We take the injustices of the present social order too much as a matter of course. We ought to see them as making against humanity, and therefore against the scriptural revelation. When these injustices culminate in a war like the present, the only safety is thought that deals honestly with the inhumanity of the war. Granted that war in self-defense is justifiable, we keep ourselves open to divine revelations only as we refuse to glorify the inhuman. Only that nation can succeed in war and remain open to revelation from above which recognizes the inhumanity of war and refuses to glorify it.
Closely related to the blight of the spirit of this present world is the failure to perceive the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp of scriptural truth. Though the Bible was given to a peculiar people, self-centered and exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in suggestions that its content can be appreciated the full only by those whose sympathies run out to men at the very ends of the earth. In the eyes of the Scriptures a human being is a human being anywhere. The differences between men are as nothing compared to the likenesses. Every revelation must begin somewhere and must attack its problems in proper sequence, one after the other; but mere priority of approach does not mean that one problem is inherently more important than another. Leaders among the Jews early tried to impress this upon the Jewish mind. Considered in its historical setting, the book of Jonah is one of the most spiritually daring books ever written. Jonah stands as a type of Jew who would not admit anything of worth in human beings outside of Judaism. Rather than carry the word of the Lord to Nineveh he would leave his country and go to Tarshish; rather than turn back and resume the journey to Nineveh, he would consent to be cast overboard in a storm. Forced at last to deliver his message, he announced it with the grim satisfaction of expecting to see Nineveh destroyed. And the final text of the book is that Jonah must learn not merely to proclaim his message to the Ninevites, but to proclaim his message with sympathy and genuine human interest. The Jews were a long time learning the lesson, but not longer than other peoples have been. Just because of the human interest involved, the missionary impulse is necessary to a spiritual seizure of the biblical revelation.
It is important that we keep the missionary motive on the right basis. It is true that the Scriptures will never be adequately appropriated until all kindreds and peoples and tongues bring their contributions. Some phases of the truth the Oriental mind must seize before the Occidental mind can be brought to appreciate them. When the final revelation comes it will be adapted to the understanding of any kindred under heaven. It is worth while to spread the Christian revelation for the sake of the return which the Christianized peoples will one day bring to our studies of the truth. But the better motive is deeper than this—the passion for human beings as human beings. Any human being is entitled to any truth which another human being can reveal to him.
The approach must be the human approach. We must speedily get away from the Jonah-like conceptions of the biblical revelation as intended particularly for any one nation. One great danger from the present war is the loss by the religious nations involved of the ordinary New Testament point of view. Many of the fighting nations have lapsed back into the pre-Jonah era. But the present war aside, the thought of supreme truth as intended chiefly for a particular race or nation, leads to a patronizing, condescending bearing toward other peoples which thwarts the finer spiritual achievements. The contacts between the so-called higher and so-called lower nations in military, diplomatic, and commercial relations have thus far for the most part been abominable. Too often missionary effort itself has based itself on these same assumptions of racial superiority. A people may indeed receive blessings from the Scriptures in whatever spirit they are bestowed, but damage is wrought in the souls of the bestowers by the attitude of superiority. The only genuinely biblical approach is one of respect—respect for the peoples as peoples, respect which will have regard for their growing independence in spiritual development, respect which will not force upon them particularistic interpretations of the universal Scriptures.
Now, all of this may seem like a long distance from a treatment of understanding of the Scriptures in the ordinary sense. It would not have been worth while, however, to discuss this problem merely from the point of view of exegesis or professional commentary. The essentials about the Scriptures are their relations to life, their views of human beings and teachings concerning the forces of the spiritual kingdom. We shall proceed in the other chapters to speak of God, of the revelation of God in Christ, and of the spirit of Christ as revealed in his cross. Before we enter upon that study we must again remind ourselves that only life in harmony with the point of view of the Scriptures and only an interest in the same human problems that engross the attention of spiritual writers can avail us for vital interpretation of the teachings concerning the Divine, or make intelligible to us the hold of the Scriptures on the life of the world. The Bible is conceived in a spirit of respect for men. Only those who enter into that same spirit can hope to make much of the biblical revelation.
CHAPTER IV
THE BOOK OF GOD
We have remarked upon some points of view from which the student must start in order to reach a sound understanding of the Scriptures. It is time for us to ask ourselves, however, as to the dominant notes of the Scriptures which make the Book so dynamic. The purpose of this chapter is to show that the essentials of the Book are, after all, its teachings about God. The Bible is the Book of God. Due chiefly to the ideas about God are its uniqueness and its force.
Before advancing to the consideration of the Bible as a book about God it will be well for us to glance for a moment at other grounds on which supremacy for the Scriptures is sometimes claimed. There are those who maintain that the value of the Bible lies in the wealth of information which it gives us concerning the first days of the world's life. The Bible helps us to regard sympathetically the view of the universe by the ancient Hebrews. It is a repository of knowledge as to early science and philosophy. Now, all this is true, but relatively unimportant. Had it not been for the religious teachings of which the old-time view of the world was the vehicle, that vehicle itself would long since have been forgotten. Only archaeologists are to-day greatly interested in ancient theories of the world as such.