p. 10 | Undermining Confidence by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 1, 1914

“Undermining Confidence”

By Editor

MUCH has been said and written of late regarding the dangerous tendency which exists among some so-called Christian teachers of undermining confidence in the Scriptures of Truth. The so-called higher critics of the Bible deny many things that have been regarded as cardinal truths. The Christian Observer of Dec. 10, 1913, under the above heading, reviews the work of these critics in an excellent article, which we reproduce entire. The editor says:—

Much of the modern assault upon the statements of the Bible proceeds from parties within the church. Many of the assailants justify their work of destructive criticism by the claim that they are not touching the really essential elements that make it the Word of God, but are merely exposing and eliminating the imperfect human elements. The Davidic authorship, according to their view, has no vital connection with the spiritual value of a given psalm. The inaccuracy of Old Testament prophets in matters of geography or history does not impair, to these critics, their contribution to the religious ideas of the race. Their doctrine of God, their spiritual ideals, their lofty and pure ethics, stand regardless of the overthrow of their dates and incidental affirmations.

The soundness of this position must be tested from various points of view. And we can at present call attention to only one of the many applications of this principle. Two points in the recorded career of Jesus have been selected by modern criticism for special attack, the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of our Lord. Many who have denied the former have held tenaciously to the latter. But among those who have repudiated the testimony of the Gospel records to one or to both, there has been a stout protest against any charge that would group them with unbelievers in Jesus. Some affirm that they can repudiate the testimony as to the virgin birth and still hold to the evangelical doctrine of his deity and his office as Saviour. On critical grounds, they tell us, they cut out those parts of the infancy narratives that relate a virgin birth, and yet accept as veracious and reliable the rest of the Gospels, or at least the substantial proportion of what remains.

That an individual may do this, has actually done this, we shall not deny. For nothing is clearer in history than the versatile ability of the human intellect in the way of bad logic and flagrant inconsistency. But that a widespread and permanent faith of this kind is possible, we are bold to deny. No continuous succession of men, no large school of thought that projects its life into the future, will maintain this attitude. In the long run, the human intellect, even in deeply religious circles, will make its inevitable logical choice between the two positions. It will hate the one and love the other, or else will hold to the former and despise the latter. It will not be able to serve both the criticism that cuts out Matthew and Luke as competent and credible witnesses to the manner of the birth of Jesus, and the faith that accepts the rest of their remarkable record along with that of Mark and others.

For it will inevitably be the case that confidence in the credibility of the witnesses as such will be undermined. If the writers of the first and third Gospels were so gullible, so ignorant, so given to romance, so easily deceived, or so ready to invent and deceive others, as to palm off on their readers this account of the birth of Jesus, their reliability, their competence as historians, is at once discredited. How can we pin our faith to them at other points? If on so delicate and important a matter, involving the most sacred matters of human life, they perpetrate a blunder or a crime so gross and historically unpardonable, the inexorable verdict of intelligent men will sooner or later strip them of their claims and say, “Thou mayest no longer be historian.”

For—and let all our readers mark the statement—the evidence for the virgin birth of Jesus is the same as the evidence for his miracles, his resurrection, his teaching, his sinless life. It is the same as the evidence that he lived and died at all. The witnesses may be fewer. But the evidence is the same in character, and is just as worthy of credence. The men who will not believe Matthew and Luke will not continue long to trust Mark or John or Paul. Certainly the disciples and followers of such men will not. When confidence in the witness is undermined, the story which he tells will be summarily brushed aside by the merciless logic of the human mind. The Bible must really be trusted altogether or not at all. The average man of reverence and common sense will, as a matter of fact, trust it fully or virtually repudiate it entirely as an authority over conscience and life.