Letters to the Editor
THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,--A very important leading article in the Record news- paper, the leading organ of the old-fashioned Evangelical Party, has all unconsciously put its finger on the spot. Rem acu letigisti. It quotes with approval the weighty opinion of that careful observer, Professor C. C. J. Webb of Oxford, that the Higher Criticism
probably involves a greater and more momentous break with Tradition than the Reformation of the sixteenth century. It has affected the whole of Christendom."
The Editor of the Record, in a leading article of last week, then makes the following comment :- " There is undoubtedly a connexion between the loss of authority attaching to the Bible and the falling off in Church attendance. The great mass of the people have come to believe that the super- natural revelation in the Word of God has failed to meet the demands of modern knowledge." (Aug. 23.) Now what is the remedy ? The Record says :- "Christianity began in an experience . . . The experience came before the Creed . . . The greatest need of the Church to-day is the experienced conviction that," &c. . . .
Now here we touch the bottom of the whole controversy between the world and the modern Church. The Apostles and the Early Church of the first four General Councils accepted the truth of the Old and New Testament Scriptures not as " experience " but as historic fact. The Apostles preached the fact of the Resurrection as having taken place as a fact of evidence and observation. They quoted the Old Testament invariably as prophesying the facts which they had lived to witness. Our Lord testifies to His Messiahship not as a matter for His own experience but as a prophesied fact : " as it is written." " How then should the Scriptures be ful- filled ? " St. Paul bases the fact of the Resurrection on not only ocular evidence but as being " according to the Scrip- tures." But the Church to-day no longer belieVes that the Bible is true in Old or New Testament. All the Chuich parties agree to applaud the New Commentary, and Dr. Gore's New Commentary seems to give up all belief in the historic witness of either Testament. The Old Testament Editor accepts as a basis " the exploded fictions of Welihausen's unbelieving school, and the New Testament Editor seems to give up all the miracles of Christ except His Resurrection. Even the raising of Lazarus is put down (apparently) to the mythic Hercules raising the mythic Alcestis placed (appa- rently) to the credit of the Christian account of Christ !
Now what are the facts? At the Oxford Orientalist Con- gress the Assyrian and Egyptian school , of discoverers individually reprobated the fancies of Modernism and the Higher Criticism as no longer confirmed by the facts of the case. Even J and E and P were strongly disputed ; and the fact of Noah's Flood (first discovered by Professor Langdon and taking place about the year 3,500 n.c.) was an epoch-making discovery. Professor Langdon- " loath " as he was at first to. admit it—now asserts with the rest of the new school of explorers the " historic accuracy " of the Old Testament. That is to-day undeniable in respect of Genesis c. xiv. (which Dr. Gore's Commentary denies) and of the Book of Daniel, where the Maccabean date (asserted by Dr. Gore) is now given up, even by the International Critical Commentary (s.v. " Daniel "), on the score of Assy- rian discovery," at any rate for the first six chapters with a reserve in favour of the genuineness of the whole Book if further discovery warrants. The documents of Genesis and Exodus, owing to the discovery of pure Accadian and old Egyptian words lying alongside the old Hebrew, are to-day immune from the Higher Critical conjectures (or rather fictions) of Wellhausen, which the Church accepts and which the facts no longer warrant. To quote the verdict of one of the most eminent members of the Oriental Congress to me afterwards : " Dr. Gore's New Commentary is rubbish from the point of view of archaeological findings." The Church of to-day, if it wants a hearing, must get back to the facts of history and drop " experience " for truth.—I am,
Previous page
