If you didn’t read my last post, I’d recommend reading it now – that will make this post more profitable.

I can hear people asking, “What’s the big deal? Aren’t you over-reacting?” Perhaps I am, but I’d like to expand my comments a little and remind us of the important biblical facts that a form-critical NT reading overlooks.

What is so dangerous about showing 8-year-olds a little “historical fiction” about the way that biblical stories are passed down from older generations to younger? That’s called “oral tradition” – passing stories by word-of-mouth. Is that a problem in NT study? I submit that it is. While oral tradition may have played a part in the formation of parts of the New Testament, we must remember that the majority of the NT was written without relying on oral tradition. Consider the epistles: Paul makes clear that he received revelation from God and not tradition from men (Gal. 1.11-12), and none of the letters focus on repeating narratives from Christ’s life. Revelation is certainly not a collection of historical tales! The book of Acts is written by an eyewitness to most of its events (Luke writes several chapters in first-person). The Gospels are the most important books to this discussion, though – they bear much of the brunt of form criticism’s examination. Were the Gospels written as the result of stories passed down orally from Christian to Christian, meeting the needs of the moment? Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses – men who were among Jesus’ closest companions. I hardly think they relied on oral tradition to write down events they personally observed. Luke claims to write his narrative as the result of research (Luke 1.1-4). That research would certainly have included at least one “story-telling” and probably some stories were repeated multiple times before Luke heard them. Mark does not tell us how he wrote his gospel, although I think that the suggestion that he relied heavily on Peter holds some weight. But when you boil it all down, you see that oral tradition played a part in the writing of, at most, two books of the NT. In its truest form, form criticism views all four gospels as a product of edited oral tradition and judges their contents accordingly.

I just hinted at a second fault I see in form criticism: how it views the Scripture. Unfortunately, most scholars who practice form criticism (and certainly its earliest and most important proponents like Dibelius and Bultmann) view the gospels as the result of years (generations, even) of oral tradition, shaped and formed by the needs of the church, and finally compiled and written down. I cannot reconcile that view with the plain statement of Scripture in II Peter 1.21: “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” But here’s where things get sticky. I see, on the one hand, a group of scholars who are teaching that the Bible is a result of natural means – they offer ordinary human explanations for all that happens. On the other extreme, I see those who are committed to defending the Bible’s supernatural origin against any and all hints of criticism or correction of the inerrant Word. But I don’t fit into either of those groups neatly. (Although I am considerably closer to the second!) You see, I believe that the Bible’s origins are both human and divine. The Bible teaches that – re-read II Pet. 1.21: “men … were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” “All Scripture is inspired” (II Tim. 3.16), but it doesn’t read like the work of one writer. By that, I mean that Luke sounds different from Matthew. David’s psalms don’t read like Hosea’s prophecy. The Chronicler writes his history with a different feel than the author of Kings. God is the Author of the entire Bible, but He did not dictate His Word through passive scribes. He used the specific style, background and understanding of each human author to precisely convey His meaning. This means that He guided all the details of the life of each writer so that He could use him to accurately write His Word. This is a position of faith, not humanism. But let me bring this back to form criticism and my “middle-ground” problem. I don’t believe that Scripture’s description of its own inspiration is so narrow that it precludes the involvement of oral tradition. (I’m simply not aware of any verse that rules it out!) I admitted in the last paragraph that I believe that oral tradition was probably part of the background to Luke’s (and possibly Mark’s) gospel. I also believe that if Luke or Mark used stories that they heard repeated by other Christians, those stories were factually accurate. I am absolutely certain that none of the Gospels (no part of any book of the Bible, for that matter!) is the result of natural human efforts and God-less processes.

So, form criticism. I think that some of its presuppositions may be true in some cases (rare cases). But I’m convinced that its conclusions are well beyond the bounds of an orthodox statement of inspiration. I am concerned when those presuppositions (even the most harmless ones) are displayed before elementary school children with no chance for qualification or caution.

Thanks to those who endured to the end of one of my longest posts yet. I hope it was helpful.