SACRED HISTORY IN THE EDUCATION OF PREACHERS.
FACTS are the basis of correct knowledge in all departments of human study. No deductions in the physical sciences are conclusive unless they are derived from well established facts; and even in psychology certain facts of consciousness are the guides to investigation and the tests of truth. It is not less so in the study of the Christian religion. The facts recorded in the Bible constitute both the greater part and the most important part of religious knowledge. They were employed by the prophets of Israel, so far as then known, as the arsenal whence they drew their most formidable weapons in their combats with sin; they were used as a constant source of illustration, warning and exhortation, by the Great Teacher; and both for instruction and correction in right living and right thinking they were the chief reliance of the apostles. They constituted, in a word, the framework of all religious instruction on the part of inspired men, and they continue to hold that place among their uninspired followers.
But when I speak thus I refer to facts not memorized merely, but understood. No fact is of any value to him who is ignorant of its import. The offering of Isaac, for example, is valueless, if not harmful, until it is understood in the light of God’s command and of the purpose of God in commanding it. Even the crucifixion of Jesus is nothing more than a mournful exhibition of human malice, until it is seen in the light thrown upon it by Old Testament prediction and New Testament revelation. So of all the other facts in Sacred History.
It follows from these considerations, that a knowledge of the facts recorded in the Bible is the beginning of Christian education and indispensable to correct knowledge in all that follows. Do not understand me to mean a perfect knowledge of these facts; for this can be only approximated by the studies of a lifetime. No man, indeed, has ever yet acquired a distinct acquaintance with all the facts; neither has any man measured the full significance of those with which he is most familiar. I mean only that general knowledge by which the mind has come into contact with all the facts, and has in a fair degree ascertained the meaning of those that are the more significant. This is all that is attainable in a course of college instruction.
These facts make up the body of Sacred History. They include not only the contents of all the historical books of both Testaments, but also the historical matter to be gleaned from the poetical and prophetical books of the Old Testament, and from the epistles and the Apocalypse of the New. They also include the known facts in respect to the books as books —their dates of composition, their authorship, their individual purposes, and their structure.
I think that there can be no difference of opinion as to the importance to the preacher of such an acquaintance with his Bible; yet I suppose that in nothing are the attainments of
preachers as a class relatively more deficient. This deficiency is more marked in America than in Great Britain, as appears from the greater frequency of mistakes in attempting to state facts of the Scriptures made by American preachers than by those of the mother country. This is accounted for not exclusively by the greater accuracy in scholarship in general there than here, but also by the fact that in the schools of England and Scotland the Bible is used as a text book, and boys learn much of it in the course of their primary education. The young man who enters the theological seminary there is frequently better informed in the Scriptures than the one who leaves it here. Indeed, in the majority of theological seminaries in America the English Bible is not a text book at all—it is used only as a book of reference; and consequently the graduates come forth woefully ignorant of its contents. The results are so deplorable that wide-awake professors in many of these schools have recently begun to vigorously agitate the question of the practicability of getting the Bible into the courses. There are some honorable exceptions to this rule, a conspicuous example of which is the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, which, by the by, is the most largely attended of all similar institutions in the United States.
The theory of those who thus omit the systematic study of the whole Bible from their courses is, that the preacher, after obtaining his classical education and studying the higher branches of Theology, can easily and readily acquire the needed familiarity with Bible history by his own unaided study. Undoubtedly he can thus acquire it; but how many of them do so! Let the very prevalent ignorance of the details of this history among preachers both old and young, both learned and unlearned, answer.
The fact that this method is a practical failure is enough to condemn it; and it is also condemned by the consideration that it involves a reversal of the method employed in all other departments of scientific study. Who would put a student to work in the higher branches of Mathematics before he is well grounded in Arithmetic, because he can learn Arithmetic more easily at a later period! Who would introduce him to speculations on the length of geological periods, before drilling him in the facts on which the science of Geology is based! Who would deliver to him lectures on the philosophy of history before he had read the history of a single nation! Just as idle is it to have a young preacher studying the structure of sermons before he knows accurately anything to form the contents of a sermon; to studying exegesis before he knows the facts on which the interpretation of difficult passages depends; to studying Biblical Theology before he knows the book whose theology is to be classified; or to scrutinizing the erroneous practices found in ecclesiastical history, when he is ignorant of the Scriptural practices by which alone these errors can be judged!
The absurdity of this reversal of the natural order of things may be seen from still another point of view. In attempting to prosecute the higher branches of Biblical study without a previous knowledge of Sacred History, the student is completely in the hands of his instructor. He can test the statements of the latter only by the Scripture citations placed before him, and these are selected as proof texts. In regard to others which might seriously modify or contradict what he taught, he knows nothing. On the other hand, if he shall have taken a thorough course in Sacred History there will constantly recur to his memory almost forgotten facts which bear upon the questions under discussion, as agreement with them or disagreement shall revive the remembrance of them. Especially will he be thus guarded against inferences drawn from facts incorrectly or falsely represented.
It is urged as an objection to the amount of English Bible study on which I insist, that there is not time for it without lengthening the whole curriculum. I would not disguise the time required for it. Judging by my own experience in teaching it for thirty-two years, I would say that less time than three and a half years of one daily recitation would be inadequate. Classes can be rushed through it in less time, but it must be at the expense of making a too light impression on the memory, and of imparting a dim conception of the connection and significance of the events. The ground can be skimmed over too, by using such a makeshift for the Old Testament as Smith’6 Sacred History for students, and studying the Gospels by a harmony, instead of taking up book after book of the Bible itself. A man who studies by means of these labor-saving devices can never know the books as such, and he is ready to believe anything that is told him about their authorship, their dates, their designs, or their structure. The cry has been raised in all the circles of higher education, ‘‘Back to original sources;” it is the call of wisdom, and the student of the Bible can not afford to disregard it. He can not, in other words, afford to let another man stand between him and his Bible and receive it only as he reports it to him, thus drinking the milk of the word through a quill.
The objection which we are considering has especial force with the managers of those colleges among us that attempt to teach a ministerial course without an adequate number of teachers. These schools are ambitious above their capacity. They think that they must put on the appearance of teaching a full course of ministerial instruction, and they make it out by giving a little of this and a little of that, the names covering a large area while the area covered under each name is but a small patch. This is a most unscientific method. Common sense, to say nothing of science, demands that in imparting an education, that which is taught at all be taught well and thoroughly. It is better to teach one thing as it should be taught, than many things indifferently. If I were conducting such a school, I would begin with Sacred History. I would give it all if I could; and I would stop with it if I could go no further. To give an adequate course in it requires the whole time of one professor, teaching four hours a day one half the session, and three hours the other half. The student who goes out of college with this as his only special training, is better prepared to preach the gospel than one who goes out with this half learned and several other branches half learned with it. Unfortunately, many students go out from all of our colleges and begin to preach with half or less than half what they should be taught; and many others who have begun to preach with no education preparatory for it, come into our colleges to learn just a little more that they may preach just a little better. All these are profited more by the study of Sacred History than they can be at their stage of advancement by anything else. By all means, then, give them as much of it as you can induce them to take, and do not assign them studies for which they are unprepared.
But there are other students, the more persevering class, who must and will have more; what shall the college with an inadequate teaching force do with these! I answer, tell them to go for the rest to colleges that are better equipped. But let them go with that which they have already learned so adjusted to what they must yet learn as to secure for them full credit on the books of the new college. In other words, I would have all of our colleges that give especial instruction to preachers, to agree as nearly as possible on a standard curriculum; and I would have every college begin at the beginning of this, teach thoroughly what it can, and to ungrudgingly pass the student on to those which are prepared to teach more. I am perfectly willing, so far as the college with which I am connected is concerned, to send our graduates on to any other school that may be established among us where they can learn what we are not prepared to teach them, provided only that this added instruction is something which they need, and that it is imparted by men on whom we can depend.
But the question, how to make room for so much study of Sacred History without unduly lengthening the entire curriculum, is still before us. I answer, that this study is so needful and so fundamental, that such a consideration as unduly lengthening the curriculum is of little moment in comparison. The curriculum itself is an uncertain quantity, varying so much in various institutions, that it can not be said to have a fixed limit. If, however, in fixing a limit we should be confronted with the alternative of shortening the Sacred History course or omitting some study which has been regarded as well nigh indispensable, I would unhesitatingly make the omission, and leave the omitted study for the future private work of the preacher. I would choose the less of the two evils; and I would do so the more willingly because, as matters educational now stand, a man can find graduate courses offered in various Universities in every branch of Biblical study which he may wish to pursue, except Sacred History. It is the singular misfortune or fault of the boasted educational systems of our day, that the most fundamental branch of Biblical or theological study is the one most of all neglected. The future will correct this error. The scientific methods which now prevail in all other departments of human investigation, will finally force their way into theological schools, and brush aside much of the rubbish which they have inherited from the middle ages.
In the meantime, however, this difficulty is not so serious as might be supposed. The college over which I have the honor to preside has solved the problem in a way not unsatisfactory. it has managed, in a course of three years for Bachelors of Arts, to take students through the whole of Sacred History, and also through one year each of Hebrew, Hellenistic Greek, Homiletics, Hermeneutics and Exegesis, Biblical Criticism, and a half year each in Christian Doctrine and Church History. This is by no means an inadequate or limited scheme of education for the ministry. If I were to lengthen it, I would add one more year of Hebrew, and one year of exegetical and historical study of the Prophets and the Hagiographa.
J. W. MCGARVEY.
Christian Quarterly October 1897 Pages 454-460