The recent Seminar on the Authority of Scripture, held at Gordon College and Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts, may prove of historic importance for intra-evangelical relationships. The ten days of independently sponsored discussion were a significant though wholly unofficial demonstration of evangelical ecumenicity on the scholarly level. As such, they undoubtedly led to better understanding among evangelical scholars. Participants did not always agree, but they expressed their differences with candor and mutual respect, and within the fellowship of those who acknowledge the authority of the Bible as that of Christ himself.
It is heartening that some fifty scholars from ten countries and from various ecclesiastical backgrounds could find agreement in such vital matters as the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture, its complete truthfulness, and its authoritativeness as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. While important questions, among them the concept of inerrancy, were left for further study, the report adopted (see News, p. 41) shows that, when scholars who are committed to the supreme authority of Scripture talk to one another candidly and at length, they will discover important areas of agreement and be encouraged to increased scholarly activity.
In such discussion there might be tendencies that could lead on the one hand to isolationism within a doctrinaire orthodoxy and on the other hand to concessiveness to underlying liberal assumptions. But this need not happen if evangelical scholars continue to stand under the supreme authority of Scripture. Indeed, the ten days at Wenham may prove to be the catalyst evangelical scholarship has long needed for strengthening its forces and challenging liberalism anew. Certainly the following resolution passed by the seminar shows that there is much land yet to be taken:
In view of the great need within the evangelical community and in the whole Church, we recommend:
I. Work on the highest possible level of scholarship in these and similar fields:
A. The production of critical commentaries on the Hebrew and Greek texts.
B. An up-to-date statement of the Warfield position on Scripture.
C. Thorough discussion of inerrancy—the history of the use of the term, its scope, definition and so on.
D. Discussion of the inter-relationship of metaphysics, theology, and exegetical studies.
E. Discussion of language and Scripture, including divine communication through human elements.
F. Hermeneutics, including basic principles, close analysis of the history of hermeneutics, literary genre, and the use and control of presuppositions.
G. The nature of truth and the verification of the truth of Scripture.
II. The need for evangelical scholars to maintain fellowship and contact by:
A. Taking opportunities at such meetings as those of the Evangelical Theological Society, the American Academy of Religion, and other learned societies to meet on specific projects.
B. Theologians and biblical scholars continuing to meet together.
C. Finding means to extend this fellowship on an international level—e.g., the Tyndale Fellowship for biblical research in Britain.
III. A system of foundation grants, enabling individuals or small groups of scholars to pursue specific and agreed projects.
IV. The encouragement of evangelical institutions to strengthen their sabbatical-leave programs and to foster research by their faculty members.
V. A plea to the scholarly community to pay more attention to truly biblical research and academic writing and to resist temptation to popularize in areas already adequately covered.
Here is a call to evangelical scholars to lengthen their cords and strengthen their stakes. Heads of evangelical seminaries, colleges, and foundations, as well as Christian publishers, might well ponder these recommendations.
Why Hate The Bible?
The mailbag of a magazine contains everything from bombs to bonbons. The same bag that brings joy brings sorrow. One letter expresses the highest praise, the next the most scathing criticism.
Recently our mail bag has contained some printed material that explodes with hatred for the Bible. This does not come from readers in the neo-orthodox and liberal traditions, where the Bible may be badly used at times but is certainly not hated. It comes, rather, from people divorced from the Christian tradition who denigrate the Bible and refuse to find anything good in it.
One pamphlet alleges that there are contradictions, doctored passages, absurdities, tyranny, cannibalism, barbarities, atrocities, impossibilities, insane sex ideas, human sacrifice, and injustice to women within the Bible.
The author claims these facts are known to church leaders, who conceal them from the laity. “One-half the clergy are well-housed hypocrites,” he says; “the other half are poor ignoramuses.” Further, “the Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards.”
Why this hatred of a book that has led millions of people to a better life and produced fruits no one could object to? Some say, “It’s antiquated and outdated.” But nobody hates outdated textbooks in biology or chemistry. Others say, “It’s a collection of fables and myths.” But nobody hates Andersen’s Fairy Tales. No one wants to start a bonfire with Aesop’s Fables. No campaigns are mounted against Jupiter, Minerva, or Diana.
How ridiculous to say, as the author of this pamphlet does, that “if bad books are burned, the largest bonfire should consist of Bibles.” Yet what is perhaps most absurd of all is the assertion that “the Higher Critics have won. Their victory makes the Fall a fiction and the Atonement an absurdity. The descendants of apes need no savior.”
How true! Descendants of apes need no Saviour. Only men do.
Graham In A ‘Green And Pleasant Land’
“In America, it’s popular to go to church. In many places you have to go to be respectable or to get ahead in business. Here in London it’s the opposite—you’re sort of an odd person if you go to church.”
As usual, Billy Graham described the situation bluntly. Many American churchgoers are shams, but at least they go. In Britain, the situation is so bleak that many an active Christian has slipped into a kind of despondent minority-group attitude.
It took courage for Graham and his associates to enter this unpromising situation. The response they got (see p. 39) can be explained only as the result of the unheralded efforts of thousands of Britons and the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.
Mass evangelism is nothing new to Britain. Graham has been there before, and Gipsy Smith and Dwight L. Moody were there before him. There are also many British evangelists. Yet somehow the call for public profession of commitment seems to go against the British grain.
On the eve of Graham’s arrival, lurking resentments boiled forth in Jim Hunter’s new novel The Flame, which appears to be England’s counterpart of Elmer Gantry. The Times Literary Supplement observed that the novel “assumes that evangelical fervour, conservative politics, and race hatred form an ineluctable syndrome. This, a flattering assumption for readers on the Left, is neither true nor helpful.” After watching the handling of Graham on a TV discussion program, a columnist in Newcastle-on-Tyne communicated that one would have thought the evangelist “was peddling something nasty like racialism, Fascism, or how to squeeze just one more gambling den into England’s green and pleasant land.”
Secular carping is predictable, but the abuse of a dedicated evangelist by those within the church is strange indeed. In an age when ecumenism seems to overcome all, Graham is ostracized by some on the grounds that his views of the Bible are too conservative. (If only these critics were as particular when it comes to liberal theology.)
Billy Graham is not simply an American-style evangelist but a New Testament-style evangelist. The main and continuing criticism is not that he uses TV, pancake makeup, a Southern accent, advertising, a fairly large staff, or popular-styled music, but that he does little more than preach what was preached in the first century, albeit with contemporary references.
The thousands of crusade converts, most of them young people, seem a small band compared to the armies of secularism. But quiet, grass-roots soul-winning will go on long after the Billy Graham team returns to America and the mass meetings are fading memories. And this could remake a nation.
The Good Gift Of Wholesome Humor
By the way, whatever happened to humor—honest humor, that good gift of God? The question was brought to mind in part by the recent death of Ed Wynn.
We recall pleasantly those ante-TV evenings of listening to Ed Wynn on the radio as the Texaco Firechief. Wynn, master of the pun and giggle, was a truly funny man. For half a century he brought his audiences a little bit of respite from the sometimes terrifying facts of daily life.
In a day when many comedians seem to feel that success depends on titillating their audiences with prurient appeals, it is refreshing to recall that Wynn rose to the top of his field by being not only funny but also wholesome.
We salute the memory of Ed Wynn, a master practitioner of the good gift of wholesome humor and hope for a worthy successor.
