Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

See, also, the story, in the Cyropædia, of Araspes and his two souls.

In addition to the extracts from Professor Hovey, Meyer, Lücke, and De Wette, the following passages from F. D. Maurice (“Theological Essays”) are interesting, as showing a concurrence of testimony from yet another quarter to the thesis of this section:—

“When any one ventures to say to an English audience, that eternity is not a mere negation of time, that it denotes something real, substantial, before all time, he is told at once that he is departing from the simple, intelligible meaning of words; that he is introducing novelties; that he is talking abstractions. This language is perfectly honest in the mouths of those who use it. But they do not know where they learned it. They did not get it from peasants, or women, or children. They did not get it from the Bible. They got it from Locke. And if I find that I cannot interpret the language and thoughts of peasants, and women, and children, and that I cannot interpret the plainest passages of the Bible, or the whole context of it, while I look through the Locke spectacles, I must cast them aside....

“Suppose, instead of taking this method of asserting the truth of all God's words, the most blessed and the most tremendous, we reject the wisdom of our forefathers, and enact an article declaring that all are heretics, and deniers of the truth, who do not hold that eternal means endless, and that there cannot be a deliverance from eternal punishment. What is the consequence? Simply this, I believe: the whole gospel of God is set aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not one we can refer only to the future, or that we can in any wise identify with the future. Every man who knows what it is to have been in a state of sin, knows what it is to have been in a state of death. He cannot connect that death with time; he must say that Christ has brought him out of the bonds of eternal death. Throw that idea into the future and you deprive it of all its reality, of all its power. I know what it means all too well while you let me connect it with my present and personal being, with the pangs of conscience which I suffer now. It becomes a mere vague dream and shadow to me when you project it into a distant world. And if you take from me the belief that God is always righteous, always maintaining a fight with evil, always seeking to bring his creatures out of it, you take everything from me—all hope now, all hope in the world to come. Atonement, redemption, satisfaction, regeneration, become mere words, to which there is no counterpart in reality.”

Olshausen, an Orthodox commentator, speaks thus in regard to Christ's predictions concerning his coming, in Matt. ch. 24, 25:—

“One of the most striking examples of the binding of the present and future in one narrative, and one which presents many difficulties, is to be found in these passages. Plain descriptions of the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish state blend with no less apparent descriptions of the coming of Christ in his kingdom. It cannot be denied that the Orthodox interpreters are far less natural and unforced than the others, in their treatment of this passage. Their dogmatic views lead them to put apart from each other elements which are blended together by Matthew and by the other evangelists. For example, Schott says, that the description of Christ's coming begins (Matt. 24:29) immediately after ‘the tribulation,’ &c., and that all before that belongs to the destruction of Jerusalem. But apart from the impossibility of regarding the 29th verse as the beginning of something entirely new, there are also in the passages which follow distinct references to the present generation (verse 34), and in the first part as distinct references to ‘the last time.’ We do not, therefore scruple (says Olshausen) to accept the simple explanation which alone suits the text, that Christ speaks of his coming as coincident with the destruction of Jerusalem, and with the downfall of the Jewish state.”

The most interesting question, perhaps, is as to the opinions of Jesus himself about his coming. That he forsaw the overthrow of Jerusalem and the Temple is certain. Everything indicates that he possessed a marvellous power of reading the future in the present, and saw in the condition of the Jewish mind the inevitable overthrow of their state. He also saw that through his death all men should be brought to him, and that he should become King in the way in which he described to Pilate his royalty, i.e., King of the truth. All who love the truth shall, sooner or later, obey his voice. In what way, then, did he expect to come? In the way he himself indicates the coming of his kingdom—like leaven, working secretly in the dough; like seed, sprouting mysteriously in the ground; like lightning, seen everywhere at once. By these images alone could he convey to his disciples his ideas. He longed to tell them many things more, but they were not able; to bear them.

The latest illustration of Orthodox ideas on this subject we have met with is contained in a little tract which has fallen in our way, containing “extracts from a sermon addressed to the students in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Xenia, Ohio, by Rev. William Davidson.” It begins in this somewhat enigmatical way:—

“It is an unspeakably terrible thing for any one—for even a youth or a heathen—to be lost.”

Why this limiting particle “even” is introduced is not explained. It seems to be implied either that a youth and a heathen have not as much to lose as others, or else that we are not bound to feel so much for their loss as for that of others. After a little poetry (which we omit, as it is altogether too stern a matter for any sentimental ornament), Mr. Davidson proceeds:—