Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III HOW CRITICISM BECAME NECESSARY 1 It is the basal idea of Christianity that the Sacred The basal Scriptures, being the book of Witness to the promise christianand presence of the perfect life amongst men, is the ity. standard whereby the Church must test her doctrine and her life. This does not mean that the Bible alone is our religion, if by "the Bible alone " we mean to take the Scriptures out of relation with the continuous experience of Christians. It does mean, however, that Christian experience, perpetuating and propagating itself through the ages, shall again and again bring itself to book, searching out all possible contradictions between its own ideals and the ideals attested in the Scripture as God's own desire for his people.3 The aim of this chapter is to follow the first steps in the history of Higher Criticism by showing how it happened that the Bible, taken away from its history, was interpreted in ways foreign to its own sense. 1 Literature: Harnack, Hist. of Dogma; Allen, Christian Institutions, 1897; Moeller, Church History, Vol. I; Westcott, The Bible in the Church, 1893; The Canon of the N. T., 6th ed., 1889; Credner, Oeschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanon, 1847; Loofs, Leitfaden z. Studium der Dogmengeschichte, 2. Aufl., 1890. 2 Briggs, The Study of Holy Scripture, 1899, e. 1; Macpherson, Christian Dogmatics, pp. 24-29; Kaftan, The Truth of the Christian Religion, tr. 1894, I, pp. 188-202; Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, III, s.v. "Scriptures." At the outset we lay it down as a fundamental law of interpretation that like must be interpreted by like. This holds good in the study of single books of the New Testament. There must be a mental and spiritual affinity between the book and the student, if a...
