And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10, 11).

The message of the angel, though concise, was comprehensive and full. It contained, (1) the fact, “Unto you is born this day,” (2) the place, “In the city of David,” that is, in Bethlehem, so called, because David likewise had been born there, (3) the office of the Messiah, “A Saviour,” (4) His name, honour, and character, “Christ the Lord.”

Fear Not

The fright that came upon the shepherds as poor mortal men thus coming in contact with the Lord’s glory and his angels in the dead of night is to cease, for it is blessing, yea, the absolute supreme blessing for mortal men that is thus revealed to these shepherds. The Gospel for sinners always must begin with “fear not,” for it removes sin and fear. With “for” the angel justifies the command, and with “behold” exclaims at the greatness of this justification. But he first states the effect, and then the cause, first the joy, then the birth that produces the joy.

R. C. H. LENSKI

While it is natural that man should be afraid when the invisible, the unknown, suddenly becomes visible to him, the angel, now that Christ has been born, comes with the words “Fear not!” He does not, however, leave it at that, but gives the reason why they need have no fear. He brings to them the glorious tidings that in Bethlehem, the city of David, on that day, the promised Messiah has at length been born. The hope of the centuries has been fulfilled. For this reason the tidings are joyful to them and to all the people.

NORVAL GELDENHUYS

Joyful Tidings

What are these joyful tidings? What was the content of this report? Why, “This day is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord.” It is only this, “A Saviour is born; a way of escape is provided,” and farther they do not proceed. Yet this they say is a matter of great joy; as it was indeed. It is so to every burdened, convinced sinner, a matter of unspeakable joy and rejoicing. Oh, blessed words! “A Saviour is born!” This gives life to a sinner, and opens “a door of hope in the valley of Achor,” the first rescue of a sin-distressed soul.

JOHN OWEN

It is still proclaimed in our ears that to us is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord. These should be glad tidings to all, for in them all our hopes centre, and from them all our comforts flow. What an auspicious mom was that which brought so great a blessing to mankind! What a joyful day is that which first conveys the sound of the gospel to our ears! But most happy for us is that hour in which we are enabled to believe in Christ for the salvation of our souls. If real Christians deem it proper to commemorate the birth of Christ at a season set apart for that purpose, they will not do it with revellings and feastings, but with abundant thanksgivings to God, and liberality to their poorer brethren.

COMMENTARY OF HENRY AND SCOTT

Lord And Saviour

Christ Jesus, the only Son of God, is our Lord in three ways: first, by creation, in that he made us of nothing when we were not; second, he is our Lord by the right of redemption; third, he is the head of the Church (as the husband is the head of the wife) to rule and govern the same by his word and spirit.

M. W. PERKINS

Our Saviour is called in the Old Testament the Messiah, and in the New Testament the Christ; and both words import that he was the Anointed One. This designation is given to him, in allusion to the rite by which persons were consecrated to their offices under the former dispensation, namely, by being anointed with oil. This rite was observed in the case of the three offices which were most celebrated, those of prophet, priest, and king.

JOHN DICK

Hear that message of the angel in the world as it was, a world lacking joy, that had heard no good tidings for a generation, that was afraid in its heart of the tyranny of oppression. Then … there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. Saviour—confronting all the sin of the world with regal authority, based upon redeeming power. Christ—confronting all the chaos of the world, the Messiah, who will be able to realize the true hegemony, the Kingdom of God. Lord—the One who confronts all eternity and all ages, and He is born.

G. CAMPBELL MORGAN

Like Matthew 1:21, this passage clearly indicates that to the circle in which Jesus moved his coming as the Messiah was connected with the great series of prophecies which promised the advent of Jehovah for the redemption of his people, as truly as with those which predicted the coming of the Davidic King. The terms, “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,” are, indeed, an express combination of the two lines of prophecy, and import that the Child who was born in the city of David was both the promised Redeemer of Israel and the Anointed King that was to come.… This Child is at once a Saviour, the promised Messiah, and Sovereign Lord of men and angels—for it is an angel who speaks these words.… There is here a declaration that in this Child born in the city of David, the functions of Redemption, Messiahship and Supreme Lordship are united.

B. B. WARFIELD

To All People

Though the angel addresses the shepherds alone, yet he plainly states, that the message of salvation which he brings is of wider extent, so that not only they, in their private capacity, may hear it, but that others may also hear. For God had promised Christ, not to one person or to another, but to the whole seed of Abraham. If the Jews were deprived, for the most part, of the joy that was offered to them, it arose from their unbelief; just as, at the present day, God invites all indiscriminately to salvation through the Gospel, but the ingratitude of the world is the reason why this grace, which is equally offered to all, is enjoyed by few. Although this joy is confined to a few persons, yet, in respect to God, it is said to be common. When the angel says that this joy shall be to all people, he speaks of the chosen people only; but now that “the middle wall of partition” (Eph. 2:14) has been thrown down, the same message has reference to the whole human race. For Christ proclaims peace, not only “to them that are nigh,” but to them that are “far off” (Eph. 2:17), to “strangers” (Eph. 2:12) equally with citizens.

JOHN CALVIN

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

With these words the Apostle Paul makes a distinction which should be in the mind of every Christian.

One of the privileges of the believer is an assured hope, something which reaches beyond present circumstances and rises above the buffetings which are an inevitable part of life.

It is because we Christians so often look at our immediate circumstances with the astigmatic lenses of the worldling that we fail to bear clear testimony to the grace of God.

Only the Christian knows his present position and his ultimate destiny. Only the Christian has the answers to this life and to that which is to come, dim as his understanding may be. The Christian can look at the world and think of all its uncertainties and yet reverently say, “So what!” for he knows in his heart that the sovereign God of the universe is his own loving heavenly Father.

This in no way justifies an unconcern with needy men in a needy world, however; it increases this concern, for the comfort and hope which are a part of the Christian’s heritage are blessings to be passed on and not kept in selfish seclusion. Yet, a clear distinction should be made between the by-products of the Christian faith and those things which constitute that faith.

There is often an alarming tendency to interpret Christianity in terms of peace, joy, hope, psychological adjustment, social awareness and other lovely, desirable things. When this is done, without an adequate presentation of the Gospel itself, Christianity is not advanced, but made confusing.

Christianity we know is not a panacea for life’s problems but the acquiring of a new life through faith in the atoning and transforming work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And through him who died for our sins, who rose again for our justification and who is living today, praying for us and giving us the companionship of his Holy Spirit, we come to look at our position in terms of the Christ who dwells in us and not as a detour around problems.

How true it is that Christ never promised exemption from life’s pressures; but he did promise grace sufficient to meet those pressures, a grace which enables us to rejoice in hope, and to be patient in tribulation.

The Christian’s failure to appropriate the privileges and blessings that are his is what causes so much unhappiness and covers the joy of salvation with a gloom of temporal sorrows.

Almost all of us have known persons to whom life seemed to have dealt far more than one individual’s share of suffering and sorrow, and we have seen those people demonstrate an inner source of peace and joy that the world can only marvel at, but not understand. This has been demonstrated in the sick room, at the grave side, and where the sins and failures of others have brought suffering and disgrace to the innocent; for standing beside those afflicted souls has been the One who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Why is it, then, that so few of us who name Christ as Saviour rise to the privileges and live by the blessings which he is so anxious that we should appropriate?

Is not the answer to be found in our failure to realize that relationship with Christ is a personal matter, and He is not separated from us by some great and ethereal distance but is closer to us even than breathing itself?

Furthermore, only too often our supposedly Christian joy has been predicated on some immediate personal success or material advantage. Such experiences can and do pass, but true Christian joy and hope have their root in things which are not subject to change or decay.

Christian hope is a firm assurance and expectation of the goodness of God, and it comes from our participation in the fullness of his blessings through our relationship with the Son. This hope is a wellspring of spiritual water, relieving the thirsty soul and bringing never-ending refreshment to the parched deserts of a sinful world.

This hope must be distinguished from the fading things of a material world, not only by the nature of that for which we hope but also by its eternal quality. Let the imagination run riot and conjure up a vision of obtaining everything this world has to offer, not only in things material but also in the intangibles of achievement which bring honor and power. Unless such were to be sanctified and blessed by God, they would prove as transient and unsatisfying as the world of which they are a part.

The Christian’s hope, being fixed and eternal, should carry with it a definite reaction in outlook, personality, and action. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Like Peter we look at the waves rather than to the Ruler of the waves. Like Martha we may be burdened with much serving, losing sight of the Lord of Glory whom it is our privilege to serve. Like Thomas we magnify doubts rather than exercise that faith which dissolves them into the assurance of things not seen.

The Christian’s hope is also a foundation which remains unmoved because that foundation is Christ. In a day when a search for security is almost a fetish, it is the Christian alone who enjoys the stability of eternal verities.

There is also a cleansing power in this hope. “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure,” for the object of his faith is altogether pure and lovely. Instead of accepting the standards of the world, he looks to those standards which have their source in the perfections of Christ.

The very heart of our hope as Christians rests on the person and work of our Saviour. We have the fullest kind of assurance because we know that he is the eternal Son of God. We have absolute confidence because we know that he has redeemed us for time and eternity. Although still living in the flesh we know that we even now have eternal life, and that which is not yet seen will some day become a glorious reality.

The Apostle Paul, who as much as anyone and more than most, suffered for his Lord, lived a life of continuing hope in the sureness of his position as a Christian. In the midst of overwhelming odds he said: “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”

The Lord that Paul knew is our Lord. And the hope which was his is ours. Here there is no enduring situation, but there is one to come which will be based not on our present circumstances or frustrations but on the promise of our God.

This is the Christian’s hope and it should transform our daily lives.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness; come before his presence with singing.” Thus David sang, and through the ages that call to devotion in Israel has not gone ignored in the Christian Church.

Unfortunately today, however, in the ministry of music, there is too often the pagan rhythm of modern jazz, in place of the highest praise of which the Church is capable. Yet no medium, aside from the preaching of the Word of God, has greater potential value in presenting the Gospel.

Throughout the centuries, the Bible and the hymnal have ministered to the spiritual needs of man and have assisted him in his worship. But just as the Church has suffered periodic declines in spiritual power, so has church music. There are evidences of such decline today.

In many areas, provincialism has invaded the Church and has muted the effectiveness of Christian music by substituting the light frothy song for the great devotional or worship hymn. Tin-pan-alley musical settings to skimmed-milk tests, delivered with flagrant exhibitionism by a keyboard personality or a “blues” singer, reveal a startling lack of reverence.

More than one minister, deploring the trend in church music today, would say with the words of Dr. Vernon McGee, pastor of the Church of the Open Door, Los Angeles:

The spiritual level of the church today is recorded in the type of music and the character of the songs that are sung. If that’s true, then the present-day church has hit a new low. Today the catchy tune is the thing which is popular, and frankly you can dance to some present-day church music. On the radio you can’t always be sure whether it’s a ballad, boogie, bebop, or the latest chorus of the church. Several song writers are getting rich writing this low type of music, a type which appeals to the flesh. It’s like taking dope, the more you hear it, the more you want to hear it until you become addicted to it.

How this demoralization creeps into the church and what it does to it has been described by Bishop James A. Pike, formerly dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, and now head of the Episcopal Church in California:

When a juke box or TV gets us off to a somewhat less than reverent start, the result is a vulgarizing of holy things. Perchance these songs will lift up some to the living God. But for many more it downgrades Him to the commonplace. It is an ersatz religion, without awe, without mystery, without reverence, without judgment, and in the end, without reality.

But the condemnation of such music does not come only from ministers. Secular musicologists are alarmed by the trend and are saying so. In an article entitled “Popular Tunes Help Corrupt the Child,” Irving Sablosky, recent Chicago Daily News critic, writes:

Popular music is helping to corrupt the youth of America. I’m not accusing the lyrics, I’m accusing the music itself of lowering the whole moral character of our growing generation.… The mind can work both ways: if it is trained to think on a high level, it will have no use for banalities; if it is given spiritual nourishment to begin with, it won’t tolerate emptiness.

Where Christianity ought to be worshiped in the highest sense of the word, it has too often fallen far short of the glory of God through the failure of its music. Where entertainment becomes the goal, it is no mystery why we have a perverted expression of the Christian faith, for the goal of the entertainer and the goal of God’s messenger are inherently different. With one, it is what the people want; with the other, it is what they need. We are as guilty in our singing as in our preaching if we declare not the whole counsel of God.

A Godly Standard For Singing

We may ask, “Since standards of church music vary and everyone seems to be setting the standard for himself, is there a Christian basis for determining a standard for singing?” Scripture gives one basic principle which certainly applies. We are to “walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” (Rom. 8:1). We therefore are not to render music in the power of the flesh, but in the power of the spirit, not to give a carnal thrill, but a spiritual impact.

If we keep it well in mind that music in the church is not an end, but a means to an end, we will have less difficulty in charting our path. The end sought is the glory of God, and not the glory of the performer or of his music. Music as a choral setting can open the door of our understanding so that the message of God enters our intellect without hindrance and captures our wills with its power and beauty. Music without textual association can, when properly selected, be a blessing to the worshiper and enhance his communion with God, for often it enables him to reach out to God for the fulfillment of his own personal need.

To be consonant with God’s standards, church music must be dedicated to the highest possible cultural plane. Pity the man who, having developed complicated esthetic sensibilities, hungers for a message of God in praise and finds it clothed in undignified musical rags. He is the forgotten man in much of today’s evangelism.

The loftiest sentiments of the Christian faith have found expression in the great hymns of the Church, and we have spiritual fellowship with those who have walked with God in centuries past. Great testimonies to saving grace have been set to music, outstanding devotional verse has been united with distinguished hymn tunes, and the scriptural passages have been interpreted for us in music by masters.

But not all of Christendom benefits from this heritage largely because true worship has been ignored. And worship we must have. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God.” Our evangelical hymnals do not contain a sufficient number of devotional hymns to give scope and depth in worship. So many are filled with songs that fail to lift us above ourselves and our own religious experience. This is not to say that a gospel hymn, properly chosen, has no place, for it does. But certainly believers in the church who overemphasize the subjective experience are in danger of worshiping experience and not God.

It is a real mistake for a church to confine itself solely to the Gospel song. Unfortunately, for some that seems to be the only one with a “message” in it, for any other fails to give the “subjective kick.” But this attitude ignores man’s obligation to worship God.

We note that the Psalmist expresses a great deal of subjectivity, but it is always linked with the objective source of the blessing. “He is my rock and my salvation.… My soul thirsteth for God.… I will bless the Lord at all times.”

Some churches have lost the great hymns because they left them behind in their denominational hymnals at the time they became independent. They took with them only the Gospel songbook that had been used in the Sunday school room. But there are encouraging signs today that some are returning to the great hymns of the Church, and some publishers are including them in the new hymnals.

Where provincialism has barred us from the great hymns, let us rediscover those that are a witness of our faith. Our satisfaction in that experience will eliminate unworthy hymns. Expression of our faith in hymnody should keep pace with our spiritual growth. That song which is light and joyous does express the faith and joy of a new Christian, but if he is alive, he will grow, and if he grows, it will be reflected in his praise.

Christians should live up to their spiritual capabilities, and we are not doing that if we choose hymns on a level below our spiritual understanding. Why must it be that we sing a type of song typified by “I’m So Happy and Here’s the Reason Why,” when we ought to be singing “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts.”

And too often we are exhorted to sing loudly. For instance, young people sing the rhythmic Gospel choruses on their outings when it would be wise to sing secular fun songs, saving devotional singing for more appropriate occasions. Jesus himself pointed out the danger of mere noisiness: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matt. 15:8–9). The Apostle Paul expressed an attitude for our conduct: “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also” (1 Cor. 14:15).

Musical Reformation Needed

What is the remedy? We must give intelligent leadership to the coming generation. In his book, The Pattern of God’s Truth (pp. 80–81), Dr. Frank Gaebelein offers this solution:

The call is for Christian education to lead the way to higher things. But that call will not be fully answered until our schools, colleges, and seminaries espouse a philosophy of music befitting the Gospel. So long as the lower levels of an art so closely linked to man’s emotions are cultivated at the expense of the best, we shall continue to have Christian leaders, many of whom are deaf to the nobler elements of spiritual song. Evangelicalism is due for a musical reformation. The reformation will come only when Christian education, having set its face against the cheap in this greatest of the arts, seeks to develop in its students response to a level of music worthy of the deep things of God. Here, as in so much else, we do well to listen to Martin Luther, who called music “a noble gift of God next to theology,” and even went so far as to say: “We must teach music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have skill in music … neither should we ordain young men as preachers unless they have been well exercised in music.”

The musical practice of evangelicalism needs to be examined in terms of textual content, musical setting, and method if the members of the Church are to grow in spiritual power. An example must be set not only for youth in churches, Sunday Schools, and colleges, but also for those who are being trained to lead our spiritual enterprises. The trend toward spiritually vigorous church music is already evident in many churches. Let us be certain that the glory of God is the foremost objective in the music of the faith.

END

Edward A. Cording is Executive Director of the Conservatory of Music and Chairman of the Division of Fine Arts at Wheaton College. He is a former president, was one of the founders, and for five years was secretary of the National Church Music Fellowship, a movement whose membership includes representatives of evangelical schools and churches.

The Fourth Gospel emphasizes that the destiny of Jesus of Nazareth was bound up with the figure of John the Baptist (cf. John 1:15, 26–28, 29–34). By John he found his first disciples (John 1:35–39). For a time his work paralleled that of the Baptist, perhaps in somewhat of a strained relation to some of John’s followers (cf. John 3:22–30). According to the witness of John, he was the Lamb of God whom the Father chose, as once before in the story of Abraham and his son (cf. Gen. 22:8; John 3:16).

The Synoptic Gospels have not narrated the activity of Jesus in the Jordan valley, because for them his ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem was decisive. The work of Jesus in the Jordan valley was evidently unaccompanied by any miracle, even as John also accomplished his work without miracles (cf. John 10:41). According to all the Gospels, the ministry of Jesus was confirmed by miracles first in Galilee. It is important to hold to this point on which the Gospels concur.

Perhaps Jesus’ zeal for the purity of the Temple (cf. John 2:12–22) is a Hasidic and Zealotic trait. For sure, his unique, insistent and sharp attack upon the priestly society in Jerusalem does not reflect the secluded protest of Qumran. Jesus acted to confront the whole people with a decision. His change of water into wine (cf. John 2:1–11) revealed the Messiah who was reviving the powers of ancient time, even as once Elisha cleansed the water in Jericho (cf. 2 Kings 2:19–22). To adduce Hellenistic and heathen parallels, as speculative research is wont to do, does not fit the action of Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth evinces no Hellenistic traits. He rose from a movement which was antithetical to Hellenism. His miracles in feeding the multitude, changing the water, and raising the dead recall the time of Moses and Elijah, and signify that ancient, old-Israelite motives became historic in Jesus of Nazareth.

Although the preaching and teaching of Jesus, his thought and fundamental eschatological-apocalyptic view, suggest many a point of contact with the Qumran scriptures, no one should regard him as an Essene. His miracles, his conflict with the Law, his seeking out of sinners, all exhibit a sharp contrast to Qumran theology. Jesus and his disciples were directly related to the movement of John the Baptist, but very soon developed their own idea of purity, holiness, and atonement.

Historical Evidence

All the Gospels are historical and doctrinal commentaries on the history of Jesus. They not only give witness for faith, but also historical information which is relevant to scholarly discussion. To resort to the history of tradition, to form criticism, to literary criticism, and to the work of redaction, does not release us from the primary question: what actually happened? At the beginning stood the history of Jesus, not a theological construction.

Exegetical criticism has disputed most of all the historical worth of the Fourth Gospel. Since F. Christian Baur, one has seen its actual significance in the sphere of Spirit, Doctrine, and Symbol, but not in history. We hear today that the older historical and miracle tradition was reconstituted under the influence of gnostic-colored sayings and words of that time so that faith, upon which the gospel of John lays decisive importance, becomes a new existential understanding of man. But the biblical-Hebraic faith, which centers in the sending of Jesus (cf. John 20:31) loses its stability and reality when one detaches it in this modern sense from its roots. At the basis of the Fourth Gospel is the earlier historical and miracle tradition, only elucidated by the corresponding tradition of word and saying. Both materials form an inner unity and should not be divorced from one another. The Qumran Find pertains in a special way to the Fourth Gospel. It is now possible to compare Iranian dualism, late Jewish apocalyptic, Qumran sectarianism, and Johannine theology with each other. The Fourth Gospel knows a definite, fundamental Palestinian-Jewish stratum, from which it then passes over to a general, oriental-Hellenistic thought-form. There is good reason to be cautious in leaning upon the diverse concept of “Gnosis.”

Yet it has also been recognized that precisely the Fourth Gospel ascribes importance to historical associations, and does not look upon them only as illustrative material.

1. The activity of Jesus is arranged fundamentally into three geographical periods which also differ in their substance: At first Jesus was connected with the Baptist in the Jordan valley of Judaea (cf. John 3:22; 4:3). Then follows the ministry of miracle and teaching in Galilee and the surrounding area (cf. John 2:1 ff.; 4:43 ff.). Finally, a coherent grouping begins with the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem (cf. John 7:1–13; 10:22–39). This last sojourn in Jerusalem was at times interrupted (cf. John 10:40–42). The Johannine outline appears capable of taking in the Synoptic material, but not vice versa.

2. Small chronological notices should not be overlooked. We read in John 2:20: “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” This precise number is congruous with the historical interval if fitted into the Jewish computation of time, by which, in this instance, only the actual years of building were counted. To that number must be added the Sabbath years in which the work of building was suspended. Also the Johannine dating of the death of Jesus on Friday, the 14th of Nisan, should be credited as accurate.

3. The prominence given to Cana in Galilee (John 2:11) is fully justified: “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory.” Cana, eight miles north of Nazareth, was closely related geographically and historically with the home city of Jesus. It is understandable that the presence of his mother was mentioned at the marriage feast. It was after that that Jesus removed with his mother, brethren and disciples to Capernaum, which belonged to another area of geography and territorial history (cf. John 2:12). We may well see in that removal a connection with adverse pressure upon the family of Jesus in Nazareth (cf. Luke 4:30 f.).

4. According to more recent geological investigations in Palestine, the gospel of John is thoroughly right when it takes the water from Jacob’s well to be well water and not cistern water (cf. John 4:6 ff.). The water flows under the earth from below Mount Gerizim.

5. Archaeological discovery has confirmed the location of the Pool of Bethesda near the Sheep Gate (cf. John 5:2). From the ruin it is possible to trace the trapezoid form of a double pool, constructed in the Hellenistic era, which had special significance for Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. The remains of strong and high columns point to the Herodianic period. Of late, French excavations have been resumed with success.

6. Occasional reference to sites in the Fourth Gospel, as Bethany “beyond the Jordan” (1:28), “Aenon near Salim” (3:23), Ephraim (11:54), go back to exact knowledge of their location by the Evangelist; they are not to be symbolically or allegorically understood. The region of Aenon by Salim lies southeast of Nablus and Shechem (cf. W. F. Albright). Most likely the Samaritan highland was accessible to John the Baptist.

7. The Evangelist took special care to identify sites in the Passion history: the brook Kidron (18:1), the garden in which Jesus and his disciples tarried (18:1), the court of the high priest Annas (18:15), the Praetorium (18:28,33; 19:9), the Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha (19:13), Golgotha (19:17), and the garden in which the new tomb lay (19:41). All these sites indicate his accurate knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem. Above all, the tomb of Jesus was a holy site for the Evangelist as it bore testimony to the Resurrection (cf. 20:1–18).

8. The Gospel gives a clear picture of the Jewish custom of burial, of mourning, and of comforting the survivors. It mentions the binding of the body “in linen clothes” (19:40), which protected but did not hinder the individual parts. Both the binding and the cloth wrapped about the face belonged to preparation for burial, in the case of Lazarus as well as in that of Jesus (cf. 11:44; 20:7). If at all possible, the body was washed, prepared, and buried on the day of death. Then the procession of mourners went back, and it lay upon the friends to comfort the survivors. Jesus appears at first in John 11:17 ff. as a friend who has the task of comforting the two sisters. Then he lays aside that role, does not go into the house of mourning, but waits near the grave of Lazarus in prayer to God.

Excavations In Palestine

In a recent article, W. F. Albright has pointed out how drastically the Jewish revolt, between 66 and 70 A.D., desolated Palestine and altered the relations of men to each other. His excavations in Geba and Bethel have uncovered traces of Roman occupation where it was engaged in a radical process of destruction. Of a certainty the relations between Jews and Christians were disrupted at this time, for Christians were decried as traitors by the Jews, and on the contrary as Jews by the Romans. In these years there was many an exodus and flight of Christians so that Palestinian traditions had to be collected elsewhere. In the opinion of Albright this happened to the Johannine tradition, which was then edited in Asia Minor.

On the one hand, the Johannine tradition thinks entirely theologically, and refers the source of thought and being to God himself, but has at the same time quite definite historical and earthly interests which should not be underestimated. The Fourth Gospel must be carefully read and understood, because it contains valuable material which helps to delineate the “Jesus of History.”

END

Otto Michel is Professor of New Testament at University of Tuebingen, Germany. From his earlier days at Halle he has maintained a stalwart witness for the Gospel against various forms of liberalism. In addition to being a stimulating lecturer, he is well-known through his contributions on both Romans and Hebrews in the H. A. W. Meyer Commentary series.

Just a few days ago I walked out into the scrub pine “woods,” northeast of the airport on Nantucket, to view the wreckage of an airliner. Having refused what was at one point the last open seat on that ill-starred flight, I saw before me an amazing sight. The path of the plane’s three sets of wheels could be traced for a long distance. First, one of the wings had clipped off the top of a fence post, slicing off a “No Trespassing” sign, but leaving the bottom half intact. Then a ridge had tipped the plane, causing wreckage to fly. Straight ahead it cut a path through the low-growing tree tops, and beyond that, twisted metal and burst-open traveling bags were scattered abroad over the ground. In front of me was a large chunk of fuselage—a grisly, fire-gutted death-trap.

Numbered stakes had been driven into the ground and numbered tags had been tied to pieces everywhere. Critical surveyors had mapped the entire scene. Many of the details, of course, would never be known. But what was here was unmistakably clear. One could locate the open space where there had been a perfect three-point landing, and the spot where the first jolt had scattered wreckage; and one could also reconstruct other events of those few dread seconds in which so much had happened.

For 13 years the writer has been driving numbered stakes and hanging numbered tags over the field of the history of gospel criticism. It has been slow work, involving the study of inaccessible books, usually in German or Latin, with only a little help from English books. Source criticism was introduced into England as a fait accompli nearly 30 years after it had received rather final definition on the Continent. It was more admired in England than investigated or understood. To be sure, many things will never be known about the course of modern gospel study. But much can be unmistakably known if the history of such study is critically surveyed.

Our purpose in this article is to point out significant weaknesses in the development of the dominant form of modern critical study of the Gospels. The facts were obtained as follows:

Starting from form criticism, the popular view of the Gospels today, the writer began to work backwards. A single critical question was asked again and again at each of many points of investigation. Stated in its actual, inelegant form, the question was: “How did this fellow get this way?” Such inquiry resolved itself into three specific questions, namely: (1) How did things stand before this theory under study was propounded? (2) Where did this theory come from? (3) What reasons were given for accepting it? It is absolutely necessary to learn the answers to these three questions if one would understand a given theory or form a truly independent judgment on any view of the Gospels. Otherwise one remains shut up to acceptance or rejection of a given view simply because someone else accepts or rejects it.

Form Criticism Questioned

Now, if we start from form criticism in any of its forms (Bultmann’s, Dibelius’, Albertz’s, or Taylor’s), and work backwards, we discover that despite its present popularity, which seems to be growing into virtual idolatry, form criticism is a very delicate blossom. In fact, four distinct questions are critical for its continued existence.

The first is whether the method itself is valid. The essence of that method is literary analysis. Component parts of the Gospels are analyzed and classified according to literary forms. They are also assumed to have been produced originally in a purely literary activity. This means, for example, that just as one asks why someone should have written a certain fairy story, so a form critic asks why anyone should have written (that is, invented) a story about Jesus healing a blind man. Such is the initial question we must consider regarding form criticism: “Is its methods valid?”

Three additional questions remain, all closely connected with the Mark theory. These will prove either vital or fatal for form criticism because they concern its foundations. They concern not merely the petals of form criticism but its very roots.

The second question is this: “Has the work of analysis been applied to the right document?” The only way to be assured is to determine our earliest Gospel. If Mark was earliest, and was subsequently used by the compilers of Matthew and Luke, then doubtless the form critics have been digging in the right place. But if Mark is not the earliest Gospel and therefore not actually the primary source used by the writers of Matthew and Luke, then the conclusion is inescapable that scholars have applied a prodigious amount of ingenuity to the wrong document. If the Mark theory be not true, they ought instead to have been analyzing Matthew or Luke, whichever proved to be earliest.

Manipulation Of Scripture

The third question relates to the validity of two dissections of Mark (by W. Wrede and K. L. Schmidt) on which form criticism is based. Waiving the question whether Wrede and Schmidt dissected the wrong document, we here face the additional question: “Is a specific pre-form-critical literary analysis of Mark valid?” The analysis is based on a theory that Jesus never thought of himself as the Christ, and also on a theory that the editor-compiler of Mark invented a scheme according to which Jesus gradually revealed the secret of his Christhood. Then the writer, it is claimed, made that scheme the outline of our second Gospel. In other words, Wrede and Schmidt nailed over Mark’s Gospel a big sign reading: “No History Here!” Can this preliminary manipulation (manhandling) of Mark be justified?

A fourth question would remain were form critics successfully to run the gantlet of the first three. Scholars writing in favor of the Mark theory about a century ago were extolling the features of Mark which seemed explicable only as statements of an eyewitness of the events narrated. The supposed lack of eyewitness qualities in Matthew and the alleged abundance of them in Mark originally led scholars to claim greater originality and priority for Mark. Then form critics come along. They deny the validity of the concept of eyewitness accounts in the Gospels. In so doing, they have also denied the foundation of the “proof” that Mark is our earliest Gospel. Yet they proceed to analyze Mark, which they would not be analyzing at all but for the fact that an earlier generation of scholars had “proved” Mark earliest by claiming that indubitable signs of its originality and priority lay in the eyewitness qualities of its narratives. The question, therefore, is: Do logic and scientific integrity give the form critics any right to use their method on Mark, assuming it to be our one primary source, before they have established its priority on a new and different basis? Though one were to grant the validity of their method, and its use on the right document, and their propriety of building on the work of Wrede and Schmidt, this fourth question remains.

The Mortal Blow

An adverse answer to any of the four questions would deal a mortal blow to form criticism. Three of the questions are so dependent upon the Mark theory that should that theory ever come to be rejected, then a triple wound would accrue to form criticism. Enough has been said to show the critical importance of the Mark theory. Following its general adoption, nearly all later scholarship has been built upon it; most of the earlier study preceding it will be found to culminate in it. Most important for any historian or theologian, therefore, is its truth or falsity. The minister who cares about the factual undergirdings of his message will also have a vital interest in settling this question correctly.

Misleading statements have become widespread in many published works. For example, T. W. Manson says: “Nine-tenths of Mark is transcribed in Matthew.…” My own investigations had shown 40.6 per cent of the words of Mark to be the same as those in Matthew, with no indication whether they had been copied by the writer of Matthew, or had found their way from Matthew into Mark. From 40 per cent to 90 per cent makes quite a discrepancy! It is common today to find published statements which begin: “Since nine-tenths of Mark had been incorporated into Matthew,” and so forth. My investigation showed that Manson had quoted Streeter, using the latter’s statement loosely and carelessly. But that was not all. Streeter got his information from Hawkins, whom he misunderstood. Indeed, he drew a demonstrably impossible conclusion from Hawkin’s statements; Hawkin’s statistics could never yield Streeter’s conclusions. In this way a jump from 40 to 90 per cent of Mark was alleged to be incorporated into Matthew.

Even so, why did everyone insist that Mark had been taken up into Matthew, instead of vice versa? This situation led me carefully to investigate the Mark theory.

Origin Of The Theory

When was the Mark theory originated? Who first propounded and advocated it? The earliest origin usually claimed in 1835. By 1865 it appeared assured of its present dominant position. Investigation of the intervening 30 years enables one to discover and study the circumstances in which it became dominant and the reasons alleged for the probability of its validity.

When I asked: “What converted scholars to the Mark theory?” I expected in my naivete to find that someone had studied the data exhaustively and had written a thorough book, which had convinced others and produced virtual unanimity in favor of the Mark hypothesis. Instead, I discovered that the question had been settled during the late fifties and early sixties of the last century, in a controversy where the real issues had never received consideration.

Advocates And Propagation

Space limits preclude a detailed tracing of the factors that brought Mark into favor, from Koppe and Storrs through Lachmann, Wilke, and Weisse, and thence down to the times of Holtzmann, Meyer, Ritschl, Weiss, and others. I can only give some principal facts. First, who advocated the Mark theory? Add or subtract a few names, and the answer is: Lachmann, Weisse, Wilke, Ewald, Reuss, Thiersch, Tobler, Ritschl, Meyer, Plitt, Weiss, Wittichen, Holtzmann, Mitzig, B. Bauer, Volkmar. Some helped originate and launch the view; others were influential in turning the tide in its favor. Two almost alone secured its wide and abiding propagation into the future, namely, Holtzmann and Meyer. Meyer’s influence worked through his famed commentaries, circulated in a fabulous number of editions and translations up to the present day—when the English translation will soon be reprinted. Holtzmann’s influence worked through widely circulated books and through his long eminence and high repute as a teacher. His first book (1863) was especially convincing. E. A. Abbott, in the 9th edition (1879) of Encyclopaedia Britannica, wrote: “the work which most approximates to a proof of the originality of the tradition contained in Mark is Holtzmann’s Die Synoptischen Evangelien, &c., 1863.…” As late as 1893 and after, young Albert Schweitzer at Strasbourg University was awed by the great scientific scholar who had established the Mark hypothesis, and he instinctively singled him out as the one teacher whom it would be impertinent to disagree with openly. B. Weiss was also a potent influence through long years, both in his own right and as Meyer’s posthumous editor. The critical years seem to have been 1861–1865, when Meyer had just swung over to the Mark theory, Holtzmann’s book appeared, and Weiss was vigorously advocating the new view.

The victory of the Mark theory arose in the historical context of a specific controversy. The view then dominant was that of Baur and the Tubingen School. They had adopted Griesbach’s old theory that Mark was the latest of the three Gospels, patched together out of alternating phrases and scraps of words drawn from Matthew and Luke. The question at issue was strictly in relation to Mark. Was it last or first? The reader must not suppose that this was a general question, defective merely because it ignored the possibility that Mark may have been the second earliest Gospel. This defect was grave enough. But the real fault lay in an assumption that the discrediting of Griesbach’s artificial theory would automatically establish the Mark theory. The earliest “proof” of the Mark theory in the English language is not a proof of that theory at all. It is a short discussion, three pages long, which shows the absurd suppositions of the Griesbach theory.

The context and terms of the debate against Baur’s modification of the Griesbach theory quite positively insured the defeat of the old view and the automatic victory of the Mark theory regardless of its real merits or defects. For example, Matthew never stood a chance. It was simply taken for granted by advocates of the Mark theory that Matthew was not authentic, nor apostolic, nor early. Holtzmann tells us that he assumes this and takes it e concessu, that is, as something everybody concedes. Meyer tells us that Matthew being ruled out, and Luke never being considered a real possibility, Mark, therefore, by simple elimination, must be considered the earliest. Now it is true that the other side, the Tubingen School, defended Matthew as the earliest Gospel. But they also roundly denied that it had any value. They dated it between 130 and 134 A.D., 100 years after the ascension. It was certainly unauthentic, and written long after the death of Matthew the tax-collector. If we had asked them what historical value Matthew had, they would have replied: “As history it is valueless, except as it testifies to Jewish tendencies current in some churches 90 or 100 years after the death of Jesus.” Investigation discloses no genuine effort to determine the relative merits and rights of Matthew and Mark to consideration as our earliest Gospel.

Actually, the advocates of the Mark theory were taking away three authentic Gospels from the churches and giving them one in return. But in the specific context of the struggle, which made their theory dominant, the impression arose that they were presenting the churches with one genuine Gospel in place of three unauthentic ones.

Plagiarism Assumed

In trying to ascertain the real mind of the scholars, I first sensed vaguely, and soon recognized unmistakably, that all the writers involved took for granted that the only possible explanation of similarities in the three Gospels was due to borrowing or copying in Greek. This assumption was openly confessed and given an appropriate name: the plagiarism hypothesis (Benutzungshypothese). Now this means that we are not really dealing with basic studies of the synoptic problem at all. On purely theoretical grounds, numerous possibilities were ruled out. What of the possibility of an Aramaic original of Matthew, which nearly all ancient writers mention? Why rule out the possibility of kinds and degrees of interdependence which would not require a denial of the authenticity of the Gospels—that is, which would acknowledge the Gospels as three sufficiently independent, and therefore independently attested and authenticated, accounts of Jesus’ works and words by the real Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

The plagiarism theory has imposed an unduly constricted set of limitations on the study of the Gospels. Actually, the theory of copying in Greek is positively detrimental. For when tested by the concrete data, it hinders us from seeing the full extent and range of the facts of agreement. Specifically, Matthew and Mark have 1,500 odd items of inexact agreement and synonymous resemblance. Such data create problems for the theory of copying in Greek. On it they must be explained as differences. However, on a theory that an Aramaic Matthew was in Peter’s hands at Rome we can very well account for everything. The Greek agreements would arise when the Aramaic Matthew was translated into Greek by someone, and when Peter’s preaching based on Matthew was rendered into Greek in Mark. The average exact agreement in Greek is even less than two and one-half words long. Such exact agreements do not require a theory of copying in Greek. As soon as we give up the plagiarism theory, while the extent of resemblance between Matthew and Mark is actually enlarged by 1,500 odd items, we also secure the immense theoretical advantage of not having to explain 1,500 items as changes deliberately introduced into a Greek text.

The general view just advanced has the advantage of being capable of being tested by analogy. We can compare the entire range of data from a synopsis of Matthew and Mark with the data from a synopsis of the A and B texts of Greek Judges, representing apparently two independent translations from Hebrew. Such comparison justifies rejection of the theory of copying in Greek. At the same time, it shows that Matthew and Mark do not exhibit the same strict adherence to an original document as do the A and B texts of Judges when compared to a Hebrew text. The data in some respects are strictly comparable, and in others radically divergent. Matthew and Mark show close correspondences other than the kind produced in the A and B texts of Judges by extreme loyalty to an original written document.

A bare statement of the data is given in the following table:

So much for the Mark theory and its undergirding plagiarism hypothesis.

As to the “Q” theory, it is a “sputnik,” a man-made satellite which the Mark theory hurls into orbit. No agreement has ever been reached on the original language of “Q,” or on its contents or on the arrangement, or on any specific feature of its provenance, time, place, or authorship. Unless and until the Mark theory has been first adopted, there exists no “problem” that requires “Q.” Reject the Mark theory, regard Matthew as the first Gospel produced, and the need for a “Q” hypothesis vanishes. The synoptic data do not create the problem that “Q” is intended to solve; the Mark theory creates it by its own inability to explain the data.

E. A. Abbott, the famed British scholar, has given an excellent evaluation of gospel studies prior to 1879:

The work of Dr. Holtzmann … is of great value; and so are Dr. Weiss’s Marcusevangelivm (1872) and Matthausevangelium (1876); but it is truly lamentable that nearly a century has passed in the accomplishment of so little. The reason is perhaps to be looked for (1) in the amount of personality that has been introduced into discussions of this kind; (2) in the haste with which theories have been erected upon the basis of single causes; (3) in the general absence of an attempt to classify and concentrate evidence; (4) in the failure to recognize the distinction between probabilities and certainties, and the amount of labor necessary to attain certainty; (5) most of all, in the absence of mechanical helps” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.).

Certain it is that the scholars who agreed in the general result, and who thus made the Mark theory dominant, could not agree on the means and reasoning by which they reached their conclusion. Holtzman spells this out in detail. And it is further certain that only one or two scholars considered it possible that our present Mark could have been used by the writers of Matthew and Luke. Nearly all, when they said “Mark,” meant another writing significantly different from our Mark. It is often said that we have Mark but we don’t have “Q.” Investigate the actual waitings of those who established the Mark theory. You will find that we don’t have Mark either.

The writer agrees fully with Abbott’s evaluation. He thinks that gospel studies have been on a flight that has landed in the woods, missing both the landing-strip and the airport as well. A new, comprehensive study of the Gospels is urgently needed. The really scientific study of the synoptic problem is ahead of us. Indeed, the preliminary isolation and statement of the data of the problem have yet to be achieved. On the positive side, study and work, in God’s providence, can lead to renewed conviction (on more solid foundations than ever) of the genuineness, authenticity, and early dates of our Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

END

Preacher In The Red

PARTING OF THE WAYS

The congregation of the Foursquare Church in Shelton, Wash., was listening attentively to the announcements. I was urging all to attend the evening service, the sermon being on Jesus’ parable concerning the rich fool.

After a very brief preview of the content of the message I announced the topic: “A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted!”

Then in the next breath I said, “Will the ushers please come forward and receive the offering.”—The Rev. RAYMOND L. Cox, Corvallis, Oregon.

ARE YOU A FATHER?

A Protestant minister with a parish among a Roman Catholic population spends an exciting life, I can assure you.

One day the phone rang and a female voice said;

“Are you a father?”

“Of course I am; I have three kids.”

“Whaaat?!”

“Yes, three children.”

“Are you married?”

“Naturally.”

“Let me get it straight: you have three children, you are married and you are a father?”

“Right.”

“Shame on you!”

And bang! Down goes the receiver.—The Rev. NUNZIO TESTA, Grace Presbyterian Church, New York, N. Y.

For each report by a minister of the Gospel of an embarrassing moment in his life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY will pay $5 (upon publication). To be acceptable, anecdotes must narrate factually a personal experience, and must be previously unpublished. Contributions should not exceed 250 words, should be typed double-spaced, and bear the writer’s name and address. Upon acceptance, such contributions become the property of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Letters should be addressed to: Preacher in the Red, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1014 Washington Building, Washington 5, D. C.

John H. Ludlum, Jr, is Minister of the Community Church on Hudson Avenue, Englewood, N. J. He holds the B.A. from Rutgers University, the B.D. from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and the Ph. D. from Yale University (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures). His doctoral studies included Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, as well as the Literature and Criticism of the Old and New Testaments.

The question of biblical interpretation has returned to the centre of theological discussion today. Hermeneutics is no longer relegated to a backroom. It is one of the most prominent preoccupations of the present hour. And in this renascence the name of Martin Luther is much mentioned, for it is being recognized afresh that in a very real sense he is the father of Protestant interpretation. His influence has been widespread and profound. As Professor Kurt Aland has reminded us in a lecture delivered recently at the St. Andrews School of Theology in Scotland, Luther’s interpretation of Scripture has not only left its mark on the theologians and churches of the Lutheran confession for more than four centuries, but is of no less decisive importance for all Protestant communions. In considering Luther’s principles of biblical hermeneutics we are handling one of the vital issues of the hour.

The Bible, of course, was central in the reforming policy of Luther. “As a theologian,” wrote Professor Henry E. Jacobs, “Luther’s chief effort, on the negative side, was to free theology from its bondage to philosophy, and to return to the simplicity of Scripture. He was dissatisfied with technical theological terms because of their inadequacy, even when the elements of truth they contained restrained him from abandoning them. He was not without a historical sense and a reverence for antiquity, provided that it was subjected to the tests of Holy Scripture. Scripture was not to be interpreted by the Fathers, but the Fathers were to be judged by their agreement or disagreement with Scripture” (Article ‘Luther’ in E.R.E. Vol. VIII, p. 201).

Luther’S Experience

We need not traverse yet again the familiar ground of Luther’s rediscovery of the Bible in his personal experience. Suffice it to say that the Reformation really started not on the steps of the Scala Sancta in Rome (where pious legend may have overlaid the tale) nor even at the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg (where the Ninety-Five Theses were pinned in order to inaugurate a discussion rather than to touch off a revolt), but in the Black Tower of the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt where Luther sat before an open Bible and allowed God to address him face to face. This Turmerlebnis (Tower Discovery) is dated by Schwiebert as “sometime in the fall of 1514” (Luther and His Times, p. 288). Luther himself tells us how he dwelt upon the First Chapter of Romans. “Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justified us through faith. Whereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before ‘the justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. The passage of Paul became to me a gate of heaven” (Luther, Werke, Weimar Auflage (W.A.) Vol. LIV, p. 185).

This experience marked the birth of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith, which was the touchstone by which he tested every theological opinion. But it was cradled in Scripture and, even though Karl Barth takes exception to the expression, we may still rightly affirm that whilst sola fide constitutes the material principle of the Reformation, sola Scriptura is its formal principle. Luther’s “illumination” as he calls it in his Table Talk, or his “inspiration” as Schwarz prefers to denominate it (The Problems of Biblical Translation, p. 169)—that is, his God-given insight into the meaning of Romans 1:17—transformed the whole Bible for him and supplied his overall interpretative clue. His ratiocinative process is evident. As Schwarz has put it: “The meaning of one passage had been revealed to him. He therefore had received the true understanding of this one verse. Holy Writ, being God’s revelation, must of necessity be a unity and its contents be in agreement. It is therefore permissible, or even necessary, to interpret the Bible in accordance with Romans 1:17, if the true meaning of this verse has been revealed” (ibid.). Luther’s entire exegetical output stems from this comprehension, which he recognizes as a gift from God. “I have not dared nor am I able to boast of anything but the Word of truth which the Lord has given me” (Lenker Ed., Vol. II, p. 429).

Scripture Its Own Interpreter

Let us now seek to elaborate some of Luther’s hermeneutical principles arising from his watchwords of sola Scriptura and sola fide. The first is crystallized in the now celebrated phrase Scriptura sui ipsius interpres (W.A. Vol. VII, p. 97). “That is the true method of interpretation,” he says, “which puts Scripture alongside of Scripture in a right and proper way” (Philadelphia Edition (P.E.), Vol. III, p. 334). He seeks to apply the comparative method by setting one portion of the Word beside another and allowing the plainer texts to illuminate the more obscure, as Origen and Augustine had suggested. Luther was convinced of the basic clarity of Scripture. He refused to regard it as a closed book to all but experts. He was persuaded that the humblest believer might read it with spiritual understanding. It was this conviction that led Luther to undertake the translation of the Bible into German—perhaps his greatest monument still. In his Letter on Translating he tells us that his aim was to render the divine message in the language of “the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the market place” (P.E. Vol. V, p. 15). “There is not on earth a book more lucidly written than the Holy Scripture,” he declared. “Compared with all other books, it is as the sun compared with all other lights” (Comm.Ps. 37).

The Word Itself Is Clear

Luther does not deny that some passages of Scripture are hard to understand. But they are so, he argues, “not because they are too high for us, but because of our ignorance of words and grammar” hence his insistence upon a knowledge of the original tongues. But Luther further distinguishes between the intelligibility of the contents of Scripture (evidentia rerum) and the clarity of words (claritas verborum) through which the revealed content is communicated. Mysteries there will always be, for frail reason can never climb up into the divine majesty. The things of God (res Dei) will always be in part incomprehensible to the human mind, but the things of Scripture (res Scripturae) are always clear. Nevertheless, all essential doctrines and precepts are plain to every believer.

Luther does not approve the indiscriminate concatenation of Bible texts without due respect to their meaning and context. He was aware that heretics were fond of such proof, as Irenaeus had complained. “Heretofore I have held that where something was to be proved by the Scriptures,” says Luther, “the Scriptures quoted must really refer to the point at issue. I learn now that it is enough to throw many passages together helter skelter whether they are fit or not. If this is to be the way, then I can easily prove from the Scriptures that beer is better than wine” (W.A. Vol. VI, p. 301). The exegete must keep in view the total teaching of Scripture. “It behoves the theologian, if he would avoid error, to have regard to the whole of Scripture, and compare contraries with contraries” (Opera Latina, Vol. III).

Luther strongly insists upon the primacy of the literal sense. He resolutely sets aside all the verbal jugglery involved in multiple interpretation and firmly takes his stand upon the plain and obvious significance of the Word. “The literal sense of Scripture alone,” he asserts, “is the whole essence of faith and Christian theology” (quoted in F. W. Farrar History of Interpretation, p. 327). And again, “If we wish to handle Scripture aright, our sole effort will be to obtain the one simple, seminal and certain literal sense” (ibid.).

Principles Of Exegesis

Luther believes that every portion of Scripture can be interpreted “in a simple, direct and indisputable way” (P.E. Vol. I, p. 320). He prefers to speak of the grammatical and historical rather than of the literal sense, and fearlessly advances it in the face of his opponents. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his controversy with Jerome Emser, secretary to Duke George of Saxony and Court Chaplain, whom he addressed as the Leipzig Goat. As Steimle has noted, “Luther goes straight to the fundamental difference between them, the sole authority of Holy Scripture in matters of faith and the right exposition of Scripture according to its grammatical sense. Over against Emser’s position, that he would fight with the sword (i.e. the word of Scripture), but that he would not permit it to remain in the scabbard of the word sense, but use the naked blade of the spiritual secret sense, Luther, in the most important section of his answer, under the subtitle ‘The Letter and the Spirit,’ utters the foundation principles of Protestant exegesis” (P.E. Vol. III, pp. 279–280).

But with Luther this is clearly a preference and not an exclusion. Although he urges the primacy of the literal sense, it cannot be said that to sola Scriptura he adds the further principle sola historica sententia, as B. A. Gerrish claims in a recent article (Scottish Journal of Theology, December 1957, p. 346). Indeed the latter goes on to admit that Luther allowed the use of allegory, not as proof, but as ornament and in accordance with the analogia fidei which would accommodate it to Christ, the Church, faith and the ministry of the Word (W.A. Vol. XLII, p. 377). In effect, as Professor Aland brings out, Luther does concede a double meaning of Scripture, just as there is a double obscurity—an outward meaning obtained by the help of the Word and another that lies in the knowledge of the heart. That is why Luther lays so much stress upon the understanding of Scripture by faith. We must feel the words of Scripture in the heart, he says. “Experience is necessary for the understanding of the Word. It is not merely to be repeated or known, but to be lived and felt” (W.A. Vol. XLII, p. 195). Thus, although he is staunchly opposed to all the ‘monkey tricks’ (Affenspielen) of unbridled allegorization, he nevertheless admits a significance in Scripture beyond the strictly literal. The Lutheran dogmaticians elaborated this unsystematized insight into a distinction between the external and internal forma of Scripture. Quenstedt defined it thus: “We must distinguish between the grammatical and outer meaning of the Divine Word and the spiritual, inner and Divine meaning of the Divine Word. The first is the forma of the Word of God insofar as it is a word, the latter is its forma insofar as it is a Divine Word. The first can be grasped even by any unregenerate man, the latter, however, cannot be received except by a mind which has been enlightened” (Theologia, Vol. I, p. 56).

Christ The Key To Scripture

Luther’s interpretation of Scripture is at once Christocentric and Christological. It is Christocentric in that he regards Christ as the heart of the Bible. “Take Christ out of the Scripture and what more is there to find in it?” he asks Erasmus. “Scripture must be interpreted to mean nothing else but that man is nothing, Christ is all” (cf. E. C. Blackman, Biblical Interpretation, p. 117). Christ is “the sun and the truth in Scripture” (W.A. Vol. III, p. 643). Scripture contains “nothing but Christ and the Christian faith” (W.A. Vol. VIII, p. 236). And that assertion obtains for the Old Testament as well as for the New. “Here you will find the swaddling clothes and the manger in which Christ lies. Simple and small are the swaddling clothes, but dear is the treasure Christ that lies in them” (P.E. Vol. VI, p. 368). It might be said, as Blackman suggests, that for Luther Christ is both the literal and the spiritual sense of Scripture and that these two are one in Him (Op. cit., p. 120).

That leads us on to examine the Christological approach of Luther to Scripture, which is determinative for his whole hermeneutical programme. Luther’s recognition of the dual nature of Scripture is one of his most relevant insights. But its precise definition must be carefully observed. He realizes that Scripture is both human and divine, but he does not thereby open the door to the suggestion of fallibility. For he draws a deliberate analogy between Scripture and the person of Christ, between the Word written and the Word incarnate. Orthodox theology enjoins us to hold in tension the humanity and divinity of our Lord. We have to confess that He was both fully man and fully God. It is a heresy to deny either. Docetism erred in overlooking His humanity; Psilanthropism erred in denying His divinity. The same sort of problem confronts us in the Bible: namely, the reconciliation of the divine and human elements of the Word. Luther would insist that just as the accepted doctrine of Christ’s person, as expressed in the Chalcedonian formula, requires us to believe in the two natures of our Lord “without confusion, without mutation, without division, without separation,” so also we should recognize the twofold nature of Scripture and hold both to its full humanity and its full divinity. “The Church must devlop its doctrine of the Scriptures,” says Emil Brunner, “on the same lines as the doctrine of the two natures. The Bible shares in the glory of the Divinity of Christ and in the lowliness of His humanity” (Revelation and Reason, p. 276). Luther would concur. But he would not therefore draw the unconvincing conclusion that Brunner does from his assertion, when he writes elsewhere: “Naturally, the Scripture is an historical document written by men and, to that extent, also participating in the frailty of all that is human, in the relativity of all that is historical. Men must first have forgotten what to come in the flesh, to become historical, meant, to be able to set up a doctrine of an infallible Bible book” (Der Protestantismus der Gegenwart, p. 254: cited in Inspiration and Interpretation, ed. J. W. Walvoord, p. 230). As Dr. Paul K. Jewett, who has recently submitted Brunner’s conception of revelation and inspiration to critically penetrating analysis, points out with compelling pertinence, “what Brunner nowhere makes clear is why this dualism, which renders impossible an infallibly written revelation, is no barrier to an infallible personal revelation in Christ” (Emil Brunner’s Conception of Revelation, p. 165). Luther, on the other hand, presses the analogy between the Incarnation and the nature of Scripture to its logical limit in what we have called his Christological approach. The human element of Scripture is no more liable to error than was the human nature of Christ. It is within the sanctions imposed by such a principle that the whole of Luther’s hermeneutics moved.

This short survey of a great body of sound hermeneutrical material may at least serve to underline the pivotal significance of Luther’s biblical interpretation and its relevance to current discussions. Well does Dr. Robert M. Grant in The Bible and the Church claim that Luther’s contribution in this sphere has “permanent value for the interpretation of Scripture.… Today the reviving theological interpretation of the Bible must look back to him” (p. 117), And we are witnessing this return in strength.

END

A. Skevington Wood has served many Methodist pastorates in Scotland and England, last among these the superintendency of Paisley Central Hall from 1951–57. He holds the B.A. degree from University of London and the Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh where he majored in Church History.

According to the Report of this year’s Lambeth Conference, “the vast majority of people in the Anglican Communion, while rejecting the crudities of the medieval conceptions of purgatory, are quite sure that the fact of death does not remove the need for and the appropriateness of praying for the departed that God will fulfill his perfect will in them; and that such prayer is both natural and right.” If this is really so, then we certainly would not feel disposed to dispute the Report’s further assertion that “there is evidently need for a fresh study from the Bible of the whole question.”

Last year saw the publication in London of the Report of a select committee of the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon entitled Principles of Prayer Book Revision. The compilers of this Report (which is not without its virtues) seek to justify the inclusion in their Church’s proposed new Prayer Book of prayers for the departed on the grounds of sentiment: in particular, “the instinct of natural piety—or Christian charity—which rebels against the idea that those whom we have loved enough during their earthly pilgrimage to have them regularly in our prayers must be excluded from them because they have died.” This, we are assured, “amounts to a recognition that the ruthless surgery of the Reformers in excising all prayer for the departed from the Prayer Book, however much it may have been justified in the sixteenth century, is no longer tolerable, now that the more flagrant abuses connected with the Romish doctrine of Purgatory have ceased to be a threat to true religion.”

It is misleading, however, to speak of the Reformers as having practised “ruthless surgery” in this matter. In point of fact, the decision to exclude all prayers for the departed was reached only gradually, as is shown by the fact that such prayer was still to be found in the first (1549) Prayer Book of Edward VI, and was finally excluded only in the second (1552) book. The reason for this exclusion was not merely the abuses of Rome, but primarily the conviction, reached through a close study of Holy Scripture, that prayer for the dead is altogether without sanction in God’s Word. This being so, in the interests of truth, the fathers of the Reformation could not permit themselves to be governed by sentiment.

It is, moreover, unwise, not to say dangerous, to allow sentiment, however pious, to dictate what is and what is not legitimate in Christian worship. On this basis, all teaching concerning God’s wrath and judgment should be expunged and universalism embraced, and the cross of Christ evacuated of its holy moral force. Natural piety is then elevated to a saving virtue.

To imagine that doctrine can be divorced from practice is also thoroughly unrealistic. The Report, however, in acknowledging that the inclusion of such prayers “involves a change of Anglican practice,” adds that “it does not necessarily follow from this admission that it involves a change of doctrine.” In view of the fact that it was on doctrinal grounds that prayers for the dead were originally excluded, it is difficult to see how their introduction can fail to involve a change of doctrine.

The doctrine of the New Testament is plain enough, namely, (1) that those who have died in unbelief are past praying for, since they are on the farther side of that great gulf which none may cross over (Lk. 16:26; cf. Heb. 9:27); and (2) that those who have fallen asleep in the Lord are now with Christ (Phil. 1:23), at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:7), and therefore not in need of our prayers. In Holy Scripture, which contains so many exhortations to prayer, the silence concerning prayer for the dead is not merely significant, it is conclusive. Had Christ and his Apostles approved the practice, it is certainly strange that it should not have been commended in a passage such as 1 Thess. 4:13 ff. where Paul is writing expressly “concerning them that fall asleep.” Here, as elsewhere, however, the teaching of calm and confident assurance regarding the well-being and security of those who fall asleep in Christ only serves to show how incongruous prayer for the dead is in the scriptural view of things.

The complete silence of the Apostolic Fathers regarding this practice must also be taken into account. To say that “from the middle of the second century onwards there is irrefutable, nay overwhelming, testimony from the catacombs and other Christian epitaphs of the Christian belief that the prayers of the living avail for the dead” does not demonstrate the correctness of the practice, for it is well-known that from the second century onwards many false beliefs and practices gained currency, and even in some cases official sanction, within the Church. Shades of Tract XC rise before us when we read that Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the English Church, while condemning the Romish doctrine of purgatory, “leaves it open to Anglicans to believe that some other form of purification may await redeemed but imperfect souls after death”! The New Testament knows no other means of purification from sin than the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7). By his one offering Christ has perfected forever those who are sanctified (Heb. 10:14).

“The only purgatory wherein we must trust to be saved,” says the Anglican Homily concerning Prayer, “is the death and blood of Christ; which if we apprehend with a true and steadfast faith, it purgeth and cleanseth us from all our sins, even as well as if He were now hanging upon the cross.… This then is that purgatory wherein all Christian men must put their whole trust and confidence, nothing doubting but, if they truly repent them of their sins, and die in perfect faith, that then they shall forthwith pass from death to life. If this kind of purgation will not serve them, let them never hope to be released by other men’s prayers, though they should continue therein unto the world’s end.… Let us not therefore dream either of purgatory, or of prayer for the souls of them that be dead; but let us earnestly and diligently pray for kings and rulers, for ministers of God’s holy word and sacraments, for the saints of this world, otherwise called the faithful, to be short, for all men living.”

The true Christian attitude regarding the faithful departed is thus one of joy and complete confidence, knowing that for them to die is gain (Phil. 1:21), and that those who have died in the Lord are indeed blessed (Rev. 14:13). So far, then, from being a gain to the Church, prayer for the dead brings in a note of doubt and uncertainty concerning the bliss and well-being of those who have fallen asleep in Christ, and thus tends to rob the believer of one of the most precious emphases of Holy Scripture. It is a practice which dishonours Christ and the fulness, perfection, and sufficiency of his work of redemption for us sinners.

Exposition And Doctrine

Luther’s Works, Vol. 1, Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1–5, translated by George V. Schick (Concordia, 1958, 387 pp., $5), is reviewed by F. R. Webber, author of A History of Preaching.

Here is the first of a set of 55 good sized volumes that may well be one of the most significant publication projects of our generation. Several volumes have appeared recently, and others will be released at the rate of four a year.

There have been many editions of Luther’s collected writings, such as Weimar, 80 vols.; Wittenberg, 19 vols., Jena, 15 vols.; Altenberg, 11 vols.; Leipzig, 23 vols.; Walch, 24 vols.; Erlangen-Frankfurt, 102 vols.; Lenker, 13 vols.; St. Louis, 23 vols.; Holman, 6 vols. and Calwer, 6 vols. Of these, Weimar is by far the most scholarly. Most of these are in Latin and German. Single volumes are so numerous that the listing fills 105 double column pages, set in the smallest of type, in the British Museum’s 1946 catalogue.

The new 55-volume edition of Luther’s collected writings is an effort to make Luther speak in idiomatic English. They are based upon the Weimar edition of 1883 ff., whose 80 volumes, each the size of a pulpit Bible, fill eight shelves of standard public library size.

Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1–5, will prove a revelation to readers who think of Luther as a defiant man, who shook his fist at popes and councils, and challenged them to prove their arguments by means of clear Scripture verses. In this series of expository lectures we meet with a genial Luther in his peaceful lecture room at Wittenberg University, with a Hebrew Bible before him, explaining the text in simple, winsome language.

Luther’s expositions of Genesis began on June 3, 1535 and ended January 18, 1544. They were delivered in Latin. Having reached Genesis 50:26, Luther laid aside his Latin notes and said: “Das ist nu der liebe Genesis. Unser Herr Gott geb, dases andere nach mir besser machen.” He died February 18, 1546, at the age of 63.

Luther expounded Genesis in Latin, verse by verse and word by word. Points of grammar are mentioned only when necessary to make the meaning clear, and there is no effort at display of his knowledge of Hebrew. The first dozen pages of Genesis 1–5 may prove unfamiliar ground to the reader, for Luther presents a summary of the curious notions of the universe, as taught by the philosophers of his day. Except for these opening pages, the style is delightfully simple and clear.

Luther wasted no time with speculation. He was convinced that the heavens and the earth were created just as the inspired words of Moses state, and that the entire work of creation, in which Father, Son and Holy Ghost all participated, was finished in six days. He admits again and again that there are details which he cannot understand, but he says, “I, therefore, take my reason captive and subscribe to the Word, even though I do not understand it” (p. 26).

The expositions of Genesis are more than a verse-by-verse commentary. Luther includes much doctrinal teaching: the Holy Trinity, the origin of all created things, the sin of Adam and its transmission to the entire human race, the deterioration of mankind and of all other created things because of sin, and the gracious plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. He mentions the redeeming work of the Saviour again and again. As a commentary the book is exegetical, doctrinal, devotional, homiletical and practical, and always in simple language that reads easily. A sample of Luther’s style may prove of interest:

“Now here, too, a sea of questions arises. Inquisitive people ask why God permitted Satan to tempt Eve. Furthermore, why Satan waylaid Eve through the serpent rather than through a different animal. But who can supply the reason for the things that he sees the Divine Majesty has permitted to happen? Why do we not rather learn with Job that God cannot be called to account and cannot be compelled to give us the reason for everything He does or permits to happen? Why do we not likewise register a complaint with God because the earth does not produce plants and because the trees are not green throughout the year? I am fully convinced that in Paradise there would have been perpetual spring without any winter, without snow or frosts, such as we have today after sin. But these are all things under the divine power and will. To know this is enough. Besides, it is wicked curiosity to investigate these problems in greater detail. Therefore let us, who are clay in His hands, cease to discuss such questions. Let us not sit in judgment on our God; let us rather be judged by Him” (p. 144).

The translator of the first volume of Luther’s Works is the Rev. Dr. George V. Schick, professor of Hebrew and Old Testament interpretation at Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis. Born in Chicago, Dr. Schick has studied at Johns Hopkins, Leipzig and Berlin. He taught Oriental history at Johns Hopkins, and later he taught Hebrew at Concordia College, Ft. Wayne, before taking up his present work at Concordia Seminary 20 years ago. He is author of two text books on biblical Hebrew, and served on the editorial board of the Lutheran Witness for 46 years.

Occasionally, in the other volumes of this series now in print (by other translators), the effort at idiomatic English is marred by clichés which seem strange in a serious theological or exegetical work. Fortunately these blemishes are rare, and they include such expressions as “he came up with,” “in this area,” and “on this level.” In a work of this scope, meaning, of course, the entire set of 55 volumes, which may become to the reader of English almost a Weimar edition, it might have proved more agreeable had the Authorized Version of 1611 been used uniformly throughout. The 1611 translation has survived about 500 revised Bibles and portions of Bibles, and it is difficult to believe that a version that translates logos as “expressed Himself” will prove more than a passing fad. Most of us can quote the 1611 version, and without the annoyance of having to explain our explanations. Our shelves of commentaries, concordances and numerous textual helps are based upon this version, and with its matchless beauty of language, it seems more in character with a 55-volume undertaking of Luther’s Works in English.

F. R. WEBBER

Women Of Scripture

She Shall be Called Woman by Frances Vander Velde (Grand Rapids International Publications, 258 pp., $2.95); and All of the Women of the Bible by Edith Deen (Harper, 410 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Norma Ellis, wife and mother in a Presbyterian Manse.

It may seem that there are enough books based upon the women of the Bible that another would have nothing new or fresh to offer. But Mrs. Vander Velde, in gathering together these materials, which have been used in many study groups, has now offered for wider use a “gallery of character sketches” that deserve commendation.

Mrs. Vander Velde discloses in her Preface that she has had the “pleasure to become intimately acquainted with these women” and she succeeds in sharing this intimacy. In her book, 31 women-saints and sinners become flesh and blood. She presents enough background to disclose the problems they faced and the emotions they experienced. Then, by awaking an interest and by posing a number of pointed questions after each woman’s life, she presents the challenge to search the Scriptures further.

These “Suggestions for Discussion” contain, in addition to questions bearing directly on the Scripture, questions calculated to cause the reader to evaluate the behavior or motive of these Bible characters and sometimes of contemporary Christendom. This practical application, appropriate particularly to women, is what chiefly makes this book excellent for study and discussion groups.

Mrs. Vander Velde’s own unquestioning belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God gives the book the ring of certainty. At one point, however, one wishes she were less dogmatic with reference to a question upon which conservative scholars do not take a united stand: namely, her identity of Salome, wife of Zebedee, as the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

A second study book on women of the Bible is All of the Women of the Bible by Edith Deen. Anyone desiring to do serious study on the women of the Bible would of necessity consult this book. It is unique in its field because of its completeness.

Mrs. Deen groups all of the women of the Bible in various sections and then has a helpful index. Her book contains “316 concise biographies, including 25 searching studies of women in the foreground, more than 125 shorter sketches of named women and more than 125 sketches of nameless women in the background.” The sketches vary in length from 12 pages to one sentence. Among the short ones are found such women as the nurse who let Mephibosheth fall and a silly woman mentioned in 2 Timothy 3:6, 7.

Unlike Mrs. Vander Velde’s book, this one presents arguments from several points of view, by no means all conservative. In her discussion concerning Salome, for instance, she speaks of her son John in this wise: “He may have written the Fourth Gospel, though some scholars question this.”

Edith Deen is well known as a writer and commentator on women’s affairs. Several years ago she ran a series of articles in her newspaper column on “Great Women of the Bible.” It was the tremendous response to this series that led into further research, in which her Mayor husband joined, resulting in this book.

Although it lacks the ring of personal conviction that attracts the Christian reader to Mrs. Vander Velde’s book, its fine presentation and the extensive research that went into it cause it to be very valuable for the church or pastor’s library.

NORMA R. ELLIS