Part 6 of what i learnt reading the nature of Biblical Criticism by John Barton

Barton then continues by examining more closely Augustine’s second strategy for dealing with Gospel discrepancies. This is the approach where Augustine argues that what ultimately matters is the integrity of the truth being communicated, not the exact wording or sequencing of details. In his terms, what matters is not the verba but the res — not the words, but the reality or meaning. The veritatis integritas is what matters most.

So differences in wording, sequencing, or detail are not really threatening, because the evangelists are still communicating the same underlying truth. Barton notes that this looks quite close to what many modern readers do with the Gospels.

He even connects this to Origen. According to him, Origen argued that some details in John cannot be taken strictly at face value and therefore must be understood allegorically. He also applies narrative criticism to Matthew and finds parts of it unpersuasive if taken as they stand. I’m not familiar enough with Origen to evaluate that directly, so I’m taking Barton’s presentation as it is.

At the same time, Barton admits that this approach is somewhat dangerous, because it can lead to a disregard for the text as it stands. Even if it resolves inconsistencies, it risks dissolving the narrative into interpretation.

He then shows that this tendency reappears later in the Reformation with Chemnitz, and even earlier with figures like Theodore of Mopsuestia.

After that, Barton returns to Augustine’s first strategy when accounts are sufficiently different, they are treated as referring to different events. This reappears in Osiander’s Harmonia Evangelica, where the principle is pushed much further.

For Osiander, every detail must be true exactly as stated. So if Matthew and Luke differ, then they must be describing different events. The result is a multiplication of events multiple temple cleansings, multiple similar healings, and so on. Barton describes this as almost comic.

He then concludes that, for Osiander, the Gospels become building blocks of a larger harmony. And despite their differences, both Augustine and Osiander share a commitment to an objective harmony they assume that the harmony is already there, and that the reader who sees contradictions is simply mistaken.

He then introduces Niels Astrup Dahl’s view, that the Gospels are four alternative tellings of the same kerygmatic story “the Gospel according to Mark,” not “the Gospel of Mark.”

But Barton pushes back and says that the Gospels were not originally treated as independent, self-contained witnesses, but rather as collections of material that could be extracted and recombined. He even finds it surprising that figures like Augustine did not simply rewrite them into a single harmony, but instead insisted that they are already consistent as they stand.

And this is where my difficulty starts and it becomes even sharper as he goes on.

Because I don’t see how the evidence he has presented actually undermines the idea that the Gospels can be multiple tellings of the same core message. And more importantly, I don’t see why assuming an objective harmony necessarily conflicts with seeing the Gospels as self-contained witnesses.

If anything, some of his own examples seem to point in the opposite direction. Osiander, for instance, does not collapse the Gospels into each other. He preserves each account by multiplying events. That move may be excessive, but it still treats each Gospel as having its own integrity. And Augustine’s first strategy treating sufficiently different accounts as different events also seems to presuppose that each account stands on its own.

So I don’t see why these categories must be opposed.

The Gospels can be:

compendia of traditions,

drawn from a shared pool,

and still rooted in distinct witnesses.

Those are not mutually exclusive.

And I would add another grounding for what people call “objective harmony”: the idea of a common tradition pool. If the evangelists are drawing from shared traditions sayings, miracles, teachings then some level of coherence is naturally expected. The Q hypothesis is one example of this if such a Tradition existed and Two Gospels Authors used it then we should expect some level of harmony between them by the fact they draw from the same source, their Gospel are not totally isolated.

So objective harmony does not have to be a blind assumption. It can arise from:

historical models of transmission,

logical analysis of contradiction,

or shared-source theories.

And none of that is inherently non-critical.

Now, I agree with Barton that harmonization can be non-critical. His example with Proverbs works. Trying to harmonize “answer a fool” and “do not answer a fool” into a single rule ignores the genre of maxims. That is a clear case where harmonization disregards genre, and therefore fails by his own definition.

But I have not seen him show that this applies to the Gospels.

And this is where the issue becomes more precise.

If biblical criticism is defined as recovering the plain meaning of the text through recognizing its genre, then harmonization is non-critical only if:

it ignores the genre,

or it distorts the plain meaning.

That needs to be demonstrated not assumed.

Now Barton sharpens his position further.

He says that for the modern critical reader, the problem is precisely that harmonizers lack the sense that each Gospel tells a separate story that is incompatible at many points with the others.

He goes even further and says that to say Jesus healed one blind man is really to say he did not heal two.

And this is where I find myself strongly pushing back.

Because even if this is meant as a claim about how narrative works, it is not self-evident. It treats a possible narrative convention as if it were a necessary rule of narration, and that step requires argument.

There are countless examples — both in real life and in storytelling where omission does not imply exclusion.

If I recount my day, I select what is relevant and omit the rest. If I say I had lunch with a colleague, that does not mean no one else was there. It simply means that mentioning them was not relevant to what I was trying to convey.

In fiction, omission is even more deliberate it is used for emphasis, pacing, and narrative effect.

So the move from “one is mentioned” to “only one existed” is not something that can just be assumed. It needs to be justified.

And this matters, because Barton uses that intuition to support a broader claim: that harmonization produces a kind of “fifth Gospel,” incompatible with the original four, and that critical reading requires treating each Gospel as a finished whole with its own internal dynamic.

He contrasts this by saying that harmonizers are like lawyers stacking evidence, whereas critical readers are like literary readers. And he even says there is no common ground between these approaches.

But here again, I think something important is missing.

If he wants to say that the critical approach requires treating the Gospels as incompatible narratives, then he needs to clarify:

what standard of incompatibility he is using,

and why that standard should be preferred.

Because assessing incompatibility is not just a matter of narrative intuition it is also constrained by logic. A contradiction is not simply a difference; it requires affirming A and not-A in the same respect.

So if differences are being treated as incompatibilities, that move needs to be justified.

And more broadly, even if Barton is operating at the level of methodological stance, that stance itself needs grounding.

It is not enough to say:

harmonizers assume harmony,

therefore they are non-critical.

You also need to show:

why assuming harmony is methodologically flawed,

and why privileging non-harmonizing readings is justified.

At the moment, it seems to me that what Barton is doing is not explicitly asserting “disharmony,” but he is promoting a reading discipline that privileges preserving or exposing incompatibility rather than resolving it.

And that is fine as a method but it still needs to be argued for, especially given his own definition of criticism.

Because once again, if method follows from what the text is, then before rejecting harmonization, one must show that the Gospels are not the kind of texts for which harmonization is appropriate.

So at this stage, my position is still the same, but now more precise:

I am not saying Barton is wrong.

I am saying that there is a gap between:

his definition of biblical criticism,

and his evaluation of harmonization.

And that gap needs to be argued for.

Until then, I still don’t see why harmonization as such should be considered non-critical, especially if it arises from a genre-sensitive attempt to understand the text.

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