The Revised Standard Version - Editors "theology". Continued

Doctor Grant holds that "The fiery-tempered, jealous, vindictive Yahweh of the early Old Testament documents is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"(New Horizons of the Christian Faith[1928],p.179), a statement which is irreconcilable with the teaching of Mt.22:29-32 and Heb.11:17-19. Such a state-ment indicates that Doctor Grant accepts the view of the radical OT critics, according to which the pre-prophetic religion of Israel was a primitive "Yahwism" which did not differ essentially from the religions of the neighboring Semitic peoples and had its sources in them. It also shows that he is prepared to brush aside or ignore statements in the NT which teach the very opposite.

Doctor Moffatt is best known to the general reader through his translation of the Bible and especially of the New Testament. In the OT and also in the NT he has not hesitated to rearrange the text in accordance with "critical" opinions, which have their origin not in textual evidence but in subjective theories. E.g., the first half of Gen.2:4 is transferred to the beginning of chap. 1 and rendered, "This is the story of how the universe was formed." In Mt.l:16 he followed von Soden in adopting the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac, "and Joseph (to whom the virgin Mary was betrothed) the father of Jesus, who is called 'Christ.' " This reading, which in its natural and obvious sense makes Joseph the actual (not merely the adoptive) father of Jesus, does not have anything like as much evidence in its support as does the reading followed by AV,RV,W,G,B. Yet Moffatt not only adopted it but did so without a word of explanation, such as is given not seldom elsewhere in his marginal notes.

Dean Weigle contributed a brief autobiography to Con-temporary American Theology (Series Two, edited by Vergilius Ferm, 1933) under the title, "The Religious Education of a Protestant." In it he tells us that during his student days at Yale he reached so advanced a position theologically that "when William Newton Clarke's Sixty Years with the Bible appeared some dozen years later, I found that it had no particular message for me—I had long since made the adjustments he described, or had never needed to make them" (p. 322). To those who are acquainted with the writings of that distinguished liberal theologian, these words will suffice to indicate the Dean's general attitude to Biblical questions. For the benefit of others a few quotations from Clarke's book may be given. Clarke tells us: "In the late Eighties I read the debate between President Harper and Professor Green on this latter [the higher critical] method of study. . . . I well remember how the conviction was borne in upon me that the higher criticism was a thoroughly revolutionary thing" (pp. 175f.). Nevertheless his conclusion was: "The inquiry that was undertaken by the higher criticism was perfectly legitimate, and I had no right to resist it or wish it away" the result being that "for many years I have not talked as if Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or the book of Isaiah had but one author, or Job or Jonah were historical" (p. 183), which prepares us for the statement, startling but quite logical: "It was a day of mingled good and ill when Christianity adopted the Old Testament as its original sacred Scripture" (p. 185). Needless to say Clarke was very emphatic in rejecting the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. To such views, so the Dean assures us, he adjusted himself, where adjustment was needed, some forty years or more ago. That his position is substantially the same today is indicated by the fact that in We Are Able (1937), a little volume of popular addresses, he deemed it necessary to assign Daniel to a Maccabean date (p. 11) and referred to the book of Jonah as "a satiric, almost derisive picture of the post-exilic Jew" (p. 22).

Doctor Wentz published in the Christian Educator(1937) an article entitled, "A New Strategy for Theological Education." It is in large measure a plea for a Bible-centered curriculum for theological seminaries, similar to the one which has been in operation at the Biblical Seminary of New York, of which Dr. W. W. White was the founder and for many years the head. Since Doctor Wentz does not indicate that he holds a different attitude toward the Bible which is to be the center of the curriculum from that held by Doctor White, we may assume that it is substantially the same. This would entitle him to the distinction of being the one conservative on the Revision Committee of 1946. By this we mean simply that his attitude toward the Bible is essentially different from that of the other members of the committee. But it is to be carefully noted that in his contribution to the Introduction(p.67) he makes it abundantly clear that he is in favor of a "modern speech" revision of AV-ARV which not only translates but interprets the Scriptures.

The above data might be amplified. But they suffice to show that while the Committee of Revisers was governed by a "conservative rule," which required agreement of two-thirds of the entire committee, more than two-thirds of the committee shared the same decidedly unconservative attitude toward the problems which faced them in the preparation of this "revision" of AV and ARV.