Letter to a young friend
My dear W——
You say that you would like me to take up the question of the authority of Scripture from the point of view of my own spiritual development. I will endeavour to tell you what helped me, though, in the main, help on these lines comes mostly imperceptibly, though none the less surely.
I made a confession of Christ when very young. Looking back I can see how feeble and shallow was my hold on divine things. The enemy soon took advantage of this and I was faced with posers. Smart avowedly infidel writers produced arguments that well nigh bowled me over. However one bit of Scripture helped me at that time. That was the history of the Jews. I could not explain their history apart from divine arrangements. I saw clearly there was something quite supernatural in the Jew maintaining his nationality spite of living in foreign lands for centuries where assimilation and absorption in all similar cases would have done their work or incorporated them tracelessly in the nations with whom they dwelt. I saw all this foretold in the Scriptures and have ever been thankful for this help in days of immaturity and of peril. This was my first conscious touch with Scripture when faced with a crisis.
Then all through life I have recognized personally what the Chinese convert said: “The Bible knows all about me, so I conclude that the One who made me made the Bible.” The Chinaman did not mean that the Bible knew all that he had done, but it knew the inner working of man’s heart, even the exemplary Apostle Paul said, “I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Rom. 7:7). The word of God, the law, came to him and revealed himself to him. What could do this but the word of God?
Should man have ever known that he had spirit as well as soul but for the Scriptures? But once we are informed as to this we can detect the working of spirit and soul in our bodies. Does not Hebrews 4:12-13, bear this out, where the passage glides from the word of God to its Author, thus declaring that when the word of God comes in searching power to my soul, it is God Himself who is speaking? Hence the deep importance of the practice of reading the Scriptures.
Another thing impressed me much, and that was the saintly lives of Christians I knew. Dr. Graham Scroggie says, “Books may inform and reform,—the Bible transforms” and it is the only book that does. Transformation comes from outside and above oneself in every particular. I found the Word of God exerted this force in many lives I knew, and it impressed me greatly. A tree is known by its fruit, and the fruit of the Spirit manifested in human lives convinced me of the goodness and divinity of the Bible. One could expatiate on this theme till volumes were filled, so ample is the testimony all down the ages.
I found many things in the Bible that I could not understand or explain, and this in two ways; (1) things manifestly beyond the creature’s grasp, and (2) historical events such as the wiping out of the Canaanitish nations, the slaying of Agag by Samuel, the whole population of the world save eight persons being destroyed by the flood, and many things on this line. There were disconcerting to me as a young Christian, especially No. 2.
As to things manifestly beyond the creature’s grasp one would not have it otherwise. On reflection I thought if a man could understand all in the Bible it would prove that it was written by a man. The fact that the Bible presents as revelation much that is beyond my reason and capacity proved to me its supernatural origin.
Who by searching can find out God? Who can understand the mystery of the Godhead? Who can fathom the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God? Far sooner ask an ant to understand the working of the mind of a man, than for a man to fathom the mind of God. In the former case the ant is finite and so is man: in the latter case man is finite and God is infinite. In the former case you can measure the distance; in the latter it is impossible to do so.
What has helped me much in relation to the word of God is to see how things visible illustrate the invisible, how the natural illustrates the spiritual. There is a danger in this, if we force divine things to conform to nature. But nature often furnishes a legitimate illustration of what is divine.
Take the sun in the heavens. I cannot understand or explain why and how it is suspended in space, any more than I can understand space. I cannot understand how it can be a mass of glowing fire for centuries—“Nothing hid from the heat thereof” (Ps. 19:6), as Scripture eloquently and tersely puts it. I know these things are. I believe them. I cannot understand or explain. I once read a book by the late Dr. Alfred T. Schofield in which there was a diagram showing the extent of scientific knowledge and of ignorance. It took the form of rings radiating from a common centre. The ring of knowledge was very attenuated; that of ignorance was very broad. This is one illustration out of thousands. If the most advanced scientist does not know much about such a material thing as the sun, is it any wonder we know nothing of the Creator of the sun, unless He chooses to reveal Himself?
As to being troubled about historical events such as wiping out of the Canaanitish nation, the slaying of Agag by Samuel, the flood involving the destruction of the whole world save eight persons, etc., etc., what has helped me is to see that the word of God makes no attempt to explain anything. I had to say to myself, you do not know the good and valid reason God had in so acting.
One has to understand the exact circumstances of the case in question to come to a right conclusion, and these the Bible does not always furnish. When the Canaanitish tribes were exterminated God had waited four hundred years till the cup of the Amorites’ iniquity was full. Then He struck.
These are questions whose answer lies with God in His supreme wisdom. We know what He commanded or allowed was for His glory, and the good of mankind. There are many questions I can never solve. It is a good thing not to keep troubling about them as a dog keeps gnawing at a bone, but having faced them and found the questions insoluble to leave them in quietness of spirit in God’s wise hands.
You feel that nothing can be God’s message until you are in the right spirit to receive it. Surely this is not right. Take an illustration. An evangelist preaches the gospel. He quotes the text, “God commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 14:30). Does this not apply to all men, irrespective of their condition of mind? You would reduce the scope of this passage to those who are in the right spirit to receive it. But what right have you to do this?
You say again, “Until therefore, I have felt the power of particular scriptures, they are no more to me than a good book—the reading of which gives mental exhilaration.” Apply this to common life and you have the breakdown of civilization. Could an officer treat the detailed plan of campaign from the commander-in-chief in that way? Would he say that the orders and disposition that appealed to him as right and sensible were authoritative, and all else not, however appreciated as a literary production? Surely not. And to treat God’s word thus is to treat it with contempt, however little this is your intention.
The authority of Scripture has to do with its source. If God is the source of Scripture it is authoritative.
For instance King George’s proclamation to the army has the King’s authority behind it, and is addressed only to the army. If God commands all men everywhere to repent, you have God’s authority behind it, than which none can be greater, and it is sent to all men everywhere, whatever their condition be. You confound response with authority. Good it is to be in the state of mind to make a ready response, but the authority lies entirely in its source and it is well to keep this in mind.
After all, if God has given us the Holy Scriptures surely they are faultless from beginning to end. This is the attitude of faith. And thank God the copies of the original and the translations therefrom are so good and reliable that we may rest content that we have God’s own veritable word in our hands. Hoping this may help you.