Criticism and Faith
The Rise of Christianity. By E. W. Barnes. (Longmans. 15s.)
IT is not many weeks since a great historian, who is also a great churchgoer, expressed to me his dismay at the extent to which clergy and ministers ignored the evidence of history in their presen- tation of the faith. He was thinking of the conspiracy of silence which still closes the pulpits to any discussion of Biblical criticism. But such obscurantism is nowadays reinforced by the new orthodoxy which describing itself as " post-critical " professes to accept but in plain fact evades the findings of scholarship. Far too many of our Christian leaders behaVe as if critical study of the Scriptures had been a distressing and indelicate disease with which a sceptical liberalism had infected theology and as if orthodoxy had now shaken off the affliction and could return to its medieval or pre- scientific dogmatism unaffected by the discoveries and untroubled by the problems of the past century and a half. No attacks by flu: open adversaries of Christendom are more damaging than this debasing of the standards of truth by its accredited champions.
In such a situation the Bishop of Birmingham has given us a brave and timely presentation of a Christian faith which knows and is not afraid to state the findings of modern critical studies as to the origin, history and character of the Christian religion. With the detachment of a great mathematician, the objectivity of a great scholar and the sincerity and integrity of a great man, he has set out in a straightforward record the " things concerning Jesus," describing the political and religious background, making full allowance for the presuppositions and superstitions of the time and place, presenting the objections which can be brought against the authenticity of the records, and refusing to allow any partiality or prejudice or special pleading. Where there is a choice between (say) an earlier or a later date for a document or between apostolic or other authorship for a record he deliberately gives the benefit of the doubt to the conclusion which tells against an easy faith. Repeatedly he brings out points which most Christians would like to ignore, and issues on which Christian scholars have been timid and hesitant ; forces his readers to recognise the grounds on which critical decisions have to be taken ; and if he thinks that the
objections to traditional views are valid not only endorses them but shows the inferences which must be drawn from them. He has in fact done for us what has been done since the time of Thomas Paine by a very large number of honest minds ; and he, unlike the vast majority of them, can finish the story by " claiming for Jesus the Christ a supremacy that time cannot end."
This is the chief value of the book : it is convincing proof that a man of outstanding intellectual integrity can give full effect to the work of critical scholarship and without shirking or minimising its results can find it consistent to remain not only as a confessing Christian but as an Anglican bishop. To those who know Dr. Barnes this is a fact of great apologetic importance: no man would more readily have resigned his position had his conscience allowed him to do so.
It is important that this main purpose of the book should be remembered before we turn to the details of its record of critical scholarship. To approve the main idea is not necessarily to accept the author's valuation of particular findings. It may have been inevitable to omit the names of the scholars whose work is discussed, but surely some system of references might have been devised which would enable the reader to identify the authorities for the various points. The perpetual anonymity of " some modern scholars " gives us no opportunity of judging whether a theory is drawn from men of sound learning or from less reliable sources, whether it is itself the result of a full and competent examination of the evidence, or the obiter dictum of an imaginative savant, or a suggestion by the author.
A second question arises from the author's concentration upon the type of literary criticism associated with scholars like Burkitt and Streeter rather than upon the more recent emphasis on oral tradition and the "forms " of the Gospel stories. The present tendency to ignore the work of such scholars in spite of its massive learning and permanent importance is certainly both unjust and foolish: but we ought to recognise that they exaggerated the importance of verbal coincidences between existing documents and to modify their conclusions accordingly. It is surprising to find, for example, the very speculative dependence of the author of the Third Gospel and Acts upon a careless reading of Josephus, one of Burkitt's less impressive hypatheses, accepted as conclusive. Similarly, Dr. Barnes shows a tendency to argue that if narratives contain miracles or magic they must be relatively late, whereas in fact, as any student of natural history is aware, a strictly objective record is easily distorted by the mistaken presuppositions of a contemporary observer.
But if (as is the case) the present reviewer would take a very different view on many particular points and especially as to the Character and writings of St. Paul, this is not due to any difference of principle. Such matters must be decided in accordance with the evidence. There must be no return to the pernicious error of Gibbon's time that historical and theological truth belong to different realms of enquiry. For his timely protest against the insidious revival of this heresy as well as for his proof that faith though purged is not weakened by honest study Dr. Barnes deserves the
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