Scripture tells us that “There will be terrible times in the last days” (2 Tim. 3:1). The description of the cause for those “terrible times” lies within the church. One can summarize this by stating that, at the core of the problems in the church is unbelief. The world has come into the church. The motivation is pleasure–and self-seeking and a refusal to serve the Living God. That we are experiencing these times should be evident to all of us. We are experiencing the falling away, the steadily increasing pleasure-seeking and worldly life among those who claim to be God’s people. What makes these days terrible is the fact that men want to belong to the church but will not listen obediently to the Word of God.

That such times are the result of disobedience to the Truth is beyond any dispute. In all of history the facts show that a tampering with the Truth results in the downfall of the Church. A distaste for the Truth, and with it a lack of desire to know the Truth spells disaster, as the prophet Hosea declares, “. . . my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). One of the saddest aspects of church life today is the decline in the study of God’s Word and with it a decline in the reading of upbuilding Christian books and papers. The results are showing among us. Few people know, and few seem to care, what is taught or what is proclaimed from the pulpit. Few are able to distinguish the truth from error. Recently, in one of our larger churches, the minister declared that not all of Scripture was inspired. Only a few caught the import of it.

There is nothing new under the sun. The battle for the Truth has been going on for ages. Liberalism has been with us for many years in varying forms. Liberalism can be very appealing. The brilliant student Abraham Kuyper was thrilled by it. Another internationally famous scholar, Graham Machen, came under its spell. The renowned scholar Wilhelm Herrmann “. . . made Liberalism wonderfully attractive and heart-griping. This he did, not so much by the plausibility of intellectual argument as by the magnetic and overpowering force of his fervent religious spirit” (Graham Machen, by Ned B. Stonehouse, p. 105). Machen, after becoming aware of the destructive force of Liberalism, became a champion of the historic Christian faith, and became one of the leaders in the founding of Westminister Seminary. His book entitled, Christianity and Liberalism, is considered a classic today. No one has exposed Liberalism more clearly than did Machen.

The history of the great spiritual and intellectual giant Abraham Kuyper was different from that of Machen. Kuyper was ordained to the ministry in the Reformed church fully embracing the teaching of Liberalism. In that he had found something new and exciting. In his first congregation in Beesd he met what were considered by the consistory and other members of that congregation to be malcontents. They were the trouble-makers. Kuyper was advised to ignore this troublesome minority. But for some reason he was attracted to these stubborn malcontents. It was from them he heard the sound teaching of the historic Christian faith. It was especially the daughter of an “arbeider,” or laborer, a certain Miss Pietje Baltus, who was instrumental in bringing Kuyper back to the Reformed faith. Precisely because these so-called “malcontents” refused to waver one iota from the old Calvinism, they were instrumental in bringing Kuyper out of the deadening grip of Liberalism into the liberating power of the gospel.

I judge we are facing Liberalism in a different form in the Christian Reformed Church today. One of the emotionally-loaded issues confronting our denomination and its synod, is that of opening the ecclesiastical offices to women. Admittedly that is in the final analysis a question of how we interpret Scripture. It comprises, in other words, part of the battle for the Bible. We are being told very openly that if we hold to the traditional way of exegeting Scripture these offices are for men only. But a new way of exegeting the Word of God makes it imperative that we move with the times. And since we are being led by the Spirit we must yield to the Spirit’s apparent guiding us to liberate women from the traditions of the past. That is called “the new hermeneutic,” a kind of born-of-this-world way of dealing with the Scriptures, and applying it to the task and calling of men and women in this world. It wants to bring the Church more into conformity with our modern world. Then any teaching of Scripture that does not suit our purposes is shut out by being declared time-bound or culturally conditioned and hence invalid today.

Accompanying this is the assumption that the Bible contains errors and/or contradictions. It is, after all, written by men. These men were witnesses to the Truth , but you cannot assume that what they wrote is infallible. At best, one can say that what they wrote contains a message from God. If today we want to know that message we have to study carefully the men who wrote, the times, conditions, and cultures. After piecing that all together we can with some measure of assurance know something of the Truth God wanted to convey to men. Such an approach is indeed being held by some among us. Of this, Dr. Edward J. Young , in his book, Thy Word is Truth (p. 191), has said, “He who begins with the assumption that the words of the Scripture contain error will never, if he is consistent, come to the point of view that the Scripture is the infallible Word of the one living and eternal God.”

That in exegeting Scripture one must consider the human factor, the times in which it was written, etc., every theologian knows. Much depends on the presupposition with which one begins. If we follow the example of our Lord and Savior, we will approach the Scriptures as fully reliable and inerrant, also verbally, because the whole is God–breathed. If we begin with the proposition that the historic and human element is prominent in such a way that the writers were indeed godly, Spirit-led men, but not so led by the Spirit to write infallibly, we will surely end up with our own ideas of what the Bible teaches. To quote Dr. Young again, “If one begins with man , he will end with man” (idem, p. 191). Such exegetes have lost the Bible. Of this Prof. R. B. Kuiper, in his booklet, The Bible Tells Us So (p. 23), says “Once we grant that not the entire Bible is the Word of God, we are sure to lose one part after another until finally nothing is left of it but the covers. Is that an exaggeration? Rather, it is an understatement. He who would decide by his own wisdom what in the Bible is the Word of God and what is not, is not going to lose the entire Bible, but has lost it. By the very act of setting himself up as the judge of the Bible be has denied that it is the Word of the sovereign God.”

What E. J. Young and R. B. Kuiper have seen so clearly is happening in our own denomination today . We are losing the Bible through the new hermeneutical approach to it. We are ignoring what Scripture teaches by ignoring what the apostle Paul teaches. We dare to say publicly, that if the apostle were writing today he would write an entirely different message. Whether we are aware of it or not, with such an approach we have lost the Scriptures. From there on we will judge what applies to us today and what does not.

It should be clear to all of us that these matters are deeply serious . But since those who hold such views are very careful about expounding Scripture, only a few discerning members are able to catch this and know its implications. And among too many of them there is neither the desire nor ability to contend for the Truth . We do not have nearly enough malcontents among us, men and women who not only see the direction in which this new approach is leading us, but who also are adamant in contending for the Truth. The word “malcontent” has a bad connotation. It in the first place, means a person who is rebellious. But it may also mean a person dissatisfied and uneasy about the way things are going. As to the first meaning, those who contend for the traditional way of viewing and exegeting Scripture are seen as such trouble makers. Being mostly of the older generation they are indeed being charged with holding back the Spirit’s work. Or as one put it, “These people polarize and are divisive!”

But when we use the word “malcontent” as referring to those who are dissatisfied and uneasy, then we refer to those who are deeply troubled by what is happening in our denomination. We need many such malcontents. But we need such men and women who are not only dissatisfied and uneasy, but who will not yield one inch to the new hermeneutic and will contend for the Truth openly and unflinchingly. Perhaps if enough such malcontents will stand up and be counted we may accomplish that which the malcontents in Kuyper’s day accomplished, a conversion of those now going the neo-liberal way of the new hermeneutic.

Only by God’s grace can that be accomplished, to be sure. But we must be the instruments. This is no small undertaking. Those gripped by the new hermeneutic are excited about what is going on in the Church. They see it as a glorious breakthrough from the shackles of the old, traditional view. That view, they imply, accomplished nothing. It is staid, dead and outworn. Now the younger generation is marching in the liberty of a whole new view of things. We are now, it is averred, allowing the Spirit freedom to work in us and accomplish with us and through us the designs He has in mind for the Church. This is the mind of the time in which we live. We must not succumb to it, but contend against it, and for the faith that is being betrayed. By God‘s grace we can do so, and by God’s command we must do so. In other words, we must be careful and prayerful contenders for the peace and preservation of God’s Church. May God grant us zeal and courage to become such contenders for His truth.

Cecil W. Tuininga is a retired Christian Reformed minister living at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.