From one of our old friends in Canada we have received the following letter. It refers to a very serious issue, and concerns the policy of THE OUTLOOK. The Editorial Committee suggested it be taken up in an article instead of being placed as a letter.

October 27, 1980

Dear Sir,

In the September Outlook I read on page three: “Many of its students can assure us, however that higher critical views of the Bible are being freely taught in both college and seminary.”

This is an open accusation of the Calvin College and Seminary and of the Trustees, the professors and the students. What does it help me to read this in a magazine? What can I do? I am not in a position to listen to “many students” of the institute, I cannot go to Grand Rapids to check on this matter.

I can only think: somebody is not doing his job somewhere. That is in the first place the author of this article, Peter de Jong. It is his duty to make clear who the culprits are, what they have said or written, what the author has done about it, approaching the trustees or professors involved, and what the results are. As long as we don’t have more sound information I must consider these statements as insinuations, and not very helpful for the cause of reformation. The Outlook has some good articles, but a smudge like this spoils it. If it is true what the author wrote, then some drastic steps have to be taken. But this article cannot tiring positive results.

Please correct.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Jacob Binnema

It should be noted that the brief statement to which Brother Binnema objects was not in an article dealing with the education at Calvin College and Seminary, but in one dealing with the increasingly controversial subject of church quotas. The prevalence of higher critical views of the Bible in those institutions was mentioned as one of the main reasons for the fact that a substantial number of responsible church members have conscientious scruples against giving their largest church quota to support those schools.

In dealing with private matters we naturally do not publicize problems that can and should be settled privately. But there is nothing private about the teaching which our young people are receiving in our college and seminary and there is nothing secret about t he fact “that higher critical views of the Bible are being freely taught in both college and seminary.” This is no news to anyone who is conversant with life on the campus. It is too well attested by current students and recently graduated ministers to be open to question. At the 1979 Synod Professors Stek and Van Elderen of our seminary publicly defended the right of Dr. Allen Verhey to hold and teach such views and Professor Van Elderen told the church that he himself had been teaching them for many years.

These facts are so well known that it hardly seemed necessary to bring up new documentation in order to justify alluding to them in an article about church quotas stating the reason why many members have scruples against paying them. When such views are as common as they are in the teaching of college and seminary the time for secrecy about them is long past. Nothing is gained by silence about the matter. Only letting people know what is happening may, in the mercy of God, arouse enough of them to realize the need for correction.

Writing in a magazine may not be a substitute for trying to take proper church action. This writer and the church of which he bas been a pastor can hardly be accused of making no effort to correct this toleration of Liberal higher critical views of the Bible in our churches. The past 6 years of “Dutton appeals” are too well known to leave doubt about that. In the last year I know of at least 4 students who have tried to take formal corrective action. With one of those protests against the teaching, the Board of Trustees is currently dealing. To demand, however, that THE’ OUTLOOK be silent about such matters until. one has personally confronted or even corrected all of the professors who are engaged in teaching such objectionable views is, I believe, unreasonable and irresponsible. For THE OUTLOOK to be silent about this, one of our churches’ and schools’ most threat ening problems, would be to betray t he aim of the publication as we state it on our masthead.

I read in Brother Binnema’s letter the kind of frustration with the present state of affairs that is only too familiar to most of us. What can we do about correcting it? With God’s help, let us have protests and overtures—many of them. The Verhey case, still left unsettled, is being reappealed by the Dutton Church to the next Synod. What kind of support will there be?

And don’t forget the responsibilities of our classical delegates to boards. What is your delegate telling his classis about this important matter as it is on the board agenda? And what are the classes telling their delegates? It should never be forgotten, as it apparently often is, that the delegate’s primary responsibility is to the classis which elected him to represent it, not to the board to which he is delegated.

And the same responsibility must be stressed on the part of synod delegates. Recently a determined drive to get church offices open to women in defiance of what the Bible teaches to the contrary was at least stalled by the sheer volume of reaction from the churches and classes. The same thing could happen (as it did among the Missouri Lutherans a few years ago) with respect to the more basic matter of the higher critical misuse of the Bible. Enough churches and classes must become sufficiently informed and concerned to insist on holding the Bible’s inerrancy and to demand that their schools teach it. Let us pray and work that the Lord may move them to such action.