RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
This isn’t a detailed analysis and refutation of higher criticism (though such are listed in the bibliography). Rather, it is an examination of the presuppositions behind the higher critics’ methods. Their goal is simple: to show that God is divided. If God cannot give a unified Covenant Word to his people, then his (eternal) sanctions do not imply.
North writes: “North: An unknowable god is the only god who is acceptable to modern autonomous man, for an unknowable god presumably will not bring final judgment to inherently uninformed and uninformable finite mankind. We must never forget: the primary goal of self-proclaimed autonomous man is to escape God's final judgment. So, in order to escape this judgment, the higher critics spin a web of pompous verbiage that they hope and pray - well, at least they hope - will protect them from the eternal consequences of their God-defying rebellion” (31).
Problem: how do I know what is true in the bible and what is just symbolic? By what criteria?
Circular reasoning: The methods used by higher critics are circular: they use their colleagues' reconstructed literary texts to reconstruct the biblical past, and they use their own newly reconstructed biblical past to further reconstruct the biblical texts (34).
North writes: “North: An unknowable god is the only god who is acceptable to modern autonomous man, for an unknowable god presumably will not bring final judgment to inherently uninformed and uninformable finite mankind. We must never forget: the primary goal of self-proclaimed autonomous man is to escape God's final judgment. So, in order to escape this judgment, the higher critics spin a web of pompous verbiage that they hope and pray - well, at least they hope - will protect them from the eternal consequences of their God-defying rebellion” (31).
Problem: how do I know what is true in the bible and what is just symbolic? By what criteria?
Circular reasoning: The methods used by higher critics are circular: they use their colleagues' reconstructed literary texts to reconstruct the biblical past, and they use their own newly reconstructed biblical past to further reconstruct the biblical texts (34).
