The Fundamentals: Volume 2, Chapter 4: Christ and Cristicsm

8/20/2019 The Fundamentals: Volume 2, Chapter 4: Christ and Cristicsm

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CHAPTER IV.

CHRIST A D CRITICISM ••

BY SIR ROBERT A DERSO , . C. B., LL. D.

c\UTHOR OF THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM, ETC., ETC.,

LONDO · , E GLA D.

In his Founders of Old Testa1nent Critici ,sm ProfessorCheyne of Oxford gives the foremost place to Eicl1horn. Iiehails him, in fact, as th founder of the cult. And accordingto this same authority, wl1at Jed Eichhorn to enter on his taskWas his hope to contribute to the winning back of tlie edttcated classes to religion. The rationalism of Ge1·1nany atthe close of the eighteenth century would accept the Bible?nly oa the terms of bringing it down to tl1e level of a humanbook, and the problem which had to be solved was to get ridof the element of miracJe which pervades it. Working on thelabors o~ his predecessors, Eichhorn achieved this to hjs ownsatisfaction by appealing to the oriental habit of thought, wliiCh

•e1zes upon ultimate causes and ignores intermediate processe .

l hi commended itself on two grounds. It had an undoubtedelement of truth, and it was consistent with reverence for HolyScripture. For of tl1e founder of the Higher Criticism it

faith in that Which is holy, even in the miracles of the Bible,Was never shattered by Eichhorn in any youthful mind.

In the view of his succes ors, however, Eichhorn s hypothe-•

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.Sts was open to the fatal objection that it was altogether tn·adequate. So the next generation of critics adopted the moredrastic theory that the Mosaic books were mosaic in thesense that they were literary forgeries of a late date, composedof materials supplied by ancient documents and the myths andlegends of the Hebrew race. A11d tho11gh this theory has been

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modified from time to time during the last century, it remains

substantia lly the critical view of the Pentateuch. But it isopen to two main objections, either of wh ich would be fatal.It is inconsistent with the evidence. And it directly challenges lthe authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as a teacher; for oneof the few undisputed facts in t~is controversy is that ourLord accredited the books of Moses as having divine authority.

THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT.

It may be well to deal first with the least important of theseobjections. And here we must distinguish between the true \Higher Criticistn and its counterfeit. The rationalistic f Higher Criticism, when putting the Pentateuch upon its trial, tbegan with the verdict and then cast about to find the evidence; ·whereas, true criticism enters upon its inquiries with an openmind and pursue& them without prejudice. The differenc.emay be aptly illustrated by the position assutned by a typicalFrench judge and by an ideal Eng lish judge in a criminal trial. fThe one aims at convicting the accused, the other at elucidating fthe truth. -The proper functi~n of the Higher Criticism isto determine the origin, date, and literary structure of an an

cient writing. This is Professor Driver's de scription of truecriticism. But the aim of the counterfeit is to disprove the 0genuineness of the ancient writings. The justice of this state-ment is established by the fact that Hebraists and theologians fof the highest eminence, whose investigation of the Penta-teuch problem has convinced them of the genuineness of thebooks, are not recognized at all.

sIn Britain, at lea st-and I am not competent to speak oft

Germany or Amer ica-no theologian of the first rank has1

adopted their assured results. But the judgment of suc hCn1en as Pusey, Lightfoot and Salmon, not to speak of 1nen who

are st ill with u s, they contemptuously ignore; for the ration- ,alistic I-Iigher Critic is not one who investigates the evidence, 1

but one wqo accepts the verdict.


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72 The Fundamentals•

and two ladies had lost their purses. The empty purses were

afterwards found in the pocket of the Bishop o,f the Diocese'

On tl1e evidence . of the two purses the Bishop , should be con-victed as a thi ef, and 10n the evid .ence of the two words thebook of Daniel sho ,uld b 1e co,nvicte 1d as .a forgery

HIST ,OR.ICAL BL ,UNDE R.

. Here is another typical item in the Critics' indictment ofDanie l. The book opens by recot·ding Nebuchadnezzar's sie·geof Jerusalem in the · third year of Je11oiakim, a statement thecorr 1ectness of which is confirmed by history, sacred and secu~Jar. Berosu.s, the 1Cl1ald .e:an his t 1orian, , tells us that 1during thisexpedition Nebuchadnezzar received tidings of ·his father'sdeath, and that, committing to oth~rs the care of his army andof his Jewish and other prison 1ers, ''h 1e himself hastened homeacross the desert.'' Bu t the German skeptics, having decidedthat Daniel wa.s a forgery, had to find evidence to supporttheir · verdict. And so they made the brilliant discovery thatBerosus was here ref 1erring to the exp 1edi ·tion of th ,e followingyear, when Nebuchadnezzar won the battle of ·carchemisb

against the army of tl1e king of Egypt, and that he had ·notat that time invaded Judea at all. But 1Ca,rchem ,ish is on th,eEuphrates, and the idea of ''hastening home'' from there toBabylon across the desert is worthy of a schoo lboy 's essayThat he crossed the desert is proof that he set out from Judea;and .his Jewish captives were, of course, Daniel and his cont·

/ panion princes. . His invasion of Judea took place before hiSaccession, in Jehoiakam's t liird year, whereas the battle of Carchemish was fought after his accession, in the king of Judah'~fourth year, as the biblical books record. But this grotesqtJeblunder ' of ' Bertholdt' 's ''Book of · Daniel' '' in the be,ginni ,ogi>f the nineteenth century is gravely reproduced in Pro fessofDriver's ''Book of Daniel'' at the beginning of the twentietb

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• 73Chris t and Criticism. .

CRITICAL 1 PROFANI T . •• •

But to return to Mose s . According to '' the critical hypothesis,'' tl1e books of the Pentateuch are literary forgeries of theExi lic Era, the work of the Jerusalem priests o:f those evildays. From the Book of · Jeremiah we know that those menwere profane apostates ; and if ''the critical hypothesis'' be true,

1 they were infinitely worse than even the prophet's inspired de' nunciations of them indicate. For no eighteenth century athe

ist ever sank to a lower depth of profanity than is displayedby their use of the Sacred Name. In the preface to his ''Darkness and Dawn, Dean Farrar claims that he ''never touches

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the early preachers of Christianity with the finger of fiction.''When his story makes Apostles speak, he has ''confined theirwords to the words of a revelation. But ex hyp. the authors

of the J?entateuch ''touched with the finger of fiction'' not onlythe holy men of the ancient days, but their Jehovah God. ''Je- .hovah spake unto Moses, say ing. This and . kindred formulasare repeated times without number in the Mosaic books. If

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this be romance, a lower type of profanity is inconceivafile,unless it be that of the man who fails to be shocked and re-

volted by it.But no; facts prove that this judgment is unjust. For menof unfeigned piety and deep reverence for divine thi11gs canbe so blinded by the superstitions of ''religion'' that the im-primatur of the church enables them to regard these discred,ited books as Holy Scripture. As critics they brand the Pen ..tateuch as a tissue of myth and legend and fraud, but as re- ·ligionists they assure us that this ''imp lies no denial of its in ..

it • d f t ''*sp1rat1on or 1sparagement o 1 s con ents .•

ERRORS REFUTED BY FACTS.

In controversy it is of the greatest importance to allow op ..ponents to state their position in their own words ; and here

* The Higher Criticism : Three Papers,'' by Professors Driver andKirkpatrick. .

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is Professor Driver's state1nent of the case against the Books· of Moses:

' We 1can only argue on grounds of pr 1o'bability deriv ,ed fro111our view of the progress of the art of writing, or of literarycomposition, o,r of tl1e rise .and growtl1 of the prophetic to11eand fee .li:ng in ancie ·nt Israel, or of th .e perio ,d. at wh ·ich the ,traditions co ,ntained in the narratives might have taken shape,or of the probability that they would have been written downbefore the impetus given to culture by the monarchy ha 1d takeneffect, and similar considerati ,011s, or estimating n10,st of whi 1cl1,.tho ,ugh plausible argun1ents on one si,de or the other may bea ,dvanced, a standard on which we can confidently rely scarcelyadmits of being fixed.'' ( ' 'Introduction, '' 6th ed ,, page 123.)

This n10,dest r·ef 1rence to ' 'literary c11np 1os.it .io1 '' and ' ''tll)eart of writing'' is characteri sti ,c. It is intended to gloss overthe abandonment of one of the chief points in the origina lattack. H ,ad '''D1·iver's Int1 . ducti ,on'' appeared twenty yearsearlier, the assump 1tion tl1at su.ch a litera .ture · as the Penta ,te,uchcould be·long to the age of l\tloses would doubtless have beenbranded as an anachron .ism. For one of the main grounds onwhich the book ,s w 1ere ,as.signed t,o the latter ,da ,ys 10,f the monarchy was that tl1e Hebrews of ' six ce11turies earlier wer ,e, an

illiter ,ate people. And aft1

er that error had been refuted by•a1·cl1aelogical dis ,c1overies, it was s·till maint .ained that a code .,of laws so adv .anced, and so elaborate, as that of Moses couldnot have originated in such an age. This figment, however,was in its turn exploded, when the ,sp1de of the expl .orerbroug 'ht to light ' th .e 110w fa ,m,ous C,ode of ' Khammt1 'r ,abi, the~mraphel of Genesis, who was king of Babylon in the timeof Abraham. .

Instead, howeve1·, of donni11g the white sheet . wl1en confron ·ted by this new witness, the critics, with great effro 1ntery,pointed to the newly-found Code as the original of the laws o,fSin .ai. Such .a conclusion is natural 011 the part 0 1f tnen wl10tr ·ea ·t the P 1entateuch as merely h·u1n,an. , But the critic .s canno ·t

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l1ave it both ways. T 'he Moses wl10 copied Kham111t1rabi mt1st•

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Christ an d · C riticis11i 75•

have bee11 he real Moses of the Exodus, and not tl1e mythical

Moses of the Exile, who wrote long centuries after Khammu-rabi had been f org ,otte11 ·•

AN INCREDIBLE THEORY. • •

The evidence of the Khammurabi Code refutes an impor-•

ta11t co,unt in tl1e critics' indictment of the P 'entate ·uch; b·ut wecan call .ano 1ther witness wllos 1e testimony den1olishcs theirwl1ole case. The Pentateuch, as we all know, and t'he Pentateu ·ch alo ,ne, constit ·utes the Bible of the ·Samaritans~ Who,then, were the Samaritans ? And how · and when di 1d theyobtain the Pentateuch ? Here again th ·e critics s·hall speakf o·r themse ,lves. Among the distinguished men .who ha V 'e championed their crusade in Britain t ·here 'has been none more es

teemed, non1

e more scholarly, ·than the late ·Professor Robertson Smith; and here is an extract from his ''Samaritans'' article in the ''Encyclopedia B1 ita11ni,ca'':

''They ( ·the Samarita11s) 1·ega1·d hemselves as Israelites, descendants of the ten tribes, and claim ·to possess the Or .thodox .religion of Moses * * * The pri 1estly la ·w, which isthroughout based 011 the p1~actice of the pri 1es1ts in J er ·usalembefore the Captivity, was r,educed to f o·rm after the Exile, andwas pu 'blished by Ezra as the law 10£ the rebuil ·t temple of Zion.The Samaritans must, tl1erefore, have derived th 1eir Pentate ,uch

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from the Je ·ws after Ezra' 's reforms.'1

' And in the same ·para-•

grapl1 he says that, according to the c,ontenti ,on of the Samari-tans, ''no ,t only t'he temple of Zion, but the earlie ·r t ,emple Of

Shilo 1h and the· pri1

es·thood of Eli, were S1

chismatical.'' . Andyet, ,as he goes on to say, 1''the Samari ,tan r 'eligion was built onthe Pentateuch alone.'' ·

·No ,w marlc what this implies. We know something of racia1 bitterness. We know more, unfortunately, of the fierce'bitterness of religious strif ·e. And both these elements com

bined to alienate the Samaritans from the Jews. But morethan this, in the post-exilic period distrust and dislike were•

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turned to intense hatred S±S ''abl1orrence'' is Robertson Smith's

· word by the sternnt-ss and contempt with which the Jewsspurne 1d their proffered . help in the w 1ork of reconstruction ,atJerusalem, and refused to acknowledge them in any way. Andye:· we a .re aske4 to believe t:ha t, at t.his very time a .nd inthese very circumstances, the Samaritans, while hatin .g theJews much as Orangemen hate the Jesuits, and denouncingthe whole Jewish cult as schi smatical, not only accepted theseJewish books 1 relating to tha t cult as tl1e ''service books'' oftheir own ritual, but adopted them as thei lr ''Bib 1le,'' to the exclusion even of the writings of their own Israelite prophets,and the venerated and sacr ,ed books wl1ich record the historyof their ·king . In the whole range of controversy, religiousor .s1ecular, was there ever propound ,ed a theory more utterly

incredible and pr1

eposterous .•

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ANOTHER PREPOS 1TEROu ·s p ,osITION. .

N 10 le ss preposterous are the grounds on which this conc1u-•

sion is commended to us. Here is a statement of them, quotedfrom the standa rd textbook of the cult, Hasting's ''Bible Dic-tionary'' : ·

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''There is at least one valid ground for the conclusion -thatthe Fentateucl1 was first a ,ccepted by the Samaritans ,after theExile. Why was . their request to be allowed to take part inthe building · of ·t·he: second temple refused by the heads of theJerus ,alem communi ·ty? Very pr 1obably b.ei,ause : th 1e Jews were

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.awa,re that , t.he Sa.m.aritans 1 di 1d no 1t as yet p 1ossess th 1e Law-Book11 .It is hard to suppose tha .t otherwise they w 1ou] ,1 havemet with this refusal. Further, anyon 1e wl10, like the pres lentwriter, regards the m ,odern criticisn1 of tl1e Pentateuch as essen tially correct, has a second decisive reason for adopting

· the above view.' '' ( Professor ·Konig's article, ''Samaritan Pentateuc .h,'' page 68.)

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Here are two ''decisive reasons'' for holding that ''the Pen ~

tateuch was · first acc1

epted by th1

e Samaritans after th1

e Exile . .First, be-cause ''very prol? ably'' it was belc,aitse tl1ey had not

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78 Tlie Fu1ida:mentals -

look fo:rward to a great blood shedding that would bring life. and blessing to mankind. But Babylon was to the ancient

world what Rome has been to Christendom. It corruptedeVery d·ivine ordinance and truth, . and perpetuated them as thuscorrupted ,. And in the Pen ,tatettch we hav 1e· the 1divine re-iss ,ueOf the true cult. The figment that the deba sed and corruptversion was the original may satisfy some profe ssors of 11:e·brew, but no one who has any practical know ledge of human

natt1re wou]d entertain it. ·INSUFFICIE ,NT EVIDENCE.

At thi sv stage, however, what concerns us is not the divineauthority of the book s; but the hum .an error and fo11y of thecritical attack upon them. The only historicaJ ba sis of that at·

. tack is the fact that in the revival ttnder Josiah, ''the book ofthe law' ' was found in the temple by Hilkiah, the high prie st, .to .whom tl1e young king entrusted the duty of cleansing andrenovating the long negl ,ecte 1d shri ne. A :most natural discovery it was, seeing that Moses had in express terms commandedthat it should be kept there (2 Kings 22 :8; Deut. 31 :26). Butaccordiµg to the critics, the whole busiQ 1ss1was a detestab 1e

trick of the priests. For they it was who forged the booksand invented the command, an .d then hid the product of theirinfam0us wo~k where they knew it wot11d be fo 1und.

And apart from this, the only foundation for ''the assuredre sults of modern critici sm, as they themselves acknowledge,consists of ''grounds of probability'' and ''plausible arguments IIn no civilized country w,ould an hab 1itu ,al criminal he conv ,icte idof petty larceny on such evidence as this ; and yet it is 011 tl1esegrounds t~at w·e a ,re called up ,on 'to gf ve ttp , 'the s,a,cr 1ed bookswhich o,t1r Divi ,ne L 1ord acc ·r'e 1dited as ''tl1e Wor 1d of God'' and 1

n1ad.e tl1e bas ,s, of His do ,c·triria ,1 teacl1in ,g. ·•

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CHRIST OR ,CRITICISM? ••

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And this brings us to the second, and incomparably the

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g1·aver, objection to , '' tl1e assured 1~es11lts ,of modern criti ,cism ,.'That the Lord Jesu s Cl1rist i,dentifi ed Hin1se lf with .the Hebrew Scriptures, and in a very spec ial way with the Boole ofMo 1ses , . no one di sp ut ,es. A11d t l1is being ' so, we mu st makecl1oice between Christ a11d Criticism. .For if ''the .crit ical hy Pothe sis'' of the Pe~tateuch .be sustained, the conclusion i s,Seemingly inevitable, eitl1er tha t H ,e was no ,t divine , or thatthe 1,.ecords of His teaching at e unt1·tt stworthy.

Which a]ternative sha11 we adopt? If . the second, t'hen,eve r}r claim ·to 1 in ,spiration .mu st be abandoned, and ,agno ,sticism

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tnu st supplant faith in the case , of every fearles s thi .nker . In -spiration is f·ar too great a qttestion for incidental treatmenthere ;Ibttt two remarks with re spe ct to it may not be ·in ·o.pportu ne . Behind the f ra ·u,ds of Spiritualis1n there lies tl1e f,act, at

te sted by men of high character, some of Whorn are eminentas sc ientis ,ts and ,s,cholars, that de finite communications are receiv ,ed in precise words from the worl9- of spirits. ,* And thisbeing so to deny that the Spirit of Go d cou ld thu s communicate trttth to me ·n, or, in other wo1~ds , to 1·eject verba] inspiration on a priori gr ,ounds, betr ,ays the stupidity of sys ,tematizedll~belief. And, se,co,ndly, it is a ·111zing that any one · who re -

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gards the comin ,g of Chri st as. God's supreme , revelation ofHim .self can ima ,gine t ·hat ( to pttt it on no higher ground t·han' 'P roviden ,ce'') , the Divine ,Sp ·irit could fail to ensure that man-k,ind shquld have a trustworthy a ,nd t ·r,ue recor 1d of His mis -

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sion and His teaching. .•

A ~IORE HOPELESS DILEMMA.

But if the Go sp,el narr ,ative be authenti ,c, we are drive ,n backupon the alternativ ·e tl 1at He of wh 1om they sp 1eak cou ld notbe divine. ''No ·t so,'' ' the critics protest, ''for did He not Himse lf conf ,ess His ignor ,ance ? And i s not this explained h,y the~postle's statement that in I-Iis humiliation He empti ,ed Himself of His Deity?'' ' And tl1e inference , drawn from 'this (to

'*The fact that ,. as the Christian believes ,, th ,ese spirits are demons

\Vho personate the dead , does not affect th e argi11nent.•


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80 The Fundamentals•

quote the standard text-book of tl1e cult) is that the Lord ofGlory ''held the current Jewish n 1otions re ·specting the divineattthority and revelati 1on of the Old Te .stament.'' But even ifthis conclusion--as portentotts ,as it is prof a11e could be es tab· 'lished, instea 1d of affor 1ding an ·escape from the di :lemma i11which th ·e Higher Critici .s.m involve ,s i.ts ·votaries, [ it would 01ilyser ·ve to ma .ke tha ·t dilemma in ,or ,e 110peless and m .ore t 1errlble.Fo ,r what chiefly concerns us is not that, e:r. hyp. the Lord's

doctrinal teaching was fal se, but that in u11equivocal terms, a11dwith extreme solemnity, He declared again and again that Histeaching was not His . own but His Father's, and that the verywords i11 which He conveyed it were God-given.

· A few years ago tl1e devout were distressed by the pro-cee 1dings of a certain Chicago ''prophet,'' who claime ,d divineauthority for his lucubration ,s. I{indly 1disposed peopie, rejecti·n·g a severer estimate of the man and his , platform uttera .nces,•regarded h.:m merely a.s a profane f·ool. Sha ·11 h ie criti .c.s, be-tra ,y u ,s, int 10 form ,in,g a si1nila1 l.y ind ·ulgent e,stima ·te ofMy pe11 refuses to con1plete the sentence . ·

And will it b.e believe ·d that th 1e on :ly ,scriptural basis offe1·edus for this ast ·ounding position is a verse in on ,e of the Gospels .

and a word in one of the Epistles Passing strange it is that1ne11 who handle I1oly Scripture with sttch freedom when it· conflicts with their ''assured re su lt s'' should attach such e11or~

mous importance to an isolated verse or a single wor .d, when•

it can be misused to support them. The verse is Mark 13 :32,where tl1e Lord says, with ·1·eference to His coming a .gain: ''Of·tl1at day and hou ·r knowetl1 no one ; no, , n,ot th 1e angels whichare in heaven, 11either th ,e S 1on, but the Fa ther.'' ' B·ut this follows in1mediately upon the , ·words: ''Heaven , and earth sha l1lpass away, bt1t I1Iy words shall n 1ot p,ass away.' '' I

THE WORDS OF GOD.

Th e Lor ,d's words were not ''in spired''; they were the words

of God in a still higher s.ense .. ''The peop le were astonished

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at His . teaching,'' we are told, f 1or I-Ie taught them as .onehaving exousia. The word occurs again in Acts 1 :7, wherelie says that times and seasons the Father hath put in Hisown exousia.'' And this . is explained by Phil. 2 :6, 7 : ''1-Iecounted it not a prize ( or a thing to be gr ,asped) to be onan equality with God, but emptied f imself'' the word onwhich the kenosis theory of the critics depends. And He not

only stripped Himself of His glory as God; . He gave up Hisliberty as a man. For He never spoke His own words, but

1only the words which the Father gave Him to speak. And thiswas the limitation of His ''authority''; so t .hat, beyond what·the Father gave Him to speak, He knew nothing and was silent.

, · B,ut when He spoke, ''He taught them as 0 1ne . who hadauthority, and not as their scribes.'' From their scribes theywere used to ·rec 1eive defi ·nite teaching, but it was teachin ,g basedoti ''the law and the prophe ·ts.'' But here was One who 1Stoodapart and taught them from a wholly different plane. ''For,''He declared, ''I spake not from Myself ; but the Father which .sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment what I should say ·and what I should speak. * * * The things ,, therefore,

which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I,peak'' ' (Jo ,hn 12 :49, 50, R. V.).And let us not forget th3.t it was not merely the substance

of His teaching that was divine, but the very language in, which it was conveyed. So that in His prayer on the night 0f

the betrayal He could say, not only ''I .l1ave given them ThyWord,'' but ''I have given tl1em the words whic]1 Thou gavestMe.''* His words, therefore, about Moses and tlie HebrewScrip ·tures were not, as the critics, witl1 sucl1 daring and se 1eming ,profanity, maintain, the lucubratio 1ns of a superstitious and•

ignorant Jew; they we ·re the words of God, an 1d conveyed truththat was divine and eternal. ·-

When in the dark days of the Exile, God needed a prophet

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*Both the Joro\ and the P1J/Ja-ra14: 10, 24,

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John 178~ 14; as again in Chap.•

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..The P undamentals.2

who would speak only as He gave l1im words, He struck Eze

kiel dumb. Two judgment s already rested on that people~the seventy years ' Servitude to Babylo ,n, and then the Captivity. and they were warned . hat continued impenitence wou1dbring on the1n the still mo re terrible judgment of the seventyyears' de solation s. And till that la 9: judgment fell, Ezekielremained dumb (Ezek. 3 :26; 24 :27; 33 :22). But the LordJe sus Chri st needed no such di scipline. He came to do theF ather' s will, and no word s eve ,r pa ssed His lip s save thewords given Him · to speak .

In thi sl connection, mo 1reover, . two fact ls wh .ich are strangelyoverlooked claim pr 1ominent notice. The first is, that in Mark13 the antithe sis is not at all b,etween man and ,God , b 1ut -between the Son o f God and the Father. And th 1e se ,cond is

tl1at . He had been r ,e-inve sted with all that, according to Phi].2, He laid a side in c,oming into the world. ''All thingshave be .en delivered unto Me 0 1£ My ·F ath 1er, , He declar ·e,d.; and

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tl1is at ,a time when the proofs , th .at ' 'H e wa ,s de .spise ·d and r 1e-jected of men'' were pre ss ing on Him. His reassuming theglory awaited His return to heaven , but here on earth the allthing s were alre ·ady His ( Matt. 11 :27) . · .

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AFTER THE K E NOSIS ••

The fore going is surely an adequate reply ·to the kenosisfigment of the critic s ; but if an .y should still doubt or cavil,there is another answer which i s complete and crushing.Whatever may have been the limitation s under which He rested

during His ministry on earth, He was released from them whenHe ro se f ,rom th 1e dead. And it wa s in Hi s post - 1esttrrecti .o~teaching that He gave the fullest and cleare st testimony to theHebr ,ew Scriptures. T ·hen it wa s that, beginning at M 0 ses,and all the prophet s, He expoun 1ded ttnto them in all the Scrip·tt-tres the thing s concernin .g Himself.'' An4 aga.in , c.onfinning

all His previous teaching about those Scriptures, ,iHe said untothem, The se .are the words wh ·i1ch I ' spake unto you while I w,as•


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Christ and c·r ·it ·icism 83•

Yet with ·You, hat all things must be fulfilled which were writ-

ten in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms,concerning Me.

And th 1e record adds: Then 10pened I-Ie their mind thatthey might understand the Scriptures .. And the rest of theNew Testament is the fruit of that ministry, enlarged and unfolded by the }Ioly Spirit gi, 1en to lead them into all truth.And in every part of tl1e New Testament the Divine authorityof the Hebrew Scriptures, and espec .ially ,of the Books ofMoses, is either taught or assumed.

THE VITAL ISSUE.

Certain it is, then, that the vital i,ssue in this controversyis not the value of the Pentateuch, but the · Deity of Christ.

And yet the present article ·does not pretend to deal with thetruth of the Deity. Its humble aim is not even to establishthe a11thority of the Script ,ur 1es, but m.erely to discredit thecritical attack upon them by exposing its real character and itsUtter fe ,ebleness. The writer ·s, method, therefore, has been ~-tnainly destructive criticism, the critic .s fav .orite weapon being

thus turne .d against . themselves. •A DEMAND FOR CORRECT STATEMENT •

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One cannot but feel distress at having to ac .cord s,uch tr ,eattnent to certain distinguished men whose reverence for divinethings is , beyond reproach. A like distress is felt at times bythose who l1ave experience in dealing with sedition, or in sup

Pressing riots. But when men who , are entitled to consjderation and respect thrust themselves into the line of fire, theytnust take the consequences. These distinguished men will llotfail to receive to the fttll the deference to which they are en-

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titled, if ,o,nly th 1ey wi]l 1djssociate tl1emselves from the dishon-est claptrap of this crusade ( the assured results of modern

criticism ; all scholars are with us ; and so a .n -bluster andfalsehood by which the weak and ignorant are browbeaten or•

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84 The undame ntala.•

. deeeived) and acknowledge that their 1''ass ,uried results'' ·aremere hypoth ,eses, repudiated by Hebraists and theologians ascompetent and , eminent as themselves .

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TH .IN 1GS TO FEAR. ,

The effects of this ''Highe ,r Criticism'' a ,re extremel ,y grav ,e.For it has dethroned the Bible in 'the home, an ,d the good, oldpractice of ''family worship'' is rapidly dying out. And greatnational interests also are involved. For who can doubt thatthe prosperity and power of the Protestant nations of the worldar~ due to the influence of tl1e Bible up ,on character and con ...,duct? ' . Races of m 1en who for g ,ene ,rations have been taughtto think for themselv ,es in matters of ~he highest moment willnaturally excel in every sphere of effort Or of enterpr.is ·e. And

more than this, no one who is trained in the fear of God will•fail in his duty to his neighbor, but will prove himself a goodcitiz 1en. But 'the detl1ronem 1en ·t 10£ tl1e Bible leads 1 pr ,ac,tically tothe dethronement of God ; a11 1d in 1Ge ,rmany and America ., ,and

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. now in England, the effects of this are declaring the1nselvesin ways, and to a:n extent, well fitted to cause anxiety for the

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future. CBR .IST ' SUPREME ••

If a personal word may be pardoned in conclusion, thewriter would appeal to every book he has written in proofthat he is no champion of a rigid, traditional ''orthodoxy.''With a single limitation, he would advo 1cate full and free criti-cism of Holy Scripture. And t'hat one lim ,itation , is tha ,t thewor ,ds of th ,e Lo ,rd Jesus Christ s,hall be, deeme 1d a , ba ,r to cri ,ti-cism and 'an end of coritrovers .y'' on every , subject exp 1resslydealt with in His teaching. ''The Son of God is come'' ; andby Him ca1ne both grace and TRUTH. And from His handit is that we have reeeived the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

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Documents

The Fundamentals: Volume 2, Chapter 4: Christ and Cristicsm