Destructive Criticism
Destructive Criticism
DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.
BY G. A. KLINGMAN
Ever since the author of Destructive Criticism tempted Eve, he has been trying to destroy the word of God. He employs his multifarious arts and devices in a most insidious manner, and is most dangerous when he poses as an angel of light or a minister of righteousness .All the attacks made upon the Bible have not only failed but the Bible has gloriously triumphed over its enemies and is found in all parts of the world today and is being read by more people than at any other time in the history of mankind. The latest effort of the Old Serpent to rob us of our blessed hope and only infallible guide is made through the channel of criticism. He has wrapped his coils around our public schools, colleges, and universities; our printing presses, our platforms and pulpits. Many are taken unawares; they are led to believe that if they expect to be recognized in the educational circles they must accept the views of the destructive critics. It does not take a prophet to "discern the signs of the times," nor the son of a prophet to forecast the nature of the fight that must be fought within the next few years. The enemy has challenged us and must be met; yea, rather, "the fight is on" and we must meet the foe and give to the great hosts of young people who should and will be educated "the heritage of them that fear the Lord;" we are under obligation to show that the Bible stands the test of criticism; the present age makes that demand upon those of us who believe in God and accept the Bible as His inspired word. But one may ask, What do you mean by Destructive Criticism, In order to answer this question properly it will be necessary to define several terms that are being used in the discussion of this subject.
Biblical Criticism concerns itself with the contents of the books of the Bible. It deals with the text, the date, the authorship, genuineness, reliability, and literary characteristics of each of these books. There are three distinct departments of this science:
(1) Textual Criticism, which has to do with the text itself; (2) Historical Criticism, which inquires into the date and authorship of a book, and (3) Literary Criticism, which examines the literary style. In 1707 Mill's "Critical Creek Testament" was published and Textual Criticism was recognized as a science. This was at first called Biblical Criticism, but as the science developed, the other forms of criticism, namely Historical and literary, claimed recognition, and since that time the expression "Biblical Criticism" has been as the general term with the three divisions as above indicated. Near the close of the eighteenth century Eichhorn introduced the title "Higher Criticism" to denote the historical and literary elements and to distinguish these from Textual Criticism which is also called Lower Criticism. While the expression Biblical Criticism was first used in the beginning of the eighteenth century to designate this branch of research as a science, we must not conclude that there was no biblical criticism before that time. All the labors bestowed by scholars in an attempt to gather together the writings of inspired men properly belong to this science. We owe a debt of gratitude to those Hebrews who gathered together the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and established what is called the "canon" or "rule" by which the writings are shown to he inspired, genuine, and reliable. Another great work of Biblical Criticism "was done by those who gathered together the twenty- seven books of the New Testament as the productions of the holy men of God who were moved by the Holy Spirit. The title "Higher Criticism" has been very much misunderstood. We have shown that in its correct usage it refers to a work that has given us our Bible in its present form of sixty-six books. The expression has been brought into disrepute by certain German Rationalists who adopted and pursued the wrong method of investigation. To be accurate, we should say that they followed only one line of reasoning —the experimental or empirical. Now this kind of reasoning is valuable provided it is sustained by the other two kinds: the Inductive and Deductive. By the Inductive method we mean that process of the mind by which we infer that what we know to be true of the individuals of a certain class is true of the whole class; we pass from particulars to the general, from parts to the whole; from certain propositions to a principle. By the Deductive method is meant that operation of the mind by which we pass from general to particular, from the class to the individual; from the principle to the propositions. We start with an established premise or one that is admitted and thus arrive at necessary conclusions or consequences. A certain class of Bible critics have ignored both of these methods and followed only the empirical or experimental. We would not be understood as denouncing this method of investigation; it is very valuable; it has its place in the world of thought; we learn many things by observation and experiment, but we cannot depend upon these alone. Empirical Laws are denned as Laws founded on conformities ascertained to exist, but have not yet been traced to any broad general principle. Empirical Knowledge has been described as knowledge gained purely by observation or experiment, and has no guarantee for its truth but the judgment and opinion of its author. It is not difficult to see that there will be two results of such a partial and unscientific investigation: (1) There will be many erroneous statements made and many of the conclusions reached will be false; the human mind is not infallible, and our observations and experiments are of necessity limited since we are not in possession of infinite knowledge. (2) There will be bold assumptions and claims to superior scholarship on the part of those who follow this method exclusively; they will consider themselves as leaders of advance thought and intellectual progress; men of broad minds and liberal spirits. And this is exactly what has happened. Those who pursued the wrong method of investigation have reached conclusions which if true would destroy the Bible as the inspired word of God, and we have no apology to make for designating them Destructive critics and Infidels; they represent an abuse and perversion of the principles of Biblical Criticism. As to boast of superior scholarship on the part of this school of critics, I wish to present an extract from the gifted Prof. L. T. Townsend, L. L. D. In a lecture delivered in Tremont Temple in Boston, January 28, 1906,
he said: "The advocates of the new theology appear to be working for all it is worth, the respect —almost reverence — that the masses of our people have for those who are thought to be very learned; a respect that often is immensely greater than it ought to be; for a man may know all the idioms of the Hebrew and Greek languages and yet be a fool in archaeology, history, philosophy and science, and even be deficient in common sense. And somehow the new theology people have been remarkably successful also in giving the impression that there are scarcely any advocates of primitive, orthodoxy who have much standing among scholars or thinkers and that the higher critics, beyond dispute are masters in the educated world." This boasted popularity is easily accounted for in the light of the following facts: "It was when the throne of Germany, and her universities, pulpits and press had gone over to rationalism, and when King Alfred 11, the greatest conqueror and ruler Germany had had for centuries, was filling every university under his control with professors of the infidel stamp, and when even the hymn books were taken in hand and freed from everything objectionable to infidelity, that there was established in Berlin, in 1765, under the patronage of the King and the universities, a publication called The Universal German Library, whose aim was to commend in extravagant terms every rational book or writer, and to pour contempt upon every other. Now, while in our country there happens to be no such Universal Library Magazine, dealing out this kind of injustice, yet there is plenty of evidence that our religious press, and especially the secular, have pretty generally been doing this Universal German Library kind of business, and are responsible for the fact that Christian people have been only poorly informed as to what is really doing in the theological world, and are left without a knowledge of even the names of eminent American scholars who hold conservative views. Nor is it too much to say that these religious denominational papers of which better things ought to be expected, have no intention of being fair in their treatment of books and authors that are not of their way of thinking." (The Bible Champion, September, 1913). THE REAL ISSUE.
We are not objecting to Biblical Criticism. Lower or Higher. We rejoice that through the. avenue of Lower or Textual Criticism, the pure text of the Sacred Scriptures has been preserved and handed down from generation to generation; and that through the medium of Higher Criticism we have come into possession of very valuable information regarding the date, authorship, inspiration, genuineness, reliability and canonicity of the several books of the Bible, and have been taught to appreciate their literary beauty and value. We have no fight to make against criticism properly and legitimately conducted; nay, we welcome every test to which the Bible may be subjected for we know it will come out of the crucible sweeter, richer, purer, and more radiant with the promises of God and his eternal truth. Our fight is against the destructive criticism of the rationalistic school. James Orr in The Problem of the Old Testament shows clearly that the fundamental issue is found in the answer to the question. Is the religion of Israel of natural or supernatural origin? Those who with Kuenen, Graf, Wellhausen, Duhm, Smend, Stade, Gunkel and others hold the position that the Religion of Israel was of natural origin, simply a historic development or evolution of older forms of religion, are without a doubt destructive critics. Wellhausen, one of the foremost representatives of this school acknowledges himself to have been a disciple of Vatke. Let him speak for himself: " It is only within the region of religious antiquities and dominant religious ideas —the region which Vatke in his Biblische Theologie had occupied in its full breadth, and where the real battle first kindled —that the controversy can be brought to a definite issue." (Orr p. 5). Now Vatke was a disciple of Hegel, a German rationalist of the most pronounced type. Hegel was one of the successors of Kant the great German philosopher whose system tended toward idealism; this idealistic tendency was carried to an extreme by Hegel, who began with pure nothing and reasoned that thought itself or pure logic is the revelation of the absolute; that thought itself is the sole existence, the very process in which the Absolute, or God, consists. For instance, you see a tree; Hegel says the tree has no real existence; neither has your perception of the tree any real existence; the only thing that really exists is the idea, the thought, or the relation of your mental perception and the tree. Now when such ideas as these are applied to the Bible what is the result? Kunen, a Dutch scholar, and one of the principal leaders of the "modern movement" among the Dutch, says. "So soon as we derive a separate part of Israel's religious life directly from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in even one single point, so long our view of the whole continues to be incorrect." What an admission!! Not only does this doctrine of Destructive Criticism bear the brand "Made in Germany," but its very foundation rests upon the denial of the supernatural or immediate revelation from God! The Mosaic account of the creation of the material universe is thrown away and we are offered the Nebular Hypothesis. The germs of this theory are in Kant's philosophy; the suggestion of its development was first made by Sir Wm. Herschel, the great astronomer, but it remained for La Place to carry it out to its conclusions which represent the great and wonderful panoply with its millions of stars, planets, moons and suns, as resulting from a process of natural development beginning with a cloudy vapor. Who can believe this? Scientists themselves say that this theory must give way to the planetesimal theory, which in turn will have to give way to another theory, and so add infinitum. How can man obtain the consent of his mind to substitute such theories for the simple fact that "God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also" (Genesis 1:16). Let others pose as great thinkers, philosophers and scientists, but give me the simple faith of a child by which I "understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been been made out of things which appear;" (Hebrews 11:3), and let me sing with Joseph Addison: And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
Th' unwearied sun, from day to day, Does his Creator's power display,
And publishes to every land, The work of an almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail, the moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly, to the listening earth, Repeats the story of her birth;
While all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the news from pole to pole.
What tho' in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball —
What tho' no real voice nor sound Amid their radiant orbs be found—
In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice;
Forever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine."
Applying the principles of destructive criticism to the creation of man, we must strike out the scriptural account as given in Genesis, and accept the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. This theory starts with a bit of protoplasm or an Amoeba and through the process of natural development finally introduces to us a sentient being called man, with all his wonderful intellectual powers, his moral nature, a conscience, and a soul-hunger for the Infinite! What comfort do men find in a theory that makes them no better than a tadpole, lizard, boa-constrictor, house-fly, June-bug, hippopotamus, giraffe or gorilla? When the Bible declares that man was made in the image and likeness of God! Again we call upon scientists to sit in judgment and this is what they have to say:
"As early as 1889 Prof. Virchow of Berlin, admittedly the ablest anthropologist of modern times, when summing up the results of investigators of his subject, by himself and other leading scientists, covering a period of twenty years, declared: "In vain have the links which should bind man to the monkey been sought; not a single one is there to show. The so-called proanthropos, who should exhibit this link, has not been found. No really learned man asserts that he has seen himPerhaps some one may have seen him in a dream, but when awake he will never be able to say that he has approached him. Even the hope of soon discovering him has departed; it is hardly spoken of." Shortly before his death, some ten years later, in an address before the International Medical Society, he spoke to the same effect, and with even a greater degree of positiveness, asserting that, "the attempts to find the transition from animal to man has ended in total failure. The middle link has not been found and never will be." That the Darwinian theory of descent has in the realms of nature not a single fact to confirm it is the unequivocal testimony of men as distinguished in their respective departments of scientific research as Dr. N. S. Shaler, of Harvard University, Dr. Etheridge, fossiologist of British Museum, Prof. L. S. Beale, King's College, London, Prof. Fleisch- mann, of Erlangen and others.
Several notable books bearing on this subject have appeared during the past year. One by George Paulin, published by Scribners, entitled "No Struggle for Existence; No Natural Selection" presents an array of facts in support of the two assertions made in its title, and against Evolution, which must carry conviction to any unprejudiced mind. Another to the same effect is by Professor L. T. Townsend entitled "Collapse of Evolution" Still another and we believe an epoch marking book, is from the pen of Professor E. Dennert, Ph. D., recently published in Germany, and entitled "At the Death-bed of Darwinism." A perusal of this book "leaves no room for doubt," as asserted in the preface of the American edition, "about the decadence of the Darwinian theory in the highest scientific circles of Germany. And outside of Germany the same sentiment is shared generally by the leaders of scientific thought."
Thus we see that, in the opinion of the vast majority of those best qualified to judge in the matter, the Evolutionary theory is in extremis. Nay, more, is already dead, since the spirit (the theory of Natural Selection) has departed. Some of its friends may sit about the remains intently watching for some signs of renewed life, but they watch in vain. That among those who mourn the passing of Evolution there are some naturalists and others who clung to it, as said by Dr. Goette, the eminent Strasburg Zoologist "simply because it seems to furnish a much desired mechanical explanation of purposive adaptions," is not surprising, since it leaves them nothing but the hated alternative of accepting Genesis with its personal God and creative acts.
We have shown that it is this method of reasoning that has produced a school of literary critics of the Bible whose erroneous conclusions are destructive and that continually — they assume that the religion of Israel was developed naturally through the experience of the Israelites and their associations with the Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians and Babylonians, and that it was not revealed to them by Jehovah. Just here we wish to introduce the testimony of the learned Dr. R. A. LeMaster:
It is one of the wonders of modern times that just when the faith of Christian men in the Inspired Authority of the Scriptures is being so sorely tried by the professed friends of the Bible, that the records of antiquity should so providentially open to the aid of the genuine seeker after the truth. The testimony of Archeology definitely and uniformly sustains the historic truth of the Scriptures, and does not support the hypothesis of Higher Criticism in a single particular. The only answer which the Higher Critics can make to this fact is to make the claim that the religion of the Bible had its origin in Babylonia, and the historic dates and events of the Old Testament were obtained from the older records of Egypt, Syria and Palestine. An assumption which rests wholly on a forced misinterpretation of history. The exact reverse of this is true. The Semitic Babylonian religion came from Syria and Palestine, and the creation, deluge and the antediluvian patriarchs of Babylon came from Pales tine; instead of the stories of the Hebrews having come from Babylon, as held by nearly all Semitic writers. But let us be fair and let these critics speak for themselves In the Brooklyn Eagle, June 7, 1909, we have the following quotations from lectures delivered to the students of Michigan University at Ann Arbor:
"The Patriarchs are legendary beings"
"As yet we have no evidence of Israel's sojourn in Goshen"
"The popular idea of the exodus has no foundation in fact."
"The Gospels contain 2,899 verses; of these only about one hundred furnish strict biographical details"
"Our information about Jesus is scanty indeed."
"We do not know what Jesus' descent was"
"We do not know his birth-place for certain"
"We do not know his age at the time he undertook his mission"
"We have no absolute certainty that any single saying in the Gospels was uttered in that precise form by Jesus"
"We do not know when or where he was crucified"
"We do not know exactly what claims he made with respect to his mission on earth."
We close these infidel sayings with another from Well-hausen in these blasphemous words: "I knew the Old Testament was a fraud, but I never dreamt of making God a party to the fraud." (Beecher's Biblical Criticism, pp. 7 and 8). The critics we have so far considered have come out in the open. Like the giant of the Philistines they have defied the armies of Israel, and with David of old they have been met "in the name of Jehovah of hosts." But there is another class to which we now invite your attention. They are styled "Moderate Higher Critics." These are men who do not deny the supernatural but have consciously or unconsciously adopted some of the principles of the destructive school and are on that account the more dangerous. They follow what is known as "The Historic Method" and try to harmonize it with the Bible. They are carrying on a submarine warfare; we do not always know where they are; they have unsettled the minds of many; they are eloquently preaching about the man Jesus but say very little about "God manifest in the flesh." They discourse learnedly on the character of Jesus the Nazarene, but have ceased to preach "Christ and' him crucified." They find no place for the atonement and deem it unwise to preach doctrinal sermons; the sinner is not warned to "flee from the wrath to come" and the saint is not encouraged with the hope of "entering in through the gates into the city." This form of subtle infidelity, justly styled "Crypto-agnosticism" is slowly working upon the hearts of the unsuspecting and poisoning the lives of the innocent. Our young people need to be warned. A graduate of one of our state university told me that in his division of the graduating class there were 150 men all of whom had shipwreck made of their faith while at the university. Never has there been a time when there was greater need of preaching the gospel of the Son of God in a plain and simple way, and "contending earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints." Let us not be affrighted by the adversaries; they can do nothing against the truth; God has magnified his word above all his name and Jesus the Son of God has said: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass away." The Bible has nothing to fear from Lower Criticism, Higher Criticism, or the Highest Criticism; it has stood the test for centuries and will endure them all until the end of time.
Let us give ourselves more devotedly than ever to the great task of educating our young people for whom we may well entertain fears if they are set adrift on the ocean of life beneath whose waters the sub-marines of Teutonic rationalism and bombs of crypo-agnosticism await the approach of the unsuspecting mariner. That their voyage to the haven of eternal peace and glory may be safe, let us give them the only infallibly safe guide —the Book of books.
"Bring me the book," said the great Sir Walter Scott when he was about to die. "What book?" asked Mr. Lockhart. "There is but one Book now; bring me the Bible."
"Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
Star of eternity! the only star By which the bark of man could navigate The sea of life,
and gain the coast of bliss Securely; only star which rose on Time,
And on its dark and troubled billows, still,
As generation, drifting swiftly by.
Succeeded generation, threw a ray Of heaven's own light,
and to the hills of God The everlasting hills, pointed the sinner's eye."