The Doctors Puzzled by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

The Doctors Puzzled.

By Editor

A NEW phase of religio-scientific nonsense has developed in the South. Doctor Woodrow, Professor of Natural Science and Theology in the Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina, has adopted a compromise between Darwinism and the Bible account of creation. His idea, as advanced in an address to his class, is that woman may have been specially created, but that man was evolved from a lower order of beings. Nothing is more common than for men to invent vagaries in science and religion, and this mongrel idea would not be noticed here if it were not for the action of the trustees of the seminary. A resolution enjoining the Doctor to cease teaching such theories in the seminary was voted down, and the Board, by a vote of eight to three, adopted the following resolution:—

"That in the judgment of this Board the relations subsisting between the teachings of Scripture and the teachings of natural science are plainly, correctly, and satisfactorily set forth in said address; that the Board is not prepared to concur in the views expressed by Dr. Woodrow as to the probable method of the creation of Adam's body, yet in the judgment of the Board there is nothing in the doctrine of evolution, as defined and limited by him, which appears inconsistent with perfect soundness in the faith."

The minority entered their protest, and the subject is to be carried before the four synods controlling the seminary, viz., those of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.

The matter has an amusing and a serious side. It is amusing to see grave Doctors of Divinity so easily thrown off their balance by a theory absurd enough to entitle its inventor to be called a "crank;" and it is a matter of serious regret that men set not only for the defense of the gospel but to unfold Bible truth to those who shall themselves become teachers, have such a superstitious fear of going contrary to "Science," that in order to accept some fantasy to which that name has been tacked, they will throw the Bible away. And this also is a sign of the times.