Gordon Clark: The Baby and the Bath (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1955. The Baby and the Bath. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. Nov. 30. 8-9.

The Baby and the Bath

By Gordon H. Clark

The Earnest Worker is an official publication of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Church in America. In its October issue Dr. Richard W. Graves, under the title All Saints' Day, complains that the early Presbyterians were too strict in dispensing with saints days and that in reacting against the Catholic abuses they threw out the baby with the bath. At the present time, he says, we are regaining a proper balance by reinstating All Saints' Day, Epiphany, Whitsuntide, and Trinity.

But what is the baby and what is the bath? Sometimes illustrations fail to illustrate. Even the parables of Jesus cannot be pressed to their last detail; in fact he told parables as much to disguise as to reveal his thought (Mark 4:12). Fallible writers and speakers may wish to reveal their thought and inadvertently tell a story that throws the audience off the track. What then is the baby that is to be kept while we throw out the bath water?

Presbyterianism is founded on the Word of God. Our worship is to be in conformity with God's requirements. God has told us in the Bible how he desires us to worship him, and we have no authority to add to or to subtract from his directions. We are to turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left.

Chapter I, section 6, of the Westminster Confession admits that "there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence..." That is to say, the church service as much as the city council must meet at a set time. A professional society as well as a prayer meeting must select a given place. And they must all have some seating arrangements. These common circumstances are not legislated by the Bible. They are matters of mere convenience. But the content of the worship service itself, the particularities that distinguish it from other meetings, are given unchangeably in the word of God. To these instructions "nothing may at any time be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men."

To a Presbyterian mind this Scriptural principle is the baby, and the Romish superstitions are dirtier than the bath water that is to be thrown out. There is no hint in Scripture of the celebration of an All Saints' Day or of any saint's clay. Hallowe'en is simply a pagan ceremony superstitiously introduced into the so--called Christian calendar. God has required of us to celebrate the Lord's Day and no other.

Why do not political publications of the church promote instead of attack the official position of the church? Let us not throw out the baby and keep the bath.