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WHAT IS LEFT US

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jun 6, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 22.

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WHAT IS LEFT US.

A Review.

THE book noted below, an unpretentious looking volume, is the publication of "the Nathaniel William Taylor lectures" for 1905, given before the Divinity School of Yale University. From the friends of the "higher criticism" this book has received much praise and commendation. Because of this we have tried to read it calmly, candidly, fairly, from cover to cover, but entirely apart from its utter antagonism under seeming friendliness, to the Scriptures and Jesus Christ their Author, we do not see how it could be tolerated, not to say commended, from the view-point of its logic and conclusion. Starting out to help its readers "toward the right using of the Scriptures," it proceeds utterly to condemn their infallibility and inspiration, and adopts as the principle by which all scripture is to be tested the following:
"The principle is, that the Christian element in the Scriptures is the indispensable and formative element in Christian theology, and is the only element in the Scriptures which Christian theology is either required or permitted to receive as contributing to its substance."
Of Jesus Christ, Mr. Clarke declares:
"The primary fact is His revelation is true."
And yet the only record we have of Christ and His work comes to us through common men, whose inspiration Mr. Clarke denies.
He tells us again that:
"There certainly is non-Christian matter in the Old Testament, and for aught we know there may be in the New."
How may we know?—This is his rule:
"That is Christian which enters into or accords with the view of divine realities which Jesus Christ revealed."
Again:
"If any proposed doctrine contradicts the large meaning and spirit of Christ, of course, Christian theology must have none of it. . . . Nothing may rank with that which Christ has directly given, except that which belongs with it by true affinity."
And again we say: All that we know of what Christ has directly said comes to us through the Evangelists, whose writings, in the author's view, are uninspired. He sees the lameness of this arguing; and thus hedges:
"It is not Christ represented by the conceptions of Paul or John."
How then may we know what is Christian? This is the answer:
"Inspiration was an outward mark, but the inward certifier is quality; and quality can certify itself only by appeal to judgment, or discernment."
The final test, then, the only standard, the sole basis of hope, which Mr. Clarke gives us in our "Christian" theology is the purely human, our own conception, our own judgment, our "discernment, which is the power of vision in the spiritual world."
In this way we may proceed to cut and carve, to mine and dig, and select and reject, both Old and New Testaments, and among us all, refractory mortals as we are, the whole Bible goes—Christ and all. In Mr. Clarke's "discernment," "judgment," the record of creation, of the origin of the world, of the race, and of sin, all go. The Old Testament revelations of God are rejected. God "is not a God of sacred places." "The doctrine that God saves men by imparting to them merit which He has provided for them in Christ, will retire into history." The hope of the second advent goes, as "part and parcel of Judaism, and no part of the gift of Christ at all;" and altho Jesus gave genuine utterance to such hopes, he judges it "to be no part of His gift to the world;" for Jesus, "is the limitations of humanity, thought in the manner of His time."
And there the book and "higher criticism" bring us—with no standard, with no perfect example, no Bible, no Christ; all have been tried at the supreme bar of Mr. Clarke's concepts of Christian theology and mostly found wanting, not excluding Christ's own teaching. And the serpent said, "Ye shall be as God." Many love to believe the old lie still.