The Logic of the Higher Criticism

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 10, 18 March 1925, Page 57

The Logic of the Higher Criticism

(By J. D. Tibbits, in America.)

No one who glances even cursorily at the non-Catholic religious literature of the day can fail to be impressed with the importance which it attaches to the Higher Criticism of the Sacred Scriptures. There is perhaps no single cause which has contributed in nearly so great a degree- to the change which has, ; of recent years, affected »every sect of Pro- .: testantism, and which has issued, at length, -in what is called the New Theology. The relation between the two seems to be little else than that of absolute dependence, .for > it would be quite as impossible to think of ; the one without the other, as it would be ; even to imagine the other without the one. ': That the New Theology should have been derived from a different source is as inconceivable as.that the Higher Criticism should . have produced a different result. And as this logical connection appears so palpably and so unmistakably clear, it can hardly do other than suggest an inquiry as to the logic upon which the Higher Criticism is itself sustained. Is it or is it not susceptible of rational demonstration ? This is an important question for two reasons, first, because it is so widely accepted as a method of apprehending facts, and second, because it is the adopted system of so many who stand in the very first rank of scholarship. And its importance will be all the more apparent if we do but consider the .. nature of the revolution which it has wrought i in modern Protestant thought. The Difference Between the New Theology and the Old consists not merely iii the changing of a creed, or even in the denying of a creed. U is an entirely new conception of religion, and, to a considerable extent, a new conception of life. What, then, is the rational nature . of the cause, adequate to the production of so vast an effect? I propose briefly to describe its method, and to subject that method to an equally brief analysis; for in no other way is it possible to estimate the value of so much that is taken for granted in the contemporary non-Catholic world, and which is assumed to be, for all practical purposes, self-evident. Speaking in a broad sense, the method of the higher critics divides itself into two elements. The first of these may, for convenience sake, be termed the scientific the second, the inferential. The scientific element ,y: contents itself solely with observing and classifying facts; and though it represents 1 the more scholarly part of the process it also represents that part which is less strik- . |. ing, and which is consequently of little or i no general interest. jj The second element is engaged in drawing ujfehferehces from the facts presented by the first. It therefore drafts to a comparatively '}' small extent upon the scholarship of the ' v> critic. Its loss, however, in this regard ob•;Vtains ample'* compensation from the sensational character of its conclusions. An audience is invariably commanded; and this audience, being in the main both uncritical and V -»•<.' '.',-'--'..-..■■• ;■..-•?

untrained, will be quick to impute to this second and almost wholly speculative element the pure erudition of the first. The exact manner in which these two elements combine in actual operation finds one of many possible illustrations in the so-called and ever-present "Synoptic Problem." In Its Examination of the Gospels the scientific element notes a curious.similarity attaching to the accounts given by the Synoptic writers of the healing of the paralytic. The precise words, "Then saith He to the paralytic," appear in all three, and hot only are the words in all three precise, but they are, in each instance, enclosed in parentheses. The inferential element then steps in, and using this, in conjunction with other more or less similar illustrations, pronounces the conclusion that the Synoptists copied their several accounts from a single anterior source. Now with the truth or falsity of this particular conclusion, I am not at all concerned, but the danger of the method by which it is traced must be apparent to anyone. That many inferences are perfectly valid, every logician will admit; but it hardly takes a logician to distinguish between a valid inference and an unprovable guess, while the fact that many of the conclusions of the critics are nothing more nor less than the merest guess-work is shown by the differences, both existing and .persisting, among them. The points upon which they are in substantial agreement fall into relative insignificance. But the essential laxity of the whole scheme is even clearer if we do but realise the truth that a third element has already entered, in ; that it has been all along in practical control of the second; and that it has cast the deciding vote in every judgment. That element is the personality which each critic brings to bear upon the problem, and which, consciously or unconsciously, must add the final touch of color to the result. -Its Importance Can Hardly Be Over estimated. By it, every prejudice and prepossession gains admittance to the process; because of it no bias, theological or otherwise, can be excluded. If the impressions of the critic incline him to belief in the supernatural, his conclusions may be relatively conservative. If, on the contrary, they are of a radical type, so also will be his judgment. So eminent a scholar as the late Dr. Charles W. Briggs concluded that the Resurrection was proved by the Gospels. The late Dr. James D. Martineau, perhaps equally eminent, concluded that it was not. Were such a. discrepancy of result the exception rather than the rule, it would, of course, be negligible, ■ The fact is, however, that it is the rule rather than the exception. " --<• .» ; What, then, must be our estimate of this curious process, viewed purely as an instrument for apprehending truth? We may free-

ly allow that it has given birth to many plausible speculations, that it has proposed many striking theories, that it has been not infrequently suggestive. All this, however,: is beside the point. The real question is, has it produced one solid .fact logically competent to revolutionise the theology of the ages? ' a '

In Its Very Method is the Answer Contained.

Facts are used by it only as stepping stones to theories, and as bridging the chasm between objective and subjective. Its value, therefore, lies chiefly in the , efficiency with which it registers impressions, and the skill with which it clothes them in the language of learning.

And the further question remains 'as to just what light such a system can possibly cast upon the problems peculiar to the present day. We have seen that it has resulted in the New Theology; that the New Theology asserts itself to be essentially a moral movement; and that it is unceasing in its claim that it translates the message of Christ into the language of the twentieth century. But after all, what precept of Christ-has it given us which was unknown to St. Augustine and St. Jerome? And how can it possibly deal with Christ's attitude toward matters of which its sources are necessarily silent? Can it infer from His treatment of Pharasaism what would be His treatment of Socialism? Or can it bring Him into relation with all the moral and economic evils distinctive of our age? Paradoxical as it may sound, the method of the Higher Criticism and the New Theology alike is essentially and above all else antiquarian. It is dependent, in last analysis, upon dead writers and dead languages. From its very nature it can never speak with a living voice nor can its message possess significance for living men. It has confined Christ in a literary prison which is bounded by the. walls of internal and external evidences, and from which its own principles forbid escape, despite the continuous procession of efforts which its history records, and of which it is itself merely the last.

The fact that it is compelled to offer this system to thinking men as the latest theological product of a critical and enlightened age is at once a concession of the helplessness of the older Protestantism and a condemnation of the new.