Questions and Answers By R. A . TORREY
Do you think it wise for a man who is a pastor in charge of a church to study Greek? Do you think the practical help that would be derived from it would compensate for the valuable time spent upon it when there are so many other important things to do? I most certainly do not. A thorough knowledge of Greek is of great help in the study and teaching of the Bible; and, if one is young and preparing for the work, I should advise his taking Greek as a part of his course, provided he has time to get a thorough knowledge o f Greek; but there is no probability and scarcely a possibility of a pastor in actual charge of a church getting a thorough knowledge o f Greek. A smattering o f Greek is worse than no knowledge o f it at all. It is a snare to the one who has it. For any one who has not a thorough knowledge of Greek, it is far wiser to depend upon the excellent translations that we have o f the original Scriptures in our Authorized and Revised Versions, than to depend upon his own attempts at translation and interpretation. A man who has only a smattering of Greek, if he uses it, is pretty sure to make himself ridiculous. He thinks he has dis covered something when in reality he has only been misled by his partial knowledge. I have heard man after man o f real abil ity along other lines make an egregious fool o f himself when with his very limited knowledge of Greek, he has attempted to give original translations of the Scriptures. Only recently two brethren who have set themselves up as teachers, and whose knowledge of Greek is of the most partial and inaccurate character, have been pub lishing what they regard as a new theory in regard to eternal punishment which they have derived, or think they have, from their original researches in the Greek Tes tament But their discoveries are imag inary and not real and they have arrived at results which are utterly false and mis leading, and some o f. their translations
which they would substitute for those that the ripe Greek scholarship has given us are simply ludicrous to a Greek scholar. How is it that an all-wise and all-loving God could create mankind with a fore knowledge that so many would be doomed to eternal punishment? Finite beings are always getting on peril ous ground when they begin to ask how an infinite God could do this or that. An infinitely wise God may have a thousand good reasons for pursuing a certain course of action when we in our finite foolishness cannot see one good reason. It will solve a great many o f our perplexities when we come to see that God knows more, than we do. The fact is that the average man of the present day is so puffed up with a sense of his own capacity for understanding anything and everything that it never dawns upon him that the ways of an in finite God are beyond his comprehension. If a child of six or seven should undertake to criticize the teachings of a' profound philosopher of fifty or sixty, we would not take it as an indication of the child’s wis dom but simply of the child’s foolish con ceit. But it would not be as foolish as the ripest philosopher undertaking to criticise God. Man never appears more ridiculous than when he tries to tell what an infinitely wise God must do. Even though it were utterly impossible for us to understand at all how a wise and loving God could create mankind with a foreknowledge that so many would be doomed to eternal punish ment, that would not prove for one mo ment that He could not do it. It would be much easier to get the ocean into- a pint cup than it would be to get a com plete understanding of God and God’s ways into a finite mind. The main question then is, not how God could do it, but have we proof that God has done it. All we know about the matter is what God has been pleased to reveal in His own Word. The proof that the Bible is the Word of God is simply overwhelming. There are certain
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