John William Burgon · 11 of 36

VII. Examination of the Contribution of Rev. Professor Jowett, M.A. · Part 2

8. And yet the grand external characteristic feature of the Bible remains unnoticed! The one distinctive feature of the Bible, is this,—that the four-fold Gospel, as a matter of fact, exhibits to us, the Word “made flesh:” and, (O marvel of marvels!) suffers us to hear His voice, and look upon His form, and observe His actions. It does more. The New Testament professes to be, and is, the complement of the Old. The promise of Christ, solemnly, and repeatedly,—“at sundry times and divers manners,”—given in the one, is fulfilled in the other. Henceforth they are no more twain, for they have been by God Himself joined together; and the subject of both is none other than our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Enough surely has been already adduced to warrant a reasonable man in refusing to accept Professor Jowett’s repeated asseveration that the Bible is “to be interpreted like any other book.” A Book which proves on examination to be so wholly unlike every other book,—so entirely sui generis,—may surely well create an à priori suspicion that it is not to be interpreted either, after any ordinary fashion. But the grand consideration of all is still behind! The one circumstance which effectually refutes the view of the Reverend Professor, remains yet to be specified; namely, that the Bible professes to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is again and again declared to speak therein, διά, “by the instrumentality,” “by the mouth,” of Man. In other words, God, not Man, professes to be the Author of the Bible!

That the Bible does set up for itself such a claim, will be found established at p. 53 to p. 57 of the present volume. Professor Jowett’s assurance that “for any of the higher or supernatural views of Inspiration, there is no foundation in the Gospels or Epistles,” (p. 345,)—must therefore be regarded as an extraordinary, or rather as an unpardonable oversight on his part. One would have thought that a single saying, like that in Acts iii. 18 and 21, would have occurred to his memory, and been sufficient to refute him. Other places will be found quoted at p. cxcvii.

Very much is it to be feared however that the same gentleman has overlooked a consideration of at least equal importance; namely, the inevitable inference from the discovery that the origin of the Bible is Divine. He informs us that,—“It will be a further assistance (!) in the consideration of this subject, to observe that the Interpretation of Scripture has nothing to do with any opinion respecting its origin.” (p. 350.) “The meaning of Scripture,” (he proceeds,) “is one thing: the Inspiration of Scripture is another.”—True. But when we find the Reverend Author insisting, again and again, that “it may be laid down that Scripture has one meaning,—the meaning which it had to the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered, or wrote it,” (p. 378,)—we are constrained to remind him that, “To say that the Scriptures, and the things contained in them, can have no other or farther meaning than those persons thought or had, who first recited or wrote them; is evidently saying, that those persons were the original, proper, and sole authors of those books, i. e. that they are not inspired.” So that, in point of fact, the origin of Holy Scripture, so far from being a consideration of no importance, (as Mr. Jowett supposes,) proves to be a consideration of the most vital importance of all. And the Interpretation of Scripture, so far from having “nothing to do with any opinion respecting its origin,” is affected by it most materially, or rather depends upon it altogether!

On a review of all that goes before, it will, I think, appear plain to any person of sound understanding, that Professor Jowett’s à priori views respecting the Interpretation of Holy Scripture will not stand the test of exact reason. To suggest as he has done that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book, on the plea that it is like any other book, is to build upon a false foundation. His syllogism is the following:—

If the Bible is a book like any other book, the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book.

The Bible is a book like any other book.

Therefore,

But it has been shewn that the learned Professor’s minor premiss is false. It has been proved that the Bible is NOT a book like any other book.

Nay, I claim to have done more. I claim to have established the contradictory minor premiss. The syllogism therefore will henceforth stand as follows:—

If the Bible can be shewn to be a book like no other book, but entirely sui generis, and claiming to be the work of Inspiration,—then is it reasonable to expect that it will have to be interpreted like no other book, but entirely after a fashion of its own.

But the Bible can be shewn to be a book like no other book entirely sui generis; and claiming to be the work of Inspiration.

Therefore,—

2. It remains however, now, to advance an important step.—Mr. Jowett, in a certain place, adopts a principle, the soundness of which I am able, happily, entirely to admit. “Interpret Scripture from itself,—like any other book about which we know almost nothing except what is derived from its pages.” (p. 382.) “Non nisi ex Scripturâ Scripturam interpretari potes.” (p. 384.)

Scarcely has he made this important admission however, and enunciated his golden Canon of interpretation, when he hastens to nullify it. his very next words are,—“The meaning of the Canon is only this,—‘That we cannot understand Scripture without becoming familiar (!) with it.’”

But, (begging the learned writer’s pardon,) so far from that being the whole of the meaning of the Canon, his gloss happens exactly to miss the only important point. The plain meaning of the words,—“Only out of the Scriptures can you explain the Scriptures,”—is obviously rather this:—“That in order to interpret the Bible, our aim must be to ascertain how the Bible interprets itself.’ In other words, Scripture must be made its own Interpreter.’ More simply yet, in the Professor’s own words, (from which, more suo) he has imperceptibly glided away,)—“Interpret Scripture from itself.” (p. 382.) . . . . How then does Scripture interpret Scripture? That is the only question! for the answer to this question must be held to be decisive as to the other great question which Mr. Jowett raises in the present Essay,—namely, How are we to interpret Scripture?

Now this whole Inquiry has been conducted elsewhere and will be found to extend from p. 144 to p. 160 of the present volume. It has been there established, by a sufficiently large induction of examples, that the Bible is to be interpreted as no other book is, or can be interpreted; and for the plain reason, that the inspired Writers themselves, (our Lord Himself at their head!) interpret it after an altogether extraordinary fashion. Mr. Jowett’s statement at p. 339 that “the mystical interpretation of Scripture originated in the Alexandrian age,” is simply false.

And in the course of this proof, (necessarily involved in it, in fact,) it has been incidentally shewn that the sense of Scripture is not, by any means, invariably one; and that sense the most obvious to those who wrote, heard, or read it. It has been fully shewn that the office of the Interpreter is not, by any means, (as Mr. Jowett imagines,) “to recover the meaning of the words as they first struck on the ears, or flashed before the eyes of those who heard or read them.” (p. 338.) The Reverend writer’s repeated assertion that “we have no reason to attribute to the Prophet or Evangelist any second or hidden sense different from that which appears on the surface,” (p. 380,) has been fully, and as it is hoped effectually refuted.

And here I might lay down my pen. For since, at the end of 74 pages, the Professor thus delivers himself, (in a kind of imitation of St. Paul’s language,)—“Of what has been said, this is the sum,—‘That Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which has to be gathered from itself . . . . without regard to à priori notions about its nature and origin:” that, “It is to be interpreted like other books, with attention to the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge,” and so forth; (p. 404;)—it must suffice to say that, having established the very opposite conclusion, I claim to have effectually answered his Essay; because I have overthrown what he admits to be “the sum” of it. Let me be permitted however—before I proceed to review some other parts of his performance,—in the briefest manner, not so much to recapitulate, as to exhibit ‘the sum’ of what has been hitherto delivered on the other side; in somewhat different language, and as it were from a different point of view.

We are presented then, in the New Testament Scriptures, with the august spectacle of the Ancient of Days holding the entire volume of the Old Testament Scriptures in His Hands, and interpreting it of Himself. He, whose Life and Death are set forth in the Gospel;—whose Church’s early fortunes are set forth historically in the Acts, while its future prospects are shadowed prophetically in the Apocalypse;—whose Doctrines, lastly, are explained in the twenty-one Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter, St. James and St. John and St. Jude:—He, the Incarnate Word, who was “in the beginning;” who “was with God,” and who “was God:”—that same Almighty One, I repeat, is exhibited to us in the Gospel, repeatedly, holding the Volume of the Old Testament Scriptures in His Hands, and explaining it of Himself. “To day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears,”—was the solemn introductory sentence with which, in the Synagogue of Nazareth, (after closing the Book and giving it again to the Minister,) He prefaced His Sermon from the lxist chapter of Isaiah.—“Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.”—“‘O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?’ And beginning at Moses, and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”—“These are the words which I spake unto you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me .”

“Christ was before Moses. The Gospel was not made for the Law; but the Law was made for the Gospel. The Gospel is not based on the Law, but the Law is a shadow of the Gospel. In order to believe the Bible, we must look upward; and fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, sitting in Heavenly Glory, holding both Testaments in His Hand sealing both Testaments with His seal; and delivering both Testaments as Divine Oracles, to the World. We must receive the written Word from the Hands of the Incarnate Word.”

This august spectacle, let it be clearly stated,—(1) Establishes, beyond all power of contradiction, the intimate connexion which subsists between the Old and the New Testament; as well as the altogether unique relation which the one bears to the other:(2) Invests either Testament with a degree of sacred importance and majestic grandeur which altogether makes the Bible unlike “any other book:”—(3) Proves that the Bible is to be interpreted as no other book ever was, or ever can be interpreted:—(4) Demonstrates that it has more than a single meaning:—and lastly, (5) Convincingly shews that God, and not Man, is its true Author.

It will of course be asked,—Then does Mr. Jowett take no notice at all of this vast and complicated problem? How does he treat of the relation between the Old Testament and the New? . . . He despatches the entire subject in the following passage:—“The question,” (he says,) “runs up into a more general one, ‘the relation between the Old and New Testaments.’ For the Old Testament will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself, or from the New.” (Very different certainly!) “In the first case,—a careful and conscientious study of each one for itself is all that is required.” (That is to say, it will not be explained at all!) “In the second case,—the types and ceremonies of the Law, perhaps the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed (!) to be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the things that were to be in the latter days.” (p. 370.) (And why not “will be found to be replete with Christian meaning,—full of lofty spiritual significancy?”—the proved marvellousness of their texture, the revealed mysteriousness of their purpose, being an effectual refutation of all Mr. Jowett’s (à priori notions!)

“And this question,” (lie proceeds,) “stirs up another question respecting the Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New. Is such Interpretation to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of other times?” (Nay, but Reverend and learned Sir: “nothing so plain,” as you justly observe, “that it may not be explained away;” (p. 359;) yet we cannot consent to have the sense of plain words thus clouded over at your mere bidding. It is now our turn to declare that the Interpreter’s “object is to read Scripture like any other book, with a real interest and not merely a conventional one.” It is now we who “want to be able to open our eyes, and see things as they truly are.” (p. 338.) We simply petition for leave to “interpret Scripture like any other book, by the same rules of evidence and the same canons of criticism.” (p. 375.) And if this freedom be but conceded to us, there will be found to be no imaginable reason why the Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New,—(Christ Himself being the Majestic Speaker! our present edification and everlasting welfare being His gracious purpose!)—should not be strictly “regarded as the meaning of the original text.” . . . But let us hear the Professor out:—)

“Our object,” (lie says, and with this he dismisses the problem!)—“Our object is not to attempt here the determination of these questions; but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress can be made, or any agreement arrived at in the Interpretation of Scripture.” (p. 370.) . . . They must indeed. But can it be right in this slovenly, slippery style to shirk a discussion on the issue of which the whole question may be said to turn? especially on the part of one who scruples not to prejudge that issue, and straightway to apply it., (in a manner fatal to the Truth,) throughout all his hundred pages. Mr. Jowett’s method is ever to assume what he ought to prove, and then either to be plaintive, or to sneer. “It is a heathenish or Rabbinical fancy:”—“Such complexity would place the Scriptures below human compositions in general; for it would deprive them of the ordinary intelligibleness of human language” (p. 382):—&c.

“Is the Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New to be regarded as the meaning of the original text; or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of other times?” (p. 370.) This is Mr. Jowett’s question; the question which it is “not his object to attempt to determine;” but which I, on the contrary, have made it my object to discuss in my VIth Sermon,—p. 183 to p. 220. Without troubling the reader however now to wade through those many pages, let me at least explain to him in a few words what Mr. Jowett’s question really amounts to: namely this,—Do the Apostles and Evangelists, does our Blessed Lord Himself, when He professes to explain the mysterious significancy of the Old Testament,—invariably,—in every instance,—misrepresent “the meaning of the original text?” And the answer to this question I am content to await from any candid person of plain unsophisticated understanding. Is it credible, concerning the Divine expositions found in St. Matth. xxii. 31, 32,—xxii. 43-5,—xii. 39, 40,—xi. 10,—St. John viii. 17, 18,—i. 52,—vi. 31, &c.,—x. 34-5:—the Apostolic interpretations found in 1 Cor. ix. 9-11,—x. 1-6,—xv. 20,—Heb. ii. 5-9,—vii. 1-10,—Gal. iv. 21-31:—is it conceivable, I ask, that not one of all these places should exhibit the actual ‘meaning of the original text?’ And yet, (as Mr. Jewett himself is forced to admit,)—“If we attribute to the details of the Mosaical ritual a reference to the New Testament, or suppose the passage of the Red Sea to be regarded not merely as a figure of Baptism, but as a preordained type;,—the principle is conceded!” (p. 369.) “A little more or a little less of the method does not make the difference.” (Ibid.) In a word,—in such case, Mr. Jowett’s Essay falls to the ground . . . To proceed however.

3. The case of Interpretation has not yet been fully set before the reader. Hitherto, we have merely traced the problem back to the fountain-head, and dealt with it simply as a Scriptural question. We have shewn what light is thrown upon Interpretation by the volume of Inspiration. The subject has been treated in the same way in the Vth and VIth of my Sermons. But it will not be improper, in this place,—it is even indispensable,—to develope the problem a little more fully; and to explain that it is of much larger extent.

Now, there is a family resemblance in the method of all ancient expositions of Holy Scripture which vindicates for them, however remotely, a common origin. There is a resemblance in the general way of handling the Inspired Word which can only be satisfactorily explained by supposing that the remote type of all was the oral teaching of the Apostles themselves. In truth, is it credible that the early Christians would have been so forgetful of the discourses of the men who had seen the Lord, that no trace of it,—no tradition of so much as the manner of it,—should have lingered on for a hundred years after the death of the last of the Apostles; down to the time when Origen, for example, was a young man? . . . . It cannot possibly be!

(i.) “The things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses,” (writes the great Apostle to his son Timothy,) “the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” Provision is thus made by the aged Saint,—in the last of his Epistles,—for the transmission of his inspired teaching to a second and a third. generation. Now the words just quoted were written about the year 65, at which time Timothy was a young man. Unless we suppose that Almighty God curtailed the lives of the chief depositaries of His Word, Timothy will have lived on fill A.D. 100; so that “faithful men” who died in the middle of the next century might have been trained and taught by him for many years. It follows, that the “faithful men” last spoken of will have been “able to teach others also,” whose writings (if they wrote at all) would range from A.D. 190 to A.D.. 210. Now, just such a writer is Hippolytus,—who is known to have been taught by that “faithful man” Irenæus,—to whom, as it happens, the deposit was “committed” by Polycarp,—who stood to St. John in the self-same relation as Timothy to St. Paul!

(ii.) Our Saviour is repeatedly declared to have interpreted the Old Testament to His Disciples. For instance, to the two going to Emmaus, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Moreover, before He left the world, He solemnly promised His Apostles that the Holy Ghost, whom the Father should send in His Name, “should teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance all things which He had spoken to them.” Shall we believe that the Treasury of Divine Inspiration thus opened by Christ Himself was straightway closed up by its human guardians, and at once forgotten? Shall we not rather believe that Cleopas and his companion, (for instance,) forthwith repeated their Lord’s words to every member of the Apostolic body, and to others also; that they were questioned again and again by adoring listeners, even to their extremest age; aye, and that they taxed their memories to the utmost in order to recal every little word, every particular of our Saviour’s Divine utterance? It must be so! And the echo, the remote echo of that exposition, depend upon it! descended to a second, aye and to a third generation yea, and has come down, faintly, and feebly it may be, but yet essentially and truly, even to ourselves!

(iii.) And yet,—(for we would not willingly incur the charge of being fanciful in so solemn and important a matter,)—the great fact to be borne in mind, (and it is the great fact which nothing can ever set aside or weaken,) is, that for the first century at least of our æra, there existed within the Christian Church the gift of Prophecy; that is, of Inspired Interpretation . The minds of the Apostles, Christ Himself “opened, to understand the Scriptures.” Can it be any matter of surprise that men so enlightened, when they had been miraculously endowed with the gift of tongues, and scattered over the face of the ancient civilized World, should have disseminated the same principles of Catholic Interpretation, as well as the same elements of Saving Truth? When this miraculous gift ceased, its results did not also come to an end. The fountain dried up, but the streams which it had sent forth yet “made glad the City of God.” And by what possible logic can the teaching of the early Church be severed from its source? It cannot be supposed for an instant that such a severance ever took place. The teaching of the Apostolic age was the immediate parent of the teaching of the earliest of the Fathers,—in whose Schools it is matter of history that those Patristic writers with whom we are most familiar, studied and became famous. Accordingly, we discover a method of Interpreting Holy Scripture strictly resembling that employed by our Saviour and His Apostles, in all the earliest Patristic writings. As documents increase, the evidence is multiplied; and at the end of two or three centuries after the death of St. John the Evangelist, voices are heard from Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine; from Antioch and from other parts of Syria; from the Eastern and the Western extremities of North Africa; from many regions of Asia Minor; from Constantinople and from Greece; from Rome, from Milan, and from other parts of Italy; from Cyprus and from Gaul;—all singing in unison; all singing the same heavenly song! . . . In what way but one is so extraordinary a phenomenon to be accounted for? Are we to believe that there was a general conspiracy of the East and the West, the. North and the South, to interpret Holy Scripture in a certain way; and that way, the wrong way?

Enough has been said, it is thought, to shew that many of Mr. Jowett’s remarks about the value of Patristic evidence are either futile or incorrect; or that they betray an entire misapprehension of the whole question, not to say a thorough want of appreciation of the claims of Antiquity. We do not yield to the ‘Essayist and Reviewer’ in veneration for the Inspired page; and trust that enough has been said to shew it. Our eye, when we read Scripture, (like his,) “is fixed on time form of One like the Son of Man; or of the Prophet who was girded with a garment of camel’s hair; or of the Apostle who had a thorn in the flesh.” (p. 338.) We are only unlike Mr. Jowett we fear in this,—that we believe ex animo that the first-named was the Eternal Son, “equal to the Father,” and “of one substance with the Father:” and further that St. Paul’s fourteen Epistles are all inspired writings, in an entirely different sense from the Dialogues of Plato or the Tragedies of Sophocles. It follows, that however riveted our mental gaze may be on the awful forms which come before us in Holy Scripture,—as often as we con the inspired record of the actions and of the sayings of those men, we are constrained many a time to look upward, and to exclaim with the Psalmist, “Thy thoughts are very deep!” And often if asked, “Understandest thou what thou readest?”—we must still answer with the Ethiopian, “How can I, except some man should guide me?”

(iv.) To assume however that our defective knowledge “cannot be supplied by the conjectures of Fathers or Divines,” (p. 338,) is in some sort to beg the question at issue. To say of the student of Scripture that “the history of Christendom, and all the afterthoughts of Theology, are nothing to him:” (p. 338:) that “he has to imagine himself a disciple of Christ or Paul, and to disengage himself from all that follows:” (Ibid.:) is not the language of modesty, but of inordinate conceit. In Mr. Jowett it is in fact something infinitely worse for he shews that his object thereby is to “obtain an unembarrassed opportunity of applying all the resources of a so-called criticism to discredit and destroy the written record itself.”

“True indeed it is, that more than any other subject of human knowledge, Biblical criticism has hung (sic.) to the past;” (p. 340;) but the reason is also obvious. It is because, in the words of great Bishop Pearson, “Philosophia quotidie progressu, Theologia nisi regressu non crescit .” “O ye who are devoting yourselves to the Divine Science of Theology,” (he exclaims,) “and whose cheeks grow pale over the study of Holy Scripture above all; ye who either fill the venerable office of the Priesthood or intend it, and are hereafter to undertake the awful cure of souls:—rid yourselves of that itch of the present age, the love of novelty. Make it your business to inquire for that which was from the beginning. Resort for counsel to the fountain-head. Have recourse to Antiquity. Return to the holy Fathers. Look back to the primitive Church. In the words of the Prophet,—‘Ask for the old paths.’”

When therefore Mr. Jewett classes together “the early Fathers, the Roman Catholic mystical writers, the Swiss and German Reformers, and the Nonconformist Divines,” (p. 377,)—he either shews a most lamentable want of intellectual perspective, or a most perverse understanding. So jumbled into one confused heap, it may not be altogether untrue to say of Commentators generally, that “the words of Scripture suggest to them their own thoughts or feelings.” ,(p. 377.) But when it is straightway added, “There is nothing in such a view derogatory to the Saints and Doctors of former ages,” (Ibid.,) we are constrained, (for the reasons already before the reader,) to remonstrate against so misleading and deceitful a way of putting the case. Mr. Jowett desires to be understood not to depreciate “the genius or learning of famous men of old,” when he remarks “that Aquinas or Bernard did not shake themselves free from the mystical method of the Patristic times.” (Ibid) But with singular obtuseness, or with pitiful disingenuousness, he does his best by such words to shut out front view the real question at issue,—namely, the exegetical value of Patristic Antiquity. For the Church of England, when she appeals, (as she repeatedly does,) to “the Ancient Fathers,” does not by any means intend such names as the Abbot of Clairvaux, who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century; or Thomas of Aquinum, who lived later into the thirteenth. It is the spirit of the ante-Nicene age which she defers to; the Fathers of the first four or five centuries to whose opinion she gives reverent attention; as her formularies abundantly shew. Whether therefore Aquinas and Bernard were or were not able to “shake themselves free from the mystical method of the Patristic times,” matters very little. The point to be observed is that the Writers of the Patristic times, as a matter of fact, “did not shake themselves free from the mystical method of” Christ and Hiss Apostles!

Very far am I from denying that “any one who, instead of burying himself in the pages of the commentators, would learn the Sacred Writings by heart, and paraphrase them in English, will probably make a nearer approach to their true meaning than he would gather from any Commentary.” Quite certain is it that “the true use of Interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the author.” (p. 384.) But this is quite a distinct and different matter, as every person of unsophisticated understanding must perceive at once. The same thing will be found stated by myself, in a subsequent part of the present volume, at considerable length; the qualifying condition having been introduced at p. 16. The truth is, a man can no more divest himself of the conditions of thought habitual to one familiar with his Prayer-Book, than he can withdraw himself from the atmosphere of light in which he moves. Not the abuse of Commentators on Holy Scripture, but the principle on which Holy Scripture itself is to be interpreted,—is the real question at issue: the fundamental question which underlies this, being of course the vital one,—namely, Is the Bible an inspired book, or not?

Apart from what has been already urged concerning “the torrent of Patristic Interpretation” which flows down not so much from the fountain-head of Scripture, (wherein so many specimens of Inspired Interpretation are preserved,) as from the fontal source of all Wisdom and Knowledge,—even the lips of the Incarnate Word Himself,—apart from this, a very important Historical circumstance calls for notice in this place.