Unbelief in Creed

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 9, 1901

Unbelief in Creed

Unbelief in Creed.—Speaking of the revision of the Presbyterian confession of faith, the Springfield Republican says: “The fact is that the churches and denominations do not believe in their dogmas. It is one of the puzzles of life to view the clinging to forms of expression from which the life has departed, in relation to the government of this universe; the calmness with which men sustain creeds which ‘deal damnation round the land,’ while they themselves do not believe a word of them. For here is a great body rent in difference over the question of revoking or doing away with a conventional system made centuries ago, when the race was yet in the blindness of Roman domination, which has for its central core the tremendous assumption that (in the words of an excellent definitive dictionary) maintains that ‘God, antecedent to the fall of man or any knowledge of it, decreed the apostasy and all its consequences, determining to save some and condemn others, and that in all He does He considers His own glory only.’ That is the very essence of the Presbyterian confession of faith, with all its five points of particular election, particular redemption, moral inability in a fallen state, irresistible grace, and final perseverance. It is nothing less than a hideous scheme of despair. . . . And it is incredible that any man of common reasoning power should hold it as faith. It is not so held to-day. But the pride of the church, and the fear of a break to skepticism, frighten the good folk, who feel that others who are not so good may somehow get the better of them, and all Christianity go down, if their creed be abandoned as untrue.”