When our paths crossed downtown that day the poor man had that same miserable, woebegone look that seemed to be frozen on his face. Reports had it that he had lost heavily during the Great Depression of the thirties and that this was probably the reason for his wretched appearance and all that gloom. Our conversation was brief:
“How are you Mr. …………. ?”
“I’ve lost everything,” he answered in Dutch.
Poor fellow, he really looked it!
Suddenly remembering how someone else had dealt with a similar case, I went on to ask:
“When did you lose your wife, Mr. ………….. ?”
Disgusted, he answered, “I did not lose my wife.”
“When did you lose your children?” I continued. As if he meant to say, how silly can you be, he replied, “I did not lose my children.”
“When did you lose Christ?” And with that parting question I walked on, hoping he would really search his soul and think it over.
And that leads me to wish our readers a very Happy New Year!
But what is there to be happy about?
Will anything in 1973 be really new or different? Granted, if the Lord tarries, 1973 will in all likelihood just be more of the same.
The same sins, the same bad news of the world every hour on the hour, the same tensions, the same inhumanity of man to man, the same areas of concern in and for the church, the same agonizing battle for the truth, the same old apostasy and heresy, and the same foes within the church as the pillar and ground of the truth as well as those who attack her from without. As the Preacher said: “That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9).
Happy New Year? Stuff and nonsense! Let’s be realistic and remember that time is on the wrong side. Things will get worse instead of better, and all our reformational hopes and dreams and efforts have no more chance of getting anywhere in 1973 than they did in years gone by.
But wait!
If you and I ever capitulate to such thoughts, let’s ask ourselves: When did you lose Christ?
To the cynic, the pessimist, and the non-spiritually minded dullard, it may mean little or nothing to affix the letters A D. to the new and unknown year 1973. But to the alert and informed believer, Anno Domini (in the year of our Lord) is a truly meaningful and glorious confession of faith. Anno Domini—1973 means that this year also will be controlled from beginning to end not by the world, false teachers, the Antichrist, the devil, or the demons of hell—but by our Lord Jesus Christ who is reigning supreme as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Do we really mean it when we say A.D.? Do we really believe it? Let us then be done with our jeremiads, our despair under Elijah’s juniper, our weariness in well-doing—all so ill-becoming to us as subjects of the Sovereign Ruler of the universe who, at the beginning of every year and of every day, speaks this reassuring word: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18).
Anno Domini—1973!
This means that the headquarters of the world and of the universe is not in Washington, D.C., Ottawa, Canada, Moscow, Peking, Hanoi, or in magnificent cathedrals and colossal councils in which apostate churchmen may hold sway—no, not for a moment! Headquarters for every day and every moment also of 1973 will be at God’s right hand where our Lord and Savior reigns supreme.
“To the philosopher,” someone has written, “time is one of the fundamental qualities. To the average man, time has something to do with dinner.” But to the believer, time and the dawn of another year are radiant with this assurance that Jesus Christ, whose we are and whom we serve, is using every moment of it to work out God’s great plan for His own glory and for the true and abiding good of us His people.
“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.”
(James Russell Lowell)
Anno Domini—1973!
This too is another year of our Lord,
Well then, Happy New Year! A very happy New Year indeed!
LOOK WHO SAID IT!
Does the feeling ever steal over you also that things in society and particularly in the church are going from bad to worse so that at times you become nostalgic enough to long and sigh for a return of “the good old days?”
Of course, to gripe and be dissatisfied about everything in the present and just to slump down with the malcontents into the doldrums will benefit neither ourselves nor others and is an evil against which we are to be on guard. It is always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Or as the Preacher said:
“Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this” (Eccles. 7:9).
However, that this does not mean we are to be incurable optimists with rose-colored glasses and approve of everything in the church, come what may, is obvious from what our Lord Himself had to say to the churches of Asia Minor. As one whose “eyes were as a flame of fire” and out of whose mouth “proceeded a sharp two-edged sword,” Jesus spoke severely and in no uncertain terms about deterioration and decadence in the churches. For example, to the church in Ephesus He told John to write:
“But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).
All of which thus far is meant to say that there can be a right as well as a wrong way to recognize and lament changes in the church that bode no good for the future, to realize that a new breed is appearing both in the pulpit and in the pew, and to arouse ourselves to the awareness that what happened to the churches in Asia Minor long centuries ago may very well be happening to us in our day as well.
The title above these lines, Look Who said it!, is a reference to a report by Randall Vander Mey in Calvin College Chimes (Nov. 10, (72) on the CHCRCA Conference held in Holland, Michigan, Octoher 24-26. Vander Mey, a junior at Calvin, attended the conference as a delegate from the CRC. Of special interest for our purpose in Vander Mey’s report is the concluding part from which we cite just these brief excerpts:
“The cautionary note of good conservative separatist thought which would almost have been a majority opinion in the CRC some years earlier [Italics mine] was represented only by Rev. Leonard Greenway. . . and by former Banner editor John Vander Ploeg . . . .
“With a few minor exceptions, the rest of the CRC contingent was headlong in pursuit of fellowship.”
Now it must at least be said to the credit of the Calvin College Chimes reporter that he is discerning enough to recognize what has been happening in the CRC, regardless of how he personally may feel about the change that has taken place
And so we repeat: Look Who said it! It’s so easy you know to make a caricature of conservative oldsters, to dismiss them as calamity howlers, trouble makers, heresy hunters or diehards. But none of this can very well be bid at the door of a Calvin junior reporting for Calvin College Chimes on the conference as a delegate from the CRC.
When this student comments on the shift in the CRC and tells it like it is, it, would seem to be high time that others in the church who are either blind to what is happening or unwilling to be aroused ought to wake up and get the message.
Once again, look who said it!
FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS
Sure, I know that it’s a lost cause and that we can’t reverse the tide. I know also that the hallowed custom of addressing God as Thee and Thou in prayer is not prescribed in the Bible as it was written in the original. And I know also that we are to grow old graciously and that we obviously will have to learn to live with the innovation of having our Lord addressed as You (just as we address each other) in prayer in public worship.
No, I am not trying to say that the acid test of clergy caliber is whether one is a you man or if he still makes use of Thee and Thou. Neither am I able to say for sure that the observation of a faithful and discerning listener is right when she concludes that as far as the content and quality of sermons goes the scales are definitely tipped in favor of the Thee and Thou preachers and not the other way around. Also far be it from me to try to tell the You people that my conscience must be their guide in this and that it is impossible for them to be devout and reverent when they address God as they do.
But is it too much to ask those who occupy our pulpits not to grate on sensitive souls by going from the sublime to the ridiculous? Take, for example, the case of the young minister of whom I was recently told. In fine fettle and with loud voice he began to recite what our Savior said on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast . . .” and then a sudden standstill and dead silence. A You man and apparently allergic to saying Thou, he suddenly found himself in a liturgical cul-de-sac. When, after the pause, he extricated himself it came out like this: “My God, my God, why hast—You forsaken me?” Is it any wonder that the Thee and Thou people found this to be a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous?
Then there was the case of the young man in the pulpit who, when in prayer he forgot himself for a moment and let Thee slip out instead of you, he quickly corrected himself by adding, “I mean You.” Did that really happen? The man who reported it insisted that he was right there and heard it. Now Thee and Thou people in the pew may be written off as antiquated fuddy-duddies but their feelings for a hallowed custom should not have to be trampled upon by this kind of switch from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Then too there are these middle-of-the-roaders who scramble their Thees and Yous throughout their prayers. Whether they can’t quite make up their minds to which school they belong, or whether they arc playing the old game of compromise, or maybe throwing a sop to both sides, ts not for me to say. At any rate, please don’t be ridiculous by mixing things up so that someone might even be tempted to start counting to find whether the Thees or the Yous are winning out. If you must address the Lord as You in public prayer, please do so as unobtrusively and reverently as possible to avoid desecration of that which is sacred and also not to deprive true worshipers of the blessing they come to receive.
Just a word finally about the idea that anyone who will be hep to the “now” generation can no longer afford to use Thee and Thou. When it comes to being a popular preacher, I suppose it is safe to say that Billy Graham is still second to none. The last time I heard him he was still addressing God as Thee and Thou and even in so doing he nevertheless seems to have no difficulty in retaining his place right at the top. Let’s not underestimate the ability of our generation to appreciate and also to use lofty language in worshiping the Lord.
REPORT 44 – DR. DAANE’S UMBRELLA?
Headers of THE OUTLOOK will recall that Report 44 is the document about the Nature and Extent of Biblical Authority submitted by the 1972 CRC Synod to the churches “as providing guidelines for our understanding and further discussion of the nature and extent of Biblical authority.”
Those who read The Banner, “official organ of the CRC,” will also have noticed in recent issues that Dr. James Daane, a CRC minister and Professor of Pastoral Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has been placing a construction on Report 44 that would make it an umbrella to cover “what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” (The Banner, Nov. 10, ‘72, p. 7).
The following excerpts from Dr. Daane’s articles in the November 10 and December 1 issues of The Banner give some idea of what he claims the position of Report 44 on the Bible to be:
“The 1972 Synod’s view of the Bible and its message is basically that which has long been advocated by Professor C. C. Berkouwer, and lies at the heart of what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new Theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” [Italics mine].
“The Synod of 1972 . . . decided that the Bible is ‘saving revelation’ and that it has no qualities of authority, whether in nature or extent, or any other, except those that reside in and are expressive of the Bible as saving revelation. For ‘saving revelation’ the Synod said, is what the Bible is.”
“Report 44 and the 1972 Synod’s decision about the Bible and about the nature of its authority quite literally takes away every biblical ground for Berkhof’s position that Christ is Lord in two different ways, for the believer it gracious Lord, for the world of unbelievers a Lord of non-gracious power. [Italics mine.] The 1972 Synod denied that grace and power may be thus separated when it defined the Bible as saving revelation, and thereby defined the nature and extent of biblical authority as neither more nor less, nor as something other, than saving, gracious authority.”
So, if Dr. Daane’s interpretation of Report 44 is correct, then it follows that this Report and the 1972 Synod’s favorable action concerning it is an umbrella under which “the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” may now find itself safely sheltered. It is to this point that I would call special attention at this time.
Dr. Daane mentions only Professor Berkouwer of the Dutch churches, but with good reason also the names of Professors H. Kuitert and J. Lever (even though the latter is in zoology) immediately come to mind when he mentions “the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken.” Does Dr. Daane mean that Report 44 is an umbrella large enough to cover them also? If so, this would certainly not be in keeping with what the 1972 Synod was told by its Advisory Committee on Doctrinal Matters prior to its favorable action with respect to Report 44. Synod 1972 was advised:
“A third area of objection to Report 36 concerns the question of whether the report was explicit enough in rejecting certain errors which have recently appeared within the Reformed community. Many have expressed the fear that Report 36 did not clearly reject or refute errors which had been noted in the writings of certain scholars from the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands. It was felt by some that Report 36 was a compromise, tolerating erroneous positions held by such men as Prof. H. Kuitert and Prof. J. Lever. We wish to call Synod’s attention to the fact that Report 44, without mentioning names, emphatically rejects these errors” (Acts of Synod 1972, p. 67. Italics mine).
But now Dr. Daane tells us: “The 1972 Synod’s view of the Bible is basically that which . . . lies at the heart of what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken.”
Now the question: Is Dr. Daane’s Umbrella covering “The new theology” of the Netherlands really to be found in the language of Report 44 or is it something that he was manufactured and is it therefore without any warrant or basis in that document?
Will the members of Synod’s Committee on Biblical Authority (who formulated Report 44) please let us know publicly and as soon as possible whether they meant what Dr. Daane finds in Report 44 or whether his interpretation of it is to be repudiated? Drs. A. Bandstra, D. Holwerda, F. Klooster, Rev. J. Vos, and Drs. M. Woudstra and C. Spykman are certainly in the best position to say precisely what they did mean in presenting Report 44 and whether Dr. Daane is right or wrong. Unless Dr. Daane’s position (advocated in the official organ of the CRC) is challenged and refuted there are those who will conclude that his Report 44-umbrella is really as big as he claims it to be.
Space in THE OUTLOOK will gladly be made available to the above-mentioned men if they will give their reply to our request to make matters clear. Otherwise we will eagerly watch The Banner for what they have to say about this important question. Surely this matter brooks no delay.
“How are you Mr. …………. ?”
“I’ve lost everything,” he answered in Dutch.
Poor fellow, he really looked it!
Suddenly remembering how someone else had dealt with a similar case, I went on to ask:
“When did you lose your wife, Mr. ………….. ?”
Disgusted, he answered, “I did not lose my wife.”
“When did you lose your children?” I continued. As if he meant to say, how silly can you be, he replied, “I did not lose my children.”
“When did you lose Christ?” And with that parting question I walked on, hoping he would really search his soul and think it over.
And that leads me to wish our readers a very Happy New Year!
But what is there to be happy about?
Will anything in 1973 be really new or different? Granted, if the Lord tarries, 1973 will in all likelihood just be more of the same.
The same sins, the same bad news of the world every hour on the hour, the same tensions, the same inhumanity of man to man, the same areas of concern in and for the church, the same agonizing battle for the truth, the same old apostasy and heresy, and the same foes within the church as the pillar and ground of the truth as well as those who attack her from without. As the Preacher said: “That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9).
Happy New Year? Stuff and nonsense! Let’s be realistic and remember that time is on the wrong side. Things will get worse instead of better, and all our reformational hopes and dreams and efforts have no more chance of getting anywhere in 1973 than they did in years gone by.
But wait!
If you and I ever capitulate to such thoughts, let’s ask ourselves: When did you lose Christ?
To the cynic, the pessimist, and the non-spiritually minded dullard, it may mean little or nothing to affix the letters A D. to the new and unknown year 1973. But to the alert and informed believer, Anno Domini (in the year of our Lord) is a truly meaningful and glorious confession of faith. Anno Domini—1973 means that this year also will be controlled from beginning to end not by the world, false teachers, the Antichrist, the devil, or the demons of hell—but by our Lord Jesus Christ who is reigning supreme as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Do we really mean it when we say A.D.? Do we really believe it? Let us then be done with our jeremiads, our despair under Elijah’s juniper, our weariness in well-doing—all so ill-becoming to us as subjects of the Sovereign Ruler of the universe who, at the beginning of every year and of every day, speaks this reassuring word: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18).
Anno Domini—1973!
This means that the headquarters of the world and of the universe is not in Washington, D.C., Ottawa, Canada, Moscow, Peking, Hanoi, or in magnificent cathedrals and colossal councils in which apostate churchmen may hold sway—no, not for a moment! Headquarters for every day and every moment also of 1973 will be at God’s right hand where our Lord and Savior reigns supreme.
“To the philosopher,” someone has written, “time is one of the fundamental qualities. To the average man, time has something to do with dinner.” But to the believer, time and the dawn of another year are radiant with this assurance that Jesus Christ, whose we are and whom we serve, is using every moment of it to work out God’s great plan for His own glory and for the true and abiding good of us His people.
“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.”
(James Russell Lowell)
Anno Domini—1973!
This too is another year of our Lord,
Well then, Happy New Year! A very happy New Year indeed!
LOOK WHO SAID IT!
Does the feeling ever steal over you also that things in society and particularly in the church are going from bad to worse so that at times you become nostalgic enough to long and sigh for a return of “the good old days?”
Of course, to gripe and be dissatisfied about everything in the present and just to slump down with the malcontents into the doldrums will benefit neither ourselves nor others and is an evil against which we are to be on guard. It is always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Or as the Preacher said:
“Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this” (Eccles. 7:9).
However, that this does not mean we are to be incurable optimists with rose-colored glasses and approve of everything in the church, come what may, is obvious from what our Lord Himself had to say to the churches of Asia Minor. As one whose “eyes were as a flame of fire” and out of whose mouth “proceeded a sharp two-edged sword,” Jesus spoke severely and in no uncertain terms about deterioration and decadence in the churches. For example, to the church in Ephesus He told John to write:
“But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).
All of which thus far is meant to say that there can be a right as well as a wrong way to recognize and lament changes in the church that bode no good for the future, to realize that a new breed is appearing both in the pulpit and in the pew, and to arouse ourselves to the awareness that what happened to the churches in Asia Minor long centuries ago may very well be happening to us in our day as well.
The title above these lines, Look Who said it!, is a reference to a report by Randall Vander Mey in Calvin College Chimes (Nov. 10, (72) on the CHCRCA Conference held in Holland, Michigan, Octoher 24-26. Vander Mey, a junior at Calvin, attended the conference as a delegate from the CRC. Of special interest for our purpose in Vander Mey’s report is the concluding part from which we cite just these brief excerpts:
“The cautionary note of good conservative separatist thought which would almost have been a majority opinion in the CRC some years earlier [Italics mine] was represented only by Rev. Leonard Greenway. . . and by former Banner editor John Vander Ploeg . . . .
“With a few minor exceptions, the rest of the CRC contingent was headlong in pursuit of fellowship.”
Now it must at least be said to the credit of the Calvin College Chimes reporter that he is discerning enough to recognize what has been happening in the CRC, regardless of how he personally may feel about the change that has taken place
And so we repeat: Look Who said it! It’s so easy you know to make a caricature of conservative oldsters, to dismiss them as calamity howlers, trouble makers, heresy hunters or diehards. But none of this can very well be bid at the door of a Calvin junior reporting for Calvin College Chimes on the conference as a delegate from the CRC.
When this student comments on the shift in the CRC and tells it like it is, it, would seem to be high time that others in the church who are either blind to what is happening or unwilling to be aroused ought to wake up and get the message.
Once again, look who said it!
FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS
Sure, I know that it’s a lost cause and that we can’t reverse the tide. I know also that the hallowed custom of addressing God as Thee and Thou in prayer is not prescribed in the Bible as it was written in the original. And I know also that we are to grow old graciously and that we obviously will have to learn to live with the innovation of having our Lord addressed as You (just as we address each other) in prayer in public worship.
No, I am not trying to say that the acid test of clergy caliber is whether one is a you man or if he still makes use of Thee and Thou. Neither am I able to say for sure that the observation of a faithful and discerning listener is right when she concludes that as far as the content and quality of sermons goes the scales are definitely tipped in favor of the Thee and Thou preachers and not the other way around. Also far be it from me to try to tell the You people that my conscience must be their guide in this and that it is impossible for them to be devout and reverent when they address God as they do.
But is it too much to ask those who occupy our pulpits not to grate on sensitive souls by going from the sublime to the ridiculous? Take, for example, the case of the young minister of whom I was recently told. In fine fettle and with loud voice he began to recite what our Savior said on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast . . .” and then a sudden standstill and dead silence. A You man and apparently allergic to saying Thou, he suddenly found himself in a liturgical cul-de-sac. When, after the pause, he extricated himself it came out like this: “My God, my God, why hast—You forsaken me?” Is it any wonder that the Thee and Thou people found this to be a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous?
Then there was the case of the young man in the pulpit who, when in prayer he forgot himself for a moment and let Thee slip out instead of you, he quickly corrected himself by adding, “I mean You.” Did that really happen? The man who reported it insisted that he was right there and heard it. Now Thee and Thou people in the pew may be written off as antiquated fuddy-duddies but their feelings for a hallowed custom should not have to be trampled upon by this kind of switch from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Then too there are these middle-of-the-roaders who scramble their Thees and Yous throughout their prayers. Whether they can’t quite make up their minds to which school they belong, or whether they arc playing the old game of compromise, or maybe throwing a sop to both sides, ts not for me to say. At any rate, please don’t be ridiculous by mixing things up so that someone might even be tempted to start counting to find whether the Thees or the Yous are winning out. If you must address the Lord as You in public prayer, please do so as unobtrusively and reverently as possible to avoid desecration of that which is sacred and also not to deprive true worshipers of the blessing they come to receive.
Just a word finally about the idea that anyone who will be hep to the “now” generation can no longer afford to use Thee and Thou. When it comes to being a popular preacher, I suppose it is safe to say that Billy Graham is still second to none. The last time I heard him he was still addressing God as Thee and Thou and even in so doing he nevertheless seems to have no difficulty in retaining his place right at the top. Let’s not underestimate the ability of our generation to appreciate and also to use lofty language in worshiping the Lord.
REPORT 44 – DR. DAANE’S UMBRELLA?
Headers of THE OUTLOOK will recall that Report 44 is the document about the Nature and Extent of Biblical Authority submitted by the 1972 CRC Synod to the churches “as providing guidelines for our understanding and further discussion of the nature and extent of Biblical authority.”
Those who read The Banner, “official organ of the CRC,” will also have noticed in recent issues that Dr. James Daane, a CRC minister and Professor of Pastoral Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has been placing a construction on Report 44 that would make it an umbrella to cover “what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” (The Banner, Nov. 10, ‘72, p. 7).
The following excerpts from Dr. Daane’s articles in the November 10 and December 1 issues of The Banner give some idea of what he claims the position of Report 44 on the Bible to be:
“The 1972 Synod’s view of the Bible and its message is basically that which has long been advocated by Professor C. C. Berkouwer, and lies at the heart of what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new Theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” [Italics mine].
“The Synod of 1972 . . . decided that the Bible is ‘saving revelation’ and that it has no qualities of authority, whether in nature or extent, or any other, except those that reside in and are expressive of the Bible as saving revelation. For ‘saving revelation’ the Synod said, is what the Bible is.”
“Report 44 and the 1972 Synod’s decision about the Bible and about the nature of its authority quite literally takes away every biblical ground for Berkhof’s position that Christ is Lord in two different ways, for the believer it gracious Lord, for the world of unbelievers a Lord of non-gracious power. [Italics mine.] The 1972 Synod denied that grace and power may be thus separated when it defined the Bible as saving revelation, and thereby defined the nature and extent of biblical authority as neither more nor less, nor as something other, than saving, gracious authority.”
So, if Dr. Daane’s interpretation of Report 44 is correct, then it follows that this Report and the 1972 Synod’s favorable action concerning it is an umbrella under which “the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken” may now find itself safely sheltered. It is to this point that I would call special attention at this time.
Dr. Daane mentions only Professor Berkouwer of the Dutch churches, but with good reason also the names of Professors H. Kuitert and J. Lever (even though the latter is in zoology) immediately come to mind when he mentions “the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken.” Does Dr. Daane mean that Report 44 is an umbrella large enough to cover them also? If so, this would certainly not be in keeping with what the 1972 Synod was told by its Advisory Committee on Doctrinal Matters prior to its favorable action with respect to Report 44. Synod 1972 was advised:
“A third area of objection to Report 36 concerns the question of whether the report was explicit enough in rejecting certain errors which have recently appeared within the Reformed community. Many have expressed the fear that Report 36 did not clearly reject or refute errors which had been noted in the writings of certain scholars from the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands. It was felt by some that Report 36 was a compromise, tolerating erroneous positions held by such men as Prof. H. Kuitert and Prof. J. Lever. We wish to call Synod’s attention to the fact that Report 44, without mentioning names, emphatically rejects these errors” (Acts of Synod 1972, p. 67. Italics mine).
But now Dr. Daane tells us: “The 1972 Synod’s view of the Bible is basically that which . . . lies at the heart of what has come to be called by those who reject it the ‘new theology’ of the Gereformeerde Kerken.”
Now the question: Is Dr. Daane’s Umbrella covering “The new theology” of the Netherlands really to be found in the language of Report 44 or is it something that he was manufactured and is it therefore without any warrant or basis in that document?
Will the members of Synod’s Committee on Biblical Authority (who formulated Report 44) please let us know publicly and as soon as possible whether they meant what Dr. Daane finds in Report 44 or whether his interpretation of it is to be repudiated? Drs. A. Bandstra, D. Holwerda, F. Klooster, Rev. J. Vos, and Drs. M. Woudstra and C. Spykman are certainly in the best position to say precisely what they did mean in presenting Report 44 and whether Dr. Daane is right or wrong. Unless Dr. Daane’s position (advocated in the official organ of the CRC) is challenged and refuted there are those who will conclude that his Report 44-umbrella is really as big as he claims it to be.
Space in THE OUTLOOK will gladly be made available to the above-mentioned men if they will give their reply to our request to make matters clear. Otherwise we will eagerly watch The Banner for what they have to say about this important question. Surely this matter brooks no delay.