The end of the historical-critical method

the long version

"Gerhard Maier is a German theologian who created a bit of a 'stir' when this book was published in Germany in 1974. Essentially, he argues for abandoning the 'critical' approach to biblical studies, and a return to treating it as 'revelatory.' Here are some quotations from the book: 'The Bible itself gives no key with which to distinguish between the Word of God and Scripture, and along with that, between Christ and Scripture (Pg. 16).' 'Accordingly, the historical-critical method is of necessity concerned with differences of content and judgments about facts, whereas the Bible wants to be a witness of personal encounter and the declaration of the divine will. A suitability of method to subject matter is again diminished or destroyed (Pg. 19).' 'This method would take human reason out of the fall into sin and use it critically, i.e., to discriminate and make judgments in matters of revelation. In actual fact this method has thereby already withdrawn reason from claims to revelation. What blindness! (Pg. 23)' 'The assumptions of the historical-critical method--founded on human arbitrariness--logically lead to this, that man himself appears as the norm in the real canon. Man, who began critically to analyze revelation and to discover for himself what is normative, found at the end of the road: himself (Pg. 35).' 'The theologian is different. He must methodologically begin with the assumption that a given event here is possible, and therefore he must ensure an openness to the methodological principle which will not hastily and insolently curtail divine revelation at any place... Therefore the historical-critical method is to be replaced by a historical-Biblical one (Pg. 52).' 'Our starting point was the methodological insight that, at least initially, we must let revelation determine its own limits. Consequently revelation defines itself (Pg. 63).' "The often sadistic desire to elaborate on contradictions has no support in the Biblical method (Pg. 71)'" -- Amazon.com.