Saturday, January 7, 2023

Gordon Clark: Impartiality (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1957. Impartiality. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 5. Dec 18

Impartiality

The idea of a chosen race, so strongly emphasized in the Old Testament, is incredible and repugnant to many contemporary religious writers. Before his conversion to Christianity, the English philosopher C. E. M. Toad argued that Palestine was such a small country that a divine revelation could never be thought as restricted to its confines. Other writers, even without being anti-semitic, ridicule the notion that the Jews are a chosen people.

But the Old Testament states that God called Abram. God might have called some other idolatrous inhabitant of Chaldea. Or, God might have called Melchisedec. This would seem more appropriate, for Melchisedec was a worshipper of the Lord, and Abram was not. But the Old Testament says that God called Abram.

Although the religion of ancient Babylonia and the religion of modern humanism are so different in several respects, there is one important point on which they agree. If humanism or advanced modernism admits the concept of God at all, God is thought of as a God of nature. In antiquity the worship of nature took the form of a vile fertility cult; in modern times it is scientific law and the gradual, constant processes of nature that are emphasized. God's power is everywhere the same. He always acts in the same way. He never favors one person more than another. We enjoy his blessings only as we learn and submit to the inviolable laws of nature. God is impartial.

In fact there is a translation of the Bible which says that God is impartial.

But this is not a good translation, and the idea is not Biblical. The religion of science, the religion discovered by empirical methods, neglects and ignores the fact of sin. It has done away with hell. It may have done away with heaven too and may have confined "salvation" to the scientific improvement of the conditions of this life. Such are the views, at least, of Edwin A. Burtt and Corliss Lamont.

The Bible, however, tells us (what ought to be evident to everyone) that man is evil; that he has sinned; and that therefore it is he himself rather than external conditions that need to be improved. The Bible also tells us that God has undertaken this task. God does not merely act in the form of natural law; but he intervenes in history and acts in special and supernatural ways.  God called Abram.

He also called Moses. And he eventually was incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Thus we are faced with two concepts of God. We have to answer the question, What is God? Is he impartial? Does he treat everybody alike? Or does he intervene in history and choose one individual instead of another?

Psalm 65:4 says, "Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto thee."

No doubt some philosophic arguments can be produced with reference to these two concepts of God. Such a discussion is not possible here. But one thing is clear: the Biblical conception of God is completely different from that of the religion of science. The Biblical God is not impartial. He acts specifically in time and space, in history, in the affairs of men. He chooses. Let us not confuse one of these religions with the other.

— G.H.C.

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