The Divine Origin
of the Bible
Benjamin B. Warfield
Contents:
I. THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE
II. THE STRUCTURE OF
THE BIBLE
III. THE TEACHING OF THE BIBLE
IV. SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF'
THE BIBLE
V. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ACCOUNTING FOR THE BIBLE
When the
Christian asserts his faith in the divine origin of his Bible, he does not mean
to deny that it was composed and written by men or that it was given by men to
the world. He believes that the marks of its human origin are ineradicably
stamped on every page of the whole volume. He means to state only that it is not
merely human in its origin. If asked where and how the divine has entered this
divine-human book, he must reply: "Everywhere, and in almost every way
conceivable." Throughout the whole preparation of the material to be written and
of the men to write it; throughout the whole process of the gathering and
classification and use of the material by the writers; throughout the whole
process of the actual writing, - he sees at work divine influences of the most
varied kinds, extending all the way from simply providential superintendence and
spiritual illumination to direct revelation and inspiration.
It is of
great importance to distinguish between these various ways in which the divine
has been active in originating the Scriptures, but it is of vastly greater
importance to fix the previous fact that it is in the Scriptures at all and has
entered them in any way. The present essay aims, therefore, without raising any
of the many questions which concern the distinguishing of the various activities
of God in originating his Scriptures, to busy itself with the one previous
question: Is there reason to believe that God has been concerned at all in the
origin of the Bible?
The question thus proposed is a very general one.
And it is a very immense one - almost limitless. It is, of course, utterly
impossible to do more than touch upon it in any reasonable space, and all that
could be urged in a single paper or in any reasonably circumscribed series of
papers would bear a very small proportion to all that might be urged - to the
mighty case that could be made out. No attempt can be made, therefore, toward
fullness of treatment. A series of propositions most baldly stated will only be
laid down one after the other, and it will be left to the reader to develop and
illustrate them and bring out their combined force, which will, however, it is
hoped, be immediately partly evident from their simple statement. An effort will
also be made, in the choice of the propositions and their ordering, to frame an
argument of a kind which will demand, as of right, entrance into every mind;
one, therefore, which will depend for its force on no original assumptions, but
will begin rather with simple and patent facts - will simply put these facts
together and then inquire what kind of facts they are and what they imply. Thus
the reasoning will take the form of an inquiry rather than an argument - of an
induction rather than a demonstration. The conclusions reached may not be so
sharply and accurately defined as if reached by other methods, but they have the
advantage of being obtained by a process to every step of which every man's mind
ought to be open.
Our purpose is to look upon the Bible simply as one of
the facts of the universe, of which every theory of the universe must take
account, and for which, just as surely as for gravitation, it must make account
or itself die, and then ask (and press the question): What kind of a cause must
be assumed to account for it just as it is and just as it arose in the world?
Thus we may inductively come to an answer to the query: "Must we assume
superhuman activities at work in the genesis of this book?"
Without
further introduction, we begin the inquiry at once.
I. THE HISTORY OF
THE BIBLE
1. The basal fact from which our inquiry takes its start is
the very indisputable and patent one that in the world there is such a book as
THE BIBLE. There is a definite volume, well known and always the same in
contents, about which there need be no mistake, which goes under this name, and
under this name is accessible to all. This very patent fact is the first that we
need to notice.
2. It is another fact, hardly less patent than the last,
that this book occupies a unique position in the world of civilized man. No
other book stands to-day among men for what the Bible stands for. We are not
asserting here that it has a right to the position it occupies or the power it
exerts: we simply assert that it is undeniable that it holds that position and
exercises that power.
The legislation of civilized nations is profoundly
affected by its teaching; the social habits of cultured people are largely
determined by its scheme of life; the governmental forms of powerful countries
are built on its principles, and their functions are carried on under its
sanctions. Rulers are entrusted with the exercise of their powers, witnesses are
credited in the deposition of their testimony, only after oaths sworn upon or
according to it. Everywhere it has percolated through the fabric of
civilization, and modern society is built up upon the lines drawn by
it.
Still further, where it most dominates, there is most life. It is the
great Protestant nations - those who most rest upon this book - which are the
most prominent nations, the most full of abounding life and enterprising energy,
the most impressive on the destinies of man. It is even the pioneer of
civilization; instead of following, it breaks the way for material advancement.
Go where you will, if you find life, you will find also the Bible; and you will
find it in the very midst of the organism. You will find it in the hall of
legislation, and in the laws that are there framed; in the courts of justice,
and in the justice that is there administered; in the colleges of learning, and
in the learning that is there imparted; at the home-firesides, and in the moral
training and homely virtues which are there inculcated. In a word, it is, as no
other book has ever been to a single nation, bound up with all civilization and
progress and culture.
3. It is worth our notice, still further, that this
position of power and influence has been attained and held by the Bible through
a most remarkable history. Confined for ages to a rough, isolated corner of the
globe, in the keeping of a small and peculiar tribe of men, it almost without a
moment's warning, like a great lake receiving a new accession of waters,
immediately on completion, burst all boundaries and deluged the world. It came
commended by no external pomp of appearance, attended with no force of arms.
Alone and single-handed, in the face of stinging contempt and bloodthirsty
cruelty, it opposed ancient prejudices, long-settled habits, customs and
religions, every consideration of self-interest or indulgence or safety, and
swept them away like so many straws. By its simple, despised presence among men
it conquered. It mattered not where it went; human society in every stage of
development, under every form of administration, and composed of every race of
men, everywhere alike yielded itself to it.
We cannot overstate the case;
it is even impossible for us to mentally realize the profundity of the change
induced. Look only at the straws of external action which, veering suddenly
around, advertise to us the change of wind beneath and behind. See the
revolution in the sentiment which the sight of a cross kindled.
Who can
estimate, again, the profound revolution which was necessary in men's very
habits of thought, in their inmost consciousness, before sacrificial ordinances
could fall into neglect. Just think of it. From the beginning of the world
sacrifices had been universal. Men knew, and had from the beginning known, no
other way to express the deepest facts of their consciences. The habit had been
ground in upon the race not only for a lifetime, but for a world-time. Everybody
everywhere spontaneously fled to this rite as the fit expression of the sense of
sin and the hope of deliverance. And yet, in little more than fifty years after
the introduction of Christianity into his province, Pliny complains that it had
almost put a stop to sacrifices there. A world-habit, dominant from the
beginning, thus rolled back upon itself in a single generation! We cannot
possibly appreciate the greatness of this conquest. Sacrifices had been almost
the whole life of the people: from childhood sacrifices had met each man in
every form, in every quarter, in every act, in every duty of every day's
business. Not only could he not engage in any of the graver duties of the
citizen without being confronted with them everywhere; he could not rise from
his bed in the morning, retire to it at night, partake of his necessary
sustenance, without a recognition of a god or the performance of a rite at every
step. And yet Christianity came, not undermining the principle which underlay
sacrifices, but emphasizing it, and still they fled away from its
presence.
Beneath such external changes, conceive, if you can, the
immense revolution that was wrought. Not only was the whole practice of religion
altered, but also the whole theory of religion; not only the whole practice of
morals, but the whole theory of morals. Vices in former repute were suddenly
raised to the highest pinnacle of virtues; virtues in former repute were thrust
down to the lowest hell of vices. Everything was overturned.
Is it asked
whether the human means employed in gaining this grand victory were not
sufficient to account for it? Look at them. A dozen ignorant peasants
proclaiming a crucified Jew as the founder of a new faith; bearing as the symbol
of their worship an instrument which was the sign of ignominy, slavery and
crime; preaching what must have seemed an absurd doctrine of humility, patient
suffering and love to enemies - graces undreamed of before; demanding what must
have seemed an absurd worship for one who had died like a malefactor and a
slave, and making what must have seemed an absurd promise of everlasting life
through one who had himself died, and that between two thieves.
Did their
voices fall on willing or docile ears? This was the age of those princes of
scoffers, Celsus and Lucian.
Did they prosecute their work in peace and
quietude? They were thrown to the lions until the very beasts were satiated with
their prey. Their blood seemed only to water the field of the Lord.
Thus,
in the face of all discouragement and cruel persecution, the Bible found itself
established with incredible rapidity in the hearts of an immense Christendom. In
less than seventy years it was known over all the then known world; within
little more than a single century it had won to itself "almost the greater part
of the whole state."
Do you say that this, despite all appearances, must
have been an exceptional age and an exceptional experience? We reply that it is
the experience of the ages. When corruption had brought back an age of darkness
and the Bible was once more lost from real life, it required but a Luther to
tear off the veil for it to re-enact the same history and sow Europe with the
blood of its votaries till a harvest could be reaped of equal victory. It cannot
be necessary to repeat the story of the noble conflict. You know it well, and
know that it was a Bible war and a Bible victory. The same history is even now
working itself out about us. Madagascar, under our eyes, has repeated it. Every
corner of the globe has felt the tingling of the mighty impulse. Even here, in
America, we are living amid historical wonders, our eyes unopened to the sight.
Rapidly as the population of the United States has grown since 1800, the
proportionate increase of the votaries of the Bible has outstripped it. Yet so
quietly has it all been done that we live utterly oblivious of it until, through
painfully gathered statistics, the fact is made to look us squarely in the
face.
How certain a fact, then, it is that the Bible has reached its
present wonderful position and influence through a most remarkable history, and
a history which it is still continuing on exactly the same lines!
4. It
is important to note, next, that throughout all this history, and still to-day,
this great influence which the Bible has exerted has been, and is still, purely
and only beneficent. All its power has been exerted in the direction of the
elevation of man and loving ministry to his needs. Of course we are in no danger
of forgetting that the truth of this statement has been of late challenged in
some quarters. But neither can we forget three other facts: 1. That it is not
challenged by the well-informed and unprejudiced even among those who deny the
divine origin of the Bible. 2. That the methods by which it is attempted to make
the Bible appear in any other rôle than that of a cornucopia of good for man
will (as Dr. Fisher has lately very clearly shown) avail equally to prove that
love is a curse and the household fireside, with all its blessings, a very nest
of corruption. Of course, it is not denied, either of love or of the Bible, that
it sometimes has been the cause of pain; each has often ennobled man through the
pain and self-sacrifice called out by it. Nor is it denied of either that it has
been made at times the excuse of crime, but both have cried out upon the
wickedness which would hide behind their sacred skirts. 3. That those who put
forth the challenge have been led to do it only because the teaching of the
Bible has so leavened society and the usages of modern life that it is almost
impossible for men to believe that the world could ever have existed without the
restraining and ennobling influences which now seem naturally to dominate us,
and yet which really have their root in the Bible. A true picture of the boon
which this book has really been to the world can be obtained only by an
examination of two classes of facts - those belonging to the condition of
society before it entered into its beneficent reign on the one hand, and on the
other those belonging to the condition into which society lapses whenever the
Bible in any degree loses its hold upon men. The shamelessness of Roman society
under the early emperors will give us the norm of the one; the horrors of the
Italian renascence and of the French Revolution will give us the norm of the
other. It is not necessary to stop now to pollute these pages with the recital
of the depths of degradation from which the Bible rescued man, and from which
its potent influence (witness the Italian renascence and the Reign of Terror)
alone keeps him rescued: they may be read in any accredited history of the
times, and it is certainly justifiable to assume as fact what is recognized as
fact by all competent historians.
Thus, then, the Bible is seen to tread
the ages like the fabled goddess under whose beneficent footfall sprang
beautiful flowers wherever she went. Hospitals and asylums and refuges for the
sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its
path. Woman, whose equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social
disorganization, has been elevated; slavery has been driven from civilized
ground; letters have been given by Christian missionaries, under the influence
of the Bible and in order to its publication, to whole peoples and races. Who
can estimate that boon? Thus Cyril and Methodius gave alphabet and written
language to the vast hordes of the Sclaves; thus Ulphilas, to the whole race of
Teutons; thus even Egypt, mother of letters, first received a manageable
alphabet. Thus still to-day tribes and peoples sunk in barbarism are being
lifted by the Bible to the ranks of literary nations. So the work goes on, and
still to-day, as ever before, the Bible stands in all the world exercising
everywhere its immense power in the restraining of all evil passions, in the
advancement of all that is good and tender and elevating, in pouring out
benefits unspeakable to the individual and the state.
5. All this immense
influence for good which the Bible is exercising over the minds and hearts of
men is due to a most deep-seated and steadfast conviction in their minds that it
is from God and constitutes a law given from heaven for amending the lives and
ameliorating the condition of men.
If this be a fanaticism, it is a most
beneficent and a most remarkable fanaticism, far from easy to account for on the
hypothesis that it is a fanaticism. Did men rush to embrace a delusion which had
nothing to commend it to them amid the scoffs of Celsus and the ridicule of
Lucian, against their every interest and against their every inclination, and
that when the majesty of Rome was unsheathed to fright them back and the jaws of
the lions yawned to engulf them? Men do not usually spring so to die for a
delusion which offers so little and threatens so much. Then, too, how has the
fanaticism so grown? How is it that it still holds captive so many millions of
those whose intellect is of the clearest and whose culture is of the highest?
How is it that it still embraces the civilized world? But, however it be
attempted to account for it, here is the fact. The great influence which the
Bible has ever exercised has been always, and still is accounted for by those
who yield to it on their sincere conviction that this book, which differs so in
power from all other volumes, differs from them equally in origin, being alone
of books God's book, while all others are men's.
6. This conviction is
traced by them not solely to the visible power and influence of the book, nor
solely, conjoined with that, to the manifest grandeur and divinity of its
contents and character, but also (continuing to dwell now on external
particulars) to marvelous circumstances which attended the giving of this
marvelous book to the world. Those who wrote its latter portion and sent the
whole abroad asserted that they acted under commission from God and
authenticated their mission by a series of astounding miracles. Thus the miracle
of the book is appropriately believed to have sprung from the center of a
God-endowed company.
We cannot pause now to prove that these miracles
really occurred. All that can be said is that the testimony they rest on is
irrefragable, and that they must be admitted to have occurred or the foundations
of all history are swept away at a stroke. It is enough here to note how
appropriately the wonderful history which has been wrought out by the Bible is
made to spring from open miracles. All is here consistent and appropriate; and
if those miracles which are asserted to have happened really happened, all is
explained and constitutes a harmonious whole. Otherwise, we are landed in great
difficulties and inconsistencies.
If we will ponder the facts which we
have so baldly stated, it seems that we must conclude that the external history
of this book is such as will so harmonize with a supernatural origin for it as
to take away all strangeness from the assertion of such an origin. And what is
that but saying that the history of the book suggests a supernatural origin for
it - even raises a presumption in favor of such an origin for it? This book is
certainly unique in the power it possesses: is it not unique in its source of
power? It is certainly furnished with an influence possessed by no other book.
Whence came it?
II. THE
STRUCTURE OF THE BIBLE
And now let us open the volume and see
what kind of a book this is which has exerted such remarkable power through so
long and so wonderful a history. We have all, doubtless, a notion of the kind of
book a volume is likely to be which will exercise vast influence over men - a
masterly argument, say, well ordered and set foursquare against all possible
opposition, each part fitted with consummate skill to each other part, and the
whole driven with relentless force and unswerving purpose straight to the
intended goal; or a fervid appeal, say, based on the primal emotions of the
heart, with burning and well-chosen words touching each string of that mystic
harp, beating out from them all one burst of answering music. A consummate
master of thought and speech may be thus conceived of as so catching the human
heart as to hold it almost permanently. Yet his influence would be limited -
notably, by this: the radius of the circle of his sympathies. Certainly no man
has yet arisen able to frame a writing of universal and age-long influence,
simply because no one has arisen yet wholly above the environment of the social
customs and age-influence in which he was bred. And certainly it is
inconceivable that a book should exert great influence over a wide expanse of
territory and through long stretches of time which was not consciously framed
for influence by an intelligent and competent mind. All this being true, it is
assuredly worth our most serious attention that the Bible is the only book in
existence which has any pretensions to being universal and lasting in its
influence; and yet, if it be not of superhuman origin, it could not have been
framed consciously for influence. Let us look into this fact somewhat more
closely.
7. On first throwing open this wonderful volume we are struck
immediately with the fact that it is not a book, but rather a congeries of
books. No less than sixty-six separate books, one of which consists itself of
one hundred and fifty separate compositions, immediately stare us in the face.
These treatises come from the hands of at least thirty distinct writers,
scattered over a period of some fifteen hundred years, and embrace specimens of
nearly every kind of writing known among men. Histories, codes of law, ethical
maxims, philosophical treatises, discourses, dramas, songs, hymns, epics,
biographies, letters both official and personal, vaticinations, - every kind of
composition known beneath heaven seems gathered here in one volume.
Their
writers, too, were of like diverse kinds. The time of their labors stretches
from the hoary past of Egypt to and beyond the bright splendor of Rome under
Augustus. They appear to have been of every sort of temperament, of every degree
of endowment, of every time of life, of every grade of attainment, of every
condition in the social scale. Looked at from a purely external point of view,
the volume is a rough bale of drift from the sea of Time, a conglomerate of
débris brought down by the waters and cast in a heap together. Nay, not only
are there heterogeneous, but seemingly positively conflicting, elements in it.
One half is a mass of Hebrew writings held sacred by a race which cannot look
with patience on the other half, which is a mass of Greek writings claiming to
set aside the legislation of a large part of its fellow. Yet it is this
congeries of volumes which has had, and still has, this immense influence. The
Hebrew half never conquered the world until the Greek half was added to it; the
Greek half did not conquer save by the aid of the Hebrew half. The whole mass,
in all its divinity, has attained the kingship.
The question which will
not down is, Can the miraculous power of this book be explained by the measure
of power to which other books are able to attain? Where does this book,
seemingly thus cast together by some whirlpool of time, get its influence? If
influence is not natural to such a volume, must it not point to something
supernatural in it? Whence came it?
8. We may look, however, on a still
greater wonder. Let us once penetrate beneath all this primal diversity and
observe the internal character of the volume, and a most striking unity is found
to pervade the whole; so that, in spite of having been thus made up of such
diverse parts, it forms but one organic whole. The parts are so linked together
that the absence of any one book would introduce confusion and disorder. The
same doctrine is taught from beginning to end, running like a golden thread
through the whole and stringing book after book upon itself like so many pearls.
Each book, indeed, adds something in clearness, definition, or even increment,
to what the others proclaim; but the development is orderly and constantly
progressive. One step leads naturally to the next; the pearls are certainly
chosen in the order of stringing.
An unbroken historical continuity
pervades the whole book. It is even astonishing how accurately the parts
historically dovetail together, jag to jag, into one connected and consistent
whole. Malachi ends with a finger-post pointing through the silent ages to a
path clearly seen in the Gospels. The New Testament fits on to the Old silently
and noiselessly, but exactly, just as one stone of the Jewish temple fitted its
fellow prepared for it by exact measurement in the quarries; so that, on any
careful consideration of the two coexisting phenomena - utter diversity in
origin of these books, and yet utter nicety of combination of one with all - it
is as impossible to doubt that they were meant each for the other, were
consciously framed each for its place, as it is to doubt that the various parts
of a complicated machine, when brought from the factory and set up in its place
of future usefulness, were all carefully framed for one another.
But just
see where this lands us. Unless we are prepared to allow to a man some fifteen
hundred years of conscious existence and intellectual supervision of the work,
we are shut up here to the admission of a superhuman origin for this book. It is
difficult to see how this argument can be really escaped. It will be perceived
that it is analogous to what is often urged from the phenomena of the natural
universe to prove for it a divine origin. Indeed, all the arguments urged in the
one sphere are also capable of being urged in the other. The gradual framing of
the Bible through a period of fifteen hundred years excludes human supervision.
Now, the Bible, as a whole, is a result or an effect in the universe, and it
must have had, as such, an adequate cause, which, since the result is an
intelligent one, must have been an intelligent cause: there is the ontological
argument, and it proves a superhuman intelligent cause for the Bible. It
consists of orderly arranged parts, of an orderly developed scheme: there is the
cosmological argument, and again it proves the activity of an intelligent cause
(and much else not now to be brought out) of at least fifteen hundred years'
duration. It is itself a cause of marvelous effects in the world for the
production of which it is most admirably designed, and its whole inner harmony
and all its inner relations are most deeply graven with the marks of a design
kept constantly before some intelligent mind for at least fifteen hundred years:
there is the argument from design, attaining equally far-reaching and cogent
conclusions as in the realm of nature. The analogy need not, however, be drawn
out further. An atheist of the present day spoke only sober truth when he
declared that the divine origin of the Bible and the divine origin of the world
must stand or fall together. The arguments which will prove the one prove also
the other. Butler proved this proposition long ago. It stands indubitable; so
that absolute atheism or Christianity must be our only choice.
9. Another
point in which the unity of the Bible is strikingly apparent needs our attention
next: amid all the diversity of its subject-matter, it may yet be said that
almost the whole book is taken up with the portraiture of one person. On its
first page he comes for a moment before our astonished eyes; on the last he
lingers still before their adoring gaze. And from that first word in Genesis
which describes him as the "seed of the woman" and at the same time her
deliverer - with occasional moments of absence, just as the principal character
of a play is not always on the stage, and yet with constant development of
character - to the end, where he is discovered sitting on the great white throne
and judging the nations, the one consistent but gradually developed portraiture
grows before our eyes. Not a false stroke is made. Every touch of the pencil is
placed just where it ought to stand as part of the whole. There is nowhere the
slightest trace of wavering or hesitancy of hand. The draughtsman is certainly a
consummate artist. And, as the result of it all, the world is possessed of the
strongest, most consistent, most noble literary portraiture to be found in all
her literature.
Yet we are asked to believe that this grand result has
been attained, not by the skilled limning of a Michelangelo, but by the
disconnected dabblings of a score and a half of untrained forgers, who,
moreover, were ever at cross-purposes with each other. Why, if the creation and
successful dramatization, through a few short years, of such a character as
Hamlet required the genius of a Shakespeare, what genius was required for this
astoundingly successful creation and dramatization of such a character as that
of the GOD-MAN through the ages of ages and aeons of aeons - from the time when
at his Father's side he sat, coequal with him, before all worlds, to the time
when these same worlds shall be swallowed up in the final fire! One should
certainly rather risk his sanity in the assertion that the play of "Hamlet" had
formed itself by the fortuitous concourse of the alphabetical signs and made its
own portraiture of the subtle Dane, than on the assertion that this portraiture
of the GOD-MAN had been attained apart from the constant supervision and active
labor of a consummate mind. If we should thus consider this portraiture only as
a fiction, it would demand for its author something more than has yet been seen
in man. As it is undeniable now that it occupies the chiefest portion of the
Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and binds the portions it occupies together as
a consistent dramatization of itself, it is equally undeniable that these
portions of the Bible, at any rate, owe their origin to a mind able to
superintend their composition for at least fifteen hundred years with a genius
hitherto unexampled among men.
10. One other bond of connection between
the parts of the volume must needs be adverted to briefly - that formed by
numerous predictions of coming events given in the earlier portions and accounts
of the fulfillment of them in later portions, by which these later portions are
proved to be but the intended outgrowth and conclusion of the former. These
predictions run through an immense range both of time and of circumstance, and
are made too precise and detailed in form, and too precise and detailed in the
account of their fulfillment, for it to be possible to doubt, on the one hand,
that they were real predictions, or, on the other, that they were really
fulfilled. Thus the various books are drawn close together; and if the Bible,
externally considered, may be likened to a bale of drift, these prophecies,
given in one part and reaching their fulfillment in another, are the strong
cords which bind the bale securely together and make it one whole. The unity
induced by this means is, indeed, complete and most conclusive to its own divine
origin.
11. Thus we are led to appeal to prophecy, and that not only to
prove the unity of the plan of Scripture, but, independent of and far above that
- by its very nature as prediction of things yet hidden in the future - as an
irrefragable proof of the divine origin of the whole of the closely-knit volume
in which it finds place. It is not a function of human intellect to read the
secrets of unborn ages; and the existence in this book of accurate, detailed
predictions of even unimportant and certainly incalculable events of the far
future demonstrates its divine origin.
It is, of course, impossible in
this brief essay to illustrate the character and convincingness of Scripture
prophecy, or even to indicate instances of its unquestionable fulfillment in
detail. Were there space, we might point to the immense number of independent
predictions, seemingly opposite, or even contradictory, to one another, before
their fulfillment, found on the coming of Christ to be harmoniously gathered up
and fulfilled in his unique personality and work - predictions covering not only
the great outlines of his work and the marked traits of his person, but
publishing ages beforehand the very village in which he should first see the
light, the homage on the one hand, and the abuse on the other, which he should
receive, the life he should live and the death he should die, even to the most
minute description of the pains he should suffer and the scoffs he should endure
as he hung upon the tree - yea, even the exact price of his blood and fate of
his betrayer. Or, again, we might point to that ever-living witness to the truth
of prophecy in the Jewish race upon whom everything that has been prophesied has
been and is being duly fulfilled; or, again, to an infinite multitude of minute
details of predictions touching many races and nations which have with infinite
might fulfilled themselves everywhere. Space would fail, however, for such an
enumeration. And it is the less necessary, now that the feverish efforts, on the
part of those who wish to escape from the power of the Bible, to assign later
dates to the prophetical books than most cogent proof from many quarters will
allow, amount to an admission that the prophetical element in them cannot be
denied. In prophecy, therefore, we have a continual miracle set in the midst of
the Bible, to stand in all ages as a sure proof that it comes from God. As each
prediction is in turn fulfilled before the eyes of each age which witnesses it,
a miracle performs itself (and attests itself in the act) which is as cogent and
sufficient evidence of the divine origin of the Bible as if all the miracles of
the apostolical age were rewrought in our presence to reaffirm its teaching.
Thus we see, in perhaps a new light, the meaning of our Lord's pregnant saying:
"If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though
one rise from the dead."
As, then, when we considered the external
history of the Bible, we were driven back, step by step, through marvelous
circumstances to open miracles of power proclaiming and demonstrating the divine
origin of the book, so here, as soon as we look within it in even the most
cursory way, we repeat the same process and move back from marvel to marvel,
until we reach the open miracle of prophecy, again independently proving the
divine origin of the book after a fashion which cannot be escaped or
legitimately questioned.
III. THE TEACHING OF
THE BIBLE
The same process is only again repeated, and cumulative
evidence for the divine origin of the Bible obtained, when we look somewhat
deeper into its contents and ask after the character and witness of its teaching
- a subject broad as the earth itself and full of self-evidence, but upon which
we have as yet not even cast a glance. The character and the nature of the
contents of the Bible alone are enough to prove its divine origin. If men cannot
have made the miracles of power by which its publication to the world was
accompanied, nor the miracles of prophecy by which its progress through the
world has been accompanied, no more can they have manufactured the miracles of
teaching of which its contents consist. Independently of all other evidence, the
miracle of the contents demands a divine origin. This, again, may be made
plainer by some specifications, which again, however, must be presented in a
very naked and fragmentary way.
12. Let us note, then, first of all, the
unspeakable elevation and grandeur both of the teaching itself which this book
presents and of the assumptions on which it bases that teaching.
The
conception of God which is here presented - how unutterably divine is it! Apart
from the Bible, man has never reached to such a conception. This element of it,
and that element of it, has, indeed, through the voice of nature, separately
dawned upon his soul; but the complete ideal is conveyed to him only by this
book. Infinite and eternal spirit - pure and ineffable - unlimited by matter, or
space or time, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in essence and attributes! And
what a circle of attributes! Infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite justice,
infinite holiness, infinite goodness, infinite mercy, infinite pity, infinite
love! Verily, if this conception be not a true image of a really existent God,
the human heart must say it ought to be. And this is the conception of God which
the Bible holds up before us - more than that, which it dramatizes through an
infinite series of infinitely varied actions through a period of millenniums of
years in perfect consistency of character. Everywhere in its pages God appears
as the all-powerful, all-wise, necessarily just and holy One; everywhere as the
all-good, all-merciful, necessarily pitiful and loving One. Never is a single
one of these ineffable perfections lost or hidden or veiled.
The Bible's
conception of the nature of man is of like nobility. Framed in the image of God,
he was made like him not only in the passive qualities, but also in his
endowment of active capacities. Even freedom of action - unbound ability to
choose his own future – were placed in his grasp. So, also, the Bible's
teaching as to the duties that man, even after he has made his fatal choice,
owes to God and his neighbor, all founded on the principle of love; its teaching
as to the possibilities before man and the destiny in store for him, culminating
in the possibility of his enthronement as co-ruler of the universe with his
divine Redeemer; its teaching as to the relation of man to the physical and
irrational universe as responsible head over it; its teaching as to the origin
of this universe itself and its purpose and destiny, - all reach the acme of
grandeur. These instances must serve us as specimens of the grandeur of its
teaching.
13. We must note, still further, that both the general tenor of
the Bible and its special assertions are all in precise accord "with what the
profoundest learning shows to be the actual state of the universe, as well as
what the deepest and largest experience establishes as the actual course of
nature." And it is a very pertinent question how it happens that the Bible was
able, alone of ancient books, to forestall the conclusions of the latest science
of the nineteenth century. It has taken scientific thought up to to-day to bring
its conceptions of the origin of the world to the point at which Moses stood
some three millenniums ago. This, again, must serve us now as a specimen fact
(among a multitude) proving that "whoever wrote this book knew more than we
know, and knew it distinctly when we knew nothing."
Yet, although
possessed of a knowledge thus unspeakably advanced beyond all of their time, the
writers of this book do not seem to have been proud of their possession or
anxious to display it; they do not even formally transmit their knowledge, but
simply act and speak on its presupposition; so that when we reach an equal stage
of advancement to theirs, without having been hitherto conscious of its
presence, we suddenly find it there continually implied and constantly
underlying every part. It is thus always most deeply felt by those most
conversant with the progress of knowledge, and yet does not in any degree clog
the understanding of the book for the purpose for which it was given by those
who are as yet ignorant of the basis of physical or philosophical fact
assumed.
14. Thus we are led to take note of another general
characteristic of biblical teaching - the fact that all its great truths are
universal truths; i.e., truths capable of reaching and making entrance into and
taking a strong hold upon the heart of man as man, and of all men equally,
independently of their race-affinities, intellectual advancement or social
standing. That this should be so is undoubtedly a great wonder, and it is
redoubled when we remember that it is correlated with great and remarkable
knowledge. Usually, when the profound philosopher speaks, he needs philosophers
for his audience; and yet here is a book which naturally and without effort
betrays acquaintance with the deepest reaches of modern discovery, and yet in
its every accent speaks home to the child as readily as to the sage.
In
still another respect this same fact - namely, that the truths of the Bible
"find us" - has probative force, since, herefrom, it is equally evident that the
Bible is suited to man and that its asserted truths are instinctively recognized
by man as actual truths. The Bible thus certainly comes with a message to man -
one that is recognized by each man who needs its words as specially for him, and
that is witnessed to instinctively by each as true. How does it happen that this
book, alone among books, reaches the heart alike of the Bushman and of a Newton?
of a savage lost in the horrors of savagery and of a Faraday sitting aloft on
the calm and clear if somewhat chill heights of science? This universality of
effect seems to prove a corresponding universality of intention. But who of men
has ever been able to hold before him as recipients of his book all men of all
ages? Who has been able to calculate upon the hearts and characters of men
removed from him by such stretches of both time and circumstance? Who could have
been able to adapt a message penned in a corner, ages agone, to the mental
position of the nineteenth century and the hearts of a Newton and a Faraday? Yet
we must assume for the Bible an author who was capable of this. Was Moses
capable of it? Was an anonymous forger of his name?
15. We must, however,
turn to note another general characteristic of Scripture - the remarkable
simplicity of its manner and the transparent honesty of its tone; so that its
words, even when describing the most utter marvels, possess that calm, quiet
ring which stamps them with indubitable truthfulness. If we are asked why we
trust a friend in whom we have every confidence, and credit his every statement,
we may be somewhat at a loss for a definite answer. "We know him," we say. This
same evidence is good also for a book. We may judge of the truthfulness of men's
writings by all those little intangible characteristics which when united go
toward making a very strong impression of actual proof, but which one by one are
almost too small to adduce or even notice, just as we may judge of the
trustiness of men's characters by all the innumerable looks, gestures, chance
expressions, little circumstances which make their due impression on us.
Combined, they are convincing, though each by itself might seem ambiguous or
valueless. The conclusion in each case is, however, valid and rational, and the
evidence is unmistakably good evidence. Now, for the Bible, this evidence is
unusually strong; and thus it happens that men who do not know how to reason,
and who are incapable of following a closely-reasoned argument, are accepting
the Bible on all sides of us on truly rational and valid evidence, and accepting
it on like evidence as divine. They are continually reading accounts of miracles
so numerous and so striking that the witnesses of them could not be mistaken; so
embedded in a narrative of such artlessness, gravity, honesty, intelligence,
straightforwardness as palpably to be neither fraud nor fancy that they form
part and parcel of it and are absolutely inseparable from it; so embedded in a
narrative which approves itself by a thousand simple and inimitable hints and
traits to be transparently truthful and trustworthy that they must stand or fall
with it. Now, this is most rational evidence, and evidence so strong that it is
as difficult for the honest mind to resist it as it is for us to express
it.
16. It becomes surely, then, of sufficient importance to justify
special notice that in the midst of this narrative, and scattered all through
it, we find calm and simple, but frequent, constant, and steadfast, assertions
of a divine origin for itself. So honest and transparently truthful a narrative,
filled with marks everywhere of superhuman knowledge, naturally enough does not,
in the pride of human nature, claim all this superhuman knowledge for its human
authors, but ascribes it all to God; naturally enough empties its human authors
of any credit for knowledge before the time of knowledge and plans beyond the
reach of man and ascribes it all to God. And its very honesty and simplicity of
statement, the transparent honesty of this statement, proves the assertion
truthful and trustworthy. Here, then, once more, we reach through orderly steps,
exhibiting at each stage marks of God's hand, the assertion of a divine origin;
here, once more, after walking through the aisles and nave and choir of a grand
cathedral filled all along with the marks of genius in its planning and
execution, we reach again the wall, and, lo! on it the marks of the chisel and
the superscription of the Architect that prove it was made by a competent mind
and did not grow.
It is very difficult to see but that the argument, if
fully drawn out and illustrated, is conclusive.
IV. SPECIAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF' THE BIBLE
Another, and an even more cogent, argument
might be presented from a consideration of some special characteristics either
of the whole Bible or of some of its parts - an argument hitherto untouched.
This argument would soon, however, grow much too vast to be included in this
essay. We must content ourselves with only pointing at a distance to only one
particular which might, were there space, be urged most convincingly.
17.
We refer to the progressive character of the teaching included in this book,
with the special cases which might be adduced under that head. It begins with
first principles expressed in outward symbol, and advances gradually to the full
system, working out its approaches in history before delivering it in dogma. We
do not urge simply that this progressive scheme is consistent with a divine
origin for it; we urge that this supremely wise method of delivering truth and
training a people, taken in connection with the unity of the system throughout
the whole, is consistent with nothing else. No doctrinaire made this Bible - see
what kind of work they do in the history of Middle-Age Florence and
Revolutionary France - but a most consummate statesman who knew what was in man
and how to mould him to his purposes.
We would appeal, in this connection
- progressiveness - specially to the practical and practicable character of
Old-Testament legislation. And thus we are led to assert that those very
passages concerning polygamy and kindred themes (which have been made an
occasion of gibe against the Scriptures) are themselves a most cogent argument
for their divine origin. We Americans ought to know by this time that the best
way to secure polygamy unharmed and enshrine it unconquerably under the
protection of a nation is to write on the statute-books inoperative laws against
it. The Bible was framed by too wise a statesman to fall into that error, and we
who enjoy Christian homes to-day have to thank God for it. The unspeakable
wisdom of dealing at that age, and under those circumstances, with polygamy,
divorce, slavery by regulative laws, which in regulating discouraged, and in
discouraging destroyed them, makes strongly for a superhuman origin of the
legislation.
So, again, growing out of this same progressive system, we
could appeal most strongly to the ritualistic system of symbolical worship given
to the Jews and by law secured from failure, by which object lessons - all
schoolmasters to lead to something better and higher - were ineffaceably taught
to a whole nation, which was thus prepared to receive the spiritual lesson meant
for it.
Still again we should appeal to the wise method of New-Testament
legislation through great principles rather than specific ordinances, thus
securing absolute universality in connection with perfect definiteness; or again
to the remarkable tenderness and beauty of this legislation, especially apparent
in the cases of slaves, wives and children and temporal rulers - a phenomenon in
the age when it was given enough of itself to suggest a divine origin for the
one book which contains it; or still again to the wise silence of the same
legislation on many subjects on which it must have been very tempting then to
legislate, but legislation on which we can see now would have imperiled the
success of the main purpose for which the book was given and obtained no
corresponding gain.
On all these and like points, however, it is not now
possible to touch. We pass on, therefore, to our last remark.
V. IMPOSSIBILITY OF
ACCOUNTING FOR THE BIBLE
18. That the Bible, thus standing in the world,
being of such sort, and having had such a history, has yet to be accounted for
on the hypothesis that it had only a human origin. Here it stands, just such a
fact in the universe, a substantive thing, tangible and that can be examined.
The ingenuity of men has been feverishly busy with it these hundreds of years.
Yet the world still awaits a theory which will render an adequate account of it
on any other hypothesis than that it came from God. Theories have been
attempted, but one after another they have broken down of their own weight or
have had justice executed upon them by fellow-unbelieving hands amid the
plaudits of all men of all parties. Thus it happens that up to to-day no
hypothesis except that of superhuman interference has been able to stand a half
century as an account of the origin of this book. What is this but the
confession that without the assumption of superhuman interference this book
cannot be accounted for? that these miraculous claims and these miraculous
assertions cannot be rationally or satisfactorily explained away? Look for one
moment at the efforts made to account on natural grounds for the miraculous
element in the New Testament. First, a school arose which tried to work on the
assumption that whenever a miracle is recorded the event described did really
happen, indeed, but that it has been exaggeratedly and mistakenly described as
miraculous, and not merely natural, by the New-Testament writers. The sick were
healed, but by medicinal means; the dead were raised, but only from seeming, not
real, death. That attempt to explain away the miraculous failed, as requiring as
great a series of miracles of wonderful coincidences as it explained away.
Another then arose which wished to account for it all as a series of myths,
holding that there was a kernel of truth in each event described, but that this
kernel had gathered much falsehood around it as it rolled through time, from
mouth to mouth, before it got recorded in our Bible, just as a snowball grows
almost unrecognizably greater as it rolls down a long slope. But this attempt
was wrecked hopelessly on the lack of a soil for the myths to grow in (that is,
of snow to frame the balls of) and of time for them to increase in (that is, of
any hill for them to roll down). Then another rose on its ruins - an elaborate
theory of party strifes and forgeries and re-forgeries of books in every
conceivable interest; so that the same material was worked over and over again
by false and designing men, to serve each new notion, until the final outcome
was our New Testament. Again this theory was wrecked on the lack of time for all
this elaborate process before the date at which adequate proof is in hand for
the existence of the books. The whole elaborate scheme falls with the failure of
the attempted rape of the second century. It cannot be true unless all history
is false.
Time is lacking for the New Testament to have grown in, if
considered a product of time; whence, then, came it? Soil is lacking for it to
have developed in, if considered a human development; then, whence came it? All
schemes which have hitherto been invented to account for its origin without God
have pitiably failed, and there is no particular reason to look for anything
more cogent to be advanced in the future. If, however, this book cannot be
accounted for apart from God, we seem shut up to account for it as from him.
Certainly, the only rational course is to accept it as from him until it is able
to be rationally accounted for without his interference.
With this we may
fitly close our inquiry. The query with which we started seems abundantly
answered. A supernatural origin for the Bible appears cumulatively
proven.
In closing, it would be well for us to take note of one or two
facts in regard to the argument which has been offered. Let it be observed,
then:
1. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between a
superhuman and a divine origin for the Bible. This is not because the two are
not separable, but only because they are, in our present argument, practically
the same.
2. That no attempt has been made to distinguish between the
divine origin of the system and that of the books recording that system. This,
again, is not because the two are not separable, but only because, so far as the
argument has been pressed - though not much farther - the two need not be
practically separated.
3. That no question has been raised as to the
extent of the divine in the Bible. This is due to three facts: Because this
question need not be raised primarily for the establishment of the faith, but is
necessarily a consequent one to be raised after the general divine origin of the
book is admitted; because, again, the humble Christian often looks upon and
draws life from the Bible without raising this question, simply accepting what
he reads as divinely given to strengthen his faith; and because, again, it was
impossible in one essay to treat both questions.
4. That, nevertheless,
the facts and arguments which have been adduced in a general way to prove the
general divine origin of the Bible not only prepare the way, but even, narrowly
questioned, will raise a strong presumption, for the further conclusions that
this book has been not only in a general way given by God, but also specifically
inspired in the giving, that thus its every word is from him, and that it is
worthy of our reverent and loving credence in its every particular.
* Originally published in 1882, by the Presbyterian Board of Publication,
Philadelphia; Pa.
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