Transcendentalist Hermeneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible.

William F. P. Burton's career straddled several worlds that seemed at odds with each other. As a first-generation Pentecostal he pioneered, with James Salter, the Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM) at Mwanza, Belgian Congo in 1915. The CEM became a paradigm for future Pentecostal Faith Mission work in Africa, thanks to Burton's propagandist writings that were published in at least thirty European and North American missionary periodicals. His extensive publications, some twenty-eight books, excluding tracts and articles in mission journals, reveal that the CEM was a missionary movement animated by a relentless proselytism, divine healing, exorcism, and the destruction of so-called “fetishes.” The CEM's Christocentric message required the new believer to make a public confession of sin and reject practices relating to ancestor religion, possession cults, divination, and witchcraft. It was a deeply iconoclastic form of Protestantism that maintained a strong distinction between an “advanced” Christian religion, mediated by the Bible, and an idolatrous primitive pagan religion. Burton's Pentecostalism had many of its own primitive urges, harkening back to an age where miraculous signs and wonders were the stuff of daily life, dreams and visions constituted normative authority, and the Bible was immune to higher criticism. But his vision also embraced social modernization and he preached the virtues of schooling and western styles of clothing, architecture, and agriculture. It was this combination of primitive and pragmatic tendencies that shaped the CEM's tense relations with the Belgian colonial state.

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“Mediating Modernism”: Charles Briggs, Catholic Modernism, and an Ecumenical “Plot”

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s001781600001018x ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 81 (4) ◽

pp. 413-430

Author(s):

Mark S. Massa

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Gilded Age ◽

Church History ◽

Theological Seminary ◽

Presbyterian Church ◽

Church Courts ◽

Higher Criticism ◽

The Bible ◽

Union Theological Seminary ◽

Critical Methods

Historians of religion in America, as enamored of marking “watersheds” in our culture as other scholars, have long used the famous “Briggs Case” as an event for marking that cultural moment when American mainline Protestants, mostly kicking and screaming, began to confront officially the higher criticism of the Bible. Charles Augustus Briggs, as students of Gilded Age religion know well, was a professor of scripture at New York's Union Theological Seminary who, between 1891 and 1893, underwent a peripatetic heresy trial in various Presbyterian church courts—“the most notorious event in 19th century American church history,” as one of its chroniclers has described it—for advocating the application of modern historical-critical methods to the biblical record.

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Conclusion

10.1093/oso/9780190249496.003.0015 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Douglas A. Sweeney

Keyword(s):

Biblical Exegesis ◽

Higher Criticism ◽

The Bible ◽

Synoptic Problem

Douglas A. Sweeney recapitulates the massive role of biblical reflection in Jonthan Edwards’ life and thought and then summarizes the chief contributions of this volume. He argues persuasively that students of Edwards need to attend closely to his “chief occupation”: biblical exegesis. Much work still needs to be done on this aspect of Edwards, and Sweeney offers suggestions about elements of Edwards’ exegetical endeavors requiring further attention. Those interested in Edwards’ work with modern higher criticism have much more work to do on his handling of the historicity of the Pentateuch, the scope of biblical prophecy, the synoptic problem, and more. Those inclined toward the contents of Edwards’ major treatises have far more to do on their relation to the Bible and what Edwards took to be the Bible’s theological claims. And all of us have more to do on Edwards’ biblical context and interlocutors, and the bearing of these sources on his preaching, teaching, and writing.

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HOW DESTRUCTIVE OF TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN BELIEFS IS HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE TODAY CONCEDED TO BE?

Think ◽

10.1017/s1477175611000303 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 10 (29) ◽

pp. 91-109

Author(s):

George A. Wells

Keyword(s):

Historical Criticism ◽

Higher Criticism ◽

The Bible ◽

Christian Beliefs

Many theologians accept that it is not plausible to dismiss what is called the ‘higher criticism’ altogether, but try to limit its efficacy. This article discusses a number of their ways of doing so.

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The Bible in The Church

Scottish Journal of Theology ◽

10.1017/s0036930600020020 ◽

1948 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 225-232

Author(s):

A. G. Hebert

Keyword(s):

Point Of View ◽

People Of God ◽

Higher Criticism ◽

The Bible ◽

The People ◽

History Of ◽

The Subject ◽

The Church ◽

Critical Investigation

The subject is the Bible, and its relation to the Church. Hence I shall not attempt to deal with the so-called Bible Difficulties, or with the Higher Criticism, or to develop a theory of Inspiration. I must try to give a line about the general interpretation of the Bible, as being God's Book and truly inspired, written in the Church and for the Church's use; and as written by men, because it has been God's method to reveal Himself through men. It was written by men, and tells a story which is real history; therefore we must have thorough critical investigation of the Bible. It is God's Book because it tells the story of God's saving Purpose, worked out in the history of the believing and worshipping People of God, Israel, His chosen nation. Because this story is true, we have nothing to fear from the Higher Criticism. If that Criticism has been at fault, as it often has been, it is because it has often failed to see the record, as it needs to be seen, from the point of view of believing and worshipping Israel.For the Church is the People of God, God's Israel. As such, it has existed not for some 1900 years only, but for more than 3000 years, since the day when the Lord God redeemed it out of Egypt and made His Covenant with it.

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