2.03. Credibility of Scripture
Credibility of Scripture Credibility of the New Testament The proofs of the credibility of the New Testament are the following.
First, the excellence of the doctrines taught in it. The ethics of the New Testament is greatly superior to that of Greece and Rome in elevation and spirituality. Had the early Christians possessed gunpowder, the steam engine, and the telegraph, while no others had them, their superiority in science would be undisputed. They possessed a doctrine of morals as much superior to that of paganism as modern inventions are to ancient. The moral character produced by New Testament Christianity is higher than that produced by other religions. The Vedas, the Koran, and the still better writings of Plato and Aristotle do not transform human nature as do the Scriptures. Among the doctrines of Christianity is that of endless suffering for sin. If the apostles testified falsely and the New Testament is merely their fiction, they were liable according to their own statement to eternal perdition. At the same time, great temporal suffering was the consequence of teaching the gospel. If they were deceivers, they suffered for their deception in this life and were to suffer eternally in the next. A falsehood under such circumstances is improbable; for there was nothing to gain by it, either here or hereafter. (See supplement 2.3.1.)
Second, the character of Jesus Christ is an argument for the credibility of the New Testament. He is implicated in these writings in such a manner that if they are false he is an impostor. Whatever be the kind of the falsehood, it cleaves to him. If the writings were forged designedly, he was an accomplice. If they are erroneous by reason of ignorance and superstition, he shares in this ignorance and superstition. But he claims all knowledge upon the subjects discussed in the New Testament. In this lies the absurdity of Renan’s portraiture of Christ. According to Renan, Christ was self-deluded and superstitious and yet the ideal man.
Third, the effects of the New Testament in the history of the world are an argument for its credibility. Christendom proves the truth of Christianity. That the best part of human history rests upon a falsehood is incredible. The rule “by their fruits you shall know them” applies here. As grapes cannot be gathered from a thorn bush, so the philosophy, the poetry, the science, the art, the morality, and the civilization of the Christian in distinction from the heathen world could not have sprung from imposture and delusion. The Koran has not produced such effects in human history, nor have the Vedas. The Koran did not make its way by its intrinsic moral force, but by the sword. If it had been left like the New Testament to its own unassisted qualities, it would not have made converts beyond the family of Mohammed. The spread of Mormonism is an illustration. There is no sword to force it into sway, and therefore it remains a small local sect in Utah. Christianity, though greatly helped, does not depend upon earthly victory at critical points in its history.1[Note: 1. Needless to say, Shedd would have been quite surprised at the actual growth of Mormonism, currently at eleven million members!] Had Charles Martel been defeated by the Saracens at Poitiers, this would not have annihilated the Christian religion any more than the ten persecutions did.
Fourth, the miracles of the New Testament prove the credibility of its doctrines. This supposes that the truthfulness of the miracle has previously been established. If it be conceded that Jesus Christ really did raise Lazarus from the dead by his own power, he must have had creative power. This evinces him to have been a divine being; and if divine, of course, a being of absolute truth. If it be conceded that the apostles of Christ did really perform miracles by the power that Jesus Christ imparted to them, then they must have been in communication with him, and his credibility attaches to them as his agents and instruments. For it is incredible that miraculous power should originally belong to an evil being, though it may be delegated to him. The intuitive judgment is expressed in John 9:16; John 9:33; John 10:21 : “Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? If this man were not of God, he could do nothing [miraculous].” A miracle, therefore, if an actual historical fact, is a proof of the divine origin of the truths attested by it. (See supplement 2.3.2.) The historical reality of a miracle is proved in the same manner that any historical event is proved, namely, by human testimony. Testimony is another man’s memory. We trust our own memory as we trust our own senses, because memory is a remembered sensation or consciousness. If therefore another person is honest and possesses as good senses as ourselves, there is no more reason for disbelieving his remembered sensations than for disbelieving our own. We prove that miracles were wrought by Christ and his apostles by the testimony or remembered experience of honest men, not of inspired men. This is to be carefully noticed. The resurrection of Lazarus is established by the same kind of evidence as that by which the assassination of Julius Caesar is proved, namely, that of capable and truthful eyewitnesses. Inspiration is not brought in to strengthen the testimony in one case any more than in the other. It is the common human testimony, such as is accepted in a court of law, that is relied upon to establish the historical reality of a miracle. Those Jews who saw Lazarus come forth from the tomb and those Jews who afterward saw him alive were none of them inspired men at the time when the miracle was performed. A few of them were afterward inspired, but this inspiration added nothing to their honesty or to their capacity as witnesses, for inspiration is not sanctification. The argument from miracles is therefore no argument in a circle. We do not prove that certain miracles were performed because certain inspired men saw them, and then proceed to prove that these men were inspired because they wrought miracles. But we prove that certain miracles were performed because certain truthful men saw them, and then proceed to prove that some of the truthful men were also inspired men. And among the proofs of their inspiration is the fact that they were empowered by God to work miracles in attestation of their inspiration but not of their honesty. That they were honest witnesses is all that the apostles claim for themselves when they give their testimony to miracles. They say nothing in this connection about their inspiration. St. Peter affirms: “We have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). St. Paul does the same: “I delivered unto you how that Christ died for our sins and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve; after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; after that he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Inspiration is not requisite in order to honesty. The “five hundred brethren” who saw Christ after his resurrection are to be regarded as capable and upright witnesses unless the contrary can be proved. Their veracity alone is sufficient to prove the fact that he who was crucified on Mount Calvary before thousands of spectators was alive again upon the earth.2[Note: 2. WS: See South, On Christ’s Resurrection, sermon 3.91. Also Christlieb’s summing up of the ten appearances of Christ after his resurrection (Modern Doubt, lect. 7).]
And here it is important to observe that the number of eyewitnesses to the gospel miracles is not to be estimated by the number of Christ’s personal friends and disciples. The Jewish people generally, of that generation, were spectators of those miraculous events that accompanied the public life of Jesus Christ in Palestine and virtually acknowledged that they were. The apostles in the very beginning of their preaching and ever afterward boldly assert that the Jews themselves saw these miraculous events. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, addressing the “men of Israel,” describes Jesus of Nazareth as “a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, as you yourselves know” (Acts 2:22). This appeal to the whole mass of the Jewish population of that day for the truth of Christ’s miracles was not contradicted by the Jews, as it unquestionably would have been had these miracles been the invention of a few followers of Christ. Such a bold and unblushing summoning of a whole nation as witnesses of what had never happened among them would have been immediately repelled with scorn, and its falsehood exposed; and such a contradiction and exposure of the narratives of the first preachers of Christianity by the Jews generally, on the very spot where the miracles were asserted to have taken place, would have been a fatal obstacle to their spread among other peoples. The Jews had every motive to flatly contradict the assertion of St. Peter that Christ’s miracles had been wrought among the Jewish people and that the Jewish people knew that they had. But they did not contradict it. The gospel narratives continued to be repeated among the Jews and were believed more and more widely because no one of that generation denied that the events had occurred. It was reserved for a later generation to do this. Silence gives consent. The Jewish people of that generation, by making no objection to the testimony of the apostles, commit themselves to it. They involuntarily fall into the number of eyewitnesses for the gospel miracles. (See supplement 2.3.3.) The force of an indirect national testimony is very great, in some respects even greater than the direct testimony of an individual. The following remarks of Channing (Evidences of Christianity) respecting the testimony of a printed book compared with that of its author will apply here: A book may be a better witness than its author. Suppose that a man claiming to be an eyewitness should relate to me the events of the three memorable days of July, in which the last revolution of France was achieved; suppose, next, that a book, a history of that revolution, published and received as true in France, should be sent to me from that country. Which is the best evidence of the facts? I say, the last. A single witness may deceive; but that a writer should publish in France the history of a revolution that never occurred there or which differed from the true one is in the highest degree improbable; and that such a history should obtain currency, that it should not instantly be branded as a lie, is utterly impossible. A history received by a people as true, not only gives us the testimony of the writer, but the testimony of the nation among whom it obtains credit. It is a concentration of thousands of voices, of many thousands of witnesses. I say, then, that the writings of the first teachers of Christianity, received as they were by the multitudes of Christians in their own times and in those that immediately followed, are the testimony of that multitude, as well as of the writers. Thousands nearest to the events join in bearing testimony to the Christian miracles.
While however the testimony for a miracle is the same in kind with that for any common historical event, it is stronger in degree. The world believes that Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus in the capitol on the testimony of those who saw the deed as recorded by contemporary and succeeding historians. The credibility of this event is not disputed. But it would be possible to dispute it. Had there been any strong motive for so doing, such as obtains with some men in the instance of the Christian religion, it would have been disputed. The evidence for the assassination of Julius Caesar is historical, not mathematical. It is assailable. And yet it goes into history and is universally accepted as a fact of history. The evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is yet stronger by reason of what may be denominated a monumental testimony added to the personal. Besides the testimony of those who saw these events and the record of it in the writings of the New Testament and the few references to the death of Christ by others like Josephus and Tacitus, there is the fact of an institution like the Christian church with its sacraments and worship, which greatly strengthens the testimony of the personal witnesses. If the assassination of Julius Caesar had been commemorated down to the present time by a society formed in his honor and bearing his name, the proof of his assassination would have been strengthened just so much more as this is fitted to strengthen testimony.
Now comparing the facts connected with Christianity with the facts of secular history, we see that the former have a superiority over the latter in respect to this kind of evidence. No event in secular history is so much supported by monumental evidence as is the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It is literally the center of human history. Everything groups around it. The epoch anno domini3[Note: 3. in the year of (our) Lord] from which everything is dated, Sunday with its public worship, the church organization, the sacrament of the supper, the feasts and fasts of Christendom-all imply the actual historical existence of Jesus Christ as he is described in the gospels and generally the truth of the New Testament.
It is here that one of the differences between Christianity and infidelity is apparent. Infidelity does not embody itself in institutions and therefore has no monumental evidence. No great organization is founded upon its principles; and it is not incorporated into the structure of human society. It not only builds no churches, but it builds no hospitals. Doing nothing toward the religious welfare of man, it does nothing even for his physical well-being. It is not found in heathenism. It lives only in the heart of Christendom; upon which it feeds as the cankerworm does upon the vegetation which it destroys. The miracles of the New Testament being thus supported, first, by a human testimony as strong at least as that by which the best established facts of secular history are supported and, second, by an additional evidence from institutions and monuments that become a proof of the credibility of the doctrines of Christianity. These doctrines were promulgated in connection with these miracles, so that if it be true that no one but God could have wrought the miracles, no one but God could have promulgated the doctrines.
Theories Opposing New Testament Credibility The principal theories antagonistic to the credibility of the New Testament are the following.
First, the four gospels are the productions of impostors who designedly attempted to deceive. Celsus took this position. He conceded the authenticity of the gospels but denied their credibility. They were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but with the intention to palm off miracles as real events. Reimarus, author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, adopted this view.
Generally speaking, this form of infidelity has not prevailed among learned skeptics. It is current mostly among the uneducated opponents of Christianity. It is the infidelity of the masses, so far as the masses have been infidel. It is true that this view appears somewhat among the English deists and French atheists of the eighteenth century. But these cannot be classed with the erudite skeptics of the nineteenth century. This is evinced by the estimate which the skepticism of this age puts upon them. Baur would not think of referring to the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire as authority for his own positions. Strauss would not strengthen his statements by such biblical criticism as that of Toland and Collins. This species of attack, which charges downright imposture upon the founder of Christianity and forgery and deception upon his apostles may therefore be disregarded in the general estimate of skepticism. It does not influence the educated unbeliever. It works among the illiterate. The chorus in Burns’s “Jolly Beggars” gives voice to it: A fig for those by law protected!
Liberty’s a glorious feast!
Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest. A second and more plausible theory antagonistic to the credibility of the New Testament is the so-called mythical theory. This does not charge intentional deception and downright imposture upon Christ and his apostles, but would account for the narratives and teachings of the gospels by the unconscious and gradual self-deception of superstitious and enthusiastic men. The biography of Christ as related by the four evangelists, according to this theory, resembles that of a Roman Catholic saint as related in the Acts of the Saints. A devout monk dies, and one hundred years after his death the traditions respecting him are recorded by some enthusiastic admirer. Some striking events in his life are magnified into wonders. Some uncommon acts of piety and devotion are exaggerated into miracles. The biographer is not a cool and calculating deceiver, but he is self-deceived. He accepts the mass of historical matter that has floated down to him and in common with his fellow monks and religionists gives it a blind credence. In this way a legend is related as actual history. There is a kernel of truth and fact in it. There was such a monk, and some of the events related actually occurred. But there is also much that is not historical and must be thrown out by the critic. A myth differs from a legend, as a nation differs from a community. It is a national legend. This unconscious process of exaggeration which goes on in a monastery and a community of monks goes on upon a large scale in a nation and through a whole people or race. The early history of Rome illustrates this. The narratives respecting the founding of Rome, the early accounts of Romulus and Numa, the descriptions of the battles and combats between Romans and Sabines, Horatii and Curiatii, were the slow formation of ages and periods when the imagination was active and traditions were not scrutinized. There is a basis of truth, but all is not veritable history. What is true of Rome is true of Greece, of Egypt, of India. Each has its mythical age. The same is true of Christianity according to the theory which we are considering. At its first beginning, there was an individual named Jesus Christ, of marked traits and of remarkable life. But the admiration and affection of adherents gradually exaggerated these traits and life into the supernatural, the miraculous, and finally the divine. While no deliberate and intentional deception is to be charged either upon the principal personage or his adherents any more than in the instance of the Roman myth or the medieval legend, a full historical credibility can no more be conceded to the one than to the others. The objections to the mythical theory of the origin of Christianity are the following.
First, the character, claims, and teachings of Jesus Christ as represented in the New Testament contradict the national feeling of the Jews at the time of the advent and ever since. But it is of the nature of a myth to be in entire harmony with the spirit of the people among whom it arises. The national legends of early Rome do not offend and affront the Roman pride but favor it. The mythical stories connected with King Arthur and the knights of the Roundtable harmonize with the temper and spirit of the early Britons. The myth always aggrandizes the nation itself and the heroes of the nation because it is a spontaneous outgrowth of the national imagination. But the character, claims, and doctrines of Jesus Christ were an utter offense to the feeling of the people among whom he was born and by whom he was crucified. He was the farthest possible from a national hero or a popular idol. The Jewish imagination, if employed in the construction of exaggerated accounts of a Jewish Messiah, would not have selected Jesus the Nazarene. The Jewish Messiah, according to the common national feeling at the time, would not have been the son of a Nazarene (“shall Christ come out of Galilee?” John 7:41; John 7:52; John 1:46) nor would he have been born in a stable.
It is therefore impossible to account for the character and teachings of Christ by the theory of mythical development. He could not have been the merely natural outgrowth of Judaism, as Judaism was in the beginning of the first century, any more than Shakespeare could have been the outgrowth of the Pictish period in English history. The utter contrariety between the New Testament and the carnal Judaism, between the spirit of Christ and that of the unspiritual people of whom he was born, is fatal to the mythical theory.
If it be said that the biography of Christ in the gospels is not a national product but that of a few individuals of a nation and therefore this answer does not apply to the case, the reply is that these few individuals were Jews and thoroughly imbued with the views and traditions of their people and of the time in which they lived. They were expecting a temporal prince in the Jewish Messiah, and it required three years of personal instruction by Christ and finally the inspiration at Pentecost to disabuse them of their error. If therefore this biography was the work of their own imagination, either in part or wholly, it would inevitably have had the national characteristics. An earthly reign and an earthly splendor would have been attributed to their hero.4[Note: 4. WS: Edersheim (Life of Jesus 3.1) observes that the temptation of Christ in the gospels is not found in the rabbinic representation of the Messiah.] Neither can the person of Christ be explained as the natural product of human development generally. Says Neander (Life of Christ, 4 [ed. Bohn]), “the image of perfection presented in Jesus of Nazareth stands in manifold contradiction to the tendencies of humanity in that period; no one of them, no combination of them, could account for it.” Says Channing (Evidences of Christianity):
Christianity was not the growth of any of the circumstances, principles, or feelings of the age in which it appeared. In truth, one of the great distinctions of the gospel is that it did not grow. The conception which filled the mind of Jesus of a religion more spiritual, generous, comprehensive, and unworldly than Judaism and destined to take its place was not of gradual formation. We detect no signs of it and no efforts to realize it before his time; nor is there an appearance of its having been gradually matured by Jesus himself. Christianity was delivered from the first in its full proportions, in a style of singular freedom and boldness, and without a mark of painful elaboration. This suddenness with which this religion broke forth, this maturity of the system at the very moment of its birth, this absence of gradual development, seems to me a strong mark of its divine original.5[Note: 5. WS: While this remark of Channing disconnects the New Testament too much from the Old and separates Christianity too much from the spiritual Judaism that prepared for it, it is nevertheless correct in regard to the originality of Christ’s doctrines and is the more significant as it comes from one who denied his deity.] (See supplement 2.3.4.)
Second, the mythical period in the history of a people is in the beginning, not at the close of its career. No myths were originated respecting Roman demigods and heroes in the days of the empire. When a people have reached their culminating point and begin to decline, the national imagination is not active in producing exaggerated accounts of either men or events. This period is the day of criticism and skepticism, when the myths that were produced in the childhood of the nation are sifted, doubted, and rejected.
What now was the case with Judea at the time of the advent? The nation was drawing near its downfall. It was virtually a part of the Roman Empire, though the scepter had not formally and actually departed from Judah. Everything was effete. The morning freshness of the early faith was entirely dried up. The Jewish people, excepting a small minority represented by Simeon and Anna who were “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” were either hypocritical formalists like the Pharisees or skeptical disbelievers like the Sadducees. More than this, they were under the iron heel of that powerful despotism which had subjugated the world, and all national hope and aspiration was dead within them. This consequently was no time for the play of that innocent and unquestioning fancy by which the myth and the ballad are invented. To suppose that a body of legendary narrative and teaching could spring up in such surroundings as these would be like supposing that the most delicate forms of poetry-those of Keats and Tennyson, for example-could have originated in a community of miners or day laborers. When Shakespeare makes Hector quote Aristotle, it is an anachronism that may be pardoned because there is no anachronism in the human nature which he depicts. But when men are represented by the theorist as inventing the most fanciful and childlike forms of literature in the wearied and skeptical old age of a nation; when the time of the Caesars is selected as the period for the upspringing of a series of myths and legends, this is an anachronism that admits no excuse or justification. Arnold speaks in amazement of Strauss’s “idea of men’s writing mythic history between the time of Livy and Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking such for realities!” (Stanley, Life of Arnold 2.51).
Third, the mythical theory supposes superstition and a propensity to believe in the wondrous and superhuman. But the Jews were never at any time specially liable to this charge. Their rigorous monotheism was unfavorable to legends and fictions respecting the deity and his operations. The Jews at the time of the advent were, on the whole, disinclined to believe in the miraculous. This is proved by the fact that they endeavored to explain away the reality of Christ’s miracles by attributing them to sorcery and a league with Satan: “This fellow does not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils” (Matthew 12:24). The account of the man born blind whose sight Christ restored betrays great unwillingness to believe that this miracle had actually been performed: “Is this your son that was born blind; how then does he now see? What did he unto you? How opened he your eyes?” All that portion of the Jewish people who were Sadducean in their opinions, certainly, were not inclined to superstition but to skepticism: “Though Christ had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him” (John 12:37).
Fourth, the myth is polytheistic, not monotheistic. It describes the adventures and actions of a multitude of divinities among themselves. A single deity affords no play for the imagination. As Guizot remarks (Meditations, 1st series, 192), “the God of the Bible has no biography, neither has he any personal adventures.” The Babylonian and Assyrian legends respecting the creation, fall, and deluge differ wholly from the biblical narratives of which they are the corruption by the introduction of many gods. They also differ in being sensual (see the narrative of the amours of Venus and Nimrod in Sayce-Smith’s Genesis, chap. 14). This fact must be considered in settling the important question respecting the use of earlier materials by an inspired writer. When it is acknowledged that Moses used ancient traditions and documents in composing the first part of Genesis, the vital question is whether he used sacred or secular traditions, ecclesiastical or national; whether he employed documents derived from the line of Seth and the antediluvian church-the “sons of God” as they are denominated in Genesis 6:2 -or whether he worked over those which have come down in the annals of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. In the former case, the document is an integral part of the primitive revelation to Adam and the patriarchal church. It is monotheistic and free from error. In the latter case, the document is a part of ethnic religion and is vitiated like all ethnic religion by polytheistic and pantheistic fables.
If it be said that the national legend is sanctified and freed from its false and corrupting elements before it is incorporated by the inspired writer into his work, the reply, in the first place, is that little or nothing would be left in this case. The pantheism, polytheism, and sensuality are so thoroughly wrought into the fabric of the myth that they could be extirpated only by the annihilation of the whole thing. But, second, the antagonism between infinite holiness and human impurity is too great to permit such borrowing on the part of God. In the Old Testament, the chosen people are forbidden under the severest penalties to make any use whatever of the religious rites and ceremonies of the idolaters around them. Is it probable that the Holy Spirit would have contradicted his own teachings and employed the idolatrous myths of Babylon and Nineveh in constructing revealed religion? When the Israelites had made a golden calf and had attempted to introduce an idolatrous cultus, Moses was commanded not merely to break the idol in pieces, but to pulverize it and, mingling it with water, compel the people to drink it down (Genesis 32:20). This vehement and abhorrent temper of the Bible toward idolatry in all its forms is utterly inconsistent with the supposition that the Holy Spirit would permit his inspired organs to depend, in the least, upon the fables of an idolatrous mythology for their instruction. The sanctification of polytheistic myths for the service of monotheism and their adoption into revelation would be like the alleged consecration of heathen statues of Jupiter and Apollo by the Romish church and their conversion into statues of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Limitations of New Testament Evidence for Credibility But while there is this amount and kind of evidence for the credibility of the New Testament, it must be noticed that it can produce only a historical faith. It cannot produce saving faith-that higher species of confidence which accompanies salvation.6[Note: 6. WS: On the distinction between historic faith (fides humana) and saving faith (fides divina), see Dorner, Christian Doctrine 1.98-113.] The scriptural applies here: “The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). In accordance with this statement, Westminster Confession 1.5, after asserting that “we may be moved to a high and reverent esteem of Scripture, by the testimony of the church, the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole,” adds that “our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.” Similarly, Calvin (1.8.13) remarks that “the Scriptures will be effectual to produce the saving knowledge of God only where the certainty of it shall be founded on the internal persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Those persons betray great folly who wish it to be demonstrated to infidels that the Scriptures is the word of God, which cannot be known without faith.” The reasons for this are the following.
First, Christianity is moral and historical truth, not axiomatic and mathematical. Consequently, it demands the assent of faith, in distinction from assent to a self-evident proposition. Its founder said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). This command implies that Christianity can be disbelieved. Axiomatic or self-evident truth cannot be disbelieved, and neither can it be believed. Geometry is not a matter of faith. It is improper to say that we believe that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts or that two and two make four. We perceive these truths, but do not believe them. They do not rest upon testimony and are not accepted on account of testimony, like historical truth. The assent of faith is therefore different from the assent of intuitive perception. We do not intuitively perceive that Christ rose from the dead or that the Logos was born of a virgin, any more than we do that Alfred the Great was king of England. Intuitive knowledge is direct perception either by the senses or by the reason. There is no possibility of doubting a sensuous impression or a mathematical intuition. Each is self-evident. But for moral and historical truth, there is not the certainty of self-evidence but of probability, more or less. Consequently, in history and in morals there are degrees of certainty, but not in mathematics. In moral and historical truth there is a sufficient reason for believing the truth or the fact, though not such a reason as renders disbelief impossible. We may therefore doubt or disbelieve in regard to religious truth, because, while it is credible by reason of testimony and other kinds of evidence, it is not self-evident like an axiom or a physical sensation. Faith is reasonable, in case there are more reasons for believing than for disbelieving. It is not necessary that there should be such evidence as overwhelms all objections and renders them absurd, in order to evince the rationality of faith. The preponderance of evidence justifies the act of faith and condemns that of unbelief. A criminal is sentenced to death in a court of justice not by reason of an absolute demonstration that admits no possibility of the contrary but by reason of a preponderance of testimony which conceivably might be erroneous. (See supplement 2.3.5.)
Second, the belief of Christian truth is voluntary; the perception of mathematical truth is involuntary. A man “yields” to the evidence for moral and historical truth, which implies the possibility of resisting it. His will, that is, his inclination, coincides with his understanding in the act of faith. But a man assents to geometrical axioms without any concurrence of his will. This is the act of the understanding alone. He does not yield to evidence but is compelled by it. “Moral truths,” says Ullmann (Sinlessness of Christ, 50), “do not force themselves upon our mind with the indubitable certainty of sensible objects or with the incontrovertible evidence of mathematical demonstration. Their reception into the mind is to some extent an act of self-determination.” Faith therefore has a voluntary element in it. The doctrine of divine existence, for example, is not assented to passively and necessarily from the mere mechanic structure of the intellect as the axioms of geometry are, but actively and freely. Axioms are not matters of proof; divine existence is. The individual believes in the existence of God partly because he inclines to believe it and not because it is absolutely impossible to resist the evidence for it and to sophisticate himself into the disbelief of it. He yields to the proof presented for the doctrine.7[Note: 7. At the same time, it is also worth noting that Shedd believed that the ontological argument for God’s existence is valid and true and quite compelling when the argument is correctly apprehended.] “A man’s creed,” says Byron (Life 4.225), “does not depend upon himself; who can say, ‘I will believe this, that, or the other?’ ” But this depends upon the amount of evidence in the case. A man cannot say that he will believe Gulliver’s travels, because there is not sufficient probability in them and testimony for them. But he can say that he will believe Caesar’s Commentaries, because there is sufficient probability and testimony to warrant this decision. At the same time, there is not such a degree of evidence for the truth of Caesar’s Commentaries as to render disbelief impossible. (See supplement 2.3.6.)
Third, faith being an act of the understanding and will in synthesis carries the whole man with it. Scientific assent being an act of the understanding alone carries only a part of the man-the head not the heart. Faith consequently affects the character, but axiomatic intuition does not.
Fourth, the belief of Christian truth is an object of command; assent to self-evident truth is not. This follows from the fact that faith is voluntary. A command is addressed to the will. “Believe in Christ” is consistent language. “Believe Euclid” is absurd.
Sixth, the belief of Christian truth is rewardable, perception of mathematical truth is not. The former is a virtue, the latter is not. For these reasons it is impossible to produce by the historical and moral arguments for the truth of Christianity such a conviction as is absolutely invincible to the objections of the skeptic and, what are still stronger, the doubts of a worldly and unspiritual mind. The human heart and will has such a part in the act of belief in the gospel that any opposing bias in it is fatal to absolute mental certainty.
Saving faith is far more certain than historical faith. It is a mental certainty that is produced by the Holy Spirit. He originates an immediate consciousness of the truth of the gospel; and wherever there is immediate consciousness, doubt is impossible. Saving faith implies a personal feeling of the truth in the heart; historical faith is destitute of feeling. This makes the former far more certain than the latter and less assailable by counterarguments. When an inward sense and experience of the truth of the gospel is produced by the divine Spirit in a human soul, as great a mental certainty exists in this instance as in those of sensuous impressions and axiomatic intuitions. A dying believer who is immediately conscious of the love of God in Christ Jesus is as certain in regard to this great fact as he is that fire pains the flesh or that two and two make four. When St. Paul said, “I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39), he was as sure of this as he was of his own existence. And this, because of his immediate consciousness of the redeeming love of God.8[Note: 8. WS: On the subject of Christian certainty, in distinction from natural certainty, see the thoughtful treatise of Frank.] (See supplement 2.3.7.) Credibility of the Old Testament The credibility of the Old Testament is proved by the New Testament. Christ and his apostles refer to it as divine revelation: “Search the Scriptures” (John 5:39); “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. All things written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms must be fulfilled concerning me” (Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44); “the gospel of God was promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (Romans 1:2); “all Scripture is given by inspiration” (2 Timothy 3:16); “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:20-21). By the term Scriptures is meant that collection of writings known as the sacred books of the Jewish people. They are referred to by Christ and his apostles as the source of information respecting religion generally and all matters pertaining to human salvation. It is clear that they received them as authoritative and a final arbiter upon such subjects. But this implies the credibility of the Old Testament, if Christ and his apostles were not deceived in their opinion and judgment. That the reference of Christ, when he speaks of “the Scriptures,” is to a well-known collection of inspired writings is proved by Matthew 5:17 : “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Our Lord here affirms that his mission will realize all that is promised in the Old Testament revelation. This revelation he denotes by the common Jewish designation: the Law and the Prophets, that is, the Pentateuch and Prophetico-Historical books. There is the same reference to a collection of writings in John 7:19; John 7:22-23 : “Did not Moses give you the law? Moses gave unto you circumcision. A man receives circumcision on the Sabbath day, that the law of Moses should not be broken.” Here, the ceremonial law is more particularly meant, and this law is not taught in one book or part of a book of the Pentateuch but runs through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In Luke 2:22 Mary was purified “according to the law of Moses.” Moses is represented by Christ as “giving” law in these books. In like manner, in Acts 15:21 the word Moses denotes a collection of sacred writings: “Moses of old time has in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.” The Jewish congregations at the time of the advent had the Pentateuch read to them by a reader, as both Jewish and Christian congregations now do, believing that it had the inspired authority of Moses. In the walk to Emmaus with two of his disciples, Christ “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). He recapitulated and explained all the messianic promises in the Old Testament, beginning with the “seed of the woman” in Genesis and ending with the “messenger of the covenant” in Malachi. In Mark 12:26 Christ refers to the miracle of the burning bush as an actual fact and denominates the Book of Exodus in which the account of it is contained “the book of Moses.” In Matthew 22:32 Christ quotes Jehovah’s words to Moses from the burning bush-making a second reference to this miracle. If it is objected that Christ only accommodated himself to the ancient Jewish opinion that Moses was the author of the Book of Exodus without believing or endorsing it, the reply is that Christ is arguing to prove to the Sadducees that the resurrection of the body is a fact. Now unless Jehovah actually spoke to Moses those words and Moses recorded them without error, so that Christ is correct in calling Exodus “the book of Moses,” his argument fails. If Jehovah did not speak the words, Christ did not prove his point. If Jehovah did speak them but Moses did not record them, he did not prove it; because he refers to Moses as his authority. And if Jehovah did speak the words, but Moses did not record them infallibly, Christ’s argument though having some validity would not be marked by infallibility. There may have been some error in the narrative. That Christ refers to a well-known collection is also proved by his quotation from the Old Testament in Matthew 23:35 : “Upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias” (Barachias is wanting in Luke 11:51 and in אc). Here our Lord mentions an event in Genesis and in 2 Chronicles 24:21-22 -the first and almost last book of the canon. Between these two events, he speaks of a series of righteous men whose blood was spilled in martyrdom. Who can doubt that he had in mind the entire Old Testament, which contains the account of these martyred servants of Jehovah. The reference to the murder of Zacharias proves that Chronicles belonged to the canon in Christ’s opinion. To say that Christ accommodates himself to the popular view without adopting it himself contradicts the connection of thought. Christ is denouncing the judgment of God upon the Pharisees. This would be an idle threat if there were no such series of martyrs and no true account of them in the Old Testament Scriptures. In Matthew 12:39 Christ cites the miracle of Jonah as one which he believed and his hearers also. But Jonah is comparatively a secondary book in the canon, and the miracle therein recorded more difficult to believe than most. According to Luke 4:17-21 Christ read and commented on Isaiah 61:1-11, which shows that he did not regard the later prophecies of Isaiah as spurious. That the writings now received by the Christian church as the Old Testament canon were the same as those to which Christ and his apostles refer is proved by the following arguments.
They are the same which were translated into Greek by the Septuagint in 285 b.c. For two centuries preceding the advent, they had been received among the Greek-speaking Jews as the inspired volume. As a collection, they were called “the Scriptures.” It is objected that in the Septuagint version the apocryphal books are found. But they did not belong to it originally. That they constituted no part of the work of the Septuagint is proved by the fact that Philo and Josephus do not mention them, though Sirach, one of the best of the apocryphal authors, wrote about 237 b.c.; that Christ and his apostles never quote from them, though they quote from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament; that some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint version do not contain the Apocrypha; and that the Palestinian Jews never regarded the Apocrypha as canonical. The explanation of their presence in some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint is that the Egyptian or Alexandrian Jews had a higher estimate of the Apocrypha than the Palestine Jews had and appended them to the Old Testament canon, as at a later date some other apocryphal writings were appended to manuscripts of the New Testament, and obtained some currency in the patristic church. The Sinaitic manuscript, for example, contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Pastor of Hermas; and the Alexandrine contains the first Epistle of Clement of Rome and the apocryphal psalms attributed to Solomon. Such noncanonical compositions were occasionally copied into the manuscripts of the New Testament by those who highly esteemed them and in this manner gradually acquired some authority. By being appended to the canonical Old Testament, the authority of the Apocrypha increased until finally it was declared to be canonical and inspired by the Council of Trent. The patristic church, however, was not agreed concerning the Apocrypha and never adopted it in general council. Jerome (Prologus Galeatus) asserts that Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus do not belong to the canon. Melito, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzus, Athanasius, Amphilochius, and Epiphanius give lists that do not include the Apocrypha. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus placed it on an equality with the canonical books. The North African fathers took this view in the Council of Hippo (393) and the third Council of Carthage (397). These small local councils included the Apocrypha “among the canonical Scriptures.”9[Note: 9. inter scripturas canonicas] That the Apocrypha is canonical and inspired is a Romish, not a patristic decision. The Reformers rejected the Romish opinion and denied the inspiration and canonicity of the Apocrypha.
They are the same writings which Philo and Josephus recognize as the Jewish Scriptures. Philo, in the first century, cites from most of them. Josephus (Against Apion 1.8) states that the Jews have “twenty-two books which are justly believed to be divine.” It is not certain from the passage, which is somewhat obscure, whether Josephus included Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, and Nehemiah, though the probability is that he did. That these are contained in the Septuagint version would favor this. The Targums go to show that the books received by the Christian church as the Old Testament canon are the same as those received by the Jews. That of Onkelos is a Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch. Onkelos wrote about the time of the advent; others say in the second century. The Targum of Jonathan contains in Aramaic Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Minor Prophets. The Samaritan Pentateuch supports the genuineness of the Old Testament Pentateuch. The Samaritans received it from the ten tribes in all probability, and the ten tribes must have had it at the time of their separation from Judah in 975 b.c. for they would not subsequently have taken it from Judah. The great care with which their sacred books were preserved by the Jews makes it highly probable that the books now received as the inspired canon of the Old Testament are the same as those received by Ezra and Nehemiah. The Pentateuch by the command of Moses was deposited with the sacred things of the tabernacle, and provision was made for its public reading from time to time (Deuteronomy 31:9-13). Josephus in his autobiography says that Titus gave him leave to take from the “ruins of his country” what he wished. He asked for the liberty of his own family and the “holy books” of his people, which were granted to him. (See supplement 2.3.8.) The language evinces the genuineness of the received Old Testament canon. All the varieties of Hebrew, from the early forms in Genesis and Job to the later in the Aramaic of Ezra and Nehemiah, are found in it. The discoveries in the antiquities of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt support the genuineness of the Old Testament. The agreement in doctrine between the Old Testament and the New supports the genuineness of the former. The same general system of justice and mercy, law and gospel, sin and redemption, runs through both: “It is mere assertion that fatherhood, filiation, and brotherhood are unrevealed in the Old covenant; the truth is that they are revealed, but in a limited and mediate typical manner. It is an equally vague assertion to affirm that the God of the New Testament is not an indignant God, full of majesty and power, and that Christians ceased in every sense to be servants” (Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine §63). The relation of the earlier and later revelations to each other is well stated in the remark of Augustine that “the New Testament is latent in the Old, and the Old Testament is patent in the New.” The correctness of this is seen by considering the implications of the New Testament. Take as one example out of a multitude the words of Christ in Matthew 10:15 : “Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” This affirmation of Christ implies (a) the historical credibility of Genesis; (b) the truth of the miracles connected with the lives of Abraham and Lot and thus of the supernaturalism of the Pentateuch generally; (c) the responsibility and guilt of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and thus of all the primeval populations; (d) the fact of a day of final doom, when they shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body; and (e) the omniscience and divine authority of Jesus Christ, whereby he is entitled to make such an affirmation.
S U P P L E M E N T S
2.3.1 (see p. 127). “The apostles,” says Grotius (Christian Religion 2.5), “affirmed that they were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Christ, in that they saw him alive after his death and burial. They also appealed to five hundred witnesses who saw Jesus after he was risen from the dead. It is not usual for those who speak untruths to appeal to so many witnesses. Nor is it possible that so many men should agree to bear a false testimony. Furthermore, nobody has a bad design for nothing. The apostles and first Christians could not hope for any honor from saying what was not true, because all the honors were in the power of the heathen and Jews, by whom they were reproached and contemptuously treated; nor for riches, because, on the contrary, the Christian profession was often attended with the loss of property, if they had any; and, if it had been otherwise, yet the gospel could not have been preached by them but with the neglect of temporal good. Nor could any other advantages of this life move them to speak a falsity, since the preaching of the gospel exposed them to hardship, to hunger and thirst, to stripes and imprisonment. Fame among themselves only was not so great that for the sake thereof men of upright intentions, whose lives and tenets were free from pride and ambition, should undergo such evils. Nor had they any ground to hope that their religion, which was so repugnant to human nature, which is wholly bent upon its own interests and to the civil authority which everywhere governed, could make any progress but from a divine promise. Furthermore, they could not expect that fame of any kind would be lasting, because (God on purpose concealing his intention from them) they expected that the end of the whole world was just at hand, as is plain from their own writings and those of the Christians that came after them. It remains, therefore, that they must be said to have uttered a falsity for the sake of defending their religion, which, if we consider aright, cannot be said of them; for either they believed from their heart that their religion was true or they did not believe it. If they had not believed it to have been the best, they never would have chosen it from all other religions, which were more safe and honorable. Nay, though they believed it to be true, they would not have made a public profession of it unless they had believed such a profession necessary; especially when they could easily foresee, and they quickly learned it by experience, that such a profession would be attended with the death of a vast number; and they would have been guilty of the highest wickedness to have given such occasion without a just reason. If they believed their religion to be true, nay, the best of all, and ought to be professed by all men, and this, too, after the death of their master, it was impossible that this belief should continue if their master’s promise concerning his resurrection had failed. The failure of Christ to rise from the dead would have been sufficient to any man in his senses to have overthrown the belief in him which he had previously entertained. Again, all religion, particularly the Christian, forbids lying and false witness, especially in divine matters; they could not therefore be moved to tell a lie out of love to religion, especially such a religion. To all which may be added, that they were men who led such a life as was not blamed by their adversaries and who had no objection made against them but only their simplicity, the nature of which is the most distant that can be from forging a lie. And there was none of them who did not undergo even the most grievous things for testifying to the resurrection of Jesus. Many of them endured the most torturing death for this testimony. Now to suppose it possible that any man in his wits could undergo such things for an opinion he had entertained in his mind, and also for an opinion which is known to be a falsehood; that not only one man, but very many, should be willing to endure such hardships for an untruth, is a thing plainly incredible. What has been said of these first twelve apostles may also be said of Paul, who openly declared that he saw Christ reigning in heaven. He had the best learning of the Jews and great prospect of honor if he had trod the paths of his fathers. But, on the contrary, he thought it his duty, for this profession, to expose himself to the hatred of his relations and to undergo difficult and dangerous voyages all over the world and at last to suffer an ignominious death.” Says Stillingfleet (Letter to a Deist): “If the Christian religion had been a mere design of the apostles to make themselves heads of a new sect, what had this been but to have set the cunning of twelve or thirteen men, of no weight or reputation, against the wisdom and power of the whole world? If their aim were only at reputation, they might have thought of thousands of ways more probable and more advantageous than this. Consider the case of St. Paul. Is it reasonable to believe that when he was in favor with the Sanhedrin and was likely to advance himself by his opposition to Christianity and had a fair prospect of ease and honor together, he should quit all this to join such an inconsiderable and hated company as the Christians were, only to be one of the heads of a very small number of men and to purchase it at so dear a rate as the loss of his friends and interest and running on continual troubles and persecutions to the hazard of his life? It is hardly possible to suppose that a man who is self-deceived and means honestly would do this. But it is impossible to suppose that a man in his senses, knowing and believing all this to be a cheat, should own and embrace it, to so great disadvantage to himself, when he could not make himself so considerable by it as he might have been without it. Men must love cheating the world at a strange rate that will let go fair hopes of preferment and ease and lead a life of perpetual trouble and expose themselves to the utmost hazard only for the sake of deluding others.”
2.3.2 (see p. 128). A miracle may be performed by an evil being and for an evil purpose, but only as he is permitted and enabled to do so by God. In this case the miracle is a trial of faith. Our Lord so teaches: “There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24). St. Paul says that the coming of Antichrist will be “with all power and signs and lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). In such cases as these the nature of the doctrine taught in connection with the miracle must be considered. When the accompanying doctrine is contrary to that which has been previously verified by miracles, it is an evidence that the miracle is that of Satan, not of God. Such, perhaps, were some of the miracles of the Egyptian magicians. The directions which God gave by Moses to the Israelites for their conduct in such instances illustrate this: “If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and give you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke unto you, Let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proves you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he has spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). When miracles have already been wrought to prove the doctrines of monotheism, then either real or pretended miracles that are subsequently wrought to prove the contradictory doctrines of polytheism are not to be believed. For it is not supposable that God would himself employ his miraculous power, first to establish certain truths and then to overthrow them, first to give authority to Moses and then to the Egyptian priests. This is self-contradiction. But it is not self-contradiction when God first demonstrates the truth of his own revelations to Moses by the wonderful miracles of the exodus and the desert and then permits and empowers Satan and his agents to work some wonders, not in order to prove their truthfulness, but to strengthen by trial the faith of his people. Such a trial of faith Stillingfleet compares to “a father that has used great care to make his son understand true coin, and who may afterward suffer false to be laid before him, to try whether he will be cheated or not.” Even supposing, as this comparison does, that the satanic miracles are spurious, they are genuine for the spectator. “It is plain,” continues Stillingfleet, “that, after the true doctrine is confirmed by divine miracles, God may give the devil or false prophets power to work, if not real miracles, yet such as men cannot judge by the things themselves whether they be real or not; and this God may do for the trial of men’s faith, whether they will forsake the true doctrine confirmed by greater miracles, for the sake of such doctrines which are contrary thereto, and are confirmed by false prophets by signs and wonders” (Origines sacrae 2.10).
Belief in the reality of a miracle is not necessarily accompanied with faith in the author of it. There is no infallible connection between miracles and faith. They do not operate mechanically. The Pharisees saw with their own eyes our Lord’s miracles, as his disciples did, and had no more doubt than they had that they were genuine, but they did not, like them, believe that he was the Messiah and Savior of mankind: “Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him” (John 12:37). The dislike of the doctrine associated with the miracle and the consequent unwillingness to believe it, while yet the reality of the miracle is not denied, shows that miracle and doctrine are reciprocally related and cannot be torn apart. For this reason the performance of a miracle was sometimes conditioned by Christ upon faith in him: “Believe you that I am able to do this?” (Matthew 9:28; Mark 9:23; and elsewhere); “he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58).
Consequently, a miracle in and of itself merely is not the sole test of a genuine revelation from God. The nature and contents of the revelation must also be considered in connection with it. The chief use and necessity of a miracle is to establish the truth of a new religion; in other words, of revealed religion. No miracles are wrought to prove the doctrines of natural religion. These are written in the human constitution and are as old as the human conscience. No supernatural proof has been given of this class of truths. But whenever, under the old economy or the new, God introduced new doctrines by inspiring prophets and apostles to communicate them, he corroborated them by miracles. When God commanded Moses to reveal to the Hebrews the new religion of the Old Covenant and the theocracy and to conduct them from Egypt to Canaan and give them the levitical institute, he assisted the faith of both Moses himself and the Israelites by a great series of wonderful miracles. And, subsequently, whenever in the history of Israel Jehovah introduced a new prophecy or a new movement connected with the progress of the messianic kingdom, the miracle often came in to strengthen faith. When Jesus Christ appeared and taught the New Covenant, the final from of revelation, this new revelation was associated with and corroborated by that stupendous series of miracles which began with the miraculous conception and ended with the ascension. Speaking generally, miracles accompany the truths of revealed religion because this is something new, uncommon, and not issuing from the mind of man, and miracles do not accompany natural religion, because this is something old, common, and issuing from the human constitution. The words of Moses to Jehovah and the answer of Jehovah to him are the key to miracles: “Moses answered and said, They will not believe me nor hearken to my voice; for they will say, The Lord has not appeared unto you. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth your hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand, That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared unto you” (Exodus 4:1-5). The personal appearance of almighty God “talking with Moses” and giving him a long series of instructions and directions was something wholly new, not provided for in the ordinary course of nature and wholly distinct from all the natural religions that were upon the earth. This made it necessary to accompany it with supernatural acts, some of them immediately from God himself and some of them mediately from Moses that demonstrated to the observers that God had verily broken through the veil of eternity and had come down into time and upon earth and was “speaking with Moses face to face as a man speaks unto his friend” (33:11).
2.3.3 (see p. 129). The people of Egypt in the time of Moses, like the Jews in the time of Christ, were also involuntary witnesses to the truth of the Mosaic miracles. The attempt of the magicians to imitate the plagues wrought by the hand of Moses was a testimony that the latter had wrought something wonderful. The failure to imitate all of them, while imitating some, was a testimony to the superhuman nature of the Mosaic acts. And, last, the fact that the Egyptian people were not persuaded into a disbelief of the Mosaic miracles by the jugglery and counterfeited miracles of the magicians testifies to the reality of the former. The proof of this latter fact is given by St. Paul, who repeats and thereby endorses a tradition reported in the Aramaic paraphrase, to the effect that the futile attempts of Jannes and Jambres to imitate Moses were well understood by the Egyptian people: “Their folly was manifest unto all men” (2 Timothy 3:8).
2.3.4 (see p. 133). The originality of Christ is described by Ullmann (Sinlessness of Jesus 4.1-2): “As a teacher, Jesus was fully as eminent as the unparalleled greatness and dignity of his person would have led us to expect. His teaching was not like that of one who had worked out and carefully put together a system of thought in his own mind and then brings it before others to be considered and weighed. He taught as one who was in authority, with the certain consciousness that he was in possession of the truth, and with the full conviction that he could meet with no contradiction; all of which must be regarded as boundless and intolerable presumption and arrogance, did there not underlie it a direct and infallible intuition of that which is eternally true, and if he had not a perfect right to say of himself, ‘We speak that which we do know and testify that we have seen.’ The exaltedness of his spirit manifested itself also in the inimitable form of his discourses. Here there is not a trace of anything which had been gained by study, and yet all is in the purest sense and in the highest degree perfect. Exuberant fullness and unfathomable depth of meaning are combined with perfect simplicity and intelligibleness of form; strength and loveliness, a world-comprehensive breadth and intuitional directness, the most exalted ideality and the most lively imagery, are united and blended in a way which has never been equaled. He is at once the profoundest and the most popular teacher the world has ever seen.”
2.3.5 (see p. 136). “Doubting,” says Butler (Analogy 2.6), “necessarily implies some degree of evidence for that of which we doubt. For no person would be in doubt concerning the truth of a number of facts which should accidentally come into his thoughts and of which he had no evidence at all. And though, in the case of an even chance and where consequently we were in doubt, we should in common language say that we had no evidence at all for either side, yet that situation of things which renders it an even chance, and no more, that such an event will happen, renders this case equivalent to those in which there is such evidence on both sides of a question as leaves the mind in doubt concerning the truth. In all these cases, there is indeed no more evidence on the one side than on the other, yet there is much more evidence for either side than for the truth of a number of facts which come into one’s thoughts at random. And thus in all these cases doubt as much presupposes evidence, lower degrees of evidence, as belief presupposes higher, and certainly higher still. Anyone who will a little attend to the nature of evidence will easily carry this observation on and see that between no evidence at all, and that degree of it which affords ground of doubt, there are as many intermediate degrees as there are between that degree which is the ground of doubt and that which is the ground of demonstration. And though we have not faculties to distinguish these degrees of evidence with any sort of exactness, yet in proportion as they are discerned they ought to influence our practice. For it is as real an imperfection in the moral character not to be influenced in practice by a lower degree of evidence when discerned, as it is in the understanding not to discern it. And as in all subjects which men consider, they discern the lower as well as the higher degrees of evidence, proportionably to their capacity of understanding, so in practical subjects they are influenced in practice by the lower as well as the higher degrees of it proportionably to their fairness and honesty. And as in proportion to defects in the understanding men are inapt to see lower degrees of evidence and are in danger of overlooking evidence when it is not glaring and are easily imposed upon in such cases, so in proportion to the corruption of the heart, they seem capable of satisfying themselves with having no regard in practice to evidence acknowledged to be real, even if it be not overwhelming. From these things it must follow that doubting concerning religion implies such a degree of evidence for it as, joined with the consideration of its importance, unquestionably lays men under the obligations before mentioned to have a dutiful regard to it in all their behavior. If then it is certain that doubting implies a degree of evidence for that of which we doubt, it follows that this degree of evidence as really lays us under obligations [to believe in proportion to the strength of the evidence] as demonstrative evidence does.” Locke (Understanding 4.15) presents a similar view of probability: “Probability is likeliness to be true; the very notation of the word signifying such a proposition for which there be arguments or proofs to make it to be received for true. [Probability (probo)10[Note: 0 10. I prove, demonstrate] is provability.] The entertainment which the mind gives this sort of propositions is called belief, assent, or opinion; which is the receiving any proposition for true upon proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true without absolutely certain knowledge that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, belief and knowledge; that in the instance of certainty and knowledge there is self-evident intuition, while in the instance of probability and belief there is not. The grounds of probability are two: (1) conformity with our own knowledge, observation, and experience, and (2) the testimony of others vouching their own observation and experience. Probability, consequently, is wanting in that intuitive and mathematical certainty which accompanies an axiom or any self-evident proposition and which admits no degrees of evidence. Probable propositions, consequently, are capable of a great variety of degrees of proof; from that which is so slight as to be almost equivalent to no proof at all, to that which is so strong as to be almost equivalent to demonstration.”
There is nothing obligatory or of the nature of duty in assent to intuitive truth; but there is in assent to probable truth. We never say that a person is bound to assent that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts; but we do say that he is bound to yield assent to a proposition for which the evidence for is greater than the evidence against. A jury is always charged by the judge to give the verdict in favor of the party whose proof is the stronger. They have no moral right to decide contrary to the preponderance of testimony and the probability of truth founded upon it. Respecting the force of probable evidence, the remark of Anselm is true: “We should not reject the smallest reason, if it be not opposed by a greater. Any reason, however small, if not overbalanced by a greater, has the force of necessity” (Cur deus 1.10). The assent of intuitive perception depends upon something intrinsic to the thing perceived: that of belief upon something extraneous to it. A person assents to the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles from what he perceives to be the nature of a triangle and what is necessarily implied in it; but he assents to the proposition that the second person of the Trinity became incarnate, not from the intrinsic nature of this person and its corollaries, but from the testimony of God in revelation. There is nothing in the nature of the second trinitarian person, any more than in that of the first and third, that necessarily implies his incarnation.
2.3.6 (see p. 137). There is a certain amount of evidence that makes for theism and a certain amount that makes for atheism. If a person is inclined to theism because of his reverence and love for a personal God, this will concur with the probative force of the argument for the being of God and increase its effect. If he is disinclined or averse to it because of his nonreverence and dislike of a personal God, this will concur with the probative force of the argument against divine existence and strengthen it. In this way a man’s inclination or disinclination toward a doctrine constitutes a voluntary element in his belief or disbelief of it. Bias for or against a doctrine presupposes that the doctrine is known and affects the judgment respecting the arguments and testimony for it, either favorably or unfavorably.
Paley (sermon on John 7:17) shows the influence of the vicious bias of the will upon the judgment of the understanding concerning the truth of Christianity, in the following manner. His general position is that “virtue produces belief, and vice unbelief.” Remarking upon the latter part of the proposition, he says: “A great many persons before they proceed upon an act of known transgression expressly raise the question in their own mind whether religion be true or not, in order to get at the object of their desire; for the real matter to be determined is whether they shall have their desire gratified. In order to get at the vicious pleasure in some cases, or in other cases the worldly gain upon which they have set their hearts, they choose to decide and do in fact decide with themselves that the truths of religion are not so certain as to be a reason for them to give up the pleasure which lies before them or the advantage which is now in their power to compass and may never be again. This conclusion does actually take place and must almost necessarily take place in the minds of men of bad morals. And now remark the effect which it has upon their thoughts and belief afterward. When they come at another time to reflect upon religion, they reflect upon it as something which they had before adjudged to be unfounded and too uncertain to be acted upon or to be depended upon; and reflections accompanied with this adverse and unfavorable impression naturally lead to infidelity. Herein, therefore, is seen the fallacious operation of sin: first in the unfair circumstances under which men form their opinions and conclusions concerning religion; and, second, in the effect which conclusions and doubts so formed have upon their judgment afterward. First, what is the situation of the mind in which they decide concerning religion? And what may be expected from such a situation? Some magnified and alluring pleasure has stirred their desires and passions. It cannot be enjoyed without sin. Here is religion denouncing and forbidding it one side, there is opportunity drawing and pulling on the other. With this drag and bias upon their thoughts, they pronounce and decide concerning the most important of all subjects and of all questions. If they should decide for the truth and reality of religion, they must sit down disappointed of a gratification upon which they had set their hearts and of using an opportunity which may never come again. Nevertheless they must decide one way or the other. And this process, namely, a similar deliberation and a similar conclusion, is renewed and repeated as often as occasions of sin offer. The effect, at length, is a settled persuasion against religion; for what is it in persons who proceed in this manner that rests and dwells upon their memories? What is it which gives to their judgment its turn and bias? It is these occasional decisions often repeated; which decisions have the same power and influence over the man’s after-opinion as if they had been made ever so impartially or ever so correctly, whereas in fact they are made under circumstances which exclude, almost, the possibility of their being made with fairness and with sufficient inquiry. Men decide under the power and influence of sinful temptation; but, having decided, the decision is afterward remembered by them and grows into a settled and habitual opinion, as much as if they had proceeded in it without any bias or prejudice whatever.
“But not only do vicious and sinful men expressly raise the question to themselves, when they desire to gratify their desires, whether religion be true or not, there is also a tacit and unconscious rejection of religion which has the same effect. Whenever a man deliberately ventures upon an action which he knows that religion prohibits, he tacitly rejects religion. There may not pass in this thoughts every step which we have described nor may he come consciously to the conclusion; but he acts upon the conclusion, he practically adopts it. And the doing so will alienate his mind from religion as surely, almost, as if he had formally argued himself into an opinion of its untruth. The effect of sin is necessarily and highly and in all cases adverse to the production and existence of religious faith. Real difficulties are doubled and trebled when they fall in with vicious propensities, and imaginary difficulties are readily started. Vice is wonderfully acute in discovering reasons on its own side. This may be said of all kinds of vice; but I think it more particularly holds good of what are called licentious vices; for sins of debauchery have a tendency which other species of sin have not so directly to unsettle and weaken the powers of the understanding as well as to render the heart thoroughly corrupt. In a mind so wholly depraved, the impression of any argument relating to a moral or religious subject is faint and slight and transitory. To a vitiated palate, no meat has its right taste; with a debauched mind no reasoning has its proper influence.”
2.3.7 (see p. 137). There is a false and true subjectivity. The former is not corroborated by the object; the latter is. When the “Christian consciousness” is appealed to as the ultimate authority, separate and apart from divine revelation, this is an instance of spurious subjectivity. Those who would substitute ecclesiastical tradition and the voice of the church as the ultimate authority, instead of the Scriptures, as well as those who would substitute Christian consciousness for them, commit the same error in common. The Romanist and the mystic are really upon one and the same ground and are equally exposed to that corruption of Christianity to which every human mind is liable which does not place the Scriptures above both the church and the Christian consciousness, whenever the question concerns an ultimate and infallible source of religious knowledge. Consciousness cannot be an absolute and final norm for consciousness; subjectivity cannot preserve subjectivity from error. It is the object of consciousness by which the process of consciousness is to be judged and determined. As that subjective process of faith and feeling which is seen in the Christian experience or consciousness owes its very existence to the objective written revelation, so it must be kept free from deviation and error by the same. To leave the process to test itself and protect itself from corruption is dangerous. An individual Christian who should trust to the feelings of even a regenerate heart and the inward light of even a renewed mind, without continually comparing this subjective feeling and knowledge with the written word, would be the victim of a deteriorating and, in the end, an irrational and fanatical experience. A genuine Christian subjectivity is the simple perception and acknowledgment of the truth as it actually reads in the Scriptures. For illustration, the truth that “the Word was God” may be accepted and believed in the Arian sense that “God” is here used in the secondary signification instead of the primary. This is not the natural meaning of the term, taking the context into consideration, and has not been the common interpretation. This is not supporting and corroborating the person’s belief and experience by the real and true object, but by a false modification of it. Multitudes in the present generation are putting false interpretations upon Scripture and adopting a false view of God and man, of sin and salvation, and then appeal to their personal experience under the name of “Christian consciousness” in corroboration of their views. Neither the Scriptures nor the creeds derived from them are the final authority for this class, but the feeling of the hour.
2.3.8 (see p. 140). Josephus (Against Apion 1.8) testifies to the fixedness of the Old Testament writings, so far as the Jews themselves were concerned: “During so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything from them or to make any change in them. It is natural to all Jews from their very birth to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines. It is not so with the writings of the Greeks, who take their histories to be written agreeably to the inclinations of their writers and who sometimes write histories without having been in the places or near them in time.”