By B.B. Warfield
(1851-1921)
It is the primary claim of Christianity that it
is "the truth." Jesus Christ, its founder, calls himself
significantly "the truth" (John xiv. 6), and sums up his mission
in the world as a constant witness-bearing to "the truth" (John
xviii. 37). It is accordingly as "the truth" that the gospel
offers itself to men; and it seeks to propagate itself in the
world only as "truth," and therefore only by those methods by
which "truth" makes its way. Not the sword but the word is
Christianity's weapon of defense and instrument of conquest. "Cut
me off that old man's head" was Caliph Omar's answer to the
arguments with which the aged Christian priest met him as he
triumphantly entered Jerusalem: and in this scene we have
revealed the contrast between Christianity and all other
religions. "That old man," says Dr. James MacGregor, "with no
shield but faith, no sword but the word, setting himself alone to
stem the then raging lava-torrent of fanaticism, with its brutish
alternative of the Koran or death, is typical of the fact that
Christianity is an apologetic religion." Confident that it is the
only reasonable religion, it comes forward as pre-eminently the
reasoning religion. The task it has set itself is no less than to
reason the world into acceptance of the "truth."
If the world were only as eager to receive the truth as the truth
is to win the world, the function of Christian men might well be
summed up in the one word, proclamation. But the typical
responses of the world to the proclaimed truth are the cynical
sneer of Pilate, "What is truth?" and the brutal commend of Omar,
"Cut me off that old man's head!" So, proclamation must needs
pass into asseveration, and asseveration into contention, that
the truth may abide in the world. "Bear witness to the truth";
"contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered
to the saints": these are the twin exhortations by which every
Christian man's duty is declared for him. How early did the
Christian proclamation produce its double fruitage of martyrdom
and controversy! The old Greek word "martyr," "witness" soon took
on a specific Christian meaning, and became more and more
confined to those who had sealed their testimony with their
blood; and everywhere the irritated world complained of these
persistent reasoners that they were turning the world upside
down.
"Martyrdom" and "controversy!" If the collocation sounds strange
in our ears it can only be because we have failed to realize how
inevitable is their connection, how necessarily they appear as
twin fruits of the one fair tree of faithfulness. There never was
a martyrdom save as the result of controversy. The spirit which
would still contention for the truth never yet went to the stake.
There is a sentiment abroad indeed which decries controversy. The
same sentiment should certainly decry martyrdom also. An anemic
Christianity which is too little virile to strive for the truth
can never possess the nerve to die for it. And the contradiction
of loving the one and hating the other is glaring. Says Dr.
Mandell Creighton strikingly: "The age of the martyrs has a
powerful attraction even to the casual reader; the age of the
heresies leaves him bewildered and distressed. Yet the agents in
both were discharging an equally necessary function. Both were
upholding the truth of the gospel; the one against the power of
the world, the other against the wisdom of the world. The martyrs
had this advantage, that the force of their testimony was
concentrated in one supreme moment, was expressed in one heroic
act, which commands universal sympathy. The controversialists had
to live through a protracted struggle and are judged by all their
utterances, and all their human weaknesses which the conflict
remorselessly revealed."
The spirit of the martyr and the spirit of the controversialist
are therefore one. Both alike are the sport of the indifferent,
and the scorn of the worldly-wise to whom opportunism is the last
word of wisdom, and "convictions" the disease of fools.
"Conviction," cries the "Master-Devil" of Gilbert Parker's The
Seats of the Mighty—"conviction is the executioner of the
stupid. When a man is not great enough to let change and chance
guide him he gets convictions and dies a fool." Christian men may
call him a martyr: but the world at best a fanatic, at worst a
well-punished disturber of the peace. The issue does not seem to
the world worth fighting for and certainly not worth dying for.
If it did, the verdict would assuredly be different. At least
whenever the issue seems to it worth fighting and dying for, even
the worldly-wise can find ground enough for admiration and praise
of that spirit of faithfulness, by which it is that the martyr
and the controversialist alike are dominated. We find this
anecdote in General Sir John Adye's Recollections of a Military
Life: "An English soldier coming on duty was heard to say to his
comrade, 'Well, Jim, what's the orders at this post?' Jim
replied, 'Why, the orders is you're never to leave it till you're
killed, and if you see any other man leaving it, you're to kill
him.' " There burns (in its own coarse form) the spirit both of
the martyr and of the controversialist—or, to put it in one
word, the spirit of the faithful man ready to do his duty, all
his duty, and his duty to the end. Let us permit one who himself
trod the thorny path to its goal make for us the application. "In
Tynedale, where I was born, not far from the Scottish border,'
writes Nicholas Ridley, "I have known my countrymen watch night
and day in their harness, such as they had, that is, in their
jacks, and their spears in their hands (you call them northern
gads), especially when they had any privy warning of the coming
of the Scots. And so doing, although at every such bickering some
of them spent their lives, yet by such means, like pretty men,
they defended their country. And those that so did, I think that
before God they died in a good quarrel, and their offspring and
progeny, all the country loved them the better for their fathers'
sakes. And in the quarrel of Christ our Savior, in the defense of
his own divine ordinances, by the which he giveth us life and
immortality, yea, in the quarrel of faith and Christian religion,
wherein resteth our everlasting salvation, shall we not watch?
Shall we not go always armed, ever looking when our adversary
(which, like a roaring lion, seeketh whom he may devour) shall
come upon us by reason of our slothfulness? Yea, and woe be unto
us, if he can oppress us unawares, which undoubtedly he will do,
if he find us sleeping."
Nicholas Ridley would fain persuade us then, of the duty of
controversy. He walked in that path himself and it led him to the
stake. Was he a "martyr?" Or, as many prudent men of his day
declared, only an inextinguishable firebrand? It is greatly to be
feared that today also he would be judged by the wise among us
merely "a stirrer up of strife." It is certain that there are
many in our midst who fear controversy more than error. These
assuredly do not stay to remember that Christianity's sole weapon
is reasoning, its supreme effort to reason itself into the
acceptance of the world. What then will happen if it renounces
the duty of reasoning? To be sure constant reasoning is a
weariness to the flesh, and the temptation lies very close to
purchase longed-for and needed peace by calling a halt for a time
and resting on what is already attained. This were much like
seeking rest from the labors of life by ceasing to breathe for a
season. Let us learn here from a remark of Coleridge's. "For a
nation to make peace only because it is tired of war," he says,
"in order just to take breath is in direct subversion to the end
and object of the war, which was its sole justification. 'Tis
like a poor waysore foot-traveler getting up behind a coach that
is going the contrary way to his." Christianity is in its very
nature an aggressive religion; it is in the world just in order
to convince men; when it ceases to reason, it ceases to exist. It
is no doubt the truth; but the truth no longer proclaimed and
defended rots quickly down. The lawyers have a very instructive
maxim which it will do us all no harm to heed: "A lie well stuck
to," they say, "is better than the truth abandoned." "I have
often asked my Radical friends," Mr. Froude writes in one of his
latest books, "what is to be done if out of every hundred
enlightened voters two-thirds will give their votes one way but
are afraid to fight, and the remaining third will not only vote
but will fight too if the poll goes against them. Which has the
right to rule? I can tell them," he adds, "which will rule.
… The brave and resolute minority will rule. The majority
must be prepared to assert their Divine Right with their hands,
or it will go the way that other Divine Rights have gone before."
Mr. Froude is dealing with political matters, and speaks of that
strife with the sword which the Christian religion has renounced.
But strife it has not renounced: and whenever it shall have
renounced strife against its perennial foe with its own
appropriate weapon—the Word—it will have renounced
hope of ruling over the hearts and thoughts of men. Controversy
is in this sense and to this degree the vital breath of a really
living Christianity.
Are there then to be no limits set to the controversial spirit?
Assuredly there are. These limits are, however, not to be sought
in motives of convenience or prudence. Christianity thrives on
controversy, and exists only by virtue of it—it is in the
world to reason the world into acceptance of itself, and it would
surely be vain to expect the world to take its reasonings without
reply. "It is the native property of the divine word," says
Calvin, rather "never to make its appearance without disturbing
Satan, and rousing his opposition. This is the most certain and
unequivocal criterion by which it is distinguished from false
doctrines, which are easily broached since they are heard with
general attention and received with the applause of the world."
"If the presence of controversy," therefore, adds Vinet, "is not
in itself the criterion of the truth of a doctrine, a doctrine
which arouses no contradiction lacks one of the marks of truth."
And surely subjective motives cannot exonerate us from bearing
our witness to the truth. Indeed it may be fairly argued that
even subjective considerations would rather bid us advance
valiantly to the defense of the truth, if it be at all the case
as Dr. Hort tells us it is, that "smooth ways" in this sphere too
"are like smooth ways of action … truth is never reached
or held fast without friction and grappling." And surely we will
give quick assent to the same writer's dictum that "there are
other and better kinds of victory than those that issue in
imperial calm." Even a certain amount of heat in controversy may
thus find its justification—in the consideration, to wit,
that it is not merely the chill logical intellect which may well
be enlisted in this war. The poet's line, "And God's calm will
was their burning will," is no libel on the spirit of God's true
martyrs and saints.
The limits of controversy for the saving truth of God must be
sought then solely in objective considerations. Aristotle perhaps
as well as another, lays down the principles which should govern
the matter. "It is not necessary," he remarks, in his formal
manner, "to examine every proposition or every thesis; but only
those concerning which there really exists doubt in someone's
mind, so that it is instruction and not rather rebuke or sense
that is needed; for (for example)," he adds, "it is rebuke that
is needed when doubt is expressed whether the gods should be
served, and it is sense that is lacking when doubt is expressed
as to whether snow is white." His meaning is apparently that
there are some opinions which are so senseless that those who
broach them proclaim themselves by that very fact beyond the
reach of argument; and some so immoral that those that broach
them exhibit in them an evil heart beyond the cure of reason:
with these controversy may well be declined because from the
outset useless. But whenever opinions are broached which do not
argue utter depravity or utter senselessness—they claim, of
right, instruction from those who are in the world for the
express purpose of bearing witness to the truth. Questions beyond
this concern only the manner of controversy and the tone of
controversy: they cannot touch the duty of controversy. He that
declines controversy "on principle," or from motives of
convenience or prudence, has thereby renounced his confidence in
the truth—that truth of which it has been truly said, that
it is "like a torch, the more it's shook, it shines."