The Fundamentals (1910), Vol.1

The History of the Higher Criticism. 105 Zachariah and Jonah* and Proverbs were supposititious and quasi-fraudulent documents. This is a straightforward state­ ment of the position taken by what is called the moderate school of Higher Criticism. It is their own admitted posi­ tion, according to their own writings. The difficulty, therefore, that presents itself to the average man of today is this: How can these critics still claim to believe in the Bible as the Christian Church has ever be­ lieved it? A DISCREDITED BIBLE. There can be no doubt that Christ and His Apostles ac­ cepted the whole of the Old Testament as inspired in every portion of every part; from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Malachi, all was implicitly believed to be the very Word of God Himself. And ever since their day the view of the Universal Christian Church has been that the Bible is the Word of God; as the twentieth article of the Anglican Church terms it, it is God’s Word written. The Bible as a whole is inspired. “All that is written is God-in­ spired.” That is, the Bible does not merely contain the Word of God; it is the Word of God. I t contains a revelation. “All is not revealed, but all is inspired.” This is the con­ servative and, up to the present day, the almost universal view of the question. There are, it is well known, many the­ ories of inspiration. But whatever view or theory of inspira­ tion men may hold, plenary, verbal, dynamical, mechanical, superintendent, or governmental, they refer either to the inspi­ ration of the men who wrote, or to the inspiration of what is written. In one word, they imply throughout the work of God the Holy Ghost, and are bound up with the concomitant ideas of authority, veracity, reliability, and truth divine. (The two strongest works on the subject from this standpoint are by Gaussen and Lee. Gaussen on the Theopneustia is pub­ lished in an American edition by Hitchcock & Walden, of

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