THE REVELATION
OF
LAW
IN
SCRIPTURE
Considered with respect both to
its own nature, and to its relative
place in successive dispensations.
Patrick Fairbairn, D.D.
Report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt:
T. & T. Clark's 1869
PREFACE
THE subject handled in the following Lectures enters
so deeply into the whole scheme and objects of
Divine Revelation, that no apology can be required for
directing public attention to it; at any period, and in
any circumstances of the church, it may fitly enough be
chosen for particular inquiry and discussion. But no
one acquainted with the recent phases of theological
sentiment in this country, and with the prevailing
tendencies of the age, can fail to perceive its special
appropriateness as a theme for discussion at the present
time. If this, however, has naturally led to a somewhat
larger proportion of the controversial element than might
otherwise have been necessary, I have endeavoured to
give the discussion as little as possible of a polemical
aspect; and have throughout been more anxious to unfold
and establish what I conceive to be the true, than to go
into minute and laboured refutations of the false. On
this account, also, personal references have been omitted
to some of the more recent advocates of the views here
controverted, where it could be done without prejudice to
the course of discussion.
viii PREFACE.
The terms of the Trust-deed, in connection with
which the Lectures appear, only require that not fewer
than six be delivered in Edinburgh, but as to publica-
tion wisely leave it to the discretion and judgment of the
Lecturer, either to limit himself to that number, or to
supplement it with others according to the nature and
demands of his subject. I have found it necessary to
avail myself of this liberty, by the addition of half as
many more Lectures as those actually delivered; and one
of these (Lecture IV.), from the variety and importance
of the topics discussed in it, has unavoidably extended to
nearly twice the length of any of the others. However
unsuitable this would have been if addressed to an
audience, as a component part of a book there will be
found in it a sufficient number of breaks to relieve the
attention of the reader.
The Supplementary Dissertations, and the exposition
of the more important passages in St Paul’s writings in
reference to the law, which follow the Lectures, have
added considerably to the size of the volume; but it
became clear as I proceeded, that the discussion of the
subject in the Lectures would have been incomplete
without them. It is possible, indeed, that in this
respect some may be disposed to note a defect rather
than a superfluity, and to point to certain other topics or
passages which appear to them equally entitled to a place.
I have only to say, that as it was necessary to make a
selection, I have endeavoured to embrace in this portion
what seemed to be, for the present time, relatively the
most important, and, as regards the passages of Scripture,
PREFACE. ix
have, I believe, included all that are of essential moment
for the ends more immediately contemplated. But
several topics, I may be allowed to add, very closely
connected with the main theme of this volume, have
been already treated in my work on the ‘Typology of
Scripture;’ and though it has been found impracticable
to avoid coming here occasionally on the ground which
had been traversed there, it was manifestly proper that
this should not be done beyond what the present subject,
in its main features, imperatively required.
GLASGOW, October 1868.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY-Prevailing Views in respect to the Ascendency of Law
(1) In the Natural; (2) In the Moral and Religious Sphere; and
the Relation in which they stand to the Revelations of Scripture on
the subject,...... 1-33
LECTURE II.
The Relation of Man at Creation to Moral Law—How far or in what
respects the Law in its Principles was made known to him- The
grand Test of his Rectitude, and his Failure under it, .... 34-60
LECTURE III.
The Revelation of Law, strictly so called, viewed in respect to the Time
and Occasion of its Promulgation, ...... 61-81
LECTURE IV.
The Law in its Form and Substance—Its more Essential Characteristics
—and the Relation of one Part of its Contents to another, ...82-146
LECTURE V.
The Position and Calling of Israel as placed under the Covenant of Law,
what precisely involved in it—False Views on the subject Exposed
—The Moral Results of the Economy, according as the Law was
legitimately used or the reverse, ...... 147-179
LECTURE VI.
The Economical Aspect of the Law—The Defects adhering to it as such
—The Relation of the Psalms and Prophets to it—Mistaken Views
of this Relation—The great Problem with which the Old Testament
closed, and the Views of different Parties respecting its Solution, . 180-213
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE VII.
The Relation of the Law to the Mission and Work of Christ—The
Symbolical and Ritual finding in Him its termination, and the Moral its
formal Appropriation and perfect Fulfilment,... 214-252
LECTURE VIII.
The Relation of the Law to the Constitution, the Privileges, and the
Calling of the Christian Church, ...... 253-291
LECTURE IX.
The Re-introduction of Law into the Church of the New Testament, in
the sense in which Law was abolished by Christ and His Apostles,292-323
SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
I. The Double Form of the Decalogue, and the Questions to which it
has given rise,...... 325-334
II. The Historical Element in God’s Revelations of Truth and Duty,
considered with an especial respect to their Claim on Men’s
Responsibilities and Obligations,..... 335-355
III. Whether a Spirit of Revenge is countenanced in the Writings of
the Old Testament,...... 356-364
______
EXPOSITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PASSAGES
ON THE LAW IN ST PAUL’S EPISTLES.
PAGE PAGE
2 Cor. iii. 2-18, 366 Rom. v. 12-21, 415
Gal. ii. 14-21,385 " vi. 14-18, 421
" iii. 19-26,391 " vii.,425
" iv. 1-7,400 " x. 4-9,442
" v. 13-15, 403 " xiv. 1-7448
Rom. ii. 13-15, 405 Eph. ii. 11-17,453
" iii.19,20, 408 Col.ii.11-17,462
" iii. 31, 412 1 Tim. i. 8-11, 474
THE REVELATION OF LAW IN SCRIPTURE.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
PREVAILING VIEWS IN RESPECT TO THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW
(1) IN THE NATURAL; (2) IN THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS
SPHERE; AND THE RELATION IN WHICH THEY STAND TO
THE REVELATIONS OF SCRIPTURE ON THE SUBJECT.
AMONG the more marked tendencies of our age,
especially as represented by its scientific and literary
classes, may justly be reckoned a prevailing tone of sen-
timent regarding the place and authority of law in the
Divine administration. The sentiment is a divided one;
for the tendency in question takes a twofold direction,
according as it respects the natural, or the moral and
religious sphere—in the one exalting, we may almost say
deifying law; in the other narrowing its domain, some-
times even ignoring its existence. An indissoluble chain
of sequences, the fixed and immutable law of cause and
effect, whether always discoverable or not, is contem-
plated as binding together the order of events in the
natural world; but as regards the spiritual, it is the
inherent right or sovereignty of the individual mind that
is chiefly made account of, subject only to the claims of
social order, the temporal interests of humanity, and the
general enlightenment of the times. And as there can
be no doubt that these divergent lines of thought have
found their occasion, and to some extent also their ground,
2 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the one in the marked advancement of natural science,
the other in the progress of the Divine dispensations, it
will form a fitting introduction to the inquiry that lies
before us to take a brief review of both, in their general
relation to the great truths and principles of Scripture.
I. We naturally look first, in such a survey, to the
physical territory, to the vast and complicated field of
nature. Here a twofold disturbance has arisen—the one
from men of science pressing, not so much ascertained
facts, as plausible inferences or speculations built on them,
to unfavourable conclusions against Scripture; the other
from theologians themselves overstepping in their inter-
pretations of Scripture, and finding in it revelations of
law, or supposed indications of order, in the natural
sphere, which it was never intended to give. As so inter-
preted by Patristic, Mediaeval, and even some compara-
tively late writers, the Bible has unquestionably had its
authority imperilled by being brought into collision with
indisputable scientific results. But the better it is under-
stood the more will it be found to have practised in this
respect a studious reserve, and to have as little invaded
the proper field of scientific inquiry and induction, as to
have assumed, in regard to it, the false position of the
nature-religions of heathenism. It is the moral and
religious sphere with which the Bible takes strictly to
do; and only in respect to the more fundamental things
belonging to the constitution of nature and its relation to
the Creator, can it be said to have committed itself to any
authoritative deliverance. Written, as every book must
be that is adapted to popular use, in the language of
common life, it describes the natural phenomena of which
it speaks according to the appearances, rather than the
realities, of things. This was inevitable and requires to
LECT. I.] INTRODUCTORY. 3
be made due account of by those who would deal justly
with its contents. But while freely and familiarly dis-
coursing about much pertaining to the creation and pro-
vidence of the world, the Bible does not, in respect to the
merely natural frame and order of things, pronounce upon
their latent powers or modes of operation, nor does it
isolate events from the proper instrumental agencies. It
undoubtedly presents the works and movements of nature
in close connection with the will and pervasive energy of
God; but then it speaks thus of them all alike—of the
little as well as the great—of the ordinary not less than
the extraordinary, or more striking and impressive.
According to the Bible, God thunders, indeed, in the
clouds; but the winds also, even the gentlest zephyrs,
blow at His command, and do His bidding. If it is He
who makes the sun to know his going forth, and pour
light and gladness over the face of nature, it is He also
who makes the rain to fall and the seeds of the earth to
spring, and clothes the lilies of the field with beauty.
Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.
And as in the nearer and more familiar of these opera-
tions everything is seen to be accomplished through
means and ordinances bound up with nature’s constitu-
tion; so, it is reasonable to infer, must it be with the
grander and more remote. In short, while it is the
doctrine of the Bible that God is in all, and in a sense
does all, nothing is authoritatively defined as to the how
or by what they are done; and science is at perfect
liberty to prosecute its researches with the view of dis-
covering the individual properties of things, and how,
when brought into relation, they act and react on each
other, so as to produce the results which appear in the
daily march of providence.
Now, let this relation of the Bible, with its true
4 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
religion, to the pursuits of science, be placed alongside
that of the false religions of Greek and Roman poly-
theism which it supplanted, and let the effect be noted—
the legitimate and necessary effect—of the progress of
science in its clearest and best established conclusions on
the one as compared with the other. Resting on an
essentially pantheistic basis, those ancient religions ever
tended to associate the objects and operations of nature
with the immediate presence and direct agency of some
particular deity—to identify the one in a manner with
the other; and very specially to do this with the greater
and more remarkable phenomena of nature. Thus Helios,
or the Sun, was deified in Apollo, and was not poetically
represented merely, but religiously believed, to mount
his chariot, drawn by a team of fiery steeds, in the morn-
ing, to rise by a solid pathway to mid-heaven, and then
descend toward the western horizon, that his wearied
coursers might be refreshed before entering on the labours
of another day. Selené, or the Moon, in like manner,
though in humbler guise, was contemplated as pursuing
her nocturnal course. Sun, moon, and stars, it was
believed, bathed themselves every night in the waves of
ocean, and got their fires replenished by partaking of the
Neptunian element. Eclipses were prodigies—portentous
signs of wrath in heaven—which struck fear into men’s
bosoms, as on the eve of direful calamities, and sometimes
so paralysing them as to become itself the occasion of the
sorest disasters. Hence, the philosophy which applied
itself to explore the operation of physical properties and
laws in connection with natural events, was accounted
impious; since, as Plutarch remarks,1 it seemed ‘to
ascribe things to insensate causes, unintelligent powers,
and necessary changes, thereby jostling aside the divine.’
1 Life of Nicias.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 5
On this account Anaxagoras was thrown into prison by
the Athenians, and narrowly escaped with his life.
Socrates was less fortunate; he suffered the condemna-
tion and penalty of death, although he had not carried
his physical speculations nearly so far as Anaxagoras.
At his trial, however, he was charged with impiety, on
the ground of having said that the sun was a stone, and
the moon earth; he himself, however, protesting that
such was not his, but the doctrine of Anaxagoras; that he
held both sun and moon to be divine persons, as was
done by the rest of mankind. His real view seems to
have been, that the common and ordinary events of Pro-
vidence flowed from the operation of second causes, but
that those of greater magnitude and rarer occurrence
came directly from the interposition of a divine power.
Yet this modified philosophy was held to be utterly
inconsistent with the popular religion, and condemned as
an impiety. Of necessity, therefore, as science proceeded
in its investigations and discoveries, religion fell into the
background; as the belief in second causes advanced, the
gods, as no longer needed, vanished away. Physical
science and the polytheism of Greece and Rome were in
their very nature antagonistic, and every real advance of
the one brought along with it a shock to the other.
It is otherwise with the religion of the Bible, when
this is rightly understood, and nothing from without,
nothing foreign to its teaching, is imposed on it. For it
neither merges God in the works and operations of nature,
nor associates Him with one department more peculiarly
than another; while still it presents all—the works them-
selves, the changes they undergo, and every spring and
agency employed in accomplishing them—in dependence
on His arm and subordination to His will: He is in all,
through all, and over all. So that for those who have
6 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
imbibed the spirit of the Bible, there may appear the
most perfect regularity and continued sequence of opera-
tions, while God is seen and adored in connection with
every one of them. It is true, that the sensibilities of
religious feeling, or, as we should rather say, the fresh-
ness and power of its occasional outbursts, are less likely
to be experienced, and in reality are more rarely mani-
fested, when, in accordance with the revelations of science,
God’s agency is contemplated as working through material
forces under the direction of established law, than if,
without such an intervening medium, in specific acts of
providence, and by direct interference, He should make
His presence felt. The more that anything ceases to
appear strange to our view, abnormal—the more it comes
to be associated in our minds with the orderly domain of
law—the less startling and impressive does it naturally
become as an evidence of the nearness and power of God-
head: it no longer stands alone to our view, it is part of
a system, but still a system which, if viewed aright, has
been all planned by the wisdom, and is constantly sus-
tained and directed by the providence of God.
In this, as in so many other departments of human
interest and experience, there is a compensation in things.
What science may appear to take with one hand, it gives
—gives, one might almost say, more liberally with
another. If, for example, the revelation on scientific
grounds of the amazing regularity and finely-balanced
movements which prevail in the constitution and order of
the material universe, as connected with our planetary
system,—if this, in one aspect of it, should seem to have
placed God at a certain distance from the visible world,
in another it has but rendered His presiding agency and
vigilant oversight more palpably indispensable. For
such a vast, complicated, and wondrous mechanism, how
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 7
could it have originated? or, having originated, how
could it be sustained in action without the infinite skill
and ceaseless activity of an all-perfect Mind? There is
here what is incalculably more and better than some
occasional proofs of interference, or fitful displays of
power, however grand and imposing. There is clear-
sighted, far-reaching thought, nicely planned design,
mutual adaptations, infinitely varied, of part to part, the
action and reaction of countless forces, working with an
energy that baffles all conception, yet working with the
most minute mathematical precision, and with the effect
of producing both the most harmonious operation, and
the most diversified, gigantic, and beneficent results.
It is, too, the more marvellous, and the more certainly
indicative of the originating and controlling agency of
mind, that while all the planetary movements obey with
perfect regularity one great principle of order, they do so
by describing widely different orbits, and, in the case of