Understanding the Scriptures — Reading Notes

Christians were anxious to hold the believers to the strait and narrow way. To do this they repeated often the words of the Lord Jesus. When, however, the older members of the first circles began to fall away, the words were written down, not because some scholar felt moved thus to improve his leisure, but because it was absolutely necessary to preserve the words. Moreover, conflicts were arising between the growing church and the forces of the world round about. Some scriptures were written to supply instruments with which to carry on the warfare. Always the fundamental aim was to keep the people acting according to the teachings which lay at the heart of the Christian system. The object of the biblical revelation was from the beginning just what it is to-day in the hands of Christian believers--the object of using the Scriptures as an instrument for practicing the Christian spirit into all the phases of life.

We would by no means deny that there are imposing philosophies or, rather, hints toward such philosophies, in the Scriptures, but we insist that these did not come out of a purely philosophizing temper. They came as men tried to put into some form or order the understandings at which they had arrived as they wrestled with the tough facts of a world which they were trying to subject to the rule of their religion. As we have said in the previous chapter, the Scriptures bear scars of all such conflicts. The revelation was knocked into its shape in the rough-and-tumble of an attempt to convert the world. And this is not to claim for the Bible any difference in method of creation from that which obtains in the shaping of any vitally effective piece of literature. The world-shaking conceptions have always been won in profound experience. This chapter is not written with the principles of the modern school of pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the Damascus road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections to starving saints.

The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed, tell us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going to and fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born, and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency. Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul had ever heard that much of his theology might be out-dated with the passage of the years, he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose of bringing men to obedience to the law of God.