Latest faculty appointee at the Mid-America Reformed Seminary at Orange City, Iowa, is Rev. Robert Grossman. As an experienced pastor in the Eureka Classis, Reformed Church in the U.S., he brings a fresh and somewhat different perspective to the school. People in the area had an opportunity to become acquainted with him when he spoke at a Reformed Fellowship meeting on October 22, 1985 in the Bethel C.R. Church at Sioux Center. In his lecture he sought to bring the lessons of his churches’ century of struggle with Liberalism to bear on the problems of today.

His denomination could be traced back to German immigrant beginnings in about 1710. Many of its people had come originally from the Palatinate where the Heidelberg Catechism was written, and its early connections were with Classis Amsterdam of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. It grew until about the mid-1850s when it began to lose much of its Reformed doctrinal heritage . In 1934 almost 1700 congregations joined in the first of successive mergers which eventually became the very liberal United Church of Christ. One classis (called “Eureka” because they had “found” a way to organize as a conservative German-speaking classis in a liberalizing denomination) resisted the liberal movement and eventually became independent. Especially contributing to the apostasy from the Reformed Faith were the influences of three prominent seminary professors, F. A. Rauch, John W. Nevin, and Philip Schaff. Schaff claimed that Roman Catholicism was a legitimate development in the churches’ history and that Protestantism, although having some validity, had carried the churches too far away from their Roman Catholic roots. Thus there developed what was called the “Mercersberg Theology” which stressed experience rather than doctrine, and became semi-Roman Catholic in its view of the church. Although there were strong objections to this movement, the synods did not sustain them, in effect, approving the theology being taught in the seminary. The speaker noted the way in which seminaries often turn from the orthodox views they were established to promote, as “progressive” (or Liberal) professors gravitate to positions of influence and honor. Then even the conservative opposition may move toward congregationalism in polity and toward a simplification of doctrine (or “fundamentalism”). The German Reformed pastors soon stopped referring to the Canons of Dordt. In the retreat from Biblical doctrine this Fundamentalism essentially falls into the same error as Liberalism. In the meanwhile, the church becomes identified with a bureaucracy which claims more and more power, and loses its identity as a congregation with its officers serving God and His Kingdom. One of the worst features of this kind of development is its compromise of theological differences and leveling of diverse interpretations of the Bible so that people say that one view is as good as another. In allowing such opposite uses of the Bible one ends without the Bible. It is far better to have a disagreement like that between Luther and Zwingli than to shake hands and say that such matters are not important, that “it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere.” Liberalism is really such a false brotherhood, like that of the World Council of Churches in which truth is replaced by sincerity.

The developments which the speaker outlined as they appeared in his denominational history could also be traced in other circles, in Puritan New England and in our own denomination, for example. The movement of “progressives” to places of authority, the rise of congregationalism, regression into “Fundamentalism,” church identification with bureaucracy, and, finally and worst, the leveling of differences in “interpretations” of the Scriptures are constantly in operation in churches, and call for the use of measures to forestall them. The speaker delineated several of these. We must learn to discipline ministers of the Word before they become out-and-out heretics—when their errors begin. We must restore Biblical discipline in congregation, classis and synod, instead of calling for peace at any price. We must be willing to “contend for the faith” against errors coming from within as well as from without, and not fear controversy. When someone suggests that we take matters more easily, not be so critical, and adopt a more brotherly stance toward those who disagree, we must be more sensitive to what God thinks of us if we do not contend for the faith than to such criticisms.

In subsequent questioning and discussion the speaker noted how in a Liberal church atmosphere, although older people may keep their faith, their children and grandchildren fall away from it. Asked for an opinion about the ph ilosophy of Dooyeweerd, he recalled how that movement began seeking a Biblical perspective, but how in its development it became very destructive when it no longer permitted the Bible to tell us what to do. Regarding the way in which Liberals gain influence in churches, he observed that many people whose theology is shaky eventually become professors. The history of the Eureka Classis’ long struggle against Liberalism underscores the need for strenuous and aggressive action for the Reformed Faith and against the false teaching that betrays it.

The appointment of the new professor recalls an earlier development in our denominational history. Dr. Henry Zwaanstra in an article on “Grundy College: 1916–1934” (in Perspectives on the CRC, edited by De Klerk and De Ridder, pp. 109–150) details the almost 20 years of effort to provide training for ministers from the German Reformed traditions and resources of some of our churches in central Iowa. After that effort failed, victim of the depression and of the opposition to a competitor of the denominational schools, the former teachers became an important part of Calvin’s faculty. The gospel of Christ does not wear a national and ethnic label, although we and other Christians at times blunder into acting as though it did. (Sometimes it appears that the myth of “ethnic theologies” is becoming our churches’ most advertised current heresy!) But addition of Professor Grossman with his outspoken commitment to the Biblically Reformed Faith to the Orange City staff may help to counteract some of our provincialisms and prepare students and others who are influenced by the school to become more effective servants of the gospel in our time in our own and other churches.