The Situation and the Remedy by W. W. P.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 9, 1909

The Situation and the Remedy

By W. W. P.

No one can shut his eyes to the fact that radical changes have been made in the teachings of religious leaders during the present generation. The departures from the old standards of faith are too evident to admit of a denial. The radicals assert this with much satisfaction, while the conservatives deplore the results which have been developed from a principle of interpretation adopted decades ago by some of their own school. Among those who have commented upon this trend in theology is Dr. James Orr, of Scotland, who has contributed to the Homiletic Review for August an article with the title “American Theology as Seen by a Scottish Theologian,” from which we take these paragraphs:—

It is plain, indeed, that it is a long way that American thought has traveled in theology, as in other matters, in the last few decades. Time was when the world looked to America for its massive theological systems — witness the works of Hodge, Shedd, and of like-minded writers. These were the text-books in theological education a quarter of a century ago. That age passed. Systematic theology, undermined by critical and historical studies, seemed left behind. It fell out of favor and gave place to other tendencies; never, however, completely. . . .

That there is a radical — or more properly a revolutionary — spirit abroad which assails the very foundations of Christian thinking and belief, few conversant with the signs of the times will deny. It is not Christianity alone that is thus assailed; the attack is on all social and ethical institutions and ideas which come down with the sanction and veneration of the past. The recent startling articles in the Cosmopolitan on the teachings on marriage and ethical relations in American schools and universities, if marked by the journalistic note of exaggeration, still have enough of substance to show what a grave peril attaches to the spread of these revolutionary ideas. In theology the radical spirit finds fit expression in the recent outspoken works of Prof. G. B. Foster, of Chicago. With Professor Foster’s relations to his denominational friends we have nothing to do, but it is foolish to deny that the positions, boldly stated and defended in his “Finality of the Christian Religion,” and now in his book on “The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence,” mean the surrender and denial of everything vital and fundamental in Christianity as the New Testament presents it, and as the world and church have hitherto understood it. Supernatural revelation is absolutely parted with; Jesus is reduced to the limits of humanity; every doctrine in the creeds of any of the churches is altered or rejected. “Scientific theology has succeeded in undermining the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity and of the Deity of Christ.” It is an open question for Christianity whether Jesus even historically existed. “To hold that belief in the existence of Jesus is an inalienable constituent of our religion is to adopt a position which, from the standpoints of Jesus and of Paul themselves, is in principle subversive of religious faith.” “Is it inconceivable that the very name of Christianity shall have passed away?” The prophets of this new cult are Hegel, Bousset, Otto Pfleiderer — more truly Nietzsche. With such negations the Christian church, which values its existence and its faith, can have no dealings. . . .

There is need, it appears to the present writer, for a more positive and less ambiguous attitude to the great doctrines on the part of Christian teachers. The process of thought in the circles referred to is one easily traced. First there is an ostentatious throwing overboard, generally with some expressions of contempt, of what is called the “verbal inspiration” of Scripture, or of the authority of Scripture generally. Jesus is recognized by most as the incarnate Son of God, though with shadings off into more or less indefinite assertions even on that fundamental article which make it doubtful where the writers exactly stand. Christ’s pre-existence is generally placed in doubt; it is, e. g., left unmentioned by Dr. Clarke. Jesus is still spoken of as the highest Revealer, or ultimate Revelation, of God, and it is allowed that his words, if only we can get at them, furnish the highest rule of guidance for time and for eternity. But then criticism, we are also told, must have its rights. The Gospels go into the crucible, and in the name of synoptical and Johannine criticism, are subjected to wonderful processes, in the course of which much of the history peels off as excrescence. Jesus, we are reminded, was still a man of his generation, liable to error in his human knowledge, and the limitations in his conceptions and judgments have to be allowed for. Paul, held to be still largely dominated by his inheritance of rabbinical and Pharisatic ideas, is not a teacher we can follow further than our own judgment of Christian truth leads us. If these things are done in the green tree of the New Testament, it is easy to see what will be done in the dry tree of the Old. But of this it is unnecessary to speak. The fluidity of the whole way of thinking must impress every student. Scotland, it is believed, demands something more positive.

A very serious element in the newer thinking is the tendency in the radical schools to doubt or surrender even the moral perfection of Jesus. Paul Wernle, one of the most brilliant of Germany’s liberal theologians, says boldly that Jesus never claimed to be sinless. In America, as in Britain, there is an increasing movement in the same direction. This is quite logical from the humanitarian point of view. It is very well to deny the physical miracles, to argue against the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection. But if a sinless personality is conceded, the greatest miracle of all remains. So from numerous sides we have the affirmation that, in the words of Professor Foster, Jesus is only “the best we know.” In his latest book he declares: “Even now we may not see in Jesus an absolutely perfect model without jeopardizing the freedom and the progress of humanity.” In another place he tells us that “the democratic goodness about us is not so much a donation from Jesus as a creation of modern men who are as certainly children of God as Jesus himself was.” In such a declaration the whole of the new tendency stands revealed, and it is not for a living Christianity to make terms with it, but to fight it to the death — only, not with carnal, but with spiritual weapons.

The situation is abundantly clear. In the effort to counteract the force of this advent message, and from the desire to appear in harmony with the assertions of a non-Biblical science, the inspiration of the Scriptures, in any true sense of that word, was either denied or left as an open question. This virtually placed human reasoning and human

speculation above divine revelation, and only one result could follow — theological anarchy. The only remedy is a return to first principles, the acceptance of the Word of God as the Word of God, and the obedience of faith. But this means to receive and obey the message for this time, and to prepare for the coming of the Son of man.

There will soon be no middle ground between a refined infidelity and the great second advent message. W. W. P.