Truth Magazine

By Thomas G. O’Neal

In this special issue of Truth Magazine, brother Mike Willis has asked that I write on “The Effects of Modernism” as my contribution to “An Assault on Modernism.” I want to commend Mike for his concern with the effect modernism is having on brethren. As editor he follows well in the foot steps of his brother, Cecil, who did much while editor to expose the modernism among brethren. Modernistic brethren did not appreciate Cecil’s work and they will not appreciate Mike’s effort with this special issue either. The one thing modernistic brethren cannot stand is exposure.

As best I can I want to write without overlapping my material with other writers but, with my approach to the subject, I am sure to some degree I will overlap with others.

What Is “It” That Effects?

In an effort to see what the effects modernism has had on brethren in the realm of “doctrine, evangelism, etc.” I believe it important to, as best I can, establish what modernism is.

Modernism, sometimes called liberalism, is difficult to define. Modernism is not like some doctrines that will admit an easy definition. “Once in grace, always in grace” is a doctrine that can be set forth in rather simple, yet definite, terms. This is not true of modernism. In my dealing with this matter, I have found out I can define it better by “examples” rather than a formal definition. There may be several reasons for this: (1) I know modernism is not so, therefore I have been much like the late, beloved Luther Blackmon told a young man going off to college. Said Blackmon, “Don’t learn a lot of stuff that isn’t so.” (2) Modernists do not agree among themselves. What one will accept, others will reject. (3) They change their song from time to time. I well remember the advice that brother B. G. Hope gave one time about the modernistic theory of evolution. He said one should learn the Biblical text for it would never change; but if one tried to keep up with all the material and different positions set forth by the evolutionist, it would be almost impossible.

Modernism is an attitude toward divine truth. When once a person sees what the attitude is, he can spot modernism wherever it is found, even though it may not look like it did the last time he saw it, and it will not, for this is one of the subtle ways modernism works. It does not always appear with the same suit, for soon everybody would recognize it.

Jesus said to his disciples, “If ye continue in my word . . . ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). The modernist is uncertain about everything except what the Bible teaches is not true. Brother Alan Highers said, “Some very fine men, who have received liberal theological education, and who are now teaching in some Christian colleges, give evidence in their teaching of the liberal influence upon them. They are giving forth, in fact with an uncertain sound” (Words of Truth, Sept. 4, 1964, page 3). The modernist is uncertain, but Jesus said from His word one could know the truth.

In a series of articles in the Gospel Guardian, brother Rufus R. Clifford, Sr., said, “Modernism is an attitude toward Bible teaching. It is disbelief in the elementary teaching of Christianity. Since modernism is an attitude toward divine truth, it must follow there are different shades and degrees of that attitude. The infidel, the skeptic, the agnostic, and the atheist are all modernists, but they. do not all hold the same degree of denial of God’s word” (Gospel Guardian, June 21, 1951, page 1). Alan Highers said, “Liberalism (or modernism, T.G.O.) may be broadly defined as a loose and lax attitude toward the inspiration and authority of the scriptures” (The Living Messages of the Books of the New Testament, page 310).

Shades of Attitude

Having seen that modernism is an attitude toward the Scriptures, next we need to see that everyone does not have the exact same attitude. Thus, we have shades, or different degrees, of that attitude.

Writing in the 1950s about some of the modernism that appeared in the Gospel Advocate literature, brother Robert C. Welch said, “Some modernists go so far as to deny the miracles, the virgin birth, and the resurrection of Christ. But not all of them will go so far. Others reject any inspiration in the writing of the Bible above that of the natural abilities of secular authors of classical works. Others will admit a degree of special inspiration, but limit it to mere thought impulses, possibly arising from circumstances facing the author, or from emotions stirred from existing conditions …. It is entirely possible for the modernist who denies verbal inspiration to believe in the virgin birth of Christ” (Gospel Guardian, Vol. 7, page 17).

Brother Yater Tant said in an article in the Gospel Guardian “Long before the final stages of modernism are reached, there are tendencies and actions which are definitely headed toward that final atheistic philosophy” (Gospel Guardian, Feb. 21, 1952, page 5).

Because modernism is an attitude and because there are different shades or degrees of that attitude, one needs to understand that all modernists do not agree. Yet they are united in their opposition to the religion of Jesus.

Modernism says that the God of heaven has not revealed his will to mankind in words that men can understand, therefore knowing the will of God. Further, man was not created by God but rather is the result of theistic or organic evolution. Being just a highly educated animal, and since God has not revealed His will, man has not transgressed God’s will and, therefore, has not sinned. Not having sinned, he does not stand in need of redemption, therefore, Jesus is not God in the flesh to die, shedding His blood, for the sins of man. The church of the New Testament is unimportant for man does not need to be a member of it. There is no hell to avoid and no heaven to seek after. Therefore, the impact “religion” should have on mankind is in this life. Concern of religion should be for the social welfare of man, thus the “social gospel” of modernism. Having given up all faith in “another world,'”‘ modernism centers its thoughts and hopes in “this world.”

Modernism uses the same terms. I have used in the above paragraph, but when I used such words as “God’s will,” “transgressed,” “Sinned,” “redemption” I have used them, meaning exactly by them what the New Testament writers meant by them, and what most people who will read this article understand them to mean. However, when modernism uses these same terms it has a different set of definitions to apply to them. This is how modernism often is deceitful and takes the unsuspecting in. I might add just here this is the way the young modernistic “princes” among us operate. But the old hard core modernist knows he is a modernist, knows everybody else knows he is a modernist and does not care. For example, to my knowledge, no one has yet been able to get Ed Fudge to give a simple “yes” or “no” to the question “Is instrumental music in worship sinful?” He has beat all around the bush and it is now time he beat the bush! Yet when I wrote the head of the theological department at the University of Chicago and ask him “Do you believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin?”, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ was bodily raised the third day from the tomb?” and “Do you believe the New Testament to be a divinely, verbally inspired book?” he answered in one word-“No.” A modernist is proud of his education but he cannot, or will not, express himself so the common man can understand him.

(1) What effect does all of this have on doctrine? This attitude causes one to examine Bible teaching by human wisdom and reject what does not seem reasonable.

(a) The virgin birth of Christ is rejected because in all of the evidence of mankind no person was ever born of a virgin, except the one time when Jesus was. It is unreasonable, therefore, the University of Chicago theological department head can say, “No. I do not “believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.” Nels F. S. Ferre of Vanderbilt said on page 191 of his book, The Christian Understanding of God, “Mary, we remember, was found pregnant before her engagement to mild Joseph. Nazareth was hard by a Roman garrison where the soldiers were German mercinaries. Jesus is also reported throughout a continuous part of history of art, it is claimed, to have been blonde. This is supposedly unnatural for the Mediterranean countries where this same tradition started and was continued. Hence Jesus must have been the child of a German soldier!” Modernism denies the virgin birth.

(b) After a year in college, I met the valedictorian of my high school class on the street of my home town. Specifically, I asked her about the Bible classes she had at David Lipscomb College. One she mentioned, telling me how much she liked it for the teacher she said took up each of the miracles and explained how it was possible for each of them to have happened. Modernism was present but she did not recognize it. Modernism explains by human wisdom how miracles are possible and the believer explains them in one word-God.

(c) Modernism denies the resurrection. The theological department head at the University of Chicago said, “No,” I do not “believe that Jesus Christ was bodily raised the third day from the dead.” One preacher in Washington, D.C. was quoted as saying “We liberal clergymen are no longer interested in the fundamental-modernist controversy. We do not believe we should even waste our time engaging in it. So far as we are concerned, it makes no difference whether Christ was born of a virgin or not. We don’t even bother to formulate an opinion on the subject” and a Virginia preacher said, “We have closed our minds to such trivial considerations as the question of the resurrection of Christ. If you fundamentalists wish to believe that nonsense we have no objection, but we have more important things to preach about than the presence or absence of an empty tomb twenty centuries ago” (Gospel Guardian, Vol. 8, page 476).

(d) Modernism denies creation and teaches evolution. Neal D. Buffaloe said in Mission, April, 1969, “It is true that the thesis here defended does conflict with the Bible as literally interpreted. In fact, any acceptance of organic evolution leads logically to such a conflict. One must accept all of evolution or none. And the evidence for organic evolution is overwhelmingly convincing . . . either the Genesis account of the `days’ is non-literal or it is false.” This is the kind of modernism brother Keith Sharp had to expose when he recently met this Buffaloe in debate. Modernism denies man is a creature of God’s creation but is the product of organic evolution.

(e) Modernism denies verbal inspiration of the Bible. In an article in Mission, January, 1972, Warren Lewis said, “Scripture does disagree with itself . . . one says one thing but another says something which does not square with what the other said …. Each of the Gospel writers paints a picture of Jesus which cannot be forced to agree with the other three pictures . . . . Yes, they all point to Jesus; but one wonders which Jesus to believe in …. How can we say that scripture is breathed of God and profitable when it has jarring, clashing disagreements within it, when it makes up things that most likely did not happen, and when what it teaches about Jesus in one place does not tally with what it teaches about Jesus in another place . . . Nor does 2 Timothy say that the writers of scripture were `inspired’ . .what about the clashes and jars? The knots of disagreement in scripture which cannot be united . . . the disagreements are at the heart of the meaning of scripture . . . . Every truth about Jesus Christ in one gospel can be turned around in another Gospel.” This modernist denies the Bible is inspired, saying the gospel writers made up things about Christ that did not happen, and differ about the life of Christ, with each writer disagreeing with the others. This is the modernist’s view of the Bible.

Therefore modernism says man evolved from lower animals, that Jesus neither was virgin born, worked miracles nor was raised from the dead and the Bible is not inspired of God, but rather a book of disagreements. It attacks the very center of Bible teaching, denying its doctrine. About the only thing modernism is sure of is that the doctrine of the Bible is not true.

(2) What effect does all of this have on preaching and teaching or evangelism? If modernism is so, then there is no need for any evangelism. If Jesus was not virgin born, worked miracles and was raised by the power of God from the tomb, then it does not make any difference whether one hears of Jesus or not. Hearing about Abraham Lincoln would do just as much for one as hearing about Jesus, if he is not the Son of God.

If modernism is true, there is no need to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” for there is no gospel to preach. There is no Christ to tell about. Why should one hear of Jesus of history any more than Lincoln of history?

What then does modernism do about “church activity”? It says “we have more important things to preach about than the presence or absence of an empty tomb twenty centuries ago.” What is it that is more important? One modernist says, “We do not teach the Bible to our young people. Our youth program is centered around recreation” (Gospel Guardian, Vol. 8, page 476). “Recreation” is “more important” than the Bible. We observe many religious bodies, including some churches of Christ, that have given up the concept of teaching the Bible and have centered much of their activity around providing recreation. The more recreation that is provided the less Bible teaching is done; the less Bible teaching that is done the more modernistic the church becomes. Churches of Christ have not been in the business of providing recreation long enough to completely leave off Bible teaching and center their program completely around recreation. However, to the extent that they set aside Bible teaching for recreation, to that extent they become more modernistic. There was a time when the denominations did not have recreation, but it took time for them to bring it in. There was a time that one would have been hard pressed to find a church of Christ providing recreation, but not so any more.

The more recreation the less interested a church is in evangelism. Preaching the Bible to the lost takes a back seat to recreation. Thus, recreation will eventually kill New Testament evangelism. This is the effect of modernism on evangelism. Why? Because modernism not only denies the deity of Jesus but says man is an evolved animal. Thus, he has not sinned, is not lost in sin, does not need redemption and there is no heaven to which he can go. So why tell him about Jesus the Son of God that does not exist? Help him have a_ good time here for there is no after life. A generation of modernism and evolution taught has convinced people that they are just animals, thus they live like animals. Much, if not all, of the problems of today’s society is the result of modernism being accepted and put into practice.

Truth Magazine XXII: 42, pp. 679-682
October 26, 1978

By Daniel H. King

Did Jesus Really Live?

The tenor of scholarship has changed since the period of the “Christ-myth” scholars and it is probable that there is not to be found a single writer who would argue that Jesus was only a fiction and the figment of the disciple’s imagination. Yet, in this fact do we not find illustrated the fickeled nature of the learned theorist? He is always looking for something new and different- and he will find it even if he must invent it. His mortal enemy is the theorist or scholar of the last and preceding generations. As long as their theories are in the spotlight his are not. So he must undermine theirs and establish his own. So it is and so it must ever be with those who make human learning their idol and reverence it as their god.

Now, to begin with, the view of the French writers and Bruno Bauer who classed Christianity among the mythical religions should never have been expressed. Is it not true that from the very beginning the church had bitter enemies, shrewd and powerful, who sought every available weapon of attack? Had there been factual basis for the supposition that this Christ the Christians worshiped was an invented fable, would not they have used it? Yet, so far as is known, no one thought of such a possibility until close to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Had Jesus not really lived, none would have known it better than the Jews, and, had it been possible, they surely would have raised that issue. On the contrary, all Jewish attacks on Jesus take for granted his life and death in Palestine. Says the Talmud: “On the eve of the Passover Jesus of Nazareth was hung. During 40 days a herald went before him crying aloud: `He ought to be stoned because he has practiced magic, has led Israel astray and caused them to rise in rebellion. Let him who has something to say in his defense come forward and declare it.’ But no one came forward, and he was hung on the eve of Passover” (Sanhedrin, 43a).

Later Jewish writings make many claims against him. They say: he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pantheras (a word play on the Greek word for virgin, Parthenos); his mother’s name was Mary, and she was a dresser of women’s hair; he was a “revolutionary” and he “scoffed at the words of the wise”; he worked miracles by means of magic brought out of Egypt; he had devoted disciples who healed diseases in his name; he was a heretic who sinned and caused the multitude to sin, and he “led astray and deceived Israel”; he was about 33 when he was put to death; and he was executed on the eve of Passover. But they never said he did not exist!

As Neil poignantly argued in an essay in the Expository Times:

“The Christ-myth theory foundered on the rocks of hard facts. No serious historian-Christian or non-Christian-would subscribe to the theory that Jesus never existed. The evidence is conclusive on any reasonable view that a man called Jesus lived in Palestine 2000 years ago, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. This much is not a matter of dispute.”

The evidence from Josephus (Antiguties 18:3, 3 and 20:9, 1), Tacitus (Annals, XV 44). Pliny’s letter to Trajan, and Suetonius (Life of Claudius 25), have not even been considered here for sake of brevity.

Did the Church Create the Jesus of the Gospels?

Extreme Form-critics say the early church created the major features of Jesus life and teaching as portrayed in the Gospels. This meets with the problem that communities, as such are not thus creative-not in music, art, philosophy, science, morals or religion. Communities can furnish favorable conditions for creativity, can help at the start and radically modify the result afterwards, but it takes creative personalities to account, in all such realms, for the unique, original discoveries. For instance, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music was largely lost sight of for a century, and then gathered around it an enthusiastic following of those who hailed Bach as the prince of musicians. It would be preposterous, though, to suppose that the community of his followers created the music, and that Bach was only an imaginary mouthpiece through which the group spoke. Nothing like the originality of Bach’s music or Jesus’ unique contribution to ethical and religious life and thought is ever explicable without creative personality.

Another obstacle to the view of the Form-critical school of thought has to do with the nature of the community which is supposed to have produced this distorted picture of their Lord. It must be remembered that disciples of Christ were people dedicated to the propagation of truth. No aspect of their lives individually or corporately lived was to reflect dishonesty or guile. A simple perusal of an analytical concordance will reveal this fact. Their intention is everywhere consistent with the thought reflected in the preface of Luke the historian, “it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee . . .” (Luke 1:3). And it must not be forgotten that most of these men sealed their writings with their own blood. Not a single one renounced the things that he had recorded. To a man they left this world convinced that they would meet their resurrected and glorified Lord on the other side of death! So impressed am I and a host of others (even in the twentieth century!) with their testimony and their faith that we share it and have the same conviction.

Are the Gospels Accurate Accounts?

Five points need to be considered in connection with the arguments which have been leveled against the accuracy of the Gospels and the writers who produced them:

1. It is assumed that the memories of the writers were no better than those of present-day scholars and, therefore, would have been prone to forget exact details and enlarge the happenings in a legendary and even mythical way. However, two facts militate against this presupposition. First, oriental memories-especially those of trained teachers-are incomparably more retentive than our own. Second, we must recall that their memories were not left unaided in recollecting the events of Jesus’ life and the words from his mouth. Their mental capabilities were quickened by the Divine Spirit: “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you” (Jn. 14:26).

2. Again, the assumption of the Higher Critic is that as time passed the accounts grew and so did the portrait of Jesus such that in point of fact the Jesus that was preached (the Kerygmatic Christ) bore very little resemblance to the Jesus who actually lived (the Jesus of history). But this assumes that a great amount of time had elapsed before the writing of the Gospels, and that is an assumption which the facts do not allow. The first Gospel was written when there were still plenty of people alive who were contemporary with Jesus and could have easily exposed it as a fraud if it had not been true.

3. When we compare our four Gospels with the fantastic legendary excesses of the lives of Jesus that came to be written in the second century we can be confident that the picture given us is reliable and historically accurate. He knows hunger, weariness, pain, disappointment, etc.-and we would not expect any of these in a legendary account.

4. There is also the matter of the internal features of the accounts which appear the more striking in the light of current scholarly opinion. H. B. Swete in his essay, “The Trustworthiness of the Gospel Narrative” which appeared in Critical Questions (London, 1906), said it so admirably that we will simply quote him here:

“Can the Gospels be equally trusted when they draw the picture of their central character? Is the Christ, as they portray Him, an historic person, or is he the creation of the Evangelists or of their Apostolic predecessors? . . . Such a view . . . will not bear close examination with the Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptic Christ calls Himself the Son of man, a name which is but once given to Him by His followers. He reveals His messiahship only by degrees, and not publicly until just before the end. He lives with the twelve on terms of intimacy; Peter even once ventures to rebuke Him. His transfiguration is the one occasion on which His superhuman glory is revealed, and the three witnesses are forbidden to speak of it during His lifetime. He is “meek and lowly in heart”; He is at home with poor folk and little children; He sends the rich empty away. Adoration is rarely offered to Him; He does not even accept the title “Good Master”, without protesting against a possible misapprehension. This is not such a conception of Christ as could have originated in the Apostolic Age. Still less was it suggested by Jewish expectations; a Messiah who refused a crown, who lived the life of an itinerant teacher, who suffered the death of the cross, was not such a Messiah as any Jew of that time looked for or desired. Whence, then, came the picture of the Christ which the three Synoptic Gospels consistently offer? I can see no escape from the conclusion that it was drawn from life. The Central Figure of the Gospel Story, no less than the surroundings, bears the stamp of truth” (pp. 51-52).

5. Our last bit of evidence has to do with the discipline of archaeology. This relatively new science has had a remarkable effect upon the study of both biblical testaments. Assuredly the greater boon has been in the area of Old Testament and its Ancient Near Eastern background. But New Testament and Gospel research have also benefitted therefrom. F. F. Bruce has summarized its contribution thusly:

“New Testament archaeology . . . has enabled us . . . to identify a large number of sites mentioned by the apostles and evangelists. At times it has succeeded in pinpointing the location of an ancient city whose name and whereabouts had long since disappeared from popular memory. At other times a tomb, a monument, or the foundations of a building have come to light and helped us to understand better some New Testament incident associated with the place in question” (“Archaeological Confirmation of the N. T.,” in Revelation and the Bible, ed. by Carl F. H. Henry (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), p. 320).

Simply put, archaeology has placed the Gospels squarely in the arena of history, giving much greater credence to the accounts themselves than to those who have attacked them over the past century.

Conclusion

Our conclusion is a very simple one. Perhaps some will consider it infantile, but it is nevertheless true. The “Quest of the Historical Jesus” is a search which never should have begun. It was illegitimate from the outset. The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith have always been one and the same. The accounts given to us by the Gospels are historical in nature. That does not imply that they are impartial accounts. They do not even try to be impartial. But that does not mean they are inaccurate. They record what happened not for its own sake, but because they saw the hand of God at work. To their writers Jesus was a unique Person who came on to the stage of history by the direct intervention of God and in the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Could men who thought in this way be expected to write a prosaic matter-of-fact record of the events? Of course not! But it is one thing to say this and another to claim that the Gospels are simply what the writers thought about Jesus and not what Jesus actually did and said.

Moreover, it is good to see some scholars beginning to move in this direction as well. 1. Howard Marshall closes his recent study with the following paragraph:

“I believe in the historical Jesus. I believe that historical study confirms that he lived and ministered and taught in a way that is substantially reproduced in the Gospels. I believe that this Jesus gave his life as a ransom for sinful mankind, and that he rose from the dead and is the living Lord. And in view of these facts I trust in him and commit my life to him” (l Believe in the Historical Jesus(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977), p. 246).

We shall hope to hear more of the same from other writers of repute in the years ahead. Surely the pendulum has swung as far as it will in the other direction!

Truth Magazine XXII: 41, pp. 660-662
October 19, 1978

By Leslie Diestelkamp

When Adam and Eve walked innocently in the Garden of Eden they represented and demonstrated God’s first grace and the greatest of God’s temporal gifts to humanity. In creating them altogether suited to each other, and in establishing the family arrangement, God had elevated humanity to a much higher level than all the other created beings. In arranging that each man should thereafter have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband, God provided the maximum in earthly possessions for us and supplied the ultimate in human satisfactions.

So much of the world that God created for our good has been abused by mankind, and this is most significantly true of the family. The beautiful rivers and lakes have been contaminated by man’s pollutants. The grandeur of the mountains has been scarred by the engineering feats of man. Even our atmosphere has been polluted by the industry man has devised. So it should not surprise us to discern that the family, God’s greatest gift to us, has also been defiled.

It was God’s intent that each man and each woman should be able to enjoy the companionship and benefit from the relationship that is the natural result of marriage. Likewise it was God’s design that each child should be born into the sheltered circumstance that only the family circle can provide. But God did not put a great banner high in the sky, where all could see, telling each man to take his own wife and each woman to receive her own husband. Instead, he instilled in the mind and body of man an instinctive and altogether natural desire for each other. There are and always have been significant exceptions to this principle (those who have no need and/or no desire for marriage and its relationships). Likewise, there have always been and still are perversions and abuses of God’s law regarding the family relationships (fornication, homosexuality, divorce, etc.).

The High Ideal

Even in these modern times when materialistic pursuits seem to prevail, when humanity seems to seek first the pleasures of this world, when the love of money is so great and the minds and bodies of the people seem to be given over to sensualism, there still remains the lovely, the beautiful and the pure that is reached only to the fullest extent in the sanctuary of the family circle.

The ideal in romantic love is perhaps demonstrated best by the story of Jacob’s love for Rachel (see Gen. 29:15-20). Notice that the Bible says, “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had for her.” In the Song Of Solomon we have the beautiful story of the love of the maiden and her humble sweetheart, a love that prevailed over the ardent wooing of King Solomon who wanted the maiden for his own. (Note: I do not pretend to know all the involved principles in this story and I decline to speculate on its application, as some would, to Christ and the church. But, whether it is a true story or a symbolic one, the romantic features of it are beautiful and meaningful).

My appeal in this essay is to Christians. We must not take marriage and parenthood for granted. We have the opportunity in these times to maximize the high ideal that God intended. We can, if we will, exemplify righteousness coupled with joy, holiness combined with happiness. We can have the greatest of life’s satisfactions while escaping the most terrifying of life’s tragedies. We can provide peace and tranquility at home that will enable us to face the carnal, materialistic world about us without fear.

Some may say I have over-simplified the matter and made it appear too easy. No, indeed, I have not said these ideals were always easy to reach. I have simply said they are possible! And I urge us to remember that they are worth the effort!

Thirty-five years ago a soldier came to me and admitted that he had strayed from “the straight and narrow.” But he said, “There was always one thing that kept me from going too far, and that always brought me back to the right way.” He did not tell me of great preachers he had heard in his youthful days in Oklahoma, nor of great churches he had attended, but he told me of the family circle “at home.” He told me that he could never forget that every night before bed-time his father would gather the whole family together and they would read the Bible and pray. The impact of that experience throughout his childhood saved him, he suggested, from complete departure. I think he later became a gospel preacher.

Where The Power Is

We are told that one great journalist of the previous century had been to Washington but was stranded in a small community en route to his home. There he participated in a family worship (devotional) in the humble home where he spent the night. Then he began to write a series of articles about our national capitol. He said, “I have been to the capitol of the U.S., but it is not in Washington, but in the homes of America where the Bible is read and where prayer is offered to God.” How true!

More significantly, I believe that if one wants to see the real kingdom of God today, that is, if he would observe the Spirit of God working through the instrumentality of the living Word, then he must go, not to the great cathedrals or even to the humble meeting houses where faithful saints meet, but to the firesides, to the family circles where devoted Christians live and love in joyful togetherness with each other and in sweet communion with God.

“Home, home, sweet, sweet home. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” Thank God for his grace in giving us home, sweet home!

Truth Magazine XXII: 43, p. 690
November 2, 1978

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