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The End of the Historical-Critical Method

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Is the Bible simply another ancient Middle Eastern test, or is it somehow unique? And if it is unique in some way, is it ever intellectually honest to simply disregard that uniqueness in studying it? How can Christians study documents they believe to be God's revelation, or to contain it in some real sense, as if it were otherwise, and without compromising the very uniqueness which presumably prompts them to study it? This book is essential for any student of the Bible who considers himself or herself in any sense a believer. It challenges such people to invoke their intellects and, above all, their capacity for intellectual integrity in asking a question most non-Fundamentalists simply refuse to think about: is it ever intellectually honest for Christians to study the Bible as if they were agnostic or athiestic students in a secular university? Is there a place specifically in the Church for Bible study filtered through the presuppositions of unbelief? And even in the secular acadamy, to what extent are "modern methods of Bible study" in fact intellectually honest?

Gerhard Maier is a German theologian who created a bit of a "stir" when this book was published in Germany in 1974. Essentially, he argues for abandoning the "critical" approach to biblical studies, and a return to treating it as "revelatory." Here are some quotations from the book:

"(T)he Bible itself gives no key with which to distinguish between the Word of God and Scripture, and along with that, between Christ and Scripture." (Pg. 16)
"Accordingly, the historical-critical method is of necessity concerned with differences of content and judgments about facts, whereas the Bible wants to be a witness of personal encounter and the declaration of the divine will. A suitability of method to subject matter is again diminished or destroyed." (Pg. 19)
"(T)his method would take human reason out of the fall into sin and use it critically, i.e., to discriminate and make judgments in matters of revelation. In actual fact this method has thereby already withdrawn reason from claims to revelation. What blindness!" (Pg. 23)
"(T)he assumptions of the historical-critical method---founded on human arbitrariness---logically lead to this, that man himself appears as the norm in the real canon. Man, who began critically to analyze revelation and to discover for himself what is normative, found at the end of the road: himself." (Pg. 35)
"The theologian is different. He must methodologically begin with the assumption that a given event here is possible, and therefore he must ensure an openness to the methodological principle which will not hastily and insolently curtail divine revelation at any place... Therefore the historical-critical method is to be replaced by a historical-Biblical one." (Pg. 52)
"Our starting point was the methodological insight that, at least initially, we must let revelation determine its own limits. Consequently revelation defines itself." (Pg. 63)
"The often sadistic desire to elaborate on contradictions has no support in the Biblical method." (Pg. 71)

This book is now a bit dated, in that it appeared in 1970. However, it is a fine summary of exegetical history up to that point. Maier provides a good antidote to the chaos that still reigns in many circles of the Biblical guild today.

Maier writes from a distinctively Lutheran perspective, and the translation is a bit clunky at times. I think the book can quickly bring you up to speed on the issues if you are willing to read the footnotes and familiarize yourself with the wider debate. A good, quick read.