Gordon Clark: A Plague on Both Your Houses (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1958. A Plague on Both Your Houses. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 3–4.

A Plague on Both Your Houses

In the struggle between the free nations and the slavery of communism, some of the eastern nations, like India, profess to adopt a neutralism. Communism and American materialism are equally bad, they say, and they wish a plague on both houses. Now, Americans, even though they may admit the many shortcomings of western and especially American civilization, are apt to think that neutralism is impossible, and that there is no third way between slavery and freedom. But if there were a third way, or in any situation in which there is a third possibility, the position of wishing a plague on both houses is not impossible. One must, however, make clear just what the possibilities are.

In the religious controversies of the recent past, and indeed of the present, some strategists who have wished to undermine Biblical religion have made use of a plausible application of this principle of a plague on both your houses.

It has been said that the Sadducees were the modernists of Christ's day. They had no faith, they were secularists, they did not listen to the prophets, and sincere people in modern times should not follow their example. We do not want to be Sadducees or modernists. On the other hand, the Pharisees were the fundamentalists, the orthodox, of Christ's day. But it was a dead orthodoxy and they earned for themselves a bad reputation. Therefore we today ought not to be Pharisees either. A plague on both your houses. Let us have neither orthodoxy nor modernism.

This type of appeal has impressed many people. These people follow their devout feelings, have little interest in theology, and are satisfied with some sort of quiet pietism or mysticism. But the argument cannot stand up under scrutiny.

The major flaw in the argument is that the Pharisees were not orthodox. They were not the fundamentalists of Christ's day.

In the first place, they were hypocrites; and whatever lip-service they paid to the Old Testament must be discounted. It is true enough that they paid a certain honor to Moses and the Law. It is true enough that they talked of God and were zealously theological. But their theology was not orthodox, and they altered the Law which they professed to follow.

It is hard to understand how anyone who has read the gospels can think that the Pharisees were orthodox. This is not a question of their evil deeds. The point is that their theology was wrong. A few passages from Matthew show clearly that the Pharisees did not accept the teaching of the Old Testament.

That they misinterpreted the fourth and fifth commandments is stated in Matt. 12:2-13 and 15:4-9. The second of these two references sweeps in areas beyond these two particular commandments. It says in general that the Pharisees substituted the commandments of men for the doctrines that God had revealed in the Old Testament. This is not orthodoxy.

Another still more general reference is Matt. 16:12, where Christ warns the disciples to avoid the doctrine of the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a false theology, they did not believe the Old Testament.

A more particular case, though one of extreme importance, is found in Matt. 22:41-46. The passage shows that the ideas which the Pharisees entertained about the nature of the Messiah were inconsistent with what the Old Testament taught. It is just not true that the Pharisees were orthodox.

And a final but not so basic point is found in Matt. 23:16-22, where the casuistical theories of the Pharisees are condemned.

Therefore when someone says, a plague on both your houses, when he wishes to condemn both modernism and fundamentalism, when he tries to disparage orthodoxy by making it appear Pharisaical, he is not supporting the Biblical position, he is not a neutral, but he is definitely aiding unbelief. It is, however, a good strategy, for it appears plausible to those who know little of what the gospels actually say. Our task is to inform the public of the exact position which Christ, the Apostles, and the Old Testament prophets actually took.

— G.H.C.