I have loved the Christian Reformed Church all my life. Her Biblical and distinctly Reformed creeds and confessions clearly identify her and have been a blessing to me in my personal relationship with God and His Word. Therefore, the present direction of the Christian Reformed Church has been a tremendous grief to me. I find it difficult to believe that with such a thoroughly Biblical foundation, our church, seminary, and college could be misled by three Calvin professors, Van Till, Young, and Menninga who are not, and do not claim to be, our spiritual leaders. Many of our elected and appointed educational and spiritual leaders have rushed to the support of these professors and their method of Biblical interpretation.
My conviction is that the things discussed and argued to date are merely symptoms of the real issue we must ultimately face. The length of the creation days is not the issue; whether either side has enough love to hold thru disagreement is not the issue. Whether God is great enough to do anything that pleases Him is not the issue. The real issue is: Is God’s Word truly and completely inspired? Can we believe all of the Bible or will we accept and believe only part of it?
These professors suggest that God would be “tricky” or “deceptive” if He meant for us to literally believe all that the Bible says, for that would contradict scientific evidence. This has terrible implications since it echoes the question Eve was asked in Genesis 1:3c, “Has God indeed said . . . ?” I dare not judge how God responds to those who imply that He is “tricky” or “deceptive.” Those are the Biblical word descriptions of satan, not God. The Bible says that “God cannot lie” (Titus 1:2) and that satan is “the father of the lie” (John 8:44). Everyone concerned about the Calvin professors’ views should get a copy of the “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee,” given at the February, 1988, General Board meeting of Calvin College. It can be obtained from your pastor or clerk, since every church was sent a copy.
Please give your prayerful consideration to an obvious and total disagreement between what they say and teach, and what God’s Word, the Bible, says:
Jeremiah 29:19 “. . . Because they have not heeded My words, says the Lord, which I sent to them by My servants, the prophets, rising up early and sending you them, neither would you heed, says the Lord.”
Jeremiah 30:2 “Thus speaks the Lord God ofIsrael, saying: Write in a book for yourself all the Words that I have spoken to you.”
I. They say:
The Bible is the “Word” of God, but not the “words” of God. This is their foundation on which all of their teachings rest. To them this means that the Bible contains the non-specific message of God; That many passages are just story or parable words (packaging) in which the Truth can be found; that these word packages are of less importance than the message contained. Thus they try to convince us that God has failed to give us a clear revelation of His Word and works. So, by whom or by what means are we to be led to the Truth? It thus becomes necessary for the “mind of man” to discern which words are God’s actual message and which are just “packaging.”
From the Ad Hoc Committee
Report, page 4: “According to Van Till, Genesis 1–11 is the preamble and the first part of the historical prologue of the covenant, and he calls this part of the prologue ‘primeval history.’” The report continues by quoting from Van Till’s book, The Fourth Day, page 83: “. . . Primeval history and parable can both serve as vehicles of truth important truth. In both cases, the concrete details of the story constitute the packaging in which the truth is conveys. In both cases, the content of the truth is of infinitely greater value than the vehicle or packaging in which it is carried . . . . Though it [primeval history] is not to be taken literally, it is to be taken seriously.”
But God says:
John 17:17 “Sanctify them by the Truth; Thy Word is Truth.”
John 17:8 “For I have given them the words which You have given Me; And they have received them. . . .”
II Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is given by inspiration . . . , and is profitable . . . .”
II. They say:
Moses could not possibly be accurate in the narrative, because he lived so long after the history he describes, and the truth could not have been accurately passed on by so many generations,
But God says:
Numbers 12:6–8 (In response to Aaron and Miriam after they spoke against Moses), “. . . Hear now My Words; If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision, and I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings; And he sees the form of the Lord, Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
Exodus: 33:11 “And the Lord spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend . . . .” Moses did not have to depend on any other persons or his own memory to be accurate, for God spoke plainly to him, face to face.
III. They say:
Adam was not necessarily created, but maybe Adam was born by a more primitive mother. From the Ad Hoc Committee Report, page 2 (comments from interview with Prof. Menninga), “Maybe ·the dust is a figure of speech and maybe God formed Adam by enabling a more primitive mother to give birth to an offspring who possessed the image of God.” In the same report, page 7, the committee says of Dr. Young, “It would follow, therefore, that although Prof. Young, in his published writings, has indicated that Scripture compels us to accept a miraculous origin of man (underlining mine, JT), he would wish to maintain some degree of openness on man’s biological origin.” From the same report, page 5, Prof. Van Till is · quoted from his book, The Fourth Day, page 258: “I see no reason whatsoever to deny that the creation might have had an evolutionary history or that morally responsible creatures (man, JT) might have been formed through the processes of evolutionary development.”
But God says:
Genesis 2:7 “And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” Notice the two steps: The creation from dust, then the breathing of life into that creation.
Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in His Own Image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them.”
IV.They say:
Adam was “weak and vulnerable.”
From theAd Hoc Committee Report, page 2: “As a scientist, Menninga is not sure how Adam was formed. As a believer, he confesses that Adam, though weak and vulnerable (emphasis mine, JT), was made in the image of God and innocent of sin.” In the same report, page 5, Van Till states in his book, The Fourth Day, page 258, “To consider the possibility that we are creatures, members of God’s creation, whose capacity for the awareness of self, of God, and of our responsibility for obedience to divine mandates has been formed thru a process of continuous evolutionary development does not strike me as inappropriate or incongruous or unbiblical” (italics mine, JT).
But God says:
Genesis 1:31 “And God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (not weak and vulnerable).
Genesis 1:28 “So God blessed them, and God said to them; Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Hardly the mandates of a weak and vulnerable man!)
V. They say:
The result of Adam’s sin was not death, but “broken relationships.”
But Gods says:
Romans5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death thru sin (notice the cause and effect relationship), and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . .”
Romans 5:17a “For if by one man’s offense death reigned thru the one . . . .”
VI. If Adam was not created, but born he would bear the image of that “more primitive mother,” not the image of God (even Jesus received His human or Adam’s likeness from His mother, Mary, who bore Him).
And if death was occurring before sin, then Adam was just another step in the evolutionary development and would die as his forbearers did, without sin. We must also conclude that Adam was not created in God’s image and there would be no need to be redeemed.
But God says:
Genesis 3:19b “For dust you are and to dust you shall return.” This is part of the curse resulting from Adam’s sin; returning to dust was not Adam’s original condition. Genesis 1:27. “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.”
VII. They say: The flood could not have covered the whole earth; Our scientific findings do not agree with God’s Word.
But God says: Genesis 7:19 “And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered.”
Genesis 8:9 “But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.”
Psalms 104:5, 6 “You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, you covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.”
II Peter 3:6 “. . . Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished . . . .”
God’s Word is our authority. When we seek the answers to these questions from His Word, it consistently and firmly disagrees with what they are telling us. We must make a decision. Either we believe all Scripture is God’s inspired Word and accept by faith those things which we cannot understand; Or, we accept their teachings; That God did not mean to have all His Word believed as inspired, and that “man’s mind” must determine what parts of the Bible are truly inspired and what parts are to be considered merely “packaging.”
To deny any part of God’s Word is to deny God Himself—God the Holy Spirit is denied when any portion of God’s Word is called “packaging,” and they refuse to accept what II Timothy 3:16 says: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable . . . .” And when Peter writes in II Peter 1:21, “. . . But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” this obviously means that these men did not write their own words, but only what God moved them to write.
Can we accept the current teaching that only part of the Bible is God’s Word and the rest merely packaging, and that God has left us without instruction or direction so that it is left to “man’s mind” to lead us? God says in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” And Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is . . . .” They teach that what they see or touch in the created universe is to be believed even if it disagrees with Scripture, thus repeating their denial of God’s inspired Word. However, God’s Word reminds us of Jesus’ admonition to Thomas in John 20:29, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Do we need to be concerned? Jesus Himself says in Matthew 10:33, “But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father Who is in Heaven.”
I pray that we could all receive the same blessing as Christ’s disciples did just before His ascension, when in Luke 24:44, 45, He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.”
Jack M. Terpstra, 3810 Basswood Grandville, Ml 49418