[94] On page 9 Dr. Moffatt has some very just reflections of a general character on the method of studying the canon of the New Testament and its growth. He speaks of the danger which may arise from treating the writings of the New Testament apart from the rest of " the literature of primitive Christianity". The canon “represents a dogmatic selection from " that literature. "Is there not a danger," he asks, "of isolating the writings unhistorically under the influence of what was the postulate of a later generation?

Here it appears that Dr. Moffatt is on his guard against the danger, which after all he has not escaped, of examining the writings of the New Testament too much from the point of view of the later age. He here warns us against [95] what elsewhere he in practice observes as right method. In an early section of the present article we quoted from page 8 his principle that one should select the later second century as giving the proper coup d'oeil for studying the New Testament; and we have stated the opinion (1) that he carries out this principle in such a way and to such an extent as seriously to distort his view, (2) that it is a false principle. Now we see that on page 9 he states a different and better principle; and this is far from being the only case in which he varies from himself in successive paragraphs or successive pages.

Thus on page 9 the Author proceeds rightly to guard against a possible but wrong inference from the words which we have just quoted, viz., that "the unity of the New Testament is a purely factitious characteristic imposed upon its contents by the ecclesiastical interests of a subsequent age". In corroboration of this caution he aptly cites Dr. Denney, "Death of Christ," (pp. 1- 4), and Dr. Sanday in Hastings' "Encyclop. of Religion " (ii. p.576 f.). He then quotes at length the opinion of a distinguished German [96] scholar 1 that the canon of the New Testament includes all that was upon the whole of most value, oldest and most important in the literature of the early period. He protests, however, "against introducing a priori conceptions of unity and uniqueness into the historical criticism of the religious ideas and the literary form of the New Testament writings". All this is quite right and well said-said almost wholly in the words of others. There is a unity in the New Testament, but we must not hastily and without proper study form an a priori conception of what that unity is.

Yet in spite of this protest the only unity of which Dr. Moffatt takes any account in the New Testament is an a priori conception, viz., that which springs out of "the growing consciousness of the Church"; and he makes frequent and fatal use of this misinterpreted "consciousness". It supplies a convenient pseudo-explanation of almost all the most noteworthy phenomena; and it always implies an importation by the Church into the original and [97] true history of ideas and pseudo-facts which were not contained there at first.

The Author's idea of the unity seems to be that it was imposed by the Church in order to make the New Testament what it now is; and he takes no account, so far as I have observed, of the real unity. One can and should, as he rightly holds, study each document apart and for itself, and one can and should also study the unity which he too finds running through the whole; but this unity is in his estimation not an internal unity springing from the natural development of the original idea and the original truth, an idea present in the historical facts from the beginning and gradually becoming clear to the great apostles as they lived and grew wise: it is an idea which grew through the invention or exaggeration of tales and the concoction of unhistorical legends about the Founder of the Church, and which found in this process of invention or exaggeration the means of expressing itself.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Wrede, "Ueber Aufgabe und Methode" etc., p. 11.