Truth Magazine

By Phil Roberts

For many centuries after the close of the New Testament canon, the Bible was the only really well-known account of the events of antiquity. Consequently, the Biblical version of ancient history was pretty much taken for granted. Only occasionally would a dissenting voice arise. But the social and cultural upheavals of the 15th and 16th century Renaissance brought radical changes in the way Western man perceived himself and his world. This new perspective is now identified by the term “Humanism”-a philosophy based on an exalted confidence in man and his intellectual power, and usually accompanied by a corresponding decrease in man’s sense of dependence on God. “Man is the measure of all things.”

The trends established in the Renaissance reached their full flower in the 18th century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an epoch dominated by (1) an increased emphasis on humanistic philosophy, (2) an attitude of rebellion against traditional religious beliefs, and (3) the canonization of the “scientific method” as the only sure basis of knowledge. Under the spell of humanistic philosophy, however, the “scientific method” came to mean much more than a systematic, open-minded inquiry. Incorporated into the method was a rationalistic bias against anything purporting to be supernatural.

The implications of this new spirit for the study of the Bible were clearly articulated by A. Kuenen, one of the fathers of the modernistic approach to Israelite history. In the opening chapter of his book, The Religion of Israel(1882), he expressly declares that his methodology will admit no distinction between the origin of the religion of Israel and the origin of any other religion. “For us,” he says, “the Israelite religion is one of those religions; nothing less, but also nothing more.” And in his earlier book on The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (1877) he said, “So soon as we derive a separate part of Israel’s religion directly from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in even one single point, so long also our view of the whole continues to be incorrect . . . It is the supposition of a natural development alone which accounts for all the phenomena.” Notice that these comments do not come in the final chapters. They come at the very beginning of both books. They are not the conclusions which a modernist reaches after his study of the Bible. They are the “suppositions” with which he begins.

For the modernist, therefore, the task becomes that of a reconstruction of Bible history. The Biblical account cannot be true because it tells of the divine origin of the nation and religion of Israel. The modernist must, therefore, extract historical data from the supernatural mold of the Bible, and press that same data into a naturalistic mold. He must reconstruct Bible history. He does not consider his job one of disproving the accuracy of the Biblical account. The accuracy of that history and the arguments of those of us who believe it are simply rejected out of hand. His attitude toward us is succinctly stated by John Hayes in the recently published, encyclopedic tome, Israelite and Judaean History (1977). In this work of 767 pages, precisely one-half page of the introductory chapter is devoted to the conservative position. In that half page, Hayes gives a few examples of our beliefs, and then concludes with the following remark: “In the following chapters, practically no attention will be given to this view since it does not assume that one has to reconstruct the history of Israel.” There is, therefore, no confrontation between modernism and conservatism. As far as they are concerned, we do not exist. All their time and energy is consumed in developing and defending their various reconstitutions. And it is to those reconstructions that we now turn our attention.

The first full-blown modernistic reconstruction was put before the public in 1878 by the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen, in his book, Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Wellhausen of course rejected all of Gen. 1-11′ as pure legend. Likewise, he regarded the patriarchal stories of Gen. 12-50 as historically worthless legends, referring probably to whole nations rather than to individual patriarchs. But from the time of Moses onwards Wellhausen did not feel much need to reconstruct the outward political history of Israel. Indeed, he could even say in his article o n “Israel” in the Encyclopedia Britannica that “the historical tradition about Moses (as opposed to the legislative tradition-PR) is in its main features manifestly trustworthy.” No, to Wellhausen it was not so much the political history of Israel that needed reconstruction as it was the religious history. And the key to Wellhausen’s reconstruction of that religious history is found in his source-criticism of the Pentateuch-the famed “Documentary Hypothesis.” According to this theory the authorship of the first five books of the Bible was not to be attributed to Moses (ca. 1400 B.C.), but to no less than four separate authors from much later times. The oldest section, “J”, was said to have been written no earlier than 850 B.C., and even then exhibited a very primitive concept of God. Next came “E”, written about 750 B.C. and exhibiting an only slightly higher concept of God. The third section, “D”, is roughly the same as our present Deuteronomy and was written in 621 B.C. as a pious forgery, the sole purpose of which was to enforce the legitimacy of Jerusalem as the central sanctuary for the nation. This was presumably the document “found” by Hilkiah during the days of Josiah (cf. 2 Kings 22:8-20 and Deut. 12:1-14). The fourth document, “P”, was not composed until during or shortly after the Babylonian captivity (ca. 500 B.C.). It contained most of the complex legal material in the books of Exodus-Numbers. Finally, the whole thing was woven together into the form of our present Pentateuch about 400 B.C., perhaps by Ezra himself, and attributed to the legendary character of Moses to give it an air of authority.

Of course, these late dates made it possible to explain the miraculous stories about Moses and the origin of the nation as nothing more than legends which grew up around the great national hero later on. But more importantly, the division of the Pentateuch into separate strands coming from different time periods permitted Wellhausen to rearrange the contents of the Pentateuch in a way that would correspond to an evolutionary pattern of progression from simple to complex. Darwin’s theory was then in its heyday. In the reconstruction Wellhausen argued that Israel’s religion had at first been nothing more than a primitive, polytheistic faith in Jehovah as the national God of Israel. It was not until the time of the first great writing prophets, Hosea and Amos (ca. 750 B.C.), that Israel’s faith became truly monotheistic. And it was not until after the Babylonian captivity that the detailed cultic laws of sacrifice and priesthood were evolved.

All of this sounds very strange-quite absurd even-to those of us who accept the Biblical account. But Wellhausen’s reconstruction had great appeal to those who shared his naturalistic presuppositions. Yet, by the turn of the century criticisms from within the modernist movement itself began to arise. In Germany, these criticisms focused primarily on Wellhausen’s exclusive reliance on source-criticism, as opposed to the newer form criticism. In America, the criticism did not come until slightly later. But when it did, it came in a flood, and focused primarily on increasing archaeological evidence that the radical skepticism of the Wellhausen school was totally unwarranted. Moreover, in both countries the evolutionary model was rapidly becoming passe. As a result, by 1940 there was hardly a leading scholar anywhere to represent a true Wellhausen reconstruction. Only the documentary hypothesis survived to pass into the. canons of critical orthodoxy, and that with considerable modification.

In the wake of the disintegration of the Wellhausen school, the modernist movement divided into two camps regarding the reconstruction of Israel’s history. On the one hand is the Alt-Noth approach (Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth), represented in English by Noth’s The History of Israel (1960). On the other hand is the Albright-Bright approach (William Foxwell Albright and John Bright), represented best by Bright’s A History of Israel (1972). Both of these schools are thoroughly modernistic. They are, nevertheless, sharply divided over the proper way to reconstruct the history of Israel. This division is most apparent in their approaches to the history of the origins of Israel.

The German school of Alt and Noth approaches the history of Israel almost exclusively from a form-critical study of the Old Testament itself, searching through the Bible for the various sagas, legends, and myths which they believe were preserved at ancient Canaanite centers of worship such as Gilgal, Bethel, and Shechem, and eventually taken over by the Israelites. Presumably these legends were welded together by the Israelites to form the continuous narrative of the patriarchal stories in the Bible, which were then taken as an explanation of the origin of the nation.

But according to Alt and Noth, the true origin had been much different. The Israelites were not at all a unified nation decended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact, according to the Alt-Noth reconstruction there simply was no such thing as the nation of Israel until the time of the Judges. It was at that time that a number of unrelated, semi-nomadic tribes gradually and peacefully penetrated the land of Palestine from various directions and, at some time during the 12th century, bound themselves together in a twelve tribe league known as an amphictyony. This amphictyonic league was, according to Noth, the beginning of “Israel.” These “Israelites” took over both the Canaanite centers of worship and the legends attached to those centers; mixed the legends with fragments of their own; and wove the whole thing into the consecutive narrative of the patriarchs known to us through the Bible. In sum then, Noth believes that the Biblical account of the history of Israel is totally worthless for anything prior to the time of Saul and David; that the patriarchal and even the Exodus stories are nothing but cult legends; and that the real key to the origin of the nation is the formation of a twelve tribe amphictyonic league.

In contrast to all this is the American school of Albright and Bright. Focusing primarily on an archaeological approach, they have concluded that the origin of the nation of Israel was actually fairly close to the general picture presented in the Bible. Members of this school have severely criticized both the methods and the conclusions of the Alt-Noth school along three major lines: (1) a failure to utilize the results of archaeological research as an external control on their speculative literary analysis of the Biblical text; (2) building a theoretical reconstruction of Israel’s history around the concept of an amphictyonic league when in fact no evidence for the existence of any such league in Israel has ever been found; and (3) a simply unwarranted “nihilism” toward the value of Israel’s historical documents.

According to Bright, the patriarchs were real people, and the Biblical picture of them is essentially correct. They did indeed go down into Egypt and come out under the leadership of Moses. And the conquest of Canaan was a true military invasion, as recorded in Joshua. Of course all true miracles are eliminated from the account by Bright, and many errors and inconsistencies are found in the Biblical record. But his attitude towards Biblical history is, within the modernist spectrum, a very conservative one. And his reconstruction is not so much a reconstruction as an adjustment of Israel’s history to fit the methods of modern, humanistic historiography. Indeed, one gets the distinct impression that Bright and his school actually believe in some miracles. But their commitment to the methodology of naturalistic historiography prevents them from allowing this into their work.

Unfortunately, though, it is the Albright-Bright school that has most recently fallen into disfavor in modernist circles. That is not to say that the Alt-Noth reconstruction has survived intact. Critics are more and more inclined to reject the amphictyonic league as part of the early structure of the nation. But the rejection of the historicity of the patriarchal period is generally accepted, along with radical skepticism about the ethnic unity of Israel. It is my opinion that this ascendency of the Alt-Noth approach is due, not to any successful refutation of the criticism from the Albright-Bright school, but simply to the fact that its methods and conclusions are more in keeping with the presuppositions and spirit of unbelieving modernism.

The problems of the Alt-Noth approach are pervasive, however, and it is unlikely that this school will hold the field forever. Indeed, pressure is already mounting within critical circles, and the next few years will probably witness the rise of yet another reconstruction of Israel’s early history-most likely the one recently proposed by G. E. Mendenhall In His Book, The Tenth Generation (1973). Mendenhall, trained in the methods of the Albright-Bright school, nevertheless maintains the radical skepticism of Alt and Noth with regard to the historical reliability of the Biblical text. But he has rejected the concept of the amphictyonic league, and the idea that the tribes which eventually merged to form the nation of Israel were semi-nomadic invaders. Instead, he argues, Israel was created by a social revolution within Palestine. In other words, the lower classes of the indigenous population of Canaan revolted against the city-state overlords and banded together to form a new political unit named “Israel.” “Israel,” he argues, is not an ethnic designation but a political one. There was neither a conquest (Bright) nor a peaceful invasion (Noth). There was simply an internal social revolution. I suspect that this social revolution theory will be just the thing that will capture the fancy of a new generation of modernists needing a new reconstruction to replace the well worn and now frazzled AltNoth approach.

But the real concern for those of us who believe the Bible is not the next tack to be taken by modernism. It is our own stance in the face of modernistic criticism of Bible history. First, we must not hide our heads in the sand. We cannot afford to ignore either the modernist or his arguments. Second, we must equip ourselves to expose the basic fallicies of modernistic reconstructions. This is often a tedious task, but a number of books are available which will assist the believer. Perhaps the finest critique of Wellhausen and his school ever written is James Orr’s The Problem of the Old Testament (1926). Also of value in dealing with the documentary hypothesis is O. T. Allis’ The Five Books of Moses (1943). Unfortunately conservatives have yet to produce anything of real substance in dealing with the more recent schools of Bright, Noth, and Mendenhall. Some material may be found in O. T. Allis’ The Old Testament: Its Claims and Its Critics (1972). But Allis was a veteran of older battles, and many of his arguments against the newer schools lack cogency. At present, most conservative scholars seem content to play the Bright school off against the Noth school. This approach can be seen in R. K. Harrison’s excellent Introduction to the Old Testament (1969) and also in Kenneth Kitchen’s extremely useful Ancient Orient and the Old Testament (1966). This can be a dangerous game though, and it appears to me that several of its practitioners have actually come very near to surrendering to modernism’s presuppositions in the process. No such surrender is to be found, however, in Leon Wood’s A Survey of Israel’s History (1970), which is probably the best all round conservative history of Israel available today.

But last and most importantly, we must realize that the real gulf between us and modernism in the study of Biblical history is neither a matter of scholarship nor of argumentation. They work with the same data we do. They know it just as well as we do, and often better. It is naive for us to think we can overthrow them by argumentation from that data, because their position was not arrived at by argumentation from that data to begin with. Rather, their reconstructions are the interpretation of the data which is forced upon them by their anti-supernatural presuppositions and methodology. And until that philosophical impass is solved, no real communication with modernism is possible.

Truth Magazine XXII: 41, pp. 663-666
October 19, 1978

By Ron Halbrook

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty (2 Pet. 1:16).

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of (2:1-2).

Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen (3:17-18).

The gospel of Jesus Christ includes facts (1 Cor. 15:1-3), commands (Rom. 10:16), and promises (Col. 1:23). Any teaching which rejects any facts, commands, or promises in the gospel is heresy. No matter how popular or persuasive heresy may be, it is a betrayal of truth and a harbinger of eternal destruction. If we are to escape this destruction, if we are to be loyal to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we must grow in him and oppose the error of the wicked. The purpose of this study is to contrast the gospel of Jesus Christ to a system of religious thought known as Liberalism or Modernism.

Modernism undermines the commands and promises of the gospel by calling the facts of the gospel in question, especially in regard to miracles. The facts of the gospel are held in perpetual doubt by Modernists. They allege an admixture of fables in the gospel story and complain about the foibles of both those who wrote and those who hear the message. Liberalism is in many ways a negative religion: internally in disarray when viewed as a movement, but united in opposition to the gospel as recorded in the New Testament. It is our plan to show that the miraculous is found throughout God’s Word but that Modernism assaults the miraculous element as false or at least nonessential. After discussing the nature and ultimate results of Liberalism, we shall make an appeal for gospel preaching.

Miracles In The Gospel

Miracles are supernatural acts of supernatural power and origin. God is the creator of the natural order and therefore is not limited by it. The power which He exercised in creation may be exercised at other times according to His will. The word often translated “miracle” (dunamis) in the New Testament is the word for “power, inherent ability . . . used of works of a supernatural origin and character, such as could not be produced by natural agents and means” (Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words, 111, p. 75). Another term (semeion) used means “a sign, mark, token . . . used of miracles and wonders as signs of Divine authority” (ibid.)-“an unusual occurrence, transcending the common course of nature” (Thayer’s Lexicon, p. 573)-“an event that is contrary to the usual course of nature” (Arndt & Gingrich, Lexicon,p. 755). Often with the word “sign” appears the synonym “wonder” (teras), meaning “something strange, causing the beholder to marvel” (Vine, IV, p. 228). Each of the three words used tells us something about the nature and purpose of miracles: “A sign is intended to appeal to the understanding, a wonder appeals to the imagination, a power . . . indicates its source as supernatural” (ibid.). As J. Gresham Machen so clearly put it, “A supernatural event is one that takes place by the immediate, as distinguished from the mediate power of God . . . in the events called natural, God uses means, whereas in the events called supernatural He uses no means, but puts forth His creative power” (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 99).

God has acted above the limits we call natural in order to create that which did not exist, to reveal messages to men, and to authenticate those messages as Divine. Jesus said that God literally and directly created mankind “at the beginning” as is recorded in Genesis 1-3 (Matt. 19:1-5). Jesus believed that God had spoken through His Spirit to prophets such as Moses and Isaiah, and that such messages at times predicted the future (Matt. 22:31, 43; Lk. 4:1721). Specific miracles recorded in the Old Testament-supply of manna, the brass serpent, God’s gift of wisdom to Solomon, Jonah and the great fish (Jn. 6:31-32, 58; 4:1415; Matt. 12:38-42)-were accredited as true by Jesus in every case. He authenticated His own mission and message with miraculous signs, and provided the same authentication for personal ambassadors whom He sent out preaching (Jn. 20:31-32; Matt. 10:1-15; Mk. 16:15-20). Thus were the Apostles empowered to preach salvation in Jesus’ name, “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles” (Heb. 2:4).

The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be preached without treating as literal facts the creation, prophecy, the Old Testament miracles, the virgin birth of Jesus, His personal miracles, the miracles which He performed through His Apostles, the inspiration of Scripture in a supernatural sense, the forgiveness of sins, miraculous power exercised in the establishment and spread of the church, and both the hope of heaven and dread of hell. The God revealed by Jesus Christ is above nature as its creator and sustainer; by the very nature of his being, God can act above and beyond natural limits. This is the God of the gospel. To change Him in an effort to preach Him is to have another God, another gospel, and another religion.

Modernism’s Assault on Miracles

Centuries of apostasy from New Testament teaching prepared fertile ground for infidelity. The monolithic corruption and stagnation of the monolithic church-state known as Roman Catholicism spawned not only religious reformation in the 1500-1600s but also revolution in the 1700-1800s. In rejecting the supernatural superstitions perpetuated by Catholicism, and in embarking on the age of reason, many people dismissed the Bible teaching on miracles as a part of the evil to be escaped. Men failed to see that New Testament Christianity and its miracles were distinct from Roman Catholicism and its superstitions. The ebb and flow of these religious reactionary movements, increased in force by the strong currents of scientific and industrial advances, produced a tidal wave of naturalism between 1875 and 1925. The twentieth century has never recovered from the wreckage of the flood. Naturalism made twentieth-century man self-confident to the point of arrogance and self-sufficient to the point of infidelity. This naturalism was evidenced in the rise of evolution, applied to every phase of man’s thought including religion, and the rise of so-called higher critical studies applied to Scripture, treating it as of human origin. To this day, the assumptions of Liberalism or Modernism persist in much of American religious faith and practice.

Machen identified the root idea of Modernism as “the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity.” Modernism claims to mediate Christianity to the modern world but relinquishes “everything distinctive of Christianity, so that what remains is in essentials only that same indefinite type of religious aspiration which was in the world before Christianity came upon the scene” (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 7). In other words, what remains is the same sin, unbelief, guilt, despair, and hopelessness, the same rebellion and confusion, to which is “attached the terminology of traditional Christianity” (John Warwick Montgomery, The Suicide of Christian Theology, p. 28). Carl Henry clearly identified the major assumption of modern thought which makes all miracles suspect if not incomprehensible: “the space-time universe is viewed as ultimate and only within that broader context can room be made for a deity” (Remaking the Modern Mind, p. 208). This is immediately seen in a classical definition of Modernism given by spokesman Shailer Mathews in The Faith of Modernism: “It is the use of the methods of modern science to find, state and use the permanent and central values of inherited orthodoxy in meeting the needs of a modern world” (pp. 22-24). God must pardon the inconvenience, but His friends must put Him under the microscope and analyze His Word by the canons of Science! If He and His revelations do not seem to fit into the laboratory where the whole natural universe is studied, they can be made to fit.

Once Modernism starts its work, there is no stopping place until God Himself has been remade to order to fit the assumptions of Liberal research. The avowed atheist replaces God Himself with evolution; in order to make the gospel believable to modern man, the Liberal retains God but replaces the Genesis account of creation with the theory of evolution. In discussing the foundations of Liberal theology, proponent W. P. Montague pointed out how the acids of Modernism must eat deeper and deeper into Scripture:

When once the nose of the camel of doubt is permitted to enter the tent of faith there is no assurance as to where the invasion will stop. If any of the miracles of the Bible are rejected, the others become open to question (David E. Roberts and Henry Pitney Van Dusen (eds.), Liberal Theology, An Appraisal, p. 155).

Professor D. R. Dungan confided to J. W. McGarvey in 1908 and 1909 that at Drake University the faculty no longer believed “that Genesis represents the beginning of things correctly” and was ready to approve a B.D. thesis on the Messianism of Isaiah which denied all predictive prophecy in the book. Old Testament miracles such as Jonah and the whale are smiled upon as fables or parables. Jesus is made not an object of faith but an example, a “symbol,” an “illustration of the essence of religion” (Lyman Van Law Cady in Liberal Theology, An Appraisal, p. 147). His virgin birth and other miracles are explained away on naturalistic principles. His death for our sins and his bodily resurrection are given figurative meanings-they simply cannot be events beyond the meaning of the natural order of things. Miracles in connection with the establishment of the church and both the hope of heaven and dread of hell in a literal sense, all must be dismissed.

The center of Modernism’s assault is the verbal inspiration of Scripture, such as is affirmed in 1 Corinthians 2:13 (“things” and “words” which “the Holy Spirit teacheth”) and 2 Timothy 3:16 (“all scripture is given by inspiration of God” or breathed out from God). Such an authenticated and guarded text in the original manuscripts would guarantee the historical reality of each recorded miracle! The one unifying hope for different branches of Liberalism is “that tomorrow some fresh evidence of the unreliability of the Scriptures may be found” (I. M. Haldeman, A King’s Penknife or Why I Am Opposed to Modernism, p. 163). In one of the most celebrated blasts of Modernist warfare, Charles A. Briggs delivered The Authority of Holy Scripture: An Inaugural Address, castigating “Superstition” in the form of “Bibliolatry, ” “Verbal Inspiration, ” the “Authenticity” of Scripture, its “Inerrancy, ” “Violation of the Laws of Nature” (i.e. miracles), and “Minute Prediction” or “Predictive Prophecy. “

Ultimately, the God of the Bible and the God of Liberalism are two different deities. Infidelity is unbelief in the God of the Bible and Modernism is one form of infidelity. It denies the supernatural in Scripture, or dismisses the supernatural as non-essential, or explains the supernatural away. Modernists have a god but not the God of Scripture. Like the infidels of ancient times, they have “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man” (Rom. 1:23) and are therefore “without God” (atheoi, Eph. 2:12). Liberal advocate and editor C. C. Morrison admitted as much in his 3 January, 1924 Christian Century article “Fundamentalism and Modernism: Two Religions.” He might as well have been a prophet of Baal distinguishing himself from Elijah, in the following barrage:

There is a clash here as profound and as grim as that between Christianity and Confuscianism. Amiable words can not hide the differences. “Blest be the tie” may be sung till doomsday but it can not bind these two worlds together. The God of fundamentalism is one God. The God of the modernist is another. The Christ of the fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of modernism is another. The Bible of fundamentalism is one Bible; and the Bible of modernism is another. The church, the kingdom, the salvation, the consummation of all things-these are one thing to fundamentalists and another thing to modernists.

In like manner, Modernist educator W. C. Morro found J. W. McGarvey’s literal approach to the restoration of New Testament Christianity difficult to adjust “to reality or to a reasonable conception of God” (Brother McGarvey, pp. 133-34).

Gospel Preaching: The “Foolishness” of God

Modernism is the practical repudiation of God’s grace, while speaking much of grace. Everywhere miracles appear in connection with Christ, the Bible, the church, heaven, or even the Father Himself, doubt and denial reign supreme in naturalistic Liberalism. Like those who rejected Christ in the first century, Modernists discount the gospel as “foolishness,” label its miracles as insufficient for faith, and proceed as if human wisdom were all sufficient. Modernism is Ancientism: the world seeking God by means of its own wisdom, an experiment doomed by past attempts!

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God …. For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe (1 Cor. 1:18, 21).

Let us not lose confidence in the New Testament message, but preach it, preach it, preach it.

When we preach the facts of the gospel as true, we certify its commands and promises as true. Pressing the demands of the gospel in contrast to the doubts of Liberalism, W. W.Otey said in his Christ orModernism,

For three days the hope of the world hung on three words: I will arise.

For nineteen hundred years the hope of the world has hung on three words: He is risen (p. 72).

Because he arose, the gospel commands and promises are true. Knowing the gospel is true, we preach it with confidence that it will accomplish God’s purpose and satisfy man’s need. “There is no more perfect adaptation of light to the eye, food to hunger, water to thirst than the adaptation of Christ and the gospel to satisfy every need and desire of man’s spirit” (Otey, p. 13). Preach the gospel of Christ because it is eternal truth. Preach it because it heals the broken-hearted, delivers the captives, gives sight to the blind, frees the oppressed, and proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord (Lk. 4:16-21). Preach it without fear. Preach it without compromise. Preach it till death stills the tongue.

Truth Magazine XXII: 42, pp. 676-679
October 26, 1978

By Daniel H. King

The Nature of Contemporary Opinion

In order to dramatize the nature of the question with which we will be wrestling in the present article, at least for the sake of those who are uninitiated with regard to contemporary New Testament theology, we would like to quote from three thinkers who have been prominent in formulating the current debate:

Albert Schweitzer. “The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and died to give his work its final consecration never had any existence …. He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old by the lakeside He came to those men who knew him not.”

Rudolf Bultmann: “It seems then that the form of the earthly no less than the heavenly Christ is for the most part hidden from us. For all the inestimable value of the gospels they yield us little more than a whisper of his voice: We trace in them but the outskirts of his ways.”

R. H. Lightfoot: “I do indeed think that we can now know nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary, and other sources about Jesus do not exist.”

Doubtless the foregoing statements are shocking to you, if (as I am sure is the case with the bulk of our readership) you have not kept up with the writings of modern New Testament scholarship. Yet, they do not flow from the pens of avowed infidels or atheists as you might have thought but rather from professed “Christian” thinkers. What is more, their thinking represents the thinking of men who hold the most important posts in some of the most prestigious universities, colleges, and seminaries the world over. There is little wonder, therefore, that theological schools have generally come to be dubbed “theological cemeteries,” since “the faith once delivered” is now long dead and buried insofar as they are concerned. Theological study increasingly has taken on a resemblance to an autopsy performed on a corpse.

Bible scholars once read and devoutly analyzed the text of Scripture, asking, “What did it mean then and how does this apply to us today?” But contemporary writers and teachers spend their time asking “What did they (the early church) believe?” and see no connection whatever between this and the question, “What shall we believe?” The issue has come to be one of historical interest entirely. It has no relevance for us today.

But what brought about this change in terms of relevance? Naturally there are many factors that could be explored, as there are many streams that flow into the sea, howbeit the primacy of one in particular stands out above the rest. That is the so-called “Quest of the Historical Jesus.” And we would like to begin by attempting to trace out its origins.

History of the “Quest”

As Joachim Jeremias has said, “No one in the early church, no one in the Reformation and the two succeeding centuries thought of asking the question whether the historical Jesus and His message had any relevance for the Christian.” Whence then, did this problem arise? Well, as a matter of fact, the date of its birth can be precisely fixed at 1778. The question was a child of the Enlightenment. The earlier ages held fast to the position that the. Gospels give us absolutely reliable information about Jesus; they saw no problem here.

However, Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), professor of Oriental Languages in Germany, left a manuscript which after his death was published by G. E. Lessing. The last excerpt (of seven) was entitled – Concerning the Aim of Jesus and His Disciples. In it Reimarus distinguished between the aim of Jesus, which he claimed was to set up an earthly kingdom and deliver the Jews from the yoke of the Romans, and that of the disciples. Reimarus alleged that the purpose of Jesus had been thwarted and that the disciples (too lazy to go back to their jobs) stole the body of Jesus and invented the message of His resurrection. Hence, it was the disciples who invented the Jesus of the Gospels. This was the significant aspect of the thesis put forward by Reimarus, i.e. that the Jesus of history and the Christ preached by the church were not the same. Now, the representation of the historical Jesus as constructed by the eighteenth-century professor is seen today by all as absurd and amateurish. Jesus was no political revolutionary. Moreover, the sources bear unambiguous and trustworthy testimony that He was strongly opposed to the nationalistic zealot leanings of His environment. Additionally, Reimarus’ work was obviously an anti-Christian diatribe or hate-pamphlet and deserved little attention for that reason. Nevertheless he must be credited with the first attempt at distinguishing between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith.”

After Reimarus several rationalistic “lives of Jesus” were written, most of which to a greater or lesser extent denied the miraculous incidents in the Gospels. Usually they attempted to explain the accounts as having resulted from natural causes, Johann Hess (1741-1828) of Zurich, Franz Reinhard (1753-1812) of Wittenberg, Johann Jakobi of Walterhausen (1816), Johannes Herder (1744-1803) of Weimar, Heinrich Paulus (1761-1851) of Heidelberg, Karl Hase (1800-1890) of Jena, and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) of Berlin. As an example of this tendency, we might offer the method of handling the resurrection in the case of both Hase and Schleiermacher. Both men said that he was raised but that it could have been a return to consciousness from a trance instead of an actual resurrection from death. He merely “swooned” for a time and awoke.

David Strauss (1808-1874) shocked the world in 1835 with his Life of Jesus which was even more radical still. Strauss said that the church created the miracles of the Gospel through its “legend-creating faith.” But he stopped at the miracles and accepted the fact that Jesus had lived and that the Gospels told his story in a general way. However, Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) of Berlin and Bonn, went so far as to assert that everything that is known about Jesus is a product of the imagination of the early church, and as a consequence the conception that developed had no connection with any concrete personality called Jesus in the history of the world. Or to put it more succinctly, the historical Jesus never existed. This period came to be known as that of the “Christ-myth.”

Following up on the researches of Bauer, Arthur Drews in The Christ Myth and J. M. Robertson in Pagan Christs and Christianity and Mythology both argued that there was no historical proof whatever that the Jesus of the Gospels ever lived. The studies in comparative religion by Frazier, Gunkel, and Pfeiderer were drawn upon by them, especially with reference to Vegetation and Solar Myths, which formed the basis of the religions prevalent in the first century. This was surely the lowest ebb of the discussion and only a few were drawn into this radical position.

The next important era in the “quest” was the period which covers the first third of the twentieth century. This was the period of the “liberal lives of Jesus.” At this point the geographical picture changes slightly. For, up to this point all of the writers were from Germany. And, although German writers would still be the “cutting edge” in the debate, yet the scope became more international. Adolf Harnack (1901) the German, presented the most important and influential volume of this time. What is Christianity? — was its title and between its covers appeared the classic statement of the liberal theological position as to the significance of Jesus. For him, Jesus’ primary importance is seen in his message as it is included in his teaching: “If, however, we take a general view of Jesus’ teaching, we shall see that it may be grouped under three heads. They are each of such a nature as to contain the whole, and hence it can be exhibited in its entirety under any one of them. Firstly, the kingdom of God and its coming. Secondly, God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul. Thirdly, the higher righteousness and the commandment of love.” You will note that this liberal credo is singularly silent with reference to the miraculous, the deity of Christ, and matters of dogma or doctrine. This was intentional since all of such particulars had been abandoned by liberalism at this juncture. Other writers of this time who made their mark were Goguel of France, Mackinnon of Great Britain, Case of America, and the Jewish scholar Klausner. All of them denied that Jesus was the metaphysical Son of God; all agreed that a resurrection did not occur; all assumed the miraculous to be impossible; and furthermore, they all denied the possibility of writing a biography or history of the real Jesus by examining our Gospels.

As so often happens in critical scholarship, however, the entire nature of this debate changed with the entrance of a new generation of scholars upon the scene. Three names are connected with the downfall of the old liberal school: William Wrede who in 1901 published The Messianic Secret in the Gospels; Albert Schweitzer, whose work Quest of the Historical Jesus appeared in 1906; and Martin Kahler who authored The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, which came off the presses in 1892 but did not have its effect until much later. Wrede argued that it was no longer possible to obtain from the Gospels a real picture of the historical Jesus. Schweitzer made the same point, then constructed his own portrait of Christ. He said Jesus of Nazareth was a fanatical futurist who died in vain for his hope in the Second coming. Kahler on the other hand, distinguished between “Jesus” and “Christ”, intending by “Jesus” to describe the man of Nazareth; by “Christ” he understood the Savior proclaimed by the church. The two words for `historical’ also brought about a second distinction in the original German edition. For the term historisch meant for him the bare facts of the past, while geschichtlich meant that which possesses permanent significance. So, he placed in opposition to one another the so-called `historical Jesus’, as the lives of Jesus had sought to reconstruct him, and the geschichtlich, Biblical Christ, as the apostles proclaimed Him. This last figure was the one who concerned Kahler the most in terms of an existential appreciation of him. At first, however, Kahlar’s thesis went unheard; only in our time, when Rudolf Bultmann took it up, did it receive attention.

A single quotation from one of the scholarly journals of that day will reflect the condition of the Gospels in the minds of scholars as the result of the theories they had spun:

“As a result of the work of the Higher criticism the Four Gospels are a complete wreck as historical records . . . It can never be proved that an historical person uttered the great teachings of the Fourth Gospel . . . . As authorities for a life of Jesus they (the Synoptic Gospels) are hopelessly shattered by the assaults of the Higher Criticism. How little they tell us of an historic Jesus” (Hibbert Journal, Jan., 1911, pp. 346-347).

The introduction of form-critical techniques into this discussion gave the venture a slightly different twist, although writers were still dependent upon what had gone before. Hermann Gunkel, an Old Testament critic, first authored the method in that area, but it was left to Martin Dibelius to apply this system to New Testament literary documents. Rudolf Bultmann followed upon the heels of these men with a form-critical analysis which offered a fully developed existentialist philosophical approach. The History of the Synoptic Tradition was the title of the first of many books by him. His studies promoted the view that a quest for the historical Jesus is an impossible assignment, and his existential theology carried through the thesis that such a quest is illegitimate. He held that only a minimal knowledge about the earthly Jesus is necessary for faith: the fact of his existence and his death. Christian faith requires no historical foundation beyond the mere “thatness” of Jesus’ existence. Further, he claimed that Christian relevance and acceptance in the modern scientific age require reinterpretation of the New Testament in terms of an “existentialist non-miraculous prephilosophy.” In other words, the New Testament must be “demythologized” of its miraculous content. It is not hard to see in Bultmann the influence of M. Heidegger, an avowed atheist who said that Bultmann was “making theology out of my philosophy.” Two of his most influential disciples are Hans Conzelmann and Erich Dinkler of Gottingen and Heidelberg respectively.

After Bultmann it was left for others to justify a “quest” at all, since he had denied the need. The apology for the “New Quest” came originally from James M. Robinson in an article in The Christian Century. But it was followed by numerous efforts: Ernst Kasemann, Gunther Bornkamm, Ernst Fuchs, and Gerhard Ebeling, have all attempted to argue the validity of the historical element for faith. And this is fundamentally the way that things stand at this point in the discussion. There has been a movement away .from the thinking of Bultmann on the part of three schools of thought in scholarship: the post-Bultmannians, the “Heilsgeschichte” scholars, and the Pannenberg school. Conservative scholars have never shared his convictions, but they along with the aforementioned three groups are demanding a starting-point in the life and teaching of the historical Jesus.

Truth Magazine XXII: 40, pp. 649-651
October 12, 1978

By Mike Willis

I took a course in graduate work in which we studied the book of Psalms. Unlike some of the other work which I had in the book, this course selected several Psalms for special study which the professor described as the “Royal Psalms.” What this turned out to be was a study of the Messianic Psalms by a professor who did not believe that the Old Testament contained any prophecies of Jesus. As you might guess, I was in constant conflict with my professor and other students while in that class. Toward the end of the session, each student was requested to present a paper for class discussion regarding what he had gotten from the class. One student presented a paper on studying the psalms with presuppositions which prevented that person from seeing what the psalm actually said. The paper was obviously aimed at my presupposition that the messianic psalms had application to Jesus Christ and were prophecies of His life, work, death, arid resurrection. When the student finished his presentation, I immediately responded with a request that he consider his own presuppositions. He approached the psalms, with a presupposition that there was no such thing as predictive prophecy in the Bible, the acceptance of the evolutionary concept of the development of religion, the inherent goodness of man, etc. Our differences could not be ironed out until our presuppositions were the same. Hence, I called for a discussion of these presuppositions.

Though I got nowhere in class for making this statement, I am still convinced that modernism has a set of presuppositions all its own. We need to become aware of those presuppositions and how they affect where a man comes out with reference to what he believes. Hence, let us consider some of the presuppositions of modernism.

Naturalism

J. Gresham Machen stated that “the many varieties of modern liberal religions are; rooted in naturalism” (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 2). In religion, naturalism refers to the idea that “religion does not depend on supernatural experience, divine revelation, etc., and that all religious truth may be derived from the natural world.” Hence, one of the foundation presuppositions of modernism is that man does not have a divine revelation from God and that no supernatural phenomena have occurred ins this world.

Commenting about modernism’s acceptance of naturalism, James D. Bales wrote, “To the extent than modernism is consistent in its naturalism, and anti-supernaturalism, to that extent it pushes God away from man and silences His voice through undermining faith in the Bible. When it is fully consistent, in its anti-supernaturalism, it denies the existence of God. Consistent naturalism and evolutionism maintain that not only man but also his religious ideas have evolved. If this is true, man evolved the idea of God, and man created God instead of God creating, and revealing Himself to, man” (Modernism: Trojan Horse in the Church, pp. 28-29). Accepting this point of view, there are several other logical conclusions which modernism must accept as presuppositions.

Uniformity of Nature

If there has been no supernatural intervention in nature, nature has been uniform. By accepting the doctrine of the uniformity of nature, all of the miracles recorded in the Bible are neatly eliminated. This doctrine is based on the assumption that this world has always operated as it is presently operating. Inasmuch as men do not witness a creation of man from dust, a universal flood, a resurrection of a body from the dead, etc. today, they assume that these things never happened. Indeed, things which are extraordinary have such a presupposition against them that they could not ever have occurred.

Hume argued that a miracle was a violation of natural law. He said that no testimony was sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. Hence, there is a predisposition to disbelieve anything miraculous. With this predisposition to eliminate the miraculous, modernists proceed through their Bibles with a penknife to eradicate anything miraculous from its pages. Accounts of miracles are reinterpreted as myths or folklore. At any rate, they cannot be considered historical accounts of what actually happened on any given occasion. The adoption of the belief in the uniformity of nature is, consequently, one of the important presuppositions of modernism.

Evolution

Having rejected the Bible’s account of the origin of man and replaced it with naturalism, modernism accepts evolution as the explanation of the natural order of things. The acceptance of biological evolution is obviously in opposition to the Genesis account of creation. Genesis 1-3 cannot be true if biological evolution is accepted. When modernists accept the doctrine of evolution, they are forced to treat the account of creation as unhistorical and the story of Adam and Eve as some sort of mythological interpretation of the origin of man and the beginning of sin. All of this has ramifications for other doctrine of divine revelation.

Yet, evolution is not confined simply to the biological evolution of man; evolution has infiltrated nearly every field of study known to man. We should not be surprised, therefore, that there would be an evolutionary explanation of religion. The doctrine of the evolutionary development of religion conceives of religion as going through a number of stages of development. Rather than religion being conceived as God’s revelation of Himself to man, religion is looked upon as man’s desperate attempts to come to know a god who was probably his own invention in the first place (modernism’s concept of God depends upon how consistently the individual modernist applies his presupposition of naturalism). According to the evolutionary explanation of religion, man’s religion evolved through the stages of animism, totemism, polytheism, and finally arrived at monotheism.

Christianity is accepted by modernists as the highest development of man’s religion. (This reflects more of one’s bias than his ability to prove that one form of religion is better than another since the modernist also accepts relativism.) Christianity is by no means considered the only acceptable religion. Hence, the modernist would consider all religions to be acceptable but Christianity is just the. best religion of all of those which are available. All religions shed some light but Christianity sheds the most light. The Buddhist and Hindu can find access to God through their religions just as certainly as can the Christian.

The ramifications of this presupposition of modernism are so extensive that the very heart is removed from Christianity when these presuppositions are followed to their logical conclusions. Most modernists decide to abide in inconsistency and stop at some point less than total denial of Christianity. What they have left is not New Testament Christianity; it is twentieth century paganism disguised as Christianity.

Inevitability of Progress

Having accepted evolution, modernists looked upon the historical development of the world as one of progression. Human progress is inevitable if the doctrine of evolution is accepted. Man is evolving constantly and always improving. What was acceptable for men of the tenth century before Christ was not acceptable for Christ; what was acceptable for Christ is not acceptable for modern man. “The implicative of inevitable advance was drawn widely from the views both of Hegel, who fathered the modern idealistic movement which has insisted so strenuously on a spiritualistic explanation of the universe, and of Darwin, who stands as the fountain-head of most evolutionary naturalism” (Henry, op. cit., p. 39). Anything which was of the past was obsolete and outdated. It had to be cast aside as the useless refuse of by-gone ages. Even as outdated concepts of science, math, and philosophy had to be cast aside and replaced with new ideas, the religion of the Bible had to be updated. The idea of a blood atonement, hell, and sin had to be re-defined. Men no longer based their religion upon a revelation given once for all times; religion was thought to be in a state of flux. What was true for the past is not true for today.

I think that you can see what implications this had for any concept of authority. With these presuppositions, there could not exist any ethical or doctrinal absolutes. Everything is relative. What was sin for someone in the past may or may not be sin for me today. What was believed as factual for someone in the past may or may not be accepted as factual by me today. As a matter of fact, the modernist absolutely believes that there are no absolutes. To him there are no absolute truths!

Fosdick, for example, plainly states, “Of course there are outgrown elements in Scripture” (The Modern Use of the Bible, p. 94). He continued, “Here, then, is the first essential of intelligent Biblical preaching in our day: a man must be able to recognize the abiding messages of the Book, and sometimes he must recognize them in a transient setting” (p. 95). “It is impossible that a Book written two to three thousand years ago should be used in the twentieth century A.D. without having some of its form of thought and speech translated into modern categories. When, therefore, a man says, I believe in the immortality of the soul but not in the resurrection of the flesh, I believe in the victory of God on earth but not in the physical return of Jesus, I believe in the reality of sin and evil but not in the visitation of demons, I believe in the nearness and friendship of the divine Spirit but I do not think of that experience in terms of individual angels, only superficial dogmatism can deny that that man believes the Bible” (p. 129). 1 think you can see, from reading these quotations, Fosdick’s method of updating the Bible-he simply eliminates those parts of it which he chooses not to believe by reinterpreting them. He justifies this in the name of progress.

Conclusion

Modernism, my brethren, is a form of worldliness which tries to make Christianity acceptable through deleting those things which are offensive to the modern mind. If the belief in miracles is contrary to twentieth century thought, the modernist removes the belief in miracles. If belief in the blood atonement of Jesus Christ is offensive to modern thought, the modernist reinterprets the atonement. Modernism is conformity to this world rather than being transformed from it. Christians will be different when they reject the presuppositions of modernism in favor of the belief and acceptance of the divine revelation of God as found in the Scriptures.

Truth Magazine XXII: 42, pp. 674-675
October 26, 1978