Biblical criticism and moral critiques

Biblical criticism and moral critiques

The nineteenth century produced a harvest of writings in a discipline that was just then emerging: modern biblical criticism. Such studies questioned traditional readings, especially regarding the historical nature and accuracy of biblical narratives, as well as the authorship of various biblical documents, their date of composition and their unity as

Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 544

singleauthored works emanating from a particular person with a particular purpose in mind at a particular time. Germans led the way in this field. F.C.Baur was the scholar at the centre of the radical Tübingen school of New Testament studies. The most explosive work of German biblical criticism, however, was unquestionably D.F.STRAUSS’S Life of Jesus (1835). It is probable that no single work written in the nineteenth century—not even Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species—provoked more crises of faith in the West than this one. Strauss argued for a mythical view of the accounts in the gospels. In other words, these stories could not be credibly explained in either supernatural or naturalist ways and should instead be viewed as unhistorical tales that evolved over time as a result of religious assumptions or expectations. Ultimately, Strauss admitted that he no longer could consider himself a Christian. Strauss’s Life of Jesus provoked innumerable crises of faith. Among those influenced by Strauss was the German communist Friedrich Engels, who was set on his road to unbelief by reading this work. The English novelist George Eliot (Marian Evans), who had been raised as an evangelical, was led to abandon orthodox Christianity through her encounter with this text. Moreover, her translation of it into English, published in 1846, led to many more such encounters, including a significant impact amongst popular radicals, with the loss of faith of the Chartist leader Thomas Cooper being perhaps the most prominent example. Cooper, in turn, recapitulated Strauss’s ideas in his popular Cooper’s Journal, and thus the process of dissemination continued.

Biblical criticism was so unsettling in Protestant countries because the Bible had come to be viewed as the foundational authority for all true religion by so many of their inhabitants. Criticism of the gospels, as Strauss had done, was particularly undermining because it also simultaneously challenged traditional views of Christ. Moreover, Roman Catholic countries were not immune either. ERNEST RENAN’S Life of Jesus (1863), which had a substantial impact in his native France and beyond, offered a portrait of Christ that was devoid of miracles. For popular radicals in the English-speaking world, the somewhat crude antiBible polemic offered in THOMAS PAINE’S The Age of Reason (1793) was another influential trigger for crises of faith.

It is also clear that moral critiques of the contents of the Bible, Christian theology and the behaviour of the Church, and of Christian leaders and Christians generally, induced numerous crises of faith. Christian doctrines such as endless punishment in hell, predestination and substitutionary atonement struck many as morally offensive, thus making Christianity as a whole seem untenable for some. Romanticist intellectual currents helped to reposition these once widely accepted doctrines in this more unfavourable light in the eyes of many (see ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF). The English philosopher HERBERT SPENCER attributed his loss of faith to his growing moral objections to Christian teaching, and a study of plebeian radicals has argued that moral objections to religion loomed largest in their accounts of their moves into unbelief.