The Fundamentals (1910), Vol.1

The History of the Higher Criticism. 99 times and in diverse manners spake by the prophets,” said Paul. Not so, said Kuenen; the prophets were not moved to speak by God. Their utterances were all their own. (San- day, page 117.) These then were their views and these were the views that have so dominated modern Christianity and permeated modern ministerial thought in the two great languages of the modern world. We cannot say that they were men whose rationalism was the result of their conclusions in the study of the Bible. Nor can we say their conclusions with regard to the Bible were wholly the result of their rationalism. But we can say, on the one hand, that inasmuch as they refused to recognize the Bible as a direct revelation from God, they were free to form hypotheses ad libitum. And, on the other hand, as they denied the supernatural, the animus that animated them in the construction of the hypotheses was the desire to construct a theory that would explain away the supernatural. Unbe­ lief was the antecedent, not the consequent, of their criticism. Now there is nothing unkind in this. There is nothing that is uncharitable, or unfair. It is simply a statement of fact which modem authorities most freely admit. THE SCHOOL OF COMPROMISE. When we come to the English-writing Higher Critics, we approach a much more difficult subject. The British-American Higher Critics represent a school of compromise. On the one hand they practically accept the premises of the Conti­ nental school with regard to the antiquity, authorship, authen­ ticity, and origins of the Old Testament books, On the other hand, they refuse to go with the German rationalists in alto­ gether denying their inspiration. They still claim to accept the Scriptures fas containing a Revelation from God. But may they not hold their own peculiar views with regard to the origin and date and literary structure of the Bible with­ out endangering either their own faith or the faith of Chris-

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