GOD OR MAN?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 22.

“The Adam Myth.”

Referring to the refusal of licenses to three candidates for the ministry by the presbyteries of New York and Elizabeth (N. J.), because they regarded the Bible account of Adam a myth, the Independent, one of the leading religio-secular journals of America, takes occasion to say that these young men “had received their theological instruction in Presbyterian and Congregational seminaries,” in which the early chapters of Genesis “were interpreted as representing an earlier stage in the developing religious philosophy of the human race,” and thus continues:—

They could not possibly accept the story of Adam and Eve with the same literalness that Paul and the Westminster divines did. How could they? How could any young student of the present time? We venture to say that there is not a competent teacher of biology or geology in the obscurest Presbyterian college in the United States who believes that the Adam and Eve of Genesis were historical characters. One would have to rake all our colleges and universities with a fine-toothed comb to find such a teacher, and very few they would be. The belief, in scientific circles, of such an Adam and Eve, is dead, and is no longer considered or discussed. Of course the doctrine of a literal Adam lingers in popular belief just as once did the belief that the world was made in six literal days; but it is held by those who got their education a generation or two ago, or who never got any education at all. The older men in the presbyteries, especially those who have, for one reason or another, dropped out of the educative stress of pastoral life, have not learned what the colleges now teach; and it is they that oppose their large ignorance to modern knowledge.

And thus the wisdom of God is set against the wisdom and guesses of men, and the wisdom of God is rejected. One of the very reasons of this is the creed fetish. If the Christian church had stood by the ever-expanding, life-giving Word of God, it would have needed no creed, and the indwelling presence of the Incarnate Word would have been the dominant power in the church. But creed separated men from the Word. Instead of allowing the Spirit of God to interpret that Word to every man, men must interpret it, not alone for themselves, but for generations to come. This interpretation was demanded, and the right to interpret assumed, because men did not believe in God’s power to guide and control other men as truly and as wisely as they believed He did themselves. In other words, the creed, contrary to its meaning, spelled out unbelief, and spelled it large. Heresy was determined and condemned almost entirely, not because of rejection of the Bible, but because of the rejection of the creed.

A few generations later some parts of the creed is proved untrue, reverence for the dead hands that wrote it has waned, and it is ignored or amended.

Then, having set the creed above the Bible, and the creed having been demonstrated to be faulty by later research in Biblical, scientific, and philosophical lines, both Bible and creed are rejected. And that is the reef of unbelief upon which the great popular Protestant churches are fast drifting to-day, if they be not already there.

It is admitted that Paul believed in Genesis, but was mistaken. If mistaken in this, the conclusion is irresistible that he may have been just as easily mistaken in regard to man’s helpless condition and the doctrine of justification by faith.

Genesis and the four books following were in the days of our Lord, even as now, known as the books of Moses. Jesus refers to them without a question. In every temptation by the devil, our Master met him with quotations from Moses. In His instruction regarding marriage, He carries us directly back to the creation of man and woman as recorded in Genesis. Matt. 19:4, 5. So also He does regarding the Sabbath. Mark 2:27, 28. Luke traces the genealogy of Christ, according to the flesh, directly back to Adam, “the son of God.”

The secret of all this unbelief and rejection of the Bible is found in the words of Jesus to the Jews:—

“How can ye believe which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” John 5:44–47.

These words will bear serious and careful study. There never was a time in all the past when men were seeking honor of one another more than now. Selfish ambitions, personal aggrandizement in Church and State and Society, greed of gold and the shining baubles which perish, human hypotheses called science and knowledge, have blinded spiritual vision, dulled spiritual hearing, and closed spiritual avenues to the beauty, sublimity, sweetness, and power of God’s Word. But while the very conclusions of science which lead to the rejection of the Word are themselves questioned, the Bible is rejected, as though the evidence of the questionable conclusions were sufficient.

Out of this unbelief and rejection of portions of the Bible springs more serious evil. The great thoughts of Genesis are God’s creative power, and His fatherly, providential dealing with men, by which He would again restore them to Himself through the Seed of the woman. All through the Bible, and especially in the Gospel prophet, in the Psalms, in the Gospel by John, and in the Pauline epistles, is the one emphatic thought of Genesis 1 and 2 repeated, that God created the heavens and the earth and is therefore the Saviour, the Re-creator, the Regenerator. He only can create; He only can re-create the souls wrecked by sin. This is the hope of mankind. But from this hope, strong with all the blessings of a life of righteousness, big with all the glories of an eternal world, evolution and biology—“science falsely so called”—are shutting the poor, blind, desolate world, groping for the light of life, and the comfort of a personal, divine Father.

Praise God, there are still those in the churches who stand by the old ever-living Book, who still believe that the revealed knowledge of God through Moses and Paul and Jesus is more than that given through the modern professors of a day, who are willing, if need be, to be counted as having “large ignorance” even as Paul was counted a fool, and Jesus a madman. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 1 Cor. 1:25.