Dr. Farrar allows that the Canon of the New Testament was formed "in the same gradual and tentative way." Many Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypses were "current" in the "first two centuries." Some of them were "quoted as sacred books" and read aloud in Christian3 churches. Seven, at least, of the books which are now canonical15 were then "disputed"—namely, the Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Second and Third Epistles of St. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and the Book of Revelation. The Canon was "formally and officially settled" by the Council of Laodicea (a.d. 363), and the two Councils of Carthage (a.d. 397 and 419), the decrees of which were sanctioned by the Trullian Council (a.d. 692), nearly seven hundred years after Christ. Dr. Farrar holds, however, that these Councils merely registered the general agreement of the Christian Church. The real test of canonicity is not the decision of Councils, which may and do err17, but "the verifying faculty18 of the Christian consciousness." Dr. Farrar's argument, if it means anything at all, implies that while Councils may err, consisting as they do of fallible men, this "Christian consciousness" is really infallible. But as this Christian consciousness only exists, after all, in individual Christians, however numerous they may be, or through however many centuries they may be continued, it is difficult to see how the greatest multitude of fallibilities can make up one infallibility. And unless it can, it is also difficult to see how Dr. Farrar can have an infallible Canon. He disclaims19 the authority of the Church, on which Catholics rely; indeed, he says it can hardly be said that the "whole Church" has pronounced any opinion on the Canon at all. What really happened is perhaps unconsciously admitted by Dr. Farrar in a rather simple footnote. "Books were judged," he says, "by the congruity20 of their contents with the general Christian conviction." Precisely21 so; the books did not decide the doctrine22, but the doctrine decided the fate of the books. And how was the doctrine decided? By fierce controversy23, by forgery24 and sophistication, by partisan25 struggles, and finally, after the adhesion of Constantine, by faction fights that involved the loss of myriads26 (some say millions) of lives.
Not the slightest attempt is made by Dr. Farrar to meet the difficulty of his position; indeed, he seems unaware27 that the difficulty exists. All he sees is the difficulty of the positions taken up by the Catholics and the early Protestants. It never occurs to him that he has only shifted from one difficulty to another. The Catholics rely upon the living voice of God in the Church. That covers everything, like the sky; and is perfectly28 satisfactory, if you can only accept it. The early Protestants repudiated29 the authority of the Church, at least as represented by the Pope and Councils; but they acknowledged the authority of the primitive30 Church. They were shrewd enough to see that what cannot possibly rest on mere16 reason must rest somewhere on authority; so they admitted as much as was sufficient to cover the Scriptures31 and the Creeds32, and refused to go a step farther. Dr. Farrar breaks away from both parties, and what is the result? He talks about the Canon of the New Testament being formed "by the exercise of enlightened reason," but he lays down no criterion by which reason can decide whether a book is inspired or not, or so specially33 inspired as to require a place in the Canon. The "verifying faculty of the Christian consciousness" is one of those comfortable phrases, like the blessed word Mesopotamia, which are designed to save the pains of accuracy and the trouble of definite thought. What light does it really shed upon the following questions? Why is the Protestant Canon different from the Catholic Canon? Is it owing to some inexplicable34 difference in the "verifying faculty of the Christian consciousness" in the two cases; and by what test shall we decide when the Christian consciousness delivers two contradictory35 verdicts? Why is the book of Ecclesiastes in the Canon, while the book of Ecclesiasticus is (by the Protestants) relegated36 to the Apocrypha37? Why is the book of Esther in the Canon, and the book of Judith in the Apocrypha? Why is the book of Jonah in the Canon, and the book of Tobit in the Apocrypha? Why is the book of Proverbs in the Canon, and the book of the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha? These are questions which the early Protestants answered in their way, but we defy Dr. Farrar to answer them at all.
Let us follow Dr. Farrar into his second chapter. He states, truly enough, that both the Old and the New Testaments38 represent "the selected and fragmentary remains of an extensive literature." Many books referred to in the Old Testament are lost. Some of the canonical books are anonymous39; we do not know who wrote them. Others bear the names of men "by whom they could not have been composed." The Pentateuch is "a work of composite structure," which has been "edited and re-edited several times." The Psalms40 are a collection of sacred poems in "five separate books of very various antiquity41." The Proverbs consist of "four or five different collections." The New Testament is a selection from the voluminous Christian literature of the earliest centuries. Many Gospels were already in existence when St. Luke prepared his own. "It is all but certain," Dr. Farrar says, "that St. Paul, and probable that the other Apostles, must have written many letters which are no longer preserved." That is to say, some letters actually written by St. Paul were allowed to perish, while others not written by him were allowed to bear his name, and were placed as his in the New Testament Canon! There are passages in the Gospels that are known to be interpolations; for instance, the story of the Woman taken in Adultery. This story is "exquisite42 and supremely43 valuable," but it is bracketed in the Revised Version as of "doubtful genuineness." Such passages are eliminated because they do not "meet the standard of modern critical requirements." O sancta simplicitas! Is there any reason, in the natural sense of that word, for believing that John the Apostle wrote the rest of the Fourth Gospel, any more than he wrote this rejected story? Dr. Farrar strains at gnats45 and swallows camels, and prides himself on his discrimination.
His references to Justin Martyr46 and Papias seem less than ingenuous47. It is not true that Justin Martyr "freely uses the Gospels." Dr. Farrar admits that he "does not name them." Saying that he "used" them is quietly assuming that they existed. All that Justin Martyr does, as a matter of fact, is to cite sayings ascribed to Jesus, but not in one single case does he cite a saying of Jesus in exactly the form in which it appears in the Four Gospels. Supposing that he wrote freely, and had ever so bad a memory, and never took the trouble to refer to the originals, it is simply inconceivable that he should never be right. Now and then he must have deviated48 into accuracy. And the fact that he never does is plain proof that he had not our Gospels before him. Nor does Papias mention "the Gospels." He mentions only two, Matthew and Mark, and he says that Matthew was written in Hebrew, Now, the earliest date at which Papias can be fixed is a.d. 140. This is chosen by Dr. Farrar, and we will let it pass unchallenged. And what follows? Why this, that no Christian writer before a.d. 140 betrays that he has so much as heard of any Gospel, and even then but two are known instead of four, and one of these is most certainly not the Gospel which opens the New Testament.
All this was proved a quarter of a century ago by the author of Supernatural Religion—a work which is systematically49 ignored by the so-called Higher Critics because its author was a pronounced Rationalist. An excellent summary of this writer's demonstrations50 appears in the late Matthew Arnold's God and the Bible:—
"He seems to have looked out and brought together, to the best of his powers, every extant passage in which, between the year 70 and the year 170 of our era, a writer might be supposed to be quoting one of our Four Gospels.
"And it turns out that there is constantly the same sort of variation from our Gospels, a variation inexplicable in men quoting from a real Canon, and quite unlike what is found in men quoting from our Four Gospels later on. It may be said that the Old Testament, too, is often quoted loosely. True; but it is also quoted exactly; and long passages of it are thus quoted. It would be nothing that our canonical Gospels were often quoted loosely, if long passages from them, or if passages, say, of even two or three verses, were sometimes quoted exactly. But from writers before Iren?us not one such passage can be produced so quoted. And the author of Supernatural Religion by bringing all the alleged51 quotations52 forward, has proved it."*
Now what is the exact value of these demonstrations? We will give it in Mr. Arnold's words: "There is no evidence of the establishment of our Four Gospels as a Gospel-Canon, or even of their existence as they now finally stand at all, before the last quarter of the second century." Not only is there no evidence of the orthodox theory, but, as Mr. Arnold says, the "great weight of evidence is against it."
Dr. Giles—another ignored writer, although a clergyman of the Church of England—had said and proved the very same thing in his Christian Records; and had appended the following significant declaration:—
"There is positive proof, in the writings of the first ages of Christianity, that the same question as to the age and authorship of the books of the New Testament was even then agitated53, and if it was then set at rest, this was done, not by a deliberate sentence of the judge, but by burning all the evidence on which one side of the controversy was supported,"**
* Arnold, God and the Bible, pp. 222-3.
** Dr. Giles, Christian Records, p. 10.
It is probable that Dr. Farrar is well aware that our Four Gospels cannot be traced beyond the second half of the second century—that is, considerably54 more than a century after the alleged date of the death of Christ. But he shrinks from a frank admission of the fact, and leaves the reader to find it out for himself.
Instead of making this important and, as some think, damning admission, Dr. Farrar continues his remarks on the Bible Canon. That thirty-six books are accepted "on the authority of the Church" simply means, he tells us, that they are accepted "by the general consensus55 of Christians." The whole Church, as such, has hardly pronounced an opinion on the subject. The Churchmen who voted at Laodicea and Carthage "exercised no independent judgment56," and their critical knowledge was "elementary." Nor was the decision of the Council of Trent any real improvement. Dr. Farrar approves the reply of the Reformed Churches, that "any man may reject books claiming to be Holy Scripture if he do not feel the evidence of their contents." But this is to make every man a judge, not only of what the Bible means, but also of what it should contain. Each unfettered Christian may therefore make up a Bible for himself; which is simply chaos57 come again. What then is the way of escape from this grotesque58 confusion? Dr. Farrar indicates it with a crooked59 finger:—
"The decision as to what books are or are not to be regarded as true Scripture, though we believe it to be wise and right, depends on no infallible decision. It must satisfy the scientific and critical as well as the spiritual requirements of each age."
This reduces the Bible Canon to a perpetual transformation60 scene. It is a tacit confession61 that the Protestant Bible is an arbitrary collection of questionable62 documents; that it has nothing to plead for itself but common usage; that its very contents, as well as their interpretation63, are liable to change; in short, that if the Catholic stands upon the rock of implicit44 faith, and defies all dangers by closing his eyes and clutching the reassuring64 hand of his Holy Mother Church, the Protestant flounders about with the poor little dark-lantern of private judgment in a frightful65 mud-ocean—his old rock of faith in an infallible Bible having been reduced to dust by the engines of criticism, and finally to slush by a downflow from the lofty reservoir of pure reason.*
* It would be a pity to omit an amusing instance of the
contemptuous dogmatism of Christian divines when they had
the field to themselves. Dr. William Whitaker, a famous
learned writer on the side of the Reformation in England, in
his Disputation with two of the foremost Jesuits, Bellarmine
and Stapleton, wrote as follows:—"Jerome, in the Proem of
his Commentaries on Daniel, relates that Porphyry the
philosopher wrote a volume against the book of our prophet
Daniel, and affirmed that what is now extant under the name
of Daniel was not published by the ancient prophet, but by
some later Daniel, who lived in the times of Antiochus
Epiphanes. But we need not regard what the impious Porphyry
may have written, who mocked at all the scriptures and
religion itself." Well, this opinion of the blasphemous66
Porphyry, whose writings were burnt by the Christian Church,
is now accepted by the Higher Critics. Canon Driver, for
instance, admits that the Book of Daniel is not the work of
Daniel, that it could not have been written earlier than 300
B.C., and that "it is at least probable that it was
composed under the persecution67 of Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C.
168 or 167" (Introduction to the Literature of the Old
Testament, p. 467). This involves that the fulfilled
prophecies of Daniel were written after the events.
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1
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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faction
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| n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争 | |
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canonical
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| n.权威的；典型的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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disclaims
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| v.否认( disclaim的第三人称单数 ) | |
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congruity
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| n.全等，一致 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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forgery
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| n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为） | |
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partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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relegated
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| v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类 | |
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apocrypha
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| n.伪经，伪书 | |
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testaments
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| n.遗嘱( testament的名词复数 )；实际的证明 | |
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anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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psalms
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| n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 )；圣诗；圣歌；(中的) | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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gnats
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| n.叮人小虫( gnat的名词复数 ) | |
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martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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48
deviated
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| v.偏离，越轨( deviate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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55
consensus
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| n.(意见等的)一致，一致同意，共识 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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