METHODS OP BIBLICAL CHlTlClSM. 



103 



purely literary questions are largely controlled by the view 

 taken of the origin and course of development of the religion : 

 on a different theory, the judgment passed on the age, relations, 

 and historical value of particular writings would be different 

 also. This dependence of many of the conclusions of criticism 

 on the religious and historical standpoint is practically 

 admitted by Wellhausen when he declares that it is only 

 within the region of religious antiquities and dominant 

 religious ideas that the controversy can be fully brought to a 

 definite issue. The question is not simply one between those 

 who accept and those who reject Higher Criticism : it is in 

 reality a much deeper issue : the existence at all of the super- 

 natural element in the religion of Israel. 



Our Attitude to the Su'pernatural. 



The fundamental issue, therefore, is the attitude of ourselves 

 and the critics to the supernatural. Now the Eeligion of Israel 

 has a unique place amongst historical religions : there is nothing 

 to be compared with it. The illimitable influence of a small 

 and obscure people on the history of the world, the unity and 

 coherent development of their teachings, and their obvious 

 culmination in the transcendent personality of Christ, justify its 

 steady unhesitating claim to a divine origin. It is here that 

 Kuenen and the " modern " school of critics part company with 

 us. They insist that Israel's religion is nothing less, but also 

 nothing more than other religions. They deny the supernatural 

 in history and prophecy, and recognize alone " natural develop- 

 ment." This is, of course, an instance of the fallacy of begging 

 the question. The critics take a whole series of phenomena, 

 the most important and characteristic of which is the persistent 

 claim to the supernatural, and rule the special part of the pheno- 

 mena out of court. We insist that the facts offered by religion and 

 history must be impartially examined, and that the rejected 

 phenomena are so integral a part of the whole that it is in the 

 highest degree uncritical to begin by saying that they are im- 

 possible. The case is one of competing interpretations of the 

 Old Testament : and the ultimate test of the validity of criticism 

 must be its fitness to meet the facts. The purely natural inter- 

 pretation has to leave out the greater part of the facts asserted, 

 to rearrange them, and to treat them with the highest degree of 

 arbitrary licence. 



The interest of Christian faith in these literary questions is 

 fundamental. 



