THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE, BIBLICAL CRITICISM, AND THE FUNDAMENTALS

Stuart Mathieson

doi:10.1111/zygo.12676

Abstract

AbstractThe Victoria Institute was established in London in 1865. Although billed as an anti‐evolutionary organization, and stridently anti‐Darwinian in its rhetoric, it spent relatively little time debating the theory of natural selection. Instead, it served as a haven for a specific set of intellectual commitments. Most important among these was the Baconian scientific methodology, which prized empiricism and induction, and was suspicious of speculation. Darwin's use of hypotheses meant that the Victoria Institute members were unconvinced that his work was truly scientific, but even more concerning for them was the specter of biblical criticism. This approach to biblical studies incorporated techniques from literary criticism, treating it as any other document. Since it also relied on hypotheses, the Victoria Institute members were similarly skeptical that biblical criticism was scientific, and spent much of their time attempting to refute it. In this way, they functioned as an incubator for the concerns that would animate the fundamentalist–modernist controversies of the early twentieth century.

Highlights

This approach to biblical studies incorporated techniques from literary criticism, treating it as any other document. Since it relied on hypotheses, the Victoria Institute members were skeptical that biblical criticism was scientific, and spent much of their time attempting to refute it
This article uses the Victoria Institute to trace the prehistory of fundamentalism from Origin of Species to The Fundamentals, arguing that it provided a forum in which concerns about biblical criticism were held to be a matter of crucial scientific importance, and one much more threatening than evolution
Robinson too exhibited a bellicose streak, and, Treloar does not offer an opinion on whether or not he might have become a fundamentalist, it seems fairly certain that the outlook and militancy that he shared with Anderson, and many members of the Victoria Institute, would have inclined him toward fundamentalism (Treloar 2013, 32)

Summary

The Victoria Institute

Much of the pamphlet was taken up by an overlong account of Reddie’s grievances against London’s scientific establishment, it included a rather bellicose mission statement This new philosophical society, the members of which were to be “professedly Christians” pledged “to defend revealed truth from ‘the opposition of science, falsely so-called’” (Reddie 1866, 26). The Victoria Institute hoped to dismiss Darwinian arguments, and those of the higher critics, as unscientific, depriving them of the prestige and intellectual authority associated with the scientific method Because they had not used the Baconian methodology, such arguments were, as the Victoria Institute understood it, “merely pseudo-science,” and could be dismissed on epistemological grounds rather than being assessed on their own merits (Reddie 1866, 3). This heritage belies the misconception of fundamentalism as a movement that was anti-intellectual or even merely anti-scientific in origin; rather, these were extremely learned figures who operated according to a different epistemological framework

Early Points of Conflict

Science and Scripture at the Turn of the Century

Conclusion