I’m saddened to see some evangelical apologists, whom I otherwise respect, spending an increasing amount of time theorizing on what a Gospel author’s sources and intent must have been. How can they know what sources influenced the Gospel authors or what was a particular author’s intent other than what was stated in the text itself? In fact, in a hallway at the San Diego Evangelical Theological Society’s annual meeting in 2019, I had a friendly, yet intense argument with a fellow apologist about the reliability of our discerning gospel sources. More about that later.
Now, as many know, I’m a theologian/apologist and I freely acknowledge that some of these apologists are much more skilled than I in ancient manuscripts and biblical languages. But the basis of my criticism doesn’t arise from the knowledge of manuscripts and languages. It comes from an article written by C. S. Lewis entitled “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism.” Lewis’s critique of this Gospel sources and/or intent talk is, I think, devastating to proclamations about Gospel sources, Gospel influences, and the Gospel author’s intent.
Before I present Lewis’s argument, some readers may not realize that Lewis was much more than the author of extremely popular Christian fiction and non-fiction works. For thirty years, Lewis was a fellow at Magdalen College at Oxford University and later became the chairman of the department of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. He published many works unrelated to Christianity. Through much of his life, J. R. R. Tolkien was his closest friend, and Tolkien and Lewis were integral to an informal gathering of many authors called the Inklings. The Inklings discussed the various members’ unfinished works. In short, Lewis was an expert in literature and was intimately familiar with the writings of many of his contemporaries.
Thus, when outsiders published reviews of Lewis’s own works and the works his fellow Inklings, he was in a position to know whether those reviewers were correct or mistaken. Lewis then applies what he learned from the reviews of contemporary critics to critics of the New Testament Gospels:
All this sort of criticism [of New Testament Gospels] attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the texts it studies; what vanished documents each author used, when and where he wrote, with what purposes, under what influences—the whole Sitz im Leben of the text.1 This is done with immense erudition and great ingenuity. And at first sight it is very convincing. I think I should be convinced by it myself, but I carry about with me a charm—the herb moly—against it.2 You must excuse me if I now speak of myself. The value of what I say depends on its being first-hand evidence. What forearms me against all these Reconstructions is the fact that I have seen it all from the other end of the stick. I have watched reviewers reconstructing the genesis of my own books in just this way…. What the value of such reconstructions is I learned very early in my career.3
After mentioning a review of one of his own works where the reviewer was “totally wrong,” Lewis then writes:
I have watched with some care similar imaginary histories both of my own books and of books by friends whose real history I knew.4 Reviewers, both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author’s mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, what—and when—he did everything.
Now I must record my first impression; then, distinct from it; what I can say with certainty. My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; that the method shows a record of 100 per cent. failure. You would expect that by mere chance they would hit as often as they miss. But it is my impression that they do no such thing. I can’t remember a single hit. But as I have not kept a careful record my mere impression may be mistaken. What I think I can say with certainty is that they are usually wrong.5
Lewis says he can’t remember these contemporary reviewers ever being right but he can say they are “with certainty… usually wrong”! Contemporary critics of his own works and the works of his friends were with certainty usually wrong! Lewis then tells us to consider the “overwhelming advantages” these contemporary reviewers start with as compared to biblical critics.
They reconstruct the history of a book written by someone whose mother-tongue is the same as theirs; a contemporary, educated like themselves, living in something like the same mental and spiritual climate. They have everything to help them. The superiority in judgment and diligence which you are going to attribute to the Biblical critics will have to be almost superhuman if it is to offset the fact that they are everywhere faced with customs, language, race-characteristics, class-characteristics, a religious background, habits of composition, and basic assumptions, which no scholarship will ever enable any man now alive to know as surely and intimately and instinctively as the reviewer can know mine. And for the very same reason, remember, the Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.6
About the argument I mentioned at the outset. This apologist argued intently that we must employ gospel sources to understand how the gospel accounts got to us. But I kept replying, “If Lewis is right about contemporary critics not getting the “sources” correct about his own works and the works of his friends, then how are we going to go back 2,000 years and proclaim that we do understand what ancient sources influenced the gospels? I kept saying the same thing again, and again. Finally he asked me to tell him where Lewis wrote that and we graciously parted company.
It’s simple, if contemporary critics of C. S. Lewis and his Inkling author friends weren’t correct on the various authors’ intents, the sources of their writings, or what influenced them, then why should we have any confidence whatsoever in modern New Testament scholars who tell us about the intent or sources—like Q or whatever—that influenced Gospel authors when those authors wrote almost two millennia ago?
We shouldn’t.
- Sitz im Leben is German and is difficult to translate. It’s roughly translated “setting in life” or “sociological setting.” W. R. F. Browning in the Oxford Dictionary of the Bible wrote, “In NT scholarship critics try to relate sayings of Jesus both to the Sitz im Leben of the Church in which they were transmitted and to the Sitz im Leben of Jesus’ ministry in which they may have originated.” W. R. F. Browning, Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 253. [↩]
- The herb moly is mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as making a person immune to sorcery. [↩]
- C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 158-159. [↩]
- For much of his life, Lewis’s closest friend was J. R. R. Tolkien who, with Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and quite a few others, formed an informal literary discussion group called the Inklings that met from 1930 to 1949. [↩]
- Ibid., 159-160. Emphasis mine. [↩]
- Ibid.,160. [↩]