The King James Version
Defended
By Dr.
Edward F. Hills
CHAPTER
THREE
A SHORT
HISTORY OF MODERNISM
There are many scholars
today who claim to be orthodox Christians and yet insist
that the New Testament text ought not to be studied from
the believing point of view but from a neutral point of
view. (1) The New Testament text, they maintain, ought
to be treated just as the texts of other ancient books
are treated. And in this they are followers of Westcott
and Hort (1881), who still remain the best known
advocates of this neutral principle.
In this present chapter we
will endeavor to point out the error of this neutral,
naturalistic New Testament textual criticism and to show
how it has led to skepticism and modernism.
1. The Skeptical
Tendency Of Naturalistic New Testament Textual
Criticism
The following short
history of New Testament textual criticism will show how
the use of the naturalistic method leads inevitably to
skepticism regarding the New Testament text.
(a) The Reformation
Period—The Theological Approach to the New Testament
Text
New Testament textual
criticism cannot properly be said to have begun until
the New Testament was first placed in print in 1516, one
year before the commencement of the Protestant
Reformation. Hence the first New Testament textual
critics were editors such as Erasmus (1466-1536),
printers such as Stephanus (1503-1559), and Reformers
such as Calvin (1509-1564) and Beza (1519-1605). A study
of Calvin's commentaries and the notes of Erasmus and
Beza indicates that these 16th-century scholars had not
worked out any clearly defined system of New Testament
textual criticism. In this department of biblical study
they were unmethodical, and some of their remarks
concerning the New Testament canon and text reflect the
humanistic culture in which they had been reared. But in
their actual editing and printing of the New Testament
they were guided by the common faith in the Received
Text. For in their appeal to the New Testament against
the errors of the papacy and the Roman Catholic
doctrinal system these Reformers were not introducing a
novelty but were falling back on a principle which long
before the Reformation had been acknowledged by
everyone.
For centuries it had been commonly believed that
the currently received New Testament text, primarily the
Greek text and secondarily the Latin text, was the True
New Testament Text which had been preserved by God's
special providence. It was out of
this common faith, therefore, that the printed Textus
Receptus was born through the editorial labors of
Erasmus and his successors under the guiding hand of
God. Hence during the Reformation Period the approach to
the New Testament text was theological and governed by
the common faith in holy Scripture, and for this reason
even in those early days the textual criticism of the
New Testament was different from the textual criticism
of other ancient books.
(b) The Age of
Rationalism - The Naturalistic Approach to the New
Testament Text
After the
commencement of the 17th century rationalists began to
arise who laid aside the theological approach to the New
Testament text and took up in its stead the naturalistic
approach which makes no distinction between the text of
the New Testament and that of a purely human book.
Denying the common faith, they handled the New Testament
text in a wholly secular way. One of the most famous of
these rationalists was Hugo Grotius (1583-1645),
celebrated Dutch statesman and theologian. In his Annotations (pub. 1641-50) Grotius made a number of
conjectural emendations, in the New Testament text. (2)
a procedure which was then customary in the editing of
ancient classical authors. And in 1658 Stephen
Courcelles, professor at the Arminian College in
Amsterdam, continued this trend by publishing an edition
of the New Testament containing some of the conjectures
of Grotius and also some of his own mixed
indiscriminately with variant readings drawn from the
New Testament manuscripts. (3) This action on
Courcelles' part created alarm among orthodox Christians
and awakened new interest in the problem of the New
Testament text.
In 1675 John Fell, Dean of
Christ Church and later Bishop of Oxford, suggested a
new way of attacking this problem. In places in which
the New Testament manuscripts differed from each other
we should think of the scribes that copied the
manuscripts rather than of the original apostolic
authors. By noticing all the various ways in which these
scribes made mistakes, we would be able to detect false
readings and thus finally arrive at the true reading by
a process of elimination. (4) This suggestion was taken
seriously by Gerhard von Maestricht, an official of the
city of Bremen, who in 1711 published 43 rules for New
Testament textual criticism most of which dealt with the
mistakes scribes were likely to make. (5) And this shift
of attention from the inspired authors of the New
Testament to the uninspired scribes that copied it was
another step toward a completely naturalistic New
Testament textual criticism.
In 1720 Richard Bentley
(1662-1742), famous Cambridge scholar, proposed a
thoroughly naturalistic method of New Testament textual
criticism. What he advocated was the rejection of the
printed Greek New Testament text altogether and of the
readings of the majority of the manuscripts and the
construction of a new text by comparing the oldest Greek
New Testament manuscripts with the oldest manuscripts of
the Latin Vulgate. He believed that these ancient Greek
and Latin manuscripts would agree very closely and that
this close agreement would make it possible to recover
the New Testament text in the form in which it existed
at the time of the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.). (6) He
also believed that this method of textual criticism
would improve the "barbarous" style of the existing New
Testament text and "make it more worthy of a
revelation." (7)
J. A. Bengel (1687-1752)
was an orthodox German Lutheran except in the realm of
New Testament textual criticism. Here like Bentley he
inclined toward rationalism. He claimed to believe in
the providential preservation of the Scriptures, but
when he began to deal with the New Testament text he
laid this doctrine on the shelf as an unworkable
principle. "Concerning the care of the early Church for
the purity of the manuscripts and concerning the fruits
of this care, whatever is clearly taught must be eagerly
and piously maintained. But it is certainly difficult to
explain through what churches and ages this care
extended, and whatever it was it did not keep from
coming into existence those variant readings which
circulate today and which are more easily removed when
their origin is known." (8)
In his own textual
criticism Bengel relied on Bentley's method of comparing
various classes of manuscripts with each other. (9) Also
he laid great stress on a rule which he himself had
formulated: "The hard reading is to be preferred to the
easy reading." (10) When there is a choice, Bengel
argued, between a reading which is hard to understand
and a reading which is easy to understand, the hard
reading must be the genuine one, because the orthodox
scribes always changed the hard readings to make them
easy. Hence, according to Bengel, the orthodox
Christians had corrupted their own New Testament text.
This hypothesis amounted to a denial of the doctrine
that God by His special providence had preserved the
True Text down through the ages in the usage of
believers. It is no wonder therefore that an outcry was
raised against Bengel by conservative Christians in
Germany.
(c) The Age of
Enlightenment—The Skeptical Approach to the New
Testament Text
The last half of the 18th
century in Germany was the age of "enlightenment" in
which rationalism was positively encouraged by Frederick
II, the "philosopher king," who reigned over Prussia 46
years (1740-86). Under these conditions the skepticism
inherent in the naturalistic method of New Testament
textual criticism was clearly brought out.
Johann Semler (1725-91),
professor at Halle, was the first textual critic to
suggest that the New Testament manuscripts had been
edited, not merely copied, by the ancient scribes. (11)
He was bold also in some of his conjectures concerning
the New Testament text. For example, he believed that
chapter 9 of 2 Corinthians was a fragment inserted by
the scribes in its present location and that chapter 16
of Romans was originally a letter to the Corinthians
that got attached to Romans by mistake. (12) And in
other respects also Semler revealed himself as one of
the first modernists. He believed that both the Old and
the New Testament canons had grown by degrees and that
therefore the Scriptures were not inspired in the
traditional sense. According to Semler, the teaching of
Jesus and the Apostles contained Jewish conceptions of
merely "local" and "temporal" value which it was the
task of scientific exegesis to point out.
(13)
J. J. Griesbach
(1745-1812), pupil of Semler and professor at Jena,
early declared himself a skeptic regarding the New
Testament text. In 1771 he wrote, "The New Testament
abounds in more glosses, additions, and interpolations
purposely introduced than any other book." (14) And
during his long career there is no indication that he
ever changed this view. He was noted for his critical
editions of the New Testament and for the comprehensive
way in which he worked out a classification of the New
Testament manuscripts into three "rescensions" or
ancestral groups. (15) He also developed the thought
implicit in Bengel's rule, "The hard reading is to be
preferred to the easy reading." Like Bengel he
interpreted this rule to mean that the orthodox
Christians had corrupted their own New Testament text.
(16) According to Griesbach, whenever the New Testament
manuscripts varied from each other, the orthodox
readings were to be ruled out at once as spurious. "The
most suspicious reading of all," Griesbach wrote, "is
the one that yields a sense favorable to the nourishment
of piety (especially monastic piety)." And to this he
added another directive: "When there are many variant
readings in one place, that reading which more than the
others manifestly favors the dogmas of the orthodox is
deservedly regarded as suspicious."
Griesbach's skepticism was
shared by J. L. Hug (1765-1846), who in 1808 advanced
the theory that in the 2nd century the New Testament
text had become deeply degenerate and corrupt and that
all the extant New Testament texts were merely editorial
revisions of this corrupted text. (17) And Carl Lachmann
(1793-1851) continued in this same skeptical vein. He
believed that from the extant manuscripts it was not
possible to construct a text which would reach any
farther back than the 4th century. To bridge the gap
between this reconstructed 4th-century text and the
original text Lachmann proposed to resort to conjectural
emendation. In 1831 he published an edition of the Greek
New Testament which reflected his views. (18)
(d) Westcott and
Hort—The Light That Failed
In the 1860's
manuscripts Aleph and B were made
available to scholars through the labors of Tregelles
and Tischendorf, and in 1881 Westcott and Hort (19)
published their celebrated Introduction in
which they endeavored to settle the New Testament text
on the basis of this new information. They propounded
the theory that the original New Testament text has
survived in almost perfect condition in these two
manuscripts, especially in B. This theory attained almost immediately a
tremendous popularity, being accepted everywhere both by
liberals and conservatives. Liberals liked it because it
represented the latest thing in the science of New
Testament textual criticism. Conservatives liked it
because it seemed to grant them that security for which
they were seeking. But since this security had no
foundation in faith, it has not proved lasting. For in
the working out of their theory Westcott and Hort
followed an essentially naturalistic method. Indeed,
they prided themselves on treating the text of the New
Testament as they would that of any other book, making
little or nothing of inspiration and providence. "For
ourselves," Hort wrote, "we dare not introduce
considerations which could not reasonably be applied to
other ancient texts, supposing them to have documentary
attestation of equal amount, variety, and antiquity."
(20)
Soon Westcott and Hort's
theory began to lose its hold in the liberal and radical
camp. In 1899 Burkitt (21) revived Hug's theory that all
extant texts are editorial revisions of a lost primitive
text, a position later adopted by Streeter (22) and
other noted textual critics. The skepticism of Griesbach
and other early critics was also revived, and with a
vengeance. As early as 1908 Rendel Harris declared that
the New Testament text had not at all been settled but
was "more than ever, and perhaps finally, unsettled."
(23) Two years later Conybeare gave it as his opinion
that "the ultimate (New Testament) text, if there ever
was one that deserves to be so called, is for ever
irrecoverable." (24) And in 1941
Kirsopp Lake after a lifetime spent in the study of the
New Testament text, delivered the following judgment:
"In spite of the claims of Westcott and Hort and of von
Soden, we do not know the original form of the Gospels,
and it is quite likely that we never shall."
(25)
Westcott and Hort
professed to "venerate" the name of Griesbach "above
that of every other textual critic of the New
Testament." (26) Like Griesbach they believed that the
orthodox Christian scribes had altered the New Testament
manuscripts in the interests of orthodoxy. Hence like
Griesbach they ruled out in advance any possibility of
the providential preservation of the New Testament text
through the usage of believers. But at the same time
they were very zealous to deny that heretics had made
any intentional changes in the New Testament text. "It
will not be out of place," they wrote, "to add here a
distinct expression of our belief that even among the
numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New
Testament there are no signs of deliberate falsification
of the text for dogmatic purposes." (27) The effect of
this one-sided theory was to condemn the text found in
the majority of the New Testament manuscripts and
exonerate that of B and Aleph. This evident partiality,
however, did not appeal to Rendel Harris (1926), who
condemned all the manuscripts, including B and Aleph. All of them, he asserted, were "actually
reeking" with "dogmatic falsifications." (28)
As the 20th century
progressed, other distinguished scholars grew more and
more skeptical. In 1937, for example, F. G. Kenyon
revived Griesbach's contention that the text of the New
Testament had not been as accurately preserved as the
texts of other ancient books. "The textual history of
the New Testament," Kenyon wrote, "differs materially
from that of other ancient books. The works of classical
literature were produced in peaceful conditions. They
were copied by professional scribes.... They were not
exposed to deliberate destruction, at any rate, until,
after many centuries, the Christian Church made war on
pagan literature. The textual tradition which has come
down to us is probably that of the great libraries,
where good copies were preserved under the eyes of men
of letters.... In all these respects the fortunes of the
Christian Scriptures were different. In the earliest
days the Christians were a poor community, who would
seldom have been able to command the services of
professional scribes. There were no recognized centres
for the promulgation of authorized copies of the
Scriptures.... Then there was always the danger of
destruction.... So long as Christianity was at best
tolerated and at worst persecuted, the transcription and
circulation of the Scriptures were exposed to
difficulties from which the pagan literature was free."
(29)
(e) New Testament
Textual Criticism Since World War
II
Since World War II there
has been little change of attitude on the part of
naturalistic New Testament textual critics. As far as
the recovery of the original New Testament text is
concerned, pessimism is the order of the day. As G.
Zuntz (1953) remarks, "the optimism of the earlier
editors has given way to that scepticism which inclines
towards regarding 'the original text' as an unattainable
mirage." (30) H. Greeven (1960) also has acknowledged
the uncertainty of the naturalistic method of New
Testament textual criticism. "In general," he says, "the
whole thing is limited to probability judgments; the
original text of the New Testament, according to its
nature, must be and remain a hypothesis.'' (31) And R.
M. Grant (1963) expresses himself still more
despairingly. "The primary goal of New Testament textual
study," he tells us, "remains the recovery of what the
New Testament writers wrote. We have already suggested
that to achieve this goal is well nigh impossible." (32)
Nor is K. W. Clark (1966) more hopeful. "Great progress
has been achieved," he says, "in recovering an early
form of text, but it may be doubted that there is
evidence of one original text to be recovered." (33) And
according to K. Aland (1970), the early New Testament
text is "strongly" characterized by variations.
(34)
2. Naturalistic
Textual Criticism And
Modernism
Does naturalistic textual
criticism breed modernism? Let us review briefly the
history of modernistic Bible study and draw our own
conclusions.
(a) The Beginning of
Modernism—The Denial of the Biblical
Miracles
Modernism may fittingly be
said to have begun with the deists, a group of
"free-thinkers" who were active during the early part of
the 18th century in England, where they founded the
Masonic Lodge. They taught that all religions are
equally true since all of them, including Christianity,
are merely republications of the original religion of
nature. Reason, the deists insisted, and not the Bible
is the supreme authority, since it is to human reason
that the original religion of nature is most clearly
revealed. And with this naturalistic outlook it is not
surprising that some of the deists denied the reality of
the miracles of the Bible. One of those that did so was
Thomas Woolston (1669-1731), who ridiculed Christ's
miracles and even the biblical account of Christ's
resurrection. For this he was convicted of blasphemy and
fined one hundred pounds. Being unable to pay, he spent
the last four years of his life in prison.
(35)
One hundred years later
the German rationalists found a less offensive way of
denying the miracles of Christ. These miracles, they
asserted, were actual events which took place according
to the laws of nature. The disciples, however, thought
that these remarkable occurrences were miracles because
they were ignorant of these natural laws. H. E. G.
Paulus (1761-1851), theological professor at Heidelberg,
was especially active in devising a naturalistic
explanation for each one of the miracles of Christ.
Jesus' walking on the water, Paulus explained, was an
illusion of the disciples. Actually Jesus was walking on
the shore and in the mist was taken for a ghost. In the
feeding of the five thousand Jesus and His disciples
simply set a good example of sharing which was followed
by others, and soon there was food enough for everybody.
According to Paulus, Christ's resurrection took place
because He did not really die upon the cross but merely
swooned. The coolness of the tomb revived Him, and when
an earthquake had rolled away the stone at the door of
the tomb, He stripped off His grave clothes and put on a
gardener's garment which He had managed to procure.
(36)
These rationalistic
explanations of the miracle-narratives in the Gospels
were vigorously attacked by David Strauss (1808-74), who
published his famous Life of
Jesus in 1835. Strauss
maintained that in these narratives the miracles are the
main thing, the thing for which all the rest exists.
Hence the rationalists were absurd in their contention
that these narratives had grown up out of utterly
trivial events on which a supernaturalistic
interpretation had been wrongly placed. On the contrary,
Strauss argued, all attempts to find a kernel of
historical truth in these narratives must be given up.
The miracle-narratives, he insisted, were simply myths.
They were popular expressions of certain religious ideas
which had been awakened in the minds of early Christians
by the impact of Jesus' life. (37)
(b) The Rejection of
John's Gospel—The Tuebingen
School
After the
publication of Strauss' Life of
Jesus the Gospel of John rapidly
lost status in the opinion of naturalistic critics. Soon
it was regarded as of little historical value, as a mere
collection of unauthentic discourses put in the mouth of
Jesus for theological purposes. The leader in this
devaluation of the Gospel of John was F. C. Baur
(1792-1860), professor at Tuebingen and founder of the
"Tuebingen School" of New Testament criticism. According
to the Tuebingen School, Matthew and Revelation
represented a primitive Jewish gospel; Luke and the four
principal Epistles of Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians,
and Galatians) represented a Pauline gospel, and the
rest of the New Testament books, especially the Gospel
of John, represented a compromise between these two
conflicting tendencies in the early Church. And in order
to give time for these doctrinal developments Baur
maintained that the Gospel of John had not been written
until 170 A.D. (38)
Baur's late date for the
writing of the Gospel of John was soon found to be
contrary to the evidence. The study of Church history
revealed no such doctrinal conflict as Baur's theory
required. Also the discovery of Tatian's Gospel Harmony
in 1888 and of certain papyrus manuscripts in the 1930's
and 1950's all indicated that the Gospel of John must
have been written before 100 A.D. Naturalistic critics
have long since conceded this, but in spite of this
admission they have persisted still in denying that
John's Gospel gives us a true picture of the historical
Jesus and have supported this denial by various
hypotheses.
Because of their zeal for
episcopal government and the doctrine of apostolic
succession many liberal scholars of the Church of
England were reluctant to surrender completely the
apostolic authorship of John's Gospel. J. A. Robinson
(1902) dean of Westminster, was one of this sort.
According to Robinson, the Apostle John wrote his Gospel
when he was a very old man, so old that he could no
longer distinguish fact from fiction. John's memory had
so failed him, Robinson argued, that he confused the
authentic words and deeds of Jesus with his own reveries
and visions. (39) But could the Christ of John's Gospel
have been invented by a doting old man? Is it not easier
to believe John's own account of the matter, namely,
that the Holy Spirit enabled him to remember Christ's
words and to reproduce them accurately (John
14:26)?
The most common
hypothesis, however, among naturalistic critics is that
the Gospel of John was written not by the Apostle John
but by another John called the Elder John, who lived at
Ephesus at the end of the first century A. D. and who
also wrote the Epistles of John. This would make the
Gospel of John a forgery, since it claims to have been
written by the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 21:24),
that intimate follower who beheld Christ's glory (John
1:14), who leaned on His bosom (John 13:23), and who
viewed with wondering eye the blood and water flowing
down from His riven side (John 19:35). B. H. Streeter
(1924) endeavored to soften the harshness of this
consequence by speaking of the Elder John as a mystic, a
prophet and a genius, (40) but these efforts at
palliation are in vain. The fact still remains that in
the verses cited and also in others, such as John 14:26,
John's Gospel claims to have been written by a member of
the apostolic band and that this would be a false claim
if this Gospel had been written by the Elder John rather
than the Apostle John. Is it possible that this book of
the Bible, which more than any other lays the emphasis
on truth, is a forgery? Is such brazen hypocrisy to be
looked for in the Gospel of John? Does this paradox
which the naturalistic critics would thrust upon us make
sense?
Moreover, the
evidence even for the existence of an Elder John
distinct from the Apostle John is very slender,
consisting only of a single reference in the Church
History of Eusebius (323). In
the third book of this History Eusebius quotes a
statement of an older writer, namely, Papias (d. 160),
bishop of Hierapolis. "If anyone ever came," Papias
relates, "who had followed the elders, I inquired into
the words of the elders, what Andrew or Peter or Philip
or Thomas or James or John or Matthew, or any other of
the Lord's disciples, had said, and what Aristion and
the elder John, the Lord's disciples, were saying."
(41)
Eusebius claimed that here
Papias was mentioning two different Johns, placing the
first John with the Apostles and assigning the second
John a place outside the apostolic band by coupling his
name with that of Aristion. But in interpreting Papias
in this way Eusebius had an axe to grind. He disliked
Revelation and was loath to admit that this last book of
the Bible had been written by the Apostle John. His
discovery of two Johns in this statement of Papias
enabled him to suggest that Revelation had been written
by Elder John and hence was not truly apostolic.
Actually, however, there seems to be no good reason for
finding more than one John in this excerpt from Papias.
Because the Apostle John had outlived all the other
Apostles Papias mentioned him twice, first among the
Apostles as one that had spoken and second among the
next generation as one that was still speaking at the
time he was making his inquiries.
Critics used to believe
that the Gospel of John had been written to present
Christianity to the Greeks, but since the discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 efforts have been made to
connect John's Gospel with the Jewish Sectarians at
Qumran, where the scrolls were found. According to R. M.
Grant (1963), this Gospel was written about 70 A.D. by a
Jerusalem disciple of Jesus for the purpose of
presenting Christianity to Jews of this sort. (42) But
there is no evidence of any kind that this Jerusalem
disciple ever lived. How then could this mighty genius
have disappeared so completely from the pages of
history? Why would the author of so renowned a Gospel
have been forgotten so utterly by the Christian
Church?
Is it not better to
believe that the beloved disciple who wrote the Gospel
of John was the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee? Is not
this what the Gospel narrative implies? Is not this the
unanimous testimony of the early ecclesiastical writers?
What if the Gospel of John differs from the other three
Gospels not in presenting a different Jesus but only in
presenting a different facet of the infinitely complex
character of the Son of God?
(c) The Synoptic
Problem—The Two-Document
Theory
Since the early 19th
century it has been customary to call the first three
Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) by a common name, Synoptic
Gospels, in order to distinguish them from the
Gospel of John. This name seems to have been suggested
by Griesbach's first edition of the Greek New Testament
in which these three Gospels were printed as a synopsis in parallel columns. When these Gospels are
arranged in this way, the question of their mutual
relationship immediately presents itself. How are we to
explain the large measure of agreement which exists
between these three Gospels not only in content and
wording but even in the order in which the subject
matter is arranged. The problem of finding an answer to
this question is called the "Synoptic
problem."
There are three solutions
of the Synoptic problem which have found acceptance with
scholars. In the first place, there have been those who
have believed that Matthew was written first and that
Mark and Luke were copied, at least in part, from
Matthew. This hypothesis was favored by Griesbach
(1783), Hug (1808), and other early 19th century
scholars. (43) It is also the official Roman Catholic
position, having been decreed by the Pontifical Biblical
Commission in 1912. (44)
A second hypothesis, once
popular but now abandoned, was that the Synoptic Gospels
were written independently of one another but were based
on a common oral tradition derived from the Apostles.
This view was advocated in Germany by Gieseler (1818)
(45) and widely held in England in the mid-19th century,
where it was zealously maintained by Alford (1849), (46)
Westcott (1860), (47) and other well known
scholars.
There is a third
hypothesis, however, which for many years has been
regarded by most scholars as the correct solution of the
Synoptic problem. This is the "two-document" theory
which was first promulgated in Germany by C. H. Weisse
(1838). (48) According to this hypothesis, the authors
of Matthew and Luke made common use of two documents.
The first of these was the Gospel of Mark and the second
a document usually referred to as Q which contained the
sayings of Jesus. The common use which the authors of
Matthew and Luke made of Mark accounts for the agreement
of these two Gospels with each other in passages in
which they both agree with Mark, and the common use
which these same authors made of Q accounts for the
agreement of their Gospels with each other in passages
which are not found in Mark. B. H. Streeter's The Four
Gospels (1924) is probably still
the best presentation of the two-document theory in
English. Indeed Kirsopp Lake (1937) (49) regarded it as
the best treatment of the subject in any language. In
this volume Streeter not only defended the two-document
hypothesis but went on to expand it into a theory
involving several other documentary
sources.
The tendency of the
two-document theory is obviously to deny the apostolic
authorship of the Gospels. For it is impossible to
believe that the Apostle Matthew would have relied on
two documents written by others for his information
concerning the life of Jesus and not on his own memory
of his personal experience with his Lord. And it is
almost equally difficult to suppose that Luke, the
disciple and companion of the Apostle Paul, actually
preferred to base his Gospel on information gathered up
and written down by another rather than on that which he
himself had obtained by personal contact with those who
had walked and talked with Jesus. And, finally, the
two-document theory is unfavorable also to the
traditional view that the Gospel of Mark was written by
a personal disciple of Peter. For if this Gospel had the
authority of Peter behind it, it is hard to see how the
authors of the other two Synoptic Gospels could have
felt at liberty to revise it as drastically as they did,
according to the two-document theory.
But the two-document
theory is not invulnerable. B. C. Butler (1951) proved
this in his treatise on The Originality of
St. Matthew. (50) In this volume Butler attacked
with admirable clarity certain of the weak spots in
Streeter's exposition of the two-document hypothesis.
For example, Streeter was driven by the exigencies of
his theory to believe that Mark and Q sometimes
"overlapped," that is, contained divergent accounts of
the same incident or saying. In these instances of
"overlapping," Streeter believed, Luke followed Q. but Matthew
"conflated" Mark and Q. that is,
pieced them together in a very intricate and laborious
manner. And in the same way Matthew "conflated" Mark
with another source M whenever these two documents
"overlapped." Streeter never gave any motive for this
curious action on Matthew's part, and in regard to it
Butler rightly remarks, "Such a mode of procedure on St.
Matthew's part is not indeed impossible. But it is so
improbable, that one may be forgiven for asking whether
there is no other more satisfactory explanation of the
data.'' (51) And in regard to another passage Butler
observes that Streeter's hypothesis that Matthew
"conflated" Mark and Q attributes to the Evangelist "a virtuosity as
superhuman as it would be futile."
(52)
Unfortunately, however,
Butler's own solution of the Synoptic problem was
scarcely satisfactory. According to Butler's hypothesis,
Matthew wrote his Gospel in Aramaic during those early
years of the Christian Church in which he and the other
Apostles were still dwelling together in Palestine.
Matthew's Aramaic Gospel was welcomed by his fellow
Apostles and used by them to refresh their memories
concerning Jesus' life and teachings. Later, after the
Christian mission and movement had begun to take root in
Greek-speaking towns and regions, Matthew made a
translation of his Aramaic Gospel into Greek. This
translation also was welcomed by the other Apostles and
used as an aid in their apostolic preaching. When Peter,
in his old age, was at Rome, he had with him a copy of
this Greek Matthew. When Mark interviewed Peter to
gather material for a second Gospel, Peter did not trust
his memory but read to Mark selected passages from
Matthew's Greek Gospel, making changes here and there.
This is why Mark agrees very closely with Matthew in
some places and differs in others. (53)
The preceding brief
review shows the impossibility of solving the Synoptic
problem on a naturalistic basis. The two supposedly
underlying documents grow quickly to six or seven, and
in addition there are conflations, translations, and
editings. This problem can be solved only in a believing
way. In dealing with the Gospel writers the fundamental
emphasis must be on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
under which they wrote. It is this inspiration that
binds the Synoptic Gospels together and is responsible
for their agreements and their differences. Whether
Matthew, Mark and Luke made use of a common oral
tradition or whether they were familiar with one
another's writings are interesting questions but not of
vital importance. Certainly the Apostles and Evangelists
had no need of written documents to refresh their
memories of Jesus' words and works. The Holy Spirit
brought these matters to their recall in accordance with
the promise of the Saviour. He shall teach you
all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you
(John 14:26).
(d)
Old Testament Higher
Criticism—Moses Versus J. E. D and
P
The so-called
"higher" criticism of the Old Testament began in 1753
with the publication of a treatise written by Jean
Astruc, a French physician. In this work Astruc
maintained that Moses had used sources in composing the
book of Genesis. His argument for this conclusion was
founded mainly on the first two chapters of Genesis, in
which two distinct accounts of the creation of the world
and of man are given. In the first chapter the name Elohim is used
for God, in the second the name Jehovah (often translated LORD). According to Astruc,
these facts indicated that Moses had used two distinct
documents as sources when he wrote the book of Genesis.
(54)
Later this same
theory was developed more thoroughly in Germany by
Eichhorn (1780), Vater (1802), De Wette (1806), Bleek
(1822), Ewald (1823), and others. Source analysis was
applied to all five books of the Pentateuch, and the
conclusion was reached that these books were not written
by Moses at all but by three other ancient authors,
namely: (1) the Elohist (E), who
wrote Genesis 1 and the other passages in which God is
given the name Elohim; (2) the
Jehovist (J),
who wrote Genesis 2 and the other passages in which God
is given the name Jehovah; (3) the
Deuteronomist
(D), who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. And in addition
there was the Redactor (R), that is to say, the editor, who, according
to the critics, put the documents E and J together long
after the death of Moses. (55)
In 1853 Hupfeld
divided the E document into two parts, namely, the first Elohist,
who wrote Genesis 1, and the second Elohist,
who wrote some of the later portions of the E document.
(56) Then
in 1865 Graf revolutionized Old Testament higher
criticism with his hypothesis that Genesis 1 and the
other passages that Hupfeld had assigned to the first Elohist
had actually been written by priestly writers after the
Babylonian Exile and then added to the Pentateuch by a
priestly redactor (editor) about 445 B.C. In accordance
with Graf's hypothesis these passages were labelled P
(priestly) and were regarded as the latest rather than the
earliest portions of Scripture. In other words,
according to Graf and his supporters, the creation
account of Genesis 1 was a late development in Jewish
thought and one of the last sections to be added to the
Old Testament. (57)
But these critics could
not substantiate their theory. This inability was
demonstrated by conservative scholars of the period and
notably by William Henry Green of Princeton Seminary.
"The critics," Dr. Green (1895) observed, "are obliged
to play fast and loose with the text in a manner and to
a degree which renders all their reasoning precarious."
(58) The following are a few of the examples which Dr.
Green gives of this precarious reasoning.
"Elohim occurs
inconveniently for the critics in Gen. 7:9; hence
Kautsach claims that it must have been originally
Jehovah, while Dillmann insists that vss. 8-9 were
inserted by R (the redactor). The critics wish to make
it appear that two accounts of the flood, by P and J
respectively, have been blended in the existing text;
and that vss. 7-9 is J's account and vss. 13-16 that by
P. But unfortunately for them, this is blocked by the
occurrence in each one of the verses assigned to J of
expressions foreign to J and peculiar to P; and to cap
the climax, the divine name is not J's but P's. The
repetition cannot, therefore, be wrested into an
indication of a duplicate narrative, but simply, as its
language clearly shows, emphasizes the fact that the
entry into the ark was made on the self-same day that
the flood began.
" 'And Jehovah shut him
in' (Gen. 7:16b) occurs in the midst of a P paragraph;
hence it is alleged that this solitary clause has been
inserted from a supposed parallel narrative by J. But
this overlooks the significant and evidently intended
contrast of the two divine names in this verse, a
significance to which Delitzsch calls attention, thus
discrediting the basis of the critical analysis which he
nevertheless accepts. Animals of every species went into
the ark, as Elohim, the God of creation and providence,
directed, mindful of the preservation of what He had
made; Jehovah, the guardian of His people, shut Noah
in.
"Isaac's blessing of Jacob
(Gen. 27:27-28) is torn asunder because Jehovah in the
first sentence is followed by Elohim in the
second.
"So Jacob's dream, in
which he beholds the angels of Elohim (Gen. 28:12) and
Jehovah (Gen. 28:13)" is also torn asunder; "although
his waking (Gen. 28:16) from the sleep into which he had
fallen (Gen. 28:11-12) shows that these cannot be parted
Jacob's vow (Gen. 28:20-21) is arbitrarily amended by
striking out 'then shall Jehovah be my God,' because of
his previous mention of Elohim when referring to His
general providential benefits.
"The story of the birth of
Leah's first four sons (Gen. 29:31-35) and that of the
fifth and sixth (Gen. 30:17-20) are traced to different
documents notwithstanding their manifest connection,
because Jehovah occurs in the former and Elohim in the
latter.
"The battle with Amalek
(Ex. 17:8-13) is assigned to E because of Elohim (Ex.
17:9); but the direction to record it, the commemorative
altar, and the oath of perpetual hostility to Amalek
(Ex. 17:14-16), which stand in a most intimate relation
to it, are held to be from another document because of
Jehovah." (59)
(e) Wellhausen's
Reconstruction of the History of
Israel
In 1878 Julius
Wellhausen published his famous Prolegomena to the
History of Ancient Israel. (60)
This was a complete reconstruction of Old Testament
history in agreement with Graf's hypothesis, which
accordingly was renamed the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis.
The history of Israel, Wellhausen maintained, began at
Mt. Sinai, where Moses persuaded the Israelites to adopt
Yahweh (Jehovah) as their tribal god. Ever afterwards
they felt themselves to be Yahweh's people, and this
feeling gave them a sense of national unity. But Moses
gave them no laws. These were developed later after they
had settled in the land of Canaan. This primitive legal
code was transmitted orally until about 850 B.C. Then it
was written down and incorporated in the J narrative and
is now found in Exodus 20-23. (61)
Around 750 B.C., according
to Wellhausen, a tremendous transformation of the
religious thinking of ancient Israel began to take
place. Mighty, prophetic reformers arose, such as Amos,
Hosea and the first Isaiah, who publicly proclaimed that
Yahweh was not a tribal deity but a righteous God who
ruled all nations and would punish them for their sins,
who would chastise even Israel. (62) This reform
movement finally culminated in an exciting event which
occurred about 621 B.C. Hilkiah the high priest found in
the Temple the book of the law, which had been lost.
This book was brought to king Josiah, who accepted it as
genuine and called an assembly of the people in which he
and the whole nation made a solemn covenant before
Yahweh to keep all the commandments written in this
book. This action, Wellhausen asserted, marked the
entrance of the covenant-concept into Jewish thought.
The covenant which Josiah made with Yahweh came to be
regarded as typical. Ever after the Jews thought of
themselves as Yahweh's covenant people. According to
Wellhausen, however, the book that produced this
profound effect was not an ancient book, as Josiah was
led to believe, but the book of Deuteronomy, which had
been written only a short time before by the leaders of
the reform movement and placed in the Temple for the
express purpose of being "discovered." (63) How Josiah
and the people could have been so easily deceived the
critics do not say.
And what about the
biblical data that contradict Wellhausen's hypothesis?
What about those passages which indicate that the book
of Deuteronomy was known and obeyed in the days of
Joshua and Samuel? In Deuteronomy the Israelites were
forbidden to offer up sacrifices in any other location
than the place which God should choose for this purpose
(Deut. 12:13-14). Accordingly, in Joshua 22:10-34 we
find the majority of the people zealous to obey this
commandment and ready to punish with the sword those who
seemed to have violated it. Also in 1 Samuel, chapters 1
and 2, we find this Deuteronomic law in operation, with
pious Israelites coming up every year to offer
sacrifices at the Tabernacle in Shiloh. Solomon also, in
his prayer of dedication, emphasized that the Temple was
that single worship center which had been chosen for the
nation by God (1 Kings 8:16). And throughout the sacred
history even pious kings are censured for permitting
sacrifices to be offered at the high places rather than
in the Temple. Do not these facts prove that the book of
Deuteronomy was in existence and known from the time of
Moses onward?
Wellhausen had a ready
answer to this question. These passages, he maintained,
were the inventions of later authors and editors who
desired to give the false impression that Deuteronomy
had been written by Moses and had always been known in
Israel. (64) And to prove his thesis Wellhausen pointed
to other passages which, in his opinion, demonstrated
that Deuteronomy with its commandment to sacrifice at
one national worship-center was not known until the time
of Josiah. According to Wellhausen, these passages
indicated that Gideon, Manoah, Samuel, Saul, Elijah and
Elisha all sacrificed wherever they pleased without any
thought of a divinely appointed worship-center.
(65) It was
to put an end to this chaotic state of affairs,
Wellhausen argued, and to centralize divine worship at
the Temple at Jerusalem that the leaders of the reform
movement wrote the book of Deuteronomy and persuaded
king Josiah to accept it as a genuine writing of
Moses.
In other words, according
to Wellhausen, after these Deuteronomic reformers had
perpetrated their pious fraud, they and their successors
made false entries in the sacred records in order to
cover their tracks. But at the same time they were so
stupid as to leave untouched all those passages by means
of which Wellhausen and other 19th century higher
critics were able at last to expose their trickery.
Surely this is an incredible paradox rather than a
reasonable explanation of the biblical data.
According to the
Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, the Levitical laws of
sacrifice and of ceremonial holiness were developed
during the Babylonian exile by Ezekiel and other captive
priests, and it was out of these formulations that the
present book of Leviticus was put together after the
exile by writers of the priestly school (P). (66) Here
we have another unconvincing paradox. All during the
time in which the glorious Temple of Solomon was
standing, with the Ark of God inside it and all the
sacred furniture, the priests, according to the critics,
had no book of ceremonial law to "guide them. Then after
the Ark had disappeared, the Temple had been burnt, and
the people had been carried away to a foreign land, the
complicated ritual of Leviticus was formulated for the
first time. How very strange!
But if we recognize Moses
as the author of the Pentateuch, the fantastic
conjectures of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis give way
to more balanced views concerning the sacrificial laws
of ancient Israel. The first such law of sacrifice was
revealed to Moses by God (Exodus 20:23-26) immediately
after the giving of the Ten Commandments. Instead of
images of gold and silver the Israelites were commanded
to erect unto Jehovah an altar of earth and unhewn
stone. This divine injunction was placed at the
beginning of the Book of the Covenant, which Moses wrote
soon after and read to the people and which the people
promised to obey. It was the basic law of sacrifice.
Later, after the Tabernacle was erected, God modified it
so as to place the duty of sacrificing into the hands of
the priests whom He had appointed for this purpose. This
transfer Moses recorded in the book of Leviticus.
Finally, in the book of Deuteronomy Moses instructed the
people regarding the national worship-center which God
would establish at some future time in the promised
land. These modifications were usually in force, but on
special occasions and in times of chaos and confusion
the law of sacrifice reverted to the original form in
which it was first revealed to Moses at Mt. Sinai. For
this reason the sacrifices of Gideon, Manoah, Samuel,
Saul, Elijah and Elisha were acceptable to God even
though they were not offered in the Tabernacle or the
Temple.
(f) Modern
Archeological
Discoveries—Barthianism
Although naturalistic Old
Testament scholars still subscribe to the
Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, modern archeological
discoveries have greatly weakened this critical
reconstruction of Old Testament history. Beginning in
the 1920's, a series of investigations in this field has
shown that the Old Testament narratives are a good deal
more accurate than was once thought possible. (67) This
accuracy is hard to explain on the basis of Wellhausen's
theory that these stories were transmitted orally until
they were finally committed to writing about 850 B.C.
Moreover, it has been demonstrated that writing was in
common use long before the days of Moses. (68) There is
no reason, therefore, on that score why Moses and other
ancient Hebrews could not have written books. And, most
important of all, Wellhausen's contention that the
Israelites worshiped a tribal god has been challenged by
the facts, since no instances of this tribal-god concept
have been found in the religions of the ancient Orient.
(69)
But if the ancient
Israelites did not worship a tribal god, what did they
worship? In 1933 Walther Eichrodt appealed to Karl
Barth's theology for an answer to this question, (70)
and since that time many other scholars have cane the
same. Shifting the covenant-concept back from the reign
of Josiah to the time of Moses, these Barthians assert
that on Mt. Sinai Moses organized the children of Israel
into a covenant community. The Old Testament is the
witness of this community to the mighty acts of God,
which began with the deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
But according to these Barthian critics, it is
impossible to tell what these acts of God really were
because it is impossible to separate an act of God from
the response of the community to that act.
(71)
But what does all this
mean historically? Were the ancient Israelites
Barthians? If not, what was their status, religiously
speaking? The critics have no firm answer to this
question. According to Albright (1946), Moses was a
monotheist. (72) But since 1955 it has been generally
maintained that the Sinai covenant was modeled after the
treaties of the ancient Hittite kings, (73) and this
would imply, it seems, that the ancient Israelites were
polytheists after all. If so, when did they become
monotheists? Actually, however, the resemblance of these
Hittite treaties to the Sinaitic covenant seems very
slight. And the theory itself seems very improbable. For
if the Israelites were such admirers of these Hittite
treaty formulas, why did they not reproduce them in
other Old Testament passages also? Why only in
Exodus?
If, therefore, we desire
to learn the true meaning of the Sinaitic covenant, we
must turn neither to the Hittites nor to the Barthian
theology nor to the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis but to
the Scriptures as the infallible Word and especially to
the New Testament. There we find that at Sinai God
introduced His holy Law as a school master to bring His
people to Christ (Gal. 3:24).
(g) The Account of
Moses' Death—Who Wrote It?
If Moses wrote the
Pentateuch, who wrote the account of Moses' death (Deut.
34:1-12)? Many conservative scholars say that it was
added by an inspired scribe, but this is an entirely
unnecessary hypothesis. If an inspired scribe was needed
to write of Moses' death and burial, events which no man
witnessed, why couldn't Moses have been that scribe? Why
couldn't he have been inspired to write of his own death
beforehand? And in regard to the other objections which
even before the advent of Old Testament higher criticism
were raised by Spinoza (1670), Simon (1685), and LeClerc
(1685), a similar answer may be returned. As Witsius
(1692), the learned Hebraist, proved long ago, none of
the verses pointed out by these 17th century
rationalists can be demonstrated decisively to be of
post-Mosaic origin. None of them
necessarily implies that the author was looking back
from a position in time later than that of Moses.
(74)
(h) Jesus and the
Critics
Jesus named Moses
explicitly as the author of the Pentateuch. Did not Moses give
you the Law?, He asked the Jews (John 7:19). And
again, remonstrating with these hardened unbelievers, He
protested, Had ye
believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for He wrote
of Me (John 5:46). Also in His
controversy with the Saducees Jesus calls Exodus the
book of Moses (Mark 12:26). And similarly Jesus
recognized Moses, not P and D, as the author of
Leviticus (Matt. 8:4) and Deuteronomy (Mark 10:5). Hence
it is not surprising that critics who have adopted
naturalistic views concerning the Pentateuch and the
other Old Testament books have also adopted naturalistic
views concerning Jesus, charging Him either with deceit
or with ignorance and error. Let us now consider some of
these views.
(1 ) The Aristocratic
Jesus. Spinoza and LeClerc and
other 17th-century rationalists assumed an aristocratic
attitude in matters of religion. Although they thought
themselves to have progressed to a higher state of
knowledge, they deemed it best for the common people to
continue in the religions in which they had been reared
and to cultivate piety and a peaceful and quiet life.
And they attributed to Jesus this same aristocratic
tolerance of the errors of the masses. "It will be said,
perhaps," LeClerc argued, "that Jesus Christ and the
Apostles often quote the Pentateuch under the name of
Moses, and that their authority should be of greater
weight than all our conjectures. But Jesus Christ and
the Apostles not having come into the world to teach the
Jews criticism, we must not be surprised if they speak
in accordance with the common opinion. It was of little
consequence to them whether it was Moses or another,
provided the history was true; and as the common opinion
was not prejudicial to piety, they took no great pains
to disabuse the Jews." (75) But to this notion Witsius
well replied that if our Lord and His Apostles were not
teachers of criticism, at any rate, they were teachers
of truth. (76) As teachers of truth they could not have
accommodated their doctrine to the errors of their
time.
(2) The Kenotic
Jesus. During the 19th century there were certain
theologians and critics who adopted a kenotic view of
Jesus. They believed that the incarnation of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, took place by means of a kenosis, which
is the Greek word for emptying. At the
incarnation, they maintained, Jesus Christ emptied
Himself of His divine nature and became entirely human.
They based this view on Phil. 2:7, where we are told
that Christ made
Himself of no reputation (literally, emptied
Himself). In England one of the most prominent
advocates of this kenotic
interpretation of the incarnation of Christ was Charles
Gore (1891), later bishop of Oxford. In his Bampton
Lectures Gore argued that while on earth Christ had so
far divested Himself of His divine omniscience that He
participated not only in human ignorance but also in
human error. According to Gore, "our Lord actually
committed Himself to an error of fact in regard to the
authorship of the 110th Psalm." In matters of Old
Testament higher criticism, Gore contended, Jesus chose
to be ignorant and mistaken. This, Gore maintained, was
part of the kenosis, the divine self-emptying of Christ's
incarnation. (77)
But if Jesus was so
mistaken concerning the Old Testament, how can we trust
Him in regard to other matters ? Praise God, then, that
the kenotic view of Christ's incarnation is not true!
While on earth Christ veiled His divine glory, but He
did not put it off. This is the true meaning of Phil.
2:7. Christ could not lay aside His Godhead, for His
deity is unchangeable.
(3) The Prophetic
Jesus. During the latter part of the 19th century
most naturalistic scholars regarded Jesus as merely a
great prophet or moral teacher. One of the best known
advocates of this point of view was Adolf Harnack,
famous professor of Church History at the University of
Berlin. In his lectures on the Essence of
Christianity ( 1900) Harnack
grouped the teaching of Jesus under three heads:
"Firstly, the kingdom of God and its coming. Secondly,
God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul.
Thirdly, the higher righteousness and the commandment of
love." (78) According to Harnack, Jesus' chief concern
was to preach the Fatherhood of God. The Gospel, Harnack
declared, is "the Fatherhood of God applied to the whole
of life." (79)
This, then, was one
of the chief reasons why the 19th-century liberals were
so eager to find the solution of their Synoptic problem.
They believed that if only they could trace the Synoptic
Gospels back to their sources they would recover the
historical Jesus. They would see Jesus, they thought, as
He really was, as merely a very great prophet and moral
teacher and not as the divine Son of God that the early
Christian Church had depicted Him as being. Such were
the expectations of these naturalistic scholars, but
their hopes were quickly disappointed. Even the earliest
of the supposed sources were found to be theological
documents. Even in Mark and Q Jesus appears as a
supernatural Person, the Christ of God. William Wrede, a
radical German scholar, was one of the first to point
this out irrefutably in his celebrated treatise, The Messianic
Secret (1901) (80) From the
standpoint of unbelief this result was very strange, but
from the standpoint of Christian faith it was just what
might have been anticipated.
(4) The Apocalyptic
Jesus. In his famous book, The Quest of the
Historical Jesus (1906), Albert Schweitzer presented
Jesus as one whose life was dominated by the prophecy of
Daniel and especially by the expression Son of
Man (Dan 7:13). According to
Schweitzer, Jesus' ministry lasted only one year. All
during that year Jesus was expecting that the Kingdom of
God would come in a supernatural manner and that He
would be revealed as the Messiah, the heavenly Son of
Man. When he sent the twelve disciples out to preach, He
thought that this supernatural event would occur before
they returned, but He was disappointed in this hope.
Finally, He became convinced that in order to bring this
present world to an end and to usher in a new
supernatural world it would be necessary for Him to die
first. With this purpose in mind He went up to Jerusalem
at Passover time and was crucified. (81) But in spite of
this disaster, so Schweitzer maintained, a "mighty
spiritual force" streamed forth from Jesus and became
"the solid foundation of Christianity." (82) How could
this have been so if Jesus had been the deluded fanatic
that Schweitzer depicted Him as being?
(5) The Kerygmatic
Jesus. Since World War I, and especially since World
War II, the kerygmatic view
of Jesus' life has increasingly dominated the
theological scene. According to this view, the Jesus of
the Synoptic Gospels is the product of the preaching (kerygma) of the
Christian community. Early Christian preachers, it is
said, used anecdotes of Jesus' life and sayings
attributed to Him to drive home the points they were
endeavoring to make. Later these anecdotes and sayings
were compiled by editors, and from these compilations
the Synoptic Gospels were produced. But by the method of
Form-criticism (Formgeschichte) it is thought possible to
analyze these Gospel narratives into their supposedly
original fragments. This method, which was used in the
study of German folklore, was applied to the New
Testament immediately after World War I by K. L.
Schmidt, M. Dibelius and R. Bultmann and widely adopted
during the inter-war period. (83) And since World War II
Form-criticism has thrived greatly, under the leadership
of Bultmann and also of younger scholars such as E.
Kaesemann, G. Bornkamm and H. Conzelmann.
(84)
Since World War II
the Form-critics have devoted much attention to the "Son
of Man problem." This problem deals with the use of the
title Son of
Man and with the origin and meaning of this
designation. In the Synoptic Gospels the Son of Man is
spoken of in three ways: (1) as coming, e.g. Mark 13:26;
(2) as suffering death and rising again, e.g. Mark
10:33-34; (3) as now at work, e.g. Mark 2:10. (85) What
is the basic meaning of this term, and why is it used in
these three distinct senses? Did Jesus ever speak of the
Son of Man, and if so, did He apply this title to
Himself? Many Form-critics answer this last question in
the negative. Jesus, they insist, never claimed to be
the Son of Man, never even used this expression, some of
them add. It was the primitive Christian community, they
assert, that introduced this designation, first speaking
of Jesus as the coming Son of Man and then extending the
term to include Jesus' death and resurrection and the
deeds of His earthly ministry. (86) But if Jesus owes
the title Son of Man to the usage of the primitive
Christian community, why is it that all traces of this
popular usage have vanished? Why is it that in the New
Testament with but few exceptions, the expression Son of
Man is found only on the lips of
Jesus? Form-critics confess that they have not been able
to solve this problem. (87)
The solution of the
"Son of Man problem" is found only in the fact of the
incarnation. The term Son of
Man was Jesus' own way of
referring to His human nature as distinguished from His
divine nature, to Himself as perfect Man, in which
capacity He was active in the deeds of His earthly
ministry, suffered and died and rose again, and shall
appear in glory at the last day.
Perhaps more than any
other group of naturalistic scholars the Form-critics
are apt to go to extremes, especially in their attempts
to bypass the Apostles and discover the origin of
Christianity in the "Christian community." Contrary to
the Book of Acts and the unanimous testimony of ancient
ecclesiastical writers, they represent the Apostles as
receiving instruction from the Christian community
rather than founding the Christian community upon their
doctrine. This is particularly the case with the Apostle
Paul. Although Paul solemnly certified that the gospel
which he preached was "not after man" nor "received of
man" (Gal. 1:11-12), the Form-critics do not hesitate to
contradict him and derive his doctrine from the
Christian community. They maintain, for example, that
some of Paul's most important doctrinal statements
concerning the Person and work of Christ (Rom. 1:3-4;
4:25; Eph. 2:14-16, Phil. 2:6-11, Col. 1:15-20, 1 Tim.
3:16) were quotations from certain Christological hymns
which had been composed by the Christian community. (88)
In these passages therefore, according to the
Form-critics, Paul was not teaching the Christian
community anything but merely rehearsing to the
community what he had learned from it. But who were
these unknown hymn makers of the Christian community who
were able to mold the thinking of the Apostle Paul? How
could these profound theological geniuses have remained
anonymous?
According to
Conzelmann (1969), the Christian community was assembled
"through the appearances of the Risen One and the
preaching of the witnesses to these appearances!" (89)
Are we to conclude from this, then, that Jesus'
resurrection is a historical event? To this question
Conzelmann gives a disappointing answer. A historian, he
asserts, cannot prove that Jesus really rose from the
dead but only that the disciples believed that Jesus did
so. (90) But why did the disciples believe this? To this
question the Form-critics merely give the Barthian
answer that the disciples chose to believe so. "The
Church had to surmount the scandal of the cross,"
Bultmann tells us "and did it in the Easter faith." (91)
But why did the disciples choose to believe that Jesus
rose from the dead? Because He really did so and shewed Himself
to them alive
after His passion by many infallible
proofs ( Acts 1:3) . This is the
simple answer of the Bible which Form-critics decline to
accept but to which they can find no convincing
alternative.
3. Naturalistic
Textual Criticism And
Apologetics
In the preceding pages it
has been proved historically that the logic of
naturalistic textual criticism leads to complete
modernism, to a naturalistic view not only of the
biblical text but also of the Bible as a whole and of
the Christian faith. For if it is right to ignore the
providential preservation of the Scriptures in the study
of the New Testament text, why isn't it right to go
farther in the same direction? Why isn't it right to
ignore other divine aspects of the Bible? Why isn't it
right to ignore the divine inspiration of the Scriptures
when discussing the authenticity of the Gospel of John
or the Synoptic problem or the authorship of the
Pentateuch? And why isn't it right to ignore the
doctrines of the Trinity and of the incarnation when
dealing with the messianic consciousness of Jesus and
the Son of Man problem?
Impelled by this
remorseless logic, many an erstwhile conservative Bible
student has become entirely modernistic in his thinking.
But he does not acknowledge that he has departed from
the Christian faith. For from his point of view he has
not. He has merely traveled farther down the same path
which he began to tread when first he studied
naturalistic textual criticism of the Westcott and Hort
type, perhaps at some conservative theological seminary.
From his point of view his orthodox former professors
are curiously inconsistent. They use the naturalistic
method in the area of New Testament textual criticism
and then drop it most illogically, like something too
hot to handle, when they come to other departments of
biblical study.
(a) Naturalistic
Apologetics — The Fallacy of the Neutral Starting
Point
This inconsistency in
regard to the textual criticism of the Bible and
especially of the New Testament has historical roots
which reach back three hundred years to the late 17th
century. At that time the deists and other unbelievers
came up with a novel suggestion. "Let us not," they
proposed, "begin our thinking by assuming the truth of
Christianity. Let us rather take as our starting point
only those truths on which Protestants, Catholics, Jews,
Mohammedans, and all good men of every religion and
creed agree. Then, standing on this neutral platform of
common agreement, let us test all religions and creeds
by the light of reason."
Instead of rejecting this
proposal as fundamentally unchristian, orthodox
Protestant scholars accepted the challenge and during
the 18th century developed various apologetic arguments,
armed with which they endeavored to meet the unbelievers
on their own chosen ground and, fighting in this neutral
arena, to demonstrate the truth of historic Christianity
and the error of infidelity. Unhappily, however, these
orthodox champions did not realize that they had been
out-maneuvered and that by the very act of adopting a
neutral starting point they had already denied the faith
that they intended to defend and had ensured that any
argument that they might thereafter advance would be
inconsistent.
(b) The Butler-Paley
Apologetic System
Joseph Butler
(1692-1752) and William Paley (1743-1805) were the two
authors of the neutral apologetic system which in many
conservative theological seminaries during the 19th and
early 20th centuries was taught side by side with the
older Reformation faith without any due recognition of
the basic difference between these two approaches to
Christianity, the one beginning with reason, the
common truths on which all good men agree, the other
beginning with revelation, the
divine truth on which all men, good or bad, ought to agree.
Butler, who later
became bishop of Durham, published his famous Analogy of
Religion in 1736. This book dealt with the analogy (similarity) existing between the Christian
religion and the facts of nature, as they were known to
the science of Butler's day. The book was divided into
two parts, the first part dealing with "natural
religion," i.e., religious truths revealed in nature as
well as in the Bible, and the second part dealing with
"revealed religion," i.e., religious truths revealed
only in the Bible. The purpose of the book was to show
deists and other unbelievers that the same difficulties
which they found in the doctrines of Christianity were
found also in the facts of nature. Hence Christianity,
Butler contended, was, at the very least, just as
probable as deism or any other form of unbelief.
Therefore it was only prudent to accept Christianity at
least on a probability basis, for probability, Butler
reminded his readers, was "the very guide of life." (92)
It is said, however, that on his death bed Butler came
to recognize that Christianity cannot be received as a
probability but only as the truth and that he died
triumphantly repeating John 6:37.
Paley, archdeacon of
Carlisle, published his Evidences of
Christianity in 1794. In it he refuted the
objections of the deists and of skeptics such as David
Hume to the historicity of the miracles of Jesus. "There
is satisfactory evidence," he contended, "that many
professing to be original witnesses of Christian
miracles, passed their lives in labors, dangers, and
sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence
of their belief of those accounts; and that they also
submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of
conduct."
In other words, the
sufferings which Jesus' disciples endured and their
changed lives were proofs that the miracles to which
they bore witness, actually occurred. And to this
argument Paley added another, namely, the uniqueness of
Jesus. Jesus was not an "enthusiast" or an "impostor,"
as others were who claimed to be Messiahs, but remained
"absolutely original and singular." This uniqueness
proved that Jesus was truly the Christ He claimed to be.
(93)
No less famous was
Paley's Natural
Theology, published in 1802. In
it Paley compared the universe to a watch. If in
crossing a field we should find a watch, the intricate
machinery of which it was composed would soon convince
us that it had not existed from all eternity but had
been constructed by a watchmaker. So the much more
intricate machinery of the physical world and especially
of the bodies of animals and men should convince us that
the whole universe has been created by an all-wise God.
In discoursing upon this theme Paley exhibited a very
considerable knowledge of anatomy and used it to refute
the theory of evolution, which in his day was just
beginning to raise its head. (94)
Throughout the 19th
century annotated editions of these works of Butler and
Paley were used as textbooks in the colleges and
theological seminaries of Great Britain and America and
served as models for later apologetic writings. But
although the Butler-Paley apologetic system accomplished
much immediate good, in the long run its effect was
detrimental to the Christian faith because it presented
Christianity as merely a probability and not as the
truth. Also it made the starting point of Christian
thought dependent on the whims of unbelievers, since,
according to the Butler-Paley system, we build our
defense of the Christian faith upon the truths on which
all men agree. And, finally, the Butler-Paley apologetic
system, by its emphasis on probability and on a common
starting point with unbelievers, encouraged orthodox
Christians to think that they must deal with the text of
holy Scripture in the same way in which unbelievers deal
with it. Hence the Butler-Paley apologetic system
contributed greatly to the spread of naturalistic
textual criticism in orthodox Christian
circles.
(c) The Need for a
Consistently Christian Apologetic
System
Today, therefore,
there is great need for a consistently Christian
apologetic system, for a defense of the Christian faith
which takes as its starting point not the facts on which
all men agree but the supreme fact on which all men ought to agree, namely, God's revelation of Himself in
nature, in the holy Scriptures, and in the Gospel of
Christ, the saving message of the
Scriptures.
God reveals Himself, not mere doctrines concerning Himself, but
HIMSELF. The Biblical doctrine of salvation reminds us
that this is indeed a fact. I am saved by trusting in
Jesus personally. But how can I believe in Jesus Christ
as a Person unless He first reveal Himself? In the
Gospel, therefore, Jesus Christ reveals Himself to me as
the triune Saviour God, and not to me only but to all
sinners everywhere. And God reveals Himself not only in
the Gospel but also in the whole of Scripture as the
faithful Covenant God and likewise in this great
universe which His hands have made as the almighty
Creator God.
This divine revelation is
the starting point of a consistently Christian
apologetic system. Taking our stand upon it, we point
out the inconsistencies of unbelieving thought and then
show how these difficulties can be resolved by a return
to God's revealed Truth.
(d) How to Take Our
Stand—Through the Logic of
Faith
How do we take our
stand upon divine revelation? Only in one way, namely
through the logic of faith. For God so loved the
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life (John 3:16). Since this Gospel is
true, these conclusions logically follow: First, the Bible
is God's infallibly inspired Word. This must be so,
because if our salvation depends on our believing in
Christ, then surely God must have left us an infallible
record telling us who Jesus Christ is and how we may
believe in Him truly and savingly. Second, the
Bible has been preserved down through the ages by God's
special providence. This also must be so, because if God
has inspired the holy Scriptures infallibly, then surely
He has not left their survival to chance but has
preserved them providentially down through the
centuries. Third, the text
found in the majority of the biblical manuscripts is the
providentially preserved text. This too must be true,
because if God has preserved the Scriptures down through
the ages for the salvation of men and the edification
and comfort of His Church, then He must have preserved
them not secretly in holes and caves but in a public way
in the usage of His Church. Hence the text found in the
majority of the biblical manuscripts is the true,
providentially preserved text. Fourth, The providential preservation of the Scriptures
did not cease with the invention of printing. For why
would God's special, providential care be operative at
one time and not at another time, before the invention
of printing but not after it? Hence the first printed
texts of the Old and New Testament Scriptures were
published under the guidance of God's special
providence.
Thus when we believe in
Christ, the logic of our faith leads us to the true text
of holy Scripture, namely, the Masoretic Hebrew text,
the Textus Receptus, and the King James Version and
other faithful translations. It is on this text,
therefore, that we take our stand and endeavor to build
a consistently Christian apologetic system.
(For further details
regarding the logic of faith consult Believing Bible
Study, pp.
55-66.)
