The Necessity of Criticism Pt. II
There came a time in the seventeenth and eighteenth century European history called the Enlightenment when “fundamental Christian beliefs” became “problematic.” The Bible began to be interpreted in the light of different, non-Christian assumptions which include the following:
The Church has misread the Bible. Modern enlightened readers need to free themselves from church doctrine and interpret the Bible in the light of human reason alone.
Jesus Christ was not the divine Son of God. He was a superior ethical guide and spiritual example. He taught about God’s moral law, but not salvation through his death for our sins and his resurrection. These ideas were inventions of the early church.
Miracles in the New Testament, including Jesus’ resurrection, can no longer be the basis for Christian belief, since modern reason doubts that they happened as the Bible reports.
The Bible calls for ridicule, not reverence, since much of it is offensive to the modern mind. In advancing this view writers like Voltaire, Tom Paine, and Thomas Woolston sowed seeds that helped destroy the Bible’s privileged place in Western society by encouraging skepticism toward it.
The only legitimate way to interpret the Bible is the “historical” way. By historical was meant that it was assumed that cardinal Christian doctrines were rationally unacceptable, that Jesus was no more than a mere mortal, that miracles should be rejected or at least radically reinterpreted – and that no other interpretation of the Bible, but this one, deserves personal acceptance and public recognition.
Needless to say it naturally occurred -- with such liberal logic being applied to the minds and souls of many people, by the nineteenth century, many scholars in Europe, and particularly in Germany, were arguing for an understanding of the New Testament that flatly contradicted Christian belief of all pervious centuries. “Historical criticism” in the Enlightenment sense had been born; “it laid the foundations on which modern biblical studies still rest.”
By the time of the industrial revolution there seemed to be a sense of release from the thought-patterns of the past. No longer did competent theologians seek to inject life where none exists. Dead ideas were being acknowledged as dead; and so into the museums these lifeless forms were being reverently carried, there to be deposited as a token of respect to the intellectual struggles of former generations.
And so it comes to pass that whereas the theological conceptions of the twentieth century are no longer those of the Dark Ages, the change may be attributed to this inescapable anthropomorphism: Like people, like God.
In one form or another, historical criticism is still very much with us. Books about the New Testament that insist on a “historical” reading of the scriptures often mean “historical-critical” and assert that the Bible is to be treated like any other book. The Bibles central claims – as many believers over many centuries have understood them – are cast in doubt. Then new, or at least different, meanings are proposed.
Thus, you need to pay attention when reading the Bible, what someone else says that the Bible says, and how you study the scriptures. While the truth will set you free, misinterpretations have only clouded the true message and enslaved millions to doctrines that are aptly described in the text as those from “demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). It is not only good to know how to study but essential to know why you believe what you believe. If your faith is not your own whose is it?
[1] Trattner, 119.
