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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