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I requested Dr. Wace to point out the passages of M. Renan’s works in which, as he affirms, this “practical surrender” (not merely as to the age and authorship of the Gospels, be it observed, but as to their historical value) is made, and he has been so good as to do so. Now let us consider the parts of Dr. Wace’s citation from Renan which are relevant to the issue:–

The author of this Gospel [Luke] is certainly the same as the author of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the author of the Acts seems to be a companion of St. Paul–a character which accords completely with St. Luke. I know that more than one objection may be opposed to this reasoning: but one thing, at all events, is beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts is a man who belonged to the second apostolic generation; and this suffices for our purpose.

This is a curious “practical surrender of the adverse case.” M. Renan thinks that there is no doubt that the author of the third Gospel is the author of the Acts–a conclusion in which I suppose critics generally agree. He goes on to remark that this person seems to be a companion of St. Paul, and adds that Luke was a companion of St. Paul. Then, somewhat needlessly, M. Renan points out that there is more than one objection to jumping, from such data as these, to the conclusion that “Luke” is the writer of the third Gospel. And, finally, M. Renan is content to reduce that which is “beyond doubt” to the fact that the author of the two books is a man of the second apostolic generation. Well, it seems to me that I could agree with all that M. Renan considers “beyond doubt” here, without surrendering anything, either “practically” or theoretically.

Dr. Wace (“Nineteenth Century,” March, p. 363) states that he derives the above citation from the preface to the 15th edition of the “Vie de Jesus.” My copy of “Les Evangiles,” dated 1877, contains a list of Renan’s “Oeuvres Completes,” at the head of which I find “Vie de Jesus,” 15^e edition. It is, therefore, a later work than the edition of the “Vie de Jesus” which Dr. Wace quotes. Now “Les Evangiles,” as its name implies, treats fully of the questions respecting the date and authorship of the Gospels; and any one who desired, not merely to use M. Renan’s expressions for controversial purposes, but to give a fair account of his views in their full significance, would, I think, refer to the later source.

If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might have found some as decided expressions of opinion, in favour of Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel, as he has discovered in “The Apostles.” I mention this circumstance, because I desire to point out that, taking even the strongest of Renan’s statements, I am still at a loss to see how it justifies that large-sounding phrase, “practical surrender of the adverse case.” For, on p. 438 of “Les Evangiles,” Renan speaks of the way in which Luke’s “excellent intentions” have led him to torture history in the Acts; he declares Luke to be the founder of that “eternal fiction which is called ecclesiastical history”; and, on the preceding page, he talks of the “myth” of the Ascension–with its “mise en scene voulue.” At p. 435, I find “Luc, ou l’auteur quel qu’il soit du troisieme Evangile”; at p. 280, the accounts of the Passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, are said to be “peu historiques”; at p. 283, “La valeur historique du troisieme Evangile est surement moindre que celles des deux premiers.” A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy, this “surrender”! And, all the while, the scientific student of theology knows that, the more reason there may be to believe that Luke was the companion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his credibility if he really wrote the Acts. For, in that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted with Paul’s account of the Jerusalem conference and he must have consciously misrepresented it.