Higher Criticism and Systematic Theology

Eta Linnemann | Saturday, November 10, 2001
Copyright © 2001, Eta Linnemann

(Retired) Professor of Theology/Religious Education, Pedagogic Academy, Braunschweig Honorary Professor, New Testament, Philipps University, Marburg

Edited transcript of a lecture given Saturday, November 10, 2001, 10:00 a.m. Grace Valley Christian Center, Davis, California as part of the Faith and Reason series sponsored by Grace Alive! and Grace Valley Christian Center

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

Higher criticism has spread throughout the world, and there are serious consequences in the lives of modern Christians. I want to first note that even Bible-believing Christians are not immune to its influence. Because the dominant feature of higher criticism is pride, the historical-critical theologian lives in every one of us. Just as the devil said to Eve, “Look at the fruit. It will make you clever,’ he will say the same to us. If we say, “Yes, but I want to be clever,’ be careful, for the devil wants to give you only the wrong fruit. Since we are surrounded by the effects of higher criticism, let us examine them so that we will not fall prey to them.

The Effects of Higher Criticism

First, higher criticism does not acknowledge the Bible as revelation. In the Middle Ages, everyone acknowledged the Bible as God’s revelation. Everyone probably did not have personal faith, but no one would ever have dared to say, “No, the Bible is not God’s word.’ But that is precisely our situation today. All around us people are denying that the Bible is God’s revelation. Thus, when we evangelize, we must make sure first that people accept the Bible as the revelation of God.

Modern man has reduced the truth that God created heaven and earth to a “statement of faith.’ The historical-critical person says, “Oh, yes, we can agree that God has created the heavens and the earth, but it is not to be taken as objective fact.’ Thus, those who are not born-again Christians are not convinced that God did create the heavens and the earth. Ironically, they may believe in evolution, even though it is also a belief and not an indisputable result of science.

So we have to start at the beginning, as the ancient church did in speaking to the heathen. Modern people first have to learn that God created the heavens and the earth. Otherwise, they cannot know how much they are obliged to God. How often modern evangelists say, “You should become a Christian because life with Christ is so beautiful and so much better than living without Christ. It has so many benefits.’ But what we should say is that God created us, and thus we are his rightful property. If we do not acknowledge this, then we are not on the right track. And because we belong to God, we are guilty when we do not acknowledge him as the eternal God and live according to his rules. We should never think we are doing God a favor by serving him. No, he has the right to us and can rightfully condemn us when we have not respected that right. That means we will be lost forever unless we are saved through Jesus Christ. We all start as those who are lost because we haven’t given God the honor as our Creator and Owner. If we do not understand this, we cannot appreciate that Jesus Christ took flesh and blood upon himself so that he could die for us.

Thus, we need to know about creation, and we must not argue it away with evolution. One can either believe in evolution or in God as the source of all creation. Both must be taken by faith, although it would be more accurate to speak of evolution as an ideology rather than a faith. But without knowing that it was God who created the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, we can never understand salvation.

As the result of higher criticism, Adam and Eve are now seen as mythical figures. But they are really the first couple, and it is not unrealistic to think that all mankind came from them. Higher criticism also sees the fall of man as a mythical story, not as a fact of history. So according to higher criticism, it never really happened. That is the current spirit of this age. Most people have never learned that the first people were Adam and Eve, and that there was a Fall, whose consequences continue to this day.

Additionally, higher criticism does not see the Genesis flood as something that really happened. Although scientists have done research that indicates a historical flood, higher critics dismiss it as a fairy tale. And just as they do not take seriously the fact that God extinguished most of the human race through the Genesis flood, so also they do not take seriously the biblical prediction that he will do it again, not with a flood but with fire. So they do not take into account the judgment coming on the earth that we read about in Revelation. Higher criticism asserts that Israel created the story of the Genesis flood out of the Gilgamesh epics. In fact, that is the heart of historical criticism. Historical-critical theologians say that the Bible has taken something over, not that others have taken something from the Bible. This is actually a result of their belief in evolution. They say that the Bible, in spite of the problems they see in it, is the final document, the last step in the evolution of the Scriptures. That is why they say the Bible has taken over things from others.

Historical-critical theologians also say that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were not historical figures. They do not understand that after the Genesis flood, people turned again to idolatry rather than continuing in the ways of the Lord. So God made a fresh start, separating out Abraham and his family, telling them to leave their country and kindred and go to the place he would show them. But how can they understand the history of salvation when they think none of it really happened? If we do not believe what is written in the Bible and take it for granted that these were real figures of history, we will never understand how God has worked in the history of salvation. Just think of Joseph. God allowed his brothers to sell him and allowed him to be thrown into the Egyptian prison. Later, he became second only to Pharaoh in Egypt and was charged with teaching the Egyptians to store their grain in the rich years so they could survive the poor years. So we see Joseph’s brothers acting according their own ideas. But God, who reigns over history, took what these sinning men did into his plans and brought Joseph to the right place for his own purpose.

Then the critics say that it is impossible that the whole Israelite nation went down to Egypt. Of course, they also do not believe that the people of Israel crossed safely through the Red Sea, while the Egyptians who followed them drowned. For historical-critical people, these are all fairy tales. To make the biblical accounts more conformable to their thinking, they say that only one tribe went to Egypt. Then this tribe went out and met the other eleven tribes at a special meeting at Shechem, where they decided to unite. Each tribe brought its own tradition, and the one tribe who had been in Egypt brought Egypt’s tradition in, and later all these traditions were united. That is how the historical-critical theologians fancy things happened. Oh, these truly are fancies, and historical-critical students have to believe much more than those who take literally what is written in the Bible! It is easier to believe in all the miracles of the Bible, and the words of God as recorded there, than to believe what a historical-critical student has to believe.

Furthermore, historical-critical theologians do consider the Bible reports concerning Israel’s coming in the holy land as history. Accordingly, they do not see the right of Israel to own this land. This view also takes away the basis for eschatology. They cannot take seriously Zechariah’s prophesy that Israel will cry out in prayer for Jesus Christ, that he will come, and that the Mount of Olives will split into two. They also do not believe all the prophecies concerning the salvation for Israel in the end times. All of this results from the dogma of higher criticism that God does not act in history. (GVCC) Their God does nothing, and therefore all fulfillment of prophecies in history is denied. So the history of Israel is not seen as the history of promise and fulfillment, but as the history of failure. Bible critics see monotheism as the product of religious evolution, asserting that it did not exist before the prophet Isaiah.

Historical-critical theologians also do not await the second coming of Jesus. They think, “Oh, everything will continue as it has before and so we should not await the coming of Jesus.’ It is just as it says in 2 Peter, that in the end times, there will be mockers who say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?’

 

The False Faith of Higher Criticism

 

According to higher criticism, faith is nothing but a personal view, so we can decide to choose for ourselves whether or not to believe. If we consider ourselves chosen, we are given an understanding of the word of God, but it is binding only for us, not for others. We are supposed to leave other people with their own ideas and to choose their own understanding. Thus, belief is seen as a possible self-understanding, about which we have a choice. We may think our understanding is best, but it’s nothing more than a self-understanding that we have chosen.

But, in reality, faith is obedience to God. Because we are created by God, we are obliged to do what he tells us, for he has a right to our lives. To accept all this is obedience. We are lost sinners, and the only way we can be saved is to accept what God has done in sending his Son for us, and in what Jesus Christ has done for us by carrying our sins to the cross and giving us his righteousness. True saving faith is not, “Oh, I like this idea but that one is not so good. Maybe I could take in these other ideas as well, putting in a little bit of Buddhism and Islam and so on.’ According to higher critics, faith is 100 percent subjective. But according to God’s word, it is a decision we make according to the reality of God and his salvation. We may say, “I do not want to believe,’ but if we do, we will be condemned forever unless God gives us grace and another situation wherein we might rescind our decision. So God has done everything so that we may not be lost and go to hell for eternity, where we will have no communion with God. He gave us his beloved Son, allowing him to be tortured by men, spit in the face, beaten, crowned with thorns and nailed to the cross, where he was mocked and reviled until he died. God has given all of this to us, and if we say “Hmph!’ to Jesus Christ, we must suffer the consequences. So faith is not just saying, “Oh yes, I choose this understanding or that understanding.’

Higher criticism leads people astray because it does not show them what is the reality of believing. Higher criticism is really a terrible heresy, for though it uses the words of the Bible, it gives quite another sense to those words. So the Bible critics have another Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible is the Son of God-indeed, he is God himself, and the second person of the Holy Trinity. The Bible critics say Jesus is only named God’s Son, meaning that the early church wanted to tell the people that Jesus was something special, so they gave him the title Son of God. In other words, when Jews spoke to their fellow Jews who were waiting for the Messiah, they would say, “Oh look, Jesus is the Messiah.’ When they spoke to other Jews who were not waiting for the Messiah, but were familiar with the term “Son of Man,’ they would say, “Oh, Jesus is the Son of Man.’ And when they spoke to the heathen, who were not familiar with the Messiah or the Son of Man, they would say, “Jesus is the Son of God.’

Which Jesus Do You Want?

Such are the ideas of higher criticism. To Bible critics, Jesus was only a man, albeit one who was somehow special. But the Bible says Jesus is God’s Son. He is the Creator (Colossians 1:16). He became man: “The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14).

According to the Bible, the prophets spoke concerning Jesus in about a hundred prophecies. He is Abraham’s descendent, David’s son, and also his Lord. His is the Messiah, the Christos, born of the virgin Mary. Critics like to quote Galatians 4:4 to indicate that Jesus was born of a woman (a wife) and born under the law. But, in reality, this sentence starts, “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son. . . .’ This speaks about the pre-existence of Jesus. Bible critics push that aside and say, “Yes, but there is nothing said of a virgin. Cannot this verse also be speaking about a wife and a woman?’ Thus, they reason that Jesus had to be born of a woman, but not a virgin, because that is the normal way to be born.

According to the Bible, Jesus is the second and last Adam. But the critics say, “This is a late idea which we do not find in Mark.’ Whether or not this idea is found in Mark is significant because under the two-source theory, Mark is considered the oldest gospel and the source of Matthew and Luke. But according to old church tradition, Matthew was the first gospel, not Mark. Then the critics will say, “Paul did not speak about the virgin birth either.’ But Paul called Jesus the last, or second Adam, which he would not have been if he had been just an offspring of the first Adam. And if Jesus Christ had been an offspring of the first Adam, it would mean that he was just an ordinary son of Adam who would have had to die for his own sin. In other words, if Jesus had not been born of a virgin, he would have been a sinner. He could not be our Savior because he could not have taken our sins upon himself. But Paul says clearly that Jesus is the second Adam. He was born of a virgin and is the Son of God, without sin. Yes, Jesus was tempted as we are, but he was without sin. He was not just an ordinary man, as the Bible critics claim.

The Bible says Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bible critics say that he had to be born in Nazareth because he was called Jesus of Nazareth. But there is no law saying that a person must be named after the place where he is born. Jesus could have been named after the place where he grew up from his childhood years, as we believe he was.

According to the Bible, Jesus did all the miracles that are reported in the gospel and said everything the gospels report. But Bible critics, especially those of the Jesus Seminar, say he was only involved with some psychosomatic healings and that he said only about 15 percent of what the gospels attribute to him. They say that all the rest of the teachings and deeds were made up by the early church.

According to the Bible, Jesus prophesied his sufferings and then died on the cross for our sins. But Bible critics say that when Jesus spoke of his death, he was merely speculating about what people might do to him, knowing that his actions and words were revolutionary for that time. They say that he was, indeed, killed as a consequence of his actions, not on behalf of our sins.

Finally, the Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven, from which he shall come again to judge the living and the dead. But according to the critics, Jesus “lives,’ but only in the faith of his disciples and the word of kerygma. In other words, they claim that as long as Jesus is preached, he is “alive,’ but he did not physically rise from the dead.

What do we do with this information? We must make a decision. We must decide whether we want to follow the Jesus of the Bible critics or the Jesus of the Bible. They are not the same. If we choose the Jesus of the Bible critics, then we must know that we will not have the Jesus who can save us, because the Bible says, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life’ (1 John 5:12). What about you? Do you want a theology that follows Jesus Christ of the Bible, that is “built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles,’ or do you want a theology that follows philosophers and poets, and is built on the hypothesis of so-said science? For myself, I have decided to follow the Jesus of the Bible, and I hope that you will too.