My Personal Experience with the Higher Criticism

. . . to accept the results of Criticism is to accept the methods and presuppositions which produced these results. To accept their assumptions is to accept a naturalistic evolution which is fundamentally contradictory to the Biblical and Christian point of view. It is therefore essentially contradictory to Christianity . . .  J. J. Reeve



The following is an excerpt from an article in The Fundamentals, by Professor J. J. Reeve of Southwestern Theological Seminary. The Fundamentals were originally published during the modernist controversy of the 1910-15.

How can so many Christian scholars and preachers accept the views of the critics and still adhere to evangelical Christianity with intense devotion? As we have seen, to accept the results of Criticism is to accept the methods and presuppositions which produced these results. To accept their assumptions is to accept a naturalistic evolution which is fundamentally contradictory to the Biblical and Christian point of view. It is therefore essentially contradictory to Christianity, for what is the latter if it is not a supernaturally revealed knowledge of the plan of salvation, with supernatural power to effectuate that salvation? All who have experienced the power of Christianity will in the main assent to this definition. How then can Christians who are Higher Critics escape endorsing the presuppositions of the Critics? There is an inner contradiction between the assumptions of their scientific reason and the assumptions of their religious faith. A careful study of the attitude of these mediating critics, as they are called, has revealed a sense of contradiction somewhere of which they are vaguely conscious. They maintain their attitude by an inconsistency. Thus it is they have many difficulties which they cannot explain. This inner contradiction runs through much of their exegesis and they wonder that evangelical Christians do not accept their views. Already many of them are not quite so sure of their "assured results" as they were. Many evangelical Christians do not accept these views because they can "see through" them.

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