Of particular interest to Fisher are the New Testament miracles. This subject had commanded considerable attention in college courses on “Christian Evidences”: Jesus’ miracles supplied (so it was thought) proof of his divinity and of Christianity’s supernatural origin. Yet, as the treatment of miracles by Hume, later skeptics, and Rationalist New Testament critics became more widely registered, a more sophisticated defense was needed. Here, although Fisher joined his German-educated colleagues in calling for better “weapons,” he appealed more readily to strands of German theology influenced by Schleiermacher.
As a student in Germany, Fisher had translated for publication an article by August Neander, prefaced by his own introduction, conceived as “a contribution to Christian evidences.”236 Reflecting Schleiermacher’s more liberal approach to Jesus’ miracles,237 Fisher here posited that their chief value lies in calling attention to “the system of truth of which they are the heralds … confirming a belief which has been established by other sources of truth”: miracles, in other words, do not in themselves establish the truth of Christianity, but support other “evidences.” Indeed, Fisher claimed, few believers in any age were converted primarily on the basis of miracles; rather, they were first—and even now—won by the “person of Christ and the irresistible power of his presence.” Jesus’ miracles, “the natural and appropriate symbols” of his majestic doctrine, confirm belief arrived at by other means.238
Decades later, ensconced in his professorial chair at Yale, Fisher wrote several essays on this theme, including a four-part series for the Princeton Review on “The Historical Proofs of Christianity.”239 Fisher apparently wished to reformulate the teaching of “Christian Evidences,” still a curricular staple in many American colleges. Although now espousing more traditional views on miracles, and critiquing the disbelief of Renan, Strauss, and some of their predecessors,240 he continued to endorse themes from liberal German theology. The miracles, he here claimed, are of one piece with Jesus’ teaching; although not standing as proofs on their own, they complement the “internal evidence” for Christianity’s supernatural origin, namely, the consciousness of early believers.241 The disciples’ trust in Jesus’ resurrection, he argued, cannot be explained in any other way than by an appeal to miracle: out of “the depths of despondency” they were transformed into “courageous heralds,” willing to risk their lives to proclaim what they had witnessed.242
In addition, Fisher continued to emphasize that historians of Christianity study not the events “as they actually happened,” but rather the subjective consciousness of the believer. Here, unlike Smith and Schaff, Fisher rejected attempts to argue for Christianity’s historicity by appeal to the “genuineness and credibility of the Gospels.” Rather, he claimed, whoever wrote the Gospels, we should look first to the effects of Jesus and his message, and second, to the internal cohesion of the details presented.243
Fisher acknowledged that although these arguments would not convince determined atheists, they might convince less implacable skeptics.244 On this point, at least, he had gone some way toward “Germany.” Yet he stalled in his treatment of European biblical criticism. Here, he appears as conservative as Smith, Schaff, and other colleagues.
Fisher and Modern Biblical Criticism. That Fisher was well schooled in what is now called “lower [i.e., textual] criticism” is evident from his 1881 essay, “How the New Testament Came Down to Us,” a popular piece published in Scribner’s Monthly. “Textual criticism has become a science,” he wrote. In the last three centuries, scholarship in this area has advanced as much as in astronomy and botany.245 With the forthcoming publication of the Authorized Revision of the New Testament in mind, Fisher explained to lay readers how the biblical text was assembled. He assured them that few textual changes—although some errors in transcription—entered after the late second century. Textual criticism leaves intact, indeed, supports, all the doctrines and precepts of Christianity. Fisher described Tischendorf’s contribution, passing over any discrediting explanation of how that scholar managed “to carry away the precious discovery [the Codex Sinaiticus] as a present to the Czar Alexander.”246 In this popular essay, Fisher apparently chose not to instruct his readers on the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, as developed by 1881.
Fisher on Strauss and Renan. Seventeen years earlier, in four long articles in the New Englander (1864) grouped under the general title, “The Conflict with Skepticism and Unbelief,” Fisher had addressed the “Higher Criticism.” The date of 1864 for these essays is no accident: that year, the first English translation of Renan’s Life of Jesus appeared, as well as [in German] Strauss’s Life of Jesus for the German People, a popular account that was published in English in 1865. Fisher’s articles provided a basis for his book, Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, with Special Reference to the Theories of Renan, Strauss, and the Tübingen School (1866). He also rehearsed these themes in popular lectures at the Lowell Institute in 1876 that appeared the next year as The Beginnings of Christianity.247 Thus in both scholarly and popular formats, he drew attention to the dangers of European biblical criticism.
Like Smith and Schaff, Fisher defended the “genuineness” of the canonical Gospels against Strauss.248 Responding to Strauss’s claim that stories of Jesus’ miracles were myths arising from Jewish Messianic expectations, Fisher argued (somewhat inconsistently) that Jesus could not have been acknowledged as Messiah without them—but that insufficient time had elapsed between Jesus’ death and the composition of written Gospels for a cycle of myths to gain ground.249 Perhaps borrowing a point from Schaff, Fisher insisted that Jesus’ era was devoted to history, a devotion underscoring the Gospels’ credibility. Strauss’s theory, he charged, cannot explain the Apostles’ faith in Jesus’ resurrection, and hence the rise of Christianity.250
Unsurprisingly, Fisher also took aim at Renan’s Life of Jesus, which the reading public had devoured.251 The “infidel” Renan, Fisher charged, makes Jesus a deceiver: “When the light coating of French varnish is rubbed off, it is a picture of degrading duplicity that is left.”252 Renan treats the Gospel narratives as comparable to “the lives of Francis of Assisi and other mediaeval saints.” Conceding that Renan is “brilliant” and “not deficient in learning,” Fisher faulted his “imaginative” presentation, “torpidity” of moral feeling, and failure to sense “the holiness of the sacred authors and of the revealed system of religion.” Renan’s Saint Paul is similarly deemed “full of vivacity”—but abounds in “numerous unverified assertions and conjectures.”253
Renan, Fisher charged, skews the representation of Jesus and his teachings. He falsely claims that Jesus “enjoined”—not just “counseled”—poverty and celibacy. Fisher counter-argued: riches alone to do not condemn (Dives’s fault lay not in his wealth) and Matthew 19’s injunction to “become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven” does not advise castration, but merely admits the lawfulness of celibacy when “spontaneously practiced” (Origen’s interpretation and alleged deed is a “revolting absurdity”). Like other nineteenth-century Protestant advocates of “domestic Christianity,” Fisher insisted that the Gospels uphold marriage and the family as “sacred.” To imagine Jesus commanding his disciples to forsake parents is “preposterous.”254 Renan, in Fisher’s eyes, has made Christianity’s message repugnant, not attractive.
Fisher on Baur and Tübingen. Against Baur and his followers, Fisher’s tone was sharp:
It is very doubtful whether the individuals of our Teutonic race who attack the Christian religion [presumably Strauss and Baur] would know their letters, or would be possessed of any vehicle for expressing their ideas except in an oral form, if it had not been for the heroic missionaries of that religion which is thought to be so deleterious in its influence.255
Against these “Teutons,” Fisher upheld traditional evangelical views on authorship and dating of New Testament books.