Understanding the Scriptures | Page 8

modern school of pragmatism as a guide, and yet pragmatism can be so stated as to phrase an essentially Christian doctrine that spiritual ideas result from spiritual practices and are of worth as they prove themselves aids in further experience. Take some of the expressions of Paul. The fundamental fact in Paul's experience was his vision on the Damascus road and his determination to be obedient to that vision. To make his own view of the Christian religion attractive to those whom he was trying to win, it became necessary for him to speak in terms of the Judaism of his time. In fact, he could not have spoken in any other terms, though some of his reasonings seem to us to be remote from actual life. But when he left argument and came back to experience he was most effective. His terribly compelling utterances are those which were born of driving necessity. The theology started with the vision and unfolded in obedience to the vision, "What wilt thou have me to do?" Everywhere upon Paul's epistles there are the marks of practical compulsion. A letter was dispatched to convince stubborn Jews in Galatia or to persuade questioning Gentiles in Rome. Some of the profoundest phrasings of Pauline belief were uttered first as appeals for generous collections to starving saints.
The example of Paul as a receiver and giver of spiritual light is very significant. Even if we should make the largest allowances to the biblical critics who would cut down the number of epistles known to be genuinely Pauline, we would have enough left to make on our minds the impression of enormous personal activity. One passage does, indeed, tell us of a period of months of withdrawal for reflection in Arabia. For the most part, however, Paul's life was spent in ceaselessly going to and fro throughout the Roman empire; even in the days of imprisonment he seems to have been burdened with the administration of churches. It was out of such multifarious activities that the theology of Paul was born, and therein lies its value. No interpretation is likely to bring the separate deliverances into anything like formal, logical consistency. Very likely Paul was of a markedly logical frame of mind, but he did not attempt to rid his message of contradictions in detail. The unity and consistency are found in the fundamental life purpose to get men to accept Jesus Christ as the Chosen of God. If Paul had ever heard that much of his theology might be out-dated with the passage of the years, he would probably have responded that he was perfectly willing that the instrument should be cast aside if it had served its spiritual purpose of bringing men to obedience to the law of God.
It is not intended to make this a book of sermons or exhortations. We must say, however, that in a series of studies on how to understand the Scriptures stress must be laid upon the maxim that the Scriptures can be understood only by those who seek to recognize and obey the spirit of life breathing from the Scriptures. Nothing could be more hopeless than to attempt to get to the heart of Christian truth without attempting to build that truth into life. The formal reasonings of the theologian are no doubt of value, but they throw little light upon the essentials of Christianity except as they deal with data which have been supplied by Christian experience. It would, indeed, be well for any study of the Bible to begin with a recognition of the part played by distinctly scholarly research. We cannot go far, however, until we recognize that sympathy with Christian truth is necessary before we can come upon vital knowledge. And this, after all, is but the way we learn to understand any piece of life-literature. A vast amount of material is at hand in the form of commentaries upon the work of Shakespeare. We know much about the circumstances under which the plays of Shakespeare were written; we know somewhat of the sources from which Shakespeare drew his historical materials; we are familiar with the chronology of the plays; but all this is knowledge about Shakespeare. To know Shakespeare there must be something of a deliberate attempt to surrender sympathetically to the Shakespearean point of view. We get "inside of" any classic work of literature only by this spirit of surrender. The aim of Shakespeare is simply to picture life as he sees it, but even to appreciate the picture men must enter into sympathy with the painter. The Scriptures aim not merely to paint life, but to quicken and reproduce life. How much more, then, is needed a surrender of the will before there can be adequate appreciation of the Scriptures? If the Scriptures