“Heresy Hunt” in Scotland.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 462, 12 April 1890, Page 6

“Heresy Hunt” in Scotland.

IMPEACHMENT OF PROFESSORS DODS BRUCE. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE. Scotland is just now greatly agitated over the impeachment of Professors Dods and Bruce (brother of the Rev. David Bruce, who resided for so many years in Auckland). Their writings having been referred to a committee, a meeting of ministers and elders was convened in Glasgow for the 10th of February. The objectionable passages in the writings of Dr. Dods may be grouped under the following headings :—Holy Scripture, The Atonement, Justification, The Second Birth, The Divinity of Our Lord, and the Resurrection of our Lord. Two of the passages to which the strongest exception was taken by the Committee I run as follows:—1. “We must not tool hastily conclude that even a belief in j Christ’s divinity is essential to the true Christian.” 2. “If the Unitarian accepts Christ as the perfect revelation of God, if hp has Christ’s spirit and submits to Christ's rule, if practically he makes Christ his God, if Christ is his moral supreme, if his sympathies are with Christ’s work and Christ’s way, if he has through Christ actually come into fellowship with the Father, there may be much that is seriously defective in his faith, but are we to grudge to him the name of Christian ?” Upon this the Committee made the following note: —“This sentence seems to imply that there may be a Church of Christ consisting of those who deny His Godhead. Further, if a man * makes Christ practically his God,’ and yet denies His divinity—believes him only to be a creature—is not such a man an idolater ? How can he be regarded as a true Christian ? See I John, ii., 2?- And once more, the statement above quoted, along with the whole paragraph from which it has been taken, is fitted to confirm Unitarians in their present belief, and has been eagerly seized upon, and largely used by them in defence of their position.” THE IMPEACHMENT OF PUOFESSOR BRUCE. Professor Bruce, D.D., fills the chair of “Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis” in the Free Church College, Glasgow. He stands very high in the estimation of the Church, and has never been impeached for life or doctrine before. Professors Dods, Bruce, and Drummond all sail in one boat. They are beloved by the majority of the Free Church of Scotland, and that majority, with Dr. Rainy at its head, is too large now for any serious impeachment of any kind. These periodical rendings of the Church over questions of creed and scholarship, however, do very serious mischief, and divert attention from subjects like disestablishment and reformatory and evangelising efforts of a nature more useful to the Church and humanity. The report of the Committee on the writings of Dr. Bruce we quote in full: DB. BRUCE ON “THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” The purpose of the book is stated on page 40 :—“ To give a succinct account of the teaching of Christ as recorded in the first three Gospels.” The nature of the subject leads the writer to deal mainly with the facts of Christ’s life and with His sayings ; and, in regard to both, the book indicates that the authors of the Gospels are not in all respects trustworthy. I.—As regards the facts of Christ’s life, he seems to impugn the trustworthiness of the Gospels as records of these facts. Thus :

1. He represents it as a possible thing that the evangelists have intentionally misplaced incidents in Christ’s life in order to produce a false impression. With reference to his appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, which Luke places at the beginning of His ministry, Dr. Bruce, on page 50, says :—“ He has taken the scene in the synagogue at Nazareth out of its true historical place, and set it in the forefront of his Gospel, to signify that the mission of Jesus concerned men’s souls, and that it concerned all men. . . True, the evangelist’s thought is not necessarily the thought of Jesus, and in transferring that scene from its true place, late in the evangelic history, he may be conveying a false impression as to the views and hopes with which the Herald of the Kingdom began His ministry.” Again, page 257 says :—“ It is conceivable that a direction given by Jesus to His disciples concerning the rite {i.e., baptism) before His death, say on the eve of His Passion, at the same time that the Holy Supper was instituted, might have been transferred by the evangelist to what was deemed aspecially suitable place in the history—the final leave-taking, there to assume the character of a last instruction by the Master, just before His Ascension, to the future apostles.” 2. He conceives it possible that Luke may have “ invented ” narratives as settings for certain of the sayings of Jesus. On page 27, speaking of the mission of the Seventy, he says : —“ Suppose the mission . of the Seventy is an invention of Luke, or of those to whom he owed his information, the point to be noted is, that ,for this ‘invented’ mission there are no invented instructions. The instructions are simply a repetition in substance tif those given to the Twelve. If Luke unhistorical settings for some sayings of Jesus, this was the limit of Luke's editorial license. He reported no sayings which he did not believe to be in substance genuine loyia of the Master.” 3. His general conclusion regarding the facts of our Lord’s life speaks for itself. On page 340 he says : indeed, whether a real knowledge of the historical Christ’ be now possible.” And on the same page he quotes from Strauss, with seeming approval, the following “ We know very little about Jesus. The evangelists have daubed His life image so thick with supernatural colours that the natural colours can no longer be restored. The Jesus of history is simply a problem, and a problem cannot be the object of faith or the exemplar of life. It is the penalty he pays for being a God.” 11. As regards our Lord’s sayings, liberties are supposed to have been taken with them incompatible even with honest biographical writing, to say nothing of inspiration. Dr. Bruce represents the evangelists as being in the position of editors making the best use possible of reports of our Lord’s words, which in the course of transmission had probably been altered from the original form, and which they also altered to meet what, in their estimation, were the practical needs of the time. Thus having, on page 6, stated the view of Weizsacker that “comments, glosses, explanations, grew up simultaneously, and gradually became mixed with the words of the Lord,” he says = —“ln the way indicated arose, in all likelihood, variations in the reports of Christ’s sayings, which were a datum for the evangelists ’ (page 7). Then he adds:—“But it is not at all uplikely that a certain number of the existing variations are due bo the evangelists themselves. It is a nowise inadmissible supposition that they so far exercised their discretion in the use of their sources as to make the material serviceable to the edification of those for whose special benefit they wrote —acting, not ip the spirit of license, but with the

freedom of men who believed that it was more important that their readers should get a true impression of Christ than that they should know the ipsissima verba of His sayings.” In the exercise of what is called “ their discretion ” i hey have — 1. Added their own interpretations to the words of the Lord, and represented them aB actually spoken by Him. On pageS Dr. Bruce says “ The very significant and characteristic word of Jesus, ‘ I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,’ appears in Luke’s Gospel with the addition, ‘unto repentance.’ This may have been an explanatory gloss that had crept into the text used by the evangelist, but it may quite as well have been a change made by him to render the meaning clear, and possibly to guard against the misconstruction that Christ invited sinners to the Kingdom of Heaven without repentance.” ■ On page 10:—“The ‘woes’ which he [ [Luke] appends to them [the blessings I of the Sermon on the Mount] seem out of I keeping with the spirit of die discourse, and rather inferences from the words spoken by Jesus, than sayings actually uttered by him.” On page 12 :—“ In Luke’s version the one builder is represented as digging deep till he came to the rock, while the other is represented as beginning to build on the surface, without a foundation. This is a useful commentary on the speaker's words, as reported in the first Gospel; but it is a commentary, nob an exact report.” 2. They have changed the character of the sayings of Christ to suit their own tastes. On page 19 it is said that Luke has toned down the rebuke addressed to the ambitious disciples, “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom,” because it seemed to touch the dignity of the apostles. “Think of luture apostles being spoken to in this manner !” is Dr. Bruce’s picture of Luke’s feeling. On page 33 he represents Luke as toning down words that seemed to be spoken by Jesus with passionate vehemence, because “ he does not allow his beloved Lord to appear either as a bitter controversialist or as a pitilessly severe Master.” He add 3 : “Nor does his Gospel supply even a plausible pretext for the allegation that the Founder of the Christian faith was a man of narrow Jewish prejudices. The story of the woman of Canaan is left out, and the hard word, ‘ Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican,’ given by Matthew in connection with his second reference to the Church, is not found in his pages,” and then he remarks: —“For the immediate needs of the section of the Church for which Luke wrote, this picture of Christ may have been wisely drawn, and he is not to be blamed for the bias he manifests.”

lll.—The general statements on page 1 seem to be entirely at variance with any doctrine of inspiration worthy of the name. Nob only is there an intimation of a doubt regarding the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, but its report of our Lord’s teaching is depreciated as being very different from the original. And then, as if intending to tear out the very foundations of the Christian faith, Dr. Bruce says:—“Bub the question may be raised, even in reference bo the synoptists, whether they can be regarded as giving a perfectly trustworthy report of the sayings of Jesus.” It is to be noted, in general, that in treating of the motives by which the evangelists were influenced, no reference is made to the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit. The following passages from the book are added, as demanding serious consideration :

On page 44 :—“ Wo should certainly expect to find the great Initiator nob behind His apostolic interpreters in insight into the nature and ultimate outcome of His mission. Without claiming for Him omniscience, we should at least credit Him with the deep, far-reaching spiritual vision of an unique religious genius.” On page 174, the power which Jesus claimed to forgive sins is put on this footing “ God is willing that it [the privilege of forgiving] should be exercised by all on earth in whom dwells His own Spirit; and My right to forgive rests on this, that I am a sympathetic friend of the sinful, full of the grace and charity of heaven.” On page 73:—“ The Decalogue wears the aspect of an attempt to sum up the heads of moral duty Speaking of the Decalogue as the work of Moses, we may say that from it we learn what in his judgment all men ought to do in order to please God and live wisely and happily.”