Historical criticism and the evangelical: Another view

Throughout the centuries of the Church's history since the earliest written records, leaders of orthodox Christianity have championed a view of Gospel origins that conceives the Synoptics in terms of literary (inter) dependence. Without exception, 1 they have reported that the three Synoptic Gospels were literarily independent of each of other. In other words, no author copied from the work of another Gospel author, nor did any two of the Synoptic Gospels depend on a common written source.

The perspective in the Church for 1800 years was that Matthew, an apostle of Jesus Christ and an eyewitness to much that he reported, wrote the first Gospel. It held that Mark, a close disciple of Peter the apostle, wrote the second Gospel, and in so doing, reproduced the preaching of Peter. The continuing tradition said that Luke wrote his Gospel in dependence an the apostle Paul with whom he was closely associated. Advocates of the independence view from the recent past include such evangelical scholars as Louis Berkhof,2 Henry Clarence Thiessen,3 and Merrill C. Tenney.4

This view of Gospel origins prevailed in the church until scholars during the Enlightenment began to question the literary independence of those three Gospels.5 Being of a philosophical bent driven by questionable hypotheses and viewpoints, these scholars could not explain the close similarities in wording and sequence of events in the three without resorting to some type of copying among the authors. That was the beginning of theories of literary dependence.

The independence viewpoint explains the similarities among the Synoptic Gospels by recalling that the sources of the accounts were eyewitnesses whose sharp memories in many cases reproduced the exact wording of dialogues and sermons. Their memories received additional stimulation through the Holy Spirit's inspiration of their writings in accord with Jesus' promise (John 14:26). Literary independence theory accounts for the differences between the Gospels by allowing that different eyewitnesses reported the same events in different but not contradictory ways: This created a diversified, non-homogeneous body of tradition without definable limits from which the writers were able to draw. Coupled with this were the opportunities that the writers had to exchange information on an interpersonal basis. The Gospels simply recorded the versions of the events drawn from these sources that suited the writers' individual purposes. The inability of theories of literary dependence to arrive at a satisfactory solution to the Synoptic Problem has further confirmed the accuracy of the traditional independence views The combinations of agreements and disagreements in wording and sequence in the three Gospels are randomly scattered and cannot be accounted far unless the writers worked independently without referring to one another's works.

In brief, that is a description of the view of independence. Rather than pursuing further details in describing the position, I have opted to clarify it further by responding to various issues raised by Professor Osborne's recent article.7

I: PAST REACTIONS

Professor Osborne begins with several pages tracing past reactions to Historical Criticism (HC), Regarding an earlier generation of scholars including Warfield and Machen; he writes, "[I7n none of these conservative scholars do we find a wholesale rejection of critical tools" (193).8 I view matters otherwise. Warfield stated, "And in general, no form of criticism is more uncertain than that, now so diligently prosecuted, which seeks to explain the several forms of narratives in the Synoptics as modifications of one another.."9 If that is not wholesale rejection, it is very close to it.

Machen wrote, "Must we really wait until the historians have finished disputing about the value of sources and the like before we can have peace with God? . . . A gospel independent of history is a contradiction in terms."10 Like Warfield, Machen had no room for raising questions about the historical accuracy of the Gospels. Osborne also notes, "It was then [i.e. 1920s to the 1940s] that wholesale rejection of critical methodology became standard in fundamentalist scholarship" ( 193). Machen's era falls well within the period of "wholesale rejection of critical methodology." He died in 1937, having written such classic works as Christianity tend Liberalism in 1923 and

The Virgin Birth of Christ in 1930, in both of which he insisted on absolute historical accuracy that rules out the slightest concessions to HC.

II. THE RECENT DEBATE

Osborne writes regarding ETS, "I remember co-chairing the final forum on the issue [i.e. the issue of HC] with Robert Thomas in 1985. There it was decided to `agree to disagree' and to allow the society to explore further the possibility of a nuanced use of critical methodology" (194): My recollection of the 1985 meeting is quite different. In 1985 the Annual Meeting of ETS was on the campus of Talbot Theological Seminary, my institution at the time. Gleason Archer was program chair that year and asked me to assist him in planning the plenary sessions of the meeting. I was also in charge of local arrangements far the meeting. The "final forum" to which Osborne apparently refers was one of a number of parallel sessions meeting simultaneously, not a plenary session of the Society. To help with open discussion, Osborne asked me to moderate the period after his paper on "Round Four--The Redaction Criticism Debate Continues," and I accepted. However, the meeting was in no sense "the final forum" involving the ETS as a whole, as some might surmise from Osborne's statement. He and I never co-chaired such a meeting, nor was there a public consensus or conclusion reached about allowing "the society to explore further the possibility of a nuanced use of critical methodology."