According to the author of this book, four different kinds of Christianity are set forth in the New Testament, viz.: Primitive Jewish Christianity, Gentile Christianity, the Christianity of Paul, and the Christianity of the church at large. I devote my space this week to his chapter on the first of these; and it may be well to remark that, if I appear to give more attention to this book than is due to the work of an individual, I answer, he is a representative of a richly endowed and famous Presbyterian theological seminary, and also a chosen representative of the phase of recent criticism which a [272] few scholars are industriously propagating in this country and Great Britain. His utterances are therefore more significant by far, and more worthy of careful criticism, than they would be on their own merits.

      This chapter is remarkable for three things: for its, utterances respecting the practices of the early Jewish disciples, respecting the crude conceptions governing the minds of the apostles, and respecting the many historical mistakes made by the author of the Book of Acts. I shall point out some examples under each of these heads. I shall not need to discuss them elaborately; for if there is any book in the Bible that the readers of the Christian Standard understand, it is Acts of Apostles. Here we are at home; and we need only to know what a man has said in order to judge whether he is right or wrong.

      We are told in regard to the great Pentecost:

      It was not the birthday of the Christian church, as it is so commonly called, for the Christian church was in existence before Pentecost; nor was it the day on which began the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, for his promised coming preceded, or was at least closely connected with, the resurrection, so that it was through the Spirit's enlightening influence that they became convinced that he still lived, and was still with them.

      He argues for this last position in the following logical style:

      As Jesus declared on an earlier occasion that it was not flesh and blood, but his Father in heaven, that had revealed his Messiahship to Peter, it could not have been mere flesh and blood that had convinced Peter of the resurrection of the Lord.

      That is, Peter was not convinced, as the Gospel of Luke declares, by seeing the Lord alive, but by some mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit! To be convinced that a dead man has come to life, it is not enough to see him alive. So the author concludes that "the Holy [273] Spirit promised by Jesus before his death had already been received by his disciples." True, the author of Acts did not thus think; for, "in accordance with his general conception, the author of the Book of Acts finds the chief significance of Pentecost in the descent of the Holy Spirit, whom he regarded as not given till then" (pp. 48, 50). You see, the author of Acts was not a "critic," nor a professor in Union Theological Seminary.

      This is not the only point in which the author of Acts misunderstood Pentecost. The speaking in tongues on that occasion "was evidently the frenzied or ecstatic utterance of sounds ordinarily unintelligible both to speakers and hearers, except to such as might be endowed by the Holy Spirit with a special gift of interpretation. . . . It was apparently this 'gift of tongues' with which the disciples were endowed at Pentecost, and they spoke, therefore, not in foreign languages, but in the ecstatic, frenzied, unintelligible speech of which Paul tells us in his First Epistle to the Corinthians."

      Now, in these utterances Professor McGiffert has not forgotten what Luke says about the multitude from many foreign nations hearing, "every man in his own tongue in which he was born." He has not forgotten it, but he has discovered that it is not true. He says:

      It is clear that the author of the Book of Acts had another conception of the phenomenon in question. He evidently supposed that the disciples used foreign tongues, for he took pains to emphasize the fact that those present heard them speaking in the several languages native to the auditors.

      The author was not a deliberate liar, that he should so misrepresent matters; he was only a romancer. Our Professor knows the reason why he wrote after this fashion, and here it is:

      That reason is perhaps to be found in the glamor which [274] surrounded the infant church in the eyes of the historian, who was himself far removed from the events which he records. Under the circumstances, he could hardly avoid investing even familiar occurrences with marvel and mystery (pp. 48-52, n. 1).

      That means that he could not avoid lying about them just a little.

      Of Peter's sermon on Pentecost, our Professor has many curious things to say. Perhaps the most curious is what he says of the conditions of salvation laid down in 2:38. A single sentence will bring out the first curious point: "It is clear, in other words, that though he was stating primarily not the conditions of salvation in general, for which, indeed, his hearers did not ask, but simply the particular duty devolving on them under the circumstances, he was voicing at the same time the general truth, that if one is conscious of sin committed, he must repent before he can enjoy God's promised blessing." He adds, a few lines below, that "it would be a mistake to suppose that he intended, during those early days, to enunciate a new way of securing God's favor, or a new method of salvation" (63:59). On this I remark that if to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins with the added promise of the Holy Spirit, was not a "new way of securing God's favor, or a new method of salvation," Professor McGiffert ought to have told his readers where to find this method in some book of the Old Testament. But to affirm startling propositions without proof, and often against proof, is a common habit of the class of critics to which he belongs.

      Of the baptism enjoined in Peter's address, our author says:

      The connection of the rite with the name of Jesus Christ did not alter its essential character, nor make it an un-Jewish [275] thing. It meant that the repentance to which it gave expression was based upon and due to the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah; and it may well be that baptism in his name was demanded by Peter of the Jews, whom he addressed at Pentecost, just because the great crime which they had committed was the crucifixion of the Messiah, and because they could thus best give voice to their repentance for that crime (59, 60).

      All this is, of course, contradicted by the added words of Peter, "For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord shall call to him;" but then it is more likely that the author of Acts added these words to Peter's sermon by way of romancing, than that Professor McGiffert can be mistaken. When a critic says that a thing is so, a Biblical writer who says the contrary must take a back seat.

      Our Professor does not believe that Jesus ever said, "Baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). It may be he thinks that Christ directed his disciples to baptize their converts, and if he did "it would be very natural for a scribe to add the formula, 'Into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,'" which was in common use in his day. He doubts, though, whether our Lord went so far as to enjoin baptism at all. He says:

      The fact must be recognized that Paul's indifference about performing the rite of baptism (1 Cor. 1:14 sq.) is hardly what we should expect if the eleven apostles received from Christ a direct command to baptize; and it is not impossible that the entire passage (Matt. 28:19) is a later addition, as maintained by some scholars (61, note 1).

      This reference to Paul's indifference about performing the rite sounds like the exegesis of a third-rate pedobaptist debater down in Texas, rather than like that of a professor in a great theological seminary. It will provoke only a smile. But this repudiation of the second [276] half of the great apostolic commission is a more serious affair. It is, however, of a piece with the methods of destructive criticism, which unhesitatingly expunges from the sacred text such passages as stand in its way. In this connection, and in partial support of this expunging process, the Professor says that "the early disciples, and Paul as well, baptized into the name of Christ alone." This assertion, adopted from Baur, and repeated until it has become traditionary among the free critics, is absolutely without foundation. If the formula used in the commission occurs but once in the New Testament, as Professor McGiffert insists, it is equally true that the expression, not a formula, "baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus," also occurs but once; and then it is used in antithesis to being baptized into John's baptism (Acts 19:5). He who says that on this occasion the disciples referred to were baptized into the name of Christ alone, speaks without authority; for though the baptism brought them into the name of the Lord Jesus, it also brought them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[SEBC 272-277]