Like the genuineness of the Gospels, so is also their credibility beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the narratives directly from the lips of [pg 258] eye-witnesses. Nor would any one doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But, this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite result.
The writers were frauds—this was long ago the hypothesis of the superficial Hamburg Professor, Samuel Reimarus, whose “Fragments” were published by Lessing. But even to a D. F. Strauss “such a suspicion was repulsive.” The Heidelberg Professor, H. E. Paulus, sought his salvation in trying to reduce the reports of miracles to a natural sense, by doing painful violence to the text: for instance, the Lord did not walk upon the sea, but only along the sea; the miracle of the wine at Cana was only a wedding joke. Then came D. F. Strauss (died 1874), and he tried it in a different way. “If the Gospels are really historical documents, then the miracle cannot be removed from the life of Jesus.” Hence, it is to remain? Indeed not! The Gospels must not be accepted as historical sources. They are products of purposeless poetic legends, the miracles are garlands of religious myths, gradually twined around the picture of Jesus. Myths, however, need time for their formation, hence Strauss fixes the date of the Gospels within the second century. He openly admits that his hypothesis would fall to the ground if but a single Gospel has been written in the first century. As a fact, more recent rationalistic criticism has found itself constrained to drop this hypothesis. F. Ch. Baur (died 1860) fell back upon the fraud-hypothesis of a Reimarus. It, too, has been laid among the dead. Thus they have exhausted themselves in the attempt to shake off the burdensome yoke of truth.
Influenced by Strauss, Baur, and other German critics, E. Renan (died 1892) wrote his “Life of Jesus,” a frivolous romance. Quite frank are the words he wrote down in the preface to the thirteenth edition of his “Vie de Jésus” (1883): “If miracle has any reality, then my book is nothing but a tissue of errors.... If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are real things, then our method is abominable.” But he silences all doubts by the phrase: “To admit the supernatural is alone sufficient to place one's self outside of science.”
The newer “historical-critical” school, while having disposed [pg 259] of many contentions of the old schools, is nevertheless in its research bound just as energetically by the postulate of conformity to natural laws. The fourth Gospel is pushed aside: in the others all miraculous occurrences are expounded away, till the “historically credible core” is reached.
The books of the Old Testament fare even worse, if possible.
“Does Genesis relate history or a legend?” asks Prof. Gunkel, and continues: “this is no longer a question to the historian.” Well, a legend, then. But how does the historian know this? From his own pantheistic philosophy, which recognizes no God differing from this world: “The narratives of Genesis being mostly of a religious nature, they continuously speak of God. The way, however, in which narratives speak of God is one of the most reliable standards to judge whether they are meant historically or poetically. Here, too, the historian cannot do without a world philosophy. We believe that God acts in the world as the latent, hidden motive of all things ... but He never appears to us as an acting factor jointly with others(the italics are the author's), but always as the ultimate cause of all things. Quite different in many narratives of Genesis. We are able to understand these narratives of miracles and apparitions as the artlessness of primitive people, but we refuse to believe them.”
Analogous to Bible-criticism is the research in other branches of theology. The origin of Christianity, this wonderful power which so suddenly made its appearance in history and speedily vanquished a whole world, must of course not be a work of Heaven. Hence its origin must be explained at any cost in a natural way, or “historically,” as they put it. The religious notions of Christianity must not be conceded a supernatural certainty over all other religions; and “to understand an event historically means: to conceive it by its causal connection with the conditions of a given place and at a certain time of the human life. Hence science cannot consider such a thing as the appearance of a supernatural being upon the earth” (Pfleiderer).
And then they proceed to show that Christianity is a natural, evolutionary product of the Israelite religion, of Greek philosophy, of Oriental myths, and Roman customs. That it is far superior to all these, and that it is the opposite to them in various ways, is carefully hushed up. The inadequacy and impossibility of such an explanation is adroitly concealed. Nor [pg 260] could the Israelite religion of the Old Covenant, according to the naturalistic principle of liberal theology, have had its origin in revelation and the prophets; hence it comes from Babylon, as the product of natural evolution from Oriental myths and customs. Any old and new analogies, hypotheses, and fancies are good enough then to demonstrate this as “historical.”
The Truth is not in Them.
We pause here. We might thus continue for a long time; but it is enough. The patient reader, who has accompanied us on the tedious way to this point, may begin to feel tired. May he excuse the detailed recital for the reason that we had to do some extensive reconnoitring, through the precincts of modern philosophical-religious research, to avoid the reproach that we were making accusations without furnishing proofs. Our contention was, that liberal science is trying to shake off the yoke of religious truth, and to explain it away by its self-made presumptions. We believe that we have proved our contention.