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Page 15
In their attitude towards the Canon all Christians agree that the books
deemed authoritative must record the historic revelation which
culminated in Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church. A Roman
Catholic may derive more religious stimulus from the _Spiritual
Exercises_ of Ignatius Loyola than from the _Book of Lamentations_, and
a Protestant from Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ than from the _Second
Epistle of John_; but neither would think of inserting these books in
the Canon. He who finds as much religious inspiration in some modern
poet or essayist as in a book of the Bible, may be correctly reporting
his own experience; but he is confusing the purpose of the Bible if he
suggests the substitution of these later prophets for those of ancient
Israel. The Bible is the spiritually selected record of a particular
Self-disclosure of God in a national history which reached its religious
goal in Jesus Christ.
Romanists and Protestants differ as to how many books constitute the
Canon, the former including the so-called _Apocrypha_--books in the
Greek translation but not in the original Hebrew Bible. And they differ
more fundamentally in the principle underlying the selection of the
books. The Roman Catholic holds that it is the Church which officially
has made the Bible, while the Protestant insists that the books possess
spiritual qualities of their own which gave them their place in the
authoritative volume, a place which the Church merely recognized.
Luther, in his celebrated dispute with Dr. Eck, asserted: "The Church
cannot give more authority or force to a book than it has in itself. A
Council cannot make that be Scripture which in its own nature is not
Scripture." The Council of Trent, answering the Reformers, in 1546,
issued an official decree defining what is Scripture: "The holy,
ecumenical and general Synod of Trent, legitimately convened in the Holy
Ghost ...receives and venerates with an equal piety and reverence all the
books as well of the Old as of the New Testament ...together with the
traditions pertaining both to faith and to morals, as proceeding from
the mouth of Christ, or dictated by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in
the Church Catholic by continuous succession." Then follows a catalogue
of the books, and an anathema on all who shall not receive them "as they
are contained in the old vulgate Latin version."
Over against this the Protestant takes the position that the books of
the Scripture came to be recognized as authoritative exactly as
Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth have been accorded their place in
English literature. It was the inherent merit of _Hamlet_ and _Paradise
Lost_ and the _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ that led to their
acknowledgment. No official body has made Shakespeare a classic; his
works have won their own place. No company of men of letters officially
organized keeps him in his eminent position; his plays keep themselves.
The books of the Bible have gained their positions because they could
not be barred from them; they possess power to recanonize themselves.
Some are much less valuable than others, and it is, perhaps, a debatable
question whether one or two of the apocryphal books--_First Maccabees_,
or _Ecclesiasticus_, for instance--are not as spiritually useful as the
_Song of Solomon_ or _Esther_; but of the chief books we may
confidentially affirm that, if one of them were dug up for the first
time today, it would gradually win a commanding place in Christian
thought. And it is a similar social experience of the Church--Jewish
and Christian--which has recognized their worth. The modernist Tyrrell
has written: "It cannot be denied that in the life of that formless
Church, which underlies the hierarchic organization, God's Spirit
exercises a silent but sovereign criticism, that His resistlessly
effectual judgment is made known, not in the precise language of
definition and decree, but in the slow manifestation of practical
results; in the survival of what has proved itself life-giving; in the
decay and oblivion of all whose value was but relative and temporary."
In a sense each Protestant Christian is entitled to make up a Bible of
his own out of the books which record the historical discoveries of God.
He is not bound by the opinions of others, however many and venerable;
and unless a book commends itself to his own spiritual judgment, he is
under no obligation to receive it as the word of God to him. As a matter
of fact every Christian does make such a Bible of his own; the
particular passages which "grip" him and reproduce their experiences in
him, they, and they alone, are his Bible. Luther was quickened into
life by the epistles of Paul, but spoke slightingly of _James_; many
socially active Christians in our day live in the prophets and the first
three gospels, and almost ignore the rest of the Bible. But individual
taste, while it has preferred authors and favorite works, does not think
of denying to Milton, or Wordsworth, or Shelley, their place among
English classics; a social judgment has assigned them that. A man who is
not hopelessly conceited will regret his inability to appreciate a
single one of the great authors, and will try to enlarge his sympathies.
The Christian will, with entire naturalness, be loyal to so much of the
Bible as "finds him," and humbly hope and endeavor to be led into ampler
ranges of spiritual life, that he may "apprehend with all saints" the
breadth, length, depth and height of the historic Self-revelation of
God.
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