The Higher Criticism and the New Theology

The words “The Higher Criticism” used in the title of this book are not altogether satisfactory, for “The Higher Criticism” taken in its original and strict sense, as denoting literary criticism as distinguished from “the lower” or textual criticism, is not necessarily unscientific, nor unscriptural, nor unwholesome. There is a legitimate “higher” criticism of this kind. In actual usage, however, and in the common understanding to-day, the words “Higher Criticism” denote a certain type of literary criticism that follows unscientific and even absurd methods and has reached unwarranted and false results, and that is utterly mischievous. When the words “The Higher Criticism” are used to-day almost everyone understands them to apply to this type of criticism, and so we have used it in the title of the present book. The words “The New Theology” are not altogether satisfactory. This phrase came into quite common use something over thirty years ago to denote a certain type of theology that was not at all new even in those days, but was new in supposedly orthodox churches. A few years ago these words were taken up again as a battle cry in England by a school of erratic thinkers. We use these words in the title of the book because to the common mind they denote a certain type of theological thought that has proved fascinating to many ministers of the Gospel and to many laymen, and that has wrought terrible havoc in the life and work of our churches. It would be difficult to exactly define “the new theology,” but it stands in a general way for the denial or questioning of the authority of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God; for the denial or questioning of the real Deity of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; for the denial or questioning of the virgin birth of our Lord and of His literal, bodily, resurrection from the dead; for the denial or questioning of the vicarious atonement; and for the denial or questioning of the eternal, conscious suffering of those who die impenitent. This book aims to put into succinct and readily usable form the proof that both “the Higher Criticism” and “the New Theology” are unscientific, unscriptural and unwholesome.

Many of the chapters in this book are taken by permission from a series of volumes called “Fundamentals” which are being published at the expense of two Christian laymen and sent without cost to ministers of the Gospel and some other Christian workers throughout the world. Other chapters and topics, which have not as yet been fully treated in “Fundamentals” are added by the compiler.

SEMINARY, XENIA, OHIO, U. S. A.

The glories of the Lord Jesus Christ are threefold: Essential, official and moral. His essential glory is that which pertains to Him as the Son of God, the equal of the Father. His official glory is that which belongs to Him as the Mediator. It is the reward conferred on Him, the august promotion He received when He had brought His great work to a final and triumphant conclusion. His moral glory consists of the perfections which marked His earthly life and ministry; perfections which attached to every relation He sustained, and to every circumstance in which He was found. His essential and official glories were commonly veiled during His earthly sojourn. His moral glory could not be hid; He could not be less than perfect in everything; it belonged to Him; it was Himself. This moral glory now illumines every page of the four Gospels, as once it did every path He trod. 7,

The Higher Criticism and The AVw Theology

The thesis which we undertake to illustrate and establish is this: That the moral glory of Jesus Christ as set forth in the four Gospels cannot be the product of the unaided human intellect, that only the Spirit of God is competent to execute this matchless portrait of the Son of Man. The discussion of the theme falls into two parts: I. A brief survey of Christ’s moral glory as exhibited in the Gospels. II. The application of the argument.

I. CHRIST’S MORAL GLORY

THE HUMANITY OF JESUS

I. The moral glory of Jesus appears in His development as Son of Man. The nature which He assumed was our nature, sin and sinful propensities only excepted. His was a real and a true humanity, one which must pass through the various stages of growth like any other member of the race. From infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, there was steady increase both of His bodily powers and mental faculties; but the progress was orderly. “No unhealthy precocity marked the holiest of infancies.” He was first a child, and afterwards a man, not a man in child’s years.

As Son of Man He was compassed about with all the sinless infirmities that belong to our nature. He has needs common to all; need of food, of rest, of human sympathy and of divine assistance. He is subject to Joseph and Mary, He is a worshiper in the synagogue and the Temple; He weeps over the guilty and hardened city, and at the grave of a loved one; He expresses His dependence on God by prayer.

Nothing is more certain than that the Gospel narratives present the Lord Jc?us as a true man, a veritable member of our race. But we no sooner recognize this truth than we are confronted by another which sets these records alone and unapproachable in the field of literature. This second fact is this: At every stage of His development, in every relation or life, in every part of His service He is absolutely perfect. To no part of His life does a mistake attach, over no part of it does a cloud rest, nowhere is there defect. Nothing is more striking, more unexampled, than the profound contrast between Jesus and the conflict and discord around Him, than between Him and those who stood nearest Him, the disciples, John Baptist, and the mother, Mary. All fall immeasurably below Him.

THE PATTERN MAN

2. The Gospels exalt our Lord infinitely above all other men as the representative, the ideal, the pattern man. Nothing in the judgment of historians stands out so sharply distinct as race, national character — nothing is more ineffaceable. The very greatest men are unable to free themselves from the influences amid which they have been born and educated. Peculiarities of race and the spirit of the age leave in their characters traces that are imperishable. To the last fiber of his being Luther was German, Calvin was French, Knox was Scotch; Augustine bears the unmistakable impress of the Roman, and Chrysostom is as certainly Greek. Paul, with all his large heartedness and sympathies is a Jew, always a Jew. Jesus Christ is the only One who is justly entitled to be called the Catholic Man. Nothing local, transient, individualizing, national, or sectarian dwarfs the proportions of His wondrous character. “He rises above the parentage, the blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, His life; for He is the archetypal man in whose presence distinctions

Tht Higher Criticism and The New Theology

of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization and degrees of mental culture are as nothing” (Liddon). He belongs to all ages, He is related to all men, whether they shiver amid the snows of the arctic circle, or pant beneath the burning heat of the equator; for He is the Son of Man, the Son of mankind, the genuine offspring of the race.

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