98
The Fundamentals. tion of the Bible, as to the Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation being the Word of God, they had no such belief. We may take them one by one. Spinoza repudiated abso lutely a supernatural revelation. And Spinoza was one of their greatest. Eichhorn discarded the miraculous, and con sidered that the so-called supernatural element was an Ori ental exaggeration; and Eichhorn has been called the father of Higher Criticism, and was the first man to use the term. De Wette’s views as to inspiration were entirely infidel. Vatke and Leopold George were Hegelian rationalists, and regarded the first four books of the Old Testament as entirely myth ical. Kuenen, says Professor Sanday, wrote in the interests of an almost avowed Naturalism. That is, he was a free thinker, an agnostic; a man who did not believe in the Revelation of the one true and living God. (Brampton Lec tures, 1893, page 117.) He wrote from an avowedly natural istic standpoint, says Driver (page 205). According to Well- hausen the religion of Israel was a naturalistic evolution from heathendom, an emanation from an imperfectly monotheistic kind of semi-pagan idolatry. It was simply a human religion. THE LEADERS WERE RATIONALISTS. In one word, the formative forces of the Higher Critical movement were rationalistic forces, and the men who were its chief authors and expositors, who “on account of purely philo logical criticism have acquired an appalling authority,” were men who had discarded belief in God and Jesus Christ Whom He had sent. The Bible, in their view, was a mere human product. It was a stage in the literary evolution of a religious people. If it was not the resultant of a fortuitous concourse of Oriental myths and legendary accretions, and its Jahveh or Jahweh, the excogitation of a Sinaitic clan, it certainly was not given by the inspiration of God, and is not the Word of the living God. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” said Peter. “God, who at sundry
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog