By James Stalker
THE ministers of the temple of truth, it has been said, are of three kinds: first, those stationed at the gate of the temple to constrain the passers-by to come in; secondly, those whose function is to accompany inside all who have been persuaded to enter, and display and explain to them the treasures and secrets of the place; and, thirdly, those whose duty is to patrol round the temple, keeping watch and ward and defending the shrine from the attacks of enemies. We are only speaking very roughly if we say that the first of these three functions is that of the Preacher, the second that of the Teacher, and the third that of the Controversialist.
I.
At the present time controversy has an evil name; the mere mention of it excites alarm; and the image of the controversialist, in most people's minds, is anything but an amiable or admired figure. He who is called in Providence to undertake the function of controversy can reckon less than almost any other servant of Christ on the sympathy and appreciation of Christ's people; for even those who agree with his view of the truth will be sorry that he has allowed himself to enter the atmosphere of strife, and regret that he has not rested content with other kinds of work. This temper of mind of the Christian public has had its natural result. Able men are shy of undertaking work of this kind, easily finding employment for their talents in other directions, where labour is more appreciated. Controversy has accordingly fallen to a large extent into the hands of inferior practitioners; and it would be easy to mention controversies acknowledged to be of vital consequence to the welfare of the Church which do not receive the support of the champions whose advocacy would lend them dignity in the eyes of men.
It would be interesting to trace this state of public feeling back to its causes; for without doubt there are good reasons for it. It would probably be found to be a reaction from the temper of a time when controversy was carried to excess; for, although an important function of the Church, controversy is far from being the most important; and that which in due proportion is wholesome may in excess be poisonous. In their zeal for truth good men have sometimes forgotten to be zealous for charity. Controversy has raged round small points, on which Christians might well agree to differ, with a heat and violence which would only have been justified had the hearths and altars been at stake. When men thus indulge their passions, they lose from their own minds the sense of proportion, and, having expended their superlatives on objects of trifling importance, they have not the use of them when subjects emerge to which they would be really applicable. They also lose their hold on others; for the public mind, having been flogged into fury over questions which it afterwards discovers were not worth fighting about, refuses to stir even when the citadel is in danger. Thus has the Church to expiate her mistakes.
Yet it is no good sign of the times that controversy should be looked down upon. As has been mentioned in the Preface to this book, we have had to refrain from printing in full the evidence, from the Gospels, of the conduct of Jesus in the different departments of life; but, had this been done, the bulkiest of all these bodies of evidence would have been the appendix to the present chapter. In the records of His life we have pages upon pages of controversy. It may have been far from the work in which He delighted most to be engaged; but He had to undertake it all through His life, and especially towards the close. The most eminent of His servants in every age have had to do the same. St. Paul may not have been indisposed by nature to throw himself into controversy; but St. John had to enter into it with equal earnestness. It is scarcely possible to mention a representative man in any section of the Christian Church in any age who has been able altogether to avoid it.
The spirit of the true controversialist is the joyful and certain sense of possessing the truth, and the conviction of its value to all men, which makes error hateful and inspires the determination to sweep it away.* It was as the King of Truth (Joh_18:37) that Christ carried on controversy, and He was borne along by the generous passion to cut His fellow men out from their imprisonment in the labyrinth of error. Excessive aversion to controversy may be an indication that a Church has no keen sense of possessing truth which is of any great worth, and that it has lost appreciation for the infinite difference in value between truth and error.
II.
There are differences, indeed, in the present feeling of the public mind to different kinds of controversy. One of the tasks of controversy is to combat error outside of the Church. Christianity is incessantly assailed by forms of unbelief, which arise one after another and have their day. At one time it is Deism, which requires to be refuted, at another Pantheism, at another Materialism. To defend the temple of Christian truth from such assailants is popular enough and meets with perhaps even excessive rewards. This kind of controversy is accordingly much cultivated and sometimes may be indulged in where it is not needed. When it is of the right quality, however, its value cannot be overestimated; and at the present moment it requires the very highest talent, for the apologetic problems of our century have not yet been solved.
It is controversy within the Church, which excites alarm and aversion. Yet the controversy which our Lord waged was inside the Church; and so has been that carried on by the most eminent of His followers. It would, indeed, be well if the sound of controversial weapons were never heard in the temple of peace; but only on condition that it is also a temple of truth. In the time of Christ it was the stronghold of error; and not once or twice since then it has been the same. Jesus had to assail nearly the whole ecclesiastical system of His time and a large body of the Church's doctrines. To do so must, to a thoughtful mind, in any circumstances be an extremely painful task; for the faith reposed in their spiritual guides by the mass of men, who have little leisure or ability to think out vast subjects to the bottom, is one of the most sacred pillars of the edifice of human life; and nothing can be more criminal than wantonly to shake it. But it sometimes needs to be shaken, and Jesus did so.
Of course the opposite case may easily occur: the Church may have the truth, and the innovator may be in error. Then the true place of the Christian controversialist is on the side of the Church against him who is trying to mislead her. This also is a delicate task, requiring the utmost Christian wisdom and sometimes likely to be repaid with little thanks; for, while he who defends the Church against error coming from the outside is loaded with honours as a saviour of the faith, he who attempts to preserve her from more menacing danger within may be dismissed with the odious and withering title of heresy-hunter. But it is not easy to see what ethical standing-ground there is to the competent Christian man between either, on the one hand, attacking the Church himself as heretical or, on the other, being prepared to defend her from accusations of not teaching the truth.
III.
Christ and the Jewish teachers with whom He contended had a common standard and test of controversies to which they appealed. Both acknowledged the Scriptures of the Old Testament to be the Word of God. As this gave a peculiar colouring to all His work among the Jewish people, whom He addressed, as He could not have preached to any other nation, so also it immensely simplified His work as a controversialist. His superiority consisted in His more intimate familiarity with this standard to which they both appealed. They were, indeed, the learned men of the nation, and the Old Testament was their textbook; while He, as they liked to remind Him, had never learned. But His intense love for the Word of His Father and His life-long diligence in searching it made Him far more than a match for them on their own ground. Out of the stores of memory He could fetch the passage which was needed on every occasion; and, as He brought forth the word which was to overthrow their argument, He would sometimes taunt them, who boasted of their acquaintance with the Bible, by beginning His quotation with the question, " Have ye never read? " At other times, in a more solemn mood, He would tell them plainly, " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures."
He did not, however, trust merely to His knowledge of the letter of Scripture. This is the method of the small controversialist, who is satisfied if he can always meet text with text and if at the end he has one text more than his opponent. Such controversy is barren as the sand of the sea driven with the wind and has no more value than the bickerings of kites and crows. It is this kind of controversy, which has brought the controversial function of the Church into contempt. In the true controversialist there is more than mere familiarity with the text of Scripture: he has a grasp of scriptural principles, a religious experience of his own which interprets the Scripture, and a nearness to God which imparts earnestness and dignity to his work.
The mind of Jesus stood thus above the mere letter of Scripture and handled it with consummate ease and freedom. This was why He scarcely ever quoted a text of the Old Testament without revealing a new meaning in it. It was as if His touch split it asunder and showed the gem flashing at its heart. Sometimes He would gather a principle from the general scope of Scripture, which seemed to dissolve and even contradict the mere letter.** While loving and reverencing the Word of His Father with His whole soul, He knew Himself to be the organ of a revelation in which the older one was to be merged, as the light of the stars is lost in the dawn of the morning.
But it was not with Scripture alone that Jesus operated as a controversialist. There is an appeal to the common sense and to the reason of men- an appeal away from the mere pedantry of learning and the citation of authorities-which every controversialist of real mark must be able to make. And, if it can be made in a flash of wit or in an epigram, which stamps itself instantly on the memory, the effect is irresistible, when the controversy is carried on before popular judges. Jesus possessed this power in the highest degree, as many of His sayings show. One of the most striking is this, at which " they marvelled, and left Him, and went their way ": " Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's."
IV.
In any exposition of the ethics of controversy at the present day, a prominent place would be given to the duty of treating opponents with consideration. However severely their arguments may be handled, their persons ought to be treated with respect, and they should receive credit for honourable motives.
No rule could be more reasonable. We know but little of our fellow men at the best, and, when anything inflames us against them, it is easy to be blinded by prejudice to their excellences. On the other hand, we know so much about ourselves that we may well hesitate to cast stones at others. No man has all the truth, and an opponent may be seeing a side of it, which we cannot see. God sometimes gets the whole truth given to the Church only by the halves of it, held by different minds, meeting at first in conflict. The fire generated by their collision unites them at last in perfect fusion.***
Yet, excellent as this rule is, it is not without exceptions; for Jesus broke it. We have not enough information to know whether or not at the beginning of His career He treated His opponents with more consideration; but, towards the end of His life, He exposed them with more and more keenness, and at last He poured on Pharisees, scribes and priests a torrent of scorn never equalled in its withering and annihilating vehemence. (Matt. 23)
In point of fact, our estimate of the characters of men exercises an important influence on the value we set on their opinions. We may not be able to express it in public, yet in secret we may know that about an opponent which robs his opinions of all weight. He may be writing or speaking confidently on religious subjects, while we know him to be thoroughly irreligious man, who has not the very faculty on which true insight in such matters depends, and who could not afford to confess the truth, even if he knew it, because it would condemn himself at every point. It may in certain circumstances be a duty to make this public. Jesus often told the Jewish teachers that it was impossible for them to understand Him, because they lacked moral sympathy with the truth; and the interests of priests and Pharisees were vested in the system of hypocrisy which their arguments were invented to defend. Our judgments in such cases are liable to be mistaken; but He could completely trust His own; and at last He broke all the authority of His opponents by thoroughly exposing their character.
V.
In the very rush of the controversial onset, however, Jesus would pause to note and acknowledge a better spirit, if any sign of candour showed itself in an opponent.
There was a day of fierce conflict in His life to which the Evangelists devote close attention. It was one of the days of the last week before He suffered, and a combination of a most formidable character took place among His enemies, to confute Him and put Him down. The scribes and Pharisees were there of course; even the Sadducces, who in general neglected Him, had come out of their haughty retirement; and Pharisees and Herodians, who generally hated one another, were for once united in a common purpose. They had arranged well beforehand the questions with which they were to try Him; they had chosen their champions; and one after another they delivered their assaults upon Him in the Temple. But it was for them a day of disaster and humiliation; for He refuted them so conclusively that "no man was able to answer Him a word; neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions."
In the very midst, however, of this exciting scene a controversialist arose to whom Jesus extended very different treatment than to the rest. The man appears to have known comparatively little about Christ, except that He was one who was everywhere spoken against. But he was a scribe, and, as his party was attacking Christ, he was drawn into the same attitude. He looked upon Him as a misleader of the people, who deserved to be put down, and he had come to do so. Yet the answers which he heard Jesus giving before his own turn came shook him; for they were right answers, which by no means confirmed the impressions of Christ which he had brought to the spot. Some such acknowledgment seems to have been conveyed in the tone of his own question, when he put it.
It was, indeed, but a paltry question, " Which is the first commandment of all? " This was one of the subjects on which in the rabbinical schools they were wont to chop logic, and the man probably considered that it was one on which he was superior to any other rabbi. Jesus, however, had observed something that pleased Him in the man's look or manner, and, instead of merely overthrowing and humiliating him, as He had done to the others, He gave him a full and earnest answer: "The first of all the commandments is, Hear, 0 Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."
To us this is familiar teaching, and it falls on our senses without making much impression. But it is not difficult to conceive with what irresistible power and majesty it may have fallen on a mind which heard it for the first time. It seems to have thrown the man completely out of the cavilling attitude into one of intense moral earnestness. It not only smote his arguments down, but burst open the doors of his being and went straight to his conscience, which sent back the echo instantaneously and clearly: " Well, Master, Thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but He: and to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
This was a noble answer. The man had forgotten the role he had come to play; he had forgotten his comrades, and what they were expecting of him; he let his heart speak and did homage to the moral dignity of Christ. Jesus marked the change with deep inward satisfaction and said to him, " Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."
This is a great example. To attack them remorselessly in controversy often drives into permanent opposition those who might be won by milder treatment. Men may appear as opponents of Christianity who in their hearts are very near it; and it is Christ-like to detect this sympathy and bring it to expression. To prove to men that they are outside the kingdom is an easy thing in comparison; but it may be far better to let them see that they are only a few steps from its threshold. The triumph of a ruthless polemic may gratify the natural heart; but far more like the Master, where it is possible, is a winning irenicum.
* "Late in life he (Mozley) speculated on the controversial temper with an evident though unacknowledged sense of experience. He did not appear to estimate it over-highly, further than as he considered it now to be rare. The contrary temperament was dealt with tenderly-the one that really needs the agreement of those around it, that has a sense of discomfort and privation without it, that must act with others; but the true controversial spirit, that which, strong in the feeling of possession, of a firm hold of its own view, rises with opposition or neglect, which can stand alone, ready as it were for all comers, this was the temper that, as he defined it, his nature evidently responded to." - Introduction to Mozley's Essays. ** E.g., Matt. v. 31, 33.
*** "They that purify silver to the purpose, use to put it in the fire again and again, that it may be thoroughly tried. So is the truth of God; there is scarce any truth but hath been tried over and over again, and still if any dross happen to mingle with it, then God calls it in question again. If in former times there have been Scriptures alleged that have not been pertinent to prove it, that truth shall into the fire again, that what is dross may be burnt up; the Holy Ghost is so curious, so delicate, so exact, He cannot bear that falsehood should be mingled with the truths of the Gospel. That is the reason, therefore, why that God doth still, age after age, call former things in question, because that there is still some dross one way or other mingled with them; either in the staling the opinions themselves, or else in the Scriptures that are brought and alleged for them, that have passed for current, for He will never leave till He have purified them." - Thomas Goodwin.
