In the prologue to his Gospel, addressed to Theophilus, Luke states that his purpose is to “set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us.” In this second half of the twentieth century, the Christian world is besieged by writers on theology who believe most surely in very few things other than their notion that there is not much to believe anymore. It is difficult to determine whether they address Christians to convince them of the insubstantial presuppositions that have beguiled them, or the unbelieving multitudes to assure them that they were right all the time in rejecting the historic Christian faith. The “God-is-dead,” “church-is-irrelevant” writers confound the saints and confuse the sinners. But they would hardly agree to the terms of this charge, since they are actually most skeptical about sainthood and most dogmatic in repudiating the biblical concept of sin.
These vocal copy-suppliers for the seekers after “religious news” are in plentiful supply in nearly all communions. On the surface they are champions of honesty in thinking about supra-rational matters. They are eager to be regarded as destroyers of ancient ikons that have diverted the faithful from a true faith. They seek to revamp the historic faith so as to make it respectable for man “come of age.” Christianity is a subject rather than an experience; a theme to be debated with academic objectivity, not a way of life to be commended as the one that incorporates the ultimate meaning for human existence and the only peace that can survive what Shakespeare termed “outrageous fortune.” Christianity is reduced to “religion” (or one of the “historic faiths”), a proper item on a college or university curriculum, to be sure, since in ways somewhat incomprehensible to contemporary debunkers of the faith, the Christian religion has greatly influenced the development of Western civilization. The documents of the Christian faith must be subjected to the same critical study given all other historical data. There is no place for any notion that the Scriptures are to be understood only in the context of the reality of a supernatural order and only from the vantage-point of a belief that “the Spirit breathes upon—and through—the Word,” nor for the notion that reason must be supplemented by faith in interpreting and in accounting for the Scriptures.
We hope that the “realistic” challengers of the historic faith are well intentioned. Yet even if they are, we cannot help believing that they will stimulate doubt rather than faith, confusion rather than confidence.
Some time ago I spoke to a Baptist gathering about the need for “a Baptist Reformation.” I urged that this would involve a rediscovery of something very old rather than the discovery of something new—the positive preaching of a Gospel revealed by One “who knows what is in man”; a renewed emphasis upon the priesthood of all believers; a controlling conception of the Church as the household of faith rather than as a political pressure group. When I had finished, one preacher berated me for being reactionary and obscurantist. (If you cannot counter what a speaker has said, call him bad names!) A year later I learned that his own church is badly divided, and that many are leaving his world-centered ministry. I am sure that he will not find a diagnosis of his church’s ills in my analysis, for decriers of historic Christian convictions are often consoled by the liberal remnant that stands by them, swift to condemn those who persist in holding to a faith now 2,000 years old. This preacher was ready to subject me to an inquisition because I have more faith in pietism than in jazz masses, in a given body of doctrine than in a flux of current opinions, in the Lordship of Christ than in the supremacy of social demands, in the authority of the Scriptures than in that of the latest popular theologian.
In saying these things, I do not wish to be accused of indifference to the need for many social and economic reforms aimed at the correction of gross evils and inequities. No man in his right mind would have such an indifference. I simply assert that, as a proponent of the Christian faith and a servant of the Christian Church, I would make personal salvation a precondition of social change and a seeking of the will of God the pattern for such change. I advance no “either-or” proposition here but simply plead that “the right order of going” be observed. Let the non-Christian world-orders try as they will for social change, but let the Christian Church specialize in the life-changing of men and women by the redemptive power of One who is greater than the passing scene and political fashions. The Church’s this-worldly influence will in the long run be measured by the reality of its other-worldly orientation (see John 17).
This brings me to a “hard saying.” I am obliged to express the belief that many glib revisers of the Church’s faith have, in effect at least, repudiated that faith. They seek to discredit a faith they themselves have lost. They seek to substitute for the historic faith of the Church a “new version” lacking the vital elements of the Christian tradition, and bearing the authority only of their own rationality and intellectual adroitness. The “faith” they offer is alleged to satisfy the modern mind, if not the modern heart. It is a faith supposed to be beyond logical rebuttal, but it also goes beyond personal appropriation (it is not intended for that anyway; religion is primarily a subject for discussion, not for commitment). The “faith” advanced by many critics of the faith of the Christian generations is not a personal one, for, after all, they are writing “about religion” and not witnessing to a religious experience. Intellectually respectable writers on theological subjects must not commit themselves anyway—a rival publisher of theological tabletalk might, all too soon, write a better best-seller that would make one’s own passé! So any tone of assurance or finality is bad theological protocol.
Perhaps I sound unduly harsh. Perhaps I have written with too much impatience. Perhaps I have not done full justice to some who are deeply committed to the faith that holds me and are seeking to make it more intelligible to those who must hear the Gospel in their own idiom. I readily admit these possibilities. But I write with sober seriousness when I call into question all efforts to fit the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world’s specifications, all attempts to substitute social pressures for an evangelistic approach to the needs of men and women one by one, all ingenious strivings to substitute the wisdom of men for the wisdom of God, and to make men wise on every subject except salvation itself. I write with deliberation when I question scholarship concerned with a faith that need not be personally held; with a religion-become-philosophy that makes all faith subject to and limited by reason, that gives human speculation priority over revealed truth, and that makes skepticism more virtuous than faith. “It is easier to squander Christian capital than to accumulate it,” as Sir Arnold Lunn once put it.
I believe that the Church must recover some of the assurances it has for the moment lost before it can discover more relevant and revolutionary ways to minister in the second half of the twentieth century. Some old wells must be redug and some old paths followed before new victories of the faith can be won—indeed, before they can even be attempted. Above all, our answer to the question of John the Baptist, “Shall we look for another?,” must be an unqualified “No!”
