Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rowell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 14, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 23.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rowell

VI. Higher Criticism and the Gospel

THIS know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, . . . unholy, . . . despisers of those that are good, . . . lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: . . . ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 2 Tim. 3:1-7.

That this is a description of professed believers, is evident from the fact that they are “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” implying that they love God some, while professing to love Him much; and in fact the next phrase, asserting that they have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof, proves their profession of Christianity. Only professed believers could have a form of godliness; the world certainly does not have it.

Denying the Power of Godliness

Higher Criticism is the boasted product of the world’s religious leaders. A better description of the workings and effects of Higher Criticism than the above quotation, it would be impossible to find in so few words. Higher Critics deny the power of godliness in that they deny the Gospel. Paul was “not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” Rom. 1:16. But Higher Critics teach doubt as an art essential to the right understanding of the Bible, discard most of the miracles as foolish or impossible, label the story of the fall as childish myth; and consequently the necessity of a Saviour from the curse is not seen; nay, is denied. “The Gospel of Christ,” then, is no longer the “power of God” to them; but they retain the “form of godliness.” In fact they shine like angels of light. They bring to bear matchless learning and almost unlimited wealth of genius to infuse the “power of God” into their “form of godliness.” But all of their Herculean efforts are of no avail, for they are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Building Structures of Doubt

With covert insinuation or sneering gibe, these modern idolaters of reason build upon their numerous unproved assumptions, problematical hypotheses, and imaginary facts, a vast superstructure of “scientific doubt;” and with linked arms, Romanist and Protestant, naturalist and deist, infidel and Christian, invite the world to come under their banner of doubt, and to aid in casting down Revelation from its God-given supremacy, and in exalting, under different names and with varied objects, an arrogant but blinded reason on the throne of the God of Revelation. It would seem that the spirit of error which was exorcised at the Reformation, has returned with seven more worse than himself, and finding the religious chambers swept and garnished, has entered in to resume possession.

Is unfettered reason to be worshiped because it riots in its liberty and lays unconsecrated hands even on the ark of God? Shall we commit ourselves to the leadership of Higher Critics because they are able to clothe error with the intellectual lace of genius? Does vast learning make wrong right? Is a pleasant literary style any substitute for the presence of Christ? Is error any less error because advocated by world-renowned theological professors? Is infidelity any less infidel because it is baptized and stands behind the pulpit?

That these questions are not beside the subject, is startlingly evident when we read in Briggs’s “Study of Holy Scriptures,” page 80, that Higher Critics regard infidels like “Hume, Strauss, and Voltaire as guided in their attacks on the Bible by God!” Infidels, the most rabid and sneering in the whole course of centuries of blasting criticism of the Bible, guided by God Himself in the betrayal and subverting of His own Book! It is impossible for blasphemy and sacrilege to stalk more openly, more unblushingly, in the midst of men; nay, into the very sanctuary of God itself. No wonder Talmage was constrained to say that Higher Criticism should “go clear over to the devil’s side where it belongs.”

Those who uphold the tearing asunder of the Bible by atheists, as guided by God, should read the instruction given by the very first writer in the Bible to those who were thus minded: “Ye shall not add unto the Word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it.” Deut. 4:2. And they should heed the warning of the very last writer in the Bible to the same class of critics: “I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Tree of Life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.” Rev. 22:18, 19.

Taking Away the Truth

As the result of the work of Higher Criticism, many unsettled souls are crying out, with Mary, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” John 20:13. Or as a Higher Critic himself puts it:

“The Bible, no longer the book of witness to the simplicity and intelligibleness of God, no longer the book of divine promises touching a kingdom of God that shall come on earth, no longer the book of that Christ who is humanity’s Amen to all the divine promises,—the Bible ceases to be the Bible, the joyous and refreshing study of God’s search for us; and adds itself to the number of those great books that tell us the fine yet pathetic story of man’s search — the search of the philosopher, and the sage, and the monk, and the mystic — after God.”—“History of Higher Criticism,” page 24. In short the Bible becomes a wax nose that is twisted this way and that to suit the fancy or caprice of the critic.

The terrible harvest of this Higher Criticism is already seen in the unsettled beliefs, the destroyed faith, the multiplied infidels, the weakened and empty churches, and the consequent increase of crime and vice. Aliens from God, outcasts from society, broken-hearted millions, curse their miserable and squalid existence, long for death as a desired release, and each year an ever increasing number seek relief in suicide, while more plunge still deeper into drink and crime. From Africa’s burning sands, from Russia’s frigid steppes, from India’s arid plains, from China’s crowded lands, from the rocky cliffs of countless islands, — from every land in every clime, the cry of human wo is ascending in increasing volume from the destitute, the afflicted, the diseased, and the dying.

To these misery-laden souls the Higher Critic can give only a gospel of “scientific doubt,” a Bible of patches, a Bible of myths — a Christless Bible. Martineau, after giving rules for excluding certain parts of the Bible, says: “The portions of the . . . texts which remain on hand, after severing what the foregoing rules exclude, can by no means be accepted en masse as equally trustworthy. They are simply relieved of the impossible [divinity of Christ, miracles, etc.], and contain only what might be true.” And what is left, and how precious little that is, “must be judged by considerations gathered from the whole field of probabilities.”—“Seat of Authority,” pages 577, 602. These are the husks of salvation the Higher Critics have to offer the sin-burdened and empty-souled salvation seeker.

A Comfortless Religion

When the outcast, suffering, and sin-laden millions read the tender words of Christ, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and the cheering rays of hope light up the dark chambers of the soul, the Higher Critic, with a superior smile, seeks to blast their hope by informing them that Christ had not the power to give any one rest, as He was never more than a man such as they, only a very superior man. When the millions of conscience-stricken men read that “tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool,” and their hearts leap with hope as they “behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world,” the Higher Critic, with condescending pity for their simple faith, learnedly informs them that there is no sin; that what we call sin is only a phase in the process of evolution, and is a necessary condition of its development. Thus it is that countless precious passages are treated. In fact there is not a passage in the whole Bible whose veracity he does not impugn, whose morality he does

not attack, or whose spirituality he does not ridicule.

The Old Book Stands

But while traduced, ridiculed, and subverted, by avowed friend and secret enemy, while attacked without and betrayed within, the Bible to-day stands forth in greater grandeur than it has ever done in all the ages past. The multiplied attacks of whole colleges of professed believers, but in reality as actually infidelic as ever was Paine, have served only to make clearer to our enraptured view the saving truth that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” 1 Tim. 1:15. The storms of criticism that are beating against the Rock of Ages, leave it as unmoved as would be the sun if struck by an insect. “For the Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Heb. 4:12, A.R.V.

The light of divinity radiates from every chapter. Its authority and truth are corroborated and established by recent discoveries of science and disclosures of exploration; certified, demonstrated, and verified beyond doubt by the millions of Christians of ages past, who have never found a promise to fail; and the whole is climaxed and eternally crowned with glory by the character of Christ. As McIntosh says: “A tone of authority, an air of certainty, a breath of eternity, and a voice of God seems ever to pervade the book; and creeps around the reader’s spirit like the speaking silence of the lonely mountains; and sinks down into the sympathetic soul as the voice of the Eternal Father—like the deep and solemn tone of the ever sounding sea.”

As down through the ever widening vista of time we see the prophecies fulfilling, we know that God will be found true, and the “heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Matt. 5:18. And then it is that “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Thess. 1:7, 8.