Just some quick words as follow-up to the two instalments of an article by Maurice Roberts in the August-September, 1989 issue of the Banner of Truth Journal under the title of "The Interpretation of Providence in History."
How many Christians today would agree with Roberts when he said "It is the duty of the church to interpret history."? I suspect the percentage would be less today than when Roberts made that statement and much less than would have been the case a couple of centuries ago. The majority of those reading this blog would also question the point of my continually making reference to the articles of people twenty to fifty years ago. It is all connected!
Our Lord Jesus Christ reprimanded the Pharisees and Sadducees for not interpreting the signs of the times (Matt. 16:1-3) and also cautioned His disciples to look for the signs of the times (Matt. 24). Interpreting the events of past and present is the duty of Christians and, in this regard, it is helpful for me to bring to readers' attention the issues writers of some decades or more ago were wrestling with so that we can relate them to our present circumstance.
Roberts rightly contends that "A man's theology always determines his view of providence." Events of the past two centuries have seen the church, by majority, giving over to the interpretation of our world and the events if history to secular reasoners. This has fed a foe weak at first but now monstrously strong. So much is this so that one is ridiculed if an attempt is made to present an interpretation of our world and its events from a theological perspective. Today you are seen as a religious extremist if you put a biblical perspective on any of the earth sciences, history, medical science (including psychology), politics etc. This scene is far removed from times long past.
In the face of such ridicule or potential ridicule many Christians and those who errantly purport to be Christian cower and retreat into a compromise with the weapons of choice of the secular foe eg anti-biblical interpretation of history, dating of early historical events, anti-biblical interpretation of earth sciences and deference to anti-theist intellectuals.
This brings to mind Roberts' citation of the contention between Elijah and King Ahab (1 Kings 18). The incident described in that passage of Scripture, an event of history, has similarity with the present situation of compromising Christians and purported Christians dealings' with Christians who remain faithful to God's Word on the matter of Origins (Biblical Creationists). The former grouping and the latter group see each other as the "troubler of Israel" (the Church). The former grouping regard Biblical Creationists as an embarrassment to the Church, the cause of division within the Church and a stumbling-block to people coming to Jesus Christ. The latter group regard the former as being encouragers of compromise and a hindrance to the Church by bringing judgement from God for unfaithfulness to His Word.
Looking to Roberts again, he said "A man's theology always determines his view of providence" and a reverse principle also applies viz. "The way a man interprets providence proves his real theology". To demonstrate this principle Roberts cites a book by Alan P. F. Sell titled "Defending and Declaring the Faith" which by title purports to defend and uphold the Christian faith practiced (in Scotland). However, the content of the book indicates the author admires and praises some men who, in earlier times, were disciplined for heretical views on Scripture.
Commencing in the earlier part of the Nineteenth Century and continuing with pace through the Twentieth and into the present Century, the providence of God in Creation is being interpreted by the majority in the Church in a way contrary to and, it is reasonable to presume heretically, by the Reformers and Puritans. Concerns such as reassigning the génre of Genesis 1, the non straight-forward reading of the passage, death in the world before the Fall and the consequent question mark over the meaning of Christ's death on the cross, the nature of Christ in Creation and Incarnate and the nature of the New Creation all arise from the way Scripture is being interpreted by the majority in the Church today. The stated concerns are riddled with heretical cancers.
Maurice Roberts, when writing more than twenty years ago, brought out some helpful points in interpreting the times for his readers then and for us today. The issue of concern over Roman Catholicism has waned in today's climate but Roberts' mention of the theological liberal's disdain for "Antediluvian confessionalism" seems to have gained greater weight of carriage today through "Antediluvian confessionalism" being subjected to disdain from so-called evangelicals.
Yes indeed, it is our duty to interpret history and to interpret the signs of the times. Declension has characterised the life of the Church in Western Society for at least a Century and this has coincided with the rise of heretical interpretation of Genesis 1 and a disjointed and exceedingly heretical understanding of the Nature of Jesus Christ in Creation and Incarnate.
A Reformation in the manner of that some 500 years ago can reverse the declension. Let's pray for that very thing, that God will be glorified, His Name lifted up and the doubters and compromisers brought to repentance.
Sam Drucker
Showing posts with label Banner of Truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banner of Truth. Show all posts
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
THE INTERPRETATION OF PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY (Part 2)
This is the second and final instalment of Maurice Robert's article in the August - September 1989 issue of the Banner of Truth Journal. I thought the second instalment would be much shorter than the first. Not so! Consequently, my observations/comments will have to appear over the coming weekend.
"PROVIDENCE AND HISTORY
From what we have said, it follows that the way we interpret providence will determine the way we evaluate history, especially church history. And that, in turn, will determine the way we look at the great figures of church history and those who write about them.
It needs briefly to be said that providence and history are the same thing looked at from two different points of view. Both terms refer to the contents of God's eternal purpose or decree as that unfolds in this world. 'History' is the term we use to refer to the events of God's plan on earth when looked at from the standpoint of mankind. 'Providence' is the term we use when we are looking at the same thing from a theological point of view. Of course, many do not choose to accept that there is such a thing as providence. But that does not concern us here. Christians, at any rate, are committed to a belief in providence, which is just history, as God has ordained it and watches over it.
It is important to remember that a man cannot really understand history if he has no true concept of God's providence. It is true that he may be an expert in some details and therefore may be worthy of great respect for his erudition. But to be an authority in the details is not the same as to be competent to understand the overall significance of a period of history. An expert may, strange to say, 'miss the wood for the trees'.
One of the most remarkable examples of this is to be seen in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is justly regarded as an historical masterpiece. But as an overall explanation of the subject with which it deals, it is unsatisfactory. Gibbon attributes the fall of Rome to its abandonment of paganism and its conversion to Christianity! He was simply reiterating an old pagan view, advanced by such ancient enemies of the gospel as Celsus. Augustine long ago answered their case conclusively in the twenty-two books of his polemical work, The City of God. The pagan view had virtually disappeared till Gibbon revived it in late eighteenth-century England. It is a classic case of a timeless work of history marred by a false view of providence. In that case, there was no very great damage done to Christian faith. But in other cases, great damage can be done to men's faith.
Religious and philosophical assumptions always lie at the heart of the way men write history. This point is brought out very clearly in a helpful book by Dr David Bebbington of Stirling University, entitled Patterns in History. He shows that history has been viewed from various standpoints over the centuries. He mentions several of these views: the cyclical outlook of oriental writers; the traditional Christian view, which considers history to be a straight line; the idea of progress; the theory of historicism, and that of Marxism. Perhaps we today would need to include a further view, that of historical relativism. But the essential point which is made by Dr Bebbington's study is that there are not only the 'brute facts' of history. There is also the deeper question of how we understand and interpret those facts. If those who write about history do not have a biblical view of providence, they will scarcely be able to see the events they write about in their true light.
It is very interesting to evangelical Christians to note that historians who may not share their view of divine providence are nonetheless concerned about the interpretation of history. Sir Arnold Toynbee, for instance, in his monumental work A Study of History, speaks about 'metahistory'. He is evidently quoting from the historian, Christopher Dawson, who had earlier used the word, on an analogy with the familiar term metaphysics'. Toynbee explains the word in this way:
'Metahistory is concerned with the nature of history, the meaning of history and the cause and significance of historical change. It arises out of the study of history, and is akin to metaphysics and theology. The metahistorian seeks to integrate his study of reality in some higher dimension than that of human affairs as these present themselves to him phenomenally.'
At first sight it may not seem a very important matter how one interprets the events of the past or even of the present. But no one who takes the Christian faith seriously could adopt such an attitude of indifference to the providence of God and its meaning. It is the duty of the church to explain history. The Lord Jesus Christ laid it as a sin upon the Jewish leaders that they had failed to discern the voice of providence in their day: '0 ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?' [Matt. 16:3].
Events, especially events in which the hand of God is manifest, have a meaning which we ignore only to our loss or at our peril. Admittedly, there are vast areas of providence which we are not qualified to interpret. But that does not excuse men for their failure to interpret crucial periods of history, such as the life of Christ and the early church, correctly.
The question might well be asked, do we have a key in the Bible by which to interpret events in our day? We believe that we do. The great 'benchmark', so to speak, of modern church history is to be found in the Acts of the Apostles and its inspired account of what God did on and after the Day of Pentecost. In that narrative, along with the other apostolic writings of the New Testament, we have a golden key to the meaning of all subsequent events in the history of the church - and, to some extent, even of the world. The New Testament writings show us what real Christianity is, what the church should be, and therefore what we may confidently expect God to bless and to favour on earth.
Consequently, where, in history, we find that same doctrine taught and those same church ordinances practised, there we may be certain that we see the approval of God in his providence. Conversely, where, in history, we see serious departure from New Testament doctrine and practice, there we know we see God's wrath and curse. It seems impossible to escape from this view of the matter, if we grant the premise that the scriptures are the inerrant Word of God.
The application of the principle here stated drives us towards the conviction that the religion of the Middle Ages was a grave departure from God and that the Reformation was a glorious returning to God. So much is surely clear, whatever else in providence may not be clear. But to be convinced of that is essential and it is enough. It is enough to glorify God by and enough to be saved by, if we are brought in this way to believe in the Christ of the New Testament and of the Reformation.
It is precisely this interpretation of history, however, which is under attack in the western world in the twentieth century. The classic Protestant historians, whose names were once a household word in Christian circles, are now sometimes referred to, even by evangelicals, as biased and untrustworthy writers. This is the new Protestant judgment upon historians such as Knox, Calderwood, Wodrow and McCrie for Scotland, and Foxe, Burnet, D'Augibne and Wylie, who chronicled the events of the Protestant Reformation in England and on the continent of Europe.
The argument is used that a writer like John Knox, in his book The History of the Reformation in Scotland (and the same argument would apply equally to writers like him, some of whom we have named above), is guilty of prejudice. He identifies his own cause with the cause of God. What favours his cause is praised by him as the work of God and what hinders his cause is reported as that work of God's enemies. That, according to modern writers, is not good history. It is said to be too subjective a view of God's cause and it is thought to vitiate the canons of objectivity required in a reliable writer of history.
The objection sounds plausible enough. But it seems to us to leave the most crucial factor of all out of the reckoning. It fails to do justice to the New Testament scriptures. If that religion which the New Testament presents as the truth happens also to be the religion of Knox, then it is justifiable to identify it as the work of God, and its opponents as the enemies of God. The only way to invalidate this conclusion, surely, is to demonstrate that Knox's message and the message of the New Testament were not substantially the same. Knox believed that they were the same. Hence the explanation for his confidence.
The real reason why modern Protestants apologise for Knox's manner of writing history, we strongly suspect, is that they are no longer in sympathy with the theology which he held. It looks very much like being 'ashamed of the gospel' [Rom. 1:16], albeit in a sophisticated way.
There is a corollary to the claim made by early Protestants that the Reformation was a glorious work of God's providence. It is this, that God's blessing must be expected to rest on nations embracing the Reformation teachings and his displeasure to follow nations which turn from those teachings.
Whatever view one holds of the rights and wrongs of British Rule (and both were there) in the days when this country was in its prime, it cannot be denied that the collapse of our national power went hand in hand with the collapse of our Protestant religion. Sir Arnold Toynbee, to whom we have referred, lived to witness both the high water-mark of British power in 1897 and its decline by the year 1972, just seventy-five years later. The dates are significant in that they correspond closely with the decline of the British pulpit. This fact surely illustrates the proverb: 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people' [Prov. 14:24]. The curse has not come without a cause. Do we need to look any further afield for our metahistory of the period?
OUR BACKSLIDDEN PROTESTANTISM
Generally speaking, it would appear to be true to say that the backsliding of Britain (and probably of America and some other Anglo Saxon countries belonging to the Protestant family) has taken place in two Stages. As a nation, we rejected the theology of the Reformation about the time of the First World War, and the morality of the Reformation at, or just after, the Second World War. The New Morality and the 'permissive society' appeared in the early 1960s at about the same time. Since then, there has been a marked shift downwards in this country. That is not to deny that there has been, more recently, a recovery of the Reformed faith. But the impact of this movement, intensely promising as it is, is as yet only very small. The point we make here is that society as a whole, and the church as a whole, has sunk Steadily further from righteousness and from God. And, until God sends upon us the blessing of true revival, we can only continue to sink still further.
Of the many contributory causes to this state of national decline, we may here mention just three. We believe one to be the secularisation of our national school system after the passing of the Education Acts of 1870 (England and Wales) and 1872 (Scotland). After the implementation of these Acts, our day schools, many of which had before been in the hands of the churches and had taught the catechisms as well as the Bible, steadily moved towards a position of religious 'neutrality'. After the two World Wars, the pace of secularisation became accelerated. This has meant, not simply that religious education in the traditional sense is now only haphazardly taught, but also that the content of the history syllabus has become chronically anaemic in its treatment of the great spiritual conflict which raged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
So far do some educators today resent the New History, as it is called, that a society or movement has been started with the name 'The Campaign for Real Education'! No doubt they are dissatisfied with the modem approach to teaching other subjects too. But the new approach to teaching history is singled out in their very first pamphlet as desperately in need of improvement and modification. 'The pursuit of truth has been replaced by what is called "the form of knowledge approach", which means in practice that pupils are encouraged to arrive at confident judgments.. .while being dismissive of "facts".... That, like so much else in the New History, is wilfully perverse'. So writes the author of this pamphlet on behalf of this new society, which has the support of MPs, members of the House of Lords and other academics.
A second more powerful and harmful influence upon our land has come from eminent literary men and women, especially in the period since the First World War. Today we have almost come to accept that eminent literary persons must be irreligious. There are, of course. notable exceptions, such as C. S. Lewis. But this appears to have been the main direction taken by men and women of letters in the past sixty years.
A notable assault on Christian standards of behaviour was made about the time of the First War by the Bloomsbury Group. This was a brilliant set of young Cambridge graduates, including Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant and Bertrand Russell. They were later followed by D. H, Lawrence and others. These all had a profound influence on the country. The private morality of many of them was a shameless denial of earlier British standards of behaviour and morality. To read Michael Holroyd's biography of Strachey is to see how advanced practical ungodliness had become at that comparatively early date among some of our influential English intellectuals. It was a significant turning-point in the ethical history of this land in modern times. What we see today is not much more than the widespread adoption of their ideals and practices by persons of all sorts. But the lead was taken by these influential figures those many years ago.
The third factor which we may mention as a contributory cause of the present low ebb in our country is the rise of Roman Catholicism to a position of importance and influence unparalleled since the Reformation. This influence extends not only to many aspects of our national life but also to the life of churches and denominations. It is a sobering thought that many of the crucial discussions and heart searchings we face as Protestant churches in this country at this hour have something or other to do with our attitude to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. That is so whether one belongs to a church which is Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist or of some other denomination. It is a subject which we could ponder for a long time. But the fact is there and it must surely strike us as significant.
Our subject required of us that we should attempt to interpret the providence of God in history. Is there any one great practical issue which such a survey draws particular attention to? We believe that there is. The most urgent question of all for the present-day churches, in our considered opinion, is this: Were the old Protestant historians and theologians right to regard the Roman Catholic Church as no true church and to identify the Papacy with the Antichrist? Let us remember
that they were, for the most part, men of profound erudition and spirituality - men such as Calvin, Owen, Turrettine, Edwards, Cunningham and Charles Hodge. Let us further bear in mind that they claimed that their view of Rome was drawn from Holy Scripture.
Our reason for singling out this one issue is easily stated The twentieth-century Protestant church clung, by and large, to the anti-papal clauses in its creed. The present-day churches have, by and large, discarded them. This change in attitude appears to have begun somewhere around the First World War. The way Protestant churches view union with Rome is going to be momentously important from now on.
If the Catholic Church is not the Antichrist of Scripture as the old Protestant writers affirmed it to be, then there is ultimately no reason in principle why our Protestant churches should not return and reunite - if not this century, at least at some time in the future. But if the Reformers were right, then union with Rome is apostasy.
Precisely how and why Protestantism in this century came to hold a more relaxed attitude to Catholicism is one of the most intriguing, not to say burning, questions raised by the subject we have looked at.
It would make a good theme for research. Indeed, it ought to compel the attention of every Protestant who takes seriously the events of this hour."
Comments in a few days.
Sam Drucker
"PROVIDENCE AND HISTORY
From what we have said, it follows that the way we interpret providence will determine the way we evaluate history, especially church history. And that, in turn, will determine the way we look at the great figures of church history and those who write about them.
It needs briefly to be said that providence and history are the same thing looked at from two different points of view. Both terms refer to the contents of God's eternal purpose or decree as that unfolds in this world. 'History' is the term we use to refer to the events of God's plan on earth when looked at from the standpoint of mankind. 'Providence' is the term we use when we are looking at the same thing from a theological point of view. Of course, many do not choose to accept that there is such a thing as providence. But that does not concern us here. Christians, at any rate, are committed to a belief in providence, which is just history, as God has ordained it and watches over it.
It is important to remember that a man cannot really understand history if he has no true concept of God's providence. It is true that he may be an expert in some details and therefore may be worthy of great respect for his erudition. But to be an authority in the details is not the same as to be competent to understand the overall significance of a period of history. An expert may, strange to say, 'miss the wood for the trees'.
One of the most remarkable examples of this is to be seen in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is justly regarded as an historical masterpiece. But as an overall explanation of the subject with which it deals, it is unsatisfactory. Gibbon attributes the fall of Rome to its abandonment of paganism and its conversion to Christianity! He was simply reiterating an old pagan view, advanced by such ancient enemies of the gospel as Celsus. Augustine long ago answered their case conclusively in the twenty-two books of his polemical work, The City of God. The pagan view had virtually disappeared till Gibbon revived it in late eighteenth-century England. It is a classic case of a timeless work of history marred by a false view of providence. In that case, there was no very great damage done to Christian faith. But in other cases, great damage can be done to men's faith.
Religious and philosophical assumptions always lie at the heart of the way men write history. This point is brought out very clearly in a helpful book by Dr David Bebbington of Stirling University, entitled Patterns in History. He shows that history has been viewed from various standpoints over the centuries. He mentions several of these views: the cyclical outlook of oriental writers; the traditional Christian view, which considers history to be a straight line; the idea of progress; the theory of historicism, and that of Marxism. Perhaps we today would need to include a further view, that of historical relativism. But the essential point which is made by Dr Bebbington's study is that there are not only the 'brute facts' of history. There is also the deeper question of how we understand and interpret those facts. If those who write about history do not have a biblical view of providence, they will scarcely be able to see the events they write about in their true light.
It is very interesting to evangelical Christians to note that historians who may not share their view of divine providence are nonetheless concerned about the interpretation of history. Sir Arnold Toynbee, for instance, in his monumental work A Study of History, speaks about 'metahistory'. He is evidently quoting from the historian, Christopher Dawson, who had earlier used the word, on an analogy with the familiar term metaphysics'. Toynbee explains the word in this way:
'Metahistory is concerned with the nature of history, the meaning of history and the cause and significance of historical change. It arises out of the study of history, and is akin to metaphysics and theology. The metahistorian seeks to integrate his study of reality in some higher dimension than that of human affairs as these present themselves to him phenomenally.'
At first sight it may not seem a very important matter how one interprets the events of the past or even of the present. But no one who takes the Christian faith seriously could adopt such an attitude of indifference to the providence of God and its meaning. It is the duty of the church to explain history. The Lord Jesus Christ laid it as a sin upon the Jewish leaders that they had failed to discern the voice of providence in their day: '0 ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?' [Matt. 16:3].
Events, especially events in which the hand of God is manifest, have a meaning which we ignore only to our loss or at our peril. Admittedly, there are vast areas of providence which we are not qualified to interpret. But that does not excuse men for their failure to interpret crucial periods of history, such as the life of Christ and the early church, correctly.
The question might well be asked, do we have a key in the Bible by which to interpret events in our day? We believe that we do. The great 'benchmark', so to speak, of modern church history is to be found in the Acts of the Apostles and its inspired account of what God did on and after the Day of Pentecost. In that narrative, along with the other apostolic writings of the New Testament, we have a golden key to the meaning of all subsequent events in the history of the church - and, to some extent, even of the world. The New Testament writings show us what real Christianity is, what the church should be, and therefore what we may confidently expect God to bless and to favour on earth.
Consequently, where, in history, we find that same doctrine taught and those same church ordinances practised, there we may be certain that we see the approval of God in his providence. Conversely, where, in history, we see serious departure from New Testament doctrine and practice, there we know we see God's wrath and curse. It seems impossible to escape from this view of the matter, if we grant the premise that the scriptures are the inerrant Word of God.
The application of the principle here stated drives us towards the conviction that the religion of the Middle Ages was a grave departure from God and that the Reformation was a glorious returning to God. So much is surely clear, whatever else in providence may not be clear. But to be convinced of that is essential and it is enough. It is enough to glorify God by and enough to be saved by, if we are brought in this way to believe in the Christ of the New Testament and of the Reformation.
It is precisely this interpretation of history, however, which is under attack in the western world in the twentieth century. The classic Protestant historians, whose names were once a household word in Christian circles, are now sometimes referred to, even by evangelicals, as biased and untrustworthy writers. This is the new Protestant judgment upon historians such as Knox, Calderwood, Wodrow and McCrie for Scotland, and Foxe, Burnet, D'Augibne and Wylie, who chronicled the events of the Protestant Reformation in England and on the continent of Europe.
The argument is used that a writer like John Knox, in his book The History of the Reformation in Scotland (and the same argument would apply equally to writers like him, some of whom we have named above), is guilty of prejudice. He identifies his own cause with the cause of God. What favours his cause is praised by him as the work of God and what hinders his cause is reported as that work of God's enemies. That, according to modern writers, is not good history. It is said to be too subjective a view of God's cause and it is thought to vitiate the canons of objectivity required in a reliable writer of history.
The objection sounds plausible enough. But it seems to us to leave the most crucial factor of all out of the reckoning. It fails to do justice to the New Testament scriptures. If that religion which the New Testament presents as the truth happens also to be the religion of Knox, then it is justifiable to identify it as the work of God, and its opponents as the enemies of God. The only way to invalidate this conclusion, surely, is to demonstrate that Knox's message and the message of the New Testament were not substantially the same. Knox believed that they were the same. Hence the explanation for his confidence.
The real reason why modern Protestants apologise for Knox's manner of writing history, we strongly suspect, is that they are no longer in sympathy with the theology which he held. It looks very much like being 'ashamed of the gospel' [Rom. 1:16], albeit in a sophisticated way.
There is a corollary to the claim made by early Protestants that the Reformation was a glorious work of God's providence. It is this, that God's blessing must be expected to rest on nations embracing the Reformation teachings and his displeasure to follow nations which turn from those teachings.
Whatever view one holds of the rights and wrongs of British Rule (and both were there) in the days when this country was in its prime, it cannot be denied that the collapse of our national power went hand in hand with the collapse of our Protestant religion. Sir Arnold Toynbee, to whom we have referred, lived to witness both the high water-mark of British power in 1897 and its decline by the year 1972, just seventy-five years later. The dates are significant in that they correspond closely with the decline of the British pulpit. This fact surely illustrates the proverb: 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people' [Prov. 14:24]. The curse has not come without a cause. Do we need to look any further afield for our metahistory of the period?
OUR BACKSLIDDEN PROTESTANTISM
Generally speaking, it would appear to be true to say that the backsliding of Britain (and probably of America and some other Anglo Saxon countries belonging to the Protestant family) has taken place in two Stages. As a nation, we rejected the theology of the Reformation about the time of the First World War, and the morality of the Reformation at, or just after, the Second World War. The New Morality and the 'permissive society' appeared in the early 1960s at about the same time. Since then, there has been a marked shift downwards in this country. That is not to deny that there has been, more recently, a recovery of the Reformed faith. But the impact of this movement, intensely promising as it is, is as yet only very small. The point we make here is that society as a whole, and the church as a whole, has sunk Steadily further from righteousness and from God. And, until God sends upon us the blessing of true revival, we can only continue to sink still further.
Of the many contributory causes to this state of national decline, we may here mention just three. We believe one to be the secularisation of our national school system after the passing of the Education Acts of 1870 (England and Wales) and 1872 (Scotland). After the implementation of these Acts, our day schools, many of which had before been in the hands of the churches and had taught the catechisms as well as the Bible, steadily moved towards a position of religious 'neutrality'. After the two World Wars, the pace of secularisation became accelerated. This has meant, not simply that religious education in the traditional sense is now only haphazardly taught, but also that the content of the history syllabus has become chronically anaemic in its treatment of the great spiritual conflict which raged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
So far do some educators today resent the New History, as it is called, that a society or movement has been started with the name 'The Campaign for Real Education'! No doubt they are dissatisfied with the modem approach to teaching other subjects too. But the new approach to teaching history is singled out in their very first pamphlet as desperately in need of improvement and modification. 'The pursuit of truth has been replaced by what is called "the form of knowledge approach", which means in practice that pupils are encouraged to arrive at confident judgments.. .while being dismissive of "facts".... That, like so much else in the New History, is wilfully perverse'. So writes the author of this pamphlet on behalf of this new society, which has the support of MPs, members of the House of Lords and other academics.
A second more powerful and harmful influence upon our land has come from eminent literary men and women, especially in the period since the First World War. Today we have almost come to accept that eminent literary persons must be irreligious. There are, of course. notable exceptions, such as C. S. Lewis. But this appears to have been the main direction taken by men and women of letters in the past sixty years.
A notable assault on Christian standards of behaviour was made about the time of the First War by the Bloomsbury Group. This was a brilliant set of young Cambridge graduates, including Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant and Bertrand Russell. They were later followed by D. H, Lawrence and others. These all had a profound influence on the country. The private morality of many of them was a shameless denial of earlier British standards of behaviour and morality. To read Michael Holroyd's biography of Strachey is to see how advanced practical ungodliness had become at that comparatively early date among some of our influential English intellectuals. It was a significant turning-point in the ethical history of this land in modern times. What we see today is not much more than the widespread adoption of their ideals and practices by persons of all sorts. But the lead was taken by these influential figures those many years ago.
The third factor which we may mention as a contributory cause of the present low ebb in our country is the rise of Roman Catholicism to a position of importance and influence unparalleled since the Reformation. This influence extends not only to many aspects of our national life but also to the life of churches and denominations. It is a sobering thought that many of the crucial discussions and heart searchings we face as Protestant churches in this country at this hour have something or other to do with our attitude to the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. That is so whether one belongs to a church which is Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist or of some other denomination. It is a subject which we could ponder for a long time. But the fact is there and it must surely strike us as significant.
Our subject required of us that we should attempt to interpret the providence of God in history. Is there any one great practical issue which such a survey draws particular attention to? We believe that there is. The most urgent question of all for the present-day churches, in our considered opinion, is this: Were the old Protestant historians and theologians right to regard the Roman Catholic Church as no true church and to identify the Papacy with the Antichrist? Let us remember
that they were, for the most part, men of profound erudition and spirituality - men such as Calvin, Owen, Turrettine, Edwards, Cunningham and Charles Hodge. Let us further bear in mind that they claimed that their view of Rome was drawn from Holy Scripture.
Our reason for singling out this one issue is easily stated The twentieth-century Protestant church clung, by and large, to the anti-papal clauses in its creed. The present-day churches have, by and large, discarded them. This change in attitude appears to have begun somewhere around the First World War. The way Protestant churches view union with Rome is going to be momentously important from now on.
If the Catholic Church is not the Antichrist of Scripture as the old Protestant writers affirmed it to be, then there is ultimately no reason in principle why our Protestant churches should not return and reunite - if not this century, at least at some time in the future. But if the Reformers were right, then union with Rome is apostasy.
Precisely how and why Protestantism in this century came to hold a more relaxed attitude to Catholicism is one of the most intriguing, not to say burning, questions raised by the subject we have looked at.
It would make a good theme for research. Indeed, it ought to compel the attention of every Protestant who takes seriously the events of this hour."
Comments in a few days.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, November 27, 2011
THE INTERPRETATION OF PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY (Part 1)
The following is the first of two instalments of a helpful article by Maurice Roberts, Editor, in the August-September, 1989, issue of the Banner of Truth Journal (which was a lecture given earlier, April 1989, at the Leicester Minister's Conderence). Apologies for the length of the two instalments (of equal length) but it is helpful to see an Interpretation of the Times some twenty years ago, evaluate it in the light of the present situation and draw out some observations. The article follows herewith:
'And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, And thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim' [1 Kings 18:17-18]
The occurrence of the word 'interpretation' in the title of this paper informs us at once that we are in the realm of applied, rather than theoretical or abstract theology. All sciences have their theoretical and their applied aspects. This is true of theology, which, in better days, was regarded as the 'queen of the sciences'. What follows, therefore, is not so much a statement as an argument, or a case. It is an attempt to develop an interpretation of God's providence in history which is true to the scriptures and practically relevant to the pastoral needs of God's people in the times through which we are passing.
The general theme of providence is that of God's sovereign and perfect control of all events. There is a natural division of the subject into two aspects: the providence of God in the lives of individuals, and God's providence over nations and over civilisation as a whole. Perhaps it would be convenient to give descriptive terms to these two distinct, thought related, ways of studying God's providence. We could speak of micro-providence as that which concerns the individual, and macro-
providence as that which relates to the larger units of mankind in history. It is with the latter that we are concerned here, and especially with the Christian church in the Anglo-Saxon world.
It needs to be said that the literature which deals with this subject is at one and the same time vast and yet sparse. Whilst all works of history and biography have some tangential connection with the theme, yet books which deal directly and specifically with this subject are, to our knowledge, few in number. That is not altogether surprising because the exercise of interpreting providence is essentially a religious and spiritual, rather than a purely historical, one. It is a task which we can only begin with any degree of realism, once we have accepted the great (and nowadays highly unpopular) postulate, that God is truly known only in the Christian scriptures and that history has ethical and spiritual meaning because it is the unfolding of a divine purpose.
Such a great spiritual classic as Flavel's treatise on Providence, therefore, will not help us greatly, because it deals with the more individual aspect of this theme. Indeed, most treatments of providence naturally tend to look at it from the point of view of the individual, especially that of the Christian believer. This is not true of a recent valuable study entitled The Providence of God by Benjamin Wirt Farley, a contemporary American scholar, who teaches at the Union Theological Seminary, Virginia. Professor Farley's book provides us with a very thorough historical survey of providence. That is to say he works his way comprehensively, first through the views of providence held by the great thinkers of Greece and Rome, then by the early Church Fathers, and then by the Schoolmen, the Reformers and so on, up to the present day. It is a book to which one will turn again and again for information about the opinions of writers through the ages. But it does not set out to address itself directly to the type of application of the theme which forms the title of this paper. Rather than beginning with the books, therefore, it will be better to take our point of departure from the Word of God itself.
In the chapter of the Bible which was read to us this evening, we have the great discourse of the Lord Jesus Christ on the subject of the Last Things. There our Lord is informing his people of the most notable and significant events which would occur in the course of human history right up to the very end. More particularly, Christ predicts the fall of Jerusalem, which occurred in A.D. 70, and also the destruction of the whole world at the Second Coming. From our standpoint today, one event is in the past and the other in the future. And with regard to both these momentous events, Christ says that we are to 'watch' (v. 42). Clearly, the implication is that Christians are to be awake to major events in this world and they are to attempt to understand them, at least to some extent.
Failure to 'watch' and to be awake to what God is doing in the course of history is, according to Christ's warning, both foolish and dangerous. This is supremely true of the unbelieving world. But it is also true of God's own people. If we do not 'watch', then we are likely to become either complacent or, alternatively, discouraged. Events in the external world are integrally related to the words of holy scripture. To be ignorant of scripture is to be unprepared for what God is doing in history. To be unprepared at the end, when Christ returns, is to lose our soul eternally.
Furthermore, the view we take of events between our own day and the end of the world will inevitably have a considerable effect upon our whole state of mind as Christians. If we look for nothing in the future but gloom and declension, then we shall be pessimistic as to the degree of success which preaching and missionary endeavour will have on earth. But if we have an optimistic eschatology, we shall be correspondingly affected in our outlook and in our expectation of coming blessing. This is particularly true of the way in which we interpret the passage in Romans 11, respecting the 'mystery' of Israel. Admittedly, it may amount to no more than our state of mind as we set to work in the task of proclaiming the gospel and praying for its success. But our morale is very important. The overall view of providence which we adopt will have a close bearing on our morale and our degree of expectation in God's work.
SOME BIBLICAL INSIGHTS
The short passage of scripture from 1 Kings 18, which is provided at the head of this article, appears to be of considerable significance for the subject in hand. It consists of a snatch of conversation between the great prophet Elijah and the infamous King Ahab. There had been a serious state of drought in the kingdom for three and a half years. Each man, interestingly enough, blamed the other for the troubles, evidently for exactly reverse reasons.
Ahab's point of view was that Elijah had interrupted the peace and happiness of the land by praying down God's judgement. Elijah's opinion of the matter was that Ahab's idolatry had been the real cause of ruin to the land. It is an instructive exchange between a man of God and a man of the world. To the worldly man, it is the 'sour churchman' who spoils life. To the man of God, it is the reckless sinner who ruins the world by bringing God's curse upon a land. In Ahab's opinion, Israel was his kingdom and Elijah was a nuisance. In Elijah's judgement. Israel was God's theocratic kingdom and Ahab was a thorn in its flesh. It is a notable case of two opposing interpretations of providence.
There is a point of major importance to be noticed in this exchange between Ahab and Elijah. A man's theology always determines his view of providence. It must be so and it cannot be otherwise. What we think of God must determine our interpretation of what we see all around us, both in the church and in the world. This principle is to be found everywhere in the Bible. If we apply the principle to our modem situation, especially in Britain, we shall see that the principle is both a true and a useful one. Who, it might be asked, are the 'troublers of Israel' in Britain today? Every man answers instinctively in terms of his own theology. The Ecumenical finds the 'troublers of Israel' in those who will not lay aside every doctrinal difference and 'heal the wounds in the body of Christ'. The Charismatic blames the church's troubles on those who decline to seek the 'gifts'. The theologically liberal trace the modern church's malady to the presence still on earth of an 'antediluvian confessionalism'. The Evangelical and the Calvinist diagnose the church's ills as the judgment of God upon theological unfaithfulness and departure from Scripture.
This principle holds good also in its reverse form. The way a man interprets providence proves his real theology. This is illustrated interestingly by a recently published book, entitled Defending and Declaring the Faith. From the title, one would expect to find that the orthodox creed of evangelical religion was being set forth and defended. The author looks at the life and thoughts of eight well known Scottish theologians and preachers between 1860 and 1920. It is valuable as a summary of thought of such men as Kennedy of Dingwall. John Caird, A. B. Bruce and James Denney. But what is surprising to the evangelical reader is a comparison between the title of the book and the foreword, the author of which admires and praises John McLeod Campbell, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, and Edward Irving. Yet all three of these men, far from defending the faith, were disciplined for unorthodoxy by the nineteenth century Scottish church to which they belonged. It is a remarkable instance of hiatus between the title of a book and its message. What today is being called the church's remedy was, in better days, treated as heresy.
This brings us to a further point in the church's duty in a time of judgment and declension - to enquire after the real cause of the trouble. A generation which makes a false diagnosis of the church's ills may land the church in apostasy. 'Whom God will destroy he first makes mad'. There are repeated warnings in the prophets against the folly of either not heeding, or else misinterpreting, the omens of providence. (Cf Isa. 22:12-14; Jer. 23:16-17; Ezek. 22:28-30). This is what Ezekiel caustically terms 'daubing the wall with untempered mortar' [Ezek. 22:28], which he defines as 'seeing false burdens and causes of banishment' [Lam. 2:14]. In the New Testament, Christ refers to this same sin as a culpable failure to 'discern the signs of the times' [Matt. 16:3].
Whatever be the true causes of the church's steep decline in Britain in our generation, there is no denying that the decline is there. There is a worm at the root of the tree which threatens not the leaf or the blossom only, but the very existence of the tree itself. Britain has no patent rights to the gospel of Christ. The church of Christ as such cannot be lost. But national churches can be lost. The Jewish church in Palestine was lost for hundreds of years after A.D. 70. Much the same happened to North Africa and Turkey at later periods in history. We had better diagnose the cause of our modem ills correctly. Failure to do so might plunge our nation into darkness for centuries. If we see the cause. there is hope that we may repent in time. But who will repent of unrecognised sin? The fearful possibility is that we may already be past hope, because God has given our church leaders over to a reprobate mind. God forbid that it should be so. But the situation is urgent. And it is made all the more urgent in that key concepts of God's providence are out of favour.
SOME 'LOST' CONCEPTS
In the modern church, there are a number of concepts relating to providence which are in danger of being lost for one reason or another. They are concepts which are to be found in the Word of God and which were cherished in better ages of the church. Their loss in the modern church has made us spiritually weaker and less able to wrestle with God for a return of his favour. We may look briefly at four such lost concepts.
1. The concept of a 'model age'. Not in an absolute sense, certainly, but in a limited sense, there are 'model ages' of the church. By that, we mean that, in some ages, God is powerfully and wonderfully at work on earth in sending revival, reformation and influential preachers of the gospel. At other ages there is a dryness and a deadness, even on good and orthodox men. It is true, of course, that the church in apostolic times is the only 'model' church in an absolute sense. There we have the inspired men and the blueprint of what the gospel and the church ought to be. But if we see all subsequent church history as nothing more than monotonous shades of grey, we have a false idea of church history. The fact is that some ages have been rich in spiritual greatness while others have been lifeless and dead. It is possibly the influence of Brethrenism which has led to a disparaging attitude towards such golden ages of the church as the Reformation, the Covenanting and Puritan era and the period of the Evangelical Awakening. Such ages do come. If we do not believe in them, how can we begin to pray for such an age to dawn on our country again?
2. The idea that God must be glorified on earth. That God is to be glorified is a belief common to all Christians. But that God is to be glorified on earth, by our obedience and faithfulness, is by no means the common creed of all believers as it should be. The point is well illustrated in an anecdote which has come down to us from Scottish Covenanting times. A conforming Christian put the question to a Covenanter as to why he should suffer such 'unnecessary' trials. 'Because', as he put it, 'I shall have heaven as a Christian and you will get no more'. To this the godly non-conformist replied, 'Yes, we shall have more. We shall have God glorified on earth There is both great theology and also great heroism in these words.
The practical outworking of the point is that carelessness in our walk, worship and witness not only forfeits God's blessing but robs him of his declarative glory on earth - an incalculable loss. Universal obedience to God's written Word becomes, in the light of this, more essential than life itself. It is an aspect of the truth which needs to be recovered.
3. It belongs to the biblical portrait of God's church on earth that its history is like a wave, periodically rising and falling. This is the view of providence implicit in such passages, for instance, as Psalms 44, 78, 106 and 126. Christ himself made it clear that this pattern would continue to the end of the world. There would be times in history 'when the bridegroom' would be 'taken away' from God's people, so that believers would 'fast in those days' [Mark 2:20]. Again, the Lord speaks of times in the history of the New Testament church when believers would desire to see 'one of the days of the Son of man, and should not see it [Luke 17:22]. Periods of revival and declension, to use modern terms, will alternate in the life of Christ's church till the very end.
It is of great importance to believers to be thoroughly convinced of this aspect of God's providence. It kindles afresh our flagging hopes to realise that, however low the cause of Christ may fall, God is able to revive it again, even in a very short time, in answer to believing prayer. The wave that falls to its trough is destined to rise up again to another peak. This concept is essential to us if we are not to sink into despair in such a day as this.
4. The fourth aspect of God's providence which is in danger of being lost is the distinctive concept of the church's history which emerged at the Protestant Reformation. According to this view, there are three clearly-defined periods of the church's history: the early period, the medieval period and the modern period.
This three-fold view of church history is a more important part of our Protestant heritage than might at first appear. It serves to remind us that for a thousand years the church in the West wandered into darkness and superstition. This is not to deny that there were good and great men in the Middle Ages. But it helps us to see the immense debt of gratitude we owe to God for the Reformers and their work. We must never allow this view of history to be blurred in our minds. The Reformers not only gave us a new principle of exegesis and a new systematic theology but also a new way of looking at church history. This view of history is to be found implicitly in the three Reformation treatises of Luther written in 1520. It is also found more explicitly in the Fourth Book of Calvin's Institutes and in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, as it is popularly called.
There are today powerful influences at work tending to obscure this attitude to church history, which was once the commonplace view of Protestants. The Oxford Movement of the 1830s seriously challenged this view of providence which we are referring to. But, more recently, it has been blurred in people's minds by the misguided statements of some Protestant leaders, who are suggesting that the Reformation was something of a tragedy or, at least, an unfortunate mistake.
If the Reformation comes to be looked on as a tragedy, then Protestants will have ceased to be the real spiritual heirs of the Reformers. To give ground on a point of history is, in effect, to concede to a new theology. There are many who do not appear to see that this is the case. But it must be so. To recover out of the present state of decline, therefore, means that Protestants must go back to the older view of history which looked at the Reformation as a return from darkness to light. Post tenebras lux is more than a slogan. It is an interpretation of providence. Indeed, it implies a vital creed.
To be continued.
Sam Drucker
'And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, And thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim' [1 Kings 18:17-18]
The occurrence of the word 'interpretation' in the title of this paper informs us at once that we are in the realm of applied, rather than theoretical or abstract theology. All sciences have their theoretical and their applied aspects. This is true of theology, which, in better days, was regarded as the 'queen of the sciences'. What follows, therefore, is not so much a statement as an argument, or a case. It is an attempt to develop an interpretation of God's providence in history which is true to the scriptures and practically relevant to the pastoral needs of God's people in the times through which we are passing.
The general theme of providence is that of God's sovereign and perfect control of all events. There is a natural division of the subject into two aspects: the providence of God in the lives of individuals, and God's providence over nations and over civilisation as a whole. Perhaps it would be convenient to give descriptive terms to these two distinct, thought related, ways of studying God's providence. We could speak of micro-providence as that which concerns the individual, and macro-
providence as that which relates to the larger units of mankind in history. It is with the latter that we are concerned here, and especially with the Christian church in the Anglo-Saxon world.
It needs to be said that the literature which deals with this subject is at one and the same time vast and yet sparse. Whilst all works of history and biography have some tangential connection with the theme, yet books which deal directly and specifically with this subject are, to our knowledge, few in number. That is not altogether surprising because the exercise of interpreting providence is essentially a religious and spiritual, rather than a purely historical, one. It is a task which we can only begin with any degree of realism, once we have accepted the great (and nowadays highly unpopular) postulate, that God is truly known only in the Christian scriptures and that history has ethical and spiritual meaning because it is the unfolding of a divine purpose.
Such a great spiritual classic as Flavel's treatise on Providence, therefore, will not help us greatly, because it deals with the more individual aspect of this theme. Indeed, most treatments of providence naturally tend to look at it from the point of view of the individual, especially that of the Christian believer. This is not true of a recent valuable study entitled The Providence of God by Benjamin Wirt Farley, a contemporary American scholar, who teaches at the Union Theological Seminary, Virginia. Professor Farley's book provides us with a very thorough historical survey of providence. That is to say he works his way comprehensively, first through the views of providence held by the great thinkers of Greece and Rome, then by the early Church Fathers, and then by the Schoolmen, the Reformers and so on, up to the present day. It is a book to which one will turn again and again for information about the opinions of writers through the ages. But it does not set out to address itself directly to the type of application of the theme which forms the title of this paper. Rather than beginning with the books, therefore, it will be better to take our point of departure from the Word of God itself.
In the chapter of the Bible which was read to us this evening, we have the great discourse of the Lord Jesus Christ on the subject of the Last Things. There our Lord is informing his people of the most notable and significant events which would occur in the course of human history right up to the very end. More particularly, Christ predicts the fall of Jerusalem, which occurred in A.D. 70, and also the destruction of the whole world at the Second Coming. From our standpoint today, one event is in the past and the other in the future. And with regard to both these momentous events, Christ says that we are to 'watch' (v. 42). Clearly, the implication is that Christians are to be awake to major events in this world and they are to attempt to understand them, at least to some extent.
Failure to 'watch' and to be awake to what God is doing in the course of history is, according to Christ's warning, both foolish and dangerous. This is supremely true of the unbelieving world. But it is also true of God's own people. If we do not 'watch', then we are likely to become either complacent or, alternatively, discouraged. Events in the external world are integrally related to the words of holy scripture. To be ignorant of scripture is to be unprepared for what God is doing in history. To be unprepared at the end, when Christ returns, is to lose our soul eternally.
Furthermore, the view we take of events between our own day and the end of the world will inevitably have a considerable effect upon our whole state of mind as Christians. If we look for nothing in the future but gloom and declension, then we shall be pessimistic as to the degree of success which preaching and missionary endeavour will have on earth. But if we have an optimistic eschatology, we shall be correspondingly affected in our outlook and in our expectation of coming blessing. This is particularly true of the way in which we interpret the passage in Romans 11, respecting the 'mystery' of Israel. Admittedly, it may amount to no more than our state of mind as we set to work in the task of proclaiming the gospel and praying for its success. But our morale is very important. The overall view of providence which we adopt will have a close bearing on our morale and our degree of expectation in God's work.
SOME BIBLICAL INSIGHTS
The short passage of scripture from 1 Kings 18, which is provided at the head of this article, appears to be of considerable significance for the subject in hand. It consists of a snatch of conversation between the great prophet Elijah and the infamous King Ahab. There had been a serious state of drought in the kingdom for three and a half years. Each man, interestingly enough, blamed the other for the troubles, evidently for exactly reverse reasons.
Ahab's point of view was that Elijah had interrupted the peace and happiness of the land by praying down God's judgement. Elijah's opinion of the matter was that Ahab's idolatry had been the real cause of ruin to the land. It is an instructive exchange between a man of God and a man of the world. To the worldly man, it is the 'sour churchman' who spoils life. To the man of God, it is the reckless sinner who ruins the world by bringing God's curse upon a land. In Ahab's opinion, Israel was his kingdom and Elijah was a nuisance. In Elijah's judgement. Israel was God's theocratic kingdom and Ahab was a thorn in its flesh. It is a notable case of two opposing interpretations of providence.
There is a point of major importance to be noticed in this exchange between Ahab and Elijah. A man's theology always determines his view of providence. It must be so and it cannot be otherwise. What we think of God must determine our interpretation of what we see all around us, both in the church and in the world. This principle is to be found everywhere in the Bible. If we apply the principle to our modem situation, especially in Britain, we shall see that the principle is both a true and a useful one. Who, it might be asked, are the 'troublers of Israel' in Britain today? Every man answers instinctively in terms of his own theology. The Ecumenical finds the 'troublers of Israel' in those who will not lay aside every doctrinal difference and 'heal the wounds in the body of Christ'. The Charismatic blames the church's troubles on those who decline to seek the 'gifts'. The theologically liberal trace the modern church's malady to the presence still on earth of an 'antediluvian confessionalism'. The Evangelical and the Calvinist diagnose the church's ills as the judgment of God upon theological unfaithfulness and departure from Scripture.
This principle holds good also in its reverse form. The way a man interprets providence proves his real theology. This is illustrated interestingly by a recently published book, entitled Defending and Declaring the Faith. From the title, one would expect to find that the orthodox creed of evangelical religion was being set forth and defended. The author looks at the life and thoughts of eight well known Scottish theologians and preachers between 1860 and 1920. It is valuable as a summary of thought of such men as Kennedy of Dingwall. John Caird, A. B. Bruce and James Denney. But what is surprising to the evangelical reader is a comparison between the title of the book and the foreword, the author of which admires and praises John McLeod Campbell, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, and Edward Irving. Yet all three of these men, far from defending the faith, were disciplined for unorthodoxy by the nineteenth century Scottish church to which they belonged. It is a remarkable instance of hiatus between the title of a book and its message. What today is being called the church's remedy was, in better days, treated as heresy.
This brings us to a further point in the church's duty in a time of judgment and declension - to enquire after the real cause of the trouble. A generation which makes a false diagnosis of the church's ills may land the church in apostasy. 'Whom God will destroy he first makes mad'. There are repeated warnings in the prophets against the folly of either not heeding, or else misinterpreting, the omens of providence. (Cf Isa. 22:12-14; Jer. 23:16-17; Ezek. 22:28-30). This is what Ezekiel caustically terms 'daubing the wall with untempered mortar' [Ezek. 22:28], which he defines as 'seeing false burdens and causes of banishment' [Lam. 2:14]. In the New Testament, Christ refers to this same sin as a culpable failure to 'discern the signs of the times' [Matt. 16:3].
Whatever be the true causes of the church's steep decline in Britain in our generation, there is no denying that the decline is there. There is a worm at the root of the tree which threatens not the leaf or the blossom only, but the very existence of the tree itself. Britain has no patent rights to the gospel of Christ. The church of Christ as such cannot be lost. But national churches can be lost. The Jewish church in Palestine was lost for hundreds of years after A.D. 70. Much the same happened to North Africa and Turkey at later periods in history. We had better diagnose the cause of our modem ills correctly. Failure to do so might plunge our nation into darkness for centuries. If we see the cause. there is hope that we may repent in time. But who will repent of unrecognised sin? The fearful possibility is that we may already be past hope, because God has given our church leaders over to a reprobate mind. God forbid that it should be so. But the situation is urgent. And it is made all the more urgent in that key concepts of God's providence are out of favour.
SOME 'LOST' CONCEPTS
In the modern church, there are a number of concepts relating to providence which are in danger of being lost for one reason or another. They are concepts which are to be found in the Word of God and which were cherished in better ages of the church. Their loss in the modern church has made us spiritually weaker and less able to wrestle with God for a return of his favour. We may look briefly at four such lost concepts.
1. The concept of a 'model age'. Not in an absolute sense, certainly, but in a limited sense, there are 'model ages' of the church. By that, we mean that, in some ages, God is powerfully and wonderfully at work on earth in sending revival, reformation and influential preachers of the gospel. At other ages there is a dryness and a deadness, even on good and orthodox men. It is true, of course, that the church in apostolic times is the only 'model' church in an absolute sense. There we have the inspired men and the blueprint of what the gospel and the church ought to be. But if we see all subsequent church history as nothing more than monotonous shades of grey, we have a false idea of church history. The fact is that some ages have been rich in spiritual greatness while others have been lifeless and dead. It is possibly the influence of Brethrenism which has led to a disparaging attitude towards such golden ages of the church as the Reformation, the Covenanting and Puritan era and the period of the Evangelical Awakening. Such ages do come. If we do not believe in them, how can we begin to pray for such an age to dawn on our country again?
2. The idea that God must be glorified on earth. That God is to be glorified is a belief common to all Christians. But that God is to be glorified on earth, by our obedience and faithfulness, is by no means the common creed of all believers as it should be. The point is well illustrated in an anecdote which has come down to us from Scottish Covenanting times. A conforming Christian put the question to a Covenanter as to why he should suffer such 'unnecessary' trials. 'Because', as he put it, 'I shall have heaven as a Christian and you will get no more'. To this the godly non-conformist replied, 'Yes, we shall have more. We shall have God glorified on earth There is both great theology and also great heroism in these words.
The practical outworking of the point is that carelessness in our walk, worship and witness not only forfeits God's blessing but robs him of his declarative glory on earth - an incalculable loss. Universal obedience to God's written Word becomes, in the light of this, more essential than life itself. It is an aspect of the truth which needs to be recovered.
3. It belongs to the biblical portrait of God's church on earth that its history is like a wave, periodically rising and falling. This is the view of providence implicit in such passages, for instance, as Psalms 44, 78, 106 and 126. Christ himself made it clear that this pattern would continue to the end of the world. There would be times in history 'when the bridegroom' would be 'taken away' from God's people, so that believers would 'fast in those days' [Mark 2:20]. Again, the Lord speaks of times in the history of the New Testament church when believers would desire to see 'one of the days of the Son of man, and should not see it [Luke 17:22]. Periods of revival and declension, to use modern terms, will alternate in the life of Christ's church till the very end.
It is of great importance to believers to be thoroughly convinced of this aspect of God's providence. It kindles afresh our flagging hopes to realise that, however low the cause of Christ may fall, God is able to revive it again, even in a very short time, in answer to believing prayer. The wave that falls to its trough is destined to rise up again to another peak. This concept is essential to us if we are not to sink into despair in such a day as this.
4. The fourth aspect of God's providence which is in danger of being lost is the distinctive concept of the church's history which emerged at the Protestant Reformation. According to this view, there are three clearly-defined periods of the church's history: the early period, the medieval period and the modern period.
This three-fold view of church history is a more important part of our Protestant heritage than might at first appear. It serves to remind us that for a thousand years the church in the West wandered into darkness and superstition. This is not to deny that there were good and great men in the Middle Ages. But it helps us to see the immense debt of gratitude we owe to God for the Reformers and their work. We must never allow this view of history to be blurred in our minds. The Reformers not only gave us a new principle of exegesis and a new systematic theology but also a new way of looking at church history. This view of history is to be found implicitly in the three Reformation treatises of Luther written in 1520. It is also found more explicitly in the Fourth Book of Calvin's Institutes and in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, as it is popularly called.
There are today powerful influences at work tending to obscure this attitude to church history, which was once the commonplace view of Protestants. The Oxford Movement of the 1830s seriously challenged this view of providence which we are referring to. But, more recently, it has been blurred in people's minds by the misguided statements of some Protestant leaders, who are suggesting that the Reformation was something of a tragedy or, at least, an unfortunate mistake.
If the Reformation comes to be looked on as a tragedy, then Protestants will have ceased to be the real spiritual heirs of the Reformers. To give ground on a point of history is, in effect, to concede to a new theology. There are many who do not appear to see that this is the case. But it must be so. To recover out of the present state of decline, therefore, means that Protestants must go back to the older view of history which looked at the Reformation as a return from darkness to light. Post tenebras lux is more than a slogan. It is an interpretation of providence. Indeed, it implies a vital creed.
To be continued.
Sam Drucker
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Is Romans 5:12 a Defence Against Adam's Sin Having Brought Death to All Creation?
It disappoints time and again when so-called evangelicals today resort to saying Romans 5:12 deals only with death of man consequent to Adam's sin and that the rest of Creation is excluded. This is a vain attempt to keep alive their precious evolutionary view of origins. It is an abuse of the Reformation principle of letting Scripture interpret Scripture, let alone an abuse of the revelation of God in Being and Will.
If these so-called evangelicals were principled enough, if they loved the Word of God more than the world, they would interpret Romans 5:12 in the light of what Apostle Paul says only a little later in his Epistle to the Romans. At Romans 8:18-22, Paul provides clear revelation that Adam's sin and God's subsequent judgement affected the entire Creation. This has been a traditional view of the Church but has been corrupted in recent years as so-called evangelicals deepen their love for the world.
I have chosen two respected writers to reaffirm the traditional interpretation of the effect of Adam's sin. I recently quoted Joseph Alleine in a blog and do so again here. Joseph Alleine was a Puritan writer and his classic work "Alarm to the Unconverted" has been a help to many for approximately 400 years. And more recently, Graeme Goldsworthy has been lecturer at Moore Theological College, Sydney, a writer of books - one of which is "Gospel & Kingdom" and also has been a help to Christians in current times.
First to Joseph Alleine. Alleine, while not speaking to Romans 5:12 directly, does present a view of the created order and the plight of fallen man who continues in an unconverted state. You could not read Alleine's argument and be unconvinced he believed Romans 5:12 applied to the whole Creation suffering frustration and death as a consequence of Adam's sin.
On Page 54 of the 1967 Banner of Truth Trust edition Alleine says:
2: Not only man, but the whole visible creation is in vain without conversion. God has made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man, and man only is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is, in the world, like the tongue to the body, which speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, except by dumb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is, as it were, the high priest of God's creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures. The Lord God expects a tribute of praise from all His works. Now, all the rest do bring in their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if a man is false, and faithless, and selfish, God is robbed of all, and has no active glory from His works.
O dreadful thought! that God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness thereupon, and all in vain; and that man should be guilty, at last, of robbing and spoiling Him of the glory of all! O think of this. While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to you. Your food nourishes you in vain. The sun holds forth its light to you in vain. Your clothes warm you in vain. Your beast carries you in vain. In a word, the unwearied labour and continued travail of the whole creation, as to you, are in vain. The service of all the creatures that drudge for you, and yield forth their strength unto you, with which you should serve their Maker, is all but lost labour. Hence, 'the whole creation groaneth' (Rom viii 22) under the abuse of unsanctified men who pervert all things to the service of their lusts, quite contrary to the very end of their being.
On Page 65 he says:
What king would take rebels in open hostility into his court? What were this but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ is a King, He must have honour, homage, subjection. Now, to save men while in their natural enmity, were to obscure His dignity, lose His authority, bring contempt on His government, and sell His dear-bought rights for naught.
Likewise, how would a Holy God continually walk in the garden in the cool of the day if that garden and its inhabitants were forever corrupt and the antithesis of his very Being? No, the Word of God makes it clear that all changed after man rebelled. Aside from providing a metaphor of the failure of Israel's leaders, our Lord Jesus Christ, when cursing the fig tree (Matt 21:18-22), demonstrates that the creation is not worthy of continuance if its life sustaining purpose is not realised in the presence of the Son of God i.e. sinless Adam and/or sinless Incarnate God. A frustrated (mutated or faulty) Creation did not exist before Adam sinned.
On Pages 89 & 90 Alleine says this about the state of fallen and unconverted man:
2: The whole creation of God is against you. 'The whole creation', says Paul, 'groaneth and travaileth in pain' (Rom viii 22). But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse; for the 'creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage (Rom viii 20-21). If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it, as a bondage insufferable, to be abused by the ungodly, contrary to their natures and the ends that the great Creator made them for. It is a saying of an eminent divine, 'The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him, it would groan in the cup against him, groan in his throat, in his stomach against him; it would fly in his face, if it could speak. And if God should open the mouths of His creatures, as He did the mouth of Balaam's ass, the proud man's garment on his back would groan against him. There is not a creature, if it had reason to know how it is abused till a man be converted, but would groan against him. The land would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their food to nourish them, their clothes to cover them, and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God.'
I think this should be a terror to an unconverted soul, to think he is a burden to the creation. 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' (Lk xiii 7). If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, 'Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him, to dishonour Thee? No, I will choke him rather, if Thou wilt give commission.' The very air would say, 'Lord, must I give this man breath, to set his tongue against heaven, and scorn Thy people, and vent his pride and wrath, and filthy talk, and belch out oaths and blasphemy against Thee? No, if Thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me.' His poor beast would say, 'Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs ? No, I will break his bones I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from Thee.' A wicked man; the earth groans under him, and hell groans for him, till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you, and all the creatures as it were up in arms till, upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him. He makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him (Job v 22-24; Hosea ii 18-20).
The Job and Hosea citations speak of a restored Creation after sin has been dealt with once and for all. Restored to a pre-Fall condition.
As if to confirm all the foregoing, Graeme Goldsworthy in "Gospel & Kingdom" says on page 55 : The universe, in order to remain under man's dominion, and despite its ongoing challenge to man's dominion, is made to fall with man. The world outside the garden is fallen, for man cannot survive in an unfallen world. 'The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope' (Romans 8:20)". [emphasis in bold mine]
On page 53 Goldsworthy says:
"It is impossible for God to be true to himself and at the same time tolerate his own dethronement by the creature.
It follows that God would hardly tolerate a corrupted Creation for an alleged millions or billions of years before emergence of Man and it is then Man's corruption which prompts judgement from God. Additionally, our Lord Jesus Christ says at Luke 12:48 "For whom much is given, of him shall be much required". Why should Man, to whom so much of the nature of God has be given and to whom responsibility over Creation is delegated, be subjected to only thousands of years (thus far) of frustrated existence while the lesser of Creation has been frustrated for allegedly millions or billions of years longer?
Finally, Goldsworthy says on Page 45: "Man is not the end of a chain of evolution for he is qualitatively distinct from the animals".
Compromising evangelicals do great harm to the integrity of the Word of God. They cast seeds of desolation into the Church. As with any adulterer they misuse the words of their first love. This is no more evident than in their handling of the Word of God in Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Sam Drucker
If these so-called evangelicals were principled enough, if they loved the Word of God more than the world, they would interpret Romans 5:12 in the light of what Apostle Paul says only a little later in his Epistle to the Romans. At Romans 8:18-22, Paul provides clear revelation that Adam's sin and God's subsequent judgement affected the entire Creation. This has been a traditional view of the Church but has been corrupted in recent years as so-called evangelicals deepen their love for the world.
I have chosen two respected writers to reaffirm the traditional interpretation of the effect of Adam's sin. I recently quoted Joseph Alleine in a blog and do so again here. Joseph Alleine was a Puritan writer and his classic work "Alarm to the Unconverted" has been a help to many for approximately 400 years. And more recently, Graeme Goldsworthy has been lecturer at Moore Theological College, Sydney, a writer of books - one of which is "Gospel & Kingdom" and also has been a help to Christians in current times.
First to Joseph Alleine. Alleine, while not speaking to Romans 5:12 directly, does present a view of the created order and the plight of fallen man who continues in an unconverted state. You could not read Alleine's argument and be unconvinced he believed Romans 5:12 applied to the whole Creation suffering frustration and death as a consequence of Adam's sin.
On Page 54 of the 1967 Banner of Truth Trust edition Alleine says:
2: Not only man, but the whole visible creation is in vain without conversion. God has made all the visible creatures in heaven and earth for the service of man, and man only is the spokesman for all the rest. Man is, in the world, like the tongue to the body, which speaks for all the members. The other creatures cannot praise their Maker, except by dumb signs and hints to man that he should speak for them. Man is, as it were, the high priest of God's creation, to offer the sacrifice of praise for all his fellow-creatures. The Lord God expects a tribute of praise from all His works. Now, all the rest do bring in their tribute to man, and pay it by his hand. So then, if a man is false, and faithless, and selfish, God is robbed of all, and has no active glory from His works.
O dreadful thought! that God should build such a world as this, and lay out such infinite power, and wisdom, and goodness thereupon, and all in vain; and that man should be guilty, at last, of robbing and spoiling Him of the glory of all! O think of this. While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to you. Your food nourishes you in vain. The sun holds forth its light to you in vain. Your clothes warm you in vain. Your beast carries you in vain. In a word, the unwearied labour and continued travail of the whole creation, as to you, are in vain. The service of all the creatures that drudge for you, and yield forth their strength unto you, with which you should serve their Maker, is all but lost labour. Hence, 'the whole creation groaneth' (Rom viii 22) under the abuse of unsanctified men who pervert all things to the service of their lusts, quite contrary to the very end of their being.
On Page 65 he says:
What king would take rebels in open hostility into his court? What were this but to betray life, kingdom, government, and all together? If Christ is a King, He must have honour, homage, subjection. Now, to save men while in their natural enmity, were to obscure His dignity, lose His authority, bring contempt on His government, and sell His dear-bought rights for naught.
Likewise, how would a Holy God continually walk in the garden in the cool of the day if that garden and its inhabitants were forever corrupt and the antithesis of his very Being? No, the Word of God makes it clear that all changed after man rebelled. Aside from providing a metaphor of the failure of Israel's leaders, our Lord Jesus Christ, when cursing the fig tree (Matt 21:18-22), demonstrates that the creation is not worthy of continuance if its life sustaining purpose is not realised in the presence of the Son of God i.e. sinless Adam and/or sinless Incarnate God. A frustrated (mutated or faulty) Creation did not exist before Adam sinned.
On Pages 89 & 90 Alleine says this about the state of fallen and unconverted man:
2: The whole creation of God is against you. 'The whole creation', says Paul, 'groaneth and travaileth in pain' (Rom viii 22). But what is it that the creation groans under? The fearful abuse it is subject to in serving the lusts of unsanctified men. And what is it that the creation groans for? For freedom and liberty from this abuse; for the 'creature is not willingly made subject to this bondage (Rom viii 20-21). If the irrational and inanimate creatures had speech and reason, they would cry out under it, as a bondage insufferable, to be abused by the ungodly, contrary to their natures and the ends that the great Creator made them for. It is a saying of an eminent divine, 'The liquor that the drunkard drinks, if it had reason, like a man, to know how shamefully it is abused, would groan in the barrel against him, it would groan in the cup against him, groan in his throat, in his stomach against him; it would fly in his face, if it could speak. And if God should open the mouths of His creatures, as He did the mouth of Balaam's ass, the proud man's garment on his back would groan against him. There is not a creature, if it had reason to know how it is abused till a man be converted, but would groan against him. The land would groan to bear him, the air would groan to give him breath, their houses would groan to dislodge them, their beds would groan to ease them, their food to nourish them, their clothes to cover them, and the creature would groan to give them any help and comfort, so long as they live in sin against God.'
I think this should be a terror to an unconverted soul, to think he is a burden to the creation. 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' (Lk xiii 7). If inanimate creatures could but speak, your food would say, 'Lord, must I nourish such a wretch as this, and yield forth my strength for him, to dishonour Thee? No, I will choke him rather, if Thou wilt give commission.' The very air would say, 'Lord, must I give this man breath, to set his tongue against heaven, and scorn Thy people, and vent his pride and wrath, and filthy talk, and belch out oaths and blasphemy against Thee? No, if Thou wilt but say the word, he shall be breathless for me.' His poor beast would say, 'Lord, must I carry him upon his wicked designs ? No, I will break his bones I will end his days rather, if I may have but leave from Thee.' A wicked man; the earth groans under him, and hell groans for him, till death satisfies both. While the Lord of hosts is against you, be sure the host of the Lord is against you, and all the creatures as it were up in arms till, upon a man's conversion, the controversy being settled between God and him. He makes a covenant of peace with the creature for him (Job v 22-24; Hosea ii 18-20).
The Job and Hosea citations speak of a restored Creation after sin has been dealt with once and for all. Restored to a pre-Fall condition.
As if to confirm all the foregoing, Graeme Goldsworthy in "Gospel & Kingdom" says on page 55 : The universe, in order to remain under man's dominion, and despite its ongoing challenge to man's dominion, is made to fall with man. The world outside the garden is fallen, for man cannot survive in an unfallen world. 'The creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope' (Romans 8:20)". [emphasis in bold mine]
On page 53 Goldsworthy says:
"It is impossible for God to be true to himself and at the same time tolerate his own dethronement by the creature.
It follows that God would hardly tolerate a corrupted Creation for an alleged millions or billions of years before emergence of Man and it is then Man's corruption which prompts judgement from God. Additionally, our Lord Jesus Christ says at Luke 12:48 "For whom much is given, of him shall be much required". Why should Man, to whom so much of the nature of God has be given and to whom responsibility over Creation is delegated, be subjected to only thousands of years (thus far) of frustrated existence while the lesser of Creation has been frustrated for allegedly millions or billions of years longer?
Finally, Goldsworthy says on Page 45: "Man is not the end of a chain of evolution for he is qualitatively distinct from the animals".
Compromising evangelicals do great harm to the integrity of the Word of God. They cast seeds of desolation into the Church. As with any adulterer they misuse the words of their first love. This is no more evident than in their handling of the Word of God in Apostle Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, April 17, 2011
A Clarion Call From Scotland to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of a blog based upon an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
Finlayson completes his article here following and I will make a closing comment:
THE INFECTION SPREADS
The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen. The present Century opened with the blare of trumpets sounding the victory of Liberalism, and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. Prof George Adam Smith, in Glasgow, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The Rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and when the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.
HESITANT SUPPORTERS
True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by The Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised. Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.' It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives, and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent critic: 'You should hear Prof. . . . conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of Prof William Barclay, lately retired from the Glasgow College, it can be said that he paid exquisite attention, and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception!
But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess, and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing! And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yea, has God said ?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, AND HAVING DONE ALL TO STAND.'
Well, R.A. Finlayson provides a helpful analysis of the cancer that entered the Free Church of Scotland more than a century ago. But what does all that mean for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and its theological seminary - Moore College?
The answer is "It's on!"
The slithering approach of Scottish academics to conceal their abandonment of trust in the Word of God was effective. Just as a snake moves slowly and concealed toward its prey so the Scottish academics, except for one or two overanxious, introduced their new approach to the Word of God with stealth. Students and congregations, save a few alert, were inwittingly seduced into abandoning their evangelical heritage.
It all starts in the Old Testament and spreads to the New Testament.
This is happening in Moore College where the approach of Luther, Calvin, Puritans and the majority of Church Fathers (who commented on the subject) to Genesis 1 is no longer applied. Instead, a student is carefully led to consider the employment of literary devices and other creation narratives.
The fruit of this is ordained ministers rejecting the traditional evangelical acceptance of Genesis 1 as historical narrative or prose and consequent avoidance of the convictive of the passage. This then is passed on to congregations and the cancer is well and truly established.
There are many examples but I will cite just two. The author of one blogspot was recently asked by an inquirer whether he thought the mention of Noah in the genealogy contained in Genesis 5 meant that Noah was a real person, the author replied something to the effect of "We can't be certain." Hullo! What is a genealogy for?
Another, when asked to explain why he held to Exodus 20:11 being only figurative language, his reply was something to the effect of "Whatever God was saying there I will not accept that the world is 6,000 years old." Sad, God cannot tell him only the world can!
These two incidents are sufficient to grasp that the rot is on and that there will be many more within the Diocese who are or will be like minded. And, just as with the calamity within the Scottish Free Church, the cancer can be dressed in a cloak of piety so that it will be difficult to assess just who the Christians are, even for the one committing the offence.
I ask all to trust God. Come out of error. Consider seriously John 17:17.
Sam Drucker
Finlayson completes his article here following and I will make a closing comment:
THE INFECTION SPREADS
The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen. The present Century opened with the blare of trumpets sounding the victory of Liberalism, and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. Prof George Adam Smith, in Glasgow, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The Rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and when the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.
HESITANT SUPPORTERS
True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by The Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised. Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.' It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives, and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent critic: 'You should hear Prof. . . . conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of Prof William Barclay, lately retired from the Glasgow College, it can be said that he paid exquisite attention, and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception!
But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess, and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing! And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yea, has God said ?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, AND HAVING DONE ALL TO STAND.'
Well, R.A. Finlayson provides a helpful analysis of the cancer that entered the Free Church of Scotland more than a century ago. But what does all that mean for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and its theological seminary - Moore College?
The answer is "It's on!"
The slithering approach of Scottish academics to conceal their abandonment of trust in the Word of God was effective. Just as a snake moves slowly and concealed toward its prey so the Scottish academics, except for one or two overanxious, introduced their new approach to the Word of God with stealth. Students and congregations, save a few alert, were inwittingly seduced into abandoning their evangelical heritage.
It all starts in the Old Testament and spreads to the New Testament.
This is happening in Moore College where the approach of Luther, Calvin, Puritans and the majority of Church Fathers (who commented on the subject) to Genesis 1 is no longer applied. Instead, a student is carefully led to consider the employment of literary devices and other creation narratives.
The fruit of this is ordained ministers rejecting the traditional evangelical acceptance of Genesis 1 as historical narrative or prose and consequent avoidance of the convictive of the passage. This then is passed on to congregations and the cancer is well and truly established.
There are many examples but I will cite just two. The author of one blogspot was recently asked by an inquirer whether he thought the mention of Noah in the genealogy contained in Genesis 5 meant that Noah was a real person, the author replied something to the effect of "We can't be certain." Hullo! What is a genealogy for?
Another, when asked to explain why he held to Exodus 20:11 being only figurative language, his reply was something to the effect of "Whatever God was saying there I will not accept that the world is 6,000 years old." Sad, God cannot tell him only the world can!
These two incidents are sufficient to grasp that the rot is on and that there will be many more within the Diocese who are or will be like minded. And, just as with the calamity within the Scottish Free Church, the cancer can be dressed in a cloak of piety so that it will be difficult to assess just who the Christians are, even for the one committing the offence.
I ask all to trust God. Come out of error. Consider seriously John 17:17.
Sam Drucker
Thursday, April 14, 2011
A Clarion Call From Scotland to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney (Part 1)
This is the first of a two part blog based on an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
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