Part 1 (1/2)
The Making of the New Testament.
by Benjamin W. Bacon.
PART I
CANONIZATION AND CRITICISM
CHAPTER I
INSPIRATION AND CANONIZATION
The New Testament presents the paradox of a literature born of protest against the tyranny of a canon, yet ultimately canonized itself through an increasing demand for external authority. This paradox is full of significance. We must examine it more closely.
The work of Jesus was a consistent effort to set religion free from the deadening system of the scribes. He was conscious of a direct, divine authority. The broken lights of former inspiration are lost in the full dawn of G.o.d's presence to His soul.
So with Paul. The key to Paul's thought is his revolt against legalism.
It had been part of his servitude to persecute the sect which claimed to know another Way besides the ”way”[1] of the scribes. These Christians signalized their faith by the rite of baptism, and gloried in the sense of endowment with ”the Spirit.” Saul was profoundly conscious of the yoke; only he had not drammed that his own deliverance could come from such a quarter. But contact with victims of the type of Stephen, men ”filled with the Spirit,” conscious of the very ”power from G.o.d” for lack of which his soul was fainting, could not but have some effect. It came suddenly, overwhelmingly. The real issue, as Saul saw it, both before and after his conversion, was Law _versus_ Grace. In seeking ”justification” by favour of Jesus these Christians were opening a new and living way to acceptance with G.o.d. Traitorous and apostate as the attempt must seem while the way of the Law still gave promise of success, to souls sinking like Saul's deeper and deeper into the despairing consciousness of ”the weakness of the flesh” forgiveness in the name of Jesus might prove to be light and life from G.o.d. The despised sect of 'sinners' whom he had been persecuting expressed the essence of their faith in the doctrine that the gift of the Spirit of Jesus had made them sons and heirs of G.o.d. If the converted Paul in turn is uplifted--”energized,” as he terms it--even beyond his fellow-Christians, by the sense of present inspiration, it is no more than we should expect.
Footnote 1: _Tarik_, i. e. ”way,” is still the Arabic term for a sect, and the Rabbinic term for legal requirement is _halacha_, i.
e. ”walk.”
Paul's conversion to the new faith--or at least his persistent satisfaction in it--will be inexplicable unless we appreciate the logic of his recognition in it of an inherent opposition to the growing demands of legalism. Jesus had, in truth, led a revolt against mere book-religion. His chief opponents were the scribes, the devotees and exponents of a sacred scripture, the Law. ”Law” and ”Prophets,” the one prescribing the conditions of the expected transcendental Kingdom, the other ill.u.s.trating their application and guaranteeing their promise, const.i.tuted the canon of the synagogue. Judaism had become a religion of written authority. Jesus set over against this a direct relation to the living Father in heaven, ever presently revealed to the filial spirit.
The Sermon on the Mount makes the doing of this Father's will something quite other than servitude to written precepts interpreted by official authority and imposed under penalty. It is to be self-discipline in the Father's spirit of disinterested goodness, as revealed in everyday experience.
Even the reward of this self-discipline, the Kingdom, Jesus did not conceive quite as the scribes. To them obedience in this world procured a ”share in the world to come.” To Him the reward was more a matter of being than of getting. The Kingdom was an heir-apparency; and, therefore, present as well as future. It was ”within” and ”among” men as well as before them. They should seek to ”be sons and daughters of the Highest,” taking for granted that all other good things would be ”added.” So Jesus made religion live again. It became spiritual, inward, personal, actual.
After John the Baptist's ministry to what we should call the 'unchurched' ma.s.ses, Jesus took up their cause. He became the ”friend”
and champion of the ”little ones,” the ”publicans and sinners,” the mixed 'people of the land' in populous, half-heathen, Galilee. The burdens imposed by the scribes in the name of 'Scripture' were accepted with alacrity by the typical Pharisee unaffected by Pauline misgivings of 'moral inability.' To ”fulfil all righteousness” was to the Pharisee untainted by h.e.l.lenism a pride and delight. To the ”lost sheep of Israel” whom Jesus addressed, remote from temple and synagogue, this ”righteousness” had proved (equally as to Paul, though on very different grounds) ”a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.”
Jesus ”had compa.s.sion on the mult.i.tude.” To them he ”spoke with authority”; and yet ”not as the scribes” but as ”a prophet.” When challenged by the scribes for his authority he referred to ”the baptism of John,” and asked whether John's commission was ”from heaven, or of men.” They admitted that John was ”a prophet.” Those who give utterance after this manner to the simple, sincere conviction of the soul, voicing its instinctive aspiration toward ”the things that be of G.o.d,” are conscious that they speak not of themselves.
Jesus, it is true, was no iconoclast. He took pains to make clear that if he superseded what they of old time had taught as righteousness, it was in the interest of a higher, a ”righteousness of G.o.d.” If he disregarded fasts and sabbaths, it was to put substance for form, end for means. ”Judgment, mercy, and good faith” should count more than t.i.thes from ”mint and anise and c.u.mmin.” He echoed what John the Baptist had taught of repentance and forgiveness. Hope should no longer be based on birth, or prerogative, or ritual form, but on the mercy of a G.o.d who demands that we forgive if we would be forgiven. Such had been, however, the message not of John only, but of all the prophets before him: ”I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” Jesus taught this higher, inward, righteousness; but not merely as John had done. John had said: Repent, for the wrath of G.o.d is at hand. Jesus said: Repent, for the forgiveness of G.o.d is open. The Father's heart yearns over the wayward sons. Jesus preached the nearness of the Kingdom as ”glad tidings to the poor”; and among these ”poor” were included even aliens who put ”faith” in the G.o.d of Abraham.
The new Way started from the same Scripture as that of the scribes, but it tended in an opposite direction. Theirs had been gradually developing in definiteness and authority since the time of Ezra; yes, since Josiah had made formal covenant, after the discovery of ”the book of the Law”
in the temple, pledging himself and his people to obedience. As with many ancient peoples, the codification of the ancient law had been followed by its canonization, and as the national life had waned the religious significance of the Law had increased. It was now declared to express the complete will of G.o.d, for an ideal people of G.o.d, in a renovated universe, whose centre was to be a new and glorified Jerusalem. The Exile interrupted for a time the process of formal development; but in the ecclesiastical reconstruction which followed in Ezra's time ”the book of the Law” had become all the more supreme; the scribe took the place of the civil officer, the synagogue became local sanctuary and court-house in one, the nation became a church, Israel became 'the people of the book.'
Legal requirement calls for the incentive of reward. We need not wonder, then, that the canon of the Law was soon supplemented by that of the writings of the Prophets, historical and hortatory. The former were considered to interpret the Law by showing its application in practice, the latter were valued for their predictive element. Law and Prophets were supplemented by Psalms, and elements from the later literature having application to the religious system. The most influential were the ”apocalypses,” or ”revelations” of the transcendental Kingdom and of the conditions and mode of its coming. Scripture had thus become an embodiment of Israel's religion. It set forth the national law, civil, criminal, or religious; and the national hope, the Kingdom of G.o.d. Its custodian and interpreter was the 'scribe,' lawyer and cleric in one.
The scribe held ”the key of knowledge”; to him it was given to 'bind and loose,' 'open and shut.' Any preacher who presumed to prescribe a righteousness apart from 'the yoke of the Law,' or to promise forgiveness of sins on other authority, must reckon with the scribes. He would be regarded as seeking to 'take the Kingdom by violence.'
Jesus' martyrdom was effected through the priests, the temple authorities; but at the instigation of the scribes and Pharisees. His adherents were soon after driven out from orthodox Judaism and subjected to persecution. This persecution, however, soon found its natural leaders.h.i.+p, not among the Sadducean temple-priesthood, but among the devotees of the Law. It was ”in the synagogues.” From having been quasi-political it became distinctly religious. This persecution by the Pharisees is on the whole less surprising than the fact that so many of the Jewish believers should have continued to regard themselves as consistent Pharisees, and even been so regarded by their fellow-Jews. In reality Jewish Christians as a rule could see no incompatibility between average synagogue religion and their acceptance of Jesus as the man supernaturally attested in the resurrection as destined to return bringing the glory of the Kingdom. Jesus' idea of 'righteousness' did not seem to them irreconcilable with the legalism of the scribes; still less had they felt the subtle difference between his promise ”Ye shall be sons and daughters of the Highest” and the apocalyptic dreams which they shared with their fellow-Jews. Saul the persecutor and Paul the apostle were more logical. In Gal. ii. 15-21 we have Paul's own statement of the essential issue as it still appeared to his clear mind.
Average synagogue religion still left room for a more fatherly relation of G.o.d to the individual, in spite of the gradual encroachment of the legalistic system of the scribes. Men not sensitive to inconsistency could find room within the synagogue for the 'paternal theism' of Jesus, even if this must more and more be placed under the head of 'uncovenanted mercies.' To Paul, however, the dilemma is absolute. One must trust either to ”law” or ”grace.” Partial reliance on the one is to just that extent negation of faith in the other. The system of written precept permits no exception, tolerates no divided allegiance. If the canon of written law be the G.o.d-given condition of the messianic promise, then no man can aspire to share in the hope of Israel who does not submit unreservedly to its yoke. Conversely, faith is not faith if one seek to supplement it by the merit of ”works of law.”
From this point of view the Jew who seeks forgiveness of sins by baptism ”into the name of Jesus” must be considered an apostate from the Law. He acknowledges thereby that he is following another Way, a way of ”grace,”
a short-cut, as it were, to a share in Israel's messianic inheritance by the ”favour” of a pretended Messiah. The same Paul who after his conversion maintains (Gal. ii. 21) that to seek ”justification” through the Law makes the grace of G.o.d of none effect, must conversely have held before conversion that to seek it by ”grace” of Jesus made the Law of none effect. Even at the time of writing the axiom still held: No resistance to the yoke of the Law, no persecution (Gal. v. 11).
It is true, then, that the legalistic system of prescription and reward had developed--could develop--only at the expense of the less mechanical, more fatherly, religion of a Hosea or an Isaiah. Even scribes had admitted that the law of love was ”much more than all whole burnt-offering and sacrifice.” And the movement of the Baptist and of Jesus had really been of the nature of a reaction toward this older, simpler faith. The sudden revolt in Paul's own mind against the scribal system might not have occurred in the mind of a Pharisee unfamiliar with Greek ideas. But to some extent Paul's experience of the conflict of flesh and spirit, a 'moral inability' to meet the Law's demands _was_ a typical Christian experience, as Paul felt it to be. To him it became the basis of an independent gospel. To him the Cross and the Spirit imparted from the risen Messiah were tokens from G.o.d that the dispensation of Law is ended and a dispensation of Grace and Son s.h.i.+p begun. Without this Pauline gospel _about_ Jesus Christianity could never have become more than a sect of reformed Judaism.
The teaching and martyrdom of Jesus had thus served to bring out a deep and real ant.i.thesis. Only, men who had not pa.s.sed like Paul from the extreme of trust in legalism to a corresponding extremity of despair might be pardoned for some insensibility to this inconsistency. We can appreciate that James and Peter might honestly hold themselves still under obligation of the written law, even while we admit Paul's logic that any man who had once ”sought to be justified in Christ” could not turn back in any degree to legal observance without being ”self-condemned.”