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‘Being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you.’
1Pe_3:15 (R.V.)
I. In defence of the Christian position.—We are Christians, most of us, by inheritance. Born in a Christian land, of Christian parents, we have been ‘called,’ in God’s good Providence, ‘to this state of salvation.’ But this is not sufficient reason. The mere accident of birth cannot be enough. On this principle a heathen by birth should remain a worshipper of many gods, or a Mohammedan remain a Moslem. In our case indeed the circumstance of our birth is a blessing; it is on the right side, and in our favour. But it brings a responsibility with it. It will add to our condemnation if we have had the light from our entrance into the world, and yet have not apprehended or used it intelligently.
(a) A Christian believes in the Founder of Christianity, in the Christ of history, not only of theology. As we read the Gospels of the life of Christ we cannot help being struck not only by His work and His teaching, but by what He says about Himself. ‘Come unto Me’ is His constant cry to men. It is this which primarily distinguishes Him from the rest of teachers, not because He was guilty of self-assertion, but because it was true. And he who would be a Christian must take Christ at His own estimate of Himself; we must believe Him to be Who and What He said He was.
(b) A Christian believes what He taught.—We cannot separate the Teacher from His teaching. We cannot say that He was the best of men, but that His teaching was untrue and not to be believed, for then the best of men would be the worst of teachers. And this is an impossible position for any reasoning man to take; it is a reductio ad absurdum.
II. What did Christ teach?—What does He tell us which we accept as true because we are Christians and believe in the Christ Who said it?
(a) Christianity, as He teaches it, is a philosophy which guides us into all the truth, if we will but follow it patiently. In every religion worthy the name there is to be found some grain or grains of truth, but in Christianity we have a mine of priceless wisdom.
(b) Christianity is a moral system which leads to righteousness towards God and man. This is the essence of the religion of Christ. Nothing in it takes the place of right doing. Wherever Christianity has made its way, it has been a new and potent force for righteousness in the world, whether ancient or modern.
(c) Christianity is a revelation of man to himself. It tells man what for long centuries he has tried to find out, and has failed. ‘What am I? Whence came I? Whither am I going?’ men have asked. There have been many answers, but none of them have satisfied the longings of men until Christ came.
(d) Christianity is a revelation of God to man. It is only in Christ we can know God as a loving Father.
(e) Christianity gives man a new motive for right doing. Not merely admiration for the good nor fear of the consequences had proved sufficient to transform man. But Christ revealed the true secret. What admiration or fear could not do, love alone effected.
(f) Christianity throws a light on the mystery of evil in God’s world. Christ teaches us that evil is a disease, and points us to a remedy for the disease which no other teacher had discovered. ‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the Propitiation for our sin.’
(g) Christianity is a religion for all. Its teaching is so profound that the wisest cannot exhaust it, and yet so simple that the unlearned peasant and the little child can find sweetness in its truths. It is for all, and so in every land where it has been carried it has taken root.
(h) Christianity has been tried and proved by the experience of nations and individuals. True, its progress has not been a triumphal march nor the upheaval of revolution, but as certainly it has not been a failure in the world. As Christ said would be the case, it has made its way quietly and slowly, like the leaven or the seed, in the heart of individuals and peoples.
If this be the Christ, and this be Christianity, then let each professing Christian be at the trouble to think and learn and pray, and he will find in these and other aspects of the question strong and sufficient reason why he should in very truth call himself by the name of Christ.
—
Bishop C. J. Ridgeway.
THE AUTHORITY FOR THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
I. On what grounds we rest that belief.—There can be no question, moreover, which has been of more practical moment in Christian controversies, especially in the later history of the Church. It is the primary controversy between ourselves and the Church of Rome. Their whole system is based on the assumption that the ultimate authority for Christian faith resides in the Church and that the voice of the Church is that of the Pope. Whatever authority they may allow to the Scriptures, yet the interpretation of the Scriptures rests with the Church and the Pope, and consequently upon his infallibility the whole system ultimately depends. Our Church, on the contrary, recognises in the Scriptures the sole authority for our faith in all matters necessary to salvation; ‘so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.’ It expressly repudiates the infallibility even of General Councils. ‘They may,’ it says, ‘err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.’ This was the first and cardinal controversy at the time of the Reformation; there are few questions more carefully discussed by our great divines, and we have therefore abundant assistance from them in the consideration of it.
II. Our acceptance of the Scriptures as the Word of God cannot, according to our Church, be based on the authority of the Church.—The Church as a whole can only speak by General Councils; and if General Councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God, it follows that no decision of a Council can be adequate ground for our belief on such a point. There may be good reason for accepting the decisions of such Councils, and we may in practice defer to them; and in point of fact our Article says that ‘fin the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.’ By that expression it cannot, of course, be meant that no doubts respecting them were ever entertained. No one can be ignorant—and our Reformers, who were, as I have said, deeply concerned in this controversy, were as well aware as any one—of such statements as that of the Church historian Eusebius, that in his day some books of the New Testament were generally acknowledged and some few were disputed. What the expression means, as is explained, for instance, by Cosin, is that the Church as a whole, and speaking authoritatively, never entertained any doubt of them. Many points, I suppose, have been disputed at law, respecting which, nevertheless, there has never been any general doubt. Doubtful points have been ruled by authority, and the hesitations of individuals have been overborne by superior judgment. Our Church accepts this general judgment; but she does so on her own judgment, and not, as she expressly explains, by virtue of any inherent authority in the Councils to decide the question. Any attempt, therefore, to base our faith in the Scriptures on the authority of the Church is directly contrary to the principles expressly affirmed in our Articles.
III. From first to last, the authority of the Scriptures has been equivalent to the authority with which they themselves convinced men that they came from God.—In point of fact, God Himself, according to the Scriptures, is making His voice heard among men. ‘At sundry times and in divers manners’ He spoke ‘in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets.’ He was always standing among them, as He is standing among us now. There are voices in the Scriptures which men cannot account for unless they be the voice of God. Men may try to do so. They may struggle in our own time, as they struggled in our Lord’s time, against that claim. We cannot expect the Scriptures, the written voice of Christ, to escape dispute in a higher degree than His living voice escaped it when He was upon earth. As there were plenty of men—nay, the majority—in His day, to deny that the living voice of the living Son of God was Divine at all, so there will never be a time in the history of the world when there will not be many—perhaps the time may again come when they will be the majority—to deny that the written voice of God is His. But that voice must defend itself. It is its own authority. Certainly, the attesting voice of the Church of all ages gives it a momentous claim to the reverence and the acceptance of reasonable and thoughtful men. It gives to each individual the invaluable assurance, in all moments of anxiety and doubt, of knowing that he shares the faith in which the greatest saints of past generations have lived and died. It assures us that, in trusting our souls for life and death to the promises and the guidance of those Sacred Scriptures, we are encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses. But still, in the last resort, it is on the voice of God Himself that we must rely. In proportion as we submit ourselves, with an honest and humble heart, to those Scriptures, shall we be sensible that a Divine voice is speaking to us in them, answering the Divine voice which is also speaking in our consciences; and we shall more and more be able to say, like the people of Samaria, who were brought to their Lord by the report of another, ‘Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’
—
Dean Wace.
Illustration‘No authoritative decision respecting the Canon of Scripture in the Christian Church can be quoted until the Council of Laodicea, after the middle of the fourth century. We have, indeed, evidence more or less clear respecting the books which, as a matter of fact, were regarded as authoritative in the Christian Church, and they are in the main those which we now recognise, though there are several variations. Some books were in early ages regarded as carrying sacred authority which were afterwards felt not to deserve such a position, and which have consequently fallen into disuse. Such were the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Epistle of Clement of Rome. But there is no evidence that the decision was made in the Church of the first three centuries by any general ecclesiastical authority. The books of the New Testament became recognised among Christians just as the books of the Old Testament had been recognised among the Jews, by virtue of their own inherent evidence. Certain witnesses came forward and recorded in writing the teaching of our Lord, or announced certain messages for which they had His authority, or the guidance of His Spirit in communicating them to their fellows. Men had to decide for themselves whether they believed those claims. The Apostles were supported, indeed, in many cases by miracles, but not always; and though those miracles afforded momentous evidence, they were not recognised in themselves, and standing alone, as decisive of the whole question. No apparent miracle, it was felt, could of itself authenticate a message from God, which did not bear internal evidence also of having proceeded from Him. The appeal, in short, in the early Church was directed, as in the time of our Lord Himself, to the hearts and consciences of men. He Himself could but appeal to those hearts and consciences, and men accepted or rejected Him, not by reference to any external authority, but in proportion to their capacity for recognising His Divine character.’
‘Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.’
1Pe_3:15
I. Its meaning.—Not to make the Lord holy; for He is ever holy, absolutely holy, independent of all our thought and feeling toward Him, so that we can neither change His nature nor His character.
(a) He is to be esteemed by us as holy. And that, too, under all circumstances. When providential dispensations are seemingly against us, and countless foes surround us, we must not allow our hearts to indulge disappointment and distrust, nor our tongues to utter complaints of injustice and partiality, but believe that all things are working together for our best interests; as ‘He is too wise to err, and too good to be unkind.’
(b) We are to desire that others should esteem Him as we do. We always wish that due regard be paid to the friend we love, and we are sensitive anent this exactly as we regard him ourselves. So of our Divine Friend: we breathe the prayer Jesus taught us through His disciples—‘Hallowed be Thy name,’ and would accordingly have His very appellation consecrated by every lip in every place.
II. Its observance.
(a) Not by a mere intellectual assent. The proposition that He is holy and worthy of trust is far from being all. Hosts of men think of Him as such: it is an article of their creed; but thousands regard Him as one-sided and cruel. They are sadly wrong in their heart. Not so must it be with us.
(b) Not by a mere formal devotion. This, though having the semblance of reality, may lack the feeling which should ever be associated with it, and indeed form the very life of it. The words of an adulator may be never so meet and eloquent; but what are they worth when false and hollow? The form is there, the spirit is absent. We sanctify the Lord in our hearts when we unfeignedly ascribe holiness to Him in all our praises and all our prayers.
(c) This devout homage must be rendered with befitting emotion. Isaiah specifies ‘dread’ and ‘fear’; St. Peter speaks of ‘meekness and fear.’ Not the overwhelming dread felt by the desert people when Sinai rocked with thunder and burned with fire, but the loving fear which he has who finds his chief happiness on earth in doing the will of his Father in heaven. This fear renders all other impossible; for love never dreads a friend, but delights in the mere thought of him. Fearing God, we have really nothing else to fear (Dan_3:16-18; Rom_8:31).