The Churches and Modern Thought. Vivian Phelips
is vain to look to the Church fathers for trustworthy information on the subject of the origin of the Gospels.”67 This is an exceedingly grave admission when we remember that these same untrustworthy fathers of the Church did the work of sifting the wheat from the chaff—settling what was and what was not canonical.
It need hardly be said that these general conclusions, which are supported by evidence that has satisfied numerous Christian scholars, entirely do away with the idea that the Gospels are credible and trustworthy narratives.
The Acts of the Apostles.—The sections of this book in which the narrative is written in the first person plural (says Professor Schmiedel) can be implicitly accepted; but it is equally certain that they are not by the same hand as the rest of the book. Apart from the “we” sections, no statement merits immediate acceptance on the mere ground of its presence in the book. The speeches are constructed by the author in accordance with his own conceptions. This book does not come from a companion of St. Paul; its date may be set down as between A.D. 105 and 130.
The Epistles of St. Paul.—The genuineness of the Pauline Epistles does not appear to be so clear as was once universally supposed. Advanced criticism, Professor van Manen68 tells us, in his elaborate article on “Paul,” has learned to recognise that none of these Epistles is by him, not even the four generally regarded as unassailable. Van Manen’s position, however, is exceptional. In the article on “Epistolary Literature” the Epistle to Philemon and the Epistles to the Philippians, Thessalonians, Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians, and even the Epistle to the Romans, are recognised as real letters written by St. Paul. The genuineness of four of the Epistles is, in any case, generally accepted. As these include the first Epistle to the Corinthians, this conclusion is of the greatest importance. The Bishop of London is “content to rest his case, for not being intellectually ashamed of the documentary evidence, on the four undisputed Epistles of St. Paul.”69
The Apocalypse.—Criticism has clearly shown that the Book of Revelation can no longer be regarded as a literary unit, but is an admixture of Jewish with Christian ideas and speculations. Ancient testimony, that of Papias in particular, assumed the Presbyter John, and not the Apostle, to be its author.
This completes a summary of conclusions, arrived at by eminent Christian scholars of the more advanced school. Though they, or the majority of them, would be the last to make any such admission, the net result amounts practically to a surrender of the Christian dogmas.
§ 3. By Whom the “Higher Criticism” is Accepted
These criticisms are, I repeat, the work not of anti-Christians, but of Christians, who have devoted themselves to Biblical research, and who are among the greatest living experts in that sphere of knowledge. Canon Cheyne, one of the two editors of the Encyclopædia Biblica, has now written a volume on Bible Problems and the New Material for their Solution, in which he appeals to Churchmen and scholars and all who are interested in Bible criticism for thoroughness of investigation. There can be no doubt that there is a crying need for this thorough investigation, which at present is being shirked. While the main results arrived at by the Higher Criticism are, it is true, largely accepted by enlightened divines, the usual policy so far has been not to disseminate such knowledge. On this I shall have more to say in the concluding chapter of this book.
Dr. Harnack in Germany, and M. Loisy in France, may be cited as types of liberal theologians who proclaim their acceptance of the Higher Criticism. They both detach Christianity from mere narrative, and seek to appreciate it as a spiritual reality, which appeals to the imagination, the emotions, and the soul. Dr. Harnack is the Professor of Church History in the University of Berlin, and member of the Royal Prussian Academy, and a book called What is Christianity? is an English translation of sixteen lectures delivered by him in the University of Berlin, 1899–1900. In this book the effort to prove that the Gospels though unhistorical are yet historical, that Christianity though untrue is yet true, is strongly in evidence to any impartial reader. Take his remark on the “Miraculous Element” in Lecture II.; we find the same kind of specious argument on which I have already animadverted in the chapter on Miracles. He says: “Miracles, it is true, do not happen; but of the marvellous and the inexplicable there is no lack—that the earth in its course stood still, that a she-ass spoke, that a storm was quieted by a word,70 we do not believe, and we shall never again believe; but that the lame walked, the blind saw, and the deaf heard, will not be so summarily dismissed as an illusion.” Why? Because, after all, these may have been accomplished by the operation of a natural law with which we are as yet unacquainted! “Although the order of Nature be inviolable, we are not yet by any means acquainted with all the forces working in it and acting reciprocally with other forces. Our acquaintance even with the forces inherent in matter, and with the field of their action, is incomplete; while of psychic forces we know very much less.” He gives the whole situation away, however, by making excuses for the Evangelists, such as “we know that the Gospels come from a time in which the marvellous may be said to have been something of almost daily occurrence,” and “we now know that eminent persons have not to wait until they have been long dead, or even for several years, to have miracles reported of them; they are reported at once, often the very next day.” Again, speaking of the first three Gospels, he says: “These Gospels are not, it is true, historical works any more than the fourth; they were not written with the simple object of giving the facts as they were; they were books composed for the work of evangelisation.” Such reasoning serves only to confirm one’s suspicions. Here is the unedifying spectacle of an erudite scholar using his intellectual powers to make out a case for a Faith built upon foundations which he has himself destroyed. We do not wish to be told that there is a substratum of truth in the Gospel narratives. The ordinary man feels strongly that the whole should be true if it be God’s Word. That this is, and always will be, the common-sense view of mankind is proved by the fact that it is held by the vast majority of the strictly orthodox, as well as by every Agnostic and every cultured heathen.
M. Loisy writes in much the same strain as Dr. Harnack, and finds adherents in both English and Roman Catholic Churches, as may be seen from the correspondence in the Church Times during April, 1904.
In the Hibbert Journal (January, 1905) an Oxfordshire rector, the Rev. C. J. Shebbeare, presents the same aspect of liberal theology by means of various illustrations. He remarks: “It is evident that the lesson taught by our new teachers must have an important bearing upon popular religious conceptions and upon religious practice. Its chief effect will be to deliver us from the error of identifying religion with belief in the supernatural—an error of which it is not difficult to see the pernicious consequences” (italics are mine). This is all very well for those who can divest the Christian religion of its supernatural element, and yet remain honest believers. To my mind, this is simply non-Christian Theism, and the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, is the place where such persons should perform their devotions.
I crave the reader’s patience while I give one more example of advanced apologetics. The Rev. Arthur Moorhouse, M.A., B.D., Tutor in Old Testament Languages and Literature at Didsbury College, offers, in a lecture71 delivered at Manchester on “The Inspiration of the Old Testament,” “an unhesitating and emphatic denial” to the statement that there is any “untruth in the Old Testament.” Yet he tells us that “the early chapters of Genesis are not historical in our modern and scientific sense,” and asks us to remember that, “in the nature of things, it could not be history, for it deals with facts which are, of necessity, prehistoric”! Such pitiful shifts and evasions seem to many of us wholly unworthy of earnest men. “Our fathers,” says Mr. Moorhouse, “may have thought that this was history miraculously dictated, but the Bible does not say so.” No, and the Bible does not say that it is speaking the truth, but “our fathers” were simple-minded enough to forget that such a guarantee was necessary on the part of a book which they, like Mr. Moorhouse, believed to be the inspired Word of God.
§ 4. Admissions by Orthodox Apologists
I
W. C. van Manen, D.D., Professor of Old-Christian Literature and New Testament Exegesis, Leyden.
Spoken in an address to the St. Paul’s Lecture Society, at the opening of a new session in 1904.
The italics in these quotations from Dr. Harnack are mine.
Fully reported in the