I. i. Defects in the Methods of current Criticism.
It is now rather more than eight years since Harnack wrote the famous Preface to his Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur. It was an instance of the genial insight of the writer, and a keen diagnosis of the criticism of the day.
The main outline of the Preface will be remembered. Looking back over the period from which Science was just beginning to emerge, the writer characterized it as one in which all the early Christian literature including the New Testament had been treated as a tissue of illusions and falsifications. That time, he went on to say, was past. For Science it had only been an episode, during which much had been learnt and after which much had to be forgotten. His own researches, Harnack explained, would be found to go in a reactionary direction even beyond the middle position of current criticism. The results might be summed up by saying that the oldest literature of the Church, in its main points and in most of its details, from the point of view of literary history, was veracious and trustworthy. In the whole New Testament there was probably only a single writing that could be called pseudonymous in the strict sense of the term, the so-called Second Epistle of St. Peter; and, apart from the Gnostic fictions, the whole number of pseudonymous writings down to Irenaeus was very small, and in one case (the Acts of Thecla) the production of such a work was expressly condemned. In like manner the amount of interpolation was also far less than had been supposed; and the tradition relating to this early period might in the main, and with some reservations, be trusted.
Baur and his school had thought themselves compelled, in order to give an intelligible account of the rise of Christianity, to throw over both the statements in the writings themselves and those of tradition about them, and to post-date their composition by several decades. They were driven to do this by mistaken premises. Starting with the assumption that all these writings were composed with a definite purpose, to commend some sectional view of Christianity, they were constantly on the watch for traces of that purpose, and they found them in the most unexpected places. The views of Baur and his followers had been generally given up; but the tendencies set on foot by them remained. The Christian writings were still approached in an attitude of suspicion; they were cross-examined in the spirit of a hostile attorney; or else they were treated after the manner of a petit maître, fastening upon all sorts of small details, and arguing from them in the face of clear and decisive indications. Baur thought that everything had a motive, and an interested motive. But, whereas he sought for the motive on broad lines, his more recent successors either gave themselves up to the search for minor incidental motives, or for interpolations on a large scale, or else they gave way to a thorough-going scepticism which confused together probabilities and improbabilities as though they were all the same.
Harnack went on to describe the results of the labours of the last two decades (1876-96) as constituting a definite ‘return to tradition.’ This return to tradition he regarded as characteristic of the period in which he was writing; indeed he looked forward to a time when the questions of literary history which had excited so much interest would do so no longer, because it would come to be generally understood that the early Christian traditions were in the main right.
This Preface of Harnack’s attracted considerable attention, and probably nowhere more than in England. English students hailed it as the beginning of a new epoch, and one in which they could be more at home. It fell in with certain marked characteristics of the English mind. Even the progressive element in that mind naturally works on conservative lines; it has been reluctant to break away from the past. The very advances of freedom, so steady and so sure, have not been revolutionary; they have been advances
‘Of freedom slowly broadening down
From precedent to precedent.’
But it was not only the destructive conclusions of continental criticism with which dissatisfaction was felt, and which gave an apologetic colour to much English work. The methods were in many ways not less distasteful than the conclusions. Englishmen felt, whether they said so or not, that there was something wrong. And therefore, when a scholar of Harnack’s distinction put their thoughts into words and pointed to the very defects of which they seemed to be conscious, their hopes were raised that at last a movement was begun which they could follow with sympathy, and in which they might perhaps to some extent bear a part.
When I take upon myself to speak in this way of ‘English students,’ I of course do so with some reservations. I have in mind the rather considerable majority of the theological faculties in our Universities, and I might say the majority of the teaching staffs of all denominations throughout Great Britain; for there are excellent relations, and a great amount of solidarity, among British teachers of Theology in all the churches. A good general representation of the average views would be found (e. g.) in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. No doubt there is also the other type—the type represented by Encyclopaedia Biblica. There are not a few among us who are less dissatisfied with Continental methods, and who pursue those methods themselves with ability and independence. And beyond these there are very many more, especially among the cultivated and interested laity, who are acquainted in a general way with what has been done on the Continent, and who are impressed by what they take to be the results, though for the most part they have not time to test the processes. I say advisedly that this class is impressed by what it conceives to be results, because I imagine that, while there is a feeling that Continental scholars are freer in their researches and less trammelled than our own, there is also some reserve owing to the consciousness that the results have not been fully tested. To this extent I should say that the intellectual posture of this class was one of waiting—serious and interested waiting—rather than of complete committal either to one side or to the other.
Since my visit to America I seem to be better able to speak of the situation there, though closer acquaintance did but in the main confirm and define the opinion that I had previously formed. There are several differences between the conditions in the two countries. On the other side of the Atlantic there are probably greater inequalities of theological instructedness. They have a greater number of Universities and Seminaries, in which the standard varies more than it does with us. And while on the one hand general culture and that kind of vague knowledge of the nature and tendencies of criticism which goes with general culture is more widely diffused in these islands, on the other hand I should be inclined to think that a real first-hand knowledge of critical work is more often to be found there than it is here. This is due to the fact that a large proportion of the ablest professors and teachers have been themselves trained in Germany. And yet, in spite of these differences and inequalities, there is a general tendency, which seemed to me to embrace the whole nation.
It was summed up in a few words by one of the Methodist Bishops (it will be remembered that the Episcopalian Methodists are strong in America) with whom I had some conversation. He had, I believe, been secretary of some Board of Religious Education, and spoke with wide knowledge. I should be afraid to say how many students had passed through his hands. And, speaking of these students, he said that their general attitude was this: ‘They want to keep their faith; and yet they also want to see the realities of things.’
The same description would, I believe, fit the teachers and professors as well as the students, including those trained in Germany. They too want to keep their faith, and to help their students to keep their faith. As compared with the state of things in Germany, there is a more general and sustained effort to make their teaching positive and constructive; and this constructive teaching takes, I suspect, in most cases very similar lines—I should describe it as in the main Ritschlianism of the Right. At the same time, they too want to see the reality of things; in other words, they want to teach by strictly scientific methods. And the only further remark that I should have to make would be that they are perhaps a little inclined—and it naturally could not be otherwise—to look at these methods through German spectacles.
Now I would not hesitate to carry this generalization still further. We, in this country, have probably a greater number of cross currents; there is a greater number of media that stand between the individual and his ultimate aims and wishes, in the shape of loyalties to this or that church or party. And yet I think that, broadly speaking, we should not be wrong in summing up what is really at the bottom of the minds and hearts of the whole Anglo-Saxon race in the same words: ‘They want to keep their faith; and yet they also want to see the realities of things.’
It is the equilibrium of these two propositions that is most characteristic. I fully believe that motives of the same kind are present among the Germans as well as ourselves. I could easily name a number of German professors who, I feel sure, are as anxious to keep their faith as we are. At the head of the list I should put Harnack himself, whose views have been so much discussed in this country. There is, however, a greater diversity of attitude among the professorial body as a whole. And so far as they were agreed—I am speaking especially of the widespread liberal branch—they would, I think, all invert the order of the two propositions: they would give precedence to the desire to get at realities; and they would identify this getting at realities with the use of scientific method. The reason is that in Germany, more than elsewhere, the prevalent standards of judgement are essentially academic. The Universities give the lead and set the tone for the whole nation; and the Universities have now been accustomed for many generations to an atmosphere of free thought.
Now it is far from my intention to undervalue, either the use of scientific method in general, or German science in particular. I have the highest opinion of both. By far the greater part of the advance that has been made in Theology—and I believe that a great advance has been made in our own country as well as elsewhere—I would again appeal to Hastings’ Dictionary as representing a sort of average—has been due to the stricter application of science; and a great part of this has been German science. Honour must be given where honour is due. We must not hold back the full recognition that at the present time Germany holds the first place in Science, and that its output of scientific work is perhaps as great as that of all the rest of the world besides. I am not sure whether this is an exaggeration, but I hardly think it is.
But in all the more tentative forms of science, such as philosophy, history, and theology, there is, or at least has been so far, a double element, one that is stable and permanent, and another that is more or less local and ephemeral.
If I proceed to offer some criticisms upon German critical methods, I am perfectly well aware that the Germans in turn would have something to criticize in ours. At the present day discussion is not limited to any one country, but is international. It is by scholars of different race and training comparing notes together that mistakes are corrected, methods gradually perfected, and results established. I shall not hesitate therefore to point out where it seems to me that German methods have gone wrong. And I feel that I can do this the more freely when a scholar of Harnack’s high standing has set the example. The faults that we seem to have noticed in German criticism are very much those which he has indicated: it has been too academic, too doctrinaire, too artificial, too much made in the study and too little checked by observation of the facts of daily life. The very excellences of the German mind have in some ways contributed to the formation of wrong standards of judgement. More than other people the Germans have the power of sustained abstract thought, of thoroughness in mustering and reviewing all the elements of a problem, of thinking a problem out in such a way as not to leave gaps and inconsistencies. Hence they are too ready to assume that all the rest of the world will do the same, that if an important piece of evidence is omitted in an argument it can only be because it was not known, that carelessness and oversights and inconsistencies are things that need not be reckoned with. And there is also too great a tendency to argue as though men were all made upon one pattern. There is a want of elasticity of conception. And, to sum up many points in one, there is a great tendency to purism or over-strictness in the wrong place, and to over-laxity also in the wrong place, to strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.
What one desiderates most is greater simplicity, greater readiness to believe that as a rule, in ancient times as well as modern, people meant what they said and said what they meant, and that more often than not they had some substantial reason for saying it.