The Freedom of Science

by Josef Donat

It made a painful impression to find in the Christmas number, 1908, of the liberal-theological “Christliche Welt” a posthumous article by Fr. Paulsen: “What think you of Christ: Whose Son is He?” The article was without doubt one of the last he had written. It contains the program of modern liberal science. “With the seventeenth century,” we read there, “begins the reorganization of the theory of the universe by science. Its general tendency may be described by the formula: Elimination of the supernatural from the natural and historical world.” “Consequently, no miracles in history, no supernatural birth, no resurrection, no revelation, in fact no interference by the Eternal in temporal events.” Hence, the man who “thinks scientifically in this wise can have no doubt that the old ecclesiastical dogma cannot be reconciled with scientific thought.” This, of course, amounts to a complete renunciation of positive Christianity.

This scientific thought, in the words of Baumgarten, “rejects any projection of the supernatural into tangible reality”; especially is “the metaphysical genesis and nature of the Saviour highly offensive to our ethical consciousness,” even “absolutely unbearable.” The Christian religion can no longer be permitted to overtower other religions by its supernaturalness. “The distinction between a revealed and a natural religion becomes an impossibility,” says W. Bousset. And Wundt declares: “Christianity, as an ‘absolute’ or a ‘revealed’ religion, would stand opposed to all other religious development, as an incommensurable magnitude. This point of view, evidently, cannot be competent for our speculations.”

Having become the ruling mode of thought, these presumptions determine from the outset the results to be obtained by “research,” and they force it to violate its own method, so that it may be dragged along the by-ways and false ways of a mistaken, philosophical a-priorism, thereby making freedom of science a mockery. From the abundant material at our disposal let us take only one example, viz., the Modern Criticism of the Gospels.

The Gospels contain many records of facts of a supernatural character, of miracles and prophecies. That these records are necessarily false is the first principle of the historical, or critical, method, as it is called. “As a miracle of itself is unthinkable, so the miracles in the history of Christianity, and in the Christianity of the New Testament, are likewise unthinkable. [pg 255] Hence, when miracles are nevertheless narrated, these narratives must be false, in as far as they report miracles: that is, either the relation did not happen at all, or, if it did, there was a sufficient natural explanation”; “the historian must under all circumstances answer, ‘No,’ to the question whether the report of a miracle is worthy of belief” (T. Zeller). Thus instructed, “unprejudiced” research proceeds to construct its results of the investigation of the genuineness, time and date, of the writing of the Gospels and of the Acts, as well as of their credibility. Let us see how this is done.

The tradition of the early Church, as well as intrinsic evidence, testify that the first Gospel was really written by the Apostle Matthew, and this certainly before the destruction of Jerusalem. Liberal-Protestant criticism, however, assigns its origin to a time after the year 70, chiefly for two reasons: First, the striking prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, conforming so accurately to the actual event, could have been written only after the year 70; otherwise it would have amounted to a real prophecy subsequently fulfilled, a conclusion that cannot be accepted. The second reason is this: The contents of St. Matthew's Gospel is already wholly Catholic, hence it must have been written during a later, Catholic, period. For as there can be no influences from above, and as everything is evolved in a natural way, the principle must govern: that the more supernatural and the more dogmas, so much later the period in question; at first there could have been only a religion of sentiment without dogma, which gradually developed into Catholic dogmatism. Similar are the presumptions which direct modern research in respect to the genuineness of the other Gospels and the Acts. A few proofs:

Prof. Jülicher thinks that, “While we cannot go prior to the beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100....” Why? “Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem”—a prophecy, namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem [pg 256]cannot be admitted. “But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious position of Matthew. Despite his conservative treatment of tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has written a Catholic Gospel.... To Matthew the congregation, the Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential features the early Catholicism is completed.”

Jülicher arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on St. Luke's Gospel: “That Luke's Gospel was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., is proven beyond any doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war are ‘foretold.’... All arguments in favor of a later date of writing concerning Matthewhold good also of Luke.” Even more unreserved is O. Pfleiderer, until recently a prominent representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: “In this Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the constitution of the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ ... Catholic, the doctrine of Salvation ... Catholic are the morals ... Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to Peter as the foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the key.” In regard to this latter point Pfleiderer remarks expressly: “In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate this passage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains the solemn proclamation of Peter's Primacy.”The unsophisticated reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent concoction of a later time; “hence the origin of the Gospel of Matthew is to be put down not before the time of Hadrian; in the fourth century rather than in the third.”

A. Harnack fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70, because “Matthew, as well as Luke, are presupposing the destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage feast).” This is to be held also of Luke's Gospel. “This much can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by almost all critics, Luke's Gospel presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem.”

Remarkable is Harnack's latest attitude towards the Acts; it shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less the results of historical research than of philosophical presumptions. In his “Acts of the Apostles” Harnack admits: “Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties.” In substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical criticism. “These are opposed solely by the observation [pg 257]that the prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to decide.... But it is not difficult to judge on which side the weightier arguments are” (viz., on the part of the contention for an earlier date). Yet Harnack is loath to accept the better scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions. He formulates his final decision in the following way: “Luke wrote at the time of Titus, or during the earlier time of Domitian (?), but perhaps (only perhaps, in spite of decisive arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties.” (Recently Harnack recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian's proof that the fourth Gospel could not have been written by John, the son of Zebedee; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come) cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the death of the favourite disciple. “The section xx. 20-23 obviously presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter, however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters 1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of Zebedee, whose death is there presupposed.” The whole argument again rests upon the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.

The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions testify to it as the writing of St. John, is, because it teaches so clearly the divinity of Christ: and this must be denied. Significant are, for instance, the words in which Weizsäcker sums up his objections to this gospel: “That the Apostle, the favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything that he once experienced, as the living together with the incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a divine being ... of one of the original Apostles, it is unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the Gospel is subordinate.”This means, Christ cannot be admitted to be a Divine Being—impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him for it: therefore, this “miraculous picture of a Divine Being” cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.