When Augustus Toplady called Wesley ‘a low and puny tadpole’, did he perhaps think he was doing no more than Jude had done in his New Testament letter? Toplady’s choice of words was no more offensive than Jude’s. We have to remember that in the 17th and 18th centuries men (it was always men) got heated over what it meant to be faithful to the Gospel as we find it in the Scriptures. Calvin stood for one interpretation; Arminius held to another view. Their followers were sometimes less than generous in the way they described their opponents.
Would it be too much to say we must be thankful that Jude is a strong candidate for the title of least read book of the New Testament? It is a strange document, unlike any other in the New Testament. If we were asked to say what we should lose if it were dropped from its place next to ‘Revelation’, we should, I think, find ourselves at a loss.
On the face of it the writer plunders his word-stock to provide a succession of vituperative words describing those who have corrupted the faith. They are, he says, deluded dreamers, shepherds who look after themselves, not their flocks, They are dead twice over, wild sea waves, wandering stars. Grumblers and malcontents, they wheedle their way into people’s confidence. Full of empty words, they flatter to deceive. They are shameless in their carousals. He goes so far as to say that they pour abuse on whatever they do not understand.
The writer in fact does what we should avoid like the plague when speaking of other people. We temper our words. We avoid harshness. Jude is little inclined to see the point of view of those he calls enemies of religion. He is strong on condemnation, far from kindly in seeing the best in other people. How, we think, could the writer of ‘Rock of Ages’ resort to such language?
This particular lapse on the part of Toplady occurred at a time when, as has been said earlier, theologians were fighting each other over Calvin’s opposition to Arminiius. Calvin was strong on predestination and the helplessness of unregenerate man as against the Arminian emphasis on man’s free choice. Curiously both groups were forceful preachers of the Gospel and at the same time uncompromising antagonists in their understanding of the Christian faith. Perhaps we are meant to understand that when the Gospel encounters raw human nature, the outcome is uncomfortable. Perhaps we are meant to consider the possibility that the Christian Gospel cannot be reduced to a formula, a scheme, an all-inclusive explanation. Perhaps this is the point where a sense of humour has to kick in.
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