IN a former issue of the Magazine attention was called to a series of articles begun in the United Free Church “Record” by Dr John F. M’Fadyen, Professor of Old Testament Literature and Theology, Glasgow U.F. College, under the general title, “The Bible and Modern Thought,” and a promise made that further reference would be made to the articles. Dr M’Fadyen has now finished his series—six in number—and they are a revelation of the kind of teaching given to theological students in Glasgow U.F. College. What amazes one in reading these articles is their confident tone as to the so-called assured results of the Higher Criticism, the complete ignoring of the scholarly and able defences made by conservative scholars of the Bible, and the repetition of alleged discrepancies which have been answered quite satisfactorily a hundred times. In an article like this it would be wasted time to take up some of Prof. M’Fadyen’s statements for the purpose of confuting them, but we think it right our readers should have some idea of the seriousness of the situation when these articles are allowed to appear in the “Record” of the United Free Church by one of her theological teachers. In dealing with the Pentateuch Deuteronomy is placed in the 7th century B.C., mid-way between Isaiah and Jeremiah. Genesis, according to the well-approved higher critical skill in dissecting literary documents, has had a number of authors. It has two Creation and two Flood stories. This learned trifling has been so thoroughly exposed by conservative scholars that we marvel that Dr M’Fadyen goes on his way without giving the slightest hint that the Critics have been answered again and again, and that E, J, P, D, etc., have been shown to be only the vain imaginings of the Critics’ brains. The historical books come under the same ruthless criticism. I. Samuel is a favourite book for the exploitation of the Higher Critics’ views, and Dr M’Fadyen has no difficulty in finding divergences in I. Samuel which he asserts are due to the fact that the book in its present form rests upon different documentary sources, possibly J and E. Isaiah’s great inspired prophetic utterance in chap. liii. we are calmly told is “an anticipation of the experience and work of our Lord,” “though the prophecy is not a prediction of Him.” The Book of Daniel, we are told, is a late production, and the two Isaiahs are spoken of according to the approved higher critical view. In his concluding article, Dr M’Fadyen
deals with “Inspiration and Miracle.” “Claims of inerrancy,” he says, “and infallibility, which the Bible nowhere makes for itself, can never reasonably be made for it by any one who understands that, though it came from God, it came through men, imperfect men.” He further adds—”It would also be foolish to deny that in other literatures, ancient and modern, there is a real measure of inspiration. Plato and the Greek tragedians, on the one hand, and writers like Browning and Tennyson, Carlyle and Ruskin on the other, to say nothing of devotional books such as the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ have searched, enlightened, and stimulated many a heart with a power analogous at least to that of the Bible. But the modern writers are derivative and secondary, they owe their power to the moral and religious atmosphere created by the Scripture.” This paragraph is most unsatisfactory and brings down the inspiration of the Scripture to too low a level, notwithstanding the qualifying phrase at the end. As for miracles, the narratives of miraculous events in the Old Testament, he says, are not infrequently centuries later than the events themselves, and he instances those in the Book of Daniel, which according to the higher critical chronology must be 400 years after the period wherein they are set. They may be believed, but they cannot be proved, we are told. Then are they worthless? No, he says, they rendered an inestimable service to the men who were faced by the fury of a demon like Antiochus. This is playing with the great moral issues involved, and is throwing dust in the eyes of the simple. The sun standing still (Josh. x. 13) is not a miracle at all, and its miraculous character rests, we are told, on a misunderstanding of a fine poetic apostrophe of Joshua to the sun taken from the Book of Jashar. We are also warned, lest we should believe the fall of the walls of Jericho to be a miracle, that we are reading poetry not prose, which may alter the whole complexion of the miracle. We have only given a few indications of the undermining of the old foundations which characterise these articles. If the Church Courts of the United Free Church allow these articles to go unchallenged and their author be allowed to continue teaching such views, then they proclaim again to the world that the United Free Church is surely and with accelerated momentum rushing down the steep. In the March number of the “Record,” the Rev. Dr Macintyre, Glasgow, challenges and combats Dr M’Fadyen’s positions, but we would like to read a more militant note in his article declaring war against any scholar and scholarship that makes light of the Word of the Lord.