AS our readers are well aware, there is a subtle and determined attempt at the present time on the part of what are called the Higher Critics to overthrow the infallible truth of the Bible. They profess great love for the sacred Book, and do not hesitate to speak of it as the Word of God, and yet all the while they are engaged in a work which robs it of its divine glory, and reduces it to a level lower than that of many purely human compositions. They have the unhallowed boldness to affirm that many parts of the Old Testament set forth nothing but myths and legends. This infidel assertion casts a slander upon every part of the sacred volume. For the Bible is not a confused collection of detached pieces of literature; it is a marvellous unity. And, moreover, the Critics issue their unwarrantable theories in defiance of the infallible testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and supreme Teacher of the Church, who has declared that the Old Testament, from beginning to end, is the very Word of God. And still these Critics want to be considered loyal to Christ. They may be loyal to a Christ of their own imaginations, but they are not so to the true Christ of God.
It is our present purpose to point out some of the leading ideas of this pernicious form of Bible Criticism, which is strengthening the natural infidelity of the human heart in the case of multitudes at the present time.
1. Disbelief in the Supernatural
The first of these ideas we observe is a disbelief in the supernatural. We do not say that this is distinctly avowed, but the disbelief manifests itself, all the same, in its fruits. The Higher Critics look askance at every incident in the Old Testament that cannot be accounted for by the common laws of nature. If they cannot wholly deny the reality of these miraculous events, they will suggest that there was nothing supernatural in them, but that they were due to purely natural causes. For example, they declare that Moses in his use of the rods excelled in magical skill the Egyptian soothsayers, and that Elijah was a “wild worker by fire and water.” It is quite apparent that the rationalism which so strongly dominates men of science in our day has got in among theological scholars and teachers. They bring to the Bible not the far-seeing eye of living faith in an almighty, wonder-working God, but the limited vision of carnal reason, which cannot penetrate beyond the material and the natural. No wonder, then, that the remarkable record of God’s supernatural dealings with His Church in the Old Testament has lost its reality for them, and has become in their puny estimation a collection of stories that originated in the imagination of ancient Israel. It is the distinguishing glory of the Bible, as compared with other writings, that it is a supernatural book. It is the voice of the great God to fallen men, and they who endeavour to rob it of its heavenly character are doing their best to stop communication between heaven and earth, and to deprive perishing souls of the words of eternal life.
2. Belief in the Erroneous Theory of Evolution
A second idea that pervades the Higher Criticism is a belief in the erroneous theory of evolution. The Critics may not trumpet forth in every page their praise of this theory, they may not even mention it at all; but much of their criticism is regulated by a regard to it. Evolutionists hold that man did not spring into existence by an immediate act of creation, but is the result of a slow process of development from a primordial germ upwards through the lower animals. This theory, unwarrantable enough in the physical sphere, is introduced by the Critics into the sphere of religion. They affirm that man’s ideas of God and the spiritual world were very crude and gross at the beginning. When he began to think of these important subjects, he was an untutored savage. He believed at one time in many deities, and it was only by a very gradual process that he came to have exalted notions of a Divine Being, and attained an intelligent belief in one God over all. They profess to see this process carried on in the history of Israel. For example, they regard the age of Moses as a rude and barbarous one, and Moses as no more enlightened than Mohammed. They then set to work to account for the spiritual and evangelical passages that are found in the writings of Moses. The result is that they boldly aver that these passages were not written by Moses at all, but by later writers who inserted them in his works. In this way they have had the audacity to say that the Book of Deuteronomy is a great speech put in the mouth of Moses by a later writer, just as Shakespeare puts a great speech into the mouth of one of his heroes. This idea of the insertion of passages in the composition of books by later writers under the name of others of an earlier date is thoroughly immoral, and discloses the distinctly defective conscience of those who have imagined it. Besides, it is entirely incompatible with the facts, and involves a moral monstrosity absolutely unrealisable. The man, for example, who wrote Deuteronomy was filled with the Spirit of God in no ordinary degree, as is manifest from the exalted truths to which he gives utterance. Now, it is morally impossible that this man, who was so richly endowed with the Holy Spirit of God who cannot lie, should write a lie upon every page of the book in ascribing, according to this theory, to Moses what was never spoken or written by him. The Critics forbid us to believe that Moses, the man of God, who was admitted into such intimate communion with his Creator, was the writer of Deuteronomy, a most probable thing in the circumstances, and they ask us to believe that the writer of it was a man who lived long afterwards, and who stamped his book from beginning to end with a God-dishonouring lie. The Higher Critics consider themselves the only apostles of reason, but this is reason with a vengeance. We say it is moral insanity that no honest, illiterate peasant would be capable of. Such, then, is the outcome of the evolutionary theory as applied to the Old Testament. Again, they have surely gone far astray in affirming that the chosen people were, to be begin with, like the heathen nations around them, believers in many gods, and in the Lord Jehovah as one among the many. We do not deny for a moment but there was a tendency on the part of the unspiritual people in Israel to lapse into idolatry, but it is also as clear as a moonbeam that the chosen race had a distinct revelation from the beginning of the one living and true God, and that this was the important mark which distinguished them from their heathen neighbours. Undoubtedly they believed that the Lord Jehovah was their God in a special covenanted sense, but they also believed that all the gods of the heathen were dumb idols. The idea that the ancient people of God were at any time in their religious opinions on the same level with the heathen is a pure concoction of the Critics’ brains, and has no warrant from the sacred history. In fact, we find that the best authorities on the ancient religions of the world have come to the conclusion that the records of all these religions distinctly point to the fact that the first form of religion was the purest, and was characterised by a belief in only one God over all. Monotheism was the original religion; polytheism is a subsequent and degenerate system. This well-grounded opinion entirely overturns the evolutionary theory of the Higher Critics.
3. Perverse Conclusions from Minor Difficulties
The last feature of the Higher Criticism we meantime notice is its perverse conclusions from minor difficulties. It is the opinion of sound divines that the Scriptures are perfectly plain and perspicuous on all matters pertaining to sin and salvation, on man’s relation to God and God’s relation to man; but it is also their opinion that there are passages here and there, both historical and doctrinal, that present some difficulty in being understood. The Bible is not as plain as the multiplication table, but that does not make it any less the book of God. In fact, it would be the marvellous thing if the Divine Book should present no difficulty of any kind to the reader. Now, on the minor difficulties the Higher Critics stumble. They cannot understand this, and they cannot understand that; but instead of pursuing their researches in the sacred writings with patience, judiciously comparing passage with passage, and waiting for divine light and direction into the truth, they sit down and cut and carve these writings to suit their own ideas. Instead of taking up a more reverential attitude towards the Scriptures, they become quite irreverent and presumptuous, and take liberties with it that they would not dare to take with any other book. As we have already shown on the subject of the evolution theory, they take upon themselves to affirm that passages have been inserted by other writers than those whose names appear. Moses didn’t write this; David didn’t compose that; passages are inserted in Amos and Hosea that they themselves could not be the authors of. The fact of the matter is that such bold and absurd handling of books composed many hundreds of years ago, and that possess the stamp of God’s oracles upon them, would seem only possible to the profanest infidels and atheists. The conclusions that are thus drawn from passages not easily understood are fitted to turn the whole Bible into a confused jumble of unreliable records of which nothing can be surely believed. Of course, we believe the Critics make hundreds of difficulties for themselves, but their way of getting out of them is the way of rationalistic unbelief, not of God-honouring faith. Their view of the Old Testament—some of them have carried the same pernicious principles into the New—is entirely inconsistent with what is known of its history in ancient times. The Jews were most jealous of the sacred records; they guarded the oracles of God from interference with uncommon care and zeal. But what care the Critics for the historical testimony of the Jewish people, unto whom were committed the oracles of God? They will believe nothing but their own irrational theories. They are captivated with the dreams of their own imaginations. Truly, a modicum of theological learning seasoned with pride and irreverence is the most intoxicating opiate that ever upset the reason and stupefied the conscience of intelligent men.
In conclusion the question may be asked, How is it that men, brought up in the Christian Church, some of them under very godly influences, should adopt the principles of infidelity, and yet continue professed lovers of the Bible and zealous servants of Christ? The only adequate explanation of these circumstances, in our opinion, is that embodied in the words of the inspired apostle: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.” Men may be brought up in the best of homes and acquire a certain esteem of the Bible and Christ, and yet remain ignorant of the new birth and of saving illumination by the Holy Spirit. The same apostle has a very weighty and solemn passage in reference to men who in his own time appeared to be zealots for Christianity and yet were not true servants of Christ, but emissaries of the Prince of darkness. He says: “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Cor. xi. 13-15). With these remarks we leave the subject at the present time.