Chapter V
The pioneers of the Higher Criticism, as already noticed, turned aside to undertake the task of commending the Bible to the Rationalists. Their aim was laudable, but the method by which they sought to attain it was utterly mistaken. For in the sphere of faith, as in that of morals, all compromise is impossible.
But the parallel suggested by these words must not be pressed. The religion of the superstitious sceptic, who swallows a camel while he strains at a gnat, is deserving only of contempt. But I would dissociate myself from those who despise the honest and fair agnostic. Science and religion are both alike intolerant of all who refuse to accept their decrees. But the intelligent and sincere Rationalist is entitled to respect and courtesy.
In this spirit it is that I would enter on the consideration of the position and views of one of the great scholars and thinkers of the day — I refer to Dr. Harnack. Principal of the University of Berlin. And “What is Christianity?” is the work which I select for analysis. In Germany, of course, the book is widely read, and a translation has introduced it to the English public. My purpose is to show that the author of this volume has achieved the task which Eichhorn attempted, and that, in his case, the pseudo “Higher Criticism” has led to absolute Rationalism.
The note which dominates the treatise is struck on the opening page. His purpose is “to remind mankind” “that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once stood in their midst.” Not that “a man of the name of Jesus,” who “once stood in their midst,” is the Christ, the Lord of Glory — this is the very foundation of Christianity — but that the life and teaching of “the historic Jesus” deserve the attention of mankind.
A man of the name of Jesus Christ. Not only does the author fail to acknowledge Him as the Lord Jesus Christ, but throughout this book he abstains from using even the title that is so familiar to the Christian. We need not be surprised, therefore, at his telling us that the question, “What is Christianity?” does not find answer in the Divine revelation of which the Lord Jesus Christ is the sum and substance, but resolves itself into “the purely historical theme: What is the Christian religion?”
The spiritual Christian has learned to distinguish between Christianity and “the Christian religion,” but Dr. Harnack makes no such distinction. For not even “the historic Jesus” Himself will afford ‘’ the materials “for his inquiry;” we must include the first generation of His disciples as well.” Nor will even this suffice. For, he tells us,” Jesus Christ and His disciples were situated in their day just as we are situated in ours; that is to say, their feelings, their thoughts, their judgments, and their efforts were bounded by the horizon and the framework in which ‘pp. 6, 9. ‘p. 10.
their own nation was set, and by its condition at the time.” This being so, our “materials” must not be limited even to the life and teaching of “Jesus Christ and His disciples “: to ascertain aright what is Christianity “we must include all the later products of its spirit.”^
But, of course, “Jesus Christ “and His” message “are of principal importance. What, then, are ‘’ our authorities” here? The answer is, in words, “the first three Gospels.” “In words,” I say; for let no one suppose that he may accept any one of the three as trustworthy. Before the worshipper can betake himself to the sanctuary he must repair to the professor’s classroom to learn how much or how little of all on which his faith rests has escaped in the general wreck.
Our first staggering blow will be the discovery that “the history of Jesus’ birth “is worthless.” Two of the Gospels do, it is true, contain it,” but yet “we may disregard it.“* The Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, must thus give place to Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph; a man whose mind was warped by a petty provincial environment,^ whose religious teaching, therefore, taxes our ingenuity to discriminate between the element of kernel and of husk;^ a man who beHeved in such ‘’absurdities” as “stories of demons,” ’ and whose views on social questions were biassed by “his eschatological ideas and his particular horizon.”
p. 12. ‘p. 10. ‘p. 19.
p. 30. p. 12. ‘p. 55.
‘p. 58. ®p. lOI.
PSEUDO-CRITICISM 4d
The next blow to faith will be the discovery that the .resurrection is a mere “belief.” Here the language used is that of Christianity, but that is all.” .Whatever may have happened at the grave and in the matter of the appearances, one thing is certain,” we are told, ‘’ this grave was the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life eternal.” ’ ‘’ Whatever may have happened “; for, as the author says, “It is not our business to defend either the view which was taken of the death, or the idea that He had risen again.”
“Views” and ‘’ ideas,” not facts. The only facts left us are that there was once “a man called Jesus Christ,” and that He died upon a cross. “The conviction that obtained in the Apostolic age that the Lord had really appeared after His death on the cross may,” Dr. Harnack tells us, “be regarded as a coefficient.” ‘It is not that the fact of the appearances was ‘’ a coefficient,” but merely the belief that there were appearances. And this distinction is emphasised by the context. For this statement immediately follows a reference to the “coefficient” of a mistaken expectation of Christ’s near return.
“The Christian religion,” so-called, abounds with delusions and frauds, and Dr. Harnack’s “Christianity “is no better.” That Jesus’ death on the cross was one of expiation “is also an” idea.” “It belongs to a class of ideas that “respond to a religious need.” And, as the author adds, “History has decided in its favour, and we are beginning to get in touch with it.”
More than this, “Everywhere that the just man suffers, an atonement is made which puts us to shame and purifies us.”^ “These are the ideas which have been suggested by Christ’s death,” and “they have taken shape in the firm conviction that by His death in suffering He did a definitive work; that He did it ’ for us.’” ’
Then there are the miracles. A friend of mine once averted a disaster by “heahng “a man upon whom the safety of a party of travellers depended. Their hale, rough, mountain guide was seized with a sudden illness, and lay down to die. By the use of a strong will, and a bottle of hair-wash from his valise, he had the man on his feet again in half an hour. I once got him to tell the whole story to the late Sir Andrew Clark, and I remember well the response it evoked, uttered in Sir Andrew’s staccato style: ‘’ I thoroughly believe in a gift of healing.” So also does Professor Harnack; and thus he is able to accept what I may call the everyday miracles of the ministry. For, he tells us, “Historical science in the last generation has taken a great step in advance by learning to pass a more intelligent and benevolent judgment on those narratives.”
And yet, with strange inconsistency, he writes: —
“It is not miracles that matter; the question on which everything turns is whether we are helplessly yoked to an inexorable necessity, or whether a God exists who rules and governs, and whose power to compel Nature we can move by prayer and make a part of our experience.” *
pp. 159. ‘p. 159. *P. 24. p. 30.
Now this entirely explodes the infidel argument against miracles. For the seeming force of that argument depends on the fallacy that a miracle is a violation of the laws of Nature, whereas in fact it is but “the introduction of a new agent possessing new powers.” Once we acknowledge a God who rules and governs and can “compel Nature,” the credibility of Divine miracles resolves itself into a question of evidence, and a refusal on a priori grounds to examine the evidence betokens sheer materialism or stupidity.
Take Joshua’s miracle, for example. “That the earth in its course stood still “(Dr. Harnack declares)” we shall never again believe.” - Some of us who did once believe it have given it up. For the Bible does not state it. Joshua’s prayer was that the sun might “be silent.” And the record of what follows explains this Hebrew figure of speech: “The sun was silent in the half of the heaven, and hasted not to go down a whole day.” It is incongruous to say that “the sun stood still and hasted not to go down.” When we say that a man did not haste to catch a train, we imply, not that he sat down, but that he went to the station slowly. And so here: the sun lingered in the [visible] half of the heaven. And if we believe in a God who
Nature is, of course, but one sphere of God’s government, and, therefore, to speak of God’s “compelling Nature” seems incongruous. Upon this whole question of miracles I take the liberty of referring to my book, “The Silence of God,” especially chapter iii.
‘p. 28.
The word is so rendered with rare exceptions in all its one hundred and seventeen occurrences. The rendering “in the midst” suggests the grotesque idea that at noonday Joshua has power over “Nature,” His retarding the rotation of the earth does not seem more wonderful than an engineer’s “slowing down” the great wheel of a steam engine.
Professor Harnack’s purpose being to reduce the facts and the phenomena of what he calls “Christianity” to the level of Rationalism, he reads the New Testament with a predetermination to refuse everything which clashes with his own system. Not only, therefore, is the story of the birth rejected, but also that wonderful narrative which he dismisses as “a curious story of a temptation.” And the Messiahship, the eternal Sonship, and the Atonement are, like the Resurrection, relegated to the category of “ideas.”
The Gospel of John, of course, goes overboard. It “does not emanate from the Apostle John,” and it “cannot be taken as an historical authority in the ordinary sense of the word.” The genuineness of the Fourth Gospel is too well established to be dismissed in this jaunty way by a wave of the hand. But let that pass. A sceptic both by temperament and by: training, I propose to examine his scheme from the standpoint of thorough, relentless scepticism.
And let no one be either stumbled or offended by my words. When I here speak of “Jesus” I am referring to Dr. Harnack’s Buddha, the mythical founder and hero of his Neo-Christianity.
gave a drill-sergeant command to the sun to halt, and it stood still! Common sense might tell us that the need would not arise till the sun was sinking, and it became clear that the approach of night would enable the enemy to escape, ‘p. 19.
“The teaching of Jesus” is the basis of it. But what do we know of His teaching? Let me test this by an illustration. The Judge’s charge to the Grand Jury in opening the assizes for a county always commands attention in Ireland. And for some years I used to supply the leading Dublin newspapers with reports of all such charges delivered on the circuit to which I was attached as a barrister. I could not write shorthand; but by recording the key-words of every sentence I was able to furnish a verbatim report from memory. On the only occasion that my accuracy was ever challenged, the Judge himself confirmed it when appealed to. I found, however, that if even a few hours intervened the spell was broken, and I could not attempt more than a precis. And after the lapse of months, or even weeks, I should have hesitated to supply a precis. But here we are asked to believe that men who had no special aptitude for such a task, and who, we are told, are not always to be trusted even when they record events that occurred before their eyes, transcribed, long after they were uttered, the very words of prolonged discourses, such as the Sermon on the Mount. Was there ever a suggestion more utterly unworthy of acceptance by sensible people! Is it not clear as light that Matthew is the real author of the Sermon on the Mount?
But this is not all. Put the question to any Chris-
Of course I am arguing on Dr. Harnack’s assumption that the Gospels are mere human documents, and not divinely inspired. The question of inspiration is too large for discussion here. I beg to refer to my book, “The Bible and Modern Criticism,” especially chaps, vii. and xiii.
tian, “If you were forced to give up three of the Gospels, which would you retain?” and the prompt and unequivocal reply is always “John.” To the Christian the words of the great Teacher as recorded in the Fourth Gospel are more precious than all the rest. But “the author of it” — Dr. Harnack tells us — “drew up the discourses himself, and illustrated great thoughts by imaginary situations.”
This suggests a conclusion of the most startling kind. If the Fourth Gospel is not genuine and authentic, the fact confronts us that the ‘’ discourses “of *’ that sublimest of sublime books “have, throughout the whole Christian era, exercised a wider and profounder influence over the minds and hearts of men than the sayings of ‘’ Jesus” Himself. It has often happened in the world’s history that the real leader in a great movement has been overshadowed by someone whose personal magnetism has secured for him greater popularity.
And this unknown disciple is not the only claimant to pre-eminence. That the author of this Gospel, which some would call the greatest book in the world — a book, moreover, written at such a time — should not have left even a tradition of his personality or name, is a supposition which tries even a trained capacity for misbelief. But his anonymity would tell against him in a plebiscite. In Paul, on the other hand, we have a man whose matchless life-story lies before us, not only in his own Epistles, but in the narrative of Luke. His unreserved and passionate devotion to his Master only serves to increase his hold upon our respect and admiration. Is it so clear a case, then, that the modern Jew is wrong in saying that Paul was the founder of Christianity? His was “the boldest enterprise,” Dr. Harnack tells us; and he ventured upon it “without being able to appeal to a single word of his Master’s.”
Then, again, the claims of Peter cannot be ignored. Nor am I sure that, in the view of not a few, these popular candidates for the chiefship would not be overshadowed by the tragic figure of the Baptist. At all events the question is worth looking into by the light of Professor Harnack’s scheme. And it will probably be found that the grounds on which some would veto the discussion have less weight than they suppose.
It may be demanded, for example, “Was not Jesus the Messiah? Was it not He who preached the Kingdom? Was He not the Son of God? Did He not die for men? Was it not He who brought the message of the Gospel?” Now all this may prove to be no more than an appeal to the prejudices created by traditional beliefs. Let us examine it in the clear light of the “latest scholarship and modern thought.”
“Jesus” was the Messiah. Yes, but what does this imply? We are told that the discovery was forced on Him when He had “settled accounts with Himself.” It was the solution of “a surging chaos of disparate feeling as well as of contradictory theory.”’* This “theory,” moreover, was connected with the “kingdom “; and this again ‘’ Jesus took from the religious traditions of His nation.” *” The idea of the two
‘p-179. ‘pi35- ‘P-52.
kingdoms, of God and of the devil,... was an idea which Jesus simply shared with His contemporaries. He did not start it, but He grew up in it, and He retained it.“^ No, it was John the Baptist who not only started it, but gave it definite form. Not that this matters much, for the whole conception springs from Jewish tradition and ignorance:” Ultimately the Kingdom is nothing but the treasure which the soul possesses in the eternal and merciful God.” “^
Well, but ‘’ Jesus “was the Son of God. Yes, but let us not forget what we have already learned. This is merely an “idea,” not a fact. As a matter of fact, He was the son of Joseph of Nazareth. In this connection “the name of Son, rightly understood, means nothing but the knowledge of God.... Jesus is convinced that He knows God in a way in which no one ever knew Him before.”^ Hence His claim to be the Son of God.
But this is not “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” — we have drifted very far from such a conception as that — but merely “the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father, and who is also our Father.” * It is not that He has raised us to a higher level, but that He stands beside us on the level of our common humanity. He knew God better than other men, that is all.
But, it will be urged, does not the message that He brought decide the question — “a glad message assuring us of life eternal,” a message that brings to us” the certainty of redemption, humility, and joy in
*P- 54. “”p- 77- ‘p. 128. ■*?. 301 5 p. 146.
God”?* High-sounding words these, but let us examine them. Dr. Harnack analyses the “message “for us. It relates to three spheres, he tells us, which in fact” coalesce.” And these are “the Kingdom of God, God as the Father and the infinite value of the human soul, and the higher righteousness showing itself in love.“”
But what is this “higher righteousness “? To love God and our neighbour. Surely the true Rationalist will enter a protest here. The light of Nature will teach us that. That cold light, indeed, will neither solve the mystery of our strange incapacity to obey the law of our being, nor yet give us strength to fulfil that law. For Nature has no word of either help or pity in the case of failure, albeit its voice is clear on behalf of truth and good and right, and against error and evil and wrong.
And the Christian will join with the Rationalist in his protest; for this is precisely what he means when he describes the Decalogue as “the moral law.” The “New Commandment” was not to love a neighbour, but to love a fellow-disciple according to the standard of the Master’s love. The fact is that Dr. Harnack’s contempt for the Old Testament and its “capricious and war-like Jehovah” ’ has led him to forget that the law of love to a neighbour was preached in the Pentateuch, and that in proclaiming it “Jesus” was avowedly quoting Moses.
The same cause, perhaps, has blinded him to the fact that “the Kingdom,” as he conceives it, is taught as
p. 299. «p. yj, ‘p. y6.
fully in the Old Testament as in the New. For if “the Kingdom is nothing but the treasure which the soul possesses in the eternal and merciful God/” the fact is indisputable that the worship of hearts that have possessed this treasure has always found its truest and fullest expression in the language of the Psalms.
There was nothing new, then, in the message in so far as it related to “the Kingdom “and the” higher righteousness.” But the third sphere remains. We are told that “the Gospel is the knowledge and recognition of God as the Father “; and still more definitely, that ‘’ God’s Fatherhood is the main article in Jesus’ message.” That is, of course, the relationship of Father as existing between God and all mankind, for no other is recognised in Dr. Harnack’s scheme.
Now, anyone with a concordance at hand can ascertain that, unless it be the relationship between God and men in virtue of creation, the Bible knows nothing of universal Fatherhood; and further, that this relationship formed no part of the Gospel “message.” Indeed there was no need for such a “message.” Even the heathen recognised Fatherhood in that sense. The Apostle Paul, therefore, in addressing Athenian idolaters could appeal to it, adopting the very words of their own poets, “For we are also his offspring.” And the Jew already possessed the truth of Fatherhood in a far higher sense in connection with the covenant.
There was nothing new, therefore, in the conception of the Divine Fatherhood, any more than in that of “the Kingdom” or of “the law of love.” But what
’ p. 77’ was characteristic in the teaching of the New Testament was that Divine grace admitted those who were in a special sense ‘’ disciples “^ to a relationship which depended neither on creation nor yet on the covenant, but on a new birth by the Divine Spirit. That this sonship was strictly limited to those who were thus “born again” is the plain teaching of the Fourth Gospel. But no more emphatic denial of the figment of universal Fatherhood in this sphere will be found in the Fourth Gospel than is contained in the following words recorded by the Synoptists: “No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Hint.” The fact is that Dr. Harnack studies the Bible with a mind so entirely prepossessed by what he expects and intends to find there, that he reads into the Gospels a doctrine which they expressly condemn, and fails to find what lies open on the surface.
And now it is high time to pause that we may consider whether anything is left to support the Nazarene’s claims to transcendent homage. “What is there left us?” our author may well demand. I own I cannot see anything is left us, unless it be the tradition of an ideal life, to serve as a pattern of all good for all time. And as we stand amid the wreck of everything on which the Christian faith has rested during all the centuries, it is impossible to keep back the fear
In taking the Sermon on the Mount as addressed to the multitude, Dr. Harnack overlooks the first verse of Matthew V.
‘’Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22.
lest that life too may prove to be nothing but a mere “idea” — the splendid dream of those noble and generous enthusiasts who imagined that the son of Joseph was the Son of God.
Of the Greek Church Professor Harnack writes that it took the form “not of a Christian product in Greek dress, but of a Greek product in Christian dress.” And of his own scheme we may aver that it is not Christianity in the foreign garb of Rationalism, but Rationalism disguised in Christian language.
“What is there left us?” we may well exclaim. And from being an inquiry for discussion the words become the cry of our despair. What is there left? The Christ of God? But this, we are told, is no more than an “idea,” the creation of the mind of Paul. Here are Dr. Harnack’s words: “Paul became the author of the speculative idea that not only was God in Christ, but that Christ Himself was possessed of a peculiar nature of a heavenly kind.” In a word, that Christ was something more than Joseph’s son.
“The Gospel? “Yes, but not” the Gospel of our salvation “— that” Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” This, too, is but a Pauline “idea.” His was ‘’ the Gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” But “the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it,” Dr. Harnack insists with all the emphasis of italic type, “has to do with the Father only, and not with the Son.”
And let no one suppose that the foregoing quotations give an unfair impression of the author’s scheme. Here is the concluding sentence of his book. It is the summary and the climax of all that has gone before.
and it has manifestly been framed with elaborate care: —
“If with a steady will we affirm the forces and the standards which on the summits of our inner life shine out as our highest good, nay, as our real self; if we are earnest and courageous enough to accept them as the great Reality and direct our lives by them; and if we then look at the course of mankind’s history, follow its upward development, and search, in strenuous and patient service for the communion of minds in it, we shall not faint in weariness and despair, but become certain of God, of the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father, and who is also our Father.”
Such, then, is the authoritative answer to the question, “What is there left us?” Let me contrast the closing passage of Dr. Harnack’s treatise on “Christianity” with the closing passage of Cicero’s treatise on “Old Age.” In view of the heathen doctrine of the immortality of the soul the pagan puts from him the desire to live his life over again. He refuses, “after having run his course, to be called back from the goal to the starting-place.” And he adds: —
“I retire from this world as it were from an inn, and not as if from a home, for Nature has assigned it to us as an hotel for sojourn, and not as a ’ local habitation.’ O glorious day! when I shall set out on my journey to that divine conclave and company of spirits, and when to this troubled, this polluted scene I shall bid farewell!”
The reader can judge between the Roman paganism of 2000 years ago and the German “Christianity” of to-day. The one seems instinct with brightness and hope; the other aims no higher than to rescue us from “weariness and despair.”
And can it avail even for this? What message has it for the ordinary man of the world, who, being neither a Pharisee nor a fool, is conscious that he is a sinner and needs forgiveness? And this just because he is “certain of God, the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father,” the God of the Bible, “the faithful God who keepeth judgment and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations.” But he has not loved Him, neither has he kept His commandments, but broken them.
Even if he is better than his neighbours, and has habitually tried to please God, he is oppressed by a sense of utter failure. And if he has lived like other men, the warning of conscience is still plainer and louder. It is not “the certainty of God” that he craves, for he is intelligent enough to know that Nature is but another name for God, and that Nature is stern and pitiless in punishing. Nothing will satisfy him but the certainty of a Saviour. And when Dr. Harnack speaks of “the summits of his inner life” and the “upward development of mankind’s history,” the words only mock him. In other circumstances, perhaps, they might interest and amuse him; but in view of the realities of eternity they seem to savour of mere levity. Even a Romish priest with his crucifix would be a more welcome visitor.
And his preference would be right. For the position of Romanism to-day is akin to that of Judaism in Messianic times. It has not renounced the truth, but it “holds it down in unrighteousness.” The great doctrines of the Christian faith remain — the Deity of
Christ, redemption through His blood, the Divine authority of Holy Scripture — but they are corrupted and concealed by a mass of human traditions and error. Many a devout Romanist, therefore, may be acknowledged as a fellow-Christian. But infidelity absolutely separates from Christ. It is not a mere perversion of the faith; it is a denial of it. Apostate Christianity is not so hopeless as an apostasy that utterly undermines Christianity.
And this is the abyss in which Dr. Harnack’s teaching would engulf us. And the road which leads to it is the so-called “Higher Criticism.” Not so, it will perhaps it will be said, with our English Critics. But the explanation of this is simple. As a nation we are not as logical as the Germans, and most of our English Critics still feel the power of truth which every free and fearless thinker recognises to be inconsistent with the principles and conclusions of the pseudo-Criticism.