Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 61:244 (Oct 1904)
Article: An Appeal To The New School Of Theology
Author: Philip Hudson Churchman

BSac 61:244 (Oct 1904) p. 731

An Appeal To The New School Of Theology1

Mr. Philip Hudson Churchman

When we turn to discuss the great question of the Higher Criticism, we find almost the same thoughts awaiting expression in different form. First comes approval of the principle. I have seen conservative lips curl in scorn at the mere mention of “the accursed thing “: I have heard talk about “laying foul hands on the ark of the covenant.” Shall we need to repudiate such nonsense? My conservative brother, what were the Reformers but higher critics of things that all men then held to be divine? Did not Jesus Christ apply the pruning-knife of criticism to many things thought sacred by good men of his day? Do not you yourself apply the principles of literary criticism to the Bible when you explain that much of the pious talk in the book of Job comes not from God, but from Job’s worldly friends; or are you not using historical criticism when you admit it to be possible in antediluvian chronology that “the names denote an individual and his family spoken of collectively,” and that “the longevity is the period during which the family had prominence or leadership”?2 Are you not doing something that your forefathers would have condemned? Are you not indulging in the pernicious right to probe and to change one’s mind?

BSac 61:244 (Oct 1904) p. 732

No sane man will imagine that this discussion is aimed at the Higher Criticism as such; the indictment is against its contempt for scholarship that has not reached its own radical conclusions, and against its preponderatingly negative attitude. We should remember that the New School has no patent rights on these tardy epithets, these remarks that “no intelligent man accepts that notion nowadays “or that “scholars and scientists rejected this idea long ago.” These weapons which the ordinary liberal uses so generously against his conservative brother are just as handy for the Unitarian against the liberal who still accepts miracles; for the ethical culturist against the Unitarian if he believes in prayer and responsibility; for the agnostic against the ethical culturist if he insists on the ethical significance of life; and perhaps, even, for the materialist against the agnostic. I do not think that conservatives get full credit for their profound scholarship in this flippant age, nor that calling “tardy names” will mend matters much. What better illustration of this spirit could be found than a recently published remark made by a foreign critic about an American preacher whom he was eulogizing? “Of course,” said he, “thinking men disagreed with him on many points.” “Thinking men,” forsooth! Is n...