A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Sir Walter Scott - "Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott"

William Cowper Brann - "*Project Gutenberg's Etext of Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast*"

Sir Robert Naunton. - "Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth by"

Alice Dunbar - "The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories"

History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom




II. RETREAT OF THE CHURCH, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC.
Sir Robert Filmer's attack on the old doctrine
Retreat of the Protestant Church in Holland
In Germany and America
Difficulties in the way of compromise in the Catholic Church
Failure of such attempts in France
Theoretical condemnation of usury in Italy
Disregard of all restrictions in practice
Attempts of Escobar and Liguori to reconcile the taking of
interest with the teachings of the Church
Montesquieu's attack on the old theory
Encyclical of Benedict XIV permitting the taking of interest
Similar decision of the Inquisition at Rome
Final retreat of the Catholic Church
Curious dealings of theology with public economy in other fields



CHAPTER XX.

FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.


I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
Character of the great sacred
books of the world
General laws governing the development and influence of sacred
literature.--The law of its origin
Legends concerning the Septuagint
The law of wills and causes
The law of inerrancy
Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the
Bible
The law of unity
Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools
The law of allegorical interpretation
Philo
Judaeus
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
Occult significance of numbers
Origen
Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome
Augustine
Gregory the Great
Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations
Bede.--Savonarola
Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by
Lorenzo Valla
Erasmus
Influence of the Reformation on the belief in the infallibility
of the sacred books.--Luther and Melanchthon
Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church
Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgate
Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures
Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator
Scriptural interpretation at the beginning of the eighteenth
century

II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Theological beliefs regarding the Pentateuch
The book of Genesis
Doubt thrown on the sacred theory by Aben Ezra
By Carlstadt and Maes
Influence of the discovery that the Isidorian
Decretals were forgeries
That the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite were
serious
Hobbes and La Peyrere
Spinoza
Progress of biblical criticism in France.--Richard Simon
LeClerc
Bishop Lowth
Astruc
Eichhorn's application of the "higher criticism" to biblical
research
Isenbiehl
Herder
Alexander Geddes
Opposition to the higher criticism in Germany
Hupfeld
Vatke and Reuss
Kuenen
Wellhausen

III. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Progress of the higher criticism in Germany and Holland
Opposition to it in England
At the University of Oxford
Pusey
Bentley
Wolf
Niebuhr and Arnold
Milman
Thirlwall and Grote
The publication of Essays and Reviews, and the storm raised by
book

IV. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
Colenso's work on the Pentateuch
The persecution of him
Bishop Wilberforce's part in it
Dean Stanley's
Bishop Thirlwall's
Results of Colenso's work
Sanday's Bampton Lectures
Keble College and Lux
Mundi
Progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters
In France.--Renan
In the Roman Catholic Church
The encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
In America.--Theodore Parker
Apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration
Real strength of the new movement

V. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
Confirmation of the conclusions of the higher criticism by
Assyriology and Egyptology
Light thrown upon Hebrew religion by the translation of the
sacred books of the East
The influence of Persian thought.--The work of the Rev. Dr. Mills
The influence of Indian thought.--Light thrown by the study of
Brahmanism and Buddhism
The work of Fathers Huc and Gabet
Discovery that Buddha himself had been canonized as a Christian
saint
Similarity between the ideas and legends of Buddhism and those of
Christianity
The application of the higher criticism to the New Testament
The English "Revised Version" of Studies on the formation of the
canon of Scripture
Recognition of the laws governing its development
Change in the spirit of the controversy over the higher criticism

VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
Development of a scientific atmosphere during the last three
centuries
Action of modern science in reconstruction of religious truth

Change wrought by it in the conception of a sacred literature

Of the Divine Power.--Of man.---Of the world at large
Of our Bible



I. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.


Among those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much
of medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is
noteworthy for its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine
regarding the origin of the universe.

The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon,
and stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which
supports the "heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath."

The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that in this
work he is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms
show that he is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors
and painters of the medieval and early modern period frequently
represented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied
had done--as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil,
enjoying well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of
heaven.

In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other
revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting,
glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the Middle
Ages and the two centuries following, culminated a belief which
had been developed through thousands of years, and which has
determined the world's thought until our own time.

Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among
the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they
hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of the
world. In nearly all of them is revealed the conception of a
Creator of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally and
directly created the visible universe with his hands and fingers.

Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian
inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the
English-speaking peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and
others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and
Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which,
in its most important features, must have been the source of that
in our own sacred books. It has now become perfectly clear that
from the same sources which inspired the accounts of the creation
of the universe among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the
Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas which
hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In
the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also
in the account of which we have indications in the book of Job
and in the Proverbs, there, is presented, often with the greatest
sublimity, the same early conception of the Creator and of the
creation--the conception, so natural in the childhood of
civilization, of a Creator who is an enlarged human being working
literally with his own hands, and of a creation which is "the
work of his fingers." To supplement this view there was
developed the belief in this Creator as one who, having



. . . "from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space."

sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens,"
perpetually controlling and directing them.

From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler
view. Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in
Egypt, suggested that the main agency in creation was not the
hands and fingers of the Creator, but his VOICE. Hence was
mingled with the earlier, cruder belief regarding the origin of
the earth and heavenly bodies by the Almighty the more impressive
idea that "he spake and they were made"--that they were brought
into existence by his WORD.[1]

[1] Among the many mediaeval representations of the creation of
the universe, I especially recall from personal observation those
sculptured above the portals of the cathedrals of Freiburg and
Upsala, the paintings on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa,
and most striking of all, the mosaics of the Cathedral of
Monreale and those in the Capella Palatina at Palermo. Among
peculiarities showing the simplicity of the earlier conception
the representation of the response of the Almighty on the seventh
day is very striking. He is shown as seated in almost the exact
attitude of the "Weary Mercury" of classic sculpture--bent, and
with a very marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and
in the whole disposition of his body.

The Monreale mosaics are pictured in the great work of Gravina,
and in the Pisa frescoes in Didron's Iconographie, Paris, 1843,
p. 598. For an exact statement of the resemblances which have
settled the question among the most eminent scholars in favour of
the derivation of the Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see
Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp.
304,306; also Franz Lukas, Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmographien
der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893, pp. 35-46; also George Smith's
Chaldean Genesis, especially the German translation with
additions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader, Die
Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, Giessen, 1883, pp. 1-54,
etc. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. i, chap
i, L'antique influence babylonienne. For Egyptian views
regarding creation, and especially for the transition from the
idea of creation by the hands and fingers of the Creator to
creation by his VOICE and his "word," see Maspero and Sayce, The
Dawn of Civilization, pp. 145-146.


Among the early fathers of the Church this general view of
creation became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more
and more strongly the belief that the universe was created in a
perfectly literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and
there sundry theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more
spiritual view regarding some parts of the creative work, and of
these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as
they were to accept the literal text of Scripture, they revolted
against the conception of an actual creation of the universe by
the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this they were
followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material
conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in
the sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and
in the illuminations of missals and psalters, but later, at the
close of the Middle Ages, in the pictured Bibles and in general
literature.

Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the
creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially
to the deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Caedmon
paraphrased the account given in Genesis, bringing out this
material conception in the most literal form; and a thousand
years later Milton developed out of the various statements in the
Old Testament, mingled with a theology regarding "the creative
Word" which had been drawn from the New, his description of the
creation by the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing
could be more literal and material:

"He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, `Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds:
This be thy just circumference, O world!'"[2]


[2] For Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and the general subject of
the development of an evolution theory among the Greeks, see the
excellent work by Dr. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, pp.33
and following; for Caedmon, see any edition--I have used
Bouterwek's, Gutersloh, 1854; for Milton, see Paradise Lost, book
vii, lines 225-231.


So much for the orthodox view of the MANNER of creation.

The next point developed in this theologic evolution had
reference to the MATTER of which the universe was made, and it
was decided by an overwhelming majority that no material
substance existed before the creation of the material
universe--that "God created everything out of nothing." Some
venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the first
verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view--namely, that the
mass, "without form and void," existed before the universe; but
this doctrine was soon swept out of sight. The vast majority of
the fathers were explicit on this point. Tertullian especially
was very severe against those who took any other view than that
generally accepted as orthodox: he declared that, if there had
been any pre-existing matter out of which the world was formed,
Scripture would have mentioned it; that by not mentioning it God
has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing; and,
after a manner not unknown in other theological controversies, he
threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view, with the woe
which impends on all who add to or take away from the written
word."

St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence
of matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the
simple reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some
material, that very same material must have been made out of
nothing."

In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily
followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created
everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the vast
majority of the faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are
taught the same doctrine; on this point the syllabus of Pius IX
and the Westminster Catechism fully agree.[3]


[3] For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps. xx
and xxii; for St. Augustine regarding "creation from nothing,"
see the De Genesi contra Manichaeos, lib, i, cap. vi; for St.
Ambrose, see the Hexameron, lib, i,cap iv; for the decree of the
Fourth Lateran Council, and the view received in the Church to-
day, see the article Creation in Addis and Arnold's Catholic
Dictionary.


Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the
next subject taken up by theologians was the TIME required for
the great work.

Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in
Genesis extended the creative operation through six days, each of
an evening and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the
progress made in each. But the second account spoke of "THE
DAY" in which "the Lord God made the earth and the heavens."
The explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the
minds of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a
decided advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christian
thinkers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator
and his work, were not content with this, and by them was
launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the idea
that the creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened
not only by the second of the Genesis legends, but by the great
text, "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood
fast"--or, as it appears in the Vulgate and in most translations,
"He spake, and they were made; he commanded, and they were
created."

As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course
was to believe literally BOTH statements; that in some
mysterious manner God created the universe in six days, and yet
brought it all into existence in a moment. In spite of the
outcries of sundry great theologians, like Ephrem Syrus, that the
universe was created in exactly six days of twenty-four hours
each, this compromise was promoted by St. Athanasius and St.
Basil in the East, and by St. Augustine and St. Hilary in the
West.

Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views,
which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by
ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases,
and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a
reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe
that they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous
and at the same time extended through six days.[4]

[4] For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap xxxvi, xxxvii; also
his De Principibus, cap. v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi
conta Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim; for
Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48,49.


Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so
fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and
Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, and the
indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a
vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As regards
the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult
powers in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing in an
instantaneous creation, had also declared that the world was
created in six days because "of all numbers six is the most
productive"; he had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies
on the fourth day by "the harmony of the number four"; of the
animals on the fifth day by the five senses; of man on the sixth
day by the same virtues in the number six which had caused it to
be set as a limit to the creative work; and, greatest of all, the
rest on the seventh day by the vast mass of mysterious virtues in
the number seven.

St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the
work of the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that
there is something essentially evil in the number two, and this
was echoed centuries afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.

St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the
following statement: "There are three classes of numbers--the
more than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect,
according as the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less
than the original number. Six is the first perfect number:
wherefore we must not say that six is a perfect number because
God finished all his works in six days, but that God finished all
his works in six days because six is a perfect number."

Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church
until a year after the discovery of America, when the Nuremberg
Chronicle re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is
explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and
three, assume the form of a triangle."

This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and
also as in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning,
became virtually universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St.
Victor, authorities of vast weight, gave it their sanction in the
twelfth century, and impressed it for ages upon the mind of the
Church.

Both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything
out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation
of the universe with its creation in six days--were still further
developed by other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.

St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as
follows: "For, although according to Moses there is an appearance
of regular order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare
of the dry land, the gathering together of the waters, the
formation of the heavenly bodies, and the arising of living
things from land and water, yet the creation of the heavens,
earth, and other elements is seen to be the work of a single
moment."

St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinction
which for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in
effect that God created the substance of things in a moment, but
gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this
creation, six days.[5]

[5] For Philo Judaeus, see his Creation of the World, chap. iii;
for St. Augustine on the powers of numbers in creation, see his
De Genesi ad Litteram iv, chap. ii; for Peter Lombard, see the
Sententiae, lib. ii, dist. xv, 5; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see
De Sacrementis, lib i, pars i; also, Annotat, Elucidat in
Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii; for St. Hilary, see De Trinitate,
lib. xii; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his Summa Theologica, quest
lxxxiv, arts. i and ii; the passage in the Nuremberg Chronicle,
1493, is in fol. iii; for Vousset, see his Discours sur
l'Histoire Universelle; for the sacredness of the number seven
among the Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die
Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 21,22; also George
Smith et al.; for general ideas on the occult powers of various
numbers, especially the number seven, and the influence of these
ideas on theology and science, see my chapter on astronomy. As
to medieaval ideas on the same subject, see Detzel, Christliche
Ikonographie, Frieburg, 1894, pp. 44 and following.


The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and
Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his
usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly and
plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," and that
therefore "the world with all creatures was created in six days."
And he then goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the whole
creation was also instantaneous.

Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of
nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six
days, citing the text: "He spake, and they were made."

Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid
especial stress on the creation in six days: having called
attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the
world to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is now
near its end, he says that "creation was extended through six
days that it might not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of
life in the consideration of it."

Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "So important is
it to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of
the Church take this as its starting point. Were this article
taken away there would be no original sin, the promise of Christ
would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would
be destroyed." The Westminster divines in drawing up their
Confession of Faith specially laid it down as necessary to
believe that all things visible and invisible were created not
only out of nothing but in exactly six days.

Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protestant
reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the
so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of
the eighteenth century, when Buffon attempted to state simple
geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced
him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which
ended with these words: "I abandon everything in my book
respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which
may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."

Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the
matter used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted
themselves to fix its DATE.

The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the Church,
from Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this point are
presented in another chapter. Suffice it here that the general
conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming majority of the most
competent students of the biblical accounts was that the date of
creation was, in round numbers, four thousand years before our
era; and in the seventeenth century, in his great work, Dr. John
Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and
one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as
the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the
Scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference,
were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full
of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by
the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the
morning."

Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since
Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the
thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in
the spring. Yet, alas! within two centuries after Lightfoot's
great biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it
was discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated
people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed
civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of
Egypt, and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that
time reached a high development in Asia.[6]

[6] For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545,
introduction, and his comments on chap. i, verse 12; the
quotations from Luther's commentary are taken mainly from the
translation by Henry Cole, D.D., Edinburgh, 1858; for
Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon, Opera, ed.
Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270, also pp. 637, 638--in
quoting the text (Ps. xxiii, 9) I have used, as does Melanchthon
himself, the form of the Vulgate; for the citations from Calvin,
see his Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom.
i, cap. ii, p. 8); also in the Institutes, Allen's translation,
London, 1838, vol. i, chap. xv, pp. 126,127; for the Peter
Martyr, see his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zockler, vol. i,
p. 690; for articles in the Westminster Confession of Faith, see
chap. iv; for Buffon's recantation, see Lyell, Principles of
Geology, chap iii, p. 57. For Lightfoot's declartion, see his
works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822.

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.