Higher Criticism and Christ’s Resurrection
“MANY Christian believers will learn with a certain shock,” observes the Literary Digest, “that German theologians are seriously debating, at this Easter time, whether Jesus ever rose from the dead. Professor Gunkel, of Berlin, a leader of one of the most radical schools of Higher Criticism and an advocate of the so-called ‘historico-religious’ method in dealing with the Scriptures, has written a book . . . in which he tries to show that the belief in the resurrection of Jesus was the natural outgrowth of the mythology of the times.” It is not at all strange that the “Higher Criticism” should have been carried by its champions of the German school of theology, to a point where it denies the resurrection of Christ, for this is only the natural development of that antagonism to Christianity which is concealed in the germ of this method of dealing with the Word of God. When this stage of development is reached, it can no longer pretend to be in harmony with Christianity, and must be recognized as having an antichristian origin. Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ. “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain . . . ye are yet in your sins.” 1 Cor. 15:14-17. The mouths of the human critics of God’s Word are stopped on this subject by the testimony of the risen Christ, who lives to-day among men in the person of each of his followers. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Gal. 2:20. We are witnesses for Christ on this disputed, and vital point of Christian doctrine. God gives the world not merely historical evidence, but present, tangible evidence of which they can take personal cognizance; not hearsay evidence, but the testimony of Christ himself, in the words and lives of his believers now living, that the world may be without excuse. And let us beware that we are not found false witnesses.