Gordon Clark: Review of The Responsible Self, by H. Richard Niebuhr (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1964. Review of The Responsible Self, by H. Richard Niebuhr. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. May. pg. 8

The Responsible Self by H. Richard Niebuhr, 183 pages; Harper & Row, 1963, $3.50.

The author claims (1) to be a Christian, (2) writing on Christian morality. As for the first claim he admits following Christ at a great distance. "To be a Christian is simply a part of my fate, as it is the fate of another to be a Muslim or a Jew (p. 43).

As for the second claim, we also express doubts because in chapter five he rejects the definition of sin as transgression of the Law, and discards the ideas of punishment, repentance, justification, and obedience as leading to paradoxes. The statements of his substitute position are either so broad and vague or so trivially true, that one has difficulty maintaining interest.

The argument in general, beginning in chapter one, is that teleological and deontological ethics have both failed. Neither good nor right are the correct categories for ethics. They should be replaced by the category of the fitting.

But Niebuhr hardly distinguished the fitting from the good or the right, and nowhere indicates how to identify a fitting action.

Niebuhr asserts that his theory fits the Bible better than the other views because Isaiah and the prophets did not preach obedience to the Law but called attention to what was happening. Not believing in proof texts, Niebuhr does not quote Isa. 1:12, 19, 20, "Who hath required this at your hand? ... If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

The ethics of the good and the ethics of the right are too individualistic. A self cannot arise outside social experience (therefore God could not have created Adam before Eve?). In the Church we are responsible to our fellow-members, but also to a common cause represented by the prophets and apostles. Even Christ points beyond himself to the cause in which he is faithful to his companions; and God is faithful to the world.

Hence, if it is doubtful that his theory is theistic, it is clear that it is not Christian.

Gordon H. Clark

Gordon Clark: Review of Man in Community, by Russell Phillip Shedd (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1963. Review of Man in Community, by Russell Phillip Shedd. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. December.

Man in Community by Russell Phillip Shedd. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Mich. 209 pp., $1.95

In politics, in sociology, and in philosophy, the relation between part and whole, individual and group, is an important question. In the Old Testament the question concerns the relation between the Israelite and Israel, the covenant, the sins of the parents visited upon the children; in the New Testament it concerns the relation between the believer and the Church, the sinner and Adam, and the Body of Christ. Dr. Shedd's study canvasses the Biblical material in great detail.

Although this material indicates a "solidarity" of some sort, one must be careful to make precise what sort it is. Does a blood cell have existence and individuality apart from the blood stream? Is man just a cell in society? Is he its product? Or is he an individual in his own right? 

Dr. Shedd dislikes individualism. He accepts a weak argument from C. H. Dodd to prove that man is not an individual, that the ego does not remain throughout all changes, and that insofar as man can be called an individual, he is so simply because he is part of the group from which he emerges.

Yet one must question whether the sociological collectivism of the Bible (if that is what one wishes to call it) can best be understood in terms of (Platonic?) Realism. If we are realistically in Adam, and if "the one is the many and the many one" (p. 110), would it not follow that every sin of Adam, and not just his first sin, is also our sin? And if there is a realistic solidarity of priest and victim, is the goat a realistic member of the group? Can there be a vicarious sacrifice in a realistic philosophy? Apparently not; for although in some places the author speaks of substitution, he finally says, "We have found fault with those views which describe the relationship of Christ to the Church as forensic and unrealistic" (p. 157).

There is, I believe, a fundamental fallacy in the construction of the author's argument. While he admits that "Ye are God's temple" and the "olive tree" are metaphorical (pp. 174-176), yet he insists that solidarity, as in "the Body of Christ", must not be considered figurative. Because of this, metaphors are transmuted into metaphysics and the exegesis becomes twisted.

Gordon H. Clark

Gordon Clark: Assassination of President Kennedy (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1963. Assassination of President Kennedy. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. December. pg. 2.

The assassination of President Kennedy has produced expressions of shock from the ordinary people who lined the streets of Dallas and from the high officials of government.

There have been expressions of sympathy for Mrs. Kennedy and her children. Sudden bereavement is hard to bear. But let us also remember the bereaved Mrs. Tippit, whose husband was also slain as he tried to arrest the assassin. The one bereavement was as much a sudden shock as the other.

But the President's death receives the greater publicity, not because he was a husband, but because he was a president. His was a death that affects the whole nation. The stock market lost ten billion dollars, not because a husband died, but because a president died. Because of the president's death the policies of the government, both foreign policy and domestic policy, may be realigned. Reporters rushed to politicians and asked how the assassination would alter their plans and ambitions. No one can exclude from his mind the realization that politics will be different. But while the deceased president's body lies in state, it is inappropriate to issue public pronouncements on politics. Equally inappropriate is it to discuss the plans of politicians in church.

Most appropriate, however, and especially in church, is a recognition of the criminality of assassination. God has commanded, Though shalt not murder. The Church, as God's mouthpiece on earth, must proclaim the righteousness of God and call the people to obey his laws.

Unfortunately the visible churched have failed in their duty, and great sections of the American people ignore God. Well organized groups have been at work to eradicate the idea of God from our national life. Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court objects to having the motto In God We Trust in the courtroom. 

These attitudes have caused an increase in crime. Criminals go unpunished. Instead of being treated as wicked, they are treated as if they were sick. And the result is ever increasing crime.

This is the climate that breeds assassination. The communist assassin is a man who has denied God and has rejected Christian morality. He is a supporter of Fidel Castro. He is an exponent of violence. He is an example of the end product of godlessness. 

Will now the shock of assassination be sufficiently strong to create a demand for righteousness in America? Will the people require action against communism, a curb on crime, and high morality on the part of government officials? Will the people correct their own conduct? Or will America like ancient Israel ignore God, His warnings, and His preliminary judgments? Will the United States, like ancient Judah, be enslaved by a godless power?

Today we must think of the future, but we cannot see it. We do not know what victories or what defeats are in story for our nation. But for ourselves as individual Christians we know the God of Heaven, who removeth kings and setteth up kings, causes all things to work together for good to them he has called to love Him.

Gordon Clark: First Things First (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1960. First Things First. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. June-July.

Because it was the dedication of a church building, ministers of several denominations were present. Thus it was that a friend of mine heard the sermon of a denominational secretary. Afterward my friend complimented the secretary on his forthright gospel message and remarked that he wished that Dr. So and So of the secretary's denomination preached the same gospel. To which the speaker of the evening replied, "Dr. So and So believes the same things that I do." "How do you know?" asked my friend. "Why, I have talked with him and he told me so," came the answer. "Well," my friend said, "I could never have guessed it; I have only heard him preach."

Now, Dr. So and So's sermons, which are heard over the radio by thousands, do not attack the gospel. His message does not contradict the Scripture. He simply avoids the vicarious atonement and similar doctrines and gives messages of psychological comfort. He does not put first things first.

There are other preachers who preach sociology, politics, and even communism. There are preachers who directly attack the trustworthiness of the Scripture and deny its main doctrines. It is plausible to think that these men are worse than Dr. So and So. They do and he does not belittle the Bible. Well, maybe they are really worse than he; but the message of salvation is just as little heard in the one place as in the others. And if faith cometh by hearing, the auditors in Dr. So and So's congregation will no more have faith than those in the other churches. Refraining from criticizing the Bible, refraining from attacking its doctrines, gives as little publicity to the message of salvation, in fact it gives less publicity to the message than an explicit attack.

There are other ways of putting first things last, even while appearing to honor the Word of God. One such way is to ride a hobby. That is, a minister may have one beloved topic of minor importance and spend virtually all his time on it. And he may do this, not because of any conscious desire to minimize the rest of the Bible, but just because he thinks the subject requires constant emphasis. The subject might be archaeology. Now, archaeological discoveries throw a great deal of light on portions of the Old Testament, and they have frequently corroborated the truth of the Bible. It is well and wise to preach on archeology occasionally. But not every week.

Then there are men who have somewhat peculiar interpretations of difficult passages and who think these doubtful details need vigorous inculcation. The other day I was reading an article of some devotional fervor. Its ostensible thrust was very good. The writer stressed prayer, worship, service to God, in short he called upon his readers to live a Godly life. But the Biblical support of these excellent conclusions was mainly the repeated insistence that there would be a secret Rapture when Christ would come in the clouds and snatch away the saints on earth for a period of seven years.

The very best that can be said for this theory is that it is highly imaginative. Great ingenuity is required to find any Scriptural mention of a period of seven years during which the saints are in the clouds with Christ. And far from the Rapture's being secret, the passage in I Thess. 4:16 tells us that the Lord will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God. It seems to be a noisy affair. Yet I have read stories and tracts which picture those who are left on earth after the saints are taken up as wondering where their acquaintances have gone. They seem to have just disappeared and no one knows how or where. But if this rapture of the saints includes the resurrection of the dead, as I Thess. explicitly says, it is hardly light that the unbelievers will be so bewildered.

Now, if this unlikely interpretation were correct, a brilliant deduction from other obscure hints, it would be proper to preach it occasionally, perhaps in obscure hints. But there is no justification for obscuring the main message of the Bible by such imaginative details.

Over a period of 150 years the theologians of the Reformation worked out the main message, the most important doctrines, the themes of the Bible requiring the greatest emphasis. These were set down in the Reformed creeds, the greatest of which is the Westminster Confession. Its first chapter outlines the doctrine of revelation - the special revelation of God's will written in the Bible. The second chapter deals with the Trinity. The third chapter concerns God's eternal decree, by which He had foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. And the other chapters follow in logical order. Predestination, Total Depravity, Irresistible Grace, the Vicarious Sacrifice of Christ, Justification by Faith - these are the important things; these are the first things that should be put first. To spend too much time on lesser matters, even when they properly demand some time, to to impugn the weightier matters of the law.

When Calvin in Geneva and John Knox in Edinburgh preached these doctrines, the Church reached the highest point it has ever attained in all its history. The reign of the Stuarts in the following century was a disaster. The Deism of the eighteenth century was deadly. The modernism of the nineteenth century was no less so. To be sure, the gospel has never been silenced, and the level of Biblical intelligence has all this while remained higher than it was during the Romish days of the Middle Ages. But Biblical knowledge and the life of the Church as a whole has rather steadily declined over the last 300 years.

There is no evidence that we today are on the verge of a new reformation. There is no evidence that we can reestablish the level of life in Knox's Edinburgh. Our influence and position seem to be more like that of Jeremiah, who was called of God to preach to a people that refused to listen. But though he have no reasonable hope of duplicating the work of the Reformers, there is one thing we can do and one thing we ought to do. The is, to keep the memory and the knowledge of those days alive. We can keep the doctrines of the Confession from being entirely forgotten. We can do it by insisting on first things first - the infallibility of Scripture, the Trinity, the eternal decree of the Sovereign God, Creation Providence, the Fall of Man, and the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ. Put first things first.

Gordon Clark: On Social Security, A Rejoinder (The Witness)

1953. On Social Security: A Rejoinder. The Witness. Aug-Sep. Pg. 20.

In the Feb. 1952 issue of The Witness I argued that the Social Security scheme in our country was financially dishonest, would contribute to national bankruptcy, and was an indication of the low moral standards of eighty percent of the people. In the April 1953 issue Mr. Edward F. Hankin published a reply.

Basing my rough estimate on Congressional voting, I had said that eighty percent of the people approve of Social Security. Mr. Hankin thinks he refutes me with "a little simple arithmetic (that) changes the eighty to two." On Aug. 1, 1952, he says, only two percent of the population received Social Security payments. How this shows that the other 78% do not approve of the scheme is hard to understand. Mr. Hankin's simple arithmetic may be unimpeachable, but the same cannot be said for his logic.

Aside from this irrelevant arithmetic Mr. Hankin attempts to reply to my charge of injustice. Social security is dishonest because it penalizes the honest and thrifty and subsidizes the irresponsible. Even in the case of those who pay for part of their benefits, the system is so set up that under certain circumstances they receive less than they paid in, or even may receive nothing. Private insurance and annuity companies, operating on actuarial data, do not cheat their policy holders in any such way. But Mr. Hankin says "necessarily when any new system is put into operation, there are some who receive benefits they have not paid for." This is of course a false statement, and can only be based on ignorance of the insurance business.

Further, this argument seems to me to assume that theft and injustice are legitimate when used to get a system started. The labor unions used this principle to justify their violence, murders, riots, and insurrections in the thirties: they were just putting their new system into operation. This is also the Communists' principle. Massacres are justified because they produce Utopia. What was Paul's remark about those who say, Let us do evil that good may come?

But Mr. Hankin seems embarrassed at Scriptural references, and argues that Paul in II Cor. 12:14 did not mean what he said but inadvertently used a colloquial expression of that day. Paul, we remember, also quoted a Stoic poet, but he did so because the Stoic had told the truth. Nor does Paul's command that parents should lay up riches for their children rather than lay up debts for their children conflict with the duty of children to take care of their parents when through disaster they are left penniless. Maybe New Dealers have recently become conscious of moral obligations toward the aged (though I interpret it more as a grab for power and an attempt to establish socialism), yet Christian have recognized these obligations in all ages. It is not something new as Mr. Hankin says. Mr. Hankin's fallacy consists in inferring from the fact that something should be done, the erroneous conclusion that the government should do it. Apparently he would crush all private enterprise and philanthropy.

Mr. Hankin new the beginning of his article complains that if what I said is correct, the United States is in a bad way - as if the certainty that the United States could not possibly be in a bad way refutes my contention. But we surely are in a bad way. For interest readers I recommend, To Comminism Via Majority Vote, by Admiral Ben Moreell; The T. V. A. Idea, by Dean Russell; Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt; Planned Chaos, by Ludwig von Mises. And beyond these one can try Spengler, Toynbee, Hayek, Sorokin, and the Bible.

Gordon Clark: [Liberals Scored By Church Men] (Neward N. J. News)

1935. [Liberals Scored By Church Men]. Newark N. J. News. May 14.

Supporters of Presbyterians' Independent Missions Rally in Orange

The division in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., which has resulted in the creation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, was described as "a fight to the death between two mutually exclusive religions" at a rally of the board's supporters last night in Orange High School.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark, University of Pennsylvania professor of philosophy, who used those words, attacked the Auburn Affirmation, which asserted minister's rights to liberal interpretation of the five Fundamental beliefs, the inerrancy of the Bible, the Virgin Birth, Christ's miracles, the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Affirmation was circulated after the General Assembly of 1923 had passed a resolution reiterating faith in those teachings.

Dr. Clark said the Auburn Affirmation would be significant in church history. "The reason it is so important," he stated, "is that it constitutes a major offense against the Word of God. Thirteen hundred Presbyterian ministers have signed this heretical document."

Declares Judges Hostile.

Referring to trials of Independent Board members for disregarding the edict of the General Assembly of 1934 dispersing them, Dr. Clark said: "If these men are finally brought before the Permanent Judicial Commission they will be facing ministers of whom half have signed the Auburn Affirmation and of whom half are in sympathy."

Rev. H. McAllister Griffiths of Philadelphia, managing editor of Christianity Today, described the schism as "a conflict between those who stand for the Word of God and those who wish to mix the Word of God and the authority of God with the word and authority of Man." In decreeing that missionary funds should not be given the Independent Board, Mr. Griffiths said, the General Assembly usurped its authority.

"I do not say that all, or even the majority, of the missionaries are tainted with modernism," he stated, "but I do say that the fountainhead, the Board of Foreign Missions in New York, is so tainted with modernism that it will in time permeate the whole missionary structure."

James E. Bennett of Flushing, L. I., member of the Independent Board, called the trial of Rev. Dr. J. Gresham Machen of Philadelphia a "mock trial." Dr. Machen was brought to New Brunswick for trial, he declared, because the authorities feared they would lose the case in Philadelphia, "so they discovered they had lost the papers, of something, which transferred him from New Brunswick Presbytery to Philadelphia." The result of the trial, Bennett stated, was that "Dr. Machen can serve at the Communion table in Philadelphia, but not in New Brunswick."

Gordon Clark: [Predicts Revival of Heresy Charge] (The Philadelphia Bulletin)

1934. [Predicts Revival of Heresy Charge]. The Philadelphia Bulletin. November 13.

Prof. Gordon H. Clark Declares Its Dismissal by Presbyterians Was Illegal

11 Here Were Accused

A protest that charges of heresy against eleven Presbyterian clergymen here were dropped in an illegal manner is made by professor Gordon H. Clark, of the University of Pennsylvania and a Presbyterian elder.

Professor Clark, who is an instructor in philosophy, is the son of the Rev. David S. Clark, minister of Bethel Presbyterian Church, 19th and York sts.

He predicts that the heresy charges against the eleven local signers of the Auburn Affirmation will be revived at the next meeting of the Presbytery in January.

The protest of illegality is based by Professor Clark on the statement that a motion to refer the heresy charges to the Committee on Judicial Business had passed, and then, after some of the members had left the Presbytery, it was brought up again and failed to pass. He further charges that the accused men had voted on their own cases.

"The five points involved," says Professor Clark, "are the value of the Holy Scripture, the truth of the Virgin Birth, the performance of miracles, Christ's sacrifice on Calvary to satisfy Divine justice and reconcile us to God, and last, His Resurrection."

He charges that some of the signers of the Auburn Affirmation believe some of these doctrines but "all deny the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures." He continues: "There are in the Presbyterian Church two mutually exclusive religions fighting the supremacy. (The Fundamentalist and Modernist.) One is Christianity and one is not. It is claimed that a statement of this sort and charges of heresy disrupt the peace of the Church. Certainly the orthodox men of the Church did not start this.

"When two antagonistic religions are engaged in a death struggle, there will be no peace without purity. Some of the mean whose heretical teaching is running our church may really be Christians, temporarily entangled in the deceiver's net. We pray for their rescue and return to the Book.

"Charges of such a serious nature as have been made against the signers of the Auburn Affirmation are not to be brushed aside by illegal un-Christian tactics. You will find that these charges still have a great deal of life in them.

"We feel that the reformation of the Presbyterian Church, with its modernism and indifferentism, is possible only through the successful prosecution of these charges. Only thus can unity, purity and true peace be restored. It will take trouble, it will cause trouble; but to avoid this sort of trouble will mean peace with paganism."

Gordon Clark: [Heresy Decision Declared Illegal] (Philadelphia Record)

1934. [Heresy Decision Declared Illegal]. The Philadelphia Record. November 14.

Penn Professor Asks Prosecution of Presbyterian Clerics

Rejection by the Philadelphia Presbytery of heresy charges against 11 prominent clergymen was declared illegal yesterday by Dr. Gordon H. Clark, University of Pennsylvania professor and a church elder.

The heresy charges were made October 12 by Rev. H. McAllister Griffiths. They were rejected a week ago when the presbytery met in the Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, Broad and Diamond sts. The accused ministers were said to have denied five fundamental doctrines, including the divinity of Christ and the Biblical miracles.

"All of these ministers have signed the Auburn Affirmation in which these beliefs are slighted," Dr. Clark said. "Some of them believe some of these doctrines in spite of their action. But all of them deny the divine inspiration of the Bible.

Tehre are two religions in the Presbyterian Church. One is Christian and one is not. They are engaged in a death struggle. Reformation of the Presbyterian Church is possible only through the prosecution of these charges."

Dr, Clark is a son of Dr. Davis S. Clark, minister of the Bethel Presbyterian Church, 19th and York sts.

600th Post: An Indulgent Look Back

This will be the sixth post in this series of reflections (link, link, link, link). The last 100 posts have come in the past 3 months. I did manage to find time to finish transcribing my personal notes on sermons preached at my church between late 2019 and 2021 (link). I've also been reading, writing, and correspondence on original sin (link), which is an area of interest at the moment. The majority of my time, however, has been spent continuing the Gordon Clark project I mentioned in post 500 on this blog, the most recent one in the above series (link). 

An important update to this project is that last week, I was able to visit the J. Oliver Buswell library at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. I spent the whole week (and needed every bit of it!) researching what Clark material could be found there. I found several articles in their main library, one of which I shared with Doug Douma and has been posted here, another of which I have posted here. There will be several new Clark articles to come from periodicals that have been well known to contain material by him. 

The bigger update, however, is I found that there is a huge amount of Clark material in the PCA archives - located under the main library - that, to my knowledge, has never been published. One can find an index of some of these items here. Mr. Wayne Sparkman, director of the PCA Historical Center - who was very hospitable and offered invaluable advice on where I might find Clark articles in the main library's periodicals - graciously allowed me to view the archives each day. 

All said, I took 10,000+ (!) photos of material by Clark. Now, no doubt some of the photos are of material I might already have or has been published somewhere, for I was rather liberal in photo-taking for the sake of thoroughness. Nevertheless, I am quite confident that the vast majority of the photos are of material that most readers of Clark have never seen. It was certainly worth the trip to find these.

Out of respect for the purpose of the PCA Historical Center, I do not plan to publicly post entire documents from the archives here. I still plan to finish a chronological bibliography of Clark, full of embedded hyperlinks to places online one can find his works in a searchable format. This may take a while longer than I had thought, as I will need time to sift through and categorize the photos. Other phases of my research project outlined in my 500th blog post (transcriptions and book goals) remain unchanged.

One further goal I am entertaining is to write a book on something like: Select Sermon Notes by Clark. In itself, transcribing said notes will be time-consuming, as many of them are written in shorthand notation and require translation using a cipher I mention in another post (link; fortuitously, one of the archival materials contains Clark's own key to his shorthand notation and confirmed many of my inferences). As I plan to try to digitally transcribe all of Clark's material anyway for other research purposes, the time element is less of an obstacle to me. More important would be to obtain relevant permissions for such a publication as well as to find out if people would be generally interested in reading Clark's sermon notes. I confess ignorance on this point.

A final, somewhat long-term vision (one that might well extend beyond my lifetime) would be to see something like a Complete Works of Gordon Clark come to fruition. With the exception of what I found last week and books by the TrinityFoundation that have yet to be made into ebooks (which, to my understanding, will eventually happen), I've transcribed most of what has already been available. There are perhaps one or two dozen things left to transcribe aside from material from the PCA Historical archives. I haven't neatly edited my transcriptions, but I have kept them chronologized and broken down by decade, so perhaps that might someday function as a help towards this vision.

In all things, patience. If I transcribed one photo per day, it would take almost 30 years to complete. But I am trying not to make assumptions or take for granted God's blessings.

Gordon Clark: Do Miracles Occur Today? (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1966. Do Miracles Occur Today? The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. Aug-Sep. pgs. 6-7

A study of Biblical miracles is stimulated by three interests. First, one naturally wonders about Roman Catholic and Pentecostal claims to work miracles. Second, some scientists assert that no miracles could even have happened because they would be violations of natural law. Third, Christians wish to appeal to miracles, particularly to Christ's resurrection, in order to establish Christianity and in so doing must formulate some general theological viewpoint.

First, Romanists claim the occurrence of many medieval and even contemporary miracles. Pentecostalists mail out a paper urging the readers to send for a cloth that has been blessed, so that when one has a headache, one can put the cloth on his head and the headache will go away. Most Protestants look askance at such claims and question whether a modern preachers can continue to exercise the authority of the apostle Paul. A satisfactory conclusion must be based on the Biblical material.

Second, the scientific question is too intricate to discuss here. Hume, whose chief delight it was to attack Christianity, defined miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, and as these, so he says, are based on a firm and unalterable experience, miracles have never been observed in any age or country. This type of argument leads to the philosophy of science, and since Hume's day not only have the laws of science been radically altered - not a single one of the Newtonian laws remains - but even the concept of law has been drastically revised. Since not even an outline of a college course in scientific philosophy can be given, suffice it to say that the denial of the possibility of miracles cannot be made without a prior proof that there is no God. If God actually rules the universe, miracles are obviously possible.

Third, some very good Christian theologians have defined miracle as "an immediate act of God in the visible world." Since most scientists in the past have held that all events occur subject to prior conditions, this definition of a miracle seems to imply that a miracle is a violation of natural law.

Not much progress can be made on any of these points without taking into account the Biblical material. An exhaustive study would be best, but here only a sample can be made.

The original creation of the universe was accomplished without means. It is of necessity an immediate act of God. But most people are inclined to limit the concept of miracle to some particular act within the world, in which case creation would not be called a miracle.

The formation of Eve from a rib of Adam and the escape of the Israelites across the Red Sea would usually be called miracles. But in both cases God used means. In the second case the Bible very explicitly describes the means. God sent a strong east wind to blow the water back. Now, of course, the wind blew just when the Israelites needed it. Does this make the miracle a coincidence? At any rate either the crossing of the Red Sea was not a miracle or a miracle is not an immediate act of God.

In the New Testament we read about the Virgin Birth, the star of Bethlehem, the earthquake that rent the veil of the temple and raised some saints from the dead. In these no human agent had a part. Then there are the many healing miracles of Jesus. But Jesus also performed some, just a few by comparison, so-called nature miracles, such as the stilling of the storm, walking on the water, and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes on two occasions.

When the Romanists and faith healers make their claims to perform miracles, I would like to ask them to still a storm, walk on the sea, multiply loaves, or raise the dead. If they did something like this, it would be easier to believe that they had apostolic authority.

For whatever may be the truth concerning the laws of science and that type of question, the miracles in the Bible are most often said to be for the purpose of attesting a spoken revelation. Of course Christ was motivated in his healing miracles by compassion; but he also wanted to show that he was the promised Messiah. As this had been the case with Moses, so also was it with the Apostles: their miracles had the purpose of attesting their authority to speak the word of God.

We may conclude therefore that whatever else* needs to be added about miracles, there are no miracles today nor is there any further revelation beyond the Bible.

* "Whatever else includes the miracles of false prophets and Satan; and also the not-too-important question as to whether regeneration is a "miracle" of grace.