From time to time Christians do well to trace the course of the gospel through history and to refresh their memories of days gone by. Thoughts of the early Christian martyrs renew our courage and zeal. A study of the Reformation will strengthen our determination to preserve the purity of the church. And while it is on a lesser scale, it is none the less true that The Orthodox Presbyterian Church should occasionally review its first years and the events leading up to its formation. Though our church is far from old as churches go, there have been many changes. Some ministers have died, whose loss we mourn; some people have left us for good or bad reasons; young men have entered our ministry who naturally took no part in the activity of the early thirties; and so it is not too soon to look back over those days.
Some of us will remember the great mass meeting held in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in 1924 when a somewhat optimistic audience heard Dr. Maitland Alexander declare that there would be no exodus of orthodox Presbyterians from the . Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The implication was clear that he expected the Modernists to leave or to be driven out. But neither he nor Dr. Clarence Edward Macartney, who sat with him on the platform, took measures to drive them out and, as events had it, they did not leave. Instead, the Modernists went to work and gained control of Princeton Seminary; and then Westminster was founded. Later came the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. There were also two organizations which tried, by holding meetings and mailing literature, to acquaint the membership of the church with the seriousness of the situation. Finally came that travesty on judicial procedure: the condemnation of Dr. J. Gresham Machen without his being permitted to present his defense. And a few days later what is now called The Orthodox Presbyterian Church came into existence. Those were stirring times.
But what were we stirred up about? What were the topics discussed in the meetings and in the literature? What was the emphasis of the new church? The one great object of our attack was the theology summarized in the Auburn Affirmation. That document, signed by about thirteen hundred Presbyterian ministers, asserted that none of them believed in the infallibility of the Holy Scriptures and that none of them believed that the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, and the bodily resurrection were doctrines essential to Christianity. These men, and others who did not actually sign the document, held to a type of religion from which the atonement and the resurrection could be excluded without harm to their faith. Whether or not Christ offered Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, whether or not He arose from the grave-all such questions were matters of indifference to them. In certain cases their remarks about a gory, butcher-house religion showed that they had trodden under foot the Son of God and had counted the blood of the cross an unholy thing.
It was on these matters that we then placed our great emphasis. We contended for the full truthfulness of the Scriptures and for the vital doctrines of our faith. We did not merely believe these doctrines; we' did not merely mention them on occasion; but rather we put our chief emphasis upon them. This does not mean that we cared nothing for Presbyterianism. For example, we all agreed on the Presbyterian principle of an educated ministry. In November, 1932, Christianity Today carried an excellent article by Dr. Machen on "The Importance of Christian Scholarship for Evangelism." It is an article that may well be re-read now. Along with the Presbyterian insistence on an educated ministry, there was the correlative principle of requiring of communicant members only what is absolutely essential. In those days, none would have attempted to reject this principle so well stated by Charles Hodge in his Church Polity, pages 237-239:
. . . the terms of Christian communion are unalterably fixed in the word of God, and can be neither increased nor diminished by any human authority.... Nothing can justly be required as a term of Christian communion, which Christ has not made necessary to admission to heaven. In other words, [that] we are bound to receive and treat as Christian brethren all whom Christ receives as disciples. We are not to make ourselves stricter or holier than he. . . . Therefore the lowest terms of' salvation are the highest admissible terms of communion. If these principles are correct, it follows that however restrictive are the conditions a Church may see fit to establish as the terms of ministerial fellowship, it must recognize as a sister Church every body which holds and teaches the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, however erroneous it may be in other respects; and therefore it cannot with any consistency refuse either to receive members from such a Church, or to dismiss them to it.
And so on with other points of Presbyterian government and doctrine. We were indeed consciously Presbyterians. But our chief emphasis was on the Scriptures, the Atonement, and the Resurrection; and our chief activity was our opposition to soul-destroying Modernism.
Is there any less reason now to contend vigorously for these doctrines? Has unbelief been routed? Has Christendom so improved since 1936 that now these vital doctrines ought to receive less emphasis? Instead of stressing the inerrancy of Scripture and verbal inspiration, instead of insisting that there is only one way of salvation, the glorious way of the cross, should we spend hours of time debating questions of some, but of relatively little, value? Should we dissipate our energies by pushing principles precariously beyond the limits of sound judgment? Should we exhaust our force in raising a testimony to some infinitesimal sectarian oddity? No, we shall not, if our memory goes back fifteen years. No, we shall not, if we appreciate American Presbyterianism.
Further, in 1936 we frankly rejoiced when any non-Presbyterians upheld the authority of Scripture against the destructive criticism of the Modernists. We thought that if one could chase a thousand, two could put ten thousand to flight. Convinced Presbyterians as we were, we could not agree in several points with our Baptist or independent fundamentalist brethren, but we held them to be brethren none the less, and with Charles Hodge we looked on their churches as sister churches.
Of late, however, it seems that our emphasis and direction have changed. We still hold that the Scriptures are the Word of God. We still hold to the substitutionary atonement. We still oppose Modernism. But the emphasis is no longer there. We are no longer fighting shoulder to shoulder with other Bible-believing Christians. Maybe we are not fighting very much at all. We have changed. No doubt we are still Presbyterian, though the word is curiously avoided; and the customs, procedures, and temperament of American Presbyterianism are in certain quarters matters of disparagement. We have changed.
It is not here asserted that the majority of our pastors have so turned away from the original emphasis of our church. The contact that the pastors have with their members and with the outside world keeps them alive to the actual religious condition of our age. I can name one, yes two, who in physical pain drive themselves to the limit. I can name two, yes many, who, it would seem, put in an honest twelve-hour day seven days a week. No, it can never be said that our pastors are loafing on the job. But it is here asserted that the corporate emphasis of the church as a whole has changed. If anyone in the church does not recognize it, those outside the church see it plainly. Whereas our movement at its start was widely hailed by Bible-believing Christians as a great force for righteousness against unbelief, it has by this time through some form of mismanagement earned an unenviable reputation. Instead of leading the Christian forces of our country, we have assumed the position of an isolationist porcupine.
It is fruitless to excuse ourselves because other groups have wronged us. To be sure, they have. We gain nothing by complaining of misrepresentation, though we have been misrepresented. On the contrary, we ought to be honest enough to admit that some of the blame rests on us. In any case the emphasis of our church has changed and we have been turned away from our original course. Once we were a strong current in that blest river of salvation. Are we now but an eddy? Are we now in danger of narrowing our stream to an impoverished trickle that will dry up in the sands of a burning desert? Or can we hear a choir invisible telling us
"Pursue thy onward way;
Flow thou to every nation,
Nor in thy richness stay"?
Both our own health and
the actual religious condition of our country demand us to return to the ideals
and emphasis that characterized our church when it was formed in 1936. Let us
return.
No comments:
Post a Comment