The Erosion of Biblical Authority in Modern Thought

"Where has God gone? I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are all his murderers . . . God is dead. That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. There has never been a greater deed." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)


The spirit of skepticism and freethinking which seems to have permeated contemporary Western Civilization is, in actuality, an old remnant of critical thought firmly rooted in the age of Renaissance (ca. 1300-1600). Indeed, the Renaissance marked the beginning of an intellectual history which, in many ways, has continued on through the present day. As one historian notes, "No longer are man and the world seen wholly within the religious context, their place charted and mapped within the hierarchy of Being, their actions judged solely in terms of the drama of salvation" (A Concise History of Atheism - Thrower). No, in the Renaissance, the potentialities of man, which had been locked away for nearly a thousand years, would be unleashed in a way unprecedented since the classical age of Greece and Rome. Men such as Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Gutenberg, Columbus, Magellan, and Shakespeare were all men possessed by the Renaissance spirit, and because of their humanistic achievements, the world would never be the same.

The most profound and consequential event of the Renaissance, however, would be the Copernican Revolution (ca. 1600) - i.e., the theory of heliocentrism (that the earth revolves around the sun). For since Copernicus and Galileo overthrew the notion of a geocentric universe (that the sun revolves around the earth), not only was the whole concept of biblical theism called into question (albeit in secret), but now, the "theological scheme of redemption" with man at the center seemed "absolutely incredible" (Waldo Emerson - Allen). Consequently, a new paradigm was formed in human thought upon which a more critical and skeptical philosophy might be constructed; and the period of time which succeeds the age of Renaissance represents an epoch during which man would propose new philosophies and ideologies, each of which would present a serious challenge to the historic Christian faith. This progressive liberation of the mind from medievalism would reach its zenith in the late-eighteenth century during the so-called Age of Reason, or Enlightenment.

Now although the changes leading to secular advance during the Enlightenment are numerous and complex, I believe that it is possible to reduce the whole of it to two pivotal changes in philosophic and scientific thought that would forever change the landscape of religious belief, resulting primarily in the rapid erosion of biblical authority in modern thought. First, let us consider the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish thinker and skeptic who challenged the historicity of biblical miracles, and therefore provided a context for antisupernaturalism. Then, let us briefly measure the tremendous impact of Darwinian evolution, and its insistence that the universe, and all that it contains, can be accounted for purely by naturalistic means.

The skeptical writings of David Hume, specifically his works, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), The Natural History of Religion (1757), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) constitute, as one scholar has noted, "the most powerful attack upon the rationality of belief in God ever mounted by a philosopher" (Hume - Gaskin). Indeed, Hume's powerful critiques against certain arguments for the existence of God have been sustained by many even to this day. With regard to our discussion, however, it is Hume's assault on the historicity of biblical miracles that is most damaging. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his work on miracles, "Ever since Hume's famous essay against miracles, it has been believed that historical statements about miracles are the most improbable of all historical statements" (Miracles - Lewis).

Essentially, Hume argued that the physical laws of nature cannot be broken. Why? Because David Hume was a later disciple of the great Isaac Newton (d. 1727), who, in his classic "Prinicpia Mathematica" (1687), argued essentially that the entire universe is giant machine, finely tuned (by God), but so perfectly coordinated and harmonized that it is nothing less than a grand symphony. Although there has been discussion whether Newton was a Deist, or somewhere between a Cambridge Platonist and a Theist, it is obviously apparent to the reader that his idea of a grand "mechanistic universe" (i.e. that the universe is like a giant machine) opened plenty of doors for deistic and skeptical thought about the Bible, although this was not Newton's intention.

Anyway, David Hume (a brilliant historian, who, because of his skepticism never held a chair in philosophy), locked on to Newton's new paradigm (like many other academics) and started to challenge the "miracles" of the Bible as intrusions into an invioable mechanistic universe. Moreover, he never failed to remind his readers about this contradiction, noting that all men observe this phenomenon every day. In his words, "Who has witnessed a miracle, that is, a violation of the physical laws of nature. Is it a common experience for us to see men raised from the dead? How many of us have witnessed the healing of a paralytic? And who can say he has seen a blind man receive sight from a holy man?" - moreover in an empirical environment as the Gospels purport. Thus, miracles are not a common experience in the world of modern man. But Hume doesn't stop here . . . in fact he goes further and sets forth a very powerful argument. Essentially, he asks the question, "So what is the common experience of men?" Well, (1) We know that men have a tendency to lie, (2) We know that men have a tendency to exaggerate stories for the sake of fascination, and (3) We know that miracle stories are usually reported by ancient or barbaric peoples. Therefore, since we know from common experience that man has a propensity to distort the truth, it is much more reasonable to conclude that the biblical miracles were either fictitious inventions, exaggerations of certain events, or simply part of the mythos of a barbaric and superstitious people. Hume published this essay in 1749, and if you look closely at the copyright dates of the earliest higher critics (i.e. those who attack the historicity of the Bible), you will find that "most" of these authors began to write in this destructive tradition after Hume, at the onset of the Enlightenment. And that is why most academics in Europe (including many of our founding fathers) were essentially "deists" in the late 1700s.

Obviously, Hume constructed his entire thesis upon the naturalistic assumption that the biblical God cannot intervene supernaturally into the natural plane. This was his inference from the Newtonian mechanistic worldview. As mentioned earlier, however, the implications of David Hume's antisupernaturalist philosophy were far reaching and profoundly consequential. If the biblical miracles were not historic occurrences, then the scriptural concept of God would have to be abandoned; and furthermore, the life of Christ would have to be demythologized, stripped of all supernatural overtones (e.g., we would have to abandon ideas such as the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ, the resurrection, the ascension, the second coming, indeed the very Messiahship of Jesus and the idea that his death on the cross had any efficacy for the salvation of sinners, etc.). Thus, with the skepticism of Hume blinding the eyes of men at the end of the eighteenth century, the rapid erosion of orthodox biblical Christianity was well underway.

Now whereas David Hume's denial of the possibility of miracles provided fertile soil for further skepticism about the biblical God, Charles Darwin(1809-1882) sowed the seeds of popular evolutionary philosophy which would eventually deny the existence of God by providing a rational explanation for the origination and existence of all things. In essence, the theory of Darwinian evolution contends that molecular life arose spontaneously from inorganic matter a finite time ago, and that through random processes (blind chance) in nature, life evolved over hundreds of millions of years into higher biological forms, eventually culminating in the species of man. This theory of biological evolution (now) is called neo-Darwinism ( = natural selection + transmutation + time), and although there are some alternative theories, Neo-Darwinism remains ascendant.

Interestingly, the contemporary opinion that evolution is the "recent" discovery of nineteenth and twentieth century technological advance and scientific genius is simply false. For even though Darwin's Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859), subtitled, The Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life) was initially responsible for the popularization of the evolutionary hypothesis, evolutionary thinking originated long before Charles Darwin. Even the renowned paleontologist and co-architect of neo-Darwinism, George Gaylord Simpson, admittedly wrote, "There is practically nothing in Darwin's theories that had not been expressed by others long before him" (Life of the Past - Simpson). Historically, speculation into evolutionary ideas and concepts began as early as the seventh century BC with the emergence of the philosophical schools of classical Greece (ca. 600 BC).

Nevertheless, despite the antiquity of evolutionary speculations, the tremendous impact of Darwin cannot be overstated. For even as the creationist Henry M. Morris once observed:

It is probably safe to say that no other book since the Bible has
so influenced the world. Even though most people today have
never read Darwin, the entire educational establishment looks
to "Origin of Species" as the intellectual watershed from which
all modern thought descends. (The Long War Against God - Morris)

With Darwin, then, a powerful intellectual challenge was issued against the traditional Judeo-Christian assumptions regarding the origin of man and the universe. In opposition to the traditional biblical beliefs about creation, astrophysical theories of cosmic evolution were soon advanced positing the multi-billion year evolutionary development of planetary systems, stars, and galaxies; and eventually, the exclusion of God became the underlying premise behind every theorem or equation. Thus, with Promethean fortitude and boldness, the civilized voice of man exclaimed, "We can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species . . . Rather, science affirms that the human species is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces" (Humanist Manifesto II).

Summary

In sum, the influence of David Hume and Darwinian evolution on contemporary religious thought can be understood in the following way:

1. David Hume, in the eighteenth century, denied the historicity of biblical miracles, thus casting doubt on the immanence (or reality) of the Judeo-Christian God, and therefore provided a context for further antisupernaturalistic thinking.

2. Charles Darwin, in the nineteenth century, provided a rational explanation for the origination and existence of all things, and therefore removed the philosophic necessity for a creator God. There was no need for a Creator anymore since life and the universe originated on their own.

The radical implications of Hume and Darwin, then, ultimately lead us to the conclusion that God is nothing more than the fictitious creation of homo sapiens, a supreme being erected in the minds of men by the "evolutionary principle" in order to promote moral and ethical order within the species for its survival. Furthermore, the Bible is not the inspired word of God, but just one of many of the world's religious writings, all of which are cultural or nationalistic expressions of man's collective religious mind. And most importantly, Jesus of Nazareth is not the divine Son of God and Savior of mankind, but simply a moral teacher who lived and died about two thousand years ago. Thus, in Hume and Darwin we have the systematic deconstruction of orthodox biblical Christianity, and the emphatic rejection of the existence of God.

Thus, we have arrived at the present societal view that orthodox Christianity is nothing more than myth, and that God is simply a figment of mankind's imagination. This is "naturalism."