experience. Both extremes to our mind are in conflict with the Apostle's own statements. To name but one instance, in view of Gal. ii. 19, 20 we should not like to subscribe to the author's statement (p. 105) that Paul always treats the abolition of the law as a logical conclusion, not as a psychological experience. It is much more natural to assume that in Paul, as always, the logic of doctrinal thinking and the experience of practical religion have gone hand in hand and mutually fructified each other. And back of both these stood that from which Paul himself derived his whole Gospel as from its ultimate source, the objective revelation from God—a factor with which, we are sorry to say, Schweitzer does not reckon at all. Princeton. GEERHARDUS Vos.

The International Critical Commentary. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Johannine Epistles. By Rev. A. E. BROOKE, B.D., Fellow, Dean and Divinity Lecturer, King's College, Cambridge. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1912. Pp. xc, 242. Students of the Johannine Epistles who have been accustomed to rely mainly upon Westcott (or Rothe in German), will now wish to see what is said by Mr. R. Law in his Tests of Life, 1909, and by Mr. Brooke in his volume in the International Critical series. Both Mr. Law and Mr. Brooke, who follows Häring's analysis, find the key to the interpretation and analysis of the First Epistle in the criteria it supplies of true spiritual life or fellowship with God. "These things write I unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life." Mr. Law's lectures on the Epistle are a rich mine of homiletical suggestion, while in Mr. Brooke's commentary scholarship and spiritual insight are happily blended.

Mr. Brooke discusses the critical questions growing out of the Epistles (except one) with exemplary thoroughness. He makes an exhaustive, if rather superfluous, argument, contra Holtzmann, for identity of authorship of the Gospel and Epistle; discusses the "three heavenly witnesses" in a valuable note; and in an appendix attempts to reconstruct the Old Latin text of the Epistles. Mr. Brooke deliberately avoids the question of authorship which he thinks belongs to the discussion of the Fourth Gospel. He hints, however, his agreement with Harnack in attributing the authorship of both writings to John the "Elder", who lived in Asia Minor and was a pupil of the Apostle John, and in some sense a disciple of the Lord (p. lxxvii). The hypothesis of the two Johns rests upon the Papias fragment, as interpreted by Eusebius, but Eusebius, while suggesting that the "Elder" might have written the Apocalypse, indicated no doubt of the apostolic authorship of the Epistle. We are not convinced that the view of authorship "which leaves the fewest difficulties unsolved" is that which substitutes for the Apostle his mysterious alter ego of the same name, who was with him alike in Palestine and in Asia Minor, shared in a degree his authority and published the substance of his teaching, and yet merged his personality in that of the Apostle so completely that while hiding in a sense behind the latter he never

mentioned his name. A fuller discussion of the subject would have been welcomed.

Mr. Brooke needs to make no apology for the prominence he gives, in spite of the limitation of a critical commentary, to matters of edification. He believes that no other method of interpreting the Johannine Epistles is scientific or even possible. It is unfortunate that the general plan of the New Testament volumes of the International Critical Commentary did not include the printing of the Greek text.

Lincoln University, Pa.

WM. HALLOCK JOHNSON.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. By JAMES EVERETT FRAME, Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. 1912. Pp. ix, 326.

Four important commentaries on the Thessalonian Epistles have appeared within the last six years: the commentaries of Milligan in Great Britain (1908), of von Dobschütz (1909) and Dibelius (1911) in Germany, and finally the present work of Professor Frame in America. Scarcely any portion of the New Testament has received more attention from the commentators. But despite the labors of others, Professor Frame has undoubtedly brought a real enrichment of the exegetical literature. His commentary, it is true, lacks the special interest which attaches to the work of Professor Milligan, which, as was pointed out in PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW, vol. vii, 1909, pp. 126-131, represented the first systematic attempt to apply the new knowledge derived from papyri and inscriptions to the exegesis of a continuous portion of the New Testament. Professor Frame is fully aware of the value of the new materials, and employs them with good effect. But for the most part, he is dependent in this field upon the researches of Deissmann and others. His use of the papyri, therefore, though thoroughly adequate, does not constitute a distinctive feature of his work. But, if a paradox may be permitted, it is just the absence of distinctive features that constitutes the peculiar excellence of the present commentary. Professor Frame has no particular thesis to defend, and just for that reason has been able to employ the available materials with the greater fairness and circumspection.

In accordance with the general tendency of recent investigation, Professor Frame defends both epistles as genuine works of Paul. The first epistle no longer requires elaborate defence. With regard to the second epistle, Professor Frame classifies the chief difficulties under two heads: (1) the alleged contradiction between the eschatology of the second epistle and the eschatology of the first, and (2) the close literary relation between the two epistles. Like most investigators since Wrede, Professor Frame regards the second of these two difficulties as the more serious. After an instructive review of the progress of criticism (pp. 40-43), he discusses the two difficulties

separately, and then proceeds (pp. 51-53) to point out (admirably) the counter difficulties which beset the hypothesis of forgery.

In discussing the occasion of the epistles, Professor Frame distinguishes three classes among the Thessalonian Christians: (1) "the weak", who had not quite abandoned definitely enough their former pagan conception of sexual immorality as a matter of indifference, (2) "the faint-hearted", "who were anxious not only about the death of their friends but also about their own salvation", and (3) "the idle brethren". All three classes are admonished in the first epistle; in the second, only the last two classes appear. With regard to this classification, as applied in detail to the material of the epistles, the reviewer must confess some of the doubt which besets any attempt at precise reconstruction of circumstances simply from the epistles to which they gave rise. But the observations of Professor Frame are both acute and cautious.

The discussion of the eschatological passage in 2 Thessalonians is characterized by a wise caution. The political interpretation of the avouos is rejected, but on the other hand the commentator is not yet prepared to accept without question the views of Bousset with regard to the traditional origin of the Pauline eschatology.

The details of exegesis allow room for many differences of opinion. But with regard to the present commentary the differences of opinion can only rarely amount to definite contradiction. Such a rare case is to be found in connection with 2 Thess. i. II. There

Professor Frame interprets the κaí before poσevxóuela as joining the writer of the epistle with the recipients-"we too as well as you pray". That interpretation may fairly be pronounced linguistically impossible. It would be correct only if an queîs stood after κaí as in I Thess. ii. 13 (a passage which Professor Frame compares). Such lapses are in the present commentary extraordinarily rare.

With the background of Professor Frame's thinking with regard to Paul, the reviewer is in certain important respects in disagreement— for example, with regard to the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles and with regard to the character of the early Christian expectation of the Parousia. But these questions emerge for the most part only incidentally, and do not affect the admirable sanity of the strictly exegetical work. The method of the commentary is deserving of especial praise. The author has succeeded in combining unusual richness of reference to the exegetical literature with satisfactory clearness in the expression of his own opinions. No careful student of Professor Frame's commentary can fail to receive genuine instruction.

Princeton.

J. GRESHAM MACHEN.

SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY

The Christian Doctrine of Man. By H. WHEELER ROBINSON, M.A., Tutor in Rawdon College, Sometime Senior Kennicott Scholar in

the University of Oxford. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. 1911. Post 8vo; pp. x, 365. Indexes.

The task which Mr. Robinson has set before himself, put briefly, is the restatement in modern terms of the essential features of Christian anthropology. He occupies, however, the very modern standpoint which conceives everything as in a flux. What the Christian doctrine of man is, is therefore not a fixed thing but an ever changing-perhaps Mr. Robinson would prefer to say, an ever developing-quantity. It must be conceived as process, and studied as history. Even "its statement in terms of to-day can be no more than a cross-section of this continuous development" (p. 2). There is no way of stopping the flow and obtaining once for all a precipitate. We can tell what Christian men used to think about man,-what the writers of the New Testament thought, and how, standing on the shoulders of the writers of the Old Testament, they came to think it; what the Christian men of any subsequent age thought and how, standing on the shoulders of the preceding ages, they came to think it. We can tell what the Christian men of to-day think, and how, in the midst of the influences which play upon them they have come to think it. But who can tell what the Christian man of to-morrow will think? And above all who can isolate from the steadily flowing stream, we will not merely say the constant elements, the elements which, up to to-day, have remained characteristic of Christian thought, but the permanent elements, the elements which will always remain characteristic of Christian thought? The weakness of the genetic method to which Mr. Robinson commits himself is revealed in such questions. We may speak of the Christian doctrine of man "beginning historically with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ"; we may represent the whole subsequent historical development as but "the record of the germination and growth of the seed sown by Jesus Christ"; we may declare that it has never "lost its vital continuity with Him who is its source"; we may praise it for its power to slough off what is outworn and to assimilate new elements which in the enlarging knowledge of the increasing years present themselves to it. But what we cannot gloze is that we have on this ground lost all right to speak of any such thing as the Christian doctrine of man. There have already been many doctrines of man held temporarily by Christians, and for aught we know there will be many more. Unless we can lay our hands upon a continuous teaching characteristic of all who are Christians, bearing the mark not only of constancy so far, but of permanancy for ever, it is idle to talk about "the Christian doctrine of man". There is no such thing.

What is needed to give us a really Christian doctrine of man is obviously an authoritative standard of Christian doctrine. And Mr. Robinson has no such authoritative standard of Christian doctrine. The only authority which he ultimately recognizes is just his own personal decisions as to what were right and fitting (pp. 273-4). If we say, with our fathers, that the Scriptures are authoritative, clearly their authority rests on the inspiration of their writers, and the inspira

tion of their writers is reducible to "the Christian experience created in them by the Spirit of God". But we have Christian experience as well as they and from the same source. "The potential authority of the Scriptures becomes actual over us only through the continuity of this experience within us, as mediated by the historic society." That is to say, we company with Christians; by our association with them a Christian experience is begotten in us which we refer to the Spirit of God; we see this same Christian experiences reflected in the Scriptures; and so far, but only so far, we recognize them as authoritative. This, Mr. Robinson speaks of as a "unity of the historical and individual consciousness" which "goes back", he declares, "at last to the Spirit of God, on which both depend". Thus he transmutes the "Schriftprinzip" of the fathers into a "Geistprinzip", but a "Geistprinzip" which reduces at last to a mere "Selbstprinzip". For he proceeds: "This is the religious expression of what is more than a pragmatic appeal to consciousness; we may put it philosophically by saying that the only rational appeal to authority is ultimately an appeal to intrinsic truth". Whatever manifests itself to us as intrinsically true we accept as true. It is its self-evidencing quality which authenticates it to us. This is the language of Lessing and the old Rationalism. Only, by it, they reduced what could be accepted as true to rational axioms. Mr. Robinson does not wish to do that. "We appeal," he says, "to the intrinsic truth, the self-evidencing credibility of the experience which runs through Bible, and Church, and the life of the Christian man to-day." There is something else, in his view, in man, the source of sound convictions of truth, besides the bare rational faculty: but there is no other source of sound convictions of truth than what is in man. We accept as true only what evinces itself to us, being what we are, as true on intrinsic grounds: only what is self-evident to us. The Scriptures have no authority to us; their contents are accepted by us only so far as they accredit themselves to us on intrinsic grounds. Even the testimony of Jesus is without authority to us. This does not mean that we have no reverence for Jesus or fail to recognize His uniqueness among men. "We may emphasize as we may, and ought, the closeness of His relation to the ideals of Israel, the intimate interweaving of His thought as well as His life with all the tendencies of His time, we may recognize the limitations to His power in the defeat of His hopes for Israel, and the limitations to His knowledge, as in the eschatological outlook of some at least of the discourses ascribed to Him in the Synoptic Gospels; the fact remains that there is a uniqueness in His own consciousness of Himself, in the historic presentation of His personality in the New Testament, and in His influence on the subsequent centuries of human life, that forbids us to regard Him as simply one of ourselves" (p. 279). It only means that whatever we think of Him, we cannot always think well of what He teaches us, and therefore cannot accept His deliverances as authoritative enunciations of truth. "Not only did the Light of the World shine first on Semitic faces, and flash its glory to us from the jewels of Oriental parable