Gordon Clark: A Basis of Judgment (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1956. A Basis of Judgment. The Southern Presbyterian Journal, Dec. 12, pgs. 3-4.

A Basis of Judgment

After the regular evening service three ministers stood at the back of the church talking about an evangelist who had been advertized as about to come to town. This evangelist made a specialty of divine healing, and one of the three ministers wondered whether there was anything to it. On a previous occasion he had attended such a service and had come away perplexed.

The second minister, a serious man of sober judgment, replied that although he was not a Pentecostal like this evangelist, his more formal denomination also included a man who thought well of divine healing. Therefore he could not condemn divine healing merely on the basis that the Pentecostals were noisy and disorderly. Yet, after some consideration, he had come to condemn it.

The basis of his condemnation was that the preaching and practice of divine healing tends to divide the church. Some people are instantly repelled, and others are attracted. Thus the church is split into two factions, and therefore divine healing should be frowned upon.

The purpose in recounting this conversation is not to open a discussion on divine healing. There is a much more fundamental point at issue. It is this: on what basis can we properly judge something to be good or bad for the church? In this age of the disintegrating atom there is a great tendency toward collectivism. Governments are becoming more socialistic, and/churches are becoming ecumenical. Anything divisive, anything that impedes unity, any individualism attracts the frowns and suspicions of the multitudes.

For this reason there is an urge not only to unite churches of similar polity, but to unite all Protestantism, to unite with the Greek Catholics, to unite all Christendom, and in fact to unite all religions. Therefore doctrinal unity, a different type of unity, the kind of unity the Bible stresses, is disowned. The teaching of Christ that in the world the tares and the wheat must grow together until the angels harvest them is transferred from its worldly reference and inserted into the sphere of the church, from which it is concluded that the church has no authority to maintain standards of sound doctrine. Thus bad exegesis serves unscriptural principles and the divine commands concerning ecclesiastical discipline are ignored.

But why should we choose organizational unity as the basis for judging divine healing or anything else. God has given us very clear principles for judging all things. For the Scripture is inspired throughout, and it is profitable for doctrine and correction; and by attending to the words of the Lord the man of God may be furnished completely unto every good work.

The erring church needs to be recalled to the position of testing all things by God's revelation. G.H.C.