The recent panic on Wall Street, wherein the market lost a fifth of its value (hundreds of billions of dollars) in one day, tells us almost more than we want to know about modern man and his times. It reveals a society which glories in its own sophistication, but which in reality has had its intellectual bankruptcy laid bare. Even as brokers were reassuring their clients with soothing cliches, the free-falling market was revealing the utter error of their ways. The power of consensus broke, and panic ensued.

Since this makes up the social context of today’s church, we can legitimately ask whether or not she is afflicted with the same kinds of foundational weaknesses. And we would say “Yes,” that this telltale event reveals the church’s loss of faith as well as rationality. She too has her brokers saying “Peace, peace . . . .” But as the Scriptures say, there is no real peace when the underlying supports consist of half-truths and error. Can our Black Monday be far away?

Confusion Threatens

This phenomenon threatens both the church’s theology and her ability to apply it. Symptomatic of this disease, men even seem to have lost the capacity to look at words and sentences (or events and trends) and understand them correctly. And, as has happened time and time again historically, oligarchies or bureacratic fraternities have lept in to fill the resultant theological vacuum. If God’s Word won’t rule, men are all too willing!

Damnably, such groups are able to say that black is white, or that the word “No” really means “Yes,” and still draw affirmative nods from the crowd. But while this simple ignorance may be able to perpetuate itself for some time, as the Scriptures say, all error has its day of reckoning. Their “feet will slip” and they will “fall headlong.”

And when people who are at ease with a herd mentality suddenly find their folly discovered, panic overcomes them. From the results of the recent crash, we can see what happened next. They ran this way and that, with bonds, futures, precious metals prices etc. gyrating wildly as the herd irrationally and momentarily changed its choices. They were utterly lost.

God predicts this of those who scoff at His Word. He says that there is a day coming when He will send a “famine . . . . of the hearing of the words of the Lord.” In that day, “men will stagger back and forth . . . and to and fro, looking for God’s Word but they will not find it!” (Amos 8:11–12).

The Church’s Shaky Indicators

In the church there are many telltale signs of this trouble. As we said, an early indicator can be seen in the fact that we discount what people say today. And if words, which are foundational to theology are discounted, what hope does the queen of the sciences (ie. theology) have?

Jesus didn’t feel this way. He commanded, “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay,” and warned that even our “idle words” would be judged. But modern reformed Christians question whether it really matters what people say. And so they admit people to their churches, sacraments, seminaries and offices whose words are most deficient.

They claim that what really matters is the psychology behind the words. If the person “loves” in some undefined and ambiguous way, then that person is “orthodox.” He’s fit for offices, and maybe even for the “fraternity.” Likewise, if the person doesn’t have “love,” then he has disqualified himself.

Because this mentality is mystical (ie. not anchored to objective words) it’s vicious. Ultimately, it can be as arbitrary as it desires! It has no checks. It can say one thing and mean something else, or say nothing and yet claim to have said something. It may be quasi “conservative” for a time, and then it can moderate or become moderate or become outwardly liberal. But at root it was “liberal” all along because instead of being tied to God’s objective Word, it was tethered to the subjective mind of man for its authority.

This syndrome has led to a general de-emphasis of the church’s subscription vows (ie. allegiance to the church’s authoritative “words”). Confessionalism is at its breaking point. Many sessions and presbyteries don’t care what their confessions (ie. the Scriptures) say. They are their own “confession” and they will do what they want.

Some Christian Reformed churches ordain women, regardless of what the Heidelberg catechism says. And we know of a least one Mid-Western OPC church which distributes communion to its children already. The same can be said for charismatism, dispensationalism, and the principles of liberalism. “When the spirit leads (as the liberal CRC men are wont to say), who can stand before it?”

The Perception of the Seminaries?

Would it surprise us if our seminaries were similarly afflicted? Soon, Journey plans to publish criticisms of some theological works. The words are down in black and white. But according to an unsolicited response by one author’s protege, the words of the mentor just don’t mean what they say. “He,” the student said, “was just making a hypothetical case.” The words, he is saying, can be discounted because of their intention.

In the area of biblical studies, we see the loss of theology wreaking havoc. For example, many modern reformed teachers quote people like liberal James Barr (cf. an English biblical scholar) as if they were God’s greatest gift to conservatism. For the uninitiated, James Barr has done much writing wherein the errors of the German liberals found the Theological Wordbook of the New Testament have been catalogued. So, evangelical and reformed scholars point with glee to Barr as if he’s really their friend. His books are used in their seminary classrooms, often without any criticism at all.

The problem is that Barr’s presuppositions are basically liberal, just like those who wrote the Wordbook. His criticisms are intramural and not substantive. He doesn’t believe in inerrancy. The Bible, for him, is not the material cause of reformation. In reality he’s an out and out naturalist (ie. the real authority for him is his own mind) . . . albeit of a slightly more “conservative” stripe than the Germans.

But just as in Wall Street’s blindness, these danger signals don’t matter, because our earlier mentioned “fraternity” has decided that such men are perfectly “o.k.” They sense a commonality of “spirit” which legitimizes their errant theological position.

What has happened is that somewhere along the line, our scholars accepted liberalism’s charge that the orthodox line of argumentation by men such as B.B. Warfield and E.J. Young was irrelevant. (I can remember hearing such criticisms by evangelicals at my own seminary alma mater.) Deciding this, they have left those historic fields and have wandered over onto the Astroturf of liberalism.

In other words, they’re debating the issues the way they would be debated at places like Harvard and Yale. Graciously we would grant that such men, “in their hearts,” hold to Christ. But they haven’t yet realized they’re already playing on the other field.

The PCA’s Twist

The Presbyterian Church in America has developed its own unique twist on this phenomenon, which has greatly affected American Presbyterianism. For them, mysticism’s fraternity is found in the “big churches.” When the big churchmen speak, it’s just like the big brokerage houses on Wall Street. “After all, they must know how to search out the golden mean, for “They got large, didn’t they?” And contrariwise, bow can those little-church “TR’s” really know what’s right? They’re so small!

The problem for the big churchmen is that the TR’s are looking at the Scriptures and saying, “But God’s Word says.” And even while they may not always be right, at least their basic orientation is substantial. History bears this out. Christ’s “little ones,” (ie. those who cling to the “insignificant” Scriptures instead of the powers of the world) survive, regardless of temporal appearances!

At one time in history, heretical Arianism held all the big churches. It was also the “most missionary-minded,” with its missionaries penetrating Northern Europe. It occupied all the fields. But God was in control, so when Athanasius began to preach truth, the big churchmen crumbled. It took a hundred years, but ultimately error had its own “Black Monday,” and truth won out. The same could be said of Augustine’s battle with Pelagianism. The latter said the former just didn’t understand the Scriptures. But they and their twisted exegesis perished in the refreshing rains of God’s sovereign truth.

We can see the same from more contemporary history. Many churches have thought they could maintain orthodoxy by their evangelical (heart) commitment rather than by their heartfelt commitment to objective creeds and confessions. An excellent example is the old (psalm singing) United Presbyterian Church of men like Addison Leitch and John Gerstner.

Creedalists like these latter two men were perceived as reactionary. They just didn’t understand. And so the U.P. church set itself on a course which focused almost exclusively on missions and evangelism.

This is precisely the course of the PCA’s big churchmen. The problem is that the devil consumed the old U.P.’s. He scoffed at their naivete. Within a few short years (ie. 1958) they were gobbled up by the old (Northern) Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. They denied what God said, and so paid the price for it by marrying the beast of liberalism. The moderating U.P.’s thought they could “welch” just a bit on what God has said Gust enough to be successful and avoid controversies), and survive. But they didn’t. And Black Monday came. And they were wiped out.

The Church’s Black Monday?

The demise of the old U.P. Church occurred only thirty years ago. Yet we are so historically illiterate that even that lesson is too distant for us. With our biblical and historical shortsightedness, we think we can mock God again. We think we can mediate from our Calvinistic confessionalism and prosper. We pretend that we can trade truth and buy her back again when we might have the “need.” But the bear always lurks around the corner of such a strategy.

If we do not humble ourselves before God’s Word, our churches will soon bear His wrath in even more dramatic ways than heretofore. And we, both leaders and people, will look back and ask, “When did we go wrong? Why did we waste our money building another ungodly liberal church?”

In truth we have no choice. God has shown his power over the affairs of men. It is time to admit our failures and return to His Word and a straight-forward understanding of it. It is time to call for His Word as a reforming agent over our lives. It is time to speak honestly, recognizing the significance of our words. It is time to take our theology seriously, and cease our scoffing at its application. In other words, brothers and sisters, it’s time to change. Before the worst occurs.

This editorial is reprinted from the Nov.-Dec. ‘87 JOURNEY MAGAZINE, with which we have a reciprocal arrangement. Rev. R.E. Knodel is an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor at Lynchburg, Virginia.