The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 4/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE ABSOLUTE RELIGION INDEPENDENT OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS—THE BIBLE AS IT IS.
This doctrine of the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures has greater power with Christians at this day than in Paul's time. In the first ages of Christianity each apostle was superior to the Old Testament. There were no Scriptures to rely on, for the New Testament was not written, and the Old Testament was hostile. The Law stood in their way, a law of sin and death; the greatest prophets were inferior to John the Baptist, and the least in the Christian kingdom was greater than he;[1] all before Jesus were “thieves and robbers” in comparison. Yet Christianity stood without the New Testament. It went forward without it; made converts and produced a wondrous change in the world. The Old Testament was the servant, not the master of the early Christians. Each church used what it saw fit. Some had the whole of the Old Testament; some but a part; others added the Apocrypha, for there was no settled canon “published by authority, and appointed to be read in churches.” So it was with the New Testament. Some received more than we, others less. Such men as Justin, Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, refer to some other books, just as they quote the New Testament. The canon of the New Testament was less certain than the Old. Men followed usage, tradition, or good sense in this matter, and at last the present collection was fixed by authority. But by what test were its limits decided? Alas, by no certain criterion.[2]
Let us look at things as they are. Here is a collection of ancient books, spurious and genuine, Hebrew and Greek. The one part belongs to a mode of worship, formal and obsolete; the other to a religion, actual, spiritual, still alive. The one gives us a Jehovah jealous and angry; the other a Father full of love. Each writer in both divisions proves by his imperfections that the earth did not formerly produce a different race of men. They contradict one another, and some relate what no testimony can render less than absurd; but yet all taken together, spite of their imperfections and positive faults, form such a collection of religious writings as the world never saw, so deep, so divine. Are not the Christian Gospels and the Hebrew Psalms still often the best part of the Sunday service in the church? Truly there is but one Religion for the Jew, the Gentile, and the Christian, though many theologies and ceremonies for each.
Now, unless we reject this treasure entirely, one of two things must be done: either we must pretend to believe the whole, absurdities and all; make one part just as valuable as the other, the Law of Moses as the Gospel of Jesus, David's curse as Christ's blessing,—and then we make the Bible our master, who puts Common Sense and Reason to silence, and drives Conscience and the religious Element out of the Church: or else we must accept what is true, good, and divine therein; take each part for what it is worth; gather the good together, and leave the bad to itself—and then we make the Bible our servant and helper, who assists Common Sense and Reason, stimulates Conscience and Religion, co-working with them all. A third thing is not possible.
Which shall be done? The practical answer was given long ago; it has always been given, except in times of fanatical excitement. Because there is chaff and husks in the Bible, are we to eat of them, when there is bread enough and to spare? Pious men neglect what does not edify.[3] Who reads gladly the curses of the Psalmist; chapters that make God a man of war, a jealous God, the butcher of the nations? Certainly but few; let them be exhorted to repentance. Men cannot gather grapes of thorns, grasp them never so lovingly; honest men will leave the thorns, or pluck them up. Now Criticism—which the thinking character of the age demands—asks men to do consciously and thoroughly what they have always done imperfectly and with no science but that of a pious heart; that is, to divide the word rightly; separate mythology from history, fact from fiction, what is religious and of God from what is earthly and not of God; to take the Bible for what it is worth. Fearful of the issue we may put off the question a few years; may insist as strongly as ever on what we know to be false; ask men to believe it, because in the records, and thus drive bad men to hypocrisy, good men to madness, and thinking men to “infidelity;” we may throw obstacles in the way of Religion and Morality, and tie the millstone of the Old and New Testaments about the neck of Piety as before. We may call men “Infidels and Atheists,” whom Reason and Religion compel to uplift their voice against the idolatry of the Church; or we may attempt to smooth over the matter, and say nothing about it, or not what we think. But it will not do. The day of Fire and Fagots is ended; the toothless “Guardian of the Faith” can only bark. The question will come, though alas for that man by whom it comes.
Other religions have their sacred books, their Korans, Vedas, Shasters, which must be received in spite of Reason, as masters of the soul. Some would put the Bible on the same ground. They glory in believing whatever is prefaced with a Thus-saith-the-Lord; but then all superiority of the Bible over these books disappears for ever; the daylight gives place to the shadow; the Law of Sin and Death casts out the Law of the Spirit of Life. Let honest Reason and Religion pursue their own way.
- ↑ The opinion of some disciples about the excellence of that kingdom may be seen in Irenæus, Lib. II. Ch. 33, where he speaks of the Vine-Stocks.
- ↑ On the use of the New Testament in the early times, see Credner, Beiträge zur Einleit. in biblischen Schriften, Ch. I. p. 1–90; Münscher, Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Vol. I. § 30-84; Augusti, Christlichen Archäologie, Vol. VI. p. 1-244; and De Wette, Vol. I. § 18-29.
- ↑ See Augustine, Doct. Christiana, Lib. I. C. 39, who says a man, supported by Faith, Hope, and Charity, does not need the Bible except to teach others with.