I was on a Fulbright scholarship to study Chinese philosophy and culture in Taiwan for the summer. It was on my return home that I had some sight-seeing opportunities – ancient temples in Thailand, the Taj Mahal in India, the pyramids in Egypt, the Areopagus in Greece, the "philosopher’s walk" in Germany, Westminster Abbey in England. And in Scotland what else but William Barclay!

  I was hurrying home to get back to the university for the fall term, so I had but part of two days in Glasgow. I walked the streets of this ancient city – my practice everywhere I went – and searched out some Campbell sights, including the location of the first campus of Glasgow University (1454) where Alexander Campbell studied in 1809, and the site of the old Bridewell prison where he was incarcerated in 1847. By early evening I was on the "new" campus of the university. There was little chance that I would get to meet Professor Barclay, for I had no appointment and the day was far spent.

  In conversing with the officer at the security booth at the entrance to the campus, I mentioned that I had hopes of meeting Professor William Barclay. The officer, with typical Scottish cordiality, took phone in hand and rang the Barclay home. "Professor Barclay," he intoned in that inimitable Scottish accent, "there’s a gentleman from America here who would like to meet you, sir."

  "Ask the gentleman his hotel," the professor said. I told them it was the Kenilworth. "Tell the gentleman I will meet him in the lobby at 11 p.m. tonight." It was to be the end of a perfect day in "Old Scotia." It is understandable that when I got back to my university and the girls asked me which of the l2 nations that I visited did I like best. "Scotland" was my unequivocal answer.

  Having seen pictures of him, I had no problem recognizing him as he made his way into the lobby, book in hand. The book was his latest, just off the press, The Plain Man Looks At The Beatitudes, a gift to me. I have it at my side as I write. It is inscribed: With every good wish – William Barclay. I afterward noted below: "11:30 p.m. Kenilworth Hotel, Glasgow, 9-14-63."

  In that book on the beatitudes the author plowed new ground in tracing out both the Hebrew and Greek origins of praus (meek) -- "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." He concluded that it meant: "Blessed is the man who is always angry at the right time, but never angry at the wrong time." He noted that Jesus was never angry over personal abuses, but was angry when others were treated unjustly.

  We talked about Christian unity. I said a word about my interest in the unity plea of Alexander Campbell, part of which was formulated in Glasgow, Scotland, and he told me of the then current efforts toward unity between his church, the Church of Scotland, and the Church of England. "I think we can talk our way through our differences on baptism and the eucharist," he said, "but we’ve reached an impasse on the ministry."

  He pointed out that the Anglican view of ministry is such – with its insistence on episcopal succession – that the Church of England does not recognize the clergy of the Scottish church as authentic. "I am not a duly ordained minister of the gospel according to them," he told me, explaining the improbability of unity between the two churches.

  Noting how widely read he was, not only in Great Britain and America but throughout the Christian world, I asked for his explanation as to why this included so many conservatives, who, we would suppose, would not bother to read a "liberal" theologian. He said he thought it was because he stayed close to the text and sought to explain its meaning in simple terms. He then surprised me by giving himself a label – very unusual for a theologian. "I am an evangelical liberal," he said.

  While I did not ask him to elaborate, by "evangelical" I think he meant simply that he was a believer in the basics of the Christian faith and in the saving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. By "liberal" I think he meant that he drew upon modern biblical scholarship in his interpretation of Scripture – and that he had an optimistic view of man and the world. In his autobiography he says, "I believe in the basic goodness of man." That is liberalism.

  His "liberal" interpretation of Scripture really raises eyebrows, sometimes among his most ardent readers and his own countrymen. When in Glasgow on another occasion I was in a Bible discussion group where an excited Scot, apparently of Barclay’s own church, railed against "the heresies of Professor William Barclay."

  Barclay himself tells this unsavory story. In one of his broadcasts over BBC about Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee he said it wasn’t important to him what Jesus might have done on that occasion 1900 years ago. What was important is that Jesus quietens the storms in our troubled lives today, and he referred to how Jesus had helped him through the storm of losing his daughter at sea.

  In response to this he received a letter in which the writer said, "I know now why God killed your daughter – to spare her from being influenced by your heresies." It closed with "Yours in Christ," but was unsigned. Barclay said of this, "If I had that person’s address I would write and say, ‘Your god is my devil!’"

  Those conservatives or fundamentalists who believe in the plenary (complete) inspiration and inerrancy (no errors) of Scripture have their quarrel with Barclay. And yet they read and appreciate his many writings! This was the question I put to him. It strikes me as a conundrum, that they esteem his scholarship and yet cry out against his heresies.

  For example, when Matthew (27:9) quotes Jeremiah when it should have been Zechariah, Barclay bluntly says that Matthew got it wrong because he was quoting from memory. Another example is when Mark (10:35) has James and John asking Jesus if they might sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom, while Matthew (20:20) says it was their mother who made the request for them.

  Barclay explains that Matthew wrote some 20 years after Mark, and by this time the apostles were highly esteemed in the church as authoritative. Matthew, with Mark’s account before him, sought to spare James and John the embarrassment of being brazenly self-serving, and so he has their mother initiating the request,

  One can always say of these presumed "errors" that it is no big deal if Matthew cited one prophet when he meant another, or whether it was the mother or her sons who made the request, for the message is the same. And that would be right, and I think that was Barclay’s position as it is mine – there are no material errors in the Bible. That is, no errors that distort the message. In spite of static in the recording, the master’s voice comes through clearly.

  But it does matter if one takes the fundamentalist position and imposes upon the Bible a claim that it does not make for itself -- that there can be no errors at all in the text. They will even say that if there are such errors it compromises all of the Bible. They insist on asking, "If any part of the Bible is erroneous, how do you not know that it is not all erroneous?" They don’t follow this kind of logic in other areas of their lives.

  If parents receive a letter from a daughter away in college in which she is recalling her recent visit home and quotes something that her Uncle Ray said at the party, when the parents knew that it was her Uncle Bob who said that and not Uncle Ray, would they therefore toss her letter aside as unreliable because of that error? They can treasure her letter and rejoice in its message of love in spite of a minor error. In fact, the error will not matter to them, for her message is clear. But they will not claim that her letter is inerrant!

  If anything, Barclay would insist, the clashes and jars in Scripture lend credence to its integrity, for they show that there was no collusion and no conspiracy to deceive. Take the resurrection narratives – where there are several contradictions in minor details. But they all agree on what matters – the tomb was empty on Easter morning, and the risen Christ appeared to numerous witnesses.

  I f the writers were writing to deceive, they would have kept it all neat and flawless. They would have avoided such conflicts as one saying "it was still dark" (John) when the women went to the tomb, while another (Mark)) said "the sun had risen." Testimony in a court of law may differ in minor detail and yet be unimpeachable when the witnesses agree on the issue at hand.

  One thing I’ve always appreciated about William Barclay, whether in a personal visit or in his writings, is his devotion to Jesus Christ and his love for the Bible. It is grossly unfair to charge him with heresy when he was only trying to be honest in confronting difficulties that always come up in serious Bible study.

  There are a number of "Barclay stories" that circulate around Glasgow and the university. One is related to a hearing problem he had from his youth. When he was a young pastor he was visiting a distraught parishioner in her home. After counseling her and praying with her about her problem, he was about to leave when she blurted out "I just might kill myself!" Not quite understanding her, he said, "Madam, perhaps that’s what you ought to do!" That response from a preacher so amused her that she could hardly stop laughing. She laughed and laughed, and then started calling a list of friends, telling them and laughing with them about what that preacher said to her. As the story goes, it was just the therapy she needed.

  Around Glasgow University one might have heard a staff person answering a visitor’s question with, "William Barclay? Oh yes, he’s the chap who knows what Jesus had for breakfast."

  In an interview with a British journalist, which Ouida and I have on tape, Barclay was asked if he had a "philosophy of life," one that could be briefly stated. He replied that yes, his view of life is centered in work. A person’s life is his work. When the time comes that I can no longer do some useful work I want to be taken, he said. He went on to speak of the tragedies that befall us. It is often the case, he opined, that our troubles are of our own making, or some human error – such as an airliner going down.

  But an airline crash is not an act of God, he insisted. God is as grieved as we are. And when bad things happen, things beyond our control, we are to accept them as the way life is, and not blame God. We are rather to look to him to help us through such storms, believing that in it all God will in some way work for good.

  Still another story he tells explains why he always made special effort to speak plainly to the plain man. While visiting one of his parishioners around her hearth, she said to him, "Why is it that here at fireside I understand everything you say, but when you’re in the pulpit I have difficulty following you?" That set him to thinking about the importance of making ideas clear, and he resolved to follow that course in both speaking and writing.

  He came to see himself as a "theological middleman" in that he took complex ideas of the theologian and simplified them for the common man. While he claimed only to have "a second rate mind" – and one who never had an original idea – he did see himself as having the ability to simplify obscurities. Even claiming to be "anti clerical," he declared hostility against all forms of "ecclesiastical gobbledegook."

  A final Barclay story concerns a news item about him that appeared in a British newspaper shortly after his death. It claimed that he had doubts about an afterlife. One of his biographers, James Martin, a longtime friend, protested, saying that over and over again in his preaching and in his writings Barclay had made it clear that he believed in an afterlife. In fact, said his friend, I am fully confident that Willie Barclay, while gone from this world, is gloriously alive in another

Notes

  Buff Scott, Jr., whose address is Renewal@mindspring.com, has published a hard hitting polemic against "the institutional church" titled Mad Church Disease, with the sub-title "A Defector of the Contemporary Church Reveals the Naked Facts about Partisan Religion." $5.95. Order from author.

  Our daughter Phoebe is doing better – out of ICU and now in regular hospital care. She will next go to rehab. We thank you for your prayerful concern.

  Tomorrow I will speak on "What the Transfiguration of Christ Means to Us" at Pecan Grove Church of Christ, 1306 Jack Finney Blvd.,  Greenville, Texas at 10:30