Leitmotifs of religious apologetics
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2017 7:21 pm
In a thread in the Terrestrial Forum, I recently referred to E.B. Pusey's Daniel the Prophet as an example of a mainstream conservative Christian work of apologetics which speaks in the same rhetorical key as the publications of the FARMS boys (although it is much better written, being crafted in florid Victorian prose). Pusey was a well known Anglican cleric who wrote the book to defend the untenable thesis that the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible was written in the Exilic period.
In order to illustrate my point, I'm going to post the first couple of pages of the book. In this post, I'm going to past a clean copy of the text. In my next post, I'm going to show how the themes are eerily similar to those of Elders Peterson, Midgley, et al.
The context was that a group of liberal Anglicans had recently published a controversial work entitled Essays and Reviews.
The following lectures were planned, as my contribution against that tide of scepticism, which the publication of the "Essays and Reviews" let loose upon the young and uninstructed. Not that those Essays contained anything formidable in themselves. Human inventiveness in things spiritual or unspiritual is very limited. It would be difficult probably to invent a new heresy. Objectors of old were as acute or more acute than those now; so that the ground was well-nigh exhausted. The unbelieving school of Geologians had done their worst. Chronology had been pressed to the utmost long ago. The differences of human form and of language lay on the surface. The Jews had tried what pseudo-criticism could do against the prophecies as to our Lord and His Church. German rationalism had been deterred from no theory in regard to Holy Scripture, either by its untenableness or its irreverence. The Essays contained nothing to which the older of us had not been inured for some forty years. Their writers asserted little distinctly, attempted to prove less, but threw doubts on everything. They took for granted that the ancient faith had been overthrown; and their Essays were mostly a long trumpet-note of victories, won (they assumed,) without any cost to them over the faith in Germany.
They ignored the fact, that every deeper tendency of thought or each more solid learning had, at least, done away with something shallow, something more adverse to faith. They practically ignored all criticism which was not subservient to unbelief. Yet the Essayists, Clergymen (with one exception), staked their characters, although not their positions, on the issue, that the old faith was no longer tenable; that it was dead and buried and the stone on the grave's mouth fast sealed. Their teaching was said to be "bold." Too "bold" alas! it was towards Almighty God; but, from whatever cause, its authors shrank, for the most part, from stating explicitly as their own, the unbelief which they suggested to others.
In order to illustrate my point, I'm going to post the first couple of pages of the book. In this post, I'm going to past a clean copy of the text. In my next post, I'm going to show how the themes are eerily similar to those of Elders Peterson, Midgley, et al.
The context was that a group of liberal Anglicans had recently published a controversial work entitled Essays and Reviews.
The following lectures were planned, as my contribution against that tide of scepticism, which the publication of the "Essays and Reviews" let loose upon the young and uninstructed. Not that those Essays contained anything formidable in themselves. Human inventiveness in things spiritual or unspiritual is very limited. It would be difficult probably to invent a new heresy. Objectors of old were as acute or more acute than those now; so that the ground was well-nigh exhausted. The unbelieving school of Geologians had done their worst. Chronology had been pressed to the utmost long ago. The differences of human form and of language lay on the surface. The Jews had tried what pseudo-criticism could do against the prophecies as to our Lord and His Church. German rationalism had been deterred from no theory in regard to Holy Scripture, either by its untenableness or its irreverence. The Essays contained nothing to which the older of us had not been inured for some forty years. Their writers asserted little distinctly, attempted to prove less, but threw doubts on everything. They took for granted that the ancient faith had been overthrown; and their Essays were mostly a long trumpet-note of victories, won (they assumed,) without any cost to them over the faith in Germany.
They ignored the fact, that every deeper tendency of thought or each more solid learning had, at least, done away with something shallow, something more adverse to faith. They practically ignored all criticism which was not subservient to unbelief. Yet the Essayists, Clergymen (with one exception), staked their characters, although not their positions, on the issue, that the old faith was no longer tenable; that it was dead and buried and the stone on the grave's mouth fast sealed. Their teaching was said to be "bold." Too "bold" alas! it was towards Almighty God; but, from whatever cause, its authors shrank, for the most part, from stating explicitly as their own, the unbelief which they suggested to others.