Bert Van Dyken is a member of the Immanuel Christian Reformed Church of Ripon, California. He has served on the board of the Stockton Rescue Mission for twenty-eight years and has brought a gospel message there once a month for twenty-five years. Report 44, to which Mr. Van Dyken refers, is the report adopted at the CRC Synod of 1972 on the Nature arid Extent of Biblical Authority.

To what extent can we speak of the “Extent of Biblical Authority”? – We live in a changing world. “Change and decay in all around I see.” The things we took for granted as being permanent when we were young have undergone change. Some buildings thought to be indestructible are crumbling or have yielded to the big iron ball, the symbol of destruction.

There are signs of change in other areas also. Today men speak of all things being relative. There was a time when God’s moral law was accepted as basic and abiding. Now many have embraced situation ethics. This new law is made to fit every situation and is very pliable. Truth is only relative to many, and so, like Pilate, they ask, “What is truth?”

Words which used to express the ultimate have a different meaning today. We speak of perfection as over against something imperfect. Can we truly speak of the extent of the perfection of a perfect circle? The question is superfluous and misleading. If there is no flaw in the circle, it is perfect. These are “either-or” terms, otherwise what does perfection mean? God speaks of Himself as being infallible and of man as fallible. Infallibility is the ultimate. You cannot question the extent of God’s infallibility. How then can we speak of “The Extent of Biblical Authority,” when God, its Author, speaks always and only Authoritatively?

God‘s Word is the Ultimate in Authority –One of the reasons Report 44 is not clear and is saying two different things at the same time is because the mandate given by Synod in 1969 was a misnomer. It was the kind of question that presupposes the answer, and its acceptance as a valid question led the Study Committee to posit limited authority, when God speaks He always speaks with full (that is ultimate) authority. How then can a committee make a study of the extent of that Biblical authority? We believe, of course, that the whole Bible is God’s Word. Or, are we leaning toward Barthianism and believe that God’s Word is in the Bible?

    The Study Committee Tried to Answer Two Mandates— 1. The study committee was appointed in 1969. It was because of a background of unrest in theological circles, leanings toward “Theistic Evolution” and the “New Hermeneutics” in our sister church and by certain professors in the Netherlands, that Synod felt the need for the study. The findings of this committee were to be an answer to the writings of men like Dr. Kuitert and Dr. Lever of the Free University and for pastoral advice and guidelines for our churches.

2. The other mandate seemingly was a behind-the-scenes pressure that there should be room in the report for the “scientific approach.”

One wonders why a former committee appointed in 1966 to advise Synod as to Committee appointment and mandate to study “Creation and Evolution” was dissolved? Was the mandate too big and the extremes so great that the average layman would be able to sec plainly in which direction our Christian Reformed Church was going?

What does Report 44 really say? – No one seems to know exactly what Report 44 wants to say. Even the great theologians in our circles do not agree. nor do they agree with the explanations of the study committee. This, of course, was what was needed so the average layman would not be able to see that the Christian Reformed Church has been sold for a mess of “scientific pottage.” Now we have what Dr. De Koster, the Editor of The Banner, warned against repeatedly, that A and B in the report were like oil and water which will not mix. One thing Dr. De Koster overlooked however, and that is that oil and water will mix by adding an emulsifier. This emulsifier which was added is “Vagueness.” And now, wonder of wonders, it has mixed so that one can’t really say it is all good or all bad. It has quite the resemblance of what Jesus said about the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:16: “So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”

Report 44 – the great umbrella – Under this great umbrella we now have room for:

1. Those who believe and confess that God has spoken authoritatively in His Word, the Bible, and that He speaks with the same authority on whatever subject or content to which God chooses to address Himself.

2. Those who take the scientific approach, which allows for “theistic evolution,” a denial of a historical Adam and Eve and the world in history by the chapters of Genesis to be a story, myth, or somehow outside our real history.

In short, Report 44 allows for the very thing it was supposed to counteract, which was the evolutionary teachings of some of the professors in the Free University in the Netherlands and the application of their “New Hermeneutics” to the Word of God.

Change and decay in all around I see – Is the Christian Reformed Church past the point of no return? Can we teach our children that God created Adam and Eve and the world in history by the Word of His mouth, because the Bible says so? Can we teach them that God‘s Word is the final authority?

If the Bible is absolutely the ultimate and is totally authoritative, without qualification because God is its author, then to pose the question of the “Extent of its Authority” is a sin. Then we do violence to God and His Word. May this never be.