in this experience. Or, again, revelation may be thought to lie in a series of extraordinary occurrences, conceived as redemptive acts on the part of God, inserted into the course of ordinary history. In that case the task of theology is to draw out the implications of this series of extraordinary events in their sequence, and in their culmination in the apparition of Christ. Or, once more, revelation may be held to include the direct communication of truth through chosen organs of the divine Spirit. Then the fundamental task of theology becomes the ascertainment, formulation, and systematization of the truth thus communicated, and if this truth comes to it fixed in an authoritative written record, it is obvious that its task is greatly facilitated. These are not questions raised by systematic theology; nor does it belong to systematic theology to determine them. That task has already been performed for it by the precedent department of theological science which we call apologetics, which thus determines the whole structure and contents of systematic theology. The task of systematic theology is not to validate the reality, or to define the nature, or to determine the method of revelation; nor, indeed, even to ascertain the truths communicated by revelation; but to systematize these truths when placed in its hands by the precedent disciplines of apologetical, exegetical, and historical theology. 

The question of the sources of our knowledge of God culminates obviously in the question of the Scriptures. Do the Scriptures contain a special revelation of God; or are they merely a record of religious aspirations and attainments of men - under whatever (more or less) divine leading? Are they themselves the documented revelation of God to man; or do they merely contain the record of the effect on men of the revelation of God made in a series of redemptive acts culminating in Christ, or possibly made in Christ alone? Are the declarations of Scripture the authoritative revelations of God to us which need only to be understood to become items in our trustworthy knowledge of God; or are they merely human statements, conveying with more or less accuracy the impressions received by men in the presence of divine manifestations of more or less purity? On the answers which our apologetics gives to such questions as these, depend the entire method and contents of our systematic theology. Many voices are raised about us, declaring "the old view of the Scriptures" no longer tenable; meaning by this the view that recognizes them as the documented revelation of God and treats their declarations as the authoritative enunciations of truth. Nevertheless men have not commonly wished to break entirely with the Scriptures. In one way or another they have usually desired to see in them a record of divine revelation; and in one sense or another they have desired to find in them, if not the source, yet the norm, of the knowledge of God which they have sought to set forth in their theologies. This apparent deference to Scripture is, however, illusory. In point of fact, on a closer scrutiny of their actual procedure, it will be discovered that "modern thinkers" in general really set aside Scripture altogether as source or even authoritative norm of our knowledge of God, and depend, according to their individual predilections, on reason, on Christian experience, corporate or personal, or on tradition, for all the truth concerning God which they will admit. The formal incorporation by them of Scripture among the sources of theology is merely a fashion of speech derived from the historical evolution of their "new" views and is indicatory only of the starting-point of their development. Their case is much the same as the Romanist's who still formally places Scripture at the base of his "rule of faith" in the complicated formula: Scripture plus tradition, as interpreted by the Church, speaking through its infallible organ, the pope - while in point of fact it is just the pope, speaking ex cathedra, which constitutes the actual authority to which he bows. 

A striking illustration of how men cling to such old phraseology after it has become obsolete to their actual thought may be derived from a recent writer whom we have already taken occasion to quote. Dr. A. C. Headlam, whose inheritance is Anglican while his critical point of view is "modern," really recognizes no source of theological beliefs (for with him dogmatics deals with beliefs, not truths) but tradition and the living voice of the Church. Yet this is the way he describes the sources of his theology: "The continuous revelation of the Old Testament as accepted in the New, the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, the witness of Christian tradition, and the living voice of the Christian Church." The statement is so far incomplete that it omits the revelation of "nature," for Dr. Headlarn allows that nature may teach us somewhat of its Maker: it includes the sources only of what Dr. Headlarn would perhaps call "revealed theology." What is to be noted is that it avoids saying simply that these sources are Scripture, tradition, and the living voice of the Church, as a Romanist might have said, reserving of course the right of further explanation of how these three sources stand related to one another. Dr. Headlam has gone too far with modern Biblical criticism to accept the Scriptures as a direct source of dogma. He therefore frames wary forms of statement. He does not say "the Old Testament," or even "the continuous revelation of the Old Testament." He introduces a qualifying clause: "The continuous revelation of the Old Testament as accepted in the New." This is not, however, to make the New Testament the authoritative norm of theological truth. Proceeding to speak of this New Testament, he does not say simply "the New Testament"; or even "the revelation embodied in the New Testament." He restricts himself to: "The revelation of Christ in the New Testament." It is not, we see, the Old and New Testaments themselves he is thinking of; he does not accord authority to either of them as is done, for example, when they are spoken of in the old phrase, "God's Word written." His appeal to them is not as the documented revelation of God, nor even, as might be perhaps supposed at first sight, as the trustworthy record of such revelations as God has given; but simply as depositories, so far, of Christian beliefs. The Scriptures, in a word, are of value to him only as witness to Christian tradition. He says explicitly: "The Scriptures are simply a part of the Christian tradition"; and he is at pains to show that Christianity, having antedated the New Testament, cannot be derived from it but must rather be just reflected in it. He does not even look upon the Scriptures as a trustworthy depository of Christian tradition. The tradition which they preserve for us is declared to be both incomplete and distorted. They cannot serve, therefore, even as a test of tradition; contrariwise, tradition is the norm of Scripture and its correction is needed to enable us safely to draw from Scripture. "It is tradition," we read, "which gives us the true proportions of apostolic teaching and practice," by which the one-sidedness of the Scriptural record is rectified. If, then, Dr. Headlam's view of the sources of dogmatics were stated with succinct clearness, undeflected by modes of speech which have become outworn to him, we should have to say that these sources are just "tradition" and "the voice of the living Church." Scripture is to him merely an untrustworthy vehicle of tradition. 

Dr. Headlam is an Anglican, and when the authority of Scripture dissolves in his hands, he drops back naturally on "the Church," - its "tradition," its "living voice." Others, born under different skies, have only the authority of the Christian's own spirit to fall back on, whether as a rationally thinking entity, or as a faith-enlightened soul. A mighty effort is, indeed, made to escape from the individualistic subjectivism of this point of view; but with indifferent success. It is not, however, to the Scriptures that appeal is made in this interest. Rather is it common with this wholeschool of writers that it is not the Scriptures but "the gospel" which supplies the norm by which the faith of the individual is regulated, or the source from which it derives its positive content. This "gospel" may be spoken of, indeed, as "the essential content and the inspiring soul of the Holy Scriptures." But this does not mean that whatever we may find written in the Scriptures enters into this "gospel," but rather that of all which stands written in the Scriptures only that which we esteem the "gospel" has religious significance and therefore theological value. What this "gospel" is, therefore, is not objectively but subjectively determined. Sometimes it is frankly declared to be just that element in Scripture which awakens our souls to life; sometimes more frankly still it is affirmed to be only what in Scripture approves itself to our Christian judgment. "What is a proper function of a Christian man," demands an American writer not without heat, "if not to know a Christian truth when he sees it?" - just Paul's question turned topsy-turvy, since Paul would draw the inference that whoever did not recognize his words as the commandments of God was therefore no Christian man. Sometimes, with an effort to attain a greater show of objectivity, the "gospel" is said to include all that measures up to the revelation of God in Christ. But the trouble is that the Christ which is thus made the touchstone is Himself a subjective creation. He is not the Christ of the gospel narrative, as He stands out upon the pages of the evangelists; for even in its portraiture of Jesus the Scriptures are held untrustworthy. The Jesus by which we would try Scripture is rather a reflection back upon the page of Scripture of what we conceive the revelation of God in Christ ought to be. When our very touchstone is thus a subjective creation, it is easy to estimate how much real objective authority belongs to the Scriptural revelation determined by it. One of the most interesting, and certainly one of the most strenuous attempts to preserve for Scripture a certain recognition in theological construction from this point of view is supplied by Julius Kaftan. Kaftan is emphatic and insistent that the faith-knowledge which, according to him, constitutes the substance of dogmatics, takes hold upon objective realities which are matters of revelation and that this revelation is recorded in the Scriptures. But unfortunately he is equally emphatic and insistent that this "revelation" witnessed by the Scriptures is not a communication of truths, but a series of occurrences, testified to as such, indeed, by the Scriptures (when historico-critically dealt with), but by no means authoritatively, or even trustworthily interpreted by the Scriptures. And therefore it is utilizable for the purposes of dogmatics only as it is taken up by "faith" and transmuted by faith into knowledge; which is as much as to say that faith may, indeed, be quickened by Scripture, but the material which is to be built into our dogmatics is not what Scripture teaches but what we believe. "Dogmatics," we are told explicitly, "derives none of its propositions directly from the Scriptures; . . . what mediates for Dogmatics between the Scriptures and the dogmatic propositions, is faith." "The dogma of which Dogmatics treats is the dogma that is recognized by the community." All of which, it would seem, would be more clearly expressed, if it were simply said that the source of dogmatics is not Scripture but faith - the faith of the community. 

This is not the place to vindicate the objective authority of Scripture as the documented revelation of God. That is the task of apologetics. What we are now seeking to make clear, is only that, as there are apologetics and apologetics, so there are, following them, systematic theologies and systematic theologies. Systematic theology, as the presentation of the knowledge of God in systematized form, can build only with the materials which the precedent departments of theological science give it and only after a fashion consonant with the nature of these materials. If our apologetics has convinced us that we have no other knowledge of God but that given us by a rational contemplation of the world, recognized as the work of His hands; or that given us by an analysis of the convictions which form themselves in hearts fixed on Him - our procedure will take shape from the character of our sources and the modes by which knowledge of God is elicited from them. But equally if our apologetics assures us that God not only manifests Himself in His works, and moves in the hearts which turn to Him in faith, but has redemptively intervened in the historical development of the race (without this redemptive intervention lost in sin), and that not merely in acts but in words, and has fixed the record of this intervention in authoritative Scriptures, our whole procedure in systematizing the knowledge of God thus conveyed to us will be determined by the character of the sources on which we depend. Taking from the hands of apologetics the natural knowledge of God which its critical survey of the results of human science brings us, and from the hands of Biblical theology the supernaturally revealed knowledge of God which its survey of the historical process of revelation yields us, and viewing all in the light of the progressive assimilation of the body of knowledge of God by His people, through twenty centuries of thinking, and feeling, and living - systematic theology essays to cast the whole into a systematic formulation, conformed to the laws of thought and consonant with the modes of conception proper to the human intelligence. 

Systematic theology is thus, in essence, an attempt to reflect in the mirror of the human consciousness the God who reveals Himself in His works and word, and as He has revealed Himself. It finds its whole substance in the revelation which we suppose God to have made of Himself; and as we differ as to the revelation which we suppose God to have made, so will our systematic theologies differ in their substance. Its form is given it by the greater or less perfection of the reflection of this revelation in our consciousness. It is not imagined, of course, that this reflection can be perfect in any individual consciousness. It is the people of God at large who are really the subject of that knowledge of God which systematic theology seeks to set forth. Nor is it imagined that even in the people of God at large, in their present imperfect condition, oppressed by the sin of the world of which they still form a part, the image of God can be reflected back to Him in its perfection. Only the pure in heart can see God; and who, even of His redeemed saints, are in this life really pure in heart? Meanwhile God is framing the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of His people; and, as each one of them seeks to give expression in the forms best adapted to human consciousness, to the knowledge of God he has received, a better and fuller reflection of the revealed God is continually growing up. Systematic theology is therefore a progressive science. It will be perfected only in the minds and hearts of the perfected saints who at the end, being at last like God, shall see Him as He is. Then, the God who has revealed Himself to His people shall be known by them in all the fullness of His revelation of Himself. Now we know in part; but when that which is perfect is come that which is in part shall be done away.

The Archæology of the Mode of Baptism¹

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

It is rather striking to observe the diversity which has grown up in the several branches of the Christian Church in the mode of administering the initiatory rite of Christianity. Throughout the whole West, affusion is in use. The ritual of the great Latin Church directs as follows: "Then the godfather or godmother, or both, holding the infant, the priest takes the baptismal water in a little vessel or jug, and pours the same three times upon the head of the infant in the form of the cross, and at the same time he says, uttering the words once only, distinctly and attentively: 'N, I baptize thee in the name of the Father,' - he pours first; 'and of the Son' - he pours a second time; 'and of the Holy Ghost' - he pours the third time." Here is a trine affusion. With the exception of the large Baptist denominations, Protestants use a single affusion. The Baptists employ a single immersion. Throughout the East a trine immersion is the rule. Although practice seems sometimes to vary whether all three immersions shall be total,² the Orthodox Greek Church insists somewhat strenuously upon trine immersion. The ritual in use in the Russian Church directs as follows: "And after he has anointed the whole body the Priest baptizes the candidate, held erect and looking towards the east, and says: 'The servant (handmaid) of God, N, is baptized in the Name of the Father, Amen; and of the Son, Amen; and of the Holy Ghost, Amen; now and ever, and to ages of ages, Amen.' At each invocation he immerses the candidate and raises him again."3 Significant variations obtain, however, among the other Oriental communions. The Nestorians, for example, cause the candidate to stand erect in water reaching to the neck, and dip the head three times.⁴ The Syrians, whether Jacobite or Maronite, place the candidate upright on his feet and pour water three times over his head in the name of the Trinity.⁵ The office of the Syrian Church of Jerusalem provides as follows: "The priest . . . first lets the candidate down into the baptistery. Then laying his right hand on the head of the person to be baptized, with his left hand he takes up water successively from before, behind, and from each side of the candidate, and pours it upon his head, and washes his whole body (funditque super caput ejus, et abluit totum ipsius corpus)."6 In the Coptic Church the custom has become fixed for the priest to dip the body the first time up to the middle, the second time up to the neck, and the third time over the head.⁷ Sometimes, however, apparently, the actual practice is that the child is dipped only up to the neck, and the immersion is completed by pouring the water over the head.⁸ The Armenians duplicate the rite in a very odd way. Among them, we are told, "the priest asks the child's name, and on hearing it, lets the child down into the water, saying, 'This N, servant of God, who is come from the state of childhood (or from the state of a Catechumen) to Baptism, is baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' . . . While saying this the priest buries the child (or Catechumen) three times in the water, as a figure of Christ's three days' burial. Then taking the child out of the water he thrice pours a handful of water on its head, saying, 'As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Hallelujah! As many of you as have been enlightened of the Father, the Holy Spirit is put into you. Hallelujah!"'9 

If we neglect for the moment the usages of minor divisions of the Church, we may say that the practice of the Church is divided into an Eastern and a Western mode. Broadly speaking, the East baptizes by a trine immersion; the West by affusion. When we scrutinize the history of these differing practices, however, we quickly learn that, with whatever unessential variations in details, the usage of the East runs back into a high antiquity; while there are indications on the surface of the Western usage that it is comparatively recent in origin, and survivals of an older custom persist side by side with it. To be sure, the immersion as practised by the Protestant Baptists can scarcely be numbered among these survivals. The original Baptists apparently did not immerse; and Dr. Dexter appears to have shown that even the first English Baptists who seceded from the Puritan emigrants and formed a congregation at Amsterdam, baptized by affusion.¹⁰ It would seem that it was by the English Baptists of the seventeenth century that immersion was first declared to be essential to valid baptism; and the practice of immersion by them can be looked upon as a survival from an earlier time only in the sense that it was a return to an earlier custom, although with the variation of a single instead of a trine immersion. We may more properly designate as a survival the practice of immersion which has subsisted in the great cathedral of Milan¹¹ - a diocese in which many peculiar customs survive to remind us of its original independence of Rome. The Roman ritual itself, indeed, continues to provide for immersion as well as for affusion, the rubric reading: "If he baptizes by immersion, the priest retaining the mitre, rises and takes the infant; and being careful not to hurt it, cautiously immerses its head in the water, and baptizing with a trine immersion, says only a single time: 'N, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."' A similar survival appears in the Anglican Prayer Book,¹² the rubric in which runs as follows: "Then the priest shall take the child into his hands, and shall say to the godfathers and godmothers, 'Name this child.' And then, naming it after them (if they shall certify him that the child may well endure it), he shall dip it into the water discreetly and warily, saying, 'N, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' But if they shall certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it, saying the foresaid words," etc. Here immersion - though a single immersion - is made the rule; and affusion appears only as an exception - although an exception which has in practice become the rule. The Prayer Book of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America accordingly parallels the two modes, the rubric reading: "And then, naming it [the child] after them, he shall dip it in water discreetly or else pour water upon it, saying," etc. A similar reminiscence of the older usage was near being perpetuated in the formularies of the British and American Presbyterian churches. John Lightfoot has preserved for us a curious account of the debate in the Westminster Assembly upon the question whether the new Directory for Worship should recognize immersion alongside of affusion as an alternative mode of baptism, or should exclude it altogether in favor of affusion. The latter was determined upon; but Lightfoot tells us, "It was voted so indifferently, that we were glad to count names twice: for so many were unwilling to have dipping excluded, that the votes came to an equality within one; for the one side was twenty-four - the other, twenty-five."13 The guarded clauses which finally took their places in the Westminster Directory and Confession of Faith, reflect the state of opinion in the Assembly revealed by this close vote; and, when read in its light, will not fail to operate to enshrine still a reminiscence of the earlier custom of baptism by immersion. If we will bear in mind the history of the mode of baptism in the English Church as thus exhibited in the formularies framed by her, we shall be at no loss to understand how it came about that the English Baptists desired to revive the custom of immersion, or how it happened that, in reviving it, they gave it the form of a single immersion. 

Survivals such as these prepare us to learn that there was a time when immersion was as universal even in the West as in the East. In certain sections, to be sure, as in Southern Gaul and its ecclesiastical daughter, Ireland, affusion appears to have come into quite general use at a very early date. Gennadius of Marseilles (495) already speaks of the two modes of baptism as if they stood upon something like the same plane; he is comparing baptism and martyrdom, and remarks: "The one after his Confession is either wetted with the Water, or else plung'd into it: And the other is either wetted with his own Blood, or else is plung'd in Fire."14 By the time of Bonaventura affusion appears to have become the common French method; a synod at Angiers in 1175 mentions the two as on an equal footing, while one in 1304, at Langres, mentions pouring only. Possibly affusion first found a formal place in a baptismal office in the case of the earliest Irish ritual, in which it is made, as in the office of the American Protestant Episcopal Church, alternative with immersion.¹⁵ But it was not until the thirteenth century that it began to become the ruling mode of baptism on the Continent,¹⁶ and not until after the Reformation, in England. Walafrid Strabo, writing in the ninth century, speaks of it as exceptional only. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century still represents immersion as the most common and commendable way of baptizing, because of its more vivid representation of the burial of Christ; and only recommends affusion in case the whole body cannot be wet on account of paucity of water, or some other cause - in which case, he says, "the head in which is manifested the principle of animal life, ought to be wet." His contemporary, Bonaventura, while mentioning that affusion was commonly used in France, gives his own opinion as that "the way of dipping into water is the more common and the fitter and safer." A council at Ravenna in 1311, however, declared the two modes equally valid; and the rubric of the baptismal service edited by Paul V (1605-1621) treats the matter as entirely indifferent: "Though baptism may be administered by affusion, or immersion, or aspersion, yet let the first or second mode which are more in use, be retained, agreeably to the usage of the churches."17 The change was much slower in establishing itself in England. A century before Paul V, Erasmus witnesses: "With us infants are poured upon; with the English, they are immersed." The first Prayer Book of Edward VI (1549) directs a trine immersion: "first, dypping the right side; secondly, the left side; the third time, dypping the face towards the fronte." Permission is first given to substitute pouring, if the sponsors certify that the child is weak, in the second Prayer Book (1552), and in the same book trine immersion is changed to single immersion. The form at present in use does not appear until the Prayer Book of Charles II (1662).¹⁸ 

There is a sense, then, in which we may say broadly that the present diversity in baptismal usage is a growth of time; and that, should we move back within the first millennium of the Church's life, we should find the whole Christian world united in the ordinary use of trine immersion. The meaning of this fact to us will be conditioned, however, by the results of two further lines of inquiry. We should inquire whether this universality of trine immersion was itself the result of ecclesiastical development, or whether it represents primitive, that is, apostolic practice. And we should inquire whether conformity to this mode of baptism was held to be essential to the validity of baptism, or only necessary to the good order of the Church. 

The second of these queries is very readily answered. There never was a time when the Church insisted upon immersion as the only valid mode of baptism.¹⁹ The very earliest extant account of baptism, that given in the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (chap. vii.), which comes to us from the first half of the second century, while evidently contemplating ordinary baptism as by immersion, yet freely allows affusion in case of scarcity of water: "But if thou hast neither [living water nor standing water in sufficient quantity], pour water on the head three times, into the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit." "We have here," comments Harnack, "for the first time obtained evidence that even the earliest Christians had, under certain conditions, recourse to baptisms by sprinkling - a very  important point, since it shows that the scruples about baptisms in this manner were only of late origin in the Catholic Church."20 "You have here," comments Funk,²¹ "the oldest witness for the form of affusion or aspersion in administering baptism. . . . Notice also that the author holds that form valid with certitude. . . ." From that day to this, the Church as a whole has allowed the validity of baptism by affusion, in case of necessity, whether the necessity arise from scarcity of water or from weakness of the recipient, rendering immersion a cruelty. Even the Orthodox Greek Church which, in its polemic attitude against Latin affusion, is apt to lay great stress on immersion, is yet forced to admit the validity of affusion in cases of necessity.²² And Dr. Washburn tells us of the other Oriental churches: "While trine immersion is the general rule, none of the churches in the East insist upon this as in all cases essential. All admit that in exceptional cases other forms are valid. The Jacobites do not practice immersion at all, and the Armenians recognize the full validity of affusion or sprinkling in any case."23 

The whole case of the validity of clinic baptism - or the baptism of the sick on their bed, evn th/| kli,nh|, whence they were called klinikoi,, clinici, and more rarely grabatarii, lectularii, or even superfusi - was canvassed by Cyprian in the third century in a manner which seems to show not only that it had been commonly practised, but also that it had not been formally challenged before.²⁴ He declares that clinic baptism by aspersion has all the necessary elements of baptism, so that all such baptisms are perfect, provided faith is not wanting in ministrant and recipient - the mode of the application of the water not being of essential importance. He argues that, as the contagion of sin is not washed away like the filth of the body by the water itself, there is no need of a lake for its cleansing: it is the abundance not of the water but of faith that gives efficacy to the sacrament, and God will grant His indulgence for the "abridgment"25 of a sacrament when necessity requires it. The essential portion of Cyprian's representation runs as follows: 

You have asked also, dearest son, what I thought of those who obtain God's grace in sickness and weakness, whether they are to be accounted legitimate Christians, for that they are not to be washed (loti), but sprinkled (perfusi), with the saving water. In this point, my diffidence and modesty prejudges none, so as to prevent any from feeling what he thinks right, and from doing what he feels to be right. As far as my poor understanding conceives it, I think that the divine benefits can in no respect be mutilated and weakened; nor can anything less occur in that case (œstimamus in nullo mutilari et debilitari posse beneficia divina nec minus aliquid illtic posse contingere), where, with full and entire faith both of the giver and receiver, what is drawn from the divine gifts is accepted. For in the sacrament of salvation the contagion of sins is not in such wise washed away, as the filth of the skin and of the body is washed away in carnal and ordinary washing, as that there should be need of saltpeter and other appliances also, and a bath and a basin wherewith this vile body must be washed and purified. Otherwise is the breast of the believer washed; otherwise is the mind of man purified by the merit of faith. In the sacraments of salvation, when necessity compels, and God bestows His mercy, the divine methods confer the whole benefit on believers (in sacramentis salutaribus necessitate cogente et Deo indulgentiam suam largiente totum credentibus conf erunt divina compendia); nor ought it to trouble any one that sick people seem to be sprinkled or affused, when they obtain the Lord's grace, when Holy Scripture speaks by the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, and says, "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: . . ." [quoting further, Num. xix. 8-9, 12-13; viii. 5-7]. . . . Or have they obtained indeed the divine favor, but in a shorter and more limited measure of the divine gift and of the Holy Spirit . . . ? Nay, verily, the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but is poured out altogether on the believer.²⁶ 

Those who were thus baptized were often looked upon with suspicion, seeing that they were frequently such as had neglected baptism until they believed they were dying (the so-called procrastinantes, bradu,nontej), and in any case had not fulfilled the full period of their catechumenate and were therefore supposed to be insufficiently instructed in Christian knowledge, and seeing that they had been brought to Christ by necessity, as it were, and not by choice and lacked the grace of confirmation and all that it was supposed to imply.²⁷ They were therefore denied the right to receive orders in the Church, except when a scarcity of men fitted for orders, or other necessity, forbade the strictness of this rule. This judgment concerning them is already brought to light in the letter of Cornelius on the Novatian heresy, quoted by Eusebius;²⁸ and the reason on which it rested is clearly expressed in the canon of the Council of Neo-Caesarea (314; c. 12): "He that is baptized when he is sick ought not to be made a priest (for his coming to the faith is not voluntary but from necessity) unless his diligence and faith do afterwards prove commendable, or the scarcity of men fit for the office do require it." There were reasons enough to look on those who had so received baptism with suspicion; but the validity of the baptism so conferred was not itself in doubt.²⁹ 

As little did men doubt the propriety and validity of baptism by affusion when scarcity of water rendered immersion impossible. This is the precise case which occurs in the prescriptions of the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles"; and that the practice of the churches continued in accordance with these prescriptions may be illustrated by a variety of references which have come down to us. For example, in the seventh century canons of James of Edessa, the priest is instructed to baptize a dying child with whatever amount of water he happens to have near him.³⁰ 

31. Addai. - When an unbaptized infant is in danger of death, and its mother carries it in haste even to the field, to a priest who is at work there, where there is no stream, and no basin, and no watervessel, if there is only water there for the priest's use, and necessity requires haste, what is proper for him to do? Jacob. - In necessity like this it is right for the priest, if water happens to be with him, to take the pitcher of water and pour it upon the infant's head, even though its mother is holding it in her hands, and say, "Such an one is baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." 

Indeed, so little was immersion of the essence of baptism to Syrian Christians, that we read of their mistaking for baptism in the twelfth century the blessed water of the feast of the Epiphany with which "every believer who entered the Holy Church was signed after the manner of the cross," "or sprinkled," and only thus "approached the mysteries"; so that the authorities needed to guard them from this error.³¹ A body of legends from every part of the Church illustrates the same conception. There are, for example, the well-known stories of St. Lawrence baptizing Romanus with a pitcher of water, and of Lucillus baptizing by pouring water on the head.³² There is the curious story of the bishop observing the boy Athanasius "playing at church" with his young companions and baptizing them, and the decision of the council that "as water had been poured upon these persons" after the interrogations and responses, the baptism was complete.³³ There is the similar story of travelers baptizing a Jew in the desert by sprinkling sand three times on his body, and the decision that true baptism had taken place in all but the material, with the order that the Jew was now to be perfusus with it.³⁴ The Copts have a story of a woman, who, in a storm at sea, drew blood from her breast and made the sign of the cross on the foreheads of her children with it, repeating the formula of baptism. On arrival at Alexandria she took them to the bishop for baptism, but the water in the font petrified to prevent the sacrilege of a repetition of a baptism thus declared valid.³⁵ It is not needful to multiply examples of such legends: they bear witness to much popular superstition; but they bear witness along with it to a universal allowance of the validity of baptism by affusion. 

Perhaps in no way is the universality of this sentiment more pointedly brought out, than in its easy assumption in the discussion by the Fathers of the salvation of the apostles or of other ancient worthies who had died unbaptized. We meet already in Tertullian with the point of view which pervades all the attempts to explain their salvation: "And now," he says, "as far as I shall be able, I will reply to them who affirm 'that the apostles were unbaptized.'" He quotes some suggestions to the contrary, and continues: 

Others make the suggestion, - forced enough, clearly - "that the apostles then served the turn of baptism when, in their little ship, they were sprinkled and covered with the waves: that Peter himself also was immersed enough when he walked on the sea." It is, however, as I think, one thing to be sprinkled or intercepted by the violence of the sea; another thing to be baptized in obedience to the discipline of religion.³⁶ 

He refuses, in other words, to look upon a chance wetting as baptism, but the mode in which the wetting is supposed to come raises no doubt in his mind: nor indeed is he too seriously concerned "whether they were baptized in any manner whatever, or whether they continued unbathed (illoti) to the end." The Syriac "Book of the Bee," on the other hand, deems it important to insist on the baptism of the apostles, and finds it in the following way: 

And Mar Basilius says that on the eve of the passion, after the disciples had received the body and blood of our Lord, our Lord put water in a basin, and began to wash his disciples' feet; and this was the baptism of the Apostles. But they were not all made perfect, for they were not all pure. For Judas, the son of perdition, was not made holy; and because this basin of washing was in very truth baptism; just as our Lord said to Simon Peter, "Except I wash thee, thou hast no part with me," that is, except I baptize thee thou cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.³⁷ 

We may take, however, Augustine's discussion of the case of the thief on the cross as our typical example of the way in which the Fathers dealt with these, to them, puzzling facts. 

Accordingly, the thief, who was no follower of the Lord previous to the cross, but His confessor upon the cross, from whose case a presumption is sometimes taken, or attempted, against the sacrament of baptism, is reckoned by St. Cyprian among the martyrs who are baptized in their own blood, as happens to many unbaptized persons in times of hot persecution. For to the fact that he confessed the crucified Lord so much weight is attributed and so much availing value assigned by Him who knows how to weigh and value such evidence, as if he had been crucified for the Lord.... There was discovered in him the full measure of a martyr, who then believed in Christ when they fell away who were destined to be martyrs. All this, indeed, was manifest to the eyes of the Lord, who at once bestowed so great felicity on one who, though not baptized, was yet washed clean in the blood, as it were, of martyrdom. . . . Besides all this, there is the circumstance, which is not incredibly reported, that the thief who then believed as he hung by the side of the crucified Lord was sprinkled, as in a most sacred baptism, with the water which issued from the wound of the Saviour's side. I say nothing of the fact that nobody can prove, since none of us knows that he had not been baptized previous to his condemnation.³⁸ 

Such unhesitating appeals as this to "sprinkling," as confessedly true and valid baptism, if only it can be believed to have taken place, reveal to us in a most convincing way the patristic attitude towards this mode of baptism. With whatever stringency trine immersion may have been held the right and only regular mode of baptism, it is perfectly obvious that other modes were not considered invalid and no baptism. We read of those who baptized with a single immersion being condemned as acting contrary to the command of Christ,³⁹ or as making a new law, not only against the common practice, but also against the general rule and tradition of the Church;⁴⁰ and we find the deposition ordered of every bishop or presbyter who transgressed good order by administering baptism by a single immersion:41 but the form or mode is ever treated as having the necessity of order and never as having the necessity of means. 

Accordingly we find that the very mode of baptism against which these charges and canons were directed - that by a single immersion - was easily allowed, when sufficient occasion for its introduction arose. Trine immersion was insisted upon on two symbolical grounds: it represented Christ's three days' burial and His resurrection on the third day; but more fundamentally it represented baptism as into faith in the three persons of the Trinity. "Rightly ye are immersed a third time," says Augustine, "ye who accept baptism in the name of the Trinity. Rightly ye are immersed the third time, ye who accept baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, who on the third day rose from the dead." The Arians in Spain, however, in the sixth century, while following the general custom of trine immersion, explained it as denoting a first, second, and third degree of divinity in the three persons named in the formula. This led some Spanish Catholics to baptize with only one immersion, in testimony to the equality of the Divine Persons in the unity of the Godhead; and when disputes arose as to this divergence from ordinary custom, Leander, Bishop of Seville, appealed for advice in his own name and in that of the other Spanish bishops to Gregory the Great. Gregory replied as follows: 

Nothing truer can be said concerning the three immersions of baptism than the opinion you have yourself given, that diversity of custom does not prejudice the holy Church if the faith be one (quod in una fide nihil afficit sanctae ecclesiae consuetudo diversa). We use trine immersion that we may signify the mystery of the three days' burial, so that as the infant is raised three times from the water, the resurrection on the third day may be expressed. But if any one thinks this is done rather out of veneration for the Holy Trinity, neither does a single immersion in water do any prejudice to this; for, as there is one substance in three Persons, there can be nothing reprehensible in an infant's being immersed either thrice or once, - because in the three immersions the Trinity of Persons may be as well designated as in one immersion the unity of the Godhead. But seeing that now the infant is three times immersed in baptism by heretics, I think that this ought not to be done by you: lest while they multiply the immersions they divide the Godhead; and while they continue as before they glory in the victory of their custom.⁴² 

The application of the principle here is, of course, not to affusion or aspersion but to single immersion; but the broad principle that "divergent custom in unity of faith is no detriment to the holy Church" is quite clearly laid down, and is made the basis of advice which runs counter to all previous custom. This did not mean that all canonical authority should be broken down, or that each church should not order its affairs by its own canons. They of Rome continued to use and to insist upon trine immersion; they of Spain, after a few years' struggle, decreed at the Council of Toledo (633) that only a single immersion should be used thereafter in their churches: and though later offense was taken here and there with the Spanish custom, yet it received the support of both German and French synods, and the Council of Worms (868) finally recognized both practices. But the whole incident shows perfectly clearly that a distinction requires to be drawn between regular or canonical and valid baptism; and the passages which have been quoted from Cyprian, Augustine, and Gregory, when taken together, seem to show that the Church of that age did not contemplate the possibility that difference in mode of baptism could operate to the absolute invalidation of the rite. We meet with no evidence from the writings of the Fathers that baptism by affusion was held anything other than irregular and extraordinary; but we meet with no evidence that it was accounted void: it was even held, on the contrary, imperative duty in case of necessity, whether on account of paucity of water or on account of the weakness of the recipient.  

The evidence of the practice of affusion as something more than an unusual and extraordinary mode of baptism which fails us in the writings of the Fathers, seems to be provided, however, in the monumental representations of the rite. The apparent evidence of the monuments runs, indeed, oddly athwart the consentient witness of the literary remains. It may be broadly said that the Fathers, from the second century down through the patristic age, represent ordinary and regular baptism to be a rite performed on perfectly nude recipients by a form of trine immersion. In seemingly direct contradiction to this literary evidence, we read in one of the latest and most judicious handbooks of Christian archaeology: "It is most noteworthy that from the second to the ninth century there is found scarcely one pictorial representation of baptism by immersion; but the suggestion is almost uniformly either of sprinkling or pouring."43 Representations which clearly indicate immersion neither were impossible nor are altogether lacking;⁴⁴ but they bear no proportion in number to those which seem to imply the act of pouring, and when clear are usually of late date. On the other hand, representations in which affusion seems to be implied are of all ages and comparatively numerous. The fact is so obvious, indeed, that with a bald statement of it we might be tempted to conclude that the literary and monumental evidences stand in hopeless contradiction. 

Any survey of the monumental evidence which would hope to be fruitful must begin with a sharp distinction between two series of representations - those which depict the historical scene of the baptism of Christ, and those which depict ordinary baptism. The treatment of neither of these subjects has escaped influence from the other. Artists seeking to represent the rite of baptism have not always given a perfectly realistic rendering of the service as seen by them day after day in their own baptistery, but have allowed reminiscences of familiar representations of our Lord's baptism to affect their treatment. And on the other hand they have not been able to exclude the influence of the rite of baptism as customarily administered before their eyes, from affecting their representation of Christ's baptism. Even the most incongruous features from ordinary baptism have sometimes with great naïveté been permitted to enter into their pictured conception of Christ's baptism; thus very early our Lord is represented as of immature age, and later He is even sometimes placed in a sculptured marble font.⁴⁵ But despite the influence exerted upon one another by the two series of representations, they stand in very different relations to our present inquiry; and must be used not only separately but in different ways. Representations of the baptism of Christ have a definite historical scene to depict, and can tell us what contemporary baptism was like only accidentally and so far as the artist has forgotten himself. Representations of the rite of baptism on the other hand are available as direct witnesses of Christian usage, except in so far as they may be judged to depict what was conceived to be ideal baptism rather than what was actual at the date of their production, or to have been affected by traditional modes of representation or by influences from parallel scenes, as, for example, from the representations of the baptism of Christ. Each series may, however, have something to teach us in its own way, as to how Christians baptized in the earlier ages of the Church. 

The sequence of representations of the baptism of Christ may be very conveniently examined in the plates of Dr. Josef Strzygowski's "Iconographie der Taufe Christi," to which he has prefixed a very illuminating discussion. Dr. Strzygowski cannot be acquitted, indeed, of bending his material a little here and there to fit what he is led, from the literature of that age, to expect the representation of baptism to be in each age. The purity of his induction is thus marred, and the independence of the testimony of the art-evidence to some degree affected. But he has placed in his reader's hands, both in the course of the discussion itself and in the series of representations given in his plates, ample material to guard against the slight deflection which may arise from this cause. The series of representations of the baptism of Christ begins with a fresco in the crypt of Lucina in the Roman catacombs, which seems to belong to the opening of the second century.⁴⁶ Here Christ is represented as being aided by John to step up out of the river in which He is still immersed almost up to His middle. Then, there is a somewhat enigmatical fresco in the catacomb of Praetextatus, assigned to the end of the second or beginning of the third century, which is variously interpreted as a representation of our Lord's baptism (so Garrucci and Roller) or of His crowning with thorns (so Martigny and De Rossi).⁴⁷ In this picture Christ stands, clothed, on the ground, while a second figure stretches over His head something which looks like a twig, and there is a cloud of something surrounding His head. If baptism be represented here, it is evidently conceived as a simple affusion. After the frescoes, come a series of representations on sarcophagi belonging to the early post-Constantinian age. As a type,⁴⁸ these represent Christ as a boy, naked, generally in full face, with the head turned slightly to the left towards John, and the arms hanging down. John either holds his right hand over Christ or rests it on His forehead. Jordan pours its water out of a lump of rock, hanging over Christ from behind; while a dove generally flies near the rock. Among these representations there are also some, as, for example, the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (d. 359), in which lambs symbolically take the place of persons; and either light or water or something else is poured from the beak of the dove on the head of the lamb which represents Christ.⁴⁹ On the cover of a fourth century sarcophagus in the Lateran,⁵⁰ John is represented as pouring water on the head of Christ from a bowl: but Strzygowski points out that this portion of the sculpture is a later restoration. The Ravenna Mosaics come next in point of time: and in the primary one of these - that in the Baptisterium Ursianum (middle of fifth century) - John is again represented as pouring water on Christ's head from a bowl; but again Strzygowski considers this feature to be due to later restoration.⁵¹ The typical representation at this date seems to be of Christ, waist-deep in Jordan, with John's hand resting on, and the dove immediately above, His head. From the opening of the eighth century we have a new type which places a jug in the beak of the dove from which water pours upon Christ's head,⁵² while from the twelfth century examples occur in which John pours water from an urn;⁵³ and something of this sort becomes everywhere the ruling type from the fourteenth century on.⁵⁴ As we review the whole series of representations of the baptism of Christ, we are struck with the absence from it of decisive representations of complete immersion: it may be interpreted as a series of immersions, but in any case it is strangely full of hints of incomplete immersion, which can only be accounted for by the influence of contemporary habit in baptizing upon the artist, as he attempted to depict this historical scene. It is hardly possible to understand the manner in which the artists have pictured to themselves the baptism of Christ, without postulating familiarity on their part with baptism as something else than a simple immersion. 

This judgment is fully borne out by the parallel series of representation of the rite of baptism in general. This series also begins in the Roman catacombs - in the so-called sacramental chapel of the catacombs of Callistus, where we have two frescoes dating from the opening of the third century.⁵⁵ In both of these the river is still presupposed - probably a trait in representing baptismal scenes borrowed from the typical instance of the baptism of Christ. Into it the neophyte has descended, but the water scarcely reaches his ankles. John stands on the adjoining ground with his right hand on the neophyte's head. In one of the pictures a cloud of water surrounds the head. In neither case is a complete immersion possible; and in one of them affusion seems to be evident. For the period after Constantine⁵⁶ we have three especially important monuments: a gravestone from Aquileia⁵⁷ on which the neophyte stands in a shallow font and water descends on him from above; a silver spoon from Aquileia⁵⁸ on which the water descends on the head of the neophyte from the beak of the dove; and a glass fragment found in the ruins of an old Roman house, representing a girl upon whom water descends from a vase, while she is surrounded with spray from it.⁵⁹ The representation of the baptism of St. Ambrose on the famous Paliotto in S. Ambrogio at Milan, comes from a later date (ca. 827). Here the recipient stands in a font up to his middle and the priest pours water on his head from a vase.⁶⁰ The later examples fall entirely in line with these earlier ones; says Kirsch:61 "A complete immersion is not found in the West even in the first period of the middle-ages, but the form of representation which we have just noted goes over into the later art with certain modifications." We need not pause to note the examples that are adduced in illustration of what seems the general course of later art-representations: our interest will naturally center in the earlier examples already cited. In them there seems to be borne an unbroken testimony to baptism by affusion. 

It is, of course, impossible to believe that the literary and monumental testimony as to the mode of baptism prevalent in the patristic Church, is really as contradictory as it might at first sight seem. Reconciliation of the two lines of evidence has naturally been sought by the students of the subject; and equally naturally, in different directions. Sometimes the method adopted seems only forcibly to subject one class of evidence to the other. Dr. Withrow, for example, seems ready to neglect the literary evidence in favor of the monumental, speaking of immersion as if it were only a fourth or fifth century corruption of the earlier rite represented in the art remains, and pleading, against its primitive employment, that it is not represented in the catacombs and that the early fonts are not suitable for it - with an inclination to include among the fonts the so-called benitièrs or "holy-water vessels" of the catacombs.⁶² On the other hand, it is not uncommon to see the monumental evidence set practically aside in favor of the literary. This is done in some degree, as we have seen, even by Strzygowski. A tendency towards it is found also even in so judicious a writer as the late Dr. Schaff,⁶³ who pleads that, as it is impossible to depict the whole process of baptism, we must read the monumental representations as giving only one moment in the complete trine immersion witnessed to in the contemporary literature, and not treat them as representing the whole rite - though he does not stop to tell us what part affusion plays in an ordinary immersion. The fullest and most plausible statement of this point of view is made by Victor Schultze in his "Archäologische Studien über altchristliche Monumente."64 Quoting De Rossi's opinion that the baptism of the boy depicted in the catacombs of St. Callistus with a cloud of water about his head, is a mixed form of immersion and affusion, he comments thus: "Such a rite, however, never in reality existed,⁶⁵ and is seen to be an illusion from the consideration that aspersion is nothing else than a substitute for immersion and was but gradually developed out of it. The first traces of aspersion are found among the Gnostics, and this circumstance, as well as the blame which Irenaeus had for the rite, are proof that the Church had not adopted aspersion in the third century." He proceeds to remark that if the fresco is of Tertullian's time, it must certainly represent immersion, as that Father knows no other baptism;⁶⁶ and then explains the scene as representing the moment when the candidate is just rising from the water after immersion, and the water brought up with him is streaming from his head and person; whereas, if aspersion had been the idea of the artist, he would doubtless have placed a vessel in the hand of the administrator, as is done in later pictures. These very acute remarks overlook, however, two decisive facts - the facts namely that the water in which the youth stands is too shallow for immersion, and that this fresco does not stand by itself but is one of a series of representations, no one of which speaks clearly of immersion, and many of which make aspersion perfectly clear. Such an explanation of the one picture as Schultze offers would only render the explanation of the series as a whole impossible.⁶⁷ 

Rather than adopt either of these extreme views which would imply the untrustworthiness of one or the other lines of evidence, it would be easier to believe that the monumental evidence represented the actual practice of the Church while the literary evidence preserved the canonical form of the Church. It would be no unheard-of thing if the actual practice varied from the official form: indeed, we know as a matter of fact, that not only have such changes in general, but that this change in particular has usually taken effect in practice before it has been recognized in law. It was only because actual baptism had come to be by affusion that the Western Church was led in later ages to place affusion on a par in her formularies with immersion: and the same history was subsequently wrought out in the English Church. It would not be at all inconceivable, that from the beginning the actual celebration of baptism differed somewhat from the formal ritual; and this difference might well underlie the different testimony borne by the monuments as representations of what was actually done, and by the Fathers as representatives of the formal ritual. Whether and how far this hypothesis will avail or is needed for the explanation of the facts before us, may be left, however, for subsequent consideration. 

We need to note, now, certain other suggestions which have been made for the harmonizing of the divergent lines of evidence, from which we shall gain more light upon the problem. Mr. Marriott,⁶⁸ for example, supposes that early baptism included both immersion and affusion, something as the modern Armenian rite does; and that the artists have chosen the moment of affusion for their representation. This acute suggestion, however, scarcely offers a complete explanation of the facts. For unless affusion was the characteristic and determining element in baptism, it will be difficult to account for the almost unvarying choice of this moment in the rite for representation. It is needful to bear in mind the unsophisticated and unconscious nature of monumental testimony; the artist, seeking to convey the idea of baptism to the observers of his picture, would choose for representation, out of mere necessity, a moment in the rite which would at once suggest "baptism" to the beholders of his work. Mr. Marriott's view does not seem, then, to remove the conflict between the literary and monumental evidence; the literary evidence represents immersion, and the monumental evidence affusion; as the characteristic feature of the rite. M. Roller has still another useful suggestion: he distinguishes localities, remarking that in the Orient and Africa, baptism may have been by "a triple immersion and a triple emersion, accompanied by a triple confession of faith in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost," while in Rome Christians may have been for a time satisfied with "an immersion less complete." Our attention is thus at least called to the important fact that our early monumental evidence is local - confined to Rome and Roman dependencies. But again the explanation is inadequate for the whole problem: the conflict exists in Rome itself. It is not only the second and third century pictures, but also the representations from the fifth and sixth and seventh centuries and beyond, in which stress is laid on the moment of affusion. When Jerome and Leo and Pelagius and Gregory were speaking of trine immersion as of order in Rome, the artists were still laying stress on affusion. 

The only theory known to us which seems to do full justice to both classes of facts - those gathered from the literature and monuments alike - is that which De Rossi has revived⁶⁹ and given the support of his great name. This supposes that normal baptism was performed in the early Church by a mode which united immersion and affusion in a single rite - not, as in the Armenian rite, making them separate parts of a repeated ritual.⁷⁰ We shall arrive, indeed, at something like this conclusion if we will proceed simply by scrutinizing the two lines of evidence somewhat sharply. We will observe, for example, that though affusion is emphasized by the monuments, it is not necessarily a simple affusion. The candidate stands in water, which reaches to his ankles or even to his knees in the earlier pictures, and in later ones to his waist or above. Hence Dr. Schaff says, "Pouring on the head while the candidate stands on dry ground, receives no aid from the Catacombs. . . ."71 This is a rather extreme statement. The fresco in the catacomb of Praetextatus, if it be thought to represent baptism, would be a very early example to the contrary;⁷² and symbolical representations on somewhat later monuments - as for instance that on the sarcophagus of Bassus - do not indicate water below. But if it be read only as a general remark, it is worthy of remark. The points of importance to be gleaned from the monuments are that the candidate was baptized standing, ordinarily at least standing in water, and the affusion was a supplement to the water below. And if we so read the monuments we shall find ourselves in no necessary disaccord with the literary notices. The idea in any case would be an entire bath. The candidate standing in the water, this could be accomplished either by sinking the head beneath the water or by raising the water over the head. The monuments simply bear their witness to the prevalence of the latter mode of completing the ordinance. And when we once perceive this, we perceive also that the pictured monuments do not stand alone in this testimony. The extant fonts also suggest this form of the rite. And the literary notices themselves are filled with indications that the mode of baptism thus suggested was the common mode throughout the Christian world. This is implied, indeed, in the significance attached to the baptism of the head.⁷³ "When we dip our heads in water as in a grave," says Chrysostom, "our old man is buried; and when we rise up again, the new man rises therewith."74 The ritual given in the "Catechesis" of Cyril of Jerusalem (347)⁷⁵ contains the same implication; we are told that the candidates, after having confessed their faith, "dipped themselves thrice in the water, and thrice lifted themselves up from out thereof." The same may be said of the West Gothic rite for blessing the font: "God who didst sanctify the fount of Jordan for the salvation of souls, let the angel of thy blessing descend upon these waters, that thy servants being bathed (perfusi) therewith,"76 etc.; and in general of the occasional use of perfusus as a designation of the catechumen.⁷⁷ Perhaps, however, the exact nature of the literary evidence and the precision with which it falls in with this conception of the mode of ancient baptism, may be best exhibited by the adduction of a single passage, extended enough to convey the writer's point of view. We select somewhat at random the following account of baptism by Gregory of Nyssa:78 

But the descent into the water, and the trine immersion of the person in it, involves another mystery. . . . Everything that is affected by death has its proper and natural place, and that is the earth in which it is laid and hidden. Now earth and water have much mutual affinity. . . . Seeing, then, [that] the death of the Author of our life subjected Him to burial in earth . . . the imitation which we enact of that death is expressed in the neighboring element. And as He, that Man from above, having taken deadness on Himself, after His being deposited in the earth, returned back to life the third day, so every one who is knitted to Him by virtue of His bodily form, looking forward to the same successful issue, I mean this arriving at life by having, instead of earth, water poured on him (evpiceo,menoj), and so submitting to that element, has represented for him in the three movements the three-days-delayed grace of the resurrection. . . . But since, as has been said, we only so far imitate the transcendent Power as the poverty of our nature is capable of, by having the water thrice poured on us (to. u[dwr tri.j evpicea,menoi) and ascending again up from the water, we enact that saving burial and resurrection which took place on the third day, with this thought in our mind, that as we have power over the water both to be in it and to arise out of it, so He too, Who has the universe at His sovereign disposal, immersed Himself in death, as we in the water, to return to His own blessedness. 

Does it not look as if baptism was to Gregory very much what it is depicted on the monuments - an immersion completed by pouring? 

We may, then, probably, assume that normal patristic baptism was by a trine immersion upon a standing catechumen, and that this immersion was completed either by lowering the candidate's head beneath the water, or (possibly more commonly) by raising the water over his head and pouring it upon it. Additional support for this assumption may be drawn from another characteristic of the patristic allusions to baptism. It is perfectly clear that baptism was looked upon by the Fathers - however much other symbolisms attached themselves to it - primarily as a bath. It is not necessary to multiply passages in support of so obvious a proposition.⁷⁹ One of the favorite designations of baptism was "the bath," and the Greeks delighted in the paronomasia which brought together the two words loutro,n and lu,tron. It will suffice here to cite a few passages from Tertullian, merely by way of examples of what could be copiously adduced from the whole series of the Fathers: "Since we are defiled by sin," he says,⁸⁰ "as it were by dirt, we should be washed from those stains by water." "We enter then the laver once, - once our sins are washed away, because they ought never to be repeated. But the Jewish Israel bathes daily, because he is daily being defiled; and for fear that defilement should be practiced among us also, therefore was the definition concerning the one bathing made. Happy water, which once washes away; which does not mock sinners; which does not, being infected with the repetition of impurities, again defile them whom it has washed."81 Our hands "are clean enough, which together with our whole body we once washed in Christ. Albeit Israel washed daily all his limbs over, yet he is never clean."82 In the divers "washings" of the heathen, he tells us, they "cheat themselves with widowed waters," that is, with mere water, without the accompanying power of the Holy Ghost.⁸³ "Moreover," he continues, "by carrying water around and sprinkling it, they everywhere expiate country seats, houses, temples, and whole cities; at all events, at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptized; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is their regeneration, and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries. Among the ancients again, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was wont to go in quest of purifying waters. Therefore, if the mere nature of water, in that it is the appropriate material for washing away, leads men to flatter themselves with a belief in omens of purification, how much more truly will waters render that service, through the authority of God, by whom all their nature has been constituted!" For Tertullian, thus, the analogues of baptism were to be found in the Jewish lustrations and the heathen rites of cleansing; and so fundamental is this conception of baptism to him, that it takes precedence of every other; though these rites were performed by sprinkling they yet remain rites of the same class with baptism. 

This primary conception of baptism as a cleansing bath, seems to find an odd illustration in the form of the early Christian baptisteries. When separate edifices were erected for baptism their models appear to have been drawn from the classic baths. " When the first baptisteries were built," writes Mr. G. Baldwin Brown,⁸⁴ " we have no means of knowing; but both their name and form seem borrowed from pagan sources. They remind us at once of the bathing apartments in the Thermae, and the fact that Pliny, in speaking of the latter, twice uses the word baptisteria, seems to point to this derivation." If this is true, the Baptistery is emphatically the Christian "Bath-house." Lindsay⁸⁵ adds some congruous details as to the font itself. "The Font," he writes, "is placed in the centre of the building, directly underneath the cupola; in the earliest examples, as in the baptistery adjoining the Lateran, it consists of a shallow octagonal basin, descended into by three steps, precisely similar to the pagan bath - in later instances it has more resemblance to an elevated reservoir.⁸⁶ The figure of the octagon was peculiarly insisted on; even when the baptistery itself is round, the cupola is generally octagonal, and the font almost always so. This may have been, in the first instance, mere imitation of the pagan baths, in which the octagon constantly occurs. . . ." Having obtained their models of the baptistery from the surrounding heathendom, it may possibly be that the early Christians the more readily leaned toward completing their symbolical bath by pouring, that that was one of the common modes of bathing among the ancients-as appears for example in Ovid's description of Diana's bath, "when her attendants 'urnis capacibus undam effundunt.'"87 But we are bound to remember in this connection that the early representations of baptism do not seem to borrow at all from heathen representations of their purificatory rites,⁸⁸ but exhibit, as Strzygowski points out, entire independence in treating their subject, although borrowing, of course, the forms of the antique. 

The crowning indication, however, that we have found the true form of early Christian baptism in a rite performed on an erect recipient, standing in water, and completed indifferently by sinking the head beneath the water or raising the water above the head, is supplied by the fact that, on assuming this as the early practice, we may naturally account for the various developments of later practice. In such a rite as this, both later immersion and affusion can find a natural startingpoint; while the assumption of either a pure immersion or a pure affusion as a starting-point will render it exceedingly difficult to account for the rise and wide extension of the other mode. To point to the growing influence of the symbolism of death and resurrection with Christ attached to baptism, as making for a rite by immersion, or to the lax extension of clinic aspersion as making for a rite by affusion,⁸⁹ will no doubt help us to understand the development of either practice; but only on the assumption of a starting-point for the assumed developments such as the mode now under consideration supplies. Nor need we confine ourselves to the broad developments of the rite. The assumption of the mode suggested will account also for numerous minor elements in the later rites. It will account, for example, for the insistence still made throughout the East upon holding even the infant erect in the act of baptism. Indeed, on assuming this to have been early Christian baptism over a wide extent of territory, numerous peculiarities of Oriental services at once exhibit themselves as survivals of earlier practice. In this category belong, for instance, the Nestorian usage of thrice dipping the head of an already partially submerged candidate; the various mixtures of the two rites among the Copts and Armenians; the preservation of a partial immersion and trine affusion among the Syrians, and the like. When we add to the explanation of the apparent conflict between the early literary and monumental evidence which the assumption of this mode of baptism offers, the further explanation which it supplies of later developments in the rite, it would seem that we had discovered in it the actual form in which early Christians were accustomed to celebrate the initiatory rite of their religion. 

Whether this early mode of baptism - underlying, as it would seem, all the notices and practices which have come down to us - represents truly the original mode of baptism as handed down to the Church by the apostles, requires further consideration. Our earliest literary and monumental evidence alike comes from the second century. The frescoes in the catacombs of Praetextatus and Callistus date from the end of the second century or the opening of the third - the age of Tertullian, who is probably the earliest Latin writer to whom we can appeal as a witness to the prevalent mode of baptism. In the East the evidence runs back a little further. The account of baptism given by Justin Martyr, indeed, scarcely conveys clear information as to the mode of its administration. The candidates, he tells us,⁹⁰ "are conducted to a place where there is water, and they are regenerated (avnagennw/ntai) after the same manner of regeneration as that in which we ourselves were regenerated. For they then make their ablution (to. loutro.n poiou/ntai) in the water, in the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost." This defect is now supplied by "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," which, however, may in this part be little if any older than Justin. Its directions for baptism⁹¹ run thus: "Now concerning baptism, baptize thus: Having first taught all these things, baptize ye into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in living water. And if thou has not living water, baptize into other water; and if thou has not cold, then in warm. But if thou has neither, pour water thrice upon the head in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It is certain, therefore, that by the middle of the second century some such mode of baptism as we have suggested - a form of immersion though not without allowance of a simple affusion in case of need - was practised in the Church. We may even be bold enough to say that at this date some such mode was probably the practice of the Church. This evidence, of course, has a retrospective value. What was the practice of the Church a decade or so before the middle of the second century was probably the usage also of a somewhat earlier day. But we must be chary of pursuing such a presumption too far. Christian institutions in the middle of the second century, and much more at its end, were not the unaltered institutions of the apostolic age. The bishop, for example, was already a different officer from what he was in the days when the New Testament was writing; and the Epistle of Clement of Rome witnesses to quite another church system from that which was in operation in the days of Irenaeus. The "Teaching" itself, in other items of church order, brings before us a later stage of Christian life and practice than the first. The second century, in a word, marks a considerable advance on the first in the development of church usages; and it is necessary to exercise great caution in assuming what we find to be the practice of this century to be also apostolic, merely because it represents the earliest usage which we can trace. 

In these circumstances we shall welcome any further line of investigation which promises to throw light on our problem, and turn therefore with some interest to inquire after the relation of Christian baptism to what is known as proselyte-baptism or the rabbinical custom of initiating proselytes into the Jewish faith by a formal and complete ablution. In this, many scholars find the original of Christian baptism, thus tracing the genealogy of the latter through the baptism of John to a well-understood and commonly practised Jewish ritual. It is argued that there is no evidence from the New Testament notices that Christ was instituting a rite that was new in the sense that its form or mode was a novelty; or that when John called on the people to come to his baptism, he needed to stop and explain to them what this "baptism" was and how they were to do it. On the contrary, it appears that Christ and John expected to be thoroughly understood from the beginning, and only implanted a new significance in an old rite, now adapted to a new use. But what could have been the older rite on which baptism was based, it is asked, except the proselyte-baptism which we find in the next age the established practice of the Jews? If, however, Johannic and Christian baptism were thus adopted, so far as the form of the rite is concerned, from proselyte-baptism, a means is opened to us for discovering how baptism was administered in the first age of the Church which no one can venture to neglect. If we can determine the mode of baptism in proselyte-baptism, we raise a strong presumption that it was in this mode also that our Lord and His apostles baptized. The path thus pointed out is certainly sufficiently hopeful to justify our exploring it.⁹²

It is scarcely possible to overstate the importance which the rabbis attached to baptism, in the reception of proselytes. It was held to be absolutely necessary to the making of a proselyte; and though Rabbi Eliezer maintained that circumcision without baptism sufficed, Rabbi Joshua on the other hand contended that baptism without circumcision was enough, while the scribes decided that both rites were necessary. One might indeed become in some sort a proselyte without baptism; but though he were circumcised, he remained ywG until he was baptized, and children begotten in the interval would still be ~yrzmm, spurii. If he would become a "proselyte of righteousness," "a child of the covenant," a "perfect Israelite," he must be both circumcised and baptized. The regulations required that those purposing thus becoming Jews should first be fully instructed in what it was to be a Jew and what the step they were contemplating meant for them. When the time came for their admission into the number of the covenant people, three things entered into the initiatory rite: circumcision, hl'ymi; baptism, hl'ybij.; and sacrifice, !B'r.q'. Baptism was delayed after circumcision until the wound was healed, and meanwhile the instruction continued. When the day for it arrived, the proselyte, in the presence of the three teachers who had also witnessed his circumcision and who now served as witnesses of the baptism under the name of "fathers of the baptized," corresponding to the nature of the baptism as a "new birth," cut his hair and nails, undressed completely, and entered the water until his arms were covered. The commandments were now read to him, and, solemnly engaging to obey them, he perfected the baptism by completely immersing himself. The completeness of the immersion was of such importance that "a ring on the finger, a band confining the hair, or anything that in the least degree broke the continuity of contact with the water, was held to invalidate the act."93 There remained now only the offering of the sacrifice, and when thus "blood was spilt" for him, the proselyte had ceased to be in any sense a heathen. In his baptism, he had been "born anew," and he came forth from the water "a new man," "a little child just born," "a child of one day." So entirely had his old self ceased, that it was held that all his old relations had passed away, the natural laws of inheritance had failed, and even those of kinship, so that it was even declared that, except for bringing proselytism into contempt among the ununderstanding, a proselyte might marry without fault even his own natural mother or sister.⁹⁴ 

We cannot fail to see at a glance close similarities between this rite as described in the Gemara and the rite of Christian baptism as contemporaneously administered. There is in both the instruction of the candidate both before and while in the font, the godfathers, the immersion, completed in some cases at least by self-baptism,⁹⁵ and the effect of baptism as issuing in a new creature. It is very difficult to believe that neither rite owed anything to the other. But the discovery of connection between the two rites is no immediate proof that one owes its existence to the other. It might be a priori possible, indeed, that the Jewish rite was borrowed from the Christian or that the Christian was based upon the Jewish. And we may judge the similarity too close to admit the likelihood of their being of wholly independent origin - despite the obviousness of a cleansing washing as a rite of initiation and its widespread, independent use as such among pagan religions. Yet the intermediate alternative remains that both rites may have had their roots independently fixed in a common origin, while their detailed similarities were the result of a gradual and only semi-conscious assimilation taking place between similar contemporary rites through a long period, during which each borrowed something from the other. 

We will probably agree at once that it is very unlikely that the Jews directly borrowed their proselyte-baptism from the Christians, or even from John the Baptist, as has been maintained - the latter by Börner and others, and the former by De Wette and others. So immediate a borrowing of so solemn a rite is incredible, when we bear in mind the sharp antagonism which the Jews cherished towards the Christians during this period.⁹⁶ Whether, on the other hand, the Jewish rite may not have lain at the basis of the Christian rite requires more consideration. Our decision in the matter will probably depend on an answer to the stubbornly mooted question whether the Jewish ceremony of proselyte-baptism existed when Christian baptism was instituted. The evidence which we have drawn upon for the description of it comes from the rabbinical literature, beginning with the Gemara. Whether this evidence, however, is valid for a period before the destruction of the Temple admits of very serious question. Professor Schürer has recently argued very strenuously for the existence of the Jewish rite in the time of Christ.⁹⁷ On comparison of the actual evidence adduced by him, however, with that dealt with, say, by Winer in his "Realwörterbuch" - where the opposite conclusion is reached - it does not appear that it has been substantially increased in the interval: The stress of Schürer's argument is laid not on these items of direct testimony - which all come to us from the second century and later - but on general considerations derived from the nature of the case. We require only a slight knowledge of Pharisaic Judaism in the time of Christ, reasons Schürer, to realize how often even a native Jew was compelled by the law to submit to ceremonial washings. Tertullian justly says, "A Jew washes daily, because he is daily defiled." A heathen was, thus, self-evidently unclean and could not possibly have been admitted into the congregation without having subjected himself to a Levitical "washing of baptism." Whatever special testimonies exist to the fact of such a requirement, they are scarcely necessary to support so conclusive a general consideration; against which, moreover, the silence of Philo and Josephus cannot avail, nor the somewhat unintelligible distinction which it is sought to erect between Levitical washings and proselyte-baptism technically so called. Winer on the other hand lays stress on the lateness of the direct testimony to the existence of proselyte-baptism and the silence of Josephus, Philo, and the oldest Targumists, while nevertheless allowing that the proselyte was, of course, compelled to submit himself to a lustration. He only denies that this lustration had already in the time of Christ become fixed, in the case of the proselyte, as no longer an ordinary lustration for the sake of ceremonial cleansing, but a special, initiatory rite, with its time, circumstances, and ritual already developed into what is subsequently known as proselyte-baptism. He thus fully answers in advance Schürer's question of wherein proselyte-baptism differs from ordinary cleansing lustration. In essence and origin, doubtless, in nothing; but very widely when considered as a ritual ceremony with its fixed laws, constituting a part, and in the minds of many the chief part, of the initiation into Judaism. 

In these few words we have already hinted what seems to us the reasonable view to take of the matter. The facts seem to be that direct testimony to the existence of proselyte-baptism fails us in the midst of the second century after Christ, but that nevertheless something of the nature of a cleansing bath must be presupposed from the very beginning as a part of the reception of the proselyte. Delitzsch calls attention to a point which appears to be of importance for understanding the origin of the rite, when he adverts to the connection of this bath with the sacrifice, so that its prescription must date from a time previous to the cessation of the sacrifices. "Its origin also in itself," he remarks,⁹⁸ "presupposes the existence of the Temple, and the cleansings required by its sacrificial services, which were performed by plunge-baths; post-biblical legal language uses the word lbj (cf. II Kings v. 14, LXX evbapti,sato) for these cleansings, while the Pentateuchal Priest-code uses for them the older and vaguer term !ymb wrfb #xr (e.g. Lev. xv. 5, 6, etc.). Beyond doubt cleansing by means of a plunge-bath was already from a very early time demanded of the heathen, after he had been circumcised, as a precondition of his participation in the sacrificial services. We see this from the Jerusalem Targum on Exod. xii. 44, according to which the purchased heathen slave, in order to take part in the passover, must not only be circumcised but also receive a plunge-bath. This is also presupposed in the Mishna (Pesachim viii. 8) as an existing institution, and it is only debated whether the heathen belongs to the class of the simply unclean, who through the plunge-bath became clean by the evening of the same day, or to the class of the unclean-from-a-dead-body whose uncleanness lasted seven days (cf. Lev. xv. 5, 13)." These fruitful remarks seem to us to uncover the origin of proselyte-baptism in a twofold sense. They point us back to the time when it originated;⁹⁹ but in doing so they point us also back to the thing out of which it originated. Witness to it as an important element in the rite of initiation fails, as we ascend the stream of time, in the midst of the second century: nevertheless, it presupposes the sacrifice, a preparation for which it essentially is; and therefore it must have existed in this form and meaning before the destruction of the Temple. It was on the other hand, however, only after the cessation of the sacrifices that it could become an independent element of the rite of initiation: for this, it must have first lost its reference to sacrifice and have acquired a new meaning as a symbolical "new birth." In other words, in the rite of proselyte-baptism, properly so called, we see the result of a development - a development which requires the assumption of its existence before the Temple services ceased in order that we may understand its origin, but which equally requires the assumption that the Temple services had long ceased, in order that we may understand its existing nature as witnessed to in the rabbinical writings. It could not have come into being except as the prerequisite to sacrifice; it could not have grown into its full form until its original relation to sacrifice had been partially obscured in the course of time.¹⁰⁰ Although we must discern its roots set in a time before the destruction of the Temple, therefore, we cannot carry the fullgrown plant back into that period. It was apparently a growth of the second century after Christ; what existed in the first century, and in the time of Christ and John, was not this elaborate and independent initiatory rite, but a simple lustration not distinguishable and not distinguished from other lustrations. 

If, then, we are to seek a point of departure for the rite of Christian baptism in Jewish custom, we cannot find it in the developed rite of proselyte-baptism. Proselyte-baptism and Christian baptism appear rather as parallel growths from a common root. At the base of both alike lie the cleansing lustrations of the Jewish law. It was these, knowledge of which the Baptist counted upon when he came proclaiming his "baptism." This is indeed evident, independently of what has been urged here.¹⁰¹ "The baptism of John and proselyte-baptism," says Delitzsch with great justice, "stand only in indirect relation to one another, in so far as one and the same idea underlies both kinds of baptism as well as the legal lustrations in general, - the idea of the passage from a condition of moral uncleanness to a condition of purity from sin and guilt. . . . There is no reason to assume that the baptism of John or Christian baptism originated in proselyte-baptism, or even that it derived only its form from it. It was, moreover, unlike the economy of God, to build upon a Pharisaic usage and not rather upon an ancient symbol, already sanctified by the giving of the Law on Sinai. John himself assigns the choice of this symbolical rite to divine appointment (John i. 33). . . . Johannic and Christian baptism have, however, in conformity with the nature of the New Covenant as a fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets (Matt. v. 17), over and above their connection with the Law and the Levitical lustrations in general as prescribed in it, also another point of connection in prophecy, in the prediction of a future purification and sanctification through water and the Spirit (Ezek. xxxvi. 25; xxvii. 23 f.; Isa. xliv. 3; Zech, xiii. 1)."102 This cuts to the root of the matter. Christian baptism was not such a new thing that it could not be understood by the disciples to whom it was committed. It had its very close connection with precedent and well-known rites. But its connection was not specifically with proselyte-baptism as subsequently developed into a formal rite of initiation into Judaism; but with the cleansing lustrations from which that in common with this sprung, and with the prophetical predictions of Messianic cleansing. 

The bearing of this conclusion upon the hope that we might learn something of value as to the mode of primitive Christian baptism from the mode in which proselyte-baptism was administered, is obvious. If proselyte-baptism, as known to us with its established ritual, is of second century growth, while the roots of Christian baptism are set, not in it, but in the divinely prescribed lustrations and prophetic announcements of the Old Testament, we are left without ground from this quarter for any stringent inferences as to the mode of the first administration of Christian baptism. The idea of the lustrations was bathing for the sake of cleansing; and the "many baptisms" of the Jews were performed in more modes of application of the water than one. The prophetic announcements in like manner run through all possible modes of applying the water. In any mode of application, it was complete cleansing which was symbolized. Beyond that, it would seem, we cannot proceed on this pathway. 

Our archaeological inquiry as to the mode of Christian baptism leaves us hanging, then, in the middle of the second century. What Christian baptism was like at that point of time we can form a tolerably clear notion of. It was a cleansing bath, usually performed by a form of trine immersion. Exceptions were freely allowed whenever dictated by scarcity of water or illness on the part of the recipient. And the usual mode of administration, certainly at Rome and probably also elsewhere, appears to have been by pouring water on the head of a candidate standing in a greater or less depth of water. A fair presumption may hold that this rite, common in the middle of the second century, represents more or less fully the primitive rite. But we dare not press this presumption very far. Take, for example, the two points of trine baptism and immersion. Are not both in the line of a natural development? Would there not be reason enough for the rise of a threefold ritual in the Christian Church in the fact that they baptized in the Triune name and that the Jews baptized by a single immersion; just as the Catholics in Spain found ground at a later period for baptizing by a single immersion in the fact that the Arians baptized by a trine immersion? Would there not be reason enough for a gradual growth of the rite to a full immersion in the fact that that form of baptism would seem more completely to symbolize total cleansing, was consonant with the conception framed of the river baptism of John, of which our Lord Himself partook, and seemed vividly to represent also that death and resurrection with Christ suggested in certain passages of the New Testament? All the materials certainly existed for the development of such a form of baptism as meets us in the second century, from any beginning which would give the slightest starting-point for such a development. Such being the case, we appear to be forbidden to assume that second century baptism any more certainly reproduces for us primitive Christian baptism, than the second century eucharist reproduces for us the primitive Lord's Supper or the second century church organization the primitive bishop-presbyter. Where, then, it may be asked, are we to go for knowledge of really primitive baptism? If the archaeology of the rite supplies ground for no very safe inference, where can we obtain satisfactory guidance? Apparently only from the New Testament itself. We are seemingly shut up to the hints and implications of the sacred pages for trustworthy information here. But the conclusion to which these hints and implications would conduct us, it is not the purpose of this article even to suggest.

Endnotes:

Reprinted from Bibliotheca Sacra, liii. 1896, pp. 601-644.

Cf. Schaff, "The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 1886, pp. 42-43.

Bjerring, "The Offices of the Oriental Church," 1884, pp. 94f.; cf. p. xxiv. 

Denzinger, "Ritus Orientalium, Coptorum, Syrorum et Armenorum in administrandis sacramentis," i. 1863, p. 17; Butler, "The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt," ii. 1884, p. 267. Cf. the ritual in Denzinger, i. p. 381.

Denzinger, loc. cit. Cf. Washburn, the New York Independent, August 7, 1884. 

I have quoted the words from Egbert C. Smyth (Andover Review, i. 1884, p. 540), who takes them from Chrystal's "History of the Modes of Christian Baptism." Cf. Denzinger, as above, p. 17, and for actual forms, pp. 277, 287, 307.

Butler, "The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt," ii. p. 267; also Bernat, as quoted by Denzinger, loc. cit.

Schaff, "The Oldest Church Manual," 1886, p. 43, note †.

I have quoted this from Smith and Cheetham, "A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," i. 1875, p. 169a. But cf. Denzinger, loc. cit., and for the ritual itself, pp. 387 and 395, where, however, the order of the two halves of the rite differs from that given above, and in both cases the actual baptism is connected with the affusion, and the burial is separated from it. 

Schaff, as above, p. 53, note ‡; cf. in general Whitsitt, article "Baptists," in "Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia" (new edition, 1894).

Stanley, "Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church," 1865, p. 117; Augusti, "Handbuch der christlichen Archaologie," ii. 1836, p. 399.

Cf. Augusti, as above, for somewhat similar facts as to the German churches. The first translated "Tauf-Büchlein," of 1523, and its revision of 1524, alike provided: "Da nehme er das Kind und tauche es in die Taufe"; but the Lutheran Agenda and Forms of Baptism give no precise instructions in the matter. Luther is quoted as in one passage expressing a preference for immersion (Walch, Th. x. s. 2593, cf. 2637); but the theologians (though not without exceptions) treated it as a matter of indifference (e.g. Gerhard, "Loci Theologici," t. ix. pp. 144-147).

"The Journal of the Proceedings of the Assembly of Divines," for August 7, 1644, in Lightfoot's "Works," ed. Pitman, London, xiii. 1824, pp. 299-300. It is inexplicable how persistently the purport of this vote has been misapprehended. Even Mr. (now Professor) James Heron, in his admirable treatise, "The Church of the Sub-Apostolic Age," London, 1888, p. 140, writes: "I may remark that the vote by which the Westminster Assembly thus pronounced pouring or sprinkling legitimate was a very close one - twenty-five to twenty-four." This was not the vote by which they pronounced affusion legitimate - on that they were unanimously agreed: it was the vote by which they pronounced immersion illegitimate. Nor was the discussion upon the Confession of Faith, xxviii. 3, to which Mr. Heron refers it, but upon the Directory for Worship.

"De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus," chap. lxxiv. as quoted by Wall, "History of Infant Baptism," ed. 2, 1707, ii. p. 466, whence also the following facts are derived. 

Bennett, "Christian Archæology," 1890, p. 408, quoting Warren, "The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church."

Cf. Weiss in Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie der christlichen Alterthümer," ii. 1886, p. 828a.

Schaff, "The Oldest Church Manual," 1886, pp. 44-45.

Schaff, op. cit., pp. 51-52.

Cf. Wall, "History of Infant Baptism," ed. 2, 1707, ii. p. 463. 

The Contemporary Review, I. 1886, p. 231. Harnack's comment in his edition of the "Teaching" may be compared: "We have here the oldest evidence for the permission of baptism by aspersion; it is especially important also that the author betrays not the slightest uncertainty as to its validity. The evidences for an early occurrence of aspersion were hitherto not sufficiently certain, either in respect to their date (as the pictorial representations of aspersion; see Kraus, Roma Sotter. 2. Aufl. S. 311f.) or in respect to their conclusiveness (Tert. de poenit. 6; de bapt. 12); doubt is now no longer possible. But scruples as to its complete validity may have been primitive in many lands; nevertheless we can appeal to Eus. Hist. eccl. vi. 46; 14, 15 for this only with reserves; while against it we may appeal to Cyprian, Ep. Nix. 12-14, and to the practice of the Orient." - "Die Lehre der Zwölf Apostel," 1884, pp. 23-24. 

"Doctrina duodecim apostolorum," Tübingen, 1887, p. 22 (vii. 3).

Cf. Bryennios' comment on the Didache at this point; and Bapheidos as quoted by Schaff, op. cit., p. 42.

The Independent, August 7, 1884. Cf. Denzinger, op. cit., pp. 17 f. Dr. Washburn had especially in mind in these words, the Greek, the Armenian, the Armeno-Catholic, and the Jacobite churches.

Ep. lxix. 12-14: Hartel's edition of Cyprian's Letters, in "Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum," Vienna, III. ii. 1871, pp. 760f. The argument is admirably abstracted by Bingham, in his "Origines ecclesiasticae: or the Antiquities of the Christian Church," XI. xi. 5 (see the revised edition, by his great-grandson: London, iii. 1834, pp. 275 ff.).

Dr. E. C. Smyth, Andover Review, i. 1884, p. 540, thinks this refers only to the abridgment in amount of water. 

I have availed myself of the translation in "The Ante-Nicene Fathers," American edition, Buffalo, 1856, pp. 400-401.

Cf. Weiss, article "Krankentaufe," in Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie," ii. 1886, p. 223. 

"Hist. Ecc.," vi. 43.

Bingham, "Antiquities of the Christian Church," XI. xi. 5; Wall, as cited, p. 43; Kraus, as cited, p. 223. 

See Isaac H. Hall, in The Presbyterian Review, ix. 1888, p. 151.

It is so reported by one Mar Michael Chindisi in the introductory remarks to a twelfth century MS. of the Syriac "Hydragiologia," published by Carl von Arnhard (Munich: F. Straub). See the New York Independent, April 11, 1889, p. 15. 

Bingham, as above.

Smith and Cheetham, "A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," i. 1875, p. 167b.

Smith and Cheetham, i. p. 168a.

Butler, "The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt," ii. 1884, p. 399, cf. p. 266. 

"De baptismo," xii. I have availed myself of the translation in the "Ante-Nicene Christian Library," Edinburgh, i. 1869, pp. 245f.

Chap. xliii., "On the Passion of our Lord," p. 165 of the Syriac Text (as reported by Dr. Isaac H. Hall). 

"On the Soul and its Origin," i. 11. I have used the translation in the "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," New York, v. 1887, p. 319.

Pope Pelagius in his "Ep, ad Gaudentium"; quoted by Bingham, as cited, p. 281.

Sozomen and Theodoret: Bingham, loc. cit.

"Apostolic Canons," Can. 42: Bingham, loc. cit., and Kraus, op. cit., p. 828. 

Gregorius Magnus, "Epistolae," lib. i. ep. 41. Cf. Bingham, pp. 282f.; Augusti, pp. 400 f.; Kraus, p. 828: opp. cit. I have made use of Bingham's translation. A similar instance of liberality in judgment by Gregory is the somewhat famous case mentioned by Bede, "Historia ecclesiastica," i. 27. When speaking of the varying Uses of the Roman and Gallican churches, he says that "things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things," and advises Augustine to "select" from "the Roman, or Gallican, or any other Church," "those things that are pious, religious, or correct; to make these up into one body, and instil them into the minds of the English for their use." Surely this is not out of character with Gregory's strictness of home administration, as the Abbe Duchesne ("Origines du culte chrétien," 1889, p. 94) urges, and is closely paralleled by the instance under discussion.

Bennett, "Christian Archaeology," 1890, pp. 406 f. Cf. the statement of Withrow, "The Catacombs of Rome," 1888, p. 535: "The testimony of the Catacombs respecting the mode of baptism, so far as it extends, is strongly in favour of aspersion or affusion. All their pictured representations of the rite indicate this mode, for which alone the early fonts seem adapted; nor is there any early art evidence of baptismal immersion." 

Cf. the example from a Pontifical of the ninth century, in Smith and Cheetham, "A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," i. 1875, pp. 159, 171. 

Cf. plate viii. in Strzygowski's "Iconographie der Taufe Christi," München, 1885, and the remarks on p. 36. 

Given by Strzygowski, plate i. fig. 1; De Rossi, "La Roma sotterranea cristiana," i. 1864, tav. xiv.; Roller, "Les Catacombes de Rome," i. pl. xviii. 1; Kraus, "Roma sott.," ed. 2, p. 139, fig. 18. 

Given by Strzygowski, plate i. fig. 4; Roller, i. pl. xviii. 2; Perret, "Les Catacombes de Rome," i. pl. lxxx. 

Cf. Strzygowski, as above, p. 7; for representations see plate i. 

Given in Strzygowski, i. 12. 

Given in Strzygowski, i. 9; Roller, ii. pl. Ixvii. 3. 

Given in Strzygowski, i. 14.

Strzygowski, viii. 1, and the discussion on pp. 35 f. 

Strzygowski, xiii. 9, and the discussion on p. 49, cf. note 5.

Strzygowski, p. 54, and plates xv. f. 

Strzygowski, i. 2, 3; Roller, i. pl. xxiv. 4 and 5; Garrucci, "Storia della arte cristiana," ii. 1873, tav. vii. 2.

Cf. the account in Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie," ii. pp. 837 f., from which I borrow at this point.

De Rossi, "Bullettino di archeologia cristiana," 1876, tav. i. 2, and pp. 7 ff.; Garrucci, op. cit., vi. 1880, tav. 487, fig. 26.

Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie," ii. p. 342, fig. 189; Garrucci, tav. 462, fig. 8. 

Kraus, ii. p. 837, fig. 484; De Rossi, loc. cit., tav. i. 1; Garrucci, tav. 464, fig. 1. Cf. Strzygowski's note, p. 36 (note 2). 

Strzygowski, viii. 2, cf. p. 36.

In Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie," ii. p. 838.

"The Catacombs of Rome," 1888, pp. 535 ff.

In the notable discussion of Baptism which he incorporated in his edition of the "Didache," as quoted above. The explanations of Garrucci, who finds in each representation a moment subsequent to the completion of baptism itself - confirmation or the like - will belong to the same class of explanations with Dr. Schaff's: and fails for like reasons. 

Wien, 1880, p. 55.

Yet cf. the present-day Oriental practices as above, pp. 345 f.

Yet see how broadly Tertullian deals with the matter in "De bapt.," v.

Professor E. C. Smyth has criticized Schultze's theory in the Andover Review, i. 1884, p. 538. 

In Smith and Cheetham, "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," as cited. 

Kirsch, in Kraus, "Real-Encyklopädie," ii. 1886, pp. 837f., refers us, as to the older existence of this theory, to Ciampini, "Vet. Mon.," ii. 19 ff., and remarks that it is now almost generally accepted, as e.g. by Corblet.

In the Römische Quartalschrift, ii. 1888, pp. 106 f., De Rossi still insists that the performance of the rite by pouring was by no means exceptional in the early Church; he says that the catacombs agree with the oldest form in this matter, as given in the "Didache." 

"The Oldest Church Manual," as cited, p. 41, note. 

Cf. Roller; Garrucci; Bennett (p. 400) ; Smyth (p. 535, note). 

Cf. Schaff, "The Oldest Church Manual," pp. 33, 41. 

Hom. 25 on John iii. 5, as quoted by Bingham, "Antiquities of the Christian Church," XI. xi. 4 (ed. cited, iii. 1834, p. 273). 

Smith and Cheetham, i. p. 157.

Ibid., p. 158.

Ibid., p. 168.

"Oratio Catechetica," or, "The Great Catechism," chap. xxxv. (The " Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," Second Series, v. 1893, pp. 502 f.). 

Cf. Augusti, "Handbuch der christlichen Archaologie," ii. 1836, pp. 313 ff.

"De bapt.," iv. 

"De bapt.," xv.

"De oratione," xiii.-xiv.

"De bapt.," v. 

"From Schola to Cathedral," 1886, p. 146. 

"Sketches of the History of Christian Art," i. 1886, pp. 220f. Cf. Lundy, "Monumental Christianity," 1882, p. 385: "In these Baptismal frescoes, the matter is obviously represented as that of a bath. . . . It was a real washing - a thorough cleansing."

The note adds that it sometimes receives the shape of a sarcophagus in allusion to the "death unto sin" (Col. ii. 12).

Marriott, in Smith and Cheetham, i. 1875, p. 168.

As to these rites see Hermann, "Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Altertümer der Griechen," ed. 2 (Heidelb.: 1858), p. 124, and for the few representations that have come down to us of their lustrations see "Mon. dell' istituto," 1862, tav. lxiv. I owe these references to Strzygowski, p. 2. 

That the rise of aspersion cannot be connected with the practice of infant baptism all history shows. See this briefly indicated by Augusti, as above, p. 398. 

"Apologia," i. c. lxi.

Chap. vii. 

Cf. an interesting discussion in Sabatier's "La Didache," 1885, pp. 84 ff. The direct literature on the subject is copious and easily traced. There is an excellent guide to it, for example, in Schürer's "Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ," § 31, note 302 (E.T. Div. ii. vol. ii. 1891, p. 321). Schürer says that no one has "influenced modern opinion on the subject so much as Schneckenburger." This may be accounted a very happy circumstance, as Schneckenburger's book was a very solid piece of work; and we have not been able to discover that anything has been said since which will materially modify his conclusions. His conclusions are briefly summed up in pp. 183-186 of his book, "Ueber das Alter der jüdischen Proselyten-Taufe," Berlin, 1828. 

Taylor, "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 1886, pp. 51, 52.

Edersheim, "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," ii. p. 743 (Appendix xii.).

Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, as quoted above, pp. 370 f. 

Cf. Delitzsch, in Herzog's "Real-Encyklopädie," xii. 1883, p. 299.

"Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi," ii. 1886, pp. 571 ff. 

Herzog's "Real-Encyklopädie," xii. 1883, pp. 298-299. 

Both Delitzsch and Plumptre (in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," ii. 1863, pp. 943 f.) suppose that proselyte-baptism existed in the time of Christ in a more developed form than I can admit; but they both accord, in general, with the view presented in the text.

The proselytes were still required to promise to sacrifice when the Temple was restored - a survival of the third element in the rite of initiation. 

Cf. e.g. Meyer and Alexander on Matt. iii. 5, 6.

Loc. cit. 

The Twentieth-Century Christ

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

WHAT may very properly be called the Chalcedonian "settlement" has remained until today the authoritative statement of the elements of the doctrine of the Person of Christ. It has well deserved to do so. For this "settlement" does justice at once to the data of Scripture, to the implicates of an Incarnation, to the needs of Redemption, to the demands of the religious emotions, and to the logic of a tenable doctrine of our Lord's Person. But this "settlement" is a mere statement of the essential facts, and therefore does nothing to mitigate the difficulty of the conception which it embodies. The difficulty of conceiving two distinct natures united in a single person remains; and this difficulty has produced in every age a tendency more or less widespread to fall away from the doctrine, or to explain it away, or decisively to reject it. Weak during the Middle Ages, this tendency acquired force in the great intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Reformation; and then gave birth, amid many other interesting phenomena, to the radical reaction against the doctrine of the Two Natures which we know as Socinianism. The shallow naturalism of the Enlightenment came in the next age to the reinforcement of the movement thus inaugurated, and under the impulses thus set at work a widespread revolt has sprung up in the modern church against the doctrine of the Two Natures.

Germany is today the præceptor mundi. And how things stand in the academical circle of Germany Professor Friedrich Loofs informs us in his recent Oberlin lectures. "The whole German Protestant theology of the present time," he tells us, has, "to a certain extent," turned away from the conception of the Two Natures. "In the preceding generation," it seems, "there was still a learned theologian in Germany who thought it correct and possible to reproduce the old orthodox formulas in our time without the slightest modification, viz.: Friedrich Adolph Philippi, of Rostock (1882)." "At present," however, Loofs proceeds, "I do not know of a single professor of evangelical theology in Germany of whom this might be said. All learned Protestant theologians in Germany, even if they do not do so with the same emphasis, really admit unanimously that the orthodox Christology does not do sufficient justice to the truly human life of Jesus, and that the orthodox doctrine of the two natures in Christ cannot be retained in the traditional form. All our systematic theologians, so far at least as they see more in Jesus than the first subject of Christian faith, are seeking new paths in their Christology." No doubt matters have not yet gone so far in lands of English speech; but the drift here, too, is obviously in the same direction, and even among us an immense confusion has come to reign with regard to this fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion.

The alternative of two natures is, of course, one nature: and this one nature must be conceived, naturally, either as Divine or as human. The tendency to conceive of Christ as wholly Divine—so far as it has asserted itself at all—has been rather a religious than a theological tendency, if we may avail ourselves here of this overworked and misleading terminology. It has existed rather as a state of heart, and as a devotional attitude, than as a reasoned doctrine. Nothing has been more characteristic of Christians from the beginning than that they have been "worshippers of Christ." To the writers of the New Testament, the recognition of Jesus as Lord was the mark of a Christian; and all their religious emotions turned to Him. It has been made the reproach of the Evangelists that they—following their sources—were all worshippers of Jesus: and it is precisely on that ground that modern naturalistic criticism warns us that we are not to trust their representations as to His supernatural life on earth. To the heathen observers of the early Christians, their most distinguishing characteristic, which differentiated them from all others, was that they sang praises to Christ as God. A shrewd modern controversialist has even found it possible to contend that the only God the Christians have is Christ. "Christianity," says he, "is pre-eminently the worship of Christ. Far away in the background of existence there may be a power, answering to Indian Brahma or Greek Kronos and conceived as God the Father. But the working, ever-living, ever-active Deity is Christ. He is the creator and preserver of the world, the ruler, redeemer, and judge of men. He and no other is worshipped as God, hymned, prayed to, invoked. To Him have been transferred the attributes of Jehovah. He and no other is the Christian God." If there is some exaggeration here, it is not to be found on the positive side; and G. K. Chesterton is not overstating the matter when he speaks of Christ incidentally as "the chief deity of a civilisation."

This worship of Christ has had, of course, theological results of great importance, some of them even portentous—if, for example, we can with many historians look upon adoration of saints, and especially of the Virgin Mary, as, in part at least, an attempt of the human spirit to supply, outside of the Christ thought of as purely Divine, the human element in the mediatorially conceived Divine relation. But only now and again has it worked back and sought a theological basis for itself by the formal divinitising of the whole Christ. We think here naturally of the Apollinarians, and the Monophysites; but more particularly of confessional Lutheranism, which by its theory of the communicatio idiomatum managed to preserve indeed to theology a human nature for Christ, but at the same time to present a purely Divine Christ to our religious emotions. But we shall have to go back to the Gnostic Docetism of the first Christian centuries for any influential effort speculatively to construe Christ as a wholly Divine Being. If men have here and there forgotten the human Christ in their reverence for the Divine Christ, they have shown no great inclination to explain Christ to thought in terms of the purely Divine.

Revolt from the doctrine of the Two Natures means, therefore, nothing more or less than the explanation of Christ in terms of mere humanity. When we are told by Loofs that the whole of learned Germany has rejected the doctrine of the Two Natures, that is equivalent accordingly to being told that the whole of learned Germany has rejected the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, and construes Him to its thought as a purely human being. It may continue to reverence Him; men here and there may even continue to worship Him. As many of the older Unitarians found it possible still to offer worship to Christ, and incorporated in their official hymn-books hymns of praise to Him as God—such as Bonar's "How shall Death's Triumph end?" in which Christ is celebrated as "The First and Last, who was and is," or Ray Palmer's "My Faith looks up to Thee," in which he is addressed as "Saviour Divine"—so many of our new German Humanitarians still worship Christ. Karl Thieme, for example, who righteously rebukes his fellows for continuing to use such phraseology as "the Godhead," "the Deity," "the Divinity" of Christ, when they know very well that Jesus is not God but only man, yet strenuously argues that He is worthy of our worship, because of what he calls His "representative unity with God." When asked how his worship of Jesus differs in principle from the gross hagiolatry of the Church of Rome, Thieme naïvely and most significantly replies, Why, in this most important respect, that he worships only one such holy one, the Romanists many! The adoring attitude preserved by men of this class towards Jesus—whom they nevertheless declare to be mere man—has called out not unnaturally in wide circles a deep disgust. They are not unjustly reproached with idolatry, are contemptuously dubbed "Jesusites"—worshippers of the man Jesus; and occasion has even been taken from their corrupt Jesus-cult to inaugurate a movement in revolt from Christianity as a whole, wrongfully identified with them, in the interests of a pure and non-idolatrous service of God. Men like Wilhelm von Schnehen and Arthur Drews are thus able to come forward with the plea that in their philosophical cult alone can be found true worship, and do not hesitate to declare that the greatest obstacle to pure religion in the world to-day is precisely this idolatrous adoration of Jesus, interpreted as merely a human being. We can only record it to their honour, therefore, when the majority of those who have given up the Deity of our Lord refuse to worship Him, and, while according to Him their admiration and respect, reserve their religious veneration for God alone.

The present great extension of purely humanitarian conceptions of the person of Christ has, of course, not been attained without a gradual development, in the progress of which there has been enunciated a variety of compromising views seeking to mediate between the doctrine of the Two Natures and the growing Humanitarianism. The most interesting of these is that wonderful construction which has been known under the name of Kenotism, from its vain attempt to intrench itself in the declaration of Paul (Phil. ii. 8) that Jesus, being by nature in the form of God, emptied Himself—as our Revised Version unfortunately mistranslates the Greek verb from which the term, Kenosis, is derived—and so became man. The idea is that the Son of God, in becoming man, abandoned His deity, extinguished it, so to speak, by immersing it in the stream of human life. This curious view bears somewhat the same relation to the tendency to think of Christ in terms of pure humanity that the Lutheran Christology bears to the opposite tendency to think of Him in terms of pure deity. As that was an attempt to secure a purely Divine Christ while not theoretically denying His human nature, so this was an attempt to secure a purely human. Christ without theoretically denying His Divine nature. In effect it gives us a Christ of one nature and that nature purely human, though it theoretically explains this human nature as really just shrunken deity. Therefore Albrecht Ritschl called it verschämter Socinianismus—Socinianism indeed, but a Socinianism differing from the bold Socinianism to which we are accustomed by shyly hanging back and trying to hide itself behind sheltering skirts.

Kenotism differs from Socinianism fundamentally, however, in that Socinianism took away from us only our Divine Christ, while Kenotism takes away also our very God. For what kind of God is this that is God and not God alternately as He chooses, and lays off and on at will those specific qualities which make God the kind of being we call "God," as a king might put off and on his crown, or as a leopard might wish to change his spots but cannot, or an Ethiopian his skin? Of course, this is all—as Albrecht Ritschl again aptly described it, and as Loofs repeats from his lips—"pure mythology"; and the only wonder is that it enjoyed considerable vogue for a while, and, indeed, has not yet wholly passed out of sight on the outskirts of theological civilization. Loofs seems to raise his eyebrows a little as he remarks that, as it has gradually died out in Germany, it has seemed to find supporters in England: "in Sweden, too," he adds, with meticulous conscientiousness, "it was confidently defended as late as 1903 by Oskar Bensow." The English writers to whom he thus refers are men of brilliant parts—such as D. W. Forrest, W. L. Walker, P. T. Forsyth, and latest of all H. R. Mackintosh. But even writers of brilliant parts will not be able to fan the dead embers of this burned-out speculation into life again. The humanitarian theorizers are in search of a true man in Jesus, not a shrivelled God; and no Christian heart will be satisfied with a Christ in whom (we quote Ritschl again) there was no Godhead at all while He was on earth, and in whom (we may add) there may be no manhood at all now that He has gone to heaven. It really ought to be clear by now that there cannot be a half-way house erected between the doctrines that Christ is both God and man and that Christ is merely man. Between these two positions there is an irreducible "either or," and many may feel inclined to adopt Biedermann's caustic criticism of the Kenotic theories, that only one who has himself suffered a kenosis of his understanding can possibly accord them welcome.

On the sinking of the Kenotic sun beneath the horizon, there has been left, however, a certain afterglow hanging behind it. A disposition is discoverable in certain quarters to speak in Kenotic language while recoiling from the Kenotic name; to claim as a Christian heritage the essential features of the Kenotic Christology while declining to lay behind them the precise Kenotic explanation. An isolated early instance of this procedure was supplied by Thomas Adamson, who draws a portrait of Jesus in his "Studies of the Mind in Christ" (1898) which seems to require the assumption of kenosis to justify it, but who vigorously repudiates the attribution of that assumption to him. Much more notable instances are found in such writers as Johannes Kunze of Vienna (now of Greifswald) and Erich Schäder of Kiel, whose formula for the incarnation is that in Jesus Christ the Godhead is "presented in the form of a human life." According to Kunze the Godhead appears in Jesus always as humanly mediated: the two, Godhead and manhood, can never be contemplated apart; all that is human is Divine, and all that is Divine is human. The omnipotence which belongs to His deity appearing in Christ only as humanly mediated, for example, is conditioned on His prayer; Jesus could accomplish all things by the power of prevalent prayer! So also with all the Divine attributes; the result being that we have in Jesus phenomenally nothing but a man, but a man who, we are told, is nevertheless to be thought of as the Eternal God.

Similarly, according to Schäder, God in becoming flesh has not at all ceased to be what He was; He has only become it "in another way." In the place of the doctrine of the Two Natures, Schäder places the idea of what he calls "the Being of God in Jesus"—das Sein Gottes in Jesus—a phrase which becomes something like a watchword with him. "We have here," he says, "a man before us to whom there is lacking not the least thing that is human, a man who is man in everything, be it what it may"; and yet who is just God become flesh, "having ceased to be nothing which He eternally is," but "having only become it in another manner." By what a narrow line this doctrine of "God in human form" is separated from express Kenotism may be observed from the difficulties in which Schäder finds himself when he comes to speak of the act by which the mighty transformation, which he postulates in the Son of God, takes place. Here his language is not only distinctly Kenotic, but extremely Kenotic, assimilating him in his subordinationism and transmutationism to what Loofs does not scruple to speak of as the "reckless" teaching of Gess. "Now, God our Father," he writes, "lets it, lets this Son proceed from Himself as man, and thus enter into history. This is an almighty act of His love, of His reconciling will": "what is in question here is an almighty transformation of the mode of being of the Logos by God." When we are thus told that, "by God's almighty act, God's eternal Son becomes a weak, developing child," we are not so much reassured as puzzled that we are told in the same breath that thus "He does not cease to be what He was, He only becomes the same thing in another way"; nor are we much helped by having it explained to us that even in His pre-existent state the Son of God, because He was Son, was dependent on God, subordinate to Him, and wrought only God's will—so that even in His pre-existent state He used prayer to God, preserved humility in the Divine presence, and lived in obedience to God. It is only borne strongly in upon us that it is an exceedingly difficult task at one and the same time to evaporate and to preserve the true Deity of Christ.

The fundamental formulas with which Kunze and Schäder operate—that the incarnation consists in "the Being of God in Christ," that "God is in Christ in human form"—reappear in perhaps even more purity in the writings of the late R. C. Moberly. "Christ," he says, "is, then, not so much God and man, as God in, and through, and as man." "God, as man, is always, in all things, God as man"; "if it is all Divine, it is all human too." So also W. P. Du Bose wishes us not to forget that "God is most God at the moment when He is most love," and not to fail to recognise God "in the highest act of His highest attribute," confusing external pomp with internal nobility—all of which has the appearance at least of being only a way of laying claim to the inheritance of the Kenotists, while avoiding the scandal of the name. Reviewing Du Bose, Professor Sanday falls in with the notions he here expresses, and pronounces it likely that the moderns in their insistence on the single personality of our Lord, which is both Divine and human—and, apparently, Divine only because it is perfectly human,—have made an improvement on the old Two Nature doctrine of the Creeds. We may perceive from this how completely the movement is but a phase of the zealous propaganda for a one-natured Christ, and but propounds a new method of submerging God in man. This method is to proclaim the paradox that God is most God when He ceases to be God—when He becomes man. For this condescension marks the manifestation at its height of the highest of all the activities of God—Love.

But we may perceive here, too, what may also legitimately interest us, a stage in the drifting of Sanday's Christological views towards the apparently humanitarian position at which they seem ultimately to arrive. In earlier writings Sanday had taught with clarity the essentials of the Trinitarian Christology, and had pronounced himself unfavourable to the Kenotic speculations. In this review of Du Bose he falls in, however, with Kenotic modes of expression; and soon afterwards he is found confessing himself in some sense a Kenotist—while, nevertheless, in the act of propounding what seems really to be a merely humanitarian Christology. For Sanday's final suggestion is to the effect that we should think of Christ as the man into whose subconscious being—which is to be conceived as open at the bottom and through that opening in contact with the ocean of Deity which lies beyond—the waves of this ocean of Deity wash with more frequency, fullness, and force than in the case of other men, and so with more frequency, fullness, and force make themselves felt in the upper stratum of His being, His conscious self, also than in the case of other men. At the basis of this suggestion there lies a mystical doctrine of human nature, which makes the subliminal being of every man the dwelling-place of God. If we only go down deep enough into man's being, we shall find God; and if the tides of the Infinite only wash in high enough, they will emerge into consciousness. Man differs from man, no doubt, in the richness and fullness with which the Divine that underlies his being surges up in him and enters his consciousness; and Jesus differs from other men in being in this incomparably above other men. There is Deity in Him as well as humanity; but not Deity alongside of humanity, but Deity underlying and sustaining His humanity—as Deity underlies and sustains all humanity. The mistake of the orthodox Christology has been to draw the line which divides the Deity and the humanity vertically: let us draw it rather horizontally, "between the upper human medium, which is the proper and natural field of all active expression, and those lower depths which are no less the proper and natural home of whatever is Divine." Thus we shall have a Christ whose life, though, "so far as it was visible, it was a strictly human life," yet "was, in its deepest roots, directly continuous with the life of God Himself." That the same may be said in his measure of every man Sanday expressly affirms, and he as expressly identifies this Divine element which is to be found at the roots of the being of both Christ and all other men with what the Scriptures call "the indwelling of the Holy Spirit." Christ thus becomes just the man in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in greater abundance than in other men. He is not God and man; He is not even God in man; He is man with God dwelling in Him—as, though less completely, God dwells in all men. We have reached here a Christology which substitutes for the incarnation a notion which librates between the two conceptions of the general Divine immanence and the special indwelling of the Holy Spirit. According as the one or the other of these conceptions is given precedence will it find its affinities, therefore, with one or another widely spread form of the humanitarian theorizing now so popular. For there are many about us who, declaring Jesus to be no more than man, wish to explain the Divine that is allowed also to be found in Him on the basis of the Divine immanence; and there are equally many among us who wish to explain it on the basis of the Divine indwelling or inspiration.

Those who occupy the former of these standpoints are prone to speak of Jesus as "a human organism filled with the Divine thought." This conception may be presented in a very crass form, or it may be clothed in very beautiful language and made the vehicle of very fervent expressions of reverence for Christ. "I see," explains James Drummond, "in the beauty of a rose a Divine thought, which is no other than God Himself coming unto manifestation through the rose, so far as the limitations of a rose will permit; but I do not believe that the rose is God, possessed of omniscience, omnipotence, and so forth. . . . So, there are those who have, through the medium of the New Testament and the traditional life of the purest Christendom, looked into the face of Jesus, and seen there an ideal, a glory which they have felt to be the glory of God, a thought of Divine Sonship which has changed their whole conception of human nature, and the whole aim of their life. . . ." Such a conception, we are told by its advocates, is far superior to the "masked God" of current orthodoxy; it "exalts Christ above all men, and gives Him a place at the right hand of God." He was, no doubt, only a man—a human organism—but He was a man whose "attitude of will was such that God could act upon Him as upon no other in the history of humanity." "From the dawn of consciousness the human Christ assumed such an ethical uprightness before God that God could pour Himself out on Christ in altogether exceptional activities." In Him "for the first and only time the Almighty was granted His opportunity with a human soul," and, "as the Master kept Himself in unique ethical surrender to God, God acted upon Him in such a manner as to make the metaphysical relationship also unique. The ethical uniqueness implies and renders inevitable its corresponding metaphysical uniqueness of relation to God." For, we are told, "it is possible for God so to fill a responsive heart with His own spirit that every word of that soul becomes a word of God, that every deed becomes a deed of God, that every feeling reveals the loving heart of God willing to suffer with His children. In short, the life becomes such a life as God Himself would live were it possible for Him to be reduced to human circumstances. God could not suggest any improvement. He would find this soul such an open channel that He could at last pour Himself out to the utmost drop. There would be such complete mutual sympathy that the sorrows of God would become the sorrows of this soul, and the sorrows of this soul the sorrows of God. If in a moment of distress at the onslaught of sin the soul should cry out, 'Why hast Thou forsaken me?' the distress would be as real to God as to the soul, for every sorrow of either God or this soul would cut both ways. The soul would become God's masterpiece. God would throw Himself into its development with such flood that the metaphysical relationship would be beyond anything known to humanity, and beyond anything attainable by humanity. As the supreme work of the Father, and as the supreme response to the ethical cravings of the Father, such a creation could be called in the highest sense the Son of God."

Perhaps we may say that the exaltation of the man Jesus could go little further than this. And we can scarcely fail to observe that we have before us here a movement of thought running on precisely opposite lines from that of the Kenotic theories. In them we were bidden to observe how God could become man; in this we are asked in effect whether it may not be possible to believe that in Jesus Christ man became God. We are naturally reminded at this point that consentaneously with the rise of the Kenotic theories in the middle of the last century there was born also a contradictory theory—that of Isaac A. Dorner—which, with a much more profound meaning, proposed to our thought a solution of the problems of the incarnation which formally reminds us of that just described. Dorner, beginning with the human Jesus, asked us to watch Him become gradually God by a progressive communication to Him of the Divine Being, so that, though at the start He was but man, in the end He should become in the truest and most ontological sense the God-man. The difficulties of such a conception are, of course, insuperable; it would compel us to think of the Godhead as capable of abscission and division, so that it could be imparted piecemeal to a human subject, or of manhood as capable by successive creative acts of being itself transmuted into Godhead. But it was inevitable that this theory, too, should leave some echoes of itself in the confused discord of modern thought.

We hear these echoes in the high christological construction of Martin Kähler. We hear them also in the lower theories of Reinhold Seeberg. According to Seeberg, Jesus Christ is just a man whom the willing God has created as His organ and through whom the personal will of God has so worked that He has become fully one with this personal will of God. "The will of God," he says, "chose the man Jesus for His organ, and formed Him into the clear and distinct expression of His Being. He emphasizes the personal character of the Divine will in Jesus, but he allows no second hypostasis in the Godhead as its Trinitarian background. In his view we can admit the eternal existence of only one thinking and willing Divine personality, though in that one personality there co-existed a threefold tendency of will. That particular tendency of the Divine will-energy which aims at the realization of a church, manifests itself in the man Jesus, and so fully takes possession of Him that in Him it becomes for the first time personal and makes Him really the Son of God. Before God thus created Jesus into His organ there was no second ego standing over against the Father; there pre-existed in the eternal God only the eternal tendency of will to create a church. "What is peculiarly Divine in Christ" is therefore only "the peculiar will-content which we can distinguish from other will-contents, the tendency of the Divine will to the historical realization of salvation." Seeberg thinks that thus he does justice to the Godhead of Christ. He looks upon Him as the Redemptive Will of God forming as organ for itself a human subject and coming to complete personality in it. "Jesus," he says, "in the peculiar contents of His soul is God." "Herrschaft," authority, therefore belongs to Him; but also "Demut," humility; but especially "Herrschaft," for is He not the personal Son of God, the only personal Son of God that ever was or ever will be? "That ever will be," we say: for the question arises, what has become of this personal Son of God now that His life on earth is over and He has ascended where He was before? As before the "Incarnation" the particular Divine will of salvation was not a Divine personality over against the Father, but acquired personality only as it flowed into the human person, Jesus Christ, and formed Him to its organ—has it, now that this man Jesus has passed away from earth, lost again its personality and sunk again into merely the tendency of the Divine will making for salvation? It is Karl Thieme who asks this question. For ourselves, we may be content with observing that in Seeberg's construction it is not God, but only the Divine will of salvation, that becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ; and that Jesus Christ is therefore not God, but only, as we say in our loose everyday language, "the very incarnation" of the Divine will of salvation. We see in Him, not God, but only the will of God to save men—and this seems only another way of saying that Christ is not Himself God, but only the love of God is manifested in and through Him. What we get from Seeberg, then, is obviously not a doctrine of the incarnation, but only another form of the prevalent doctrine of Divine indwelling or inspiration, and it is because of this that Seeberg's theory seems to Friedrich Loofs one of the most valuable of those recently promulgated.

In an interesting passage Loofs selects out of the results of recent speculation the three conclusions which he considers the most valuable, and thus reveals to us his own christological conceptions. These are: "First, that the historical person of Christ is looked upon as a human personality; secondly, that this personality, through an indwelling of God or His Spirit, which was unique both before and after, up to the ending of all time, became the Son of God who reveals the Father, and became also the beginner of a new mankind; and, thirdly, that in the future state of perfection a similar indwelling of God has to be realized, though in a copied and therefore secondary form, in all people whom Christ has redeemed." The central point in this statement is that Christ is a man in whom God dwells. "The conviction," remarks Loofs in his explanation of his views, "that God dwelt so perfectly in Jesus through His Spirit as had never been the case before, and never will be till the end of all time, does justice to what we teach historically about Jesus, and may, at the same time, be regarded as satisfactorily expressing the unique position of Jesus, which is a certainty to faith." He is willing to admit, indeed, that he does not quite know what the dwelling of the Spirit of God in Jesus means; and, indeed, he is free to confess that he does not understand even what is meant by the "Spirit of God." And he agrees that the formula of the indwelling of the Spirit of God in Jesus is capable of being taken in so low a sense as to destroy all claim of uniqueness for Jesus. He does not feel so well satisfied with it, therefore, as Hans Hinrich Wendt, for example, expresses himself as being. But he knows nothing better to say, and is willing to leave it at that, with the further acknowledgment that he feels himself face to face here with something of a mystery. Loofs is a Ritschlian of the extreme right wing, and in his sense of a mystery in the person of Christ, leaving him not quite satisfied with the definition of His person as a man in whom God uniquely dwells, we perceive the height of christological conception to which we may attain on Ritschlian presupposition.

What Ritschl himself thought of Christ it is rather difficult to determine; and his followers are not perfectly agreed in their detailed interpretation of it. He himself warns us not to suppose him to be unaware of mysteries because he does not speak of them: it is precisely of the mysteries, he says, that he wishes to preserve silence. Meanwhile he is silent of all that is transcendental in Christ, His pre-existence, His metaphysical Godhead, His exaltation—if these things indeed belong to Christ. If Jesus had any transcendent Being other than His phenomenal Being as man, Ritschl says nothing about it. He seems, indeed, to leave no place for it. He speaks, no doubt, of the "Godhead" of Christ; but by this he means neither to allow that Christ existed as God before He was man, nor to attribute a Divine nature to the historical Christ, nor to suggest that He has now been exalted to Divine glory. He means merely to express his sense that Christ has the value of God for us—that is to say, that we are conscious that we owe salvation to Him. The "Deity" thus predicated to Him, it is explained, is purely "ethical" and not "metaphysical," and, moreover, is transferable to His people so that His Church, viewed as the sphere of His influence, is as Divine as He is. It is the "calling" of Christ to be the founder of the Kingdom of God; and in fulfilling this "calling" He fulfils the eternal purpose of God for the world and mankind. And it is only because His personal will is thus one with the will of God that the predicate of Godhead belongs to Him. "Christ is God" with Ritschl—thus S. Faut sums up the matter—"so far as He is on the one side the executor, on the other the object of the Divine will." It all comes, we see, at the best, to the conception that Jesus is the unique Revealer of God and Mediator of Redemption; and it is in these ideas that the higher class of Ritschlian thinkers live and move and have their being. To them Jesus is indeed purely human—"mere, man" if you will, though the adjective "mere" is objected to as belittling. On the other hand, however, he stands in a unique relation to God "as the embodiment of God's life in humanity, and the guarantor of its presence and power; in whom God verifies Himself to us as Father and Redeemer." There is indeed no metaphysical Sonship with the Father in question; Sonship is an ethico-religious idea when applied to Jesus. When we call Him Son, we do not mean to declare Him God in a metaphysical sense; we but indicate "His superior mission for humanity as representing and communicating the Father's life." By His "centrality for the whole human race, as the one perfect mediator of the Divine life," He is so identified with God that those who have seen Him may be said to have seen the Father also. Through Him and Him only indeed has the Father ever been seen; in. Him alone is "manifested the Father's ideal of humanity and the Father's purpose of grace toward the sinful." Through Him alone have men or can men come to the knowledge of the Father and to true and full communion with Him. "He is the one supreme Revealer," and "not only utters the thought of God"—who thus speaks through Him—but "incarnates the life of God, which through Him communicates itself to mankind as a redeeming and renewing power."

It is thus, we say, that the highest class of Ritschlian thinkers conceive of Jesus. We must emphasize, however, the words "the highest class." For this sketch of their thought of Jesus goes fairly to the limit of what can be said of Christ's dignity on Ritschlian ground. It not only, of course, gives expression to views which would be deemed impossible by a Schultz, a Harnack, a Wendt, but it transcends also what a Kaftan, a Kattenbusch, a Loofs, a Bornemann might be willing to say. For the whole Ritschlian school Christ is not so much Himself God as the means by which God is made known to us, and the instrument through which we are brought to God—and it is therefore only that they are willing, in a modified sense, to call Him Divine. "The term Divinity, applied to Jesus, expresses at bottom" in Ritschl's usage, says a careful expositor of his thought, "nothing more than the absolute confidence of the believer in the redemptive power of the Saviour." "The Godhead of Christ, therefore," says Gottschick, it expresses the value which the historical reality of this personal life possesses, as the power that produces the new humanity of regenerate and reconciled children of God." It is common, indeed, for Ritschlians, like Herrmann, to repudiate altogether experience of the power of the exalted Christ, and to suspend everything on the impression made by "the historical Christ,"—and often, like Otto Ritschl, they mediate this through the Church to such an extent that Jesus appears merely as the starting-point of a movement propagated through the years from man to man; and He may therefore, without fatal loss, be lost sight of altogether. The Ritschlian conception of Christ must take its place as merely another of the numerous forms which the Humanitarianism of our anti-supernaturalistic age manifests.

For the characterizing feature of recent theories of the person of Christ is that they are all humanitarian. The Kenotic theory, which tried to find a middle ground between the God-man and the merely-man Jesus, having passed out of sight, the field is held by pure Humanitarianism. The situation is very clearly revealed in the classification of the possible christological "schematizations" which Otto Kirn gives us in his "Elements of Evangelical Dogmatics." There are only four varieties of Christology, he tells us, which we need bear in mind as we pass our eye down the labours in this field of all the Christian centuries. These are, in his nomenclature, the Trinitarian, the Kenotic, the Messianic, and the Prophetic Christologies. The former two—the Trinitarian and the Kenotic—allow for a God-man; the first in fact, the second in theory. They are theories of the past. Only the Messianic and the Prophetic are living theories of to-day; and both of these give us merely a man Jesus. They differ only in one respect. Whereas in the Messianic Christology no less than in the Prophetic, Jesus in His self-consciousness as well as in His essential nature belongs to humanity and to humanity only, He is yet held in the Messianic Christology to be God's absolute organ for carrying out His counsel of salvation, and to be endowed for His work by a communication of the Holy Spirit beyond measure, fitting Him for unity with God and constituting Him the head of the community of God. The Prophetic Christology, on the other hand, looks upon Him as merely a religious genius, who in reaction upon His environment has become the unrivalled model of piety and as such the supreme guide to humanity in the knowledge of God and in the religious life. We may conceive of Jesus as the God-endowed man, or as the God-discovering man. In the former case we may see in Him God reaching down to man, to do him good: in the latter man reaching up to God, seeking good. Between these two conceptions we may take our choice: beyond them self-styled "modern thought" will not let us go.

Whether this reduction of Jesus to the dimensions of a mere man marks the triumph of modern christological speculation, or its collapse, is another question. The reduction of Jesus to the dimensions of a mere man was a phase of thought concerning His person which required to be fully exploited. And in that sense a service has been done to Christian thinking by the richness and variety of modern humanitarian constructions. Surely by now every possible expedient has been tried. The result is not encouraging. To him who would fain think of Him as merely a man, Jesus Christ looms up in history as ever more and more a mystery; a greater mystery than the God-man who is discarded in His favour. Say that the union of God and man in one person is intrinsically an incomprehensive mystery. It is nevertheless a mystery which, if it cannot be itself explained, yet explains. Without it, everything else is an incomprehensible mystery: the whole developing history of the kingdom of God, the gospel-record, the great figure of Paul and his great christological conceptions, the rise and growth and marvellous power of nascent Christianity, the history of Christianity in the world, the history of the world itself for two thousand years—your regenerated life and mine, our changed hearts and lives, our assurance of salvation, our deathless hope of eternal life. And yet we are invited to believe Him to have been a mere man, on no other ground than that it is easier to believe him to have been a mere man than a God-man! For that, after all, is what the whole ground of the assertion that Jesus was a mere man ultimately reduces to. It is intrinsically easier to believe in the existence of a mere man than in the existence of a God-man. But is it possible to believe that all that has issued from Jesus Christ could issue from a mere man? Apart from every other consideration, does there not lie in the effects wrought by Him an absolute bar to all humanitarian theories of His Person? The humanitarian interpretation of the Person of Christ is confronted by enormous historical and vital consequences, impossible of denial, which apparently spring from a fact which it pronounces inconceivable; though, apart from this fact, these consequences appear themselves to be impossible of explanation.

The Theology of John Calvin

by Rev. B. B. WARFIELD

[This essay appeared in a booklet published by the Presbyterian Board of Education in 1909]

The subject of this address is the theology of John Calvin and I shall ask leave to take this subject rather broadly, that is to say, to attempt not so much to describe the personal peculiarities of John Calvin as a theologian, as to indicate in broad outlines the determining characteristics of the theology which he taught. I wish to speak, in other words, about Calvinism, that great system of religious thought which bears John Calvin's name, and which also--although of course he was not its author, but only one of its chief exponents--bears indelibly impressed upon it the marks of his formative hand and of his systematizing genius. Of all the teachers who have wrought into it their minds and hearts since its revival in that tremendous religious upheaval we call the Reformation, this system of thought owes most perhaps to John Calvin and has therefore justly borne since then his name. And of all the services which Calvin has rendered to humanity--and they are neither few nor small--the greatest was undoubtedly his gift to it afresh of this system of religious thought, quickened into new life by the forces of his genius, and it is therefore just that he should be most widely remembered by it. When we are seeking to probe to the heart of Calvinism, we are exploring also most thoroughly the heart of John Calvin. Calvinism is his greatest and most significant monument, and he who adequately understands it will best understand him.

It was about a hundred years ago that Max Gobel first set the scholars at work upon the attempt clearly to formulate the formative principle of Calvinism. A long line of distinguished thinkers have exhausted themselves in the task without attaining, we must confess, altogether consistent results. The great difficulty has been that the formative and distinctive principles of Calvinism have been confused, and men have busied themselves rather in indicating the points of difference by which Calvinism is distinguished from other theological tendencies than in seeking out the germinal principle of which it itself is the unfolding.

The particular theological tendency with which Calvinism has been contrasted in such discussions is, as was natural, the sister system of Lutheranism, with which it divided the heritage of the Reformation. Now undoubtedly somewhat different spirits do inform Calvinism and Lutheranism. And equally undoubtedly, the distinguishing spirit of Calvinism is due to its formative principle and is not to be accounted for by extraneous circumstances of origin or antecedents, such as for example, the democratic instincts of the Swiss, or the superior humanistic culture of its first teachers, or their tendency to intellectualism or to radicalism. But it is gravely misleading to identify the formative principle of either type of Protestantism with its prominent points of difference from the others. They have vastly more in common than in distinction. And nothing could be more misleading than to trace all their differences, as to their roots, to the fundamental place given in the two systems respectively to the principles of predestination and justification by faith.

In the first place, the doctrine of predestination is not the formative principle of Calvinism, it is only its logical implication. It is not the root from which Calvinism springs, it is one of the branches which it has inevitably thrown out. And so little is it the peculiarity of Calvinism, that it underlay and gave its form and power to the whole Reformation movement--which was, as from the spiritual point of view a great revival of religion, so from the doctrinal point of view a great revival of Augustinianism. There was, accordingly, no difference among the Reformers on this point; Luther and Melanchthon and the compromizing Butzer were no less zealous for absolute predestination than Zwingli and Calvin. Even Zwingli could not surpass Luther in sharp and unqualified assertion of this doctrine; and it was not Calvin but Melanchthon who paused, even in his first preliminary statement of the elements of the Protestant faith, to give it formal assertion and elaboration.

Just as little can the doctrine of justification by faith be represented as specifically Lutheran. It is as central to the Reformed as to the Lutheran system. Nay, it is only in the Reformed system that it retains the purity of its conception and resists the tendency to make it a doctrine of justification on account of; instead of by, faith. It is true that Lutheranism is prone to rest in faith as a kind of ultimate fact, while Calvinism penetrates to its causes, and places faith in its due relation to the other products of God's activity looking to the salvation of man. And this difference may, on due consideration, conduct us back to the formative principle of each type of thought. But it, too, is rather an outgrowth of the divergent formative principles than the embodiment of them. Lutheranism, sprung from the throes of a guilt-burdened soul seeking peace with God, finds peace in faith, and stops right there. It is so absorbed in rejoicing in the blessings which flow from faith that it refuses or neglects to inquire whence faith itself flows. It thus loses itself in a sort of divine euthumia [greek: cheerfulness], and knows, and will know nothing beyond the peace of the justified soul. Calvinism asks with the same eagerness as Lutheranism the great question, "What shall I do to be saved?" and answers it precisely as Lutheranism answers it. But it cannot stop there. The deeper question presses upon it, "Whence this faith by which I am justified?" And the deeper response suffuses all the chambers of the soul with praise, "From the free gift of God alone, to the praise of the glory of His grace." Thus Calvinism withdraws the eye from the soul and its destiny and fixes it on God and His glory. It has zeal, no doubt, for salvation but its highest zeal is for the honour of God, and it is this that quickens its emotions and vitalizes its efforts. It begins, it centres and it ends with the vision of God in His glory and it sets itself; before all things, to render to God His rights in every sphere of life-activity.

If thus the formative principle of Calvinism is not to be identified with the points of difference which it has developed with its sister type of Protestantism, Lutheranism, much less can it be identified with those heads of doctrine--severally or in sum--which have been singled out by its own rebellious daughter, Arminianism, as its specially vunerable points. The "five points of Calvinism," we have no doubt learned to call them, and not without justice. They are, each and every one of them, essential elements in the Calvinistic system, the denial of which in any of their essential details is logically the rejection of the entirety of Calvinism; and in their sum they provide what is far from being a bad epitome of the Calvinistic system. The sovereignty of the election of God, the substitutive definiteness of the atonement of Christ, the inability of the sinful will to good, the creative energy of the saving grace of the Spirit, the safety of the redeemed soul in the keeping of its Redeemer,--are not these the distinctive teachings of Calvinism, as precious to every Calvinist's heart as they are necessary to the integrity of the system? Selected as the objects of the Arminian assault, these "five-points" have been reaffirmed, therefore, with the constancy of profound conviction by the whole Calvinistic world. It is well however to bear in mind that they owe their prominence in our minds to the Arminian debate, and however well fitted they may prove in point of fact to stand as a fair epitome of Cavinistic doctrine, they are historically at least only the Calvinistic obverse of "the five points of Arminianism." And certainly they can put in no claim, either severally or in sum, to announce the formative principle of Calvinism, whose outworking in the several departments of doctrine they rather are--though of course they may surely and directly conduct us back to that formative principle, as the only root out of which just this body of doctrine could grow. Clearly at the root of the stock which bears these branches must lie a most profound sense of God and an equally profound sense of the relation in which the creature stands to God, whether conceived merely as creature or, more specifically as sinful creature. It is the vision of God and His Majesty, in a word, which lies at the foundation of the entirety of Calvinistic thinking.

The exact formulation of the formative principle of Calvinism, as I have said, has taxed the acumen of a long line of distinguished thinkers. Many modes of stating it have been proposed. Perhaps after all, however, its simplest statement is the best. It lies then, let me repeat, in a profound apprehension of God in His majesty, with the poignant realization which inevitably accompanies this apprehension, of the relation sustained to God by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature. The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having seen God in His glory, is filled on the one hand, with a sense of his own unworthiness to stand in God's sight as a creature, and much more as a sinner, and on the other hand, with adoring wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners. He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that God shall be God to him, in all his thinking, feeling, willing--in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual--throughout all his individual, social, religious relations--is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.

If we wish to reduce this statement to a more formal theoretical form, we may say perhaps, that Calvinism in its fundamental idea implies three things. In it, (i) objectively speaking, theism comes to its rights; (ii) subjectively speaking, the religious relation attains its purity; (iii) soteriologically speaking, evangelical religion finds at length its full expression and its secure stability. Theism comes to its rights only in a teleological view of the universe, which recognizes in the whole course of events the orderly working out of the plan of God, whose will is consequently conceived as the ultimate cause of all things. The religious relation attains its purity only when an attitude of absolute dependence on God is not merely assumed, as in the act, say, of prayer, but is sustained through all the activities of life, intellectual, emotional, executive. And evangelical religion reaches its full manifestation and its stable form only when the sinful soul rests in humble, self-emptying trust purely on the God of grace as the immediate and sole source of all the efficiency which enters into its salvation. From these things shine out upon us the formative principle of Calvinism. The Calvinist is the man who sees God behind all phenomena, and in all that occurs recognizes the hand of God, working out His will; who makes the attitude of the soul to God in prayer the permanent attitude in all its life activities; and who casts himself on the grace of God alone, excluding every trace of dependence on self from the whole work of his salvation.

I think it important to insist here that Calvinism is not a specific variety of theistic thought, religious experience, evangelical faith, but the perfect expression of these things. The difference between it and other forms of theism, religion, evangelicalism, is a difference not of kind but of degree. There are not many kinds of theism, religion, evangelicalism, each with its own special characteristics, among which men are at liberty to choose, as may suit their individual tastes. There is but one kind of theism, religion, evangelicalism, and if there are several constructions laying claim to these names they differ from one another, not as correlative species of a more inclusive genus, but only as more or less good or bad specimens of the same thing differ from one another.

Calvinism comes forward simply as pure theism, religion, evangelicalism, as over against less pure theism, religion, evangelicalism. It does not take its position then by the side of other types of these things; it takes its place over them, as what they too ought to be. It has no difficulty thus, in recognizing the theistic character of all truly theistic thought, the religious note in all really religious manifestations, the evangelical quality of all actual evangelical faith. It refuses to be set antagonistically over against these where they really exist in any degree. It claims them in every instance of their emergence as its own, and seeks only to give them their due place in thought and life. Whoever believes in God, whoever recognizes his dependence on God, whoever hears in his heart the echo of the Soli Deo gloria of the evangelical profession--by whatever name he may call himself; by whatever logical puzzles his understanding may be confused--Calvinism recognizes such as its own, and as only requiring to give full validity to those fundamental principles which underlie and give its body to all true religion to become explicitly a Calvinist.

Calvinism is born, we perceive, of the sense of God. God fills the whole horizon of the Calvinist's feeling and thought. One of the consequences which flow from this is the high supernaturalism which informs at once his religious consciousness and his doctrinal construction. Calvinism indeed would not be badly defined as the tendency which is determined to do justice to the immediately supernatural, as in the first so in the second creation. The strength and purity of its apprehension of the supernatural Fact (which is God) removes all embarrassment from it in the presence of the supernatural act (which is miracle). In everything which enters into the process of the recovery of sinful man to good and to God, it is impelled by the force of its first principle to assign the initiative to God. A supernatural revelation in which God makes known to man His will and His purposes of grace; a supernatural record of the revelation in a supernaturally given Book, in which God gives His revelation permanence and extension ,--such things are to the Calvinist matters of course. And above all things, he can but insist with the utmost strenuousness on the immediate supernaturalness of the actual work of redemption; this of course, in its impetration. It is no strain to his faith to believe in a supernatural Redeemer, breaking His way to earth through a Virgin's womb, bursting the bonds of death and returning to His Father's side to share the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. Nor can he doubt that this supernaturally purchased redemption is applied to the soul in an equally supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

Thus it comes about that monergistic regeneration--"irresistible grace," "effectual calling," our older theologians called it,--becomes the hinge of the Calvinistic soteriology, and lies much more deeply imbedded in the system than many a doctrine more closely connected with it in the popular mind. Indeed, the soteriological significance of predestination itself consists to the Calvinist largely in the safeguard it affords to the immediate supernaturalness of salvation. What lies at the heart of his soteriology is absolute exclusion of creaturely efficiency in the induction of the saving process, that the pure grace of God in salvation may be magnified. Only so could he express his sense of men's complete dependence as sinners on the free mercy of a saving God; or extrude the evil leaven of synergism, by which God is robbed of His glory and man is encouraged to attribute to some power, some act, some initiative of his own, his participation in that salvation which in reality has come to him from pure grace.

There is nothing therefore, against which Calvinism sets its face with more firmness than every form and degree of auto-soterism. Above everything else, it is determined to recognize God, in His son Jesus Christ, acting through the Holy Spirit whom He has sent, as our veritable Saviour. To Calvinism, sinful man stands in need, not of inducements or assistance to save himself; but precisely of saving; and Jesus Christ has come not to advise, or urge, or woo, or help him to save himself; but to save him; to save him through the prevalent working on him of the Holy Spirit. This is the root of the Calvinistic soteriology, and it is because this deep sense of human helplessness and this profound consciousness of indebtedness for all that enters into salvation to the free grace of God is the root of its soteriology, that election becomes to Calvinism the cor cordis of the Gospel. He who knows that it is God who has chosen him, and not he who has chosen God, and that he owes every step and stage of his salvation to the working out of this choice of God, would be an ingrate indeed if he gave not the whole glory of his salvation to the inexplicable election of the Divine love.

Calvinism however, is not merely a soteriology. Deep as its interest is in salvation, it cannot escape the question--"Why should God thus intervene in the lives of sinners to rescue them from the consequences of their sin?" And it cannot miss the answer--"Because it is to the praise of the glory of His grace." Thus it cannot pause until it places the scheme of salvation itself in relation with a complete world-view in which it becomes subsidiary to the glory of the Lord God Almighty. If all things are from God, so to Calvinism all things are also unto God, and to it God will be all in all. It is born of the reflection in the heart of man of the glory of a God who will not give His honour to another, and draws its life from constant gaze upon this great image. And let us not fail punctually to note, that "it is the only system in which the whole order of the world is thus brought into a rational unity with the doctrine of grace, and in which the glorification of God is carried out with absolute completeness." Therefore the future of Christianity--as its past has done--lies in its hands. For, it is certainly.true, as has been said by a profound thinker of our own time, that "it is only with such a universal conception of God, established in a living way, that we can face with hope of complete conquest all the spiritual dangers and terrors of our times." "It, however," as the same thinker continues, "is deep enough and large enough and divine enough, rightly understood, to confront them and do battle with them all in vindication of the Creator, Preserver and Governor of the world, and of the Justice and Love of the divine Personality."

This is the system of doctrine to the elaboration and defence of which John Calvin gave all his powers nearly four hundred years ago. And it is chiefly because he gave all his powers to commending to us this system of doctrine, that we are here today to thank God for giving to the world the man who has given to the world this precious gift.

The Theology of the Reformation

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Reprinted from The Biblical Review, ii. 1917, pp. 490-512 (published by The Biblical Seminary in New York; copyrighted).

Charles Beard begins his Hibbert Lectures on The Reformation with these words: "To look upon the Reformation of the sixteenth century as only the substitution of one set of theological doctrines for another, or the cleansing of the Church from notorious abuses and corruptions, or even a return of Christianity to something like primitive purity and simplicity - is to take an inadequate view of its nature and importance." He wishes us to make note of the far-reaching changes in human life which have been wrought by what we call the Reformation, to observe the numerous departments of activity which have been at least affected by it, and then to seek its cause in something as wide in its extension as its effects. He himself discovers this cause in the "general awakening of the human intellect," which had begun in the fourteenth century and was being "urged on with accelerating rapidity in the fifteenth." In his view the Reformation was merely the religious side of what we speak of as the Renaissance. "It was the life of the Renaissance," he affirms, "infused into religion under the influence of men of the grave and earnest Teutonic race." He even feels justified in saying that, in the view he takes of it, the Reformation "was not, primarily, a theological, a religious, an ecclesiastical movement at all." 

That there is some exaggeration in this representation is obvious. That this exaggeration is due to defective analysis is as clear. And the suspicion lies very near that the defect in analysis has its root in an imperfect sense of values. To point us to the general awakening of the human intellect which was in progress in the fifteenth century is not to uncover a cause; it is only to describe a condition. To remind us that, as a result of this awakening of the human intellect, a lively sense had long existed of the need of a reformation, and repeated attempts had been vainly made to effect it, that men everywhere were fully alive to the corruption of manners and morals in which the world was groveling, and were equally helpless to correct it, is not to encourage us to find the cause of the Reformation in a general situation out of which no reformation had through all these years come. The question which presses is: Whence came the power which achieved the effect - an effect apparently far beyond the power of the forces working on the surface of things to achieve? 

There is no use in seeking to cover up the facts under depreciatory forms of statement. It is easy to talk contemptuously of the "substitution of one set of theological doctrines for another," as it would be easy to talk contemptuously of the substitution of one set of political or of sanitary doctrines for another. The force of the perverse suggestion lies in keeping the matter in the abstract. The proof of the pudding in such things lies in the eating. No doubt it is possible to talk indifferently of merely working the permutations of a dial-lock, regardless of the not unimportant circumstance that one of these permutations differs from the rest in this - that it shoots the bolts. The substitution of one set of theological doctrines for another which took place at the Reformation was the substitution of a set of doctrines which had the promise and potency of life in them for a set of doctrines the issue of which had been death. What happened at the Reformation, by means of which the forces of life were set at work through the seething, struggling mass, was the revival of vital Christianity; and this is the vera causa of all that has come out of that great revolution, in all departments of life. Men, no doubt, had long been longing and seeking after "a return of Christianity to something like primitive purity and simplicity." This was the way that an Erasmus, for example, pictured to himself the needs of his time. The difficulty was that, rather repelled by the Christianity they knew than attracted by Christianity in its primitive purity - of the true nature of which they really had no idea - they were simply feeling out in the dark. What Luther did was to rediscover vital Christianity and to give it afresh to the world. To do this was to put the spark to the train. We are feeling the explosion yet. 

The Reformation was then - we insist upon it - precisely the substitution of one set of theological doctrines for another. That is what it was to Luther; and that is what, through Luther, it has been to the Christian world. Exactly what Luther did was for himself - for the quieting of his aroused conscience and the healing of his deepened sense of sin - to rediscover the great fact, the greatest of all the great facts of which sinful man can ever become aware, that salvation is by the pure grace of God alone. O, but, you will say, that resulted from Luther's religious experience. No, we answer, it was primarily a doctrinal discovery of Luther's - the discovery of a doctrine apart from which, and prior to the discovery of which, Luther did not have and could never have had his religious experience. He had been taught another doctrine, a doctrine which had been embodied in a popular maxim, current in his day: Do the best you can, and God will see you through. He had tried to live that doctrine, and could not do it; he could not believe it. He has told us of his despair. He has told us how this despair grew deeper and deeper, until he was raised out of it precisely by his discovery of his new doctrine - that it is God and God alone who in His infinite grace saves us, that He does it all, and that we supply nothing but the sinners to be saved and the subsequent praises which our grateful hearts lift to Him, our sole and only Saviour. This is a radically different doctrine from that; and it produced radically different effects on Luther; Luther the monk and Luther the Reformer are two different men. And it has produced radically different effects in the world; the medieval world and the modern world are two different worlds. The thing that divides them is the new doctrine that Luther found in the monastery at Wittenberg - or was it already at Erfurt? - poring over the great declaration in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: "The righteous shall live by faith." Émile Doumergue puts the whole story into a sentence: "Two radically different religions give birth to two radically different civilizations." 

Luther himself knew perfectly well that what he had done for himself, and what he would fain do for the world, was just to substitute a new doctrine for that old one in which neither he nor the world could find life. So he came forward as a teacher, as a dogmatic teacher, as a dogmatic teacher who gloried in his dogmatism. He was not merely seeking for truth; he had the truth. He did not make tentative suggestions to the world for its consideration; what he dealt in was - so he liked to call them - "assertions." This was naturally a mode of procedure very offensive to a man of polite letters, like Erasmus, say, who knew of nothing that men of culture could not sit around a well-furnished table and discuss together pleasurably with open minds. "I have so little stomach for 'assertions,'" he says, striking directly at Luther, "that I could easily go over to the opinion of the sceptics - wherever," he smugly adds, "it were allowed me by the inviolable authority of the Sacred Scriptures and the decrees of the Church, to which I everywhere submit, whether I follow what is presented or not." For this his Oliver he certainly got more than a Roland from Luther. For Luther takes occasion from this remark to read Erasmus a much-needed lecture on the place of dogma in Christianity. To say you have no pleasure in "assertions," he says, is all one with saying you are not a Christian. Take away "assertions," and you take away Christianity. No Christian could endure to have "assertions" despised, since that would be nothing else than to deny at once all religion and piety, or to declare that religion and piety and every dogma are nothing. Christian doctrines are not to be put on a level with human opinions. They are divinely given to us in Holy Scripture to form the molds in which Christian lives are to run. 

We are in the presence here of what is known as the formal principle of the Reformation. The fundamental meaning of it is that the Reformation was primarily, like all great revolutions, a revolution in the realm of ideas. Was it not a wise man who urged us long ago to give especial diligence to keeping our hearts (the heart is the cognitive faculty in Scripture), on the express ground that out of them are the issues of life? The battle of the Reformation was fought out under a banner on which the sole authority of Scripture was inscribed. But the principle of the sole authority of Scripture was not to the Reformation an abstract principle. What it was interested in was what is taught in Scripture; and the sole authority of Scripture meant to it the sole authority of what is taught in Scripture. This of course is dogma; and the dogma which the men of the Reformation found taught in Scripture above every other dogma, so much above every other dogma that in it is summed up all the teaching of Scripture, is the sole efficiency of God in salvation. This is what we call the material principle of the Reformation. It was not at first known by the name of justification by faith alone, but it was from the first passionately embraced as renunciation of all human works and dependence on the grace of God alone for salvation. In it the Reformation lived and moved and had its being; in a high sense of the words, it is the Reformation. 

The confusion would be ludicrous, if it were not rather pathetic, by which the correction of abuses in the life whether of the Church or of society at-large, is confounded with the Reformation. Luther knew perfectly well from the beginning where the center of his Reformation lay, and did not for a moment confound its peripheral effects with it. Here, indeed, lay the precise difference between him and the other reformers of the time - those other reformers who could not reform. Erasmus, for example, was as clear of eye as Luther to see, and as outspoken as Luther to condemn, the crying abuses of the day. But he conceived the task of reform as a purely negative one. The note of his reform was simplicity; he wished to return to the "simplicity of the Christian life," and, as a means to that, to the "simplicity of doctrine." He was content with a process of stripping off, and he expected to reach the kernel of true Christianity merely by thoroughly removing the husk which at the moment covered and concealed it. The assumption being that true Christianity lay behind and beneath the corruptions of the day, no restoration was needed, only uncovering. When he came to do the stripping, it is true, Erasmus found no stopping-place; he stripped not only to the bone but through the bone, and nothing was left in his hand but a "philosophy of Christ," which was a mere moralism. Peter Canisius, looking at it formally, calls it not inaptly, "the theology of Pyrrhus." Luther, judging it from the material standpoint, says Erasmus has made "a gospel of Pelagius." Thus at all events Erasmus at once demonstrated that beneath the immense fabric of medieval Christianity there lay as its sustaining core nothing but a bald moralism; and by dragging this moralism out and labeling it "simple Christianity," has made himself the father of that great multitude in our day who, crying: Back to Christ! have reduced Christianity to the simple precept: Be good and it will be well with you.

In sharp contrast with these negative reformers Luther came forward with a positive gospel in his hands; "a new religion" his adversaries called it then, as their descendants call it now, and they call it so truly. He was not particularly interested in the correction of abuses, though he hewed at them manfully when they stood in his way. To speak the whole truth, this necessary work bored him a little. He saw no pure gospel beneath them which their removal would uncover and release. He knew that his new gospel, once launched, had power of itself to abolish them. What his heart was aflame with was the desire to launch this new gospel; to substitute it, the gospel of grace, for the gospel of works, on which alone men were being fed. In that substitution consisted his whole Reformation. 

In his detailed answer to the Bull of Excommunication, published against him in 1520, in which forty-one propositions from his writings were condemned, Luther shows plainly enough where the center of controversy lay for him. It was in the article in which he asserts the sole efficiency of grace in salvation. He makes his real appeal to Scripture, of course, but he does not neglect to point out also that he has Augustine with him and also experience. He scoffs at his opponents' pretensions to separate themselves from the Pelagians by wire-drawn distinctions between works of congruity and works of condignity. If we may secure grace by works, he says, it means nothing that we carefully name these works works of congruity and refrain from calling them works of condignity. "For what is the difference," he cries, "if you deny that grace is from our works and yet teach that it is through our works? The impious sense remains that grace is held to be given not gratis but on account of our works. For the Pelagians did not teach and do any other works on account of which they expected grace to be given than you teach and do. They are the works of the same free will and the same members, although you and they give them different names. They are the same fasting and prayers and almsgiving - but you call them works congruous to grace, they works condign to grace. The same Pelagians remain victors in both cases." 

What Luther is zealous for, it will be seen, is the absolute exclusion of works from salvation, and the casting of the soul wholly upon the grace of God. He rises to full eloquence as he approaches the end of his argument, pushing his adversaries fairly to the ropes. "For when they could not deny that we must be saved by the grace of God," he exclaims, "and could not elude this truth, then impiety sought out another way of escape - pretending that, although we cannot save ourselves, we can nevertheless prepare for being saved by God's grace. What glory remains to God, I ask, if we are able to procure that we shall be saved by His grace? Does this seem a small ability - that he who has no grace shall nevertheless have power enough to obtain grace when he wishes? What is the difference between that, and saying with the Pelagians that we are saved without grace - since you place the grace of God within the power of man's will? You seem to me to be worse than Pelagius, since you put in the power of man the necessary grace of God, the necessity of which he simply denied. I say, it seems less impious wholly to deny grace than to represent it as secured by our zeal and effort, and to put it thus in our power." 

This tremendous onslaught prepares the way for a notable declaration in which Luther makes perfectly clear how he thought of his work as a reformer and the relative importance which he attached to the several matters in controversy. Rome taught, with whatever finessing, salvation by works; he knew and would know nothing but salvation by grace, or, as he phrases it here, nothing but Christ and Him crucified. It was the cross that Rome condemned in him; for it was the cross and it alone in which he put his trust. "In all the other articles," he says - that is to say, all the others of the forty-one propositions which had been condemned in the Bull - "those concerning the Papacy, Councils, Indulgences, and other nonnecessary trifles (nugae!)" - this is the way in which he enumerates them - "the levity and folly of the Pope and his followers may be endured. But in this article," - that is, the one on free will and grace - "which is the best of all and the sum of our matter, we must grieve and weep over the insanity of these miserable men." It is on this article, then, that for him the whole conflict turns as on its hinge. He wishes he could write more largely upon it. For more than three hundred years none, or next to none, have written in favor of grace; and there is no subject which is in so great need of treatment as this. "And I have often wished," he adds, "passing by these frivolous Papist trifles and brawls (nugis et negotiis), which have nothing to do with the Church but to destroy it - to deal with this." 

His opportunity to do so came when, four years afterward (1524), Erasmus, egged on by his patrons and friends, and taking his start from this very discussion, published his charmingly written book, "On Free Will." It is the great humanist's greatest book, elegant in style, suave in tone, delicate in suggestion, winning in its appeal; and it presents with consummate skill the case for the Romish teaching against which Luther had thrown himself. Separating himself as decisively if not as fundamentally on the one side from Pelagius and Scotus - in another place he speaks with distaste of "Scotus his bristling and prickly soul" - as on the other from the reformers - he has Carlstadt and Luther especially in mind  - Erasmus attaches himself to what he calls, in accordance with the point of view of his time, the Augustinian doctrine; that is to say, to the synergism of the scholastics, perhaps most nearly in the form in which it had been taught by Alexander of Hales, and at all events practically as it was soon to be authoritatively defined as the doctrine of the Church by the Council of Trent. To this subtle doctrine he gives its most attractive statement and weaves around it the charm of his literary grace. Luther was not insensible to the beauty of the book. He says the voice of Erasmus in it sounded to him like the song of a nightingale. But he was in search of substance, not form, and he felt bound to confess that his experience in reading the book was much that of the wolf in the fable, who, ravished by the song of a nightingale, could not rest till he had caught and greedily devoured it - only to remark disgustedly afterward: "Vox, et praeterea nihil." 

The refinements of Erasmus' statements were lost on Luther. What he wished - and nothing else would content him - was a clear and definite acknowledgment that the work of salvation is of the grace of God alone, and man contributes nothing whatever to it. This acknowledgment Erasmus could not make. The very purpose for which he was writing was to vindicate for man a part, and that the decisive part, in his own salvation. He might magnify the grace of God in the highest terms. He might protest that he too held that without the grace of God no good thing could be done by man, so that grace is the beginning and the middle and the end of salvation. But when pressed to the wall he was forced to allow that, somewhere in "the middle," an action of man came in, and that this action of man was the decisive thing that determined his salvation. He might minimize this action of man to the utmost. He might point out that it was a very, very little thing which he retained to human powers - only, as one might say, that man must push the button and grace had to do the rest. This did not satisfy Luther. Nothing would satisfy him but that all of salvation - every bit of it - should be attributed to the grace of God alone. 

Luther even made Erasmus' efforts to reduce man's part in salvation to as little as possible, while yet retaining it at the decisive point, the occasion of scoffing. Instead of escaping Pelagianism by such expedients, he says, Erasmus and his fellow sophists cast themselves more deeply into the vat and come out double-dyed Pelagians. The Pelagians are at least honest with themselves and us. They do not palter, in a double sense, with empty distinctions between works of condignity and works of congruity. They call a spade a spade and say candidly that merit is merit. And they do not belittle our salvation by belittling the works by which we merit it. We do not hear from them that we merit saving grace by something "very little, almost nothing." They hold salvation precious; and warn us that if we are to gain it, it can be at the cost only of great effort - "tota, plena, perfecta, magna et multa studia et opera." If we will fall into error in such a matter, says Luther, at least let us not cheapen the grace of God, and treat it as something vile and contemptible. What he means is that the attempted compromise, while remaining Pelagian in principle, yet loses the high ethical position of Pelagianism. Seeking some middle-place between grace and works, and fondly congratulating itself that it retains both, it merely falls between the stools and retains neither. It depends as truly as Pelagianism on works, but reduces these works on which it nevertheless depends to a vanishing-point. In thus suspending salvation on "some little thing, almost nothing," says Luther, it "denies the Lord Christ who has bought us, more than the Pelagians ever denied Him, or any heretics." 

To the book in which Luther replied to Erasmus' "On Free Will," matching Erasmus' title, he gives the name of "On the Enslaved Will." Naturally, the flowing purity of the great humanist's Latinity and the flexible grace of his style are not to be found here. But the book is written in sufficiently good Latin - plain and strong and straightforward. Luther evidently took unusual pains with it, and it more than makes up for any lack of literary charm it may show by the fertility of its thought and the amazing vigor of its language. A. Freitag, its latest editor, characterizes it briefly, in one great word, as an "exploit" (Grosstat), and Sodeur does not scruple to describe it roundly as "a dialectic and polemic masterpiece"; its words have hands and feet. Its real distinction, however, is to be sought in a higher region than these things. It is the embodiment of Luther's reformation conceptions, the nearest to a systematic statement of them he ever made. It is the first exposition of the fundamental ideas of the Reformation in comprehensive presentation, and it is therefore in a true sense the manifesto of the Reformation. It was so that Luther himself looked upon it. It was not because he admired it as a piece of "mere literature" that he always thought of it as an achievement. It was because it contained the doctrinae evangelicae caput - the very head and principle of the evangelical teaching. He could well spare all that he had ever written, he wrote to Capito in 1537, let them all go, except the "On the Enslaved Will" and the "Catechism"; they only are right (justum). He is reported in the "Table Talk" (Lauterbach-Aurifaber) to have referred once to Erasmus' rejoinder to the book. He did not admit that Erasmus had confuted it; he did not admit that Erasmus ever could confute it, no, not to all eternity. "That I know full well," he said, "and I defy the devil and all his wiles to confute it. For I am certain that it is the unchangeable truth of God." He who touches this doctrine, he says again, touches the apple of his eye. 

We may be sure that Luther wrote this book con amore. It was not easy for him to write it when he wrote it. That was the year (1525) of the Peasants' Revolt; and what that was in the way of distraction and care, anguish of mind and soul, all know. It was also the year of his marriage, and has he not told us with his engaging frankness that, during the first year of his married life, Katie always sat by him as he worked, trying to think up questions to ask him? But what he was writing down in this book he was not thinking out as he wrote. He was pouring out upon the page the heart of the heart of his gospel, and he was doing it in the exulting confidence that it was not his gospel merely but the gospel of God. He thanks Erasmus for giving him, by selecting this theme to attack him upon, a respite from the wearing, petty strifes that were being thrust continually upon him, and thus enabling him to speak for once directly to the point. "I exceedingly praise and laud this in you," he writes at the end of his book, "that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the thing itself, that is, the top of the question (summam caussae), and have not fatigued me with those irrelevant questions about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like trumperies (nugae) rather than questions - in which hitherto all have vainly sought to pursue me. You and you alone have seen the hinge of things and have aimed at the throat; and for this I thank you heartily." 

It was in no light, however buoyant, spirit, however, that Luther entered upon the discussion. In a very moving context he writes: "I tell you and I beg you to let it sink into the depths of your mind - I am seeking in this matter something that is solemn, and necessary, and eternal to me, of such sort and so great that it must be asserted and defended at the cost of death itself - yea, if the whole world should not only be cast into strife and tumult, but even should be reduced to chaos and dissolved into nothingness. For by God's grace I am not so foolish and mad that I could be willing for the sake of money (which I neither have nor wish), or of glory (a thing I could not obtain if I wished it, in a world so incensed against me), or of the life of the body (of which I cannot be sure for a moment), to carry on and sustain this matter so long, with so much fortitude and so much constancy (you call it obstinacy), through so many perils to my life, through so much hatred, through so many snares - in short through the fury of men and devils. Do you think that you alone have a heart disturbed by these tumults? I am not made of stone either, nor was I either born of the Marpesian rocks. But since it cannot be done otherwise, I prefer to be battered in this tumult, joyful in the grace of God, for the sake of the word of God which must be asserted with invincible and incorruptible courage, rather than in eternal tumult to be ground to powder in intolerable torment under the wrath of God." This was the spirit in which Luther sustained his thesis of "the enslaved will." It is the spirit of "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." It is the gospel which he has in his hands, the gospel for the world's salvation, and necessity is laid upon him to preach it. 

The gospel which Luther had it thus in his heart to preach was, to put it shortly, the gospel of salvation through the grace of God alone. There are two foci around which this gospel revolves: the absolute helplessness of man in his sin; the sole efficiency of grace in salvation. These complementary propositions are given expression theologically in the doctrines of the inability of sinful man to good, and of the creative operation of saving grace. It is the inability of sinful man to good that Luther means by his phrase "the enslaved will." Neither he nor Erasmus was particularly interested in the psychology of the will. We may learn incidentally that he held to the view which has come to be called philosophical determinism, or moral necessity. But we learn that only incidentally. Neither he nor Erasmus was concerned with the mechanism of the will's activity, if we may be allowed this mode of speech. They were absorbed in the great problem of the power of sinful man to good. Erasmus had it in mind to show that sinful man has the power to do good things, things so good that they have merit in the sight of God, and that man's salvation depends on his doing them. Luther had it in his heart to show that sinful man, just because he is sinful and sin is no light evil but destroys all goodness, has no power to do anything that is good in God's sight, and therefore is dependent utterly on God's grace alone for salvation. This is to say, Luther was determined to deal seriously with sin, with original sin, with the fall, with the deep corruption of heart which comes from the fall, with the inability to good which is the result of this corruption of heart. He branded the teaching that man can save himself, or do anything looking to his own salvation, as a hideous lie, and "he launched point-blank his dart at the head of this lie - taught original sin, the corruption of man's heart." 

Erasmus, of course, does not fail to put his finger on the precise point of Luther's contention. He complains of the new teachers that they "immensely exaggerate original sin, representing even the noblest powers of human nature as so corrupt that of itself it can do nothing but ignore and hate God, and not even one who has been justified by the grace of faith can effect any work which is not sin; they make that tendency to sin in us, which has been transmitted to us from our first parents to be itself sin, and that so invincibly sin that there is no commandment of God which even a man who has been justified by faith can keep, but all the commandments of God serve no other end than to enhance the grace of God, which bestows salvation without regard to merits." It outraged him, as it has outraged all who feel with him up to to-day - as, for example, Hartmann Grisar - that Luther so grossly overdraws the evil of "concupiscence," and thus does despite to that human nature which God created in His own image. Luther was compelled to point out over and over again that he was not talking about human nature and its powers, but about sin and grace. We have not had to wait for Erasmus to tell us, he says, "that a man has eyes and nose, and ears, and bones, and hands - and a mind and a will and a reason," and that it is because he has these things that he is a man; he would not be a man without them. We could not talk of sin with reference to him, had he not these things; nor of grace either - for does not even the proverb say: "God did not make heaven for geese"? Let us leave human nature and its powers to one side then; they are all presupposed. The point of importance is that man is now a sinner. And the point in dispute is whether sinful man can be, at will, not sinful; whether he can do by nature what it requires grace to do. Luther does not depreciate human nature; his opponents depreciate the baleful power of sin, the necessity for a creative operation of grace; and because they depreciate both sin and grace they expect man in his own powers to do what God alone, the Almighty Worker, can do. 

He draws out his doctrine here in a long parallel. "As a man, before he is created, to be a man, does nothing and makes no effort to be a creature; and then, after he has been made and created, does nothing and makes no effort to continue a creature; but both these things alike are done solely by the will of the omnipotent power and goodness of God who without our aid creates and preserves us - but He does not operate in us without our cooperation, seeing that He created and preserved us for this very purpose, that He might operate in us and we cooperate with Him, whether this is done outside His kingdom by general omnipotence, or within His kingdom by the singular power of His Spirit: So then we say that a man before he is renovated into a new creature of the kingdom of the Spirit, does nothing and makes no effort to prepare himself for that renovation and kingdom; and then, after he has been renovated, does nothing, makes no effort to continue in that kingdom; but the Spirit alone does both alike in us, recreating us without our aid, and preserving us when recreated, as also James says, 'Of His own will begat He us by the word of His power, that we should be the beginning of His creation' (he is speaking of the renewed creature), but He does not operate apart from us, seeing that He has recreated and preserved us for this very purpose that He might operate in us and we cooperate with Him. Thus through us He preaches, has pity on the poor, consoles the afflicted. But what, then, is attributed to free will? Or rather what is left to it except nothing? Assuredly just nothing." What this parallel teaches is that the whole saving work is from God, in the beginning and middle and end; it is a supernatural work throughout. But we are saved that we may live in God; and, in the powers of our new life, do His will in the world. It is the Pauline, Not out of works, but unto good works, which God has afore prepared that we should live in them. 

It is obvious that the whole substance of Luther's fundamental theology was summed up in the antithesis of sin and grace: sin conceived as absolutely disabling to good; grace as absolutely recreative in effect. Of course he taught also all that is necessarily bound up in one bundle of thought with this great doctrine of sin and grace. He taught, for instance, as a matter of course, the doctrine of "irresistible grace," and also with great purity and decision the doctrine of predestination - for how can salvation be of pure grace alone apart from all merit, save by the sovereign and effective gift of God? A great part of "The Enslaved Will" is given to insistence upon and elucidation of this doctrine of absolute predestination, and Luther did not shrink from raising it into the cosmical region or from elaborating it in its every detail. What it is important for us at the moment to insist upon, however, is that what we have said of Luther we might just as well, mutatis mutandis, have said of every other of the great Reformers. Luther's doctrine of sin and grace was not peculiar to him. It was the common property of the whole body of the Reformers. It was taught with equal clarity and force by Zwingli as by Luther, and by Martin Bucer and by John Calvin. It was taught even, in his earlier and happier period, by that "Protestant Erasmus," the weak and unreliable Melanchthon, who was saved from betraying the whole Protestant cause at Augsburg by no staunchness in himself, but only by the fatuity of the Catholics, and who later did betray it in its heart of hearts by going over to that very synergism which Luther declared to be the very marrow of the Pope's teaching. In one word, this doctrine was Protestantism itself. All else that Protestantism stood for, in comparison with this, must be relegated to the second rank. 

There are some interesting paragraphs in the earlier pages of Alexander Schweizer's "Central Doctrines of Protestantism," in which he speaks of the watchwords of Protestantism, and points out the distinction between them and the so-called formal and material principles of Protestantism, which are, in point of fact, their more considered elaboration. Every reformatory movement in history, he says, has its watchwords, which serve as the symbol by which its adherents encourage one another, and as the banner about which they gather. They penetrate to the very essence of the matter, and give, if popular, yet compressed and vivid, expression to the precise pivot on which the movement turns. In the case of the Protestant revolution the antithesis, Not tradition but Scripture, emerged as one of these watchwords, but not as the ultimate one, but only as subordinate to another in which was expressed the contrast between the parties at strife with respect to the chief matter, how shall sinful man be saved? This ultimate watchword, says Schweizer, ran somewhat like this: Not works, but faith; not our merit, but God's grace in Christ; not our own penances and satisfactions, but the merit of Christ only. When we hear these cries we are hearing the very pulse-beats of the Reformation as a force among men. In their presence we are in the presence of the Reformation in its purity. 

It scarcely requires explicit mention that what we are, then, face to face with in the Reformation is simply a revival of Augustinianism. The fundamental Augustinian antithesis of sin and grace is the soul of the whole Reformation movement. If we wish to characterize the movement on its theological side in one word, therefore, it is adequately done by declaring it a great revival of Augustinianism. Of course, if we study exactness of statement, there are qualifications to be made. But these qualifications serve not to modify the characterization but only to bring it to its utmost precision. We are bidden to remember that the Reformation was not the only movement back toward Augustinianism of the later Middle Ages or of its own day. The times were marked by a deep dissatisfaction with current modes of treating and speaking of divine things; and a movement away from the dominant nominalism, so far back toward Augustinianism as at least to Thomism, was widespread and powerful. And we are bidden to remember that Augustinianism is too broad a term to apply undefined to the doctrinal basis of the Reformation. In its complete connotation it included not only tendencies but elements of explicit teaching which were abhorrent to the Reformers, and by virtue of which the Romanists have an equal right with the Protestants to be called the true children of Augustine. It is suggested therefore that all that can properly be said is that the Reformation, conceived as a movement of its time, represented that part of the general revulsion from the corruptions of the day - the whole of which looked back toward Augustine for guidance and strength - which, because it was distinctively religious in its motives and aspirations, laid hold purely of the Augustinian doctrines of sin and grace, and built exclusively on them in its readjustments to life. 

We may content ourselves with such a statement. It is quite true that the Reformation, when looked at purely in itself, presents itself to our view as, in the words of Fr. Loofs, "the rediscovery of Christianity as religion." And it is quite true that purely Augustinian as the Reformation is in its conception of religion, it is not the whole of Augustine that it takes over but only "the Augustine of sin and grace," so that when we speak of it as a revival of Augustinianism we must have in mind only the Augustinianism of grace. But the Augustinianism of grace in the truest sense represents "the real Augustine"; no injustice is done to historical verity in the essence of the matter when we speak of him as "a post-Pauline Paul and a pre-Lutheran Luther." We have only in such a phrase uncovered the true succession. Paul, Augustine, Luther; for substance of doctrine these three are one, and the Reformation is perceived to be, on its doctrinal side, mere Paulinism given back to the world. 

To realize how completely this is true we have only to look into the pages of those lecture notes on Romans which Luther wrote down in 1515-1516, and the manuscript of which was still lying in 1903 unregarded in a showcase of the Berlin Library. Luther himself, of course, fully understood it all. He is reported to have said in his table talk in 1538 (Lauterbach): "There was a certain cardinal in the beginning of the Gospel plotting many things against me in Rome. A court fool, looking on, is said to have remarked: 'My Lord, take my advice and first depose Paul from the company of the Apostles; it is he who is giving us all this trouble.'" It was Paul whom Luther was consciously resurrecting, Paul with the constant cry on his lips - so Luther puts it - of "Grace! Grace! Grace!" Luther characteristically adds: "In spite of the devil" - "grace, in spite of the devil"; and perhaps it will not be without its value for us to observe that Luther did his whole work of reestablishing the doctrine of salvation by pure grace in the world, in the clear conviction that he was doing it in the teeth of the devil. It was against principalities and powers and spiritual wickednesses in high places that he felt himself to be fighting; and he depended for victory on no human arm. Has he not expressed it all in his great hymn - the Reformation hymn by way of eminence? - 

A trusty stronghold is our God . . .
Yea, were the world with devils filled.

The Westminster Assembly and Its Work

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

FIRST ARTICLE¹ 

The "Westminster Assembly of Divines" derives its name from the ancient conventual church of Westminster Abbey, situated in the western district of the county of London. It was convened in the most ornate portion of this noble fabric, the Chapel of Henry VII, on the first day of July, 1643; but, as the cold weather of autumn came on, it was transferred (October 2, 1643) to a more comfortable room (the so-called "Jerusalem Chamber") in the adjoining Deanery. In that room it thereafter sat, not merely to the end of the 1163 numbered sessions, during which its important labors were transacted (up to February 22, 1649), but through some three years more of irregular life, acting as a committee for the examination of appointees to charges and applicants for licensure to preach. It ultimately vanished with the famous "Long Parliament" to which it owed its being. The last entry in its Minutes is dated March 25, 1652.2 

The summoning of the Westminster Assembly was an important incident in the conflict between the Parliament and the King, which was the form taken on English soil by the ecclesiastico-political struggle by which all Europe was convulsed during the seventeenth century. It was the difficult task of that century to work out to its legitimate issue what had been auspiciously begun in the great revolution of the preceding period; to secure from disintegration what had been won in that revolution; to protect it from reaction; and to repel the destructive forces set in motion against it by the counter-reformation. The new Protestantism was, during this its second age, cast into a crucible in the heats of which it everywhere suffered serious losses, even though it emerged from them, wherever it survived, in greater compactness and purity. The form which the struggle took in England was determined by the peculiar course the Reformation movement had followed in that country. There, on its official side, the Reformation was fundamentally a contest between the King and the Pope. The purpose which Henry VIII set before himself was to free the State from foreign influences exerted by the Pope through the Church; and his efforts were directed, with great singleness of aim, to the establishment of his own authority in ecclesiastical matters to the exclusion of that of the Pope. In these efforts he had the support of Parliament, always jealous of foreign interference; and was not merely sustained but urged on by the whole force of the religious and doctrinal reform gradually spreading among the people, which, however, he made it his business rather to curb than to encourage. The removal of this curb during the reign of Edward VI concealed for a time the evils inherent in the new powers assumed by the throne. But with the accession of Elizabeth, who had no sympathy whatever with religious enthusiasm, they began to appear; and they grew ever more flagrant under her successors. The authority in ecclesiastical matters which had been vindicated to the throne over against the Pope, was increasingly employed to establish the general authority of the throne over against the Parliament. The Church thus became the instrument of the crown in compacting its absolutism; and the interests of civil liberty soon rendered it as imperative to break the absolutism of the King in ecclesiastical affairs as it had ever been to eliminate the papacy from the control of the English Church. 

The controversy was thus shifted from a contest between Pope and King to a contest between King and Parliament. And as the cause of the King had ever more intimately allied itself with that of the prelatical party in the Church, which had grown more and more reactionary until under the leading of Laud (1573-1645) it had become aggressively and revolutionarily so,³ the cause of Puritanism, that is of pure Protestantism, became ever more identical with that of the Parliament. When the parties were ultimately lined up for the final struggle, therefore, it was King and prelate on the one side, against Parliament and Puritan on the other.⁴ The main issue which was raised was a secular one, the issue of representative government over against royal absolutism. This issue was fought to a finish, with the ultimate result that there were established in England a constitutional monarchy and a responsible government. There was complicated with this issue, however, also the issue, no doubt, at bottom, of religious freedom over against ecclesiastical tyranny, for it was impatience with ecclesiastical tyranny which gave its vigor to the movement. But the form which was openly taken by the ecclesiastical issue was rather that of a contest between a pure Protestantism and Catholicizing reaction. It was in the mind of neither of the immediate contestants in the main conflict to free the Church from the domination of the State: they differed only as to the seat of the civil authority to which the Church should be subject - whether King or Parliament. This fundamental controversy lay behind the conflict over the organization of the subject Church and the ordering of its forms of worship - matters which quickly lost their importance, therefore, when the main question was settled. It can occasion little surprise, accordingly, that, when the heats of conflict were over and exhaustion succeeded effort, the English people were able to content themselves, as the ultimate result on the ecclesiastical side, with so slight a gain as a mere act of toleration (May 24, 1689 ). 

This struggle had reached its acutest stage when "the Long Parliament" met, on the third of November, 1640. Profoundly distrustful of the King's sincerity, and determined on its own behalf to be trifled with no longer, Parliament was in no mood for compromises with respect whether to civil or to ecclesiastical affairs. On the ecclesiastical side it was without concern, indeed, for doctrine. It was under no illusions, to be sure, as to the doctrinal significance of the Catholic reaction, and it was fully sensible of the spread of Arminianism in high places.⁵ But although there were not lacking hints of such a thing, Tract No. 90 had not yet been written,⁶ and the soundly Reformed character of the Church of England as well in its official Articles of Religion as in its general conviction was not in dispute. John Milton accurately reflects the common sentiment of the day when he declares that "in purity of Doctrine" English Churchmen "agreed with their Brethren," that is, of the other Reformed Churches, while yet in discipline, which is "the execution and applying of Doctrine home," they were "no better than a Schisme, from all the Reformation, and a sore scandall to them."7 What the nation in Commons assembled was determined to be rid of in its Church establishment was, therefore, briefly, "bishoprics" and "ceremonies" - what Milton calls "the irreligious pride and hateful tyranny of Prelates" and the "sencelesse ceremonies" which were only "a dangerous earnest of sliding back to Rome." The Convocation of 1640, continuing illegally to sit after the dissolution of the "Short Parliament," had indeed endeavored to protect the established organization of the Church. It had framed a canon, requiring from the whole body of the clergy the famous "et cetera oath," a sort of echo and counterblast to the "National Covenant" which had been subscribed in Scotland two years before (February 28, 1638). By this oath every clergyman was to bind himself never to give his consent "to alter the government of this Church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, etc., as it stands now established, and as by right it ought to stand."8 It was even thought worth while to prepare a number of petitions for Parliament with the design of counteracting the effect of this act of convocation. The most important of these, the so-called "London" or "Root and Branch" petition, bore no fewer than 15,000 signatures; and the personal attendance of some 1500 gentlemen of quality when it was presented to Parliament lent weight to its prayer. This was to the effect that "the government of archbishops and lord bishops, deans, and archdeacons, etc." (the same enumeration, observe, as in the "et cetera oath") "with all its dependencies, roots and branches, may be abolished, and all laws in their behalf made void, and the government according to God's word may be rightly placed amongst us."9 Parliament, however, was in no need of prodding for this work, though it was for various reasons disposed to proceed leisurely in it. The obnoxious Act of Convocation was at once taken up and rebuked. But even the Root and Branch Petition, which was apparently ready from the beginning of the session,¹⁰ was not presented until December 11, and after its presentation was not taken into formal consideration by the House until the following February. As was natural, differences of opinion also began to manifest themselves, as to precisely what should be done with the bishops, and as to the precise form of government which should be set up in the Church after they had been dealt with. There is no reason to doubt the exactness of Baillie's information¹¹ that the Commons were by a large majority of their membership for erecting some "kind of Presbyteries," and "for bringing down the Bishop in all things, spiritual and temporal, so low as can be with any subsistance." In Parliament as out of it the great majority of leading men had become Presbyterian in their tendencies, and the Independents were for the present prepared to act with them. But there was very little knowledge abroad among the members of Parliament of what Presbytery really was,¹² and even the most convinced Presbyterians doubted the feasibility of setting up the whole Presbyterian system at once, while an influential party still advocated what Baillie calls¹³ a "calked Episcopacie."14 It still hung in the balance, therefore, whether bishops should be utterly abolished; and any hesitation which may have existed in the Commons was more than matched in the House of Lords. Above all it never entered the thought of Parliament to set up in the Church any manner of government whatever over which it did not itself retain control.¹⁵ The result was that actual legislation dragged. Abortive bill after abortive bill was brought in; now simply to deprive the prelates of secular functions, and again to abolish the whole Episcopal system. It was not until the autumn of 1641 (October 21), that at length a bill excludingthe bishops from secular activities was passed by the Commons to which the assent of the Lords was obtained (February 5, 1642); 16 and not until another year had slipped away that, under Scotch influence (August, 1642), a bill was finally passed (January 26, 1643) abolishing prelacy altogether. 

Alongside of these slowly maturing efforts at negative legislation there naturally ran a parallel series of attempts to provide a positive constitution for the Church after the bishops had been minished or done away. It was recognized from the beginning that for this positive legislation the advice of approved divines would be requisite.¹⁷ Preparation for it took, therefore, much the form of proposals for securing such advice. From all sides, within Parliament and without it alike, the suggestion was pressed that a formal Synod of Divines should be convened to which Parliament should statedly appeal for counsel in all questions which should occasionally arise in the process of the settlement of the Church. And from the beginning it was at least hinted that, in framing its advice, such a Synod might well bear in mind wider interests than merely the internal peace of the Church of England; that it might, for example, consider the advantage of securing along with that a greater harmony with the other Reformed Churches, particularly the neighboring Church of Scotland. It was accordingly with this wider outlook in mind that the proposition was given explicit shape in "the Grand Remonstrance" which was drawn up in the Commons on November 8, 1641, and, having been passed on November 22, was presented to the King on December 1. This document began by avowing the intention of Parliament to "reduce within bounds that exorbitant power which the prelates had assumed unto themselves," and to set up a juster "discipline and government in the Church." It proceeded thus (§ 186): "And the better to effect the intended reformation, we desire there may be a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island; assisted with some from foreign parts, professing the same religion with us, who may consider of all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church, and represent the results of their consultations unto the Parliament, to be there allowed of and confirmed, and receive the stamp of authority, thereby to find passage and obedience throughout the kingdom."18 In pursuance of this design, the Commons engaged themselves desultorily from the ensuing February (1642) in preparations for convening such a Synod. The names of suitable ministers to sit in it were canvassed; selection was made of two divines from each English and one from each Welsh county, two from the Channel Islands and from each University, and four from London;¹⁹ and a bill was passed through both Houses (May 9 to June 30, 1642) commanding the Assembly so constituted to convene on July 1, 1642.20 The King's assent failing, however, this bill lapsed, and was superseded by another to the same general effect, and that by yet another, and yet another, which went the same way, until finally a sixth bill was prepared, read in the Commons as an ordinance on May 13, 1643, and having been agreed to by the Lords on June 12, 1643, was put into effect without the King's assent. By this ordinance,²¹ the Divines, in number 121, supplemented by ten peers and twenty members of the House of Commons (forty being a quorum) were required "to meet and assemble themselves at Westminster, in the Chapel called King Henry the VII's Chapel, on the first day of July, in the year of our Lord One thousand six hundred and forty-three," and thereafter "from time to time [to] sit, and be removed from place to place" and to "confer and treat among themselves of such matters and things, touching and concerning the Liturgy, Discipline, and Government of the Church of England, or the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the same from all false aspersions and misconstructions, as shall be proposed unto them by both or either of the said Houses of Parliament, and no other; and to deliver their opinions and advices of, or touching the matters aforesaid, as shall be most agreeable to the word of God, to both or either of the said Houses, from time to time, in such manner and sort as by both or either of the said Houses of Parliament shall be required; and the same not to divulge, by printing, writing, or otherwise, without the consent of both or either House of Parliament." 

The prominence given in this ordinance to the reorganization of the government of the Church of England as the primary matter upon which the Assembly thus instituted should be consulted was inherent in the nature of the case, but should not pass without specific notice. And, we should further note, next to the reorganization of the government of the Church the reform of its liturgy was, as was natural in the circumstances, to be the Assembly's care. Doctrinal matters lay wholly in the background. In the heading of the ordinance it is described with exactness as an ordinance "for the calling of an Assembly of learned and godly Divines, and others, to be consulted with by the Parliament, for the settling of the Government and Liturgy of the Church of England"; while it is only added as something clearly secondary in importance that its labors may be directed also to the "vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the said Church from false aspersions and interpretations." In the body of the ordinance the occasion of calling such an Assembly is detailed. It was because "many things remain in the Liturgy, Discipline, and Government of the Church, which do necessarily require a further and more perfect reformation than as yet hath been attained"; and more specifically because Parliament had arrived at the determination that the existing prelatical government should be taken away as evil, "a great impediment to reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of this kingdom." The prime purpose for calling the Assembly is therefore declared to be "to consult and advise" with Parliament, as it may be required to do, in the Parliament's efforts to substitute for the existing prelatical government of the Church, such a government "as may be most agreeable to God's holy word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other Reformed Churches abroad." It is a clearly secondary duty laid on it also "to vindicate and clear the doctrine of the Church of England from all false calumnies and aspersions." It has already been pointed out, that this emphasis on the reformation first of the government and next of the liturgy of the Church, merely reflects the actual situation of affairs. The doctrine of the Church of England was everywhere recognized as in itself soundly Reformed, and needing only to be protected from corrupting misinterpretations; its government and worship, on the other hand, were conceived to be themselves sadly in need of reformation, in the interests of adjustment to the will of God as declared in Scripture, and of harmonizing with the practice of the sister Reformed Churches. Of these sister Reformed Churches, that of Scotland is particularly singled out for mention as the one into "a nearer agreement" with the government of which it were especially desirable that the new government of the Church of England should be brought. But this appears on the face of the ordinance merely as a measure of general prudence and propriety - there is nothing to indicate that any formal uniformity in religion with Scotland was to be sought. It was with the reorganization of the Church of England alone that Parliament was at this time concerned; and the Assembly called "to consult and advise" with it in this work, had no function beyond the bounds of that Church. 

What is of most importance to observe in this ordinance, however, is the care that is taken to withhold all independent powers from the Assembly it convened and to confine it to a purely advisory function. Parliament had no intention whatever of erecting by its own side an ecclesiastical legislature to which might be committed the work of reorganizing the Church, leaving Parliament free to give itself to the civil affairs of the nation. What it proposed to do, was simply to create a permanent Committee of Divines which should be continuously accessible to it, and to which it could resort from time to time for counsel in its prosecution of the task of reconstituting the government, discipline, and worship of the Church of England.²² Parliament was determined to hold the entire power, civil and ecclesiastical alike, in its own hands; and it took the most extreme pains to deny all initiation and all jurisdiction to the Assembly of Divines it was erecting,²³ and to limit it strictly to supplying Parliament with advice upon specific propositions occasionally submitted to it. The ordinance is described in its heading as an ordinance for the calling of an Assembly "to be consulted with by the Parliament." And in the body of the ordinance the function of the Divines is described as "to consult and advise of such matters and things, touching the premises"- that is to say, the Liturgy, Discipline, and Government of the Church, together with the clearing and vindicating of its doctrine - "as shall be proposed unto them by both or either of the Houses of Parliament, and to give their advice and counsel therein to both or either of the said Houses, when, and as often as they shall be thereunto required." And again, with perhaps superfluous but certainly significant emphasis, in the empowering clauses, the assembled Divines are given "power and authority, and are hereby likewise enjoined, from time to time during this present Parliament, or until further order be taken by both the said Houses, to confer and treat among themselves of such matters and things, touching and concerning the Liturgy, Discipline, and Government of the Church of England, or the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the same from all false aspersions and misconstructions, as shall be proposed unto them by both or either of the said Houses of Parliament, and no other"; and are further enjoined "to deliver their opinions and advices of, or touching the matters aforesaid, as shall be most agreeable to the word of God, to both or either of the said Houses, from time to time, in such manner and sort as by both or either of the said Houses of Parliament shall be required; and the same not to divulge, by printing, writing, or otherwise, without the consent of both or either House of Parliament." To make assurance trebly certain the ordinance closes with this blanket clause: "Provided always, That this Ordinance, or any thing therein contained, shall not give unto the persons aforesaid, or any of them, nor shall they in this Assembly assume to exercise any jurisdiction, power, or authority ecclesiastical whatsoever, or any other power than is herein particularly expressed." The effect of these regulations was of course to make the Westminster Assembly merely the creature of Parliament. They reflect the Erastian temper of Parliament, which, intent though it was upon vindicating the civil liberty of the subject, never caught sight of the vision of a free Church in a free State, but not unnaturally identified the cause of freedom with itself and would have felt it a betrayal of liberty not to have retained all authority, civil and ecclesiastical alike, in its own hands as the representatives of the nation. With it, the great conflict in progress was that between King and Parliament; and what it was chiefly concerned with was the establishment of Parliamentary government. In its regulations with respect to the Westminster Assembly, however, it did not go one step beyond what it had been accustomed to see practised in England with regard to the civil control of ecclesiastical assemblies. The effect of these regulations was, in fact, merely to place this Assembly with respect to its independence of action, in the same position relatively to Parliament, which had been previously occupied by the Convocations of the Church of England relatively to the crown, as regulated by 25 Henry VIII (1533/4), c. 19, revived by 1 Eliz. (1558/9), c. 1. s. z., and expounded by Coke, "Reports," xiii. p. 72.24 And it must be borne in mind that stringent as these regulations were, they denied to the Assembly only initiation and authority: they left it perfectly free in its deliberations and conclusions.²⁵ The limitation of its discussions to topics committed to it by Parliament, moreover, proved no grievance, in the face of the very broad commitments which were ultimately made to it; and its incapacity to give legal effect to its determinations - which it could present only as "humble advices" to Parliament - deprived them of none of their intrinsic value, and has in no way lessened their ultimate influence. 

In pursuance of this ordinance, and in defiance of an inhibitory proclamation from the King, the Assembly duly met on July 1, 1643. It was constituted in the Chapel of Henry VII after there had been preached to its members in the Abbey by Dr. William Twisse, who had been named by Parliament prolocutor to the Assembly, a sermon which was listened to by a great concourse, including both Houses of Parliament. Sixty-nine members were in attendance on the first day; and that seems to have thereafter been the average daily attendance.²⁶ No business was transacted on this day, however, but adjournment was taken until July 6: and it was not until July 8 that work was begun, after each member had made a solemn protestation "to maintain nothing in point of doctrine but what 'he believed' to be most agreeable to the Word of God, nor in point of discipline, but what may make most for God's glory and the peace and good of his church." The first task committed to the Assembly was the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, and it was engaged upon this labor intermittently until October 12, at which date it had reached the sixteenth Article.²⁷ That the Assembly was thus put for its first work upon the least pressing of the tasks which were expected of it - "the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from all false aspersions and misconstructions" - may have been due to the concurrence of many causes. It may have been that in its engrossment with far more immediately pressing duties than even the settlement of the future government of the Church of England, Parliament had had no opportunity to prepare work for the Assembly. Beyond question, however, the main cause was the premonition of that change in the posture of affairs by which the work of the Assembly was given a new significance and a much wider range than were contemplated when it was called, and an international rather than a merely national bearing. It was natural that Parliament should hold it back from its more important labors until the arrangements already in progress for this change in the scope of its work were perfected. It is not necessary to suppose that the determinations of the Assembly were essentially altered - or that Parliament supposed they would be - by the change in the bearing of its work to which we allude. It is quite true that in the course of the debates which were subsequently held, sufficient confusion of mind was occasionally exhibited on the part of many in the Assembly to make us thankful that these debates were actually regulated by the firm guidance of men of experience in the matters under discussion.²⁸ But the known convictions of the members of the Assembly, evidenced in their printed works no less than in the debates of the Assembly, render it altogether unlikely that had they been called upon, as it was at first contemplated they should be, to advise Parliament unassisted and merely with respect to the settlement of the Church of England, they would have failed to fight their way to conclusions quite similar to those they actually reached.²⁹ Nevertheless the alteration of the bearing of their work from a merely national to international significance, obviously not only gave it a far wider compass than was at first contemplated, but quite revolutionized its spirit and threw it into such changed relations as to give it a totally different character. 

This great change in the function which the Assembly was to serve, was brought about by the stage reached by the civil conflict in the summer of 1643. The Parliamentary cause had sunk to its lowest ebb; and it had become imperative to obtain the assistance of the Scots. But the assistance of the Scots could be had only at the price of a distinctively ecclesiastical alliance. The Scotch had been far greater sufferers than even the English from the absolutism which had been practised by the Stuart Kings in ecclesiastical matters. Not content with asserting and exercising original authority in the ecclesiastical affairs of England, these monarchs had asserted and were ever increasingly exercising the same absolutism in the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland also; and had freely employed the ecclesiastical instruments at their service in England in order to secure their ends in Scotland. But the relations of Church and State in Scotland were not quite the same as those which obtained in England.³⁰ In the northern kingdom, from the beginning of the Reformation, the ideal of a free Church in a free State had been sedulously cherished and repeatedly given effect; and the government of the Church was in representative courts which asserted and exercised their own independent spiritual jurisdiction. The interference of the King with the working of this ecclesiastical machinery was, therefore, widely resented as mere tyranny. And as it was employed precisely for the purpose of destroying the ecclesiastical organization which had been established in the Church of Scotland, and of assimilating the Scottish Church in government and mode of worship (doctrine was not in question³¹) to the model of the Church of England, which was considered by the Scots far less pure and Scriptural than their own, it took the form also of religious persecution. No claim could be put in here, as was put in in England, that the royal prerogative was exercised only for conserving the ancient settlement of the Church. It was employed precisely for pulling down what had been built up, and was, therefore, not only tyrannical in form but revolutionary in its entire effect. Add that it was understood that the instrument, if not the instigator, of this persecuting tyranny had come in late years to be a foreign prelate aggressively bent even in England on a violently reactionary policy, to which that nation was unalterably averse, and in Scotland balking apparently at nothing which promised to reduce the Church there to the same Catholicizing model which he had set himself to establish and perpetuate in England, and it will be apparent how galling the situation had become. Chafing under such wrongs, Scotland needed only a spark to be set on fire. The spark was provided in the spring of 1637, by the imposition upon the Church of Scotland by the mere proclamation of the King - "without warrant from our Kirk," as say the Scottish Commissioners - of a complete new service-book designed to assimilate the worship of the Scottish Church as closely as possible to that of England, or, as Milton expresses it from the English Puritan point of sight,³² "to force upon their Fellow-Subjects, that which themselves are weary of, the Skeleton of a Masse-Booke."33 When the book was read in the Cathedral Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh, July 23, 1637, however "incontinent," says Baillie,³⁴ "the serving-maids began such a tumult, as was never heard of since the Reformation in our nation"; and thus "the serving-maids in Edinburgh" - symbolized in the picturesque legend of Jennie Geddes and her stool, which has almost attained the dignity of history - "began to draw down the Bishop's pride, when it was at the highest."35 The movement thus inaugurated ran rapidly forward: as Archbishop Spottiswoode is said to have exclaimed, "all that they had been doing these thirty years past was thrown down at once." The Scots immediately reclaimed their ecclesiastical, and, in doing that, also their civil liberties; eradicated at once every trace of the prelacy which had been imposed on them, and restored their Presbyterian government; secured the simplicity of their worship and reinstated the strictness of their discipline; and withal bound themselves by a great oath - "the National Covenant"36 - to the perpetual preservation of their religious settlement in its purity. 

The Scots to whom the English Parliament made its appeal for aid in the summer of 1643, were, then, "a covenanted nation." They were profoundly convinced that the root of all the ills they had been made to suffer through two reigns, culminating in the insufferable tyranny of the Laudian domination, was to be found in the restless ambition of the English prelates; and they had once for all determined to make it their primary end to secure themselves in the permanent peaceful possession of their own religious establishment. The Parliamentary Commissioners came to them, indeed, seeking aid in their political struggle and with their minds set on a civil compact: they found the Scots, however, equally determined that any bond into which they entered should deal primarily with the ecclesiastical situation and should be fundamentally a religious engagement. "The English," says Baillie,³⁷ "were for a civill League, we for a religious Covenant." The Scots, indeed, had nothing to gain from the alliance which was offered them, unless they gained security for their Church from future English interference; while on the other hand by entering into it they risked everything which they had at such great cost recovered for themselves. Their own liberties were already regained; the cause of Parliament in England, on the contrary, hung in the gravest doubt. It really was an act of high chivalry, to call it by no more sacred name, for them to cast in their lot at this crisis with the Parliament; and more than one Scot must have cried to himself during the ensuing years, "Surelie it was a great act of faith in God, and hudge courage and unheard of compassion, that moved our nation to hazard their own peace, and venture their lives and all, for to save a people so irrecoverablie ruined both in their owne and all the world's eyes."38 On the other hand, the Scots demanded nothing more than that the Parliament should explicitly bind itself to the course it was on its own account loudly professing to be following, and had already declared, in the ordinance (for example) by which it had called to its aid an advisory council of Divines,³⁹ to be the object it was setting before itself in the reconstruction of the English Church. All that was asked of the Parliament, in point of fact, was, thus, that it should give greater precision, and binding force under the sanction of a solemn covenant, to its repeatedly declared purpose. That the Parliamentary Commissioners boggled over this demand, especially if it were in the effort to keep "a doore open in England to Independencie,"40 was scarcely worthy of them, and boded ill for the future. That they yielded in the end and the Scots had their way may have been, no doubt, the index of their necessities; but it would seem to have been already given in the logic of the situation. To hold out on this issue were to stultify the whole course of the Long Parliament heretofore. The result was, accordingly, "the Solemn League and Covenant." 

By this pact, the two nations bound themselves to each other in a solemn league and covenant, the two terms being employed apparently as designating the pact respectively from the civil and the religious sides. This "league and covenant" was sworn to in England by both Houses of Parliament, as also by their servant-body, the Assembly of Divines, and in Scotland by both the civil and religious authorities; and then was sent out into the two countries to be subscribed by the whole population. By the terms of the engagement made in it, the difference in the actual ecclesiastical situations of the contracting parties was clearly recognized, and that in such terms as to make the actual situation in Scotland the model of the establishment agreed upon for both countries. The contracting parties bound themselves to "the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, against our common enemies," on the one hand; and on the other to "the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland,⁴¹ in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed Churches"; to the end that thereby "the Churches of God in the three kingdoms" might be brought "to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for worship and catechizing."42 According to the terms of this engagement, therefore, the Parliament undertook, in the settlement of the Church of England on which it was engaged, to study to bring that Church to the nearest possible "conjunction and uniformity" with the existing settlement of the Church of Scotland, and that in the four items of Confession of Faith, Form of Church Government, Directory for Worship, and Catechizing; and these four items were accordingly currently spoken of thereafter as "the four points or parts of uniformity."43 By this engagement there was given obviously not only a wholly new bearing to the work of the Assembly of Divines which had been convened as a standing body of counsellors to the Parliament in ecclesiastical affairs, and that one of largely increased significance and heightened dignity; but also a wholly new definiteness to the work which should be required of it, with respect both to its compass and its aim. Whatever else Parliament might call on the Assembly to advise it in, it would now necessarily call on it to propose to it a new Form of Church Government, a new Directory for Worship, a new Confession of Faith, and a new Catechetical Manual. And in framing these formularies the aim of the Assembly would now necessarily be to prepare forms which might be acceptable not merely to the Church of England, as promising to secure her internal peace, and efficiency, but also to the Church of Scotland as preserving the doctrines, worship, discipline, government already established in that Church. The significance of the Solemn League and Covenant was, therefore, that it pledged the two nations to uniformity in their religious establishments and pledged them to a uniformity on the model of the establishment already existing in the Church of Scotland. 

The taking of the Solemn League and Covenant by the two nations, on the one side marked the completeness of the failure of the ecclesiastical policy of the King, and on the other seemed to promise to the Scots the accomplishment of a dream which had long been cherished by them. The broader ecclesiastical policy consistently pursued by the throne throughout the whole Stuart period had been directed to the reduction of the religion of the three kingdoms to uniformity.⁴⁴ The model of this uniformity, however, was naturally derived from the prelatical constitution of the Church of England, to which the Stuart monarchs had taken so violent a predilection; and that, in the later years of their administration when the policy of "thorough" was being pushed forward, as interpreted in an extremely reactionary spirit. No one could doubt that important advantages would accrue from uniformity in the religious establishment of the three kingdoms; and the Scots, taking a leaf out of their adversaries' book, began early to press for its institution in the reconstructed Church, on the basis, however, of their own Presbyterianism. Their motive for this was not merely zeal for the extension of their particular church order, which they sincerely believed to be jure divino; but a conviction that only so could they secure themselves from future interference in their own religious establishment from the side of the stronger sister-nation. They had no sooner recovered their Presbyterian organization, and simplicity of worship, therefore, than they began to urge the reformation of the sister-church on their model. The Scottish peace-commissioners, for example, took up to London with them, in the closing months of 1640,45 a paper drawn up by Alexander Henderson, in which they set forth their "desires concerning unity in religion," and "uniformity of Church government as a special mean to conserve peace in his majesty's dominion."46 In this paper they declared that it is "to be wished that there were one Confession of Faith, one form of Catechism, one Directory for all the parts of the public worship of God, and for prayer, preaching, administration of sacraments, etc., and one form of Church government, in all the Churches of his majesty's dominions." Here we see enumerated the precise schedule of uniformity which was afterwards undertaken under the sanction of the Solemn League and Covenant, the items being arranged climactically in the order of ascending immediate importance. For the Commissioners recognized that it was uniformity of Church Government which was most imperatively required; and equally frankly urged that this uniformity of Church Government should be sought by the common adoption by both nations of the Presbyterian system. The propriety of such a demand they argued on the grounds that the Presbyterian system was the system in use in all other Reformed Churches; that the English prelatical system had been the source of much evil; that the Reformed Churches were clear that their system is jure divino, while the jus divinum was not commonly claimed for Episcopacy;⁴⁷ and above all, that the Scotch were bound by oath, not lately taken in wilfulness but of ancient obligation, to the Presbyterian system, while the English were free to recast their system, and indeed were already bent on recasting it. This paper was handed in to the Lords of the Treaty on March 10, 1641, with little apparent immediate effect. Indeed, there seems to have been even a disposition to resent its suggestions. The whole matter was put to one side by the Parliament with a somewhat grudging word of thanks to Scotland for wishing uniformity of Church Government with England, and a somewhat dry intimation that Parliament had already taken into consideration the reformation of Church Government and would proceed in it in due time as should "best conduce to the glory of God and peace of the Church."48 This response was accordingly embodied in the treaty of August 7, 1641,49 to the effect that the desire expressed for "a conformity of Church Government between the two Nations" was commendable; "and as the Parliament hath already taken into consideration the reformation of Church Government, so they will proceed therein in due time as shall best conduce to the glory of God and peace of the Church and of both Kingdomes." 

Nevertheless the suggestion ultimately bore fruit. It was repeated by Henderson to the Scottish Assembly, meeting at the end of July next ensuing, in a proposition that the Scotch Church, by way of holding out the olive branch, should itself draw up a new "Confession of Faith, a Catechisme, a Directorie for all the parts of the publick worship, and a Platforme of Government, wherein possiblie England and we might agree."50 This proposal met so far with favor that Henderson was himself appointed to take the labor in hand, with such help as he should choose to call to his side. On further consideration, however, he himself judged it best to await the issue of affairs in England;⁵¹ fully recognizing that the adoption of purely Scottish forms by both nations was not to be hoped for, but if uniformity was ever to be attained, "a new Forme must be sett downe for us all, and in my opinion some men sett apairt sometime for that worke."52 Accordingly, when, as the outbreak of open war between the Parliament and the King became imminent in the midsummer of 1642, Parliament addressed a letter to the Scottish Assembly declaring "their earnest desyre to have their Church reformed according to the word of God,"53 and their well-grounded hope of accomplishing this task if war could be averted - all of which was interpreted, and was intended to be interpreted, by an accompanying letter "from a number of English ministers at London" in which it was asserted that "the desire of the most godly and considerable part" among them was for the establishment in England of the Presbyterian Government, "which hath just and evident foundation both in the Word of God and religious reason"; and, referring directly to the Scottish proposal, "that (according to your intimation) we may agree in one Confession of Faith, one Directorie of Worship, one publike Catechisme, and form of Government"54 - the Assembly naturally responded⁵⁵ by reiterating its desire for this unifying settlement and renewing "the Proposition made by" its Commissioners in 1641 "for beginning the work of Reformation at the Uniformity of Kirk-Government." "For what hope," the Assembly argues, "can there be of Unity in Religion, of one Confession of Faith, one Form of Worship, and one Catechism, till there be first one Form of Ecclesiastical Government?" The response of Parliament,⁵⁶ satisfactory if a little reserved, intimated the expected meeting of the reforming Synod on November 5, and asked the appointment of some Scottish delegates "to assist at" it;⁵⁷ a request which was immediately complied with, and the Commissioners named, who, a year later, after the adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant, went up in somewhat different circumstances, and with a somewhat different commission.⁵⁸ Meanwhile the Scots assiduously kept their proposals for the institution of uniformity of religious constitution in the two nations forward,⁵⁹ and the course of events finally threw the game into their hands, when the Commissioners of Parliament appeared in Edinburgh in August, 1643, seeking Scottish aid in their extremity, and swore the Solemn League and Covenant as its price. By this compact the two nations bound themselves precisely to the punctual carrying out of the program proposed by the Scottish Commissioners in 1640-1641. 

The Solemn League and Covenant, it must be borne in mind, was no loose agreement between two Churches, but a solemnly ratified treaty between two nations. The Commissioners who went up to London from Scotland under its provisions, went up not as delegates from the Scottish Church to lend their hand to the work of the Assembly of Divines, but as the accredited representatives of the Scottish people, to treat with the English Parliament in the settlement of the details of that religious uniformity which the two nations had agreed with one another to institute. They might on the invitation of the English Parliament be present at the sessions of the advisory Assembly it had convened, and give it their advice throughout all the processes of its deliberations. And it is obvious that their presence there would much advance the business in hand, by tending to prevent proposals of a hopelessly one-sided character from being formulated. It would seem obvious also that it was eminently fitting that Scotch counsels should be heard in the deliberations of a body to which, under whatever safeguards, was in point of fact committed the task of preparing the drafts of formularies which it was hoped might prove acceptable to both Churches - especially when thirty members of the English Parliament, the party of the other part to this treaty, were members of the body. But the proper task of the Scotch Commissioners lay not in the Assembly of Divines, but outside of it. It was their function, speaking broadly, to see that such formularies were proposed to the two contracting nations for the reducing of their church establishments to uniformity, as would be acceptable to the Church of Scotland which they represented, and would fulfil the provisions of the Solemn League and Covenant under the sanction of which they were acting.⁶⁰ And if the Assembly of Divines were utilized, as it in point of fact was utilized, to draw up these draft formularies, it was the business of the Scottish Commissioners to see that the Divines did their work in full view of the Scottish desires and point of view, and that the documents issued from their hands in a form in which the Church of Scotland could adopt them. In the prosecution of these their functions as Treaty Commissioners, their immediate relations were not with the Assembly of Divines but with the Parliament or with whatever commissioners the Parliament might appoint to represent it in conference with them. They could treat with or act directly upon the Assembly of Divines only at the request of Parliament, to treat with which they were really commissioned; and only to the extent which Parliament might judge useful for the common end in view. A disposition manifested itself; it is true, on their appearing in London, to look upon them merely as Scotch members of the Assembly of Divines, appointed to sit with the Divines in response to a request from the English Parliament. This view of their functions they vigorously repudiated. They were perfectly willing, they said,⁶¹ to sit in the Assembly as individuals and to lend the Divines in their deliberations all the aid in their power, if the Parliament invited them to do so. But as Commissioners for their National Church, they were Treaty Commissioners, empowered to treat with the Parliament itself. Accordingly a committee of Parliament was appointed (October 17-20, 1643) to meet statedly with them and consult with them, to which was added a committee from the Divines; and it was through this "Grand Committee" that the work of the Assembly on the points of uniformity was directed.⁶² As they were requested by Parliament also "as private men" to sit in the Assembly of Divines they occupied a sort of dual position relatively to the Assembly,⁶³ and this has been the occasion of some misunderstanding and even criticism of their varied lines of activity. The matter is, however, perfectly simple. In all its work looking to the preparation of a basis for the proposed uniformity, the Assembly really did its work under the direction proximately not of the Parliament but of "the Grand Committee," and the results of its labors were presented, therefore, not merely to Parliament, but, also, through its Commissioners, to the Scottish Assembly. The Scotch Commissioners as members of "the Grand Committee" had therefore an important part in preparing the work of the Divines for them in all that concerned the uniformity; and as present at the deliberations of the Divines were naturally concerned to secure for their own proposals favorable consideration, and did their best endeavors to obtain such results as they might as Commissioners of the Scotch Church recommend to its approval. Throughout everything they acted consistently as the Commissioners of the Scotch Church, seeking the ends which they were as such charged with securing. They were not members of the Assembly of Divines, were present at its meetings and took part in its deliberations only by express invitation and frankly as the agents of the Scotch Church, and possessed and exercised no voice in the determinations of the body.⁶⁴ 

By the Solemn League and Covenant, therefore, the work of the Assembly of Divines was revolutionized, and not only directed to a new end but put upon a wholly new basis. Its proceedings up to the arrival of the first of the Scottish Commissioners in London, on September 15, 1643, and the taking of the Covenant on September 25th, must be regarded simply as "marking time." The Parliament perfectly understood before the first of July, what was before it; and it could never have imagined that the revision of the Thirty-nine Articles upon which it had set the Assembly could prove an acceptable Confession of Faith for the two Churches. The employment of the Assembly in that labor was but an expedient to occupy it innocuously until its real work under the new conditions could be begun. With the coming of the Scotch Commissioners, however, the real work of the Assembly became possible, and was at once committed to it. Already on September 18, there was referred to it from the Commons the consideration of a discipline and government apt to procure nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland and of a new liturgical form, and from the 12th of the October following,⁶⁵ when the Lords had concurred, the Assembly was engaged, with many interruptions, no doubt, but in a true sense continuously, and even strenuously, upon the "four things mentioned in the Covenant, viz.: the Directory for Worship, the Confession of Faith, Form of Church Government, and Catechism."66 And when "the debating and perfecting" of these four things were over, the real work of the Divines was done, and the last of the Scotch Commissioners accordingly, having caused a formal Minute to that effect to be entered on the records of the Assembly, felt able to take leave of the Assembly and return home.⁶⁷ As an advisory committee to the Parliament of England, many other tasks were laid on the Assembly, some of which had their close connection with its work on the points of uniformity, and some of which had no connection with it at all. And the life of the Assembly was prolonged as such a committee for many months after its whole work on "the uniformity" had been completed. But its significant work lies decidedly in its preparation of a complete set of formularies - Confession, Catechisms, Platform of Government, Directory for Worship - which it proposed to the contracting nations as a suitable basis for a uniform church establishment in the three kingdoms. 

In the Second Article⁶⁸ some account will be given of the work of the Divines in the preparation of these formularies. 

SECOND ARTICLE⁶⁹

In the First Article some account was given of the calling of the Westminster Assembly and of its historical meaning. It was pointed out that its really significant work was the preparation of formularies designed to serve the Churches of the three kingdoms as a basis for uniform establishments. Some account of its work on these so-called "four parts of uniformity" is now to be given. 

Of these "four parts of uniformity" the one which was at once the most pressing and the most difficult for the Assembly was the preparation of a platform of government for the Churches. Both Parliament and Assembly were, indeed, fairly committed to the Presbyterian system under solemn sanction; and the majority of the members of both bodies were sincerely Presbyterian in conviction.⁷⁰ But sincerity and consistency are very different matters; and so soon as the details of church organization were brought under discussion, a bewildering variety of judgments was revealed. The Scots, though prepared to yield in the interest of harmony all that it was possible to yield, perhaps more than it was altogether wise to yield, were yet peremptory for a really Presbyterian establishment, as they were bound to be under the engagements of the National Covenant and were fully entitled to be under those of the Solemn League and Covenant. In this they were supported by the overwhelming majority of the Assembly. It fell, indeed, to the lot of the Scots to hold back the English Presbyterians from precipitate and aggressive action. It was their policy to obtain if possible a settlement not so much imposed by a majority as at least acceptable to all.⁷¹ They therefore gave themselves not merely to conciliate the minor differences which emerged in the debate - on the part of those, for example, who preferred a mixed Presbyterian and Episcopal system (Twisse, Gataker, Gouge, Palmer, Temple) - but even "to satisfy" the small but able band of Independents in the Assembly (Goodwin, Nye, Burroughs, Bridge, Carter, Caryl, Phillips, Sterry), who wished all authoritative government in the Church to stop with the congregation. The Independents, on their part, adopted an obstructive policy, and set themselves not only to obtain every concession it was possible to wring from the majority, but to delay the adoption of its scheme of Presbyterian government, and if possible, to defeat its establishment altogether. They were supported in this policy by the Erastians who, though not largely represented in the Assembly (Lightfoot, Coleman, Selden), were dominant in Parliament,⁷² which accordingly showed itself ultimately averse to establishing any church government possessed of independent or final jurisdiction even in spiritual matters.⁷³ In the vain hope of escaping the schism threatened by the Independents and of avoiding an open breach with the Erastian Parliament, the Presbyterian majority in the Assembly proceeded slowly with their platform of government, contenting itself meanwhile with debating and voting a series of detached propositions, which were moreover couched in the simplest and most comprehensive language, while they postponed for the present framing a systematic statement. This delay was, however, itself as great an evil as could have been encountered; and as the differences it was hoped to conciliate were such as in their nature were not subject to "accommodation," the Assembly was compelled in the end to report its scheme of government, which it had thus reduced to its lowest terms and in so doing shorn of much of its strength and attractiveness, in the face of the protest of the Independents and to a determinedly Erastian Parliament.⁷⁴

The first portion of the Assembly's work presented to Parliament was the "Directory for Ordination" which was sent up on April 20, 1644.75 This was followed the ensuing autumn (November 8 and December 11, 1644) by certain "Propositions concerning Church Government," compacted out of the several separate declarations upon points of government which had from time to time been voted by the Assembly in the course of its debates, now gathered together and thrown into some semblance of order. It must be confessed that the work of collecting and ordering these propositions was somewhat carelessly done. Now and then, for example, in transferring them from the Minutes clauses are retained which have no proper meaning in their new setting. We are told, for instance, that "the pastor is an ordinary and perpetual officer in the church, prophesying of the time of the Gospel"; and it is only from the vidimus of the votes of the Assembly preserved by Gillespie that we learn that the clause "prophesying of the time of the Gospel," here sheer nonsense, was a comment on Jer. iii. 15-17 which was on this ground adduced as a proof-text for the proposition "that there is such an ordinary and perpetual officer in the church as a pastor."76 Again there is enumerated among the offices of a pastor as if it were an independent function, "to dispense other divine mysteries"; and we have to go to Gillespie's vidimus to learn that the Assembly meant just the Sacraments (along with the benediction) and no "other divine mysteries" by this phrase.⁷⁷ The document nevertheless contains a firm enough, though cautiously worded, presentation of the essentials of the Presbyterian system; and was therefore followed, of course, by a protest from the Independent members of the Assembly, which naturally occasioned a reply from the Assembly itself. These documents were later (1648) published together under the title, "The Reasons Presented by the Dissenting Brethren Against Certain Propositions Concerning Church Government, together with the Answers of the Assembly of Divines to these Reasons of Dissent"; and republished in 1652 under the new title, "The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency by the Assembly of Divines convened at Westminster by authority of Parliament." 

The "Propositions" themselves, to which the "Directory for Ordination" was adjoined, so as to form a single document, were dealt with very freely by Parliament. Intent only on the practical settlement of the Church while it preserved to itself all ecclesiastical as well as civil authority, Parliament on the one hand, undertook to extract from "The Propositions" only so much of a practical directory as would enable the Church to go on; and on the other, precipitated the Assembly of Divines into what threatened to become endless debates on the jus divinum of the details of the Presbyterian system and the autonomy of the Church and particularly the right of the Church in the exercise of its own spiritual jurisdiction to exclude the scandalous from participation in the Lord's Supper.⁷⁸ In these debates, and in the whole conduct of its negotiations with Parliament during this dispute, the Assembly manifested the highest dignity, firmness, and courage. If Parliament utterly refused to set up a series of ecclesiastical courts with independent jurisdiction even in purely spiritual matters, and insisted on reserving to itself, or to secular committees established by and directly responsible to it, the review of even such spiritual functions as the determination of fitness to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,⁷⁹ the Assembly on its part respectfully but firmly protested against such an intrusion of the secular arm into spiritual things, and refused to be a party to any ecclesiastical arrangement which denied to the Church what it deemed its divinely prescribed rights and responsibilities. It took for its motto the ringing phrase, "The Crown rights of Jesus Christ," and declared that on His shoulders the government is, and that all power in heaven and earth has been given Him, and, ascended far above all heavens, He has received gifts for His Church and has given to it officers necessary for its edification and the perfecting of His saints. It showed itself, in the noble words of Warriston, "tender, zealous and carefull to assert Christ and his Church their priviledge and right . . . that Christ lives and reigns alone over and in his Church, and will have all done therin according to his Word and will, and that he hes given no supreme headship over his Church to any Pope, King, or Parliament whatsoever."80 On the matter of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the Assembly remained unmoved and insisted that Christ has instituted in the Church a government and governors ecclesiastical distinct from the civil magistrates.⁸¹ Meanwhile, realizing that it was of the first importance to get the framework of the Presbyterian government established and in operation, the Divines under the leadership of Alexander Henderson, passing by these doctrinal matters for the moment, had drawn up a "Practical Directory for Church Government," which they had presented to Parliament July 7, 1645. In this document, which avoided as far as possible all questions of principle, very full and definite expositions were given of the actual framework of Presbyterian government. It commended itself in this aspect of it to Parliament and was ultimately in large part adopted by it in an ordinance passed on August 29, 1648, and was published in this somewhat diluted shape as "The Form of Church Government to be used in the Church of England and Ireland." 

In Scotland this document was never formally approved, as the earlier "Propositions," which were approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, were never ratified by the English Parliament. Thus neither became of authority in both Churches. The modified Presbyterianism set up by the Long Parliament in England, under the direction of the one document, moreover, was soon swept away; while the other document, approved indeed by the Scottish General Assembly but never ratified by the Estates of the Scottish Parliament, though it has held its place among the formularies of the Scottish churches until to-day, has been largely superseded in the churches deriving their descent from them. The permanent influence of the labors of the Westminster Assembly in the great matter of church organization - supposed at the time, as they were, to be its most important, as they certainly were its most pressing and its most difficult labors - has been largely unofficial and somewhat indirect. It has doubtless been exerted nearly as powerfully, indeed, through such treatises as "The Grand Debate," already mentioned, or the "Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici," published by some of the ministers of London at the end of 1646, but supposed to incorporate the Assembly's answers to the jus divinumqueries propounded to it by Parliament, as through their formal advices to Parliament. Indeed, it is questionable whether the really great works of individual members of the Assembly on these topics, such as Gillespie's "An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland" (1641) and "Aaron's Rod Blossoming" (1646), Rutherford's "Due Right of Presbytery" (1644), and Henderson's "The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland" (1641, and again 1690), must not be conceived the chief vehicles of this influence. The most that can be said for the formal work of the Assembly in this field is that it gave ungrudgingly an immense amount of self-denying labor to preparing advices for the use of Parliament in settling the government of the Church of England on a Presbyterian model, but was prevented by the circumstances in which it did its work from doing full justice in these documents either to its own clear and strong convictions or to the system with which it was dealing. 

Next to the elaboration of a new scheme of government for the Church of England which should bring it into harmony with the established government of the Church of Scotland, the most pressing task committed to the Assembly of Divines was the preparation of a new form of worship to take the place of "The Book of Common Prayer" now to be abolished, by which the modes of worship in the Church of England should be conformed "to the example of the best Reformed Churches." The prosecution of this task was attended with no such difficulties as beset the formulation of the scheme of government. There existed no doubt differences enough in usage and preference among the several parties in the Assembly in this region of church life also; and these differences ranged all the way from a distaste among the Independents to all prescriptions in worship to a predilection in the case of some of the English churchmen for a complete liturgy.⁸² But they were less deeply rooted and more easily conciliated in a middle way than the differences by which they were divided in the matter of church government. The work of formulating forms of worship acceptable to all was, therefore, pushed through comparatively rapidly, and the whole "Directory for the Publique Worship of God throughout the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland" was sent up to Parliament by the end of 1644. By an ordinance of Parliament, dated January 3d, [4th], 1645, it was established in England and Wales to "be henceforth used, pursued, and observed, . . . in all Exercises of the Publique Worship of God, in every Congregation, Church, Chappell, and place of Publique Worship"; and a month later it was approved and established in Scotland by Acts of Assembly (February 3d) and the Estates of Parliament (February 6th). After some slight adjustments it was printed and put into circulation in both countries during the ensuing spring (the English edition bears on its titlepage the date 1644, but that is "old style"). As is indicated by the title, the book is not "a straight liturgy," but a body of agenda and paradigms. Some of these paradigms, to be sure, are so full that they are capable of being transmuted into liturgical forms by a mere transposition of their clauses into the mode of direct address, but they were not intended to be so employed and are too compressed to lend themselves readily to such use.⁸³ 

The first draft of the document was prepared by a subcommittee of the Great Treaty Committee, and, as in the case of the "Practical Directory for Church Government," it was largely the work of the Scots.⁸⁴ The suggestions for the prayers of the Sabbath-day service, and for the administration of the Sacraments, were in the first instance their work;⁸⁵ and they ultimately had the drawing up also of the suggestions for preaching and for catechizing.⁸⁶ Naturally, therefore, there is much in the book which is derived from Scottish usage. The Sabbath service, for example, is in its general structure practically identical with that of the "Book of Common Order" (commonly called "Knox's Liturgy"), and the materials for the consecration prayer in the directory for celebrating the Lord's Supper are mainly derived from the same source. But, on the other hand, the latter part of this same prayer and the concluding thanksgiving are more reminiscent of the English "Book of Common Prayer."87 The book as a whole, in fact, does not so much follow Scottish as offer a compromise between Scottish and Puritan usage. Acquiescence in this compromise must have cost the Scots a great effort, as it was, in effect, a reversal of a deliberate policy which had been adopted by the Scottish Church. After the recovery of its purity of worship consequent upon the outbreak of 1637, the Scottish Church was considerably disturbed by the intrusion of certain "novations" into its worship, which were really Puritan customs, seeping in, no doubt, in part, from England, but mainly brought in by returning Scottish emigrants to Ulster. These "novations" were made the subject of earnest conference at the General Assembly of 1641, and again at that of 1643; and, in order to meet the peril which they appeared to threaten, it was determined at the latter Assembly that "a Directorie for the worship of God" should "be framed and made ready, in all the parts thereof, against the next General Assembly" (that of 1644), Henderson, Calderwood, and Dickson being charged with the drafting of it. This whole undertaking was naturally superseded, however, by the inauguration of the broader attempt to introduce, through the mediation of the Westminster Assembly, a common Directory for the three kingdoms. But the odd effect of this supersession was that the "novations" for the exclusion of which from the Church of Scotland the first undertaking was set on foot, were in large measure constituted the official usage of the Church by the new Directory. By the very conditions of its formulation this Directory became a compromise between the Scottish and the Puritan modes of worship rather than a bar to the introduction into Scotland of Puritan modes of worship. 

By these "novations" the use of "read prayers,"88 and even of the Lord's Prayer, in public worship, was discountenanced, as was also the use of the Gloria Patri, and of the Apostles' Creed in the administration of the Sacraments, and the habit of the minister to bow in silent prayer upon entering the pulpit. No one of these usages, on which the Scots laid much stress, except the use of the Lord's Prayer, is prescribed by the Directory; but as none of them are proscribed either, the Scots were able to "save their face" by attaching to the Act by which the Assembly adopted the Directory the proviso: "That this shall be no prejudice to the order and practice of this Kirk, in such particulars as are appointed by the Books of Discipline and Acts of General Assemblies, and are not otherwise ordered and appointed in the Directory." By a supplementary Act of the same Assembly, however, they voluntarily laid aside - "for satisfaction of the desires of the reverend Divines in the Synod of England, and for uniformity with that Kirk, so much endeared to us" - the "lawful custom" of "the Minister's bowing in the pulpit."89 Of more importance than any of these usages, at least for the conduct of the public services, was the loss by the Scots, through the Westminster Directory, of the office of "Reader." From the Reforniation down, the former or liturgical portion of the Scottish Sabbath service - the opening prayer, the lessons from Scripture, and the singing of a Psalm - had been conducted by a "Reader," the Minister taking charge of the services, and indeed commonly entering the church, only when he ascended the pulpit to preach. The Westminster Divines found no Scriptural warrant for the office of "Reader," and, much against the wishes of the Scots, enacted that the Minister should conduct the entire service. "Reading of the Word in the Congregation," they set down in their Directory, "being part of the Public Worship of God (wherein we acknowledge our dependence upon Him, and subjection to Him), and one means sanctified by Him for the edifying of His people, is to be performed by the Pastors and Teachers."90 The only exception they would allow was that they permitted candidates for the ministry occasionally to perform the office of reading, as also that of preaching, on permission of their Presbyteries. 

On the other hand, besides the general structure of the services, as already noted, Scottish usage was followed in the Directory in many important points. This was particularly true in the regulations for the celebration of the Sacraments. The Baptismal service, for example - although the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and godparents were omitted - yet followed in general the Scotch order; and it was thought a great gain for the Scots when, in opposition to practically the universal English custom, they got it ordained that Baptism was never to be administered in private, but always in "the place of Public Worship, and in the face of the Congregation." It was over the mode of celebrating the Lord's Supper, however, that the most strenuous debates were held. The manner of celebrating that rite prevalent among the Independents, seemed to the Scots to be bald even to irreverence; while many of the details of the Scottish service were utterly distasteful to the extremer Puritans. In the end, things were ordered fairly to the satisfaction of the Scots, although in one matter which they thought of very great importance, they were ultimately compelled to content themselves with an ambiguous rubric. This concerned the place and manner of the reception of the elements. The Scots were insistent for their own custom, in which the communicants arranged themselves at the table and served one another with the elements as at an actual meal. This usage was, after strenuous debate, at last ordered: but the rubric was subsequently so changed that it ultimately read, merely: "The Table . . . being so conveniently placed, that the Communicants may orderly sit about it, or at it." Accordingly the Scotch Assembly, in adopting the Directory, added this proviso: "That the clause in the Directory of the Administration of the Lord's Supper, which mentioneth the Communicants sitting about the Table, or at it, be not interpreted as if, in the judgment of this Kirk, it were indifferent, and free for any of the Communicants not to come to, and receive at the Table; or as if we did approve the distributing of the Elements by the Minister to each Communicant, and not by the Communicants among themselves." In a supplementary Act the Assembly further laid down a series of details for the administration of this Sacrament. It was in accordance with the Scottish usage, also, that in a concluding section, the Directory abolished all Festival days, and affirmed that "there is no day commanded in Scripture to be kept holy under the Gospel but the Lord's Day, which is the Christian Sabbath."91 

A document formed as this was by a series of compromises was not very likely to command the hearty loyalty of any section of its framers. We are not surprised, therefore, that it was much neglected in England, though in Scotland it gradually made its way against ancient custom and ultimately very much molded the usages of the churches. Even in Scotland, however, this gradually perfected assimilation to the Directory has of late suffered from some reaction; and in some of the churches deriving their formularies from the Scottish Church, the Directory was early superseded by new models of their own.⁹² At this distance of time we may look upon it dispassionately; and, so viewed, it can scarcely fail to commend itself as an admirable set of agenda, in spirit and matter alike well fitted to direct the public services of a great Church. It is notable for its freedom from petty prescriptions and "superfluities" and for the emphasis it places upon what is specifically commanded in the Scriptures. Its general tone is lofty and spiritual; its conception of acceptable worship is sober and restrained and at the same time profound and rich; the paradigms of prayers which it offers are notably full and yet free from overelaboration, compressed and yet enriched by many reminiscences of the best models which had preceded them; and it is singular among agenda for the dominant place it gives in the public worship of the Church to the offices of reading and preaching the Word.⁹³ To both of these offices it vindicates a place, and a prominent place, among the parts of public worship, specifically so called, claiming for them distinctively a function in inducing and expressing that sense of dependence on God and of subjection to Him in which all religion is rooted and which is the purest expression of worship; and thus justifying in the ordering of the public services of the churches the recognition of the Word as a means, perhaps we should say the means, of grace. It expends as much care upon the minister's proper performance of the offices of reading and preaching the Word, therefore, as upon his successful performance of the duty of leading the congregation in prayer and acceptably administering to it the Sacraments. The paragraph on the Preaching of the Word is in effect, indeed, a complete homiletical treatise, remarkable at once for its sober practical sense and its profound spiritual wisdom, and suffused with a tone of sincere piety, and of zeal at once for the truth and for the souls which are to be bought with the truth. 

One of the sections of the Directory is given to the Singing of Psalms, and declares it "the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by Singing of Psalms together in the Congregation, and also privately in the family." This rubric manifestly implied the provision of a Psalm Book, and it was made part of the function of the Assembly in preparing a basis for uniformity of worship in the Churches of the three kingdoms, to supply them with a common Psalm Book. The way was prepared for this by the submitment to the Assembly by the House of Commons on November 20, 1643, of the query whether "it may not be useful and profitable to the Church, that the Psalms set forth by Mr. Rouse, be permitted to be publickly sung." The result of the Assembly's examination of Mr. Rouse's version (first printed in 1643) was to recommend it, after it had been subjected to a thorough revision at its own hands, to Parliament as a suitable Psalm Book for the Church (autumn of 1645). The Commons accordingly ordered the book printed in this revised form (it appeared in 1646, i.e. February, 1647), and (April 15, 1646) issued an order establishing it as the sole Psalm Book to be used in the Churches of England and Wales, though the House of Lords never concurred in this order. The Scotch Assembly subjected the book to a still further and more searching revision, and by an act passed in 1649 (ratified by the Estates of Parliament in 1650) approved it in this new form for use in the Scottish churches. It is in this Scottish revision alone (printed in 1650), in which they can only by courtesy continue to bear the name of Francis Rouse as their author, that these Psalms have passed into wide use.⁹⁴ 

To the punctual completion of "the third part of uniformity," that is to say, the preparation of a new Confession of Faith for the contracting Churches, the Divines were urged by no immediately pressing necessity in the situation of the Church of England. The existing Thirty-nine Articles were recognized by them as a soundly Reformed Creed, the doctrine of which required only to be vindicated and cleared from the false interpretations which the reactionary party was already endeavoring to foist upon it. With the internal needs of the Church of England alone in view, they might possibly have felt contented with a simple revision of these Articles, somewhat more thorough than that they had been engaged upon early in their labors.⁹⁵ The duty of preparing an entirely new Creed was imposed on them solely by the Solemn League and Covenant, by which a common Confession of Faith was made one of the bases of the uniformity in religion which the contracting nations had bound themselves to institute. It was not supposable that either Church would be content simply to accept and make its own the existing Creed of the other. Indeed, neither Church possessed a Creed which it could seriously propose to the other as suitable to the purpose or adequate to the needs of the times. The old Scotch Confession of 1560, breathing as it does the fervor of the Reformation era and full of noble expressions as it is, is too much of an occasional document, too disproportionate in its development of its topics, and too little complete in its scope or precise in its phraseology to serve as the permanent expression of the faith of a great and comprehensive Church; and the new Confession brought forward by the prelatical party in 1616, though sound in doctrine and in parts finely wrought out, suffered from the same defects. The Scots themselves recognized that they had no Creed which they could ask the English to adopt as the common Confession of the unified Churches, and therefore, when contemplating seeking such unification had it in mind to undertake the preparation of a new Creed for the purpose.⁹⁶ There was greater reason for the English to feel similarly with regard to their own formularies. The Thirty-nine Articles had, in their past experience, proved an inadequate protection against the most dangerous doctrinal reactions. It was therefore that the ecclesiastical authorities had been compelled to put forth, a half-century earlier, those "orthodoxal assertions" which have come down to us under the name of the Lambeth Articles (1595). It had long been the desire of the Puritans that these Articles should be set alongside of the Thirty-nine Articles, as an authoritative exposition of their real meaning. This desire had been given expression at the Hampton Court Conference (1604), and had been met in the Church of Ireland by the incorporation of the Lambeth Articles along with the Thirty-nine Articles into those Irish Articles of 1615, to which we may be sure the Westminster Divines would have turned rather than to the Thirty-nine Articles, had they thought of recommending the simple adoption of an existing Creed as the doctrinal standard of the unified Churches, and which indeed they did make the basis of their own new Creed. Since the necessity of a new Creed was a result of the new conditions brought about by the Solemn League and Covenant, therefore, these conditions imposed an absolute necessity for the preparation of such a document; and as time passed on the demand for the accomplishment of the task became ever more urgent. The "woeful longsomeness" of the Assembly in all its work was bringing the fulfilment of the engagements into which the nations had entered into jeopardy, and the Scots, who had paid the price of the Covenant on the faith of the fulfilment of its provisions, not unnaturally began uneasily to urge their more speedy fulfilment. It was accordingly under pressure from Scotland that the Divines at length entered actively upon the accomplishment of this "third part of uniformity."97 

It must not be inferred, however, from their slowness in entering upon it, that the work of drawing up a Confession of Faith was one uncongenial to the Assembly of Divines; or one for which its members possessed little native fitness or had made little direct preparation; or one which presented for them special difficulties. On the contrary, there was no work committed to them for which they were more eminently qualified, or in which they acquitted themselves with more distinguished success; nor was there any work committed to them in the prosecution of which they were less impeded by differences among themselves. The deep-seated antagonisms which divided them into irreconcilable parties, lay in the region of church organization and government. Doctrinally they were in complete fundamental harmony, and in giving expression to their common faith needed only to concern themselves to state it truly, purely, and with its polemic edges well-turned out towards the chief assailants of Reformed doctrine, in order to satisfy the minds of all. There were indeed differences among them in doctrine, too; but these lay for the most part within the recognized limits of the Reformed system, and there was little disposition to press them to extremes or to narrow their Creed to a party document. To the Amyraldians, of whom there was a small but very active and well-esteemed party in the Assembly (Calamy, Seaman, Marshall, Vines), there was denied, to be sure, the right to modify the statement of the ordo decretorum so as to make room for their "hypothetical universalism" in the saving work of Christ (cf. the Confession, iii. 6, viii. 5, 8). But the wise plan was adopted with respect to the points of difference between the Supralapsarians, who were represented by a number of the ablest thinkers in the Assembly (Twisse, Rutherford), and the Infralapsarians, to which party the great mass of the members adhered, to set down in the Confession only what was common ground to both, leaving the whole region which was in dispute between them entirely untouched. This procedure gives to the Confession a peculiar comprehensiveness, while yet it permits to its statements of the generic doctrine of the Reformed Churches a directness, a definiteness, a crisp precision, and an unambiguous clarity which are attained by few Confessional documents of any age or creed. In its third chapter, for example, in which the thorny subject of "God's Eternal Decree" falls for treatment, the Westminster Confession has attained, by this simple method, the culmination of the Confessional statement of this high mystery. Everything merely individual and as well everything upon which parties in the Reformed Churches are divided with respect to this deep doctrine, is carefully avoided, while the whole ground common to all recognized Reformed parties is given, if prudent, yet full and uncompromising statement. 

The architectonic principle of the Westminster Confession is supplied by the schematization of the Federal theology, which had obtained by this time in Britain, as on the Continent, a dominant position as the most commodious mode of presenting the corpus of Reformed doctrine (so e.g. Rollock, Howie, Cartwright, Preston, Perkins, Ames, Ball, and cf. Dickson's "Sum of Saving Knowledge" and Fisher's "Marrow of Modern Divinity," both of which emanated from this period and were destined to a career of great influence in the Scottish theology). The matter is distributed into thirty-three comprehensive chapters. After an opening chapter "Of the Holy Scripture" as the source of divine truth - which is probably the finest single chapter in any Protestant Confession and is rivalled in ability only by the chapter on Justification in the Tridentine Decrees - there are successively taken up the topics of God and the Trinity, the Divine Decree, Creation, Providence, the Fall and Sin, and then God's Covenant with Man, and Christ the Mediator of the Covenant, while subsequent treatment is given to the stages in the ordo salutis in the order first of the benefits conferred under the Covenant (Vocation, Justification, Adoption, Sanctification) and then of the duties required under the Covenant (Faith, Repentance, Good Works, Perseverance, Assurance). Then come chapters on the Law, Christian Liberty, Religious Worship, Oaths and Vows, followed by others on the relations of Church and State, the Church and the Sacraments, and the rubrics of Eschatology. All the topics of this comprehensive outline are treated with notable fulness, with the avowed object not merely of setting forth the doctrine of the Churches with such clearness and in such detail as to make it plain to all that they held to the Reformed faith in its entirety,⁹⁸ but also to meet and exclude the whole mob of errors which vexed the time.⁹⁹ In the prosecution of their work as practical pastors protecting and indoctrinating their flocks, the Divines had acquired an intimate acquaintance with the prevailing errors and a remarkable facility in the formulation of the Reformed doctrine in opposition to them, which bore rich fruit in their Confessional labors. The main source of their Confessional statements was, thus, just the Reformed theology as it had framed itself in their minds during their long experience in teaching it, and had worked itself out into expression in the prosecution of their task as teachers of religion in an age of almost unexampled religious unrest and controversy. This work, however, had not been done by them in isolation. It had been done, on the contrary, in the full light of the whole body of Reformed thought. It is idle, therefore, to inquire whether they depended for guidance in the scholastic statement of their doctrine on British or on Continental masters. The distinction was not present to their minds; intercourse between the British and the Continental Reformed was constant, and the solidarity of their consciousness was complete. The vital statement of Reformed thought ripened everywhere simultaneously in the perfect interaction which leaves open no question of relative dependence. The Federal mode of statement, for example, came forward and gradually became dominant throughout the Reformed world at about the same time; and the Westminster Confession owes its preeminence among Reformed Confessions, not only in fulness but also in exactitude and richness of statement, merely to the fact that it is the ripest fruit of Reformed creed-making, the simple transcript of Reformed thought as it was everywhere expounded by its best representatives in the middle of the seventeenth century. So representative is it of Reformed theology at its best, that often one might easily gain the illusion as he read over its compressed sections that he was reading a condensed abstract of some such compend as Heppe's "Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche." 

In giving form and order to their statement of the Reformed faith, however, it was but natural for the Westminster Divines to take their starting point from the formularies in most familiar use among themselves. The whole series of Reformed Confessions, as well as all the best Reformed dogmaticians, were drawn upon to aid them in their definitions, and it is possible to note here and there traces of their use. But it was particularly the Irish Articles of 1615, which are believed to have been prepared by Usher, to which they especially turned. From these Articles they derived the general arrangement of their Confession, the consecution of topics through at least its first half, and a large part of the detailed treatment of such capital Articles as those on the Holy Scripture, God's Eternal Decree, Christ the Mediator, the Covenant of Grace, and the Lord's Supper. These chapters might almost be spoken of as only greatly enriched revisions of the corresponding sections of the Irish Articles. Nothing, however, is taken from the Irish Articles without much revision and enrichment, for which every available source was diligently sought out and utilized. There are traces, minute but not therefore the less convincing or significant, for example, of the use for the perfecting of the statements of the Confession, of even the Aberdeen Articles of 1616 and of the Assembly's own revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. So minutely was every phrase scrutinized and every aid within reach invoked. 

The work of formulating the Confession of Faith was begun in Committee as early as the midsummer of 1644 (August 20).¹⁰⁰ But it was not until the following spring (April 25, 1645)¹⁰¹ that any of it came before the Assembly; and not until the next midsummer (July 7, 1645) that the debates upon it in the Assembly began. Time and pains were lavishly expended on it as the work slowly progressed. By the middle of 1646 the whole was substantially finished in first-draft, and the review of it begun. The first nineteen chapters were sent up to the House of Commons on September 25, 1646, and the entire work on December 4. Proof-texts from Scripture were subsequently added, and the book supplied with them was placed in the hands of Parliament on April 29, 1647. Immediately on its completion the book was carried to Scotland, and by an Act of the General Assembly of 1647, ratified by the Estates of Parliament February 7, 1649, it was constituted the official Creed of the Church of Scotland. Meanwhile action on it dragged in the English Parliament. It was not until June 20, 1648, that, curtailed of chapters xxx. and xxxi., on "Church Censures" and "Synods and Councils," and certain passages in chapters xx. ("of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience"), xxiii. ("of the Civil Magistrate"), and xxiv. ("of Marriage and Divorce"), it was approved by Parliament and printed under the title of "Articles of the Christian Religion"; and not until March 5, 1660, after the interval of the Protectorate, that it was declared by the so-called "Rump Parliament" to be "the public Confession of the Church of England," only to pass, of course, out of sight so far as the Church of England was concerned in the immediately succeeding Restoration. 

The book was not one, however, which could easily be relegated to oblivion. Thrust aside by the established Church of England, it nevertheless had an important career before it even in England, where it became the Creed of the Non-Conformists. The Independents, at their Synod, met in 1658 at the Savoy, adopted it in the form in which it had been published by Parliament (1648), after subjecting it to a revision which in no way affected its substance; and the Baptists, having still further revised it and adjusted it to fit their particular views on. Baptism, adopted it in 1677. By both of the bodies it was transmitted to their affiliated co-religionists in America, where it worked out for itself an important history.¹⁰² It was of course also transmitted, in its original form, by the Scotch Church to the Churches, on both sides of the sea, deriving their tradition from it, and thus it has become the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Churches of the British dependencies and of America. In the latter it has been adapted to their free position relatively to the State by means of certain alterations in the relevant chapters, and in some of the Churches it has been subjected to some other revisions. It has thus come about that the Westminster Confession has occupied a position of very widespread influence. It has been issued in something like 200 editions in Great Britain and in about 100 more in America.¹⁰³ It was rendered into German as early as 1648 (reprinted, somewhat modified, in Böckel's "Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche," 1847); and into Latin in 1656 (often reprinted, e.g. Niemeyer's "Collectio Confessionum," Appendix, 1840, and Schaff, "Creeds of Christendom," 1878); and into Gaelic in 1725 (often reprinted). More recently it has been translated into Hindustani (1842), Urdu (1848), German (1858), Siamese (1873), Portuguese (1876), Spanish (1880 and again 1896-1897), Japanese (1880), Chinese (1881), Arabic (1883), Gujurati (1888), French (1891), as well as into Benga, Persian, and Korean (as yet in MS.). It thus exists to-day in some seventeen languages¹⁰⁴ and is professed by perhaps a more numerous body than any other Protestant creed.¹⁰⁵ 

The labors of the Divines upon the "fourth part of uniformity," that is to say, in the preparation of a Catechism for the unified Churches, reached a similarly felicitous result. The Westminster Assembly was eminently an assembly of catechists, trained and practised in the art.¹⁰⁶ Not only were its members pupils of masters in this work, but not fewer than a dozen of themselves had published Catechisms which were in wide use in the churches (Twisse, White, Gataker, Gouge, Wilkinson, Wilson, Walker, Palmer, Cawdrey, Sedgewick, Byfield, and possibly Newcomen, Lyford, Hodges, Foxcroft). A beginning was made at a comparatively early date towards drawing up their Catechism; but this labor was successfully completed only after all the other work of the Assembly had been accomplished. In the earlier notices of work on the Catechism it is not always easy to distinguish between references to the preparation of the Directory for Catechising or the Directory for Worship and references to the preparation of the Catechism itself. But as early as November 21, 1644, Baillie speaks of "the Catechise" as already drawn up; and on the 26th of December following, as nearly agreed on in private in its first draft. And we learn from the "Minutes" (p. 13) that on December 2, 1644, a committee was appointed "for hastening the Catechism," and that this committee was augmented on February 7th following (p. 48). On August 5, 1645, the material of this Catechism was under debate in the Assembly itself; and by August 20 it would seem to have been so far nearing completion that a committee was appointed to "draw up the whole draught" of it. Nothing, however, came of this work. It appears, in effect, that one or two false starts were made upon the Catechism before the Divines got down to their really productive work upon it. After midsummer of 1645 we hear nothing about the Catechism for a year, when, writing July 14, 1646, Baillie tells us that all that had been hitherto accomplished was set aside and a new beginning made. "We made, long agoe," he writes, "a prettie progress in the Catechise; but falling on rubbes and long debates, it wes laid aside till the Confession wes ended, with resolution to have no matter in it but what wes expressed in the Confession, which should not be debated over againe in the Catechise." 

Accordingly, the Confession being now finished and in process of review, the new Catechism¹⁰⁷ was taken up (September 11), and from September 14, 1646, to January 4, 1647, was rapidly passed through the Assembly up to the questions which dealt with the Fourth Commandment. This, however, was only another false start. In the prosecution of this work, the Assembly became convinced that it was attempting an impossible feat; as the Scottish Commissioners express it,¹⁰⁸ it was essaying "to dress up milk and meat both in one dish." It therefore again called a halt and "recommitted the work, that tuo formes of Catechisme may be prepared, one more exact and comprehensive, another more easie and short for new beginners."109 Recommencing on this new basis, the "Larger Catechism" began to be debated on April 15, 1647, and was finished on the 15th of the following October, and sent up to Parliament on October 22. The "Shorter Catechism" was taken up on August 5, 1647, seriously taken in hand October 19, began to come into the Assembly on October 21, and was finished November 22 and sent up to Parliament November 25, 1647. The proof-texts for both Catechisms occupied the Assembly from November 30, 1647, to April 12, 1648, and were presented to Parliament April 14, 1648. The "Shorter Catechism" was approved by Parliament on September 22-25, 1648; and issued under the title, "The Grounds and Principles of Religion, contained in a Shorter Catechism (according to the Advice of the Assembly of Divines sitting at Westminster), to be used throughout the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales." The "Larger Catechism," however, although passed by the Commons on July 24, 1648, stuck in the House of Lords and never received its authorization. In Scotland, both were approved by acts of the General Assembly of 1648, ratified by the Estates of Parliament, February 7, 1649; but no mention is made of them in the reestablishment of Presbytery after the Revolution. In the later history of the Westminster formularies, the "Larger Catechism" has taken a somewhat secondary place; but no product of the Divines has been more widely diffused or has exercised a deeper influence than their "Shorter Catechism." It at once became in Scotland the textbook in religion in the schools, and has held that position up to to-day; and for a long period it was scarcely less popular in Non-Conformist England than in Scotland. From both sources it was transmitted to their affiliated Churches in America; and in the extension of the mission work of the several Presbyterian Churches in the nineteenth century its use has been diffused throughout the world. 

The tracing of the sources of the Westminster Catechisms is rendered exceptionally difficult not merely by the amazing fecundity in catechetical manuals of the British Churches of the immediately preceding and contemporary periods, but also by the obvious independence of the Westminster Divines in giving form to their catechetical formularies, and their express determination to derive the materials for them, as far as possible, from their own Confession of Faith. The contents of the first Catechism taken in hand by them - the Catechism of 1644-1645 - have not been transmitted to us. We may infer, however, from the meager details which have found record, that it was probably based on the Catechism of Herbert Palmer, published in 1640 under the title of "An Endeavour of Making Christian Religion Easie" (5th edition, 1645). The matter of the second Catechism prepared by the Assembly - that of the autumn of 1646 - is preserved for us in the Minutes, so far as it was debated and passed by the Assembly.¹¹⁰ It professedly derives its material as far as possible from the Assembly's Confession of Faith, but as it covers in large part ground not gone over in the Confession, much of its material must have an independent origin. Palmer's Catechism still seems to underlie it, but supplies no material for its exposition of the Commandments; and the influence of the manuals of Usher seems discernible. Much the same must be said of the sources of the Catechisms which the Assembly completed, "Larger" and "Shorter." The doctrinal portion of the "Larger Catechism" is very much a catechetical recension of the Assembly's Confession of Faith; while in its ethical portion (its exposition of the Ten Commandments) it seems to derive most from Usher's "Body of Divinity" and Nicholl's and Ball's "Catechisms"; and in its exposition of the Lord's Prayer to go back ultimately through intermediary manuals to William Perkins' treatise on the Lord's Prayer. The "Shorter Catechism" is so original and individual in its form, that the question of its sources seems insoluble, if not impertinent. It in the main follows the outline of the "Larger Catechism"; but in its modes of statement it now and again varies from it and in some of these variations reverts to the Catechism of the autumn of 1646. In their striking opening questions both Catechisms go back ultimately to the model introduced by Calvin, possibly but certainly not probably through the intermediation of Leo Judae.¹¹¹Perhaps of all earlier Catechisms the little manual of Ezekiel Rogers most closely resembles the "Shorter Catechism" in its general plan and order; but there is little detailed resemblance between the two. After all said, the "Shorter Catechism" is a new creation, and must be considered in structure and contents alike the contribution to the catechetical art of the Westminster Divines themselves. No other Catechism can be compared with it in its concise, nervous, terse exactitude of definition, or in its severely logical elaboration; and it gains these admirable qualities at no expense to its freshness or fervor, though perhaps it can scarcely be spoken of as marked by childlike simplicity. Although set forth as "milk for babes" and designed to stand by the side of the "Larger Catechism" as an "easie and short" manual of religion "for newbeginners," it is nevertheless governed by the principle (as one of its authors - Seaman - phrased it), "that the greatest care should be taken to frame the answer not according to the model of the knowledge the child hath, but according to that the child ought to have." Its peculiarity, in contrast with the "Larger Catechism" (and the Confession of Faith), is the strictness with which its contents are confined to the very quintessence of religion and morals, to the positive truths and facts which must be known for their own behoof by all who would fain be instructed in right belief and practice.¹¹² All purely historical matter, and much more, all controversial matter - everything which can minister merely to curiosity, however chastened - is rigidly excluded. Only that is given which, in the judgment of its framers, is directly required for the Christian's instruction in what he is to believe concerning God and what God requires of him. It is a pure manual of personal religion and practical morality. 

To whom among the Westminster Divines we more especially owe these Catechetical manuals - and particularly the "Shorter Catechism" - we have no means of determining. It is, of course, easy to draw out from the records of the Assembly the names of the members of the committees to which the preparation of the materials for them was entrusted. But this seems to carry us a very little way into the problem. On the whole, Herbert Palmer, who bore the reputation, as Baillie tells us, of being "the best catechist in England," appears to have been the leading spirit in the Assembly in all matters concerned with catechetics: and he apparently served on all important committees busied with the Catechisms up to his death, which occurred, however (August 13, 1647), before the "Shorter Catechism" seems to have been seriously taken in hand. We have no direct evidence to connect him with the authorship of this Catechism, only the first - evidently a purely preliminary - report upon which he was privileged to be the medium of making, and the contents of which certainly show much less resemblance to those of his own manual than there is reason to believe was exhibited by the earliest Catechism undertaken by the Assembly. There is still less reason, of course, to connect with its composition the name of Dr. John Wallis, Palmer's pupil and friend, who attended the committee charged with its review as its secretary (from November 9, 1647), and whose mathematical genius has been thought to express itself in the clear and logical definitions which characterize the document. Dr. Wallis' close connection with the "Shorter Catechism," in the minds of the contemporary and following generations, appears to be mainly due to the publication by him at once on its appearance (1648) of an edition of it broken up into subordinate questions according to the model of the treatise of his friend and patron, Palmer. Still less have we evidence to connect the Scotch Commissioners directly with the composition of the "Shorter Catechism." The record may give us reason to infer that the earliest Catechism undertaken by the Assembly may have been in the first instance drafted by the Scots.¹¹³ But we lack even such faint suggestions in the case of the Catechisms which were ultimately prepared. Indeed, these Catechisms, and especially the "Shorter," are precisely the portion of the Assembly's constructive work, in the composition of which the Scotch Commissioners appear to have had the least prominent part. Henderson had died before the Confession of Faith was finished; Baillie left immediately after its completion; Gillespie in the midst of the work on the "Larger Catechism"; while Rutherford, who alone remained until the "Shorter Catechism" was under way, judged that his presence until the completion of the "Larger Catechism" justified the declaration that the Scots had lent their aid to the accomplishment of all "the 4 things mentioned in the Covenant,"114 which is as much as to say that he looked upon the completion of the "Shorter Catechism" as largely a matter of routine work unessential to the main task of the Assembly.¹¹⁵ It does not follow, of course, that the Scots had nothing to do with the composition of the "Shorter Catechism." We do not know how fully its text had been worked out before any of it was brought before the Assembly, or how hard it rested on previous work done in committee or in the Assembly, or to whom the first essays in its composition were due. Of course, the Scots served with all committees up to the moment of their departure, and may have had much to do with the framing of the drafts of documents with which we have no explicit evidence to connect their names. But they appear to have had less to do with giving the Catechisms their final form than was the case with the other documents prepared by the Divines for the use of the united Churches. The Catechisms come to us preeminently as the work of the Assembly, and we are without data to enable us to point to any individual or individuals to whom we can confidently assign their characteristic features. 

With the completion of the Catechisms, the work of the Assembly under the engagement of the Solemn League and Covenant was done. The Scots, as we have seen, caused a Minute to this effect to be entered upon the records of the Assembly (October 15, 1647), reciting that some of them had given assistance to the Divines throughout the whole of their labors looking to uniformity. And on the return to Scotland of Rutherford, the last of the Scots to leave London, the Commission of the General Assembly dispatched a letter to the Assembly of Divines (November 26, 1647) - with whom it joins in the address "the Ministers of London, and all the other well-affected brethren of the Ministrie in England" - which accurately reflects the state of affairs relatively to the work of the Divines at the end of the year 1647. In this letter the Scots express their unwavering purpose to abide by the Covenant they had sworn, and exhort their English brethren to do the same, noting at the same time the difficulties they saw besetting the way, and recommending in view of them diligence in the fear of God. In pursuance of its covenant engagement, the letter goes on to declare, the Scottish Church had approved and ratified the "Directory for Worship" "being about tuo yeares agoe agreed vpon by the Assemblies and Parliaments of both kingdomes," and the "Doctrinal Part of Church Government" - that is, the "Propositions for Church Government" of 1644 - "agreed vpon by the reverend and learned Assemblie of Divines"; and had also approved the "Confession of Faith" "as sound and orthodox for the matter, and agreed vnto on their part that it be a part of the Vniformity, and a Confession of Faith for the Churches of Christ in the three kingdomes"; while it purposed to consider and expected to approve the "Directory of Church Government," the "Catechism," and the new "Paraphrase of the Psalms" at the next Assembly, to meet in the summer of 1648. From this statement we perceive how far Scotland had outrun England in fulfilling the terms of their mutual engagement, and how uneasy the northern kingdom was becoming over the ever growing prospect that they would never be fully met in England. Meanwhile all the work of the Divines for uniformity was done; there remained only the completion of the proof-texts for the Catechisms, with the completion of which their entire function, as enlarged and given international significance by the provisions of the Solemn League and Covenant, was performed. We find the Assembly, therefore, on the day on which Rutherford took his leave of it, appointing a committee "to consider of what is fit to be done when the Catechism is finished" (November 9, 1647). For a time the Assembly turned back to the controversies of the great days of its past, with the Independents and the Erastians; to its responses to the jus divinum queries;¹¹⁶ and especially to its answers to the reasons of the Dissenting brethren against the Presbyterian system of government, which it now prepared for publication (1648, and again 1652). It had ceased to have any further function, however, than that of a standing advisory board to Parliament; and as the significance of Parliament decreased ("Pride's purge," December 6, 1648, was the precursor of the end, which came in 1653) its own importance necessarily fell with it. It became increasingly difficult to get a quorum together; and its work dwindled into the mere task of an examining committee for vacant charges, until it passed out of existence with the Parliament from which it derived its being. 

What the Divines could do for the institution of the proposed uniformity of religion in the three kingdoms, we see, then, had been done and well done, by the beginning of 1648. The institution of uniformity on the basis formulated by them did not lie within their powers. That was a matter of treaty engagement between the two nations. We have seen that the Scotch were in no way backward in the fulfilment of their part of the engagement. The same cannot be said for England. The political situation was very different at the opening of 1648 from what it had been in midsummer of 1643; and Parliament was now perhaps little inclined, and, to do it justice, was certainly little able, to carry out all it had felt constrained to promise five years before.¹¹⁷ The rise of Independency to political power and the usurpation of the army were the supersession of the Covenant and all its solemn obligations: and after the usurpation came ultimately, not the restoration of Parliamentary government and Presbyterianism, but the restoration of monarchy and prelacy. The dream of an enforced uniformity of religion in the three kingdoms on a Presbyterian basis, under the inspiration of which the Divines had done their constructive work, had vanished; and so far as the successful issue of their labors depended on alliance with a friendly state, their work, as regards England at least, had failed. But this alliance was not the strength of the Assembly, but its weakness. Its work was not in character political, but religious; and its product needed no imposition by the civil power to give it vitality. Whatever real authority the formularies it had framed possessed, was inherent in them as sound presentations of truth, not derived from extraneous sources. And by the inherent power of their truth they have held sway and won a way for themselves to the real triumph of the voluntary adhesion of multitudes of Christian men. It is honor enough for the Westminster Assembly that it has provided this multitude of voluntary adherents with a practicable platform of representative government on Scriptural lines, and a sober and sane directory of worship eminently spiritual in tone; and above all, with the culminating Reformed Confession of Faith, and a Catechism preeminent for the exactness of its definitions of faith and the faithfulness of its ethical precepts.

Endnotes:

Originally printed in The Princeton Theological Review, vi. 1908, pp. 177-210. 

In the ordinance convening the Assembly, it is commissioned to sit "during this present Parliament, or until further order be taken by both the said houses." 

"Laud's real influence was derived from the unity of his purpose. He directed all the powers of a clear, narrow mind and a dogged will to the realization of a single aim. His resolve was to raise the Church of England to what he conceived to be its real position as a branch, though a reformed branch, of the great Catholic Church throughout the world.... The first step in the realization of such a theory was the severance of whatever ties had hitherto united the English Church to the Reformed Churches of the Continent. . . . His policy was no longer the purely conservative policy of Parker and Whitgift; it was aggressive and revolutionary" (J. R. Green, "Short History of the English People," New York, 1877, pp. 499-502).

As Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, "The Life and Times of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland," 1907, p. 248, puts it: "On the side of King Charles all the Romans and Anglicans; on that of 'King Pym' all the many varieties of Puritanism."

Cf. the Resolutions on Religion of February 24, 1629; reprinted in Gee and Hardy, "Documents Illustrative of English Church History," 1896, pp. 521 sqq.

A precursor of Tract No. 90, however, had been published in 1634 by "Franciscus a Sancta Clara," a pervert to Romanism of the name of Davenport, entitled "God, Nature, Grace, or a Treatise on Predestination, the Deserts and Remission of Sin, etc., - ubi ad trutinam fidei Catholicae examinatur confessio Anglicana et ad singula puncta quid teneat, qualiter differat, excutitur," etc.... A new edition of this Tract was called for in 1635. The reactionary divines meanwhile were already acting on such a theory. For the state of the case in the later years of James's reign see Bishop Carleton's " Examination of Bishop Montague's Appeal," pp. 5, 49, 94.

Cf. "Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England," 1641, p. 7; or W. T. Hale's edition, 1916, p. 8.

Wilkins, iv. p. 549; reprinted in Gee and Hardy, "Documents Illustrative of English Church History," 1896, p. 536.

Rushworth, "Historical Collections," iv. 1692, p. 93; reprinted in Gee and Hardy, pp. 537 sq. 

Baillie, "Letters and Journals," ed. Laing, 1841-1842, i. pp. 273 sq. 

Baillie, i. p. 303.

Baillie, ii. p. 117.

Baillie, i. p. 287.

The views of this party find full expression in what Mr. Marriott ("The Life and Times of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland," 1907, p. 197) calls Falkland's "powerful speech" in opposition to the "Root and Branch Bill." It is printed by Mr. Marriott, pp. 198-204. Falkland was a typical example of the party, says Mr. Marriott (p. 248), which "anti-Laudian but not anti-Episcopal" felt strongly the evils of the Laudian reaction but were devoted to the traditional settlement of the Church. "He is a great Stranger in Israel," said he in a speech of February 8, 1641 (Marriott, pp. 181-182), "who knows not this kingdom hath long labored under many and great oppressions, both in Religion and Liberty; and his acquaintance here is not great, or his ingenuity less, who doth not both know and acknowledge that a great, if not a principal cause of both these have been some Bishops and their adherents. Mr. Speaker, a little search will serve to find them to have been the destruction of Unity, under pretense of Uniformity; to have brought in Superstition and Scandal, under the Titles of Reverence and Decency; to have defiled our Church by adorning our Churches; to have slackened the strictness of that Union which was formerly between us, and those of our Religion, beyond the Sea, . . ." and the like. The remedy, however, for these evils, he insisted, was not to take away bishops but to reduce them to their proper place and functions as spiritual officers of a spiritual body. He expresses the opinion (Marriott, p. 200) that the utter destruction of bishops was not desired by "most men," and that the petitions before Parliament were misleading, "because men petition for what they have not, and not for what they have," and the like. Yet he betrays his conviction (p. 203) that "the Scotch government" is in store for England. Similarly Baxter ("Reliquiae Baxterianae," Sylvester ed., London, 1696, I. ii. p. 146) tells us that Presbytery was "but a stranger" in England, and "though most of the ministers (then) in England saw nothing in the Presbyterian way of practice, which they could not cheerfully concur in, yet it was but few that had resolved on their Principles." He adds: [the] "most (that ever I could meet with) were against the Jus Divinum of Lay Elders, and for the moderate Primitive Episcopacy."

It was this "trenchant secularity" of Parliament - its ingrained Erastianism - which afterwards made it so earnest and persistent for the government of the Church by a Parliamentary Commission. It was in this direction that its thoughts turned at the beginning of its discussion of the settlement of the Church (see the lucid account of the debates on the Root and Branch Bill given by Shaw, "A History of the English Church, during ... 1640-1660," 1900, i. pp. 90 sq., and cf. Fiennes's speech, pp. 35-36); and from this determination it never receded. Mr. Marriott ("Falkland," as cited, p. 208) remarks so far justly: "The fact is that the dominant sentiment of the Long Parliament as regards the Church was neither Episcopalian, Presbyterian nor Independent; it was Erastian. Amid infinite variety of opinions, two conclusions more and more clearly emerged: first, that there must be some form of ecclesiastical organization; and secondly, that whatever the form might be, its government must be strictly controlled by Parliament." In their Erastianism Falkland and Fiennes were wholly at one. 

This bill was also passed by the King by a commission ("Lords' Journal," iv. p. 580), and therefore on any ground became a law of the Realm ("Statutes," v. 138; 16 Car. i. c. 27), taking effect February 13, 1642. It may be read in Gee and Hardy, p. 564. 

The most notable early attempt to secure such advice was probably that taken by the Lords March 1, 1641, in the appointment of what has come to be known as Bishop Williams' Committee. See the full account of this Committee in Shaw's "History of the English Church, etc.," 1900, i. pp. 65 sqq.; ii. pp. 287-294; cf. A. F. Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly " (Baird Lecture for 1882), ed. 2, 1897, pp. 100 sqq. Similarly, in its discussion of the "Ministers' petition and remonstrance" in February, 1641, the Commons sought the advice of divines in its committee. The desirability of a standing Assembly of Divines for giving stated advice to Parliament was adverted to by more than one speaker in the course of the discussion of the Root and Branch Bill which was introduced on May 27, 1641: on the government to be set up after the abolishing of the prelates the debaters felt the need of advice from such a body.

Rushworth, iv. 1692, pp. 438 sqq., especially p. 450; cf. Gee and Hardy, pp. 553 sqq., especially pp. 561 sq. 

"Commons' Journal," ii. pp. 524, 535, 539, 541.

"Lords' Journal," v. p. 84; "Commons' Journal," ii. pp. 571, 572, 575, 579, 589, 595, etc. 

Rushworth, v. (III. ii.), 1892, pp. 337 sqq.: it is printed in the preliminary materials gathered at the opening of the Scottish editions of the Confession of Faith; also in the opening pages of A. F. Mitchell, "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, 1897, pp. xiii.-xvi.

"This is no proper Assemblie," remarks Baillie (ii. p. 186), meaning that it has no such powers as belonged to the Scottish General Assembly, "but a meeting called by the Parliament to advyse them in what things they are asked." As Dr. Leishman puts it, the Westminster Assembly "in the language of our time was rather a Parliamentary Commission The Westminster Directory, etc.," 1901, p. x.). 

Cf. e.g. the explicit action of the Lords to this effect, "Lords' Journal," vi. p. 84, to which the closing words of the Ordinance are conformed.

Even the Thirty-nine Articles (Art. xxi.) declare that "General Councils may not be gathered together but by the commandment and will of princes." This was the "law of creeds" in England. Baillie (i. pp. 9546) even tells us that when the question was mooted in Scotland whether a lawful Assembly might be held without or in opposition to the will of the Crown, he was himself in grave doubt, and could find no example of a National Assembly meeting against the will of the supreme magistrate, rightly professing, either in antiquity or among the Reformed Churches. Scotland soon supplied him with an example. The doubts of Baillie in Scotland, the attitude of Parliament in England, are incident to the principle of establishment, and it would seem can finally be rid of only in free churches. We must bear in mind, however, that from the beginning the Scotch Church claimed and exercised autonomy in spiritualia. 

The independence of the spirit of the Assembly is illustrated by the conflict which arose between the Assembly and Parliament in the matter of the exclusion of the scandalous from the Lord's Supper and in the much broader matter of the autonomy of the Church. In these matters, the Assembly exceeded its commission and offered unsought advice to Parliament, much to the distaste of that body; and even declined to act on the determinations of Parliament.

Baillie, ii. p. 108: "Ordinarlie there will be present above three-score of their divines." 

The House of Commons three years afterwards (December 7, 1646) sent an order to the Assembly asking to have sent up to it "all that they have done upon the Nine-and-thirty Articles," its purpose being to employ them in its negotiations with the King. After some demurring, and after attaching to them an explanatory preface, the Divines sent them up on April 29, 1647. For its own use Parliament omitted the Preface and Article viii. on the Creeds; and they were printed in this form in a tract entitled "The Four Bills, sent to the King to the Isle of Wight to be passed," which was published March 20, 1648. It is in this Parliamentary form that they have usually been reprinted, e.g. in Peter Hall's "The Harmony of Protestant Confessions," 1844, Appendix i. pp. 505-512; Neal's "History of the Puritans," ii. 1849, Appendix vii. pp. 454-457; Stoughton's "Ecclesiastical History of England," ii. ("The Church of the Commonwealth ") 1867, Appendix iii, pp. 528-535. The lacking Preface and Art. viii. are printed by Drs. Mitchell and Struthers, "Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines," 1874, Appendix i. pp. 541-542. The complete text, with all the changes made by the Divines marked, may be found in Appendix iv. pp. 343-348 of E. Tyrrell Green's "The Thirty-nine Articles and the Age of the Reformation," London, 1896. 

Cf. Baillie, ii. p. 177 (May 9, 1644), who, after remarking on the wide differences of opinion which emerged in the course of debate, cries out: "Had not God sent Mr. Henderson, Mr. Rutherford, and Mr. Gillespie, among them, I see not that ever they could have agreed to any settled government." The task of establishing a Presbyterian government in a Church without any experience of it, in the face of violent Independent and Erastian opposition, was no light one: and it was altogether natural that the English divines whose Presbyterianism was purely theoretical, illuminated by no practice, should have been much disabled by varying views among themselves as to the best methods of procedure. 

Even Dr. Shaw allows ("A History of the English Church, etc.," i. p. 3) that "it is probable that, without the necessity of calling in Scotch aid, and of adopting the Solemn League and Covenant, the Long Parliament would have resolved upon a system of Church government that might be called Presbyterian." And when he adds "though in a sense very different from that usually conveyed by the term," this caution need not be objected to: it is clear enough that the English, even in the Assembly and much more in Parliament, had much to learn as to what the Presbyterianism which they were intent on setting up was and what it carried with it. Scotch influence was necessary, however, not to make them Presbyterians, but to make them intelligent Presbyterians.

Cf. the "Information from the Estates of the Kingdom of Scotland to the Kingdom of England," 1640: "The second error ariseth from not knowing our laws and so measuring us with your line.... We neither know nor will examine if according to your laws these may be accounted derogatory to royal authority. But it is most sure and evident by all the registers and records of our laws ... that we have proceeded at this time upon no other ground than our laws and practice of this kingdom never before questioned, but inviolably observed as the only rule of our government." The whole matter is judiciously stated by Dr. A. F. Mitchell in his Baird Lectures on "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, pp. 289-291; cf. W. Beveridge, "A Short History of the Westminster Assembly," 1904, pp. 116-122, note on "Spiritual Independence"; also Thomas Brown, "Church and State in Scotland," 1891, pp. 114 sqq.; J. Macpherson, "The Doctrine of the Church in Scottish Theology," 1903, Lectures 5 and 6. 

Cf. the Aberdeen Articles of 1616, which the Westminster Divines did not disdain to use in perfecting their own symbol. On these Articles, cf. C. G. M'Crie, "The Confessions of the Church of Scotland," 1907, pp. 27-35. The Articles may be read in the "Booke of the Universall Kirk of Scotland," pp. 1132-1139.

Cf. "Of Reformation ... in England," 1641, p. 69; or Hale's ed., 1916, p. 58. 

"Ar we so modest spirits, and so towardly handlit in this matter," exclaims Baillie, when the imposition of the service-book was in progress, "that ther is apeirance we will imbrace in a clap such a masse of novelties" ("Letters," i. p. 1). 

i. p. 18. James Gordon's account is as follows: "A number of the meaner sorte of the people, most of them waiting maides and women, who use in that towne for to keepe places for the better sorte, with clapping of their handes, cursings and outcryes, raised such .ane uncoth noyse and hubbubb in the church, that not any one could either heare or be hearde" ("History of Scots Affairs, from 1637 to 1641," 3 vols., Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1841, i. p. 7). Cf. Balcanquhal, "A Large Declaration concerning the late Tumults in Scotland from their first Original, etc.," London, 1639, p. 23. To understand this scene we must bear in mind the division which obtained in Scotland of the Sabbath service into the Reader's and the Minister's Service. The Minister often entered the church only when his own part of the service began; and it had become the custom of "the better sorte" also to enter at that time. Meanwhile their places were kept for them by their maids. The congregation for the first half of the service was, therefore, chiefly made up of "waiting maides." 

Baillie, i. p. 95. 

The National Covenant is printed in the current editions of the Scottish "Confession of Faith." 

ii. p. 90.

So Baillie soliloquizes ("Letters," ii. pp. 99-100): and so all men at the time judged, as even Mr. J. A. R. Marriott allows. "Baillie is justified," says he ("The Life and Times of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland," 1907, p. 303) "in taking credit for the Scots in coming to the assistance of a ruined cause."

"Such a government shall be settled in the Church as may be . . . most apt to procure and preserve . . . nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other Reformed Churches abroad." This already promised in effect the establishment of a Presbyterian system in England. 

So Baillie, ii. p. 90; cf. also G. Burnet, "The Memoirs of the . . . Dukes of Hamilton, etc.," 1677, p. 237. 

The inclusion of Ireland in the new church-system is to be observed: so that from the Treaty of Edinburgh, November 29, 1643, we hear always of "the three kingdoms" in this connection. (Cf. Shaw, "A History of the English Church, etc.," i. p. 121, note 2.)

Rushworth, v. 1692, pp. 478 sq. The "Solemn League and Covenant" is also printed in the ordinary Scotch editions of the "Confession of Faith"; and in Gee and Hardy, pp. 569 sqq.

No doubt the engagement does not in so many words bind the English to the adoption of "the Presbyterian system," and no doubt it was with a view to preserving to them a certain liberty of action that they insisted on inserting the clause "according to the Word of God," and on defining the variety of prelacy which was condemned; but much too much has been made of these things (cf. Gardiner, "History of the Great Civil War," i. 1888, pp. 270 sq.). After all the engagement bound the contracting nations to the preservation of the ecclesiastical establishment in Scotland, and to the reformation of the ecclesiastical establishment in England according to the Scotch model, so far as the Word of God permitted, and it was fully understood that whatever this saving clause denoted it had reference to details rather than to principles. It must be admitted, however, that there soon developed a disposition to treat this saving clause as permitting liberty in the settlement of the English Church, so far as the Scriptures allowed it: and to those who were able to persuade themselves that no schedule of church government was derivable from Scripture, this liberty stretched very far. We may observe how the matter was viewed by the Parliamentary contractors, as clearly as elsewhere, no doubt, from certain words of Browne, when rebuking the Assembly (April 30, 1646) for its attitude with respect to the jus divinum. "It is much pressed," said he, "for the point of the Covenant. We all agree that the Word of God is the rule and must be the rule; but say there be no positive rule in the Word, are we by the Covenant bound to follow the practice of Reformed Churches in case it be against the fundamental law of the kingdom? You must interpret the Covenant so as that all parts may stand. We are bound to maintain the liberties of Parliament and kingdom. If I do any act against this I am a breaker of the Covenant" (Mitchell and Struthers, "Minutes," pp. 454 sq.) That is to say, Browne is so convinced that there is no divine prescription as to the government of the Church and that the sole judge in ecclesiastical things is the State, and that, as Rudyard put it on the same occasion, "the civil magistrate is a church officer in every Christian commonwealth" to whom in England all jurisdiction is reserved, that he cannot admit that the Covenant with its "according to the Word of God" imposes any form of government whatever. He has more difficulty with the adjoined phrase, "and the example of the best Reformed Churches," and in point of fact merely repudiates its binding force when inconsistent with English law - as if the very purpose of the Covenant were not to establish a new law in England. That the Covenant bound all parties to preserve the Presbyterian establishment in Scotland, no man doubted. 

Cf. the expression given to this policy in the Preface to "The Book of Common Prayer," which was thrust upon the Scottish Church in 1637 (Professor Cooper's edition, Edinburgh and London, 1904, pp. 7-8).

Cf. the letter of Alexander Balfour, from Newcastle, 29 December, 1640, printed in Laing's ed. of Baillie's "Letters," ii. p. 473. 

The document is printed in the Appendix to Hetherington's "History of the Westminster Assembly," ed. 4, pp. 382 sq. Cf. Mitchell Baird Lectures on "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, p. 105 and note. 

The jus divinum seems to have been first claimed for Episcopacy by Bancroft in the reign of Elizabeth, but was finding many supporters at the time when Henderson's paper was drawn up, though these supporters still constituted only a party. The difference between the two parties in this matter was urged by Falkland (Marriott, p. 203): only "some bishops pretended to jure divino," but this is the essence of "the Scotch Government." 

Cf. Shaw, op. cit., i. pp. 128-130. 

Cf. Makower, "Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England," E. T. 1895, p. 78, note 37.

Baillie, "Letters," i. p. 365; cf. p. 376. 

Baillie, ii. pp. 1, 2, 24. 

Henderson's letter in Baillie, ii. p. 2. 

Baillie, ii. p. 45. 

Acts of Assembly, 1642 (July 22): "Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638-1842," Church Law Society edition, Edinburgh, 1843, p. 66. 

This letter is printed in Rushworth, v. 1692, pp. 387 sqq. 

Rushworth, v. 1692, pp. 390 sqq. 

Baillie, "Letters," ii. p. 55.

These Commissioners were eight in number, and were fairly representative of the Church of Scotland, in the two parties into which it was then divided with respect to its sympathies with the old order in Scotland or with "the movement party in the South," that is, the Puritans. Robert Douglas, Alexander Henderson, Robert Baillie, with the Earl of Cassilis and Lord Maitland, belonged to the one side; Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, and Archibald Johnston of Warriston to the other (cf. Leishman, "The Westminster Directory," 1901, p. ix.). Douglas and Cassilis never went up to London on their commission, which Dr. Leishman supposes to have been due to the King's veto on the Assembly, as both were strong royalists (as cited, p. x.). In the case of Douglas, at least, this seems hardly likely, in view of his position in the Commission of the General Assembly, and his letters recorded in its Minutes. Dr. Mitchell rather has the truth, when he writes (op. cit., pp. 129-130): "Robert Douglas, the silent, sagacious, masterful man.... could not be spared from the duties of leadership at home, but he assisted and cheered them by his letters, maintained good understanding between them and the Church in Scotland, and in their absence came to occupy a place among his brethren almost as unique as that of Calvin among the presbyters of Geneva." The notices of his colleagues in Baillie's "Letters," which are always appreciative and affectionate, exhibit a complete harmony among the Commissioners at London; and the "Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland," published by Drs. Mitchell and Christie (1892), reveal an equal harmony between the Commissioners in London and the Commission in Edinburgh under the guidance of Douglas.

Baillie, ii. p. 84; and cf. the correspondence with the King in Rushworth, ed. 1692, III. ii. (vol. v.), pp. 393 sq. 

The General Assembly ("Acts" for 1643, pp. 89-90, 90-92), addressing the Parliament of England, informs it that the Scottish Commissioners have been "nominated and elected" "to repair unto the Assembly of Divines and others of the Church of England, now sitting at Westminster, to propound, consult, treat, and conclude with them ... in all such things. . . ." Here the Assembly of Divines and the Scotch Commissioners are looked upon as the two parties by whose consultings together the contemplated agreements are to be reached. Addressing the Assembly of Divines, however, the General Assembly only informs them that Commissioners had been appointed "to repair to your Assembly" without defining to what ends. It is to Parliament that the Assembly speaks as to the other contracting party. 

This "willingness" was not, however, spontaneous. Henderson tells us (Baillie's "Letters," ii. p. 483) that the Commissioners, "against their formar resolution, were, by their friends and for the good of the cause, persuaded to joyne" with the Assembly. Baillie's own very lucid account runs as follows (ii. p. 110): "When our Commissioners came up, they were desyred to sitt as members of the Assemblie; but. they wiselie declyned to doe so: but since they came up as Commissioners for our National Church to treat for Uniformitie, they required to be dealt with in that capacitie. They were willing, as private men, to sitt in the Assemblie, and upon occasion to give their advyce in poynts debated; but for the Uniformitie, they required a committee might be appointed from the Parliament and Assemblie to treat with them thereanent. All these, after some harsh enough debates, was granted: so once a week, and whyles ofter, there is a committee of some Lords, and Commons, and Divines, which meets with us anent our commission." For this committee see p. 102. 

"Commons' Journal," iii. p. 278; "Lords' Journal," vi. p. 265; Lightfoot's "Journal," p. 27 (xiii. 1824, of his "Works"). Cf. Baillie, ii. pp. 102, 110; and for the completeness with which they were from the first recognized and dealt with as Treaty Commissioners apart from the Assembly cf. instances in Rushworth, III. ii. (vol. v.), p. 371, ed. 1692. 

Cf. the speech of George Gillespie in the General Assembly, August 6, 1647 (Baillie's "Letters," iii. Appendix, p. 450). "Ye know we have acted in a double capacity according to our Commission: We have gone on in a way of treating with the Committee of Parliaments and Divines jointly, and have given in many Papers, as concerning the Officers of the Kirk excluding scandalous persons from the Kirk Sacrament, the growth of Heresies, and such things, as in your judgment and ours, was defective among them. We have acted in another capacity, debating with and assisting the Assembly of Divines their debates. . . ." Lord Warriston thus expresses his relation to the Assembly of Divines: "I am a stranger ... having a commission both from that Church and State, and at the desire of this kingdome assisting to your debats." (Speech to the Assembly of Divines, May 1, 1646, in "Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland," edited by Mitchell and Christie, i. 1892, p. 92.) 

The fact that the Scotch Commissioners did not vote in the divisions of the Divines is made evident in various ways, and is confirmed by the absence of their names from all the recorded votes of the Assembly (see e.g. "Minutes," p. 252). Cf. in general the note of Dr. Mitchell in his Baird Lectures (2d ed.), pp. 180-181.

The order of the Commons was passed September 18 and at once communicated to the Assembly: but the Lords concurred only on October 12. See the facts drawn out by Shaw, "A History of the English Church," i. pp. 153-154. 

"Minutes," Session 936, October 15, 1647, p. 484. 

"Minutes," p. 484. 

Below, pp. 36-72.

Originally printed in The Princeton Theological Review, vi. 1908, pp. 353-391. 

Baillie, writing in 1645, says (ii. p. 320): "The bodie of the Parliament, City, and Countrey are for the Presbyterie." Cf. i. p. 287, of December, 1640: "The farr greatest part are for our discipline." 

For example, with respect to the office of ruling elders, Baillie tells us (ii. pp. 110, 111; cf. p. 116) of the procedure thus: "Sundrie of the ablest were flat against the institution of any such officer by divine right. . . . The most of the synod was in our opinion.... There was no doubt but we would have carried it by far most voices; yet because the opposites were men verie considerable, above all gracious and learned little Palmer, we agreed upon a committee to satisfie, if it were possible, the dissenters. . . . All of them were ever willing to admitt Elders in a prudentiall way. . . . We trust to carie at last, with the contentment of sundrie once opposite, and silence of all, their divyne and scripturall institution." Again, more generally (ii. p. 122): "We doubt not to carie all in the Assemblie and Parliament clearlie according to our mind; but if we carie not the Independents with us, there will be ground laid for a verie troublesome schisme. Alwayes" [i.e. nevertheless] "it's our care to use our outmost endeavor to prevent that dangerous [evil]." 

Baillie (ii. p. 307) remarks: "The most part of the House of Commons, especiallie the lawyers, whereof they are many, and divers of them very able men, are either half or whole Erastians, believing no Church-government to be of divine right, bot all to be a humane constitution, depending on the will of the magistrates." Again (p. 336), he tells us that (in 1646) two-thirds of Parliament was made up of worldly men who would have no ecclesiastical discipline if they could avoid it, Erastians, and Erastianizing lawyers, together with a small but influential band of Independents. Cf. also pp. 250, 265, 267, 277, 315. Very properly Baillie remarks therefore, that "the power of the Parliament in ecclesiastick affairs" was the greatest of the questions which were to be determined (ii. p. 205). 

The position of Parliament laid down in the resolution with respect to the Convocation of 1640, passed December 15, 1640, nullo contradicente, gives a fair expression to its fundamental attitude towards all religious conventions, which was adhered to throughout. "The Clergy of England, Convented in any Convocation, or Synod, or otherwise, have no Power to make any Constitutions, Canons, or Acts, whatsoever, in Matter of Doctrine, Discipline, or otherwise, to bind the Clergy, or the Laity, of this Land, without common Consent of Parliament." ("Commons' Journal," ii. p. 51; cf. "Lords' Journal," iv. p. 273, Rushworth, iii. p. 1365.) 

"The Pope and the King," says Baillie (ii. p. 360), "were never more earnest for the headship of the Church than the pluralitie of this Parliament." 

"Commons' Journal," iii. p. 466; "Lords' Journal," vi. p. 525.

"The Form of Presbyterian Church Government": "The pastor is an ordinary and perpetual officer in the Church, prophesying of the time of the Gospel." "Votes passed in the Assembly of Divines," etc., p. 3 of "Notes of Debates and Proceedings, etc.," 1846, in Gillespie's "Works," ii. 1846: "That there is such an ordinary and perpetual office in the church as a pastor, proved, Jer. iii. 15-17 (prophesying of the time of the gospel), 1 Pet. v. 2-4." 

"The Form, etc." "It belongs to his office, To pray for and with his flock.... To read the scriptures publickly.. . . To feed the flock, by preaching of the word.... To catechise.... To dispense other divine mysteries. To administer the sacraments. To bless the people from God.... To take care of the poor. And he hath also a ruling power over the flock as a pastor." In the "Votes," p. 3 (Gillespie, ii.): "That which the pastor is to do from God to the people," is distributed under the heads of "Reading," "Preaching" and "the dispensation of other divine mysteries"; and then "That which the pastor is to perform in the behalf and name of the people to God" is taken up and distributed into praying, ruling and caring for the poor. Under "Preaching" is subsumed both preaching and catechising; and under the general head of "the dispensation of other divine mysteries" we have the following two specifications: "That it is the office of a pastor to feed the flock by the dispensation of other divine mysteries, proved by i Cor. iv. 1, 2: the administration of the sacraments, Matt. xxviii. 19, 20; Mark xvi. 15, 16; 1 Cor. xi. 23-25, with 1 Cor. x. 16. That he is to bless the people from God, Num. vi. 23-26, with Rev. i. 4, 5 (where the same blessings and persons from whom they came are expressly mentioned), and Isa. lxvi. 21, where, under the names of priests and Levites, to be continued under the gospel, are meant evangelical pastors, who therefore are, by office, to bless the people, Deut. x. S; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Eph. i. 2:' The "other divine mysteries" are therefore just the Sacraments and benediction; they are enumerated as other than "reading" and "preaching" the Word. 

Parliament was in no sense averse to a Presbyterian settlement. What it was unalterably opposed to was a jus divinum settlement of any kind. It was of the strongest conviction, in even its most Puritan element, that the Church derived all its authority and jurisdiction from the State; and it identified the State with itself. As Nathaniel Fiennes, son of Lord Saye, put it in the debates of February, 1641: "By the law of the land not only all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but also all superiority and pre-eminence over the ecclesiastical state is annexed to the Imperial crown of this realm, and may be granted by commission under the Great Seal to such persons as his Majesty shall think meet." Parliament, acting as the ultimate source of authority, was to set up a government for the Church: and the government was to be the Parliament's government through and through. What government the Parliament would set up was from the first determined to be the Presbyterian. "Nor shall we need," said D'Ewes in May, 1641, "to study long for a new Church government, having so evident a platform in so many reformed churches." Only, it was Presbyterian government, not jure divino, but "in a prudentiall way" which was steadily contemplated. Accordingly when the "Propositions concerning Church Government" came up to Parliament this was the rock on which it struck. Parliament was very willing to order the churches on the Presbyterian model, but not to erect independent judicatories, founded in a divine right, and exercising their functions uncontrolled by Parliament. "We passed proposition 3, about which there had been some dispute among the divines," says Whitaker ("Diary," p. 371), "with this alteration, leaving out the words, 'that the Scriptures doth hold forth,' and resolving it thus, that many several congregations may be under one Presbyterial Government." Cf. "Commons' Journal," iv. pp. 20 and 28. And when the question of the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and the exclusion of the scandalous from it, came up, Parliament absolutely refused to commit to the church officers, in congregational or classical assemblies, the determination of what sins should be accounted scandals excluding from the Sacrament, and insisted upon itself making an enumeration of such scandals, and reserving in all other cases appeal to itself. It thus intruded into the very penetralium of the spiritualia and raised with the Assembly the precise question which Calvin had raised in Geneva in the matter of Berthelier. It was on this point that the sharpest conflict between Parliament and Assembly took place. 

In the Elizabethan Articles of 1563, while it is asserted that "the superiority of government of all estates, and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within this realm" appertains to the throne, yet "the administration of the word and sacraments" is expressly excluded from the sweep of this supremacy. Parliament in 1645 was unwilling to permit even the administration of the Sacraments to remain in the unreviewed power of the ecclesiastical authorities. On the other hand, of course, the Westminster Divines in their insistence on the autonomy of the Church, were claiming far more independence of action for the Church than the Acts of Supremacy no less of the Elizabethan settlement than of that of Henry VIII allowed. The Erastian temper of Parliament, which was inclined to push the traditional control of the Church by the civil powers to extremes, was met thus by an anti-Erastian principle in the Assembly to which the old settlement seemed unendurable. There was no wish on the part of the Westminster Divines, to be sure, to take from the magistrate what is his. "We do not rob the magistrate of that which is his," says Gillespie ("Aaron's Rod," p. xvi.), "by giving unto Christ that which is Christ's." "I do not plead against 'the power of the sword,' when I plead for 'the power of the keys."' But they were determined that the magistrate should not take from Christ that which is His. "Is it so small a thing," asked Warriston in his speech of May 1st (see infra), "to have the sworde that they must have the keyes also?" This the Divines could not in conscience acquiesce in. On the Long Parliament's assumption of the entire ecclesiastical jurisdiction, see Dr. Shaw, "A History of the English Church during ... 1644-1660," i. 1900, pp. 227 sqq. ("the unscrupulous and revolutionary seizure by the Parliament of every part of the domain of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which had hitherto in whole or part belonged peculiarly to the spiritual courts," p. 236). Dr. Shaw, on the other hand, seems to consider the Parliament justified in refusing to commit to the ecclesiastical courts unreviewed powers in determining the scandals excluding from the Sacrament; which surely is a very remarkable position to take up in these later days - or at least it seems so to "the clerical mind." 

Speech of Lord Warriston in the Assembly, May 1, 1646, in the breach of privilege matter, printed in Mitchell and Christie, "Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland," i. 1892, pp. 92-98 (see p. 94). Cf. W. Morison, "Johnston of Warriston," 1901, pp. 97 sqq. 

"I am confident," said Warriston (see Mitchell and Christie, p. 97) to the Assembly, ". . . yee will all look and hold out the maine, Christs kingdome distinct from the kingdomes of the earth." This was said May 1, 1646. On the 6th of the previous March, the proposition "that Jesus Christ as King and Head of His Church hath appointed an ecclesiastical government in His Church in the hand of Church Officers distinct from the civil go-rernment" ("Minutes," p. 193), had been brought in for discussion; and it was vigorously debated with Coleman as the leader of the dissent until his death, at the end of March, and then against Lightfoot through April. On July 7th it was passed with Lightfoot alone dissenting. Ultimately it was made the first paragraph of chapter xxx. of the "Confession of Faith," in the wording: "The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate." This chapter was not accepted by Parliament. 

Cf. Baillie, ii. pp. 122 sq., 242. 

See the Preface to the document (Leishman, "The Westminster Directory," pp. 9-14), and compare Marshall's explanation in the MS. "Minutes," ii. folio 2866, as quoted by Mitchell in his Baird Lectures, ed. 2, p. 240. 

Baillie, ii. pp. 117, 131. 

Baillie, ii. pp. 131, 140. 

Baillie, ii. p. 148. 

The directory for the thanksgiving after Sermon has been attributed to Dr. Edward Reynolds, from whom came also the General Thanksgiving which was added to "The Book of Common Prayer" after the Restoration (cf. E. Cardwell, "Synodalia," 1842, p. 658; Procter and Frere, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer," 1901, p. 428; E. H. Eland, "The Layman's Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer," 1896, p. 135; L. Pullan, "The History of the Book of Common Prayer," 1905, Index, p. 330).

On the other hand, extemporary prayers had been prohibited on pain of deprivation in the Canons which had been imposed on the Scottish Church during the tyranny of Charles (1637). This question was a burning one. 

Leishman, "The Westminster Directory," 1901, pp. 164, 168-169. The objection (Baillie, "Letters," ii. pp. 122-123) of the English Puritans (and the Scotch innovators, too; for this was one of "the three nocent ceremonies" objected to by them) to the minister's private prayer in the pulpit, seems to have been made insistent by an abuse of it by the prelatical party "to bow to the east and the altar" (Baillie, ii. p. 258). It appears, however, to rest ultimately on a maxim widely adopted by the Puritans, "that all private worship in the time and place of public worship is to be discharged." The Puritans, therefore, consistently objected also to private prayers by the people on assembling for worship, and to private praying by the recipients of the Lord's Supper before and after participation. Cf. Baillie's letter to his colleagues in opposition to this sentiment, printed as Appendix E to Dr. Leishman's edition of "The Westminster Directory," pp. 188 sqq.; cf. also Dr. Leishman's notes, pp. 86, 132. Dr. Leishman thinks that the clause in the Directory, "Let all enter the assembly, not irreverently, but in a grave and seemly manner, taking their seats or places without adoration, or bowing themselves towards one place or other" (p. 16), does not forbid the offering of private prayer before the service has begun, but only superstitious recognition of sacred places in the sanctuary (p. 86). But it is clear that private praying on the part of late comers is forbidden in the clause: "If any, through necessity, be hindered from being present at the beginning, they ought not, when they come into the Congregation, to betake themselves to their private devotions, but reverently to compose themselves to join with the assembly in that Ordinance of God which is then in hand" (p. 17). Perhaps we may say the exception proves the rule, and the prohibition of private devotions to late comers, that they may not be inattentive to the public worship, implies the approval of private devotions for early comers, before public worship has begun. But we must have in mind also the general sentiment against such private devotions in public places. In Gillespie's notes of the debates in the sub-committee concerning the Directory ("Notes of Debates and Proceedings," etc., p. 102, in "Works," ii. 1846) we read: "Some debate was about the clause forbidding private adoration at coming into the church," which seems to imply that the purpose was to forbid all such adoration. But then it is added: "Mr. Marshall, Mr. Palmer, and others said, This is very necessary for this church, for though the minister be praying, many ignorant people will not join in it, till they have said over the Lord's prayer," which seems to suggest that late comers were at least conjointly and perhaps chiefly in mind.

Leishman, "The Westminster Directory," 1901, p. 17. The "Teacher" or "Doctor" was a coordinate officer with the "Pastor," which the Divines (again without the cordial assent of the Scots) found provided for in the Scriptures: "The Scripture doth hold out the name and title of teacher, as well as of the pastor; who is also a minister of the Word, as well as the pastor, and hath power of administration of the sacraments" ("Propositions for Church Government"). With respect to the difference about the "Reader," Baillie writes ("Letters," ii. pp. 122-123): "Here came the first question, about Readers: the Assemblie has past a vote before we came, that it is a part of the Pastor's office to read the Scriptures; what help he may have herein by these who are not pastors, it is not yet agitat. Alwayes [nevertheless] these of best note about London are now in use, in the desk, to pray, and read in the Sunday morning four chapters, and expone some of them, and cause sing two Psalms, and then to goe to the pulpit to preach. We are not against the ministers reading and exponing when he does not preach; bot if all this work be laid on the minister before he preach, we fear it put preaching in a more narrow and discreditable roume than we would wish."

This fact is adverted to by the House of Commons in the short account they gave to the Scotch Commissioners in January, 1644, of what it had already accomplished, that the Assembly in Scotland might be informed: "The Book of Common Prayer, and Festival Days, commonly called Holidays, are, by ordinance of Parliament, taken away; and a Directory for Public Worship established by the same Ordinance" ("Commons' Journal," iv. pp. 11, 12). How strong the Scotch feeling on these matters was may be hoserved from Rutherford's letter of September 23, 1637, to his parishioners at Anworth, in which he exhorts them to stand fast in the faith he had taught them (Bonar's edition, Letter 68; ed. of 1692, Letter 148 of Part i.). Here he warns them that "no day (besides the sabbath, which is of his own appointment) should be kept holy and sanctified with preaching and the publick worship of God, for the memory of Christ's birth, death, resurrection and ascension; seeing such days so observed are unlawful, wil-worship, and not warranted in Christ's word." With respect to the Lord's Supper he warns them, "that ye should in any sort forbear the receiving the Lord's Supper, but after the form that I delivered it to you, according to the example of Christ our Lord, that is, that ye should sit as banquetters, at one table with our King, and eat and drink, and divide the elements one to another."

E.g. the American Presbyterian Churches, for whose Directory and its rnlations to the Westminster Directory, see L. F. Benson, in The Presbyrvri¢n and Reformed Review, viii. 1897, pp. 415-443.

In this it had a worthy forerunner in Cartwright's "Directory," a copy of which was found in his study in 1585 when he was arrested. It was reprinted in 1644 and a modern edition has been published by Principal Lorimer.

On the Scottish Psalter see especially J. Laing in the Appendix to his edition of Baillie's "Letters," iii. 1842, pp. 525-556.

Compare what they say in the Preface to their revision of the Articles ("Minutes," pp. 541-542).

Baillie's "Letters," i. p. 365, cf. p. 376; ii. pp. 1, 2, 24.

Lightfoot, xiii. p. 305 - August 20, 1644; Baillie, ii. pp. 220, 221 - August 18, 1644; "Minutes," p. 77, of April 9, 1645. 

"It being necessary that the Protestant Churches Abroad, as well as the People of this Kingdom at Home, may have Knowledge how that the Parliament did never intend to innovate Matters of Faith" ("Lords' Journal," viii. p. 558). 

An order sent to the Divines from the House of Commons July 22, 1646, urges the hastening of the Confession, and Catechism, "because of the great use there may be of them in the Kingdom, both for the suppressing of errors and heresies, and for informing the ignorance of the people." The Divines themselves say in a petition presented to Parliament, in October, 1646: "The Confession being large, and as we conceive, requisit so to be, to setle the orthodox doctrine according to the Word of God and the Confession of the best Reformed Churches, so as to meet with common errouris" (" Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland," 1646-1647, edited by A. F. Mitchell and James Christie, p. 82). Cf. the speech of George Gillespie in the General Assembly, August 6, 1647 (Baillie's "Letters," ed. Laing, iii. Appendix, p. 451): "The Confession of Faith is framed, so as it is of great use against the floods of heresies and errors that overflow that land; nay, their intention of framing of it was to meet with all the considerable Errors of the present tyme, the Socinian, Arminian, Popish, Antinomian, Anabaptistian, Independent errors, etc. The Confession of Faith sets them out, and refutes them, so far as belongs to a Confession."

Lightfoot, xiii. 1824, p. 305; "Minutes," pp. lxxxvi. sq. 

Baillie, ii. p. 266. 

Cf. Williston Walker, "The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism," New York, 1893; Underhill, "Confessions of Faith ... illustrative of the History of the Baptist Churches of England in the 17th Century," London, 1854; The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Philadelphia, xiii. 1902, pp. 380 sqq. (pp. 368 sqq. of this volume).

Presbyterian and Reformed Review, October, 1901, xii. pp. 614-659; January, 1902, xiii. pp. 60-120; October, 1902, xiii. pp. 551-587. 

Cf. Presbyterian and Reformed Review, April, 1902, xiii. pp. 254-276 (pp. 361 sqq. of this volume).

Cf. the statistics in the article "Puritaner, Presbyterianer," in Herzog.3 Also J. N. Ogilvie, "The Presbyterian Churches," 1897 and 1925; Henry Cowan, "The Influence of the Scottish Church in Christendom," Baird Lecture for 1895, London, 1896. 

Cf. Mitchell, Baird Lectures on "The Westminster Assembly," ed. 2, p. 419, and the passage quoted from Heppe, p. 81.

An order from the Commons to hasten the Catechism had come in on July 22, 1646. 

Writing to the Commission of the General Assembly. See the published records of the Commission, i. p. 187.

Do,: cf. "Minutes" for January 14, where the order for preparing the two Catechisms is noted and it is added that in the preparation of them, eye is to be had "to the Confession of Faith, and to the matter of the Catechism already begun" (p. 321). Cf. also Gillespie's account in his speech in the General Assembly, August, 1647 (Baillie's "Letters," iii. Appendix, p. 452). 

It has been extracted and printed in consecutive form by W. Carruthers in his "The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.... with Historical Account and Bibliography," London, 1897. 

Leo Judae: "Q. Dic, sodes, ad quem finem homo creatus est? R. Ut optimi maximi ac sapientissimi Dei Creatoris majestatem ac bonitatem agnoscamus, tandemque illo Æternum fruamur."

Accordingly the course of salvation alone is traced in questions 20-38 with no reference whatever to the career or end of those not elected to everlasting life. The theory is that the catechumen is interested, or ought to be, exclusively in what has been done for him and what he is to expect. This is the account to give of the fact which seems strange to some (see Mitchell, Baird Lectures, ed. 2, p. 450) that there is no reference here to the future retribution of the lost. This is only a portion of a larger fact. The Catechism proceeds on the presumption that the catechumen is a child of God and gives only what the child of God needs to know of the dealings of God with him and the duties he owes to God.

How far this first draft may be represented by "The New Catechisme according to the forme of the Kirk of Scotland," published by the Scots in 1644 (reprinted in Mitchell's "Catechisms of the Second Reformation," 1886) we have no means of determining: but there is reason to believe that if this document was prepared by the Scots as a draft for the consideration of the Assembly, it was much departed from in the Assembly's work, which seems rather to have taken its start from Palmer's Catechism. 

"Minutes," October 15, 1647. Before he actually took his leave (November 9), the Shorter Catechism, which ran rapidly forward, was on the point of completion. See the "Minutes" for November 8, when the Commandments, Lord's Prayer, and Creed were ordered to be added to the Catechism.

It would seem that the Shorter Catechism was not seriously taken in hand until October 19, 1647, and that as late as September 29, 1647, it could still seem doubtful in Scotland whether the Divines would not content themselves with the Larger Catechism. On that date the Commission at Edinburgh, acting on the assumption that there might be no Shorter Catechism prepared by the Divines, appointed a committee of its own to draw up a primary Catechism for use in Scotland. (See "Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies, etc.," edited by Mitchell and Christie, i. 1892, p. 306.) The Assembly of Divines was already disintegrating and it was hard to get together a quorum.

These queries had been laid aside "till the Confession and Catechise were ended" (Baillie, "Letters," ii. pp. 379, 388), so that to return to them at this point was only to carry out a long-determined plan.

What was done by Parliament, however, was not little, though it was done slowly and proved not lasting. This is how it is sketched by a not very friendly hand: "The years 1640-60 witnessed the most complete and drastic revolution which the Church of England has ever undergone. Its whole structure was ruthlessly demolished - Episcopacy, the Spiritual Courts, Deans and Chapters, Convocation, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Psalter; the lands of the Bishops and of the Deans and Chapters were sold, and the Cathedrals were purified or defiled. On the clean-swept ground an entirely novel Church system was erected. In place of Episcopal Church Government a Presbyterian organization was introduced, and a Presbyterian system of ordination. For the Spiritual Courts were substituted Presbyterian Assemblies (Parochial, Classical and Provincial), acting with a very real censorial jurisdiction, but in final subordination to a parliamentary committee sitting at Westminster. Instead of the Thirty-nine Articles the Confession of Faith was introduced, and the Directory in place of the Book of Common Prayer. New Catechisms and a new metrical version were prepared, a parochial survey of the whole country was carried out, and extensive reorganization of parishes effected. Finally, the equivalent of a modern ecclesiastical commission (or let us say of Queen Anne's Bounty Scheme) was invented, a body of trustees was endowed with considerable revenues for the purpose of augmenting poor livings, and for years the work of this ecclesiastical charity and reorganization scheme was earnestly pursued. There is hardly a parallel in history to such a constitutional revolution as this. . . ." (W. A. Shaw, "A History of the English Church during . . . 1640-1660," i. 1900, pp. vii.-viii.). 

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