The Sacred Text

Biblical Authority in Nineteenth-Century America

Satta

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781630878443
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The advances of geologic science, Darwinism, theological liberalism, and higher textual criticism converged in the nineteenth century to present an imposing challenge to biblical authority. The meteoric rise in secular knowledge exerted tremendous pressure on the Protestant theological elite of the time. Their ruminations, conversations, quarrels, and convictions offer penetrating insight into their world--into their perspective on Scripture and authority and how their outlook was challenged, defended, and sometimes changed across time. Moreover, the nineteenth-century imbroglios greatly illuminate a recent controversy over biblical authority. Some influential modern scholars of American religion contend that the doctrine of the inerrancy of the original autographs is a recently contrived theory, a theological aberration decidedly out of concert with mainline orthodoxy since the Reformation. They argue that pressure from biblical critics incited late nineteenth-century Princeton theologians to fabricate the notion as a way to quell criticism against Scripture. American fundamentalists, they insist, unwittingly adopted inerrancy as orthodoxy, being deceived by this innovation. This story has become standard scholarly currency in many quarters. However, The Sacred Text indicates that fundamentalists and conservative Protestants more generally are the standard-bearers of the ascendant theory of biblical authority commonly endorsed among many of the leading Protestant elite in nineteenth-century America.

1

The Doctrine of Inspiration

The Key to Biblical Authority

Throughout the history of Christianity the doctrine of biblical inspiration has been inextricably connected to, and in fact determined, the nature and extent of biblical authority—they have been two sides of the same coin. If God composed the Scripture, using human writers as his amanuensis, it logically followed that everything contained therein, whether pertaining to matters of faith or fact, must be without error—how could deity make a mistake? If, on the other hand, only some parts of Scripture possessed such divine markings or if only the thoughts and not the words came forth from God, one might argue—as some did—that the Bible’s authority was limited, consisting only of those admonitions, precepts, or doctrines judged evident of divine composition.

Many nineteenth-century theological elite among the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists, maintained that the Bible, in its original autographs, in every part, including matters of history and science, was divinely composed and protected from all error, right down to the very words. Proponents asserted that Scripture wielded complete divine authority, representing the actual voice of God. This authority included issues of faith and religious practice to be sure, but it went far further than this. Adherents contended that Scripture spoke with authority on matters pertaining to history, geography, science, and anything else addressed by the divine author. Human responsibility consisted in determining, to the highest degree possible, the genuine reading of the original autographs, and humbly complying with its instructions, exhortations, precepts, and doctrines. Theological elite on all sides of the debate considered this the “high” or “strict” view of inspiration.

The “Partial theory” of inspiration, represented largely by the Unitarians, liberal Congregationalists, and other free thinkers, tended to stress human judgment as the arbiter over the sacred text in determining which portions of the Bible expressed sentiments commensurate with the divine mind and which did not.1 The interpreter only embraced those principles and concepts that they deemed evident of holy origin, discarding those notions which appeared contrary to reason. Thus human reason became the adjudicator for determining whether any given biblical passage expressed divine or profane instruction.

Throughout the nineteenth-century, Protestant religious leaders engaged in a spirited and sometimes combative debate regarding the extent and nature of divine inspiration of the Bible. It is no hyperbole to suggest that many of the leading minds of Protestantism considered not only the welfare of the church but its very existence to hinge rather precariously on this issue. This angst is clear from the statements made by one Methodist scholar writing in 1819. He noted, “Nothing could be more evident than that a firm belief in their [the Scriptures] Inspiration is of the highest moment, not only to the edification and peace of the church, but in a great measure to its existence; for if this be given up, the authority of the revelation is enervated, and its use destroyed.”2 And a decade later, one of the leading voices at Andover seminary prophesied somewhat ominously, “. . . if I mistake not the signs of the times, this subject [biblical inspiration and inerrancy] is likely, before long, to form the dividing line between those who adhere to the evangelical doctrines of our forefathers, and those who renounce them.”3

The Majority View: Inerrancy of the Autographs

A careful perusal of the antebellum scholarly literature indicates that inerrancy pervaded the highest levels of Protestantism from the very beginning of the century. Many theologians insisted that the Bible, in all its parts, extending to the very words, and including matters of history and science as well as faith and practice, was necessarily perfect and without mistake.4 The statement made by one scholar writing in the Theological and Literary Journal is indicative of those on verbal inspiration found elsewhere, “To affirm, therefore, that the inspiration of the sacred writers was a mere inspiration of thoughts unassociated with language, is to affirm an impossibility . . . and is in effect to deny that they have any inspiration.”5 These biblical scholars believed that the divine nature of Scripture extended to the words of the text.

This verbally errorless quality, they quickly pointed out, applied only to the original autographs as they came from the hand of the sacred penmen. They did not consider copyists inspired, nor did these scholars expect the transcripts to be flawless replications of the autographs.6 Indeed, from the very beginning of the nineteenth-century scholars recognized the presence of textual variants within the extant copies, often appealing to this fact as a rebuttal to alleged contradictions in the text. As early as 1800, the Swedish theologian John Dick articulated this very idea writing:

While we admire the care of Divine Providence in the preservation of the scriptures, we do not affirm that all the transcribers of them were miraculously guarded against all error. Various motives . . . contributed to render them scrupulously careful; but that they were under no infallible guidance, is evident from the different readings, which are discovered by a collation of manuscripts, and the mistakes in matters of greater or less importance, observable in them all. A contradiction, which could not be imputed to the blunder of a transcriber, but was fairly chargeable on the sacred writers themselves, would completely disprove their inspiration.7

Dick explicitly stated that his confidence in the doctrine of inspiration reposed upon absolute perfection in the originals, noting that the presence of a genuine contradiction between the sacred penmen would abnegate their divinely inspired status. The Holy Spirit, the clandestine composer of Scripture, could never err.

In a later work on theology, published after his death, Dick once again discussed the importance of ascertaining the reading of the original autographs stating:

We do not possess the original copies of the sacred writings. The autographs of the apostles and prophets have long since disappeared . . . It may be presumed, that the persons employed in transcribing the sacred writings would be at great pains to make the copies accurate . . . Yet, without a miracle, every transcript could not have been a faultless representation of the original; and that no supernatural influence was exerted upon their minds, may be very confidently inferred from the different readings which appear upon a collation of manuscripts. It is certain that they cannot all be right, and it is probable that not one of them is perfectly correct . . . No single manuscript can be supposed to exhibit the original text, without the slightest variation; it is to be presumed, that in all manuscripts, errors more or fewer in number are to be found.8

By acknowledging this, Dick expressed the conventional wisdom of the day that no text was absolutely perfect; each needed to be examined against the available textual evidence. Lower textual critics, who had conducted this sort of exacting manuscript work for centuries, labored to determine the original readings on the assumption that they represented the divine voice precisely.

As early as 1825, this same sort of concession appeared in The Biblical Repertory, a journal edited by Charles Hodge. In the first edition of the journal C. Beck wrote,

The scrupulous care taken of the Sacred Writings, and the custom of using them constantly in the church, is sufficient to convince us that they have been preserved from all serious alterations, yet they could not be entirely defended from the fate of all other ancient writings. The autographs appear to have perished early, and the copies which were taken, became more or less subject to those errors, which arise from the mistakes of transcribers, the false corrections of commentators and critics, from marginal notes, and from other sources.9

Theologians had grown accustomed to the sort of vexing problems associated with transcriber errors, making the quest for the original readings vitally important.

Indeed, the autograph doctrine played a consistently crucial role in biblical study throughout the first half of the century. Both Leonard Woods and Robert Haldane, writing in 1829 and 1830 respectively, discuss their importance. Woods, a professor of theology for nearly four decades at Andover Seminary, reasoned, “Instances of incorrectness in the present copies of the Scriptures cannot be objected to the inspiration of the writers. How can the fact, that God has not infallibly guided all who transcribe his word, prove that he did not infallibly guide those who originally wrote it?”10 His conviction regarding the significance of the original autographs only intensified, ossifying over the next decade and a half. Writing in 1844 Woods stated,

The objection to the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, from the inaccuracy of the translations, and the various readings of the ancient manuscripts, is totally irrelevant. For what we assert is, the inspiration of the original Scriptures, not of the translations, or the ancient copies. The fact that the Scriptures were divinely inspired, cannot be expunged or altered by any subsequent ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Doctrine of Inspiration
• Chapter 2: Biblical Authority and the Sciences
• Chapter 3: The High View Under Siege
• Chapter 4: The Case of Professor Charles A. Briggs
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography