Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rowell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 5, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 26.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rowell

IX. Higher Criticism—Whither?

IN the previous articles we have seen that Higher Criticism is the child of the Papacy; that it has been adopted and baptized by the leading Protestant divines of the world, and its actual infidelity has filtered from the learned institutions of the Protestant world into the churches of all Christendom. For this reason we have considered it advisable to give extended space in studying the movement. It has been made clear that it is an effort to account for the Bible by the theory of evolution. It discounts or denies all historical accounts of the Scriptures as fable, rejects the miracles as legend, and repudiates the fall as a myth. The Bible itself is considered a patchwork in which hundreds of writers have had a hand, giving us as a result a book "gangrened with error from cover to cover." Most of the books of Moses are openly claimed to be a forgery to deceive the people.

Higher Criticism teaches doubt as the highest and first requisite in studying God's Word. It makes the Saviour a superfluity if not an absurdity, for "sin is a quest after God." It talks learnedly of Christ's mistakes and hints at His prejudice. His infallibility is denied, His authority ignored. Miracles are naturalized, minimized, or evaporated. The real inspiration of the Bible is denied, and prophecy regarded as human sagacity instead of divine foreknowledge. In fact nearly all the grand truths of the Bible are openly repudiated, or denial covertly insinuated. We are flatly told never to mind what the Bible says anyway—just to trust our instincts instead. God is cast from His throne, and reason worshiped instead.

The Ingersolls of to-day are in the pulpit. Twenty-six years ago one minister said to his congregation: "You will notice, as I conduct these services from Sunday to Sunday, that there are large parts of the Bible that I do not read. I select chapters or parts of chapters from both the Old Testament and the New. . . . Large parts of it I pass by. For what reason? Simply because I wish to be perfectly frank and open as to what I believe, and because I do not choose to spend half my morning, after I have read a passage, in telling you that I do not believe it literally, and in explaining to you in what sense I do take it. The time will come when we have passed through the transition hour, when the results of the criticism of the Bible have been settled, when the thoughts of men have found their place,—the time will come, I say, when I shall be able to read any part of the Bible from the pulpit, and not be misunderstood. I shall not be understood to believe a miracle, because I read the account of it. I shall not be understood to accept as history an Old Testament legend, because I read it as a lesson."—M. J. Savage, "Beliefs About the Bible."

Is it possible that infidelity can stalk so boldly in the pulpit, and Christians not be concerned? Will those who believe the Bible any longer drink the muddy waters of unbelief because they come from the pulpit? Whither are we drifting, that such conditions not only exist, but are rapidly increasing?

The Danger to the Church To-Day

is not from its professed enemies, but from its avowed friends and defenders; not from the scoffing unbeliever, but from the minister behind the desk; not from the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God,"

but from the minister who preaches to his congregation that he does not believe what God says; not from some talented Ingersoll who lectures on "the mistakes of Moses," but from the world-renowned theological professors who lecture to ministerial students on the "mistakes of Christ."

This sort of teaching paralyzes missionary work abroad and evangelical work at home; for if sin is a necessary condition of evolution, and after all a quest for God, why bother to save any one from it? Thus religion is degraded to a pleasing fable or a process in the development of evolution.

Higher Criticism leads to endless confusion by destroying the standard; and as the destruction becomes more general and complete, the confusion is greater. And it prepares the way for the renewed success of Rome. For many Protestants are losing faith in the divine authority of the Scriptures, and there remains in the world little or nothing authoritative except the claim of Rome and the pretensions of the pope. Infallible authority men will have somewhere; and if they find the Bible shorn of it by the New Theology, they will seek it elsewhere, as Newman did, and as countless others are doing, in the pope.

Let the Rallying Cry of "the Bible and the Bible only" be once more proclaimed by Protestants from pew and pulpit, and such a reform as the world never saw before would sweep over the land. Nay, let but one denomination accept the Bible as it reads, as their infallible authority, and stand firmly and boldly upon its God-given truths, and they could alone effect a reformation as wide-spread and deep as the Reformation which gave Protestantism birth. And since the whole effect of the New Theology is to discount and discard the law of God, which defines sin and is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, such a reformation is sadly needed.

Since Higher Criticism claims that the books in which God's holy law is recorded were the forgery of a millennium later than Sinai, the law is degraded to a mockery, and made the sport of their varying theories. Thus its sacredness is absolutely evaporated, its binding claims denied, and the way paved for the wholesale repudiation of the entire law by all Christendom. Already we see the woful results of its disregard; and in the logical teaching of the New Theology that "sin is a quest for God," a premium is put on crime.

Higher Criticism is Satan's method of preparing the church for its inevitable repudiation of God's law—inevitable unless Higher Criticism is completely banished from its pulpit, ejected from its doors. Dear reader, there are a people who have never allowed the infidelity of Higher Criticism to mold their creed, who stand boldly upon the original Protestant ground of "the Bible and the Bible only," who bow to the infallible authority of that Word in all things, who believe that "sin is the transgression of the law," and who recognize the fact that God's law is the transcript of His character and so unchangeable and holy that to redeem us

from its transgression God had to give His only-begotten Son to die a heartrending death for us—even the death of the cross.

Seventh-day Adventists recognize the fact that the New Theology is only a subtle device of Satan's in his last great effort to take the world captive in his snares. The popular churches are fast being lulled to sleep by its "peace and safety" cry, and Protestantism has long since lost its meaning.

But the message is going forth to the ends of the earth that "Babylon the great [apostate Protestantism] is fallen. . . . Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Rev. 18: 2-4. Those who are being called out by this message, accept the whole Bible as their standard, and stand upon the belief that "Thy Word is truth;" and as the controversy waxes fiercer between those who believe God's Word and those who denounce it totally or in part, all who love the Bible, and "all them that love His appearing," will be compelled to take sides in the great final controversy. Which side will you take?