E. W. Bullinger

Philologos Religious Online Books
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September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index

Things to Come

No subject is more important or requires more careful attention than that which is raised by the above modern title.

The last words of Christ from the glory were to call the attention of the church seven times to the words of the Holy Spirit addressed to us in the Epistles. "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith [or is saying] to the Churches."

The aim of the enemy, therefore, is to divert our attention from that all important instruction for us. The most effectual way of doing this is not by denying it or perverting it, but by setting up something above it, by setting up the teaching of Christ above the teaching of Paul and thus using one truth to destroy another truth. This is much more subtle and therefore more dangerous than meeting truth and opposing it by error (which is of course another of the enemy's tactics and often resorted to).

Moreover, it is a side-blow at Inspiration, for, on the one hand, it is meant to lower Paul's teaching by treating it as merely human, and opposing it to the divine teaching of Christ; and, on the other hand it lowers Christ's teaching by putting it in opposition to Paul's.

"We are not ignorant of his [the enemy's] devices." For we know that both teachings are true, perfect, and equally divine, but we rightly divide them and read them with reference to the Dispensations for which they were respectively intended, and thus see not opposition but wondrous perfection and beauty.

It is helpful to note that others adopt our conclusions without knowing our premises. The testimony of such is useful. We therefore give a few extracts from an article in The Expository Times for July entitled "Paul and Jesus." We do not like or approve of the title, or the use of the name "Jesus" in such a connection, and so frequently as the writer (the Rev. Arthur Hoyle of Leeds) employs it. We make this our protest at the outset as we cannot alter the wording of Mr. Hoyle's article.

Approaching the subject from quite another direction, Mr. Hoyle says:—

"A good deal of the depreciation of Paul the Apostle may be traced to the revolt against supernaturalism that has marked the latter half of this century. It is a new development of an old position, and, partially, a strategical movement to the rear. The ultimate goal of these assailants, for the most part, is everything miraculous. If Paul can be got out of the way, then the rest are easily put aside. Paul has elevated supernaturalism into a system, made every Christian in some sense a miracle, and linked the Personal intervention of a Personal God to the deepest facts of our spiritual consciousness. So long as this system is accepted, even in its broad outlines, supernaturalism is safe. But get this out of the way, and, with flying banners, the assailants will march over all the rest. There is a show of retreat. Twenty years ago, all theology was of chaos and black night; now this position is somewhat modified. We may keep our theology, provided it has no mysterious depths and awful outlines; that is to say, provided it is no theology at all. Then Jesus is held up to us, but a Jesus one can hardly recognise. His life is a poem, dear and refreshing to the heart of man. He is the great unveiler of ethics. Simplicity and gentleness and intellectual beauty are His distinguishing characteristics. About Him is nothing polemical or dogmatic, but the sweet seduction of an entirely human sentiment, so penetrative and so persuasive, that one feels, when putting down these accounts of Jesus, as a certain woman did, 'what worries me is that it doesn't wind up with a wedding.'

"Such a Jesus as that Paul never knew. Such a Jesus as that has no sort of connexion with the teaching that 'it is Christ Jesus that died, yea, rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.' If we think other than thus about Him, we may at once put down Paul's Epistles. They are of no further use. They are plucked up by the very roots. But was Jesus just a Teacher with a handful of charming precepts? Had He no system? Had His system no mysterious depths, no awful outlines? I cannot dwell long on this, but I have observed that, just as those who object to theology do not really object to theology at all, only to some other person's theology, so those who say that Jesus has no system, usually have no system of their own. Jesus had a system. Every man whose life is at all based on reason must have a system. He cannot help himself. A man can no more escape a system and base himself on reason than he can escape the bones of his own skeleton and be a man. Wendt and Beyschlag have shown us the system of Jesus, only they have ignored the gulf, and skidded over the depths on the thin ice frozen there by their own negations. If there be no pre-existence and no resurrection and no miracles, Jesus is not the Jesus of Paul, but another. Then His teaching can be crammed into an intellectual comfit-box, and made to do service in drawing-rooms and give a sentimental aroma to the tents of the proud. It is from these great and awful facts that the system of Jesus takes on its great and awful aspects. It was the Jesus of the great facts that Paul knew and preached."

The objector says, "But there is not the serenity and sweetness about the system of Paul, not the charm that there is about Jesus."

To this Mr. Hoyle replies that it is "an objection worthy of 'an erudite and elderly butterfly.' I acknowledge that in the Epistles you are at once in another atmosphere, another and a very different, and not so sweet and gracious. But, then, it is only a question of atmosphere, and who made that atmosphere? Certainly not Paul. You may quarrel with the form of the message as much as you like, but the last question of all, and the only really important question, is this, Is the message true?"

September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index  

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