The winds of rationalism swept through Europe in the eighteenth century’s “age of enlightenment” chilling the souls of men and giving birth to atheism, skepticism and Deism. But in England and Wales, through the mercy of God, light and warmth returned to the hearts of many in the Spirit-empowered “Methodist” revivals, and faith.

The prospects for religious growth and progress as the nineteenth century dawned seemed very encouraging. The revivals of the eighteenth century had given evangelicals a sense of the reality and power of God. Most of the denominations were dominated by evangelicals. These evangelicals were largely, although not entirely, inclined away from hyper-Calvinism and desirous of making great advances in missionary work overseas and gospel ministry at home. Evangelicalism seemed strong and its future looked glorious.

Whatever divisions there were among the evangelicals over Calvinism, baptism, eschatology, etc., the evangelicals were easily distinguished by their common religious experience and their view ofScripture. “Bound up inextricably with every phase of the religious experience of evangelicals, an experience that touched their lives at every significant point, was the Bible—a Bible that was not merely a source book for the earJy history of their religion, but a Bible that was the authoritative and infallible Word of God. Faith in the Bible was to the early evangelicals as fundamental as faith in God, and they made little distinction between the two. The inerrancy of the Bible was so intimate a part of their religious thought and life that a denial of it seemed to threaten the destruction of the faith itself.”¹

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, therefore, English evangelicalism looked to be an inevitable enemy for the theological rationalism of the Higher Critical movement that was beginning to sweep through the German universities and churches. It did not seem possible that the rationalistic view of the Scriptures as an ordinary book that could be questioned, contradicted and reconstructed could ever find acceptance with those who identified Scripture as the infallible, inerrant, inspired Word of the living God. Yet by the mid-1890’s, “all of the major non-conformist bodies had survived the shock of higher criticism without schism. The new approach to the Bible had been accepted by the overwhelming majority of non-conformist leaders.”²

Not only had the non-conformist leaders capitulated but virtually all the theological institutions. By 1891, “a close if unofficial surveillance was imposed upon potential candidates for positions in the Old Testament field in British Universities, and only those who displayed proper respect for the canons of critical orthodoxy were appointed to academic posts.”³

Outside the universities, “the new approach to the Bible . . . was taught in all the leading non-conformist colleges. Any Old Testament teacher who repudiated the new criticism was nothing more than an anachronism by 1895.”⁴ This process continued in the twentieth century, so that by 1932 a modernist “gloried in the fact that there were no colleges left adhering to the position of the old evangelical confessions.”⁵

The question that we must ask is: how did the Higher Critical view of the Bible manage to overcome the evangelical view in such a short time and in such a powerful way? We shall consider six of the contributory factors:

1. The Legacy of the “Age or Enlightenment”

Whereas it might have seemed to the evangelical world that the eighteenth-century revivals had swept away the infidelity of the rationalism of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, the rationalistic principle had simply been suppressed and not destroyed.

Rationalism had sought to remove mystery, miracle and antinomy from religion and to set fact and reason over against feeling and faith. It was accepted that the Bible contained some facts but that much of it had to be accepted only by faith. Pure rationalism accepted “the facts” only and rejected “the beliefs.” In its religious form this rationalistic approach meant the making of a distinction between the beliefs of the Bible which a person might desire to believe without proof and the statements of the Bible which had to be supported by evidence or else be rejected. The seeds of the dichotomy between “the Christ of faith” and “the Jesus of history” were beginning to enter religious consciousness based on the claims that the Bible contains two differing kinds of materials, namely, the historical record and the theological interpretations.

Some of the evangelicals of the nineteenth century began to maintain “the theology of the Bible” with great tenacity whilst accepting that the history, geography and science of the Bible could be mistaken. The Bible, they believed, was infallible in theology but errant in fact. The higher critical method could, therefore, be applied to the Scriptures and a reconstruction of “the facts” could be legitimately attempted. Thus the history of the Bible could supposedly be understood in terms of the theory of evolution and the Book’s basic central message remain unchanged.

The evangelical public learned higher criticism not from atheists and skeptics but from men who upheld the basic theology of the Bible but not its factual inerrancy. “The men who led England into a critical view of the Bible were men known for their theological orthodoxy.”⁶ As long as a man preached the “gospel” he could find acceptance in evangelicalism. Many people found relief in being able to keep the great truths of the gospel whilst having to make no defense of the passages in the Bible that are difficult to harmonize or explain.

   

2. The Revival Emphasis on Experience

One of the effects of the eighteenth-century revivals was to turn men from mere head-knowledge of Scripture and the creeds to a heart-knowledge of the God revealed therein. The preaching of the utter necessity of rebirth focused attention on religious experience. In the years following the revivals the tendency was to put emphasis upon a person’s religious experience rather than his belief.

Experience-conscious evangelicals had little time for creeds. Their emphasis had not originated in a conscious desire for a creedless Christianity but this was its tendency. It was precisely that danger which had opened the door to Deism in the early eighteenth century and had enabled it to gain vic: tories. At the end of the last century Robert Shindler warned evangelicals of the lessons from history/ and C.H. Spurgeon pleaded for a creed distinctive enough to exclude the rationalists from non-conformist denominations, but failed to get a hearing in the anti-creedal atmosphere of his day. “The pietistic quality of the revival put primary emphasis on individual Christian experience and valued correct doctrine only as a means to the creation of such experience. As a result evangelicals would tolerate almost any divergence in doctrine provided the individual concerned was known to have a fervent evangelical experience, and above all if his ministry awakened the same experience in others”. Evangelicals had a “general lack of interest … in theology.”⁹

C. H. Spurgeon noted the tendency to accept any doctrinal statement as long as the person who made it was, “a clever man and a good–natured brother.”⁹

The nineteenth-century evangelicals argued against creeds for a “freer” view of Scripture on the grounds of freedom of conscience and the Protestant rule of the right of private interpretation. By rejecting creeds altogether—or accepting only such creeds as were sufficiently vague to mean little—the advocates of the higher-critical view of the Bible ousted the evangelicals from their dominant position in the denominations with hardly a fight.

3. The Revival Emphasis on Unity

One of the consequences of the eighteenth-century revivals was to unite evangelicals in a common faith and in a mutual desire to work together in missionary and evangelistic activity as well as in theological education. The desire for unity had not always been able to be realized during the revivals because of the contentions between the evangelists over the doctrines of grace. The eighteenth-century preachers had not been able to resolve this question. The nineteenth-century evangelicals generally gained unity by abandoning or modifying their Calvinism.

A study of the eighteenth-century advance ofDeism makes it clear that it made least advance where Calvinism was strongly maintained.¹⁰ C. H. Spurgeon stated, “We believe that Calvinism has in it a conservative force which holds men to vital truth.”¹¹ In reviewing the nineteenth century, the neo-orthodox writer W.B. Glover acknowledged, “Where Calvinism bad been supreme, its decline left a theological vacuum.”¹²

Not only did the decline of Calvinism with its high view of scriptural authority make the higher critical view more easily accepted, but other doctrines began to be debased also. “The awful sternness of the Calvinistic God gave place to milder ideas which may be summed up in the popular phrase “the Fatherhood of God.” The emphasis on God’s love and mercy went so far as to call in question the time honoured doctrine of eternal punishment.”¹³

The friends of higher criticism soon understood the antipathy towards Calvinism amongst many nineteenth-century evangelicals. Consequently when conservative evangelicals attacked the higher critics, they retorted by accusing them of Calvinism, and the general evangelical public accepted the charge. Constantly C. H. Spurgeon had to protest against this diverting ploy. “The present struggle is not a debate upon the question of Calvinism or Arminianism but of the truth of God versus the inventions of men.”¹⁴

It is, however, undoubtedly true that if the Calvinists had maintained their strength within evangelicalism in the nineteenth century the higher critics would have had a more difficult task capturing evangelicalism. As it was, “the theological uncertainty that accompanied the dissolution of Calvinism made the non-conformists less able and less anxious to defend traditional views from new views.”¹⁵

4. The Subtlety of the Attack

The Christian church has often been able to defend itself much more easily from attacks from outside its ranks than from within its own number. Attacks from apparent friends are always less expected and more difficult both to detect and oppose. We have already noted that many of the leading advocates and friends of higher criticism had a reputation for gospel preaching.

The friends of higher criticism were often very cunning. They described their theology as, “broad and full”¹⁶ rather than “narrow and limited” like that of the Calvinists. James Dann attacked ministers who were unorthodox in doctrine but stayed in the churches to undermine the faithP That this happened is beyond dispute. W.B. Glover approved of this subversion. He wrote of, “the tendency of some who were in advance of the general movement of opinion to hide their more unorthodox views from the public. This was unquestionably an instance of sound political sense.”¹⁸ This ethically questionable procedure undoubtedly was successful in fooling the evangelicals in general.

The cunning of the higher critics was also seen in their concentration on the Old Testament. It was far easier to question this historicity and accuracy of Jonah than of our Lord. (Evangelicals still sometimes put the words of Jesus in red and the rest in black!) A full frontal attack on the gospels had to follow the undermining of the Old Testament, not precede it.

The decline of Calvinism also led to the promotion of worldliness. C.H. Spurgeon commented, “The fact is that many would like to unite church and stage, cards and prayer, dancing and sacrament.”¹⁹ In this atmosphere of “freer” life-style, conservatism in theology was not likely to prosper. Loose living and loose theology were not unconnected. To accept higher criticism was to be in fashion. To maintain the old evangelical doctrine ofScripture was to be an anachronism.

5. The Blunders of the Conservative Evangelicals

With hindsight, it is possible to see that the conservative evangelicals made two major mistakes in their opposition to the higher critical movement. First, they paid so much attention to declaring their opposition to it, especially in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, that, “the orthodox attacks on the critics . . . were one of the chief means by which a knowledge of higher criticism was disseminated in England.”²⁰

Closely related was the second mistake. The conservatives did not take the higher critics seriously enough. “In 1880 it was still possible for orthodox Bible scholars in England to consider higher criticism as the temporary form taken by infidelity and Germany and confidently to predict the scholarly victory of tradition.”²¹ C. H. Spurgeon dismissed the teachings of Julius Welhausen as, “calculated only to befool those who are ignorant,”²² as late as 1887!

The consequence of this under-estimation of the higher critical movement, until it was too late to reverse the trends, was that some of the opposition to the higher critics rose little above anti-German rhetoric and little real attempt was made to answer the critics at a theological level. W. B. Glover recognized the lack amongst the English conservatives of an equivalent to the Princeton theologians to defend their cause.²³The conservative attack was led by comparatively untrained pastors and in the eyes of many, as in the eighteenth-century Deist controversy, “more attention was paid to learning, scholarship and oratory than to godliness, orthodoxy and evangelical zeal.”²⁴ So the higher critics won the day.

6. The Blunders of the Evangelicals in General

The less conservative evangelical leaders must bear the weight of the blame for the victory of higher criticism. It is clear that many of them put more value on maintaining unity and harmony than on the truth. They sold their heritage for a reputation of big-heartedness. C. H. Spurgeon warned them to no avail. “On all hands we hear cries for unity in this and unity in that . . . It is easy to cry, ‘A confederacy’ but that union which is not based on the truth of God is rather a conspiracy than a communion.”²⁵

Many of the evangelicals showed a sad lack of discernment. They saw an acceptance of higher criticism as a means to further their scholarly reputations. In this way the Baptist John Clifford won an accolade for his, “broad interpretation of Evangelicalism, his appreciation of the work of Biblical scholarship, his resolute opposition to blind conservatism, his repudiation of the antagonism between Religion and Science so often proclaimed by some in our church.”²⁶ However, he was also responsible for opposing the stand of C. H. Spurgeon and enabling the higher critical takeover of

the Baptist D enomination. Men praised him for his modernity but history condemns it as compromise.

In fact, while full weight must be given to the failure of many to see the real danger of higher criticism and its detrimental effects on evangelicalism, it must sadly be said that a charge of cowardice has to be levelled against many of the evangelicals of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw three groups within the evangelical churches: the conservative evangelicals: the higher critics, and “a great mixed multitude who from various causes decline to be ranked with either of them.”²⁷ It was this “mixed multitude” who would not side with either the old evangelical view of the Scripture or with the new view of Scripture, who held the key to the decline. They would not discipline error and so they were overwhelmed by it. The consequence of their indecision and cowardice was that whereas, “The early nineteenth century saw a quickening of religious life all over Europe . . . when the nineteenth century closed Christianity was at a low ebb.”²⁸

Most nineteenth-century evangelicals had a view of love to others that meant the abandonment of or compromise on truth. But as C. H. Spurgeon correctly observed, “To part with truth to show charity is to betray our Lord with a kiss.”²⁹

Some Conclusions

1. That “The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures . . . Where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered seriously out of the way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result.”³⁰ Our doctrine of scripture is, therefore, not a matter of minor importance.

2. That Calvinists have historically left the doctrine of Scripture least of all those who have departed from it. Therefore, Calvinism is an important safeguard against heresy. 3. That the basis of unity cannot be merely a shared spiritual experience or shared evangelistic zeal. A man who is converted and is a means of conversion to others can be more dangerous to the health of the churches than an outright heretic if he mixes his zeal for the gospel with defective views of Scripture and halfheartedness about other major doctrines. 4. That a false sense of Christian love can lead people to a total lack of discernment in which they treat wolves like sheep and maintain alliances with those who are enemies of the gospel. This is to the inevitable detriment of the churches. 5. That worldliness and looseness are inevitably companions of theological disinterest and looseness. 6. That evangelicals have to take their opposition seriously at a theological level and not merely respond by abuse. The absence of a theological answer to the higher critics gave the evangelicals the appearance of theological ignorance. 7. That the ministers often become corrupt before the people. “As a general rule laymen were slower in accepting higher criticism than the ministers.”³⁰ Even as late as the 1890’s, “there remained large numbers of laymen and some ministers who never accepted the new criticism even in principle.”³² But, with the pulpits of their churches hijacked, the people were left to rot, with blind guides leading them to nowhere worth going. 8. That the dismal history of English evangelicals from 1900 to 1950 cannot be understood apart from this background of nineteenth-century compromise and failure. The present, comparatively healthier state of evangelicalism is closely connected to the “revival” of Calvinism. All the present gains, however, could be rapidly lost if the lessons of the past are not remembered.

References:

¹Glover, W. R. Evangelical Nonconformity and Higher Criticism in the nineteenth century, 1954, Independent Press Ltd,p 16.

²ibid. p 213.

³Harrison, R. K. Introduction to the Old Testament, 1970, Tyndale Press, p 28.

⁴Glover op. cit. p 213. Murray, I. The Forgotten Spurgeon, 1966, Banner of Truth, p 163.

⁶Glover op. cit. p 213.

⁷Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, pp 122–126.

⁸Glover op. cit. pp 93–4.

⁹Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 400.

¹⁰Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel April 1887,pp 170–171.

¹¹Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel April 1887,pp 195–196.

¹²Glover op. cit. p 93.

¹³ibid. p 92.

¹⁴Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195–196.

¹⁵Glover op. cit. p 205.

¹⁶J. B. Brown cited in Spurgeon, The Early Years, 1962, Banner of Truth, p 494.

¹⁷Dann, J. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 172–174.

¹⁸Glover op. cit. p 41.

¹⁹Spurgeon, C. H . The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 398.

20Glover op. cit. p 41.

²¹ibid. p 36.

²²Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, August 1887, p 430.

²³Glover op. cit. pp 219-221.

²⁴Summary of Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, March 1887, p 122.

²⁵Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, pp 195–196.

²⁶Blomfeld, W.E. cited in Underwood, A. C. A History of English Baptists, 1947, Kingsgate Press, p 226.

²⁷Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, December 1888, p 619.

²⁸G iover op. cit. p 11.

²⁹Spurgeon, C. H. The Sword and Trowel, February 1887, p 91.

³⁰Shindler, R. The Sword and Trowel, April 1887, p 170.

³¹Glover op. cit. p 199.

³²ibid. p 217.

Reprinted from the Nov. 1986 Banner of Truth.