Clark’s Daddy Is Back : Higher Criticism

As I had indicated previously, the father of Gordon H. Clark, the Rev. David S. Clark, wrote at least a half-dozen articles that appeared on the pages of THE PRESBYTERIAN in the 1920’s. Here Rev. Clark addresses the errors of the higher critical method.

Modernism and the Higher Criticism
by Rev. David S. Clark, D.D.
[The Presbyterian 95.1 (1 January 1925): 8-9.]

Modernism is one of the “assured results” of the higher criticism. The fruit is characteristic of the root. The higher criticism is based on a method so erroneous that error was certain to appear as the result. Any one who has given attention to the higher criticism will readily perceive that it is largely based on a philological method. Philology has its value, and may be legitimately applied in its proper sphere ; but to make it the sole criterion of historical data, or the determining factor of such data, is unworthy of a serious investigator. The higher critic is essentially a word-monger, and his method enables him to prove, to his own satisfaction, what is not true by any other method of determination, and to deny what all other methods assert. Hence it is the fact that historians and archaeologists generally reject the findings of the critic.

Without denying the value of philology (and it has its value, and some historical value, too), it is still true that the philological method of the higher critic is a false procedure in historical investigation. By this method the higher critics have resolved Abraham, Moses, David, Samson and others into astral myths.

Canon T.K. Cheyne declared that the existence of such a personage as Moses was unproved and improbable. There are some of us uncharitable enough to think that if Professor Cheyne had been consigned to an asylum at the age of forty, it would have saved this world a lot of bother. By the very same methods employed by the criticsw some obliging individuals have demonstrated as “assured results” that Napoleon, Gladstone, and Chamberlain were similar myths ; and the same accommodation might be readily extended to Prof. S.R. Driver.

Now, it is needless to say to intelligent readers that there have been honest critics. No doubt there has been a rationalistic bias in much of the critical work that has vitiated the results, but some at least must have the credit of honest purpose. The assiduity, the erudition, the indefatigable toil displayed in the analysis of the Scripture text are not only prodigious, but the amazement of contemplating minds. But the fault was in the method. No amount of toil can make a wrong method produced “assured results.” To re-construct centuries of history in a remote past by a study of words is impossible, notwithstanding a contributory value in philological studies. What value would attach to a history of the discovery and settlement of America based on philological grounds? Documents and even traditions furnish more reliable information.

To assign a large part of the Pentateuch to post-exilic times, as the critics do, is an anachronism from the standpoint of historical criteria, whatever it may be from a philological standpoint. The historian takes account of records, traditions, institutions, laws, national and private life, influence transmitted to succeeding ages and a hundred other things that validate a true history. Can we conceive of a Hebrew people in Palestine without an Abraham? Can we account for the laws, usages, worship, beliefs, and customs of the Israelites without a Moses? Then may we account for Christianity and deny that there ever was a Jesus Christ? Then may we account for the Lord’s Supper, celebrated throughout the ages, and deny that any historical event lies at the basis of it? From such examples we may see that many things validate a history besides linguistic research ; and that the real historian draws from a varied field.