The Negotiated Word, Scriptural Authority and Christian Identity

“ The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture, and, therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. ”

“ As the Church became ever more convinced that the writings now constituting the New Testament were the only authoritative documents of the Apostolic Age, these other works were looked upon with suspicion, and finally were termed ‘apocrypha’ — that is, works whose origin was uncertain, whose contents were of doubtful character, and whose common use was not to be approved. This literature was extensive, and continued in circulation in spite of the disapproval of the more enlightened. ”

“ Thus Origen differentiates writings that were read in public worship from apocryphal works (Comm. in Matt. x. 18, xiii. 57) . This use became current, and prepared the way for the third and unfavourable sense of the word.
(3) The word came to be applied to what was false, spurious, or heretical. This meaning appears also in Origen, Prolog. in Cant. Cantic.: Lommatzsch, xiv. 325) .
§ 4. The attitude of the Christian Church to the Apocrypha.
The degree of estimation in which the apocryphal books have been held in the Church has varied with age and place. ”

“ All the Protestant churches in England and America, except the Church of England, reject their use in public worship. In French and English Bibles of the Sixteenth Century it was customary to bind up the Apocrypha between the authorized versions of the Old and New Testaments, but in the Seventeenth Century this ceased, and, as a consequence, this curious, interesting, and instructive part of Jewish literature acquired to a large extent merely scholarly interest. ”

“ All the books of the Apocrypha are comparatively modern. There is none of them, on the most favourable computation, which can be supposed to be older than the latest years of the Persian empire. They belong, therefore, to the age when the last great relicrious movement of the Old Testament under Ezra had passed away when prophecy had died out, and the nation had settled down to live under the Law, looking for guidance in religion, not to a continuance of new revelation, but to the written Word, and to the interpretations of the Scribes. ”

“ The types of Christian truth existing from the first gradually coalesced about the middle of the second century; when heretics, especially the Gnostics, appeared so formidable that a catholic church was developed. Along with this process, and as an important element in it, the writings of apostles and apostolic men were uncritically taken from tradition and elevated to the rank of divine documents. It was not the rise of new dissensions “within the church” which led to the first formation of a Christian canon ”

“ The exact principles that guided the formation of a canon in the earliest centuries cannot be discovered. Strictly speaking there were none. Definite grounds for the reception or rejection of books were not apprehended. The choice was determined by various circumstances, of which apostolic origin was the chief, though this itself was insufficiently attested; for if it be asked whether all the New Testament writings proceeded from the authors whose names they bear, criticism cannot reply in the affirmative. ”

“ The Old Testament was not brought down to the New; the New was raised to the Old. It is clear that the earliest church fathers did not use the books of the New Testament as sacred documents clothed with divine authority, but followed for the most part, at least till the middle of the second century, apostolic tradition orally transmitted. They were not solicitous about a canon circumscribed within certain limits. ”

“ A writing was considered canonical when a well-attested tradition put it among those composed by inspired men, apostles or others; and it had on that [pg 096] account a determining authority in matters of faith. Books which served as a rule of faith and were definitively set forth by the Church as divinely authoritative, were now termed canonical. The canon consisted of writings settled or determined by ecclesiastical law.288 Such was the idea added to the original acceptation of canon. To canonical were opposed apocryphal writings, i.e., heretical and fabricated ones ”

“ Now, the Catholic Church has ranked, for at least fourteen hundred years, many books as canonical, which your Protestant Church rejects as uncanonical. In the year 397, a Catholic council was held at Carthage, at which the learned and pious St. Augustine assisted. In that council, the canon of the Scripture, was satisfactorily determined; and in that very council, many books were declared to be canonical (that is, the inspired word of God,) which your Church, has had the audacity to tell the people, are not canonical, that is, they are not to be considered the inspired word of God. ”

“ The Catholics denounce the Protestant Bible, and the Protestants condemn the Catholic Bible, as being full of errors. A number of other churches and learned Christians might be named who had Bibles of their own selection and construction. And thus every book in the Bible has passed under the flaming sword of condemnation, and has been voted down by some ecclesiastical body or learned and devout Christian. Each church has either made out a Bible for itself, or accepted that which came the nearest teaching the doctrine of their own peculiar creed. ”

“ The Holy Scripture is infallible, as well the Old Testament, which is proposed anew to Christians by the church, as the New Testament, in which the clearer and more complete revelation is contained. Apostolic tradition is infallible, and therefore Catholic tradition, which is an unerring transmission of it, is also infallible. ”

“ It requires something more than the Bible to guide man to eternal life. It requires divine inspiration, it requires the Holy Ghost, it requires the Priesthood, as it existed in ancient, days, to be restored ”

“ The condition of Christendom alone is, of itself, sufficient to prove to every reasoning mind that if there is a God in heaven, as we know there is; that if there is such a principle as divine revelation, which we declare to be true; if there are such beings surrounding the throne of God as angels, of which we bear testimony, there never was a greater necessity for angels to be sent to earth, or for revelation to be given to man, than in the day in which we live. Some may say that we have the Bible and its divine teachings to peruse at our leisure ”

“ This is the reason why, even at the outset of an argument, and before we are entitled to cite the authority of tradition as divine to one who denies it, we refuse to permit the case to be argued on the scriptural ground alone, even though both parties admit the divine authority of Scripture. We desire to do something more than to make a good case, and to establish our interpretation as even the more probable or the most probable. ”

“ For how can an usage ever obtain, which has not first been given by tradition? But you say, even though tradition can be produced, still a written (Scripture) authority must be demanded. Let us examine, then, how far it is true, that an Apostolic tradition itself, unless written in Scripture, is inadmissible. Now I will give up the point at once, if it is not already determined by instances of other observances, which are maintained without any Scripture proof, on the mere plea of tradition, and the sanction of consequent custom. ”

“ We deny the ability of our adversaries to establish the authority of Scripture without first assuming Catholic principles, and we deny their logical and moral right after using these principles in establishing Scripture, to throw away or burn their ladder by denying or ignoring these same principles when it is a question of establishing the sense of the Scripture, explaining or integrating its statements. ”

“ The people of this country, being Protestants, appeal to Scripture, when a religious question arises, as their ultimate informant and decisive authority in all such matters; but who is to decide for them the previous question, that Scripture is really such an authority? When, then, as at this time, its divine authority is the very point to be determined, that is, the character and extent of its inspiration and its component parts, then they find themselves at sea, without possessing any power over the direction of their course. ”

“ What radical reforms would be made in modern worship, teaching and practice,—in the whole conduct of disciples and the administration of the church of God,—if the one final criterion of all judgment were: What do the Scriptures teach?' And what revolutions in our own lives as believers might take place, if we should first put every notion of truth and custom of life to this one test of scripture authority, and then with the courage of conviction dare to do according to that word—counting no cost, but studying to show ourselves approved of God! ”

“ You have elected to exchange your feelings of authoritative certainty for the assurances of the spirit of adventurous and progressive faith. You have dared to protest against the grueling bondage of institutional religion and to reject the authority of the traditions of record which are now regarded as the word of God. ”

“ Let me show how such unsound teaching of the essentials of Christian doctrine as denying the deity of Christ will exert its baneful influence upon the mind of the believer, especially upon the mind of the newly converted Christian in a heathen land. Be sure that the belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is not one of the non-essentials of the Christian doctrine, as those New Theologians try to make us believe, but it is the very life and essence of Christianity. If you take away this belief from the Christian faith it will die. ”

“ And yet what is progressive orthodoxy, so boldly and ably enunciated, but a growing away from the old Andover creed?
Or is it only a question of emphasis, not of dogma? Are we to infer that the old dogma abides, while only the emphasis alters? It may be that progressive orthodoxy is not what it professes to be, that instead of giving religious thought a definite impulse and being a necessary onward step in sacred learning, religious thought is only receiving a richer and deeper volume as it lies in its old bed. ”

“ But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight? What will become of their endless hell—their doctrine of the future anguish of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending gnashing of teeth. Man will discard the idea of such a future—because there is now a growing belief in the justice of a Supreme Being.
Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? ”

“ It directed its attacks partly against the secularization of the church, branching out often into wild fanaticism and rigorism, and partly against superstition and externalism. Disgusted with the interminable theological controversies and heresy huntings of that age, many came to regard the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy as a matter of indifference so far as religion is concerned, and to look for the core and essence of Christianity not so much in doctrine as in morals. ”

“ If for the new school of critics to succeed means that the orthodox view respecting Jesus of Nazareth, and the religion he founded must be entirely overthrown by being driven out of existence, then the new criticism is an "attack" which has "failed," for orthodox Christianity, that is, the Christianity which recognizes Christ as divine—as God, and the New Testament as divinely inspired and stating the substantial facts of Messiah's life—is still with us. ”

“ God's orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though man's orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it. What hope has any man, even a St. Paul—what hope had even the Lord Himself—before the harsh, [Pg 247] self-interested tribunals of human judgment, or of that purely external religionism which has always shown itself more brutal and more blundering than secular cruelty? What chance has there been, humanly speaking, for God's best saints, prophets, and reformers, when priests, popes, or inquisitors have been their judges? ”

“ Such a prejudice arose against the earlier advancement of astronomy and geology, and the new conclusions arrived at were ‘denounced in the interests of Christian orthodoxy,’ simply because those who denounced them believed them to be untrue. It is a little sad, though withal a little amusing, to observe how many persons, eminent at once for piety and Protestantism, inveigh against the Papal assumption of infallibility, while assuming an infallibility of their own. They know precisely what is Scripture doctrine and what is not. ”

“ The answer is given to the question, Why does orthodoxy believe in the efficacy of Christ's blood to save the souls of men? "It is because man distrusts his reason, and invents the infallible church, and then the infallible Scriptures, to supply his necessity of anchorage. He cannot think the God of the universe can be willing to save such a miserable sinner, [Pg 557] and he invents a God of the church, who will. He does not believe anything men can do will entitle them to heaven, or that human lives can make them acceptable in the sight of God." ”

“ More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together.
Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect. What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what is true. ”