From: REXLEX@linac.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Limits to Criticism/2
Date: 23 Aug 92 23:52:12 GMT
Organization: Fermi Lab

A.  LIMITS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION TO 
     PLENARY INSPIRATION

     1)  THE MEANING OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM
*   2)  APPEARANCE AND TRIUMPH OF MODERN CRITICISM
*   3)  BIBLICAL RENEWAL

B.  THE IMPOSSIBILITY THAT A FALLIBLE MESSAGE COULD
     BECOME THE WORD OF GOD

C.  EVANGELICALS SUPPOSEDLY NONSCIENTIFIC IN REGARD TO
     THE BIBLE

Excerpts from "The Inspiration & Authority of Scripture"  by Rene Pache,
copyright 1969, Moody Press.  Used by permission.

LIMITS OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION TO PLENARY
INSPIRATION

2.)  APPEARANCE AND TRIUMPH OF MODERN CRITICISM

     "It is universally conceded that up to about the eighteenth century  the
Jews, Christ, the apostles, the primitive church, the church fathers and the
Reformers, with their successors, affirmed in a general way the plenary
inspiration of the Scriptures." 
     "Not only the rationalism of the eighteenth century, but even more the
religious liberalism of the nineteenth opened up a breach in the orthodox
position.  Under the influence of the theory of evolution, critics came to the
point of denying the biblical account of the creation and of the fall.  After
coming out of the caves, man supposedly made for himself gods in his own image
(polytheism); then, emerging little by little from barbarism, he later stumbled
onto the idea of only one god (monotheism).  Before the development of modern
archaeology, a hundred years ago, it was believed that sure historical
information about antiquity could be traced to a point no earlier than the
sixth century before Christ.  Consequently, the whole history of the patriarchs
and of Israel was declared mythical and legendary.  Moses certainly did not
know how to read and write, and he was incapable of instituting the complicated
laws and the ritual bearing his name.  The description of the Egyptians, of the
Canaanites and of the kings of Israel-especially of Solomon-all that was
nothing but a fable.  Thus (observe the sequence of the deductions!) the
supposed books of Moses could not be historical.  They were, of necessity,
written much later, by various authors and at wholly different times.  An
understanding of criticism, thousands of years later, led to an exact
determining of what those multiple "sources" were, of which the following are
the most important (even though scholars are far from agreed among themselves
on many of these points):
     The author known as J (Jahvist, because he calls God Jahveh) probably
lived in Judah about 950-850 B.C. Some critics divide this "source" again into
Jl and J2.  The author E (Elohist, since he calls God Elohim) is supposed to
have lived around 750 B.C.  After the fall of Samaria, an "editor" by the name
of JE was thought to have combined J and E, adding on his own to these two
sources.  Document D would comprise the greater part of Deuteronomy, making
this the book of the law "found" in the temple under Josiah in 621 (II Kings
22-23).  H (Holiness) would be "the Code of Holiness" (Lev. 17-26), having to
do with ceremonial purity; the critics differ as to whether it should be placed
before or after Ezekiel.  P (from the word "priest") is known as "the Priestly
Code"; drawn up by the priests during the Exile, it was said to have been
presented to the masses (in the name of Moses) by Ezra around 398 B.C. 
Finally, several compilers (editors) were thought to have blended together a
great many heterogeneous elements to make the present Pentateuch.  Thus,
according to Oesterley and Robinson: "Early in the second century B.C. the Law
was regarded as a single whole with, apparently, no suspicion of its composite
origin.  We have not greatly erred, then, if we assign its final completion to
a date not later than 300 s.c." ("Intoduction to the Books of the OT") 
Needless to say, there are plenty of arguments to show the fragility and the
ephemeral quality of this succession of hypotheses, at once so complicated and
so devoid of factual substance.
     Examination of Oesterley and Robinson's book reveals extravagant examples
of this slicing up of the biblical text according to the supposed theory of
sources:

Genesis 2:4b-4:26 is attributed to J; 1:1-2:4a belongs to P;
Genesis 5: 29, J; 5 :1-28 and 30-32, P;
Genesis 6:1-8, J; 6:9-22, P;
Genesis 7:1-5; 7, 10, 12, 16b, 17b, 22a-23a; 8:2b-3a, 6-12, 13b, 2022; 9:18-27,
J;
Numbers 15:1b, JE; 14:3-4, J; 14:8, 9, 11-25, JE; 14:1a, 2, 5-7, 1 26-30,
33-38, P;
Deuteronomy 34:1b-6, E; 32:48-52, P; 34:1a-7-12, P;
Deuteronomy 7:6, 8-9, 11, 13-16a, 17a, 18-21, 23b-24, 8:1-2a, 3b-5 13a, 14-19,
9:1-17, 28-29, P.

There are pages and pages of such absurdities; and theological students of our
acquaintance, after conscientiously underlining the "sources" with different
colored pencils, have referred to what they call their "Bible rainbow."  Along
these same lines we have, for instance, in French, the Dictionnaire
Encyclopedique de la Bible, published by A. Westphal in 1932, which has just
been reprinted without change; and the Jerusalem Bible, the English translation
having come out in 1966.  (In fact, Catholics today go just as far as
Protestants and Jews in textual criticism.)  Such critics really remind us of
the Roman soothsayers of whom Cicero wrote, commenting that he wondered how
they could look at one another without laughing.  To reduce the biblical text
to a puzzle like this (according to some, Genesis 37 is subdivided into
twenty-six fragments, three of which appear in one verse!) is to completely
destroy the historical truth, and consequently the spiritual message, of the
entire Old Testament.
     Pursuing the treatment of the Bible as though it were an ordinary book,
liberalism has also attacked the New Testament.  If man did not experience a
fall, but rather is evolving toward the good, he has no need of a divine
Redeemer.  The supernatural elements having been eliminated, the gospel
accounts are simply legends.  Jesus was not born miraculously, and His death
could not take away sin.  There is nothing to the concept of His glorious
return, and an eternal hell does not exist.  The fourth gospel, some of the
epistles, and Revelation are certainly not authentic.

3)  BIBLICAL RENEWAL

     Better-informed scholarship has now replied to many of the arguments of
the old liberalism.  The theory of materialistic evolution as been combatted by
a great many scholars.  The discovery of Ur of the Chaldees and of the oldest
civilizations (Sumer, Babylon, Nineeh, Mari, Ugarit, Jericho, Crete, Egypt,
etc.) has demonstrated the xactitude of the biblical description of the times
of the patriarchs, of Moses and of Israel.  Since the discovery of the Code of
Hammurabi, who would dare to say that Moses was incapable of writing something
similar?  Such developments have rejoiced evangelicals, although these
confirmations cannot be said to have given the Scriptures back to them, since
they never lost them in the first place.
     A recent theology has expressed its desire to reaffirm the honor of the
Word of God and to bring us back to the Bible.  But the question is what Word
and what Bible are meant.  There has certainly been quite a considerable
revival of Bible study and of publications about the text of Scripture.  All
the same, one thing is clear about most contemporary theologians: they are not
going back to what they consider a "non-scientific" concept, that is, that the
Bible is the Word of God. In their opinion, just as in that of the older
liberals, Scripture has many errors, legends and contradictions.  It is not the
Word of God, but merely a testimony to that Word made by men who themselves
were fallible.
Karl Barth writes:

    "The prophets and apostles, even in their office, even in their function as
witnesses, even in the act of writing down their witness, were, as we are,
capable and actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word.
     If God was not ashamed of the fallibility of all the human words of the
Bible, of their historical and scientific inaccuracies, their theological
contradictions, the uncertainty of their tradition, and, above all, their
Judaism, but adopted and made use of these expressions in all their
fallibility, we do not need to be ashamed when He wills to renew it to us in
all its fallibility as witness; and it is mere self-will and disobedience to
try to find some infallible elements in the Bible." 
     The men whom we hear as witnesses speak as fallible, erring men like
ourselves . . .We can read and try to assess their word as a purely human word.
 It can be subjected to all kinds of immanent criticism, not only in respect of
its philosophical, historical, and ethical content, but even of its religious
and theological . . . Each in his own way and degree, they shared the culture
of their age and environment . . . The vulnerability of the Bible, i.e., its
capacity for error, also extends to its religious or theological content. There
are obvious overlappings and contradictions . . . Therefore, whether we like it
or not, they did not speak a special language of revelation radically different
from that of their time . . . It seems to be weakened, and therefore robbed of
its character as witnesses to revelation, by the fact that it has so many
''parallels.'' ("Church Dogmatics I")

In regard to this "non-scripture" doctrine of Scripture, French pastor Pierre
Courthial writes with much discernment:

    "On this fundamental point Barth has not been able, has not known how, and
has not wanted to exorcise the demons of the already old critical tradition
which he had been taught and which-alas-is still being taught in too many
Protestant and Roman Catholic schools of theology and seminaries.  If the
amending of Protestant theology, and then of the preaching and life of the
churches of the Reformation, did not bear the fruit that it promised in the
thirties and forties, if a number of those churches have today been driven back
into certain blind alleys (particularly regarding ecumenism), a situation which
we can see all about us, it is for the reason that the biblical "basic
incentives," after having been magnificently followed for awhile in the
theological and ecclesiastical renewal of the Twentieth Century, have been shut
out and despised through the extrabiblical and anti-biblical "basic incentives"
which were already asserting themselves at the outset, in the Barthian doctrine
of Scripture.
. . . It is clear that for Barth the *real* humanity of the Bible implies its
no less real fallibility.  It is also clear that for Barth the real humanity of
the Bible becomes the foundation for the legitimacy of the critical tradition."
("La conception barthienne de l'Ecriture Saints, examinee du point de vue
reforme")

     On this point Pierre Courthial very rightly replies that, for all that,
the Bible is not fallible: "But, just as the Word of God incarnate was without
sin, even so, the Word of God 'inscripturated' is without error.... The
humanity of Jesus is like our own in all things *sin apart*. The humanity of
the Bible is like that of every human book *except for error.*"
     According to popular dialectics, Barth does not stop there: all that Barth
has to say about the humanity and the fallibility of the Bible makes up only
his first assertions regarding it. From then on (and we emphasize this) he
tries to maintain with all his might that Scripture is the Word of God: "We
believe in and with the Church that Holy Scripture as the original and only
legitimate witness of divine revelation is itself the Word of God."  " But,"
adds M. Courthial, "we must really grasp what Barth means by this affirmation,
since he *strongly rejects the inspiration of the Bible* as it was set forth by
the fathers of the Early Church (by Augustine, for one) and by the Reformers of
the sixteenth century (such as Calvin) and as it is affirmed by the Reformed
Confessions of faith."
     Emil Brunner, another celebrated theologian, does not hesitate to say: "I
myself am an adherent of a rather radical school of biblical criticism, which,
for example, does not accept the Gospel of John as an historical source and
which finds legends in many parts of the Synoptic Gospels.'' ("The Theology of
Crisis")  "Whoever asserts that the New Testament gives us a definite
consistent account of the resurrection is either ignorant or unconscientious.''
 Scripture then is not in itself revelation, for, claims dialectical theology,
the very nature of revelation prohibits it from being put into writing.  That
which is "inscripturated" is given over to the control of man, to use Brunner's
verbiage; and it is as though the Spirit of God "were imprisoned between the
two covers of the written Word.  "For this reason, whatever may be our doctrine
of inspiration, the biblical documents cannot be considered as "inspired.'' 
Professor Brunner also rejects the doctrines of the supernatural birth and the
substitutionary atonement.  He believes, further, in regard to the synoptic
gospels, that they record many things which are not historical; that they put
into the mouth of Jesus words which He did not utter Himself; and that they
declare various things about Him that never took place as they are reported to
have taken place.  As for the fourth gospel, according to Brunner, it is
possible that Jesus did not really pronounce any of the words which John
attributes to Him.  "At some points, the variety of the Apostolic doctrine,
regarded purely from the theological and intellectual point of view, is an
irreconcilable contradiction."  Notice carefully this extremely serious matter:
if the Bible is fallible and erroneous in theology and in moral principles, as
well as in history and in science, what does it have to offer us?  Does even
the possibility of knowing God objectively remain?  Are we not tempted to say
with Mary: "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid
him"?
     If the greatest theologians express themselves like this about the true
value of the biblical texts, how can they establish on such a foundation a
"theology of the Word of God"?  In reality, this expression is given today a
totally different meaning from the traditional one.  God does indeed speak to
us by means of the Bible, but it is not the written text which is His Word. The
Word is the message which comes through to us from the Scripture, but we would
be grossly in error should we believe that the message of God is tied in with
this or that particular verse.  Finally, M. Courthial goes on to say that for
many neo-Protestant and "Barthian" theologians, such as G.S. Hendry, E.
Brunner, and J.A. Mackay, since the revelation of God is the revelation of
someone, some person, it can provide us with no "teachings," "truths,"
"doctrines" or "information."  The "act," or the "acts," of God are set over
against the "teachings" and "propositions" of the Bible.  This, of course, is
untenable; and one never ceases to marvel at the fertility of the human (or
diabolical) spirit in respect to endlessly conjuring up new forms for old
suspicions regarding the Word of God.  Pierre Courthial very accurately sums it
all up in these words: "Neo-protestantism, in its various forms, constantly
speaks of a 'theology of the Word' and of a 'biblical theology,' while it at
the same time always and everywhere attacks what the Bible claims for itself;
that is, that its 'teachings,' 'doctrines,' 'information,' and 'propositions'
constitute the written Word of God, the Word inspired by God.''
     Contemporary theology begins with the hypothesis that Scripture in itself
is not revealed truth.  William Temple, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and
in his time president of the World Council of Churches, wrote: "There is no
such thing as 'revealed truth.'  There are truths of revelation, that is to
say, propositions which express the results of correct thinking concerning
revelation; but they are not themselves directly revealed.''  This would make
Scripture the human response and the testimony to revelation; it would be the
echo of it, but in no way the revelation itself.  Professor D. D. Williams
affirms that nearly all present-day theologians have this concept.  "What it
means," he writes, "is that Christian thought can be set free from the
intolerable dogmatism which results from claiming that God's truth is identical
with some human formulation of it [the formulation in Scripture, doubtless, no
less than that, later on, in some historic creed].''
     Again, Mr. Temple writes:  "It is of supreme importance that He [Christ]
wrote no book. It is even of greater importance that there is no single deed or
saying of His of which we can be perfectly sure that He said or did precisely
this or that."  In regard to the Bible as a whole, Temple adds: "No single
sentence can be quoted as having the authority of a distinct utterance of the
All-Holy God.''  R.A. Finlayson concludes:
     "This indicates how far neo-liberalism has had to go in its attempt to
divorce revelation from Scripture and to denigrate the Bible as the source of
any adequate and reliable knowledge of God. Presumably, what makes it "of
supreme importance" to Dr. Temple that we have no certainty regarding any
"single deed or saying" of Christ is the allegation that this gives greater
scope for the exercise of faith. To us faith based on such uncertainties is
mere presumption."