The Things Which Remain.
by Daniel A. Goodsell.
PREFACE
This little book contains the larger part of an address I have delivered at several Annual Conferences on the occasion of the admission of probationary ministers into full membership. At the suggestion of some who have heard it when delivered and whose a.s.surance that it would be useful in print I am bound to respect, I have consented to its publication.
Matter not directly relating to the theme, but of sufficient importance to accompany it in addressing an Annual Conference, is here omitted, that all possible s.p.a.ce might be given to the discussion of the question, "How much Christian doctrine will still remain, though much of the most radical criticism be accepted?"
Preface
It will be understood that concessions made for the sake of the argument by no means represent my own views of that which must be ultimately yielded to the critical spirit.
Already some opinions which threatened the authority of Gospels and Epistles, and which have had wide acceptance, have been modified or withdrawn. My aim in this address was not to scout criticism, from which much of the highest value to faith is to come, but to steady the wavering young minister; to sustain his preaching power by helping him to a definite message, and to encourage him to a slow and guarded acceptance of critical opinions destructive of "the faith once delivered to the saints."
CHATTANOOGA, TENN., December, 1903.
The Things Which Remain
The followers of Him who said "I am the Truth" can never afford to hold or propagate that which is false. No man can preach with power unless he strongly believes. Teaching force depends on Faith.
[Sidenote: Doing and Knowing.]
[Sidenote: The Divine Call.]
[Sidenote: Conditions of the Call.]
Thus far our ministry has had teaching power because it has been founded on and inspired by a Christian experience. Our Church has always emphasized that essential Christian statement, "If ye do ye shall know."
At every ordination we have demanded of every candidate a declaration of his persuasion that he was "called according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ" to the particular office to which he was then to be advanced. By this we do not mean a mediate call through the order of the Church or the judgment of the Bishop, but an immediate call by the Holy Spirit from Christ Himself. This call is antedated by that personal surrender to Jesus Christ; that blessed acceptance by Him of the self-surrendered; that witnessing Spirit as to sonship which brings the consciousness of pardon, renewal, and justification known as "a religious experience."
[Sidenote: Evidence of the Call.]
Those who possess this know something. Whereas they were "once blind, now they see." They know they have "pa.s.sed from darkness to light"
through the changed love which now controls. However the persuasion reached them, it is a persuasion; not merely a hope. It is a conclusion borne in upon them by satisfactory evidence, and is a lasting certainty while the faith which brought it abides in its original measure.
Thus to-day we have a pulpit substantially in doctrine and force what our pulpit always has been. Even in some cases where doubt has entered, it would appear that this Christian experience has steadied the wavering head by the full and regular impulses of the believing heart.
[Sidenote: New Problems in Theology.]
[Sidenote: The Modern Skeptical Temper.]
It is, however, to be admitted that the years to which we have come bring with them problems which our fathers did not have to solve. Doubts of which they knew nothing throng our atmosphere and crowd upon our consciousness. The attacks on Christianity are no longer the ribald jeers of the unlovely and the vile. They come in the name of honest investigation, historical veracity, and scientific accuracy; and are projected by characters apparently truth-loving, reverent, and candid.
[Sidenote: The Sources of Advanced Criticism.]
This may be said for most of them, but on occasion it is hard to believe that all the German critics are wholly and exclusively truth-loving and candid. So extreme are the positions of some, so evidently tinctured with overreadiness for criticism and unbelief, that they must be excluded from the "most" above described.
I speak of the Germans because they, chiefly, are those capable and active in original research. Most of our American "advanced critics" are merely translators and adapters of German work. Their volumes add nothing to the controversy to those who know the German originals. Not a few Americans have obtained reputation by the expansion of the note books they made at the feet of German professors.
[Sidenote: The English Disciples of the German School.]
[Sidenote: Love of Novelty.]
This also is largely true of the English critics. Many of them are well furnished for Greek criticism. The number of Greek Englishmen is still very large. But these seem also to fortify, at least, their own conclusions by the opinions of the original German investigators. It is hard to believe that, in the contests for German professorial position, as well as in the justification of the inc.u.mbent when the position is gained, the desire to attract attention by some critical novelty of method or result has not been in some cases, at least, as influential as a simple love of truth.
[Sidenote: Some Questions as to Style.]
There is always the question also, which I profess seems to be one not easy of answer, whether the literary judgments as to style when men are dealing with another language than their own, and especially with Greek and Hebrew, can be as worthy of acceptance as their authors and many others hold them to be; whether, in short, their opinions may not, like those of experts in handwriting, come to be so colored by their personality, or their interests, as to be of little evidential value.
On this point it seems to me that not enough allowance has been made by these critics for the difference in style when men write familiarly or didactically, or when they are engaged in narration or exhortation.
[Sidenote: Foundation of Belief Unsettled.]
Whatever may be the truth as to these matters, the present state of faith is due to the unsettlement of the foundation of belief by scientific and critical scholarship.
[Sidenote: A New Foundation to Emerge.]
This unsettlement, admitted on every hand with difference of opinion as to extent, is either to increase until faith in Christianity, except as an ethical and humanitarian system, is dead, or abide until faith revives by a perception that the Church has maintained an erroneous basis for faith and that a new and stronger one is emerging from the sea of discussion. This last I believe to be the truth in the matter. I hold, therefore, that faith is not dying, but suffering in some minds from a kind of lunar eclipse, where a shadow diminishes, temporarily, the radiance, but does not extinguish the planet itself.
[Sidenote: The Authority of the Scriptures Weakened.]
When we ask what foundation is weakened, the answer is: The authority of the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith and practice. Some claim that only a few of the books are genuine and almost none authentic. If this is to be the final judgment of the learned and the sincere, it is plain that we must seek another foundation for faith than the word of Scripture. It is no more a "Thus saith the Lord" for us.
[Sidenote: Critics not yet Agreed.]
[Sidenote: Archaeology and the Bible.]
[Sidenote: Personal Standpoints.]
But we are very far from seeing that final agreement among the critics which warrants us in discarding a single book. If any one has been fought about, and fought over, it is the Gospel of John. "It used to be said that this was not a history at all, but an idealizing of tradition in the interest of a speculative idea;[1] now theologians are mostly agreed that if John is the most speculative, he is, at the same time, the most personal of New Testament writers." No other book has been finally overthrown. Archaeology has confirmed Paul, and also some Old Testament writers, especially those who speak of widely separated settlements of the Hitt.i.tes. I get a strong impression that the New Testament writers are sometimes attacked because they teach what the critics do not wish to believe. Thus it would appear that Harnack scouts the early chapters of Matthew and Luke because he doubts the virgin birth, and would hold that belief therein is no part in authority or value of the Christian religion.
[Footnote 1: Denney. Studies in Theology.]
[Sidenote: Bible Appeal for Verification.]
[Sidenote: Gracious Ability.]