“Higher Criticism”—A Note to a Friend
What you said this morning from the pulpit about your unsatisfactory search for “higher criticism” caught my attention. On subjects like this, the internet tends to be a sticky mass of ignorance and imagination, which one finds one’s way through only with caution.
A Creature of Enlightenment
“Higher criticism” is a rather antique expression. These days, since the triumph of its partisans in the academic world, the same thing is characteristically called simply “biblical studies.” It was gestated primarily in Germany during the nineteenth century and describes (I will be blunt here) the method or approach to Scripture of advocates of the Enlightenment as described by Immanuel Kant in his famous essay, “Was ist Aufklärung?”—“What Is Enlightenment?” Here is an excerpt from the essay:
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. This is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This minority is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude!) “Have the courage to use your own understanding” is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.
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