Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 75:298 (Apr 1918)
Article: The Unity Of Isaiah
Author: J. T. Lias

BSac 75:297 (Jan 1918) p. 267

The Unity Of Isaiah

Chancellor J. J. Lias

If I venture to return to my studies of Isaiah,1 it is because, amid the vast number of details into which the “scientific” criticism leads us, the reader may readily lose himself. This is one of the reasons why that criticism has been so widely accepted. It expresses the sublimest confidence in the truth of its conclusions. But the formulae of the criticism itself are as complicated as a problem of the higher mathematics. And in this impatient age it saves a world of trouble to accept the conclusions of the critics, and leave the process of thinking entirely in their hands. On the other hand, those who doubt on the matter, and are unable to enter into the details, are overwhelmed by the confident air which all critics of the German school, whether defeated or victorious, invariably assume. Like the Germans during the War, they are always victors in every battle, and when compelled to retire, do so for “strategic” reasons.

One point which may be restated in this paper is the question of the right of the critic to call his criticism “scientific.” The commentary on Isaiah in the “Cambridge Bible for Schools “may be consulted as putting the results in a form suited to inquirers. More Germane, there are many assertions, but few arguments. Almost invariably this or that conclusion is introduced by such words as “probably,” “possibly,” “might

BSac 75:297 (Jan 1918) p. 268

be,” “appears to have,” “must have had,” “must have been,” “may be assumed to have been,” etc.2 Now this is in itself a proof that the criticism so confidently described as “scientific” has no claim to be described as such. The “exact sciences”— and what is not exact is not, strictly speaking, a “science” at all — know nothing about “probabilities” of any kind. The conclusions are always tested by comparison with observation, and not till then are they regarded as established. Errors, of course, sometimes creep in, because some of the conclusions are not absolute, but are only approximative, and are usually known to be such, and are used in investigations as the nearest approach to demonstrated fact which has yet been made, and near enough for most practical purposes. Observations more minute and more careful will, it is felt, be made with improved instruments and improved conditions, and their results brought still nearer to the actual truth. Then, and not till then, all truly scientific minds will accept them. This, as students of science are well aware, has constantly happened. But the “discoveries” of the Germanizing critics from Eichhorn downwar...