The
Bible in the Critic’s Den 4
By Earle Albert Rowell
(1917)
The
traveler, dying of thirst in the parched desert, hoping for rain from vaporous
clouds, is less to be pitiied than the soul in the desert of sin hoping for
life's water from the modern isms. "Clouds they are without water, carried
about of winds;. . . to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness
forever." Jude 12, 13.
"THE Bible, then, does not claim to be
infallible, does not claim to be exceptionally inspired. No claims are made
for it except such as are made for the scriptures of other people. The
Chinese, the Hindus, the Brahmins, the Buddhists, the Mohammedans, the
Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans,- almost all of the ancient nations of the
world, - the Norse people, have had their infallible scriptures. And let me
tell you, friends, they have precisely the same and as much reason for
regarding their scriptures as infallibly inspired as we have for so looking
upon ours." The Rev. M. I. Savage, "Religion for Today," page
545.
Since we have found that the higher critics'
theories are so utterly contrary to Bible teaching and facts, we need not be
surprised if their views of inspiration are also unscriptural. They claim that
mistakes are necessary, otherwise "the writers were lifted above
opinions, and were not allowed to think."-Id., page 360.
What strange logic: The more mistakes a man
makes, the better thinker he is! It is to such reasoning as this that higher
criticism is driven in defense of its basic theories. It was left for
twentieth century intellectual giants to produce such an abortion in logic.
Even the words of Christ are not regarded as
inspired. "The authority and finality which they deny to the New
Testament in general, they deny to Him in particular," says another of
the higher critics.- McFadyen, "Old Testament Criticism and the Christian
Church," page 11. They write and talk learnedly of "the mistakes of
Christ." Absolutely nothing under the sun is sacred to them.
Another reason for their denial of the
inspiration of the Bible, lies in the fact that they ignore where they do not
deny the supernatural. To get rid of the miracles, the inspiration of their
account must be denied. As McFadyen says, "Its watchword is evolution,
and it has no place for miracle." Since inspiration itself is
supernatural, its existence cannot be allowed; or if admitted, it must be
granted to every one, even the enemies of God.
Dr. Briggs maintains that inspired Scripture
authors err in their religion, and "they err in their morals. But errors
in moral precept were such as were necessary in order to educate Israel for a
nobler time."-"Study of Holy Scripture," pages 643, 644. They
even go so far as to assert that Bible errors are "innumerable, and the
erroneousness indefinite and indefinable, and the untrustworthiness unlimited
and illimitable."
Many persons think that higher criticism is the
outcome of an honest endeavor to obtain the truth. But the history of the
movement as written by themselves dispels such a notion as a delusion. Of
Eichhorn, the real founder of Old Testament criticism, Dr. Cheyne writes that
"it was his hope to contribute to the winning back of the educated
classes to religion."-"Founders of Old Testament Criticism." To
attain this worthy end, he set himself to eliminating everything from the
Bible to which the rationalists could take exception. With the empty covers of
the Bible in his hand, he loudly proclaimed that what was left of the Bible
was divinely inspired!
The views of inspiration resulting from such a
position are many; but while differing in details, they agree in the
fundamentals. The most prevalent theory among higher critics is that of Dr. G.
A. Smith in his "Isaiah": "Isaiah prophesied and predicted all
he did from loyalty to two simple truths, which he tells us he received from
God Himself: that sin must be punished, and that the people of God must be
saved. This simple faith, acting along with a wonderful knowledge of human
nature and ceaseless vigilance of affairs, constituted inspiration for
Isaiah."-Page 373.
He then consistently illustrates his view by
telling us that men of science, "by their knowledge of laws and
principles of nature," or some generals, by "taking for
granted" that the sun will rise, all had "the same divine movement
on their natures," and are as much inspired as any writer of the Bible.
The writings of Browning, of Carlyle, of Ruskin, are, on this theory, as much
inspired as the works of Moses, of Isaiah, or Paul.
But that is by no means the logical end of this
conception of inspiration. Its consistent and inescapable conclusion has been
seen and boldly stated by America's greatest higher critic, Dr. Briggs, when
he solemnly tells us that infidels like "Hume, Strauss, and Voltaire were
guided in their attacks on the Bible by God."-"Study of Holy
Scripture," page 8o.
Mark well that pregnant sentence, my Christian
friends who are coquetting with unbelief in the form of higher criticism. Pick
up your Hume or your Voltaire. Turn to those passages which most violently
insult Christ and most openly and contemptuously degrade Him and His word, and
upon your knees, drink in their God-inspired utterances, and imbibe freely of
their Heaven-sent teaching. Do not read anything else written by these
infidels except their attacks on the Bible; for they "were guided in
their attacks on the Bible by God," but not in their other utterances!
Only their infidelity is inspired! God inspired infidelity! God rending His
own word in pieces, and inspiring His enemies for that noble work! This is the
message of higher criticism's eminent apostle, in one of the greatest
theological seminaries in America. Mark it well, for this is the boasted new
theology.
Do you want inspiration pure and unadulterated?
Then cast aside your Bible, take up Strauss, feed on Hume, and drink in
Voltaire; and where they most degrade, attack, and revile Christ and the
Bible, just there you have inspiration from God in its unpolluted form! Ho,
all ye infidels, come ye to the fount of infidelity, and drink of the waters
of unbelief God-given! Fling your Bibles into the gutter, all ye sin-burdened
souls, and cast your reliance upon the gospel of hate and doubt as revealed in
the Heaven-inspired pages of Voltaire! Ho, all ye Christians, spurn that
deceptive and lying Book you have so long made the grounds of your hope, and
feed upon the bread of hate, and drink the waters of doubt, as found in the
gospel of no-miracles, no-Christ, no-salvation, revealed in the inspired works
of St. Hume, St. Strauss, St. Voltaire!
No other conclusion is possible to the critics.
They found that they were believing exactly what the infidels had been
proclaiming for hundreds of years. Then there was nothing left for them to do
but step out of the Christian pulpit, and admit themselves infidels, or
proclaim that the infidels were inspired Christians. This was the alternative
before the new theology. As we have just seen, it has boldly, defiantly taken
the latter course. This is progress! This is "scientific Bible
criticism"! This is the brand-new Christianity, warranted to be without
miracles, Christ, sin, repentance, atonement, or any such foolish, antiquated
thing!
This new theology was born of rationalism,
cradled in skepticism, nursed by infidelity, and is now baptized, and clothed
in a new suit of clothes stolen from Christianity, and adopted into the
church. Strange blindness! Woeful infatuation! Terrible will be the awakening,
awful the penalty, when those who now so flippantly discard the sacred word of
God for the gutter thoughts of Voltaire, meet, in that day so soon to arrive,
"the word that I have spoken"; for "the same shall judge him in
the last day." John 12:48.
When we turn to Christ, what a difference! We
find with what reverence He always quotes the Old Testament Scriptures,
"which cannot be broken"; how He pointed the sorrowing disciples for
comfort to the references to Himself "in all the Scriptures," from
Genesis to Malachi ; with what power He repels Satan's temptations by appeal
to the Word -"It is written"; with what ease He refutes and confuses
the wily Jews, always by appeal to the Word.
But when we enter the theological institutions
founded in His name and established to teach His word, how great, how
infinitely sad, the change! We find there the world's religious leaders with
contemptuous solemnity lopping off chapters and whole books, because,
forsooth, they do not understand them or do not agree with them! The very
chapters and verses quoted by Christ are cast aside with a condescending smile
of superiority, and even the very words of Christ Himself are brushed into the
wastebasket with an easy wave of the theological hand. What will the harvest
of this awful repudiation of God's word be? Thank God, a few faithful voices
are lifted in clarion warning. But thousands are so poisoned by the critical
opium as to be stupefied, sunk into a spiritual lethargy, from which it seems
almost impossible to awaken them.
These higher critics may be presidents of
theological colleges, or pastors of renowned and influential churches; but the
humble child of God knows that "if they speak not according to this Word,
it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8: 20. The Christian can
never be moved who stands with both feet firmly planted upon the Gibraltar
fact that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God."
Only a moment's thought is required to see the
use the skeptic can make of such a gospel as the higher critic offers. He can
logically urge such questions and conclusions as the following:
"If there are errors in the Bible in many
things, why not in most, why not in all? If I am told to disbelieve part of
it, why should I believe any of it? Besides, by what process am I to
distinguish between the false and the true? Since you higher critical experts
disagree as to how far the unreliability of the Bible extends, by what
unerring standard may I separate the wheat from the chaff Your position so far
surrenders the whole case, that there is nothing of Christianity left to
defend. It is as if an army were to hasten to defend a fort that had been
captured and burned.
"You assure me that the Bible is no more
inspired than the attacks of the skeptics upon it; that it contains
innumerable errors, hoary superstitions, lies, forgeries, frauds, and vice;
and you expound its shortcomings so enthusiastically that I can only express
my increasing wonder that you still adhere to an exploded Book and teach the
people a religion founded upon what you now so abundantly show me is baseless
authority.
"I must at least express my gratitude to
you for so completely justifying my skepticism, and fully warranting my utter
rejection of a Book which you solemnly inform me teems with error, and is the
product of imposture. When you, the professed friends of the Bible, say more
and harsher things against it than did ever Celsus or Paine, we skeptics may
indeed take our ease, and leave its progressive destruction to its professed
friends. We may yet, with you, in the near future, sing a requiem over the
burial of an extinct Christianity, which was palmed off upon a credulous
people by the imposture of an inspired Book, and the fiction of a divine
revelation, and the delusion of an incarnate God, and the fable of a risen
Christ. And when you have omitted all the supernatural, all the miracles, all
that I object to, pray what will be left that I do not already possess?
Especially when you tell me that my own strictures upon the Bible, and
criticisms of Christ, are more inspired of God than the Book and its Author,
why should I accept your decadent religion? Why should you not instead accept
my gospel of skepticism, unbelief, infidelity, atheism, which you proclaim is
more inspired than your Bible?"
Reader, it is still true Jesus saves. Proud or weak or
self sufficient Peter may sink in fear; but Jesus treads the waves as though they
were rock; and His outstretched hand will save every soul in life's turbulent
sea who will cry, with Peter, "Lord save, or I perish!"
"I CONCLUDE, therefore, that the fate of
Jesus and His gospel is in no way bound up with the fate of miracle. It is
evident, even if naturalism is to control men's views of all history, that the
really great things in Christ and His gospel abide. . . . Only the fringe of
the evangelical career is torn away. We lose the stilling of the storm, the
walking on the sea, the feeding of the multitude, the raising of the widow's
only son and the dead Lazarus," and His bodily resurrection." - The
Rev. G. A. Gordon, "Religion and Miracle," page 130.
"Who do men say that the Son of man
is?" Matt. 16:13, A. R. V.
After dissecting the Old Testament, the higher
critics turned their scalpel upon the New Testament, and have now been
dissecting it with an ever-growing boldness, and would fain turn their weapon
of destruction upon Christ Himself.
Dr. Briggs, who holds a brief for higher
criticism, says that "the higher criticism of Holy Scripture is a
science, and its results as sure as those of any other
science."-"Study of Holy Scripture," page 105. Let us see,
then, what some of the "sure results" of this "science"
are when applied to Christ.
"Back to Christ" has been the cry;
and so in the last fifty years, more lives of Christ have been written than in
all the eighteen hundred years previous. Having discarded most of the Old
Testament as useless husk, and discredited a large part of the New as myth and
legend, the higher critics at last awoke to the realization of the fact that
they were on dangerous ground.
To excuse their course, and steel their arm for
further dissecting, they claimed that they were discarding only the
inconsequential husk, or outer shell, to get to the kernel - Christ. Yet in
spite of their claim to sacrifice nothing essential, they are making desperate
efforts to convince themselves and the church that they have not given up
Jesus. When it is pointed out that their understanding of Him is contrary to
ours in the fundamentals, they inform us, with a pitying smile, that they have
"rediscovered Jesus," that they have "cast new light upon His
life."
When Paul or James or John contradicts their
interpretation of Him, they calmly tell us that the apostles were wrong. When
the facts are against the theory, why, of course, the facts must be altered or
excluded, that the theory may stand! In short, though Christ gave His Spirit
to guide His disciples "into all truth," these Spirit-guided
disciples "misinterpreted Christ" in many instances, falsified Him
in others; and it has been left to the infallible "critical
divination" of the modern higher critic to interpret Him aright! Now let
us briefly review a few points of this new interpretation, which is casting so
much "new light" on Christ, and is such an improvement over the
antiquated views of the bosom friends of Jesus.
Since the critics had previously branded the
fall, the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the exodus, and much else, as
"utterly unhistorical," and all the persons mentioned in the books
of Moses, with Moses himself, and Job, Jonah, David, Solomon, and even Ezra,
as alike pure myths; when they found that Christ, in every instance that He
has occasion to refer to any of these persons or events, invariably accepts
them as actual, historical, and never as legend or myth, they were for a while
staggered, and endeavored, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, to reconcile
the facts with their theory. It never occurred to them to alter their theory
to fit the facts.
But they soon recognized the impossibility of
such a reconciliation, and so the inexorable logic of their theory forced them
to take another step in the history of the movement - they boldly proclaimed
that Christ was mistaken in His belief in these accounts. The Rev. Dr. Clarke
tells us that He had "ideas inherited from an expiring age, existing side
by side with His vision of eternal truth," and that He conceived
"the coming kingdom in the mistaken manner of the time."-"Use
of Scripture," page l09.
Christ, then, erred! He was deceived! And since
He taught these deceptions, He was also a deceiver! For hadn't they, the
higher critics, proved that Moses and Abraham were myths, and the Flood and
the destruction of Sodom the silliest legends? Christ believed these old
legends and childish accounts as actual history, and thus taught them; so here
was an open disagreement between the critics and Christ. The critics could not
be wrong, so of course Christ must be! What a sight- a deceived Saviour still
further deceiving a deluded people!
When Ingersoll lectured on "the mistakes
of Moses," the Christian world was shocked, and held up its hands in
horror; but to-day, when hundreds of professed Christian ministers are
lecturing to professed Christian churches, from their own pulpits, on
"the mistakes of Christ," there is hardly a whispered protest in the
same churches that were so horrified by Ingersoll. Once the attacks were made
by skeptics upon despicable trivialities; but now they are made by ministers,
in Christian pulpits the world over, against the foundations of the Christian
religion.
Since the fall is discarded as a legend, the
fact of sin is ignored or denied; or as Campbell, minister of London City
Temple, says, "Sin is, after all; a quest for God."-"New
Theology," page 151. But, says the Bible: "Sin is the transgression
of the law." "He that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the devil
sinneth from the beginning." 1 John 3: 4, 8. The devil, then, was engaged
in "a quest for God." But in spite of Campbell's dictum, we know
that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23), and not, as this
sugarcoated theology would have us believe, eternal life.
Since the atonement is founded upon the fact
that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom.
3:23), and is the very heart of our redemption, and the burden of the Bible,
and the object of the gospel, we need not be surprised that their logic
compels them to reject this also. Nay, they spurn it.
"The doctrine of the atonement, as
popularly held," says the Rev. R. J. Campbell, "is not only not
true, but it ought not to be true: it is a serious hindrance to spiritual
religion. Why in the world should God require such a sacrifice before feeling
Himself free to forgive His erring children ?"-"New Theology,"
page 115. Such a question reveals a lamentably false conception of what the
claims of justice are.
But this is the view everywhere prevalent in
new theology books, and is the logical outcome of their fundamentally
infidelic theories. The prevalence of such vicious doctrines is sapping the
spirituality and cutting the sinews of faith in the Christian church.
Of course, with the atonement goes the belief
in the incarnation. "The nativity stories belong to the poetry of
religion, not to history. To regard them as narratives of actual fact, is to
misunderstand them." "The simple and natural conclusion is that
Jesus was the child of Joseph and Mary."-"New Theology," pages
101, 102.
Other exponents of the new theology, like Canon
Cheyne, of England, and Pfleider, professor of theology in the University of
Berlin, carry this conception to its logical conclusion. The latter seriously
informs us that "to the men of old, the Christ of modern thought would
have been incomprehensible and therefore untrue; while to the mind of to-day,
simple faith in the antique mythical epic is no longer
possible."-"Early Christian Conception of Christ," page 13.
Having assumed that which most needs proof, he
proceeds to tell us that "an attempt has been made, by means of
separating away later accretions and by falling back upon the oldest historic
sources [which sources, by the way, the critics themselves manufacture, as we
shall see later], to approach as nearly as possible to the historical truth
concerning the Founder of our religion, and to present His form in its simple
human grandeur and stripped of all mythical accessories."- Id., pages 7,
8.
Having swept away the accumulated evidences of
nineteen centuries of research, in one jaunty sentence, he then delves into
the musty accounts of the hoary myths of the ancient religions of Egypt,
Greece, Persia, and India, and upon finding among the thousands of puerile
absurdities of these religions, a legend here and there remotely similar to
the New Testament accounts of Christ, he triumphantly points to it as the
origin of the New Testament record. "In the history of religion, many
parallels," he says, "are found to all these traits of the New
Testament conception of Christ as the Saviour of the world."-Id., pages
86, 87. The stories of Christianity are dependent upon "the myths and
legends of universal history."-Id., page 14. And so, in the teeth of all
evidence to the contrary, he pens the monstrous sentence that "all the
miracles [of the New Testament] find countless parallels in the legends of
pagan heroes."-Id., page 65.
The logic of such a conception leads him, and
numberless others who hold such views, to the conclusion that Christianity
"sprang up in the world of those days as the ripe fruit of ages of
development, and in a soil already prepared. Now it is of course easily
comprehended that this evolutionist method of inquiry should have a disturbing
influence upon many persons, . . . because it appears to be nothing more than
a combination of ideas that had existed for ages," in heathen and
degraded minds. (Id., pages 152, 153.)
What! you exclaim. Did Christianity emanate
from heathen darkness? Is our New Testament but a garbled edition of the
crudities of a superstitious people who worshiped stocks and stones? Are the
accounts of Him who calmed 'the raging sea, spoke peace to the soul, and went
about doing good, the fruit of the immoral superstitions of a people who ate
one another?
No, these infidel theories are not the ravings
of a Voltaire, nor the sneers of a Paine. They are the sober and earnest
statements of a number of the greatest religious teachers of the world,
standing in the van of Biblical scholarship, high in the councils of the
church. And their ideas are eagerly absorbed by thousands of young ministers,
anxious to distinguish themselves by their "broad scholarship" and
"liberal theology," and are retailed to their congregations in
graduated and sugar-coated doses. Thus hypodermic injections of spiritual
poison are given to the church by her "doctors of divinity"; and
with her spiritual nerves paralyzed, she is sinking into a deathlike lethargy,
from which only the last fiery message of the Holy Spirit can arouse her.
But the Bible, you say, teaches the deity of
Christ; and He said of His own words, "Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but My words shall not pass away." Matt. 24: 35. True; but "one of
the greatest stumblingblocks in the way of many devout and intelligent minds
to-day is that of the supposed binding authority of the letter of
Scripture." -The Rev. R. J. Campbell, "New Theology," page 176.
Then in order to excuse themselves for casting
overboard the Bible, this new theology solemnly informs us that Christ was the
first to do it, and that they are only piously following the example
consecrated by Him.
"The official teachers began everything
with `It is written,' and then followed elaborate expositions. . . . Jesus
simply ignored this whole method. He did not need it for Himself; and what
is more remarkable, He took it for granted that His hearers did not need it. .
. . One would have difficulty to find more complete emancipation from
authority than He represented in His own person. . In point of method, then,
Jesus made as complete a break with Scriptural authority as could well
be."-G. A. Coe, "Religion of a Mature Mind," page 97.
In like manner says Prof. G. W. Knox : "No
book, however sacred, no law, though written by the finger of God on tablets
of stone, no temple, though in its most holy place Jehovah had His dwelling,
could command or silence Him."-"The Gospel of Jesus," Page 82.
Yet God opened the heavens to say, "This
is My beloved Son: hear Him," Mark 9: 7. And Christ said, "The word
which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me;" and : "The
word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not
from Myself; but the Father that sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment, what
I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life
eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto
Me, so I speak." John, 14:24; 12: 48-50. Again and again He meets the
arch tempter and his subtleties with "It is written."
Open your Gospels almost at random, and you
will find that if one doctrine is more prominent than another, it is that
Christ was absolutely subject, in the most minute particular, to the will of
His Father as revealed in the Old Testament, and as revealed to Him from day
to day in those lonely watches on the mountain, while His disciples lay
wrapped in slumber. Is it any wonder, when one reads such open, barefaced
contradictions of the Bible as just quoted, that one is led to doubt if the
higher critics read the Bible at all?
While claiming to return to the historical
Christ, this new theology disbelieves His most explicit utterances, disowns
His lordship over them, repudiates His claims to deity, calls His belief in
the Old Testament a snare and a delusion, rejects completely His authenticated
miracles, criticizes, discards, and even spurns much of the Gospel accounts of
Him as largely fiction, and always wholly subject to any man's ignorant
caprice. In fact, these higher critics not only exclude the supernatural, and
deny and ridicule prophecy, but hand over nature to science, relegate history
to secular writers, abandon truth to philosophy, and leave only feeling,
imagination, and illusion, deception, fraud, and legends, to religion.
We are roundly told that the words of Christ
recorded in the Gospel of John "are wholly unhistorical, and existed only
in the imagination of the unknown writer, who considered them necessary to
elucidate his idea of the Logos-Messiah."- Picton, "Man and the
Bible," page 225. And other eminent divines assert, in similar
uncompromising ways, the utterly unhistorical character of the rest of the New
Testament.
What emerges from this man-made chaos is not
the Christianity of the apostles, nor the "mind of the Master," but
a perversion, a miserable mongrel, that is, another gospel, which indeed is
not another. In order to evade the damaging force of their open denial of the
authority of Christ, the claim is made that while much of the Gospels is myth
and legend, this is really better than if they were true history! Says the
Rev. R. J. Campbell, "Myth and legend are truer than history, for they
take us to the inside of things, whereas history only shows us the
outside."-"New Theology," page 255.
This is a most astonishing statement. Lies and
error truer than truth! Deception the core and center, and truth only the
useless outside or husk! Such a vain imagination refutes itself; but it shows
to what illogical, unspeakable makeshifts the new theologians are driven in
order to defend their actual infidelity.
But with it all, and through it all, higher
critics doggedly affirm that they at least have saved enough out of the wreck
for salvation; that the kernel of God's truth imbedded in the Bible myths and
legends remains untouched by their scorching fires of criticism. But who shall
say what and how much is essential to salvation? And what agreement could be
expected among the critics as to these essentials? What would be considered
essential by one is rejected by another, until the whole Bible is set aside.
Their sweeping declarations of Bible imperfections, and their constant
disagreements save only in the errancy of the Scriptures, would lead to the
unavoidable but unwelcome conclusion that it is not trustworthy in anything,
is not needful, and may be a superfluity. Why bother, then, to cut out parts
of the Bible- why not be consistent, and pitch the whole discredited Bible
away?
That this is not a far-fetched conclusion
deduced from their theories, is evident from the bold declaration of one of
the higher critical preachers already extensively quoted, the Rev. R. J.
Campbell: "I close by solemnly adding: Never mind what the Bible says, if
you, are in search for truth, but trust the voice of God within
you."-"New Theology," page 199.
As if the truth which came direct from God
through Jesus (John 12:49, 50), who is "the Way, the Truth, and the
Life" (John 14: 6), and who is "full of grace and truth" (John
1:14), and who said of the Bible, "Thy word is truth" (John 17: I7)-
as if this truth contained in the Scriptures, which "cannot he
broken," could be contradicted by the God of truth speaking in the heart!
Thus are opened the floodgates for the deluge
of every kind of unsanctified delusion, based upon the "voice of
God" in the heart, regardless of its agreement or disagreement with the
most solemn teachings of prophets, apostles, and Christ, who sealed their
testimony with their blood. Even though "the heart is deceitful above all
things" (Jer. 17:9), still this deceitful heart is to be exalted above
the sublime words of Christ, which He tells us are every one given Him by the
almighty Father. Surely higher critics "rush in where angels fear to
tread."
What, then, is Christ to this new theology,
which demands, in so arrogant a manner, the obedience of the Christian church?
Let one of the greatest of the "liberal Christians" in America, the
Rev. G. A. Gordon, tell us: "We have the record of His life and teaching,
the record of what He said, of what He did, of what He suffered, of what He
was. But the record is simply a symbol, a sublime memory."-"Religion
and Miracle," page 119.
That's all - only a memory, just a mystic
symbol, merely a vague finger pointing upward! Why, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Gibbon, proclaim Him to be more than that! We have at last reached the
astounding period in the world's history when infidels and skeptics, who have
spent their lives in deriding the Bible, and before whose scathing scorn many
a Christian had shuddered and fallen, actually have a higher regard for Christ
than have the leaders of His own professed church.
But this is by no means all. Fred Cornwallis
Conybeare, doctor of theology in Oxford, in his book "Myth, Magic, and
Morals" (1910), page 357, says: "The very idea of a chosen people
belongs to a forgotten mythology, and so do other cardinal notions on which
Christianity reposes, such as the fall of man, original sin, and redemption.
We begin to realize that, if any one needed redemption, it was Jehovah, and
not Adam, nor even Satan. Thus the entire circle of ideas entertained by
Christ and Paul are alien and strange to us to-day, and have lost all
actuality and living interest. . . . Jesus Himself is seen to have lived and
died for an illusion, which Paul and the apostles shared."
While the most rabid skeptics of all the ages,
from Celsus to Bradlaugh, bare their heads before the mighty, lovable presence
of Jesus, the "doctors of divinity" are ruthlessly stripping from
Christ His kingly robes, trampling them in the mire of impious doubt. Still
the church has not aroused from its lethargy. What would the dauntless Luther
say of such sacrilege? What the gentle-souled Melanchthon? Nay, what would
Christ Himself say to these modern disciples, who, like Peter of old,
repeatedly deny Him? Oh that they, like Peter, would repent, and be converted,
and strengthen the brethren! What a glorious Pentecost would follow!
It is well to mine and search, but woe to
him who breaks down the supporting pillars. If the work of the higher critic is
true, Genesis and Deuteronomy are demolished, and others will follow. They are
destroying the very pillars of protection and stability, and do not know it.
WE "have a touchstone by means of which we
may judge of all that does not suit the simple grandeur of Jesus, and may
assign it to a later development." This touchstone is higher
criticism; for "if we wish to arrive at our Lord's genuine teaching, we
must submit the material transmitted in the Gospels to a careful
sifting." More than that, "seeing that all the books of the New
Testament, in so far as they were not written by St. Paul himself, probably
date from the post-Pauline period, it is difficult to work backwards from them
through St. Paul to a correct appreciation of the Lord's teaching."- Dr.
Meyer, "Jesus or Paul," pages 66, 63, 60.
"Matthew, Mark, and Luke are compilations,
which reached their present form only after several redactions."-
Sunderland, "The Bible," page 121.
"Christianity, like every other religion,
has its mythology- a mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts of its
early history, so braided and welded with its first beginnings, that history
and myth are not always distinguishable the one from the other." Dr.
Frederick H. Hedge, "Ways of the Spirit," page 338.
Having arrived at the conclusion that Christ
was but a symbol, a memory, the learned divines were now confronted with the
fact that the body of the records concerning Christ in the New Testament was
diametrically opposed to their theories. Since their conclusion must not be
disturbed, no matter what the facts to the contrary, they one and all set out
to manufacture the premises on which to base their conclusions, and they were
naively indifferent as to the scrap heap from which they chose their material.
In order, however, to gain a hearing, their
first effort was to make great claims of giving "new light," even
while in the very act of extinguishing all the light they had. Says Dr. Wernle:
"What is crucial in these [the words of Jesus] is trust in God, purity of
heart, compassion, humility, forgiveness, aspiration - this and nothing else.
This is the will of God, as epitomized in the Sermon on the Mount. . . And
if Christendom has forgotten, for almost two thousand years, what the Master
desired first and before all things, it shines forth upon us again out of the
gospel to-day as bright and wonderful as if the sun were but now newly risen,
to drive away with its conquering beams all ghosts and shadows of the
night."- "Sources," Page 162.
This sounds fine; but an examination of the
passage shows the presumption of stating that belief in a few passages of the
ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount constitutes the whole of the will
of God, and that in accepting all of Christ's teachings, instead of just these
few, Christendom for nineteen centuries has been deluded and deceived, - until
rescued from this sad condition by the newly risen sun of higher criticism.
Thus we find the learned divines of the world busy at the astonishing and
rather difficult feat of endeavoring to prove that one twentieth of the
teaching of Christ contains more light than all His teaching; that one dollar
is more than twenty; that the sun in nineteen twentieths eclipse is brighter
than its unobscured brilliancy at noonday.
We must now choose between the Christ of the
Bible and the Christ of the critics, and the two are entirely dissimilar.
According to higher critics, a garland of legends, beautiful or absurd,
according to the taste of the critic, has been wound about His head, and must
be resolutely torn away in order to find the true Christ behind.
Since Paul was regarded as the actual creator
of Christianity as a world religion, and as Paul was biased by his Jewish
education, he warped the teaching of Jesus; and as it passed through the
alembic of his mind, it became something different from the Master's message.
Consequently, the critics tell us, it is only by critical processes that we
can come to a knowledge of true Christianity. So "scientific
criticism" has girded itself to give us the true religion of Jesus.
Meanwhile we are to go without, till they have decided upon the question. Only
the aristocracy of culture and the hierarchy of learning understand the
gospel. The higher critics make the truth of the Bible possible only to the
learned; for they claim that the Bible is not the revelation of God, but that
the revealed truth is in the Bible, buried under a mass of errors, and only a
man of Hebrew and Greek scholarship and gigantic learning can unearth it.
But who has the right gospel, the genuine
gospel of Christ, Ritschl or Herrmann, Holzmann or Baldensperger, Harnack or
Cheyne, Sabatier or Briggs? Must we wait until these learned gentlemen come to
an agreement before we know if Jesus be "our Lord and our God"?
Let us not, however, be alarmed by great names;
but let us come to close quarters with their teachings. Great men are not
infallible. Perchance we may be allowed to exercise our own judgment on a
question which concerns our eternal welfare.
The lack of agreement, the mercurial decisions,
of higher critics can be no better stated than has been done by Adolf Harnack,
himself a world-famous higher critic and divine. He says : "The common
people are like reeds swaying with the blasts of the most extreme and mutually
exclusive hypotheses, and find everything in this connection which is offered
them `very worthy of consideration.' To-day, they are ready to believe that
there was no such person as Jesus, while yesterday they regarded Him' as a
neurotic visionary, shown to be such with convincing force by His own words;
and yet the day before yesterday, none of these words were His own; and
perhaps on the very same day, it was accounted correct to regard Him as
belonging to some Greek sect of esoteric Gnostics - a sect which still remains
to be discovered. Or, rather, He was an anarchist monk like Tolstoy; or, still
better, a genuine Buddhist, who had, however, come under the influence of
ideas originating in ancient Babylon, Persia, Egypt, and Greece; or, better
still, He was the eponymous hero of the mildly revolutionary and moderately
radical fourth estate in the capital of the Roman world. It is evident,
forsooth, that He may possibly [italics Harnack's] have been all of
these things, and may be assumed to have been one of them. If, therefore, one
only keeps hold of all these reins, naturally with a loose hand, one is
shielded from the reproach of not being up to date; and this is more important
by far than the knowledge of the facts themselves, which indeed do not much
concern us, seeing that in this twentieth century, we must of course wean
ourselves from a contemptible dependence upon history in matters of
religion."-"Sayings of Jesus," page 13, note.
Upon what basis or principle is it possible to
arrive at conclusions at once so absurd and so contradictory? While all
critics vary in their results, they are quite unanimous in their guiding
principle, as stated by Harnack: "Nothing in the Gospels strikes us as
stranger than the frequently recurring stories of demons, and the great
importance which the evangelists attach to them. For many minds among us, the
very fact that these writings report such absurdities is sufficient for
declining to accept them."- "What Is Christianity?" page 63.
Paul Sabatier does not hesitate to tell us that
"the miracle is immoral" ("Life of St. Francis," page
433); and Prof. G. B. Foster proclaims that "an intelligent man who now
affirms his faith in such stories as actual facts can hardly know what
intellectual honesty means."-"Finality of the Christian
Religion," page 132.
Thus in a most arbitrary manner, contrary to
all real scientific procedure, of which they boast themselves the chief
ornaments, they assume the thing that is to be proved, - that miracles are
impossible, - tear out of the Bible all accounts containing them, and brand as
"immoral" and "dishonest" both the account and one who
believes it. Is this argument? Is this logic? Is this science? Yet this is
higher criticism.
Another favorite method of filling the Bible
with "errors" is to discredit Paul sufficiently to weaken his
truthfulness, and thus clear the ground for their own vacuous theories. Dr.
Meyer says that by Paul, "we are led so far from Jesus that it will be
difficult to trace any longer the lines of connection with Him. And yet
St. Paul professes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ!" -"Jesus or
Paul," page 40.
Perhaps the reader is curious to learn by what
intricate but infallible process of reasoning the doctor arrives at his
astonishing results. He very obligingly tells us in no uncertain language:
"In the Christ of the first three Gospels, we are dealing not with the
historical Jesus, but with the conception formed of Him by the faith and
tradition of the primitive communitive, a conception which must have been
influenced by St. Paul, seeing that it was written after his times."-Id.,
page 12.
What logic! The first three Gospels simply
"must" be the product of Pauline influence, because they were
written after Paul's time! By a parity of reasoning, the Gospels would equally
be the product of Peter's influence, for they were written after his time. In
the same manner, they can be proved to be the product of any of the other
apostles. Yet it is upon such broken reeds of logic and smoking flax of
evidence that the reliability of the whole New Testament is abjured. It is
upon such baseless reasoning that Paul is made out a religious neurotic, liar,
and hypocrite, founding the Christian church upon a nightmare.
The facility and agility with which the higher
critical mind can leap from a pin point of evidence to a whole encyclopedia of
wild conclusions is one of the wonders of the century. The certainty with
which they proclaim the truth and infallibility of their own conclusions is in
direct proportion to the lack of evidence to support them.
The words of Dr. Paul Wernle are not less
emphatic in their assumption of a complete knowledge of all the events of
Christ's time: "Christ did not discourse in the Synoptic and also in the
Johannine way. Either He spoke as a layman, a poet, a prophet, or else as a
theologian. Either He testified of the kingdom of God and the will of God, or
else of His own person. Either He looked forwards, to His return, or else
backwards, to His existence in heaven. He either preached that the doing of
God's will was the only way into the kingdom of God, or else that all depended
upon belief in His divine sonship." -"Sources of Our Knowledge of
the Life of Jesus Christ," pages 43, 44.
I confess that I am amazed to find a man of
learning seriously arguing that because one Gospel represents Christ as
speaking of His preexistence, and another of His coming again, therefore one
or the other must be false. More than that, the same Gospels speak of both.
How does the fact of Christ's having existed before the world was created
preclude His coming again? Or why is His second advent incompatible with His
preexistence? On the contrary, is not His preexistence a strong presumption in
favor of His ability to come again, and therefore its likelihood, since He
tells us He will?
Robert Browning was a layman, a poet, a
theologian, and many think him a prophet. But Wernle denies to the Son of the
infinite God the ability to be any more than one of these.
The four Gospels, then, are unreliable! But
Harnack has something better than the Gospels of the poor deluded and
deceiving apostles. He, along with other higher critics, has constructed a
Gospel of his own, actually rewriting the Gospels. This new Gospel is called
"Logia," or is designated by the capital Q. Who or what is this Q
that is so much more valuable than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all together?
Concerning Q, Harnack says, "The portrait
of Jesus as given in the sayings of a has remained in the
foreground."-"Sayings of Jesus," page 250. Is this very
valuable document a new Gospel by another of the apostles -by Peter,
perchance? Is it a life of Christ from the vigorous pen of Paul, mayhap?
Says Harnack, in the preface to his
"Sayings of Jesus," "In the following pages, an attempt is made
to determine exactly the second source of St. Matthew and St. Luke both in
regard to its extent and its contents, and to estimate its value both in
itself and relatively to the Gospel of St. Mark."
Who then was the author of Q? "Whoever the
author, or rather the redactor, of Q may have been, he was a man deserving of
highest respect. To his reverence and faithfulness, to his simpleminded common
sense, we owe this priceless compilation of the sayings of Jesus."-Id.,
page 249.
Backed by the name of Harnack, this raises
great curiosity as to what this Q is. How long has it been in existence?
"We cannot tell how long this compilation remained in
existence."-Id., page 251. What! It is not in existence now? Why, then,
this furor about it? What became of it?
"It found its grave in the Gospels of St.
Matthew and St. Luke, and probably elsewhere in the apocryphal Gospels. . . .
The final blow to the independent existence of Q was dealt when it was
incorporated in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew."-Id.
Thus we see how long this wonderful Q was in
existence. It was written, according to higher critics, only a few years
before the Gospels, and found its grave in them. Then how did they know it
ever existed? - Why, by the wonderful force of their great reasoning powers,
or by their "critical divination." The Gospels record parallel
accounts of the same event, and therefore there must have been a common source
from which they drew; and so these omniscient critics proceed to construct
that source from the Gospels, call the result Q, and then criticize the
Gospels by their own reconstructed Q. In all, Q contains only 201 verses out
of the 3,779 in the Gospels, or only one nineteenth of the whole. (Id., pages
253-271.) With this they supplant the Gospels.
One may think that these things are not
important; - but when we find that so renowned a man as Henry Churchill King,
president of Oberlin College, publishes a book on "The Ethics of
Jesus" (1910), and that all its data is avowedly derived from this
source, and not in any instance from the Gospels, it is high time that the
attention of the public was called to this perversion of Scripture. Dr. King,
along with the other higher critics, thinks that Q is more reliable than any
of the Gospels; yet it is derived by the higher critics from the Gospels.
"It is hardly too much," says he, "to say that in Q we probably
have an even older source for the life and teachings of Jesus than in
Mark."- "Ethics of Jesus," page 87.
So he uses Harnack's reconstruction. It is
amusing to see how the theologians take one nineteenth of the data we possess,
and then found their life of Jesus upon this meager material, and call it
"New Light on the Life of Jesus"- the title of a book by Dr. Briggs.
The New Testament is so immoral that they have
written one of their own! "Luke is especially full of teachings quite as
hard for the conscience as the wonder stories of the Bible are difficult for
the reason."-Dole, "What We Know About Jesus," page 46.
Says Dr. King: "Various attempts to
reconstruct the document Q have been made by Wendt, Resch, A. Wright, Reville,
Wernle, Hawkins, Wellhausen (1905), Harriack (1907), and B. Weiss (1908). With
the exception of Weiss's, Harnack's reconstruction is the most recent, and may
also be regarded as the fruit of the most thoroughgoing study. . . . Our study
will be based upon Harnack's reconstruction."-"Ethics of
Jesus," page 10.
Speaking of Q, Wernle says, "On the whole,
the historical value of these discourses is very high, higher than that of
anything else."-"Sources," page 138. So Dr. King accepts this
as the "assured results of criticism."-"Ethics of Jesus,"
page 76.
Dr. Burkitt, however, does not accept even all
of the meager Q. He selects only what he calls the "double attested
sayings," which amount to thirty-one, and sets these up as all we know of
Jesus. ("The Gospel History and Its Transmission.") Q contains 201
verses, but Burkitt's reconstruction admits only one third of this.
Professor Schmiedel, the peer of Harnack as a
higher critic, narrows the data still more: "I select nine such passages
[not open to question], and in order to emphasize their importance, give them
a special name; I call them the foundation pillars of a really scientific
life of Christ."-"Jesus in Modern Criticism," page 24. And
here is the principle upon which he so arbitrarily selects them : the passages
that run counter to the exalting of Jesus. "When we first make our
acquaintance with a historical person in a book which is throughout influenced
by a feeling of worship for Jesus, in the first rank of credibility we
place those passages of the book which really run counter to this feeling."-"Jesus
in Modern Criticism," page 24.
So we find the great churchmen selecting for
the life of Christ only the passages that are held in common (Harnack's Q),
those that are doubly attested (Burkitt), and those that are exceptional (Schmiedel).
We are now reduced to just twenty-five verses, or one one hundred and
fifty-first of the whole four Gospels, for a "scientific" life of
Christ. At this rate, it will not be long before the critics arrive at the
conclusion that we have no basis for a life of Jesus, and no foundation upon
which to build our hopes of salvation.
To the present-day presumption of infallible
and omniscient higher criticism, nothing is impossible. The ease with which
they accomplish the impossible is nothing short of amazing. In one sweeping
sentence, without reason or evidence, they disdainfully brush aside all the
New Testament records of Christ, and with a knowledge as superior to Christ's
own familiar friends as nearly two millenniums' distance from Him can give
them, they noisily and in all seriousness sit down to write anew the gospel of
Jesus, to tell us of His words and His actions away back in distant Palestine!
Wisdom, it appears, was born with the critics.
Although Christ said that the Holy Spirit would bring to the apostles' minds
all He had said, and lead them into all truth, it appears that the poor,
deluded apostles were never so led, and that Christ really meant the twentieth
century higher critics! They treat with apathetic contempt or tolerant scorn
all who are simple enough to believe the words of Christ and the records of
the apostles - all who are so old-fashioned as to believe in the exploded
doctrine of salvation through the merits of and belief in Jesus, or so foolish
as to come to Him that they may find rest for their souls.
The wonder is not so much that these things are
said, but that they are said by professed Christians; not in a corner, but all
over the earth; not by obscure men, but by the church's greatest. It may
seriously be doubted whether the avowed enemies of the Bible have ever said
either as many or half as harsh things against it as its declared believers
are now saying under cover of higher criticism.
When Voltaire made his famous boast that though
twelve men founded Christianity, one man would serve to overthrow it, he did
not dream that the theological savants of Europe, Asia, and America would
combine in the twentieth century to aid him in his nefarious design.
Neither did Tom Paine imagine, when he
vauntingly "unchained his lion," the "Age of Reason"--
which was to devour the Bible that twentieth century "doctors of
divinity" would revile the Bible in a manner to have made him stand
aghast at their bolder infidelity. Verily, higher criticism makes strange
bedfellows.
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