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A Critique of Form Criticism

By Bible Researcher & Award-Winning Goodreads Author Eli Kittim 🎓

What is Form Criticism?

Form criticism is a discipline of Bible studies that views the Bible as an anthology of conventional stories that were originally transmitted orally and later codified in writing. Therefore, form criticism tries to identify scriptural literary patterns and trace them back to their particular oral tradition. Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), a German Old Testament Bible scholar, was the founder of form criticism. He was also one of the leading proponents of the “history of religions school,” which employed the methods of historical criticism. While the methods used in *comparative religion* studies were certainly important, these liberal theologians nevertheless began their formal inquiry with the theoretical presupposition that Christianity was equal to all other religions and they, therefore, rejected its claims to absolute truth. However, this underlying presumption involves circular thinking and confirmation bias, which is the habit of interpreting new evidence as confirmation of one's preexisting beliefs or theories. Despite the usefulness of the approach, form criticism involves a great deal of speculation and conjecture, not to mention blatant unbelief. One of its biggest proponents in the twentieth century was German scholar Rudolf Bultmann (1884—1976). Similar to other form-critics who had a bias against supernaturalism, he too believed that the Bible needed to be “demythologized,” that is, divested of its miraculous narratives and mythical elements.

Form criticism is valuable in identifying a text's genre or conventional literary form, such as narrative, poetry, wisdom, or prophecy. It further seeks to find the “Sitz im Leben,” namely, the context in which a text was created, as well as its function and purpose at that time. Recently, form criticism's insistence on oral tradition has gradually lost support in Old Testament studies, even though it’s still widely used in New Testament studies.

Oral Tradition Versus Biblical Inspiration

Advocates of form criticism have suggested that the Evangelists drew upon oral traditions when they composed the New Testament gospels. Thus, form criticism presupposes the existence of earlier oral traditions that influenced later literary writings. Generally speaking, the importance of historical continuity in the way traditions from the past influenced later generations is certainly applicable to literary studies. But in the case of the New Testament, searching for a preexisting oral tradition would obviously contradict its claim of biblical inspiration, namely, that “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3.16). It would further imply that the evangelists——as well as the epistolary authors, including Paul——were not inspired. Rather, they were simply informed by earlier oral traditions. But this hypothesis would directly contradict an authentic Pauline epistle which claims direct inspiration from God rather than historical continuity or an accumulation of preexisting oral sources. Paul writes in Galatians 1.11-12 (NRSV):

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters,

that the gospel that was proclaimed by me

is not of human origin; for I did not receive it

from a human source, nor was I taught it,

but I received it through a revelation of

Jesus Christ.

Moreover, the gospels were written in Greek. The writers are almost certainly non-Jews who are copying and quoting extensively from the Greek Old Testament, not the Jewish Bible, in order to confirm their revelations. They obviously don’t seem to have a command of the Hebrew language, otherwise they would have written their gospels in Hebrew. And all of them are writing from outside Palestine.

By contrast, the presuppositions of Bible scholarship do not square well with the available evidence. Scholars contend that the oral traditions or the first stories about Jesus began to circulate shortly after his purported death, and that these oral traditions were obviously in Aramaic. But here’s the question. If a real historical figure named Jesus existed in a particular geographical location, which has its own unique language and culture, how did the story about him suddenly get transformed and disseminated in an entirely different language within less than 20 years after his purported death? Furthermore, who are these sophisticated Greek writers who own the rights to the story, as it were, and who pop out of nowhere, circulating the story as if it’s their own, and what is their particular relationship to this Aramaic community? Where did they come from? And what happened to the Aramaic community and their oral traditions? It suddenly disappeared? It sounds like a non sequitur! Given these inconsistencies, why should we even accept that there were Aramaic oral traditions? Given that none of the books of the New Testament were ever written in Palestine, it seems well-nigh impossible that the Aramaic community ever existed.

Besides, if Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews who studied at the feet of Gamaliel, surely we would expect him to be steeped in the Hebrew language. Yet, even Paul is writing in sophisticated Greek and is trying to confirm his revelations by quoting extensively not from the Hebrew Bible (which we would expect) but from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. Now that doesn’t make any sense at all! Since Paul’s community represents the earliest Christian community that we know of, and since his letters are the earliest known writings about Jesus, we can safely say that the earliest dissemination of the Jesus story comes not from Aramaic oral traditions but from Greek literary sources!

Conclusion

It doesn’t really matter how many sayings of Jesus Paul, or anyone else, reiterates because it’s irrelevant in proving the impact of oral tradition. The point is that all the sayings of Jesus may have come by way of revelation (cf. Gal. 1.11-12; 2 Tim. 3.16)!

And why are the earliest New Testament writings in Greek? That certainly would challenge the Aramaic hypothesis. How did the Aramaic oral tradition suddenly become a Greek literary tradition within less than 20 years after Jesus’ supposed death? That kind of thing just doesn’t happen over night. It’s inexplicable, to say the least.

Moreover, who are these Greek authors who took over the story from the earliest days? And what happened to the alleged Aramaic community? Did it suddenly vanish, leaving no traces behind? It might be akin to the Johannine community that never existed, according to Dr. Hugo Mendez. It therefore sounds like a conspiracy of sorts.

And why aren’t Paul’s letters in Aramaic or Hebrew? By the way, these are the earliest writings on Christianity that we have. They’re written roughly two decades or less after Christ’s alleged death. Which Aramaic oral sources are the Pauline epistles based on? And if so, why the need to quote the Greek Septuagint in order to demonstrate the fulfillment of New Testament Scripture? And why does Paul record his letters in Greek? The Aramaic hypothesis just doesn’t hold up. Nor do the so-called “oral traditions.”

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Why Cessationism is a False Doctrine

By Bible Researcher & Goodreads Author Eli Kittim 🔎

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Cessationism: God is Dead

Today, cessationists, like Justin Peters & John MacArthur, believe that God no longer communicates with mankind. It’s as if God is dead. Supposedly, he no longer performs miracles, or prophesies, or speaks. These people will often claim that if you want to hear God speak, read your Bible.

They have shut him out so thoroughly and to such an extent that it appears as if God doesn’t really exist outside the Bible. According to the cessationist movement (which by the way represents mainstream academic Christianity), God seemingly doesn’t have an independent existence outside the pages of Scripture. It’s as if he were a literary character that has been subordinated to biblical expediency. Existentially speaking, he’s not to be trusted or believed. For all intents and purposes, he doesn’t exist. It’s as if he died and left us his last will and testament. As the omnipotence-paradox riddle goes, it’s as if the Bible has become the stone that’s so heavy that even God can’t lift it.

Is Religious Experience Unchristian?

John MacArthur typically uses exaggerated caricatures of New Testament (NT) teachings to mock and ridicule *religious existential experiences.* But isn’t religious experience the foundation of our salvation, according to the NT? Romans 8.9 (NLT) says, “remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.” So how do you get the Spirit of Christ to live in you if not through an experience? Is it based on wishful thinking? Jesus says in Jn 3.3: “unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” So, how is one born again if not through some kind of an experience? And how does one develop a relationship with Christ if not through an experience? Jesus simply becomes an imaginary partner or a wishful thought or daydream? Is that what the NT teaches? And how do we get a new identity, according to Eph. 4.22-24? By reading the Bible? MacArthur clearly contradicts Scripture by implying that Christian salvation is not based on any “experience” at all. Yet, in Philippians 2.12 (NASB) Paul exhorts:

work out your own salvation with fear and

trembling.

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Should We Reject Supernaturalism?

The problem with cessationists is that they think that the process by which we “have Christ” is through reading the Bible. They pretend as if the supernatural dimension does not exist. It’s a fantasy world of imagination, at best, or the realm of the demonic world, at worst. So the Bible is wrong in pointing out the existence of the supernatural realm?

In order to shield themselves from the abuses and excesses of the Charismatic Movement (which has more often than not misattributed spiritual gifts or popularized false ones), they have inadvertently disassociated themselves from authentic gifts as well. So, they downplay and discredit all visions and experiences as if they were once sanctioned by God in antiquity but forbidden in modern times. But is Jesus’ promise limited to the apostolic age, when he says (Jn 14.21 NRSV), “those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them”?

In first Corinthians 12.4-11, Paul informs us that the spiritual life is accompanied by spiritual gifts that are *continuously* bestowed on the believers by the Spirit of God. He enumerates them as follows:

there are varieties of gifts, but the same

Spirit; and there are varieties of services,

but the same Lord; and there are varieties

of activities, but it is the same God who

activates all of them in everyone. To each is

given the manifestation of the Spirit for the

common good. To one is given through the

Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to

another the utterance of knowledge

according to the same Spirit, to another

faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of

healing by the one Spirit, to another the

working of miracles, to another prophecy, to

another the discernment of spirits, to

another various kinds of tongues, to

another the interpretation of tongues. All

these are activated by one and the same

Spirit, who allots to each one individually

just as the Spirit chooses.

Jesus demands regeneration, and Paul exhorts believers to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12.2 NASB), not by simply reading the Bible and pretending to have an imaginary relationship with Jesus. How is Christ sufficient? By reading about him in a Book? That’s preposterous!

Justin Peters, a famous expository preacher, also insists that God doesn’t communicate with anyone today. He even offers a challenge to find a single verse either in the Old Testament (OT) or the NT where anyone ever mentions that the Lord spoke to them. For starters, Scripture is filled with the expression “the LORD says” (see e.g. 1 Kgs 12.24; 21.19; Jer. 23.38; Ezek. 6.3; 20.5; Mt. 3.17; Acts 9.4-6; 13.2; Gal. 1.11-12; 2 Pet. 1.18-19) and so on and so forth. The irony is that in trying to refute the notion that God talks to people, Justin Peters ends up demonstrating the exact opposite because, apparently, God talks to him. He exclaims (emphasis added):

THE LORD IS TELLING ME TODAY

to tell you that if you feel like the Lord

might be trying to tell you something,

then he’s not trying to tell you anything.

Let me get this straight: the Lord *told him* that he *doesn’t talk* to people? Hmm. Isn’t that an oxymoron? Then he shifts to a strawman argument in which the criteria depend on one’s *certainty* of who it is that is speaking. And he furnishes us with certain examples from the OT, stating that unlike modern examples, the ancient prophets knew exactly who was speaking to them. But earlier he emphatically stated that regardless of your level of certainty, God is not speaking to you:

If you want God to speak to you dear

friends, there’s one way, I guarantee you,

you will hear God speak: read your Bible.

If you want God to speak to you audibly,

read it out loud.

(see YouTube video: https://youtu.be/7buV1Hj1pMA).

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Cessationist Deism

This is a deist understanding of God as a transcendent Being, wholly independent of the material universe, who isn’t accessible to creatures and doesn’t personally interact with them. So, the NT teaching that the Holy Spirit “will be in you [ἐν ὑμῖν]” (Jn 14.17, 23; cf. Rom. 8.9) is false? (cf. Titus 3.5; 1 Jn 2.27). Thus, “truth” (who is Jesus; Jn 14.6) is never inside but always outside of every believer? Of course not! In Rev. 3.20 (NLT), Jesus declares the exact opposite:

‘Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you

hear my voice and open the door, I will

come in [εἰσελεύσομαι πρὸς αὐτὸν].’

Usually, whenever a believer is regenerated by the Spirit they’ll experience at least one of his charisms (cf. Acts 2.2-4; Rom. 12.6-8). Moreover, there’s not a single verse in the NT to indicate that these phenomena were limited to the Apostolic Age. In fact, the exact opposite is true. In Acts 2.17-18 (NRSV), God promises to speak to believers “in the last days” (ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις):

‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that

I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and

your sons and your daughters shall

prophesy, and your young men shall see

visions, and your old men shall dream

dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men

and women, in those days I will pour out my

Spirit; and they shall prophesy.’

But according to cessationism, it seems that a personal relationship with Christ is equivalent to reading about him in a book. So, there’s no truth outside the Bible, no experiential relationship to God, no real spiritual insight, no miracles, no supernatural world, no signs & wonders, no changes in the personality, no religious experiences, no continuationism of the work & gifts of the Holy Spirit, nothing whatsoever. Wow! This is a form of deism, pure and simple: God doesn’t intervene in the affairs of men except through a book. Not only does this view contradict Scripture, it’s completely bogus and misinformed!

BIble Idolatry

The cessationist message seems to be that nothing happens inside of us experientially. Today, God only speaks through the Bible. They have made of the Bible an idol. And they have also broken the first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Yet they worship the Bible! Jesus, however, poignantly rebukes such people in John 5.39 (NLT):

‘You search the Scriptures because you

think they give you eternal life. But the

Scriptures point to me!’

In short, according to cessationism, the Bible has replaced God. God can no longer speak apart from or outside the Bible. Scripture also trumps Jesus. His spiritual relationship to human beings is not direct; it is indirect via the Bible. Put differently, we no longer believe in Jesus or God (the Spirit; Jn 4.24) as realities or entities, which exist outside the Bible, with the ability to communicate and transform our lives. No! According to cessationism, they interact with us only in and through the Bible. Thus, we only believe in the literary “word” of God. These divine beings only exist inside the Bible and not apart from it. Cessationists are in love with a book, not the author of that book. Outside of that book, they don’t seem to know its author. They only meet him via that book! This is what the Reformed doctrine of sola scriptura has produced. But this epistemology is completely bogus, as if God is incapable of speaking to us outside the Bible. As Jesus observes: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mt. 15.8)!

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Conclusion

There are different types of cessationism. But even the most open-minded, which acknowledge that God *occasionally* works by supernatural means today, still limit the person & work of the Holy Spirit to a (bare) minimum. Yet every new birth is a miracle! For cessationists, belief, not experience, is the key. Therefore, we don’t need to “experience” or “know” Jesus intimately or personally. The old saying: “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34.8) need not apply. In this strange and demonically twisted scenario, the Bible is Lord!

This is the hallmark of a false doctrine. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the NT or with Christ’s command to love God above and beyond everything else, including books (Mk 12.30). It is not sanctioned by the Scriptures. And it is neither according to God’s word nor his will. It is a form of secularism: quasi-deism coupled with liberal theology. It’s a counterfeit Christianity! This idolatrous view is far removed from Christian teaching.

If we sum up full cessationism, and take it to its logical conclusion, it’s as if God & Jesus are simply *literary characters* in the Bible whose powers and abilities are confined and subject to the authors’ discretion. Accordingly, we don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus; we have a personal relationship with the Bible! We don’t know God apart from the Bible. That’s the cessationist message, namely, that Christianity is not a “spiritual” but rather a “literary” religion! They reduce apocalyptic & existential Christianity to literature!

And they further contradict both themselves and the Bible by stating that mystical, supernatural experiences do not exist today. So, this teaching involves not only an unwarranted epistemology——in which real, living, divine persons become reduced to literary characters——but also a self-contradictory eisegesis wherein they refute the very teaching they espouse, namely, the supernatural world of the Bible!

My question is simply this: does cessationism represent authentic Christianity? And, judging from the statements of its leading proponents, the answer is a resounding no! As 1 Thessalonians 5.19-20 (NRSV) says: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets.”

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