Saturday, January 7, 2023

Gordon Clark: Unwilling to Believe (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1957. Unwilling to Believe. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 6–7. Dec 18

Unwilling To Believe

In 1956 James DeForest Murch published Cooperation Without Compromise, a history of the National Association of Evangelicals. The December 1957 issue of Earnest Worker, a Sunday School periodical prepared for the Southern Presbyterian Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Church of America, carries a belated review.

The reviewer states that the book goes too far when it presents material on page 45 to show the unbelief of the late Federal and the present National Council of Churches. Why does the book go too far? Did the author stretch the truth? Are the facts otherwise than stated? The reviewer does not assert that the author has falsified the material. But he seems not to want to believe it.

The reviewer, who classifies himself as an evangelical goes on to say "There are some very disturbing quotations on pages 109 and 110 [of Murch's book] from so-called liberals. One is startled at the basic error of those quoted, and he cannot but wonder if this author is not falling into the error of taking their texts out of their contexts."

One of the quotations, from Dr. George A. Buttrick, is: "Jesus was not a sinner. He had done nothing to incur God's wrath. And if God dealt with him as if he were the greatest sinner, then we must say of God (as a cynical Frenchman did say of these penal theologies), 'Your God is my devil.' "

Now, the reviewer does not assert that Dr. Murch took this out of context; but he wonders if the author has not done so. Instead of wondering, could not the reviewer check the quotation and come to a correct decision? Why should he insinuate that the author has made a mistake, when the fact of the matter can be so easily determined? It would appear, at least it appears to me, that the reviewer is unwilling to believe that a minister in good and regular standing could say the things that Dr. Buttrick has said.

Dr. Murch has not exaggerated the facts. There are worse things that he could have said. Dr. John S. Bonnell wrote, "With a few exceptions Presbyterians do not interpret the phrase in the Apostles Creed 'the resurrection of the body' as meaning the physical body."

And another minister in good and regular standing wrote, "Since when does orthodoxy, church membership, or anything else require that we believe the Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection, the (of all things!) substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ... Personally I have no truck with any of them, Our Presbyterian church does not require belief in these three things."

Now, these are accurate quotations. They represent the thinking of the men quoted. They are not slips of the pen. It is unfortunate for the progress of the gospel if an evangelical, out of the goodness of his heart, finds it difficult to believe that apostasy is so widespread and so deep. If the unbelief were restricted to some special doctrine of Calvinism, such as irresistible grace, it would be bad enough; but when the resurrection of Christ is denied — the only resurrection of Christ known in the gospels, the resurrection of the physical body from the tomb, so as to leave the tomb empty — what of Christianity can remain? And if this blatant apostasy is not recognized for what it is by good hearted evangelicals, what hope have the present denominations?

G.H.C.

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