Religious Skeptics by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 17, 1915

Religious Skeptics

By F. M. W.

IT is not surprising to see openly avowed infidels attack the Bible record and call into question the statements of Holy Writ; but it is painful to see a great Christian church, a church which in the past has stood stanchly for some of the fundamental principles of Scriptural teaching, by its official action place its indorsement upon these attacks against the Scriptures of Truth. This it appears, according to current reports, has been done by the New York Presbytery in its recent licensure of four graduates of the Union Theological Seminary.

Of these four candidates the Christian Observer of May 26 states that “not one was ready to accept the fact of the virgin birth of Jesus, and some, if not all, avowed their disbelief in the resurrection of the body of Jesus from the tomb of Joseph. . . . Only one of them seemed to hold clearly and loyally to the doctrine of the deity of our Lord. The others were actual Unitarians, whether aware of the fact or not. One openly and uncompromisingly avowed himself a Universalist. . . . Yet by an overwhelming majority the presbytery overruled all protests of opposition, and resolved to admit these men to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.”

The overruled minority of the presbytery, not content to let the matter rest, but feeling that this action of the majority was clearly a denial of the honored faith of the church, made an appeal to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It will be interesting to learn what action the General Assembly took upon this vital question. It is indeed a vital issue, affecting not alone the local presbytery in New York which first dealt with it, but the entire Presbyterian denomination as well. Commenting upon the issue before the assembly, the Christian Observer says:—

Our great sister church in the North faces therefore the question of the essential importance of the relative worthlessness of the cardinal doctrines of the virgin birth, the vicarious death, the actual resurrection, and the divine nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, the reliability and authority of the Holy Bible, and the supremacy of the Presbyterian standards as a test of the soundness of her teachers.

On an issue like this no compromise is possible or honorable. There must be the maintenance of the truth or the surrender of the truth. If it is allowable and ecclesiastically authorized to teach Unitarianism and Universalism and rationalism in the Presbyterian Church, then the church should change its name, and not pervert a noble, historic title. It should repudiate its confessional symbols, and cease to require its candidates for ordination to declare with all the solemnity of an oath that they believe them. It is a sad commentary on the ethics of “modern theology” that the New York Presbytery proposes to require these men to avow publicly that they receive the Scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The mental reservations of Jesuitism could not be more dishonest or disgraceful.

This action of the New York Presbytery is but an indication of the times. The fact that a so-called theological seminary could graduate for the ministry young men of such loose and liberal ideas regarding the cardinal doctrines of the Scriptures shows the dangerous mold of religious teaching in some of the great theological schools of the present day.

How can the church of Christ expect to evangelize the world when it admits to holy orders young men who have no faith in the only power which can bring regeneration to a fallen race? How can these young men, or any others who reject the doctrine of the deity of our Lord, who scout the idea of the resurrection of Christ and other cardinal doctrines, go forth as Heaven’s ambassadors? Truly they would be blind leaders of the blind.

In these days of growing skepticism, those who accept the Scriptures of Truth as the word of inspiration need as never before to show in their lives and in their teaching the power of the gospel of Christ, the only means by which men may obtain regeneration from sin and life in the world to come. F. M. W.