By David W. Forrest, D.D. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1906. New York: Imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons.1
There is a story told of an impetuous and somewhat headstrong cavalry leader in our great Civil War which is brought back to our memory by Dr. Forrest’s book. He had just ordered a daring charge, when he was interrupted by an aide-de-camp, riding furiously and bringing imperative orders from the general in command, to draw back. “Of course I obey my superior officer,” he said, with no attempt to conceal his chagrin. “But,” he at once added, his face clearing up, “Mr. Aide-de-camp, this is a very remarkable order, which I find it difficult to understand. And how do I know it has not suffered some ‘sea-change’ in its transmission through you? And, indeed, how do I know ‘the old man’ is quite himself this morning?” “Men,” he said, turning to his forces, “charge!” The authority of Christ, says Dr. Forrest, is of course final. It has in all ages been acknowledged by the Christian Church to be final (p. 1, cf. pp. 101, 392). But it certainly is not always easy to ascertain precisely the bearing of either His commands or His example (pp. 160, 393); and in point of fact men have repeatedly and in great masses and through long periods gone astray in their appeal to His authority. Nor is it easy to be sure that some of the phrases transmitted to us “have not come to us coloured by later reflection” (p. 399): His disciples certainly misunderstood Him in some of His utterances and modified them to suit their own convictions (pp. 312, 317, 319), and though “the question of subsequent modification or interpretation touches” different parts of His teaching with more or less force, it is legitimate on all occasions to raise it (p. 292). And in any event Jesus’ own outlook was bounded by the horizon of a man of His own time, race, and social and intellectual opportunities. The mysteries that press on us pressed similarly on Him. The mystery of suffering, for example—“we have no reason to suppose” that the data required for its solution “lay within Christ’s purview more than within ours” (p. 141). “The detailed course of the kingdom in the world” was “inscrutable” to Him as to us; because “the influences that determined it were infinitely complex,” and above all the factor of the free human will comes in to modify all forecasts (p. 300, cf. p. 312). It is not difficult for us to convict Him even of positive errors. No doubt He shared the current opinion which attributed the 110th Psalm to David, and the later chapters of Isaiah to Isaiah (p. 69). Nor did He err only in matters of Biblical criticism. “His teaching in many of its parts is coloured by temporary Jewish influences” (p. 96): even the Parables, at least those “that portray the final judgment,” are affected by “suggestions from Jewish traditional belief” (p. 292). Thus we are carried through the whole sorites and—despite the occasional accidental dropping of such a phrase as “Christ teaches with authority” (p. 331)—the only conclusion that can be reached is that no such “authority” can justly be assigned to the teaching of Christ as has “in all ages been acknowledged by the Christian Church” (p. 1). As we read we are inevitably reminded of Nelson at St. Vincent, vociferously protesting his subjection to his admiral’s authority, but taking great care to clap his glass to his blind eye, and, crying out “I see no signal,” to go his own way.
And here we must emphasize the phrase “his own way.” For we must not suppose that Dr. Forrest puts aside the authority of Jesus in favor of that of the Scriptures. As he says himself, generalizing on an individual instance: “He who believes that Christ’s thought had its limitations will not think that Peter’s knowledge in such a matter was infallible” (p. 330, cf. p. 413). “Is it at all likely,” he demands, “that the Apostle was commissioned to reveal an eschatological truth which was concealed from the Lord Himself, or which He deliberately refrained from proclaiming?” We do not pause here to point out that according to John’s representation (John 16:12–13) precisely this might seem very likely; or to point out that according to Dr. Forrest’s own principles there seems no good reason why the later writer, after mature reflection and the teaching of experience, might not have known better than Jesus. What we are concerned to point out here is that so far from falling back from Christ’s authority upon that of the Holy Ghost speaking through the apostles, it is one of Dr. Forrest’s aims in setting aside the authority of Christ to escape also from the authority of Scripture. It is, in fact, just because Christ’s authority authenticates the Scripture that Christ’s authority is onerous to him. He sweeps the field clean and leaves himself logically without any “external authority” at all. And he succeeds very fairly in living practically up to this logical result (pp. 372, 382, 421, cf. pp. 2, 64, 68). There is, of course, an appeal here and there to Scriptural teaching as if there were some good reason why we should not outrun the “scriptural warrant” for this or that (p. 50). But this occasional slip is explicable usually from the influence of long habit and from a sense of the force of the appeal upon those addressed. There is exhibited no great tendency to defer to the detailed teaching of John or Paul or Peter: but rather a suggestion here and there of an underlying hesitancy in appealing to it. At one point, no doubt (p. 330), there seems to be a hint let fall that we may appeal from any one apostle to “the common primitive faith” as a better basis of confidence. What is not shared by all or a plurality of the apostles, we are told, “according to every sound canon of biblical criticism,” “can only rank as a theologoumenon” of the individual; and as not “forming part of the common primitive faith” fails, by implication, of normative authority (p. 330). The New Testament, however, is treated on the whole as but a product of the Church (p. 383) which can possess no higher authority than belongs to the Church—even though it comes from “the creative period of the Christian faith” (p. 421). We say truly, then, that Dr. Forrest strips himself of all “external authority,” and stands forth as, in some sense, autonomous. Has he not the Spirit as truly as any of the apostles? And does not the promise of guidance into all the truth belong to him as really as to them? And does there not lie behind him a much longer and a much wider experience than lay behind them—through which the Church has learned many things?