The Cambridge University slay the theories of Tübingen University’s “stone dead”

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) from Tübingen University was the leading scholar who attempted single-handedly to discredit the reliability and the historicity of the New Testament. He undertook a massive task of “a complete survey of the whole of Christian antiquity” (36). He concluded that only the four great epistles of Paul – Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians – are unquestionable and thus authentic. He reconstructed the Christian history based on his unproven presuppositions later in his life. His misguided assumption and rash conclusion led him into error on “every principle point of New Testament criticism” (24). When he classified New Testament documents as historical, he operated from this classification. The Pauline epistles are an authentic and reliable guide. He suggested any critical and historical study of the New Testament must begin with the Epistles of Paul. The Gospels are not so much reliable, especially the fourth Gospel. He considered it more of a presentation of the Johannine ideal rather than a historical account of early Christianity. 

The second criticism of Baur that needs to be looked into is his take on the historicity of the name of Ignatius, the bishop in Syria. Seven Ignatian letters, six of which were written to churches and one to Polycarp the bishop of Smyrna, were the earliest monumental documents of the early church. Eusebius affirms that he was the second successor of Peter in the episcopate at Antioch which puts the date of his martyrdom in Rome not later than A.D. 115. His letters mentioned no account of discord or division in the early church, as Baur had presupposed in his writing. He theorized that there was a clear division between the Petrine party, the Judaizing church in Jerusalem, and the Pauline party which was of gentile churches. He dismissed the authenticity of Iraneus and Clementine Letter’s dating to support his theory. Regarding the letters attributed to Clement, the Tübingen School also raised the question of the historical existence of two Clements rather than the one who penned the letters. 

With these presuppositions, Baur and his Tübingen School’s attempted to discredit the early dating of the Synoptic Gospels as the historical documents by placing them around the late second century. Baur exhibited his prejudice as to any cynics operating in their presuppositions. He denied the authenticity of the early dating of any of Ignatian Epistles in any form with other pieces of literature from antiquity. The establishment of the authenticity of any of those letters would automatically sabotage the very foundation of the Tübingen Theory. The Ignatian letters did not have a hint of any faction between Petrine and Pauline’s party. This alone takes down the Tübingen structure like a house of cards.  

Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889), Brooke Foss Wescott (1825-1901), and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892), three scholars and later fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, were aware of radical criticism that was rising in Germany. Lightfoot was primarily the historian, Hort the Philosopher, and Wescott the exegete (36). Lightfoot published his first commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians in 1865, other two fellows proved to be helpful scholars in their critique and writings on Johannine and other books of the New Testament respectively. 

Lightfoot also agreed with Baur that the critical study of the New Testament historicity must begin from the great Pauline Epistles. Those three Cambridge scholars committed themselves to an enterprise of responding to the criticism of the Tübingen School. Lightfoot engaged in determining the early dates of the books of the Bible. Doing so subsequently proves the authenticity of the New Testament. Irenaeus became a bishop of Lyons in the south of France in A.D. 178. He quoted every book of the New Testament, except the Epistle to Philemon before he died around A.D. 200. This shows that all the New Testament books must not have been late compositions as the Tübingen school theorized. Lightfoot took a burden to answer the question by determining the absolute terminus ad quem for the writings of Irenaeus. Finding a final limiting point in the composition of the early gospels and literature should suffice to prove the reliability of the New Testament. 

Theodore Zahn (1838-1933) was a great conservative scholar who was working extensively on the Ignatian problem for many years. He concluded that the longer version known as Vossian could not be expanded from the shorter Curetonian letters. He believed it is the other way around. When only a few scholars were convinced and adamantly defended the seven Vossian letters as genuine and truly Ignatian in their form, findings from Zahn and Lightfoot’s independent work in greater detail put the controversy to bed. These conservative New Testament giants first pinpointed the specifics and susceptibility of the Tübingen theories. They knew that the proponents of the Tübingen theories would be defenseless on all fronts if their critical scholarship assault blew a hammer to their heads. That was what precisely they did. Lightfoot explained that every single difficulty in the Vossian letters was due to a “misunderstanding of the text, unfamiliarity with the thought and practices of the times” (51). Upon the careful examination and explanation of “the external evidence, internal consistency, and probability, and probable anachronisms” slay the theory of Tübingen University’s “stone dead” (59).

The Corpse of Baur’s Hypothesis Still Alive Today. Summarizing its main points. 

Baur’s hypotheses are still alive today in non-conservative academia a century after Baur’s death. His ghostly shadow is still breathing and walking man who is roaming around echoing his ideas. Questioning the authenticity of other Pauline Epistles other than “four undoubted Epistles Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians) is not atypical. We read the references to his priority of Paul in reconstructing the church history, since these are the earliest Christian documents. He also propositioned the fourth Gospel of John as more Hellenistic in its contents. The gospel must not be read like history but ideas of the evangelist propagated for the Johannine community as the ideals. 

Baur reconstructs the history of the church based on his reading of 1 and 2 Corinthians which departs from the traditional understanding. He argues for the supposed existence of conflict between Pauline and the Petrine party. His reconstructed history of the church presents a depressing picture of bitter rivalry and faction between the Jewish and Gentile, the Petrine and the Pauline parties in the early church. The Judaizing church became much of a hindrance, to the extent, that it tried to destroy Paul’s work among the Gentiles. So, he concludes that the trajectory of Pauline Christianity birthed from this conflict and became free from the dying sectarian Jewish church is far more authentic owing to its base on the work of Christ (25). All these hypotheses were based on ignorance that has contributed to the distortion of the study of the history of the New Testament literature. 

Recommendation to a Seminarian to read 500 pages of Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers

Today, we have the privilege to build our work on the foundations of our theological giants of the past. They did the hard work for us. The majority of textbooks on church history cover rudimentary contents. As Neill states that we have taken the authenticity of the letters of Clement and the seven letters of Ignatius for granted. We are assigned to use them merely as primary sources to study the history of the post-apostolic age. Most seminarians even do not know that the authenticity of those letters was a contentious matter. They were seriously challenged to prove their authenticity on their own merits. The scholars before us had to fight the greatest critical battle of the century to get us here. Neill, if he had his way, would assign each one of us to read 500 pages of Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers to “learn the critical method, or prepare us for facing some of the difficult problems of New Testament that yet remain unsolved” (61).