As our readers quite without exception know by this time, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands are engaged in extensive discussions on the legitimacy and propriety of affiliating themselves as confessional church with the World Council of Churches. The arguments for and against such affiliation are being pursued at great length. It is to be hoped that before a final decision is taken by these churches to which Reformed believers throughout the world have been so greatly indebted in the past, this matter which concerns us all will be placed by said churches on the official agenda of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod.

Opposition to such affiliation is present within these churches. How greatly some, perhaps many. are disturbed by the most recent pronouncement of their synod can be ascertained from periodicals and pamphlets.

Other churches of Reformed persuasion in that land have noted, and often witIl some measure of consternation, what has been done and is now being discussed. Representatives of such denominations have not hesitated to state their views on the subject, especially leaders in tIle Reformed Churches (art. 31). In recent issues of De Reformatie Prof. J. Kamphuis has devoted lengthy articles to his analysis of what is involved for a confessional Reformed church in such affiliation and even in seriously considering such affiliation a legitimate option. In his most recent article on “Afscheiding en oecumene” (Secession and ecumenism) we discover much that deserves careful consideration.

Often those who champion affiliation on the part of Reformed churches with the World Council argue that Reformed believers in the nineteenth century were faced with a foe which we no longer have—the “old-fashioned” modernism with its blatant denials of many of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. It is argued that within many churches and seminaries a return to Biblical theology augurs hopefully for having confessional churches, also Reformed, associate themselves with the world-wide movement and influencing its theological understanding and pronouncements. And it cannot be denied that much more Biblical terminology is being used in the pronouncements and literature of the Council than some decades ago. That the theological climate is not quite the same as in the days of the Afscheiding (1834) and the Doleantie (1886) cannot be gainsaid. Prof. Kamphuis, however, rightly raises a warning finger against glibly assuming that the use of Biblical terminology guarantees the Biblical character of that movement, its activities and its declarations. It is his conviction that precisely this “Biblical theology,” now so widely hailed, contains within itself grave perils for a truly confessional and Biblical orthodoxy. He points out that also the men of the Secession of 1834 were confronted with a kind of Biblical theology which they recognized clearly as the enemy of Christ and his church. In view of the fact that often Biblical theology and dogmatics are being sharply contrasted by some who claim to be Reformed, and invariably to the disadvantage of the latter, it is well for us to learn lessons from Church History and see the issues clearly.

Without entering substantially into the argument and the evidences which are adduced, we would quote a few salient passages.

                 

Kamphuis denies that the differences between then and now were as great as some would claim. “But the Secession saw itself confronted already earlier (i.e. than the days of outspoken modernism) with the prelude and beginning of the Groninger school, the so-called evangelical theology, which was in its ascendancy in the thirties (of the 19th century). Indeed, also there we deal with a ‘falsifying of the gospel,’ although not with the brazen public denial of all revealed truth but rather with a much more difficult-to-discern counterfeiting of the truth. Men continued to speak about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, about church and atonement, men even pursued eagerly a ‘biblical theology’ which demonstrated much concern for the history of God’s work in Christ and thereupon placed this ‘biblical theology’ in sharp contrast to the scholasticism and speculation which supposedly entered the Reformed churches during and after Dordrecht 1618–19. Shall we do justice to the Secession, understanding its peculiar strength and recognizing its historical significance, we must see its origin in this environment. It broke with the ecumenical movement of those days, which came to power under the banner of a so-called biblical theology and wanted to wipe out the old ecclesiastical and confessional lines of demarcation.”

Somewhat later in the same article the professor stales, “The positive stance in relation to the ecumenical movement is primarily a confessional concern! The triumph of doctrinal relativism has opened the way to the World Council…The confession of Dordrecht is still the stone of stumbling for the ecumenicists. Men still sail under the flag of a so-called biblical theology and forget the warning incoporated in these words of Bavinck, ‘Behind the facade of Scriptural ness Biblical theology has always wandered farther away from Scripture; and with its non-biblical terms ecclesiastical orthodoxy has ever and again been justified in its Scriptural character.’”

What possibly needs emphasis among Reformed believers throughout the world today is that Biblical scholars and dogmatic theologians need each other more than ever. Without Biblical studies dogmatics will degenerate into either arid scholasticism or irrelevant speculation. Without systematics Biblical theology will produce at its best an unbalanced. at its worst a subtle but deadly perversion of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

PETER Y. DE JONG