L. C. 19

290, REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
From the daughters of Philip he learned what their father had been accustomed to say about our Lord. From Aristion and “the Elder John” he learned what men who had known Christ Himself had to tell him about our Lord’s miracles and teaching. He used what he learned from them in his book, entitled an Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, or Dominical Oracles, which in modern language was an Exposition of Chris- tian Oracles or Christian Scriptures ; and, apparently, of the Gospels. On the authority of what had been told him by these persons, he says that Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, and that Mark’s Gospel consists of Mark’s recollections of the discourses of Peter. In the brief passages of Papias which have come down to us, he says nothing about the third Gospel or the Fourth ; he may have said nothing about them which was not universally known to the Church in the time of Eusebius, and therefore, whatever he said, Eusebius does not record it.
I think it extremely improbable that such persons as these,—the daughters of Philip, and men who had known the apostles, and two men who were the imme- diate disciples of our Lord,—would have believed that the first Gospel was written by Matthew, if Matthew had not written it, or that the second Gospel was written by Mark, if Mark had not written it; and I think it equally improbable that Papias would have recorded the statements of any particular individuals among them concerning the authorship of these Gospels, unless their statements had been supported
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 291
by the general consent of the rest. But though the testimony to the authorship of Matthew and Mark is in my judgment strong and sufficient, I am willing to admit that it is not absolutely decisive ; there are some kinds of facts on which tradition, unsustained by other evidence, is liable to error. It is possible that Matthew did not originally write his Gospel in Hebrew, though his friends, twenty or thirty years after his death, thought that hedid. It is even possible that it was not Mark, but some other friend of Peter, that composed a Gospel from his recollections of Peter’s discourses. But that such persons as those whom Papias consulted accepted Matthew’s Gospel and Mark’s Gospel as authentic is, for me, a decisive proof that these Gospels contain, in substance, the very story which had been told by the original apostles. They had heard the apostles; they had the books ; and they believed that Matthew, one of the apostles, wrote the first Gospel, and that Mark, the friend of another, wrote the second.
“Yes; but can we be quite certain that the Matthew and Mark of Papias were our Matthew and Mark?” We can. Papias published his Exfoszction of Oracles of the Lord about A.D. 135 ; and it is from this book—probably from an introductory letter which served as its preface—that the passages of his which I have quoted are taken. He was writing about Gospels which were at that time in common use, not about Gospels which had been superseded by other documents which gave a different account of
292 REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
our Lord. The Matthew and Mark of A.D. 135 were therefore the Matthew and Mark which had been received as trustworthy by men who had known several apostles, by the daughters of Philip, by two men who had known Christ. Fifteen years later, in A.D. 150, our Gospels were being read week after week when Christians met for worship. In that brief interval there was no time for the original Gospels to pass out of existence and for new Gospels to take their place. The ground is solid and firm; our Gospels were the Gospels of Irenaeus ; the Gospels of Irenzeus were the Gospels of Justin ; Justin’s Gospels were the Gospels of Papias. If Papias’s Gospels con- tained a trustworthy story of our Lord, so do ours.
Vi.
In the later Lectures of this course I endeavoured to show that the Four Gospels are historically trustworthy. But I end as I began. An assurance resting on historical and literary proofs that our Four Gospels contain the very account of our Lord’s miracles and teaching that was given by the apostles, and that they were written by apostles and their “followers,” is not the foundation of our faith in Christ. The Gospels themselves are not necessary to our faith. There were tribes in the second century who, as Irenzus tells us, had believed in Christ, but did not possess the Christian Scriptures. And there are many men living in our own time who could say that, after their traditional confidence in the genuine-
REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT. 293
ness and authenticity of the Four Gospels had been broken up, and while their judgment as to the age in which the Gospels were written was still in suspense, their personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was un- shaken. For a time mists and clouds were resting heavily on His earthly ministry ; they were not certain Yhat they knew exactly what He had said and done during those brief years in which He, the Son of the Eternal, was revealing His grace and power under the limitations of this earthly life. But they were as certain as ever of the transcendent works which He had been doing during the eighteen hundred years since He returned to His glory, and which He was doing still. They knew that, through age after age and in many lands, He had released men from the sense of guilt, had enabled them, in the power of His own life, to live righteously, and that through Him a great mul- titude had found God. These great things which Christ had done for others He had done for them. The books which told the story of the earthly Christ, —about these they were not sure ; about Christ Him- self they were always sure; and they trusted, loved, and served Him still.
The loss—the temporary loss—of certainty about our Lord’s earthly history was a grave loss; but it was not without its compensations. For a time the Christ of Jerusalem and Galilee was hidden by storm- clouds of controversy, and their hearts were sore that they could see and hear Him no longer. But they climbed the blessed heights which rise above all
294 REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT.
storms, and they learned to live in the immediate presence of the Christ who has passed into the eternal light of God, and yet is not beyond the reach of the most perplexed and most troubled of the sons of men. When they recovered the Christ of the Gospels, they saw Him transfigured and glorified.
For Christian faith it is enough to know the Living Christ ; a knowledge of Christ “after the flesh ”—in His place in the visible and earthly order—is not indispensable. But for the perfect strength and joy of the Christian life we must know both the Christ who lived and died in the Holy Land eighteen hundred years ago, and the Christ who, ever since His resur- rection, has been saving and ruling men. To deepen your faith in the Living Christ, and to strengthen your confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the story of His earthly ministry contained in the Four Gospels, has been the object of this course of Lectures. They were begun when the frosts and the dark days of winter were with us; now that they are closing we have come to the heat and splendour of glorious summer. It may be—God grant it !—that this is a parable, and that while we have been pur- suing these inquiries together, some of you have passed from wintry days of doubt into the clear light of a happy faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
APPENDIX.
NoTE A (P. 109).
EUSEBIUS finished his Azs¢ory shortly before the meeting of the Council of Nicza. At that council, and during the fierce excitements of the Arian controversy which preceded it, the authority of the sacred books of the Church was regarded as final. Arius was condemned by an Egyptian synod on “the testimony of the Divine Scriptures.” On the other hand, Arius himself, when sending a copy of his creed to the emperor, adds, “ This is the faith which we have received from the holy Gos- pels, according to the Lord’s words, as the catholic Church and the Scriptures teach, which we believe in all things,” But the council, though it defined some of the greatest mysteries of the eternal life of God, did not attempt to declare what books should be regarded as forming the canon of the New Testament.
Seventy years later, however, the third Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) determined “that besides the canonical Scriptures nothing be read in the Church under the title of Divine Scrip- tures.” A list of the canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament is given which contains some books that we regard as apocry- phal ; the list of the canonical Scriptures of the New Testa- ment is precisely the same as our own.
But the decrees of a provincial Council in Africa could not control the judgment of scholars and Churches in other coun- tries. Throughout the West, our present canon, largely per- haps through the influence of Jerome and Augustine, was accepted from the beginning of the fifth century. In Asia Minor, Gregory Nazianzenus, who died A.D. 389, did not
295
206 APPENDIX.
Ra
acknowledge the Apocalypse. In Syria several of the disputed books were regarded with doubt as late as the sixth century, perhaps later.
The Apocalypse was placed among the disputed writings by Nicephorus of Constantinople, in the ninth century. It is curious that the Apocalypse, which was one of the seven books about whose apostolic authorship there was serious doubt in early centuries, is one of the five books about whose apostolic authorship the most recent school of destructive criticism is most certain. But gradually all the seven secured their place side by side with the books that were universally received as canonical.
The controversy was re-opened at the Reformation. Luther treated the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of Jude, and the Apocalypse with great freedom. Calvin in his Zustétutes (book i., cap. vii.) declares it to be “a most pernicious error” that “the Scriptures have only so much weight as is conceded to them by the suffrages of the Church ; as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended on the arbitrary will of men.” He thinks that those who maintain that it depends on the determination of the Church what books are to be comprised in the canon show “sreat contempt of the Holy Spirit.” He believes that faith in the Divine origin of Holy Scripture comes from “the secret testimony of the Spirit.” For as ‘God alone is a sufficient witness of Himself in His own word, so also the word will never gain credit in the hearts of men till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the Spirit.” For Calvin, the universal consent of the Church in the recognised canon did not close the controversy about the disputed books. He judged them, one by one, and judged them by their contents. At the Council of Trent, “for the first time,” says Professor Westcott, “the question of the contents of the Bible ””—that is, the question what
1 “With regard to the Antilegomena of the New Testament, Calvin expresses himself with hardly less boldness than Luther, though practi- eally the followed common usage, He passes over 2 and 3 John and the Apocalypse in his commentary without notice."—WESTCOTT: History of the Canon, p. 488.
APPENDIX. 297
EN
books are to be included in the Bible—“ was made an absolute article of faith, and confirmed by an anathema.”! The council set out a list of the books of the Old and New Testaments, including Zodct, Fudith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and passed this decree, “If however any one does not receive the entire books with all their parts as they are accustomed to be read in the catholic Church . . . as sacred and canonical, . . . let him be anathema.”
For those who inherit the true Protestant tradition, the question, What books are to be included in the canon of either the Old Testament or the New? is not one which can be finally determined by Church authority.
Note B (P. 135).
AN attempt is sometimes made to destroy the force of the kind of evidence alleged in these lectures for the trustworthiness of the story of the Four Gospels, by suggesting that similar evidence may be alleged on behalf of the canonicity and inspiration of the curious book called The Shepherd, and bear- ing the name of Hermas. At what date this book was written is uncertain; but it probably belongs to the middle of the second century. It is a collection of visions, parables, and precepts.
The following are the main points to be considered in com- paring the “testimony” to Hermas with the “testimony” to our Gospels. (a) We learn from Eusebius that it had been read in churches, and was quoted by some ancient writers, but that it “Shad been spoken against by some,” and therefore “could have no place among the acknowledged books.” (4) The unknown writer of the /uratorian Canon, which belongs to the latter half of the second century (perhaps about A.D. 170), says that “Hermas composed Zhe Shepherd very lately in our times, in the city of Rome, while the Bishop Pius, his brother, occupied the chair of the Roman Church. And therefore it should be read, but it can never be publicly used in the church either
l Westcott: History of the Canon, p. 477.
208 APPENDIX.
among the prophets or the apostles.” (c) Irenzeus quotes it once, but without naming the author; and quotes it in a way which probably, but not certainly, implies that he thought it an inspired writing. (d) Clement of Alexandria quotes it several times as an inspired writing. (e) Origen quotes it several times as having the authority of Scripture ; and he is the first writer that attributes it-to Hermas, the friend of Paul. But this theory of the authorship is given as being nothing more than his own private opinion. “I think,” he says, “that that Hermas is the writer of that book which is called The Shepherd, which writing seems to me very useful and, as I think, divinely inspired.” But he also says that it is despised by some. (/) Tertullian strongly condemns it, and declares that every council of the catholic or orthodox Church judged it to be apocryphal or spurious. i
It appears from these passages that some Churches read The Shepherd for a time in their public services, but this did not necessarily imply the recognition of its inspiration. Some Churches might think that Bunyan’s Pélgrim’s Progress is sufficiently edifying to justify its being read occasionally in the course of public service, without attributing to it the authority of the books of the New Testament. Some fersons thought it an inspired book. But Tertullian strongly denied its inspira- tion, and maintained that it was generally regarded as spurious. Origen advanced the theory of its inspiration, and attributed it to the friend of Paul as a private opinion of his own. Evidence of this kind is wholly different from that which is advanced in the lectures for the historical trustworthiness of the Four Gospels ; the evidence is conflicting ; it consists largely in the opinions of particular individuals; so far as the evidence is derived from its use in the public services of the Church, the use was partial.
Further. The testimony of both individuals and Churches in favour of the inspiration of a book of edification is wholly different from their testimony that the Four Gospels contain the story of Christ which had been always received in the Christian Church. The testimony to the inspiration of Heras rested on the judgment of those who believed it to be inspired : the testi-
APPENDIX. 299
mony to the Gospels, as containing the story of Christ which had been told by apostles, rested on a continuous and unbroken tradition. The one was a question of opinion ; the other was a question of fact
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BS2332 .D24 Tes Dee. Dale R.W. (Robert William), 1829-1895 The living Christ and the four Gospels
BS 2332 p24 191-7?
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Dale, Robert William, 1829-1895.
The living Christ and the four Gospels [by] R.W. Dale. New York, Hodder & Stoughton, G.H Doran [191-7]
xii, 299p. 19cm. (H. & S. library fno.431
On cover: Library of standard religious authors.
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