Gordon Clark: “Religious News”? (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1958. “Religious News”? The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 6. Feb 5

"Religious News"?

A United Press columnist has recently published in the newspapers of our country a short article entitled. Protestant Modernists Lose Ground. It is a much more discerning article than most that are found in the public press.

The writer, Louis Cassels. fairly well distinguishes fundamentalism, modernism, and neo-orthodoxy. He recognizes what some others do not recognize, that neo-orthodoxy is not orthodox. He also notes, as is more commonly known, that modernism has lost ground.

But wc should not expect too much from a newspaper columnist. When the writer wishes to give an indication of the resurgence of fundamentalism, he appeals to "the rapid growth of such unabashedly fundamentalist denominations as the Southern Baptists and the Seventh Day Adventists." When one remembers the Seventh Day position on annihilation, the necessity of keeping the seventh day, and the modifications these require in a doctrine of the atonement, the combination of Seventh Day Adventists with Southern Baptists seems a little odd. There are other rapidly growing bodies that would have been better evidence of the vigor of fundamentalism.

The secular writer's confusion is most apparent in a later paragraph. We quote it in full: "Unlike extreme fundamentalists, modern evangelicals do not. as a rule, uphold the belief that God literally 'dictated' the words of the Bible. They admit the possibility that slight errors have occurred in translation or in copying the manuscripts."

Who these "extreme" fundamentalists are, the writer does not say. But the men who wrote The Fundamentals, and the theologians like Warfield and Machen who defended the doctrines, never taught that God literal!}' "dictated" the words of the Bible. This is a caricature of the traditional position, a caricature that might be excused in a newsman, but which cannot be excused in the modernists or neo-orthodox theologians from whom he got the idea. Further, has any fundamentalist denied that errors have occurred in copying the manuscripts and in the translations? Surely the knowledge that there are variant readings, and that translators make mistakes, is no new knowledge that has come to light since 1920. Even a newsman ought to know better than that.

The twentieth century, strange to say, is an age of ignorance. Only since the launching of Sputnik has there been a widespread questioning of our educational standards. Of course, this has had to do mainly with scientific education. Worse is our ignorance in the sphere of religion and theology. Not only are the people outside the churches ignorant of the Reformed doctrines, but what is shameful, the church members themselves know very little. Many know just about nothing.

Part of the fault lies in our public secularism. The elementary schools, the high schools, and the colleges do not teach the Bible, the catechism, the history of the Reformation. No doubt the Napoleonic: wars were of some importance. I do not plead for ignorance of English or American history. But the wars of religion in the sixteenth century were more important than Napoleon and our civil war together.

Part of the fault also lies with the churches. Some of them are more interested in obtaining a seat for Red China in the United Nations than they are in teaching the Shorter Catechism — or the Ten Commandments by which the Communists ought to be executed as murderers.

Politics is important; even wrong politics, unfortunately, is important. But man's relation to God is more important; and without an understanding of man's relation to God, there is no hope of knowing what man's relation to man ought to be.

It may be too late to instruct the present generation of columnists. But it will never be sooner than now to begin to instruct oneself and the church body.

— G.H.C.