THE BIBLIOTHECA SACRA. ARTICLE I. AUTHENTICITY AND INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.1 BY THE REV. JAMES H. FAIRCHILD, D.D., EX-PRESIDENT OF I. AUTHENTICITY. 1. THE Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments purport to contain revelations or communications from God to man. They are a history of his manifestations to the race. No more important question can arise than this: What place in our study of religion and theology are we to give to these Scriptures? Are they a true record of the events and communications which they present? If they are substantially correct, if the events which they record really occurred, then the Scriptures must be accepted as the chief source of our knowledge of God, and of religion. They are a revelation of God to men. 2. Our inquiry then is as to the truth of the Scripture record. But here we need to discriminate. We have no occasion to inquire as to the truth of the general ethical [ This article consists of chapters vii. and ix. from a forthcoming volume comprising the lectures upon Systematic Theology which President Fairchild has been in the habit of giving to his classes.-EDS.] teachings of the Scriptures; for example, the ten commandments, or the sermon on the mount, or of other prominent statements of ethical principles. We know these to be true, in the nature of the case. That they come to us by God's direct intervention, is an interesting and important fact; but this is not essential to our conviction of their truth. We know the Scriptures to be ethically true, by a direct survey of their contents. The same can be said of the great essential doctrines of religion contained in the Scriptures. They are seen to be true in their own light. That God exists, the creator and ruler of the universe, infinite in wisdom and power, and perfect in goodness; that men come under the law of obligation, the law of God, and are responsible to him in reference to all their conduct; that they are bound to reverence and worship him, to love him supremely, and their neighbors as themselves these great doctrines we know to be true. A revelation may give higher motives to the performance of these duties, but does not change the obligation. These • fundamental points of doctrine and of duty are not involved in our inquiry as to the truth of the Scriptures. The essential point of the inquiry is, are the Scriptures historically true? Is the record which they give of the manifestations of God to men, in the history of the Jewish people, and in the advent and life and teachings of Jesus Christ, an authentic and reliable record? Are the Scriptures essentially true as history? But here let us observe that absolute truthfulness is not necessarily required. If the Scriptures are essentially true-that is, true as other ancient historical writings, then they contain a revelation from God, and we have a revealed religion. 3. Again, the received Scriptures are composed of many parts. We have not only the Old Testament and the New, the first containing the ancient Hebrew writings, the last the later Greek writings, but these again are made up of many books, sixty-six in all, written by different authors, in different ages, some more distinctly connected with the history of God's manifestations than others, each book having its own special evidence, and resting on its own foundation. The truth or falsity of one of these books does not necessarily involve the others. We might not be able to establish the truth of a score of these, and still the essential historical truth of the Scriptures might stand. Indeed, if one of the Gospels can be shown to be historically true, then Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into the world, and Christianity is established as a divinely revealed religion. It is true that if one of the Gospels be historically true. then other large portions of the Scriptures must be also true, and there can be very little question about any essential portion; and Christianity cannot be invalidated by setting aside any less essential part. We must not confound the question of the essential historical truthfulness of the Scriptures with the determination of what is called the sacred canon; that is, the settlement of the question, what books are to be accepted as belonging to the sacred record. The determination of the canon is an important work; but any doubt which may attach to this question does not pertain to the fundamental question of the truthfulness of the Scriptures, or of Christianity itself. The determination of the canon belongs to Biblical literature rather than to theology proper. 4. We are not to overlook the fact that the unity and interdependence of the different parts of the Scriptures are such that if any considerable or characteristic portion be accepted as true, it is scarcely possible to question the rest; and nothing is made against Christianity by such questioning. Admit the Gospels, then the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles follow. The New Testament carries with it the Old, and either of these essential parts gives us revealed religion, with all its essential doctrines. 5. In our inquiry as to the historical truthfulness of the Scriptures, it is better to begin with the New Testament, especially with the Gospels. They come nearer to us in time, and thus are more fully connected with the historical period. The facts they present are more accessible to us. It will be easy to pass from the New Testament to the Old. It This is the natural method, but not the necessary one. would not be difficult to find sufficient direct evidence of the historical credibility of the Old Testament. The materials. for such an argument are abundant, and modern research is continually adding to our resources in this direction. 6. The primary question then is, are the historical books of the New Testament a truthful record of events? Are they reliable history? In pursuing this inquiry we can only touch the salient points and present a mere outline of the argument. To expand these points, or present them minutely, would furnish work for an entire theological course. It would require a volume for each prominent point in the argument. The inquiry might here be made, why single out these ancient writings of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, as the objects of investigation, rather than other sacred books. which exist in the world-the Vedas of the Brahmin, the Zend-Avesta of the Parsee, the Soutras of the Buddhist, the Koran of the Mohammedan? The answer is, simply, because of the importance of the contents of these Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. No other books can compare with them, in this respect. The other books, in comparison, are not historical to any considerable extent, and are not weighty It matters little what their origin may in their contents. be. We will accept them for what they are worth; and this seems to be very little. The highest compliment that can be offered to any of these books is to find some faint resemblance, in some minute portion, to a passage of our sacred Scriptures. If we have any books that come with divine authority, and are worthy of the attention of the world, they are the books of the Christian Scriptures. 7. It is a strong argument in favor of the historical truth of the Gospels, that for ages they have been received as history, and that this reception began in the region where the events are said to have occurred, and in the same age, or as near to it as research can bring us. Their historical truthfulness is the natural explanation of this fact. Such a fact throws the burden of proof upon the objector; he must ascribe some other origin for the books than their historical truthfulness. He must maintain that they are a fiction, composed for entertainment, or with a sinister purpose, to impose a false religion upon men; or they are the natural outgrowth of a religious enthusiasm. Some such theory must be maintained by one who denies the truthfulness of the Scriptures; but it will be found to be a mere hypothesis, utterly improbable in itself and unsustained by any evidence. Considerations like the following set aside forever such a hypothesis. (1) The books are ancient and can be traced back to the times of the events which they record. Very ancient manuscripts of the books are found, proving the existence of the books as early as A. D. 350. Translations into the Latin and Syriac were made near the close of the second century. The Peshito, a Syriac version, is traced back to the latter part of the second century. The Latin Vulgate, prepared by Jerome in the fourth century, was rendered necessary by the great variety of Latin texts then in existence. References to the books, and quotations from them, can be found in the writings of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Justin Martyr, showing that the books were in existence, and were widely diffused, and relied upon as authority, as early as the first half of the second So wide a diffusion, in that age, would have required all the time available between the middle of the first century. |