Higher Criticism

The old differences of opinion about the organ and the missionary society continued, but there was no longer any interest in controversy about them. The opposing element ceased to cooperate with the “progressives” and was moving toward separation, which had become an accomplished fact, for all practical purposes, years before it was registered by the separate listing of the statistics of the “Churches of Christ” in the religious census of 1906.

New issues arose which afforded topics for lively debate in the papers, at preachers’ meetings, and at 133 the Congresses which met annually after 1899. Chief among these were higher criticism, the reception of the unimmersed, and federation. Since federation was the only one of these that called for collective action, and since it had very strong support as soon as it was proposed, it had full and frank discussion in the conventions also, as the other two questions did not.

“Higher criticism,” or the study of the Bible by critical methods of historical and literary analysis, began in Europe early in the nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, controversy had grown hot, especially because the new method did not assume the inerrancy of the Bible, as the older orthodoxy did, and because some of the results of research cast doubt upon the historicity of some parts of the Bible. American scholars reacted, positively or negatively, to the higher criticism during the two decades after the Civil War. It became fairly well known by name, though not well understood, and there were some famous heresy trials. But Disciples did not become generally aware of it until the 1890’s. Professor J. W. McGarvey, stalwart opponent of the new methods, began in 1893 his Biblical Criticism Department in the Christian Standard. With acumen and acrimony he denounced every new conclusion or theory about such things as the authorship of Deuteronomy and the latter part of Isaiah or the date of Daniel as an attack upon the faith and the work of “enemies of the Bible.” This weekly page was widely read and much discussed. It gave great publicity to the subject and, by its caustic tone, its pungent personalities, and its identification of higher criticism with infidelity, added bitterness to what would in any case have been a very real divergence of opinion. “Few scholars and few students 134 were permanently influenced by the department,” says McGarvey’s biographer and long-time associate, W. C. Morro.

Disciples were vitally interested in this battle of the Book, for they had always claimed to be, in a peculiar sense, a Bible people. Many of them remembered the first of Alexander Campbell’s “rules of interpretation”: in studying any book of the Bible, “consider first the historical circumstances of the book—the order, the title, the author, the date, the place, and the occasion of it.” The young men who had been going to the Eastern universities and seminaries had become acquainted with the new methods of Bible study, which were directed to these very questions. The opening of the University of Chicago, just three months before the beginning of Professor McGarvey’s antibiblical-criticism page, gave an immense impetus to this trend, for its president, Dr. W. R. Harper, was the most conspicuous exponent of these new methods in the United States, with extraordinary gifts for teaching and for publicity as well as for research. It might almost be said that it was Dr. Harper who put higher criticism on the map in the Middle West. Dr. Herbert L. Willett, who had been a student under Harper at Yale, became a colleague in his Semitic Department at Chicago and dean of the Disciples Divinity House. During several years he devoted much of his time to extension lecturing and the holding of institutes on the Bible. His popularity and success in this field were sensational. For most Disciples, Willett became the personal embodiment and symbol of the new biblical learning. He carried the flag with complete boldness, and his brilliant and winsome figure became a shining mark for the counterattack.

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The papers were inevitably involved in the higher criticism controversy. The Christian Standard’s position was never in doubt. It was against it, not only on Professor McGarvey’s page, but on every other page as well. The Christian-Evangelist was cautiously liberal editorially. Its editor was not a technical scholar in this field, but his mind was always alert to discover new truth. He was hospitable to the critical methods and was not alarmed by their results, even though he did not personally accept all of them. For several years he had Dr. Willett write for the paper the weekly article on the Sunday school lesson. This showed editorial courage, rather than caution, but it was part of a consistent editorial policy that did as much as a university could have done for the education of the Disciples.