p. 7 | Higher Criticism the Enemy of Seventh-day Adventists

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 9, 1911

Higher Criticism the Enemy of Seventh-day Adventists

By Earle Albert Rowell

EARLE ALBERT ROWELL

We hear and read much about Higher Criticism lately. Many of us regard it as a remote subject, of interest only to theologians, and not at all likely to affect Seventh-day Adventists. This is a great mistake, for a plunge into the abyss of Higher Criticism is the only escape from being a Seventh-day Adventist.

If this is true, the Higher Critics will so turn their largest guns of criticism upon us as the message swells into the loud cry, in order to weaken the force of our message by knocking away our foundation.

That Higher Criticism in this country has set itself to overthrow Seventh-day Adventists is not a deduction of mine, but the open and avowed position of one of the best-known religious teachers of the United States, the Rev. Prof. William Newton Clarke, D. D., teacher of doctrinal theology in Colgate University. His “Outlines of Christian Theology” is the text-book of thousands of divinity students, and his “Use of the Scriptures in Theology” has become the guide of many thousands of ministers and laymen in the study of the Bible. Both books are written from the standpoint of Higher Criticism.

In a volume that he published a few months ago, “Sixty Years With the Bible,” he gives a sort of spiritual autobiography of his life, and tells in detail how he came to be a Higher Critic. I quote his own words:—

“Father Miller came along, a godly man and a powerful preacher, aflame with new discoveries. He simply applied the very same method to the predictive and apocalyptical parts of the Bible, ‘taking them as they read,’ . . . and bringing out startling and revolutionary results that he believed with faith invincible; and no one could answer him or show him to be in error, because the average mind that he addressed not only believed in the method he employed, but knew no other. . . . With the average untrained readers of the English Bible, he was irresistible. The great calamity of 1843 was due to a general misapprehension and misuse of the Bible. Intelligent use of the Holy Book would have made it impossible.

“Such light upon the Bible as was opening upon me in my first pastorate, I felt, would have prevented the disaster from which my parish, like a multitude of others, was suffering still. With rational conceptions of the Bible, such things could not occur; and I desired to be helpful in preventing them from ever coming to pass again.” Consequently he says, “With what delight and satisfaction then did I welcome the message of Higher Criticism!”

Is not this an unexpected honor paid the methods of our noble pioneer and reformer, William Miller, and his simple method of interpretation, “taking the Bible as it reads”? The great Higher Critic thus openly admits that it is only by seeking refuge in some recondite method of explaining away the Bible facts, that one can escape the Adventist’s faith. Higher Criticism is the only refuge from our faith. The Higher Critics themselves being the judge, the only alternative is to cast aside the Holy Book and be a Higher Critic, or take it as it reads and be a Seventh-day Adventist.

Let us take renewed courage when we see that our position is so strong, so Gibraltar-firm, that the only escape is practical infidelity. Indeed, we may stand with holy confidence upon “the Scripture that can not be broken.”

Portland, Ore.