Prodigal Son

[TBC: Enemies of the Scriptures are often bold enough to make authoritative statements for which they can offer not the slightest support. This example from 1910 shows the logical question a believer should ask.]

Bro. Mohorter, of Boston, sends me the following clipping from a recent issue of the Boston Herald:

The Rev. George Hodges, dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., preaching before University of Pennsylvania students in Houston Hall on "The Temptation," said: "Christ did not meet Satan in the wilderness, and there was no prodigal son. But the story of the temptation and the story of the prodigal contain the greatest truths which have ever been told. Fiction may be more full of truth than facts, and poetry and pictures, products of the imagination, may represent more and deeper truths than mathematical demonstrations. Records of the temptation make it sufficiently plain that what we have here is a parable rather than a history, or a picture rather than a page from a diary. Taken literally, it never happened. Jesus and Satan never stood side by side looking down on the temple. The parable of the prodigal son has no fact in it from beginning to end. There was no prodigal son; there was no famine; no fatted calf; no elder brother. This was a beautiful story which Jesus told, and he made up every word of it."

When a man makes an assertion the source of which is beyond the ordinary range of human knowledge, it is always pertinent to ask him, How do you know? When Professor Hodges said that Christ did not meet Satan, some of those university students ought to have risen and said, "Professor, how do you know? Have you any other source of information on the subject than the three Gospels, which assert that he did?" And when he said that the parable of the prodigal son has no fact in it from beginning to end, he should have been confronted with the same question. Unless he is omniscient, so as to know what took place two thousand years ago without the aid of evidence on the subject, his answer would have been silence and confusion of face. But our advanced critics are constantly assuming omniscience in regard to facts of history which do not please them. According to the very first canon of historical criticism, the testimony of men who were contemporaries of asserted facts, and who had access to means of correct information, must be accorded the highest degree of historical credibility. But this scientific professor expected the students of Pennsylvania University to believe him in this twentieth century concerning facts in the first, in opposition to Matthew, Mark and Luke. Who will dare to say that he is conceited or presumptuous? (J. W. McGarvey, "Short Essays in Biblical Criticism," 1910, pp. 360-362).