By the Reverend Abraham Kuyper, D.D., LL.D.—Translated by the Reverend J. Hendrik de Vries, D.D.1
But some of you may say, Is there no good whatever in the biblical criticism of the present day? Is it merely a stumbling over straws and a game of critical splitting of hairs? Or have you not heard of the very serious charges which are laid against the views of the ancient church? Did not these grave assertions, which, in spite of ourselves, compelled our scientific mind to agree with them, ever disturb your scientific conscience? And, if so, how can you harmonize your beautiful confession with them?
In response to which inquiries, allow me a single word, which, if it does not engage itself with particulars, holds itself true to principle and motive.
First, as it appears to me, the gigantic labor which our critics have devoted to the Scripture, is by no means lost. On the contrary, I have the firm conviction that in the end, and under God’s gracious disposal, even the excesses of the most radical Scripture-anatomists will be productive of good. How could it ever be unimportant and to no purpose, as far as principle and reverence allow it, to study the origin of the Holy Scripture in the processes of its entering upon existence; to point out the seams where the pieces of the shining robe have been so beautifully woven together; and in a better way than was ever done before to frame, if not with mathematical certainty at least with conjecture, the circle in whose midst, the author by whom, and the time in which, a book of Scripture originated? So little do I aim at the abandonment of these studies, that I would no sooner sanction an official ban upon these vivisectorial excesses and physiological indelicacies with the Corpus Scripturæ than with the corpus humanum. But if, in the circle of the medical sciences, these vivisectorial excesses and physiological violations of common chastity are not prohibited by law, has not the nobler-minded medicus the right, in virtue of the principle itself of his science,—i. e. in the name of the human character that belongs to it, because it has the home for its object,—to protest against these shameful cruelties, and the no less shameful indelicacies, as indecent and unlawful? Or, is it not true that in his bodily appearing man ceases to be worthy of the honor of furnishing an object for a separate science, when, treating the animal cruelly and himself having become bestial, he degrades himself to being little better than a corpus vile? And have we no equal rights, when it concerns the Corpus Scripturæ, to enter our complaints on the ground of the absence of feeling in the vivisectors and the offensive profanities of the Scripture-physiologists; not in spite, but in the name, of our science; both because, by their actions, the principle itself of theology is violated, and because a patchwork quilt such as they make the Scripture to be does no longer reward the trouble of scientific investigation.
I welcome the finest perception by the senses (αἴσθησις), also, in the domain of criticism. But even as our nerves and brains, the critical organ also can suffer from hyperæsthesis, so that it cannot do other than observe incorrectly; thus reaching that inharmonious condition which makes every noise seem louder, every touch more startling, and every unevenness the rougher to its sense. Such a hyperæsthesis becomes a power that governs the patient, the irresistible impulse of which is heightened by one’s very efforts to resist. Wherefore not every one who announces himself needs to be heard, nor is all criticism indiscriminately to be taken into account, but it must first be determined, by the principle of theology itself, whether we deal with a normal observer, or with one who, abnormally excited, is not able to criticise correctly.
Finally, the Holy Scripture condemns the world and the spirit that governs it. Hence nothing can be more natural than that this spirit of the world, which has made itself so strongly felt in this age, should bend its energies toward the breaking-down of the authority of the Scripture. Either it must bend before the Scripture or the Scripture must bend to it, and it cannot be otherwise than that the spirit which inspires the world, must wage inexorable war against the spirit that inspired the Scripture. The antithesis formed by the two is diametrical. And since we also, who are investigators of the Scripture, have drunk of the spirit of the world, the danger is possible that our biblical criticism may adopt a tentative character, whereby, under the mask of honoring it, our study of the Scripture may tend to undermine its authority. This presumption has indeed become a probability by this single fact, that many men who attach no significance whatever to the Scripture, and scarcely believe in it at all, devote to it the best parts of their life and the choicest of their powers.