11 ENTIRE MEANING OF GREAT CRISES IN CHRISTIAN LIFE CHANGED
3. The development of Christian doctrine out of the apostolic teaching
In other words, I should like to have the Incarnation as a center, and on either side the preparation for it, and the apprehension of it in
history.”f421
The term “Westminster” referred to the Westminster Confession, the Presbyterian articles of faith, while by the term “orthodoxy” Bishop
Westcott could refer only to his own faith, Episcopalianism. What third set of doctrines different from these two, did they have in mind, in using the word “mean”? When the Oxford Movement, with its revolutionary results, was the background to this situation, when the admiration of this
triumvirate for Newman is considered, as well as the expressed convictions of Westcott and Hort for sacramental salvation and Mariolatry, it can be seen that the new set of doctrines they planned to advocate could be nothing else than Ritualism and Romanism. Evidently, the Revisers incorporated their theology into the Scriptures. This is not the function of revisers or translators.
Many Protestants are not aware of the serious difference between the papal doctrine of Atonement and theirs; nor of the true meaning of the Mass.
Catholics teach that only the humanity of Christ died on the cross, not His divine nature. Therefore, in their eyes, His death was not, in a primary sense, a vicarious atonement to satisfy the wrath of God against sin and pay the claims of a broken law.f422 Because of this, His death is to them only a momentary event; while His coming in the flesh, or the doctrine of the Incarnation, is supreme. Its effects are continual and daily, a source of saving grace, as they believe. The turning of the bread into the body of
Christ, by the priest in the ceremony of the Mass, represents His birth in the flesh, or the Incarnation, repeated in every Mass.
So fundamental to all their beliefs is this different view of the Atonement and of the Mass, as held by Roman Catholics, that it profoundly affects all other doctrines and changes the foundation of the Christian system. When the triumvirate approached their task of revision, with their scheme to advocate their new system of doctrines, Dean Farrar says that “hundreds of texts” were so changed that the Revisers restored conceptions “profound and remarkable” in the “verbs expressive of the great crises of Christian life.”f423
The great crises of Christian life are set forth by Protestants in words and practices different from Catholics. In the great crisis, when the Protestant is under conviction of sin, he reveals it by deep sorrow and contrition; the Catholic by going to Mass. In the crisis of that moment when the soul is moved by repentance, the Protestant speaks forth his heart to God, alone or in the assembly of fellow-believers; the Catholic goes to confess to a priest and so exalts the confessional to the doctrine of the Sacrament of Confession. In that crisis, when forgiveness of sins is experienced, the Protestant is conscious of God’s pardon by faith in His Word; the Catholic hears the priest say, “I absolve thee,” which indicates the power of the supernatural priesthood. In those deep wrestlings of the spirit, the crises which come from the demands of Christian obedience, the Protestant leans on the infallibility of the Bible to tell him what he should, or should not, do;
the Catholic, through the priest, gets his light from the infallibility of the Pope, the crown of the supernatural priesthood.
The Revisers may not have had, in detail, these phases in their minds as we have enumerated them. But they had, in purpose, the principle which would lead to them. Westcott said, in the quotation above, when planning for a new set of doctrines on which the triumvirate was agreed, “I should like to have the Incarnation as a center.” And on the text under
consideration — <461503>
1 Corinthians 15:3,4 — Dean Farrar, interpreting it in the new meaning the Revisers intended for it to have, said:
“When St. Paul says that ‘Christ was buried and hath been raised,’
he emphasizes, by a touch, that the death and burial of Christ were, so to speak, but for a moment, while His Resurrection means nothing less than infinite, permanent, and continuous life.”f424
It is apparent by this translation they mean to minimize the death of Christ and to magnify His resurrection, which to them is substantially a repeated Incarnation. This tends to the Roman idea of Transubstantiation in the Mass. They belittle the death of Christ when they rule out the death of His divine nature. That leads to the conclusion that there was no divine law to be satisfied. Dr. Farrar ought to know what was intended, for he was one of the coterie in which Westcott and Hort moved.
This translation is purely arbitrary. Why did they not say, “hath been dead,”
and “hath been buried,” as well as “hath been raised”? “The aorist, the aorist,” we are told. Previously, we have sufficiently answered this unwarranted plea.
Take another text upon which Bishop Westcott has spoken expressly to inform us what is the superior reading of the Revised:
2. <402746>MATTHEW 27:46
KING JAMES: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.”
REVISED: “My God, My God, why didst thou forsake me.” (Margin.) According to their self-imposed rules, the Revisers considered that the meaning of this text, in the Authorized, was that the effects of Christ’s death were supreme and were continuous. This thought they believed of Christ’s resurrection which opened the way for repeated Incarnations, as previously shown. Therefore, in the Revised (margin), they changed the tense to the past in order to make the death of Christ a temporary event, as of a moment. Bishop Westcott, on this text, shows in the following words that he believed Christ’s passion was the death of a human, not of a divine being:
“If, then, we may represent suffering as the necessary consequence of sin, so that the sinner is in bondage, given over to the Prince of Evil, till his debt is paid, may we not represent to ourselves our Lord as taking humanity upon Him, and as man paying this debt — not as the debt of the individual, but as the debt of the nature which He assumed? The words in St. <402746>Matthew 27:46 seem to indicate some such view.”f425
He wrote to Benson, “In a few minutes I go with Lightfoot to Westminster (Revision Committee Session). More will come of these meetings, I think, than simply a revised version.”f426
As to the “more” which might come of these revision meetings, two incidents of Westcott’s life within the five years previous to revision are significant, — his visit to the Shrine of the Virgin Mary at LaSalette, France, (1865), and his suspicious Tract of 1867.
LaSalette was one of the more famous shrines of France where the Catholics claim that the spirit of the Virgin Mary wrought miracles.
Westcott reports that, while there, a miracle of healing took place. “The eager energy of the father,” he writes, “the modest thankfulness of the daughter, the quick glances of the spectators from one to the other, the calm satisfaction of the priest, the comments of look and nod, combined to form a scene which appeared hardly to belong to the nineteenth century.
An age of faith was restored before our sight in its ancient guise... In this lay the real significance and power of the place.”f427
So thorough was the impression of a “restored age of faith,” made by this Catholic shrine miracle, on him, that he wrote a paper and sent it in for publication. Dr. Lightfoot besought him to withdraw it. He feared, “that the publication of the paper might expose the author to a charge of Mariolatry and even prejudice his chance of election to a Divinity Professorship at Cambridge.”f428
Again, in 1867, Westcott wrote a tract entitled, “The Resurrection as a Fact and a Revelation.” It was already in type, his son tells us, when he was obliged to withdraw it because of the charge against it of heresy.”f429 Thus the Revisers revealed how they were influenced by exhibitions of what they considered the channel of divine power, — shrines and
sacraments. This came from their incorrect view of the Atonement. For if Christ paid not the debt for our sins by the death of His divine being on Calvary, then, from their viewpoint, satisfaction for our sins must logically be made to God by some other means. Catholics find it in the sacrifice of the Mass and also by their own works of penance, while the Ritualists and leading Revisers look to the sacraments, which is in reality the same thing.
This leads to the power of the priest and the practices of Ritualism. These views of doctrines so different from those held by Protestants in 1611, would fundamentally affect, not only the foundation truth of the
Atonement, that Christ’s death paid the debt for our sins, but all other doctrines, and pave the way for a different mentality, a different gospel, wherever the ascendancy of the King James Bible was broken down. The evidences produced in connection with the American Revisers will show this more fully.