Redaction Criticism: Handle with Care

Ever since it first appeared on the theological scene, evangelicals have taken a dim view of redaction criticism. The very name has a suspicious ring to it. In common usage, the word criticism implies a negative judgment. And the word redaction suggests a tampering with the truth hardly consistent with the divine inspiration of the Bible. Yet redaction criticism is usually defined as the study that seeks to determine an author’s viewpoint by how he edits his sources.

Sometimes, it is true, the term is used so loosely as to include the whole process by which an author composes his work, and in doing so, places his individual stamp upon it. Others occasionally define the term so strongly as to suggest that it refers to the creative work of a writer in which he concocts material de novo to support his point. Yet the root meaning of the phrase redaction criticism is substantiated by common usage. Redaction criticism usually refers to an editor’s reworking his sources and what this reveals about him as an author.

Primarily, however, it is not the definition of redaction criticism that has disturbed evangelicals but how it has been employed and the results to which leading redaction critics have come. The scholars who invented the term and who have been its most active proponents have supported views that are destructive of evangelical faith.

Their antievangelical conclusions are not surprising. Almost all of them adhere to presuppositions that simply will not allow them to accept the gospel writers as reliable reporters of what Jesus really said and did. In addition, they have misused the basic principles of redaction criticism to support their preconceived notions of how the Gospels were written. For example, they assume that in each case the purpose of the gospel writer was theological, and that his theological goals so completely overrode any considerations of what in fact actually happened that the real Jesus became quite lost in the process.

All too often they fail to reckon adequately with the possibility that the biblical author may also want to tell a factual account of what really happened. So the apostle John states that his theological goal is to convince people that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. But, quite obviously, he felt that giving a factual account of events would help him attain this goal.

Even some evangelical scholars who are enamored by redaction criticism have come to conclusions highly objectionable to their fellow evangelicals. The outstanding example is Robert Gundry, who noted that Matthew included the story of the slaughter of the infants whereas Luke did not. He then argued that Matthew was making a theological point and, in doing so, switched away from historical narrative to a quite different literary genre—fiction—in imitation of Jewish midrash practice.

The point, however, is the same for both liberal and evangelical: it is not principles distinctive of redaction criticism that have led to these objectionable conclusions but rather their faulty presuppositions and invalid applications.

Evangelicals who employ redaction criticism agree that the biblical authors have always told us the truth. But, in the Gospels, for example, each author had a clearly defined purpose different from the other gospel writers. Luke wished to tell us the truth his way rather than Mark’s way. And the evangelical who really wants to understand the Gospel of Luke has the duty to ask why Luke preferred to tell it his way. He uses it neither to undermine confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the New Testament record nor to divert his focus from the interpretation of what the scriptural text actually says. Exactly the reverse is true. The faithful exegete pursues redaction criticism because it represents just one more valid tool in his endeavor to understand and interpret the Word of God.

How does redaction criticism fit with the evangelical view of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture? Many evangelicals are deeply concerned by the rise of this new discipline and fear that it will be used to destroy the evangelical view of Scripture. And the danger is real. In the hands of liberals it has done just that. Yet, as we have seen, it is not redaction criticism as such that undermines faith, but only its misuse.

A legitimate use of redaction criticism endangers only false views of the divine inspiration of Scripture. For example, redaction criticism shows that the gospel writers report the same speech of Jesus in different ways. If inspiration demands that the Gospels always give us the exact words of Jesus, we would find ourselves in serious trouble. But clearly this is not the case. The Gospels tell us what Jesus said, but they may tell it in his exact words translated very literally into Greek, or they may tell only part of what he said, or they may summarize what he said in wholly different words that still convey the truth of what Jesus really said. The point is that the biblical authors always tell the truth. If they say Jesus said something, he really did say it, whether or not we have the exact words he used.

Likewise, inspiration does not guarantee that every biblical account of an event is complete. One gospel writer will tell us of a single blind man who was healed and will give his name. The other will note that two were healed but omit the names. Clearly the gospel writers carefully selected only some items of what was available from their sources, and redaction criticism can legitimately note this fact and seek to ascertain why they have done so.

Moreover, the gospel writers are not just historians giving a factual account of events. Each is also writing a theological treatise. But the two are not mutually exclusive. The error of many redaction critics is not that they consider the evangelists as committed Christians writing from strong theological motivation. Rather, the error lies in their unwarranted assumption that theological motivation rules out the possibility that they also wish to give us an accurate factual account of what really happened.

Some evangelicals assume that no gospel writer ever used another gospel in composing his own. That may or may not be the case. If that is so, it certainly restricts the material on which redaction criticism can work. Yet it does not invalidate the principles of redaction criticism where we do have sources. And in the Gospels we have four different biblical authors each dealing with the same material from the life and teaching of Jesus—but each doing so from his own point of view.

Redaction criticism, moreover, assumes that the gospel writers were creative authors. To some evangelicals, to speak of the creativity of a biblical author rules out the historical validity of what he says and seems to negate the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But Luke is a creative writer whose account of the life and teachings of Jesus is historically valid. Divine inspiration does not rule out the human creativity of the biblical author. Rather, divine inspiration uses human creativity. Inspiration only guarantees that such human creativity will never falsify, but will always in the end convey the message God wishes to get across to his church.

Nor dare we assume that the Gospels present us with four neatly harmonious accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus. We live 2,000 years too late to be able to fit every event discussed in the Gospels into an exact harmony. No doubt the whole of the gospel story is harmonizable in the light of omniscience. But we are not omniscient, and we must be prepared to reckon with the fact that the Gospels will always present us with irreconcilable difficulties—irreconcilable by us who live separated from the events by radically different cultures and the span of two millennia.

Yet this is not all loss. In God’s good providence, four distinct individuals, each with his own gifts and personality, can be used by God to provide a more realistic picture of the many-sided complexity of him who came to us as God manifest in the flesh. Under the divine inspiration of the Spirit of God, the four Gospel records give us a better glimpse into the infinitely complex truth of God.

Some writers seem to feel that we must set redaction criticism over against grammatical-historical exegesis. Not at all. Rightly pursued, it is a tool of grammatical historical exegesis that takes adequately into account the individuality of each biblical author and thus rightly unfolds for us the true complexity of what he is really saying. And that is just what grammatical historical exegesis is striving for.

All of these matters can be summed up in the single truth that the biblical authors were truly human authors. The divine inspiration of Scripture did not destroy their human individuality. Only if the Bible were dictated word for word throughout would it be otherwise. Instead, each biblical author is himself and chooses his own literary genre and way of speaking so as to communicate effectively to his audience. The great value of redaction criticism is that it focuses upon the writers of the Gospels as human authors who functioned as individuals. They edited and composed the Gospels, but they did so under the inspiration of God.

What then is the real value of redaction criticism? It focuses upon the author of each individual book of Scripture as a true author who knew what he was saying and sought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to say it his way. The whole process, including his redacting or editing of his sources, was completely under the guidance of God so as to constitute what the Spirit of God wishes to communicate to us in a text that is completely trustworthy.

Evangelicals, therefore, ought not to reject redaction criticism out of hand, because we would thereby lose a tool that can help us understand the Word of God better.

Nor ought we to repudiate those scholars who use it, for if we do, we destroy their ability to serve the cause of Christ and his church, and his church will suffer accordingly. Rather, we ought to use redaction criticism cautiously, recognizing the dangers from its misuse, and avoiding the false presuppositions of those who employ it to lead away from the truth.

Nor must we expect too much from it. In some ways, redaction criticism over the last three decades has proved to be another fad. But it is a fad based on basic insights that are of value in the understanding of Scripture, and that the church needs to avail itself of.

Redaction criticism is not the last word, nor is it the single right way to discover the truth of Scripture. In time, its prominence will fade, and new fads will take its place. But meanwhile, we use it. Like all tools, it needs to be rightly directed and used with appropriate care. In the hands of the wrong person it can lead to devastating results. But also, like other tools, it has its place, and it would be wrong and harmful to Christ’s church to reject it and refuse to use it.

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