08 - Humanizing Inspiration
The traveler, dying of thirst in the parched desert, hoping for rain from vaporous clouds, is less to be pitiied than the soul in the desert of sin hoping for life’s water from the modern isms. "Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds;. . . to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." Jude 1:12-13.
VIII- HUMANIZING INSPIRATION
"THE Bible, then, does not claim to be infallible, does not claim to be exceptionally inspired. No claims are made for it except such as are made for the scriptures of other people. The Chinese, the Hindus, the Brahmins, the Buddhists, the Mohammedans, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans,- almost all of the ancient nations of the world, - the Norse people, have had their infallible scriptures. And let me tell you, friends, they have precisely the same and as much reason for regarding their scriptures as infallibly inspired as we have for so looking upon ours." The Rev. M. I. Savage, "Religion for Today," page 545.
Since we have found that the higher critics’ theories are so utterly contrary to Bible teaching and facts, we need not be surprised if their views of inspiration are also unscriptural. They claim that mistakes are necessary, otherwise "the writers were lifted above opinions, and were not allowed to think."-Id., page 360.
What strange logic: The more mistakes a man makes, the better thinker he is! It is to such reasoning as this that higher criticism is driven in defense of its basic theories. It was left for twentieth century intellectual giants to produce such an abortion in logic.
Even the words of Christ are not regarded as inspired. "The authority and finality which they deny to the New Testament in general, they deny to Him in particular," says another of the higher critics.- McFadyen, "Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church," page 11. They write and talk learnedly of "the mistakes of Christ." Absolutely nothing under the sun is sacred to them.
Another reason for their denial of the inspiration of the Bible, lies in the fact that they ignore where they do not deny the supernatural. To get rid of the miracles, the inspiration of their account must be denied. As McFadyen says, "Its watchword is evolution, and it has no place for miracle." Since inspiration itself is supernatural, its existence cannot be allowed; or if admitted, it must be granted to every one, even the enemies of God.
Dr. Briggs maintains that inspired Scripture authors err in their religion, and "they err in their morals. But errors in moral precept were such as were necessary in order to educate Israel for a nobler time."-"Study of Holy Scripture," pages 643, 644. They even go so far as to assert that Bible errors are "innumerable, and the erroneousness indefinite and indefinable, and the untrustworthiness unlimited and illimitable."
Many persons think that higher criticism is the outcome of an honest endeavor to obtain the truth. But the history of the movement as written by themselves dispels such a notion as a delusion. Of Eichhorn, the real founder of Old Testament criticism, Dr. Cheyne writes that "it was his hope to contribute to the winning back of the educated classes to religion."-"Founders of Old Testament Criticism." To attain this worthy end, he set himself to eliminating everything from the Bible to which the rationalists could take exception. With the empty covers of the Bible in his hand, he loudly proclaimed that what was left of the Bible was divinely inspired! The views of inspiration resulting from such a position are many; but while differing in details, they agree in the fundamentals. The most prevalent theory among higher critics is that of Dr. G. A. Smith in his "Isaiah": "Isaiah prophesied and predicted all he did from loyalty to two simple truths, which he tells us he received from God Himself: that sin must be punished, and that the people of God must be saved. This simple faith, acting along with a wonderful knowledge of human nature and ceaseless vigilance of affairs, constituted inspiration for Isaiah."-Page 373.
He then consistently illustrates his view by telling us that men of science, "by their knowledge of laws and principles of nature," or some generals, by "taking for granted" that the sun will rise, all had "the same divine movement on their natures," and are as much inspired as any writer of the Bible. The writings of Browning, of Carlyle, of Ruskin, are, on this theory, as much inspired as the works of Moses, of Isaiah, or Paul. But that is by no means the logical end of this conception of inspiration. Its consistent and inescapable conclusion has been seen and boldly stated by America’s greatest higher critic, Dr. Briggs, when he solemnly tells us that infidels like "Hume, Strauss, and Voltaire were guided in their attacks on the Bible by God."-"Study of Holy Scripture," page 8o.
Mark well that pregnant sentence, my Christian friends who are coquetting with unbelief in the form of higher criticism. Pick up your Hume or your Voltaire. Turn to those passages which most violently insult Christ and most openly and contemptuously degrade Him and His word, and upon your knees, drink in their God-inspired utterances, and imbibe freely of their Heaven-sent teaching. Do not read anything else written by these infidels except their attacks on the Bible; for they "were guided in their attacks on the Bible by God," but not in their other utterances! Only their infidelity is inspired! God inspired infidelity! God rending His own word in pieces, and inspiring His enemies for that noble work! This is the message of higher criticism’s eminent apostle, in one of the greatest theological seminaries in America. Mark it well, for this is the boasted new theology. Do you want inspiration pure and unadulterated? Then cast aside your Bible, take up Strauss, feed on Hume, and drink in Voltaire; and where they most degrade, attack, and revile Christ and the Bible, just there you have inspiration from God in its unpolluted form! Ho, all ye infidels, come ye to the fount of infidelity, and drink of the waters of unbelief God-given! Fling your Bibles into the gutter, all ye sin-burdened souls, and cast your reliance upon the gospel of hate and doubt as revealed in the Heaven-inspired pages of Voltaire! Ho, all ye Christians, spurn that deceptive and lying Book you have so long made the grounds of your hope, and feed upon the bread of hate, and drink the waters of doubt, as found in the gospel of no-miracles, no-Christ, no-salvation, revealed in the inspired works of St. Hume, St. Strauss, St. Voltaire! No other conclusion is possible to the critics. They found that they were believing exactly what the infidels had been proclaiming for hundreds of years. Then there was nothing left for them to do but step out of the Christian pulpit, and admit themselves infidels, or proclaim that the infidels were inspired Christians. This was the alternative before the new theology. As we have just seen, it has boldly, defiantly taken the latter course. This is progress! This is "scientific Bible criticism"! This is the brand-new Christianity, warranted to be without miracles, Christ, sin, repentance, atonement, or any such foolish, antiquated thing! This new theology was born of rationalism, cradled in skepticism, nursed by infidelity, and is now baptized, and clothed in a new suit of clothes stolen from Christianity, and adopted into the church. Strange blindness! Woeful infatuation! Terrible will be the awakening, awful the penalty, when those who now so flippantly discard the sacred word of God for the gutter thoughts of Voltaire, meet, in that day so soon to arrive, "the word that I have spoken"; for "the same shall judge him in the last day." John 12:48. When we turn to Christ, what a difference! We find with what reverence He always quotes the Old Testament Scriptures, "which cannot be broken"; how He pointed the sorrowing disciples for comfort to the references to Himself "in all the Scriptures," from Genesis to Malachi ; with what power He repels Satan’s temptations by appeal to the Word -"It is written"; with what ease He refutes and confuses the wily Jews, always by appeal to the Word. But when we enter the theological institutions founded in His name and established to teach His word, how great, how infinitely sad, the change! We find there the world’s religious leaders with contemptuous solemnity lopping off chapters and whole books, because, forsooth, they do not understand them or do not agree with them! The very chapters and verses quoted by Christ are cast aside with a condescending smile of superiority, and even the very words of Christ Himself are brushed into the wastebasket with an easy wave of the theological hand. What will the harvest of this awful repudiation of God’s word be? Thank God, a few faithful voices are lifted in clarion warning. But thousands are so poisoned by the critical opium as to be stupefied, sunk into a spiritual lethargy, from which it seems almost impossible to awaken them.
These higher critics may be presidents of theological colleges, or pastors of renowned and influential churches; but the humble child of God knows that "if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them." Isaiah 8:20. The Christian can never be moved who stands with both feet firmly planted upon the Gibraltar fact that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God."
Only a moment’s thought is required to see the use the skeptic can make of such a gospel as the higher critic offers. He can logically urge such questions and conclusions as the following:
"If there are errors in the Bible in many things, why not in most, why not in all? If I am told to disbelieve part of it, why should I believe any of it? Besides, by what process am I to distinguish between the false and the true? Since you higher critical experts disagree as to how far the unreliability of the Bible extends, by what unerring standard may I separate the wheat from the chaff Your position so far surrenders the whole case, that there is nothing of Christianity left to defend. It is as if an army were to hasten to defend a fort that had been captured and burned.
"You assure me that the Bible is no more inspired than the attacks of the skeptics upon it; that it contains innumerable errors, hoary superstitions, lies, forgeries, frauds, and vice; and you expound its shortcomings so enthusiastically that I can only express my increasing wonder that you still adhere to an exploded Book and teach the people a religion founded upon what you now so abundantly show me is baseless authority.
"I must at least express my gratitude to you for so completely justifying my skepticism, and fully warranting my utter rejection of a Book which you solemnly inform me teems with error, and is the product of imposture. When you, the professed friends of the Bible, say more and harsher things against it than did ever Celsus or Paine, we skeptics may indeed take our ease, and leave its progressive destruction to its professed friends. We may yet, with you, in the near future, sing a requiem over the burial of an extinct Christianity, which was palmed off upon a credulous people by the imposture of an inspired Book, and the fiction of a divine revelation, and the delusion of an incarnate God, and the fable of a risen Christ. And when you have omitted all the supernatural, all the miracles, all that I object to, pray what will be left that I do not already possess? Especially when you tell me that my own strictures upon the Bible, and criticisms of Christ, are more inspired of God than the Book and its Author, why should I accept your decadent religion? Why should you not instead accept my gospel of skepticism, unbelief, infidelity, atheism, which you proclaim is more inspired than your Bible?"
Reader, it is still true Jesus saves. Proud or weak or self sufficient Peter may sink in fear; but Jesus treads the waves as though they were rock; and His outstretched hand will save every soul in life’s turbulent sea who will cry, with Peter, "Lord save, or I perish!"