The Influence of the Bible on Civilisation

by Ernst von Dobschütz

The difference finds its best expression in a varying use of the phrase Word of God. Both, of course, believed in an historical revelation of God to mankind, and they were convinced that this revelation was to be found in the holy Scriptures. God had spoken through his prophets; he had given his promises to his people; he had sent his Son and had fulfilled his promises through him. All this was to be found in the Bible and only in the Bible. The reformers refused the authority of tradition, just as they declined to acknowledge the present individual inspiration of enthusiasts, or "Schwarmgeister," as Luther contemptuously called them. It was in the Bible that Christianity had to look for all necessary information about God and salvation. And yet Luther, when using the expression Word of God, scarcely thinks of the written book. It is the living word as represented by the preaching of the prophets and the apostles, and perpetuated by the preaching of the ministers of the church. It is to him not a formal authority but an energising inspiration. Not everything in the Bible is authoritative, merely by the fact that it stands in the Bible; only what witnesses to Christ is authoritative and is to be taken as the Word of God. On the other hand, Zwingli and Calvin frequently use the term Word of God when speaking of the holy Scriptures themselves. It is characteristic that the reformed churches of Switzerland felt it their duty to fix the exact number of writings included in this Word of God, just as the Roman Catholic church did at the Council of Trent, while no Lutheran creed ever defines the exact content of the Bible. To the former it was a book of law, to the latter a book of inspiration.

Luther, owing to his familiarity with Saint Paul, understood that Christianity had nothing to do with the Law; the whole notion of the Law had to be dropped out from the field of religion. Law there must be in the government of the state—it would not be necessary even there, if all people were true Christians—but for the wicked there must be a law and there must be punishment. The Christian's life, however, is not a slave's obedience to injunctions but a child's glad doing of his father's will; he knows what his father wants him to do and he does it joyfully. Luther is especially interested in proving that Jesus' teaching, in particular the Sermon on the Mount, does not exhibit an ascetic law, but gives principles for the moral life of every Christian. One need not enter a monastery in order to fulfil Christ's commandments. It is in the tasks of the daily life that a Christian has to prove himself a true disciple of Jesus. The Bible is to rule the daily life of the Christian, but not in the sense of a law. When, in 1523, a preacher at Weimar aimed to introduce the Mosaic law instead of the common law, Luther treated him as a "Schwarmgeist," and, in fact, it was that proposal which lay at the basis of all the "Schwarmgeisterei." Such experiments, aiming to constitute a kingdom of the Saints on earth, as the Anabaptists made at Münster and elsewhere, always failed, and made Luther and his friends suspicious of any such attempt.

It is different with Calvin. He is interested in realising the kingdom of God in the Christian congregation, or, to put it more accurately, in the commonwealth of Geneva, which is to him identical with the Christian congregation of that place. So it is the commonwealth which is to be ruled by the Bible, and the Bible in this rôle acts as a law to which the whole community as well as the individual has to submit. And again it is characteristic that Calvin takes the Bible as a unit. It is the Old Testament law as well as the gospel which is to be regarded as the indispensable rule both of public and private life. With the Calvinists the ten commandments become an integral part of the regular Sunday service.

Of course there are many gradations between these two positions. Zwingli, the Zürich reformer, was of a different type from Calvin, while he was even more opposed to Luther than was the Genevan. Luther's rule was to abolish whatsoever was contrary to the Bible. Zwingli would permit only what was based upon or commanded by the Bible; he objected to the use of an organ, to the keeping of festival days except Sunday, and so on. Luther even tolerated pictures in the church. He was sure that no one would adore them if pervaded by the true spirit of the gospel, and he was convinced that this spirit could be successfully inculcated by means of preaching. Zwingli and Calvin both did away with all pictures in the churches. They had the walls whitewashed and the ten commandments and other passages from the Bible painted on them. Nothing is so characteristic of this difference between the Lutheran and the Calvinistic feeling as the history of an epitaph in an East Prussian church, the monument of the noble family of the earls of Dohna. At the time of the Reformation they joined the Grand Master, later Duke, Albrecht of Brandenburg in taking Luther's part. The epitaph, which was erected in the church of Mohrungen on the death of Earl Peter in 1553, was decorated with a picture showing the holy Trinity adored by the family of the donor. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the family went over to Calvinism, and the painting was altered by covering the image of the holy Trinity with black varnish and putting over it some Bible verses in gold letters.

The different attitude toward the Bible finds its expression also in the fact that the Lutherans used hymns, whereas the Calvinists adhered to the Biblical Psalter. Of course the vigorous songs composed by Luther are most of them based upon Psalms and other Biblical passages, and so were the greater number of hymns in the Lutheran church. On the other hand, the Calvinists did not agree with the English church in taking over the alternative recitation of the Psalter from the mediæval exercises of the monasteries and large cathedral choirs. They used the Psalter in a rhythmical paraphrase adapted to modern singing, but keeping so near to the wording of the Psalms that they even called it the Psalm-book. The difference was, in fact, slight, but they felt it to be essential. The Lutherans followed the usage of the church, the Calvinists the very word of the Bible. It is remarkable, however, that hymns gradually gained more importance among the Calvinists, especially since the time of the eighteenth-century revivals, and that nowadays the hymn-book, enriched by the contributions of recent time from poets of all denominations, is in favour with all Protestants and in some circles is even in danger of becoming a substitute for the Bible.

In spite of all these differences, these two great forms of Protestantism manifest almost the same attitude toward the Bible, and we see them changing their attitude almost at the same time and in the same direction. The theologians of the orthodox period exaggerated the authority of the Bible to such an extent that critics like Lessing could speak of Bibliolatry or Bible-worship. They extended the notion of inspiration even to the smallest details in the printed text which lay before them, with no regard for the fact that those details were late additions, sometimes even misprints, and that the various editions did not agree in these details. True scholastics as they were, they had no sense for facts but an unlimited desire for theory; the facts had to submit to the theory, and whoever would appeal to the facts against the theory was denounced as a heretic and driven out as a disreputable person. This doctrinal attitude changed when, at the end of the seventeenth century, Pietism in Germany and Methodism in England once again turned religion from ecclesiastical doctrine to personal devotion. The estimation of the Bible is not diminished—quite the contrary; yet it finds its expression not in stiff formulas of dogmatics but in beautiful hymns. Under the direction of P. J. Spener (d. 1705) people once more gather in private circles to read and to interpret the Bible; once more the students are drawn away from dead scholasticism to the living study of the Bible. To the theologia dogmatica is opposed a theologia biblica. People begin to realise again what is the true use of the Bible, not as a text-book for dogmatic competitions and controversies, but as the divine word of comfort and exhortation, a guide to salvation, and an expression of salvation already gained. There is a beautiful tract written by A. H. Francke of Halle (d. 1727) and very often printed as a preface to the Bible in German, "A brief direction how to read the Bible for edification." It sounds thoroughly modern, as it deals not with questions of theology but entirely with piety. This attitude was again changed by the so-called rationalism. That movement, too, entered the Protestantism of Germany as well as of England and America in various forms and under various names (deism, unitarianism), but with the same tendency. It may be that it had an easier start and a wider spread in the Lutheran church of Germany. We shall speak of its influence in the next chapter. The Bible was submitted to reason or explained according to reason. The Bible was to be followed for the sake of the precepts of reason contained in it or else not at all. It was, however, the common conviction that the Bible gave the most reasonable injunctions, and whereas orthodoxy had been mostly intellectual and Pietism emotional, rationalism by its moral strictness helped the Bible to retain its influence on daily life.

This influence was due to the fact that since Luther's time the Bible was in every house; it was the centre of the regular morning and evening prayers, the father reading and explaining to his family some chapters of the Bible. What a knowledge of the Bible had been gained by the laity soon after the Reformation is shown by the prince elector of Saxony Johann Friedrich, who at the important meetings held at Augsburg in 1530 was able to quote from memory all necessary passages of the Bible.

In Lutheran countries the influence of the Bible found expression in arts and crafts. Not only were the walls of the churches decorated with pictures taken from the Bible but also the walls of private houses. The furniture of a farmhouse was painted with Biblical stories, very awkward paintings, indeed, but showing the spirit of simple and plain devotion. It is otherwise when a rich lady's dressing-table in baroque or rococo is decorated with such scenes. We feel that they are out of place there and that scenes taken from ancient mythology would suit such a purpose much better. We should consider it a little profane that, at a wedding dinner in the sixteenth century, between the several courses elaborate dishes were passed, representing Biblical scenes. We cannot help remembering the remark of that preacher of the old church who exclaimed: "Oh, that they had these stories painted in their hearts!"

Much more important is the art of music. Luther was fond of it; he would never have given up a choir and an organ. He made it possible for the Lutheran church to produce the greatest masterpieces that music has ever achieved—Bach's oratorios. While the Roman church directed the work of its great musicians toward the glorification of the mass, and the Calvinistic church became rigorously opposed to the very art of music, the Lutheran composers were inspired by the Bible itself. The Biblical sonatas of Johann Kuhnau (d. 1722) seem to us mere trifling. The real work was done by Heinrich Schütz (d. 1672) and Johann Sebastian Bach, the cantor of Saint Thomas in Leipzig (d. 1750), who succeeded in giving to the Bible a new voice, a voice which is still sounding and entering circles where the printed Bible would scarcely be read. The combination in Bach's oratorios is very striking—the majestic church hymns sung by the choir, the simple recitative of Scripture, and, last but not least, the arias giving the response of the pious individual to the words of God in the Bible. This is the most characteristic part of it. Protestant piety cannot be without the personal expression of individual feeling; it is thoroughly subjective in the highest sense. As Luther in his catechism explains the Apostles' Creed thus, "I believe that God has created me...; I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has saved me...; I believe that it is impossible for me to come to Jesus Christ without the help of the Holy Ghost...," so Protestant piety gives to everything this subjective note. There is a Greek manuscript of the Gospels from the fourteenth century, written in several colours to distinguish the words of Jesus, of his apostles, of his enemies, and of the evangelist. The narrative of the evangelist is given in green ink, the words of the Pharisees and other adversaries of Jesus in black, the words of the disciples in blue, and the sayings of Jesus himself are in red. It is a curious piece of work, showing the tendency of the Greek church to dramatise the sacred history of the Gospel. With this Greek copy we may compare a Protestant family Bible mentioned by a modern German preacher. It is a plain old printed Bible, but the pious great-grandfather has marked it all through with various colours, which he explains in a note: "What touched the sin of my heart:—Black. What inspired me to good:—Blue. What comforted me in sorrow:—Red. What promised me the grace of God in eternity:—Gold." The difference between objective facts and subjective relation to them, between apprehension and appreciation, is evident. This is the new spirit which pervades the Protestant reader of the Bible, and therefore the Bible is much more to him than it had been to Christianity in former times.

Where the Bible was read in such a spirit it was bound to gain an influence upon the daily life. We must admit this even if we have no direct evidence. The inward acting of the spirit in the individual is inaccessible to scientific observation and statistics.