of revelation leaves many questions still unanswered, it simply means that man still has a long way to go. And who will question that?
The important consideration is not how far we have gone, but whether we are going in the right direction.
1 St. Matthew 4:7.
2 St. Matthew 16:4.
3 St. Mark 15:30
4 Judges 6:11.
5 I Samuel 16:1–13.
6 Amos 1:1.
7 St. Matthew 2:1–15.
8 St. Matthew 4–18–22.
9 Hebrews 1:1–2.
IV
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
The bible is the record of the revelation of God. God does not reveal Himself exclusively through a book. He reveals Himself in many ways, but chiefly through people and supremely in our Lord Jesus Christ. Books are made by men. God did not make the Bible—men wrote it. Therefore, when we say that the Bible is an inspired book, we do not mean to suggest that it is the result of divine dictation and, for that reason, exempt from the possibility of human blunders. We mean that the men who did the writing were actively seeking God’s will, inscribing accounts of God’s dealing with human life, and that the spiritual reliability of these accounts was tested over long periods of time by the people for whom they were written. Only in a secondary way can the Bible itself be called a revelation of God. It is the record of His revelation which culminated in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The Bible is important because of Christ—not the other way around. Christ did not come to deliver a book. He came to live a Life. The New Testament contains an account of that Life and a commentary on it. The Old Testament is a record of the preparation for it.
During the time of our Lord’s ministry there was no such thing as the Bible as we know it today. There were certain sacred writings now incorporated in our Old Testament, but the contents of the Old Testament were not properly defined for sixty years after our Lord’s resurrection. The New Testament did not begin to be written until twenty years after the conclusion of His earthly life, and its contents were not settled until more than three centuries later. During all this time the Church was busy carrying on His work. The Church, therefore, is not dependent upon the Bible. It is the Bible that is dependent upon the Church, because, when all is said and done, it was the Church that made the Bible. That is the reason why the only sensible way to interpret the Bible is by reference to the Church which made it. We must keep the order straight. First Christ—then the Church—then the Bible.
We usually speak of the Bible as a book. More properly it is a collection of books, written at different times, by different people, under very different circumstances, and often for quite different purposes. The Old Testament period covers something like two thousand years. The record deals with the religious development of people who were advancing, not only through stages of civilization, but also advancing in the knowledge and understanding of God. The earlier accounts come chiefly in the form of stories of a simple nomadic life (as in Genesis), followed by somewhat more definite records of an agricultural period (as in Judges). This in turn is followed by something approaching more formal history in an organized kingdom (as in I and II Kings). Finally, after the fall of the kingdom and the period of exile, we have the literary record coming out of a more cultural life down to the time of Christ (as in Ezra and the later prophets).
Naturally the earlier writings include certain crudities which were attendant upon a less developed state of social life but which were gradually outgrown. It is quite true that the adventurous life of David was flavored with primitive conceptions of an angry God wreaking vengeance here and there when His will was thwarted. But in the next five hundred years such conceptions gave way to the loftier idea of God yearning over His people such as we find in Hosea and the Second Isaiah.
The Bible needs to be read with discrimination. Our Lord Himself sets us the example over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy” (this is the old standard of Moses), “But I say unto you, Love your enemies.”1 Similarly our Lord sweeps aside the law of retaliation of an earlier day, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,”2 and instructs His listeners in the better way of returning good for evil. It is simply hopeless to think of opening the Bible at any point, expecting there to find detailed directions as to what one should do in the twentieth century. Sometimes you will find straight contradictions, as in those instances when our Lord said, “But, I say unto you—.” The beauty of the Bible is its sheer honesty. It refuses to gloss over the crudities and inadequacies of the early stages of religious development. But all the way through runs the golden thread of persistent search after God and the constant presence of eternal truths, however incompletely realized—all leading up to fulfilment in the Gospel of Christ.
Every now and then someone comes forth with the brilliant idea that we ought to have a new Bible, retaining the finer parts of the old Bible and adding selections from later writers like Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson and others. One practical difficulty of such an undertaking is that no two persons could ever be found who would agree on just what selections were to be incorporated in the book. It would inevitably boil down to a series of innocuous expressions of religious sentiment which could never hurt anyone. Such an inoffensive religion would be about as useful as a dry rain. Moreover, an artificial editing of this kind would mean the manufacture of a new religion. But the religion of the Christian is already settled in Jesus Christ. His faith is not in a book, but in a Person. The Bible is a mosaic presenting the picture of Christ set off by its Old Testament background.
Additions or subtractions are not helpful to the picture. This is not to say that you must gaze with similar devotion at every stone in the mosaic, or that you are to count them all of equal significance. You can be a very good Christian if you never read some parts of the Bible, but all are needed for the complete picture, just as all the records are needed in the county Court House for the history of any community. You would not go back and read the list of marriage licenses out of loyalty to your home town, but the record of them should be preserved. Neither do you need to read the lists of joshua’s warriors or of David’s mighty men for spiritual refreshment.
There are three ways of approaching the Bible—literally, symbolically, and historically. No one of these ways is wrong. On the contrary, all of them are right, but no one of them is necessarily right for every portion of the Bible. Holy Scripture contains many different kinds of writing. Some of it is poetry, some is narration, some is prophecy. To approach all of them in the same way would be simple foolishness.
Suppose someone were to take a selection of well-known poems, a history of the United States, and a collection of wise proverbs, and bind them all together in a single volume. An enthusiastic reader holds up that volume and says, “I believe literally everything in this book.” Someone reads him one of the proverbs—“A rolling stone gathers no moss.” The first man enthusiastically declares, “Quite so. I must go right out on the hillside and fasten every stone so it can never do any rolling.” “But,” says the second reader, “that is a symbolical proverb. In fact, the whole book is symbolical. None of it can be taken literally.” Whereupon the first reader turns to the account of the battle of Bull Run. But the second reader smiles indulgently and says—“That is not history. It never really happened. I assure you, this book is purely symbolical. The very name of this battle tells you it is only a parable of ranch life indicating
