Full Text for The Historical Critical Method: A Short History Appraisal (Text)

The Historical Critical Method: u NDERST;INDZi\;'G ili\:lT DISCIl'LIXII' dcnlancls in part a pre- sentation and a dcfensc of its orig.ins. 'The llat~lral sciellccs are not as apologetical in naturc as thc soclal scieirces, e.g., l~sychologj~, sociology, urba~t stuitics, :tntl~ropolog)i, auci the lilcc. 'The I-ICAl, if it is to be classified as ;I sciencc, obviously does not hclloiig to natural sciences but to the social sciences. T'hc deiinitioit and purposes of the HCJ1 ~r-ill to a large extent be dcl~cnclcnt on those recognized as founders by the currcnt practitioners. To put it another way, the origin of the methocl is perhaps best identifieti by those lrecognizect as cxl-xxts in the ficlti. Like any social sciencc, it must be tlcfcnsi\le con- ccrning its l>rocctlurcs. In a very curious essay, Ile, for God to order the exterlnination of the heathen nations suggests an apyarcntly different view of Gocl than that of the New Testament, Marcion nlrcstlcd wit11 the problenl anct simply eliminaterl the Old Testament and non-Pauline sections of the New Testament. This is an example of dctcrmining what is and is not entitled to be called God's Scripture by a solitary abstract principle. Strange as it might seem, Marcion tvorl? Spirj t. The age of 1-z~theran O~-tl10(10xy ~~rcscntcd a cliffcrcnt situation. The Lutheran or Protestant Church had hecoolc an cstablishccl cccle- siastical group thnt .ct;ns eng;~gecl ixl ciefeniling itself against the tradi- tion oriented Church of Homc. Scriptrircs provided a necessary and vital arscnal of weapons against tile opponents. ']The defensive posture of Lutheran Orthotlox): was not of its ow11 choosing, but was deter- mined i>y the situation in which the E-c~ansclical Chut.ch foulxi itself. If the Bible Ivas tllc only source of religion, tllell it 111~1st and sho~dd bc the bastion to protect thc cliurch. The n?,.ul who is recognized ns ushering thc age of the HCRl is J3ar~1ch Spi~toza, a Spanish Je.tv, in his Trac'tntzis Theoloyico-Politicz.~~. From hiin to the prcscnt drty certain principles harc ]lad canonical status in critic;jl Biblical stutlies. Basic io the thinliing of Spinoza was thnt l7hilosol>hy, to whicil the spheres of truth ancl 117isdom belonged, sl~ould be separated fro111 theology, ivhose chief purpose was to cvolc criticized from n so-calletl historical pcrspectivc a~ld it still does not lose :tny of its forcc in c!ci~landing obeclience from the nlorc pious and simple peoplc. Hc ll~rtdc such statements "that the l,L70rd of C:oci is faulty, tnmpcred !-clitll, anti inconsistcnt; that we possess it only in fragments, :mcI that the original of the covenant which Goci made with the Jews is lost." A pious respect for the Bible fro111 the vic.t.i7 point of thc faith life ancl n se'c'crc negative attitude to the historical reliability of thc Scriptures anticipated the nco- orthodox esegctical nlethods of the ~nicl-twentieth century. Another principle put forth by Spinoza is also basic to the HCM. He mnlinozals principIe that the recording of so-callecl miracles is not the result of an actrlal occur- rence but rather t'hc result of l~ious reflection can also I>c clctectecl ~vhcn certain scholars sav that thc writers of the Bible 'heightened' the description of the na&ral event to give God glory. Spinoza's post~ire in studying thc Biblical literatul-c hecame cl~aracteristic of thc ontirc HC3.I movc:ment. Hebrew jdiolns arc to be understood ill their original serlse. Each boolc should be analyzeti and ou tlincd by itself, ilmbiguities, obscurities, ancl mutually exclu- sive statements should be noted. Thc ori~inal setting for writing the boolc should be reconstructed. Character~stic of Spinoza's approach is tlli~t the intcrprctcr always remains above the Biblical liter;tturc. Hc nevcr bccon~cs in~olvetl with any thoolocricitl interpretatiolls. At P no tin~e does the Scripture per sc or the Scripture recognized as the word of Gocl makc c.laims upon tl.ze interprcter. This of course was the spring of Rationalism, ;in agc in which m;tn prided himself in his self-l~roclai~ncc ol~jcctivjty. 11 criticis111 ~vhich shoulcl l~e le.clcleci against Spinoza anit those who al~~~roacl~ the Bible in a so-called historical fashion without consideration for theology is this: Can bool; ivhich clain~s to ljc theological throughout really be understood in :iny sensc at all ivl~cn the interpreter adopts a non-theological postnre? Is it really ever yossihlc to divorce thcology fro111 history in the CIlristiax? religion? Tllis of coursc has been :I hallmarl; of the HCRl in one Jvay or another. Spiizoji.:~ occupics the position of ;I "John the Baptist" in HChI. The position of "hlcssiab" in the HChl is generally assicrlled to Johnnnes Sernlcr ( 1 7 25- 1 7 9 1 ) . In an essay in "Occasional Papers" publishecl by Concordin TJleologicnl ii'Io?ztIzly (1966) Dr. Frcc! I(1-amer makes this obseri7ation concerning Semler: "O1rr church is toclay faced with the historical and literary criticis111 wllose proponent was Senllcr ill his day." (p. 77) Senzler popularized \\;hat is commonlp 1inon:n as thc HCM. Some of his 17ic.r~~ still extant irz the HChl today and which llavc bcen influential need to be n~entioncd. (1) Script~~res ant1 the \!'ord of C;oci wcrc scparoted, thus one could make ncgativc historical criticisnls of thc Scriptures without offendiilg the IVortl of God. [Tliis .iliclv was anticipated by Spinoza.] (2) Intcr- prctations of Scripture conflictii~ g ~vith traclitionally Ilcld doctrines are to be hcld regardless of 1~1-criously lleltl opinions or any concept of Scriptural unity. (3) Jesus ancl His apostles accommodated thcir preaching to cornn?cnly acccptcd views. AIodern scicnce can bc ~rscd tc! indicate thc points of accommodation. (4) Scriptures are not al~vays correct in their tlcscription of \\;hat happened, [The HCh.1 still makes the attempt to gct behincl the words to sce what, if anything, really happened at all.] (5) Solnc Biblical accounts arc mytho- logically co~lclitiolled by the times, e.g., creation. (6) Philosophy has the san~c content as theology, thus thc mind becoilles the basis of judgment. Scripture 131ust bc read in such n way as not to contraclict the \Vcltanscha~:ung of the interprcter. ('7) Certain sections of the Scriptures may be criticized by other sections. Thus for examplc Scnlfer, hinlself, p~:eferrccl John ni~d Paul as stanciards of judgment for criticism of other parts of tIlc Sew Testalz~ellt. [i\;Iarcion did the same thing 1600 yc:!rs before Seln1cr.l (8) Hc recoanizec'l tn70 theological scl~ools of thought in the Kerv Testament the Petrine and Pauline/fohaxlninc. \:I11 this he has hccn followecl by most scholars of t-he IICR4 in that t-he Wew Testament is composcd docu- ments amalgamating clif1el:cnt and opposing schcols of thought.] (9) The IlJorcl of God is not tIlc Scripture but ratller the Law and the Gospel. I11 this scheme the Gospel talies l~rcceclencc since the Chris- tian is totally Iibcratect fro111 the La\\-. /:This concept js \.cry mr~ch like current t11inkir;g in the ellurch, but rcaUy can be trilc~d to \Inrcion.:] For Semler what is Gospci bcconics thc to~ichsto~ic in dctvrmining what is tllc 'iVorc1 of God. The .rvholc HCh.1 was well sct on its path at the beginning of the 19th century. The philosop21cr Lessing printed the 'lVulfenbi.ittel Fragmcrzte after the tieath of their anonymous author, Reimarus. Nat~~ral explanations l.clere given to thc resurrection of Jesus. Lessing himself published an essay, "The Ten Main Contradictions in the Resurrection Narratives." If Hultlnann holcls the position of prominence of those who use the I-TCM in the 20th century, then this honor belonged to Ferdinand Christian Baur in the 19th. Robert Grant of the University of Chicago called him "the illost important Ncw 'Testament critic of the nineteenth century." Baur's method of historical criticism consisted of two parts, speculative philosophy and the historical critical nlethod in the style of Sender. Baur applied the thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis method of I-legel to the Netv Testament. The thesis was representeci by the Juclaizers, the anti-thesis or opposition by the Gentile Christianity of St. Paul and the results of the syntllesis are found in the present Gospels and Epistles. Though New Testament scholars today scorn Baur's obvious de~endency on Hegel's philosophy, they are agreed that the New Testanle~lt canon is a compronlise of varying points of view. Sonle today arc changing their negative verdict of Baur's approach to a positive appreciation. To put lt. another way, from the tinlc of Jesus to the final fornlation of the canon there were not only differences in theological npproachcs but contradictory theologies. The writing and canonlzatio~z of the New Testanlent represents ecclesiastical media- tion of thc issues. What is equally important in the HCM of Baur which is pcrpctuated in the 20th century is that the question of the resurrection of Jesus is transferred froin real111 of history to the realm of faith. Baur wrote, "For history, thc ilecessary presul~position of everything that follonls is not so ~nrich the factuality of the resurrcc- tion of Jcsus itself, but much more the belief in thc same." [As quotcd from A!anfred I<.cvirnn, The Res~lrrection of the Dead (Basel: Fried- rich I~einhardt, 1972), p. 2 1 .'] The object of historical critical stucly is not the rcsurrcction itself or the empty tomb with possiblc explana- tions for its emptiness as wcre offered in the heyday of Rationalism, I)ut the concern is now with the faith of the disciples. The clisciplcs' faith bccamc a lval1 behilltl n-hich the historical critic was not permitted to 50. This sail~c posture is assumed by Bultniann and \( his most prominent succcssors. Pannenberg jn our day is a prominent exce~tio~l to this theory. Baur had many students, the most fanlous of who111 was David Friedrich Strauss, a virtual aorlostic concerning a. the reality of Jesus. Baur by making the center of historical ii~vestiga- ti011 the laster faith of thc disciples had opened the doors for the possibility that thc clisciplcs were deceived. Strauss took this option! Since what people thou$lt or believed about the resurrection became thc touchstone for the crltire Christian movement, negative faith or unbelief couId have equal standing with faith or belief. Strauss car- ried his teacher's views to a logical conclusion in his Life of Jeszls in which he offered the conclusions that Christianity was a fabrication of thc carly Christian community and that there is no evideuce fox the resurrcctidn at ail. Paul was discxeditect as a valid witness as hc re- ceived a vision. 'The E~raimgelists contradicted Paul as well as each Historical C'.riticul 17,fctf2od 299 othcr, thris clisqualifying their testimony. Strauss gave psychological expfarlntions to thc resu~rection. For his radical position he was c'lenicd his post at a xtniversity and was pensioned off. He severely criticizecl. other practioners of HCh4 for holciii~g on to certain supernatural events in the life of Jesus, even though thc method as all used it elinlillated all supernaturalism from the New Testament. In spite of Strauss' cloom, Baur considereci him his best student. Strauss must be praised for at least one good view. He treated the entire Nciv Testa- ment as a fabrication and did not look for layers of what appeared more authcnic or less. For him it was all or nothing. Strange as it might seem, hc found a kind of negative ally in the conservative exegete Hengstenberg at the University of Berlin who also treated the Script~lrcs as orle cloth. Where Strnuss found 'nothing,' Hengstenberg fo~xnd 'all.' Neither man deviated froin his establisheci view point toward the New Testament. FOP one it was story ant1 no history and for the other it was history and no story. Strauss in a way anticipated Herbert Brnun aid others who claim that if there \.iJas an historical Jesus we know nothing about him. Even Bultmann is a n1ce bit more conservative than that! Our purposes are not further servcd to sur- vey the 19th century I-ICM, though such a stitdy woulcl not be withor~t value because it is really questionable whether the HChI in the 20th century has proceeded much further than the 19th century. Perhaps the 20th century HCR4 is more cynical and agnostic in its hopes of finding tlre real historical Tesus. In closir~g this section refer- cnce ~llust be made to the final and crowning point of the HCM in the 19th century as it reached this zenith in Adolf von Harnack. iis if determinccl by fate he gave his lectures in the scllool year 1899- 1900 to more than 600 stridents from all faculties at the University of Berlin. These exten~porancous lectures were later printed in a book entitled, What is Christinlzity? Through the use of the HCM as he saw it, he found three basic elements in Jesus' preaching. (1) God's kingdom and its coming. (2) God as the Father and the infinite value of the human soul. (3) liighteo~lsness as demonstrated by the corn- mandnlent of love. \17ith these principles or metl~ods, von Harnack strippect t.he New Testament. \\'ha tever greatness Harnack enjoyed because of his oivn literary protluctivity and as the highest point in the line of ascent in the HCM in the 19th century, it was virtualiy all destroyed by Albert Sclltvcitzer who used a lllcthod which showcd that Jesus should not at all bc un- derstood as an cthical teacher, as the 19th century scholars saw him. The HCivf came into existe~lce as a recognized discipline at thc erld of the 18th century and reached its zenith at the end of the 19th century. It is generally recognized by nlost scholars that the era was brought to an encl by Albert Sch\veitzer with his publication of The Owest of the Historical Jesus, a classical anthology of the HCM in - the 19th century. Rather than for me to render the negative judgment upon thc first century of the HCbl it would be better to listcn to Schweitzer whose evaluation of New Testanlent studies in the pre- vious century is questioned by few if any, Beginning with Keiniarus and Semlcr and going up to Wrede and himself, he includett rather extensive and pertinent sections fro111 books and essays by prominent New Testament scholars. \j70rking \t;.ii-h ~ncreI!~ thc psjnciple of mutual exclnsion, he sl~o~\.ed that the HCA4 had produceil mutually contradictory results on who Jcsus ~vas. 1'Iius Schn-eitzer begins chapter 20. "Therc is nothing more negativc than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Xazarcth wlto came forward publicly as the hiessiah who preached tl;c ethic of the Ireconceived 1~hilosol3hical judgment. Thus 11c has aclvancccl not one step from the 19th century theologians who felt compelled to identify miraculous elements as non-his torical because it did not fit their predctenninecl so-callecl scientific mind set. Sonlc of Bultmann's prcsuppositions are open to question simply on the basis of literary considerations. (1) There is evideilce that instead of the development from simple to con~~)licated for~ns that just the opposite is true. Here are n few examples. Language simplifies as it progresses. Co~nplicated philosophical and scientlhc theories are deliberately sinlplified for eclucational purposes. Condensing litera- ture is a natural thing to do. Fro111 the case of the New Testament, the Pauline theology is more direct, ]nore to the point, more explicit than the material of Jesus recorclecl in the Gospel. Could not Paul's liistol-icui Critical h4ctlzod .-.- ----- 305 ------ tllcoIogy be a later practical conclensatioi~ of Jcsus' theology? (2) 12ecog11izing Palestinian and I-Icllenistic thought forms in the New Testanlent is also a clucstionablc procetlure. It o.c~crIool