A recent meeting of Classis Grand Rapids South by a vote that was one short of being unanimous decided to overture the Christian Reformed synod to sever our relationship of ecclesiastical fellowship with the GKN (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland).
Grounds:
A. The decision of the GKN regarding practicing homosexuals, together with its clarification in response to the request for clarification from the RES, is contrary to Scripture.
B. The Synod of the GKN has not heeded the concern expressed by our synod.
C. The GKN has neglected the stipulations of ecclesiastical fellowship such as “communication on major issues of joint concern” (Acts of Synod, 1974, p. 57).
In the same spirit an OUTLOOK reader, a pastor in New Zealand, suggests that the OUTLOOK should report on what happened at last November’s Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, especially in connection with their unanimously accepted report on Biblical Authority, and in view of it, call for a break-off of relations with those churches.
Symptoms of Church Sickness
The official information bulletin of those churches (Kerk Informatie) for last December reported a number of the decisions of their November synod which give the reader some idea of the current teaching and practice of those churches.
Toleration of Homosexual Practice
An earlier 1979 decision that homosexuality should not be considered as an obstacle to church membership or holding of office had left a question in the minds of some as to whether the synod had in mind homosexual practice or only the individual’s character or personality. Now that possible misunderstanding has been removed. The recent synod stated plainly that homosexual activity was not to be judged but that those who engage in such practice should be accepted.
Toleration of Extra–Marital Sex Relations
“The synod decided to make no decision of principle regarding the question of whether non-marital man-woman relationships are acceptable for our churches” (p. 9).
No Judgment on Alternate Forms of Church Organization
A committee had been previously formed to deal with the question of what stance the churches should take toward the about 120 groups including some 20,000 people who no longer feeling themselves “at home” in the regular churches, who established their own separate fellowships of similarly minded individuals. The committee studied and classified these movements into three groups, the first of which is more or less connected with the Marxist (Communist) movement, the second stressing independent personal opinions, and a third opposing the organized church in the name of the “office of believers.” Regarding these diverging kinds of “church” organizations the synod decided only to study them further in ecumenical cooperation with the Reformed and Roman Catholics.
Many a reader of such a report as this may find it difficult to understand how a church that claims to be committed to our Biblical Reformed Faith can approve or tolerate such views or practices as these which contradict plain teachings and commandments of the Bible. When leading men in those churches such as H. M. Kuitert and H. Wiersinga continue to deny basic Christian doctrines such as that of Christ’s atonement, why do these ostensibly Reformed churches refuse to expel them?
View of Biblical Authority
These and similar questions get an answer in their newly published report on the “nature of Biblical Authority.” This report, product of six years of study, was “accepted unanimously as a clear and confessionally responsible explanation of the manner in which the Scripture is to be understood in order to enable (one) to hear what the God of the Word has to say to us.” First a variety of news comments on the November synod decision and now the appearance of the report in a 126-page booklet entitled God Met Ons (God With Us) make its main principles clear.
Truth is Not Conformity to Fact But “Relational”
The starting point of the whole document is a discussion of the nature of “truth.” And it is most significant for the understanding of the whole study to observe that the nature of truth is introduced not with the question of what the Bible says about it, but with the question about what truth is understood to mean in our changing world. As the December 2 RES News Exchange stated:
The central idea of the report, that truth is relational, is set forth in an opening philosophy-oriented chapter that explains that truth in general cannot be considered as an accurate description of the state of affairs, nor as the product of the human personality, but as a relation between object and subject. The report’s view of truth is similar to that of dialectical Theology’s “truth as encounter.”
Professor J. Faber in the January 16, 1981 Clarion points out that the first chapter of the report is written by Professor Dr. C. A. Van Peursem, and is entitled “Changes in the concept of truth.” These views of Professor Van Peursem, that truth must be redefined as not meaning conformity to fact but as relational and functional will not be new to some of our readers. Ten years ago in the January, 1971 OUTLOOK I called attention to them as they had been explained and advocated by Rev. John Timmer, then one of our Japan missionaries, in the December, 1969 Reformed Journal. Again in the May, 1977 OUTLOOK I had to point out that they were being explained and advocated in the February, 1977 Journal by Rev. Philip Holtrop, a translator of Professor Berkouwer’s work and currently teacher in the Bible department at Calvin College. What is especially significant is that now these, what at first may have seemed the rather “far-out” views of a few intellectuals, have been unanimously adopted by the Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands as the key principle to properly understanding the Bible!
A False Principle
As we confront this development, we need to observe that although the Bible is indeed concerned about our relationship to God and fellow men, it at the same time insists that truth means conformity to fact. It is curious that the report on occasion (p. 73) even calls attention to texts (Deut. 13:14; 17:4; Isaiah 43:9) which show “truth” (Heb. “emet”) as meaning “facts” as they have to be established by witnesses in a court of law (and then, inconsistently, ignores this). Ananias and Sapphira were condemned for lying, for affirming something as “true” when it was contrary to fact (Acts 5:1–9). These and many other places in the Bible make it plain that truth in the Bible involves correct knowing and saying what accords with facts, as well as relationships. The Bible operates with a clear distinction between truth and falsehood. God’s truth is set against the devil’s lie. John wrote (1 John 2:21), “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.” The devil as God’s enemy is concerned both with destroying relationships and misrepresenting facts on which proper relationships are to be based. The Lord called him both “murderer from the beginning” and the “father” of lies (John 8:44). One of the devil’s favorite tactics is in our time to obscure the distinction between truth and falsehood and get people to think only of varied “perspectives.” When he now persuades even churches to adopt the basic existentialist assumption that truth no longer means conformity to fact, he thereby robs them of any intelligible way to distinguish truth from falsehood. If a lie can make for better relations, it becomes by this (“new”) definition, “truth.” A more effective device to confuse and mislead people could hardly be imagined. When our “mother” churches adopt this principle as the key to properly understanding the Bible, need anyone be surprised when they can no longer distinguish truth from falsehood or right from wrong?
A Divine-Human Bible, Fallible in Origin, Changeable in Meaning
The bearing of the report’s accepted principle that “truth is relational” on the understanding of the Bible is further explained in the RES News Exchange.
The idea of truth as relation means that the human component in the Bible cannot be separated from the divine, nor may the Bible writers be assumed to have had a passive role. They have been incorporated into t he revelation process with their shortcomings and so the Bible writers did make mistakes in their writing.
That truth is relational comes to expression also in the way the history of the Bible is portrayed. As regards an objective view of history that records the failings and defeats of leaders as well as their virtues and victories, the Bible is no more reliable than other sources. The Bible is history in the sense that in it the people of God give an account of their past. With help of the faith–relation, the factual (in)correctness of the data and the narrative about it can be brought into connection. The writers give an authoritative interpretation of the existing holy tradition.
Adopting Higher Criticism of the Bible
It is frankly stated and shown throughout this report that these churches are now unanimously adopting the higher criticism of the Bible which they long opposed as heresy. The second chapter is a survey of the history of such critical study; the third shows how the Reformed Churches have altered their views concerning it, now rejecting the “organic” inspiration ideas of Bavinck and Kuyper as really only “mechanical,” and the last two chapters show implications of this change. Those implications appear in many ways. The story of Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19:30–38, for example, is dismissed as a piece of “folk humor out of that time and we would take this account much too seriously if we saw in it historical writing. Thus peoples throughout the world make fun of each other” (p. 66). Similarly in the New Testament, “in many instances Jesus will not have said or done precisely what the evangelist describes” (p. 77).
How far may the questioning or denying of Biblical events be permitted to go, especially in the case of its miracles? Do we not have to insist that a Christian must at least acknowledge Christ’s resurrection as having actually occurred, especially in view of Paul’s treatment of it in 1 Cor. 15? Even in dealing with denial of Christ’s resurrection the Report insists that the church must be very patient (p. 83, 89, 90). Although the report agrees that faith in this event is the least that a congregation must ask of its members, it at the same time argues that the church should not exclude those who can no longer believe it because Jesus and His disciples did not exclude the unbelieving Thomas (John 20:24–30). Notice how the very Biblical account which relates how the Lord converted the unbelieving Thomas into a witness of His resurrection is being perverted into an excuse for tolerating in the church those who deny the resurrection! Could perversion of the Bible be carried much further?
Besides explaining that the Bible as a human record has all kinds of factual mistakes, the report also relativizes its doctrinal teachings and moral commandments. Faber in Clarion cites the Report’s statement that “The Bible does not contain such a system (of eternally valid truths) in the field of morality nor of theology” (p. 51). Accordingly also the RES New Exchange continues to summarize:
As norm for our life, the Bible must be seen to have many time–related commands that were intended to result in life and peace according to the attitude that the Holy Spirit works in us. Not all such commands were intended to have lasting validity. When a small time-oriented command conflicts with the great love command, the latter always takes precedence, for love does no harm to the neighbor (Cf. pp. 90ff.).
On this basis the Report argues for a more lenient attitude towards divorce than that found in the Bible (p. 96) and for recognizing the equality of men and women in today’s society, and as the RES News Exchange observes, “the solidarity of Christians with movements which focus on the liberation of the oppressed” (pp. 116, 117).
The reader of the Report is struck by the frequency with which it cites the words of our Lord in Matt. 13:52 about the “scribe . . . instructed unto the kingdom of heaven” bringing “forth out of his treasure things new and old” as a justification for depreciating the old beliefs in favor of capitulating to what is called “new.” The Report shows how the Netherlands churches who unanimously accepted it are in principle completely surrendering to the Liberal, “critical” way of using the Bible.
On the back page of the December Kerk Informatie the far from orthodox Hendrikus Berkhof (see the January, 1981 OUTLOOK article on this “other Berkhof”), President of the Netherlands Council of Churches, expresses his admiration for the report, stating t hat in it the formerly backward Reformed Churches have now, in so frankly adopting critical views of the Bible, put themselves far ahead of his own “Hervormde” (State) Church!
Correspondingly Professor J. Faber in the January 16 Clarion, capably and clearly analyzing the Report from a more orthodox viewpoint, characterized it as a “Triumph of Relativism.”
This report may try to take a stand against relativism, but the dominating idea and terminology of the “relational concept of truth” in validates this attempt. With all its talk about “relational” it makes the truth relative.
Already the first chapter . . . shows the sad situation of a church overcome by false philosophy and carried about with every wind of doctrine.
Considering their frank acceptance of Liberal, critical views of the Bible makes other actions of these Reformed Churches completely understandable. The Bible may warn us, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9, 10), but these churches decide to welcome practicing homosexuals and habitual fornicators into their fellowships because they declare the Bible’s prohibitions outdated. For the same reason they continue to tolerate in roles of leadership men such as Kuitert and Wiersinga, even though they I:Day contradict fundamental Christian doctrines.
The reader of the Report is repeatedly struck by the facf that although it defends Liberal, critical views of the Bible, it at the same time insists on the need of real faith in Christ as Savior. In doing this it is attempting to do what the Lord warned us He will not tolerate. He said, “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say” (Luke 6:46)? “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? . . . and then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22, 23). John was echoing the word of His Lord when he wrote, “He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in him” (1 John 2:4, 5).
Time to Break Relations
In view of the fact that these Reformed Churches are now frankly declaring their departures from the Scriptures in faith and practice, it seems obvious that churches which want to remain faithful to the Lord and His Word are being compelled (however reluctantly and sadly in view of past history and personal associations) to break off fraternal relations with those churches. When God’s Word commands us to “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11) may we continue to welcome as “churches in ecclesiastical fellowship” these who gladly accommodate homosexual vice and fornication? It becomes obvious, as the Wachter editor suggested some time ago, that the time has come when we must break off relations.
We should make this decision with the prayer that those churches may be moved to reverse their course. And the Reformed Ecumenical Synod will have to make the same decision. The Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands decided to remain a member of the RES with a view to seeking to promote its views and practices in these matters in that organization. The RES, if it is to remain faithful to its own Christian commitment, will have to reject those views and practices and those who hold and defend them.
Facing the Same Problems at Home
Breaking off relations with these Netherlands churches because of the course they are choosing will be a step in the right direction. It is important that we make a decision not to follow their course, but we should not stop at that point thinking that we have resolved the problem. We must realize that our churches are following that course even though we may not have pursued it quite as far as they have. The same Liberal, critical views and methods of dealing with the Bible which are now so frankly defended by the Dutch churches are also more and more commonly held and practiced in our churches and schools. Our coming synod will again have to face and should deal decisively with the views of Dr. Verhey because they in principle embody the same critical use of the Bible and the same relativizing of Christian morals as the Dutch churches are promoting. He in his thesis maintains that it is finally and most importantly one’s own “experience” that determines what in the Bible is still applicable in today’s society. Three professors of our seminary defended his views before the synod. One of them, Professor John Stek, continues to teach in spite of a student protest a year ago against his refusal to affirm the Adam and Eve story as factual. Professor Sierd Woudstra of the College promotes his critical views of Isaiah in our churches’ weekly Banner, charging, for example, that Isaiah borrowed his Chapter 14 from pagan Canaanite mythology (Nov. 24, 1980 issue, p. 22). In the pages of The Banner, homosexuals are now also permitted to defend their practices.
For some years I have had to point out that the writings of leaders in the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship and its Toronto Institute for Christian Studies expressed views of the Bible, Christian doctrine and God’s Law which look in the same direction as those now defended by the Dutch churches.* I hope that we officially reject the course chosen by the Netherlands churches, but if that decision is to do much good it will have to be followed by others rejecting the same course as we have been more or less following it at home. The demonstrated increasing apostasy of our old mother churches should move us to work and pray for a return to Biblically Reformed faith and practice and to the discipline necessary to preserve and promote it.
*Some Questions and Answers about the AACS, by Peter De Jong, published by Reformed Fellowship.