Christianity Accomodationist vs. Protectionist Biblical Critics - Essay Example

Believers in Christ found themselves in a crux between advancement and faith in the nineteenth century. At the tail end of the industrial revolution,people found themselves with new technologies, means of transportation, and definitions of living. Factory lifestyles caused cities to sprout up. Science became a profession in the nineteenth century; Darwin offered theories on evolution, Edison gave the world light, Faraday determined how batteries worked, and Marie Currie, a woman, discovered radiation. Advancements in philosophical scholarship and art paralleled the increase in science. Van Gogh and Monet painted vivid paintings, Beethoven and Chopin composed wonderful pieces, and Dickens and Dickenson wrote beautiful passages. The continuing developments in the understanding of the natural law of the world raised questions about Christianity. Historical consciousness in addition to nineteenth century advancements created a field of Biblical Critics and Protectionists, as more people looked at the occurrences in the Bible. ‘Accommodationist’ held the position that Christianity must change in a way that reflects advances in science, philosophy, and biblical scholarship. ‘Protectionist’ held that Christianity had no obligation to change, and Christianity must be protected from the challenges that scholarship presents. Both sides had many scholars. This paper looks at the accommodation view held by Strauss versus the protection view held by A.A. Hodge and B.B. Warfield. Strauss believed the essence of Christianity was true, but critically disagreed with many important tenets of the faith. “To all, belief, not built on demonstration, doubt is inherent, though it may not be developed….just as the believer is intrinsically a skeptic or critic, so on the other hand, the critic is intrinsically a believer” (Strauss, 157). Strauss stated the Bible came into its being through mythical means. He believed that Jesus unified God and humanity. However, Jesus did not perform miracles. Instead, the stories of Jesus’ miracles were added to the Bible through orally transmitted stories that by the time the disciples wrote the New Testament were showing that Jesus had disobeyed natural laws. “The mythical view once admitted, innumerable, and the never otherwise to be harmonized, discrepancies and chronological contradictions in the Gospel histories disappear, as it were at one stroke” (Strauss, 56). Strauss claimed that mysticism appeared throughout the Bible. Strauss claimed mysticism created Jesus’ unnatural birth. Two of the four Gospels refer to Jesus’ virgin birth, Matthew and Luke. Genealogical tables in Matthew and Luke considered Jesus the actual son of Joseph (Strauss, 133). Strauss believed that Joseph and Mary had a legitimate marriage and gave birth to Jesus. Only after Jesus started to show divine characteristics did stories about his virgin birth begin to appear. Strauss claimed that these stories were based on Greek myths and Old Testament predictions. In mythology many great men such as Hercules, Alexander, Pythagoras, and Plato had extraordinary births as the sons of the gods. Apollo’s son birth occurred several centuries after his death. In addition, Isaiah vii 14 stated that a Messiah should be born of a virgin by means of divine agency (Strauss, 140). Isaiah and Greek mythology existed in the time surrounding Jesus creating an environment that Jesus’ virgin birth easily became myth. Mysticism appeared for Strauss in three different ways: historical, philosophical, and poetical. Myths according to Strauss could be found in the Bible as acts that defied natural law, described clothing in detail, contradicted law of succession, or contained speech in poem or hymn (Strauss, 52). Myth in the Old Testament appeared more because few people wrote accounts of events for many years and probably centuries later. For this time lost the actual detail of an individuals garb or an individuals actual response which from human experience, the reader knows that people do not respond in poem or hymn. For example, God’s covenant with Abraham probably did not occur. It is quite natural though that when the Israelites had become populous they could have invented God’s covenant with Abraham “in order to render their ancestor illustrious” (Strauss, 55). Myths prevailed in the Bible according to Straus. Strauss believed in the essence of Christianity. “It is no denied that what to us can appear only sacred poetry was to Paul, John, Matthew and Luke, fact and certain history. It was the very same internal cause which made the narratives of the Gospel sacred fact and history to them, which make those narrative to us sacred myths and poetry” (Strauss, 776). Strauss believed that God is man with religious truths presented man (Strauss, 780). He also believed Jesus was “the greatest man to ever trod the earth- a hero” (Strauss, 767). His personality was perfect and sinless but subject to sufferings of nature. When Jesus died he proved that the incarnation of God was true not in the sense that Jesus rose from the dead, but in the sense that Jesus died for the sin of mankind. Jesus showed that by man entering life, God reconciles himself to man and that by man dying he cast off the limitations of mortality (Strauss, 780). The idea of the incarnation even if mythical, allowed religion to promulgate a strong moral lesson. The ideas stated or implied in the Bible led to the essence of religion. All sections of the Bible supported the beliefs and tenets of Christianity no matter whether they are based on facts or myths. Strauss agreed with Origen, an early Christian philosopher, that the Bible’s purpose is to instruct humanity about the rules of life. A person could take meaning from the Bible (Strauss, 43). Myths developed to teach lessons. Each mythical story had an allegorical representation relating to peoples lives. For example, David slew Goliath could be translated into any person who took on tough problems, or the Gospel story of how Jesus fed five thousand men with five loaves of bread and two fishes could be translated into a man can give a lot with a little, like giving a homeless man one dollar could mean a lot to that man (John 6:1-14). Strauss stated that at Easter, one could preach about Christ’s death, Christ burial, and the peoples’ rising with Christ without elaborating on the myth of Jesus’ incarnation. Emphasizing the idea that Jesus died for humanity and humanity rose with his death allowed for Strauss or a critic like Strauss to avoid preaching about unscientific myth (Strauss, 783). Through looking at the incarnation in this way a believer could allegorically extrapolate the story of the Jesus’ crucifixion to how Jesus related to one’s own life. Strauss explained how historical processes created mythical stories in the Bible. Even though the myths filled the Bible, the myths allowed the Bible’s to help Christians apply the Bible’s teaching through allegorical thoughts to their own lives. A.A. Hodge and B.B. Warfield believed that the Bible did not include myth or allegory. Instead, the Bible was written through inspiration. Divine Guidance made every word perfect. They believed that humans wrote the bible, but were divinely guided, and even in some cases God dictated directly to them. Each writer God made He “formed, endowed, educated, providentially conditioned” the writers supplying them with the “knowledge naturally, supernaturally, or spiritually.” Given divine guidance, each Disciple, and that Disciple alone could produce the part of the Bible that God intended him to write (230). God in most cases did not exercise control over the disciples’ word but “guided them and through their own free will wrote his word but by divine superintendence” (Hodge and Warfield, 232). Each disciple guided by God wrote freely the Words of God perfectly. For Hodge and Warfield, the continuality and continuity of the Bible proved it was the Word of God. The Bible was written in two languages with various authors, but constituted one system in which all parts correlated. The Bible was written flawlessly. Compared to other works of the time period, the Bible exemplified perfection not seen in penmanship by any other human (Hodge and Warfield, 239). Over the centuries since the Bible’s completion, the Bible has held unabated power and belief. Every Church throughout history has taken the doctrine in all its parts to heart. Powerful men like Luther handled the doctrines as the Divine Word (Hodge and Warfield, 240). The Bible proved over time for Hodge and Warfield to be shown the infallible word of God. Hodge and Warfield stated that biblical critics have tried to find faults in the Scriptures, but the Scriptures’ infallibility has proven every critic wrong. Many critics found faults in the Scriptures because of the increasing scientific knowledge. The scripture was not meant to teach science, but because of defective knowledge or interpretation on our part, the scripture has been made by skeptics to appear to be full of errors. Hodge and Warfield state that continued advancement in knowledge will solve these difficulties and lessen the number of apparent discrepancies (239). They would argue that the miracles that Strauss referred to as myths actually happened, but do not have the advancement of knowledge yet to understand them. In order to prove the Scriptures have untruths, a critic would have to prove that the discrepancy appeared in the original autograph, that the interpretation of the discrepancy is the exact message that the passage intended, and that the autograph is inconsistent with some known fact of history, science, or another statement in the Scripture (Hodge and Warfield, 242). With these guidelines “the ones who view the Doctrines as infallible have the presumption in their favor and the challenge rest in those who question its infallibility” (Hodge and Warfield, 240). Inconsistency of Jesus’ birth appeared between the four gospels, Matthew and Luke referred to a virgin birth and the other two did not (Hodge and Warfield, 130). Strauss stated that in the genealogies in Matthew and Luke Jesus is placed as the son of Joseph related to David. It is improbable that the genealogy and the history of the birth of Jesus came from Luke and Matthew, but from different sources (Hodge and Warfield, 133). Matthew represented merely the intention of the angel to inform Joseph not that Mary had become pregnant in the absence of intercourse, but that her pregnancy was to be regarded as pure, not as one fallen from virtue (Hodge and Warfield, 137). The discrepancies between the Gospels of whether Jesus was born of virgin birth or as the son of David, Hodge and Warfield would state that in the original autograph these apparent discrepancies would not appear. Strauss was motivated to resolve the miracles in the Bible that disobey the natural with the preservation of the truth of Christianity and to determine the correct resolution to the problem of overcoming natural science. Strauss was not the only Biblical critic as Strauss, Hodge, and Warfield indicate. Early Biblical scholars like Origen from Egypt, who lived 185–ca. 254, to Rationalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries like Eichhorn and Palus, to contemporaries in the nineteenth century, Schleiermacher and Kant, all analyzed the Bible. Strauss tried to also attempted resolve the discrepancies between different types of biblical scholarship. Strauss’ account felt like a book review. An individual had to sift through critic after philosopher that tried to resolve conflicts of the Bible to understand Strauss’s point. His point was valid but his work would be unattainable to those outside of academia. Hodge and Warfield tried to resolve, as did Strauss, things that may hurt the Christian faith. Hodge and Warfield stuck to their dogmatic beliefs. Warfield spent time in Prussia reading Biblical theologians and historians such as Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), Schleiermacher’s On Religion on Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799), Hegel’s Lectures of the Philosophy of Religion (1827), and Strauss’ Life of Jesus (1835). Well versed in Christian philosophy Warfield rejected these criticisms. Returning to the United States Warfield and Hodge, his predecessor for Principal of Princeton Seminary School, the pre-eminent Seminary school in the United States, wrote a protectionist response to Biblical criticism written mostly in German thousands of miles away. Only a small amount of Biblical Criticism had probably been translated and circulated in the United States compared to Europe. Hodge and Warfield wrote Inspiration in 1881. The eighty-eight years after Kant’s and forty-six years after Strauss’ publication probably gave enough time for Kant’s and Strauss’ criticism to begin circulating around the United States. Hodge and Warfield wrote an immediate argument to maintain a Protestant stronghold in the United States against existing criticism. Hodge and Warfield’s writing style was straightforward and dogmatic. Unlike Strauss’ Inspiration felt attainable to the general populous due to its concise writing and message. Not only was Inspiration attainable, but also it in a sense resolved Hodge and Warfield’s dilemma of protecting Scripture quite well. Hodge and Warfield made a case where it would be nearly impossible to prove them wrong, because no one can possibly find the original document. If one had, Hodge and Warfield would retort that the criticism lay within a wrong interpretation. Hodge and Warfield’s high criteria for proving faults in the scripture helped solidify their argument of the infallibility of the Bible. Strauss admitted that some took a critics’ view like his own harshly. Not believing in the accuracies of such things as Jesus’ birth or miracles of the Bible, yet still believing in Christianity, left a preacher/critic in a tough spot. The preacher/critic could preach the Doctrine believing the essences of what he preached, but not the facts. He could focus only on the essence, or preach his version of the ‘corrected’ Christianity. For Strauss a critic in all these instances remained true to Christianity “but his church may find him a hypocrite”. The church was likely the find the critical theologian preacher a hypocrite or the critical theological preacher may find himself having to state his own views attempting to elevate the congregations to his views. These attempts were mostly “negative” most critical theologians found that they were pushed to leave ministerial profession (Strauss, 783-784). Biblical Critics found themselves hindered by their beliefs. Critics most likely gave up part of their faith in order to preserve it in their mind. In Strauss’ own life he served as a clergyman and theologian professor. In 1835, he wrote Life of Jesus. The book cost him both a career as either a clergyman or professor. He revised the work in 1839 retracting controversial aspects. After the second version he was given a position in Zurich. He was never allowed to teach because his controversial work intimidated members of the University. Strauss lived his life off of a pension given to him by Zurich, but never again stepped foot in front of pupils (class October 16, 2008). Hodge and Warfield were the Principals of Princeton Theological School, both held the position until their deaths. The article Inspiration written prior to Hodge’s death and Warfield accession to Principle did not hinder Hodge’s position or Warfield’s promotion. Strauss, Hodge, and Warfield’s careers showed that the people with power who held the three authors’ job in their provision took Hodge and Warfield’s protection view better. If the promotion or removal from positions indicated whose pieces were taken better, Inspiration would seem to be taken more graciously. Consideration of the locations must also be considered. Strauss wrote from Prussia under a State mandated Protestant Church where as Hodge and Warfield wrote from the United States that had freedom of religion. Disregarding the state, Strauss’ writing would have appealed to the intellectuals or as Schleiermacher wrote “cultured despisers”, where Hodge and Warfield’s writing would appeal to those looking for a way to hold onto the Doctrine despite expanding knowledge of science. Both writings had their audience. Both writings still have their audiences over a hundred years later. Strauss’ Accommodationist view became more pertinent. New science has only shown the improbability of miracles. The mythical view of Strauss seems tangible to those who want to hold on to science and to scripture just as it had to those with the same view in 1885. Most churches have given up the notion that the world is six thousand years old and evolutionism, not creationism, is taught in public schools. Yet, many like Evangelical Churches hold that the Bible is the ‘Word of God’ and still believe every word as divine guidance even such unscientific facts as the age of the earth. Today Strauss’ view that the essence just documentation is more likely accepted than Hodge and Warfield’s stance that every word of the Bible should be taken as true. Strauss’ Accommodationist view held the essence of Christianity. It brought the Bible into the nineteenth century’s knowledge of the natural world by disproving miracles, virgin births, incarnations, verses in hymn or poem as myths produced through oral-tradition before the disciples wrote Scripture. Hodge and Warfield believed that miracles, virgin births, incarnations, verses in hymn or poem as stated in the Bible are infallible. There writers were human, but the words were Gods. Each disciple wrote through divine guidance making Scripture perfect. Hodge and Warfield protected the Scripture making criticism nearly impossible. They made standards for criticism unreachable through stating that by only proving fault in the lost original autograph could one truly find wrongs within Scripture. The fight between Accommodation and Protectionist of the bible prevalent in the nineteenth century has only grown. Today people still find comfort in both of these views. Both Strauss and Hodge and Warfield allow people from different vantage points to reinforce their views of Christianity. Bibliography Hodge , A.A. and B.B. Warfield. Inspiration, 1881. Strauss , David Friedrich. Life of Jesus., 1835. Read More