Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
Dr. Wace ("Nineteenth Century," March, p. 363) states that he derives
the above citation from the preface to the 15th edition of the "Vie de
Jésus." My copy of "Les Évangiles," dated 1877, contains a list of
Renan's "Oeuvres Complètes," at the head of which I find "Vie de
Jésus," 15^e édition. It is, therefore, a later work than the edition
of the "Vie de Jésus" which Dr. Wace quotes. Now "Les Évangiles," as
its name implies, treats fully of the questions respecting the date
and authorship of the Gospels; and any one who desired, not merely to
use M. Renan's expressions for controversial purposes, but to give a
fair account of his views in their full significance, would, I think,
refer to the later source.
If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might have found some as
decided expressions of opinion, in favour of Luke's authorship of the
third Gospel, as he has discovered in "The Apostles." I mention this
circumstance, because I desire to point out that, taking even the
strongest of Renan's statements, I am still at a loss to see how it
justifies that large-sounding phrase, "practical surrender of the
adverse case." For, on p. 438 of "Les Évangiles," Renan speaks of the
way in which Luke's "excellent intentions" have led him to torture
history in the Acts; he declares Luke to be the founder of that
"eternal fiction which is called ecclesiastical history"; and, on the
preceding page, he talks of the "myth" of the Ascension--with its
"_mise en scène voulue_." At p. 435, I find "Luc, ou l'auteur quel
qu'il soit du troisième Évangile"; at p. 280, the accounts of the
Passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, are said to be "peu
historiques"; at p. 283, "La valeur historique du troisième Évangile
est sûrement moindre que celles des deux premiers." A Pyrrhic sort of
victory for orthodoxy, this "surrender"! And, all the while, the
scientific student of theology knows that, the more reason there may
be to believe that Luke was the companion of Paul, the more doubtful
becomes his credibility if he really wrote the Acts. For, in that
case, he could not fail to have been acquainted with Paul's account of
the Jerusalem conference and he must have consciously misrepresented
it.
We may next turn to the essential part of Dr. Wace's citation
("Nineteenth Century," p. 365) touching the first Gospel:--
St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for the
discourses. Here are the "oracles"--the very notes taken
while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and
definite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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