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Page 17
If, then, the authority of the Bible depends upon the witness of the
Spirit within our own souls, its authority has definite limits. We can
verify spiritually the truth of a religious experience by repeating that
experience; but we cannot verify spiritually the correctness of the
report of some alleged event, or the accuracy of some opinion. We can
bear witness to the truthfulness of the record of the consciousness of
shame and separation from God in the story of the fall of Adam and Eve;
we must leave the question of the historicity of the narrative and the
scientific view of the origin of the race in a single pair to the
investigations of scholars. Our own knowledge of Jesus Christ as a
living Factor in our careers confirms the experience His disciples had
of His continued intercourse with them subsequent to His crucifixion;
but the manner of His resurrection and the mode in which _post mortem_
He communicated with them must be left to the untrammelled study of
historical students. The religious message of a miraculous happening,
like the story of Jonah or of the raising of Lazarus, we can test and
prove: disobedience brings disaster, repentance leads to restoration;
faith in Christ gives Him the chance to be to us the resurrection and
the life. The reported events must be tested by the judgments of
historic probability which are applied to all similar narratives, past
or present. The Bible's authority is strictly _religious_; it has to do
solely with God and man's life with man in Him; and, when read in the
light of its culmination in Christ, it approves itself to the Spirit of
Christ within Christians as a correct record of their experiences of
God, and the mighty inspiration to such experiences. Surely it is no
belittling limitation to say of this unique book that it is an authority
_only on God_. Every fundamental question of life is answered, every
essential need of the soul is met, when God is found, and becomes our
Life, our Home.
And with such _self-evidencing_ authority in the books of the Bible, it
is a question of minor importance who were their authors and when they
were written--the questions which the literary historical criticism
undertakes to answer. Luther put the matter conclusively when he said in
his vigorous fashion: "That which does not teach Christ is not
apostolic, though Peter or Paul should have said it; on the contrary
that which preaches Christ is apostolic, even if it should come from
Judas, Annas, Pilate and Herod." Some persons have been greatly troubled
in the last generation by being told that scholars did not consider the
conventionally received authorships of many of the books of the Bible
correct, but thought that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, or David
the _Psalms_, or Solomon the _Proverbs_ or _Ecclesiastes_, or Isaiah and
Jeremiah more than parts of the books that bear their names, or John and
Peter all the writings ascribed to them. We are not to judge of writings
by their authors, but by their intrinsic value. Suppose Shakespeare did
not write more than a fraction of the plays associated with his name, or
that he wrote none of them at all; the plays themselves remain as
valuable as ever; their interpretation of life in its tragedy and
humor, its heights and its depths, is as true as it ever was. Whatever
views of their composition or authorship may be reached by literary
experts, the Scriptures possess exactly the same spiritual power they
have always possessed. The Lord has been "our dwelling-place in all
generations," whether Moses or some other psalmist penned that line; and
Jesus is the bread of life, whether the apostle John or some other
disciple whom Jesus loved records that experience. Scholars may make the
meaning of the Scriptures much plainer by their searching studies; and
they must be encouraged to investigate as minutely and rigorously as
they can. To be fearful that the Bible cannot stand the test of the
keenest study, is to lack faith in its divine vitality. To found a
"Bible Defence League" is as unbelieving as to inaugurate a society for
the protection of the sun. Like the sun the Bible defends itself by
proving a light to the path of all who walk by it. The only defence it
needs is to be used; and the only attack it dreads is to be left unread.
And in speaking of the authority of the Bible we cannot forget that it
is not for Christians the supreme authority. "One is your Master, even
Christ." We must be cautious in speaking of the Bible, as we commonly
do, as "the word of God." That title belongs to Jesus. The Bible
contains the word of God; He is for us _the_ Word of God. We dare not
overlook His untrammelled attitude towards the Scriptures of His people,
who let His own spiritual discernment determine whether a Scripture was
His Father's living voice to Him, or only something said to men of old
time, and given temporarily for the hardness of hearts that could
respond to no higher ideal. As His followers, we dare not use less
freedom ourselves. We test every Scripture by the Spirit of Christ in
us: whatever is to us unchristlike in Joshua or in Paul, in a psalmist
or in the seer on Patmos, is not for us the word of our God: whatever
breathes the Spirit of Jesus from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_ is to us our
Father's Self-revealing speech.
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