Scientific historical method in the interpretation of the Bible requires that the Biblical writers should be allowed to speak for themselves. A generation or so ago that feature of scientific method was exalted to the dignity of a principle, and was honored by a long name. It was called grammatico-historical exegesis. The fundamental notion of it was that the modem student should distinguish sharply between what he would have said or what he would have liked to have the Biblical writer say, and what the writer actually did say. The latter question only was regarded as forming the subject-matter of exegesis. This principle, in America at least, is rapidly being abandoned. It is not, indeed, being abandoned in theory; lip-service is still being paid to it. But it is being abandoned in fact. It is being abandoned by the most eminent scholars. It is abandoned by Professor Goodspeed, for example, when in his translation of the New Testament be translates the Greek word meaning justify, in important passages, by make upright. I confess that it is not without regret that I should see the doctrine of justification by faith, which is the foundation of evangelical liberty, thus removed from the New Testament; it is not without regret that I should abandon the whole of the Reformation and return with Professor Goodspeed to the merit-religion of the Middle Ages. But the point that I am now making is not that Professor Goodspeeds translation is unfortunate because it involves--as it certainly does--religious retrogression, but because it involves an abandonment of historical method in exegesis. It may well be that this question how a sinful man may become right with God does not interest the modern translator; but every true historian must certainly admit that it did interest the Apostle Paul. And the translator of Paul must, if he be true to his trust, place the emphasis where Paul placed it, and not where the translator could have wished it placed. J. Gresham Machen, “What Is Faith?” (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1925), p. 24-25.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:03:04 +0000
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