Spiritual Polio

SPIRITUAL POLIO

I consider the Christian ministry to be the highest of all callings. My only son and two sons-in-law are ministers, and many of my ancestors have stood in that great procession of men who have preached the gospel of Christ.

We are deeply sensitive to the influence and reputation of ministers, particularly at a time when so many disruptive, distracting, and degrading influences are abroad.

Our deep conviction is that the minister’s spiritual power is directly related to his faith in, understanding, and effective use of the Holy Scriptures. Anything, therefore, which tends to diminish this faith in the Bible is of the deepest concern, not only to the Church but also to the unbelieving world.

That there is an unceasing attack on the authority and integrity of the Word of God is widely known. That much of the criticism is adroit, sophisticated, and destructive is not always so clearly understood. The “assured conclusions” of one group may be diametrically opposed to the equally firm “consensus of scholarly opinion” of another, but the views seem not to deter a united attack on the Scriptures by those who carry the philosophical bias that the Bible is often in error and that it is their duty to demonstrate the error.

I have just read a rather extensive newspaper report of a pastoral conference in Berkeley, California.

Insisting that man must be freed from biblical authority, one speaker made his main thesis the well-known neo-orthodox concept that only as the Bible speaks to a man does it become relevant. “Unless the Word of God is heard by us, that Word has no actual authority over us.” To be sure, Scripture becomes relevant to us as we respond to it; but is it only wrong to kill if I accept the divine order: “Thou shalt not kill”? Is adultery wrong only if I submit to the divine concept of purity?

Is not God’s Written Word valid regardless of what man may think of it? Ignorance of or indifference to divine truth in no way invalidates that truth. There are absolutes ordained of God which cannot be rationalized away and over which man stumbles to his own doom.

According to the same newspaper account, “Dr.… told his class … that the Bible is not the Word of God but merely of itself.”

How then does one know that God is speaking? he was asked. “You don’t,” he replied.

Little wonder that neo-orthodoxy has yet to produce a great soul winner! Wherever faith in the authority and integrity of the Scriptures is destroyed by injection of human interpretation denying clear affirmations of Scripture, the nerve of spiritual power is cut. One may exhibit a high degree of scholarship and intellectual attainment, but the one thing necessary is lacking.

From a practical standpoint, what is the layman to do with his Bible? According to the destructive thesis, he is told to view it only as a compilation of narratives written by men in the limitations of the flesh and bound by traditions and misunderstanding. Out of their efforts has come a book which he should study with the eye of a critic and from which he can receive blessing only as he sees in it divine truth for himself.

This is not a matter of minor importance. The world desperately needs the affirmations and absolutes of Holy Scripture. We as sinners need an authority which says “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.” We need that which the Bible is—a divine revelation of truth which man could never discover for himself; a revelation which is objectively true and valid regardless of what man may think of it.

Many of us accept the Bible at face value because of our presupposition that God has spoken and that he has spoken clearly and factually through human agents. We believe that the writers were guided by the Holy Spirit so that they wrote in honesty and in truthfulness. That they may have but dimly perceived the full implication of what they wrote may of course be true. But to deny the truth of it through the presupposition that human fallibility exceeded divine inspiration is to destroy the message itself and thus allow “interpretations” that amount to presumptuous denials of truth.

If we approach the Bible with the presupposition that here we have a fallible human document through which God tries to speak to man but finds himself handicapped by the agents of his message, we immediately find ourselves trying to sift the chaff from the wheat and, through our own limitations, rejecting the kernels of divine truth in favor of the chaff of human speculation.

Were one to transfer the situation to the realm of modern medicine, the result would be chaos. In the study of medicine there are certain basic sciences which one is required to learn. The student is not permitted to pass off his own opinions or interpretations about anatomy, embryology, chemistry, or physiology. The whole scheme of modern medicine and surgery is built upon the acceptance of known factors. To be sure there is research, but only proven hypotheses are carried over into the realm of practice.

How different has the situation become in the realm of some modern theology! Clearly-stated doctrines of the Christian faith may no longer constitute the basis of either theology or preaching. Students and those long since graduated into the pulpit are now being presented with a multiplicity of opinions and deductions none of which have power to win men to Christ or lead men to godly living. Little wonder that we who sit in the pew are so often puzzled, and the hungry go away unsatisfied having received a stone instead of bread! Never has the world needed truly biblical preaching more than now. Never have men needed to be confronted with their lost condition and Christ’s redemptive work more than now.

How can one wage successful warfare with a Sword which one considers defective? How can one preach with authority when such authority never reaches higher than “I believe” or “I think”?

Rejection of the basic tenets of the Christian faith includes also a substitution of ideas and values. Satan to many is no longer a personality; hell is either a byword or never mentioned; conversion is no longer a work of the Spirit but a matter of personality and psychological adjustment, and the Gospel is reduced to a set of ethical and social values which are only dimly related to a new life in Christ.

Perhaps I have overstated the case and taken offense where no offense should have been taken. If so, I do regret it and apologize. But if the contention is right, and if this new approach to the Bible is cutting at the very heart of the Church’s message to a sinning and lost world, then the indictments ought to be made.

L. NELSON BELL

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