C. S. Lewis’ ”Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” Part 1

In conjunction with episode 52 of our Christian Atheist podcast, "Archaeology and Faith," in which we discuss the amazing discovery of a curse tablet on Mount Ebal in Israel. we present here an essay by C. S. Lewis that critiques the motivations behind much of the hostility toward biblical historicity. Here is a link to that episode:

https://wisewordsforyouroccasion.podbean.com/e/52-christian-atheist/

Lewis here attacks the underlying assumptions that motivate the "higher criticism," and which they don't acknowledge as motivations. He also undermines the arrogance that fails to recognize its own weaknesses and limitations, and yet constructs what seems to them an iron-clad interpretation through textual criticism that, at best, should be approached with a certain degree of incredulity:

"These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read ... the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."

This does not mean, of course, that biblical criticism is always wrong, or that its skeptical approach has no value:

"We are not fundamentalists. We think that different elements in this sort of theology have different degrees of strength. The nearer it sticks to mere textual criticism, of the old sort ... the more we are disposed to believe in it. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers.... I could not speak with similar confidence about the circle I have chiefly lived in myself. I could not describe even the history of my own thought as confidently as these men describe the history of the early Church's mind. And I am perfectly certain no one else could.... It encourages a due agnosticism. For agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the sceptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively" to the biblical text. "Try doubting something else."

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