A Book Review Article by Peter De Jong

The End of the Historical Critical Method by Gerhard Maier, translated from the 1974 German edition by Edwin W. Leverenz and Rudolph F. Norden, 108 pp.; Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, Mo., 1977, paper, $4.50.

Above the Bible? The Bible and Its Critics by Harry It Boer, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1975, 1976, 1977, 109 pp., paper, $2.95.

The Failure of a Method – Unusually important especially for our times is the first of these two little, paperbacks. In less: than 100 pages of text a careful scholar sketches the results of the 200-year history of the historical critical method of studying the Bible, exposing their self-defeating character and suggesting at the end what is a proper “historical bibilcal method” in such study.

In his “Foreword” Dr. Eugene F. Klug recalls how in the late 1700‘s Johann Salomo Semler fathered “the technique which not only handled the Bible as an object for historical scrutiny and criticism, but also as a book little different from and no more holy than any other, and surely not to be equated with the Word of God. Very plainly he was saying that he rejected the divine inspiration of the text.” “Not unexpectedly, under his and others’ hand, the Bible text and content suffered deliberate vivisection.” A few of the practioners of higher criticism eventually realized that, when you destroy the thing you are attempting to dissect, you are putting yourself out of business. The Bible’s central message, they reasoned, must in some way be anchored tightly. There must be a mooring point for Christian truth. This minimal “message” must at all costs survive if the theological task itself is to last.

“Gerhard Maier‘s great contribution is precisely at this point. If scholars themselves determine what that Word or ‘message’ is, then plainly they are responsible for establishing whatever is canonical about the canon. Obviously this can be a very subjective exercise. With each exegete or Bible scholar conceiving it to be his task to locate the ‘canon in the canon,’ there can be no guarantee of that message, or the Word. Whether those involved in it knew it or not, and no matter how pious their intent, the fact remains that it was a self-defeating process, doomed to failure. Various theories supplanted each other in succession. Maier shows brilliantly that the so-called scientific pursuit in Biblical criticism fell apart on its own ‘findings.’ The historical-critical practitioners had themselves become the morticians at the funeral and burial of the Word of God” (pp. 8, 9).

The book covers 10 0 much ground and is too compactly written to he either quickly read or easily summarized. It is studded with sharp observations about the development of the thought of leading critics, observations which are valid too regarding others whom we see advancing the same opinion.

The author begins: the discussion (p. 11) byobserving that a scholar‘s methods of working determine what kind of results he will get. “Accordingly, a critical method of Bible interpretation can produce only Bible-critical propositions. This is true even in those instances where thc historical-critical method confirms Bible propositions. For the justification and authority of the outcome are still established by the critical scholar himself and, due to the method, cannot come only out of Scripture.” (In other words, when one, as such a “critical” scholar, accepts Christ‘s resurrection as a fact he is not believing that because the Bible says so, but because he as sovereign scholar had determined that this biblical event is to be believed while others in the same Bible are not to be so believed.)

Regarding the “nature of the historical–critical method” Maier observes that its emphasis lay not on the “historical” but on the “critical.” “The ‘critical’ was the motor and accelerator of the movement. On it rested its determining accent” (p. 13).

The central Chapler II which has the same title as the book, is a study of a 1970 German work, The New Testament as Canon, edited by Ernst Kaesemunn. In that work is higher critical authors between 1941 and 1970 give u kind or “authentic self-testimony” as to where the 200-year-old method has brought them. It may be considered a “balance sheet” of the whole movement. Maier successively shows how the exegetes, H. Strathmann, W. G. Kuemmel, H. Braun, and W. Marxen, and finally, Kaesemann, the editor, tried but were unable “to delimit or even to discover a convincing canon in the canon” by which to determine what was to be believed. Whether they tried to make that authoritative “canon in the canon” (following a misinterpretation of Luther) “what teaches Christ,” or tried to make it “the personal” in contrast with the “doctrinal-juridical,” or to make the canon the oldest records within the Biblical records, inevitably their efforts bogged down. This was especially apparent in the case of Braun. “In the end, one has difficulty avoiding the impression that for Braun the assumptions of the historical-critical method—founded on human arbitrariness—logically lead to this, that man himself appears as the norm in the real canon. Man, who began critically to analyze revelation and to discover for himself what is normative, found at the end of the road: himself. Although many of Braun‘s colleagues who joined him under similar conditions kept their distance from his radicalism, his fearless consistency reveals what inevitably lies at the end of the method’s downward road” (p. 35).

Maier then traces the failure of systematicians to find and maintain an authoritative canon in the canon, and their retreat to an appeal to spiritual experience. H. Diem, Ratschow, W. Joest, Ebeling, and the Roman Catholic, Hans Kueng were all caught in the same self–destructive effort. Especially the latter, despite his devastating criticism of the efforts of others, did not free himself from the critical method which produced them. He said, “The bold program of finding a ‘canon in the canon’ demands nothing else than this: to be more Biblical than the Bible, more New Testamently than the New Testament, more evangelical than the Gospel, and even more Pauline than Paul. Radical earnestness is the intention, radical dissolution is the result . . . the true Paul is the entire Paul, and the true New Testament is the entire New Testament” (p. 45).

Maier summarizes the tragic results for the scholar and for the churches: “Thus the use of the higher-critical method has put us into a monstrous hole. The downfall here described proved to be inescapable. What the real Word of God is became more and more nebulous.” “The subtle net woven by the higher-critical method resulted in a new Babylonian captivity of the church. It became more and more isolated from the living stream of Bible proclamation, and therefore more and more uncertain and blind both as to its own course and also in relation to its influence toward the outside” (p. 48).

The Proper Method – Instead of this frustrating and destructive “historical-critical method” the writer proposes a “historical-biblical method,” one which recognizes at the outset the uniqueness of Scripture as the Word of God. It must be one which reckons with God‘s Sovereignty, one which recognizes that “revelation and obedience, not revelation and critique, are corresponding terms . . .” (p. 54), which acknowledges the principle stated in the Reformation, that “Scripture interprets itself” (p. 55), and which operates on the basis of the claims which Scripture makes about itself (pp. 61ff.). There is much more in this compact little book, but this sampling will give the reader a glimpse of its scope and importance as it outlines “the end of the historical-critical method” and pleads for a return to the orthodox view of Holy Scripture taught by—that Scripture, and for the use of appropriate methods of studying it.

Our Churches’ Earlier Incursion of Higher Criticism – Our churches through most of their history, like many other smaller evangelical denominations, tended to hold themselves aloof from this broad historical-critical movement. A little over a half century ago its influence became apparent in our seminary in connection with the teaching of Or. Ralph Janssen. In 1919 four seminary professors brought objections to his teaching to the Board and when those objections were not sustained they brought them to the 1920 Synod. That Synod declared that although Dr. Janssen had expressed his faith in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, he had sometime . . . laid too much emphasis on the human factor and natural means, so that the divine was obscured, and it advised him to show improvement in this respect.

The next Synod in 1922 received 13 protests and communications on this matter. It is instructive to read its 50 page record (pp. 88–138, 1922 Acts).

The Broadway Church called attention to the way in which statements in Dr. Janssen‘s lectures conflicted with his avowed belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and with the doctrine of an infallible Word of God and observed that the trend of these lectures was subversive of the doctrine that we have in the Bible an ‘inspired and authoritative record of God‘s historical revelation to mankind.’” It stated that “Dr. Janssen has not simply overemphasized the human factor . . . but ignored the divine factor so that a reading of said lectures tends to weaken rather than strengthen . . . the belief in the supernatural origin and character of Israel’s religion” (p. 89).

Even more extensive was the appeal of Classis Zeeland. It noted the Zutphen church‘s expressed concern about the apparent conflict between Janssen‘s view of the Bible and the teaching of the Bible and the Creeds. It found fault with Dr. Janssen‘s approach in seeking to apply the same kind of scientific and critical approach in theological matters as one takes in other sciences, placing himself over rather than submissively under what was being studied. He handled Old Testament introduction in a “historical-critical” manner, not submitting himself to the Scripture, but subjecting the Scripture to his investigation to determine what was true and false (p. 105). It pointed out how in the interpretation of the history of Saul, Samuel and David personal ambitions of the characters were permitted to obscure the thought of God‘s revelation in the professor‘s teaching. It found it impossible to reconcile his explanations of Bible history with his claim that he believed in its inspiration (p. 112). It objected to his failure to deal with the Bible as an organic unity, and his speaking instead of various “records” (p. 112).