Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rosell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 17, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 19.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rosell

By Earle Albert Rosell

II. The Meaning of Higher Criticism

The tendency of modern science is to eliminate old methods; of modern philosophy, to discard old theories; of modern Christianity, to use modern science and modern speculative philosophy to subvert old beliefs and annihilate ancient faith, “which was once for all delivered unto the saints.” Jude 3, R.V. The horse is being supplanted by the automobile, the steam-engine by the electric engine, and the telegraph by the wireless telegraph. In like manner, not to be outdone by scientists and thinkers in the process of substitution, modern divines, in an effort to offer an up-to-date religion, are producing numerous ponderous volumes of vast learning in a Herculean effort to give us a Christless Bible; nay, a Bibleless Christianity.

Man has become so learned in art, so successful in science, so potent in war, that his pride revolts at the thought or the suggestion of there being anything beyond the scope of his progressive, adjustive, or creative genius. To hint at a limitation of his achievements is to insult his ability; to criticize his methods is to malign his morals; to disagree with his conclusions is to flout his genius; and to deprecate his emasculated religion is to traduce the man. In the overweening pride of his progress he is rearing a lofty intellectual Tower of Babel. Like the Babel of the plain of Shinar, its top is designed to “reach unto heaven;” nay, to God Himself. But let man beware lest his modern Babel share the fate of the ancient Babel, for “the secret things belong unto the Lord.” Through the veil of infinity man can not penetrate. Here the daring of his speculation is the measure of his folly. Here silence is the highest eloquence.

The world is being filled with pleasing fables, wooing man from the stony upward path of virtue to the flowery, easy highway of gratification, luring him to pleasant dreams of Oriental languor in Elysian palaces of bliss. Honest truth-seekers thus encompassed with a seducing salvation of enrapturing ease, find their minds often clouded in perplexity and their souls shrouded in darkness. And the world in general is tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, without anchor, compass, chart, or Captain. This, in an ever-increasing degree, is the work of Higher Criticism.

Enemies Now from Within

Once the attack upon the Bible was from without. Once the van of devastating criticism was led by a Voltaire or a Paine. A century ago a Rousseau was mightiest in hurling invectives at Christianity. Nay, only two decades ago an Ingersoll held highest the banner of Bible criticism. Then the friends of the Bible knew its enemies, for they were open and avowed.

But to-day the divine stories upon which our parents were nurtured, around which their affections entwined, and by which their faith was supported, are declared by the theological professors of many of the greatest colleges in the world to be not only untrue in some parts, but false in every particular—the myths of a superstitious and ignorant people, generated in an age of darkness.

Thus has the banner of infidelity been wrested from the Paines and the Ingersolls, and held aloft by religious leaders. Thus are the foundations of our faith ruthlessly torn away, not by men who, like Gibbon and Voltaire, are the declared enemies of Christianity, but by the world’s most renowned professed believers. Thus is the Bible smitten by the hand of a friend. Thus is it betrayed with a kiss.

While bending might and main, devoting talents, giving means, and even lavishing wealth of genius, upon the unseemly work of undermining faith in the Old Testament, belief in the New Testament, and firm reliance upon the infallibility of Christ; while attacking with fiendish delight, and subjecting to sarcastic ridicule, one who has a simple, childlike faith in the Bible as it reads, these modern divines blandly claim to be doing all of this for the good of Christianity!

The Words of Christ

Down through the ages with clarion voice ring those memorable words of Christ, spoken to the ancient Pharisees: “If ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” John 5:46, 47. The ancient Pharisee, tho the religious leader of the age, did not believe Moses, tho he professed so to do. The modern Pharisee does not believe that Moses ever wrote a word of the Bible, and furthermore he doubts the very first sentence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” “Not so,” says the modern Pharisee; “in the beginning the heavens and the earth did not exist, for they were evolved after millions of years, from a gaseous state.” Hand in hand with this teaching there has been a growing denial of the infallibility of Christ’s words. But Christ foretold the result of the denial of the writings of Moses: “If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” Then let us be careful how we doubt or criticize even the apparently unimportant statements in the Bible; for it was also Christ who said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Matt. 4:4.

Seed-Sowing and Fruitage

The modern religious teachers and leaders not only adopt the old infidel arguments, but enlarge them; they not only endorse the conclusions of the most rabid infidel, but strengthen them; they not only repeat the old infidel watchwords, but invent new ones even more radical and destructive. The violent unbelief of Voltaire and Paine has been baptized, and rechristened “Higher Criticism.” In the doubting minds and sordid hearts of the scoffing infidels of a century or more ago were germinated the seeds of the rampant unbelief that, under the sedulous cultivation of learned divines, is opening into full bloom in the devastating Higher Criticism of to-day. Fallacies and frauds advanced a score of times in the past and a thousand times exploded, are by the Higher Critics gravely repeated again as new and important truths.

The Higher Critic’s maxim that the Bible must be studied like any other book, is the basis of all present criticism; and this theory has led to its corollary that the Bible must be like any other book. They believe not Christ’s teaching that “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17), because it contradicts their own! But either the Bible is true or it is not. It is the Word of God or a delusion. It is absolutely reliable or not at all. It is either infallible or utterly untrustworthy. There is no middle ground. One must take his position either with Christ, Paul, and John, or with Paine, Voltaire, and Gibbon. But the Higher Critic is trying to manufacture a middle ground. He endeavors to be at once both infidel and Christian, and succeeds in being only infidel.

Doubt and Faith

That I have not exaggerated; that the Higher Critic is a doubter first, last, and all the time; that doubting is not only a pleasant pastime, but a serious business with him, I will now prove. Nay, more, he actually teaches to the divinity students, as a valuable and indeed indispensable acquisition, “the art of doubting.” A religious teacher in the Wesleyan University wrote in the North American Review for April, 1900, as follows:

“In every sphere of investigation, he should BEGIN WITH DOUBT, and the student will make the most rapid progress who has acquired THE ART OF DOUBTING WELL. . . . We ask that every student of theology take up the subject precisely as he would any other science: that he begin with doubt. . . . We believe that even the teachings of Jesus should be viewed from this standpoint, and should be accepted or REJECTED on the grounds of their inherent REASONABLENESS.”

Doubt is the means by which unsanctified reason always works. Self is its mainspring and self its goal: self its element, and the worship of self its result. But “O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt!” Matt. 14:31. “Neither be ye of doubtful mind” (Luke 12:29), for “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23), and in fact “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Heb. 11:6); while on the other hand “all things are possible to him that believeth.” Mark 9:23. The wisdom of the Higher Critic is dangerous; for “the world through its wisdom knew not God,” 1 Cor. 1:21. All these theological exalters of reason should obey the urgent words of Paul counseling them about “casting down reasonings, . . . and bringing every

thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:5.

In face of these scriptures, the fact that “the art of doubting” is actually taught as the most essential qualification for learning religion in a divinity school, is a most appalling condition of affairs, and is significant of the trend and effect of all the teaching of Higher Criticism. Its foundation is doubt, and its object is to promulgate doubt. Doubt is its essence, infidelity its sphere, and atheism its result.

A Sinister Meaning

The present and increasing vogue of Higher Criticism has a subtle and sinister meaning. With its corrosive doubt it besmirches with sacrilegious hands everything within its reach. That Book which our Lord and His apostles called “the Scriptures,” “Holy Scriptures,” “the Word of Truth,” “the Sacred Writings,” “the Oracles of God,” and always regarded as “inspired of God,” and the authoritative, infallible record of God’s dealings with the world, the Higher Critic tells us is a patchwork of legends and childish myths, put together in an age of ignorance, by superstitious or fraudulent religious leaders, and is not only unreliable in some particulars, but false in records of history, degrading in morals, debasing in spirituality, and from cover to cover “gangrened with error.”

Nevertheless, this “patchwork of errors” was always Christ’s court of last appeal. “Have ye not read?” “It is written,” “Thy Word is truth,” were the watchwords of His life. His life and teachings were simply saturated and steeped with its glorious imagery, its eternal principles, and its divine love. In the lonely watches of the night it comforted Him, when weary with His taxing labors it refreshed Him, through the agony of Gethsemane it sustained Him, and even from the agony of the cross He passed to the peace of eternity with its soothing message upon His dying lips. Shall “all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27), which were so absolutely essential to Him, be deemed by us of doubtful and even dubious value? Shall the redeemed discard as unnecessary what was endorsed, given, and sealed by, and essential to, the Redeemer?

The Book a Dead Letter

It is in vain that one refers the Higher Critics to Paul’s classic words upon the inspiration of Scripture: “Every scripture is inspired of God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.” 2 Tim. 3:16, 17, R.V., margin. Nay, they deny it. They teach that no scripture is in any way more inspired of God than the writings of Browning, of Shakespeare or even of Plato; that it does not fit him to teach anything, and leaves him incomplete in every particular, not furnished for anything.

The fact must be faced by Christians, that the issue is no longer between the open and avowed unbeliever and the Bible. The enemies the church has to fear are no longer those on the outside, but those within; nay, its very highest and most honored leaders. The danger is not from the Tom Paines and the Ingersolls, but from the teachers of ministerial classes and the presidents of theological colleges. No matter how unpleasant the duty, the issue must be faced, and sides must be chosen, not in a reluctant manner, but whole-heartedly, “nothing doubting.” No matter how brilliant the error, nor how much like “an angel of light” the advocate appears, there are but two sides,—that of Christ and that of Satan. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” Joshua 24:15. “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21.

In other words, shall the divine Book by which Christ’s whole life was guided, His spirituality nourished, in which His teachings were rooted and grounded, by which He overcame every temptation and conquered all the legions of the satanic world—shall, I say, this God-given Book be flippantly subjected to the skeptical scalpel of Higher Criticism, and dismembered at their behest, discarded by their dictum, according to the standard of their ever-changing caprice? or shall we stand firmly upon “the Scripture that can not be broken,” and say, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief”?