his contemporaries. The ascending pathway of the moral leaders of Israel was marked out by their expanding vision of God and their deepening sense of His purpose in history; not by the crudities and vagaries into which their inheritance of race hatreds and superstitions sometimes betrayed them. The Bible frankly discloses both the greatness and the limitations of these men of God, and shows that from age to age the truths of morality and religion were given clearer and fuller announcement until they found their complete manifestation in the Christ. And that revelation made in its fullest form by Him goes on disclosing its larger meaning through the centuries. Revelation is not a closed volume. Holy men of yesterday and today still speak as they are moved by the Holy Spirit.

The Fundamentalists believe in the complete authority of the Bible as a text-book of faith and conduct. Its commands are not to be questioned. They are all a part of the word of God, and not to be smoothed down into any form of compromise. The literal inspiration of the Bible leaves no room for any modification of its rules of behavior. If the men of this school do not set the same store by the dietetic laws of Leviticus as they do by the Ten Commandments, it is only unintentional concession to modern views. If Paul's rabbinical arguments in Galatians seem less convincing than the utterances of the Sermon on the Mount, it is only that the method of reasoning is more remote from our ways of thinking. All are alike, the word of God. It is only proper reverence to accept them as such, and to conform intellect and will to their control. Not only in matters of instruction as to faith and conduct is the Bible authoritative, but as well in the area of fact. All statements made regarding matters of record are to be accepted with unquestioning assent. The accounts of creation, of the long-lived patriarchs, of the miracles in the lives of the prophets and the apostles, however difficult to understand or to evaluate

as worthful for religion, are to be taken at their face value. This alone is the attitude of faith in the authority of the Holy Scripture.

The Modernist also holds the Bible to be authoritative in the field of religion and morals. But he is confronted at each step of his study with the fact that everywhere the Scriptures make their appeal to intelligence and conscience, and demand of their readers discrimination between fact and fiction, between formal command and figure of speech, between abiding principles and temporary admonitions. To refuse to make such obvious distinctions in the use of Scripture is to abdicate the employment of the rational faculties which are as much the gift of God as are the Scriptures themselves. It requires no labored argument to demonstrate the fact that there are varying levels of authoritative appeal in the Bible. The moral and spiritual teachings of Jesus and His first interpreters require no elaborate defense. They are selfevidencing to a degree not shared by the ethical standards of earlier teachers. The authority of the Bible is reasonable and self-attesting, not arbitrary or mechanical. Its commands are obligatory not because they are enshrined in a holy book but because they are eternally true and self-vindicating. It is the challenge which the Bible offers to the highest intelligence and the most discriminating judgment which constitutes its unique authority.

And the Bible is the final authority in matters of the holy life. The Fundamentalist regards it as such because it is the last word from God and cannot be superseded. The Modernist regards this as too simple and easy a solution of the matter. He recognizes the advancing nature of the divine revelation, and is undisturbed by the possibility that yet fuller disclosures of God's nature and purpose may take form. To deny this would be to assume an omniscience which no open-minded witness of the divine work in the world would claim. No one who

rightly estimates the moral and spiritual finality of Jesus is fearful that He will be displaced in the leadership of the race, or that the book which is the record of His life and message will be pushed from its position as the supreme literary guide in those matters which most concern our human life.

WE SHOULD NOT CLAIM BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY1

The Fundamentalists assert that the Bible is without error and infallible, and, therefore, authoritative. But when the inquiring mind asks for the basis of the belief in the inerrancy of Scripture it is told that it is based upon the fact that multitudes have long believed it, at least since the days of the Reformation. In other words, the basis of the belief in the inerrancy of the Bible is the prestige of the opinion itself.

But such prestige loses its force when we reflect that multitudes as great believed for as long a period that the earth was flat, or later that the sun moved around it.

If we seek a further basis for belief in the inerrancy of the Bible we are told that the Bible itself claims to be inerrant, and that its claims are self-authenticating. But on examination we find in the Bible no such claim. And even if we did find it there, we should be compelled to question whether any such claim could be self-authenticated. A government inspector came into a store the other day. He saw a piece of metal on the counter plainly marked "One Pound." But he could not accept the claim as self-authenticated. He must apply to it the tests to which all weights and measures must be submitted. Infallibility cannot be established by self-authenticating authority; only by evidence.

The greatest of all books, undoubtedly, is the Bible, the supreme literature of the spiritual life, a record of 1 By Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, D.D. Christian Work. 116: 268-70. March 1, 1924. Modernism and Christian Assurance.

the unfolding spiritual experience of the race which must remain an invaluable guide and corrective for all who are seeking God, but it is not infallible or inerrant, nor does it claim to be so.

LUTHER'S FREE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE BIBLE1

Christ is the Master, the Scriptures are the servant, Here is the true touchstone for testing all the books; we must see whether they work the works of Christ or not. ... In fact, the Gospel of John and his First Epistle, the Epistles of Paul, particularly those to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Ephesians, and the First Epistle of Peter, these are the books which show thee Christ and teach thee all that it is good and necessary for thee to know, though thou shouldst never hear nor see any other books. As for the others, the Epistle of James is a veritable epistle of straw, for there is nothing evangelical in it.

Without any doubt, the prophets had studied the books of Moses, and the late ones those of their predecessors and filled with the Spirit of God they committed their good thoughts to writing. But this is not to say that these doctors, scrutinizing the Scriptures, did not sometimes find wood, hay, and stubble, and not always gold, silver, or diamonds. Nevertheless the essential abides and the fire consumes the rest.

HOW THE BIBLE LED ONE STUDENT TO
THE FREER VIEW2

During the seventies I was usually in attendance upon a weekly conference of ministers. . . . More than once 1 Quoted by Sabatier, in Religions of Authority. p. 158-9, from Luther's Works. Erlangen ed., lxii, p. 128-33; lxiii, p. 157-379.

2 By W. N. Clarke. Sixty Years with the Bible. p. 102ff. Copyright (1912), Charles Scribners' Sons. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

in the decade the advent question was taken up. .. The premillennial and postmillennial views of the advent were presented, elaborated, and defended, sometimes with conspicuous power. It was not in vain, though the results were not such as the disputants were seeking. In consequence of the discussion several things became clear to me, some at once and some on further reflection.

The first thing that I observed was that neither of the two theories could be better defended from the Bible than the other. Either could be defended perfectly well, by making proper selection of proof-texts. The Bible contained the confident prediction of an early advent, and at the same time it contained an outlook upon the future that neither included an early advent nor had place for one. I observed that both doctrines were obtainable from the Bible, but was impressed by the fact that neither one was the doctrine of the Bible as a whole. In the sense of being found in the Scriptures, both were Scriptural: but in the better sense of rightly representing the Scriptures, neither was Scriptural.

...

. . It was borne in upon me that the Bible contains material for two opposite and irreconcilable doctrines about the early return of Christ to this world. Both doctrines cannot be true: one of them at least must rest upon misjudgment. Since this is a fact, it certainly cannot be that I am required to believe all that the Bible says because the Bible says it. If either one of the theories is true, no matter which, I certainly am not bound by the testimony that the Bible bears in favor of the other. Whatever its nature may be, the book in which these facts are found cannot have been given me by God as a book that bears His own authority in support of all its statements. The book from which these two theories can be drawn is of necessity a different book from that. Thus the Bible itself, upon examination, shows me that it is not a book infallible throughout, in which error does not exist, and that I am not required to say that it is.