Review of Current Religious Thought: May 23, 1960

Two books have crossed my desk in recent days. The first is John Murray’s Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty and the other is Emile Cailliet’s The Recovery of Purpose. Both are excellent pieces of work.

John Murray teaches theology at Westminster Seminary and has, in my opinion one of the finest theological minds of our day. As one would guess from his professorship he is orthodox, but more exactly Reformed. Describing a man as orthodox and Reformed does not classify him too exactly in these days when another man’s theological position depends so much on your own viewpoint. We can describe John Murray as orthodox and Reformed in terms of the Calvinism which found expression in the Second Synod of Dort and in the Westminster Confession of Faith. To put it in another way, he is not afraid of propositional theology. In fact, he glories in it. A confession of faith to him means that we are making definite statements about definite beliefs, and he has no trouble agreeing with the statements of the Westminster Confession.

The book has only 71 pages of printed material, and includes just three lectures on the doctrine of Scripture, the authority of Scripture and the sovereignty of God as reflected in the writings of John Calvin. It is a scholarly treatment, brief and penetrating, by a man who believes that Calvin was a Calvinist.

Murray believes in the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. He believes in the inerrancy of the Scriptures as originally communicated, and he believes that Calvin held these views also. He tells us why. In dealing with the authority of Scripture, he takes up the difficult question of the authority of the words of Scripture as against the living Word of Jesus Christ. He recognizes as we all do that people who may have difficulty with verbal inspiration find some easement in saying in effect “the words don’t really matter; what really matters is that we have communicated to us the Living Word.” Murray believes the antithesis to be false and argues that we cannot know the Living Word and have encounter with Him apart from the words in which Lie is made known to us. I quote the author: “To think of the revelation Jesus gave apart from the words He spoke and apart from the words spoken from heaven in witness borne to Him as the beloved Son of the Father is a pure abstraction. The words Jesus spoke were inspired and infallible. On any other assumption we must abandon the infallibility of Jesus as the incarnate Word as well as the centrality and finality of the revelation He was and bore … it would be strange if believers who are shut off from the special kind of privilege enjoyed by the disciples … namely his infallible verbal communication with them, should be placed at the disadvantage of having no infallible verbal revelation” (pp. 41–42). It would mean, Murray argues, that we would be at a great disadvantage in our encounter with the living Word, and there is no reason to believe that we are. I hope I have put my finger at the center of Murray’s argument and urge you to read his entire discussion.

Emile Cailliet’s book is of a different sort with a different kind of purpose. It will be my privilege soon to review the book briefly in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The problem which Cailliet has set for himself is a study of the attitudes of our day apart from the Christian orientation, and the attitudes of our day reflected in the intramural struggles of the Christian Church. He is working toward a common meeting ground where we as Christians, with a better understanding of truth, can enter into conversations with non-Christians if they are willing to re-think their approach to truth. As anyone who has heard Dr. Cailliet or read his previous works might guess, the new book is a rich feast of intellectual delights. The breadth of this man’s mind and his mastery in so many areas of knowledge constantly amaze me.

In working out his thesis Cailliet has had to wrestle with the problem of Scripture, and he does so strenuously. One will find the book worth while if he does no more than cull out Cailliet’s reflections on the one subject. To make one or two quotations on it would hardly be fair to the author. He leans over backwards to make a case for the fundamentalists, their use of Scripture (which he sharply criticizes), and their very evident successes. He is interested, too, in their zeal (pp. 63–64). Having parted company with their obscurantist approach, he nevertheless makes this interesting comment: “Not that the text itself has lost any of its significance. Quite the contrary. It commands higher value than ever before, and this to the last word” (italics mine). As Cailliet’s argument continues, he treats “and this to the last word” his idea quite differently from the way in which Murray would. His argument would allow for considerably more criticism in terms of Form, Mythos, and the like. Where Murray would say that the words of Scripture speak directly to us, I think Cailliet would be careful to say first that the words of Scripture can be understood only in the setting in which they arose, and then they speak to us only in the setting in which we find ourselves, that is, existentialism at both ends of the line.

Many weeks ago I suggested in this column that from the standpoint of theological seminary conversations there are at least three current religious thoughts: the ecumenical movement, the restatement of our confessions and their use, and the doctrine of Scripture. These two books reflect the ongoing debate on Scripture and the end is not yet. Versions, translations, basic documents, archaeological supports, the sweet uses of higher and lower criticism, the virtual reconstruction of “the divine originals”—all of these are a meaty treat for theological theses.

“Review of Current Religious Thought” is contributed in sequency by Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, and Dr. Philip Edgcumb Hughes, scholars alert to the theological tides of our time.

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