Saint Basil calls at a time when the Church is being destroyed from within by the Arian heresy: “…All intelligence of those who are learned in word is filled with delusion of false or half-true assertions like an eye filled with dust.”… “All these people are struck by an incurable epidemic of crazy love for fame, so everyone wants to be higher than the other, but at the same time, in fact, their ship is sinking to terrible depths.”… “Every borderline (dogma) set by the Fathers of the Church has been moved, every foundation, every stronghold of a sound view of the true faith has been shaken… unless our enemy attacks us first, then a friend by our side will hurt us…” Such is the situation even today but many cannot see it any more – they have become spiritually blind!

 

Nowadays, the historical-critical method in theology (HCT) lays claim to academic exegesis of the Scripture and hence of the whole Catholic doctrine. HCT has subordinated itself neither to divine inspiration nor to Church tradition in the matters of doctrine (dogmas) and morals. It is based on atheistic philosophy, does not believe in any miracle, denies the Resurrection of Christ, does not believe that Jesus is true God and true man, the only Saviour, in the way the Church has taught it for 2000 years. HCT upholds the heretical doctrine that Christ is divided into the historical Christ and the Christ of false faith who is said to have been imagined by the early community of believers.

 

The effect of the spirit of HCT can be compared to potassium cyanide poisoning. Potassium cyanide is chemically bound to oxygen receptors in the blood. This bond with deadly poison is much quicker and easier than the bond with life-giving oxygen. Death is caused by lack of oxygen. The spirit behind HCT works in a similar way: it flatters the mind of the old self which subsequently binds to this spirit of lies more quickly and easily than to the spirit of truth. The natural, carnal man with his purely rational approach to Scripture has always fabricated and will fabricate heresies with ease and spread them with great speed.

 

Saint Basil clearly shows that the Scripture is given for life, and everyone will give an account of whether his life was guided by reliance on God’s Word or not. HCT theologians do not understand at all the essential meaning of the Scripture. The attitude of the Church Fathers is completely strange to them. So what is the benefit of HCT for the Church? The same as the benefit of potassium cyanide for man.

 

Is reason the highest standard of truth?

 

The Enlightenment as well as atheistic historical criticism in theology (HCT) declared human reason the supreme authority. It is absurd! Both a criminal and a righteous man, each in his own interest, use reason. The reason of a criminal rebels against God, and so he rejects and destroys the truth. The reason of a righteous man conforms to God, and so he seeks and defends the truth. Everyone will face death and God’s judgment one day. The righteous will be saved, criminals will be condemned.

 

The activity of liberal theologians (HCT) in the Church is the same as training of agronomists in agriculture who cultivate various species of pest, competing with one another, until they infest all the crops so much that they eventually cause world famine.

 

Professor Eta Linnemann was a student of Rudolph Bultmann and E. Fuchs, F. Gogarten and G. Ebeling! After her conversion, she said her ‘No!’ to historical-critical theology! “I regard everything that I taught and wrote before I entrusted my life to Jesus as refuse. Whatever of these writings I had in my possession I threw into the trash with my own hands in 1978. I ask you sincerely to do the same with any of them you may have on your bookshelf.”

 

Next, she states: “We have put generation after generation of believing Christian young people, who were willing and eager to serve God, through this fire, sacrificing them to the Moloch of an atheistic theology. The result has been generation after generation of misguided guides. When will we become converted at last and leave this idolatry?”

 

She gives a warning from her own experience: “If anyone follows this way of godlessness, he is no longer free in his decisions; there is something or someone that forces him. This pressure is not exerted just through professional methods. One has to do with demonic powers which hold sway over everyone who follows this way. From that moment one is no longer free but oppressed by irresistible power.”

 

HCT CHANGES THE THINKING OF STUDENTS

 

Prof. Linnemann writes: “Formulation of hypotheses in the study of the Old and New Testaments is a self-stabilizing system. These HCT hypotheses are treated as realities. Those who adopt them so in their minds are formed and transformed by them. So the risk of the study of theology is quite high, because these changes take place unavoidably and unnoticeably.

 

Furthermore, students face strong pressure from the group. Their colleagues, especially in the upper grades, or the specially gifted ones, are ‘co-educators’ and significant co-bearers of this socialization.

 

Students must submit work in which they are to prove that they have sufficiently adopted the HCT methods. They are pressurized into a historical-critical way of thinking, speaking and writing. This leads to fundamental changes in their minds and in their faith. They are no longer themselves. All that they have learned during their study stands in the way of the Word of God and denies them access to it.”

 

St Pius X writes: “To hear these scholars talk about their works on the Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever even glanced through the pages of Scripture, whereas the truth is that a whole multitude of Doctors, infinitely superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from finding imperfections in them, have thanked God more and more the deeper they have gone into them, for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men. These great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the Modernists (present-day HCT) for their guide and rule, - a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion which consists of themselves. We believe, then, that We have set forth with sufficient clearness the historical method of the Modernists (present-day HCT). The (atheistic) philosopher leads the way, the (atheistic) historian follows, and then in due order come (atheistic) internal and textual criticism. It is quite clear that the criticism We are concerned with is an agnostic (denying the possibility of objective knowledge) and evolutionist (denying that God is the Creator) criticism. Hence anybody who embraces it and employs it, makes profession thereby of the errors contained in it, and places himself in opposition to Catholic faith.”

 

St Pius X continues: “And here we have already some of the artifices employed by Modernists to win new recruits! The young, excited and confused by all this glamour of praise and abuse, some of them afraid of being branded as ignorant, others ambitious to be considered learned, and both classes goaded internally by curiosity and pride, often surrender and give themselves up to Modernism (today neo-Modernism – HCT).”

 

HCT principles

 

1) The reality of God is excluded beforehand.

Some scholars do allow of His existence but not as of the living God who created, conserves and governs the world.

2) The Ten Commandments (Decalogue), according to HCT, are no longer valid.

The response by Church Tradition: “The Ten Commandments have not been abolished; on the contrary, they gained their full importance through Christ’s binding explanation of the Decalogue in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7).

3) HCT defines what is true and what is false – a myth – in the Bible.

Only this very attitude as such is highly offensive, even demonic. (cf. 1Cor 2:14)

 

STATISTICS

 

In the 60s, the attendance in Catholic churches in USA was 75%. In the 90s, it was about 28%. Attendance in Poland in 1989 was about 75%; only four years after the fall of Communism, the attendance dropped to 28%, and in Warsaw to 18%. A collapse which in USA lasted 30 years, lasted four years in Poland.

 

German journalist A. Sarrach writes about HCT: “Here we have nothing to do with the history of biblical criticism but with the history of speculations or the history of pathology.”

 

Concerning the historical-critical method, it is a method which without any self-criticism builds one erroneous conclusion on another. In the case of a number of critics one cannot escape the impression that they are demagogues rather than scholars.

 

The exegesis which no longer lives by the Bible… turns into archaeology: the dead bury their own dead.

 

Today, the same as yesterday, the saving faith is founded on the receiving of the word of God as the word of God and not as the word of men (cf. 1Thes 2:13). Saints knew nothing about HCT and yet it is them who had the best understanding of Scripture.

 

The Bible is inspired by God

a) “All Scripture is inspired by God.” (2Tim 3:16)

b) “Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” (2Pe 1:20)

 

Apart from these two main testimonies we can find almost on every page of the Bible an individual testimony about it being the Word of God – Holy Scripture. Unless we believe this testimony of the Bible, we not only oppose to God’s Word but we also declare God Himself, the Author of Scripture, a liar.

 

Therefore every bishop, priest and layman must definitely renounce the spirit of the historical-critical method (HCT).

If anyone refuses to do so, he is under a curse (Gal 1:8-9). If he dies in this state, he will be eternally condemned!

 

Do you renounce this spirit of heresy? – Yes, I do!

 

Do you give your sins to Jesus and do you receive Him as your Saviour and Lord? – Yes, I do!

 

Do you receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit like the Apostles? – Yes, I do! Amen!

 

Make a gesture of faith and burn all heretical books (Acts 19:19).

 

Copies to:

Vatican Secretariat of State

Bishoprics of the Catholic Church

Bishops of the Orthodox Church

Governments of the formerly Christian nations

Members of the European Parliament

Presidents of Europe and North and South America

Download: An appeal to Catholics - Part two: Metanoein /a change of thinking/ (8/9/2015)