Dr. Clayton Libolt gained notoriety in the Christian Reformed Churches when the 1981 synod denied his application for candidacy for the gospel ministry. He was rejected after he stated in his examination that he would not hold the Genesis Adam and Eve story to be “real” in the sense that his questioner intended. On the evening of November 4, 1982 he spoke in the Calvin Theological Seminary auditorium at a public meeting attended mainly by students. His subject was “On Reading Genesis.” He began his speech by observing that he had been moving from “right” to “left field” on his way to candidacy. The speech shed more light on the speaker’s leftward movement than on the proper reading of Genesis.
The Bible as “Literary”
Noting that we often seem to be more interested in confessing the Bible than in reading it, he suggested that we ought to read it carefully. paying attention to details. When we do that we find it to be different, more “complex” and “literary” than we had thought it was. He illustrated this point by alluding to Schoenberg’s opera Moses and Aaron, based on Exodus 32. Schoenberg questioned why Moses broke both the tables of the law and the golden calf when he found the people worshipping the latter. To Moses’ angry question to his brother why he had made the calf, the composer makes Aaron retort, “You did the same!” And he has a dejected Moses forced to admit that his own word and moral image, as well as Aaron’s golden image, was “false as all images are.” Although Libolt thought that Schoenberg would have been able to write a third act about “the Word made flesh” if he had been a Christian, instead of leaving the opera unfinished, Libolt stated that the composer had given a “good interpretation” of Exodus 32. Notice that this “good interpretation” flatly contradicts the account of Exodus, and that it misrepresents God’s law as an invention of Moses just as “false” as Aaron’s golden calf! Proceeding in the same fanciful fashion to Exodus 33, the speaker explained that when Moses was permitted to see only God’s “back” this meant God’s “past” and that His “face” meant His “future.”
The speaker called attention to a common reluctance to recognize the Bible as “literary.” He stated that whereas the modern world distinguishes between fiction and history, the Bible does not make that distinction. This assertion, Dr. Libolt later seemed to contradict when he referred to Paul’s I Corinthians 15 insistence on the factuality of the resurrection. It is not the Bible that confuses fact with fiction, but modern liberal theology which insists on confusing the two. The Bible, from the beginning of Genesis to the last chapters of Revelation insists on distinguishing the truth from the lie, attributing the first to God and the latter to the devil. (See also I John 2:21; John 8:44; Rev. 12:9).
Accepting Historical Criticism
On this point, as throughout the rest of his lecture, Libolt’s own reading of the Bible was “playful” or fanciful, rather than “careful.” Anyone who reads Romans 5 can see that Paul’s comparison of Adam with Christ was no mere literary allusion, but was a historical parallel between the real fall into sin and the real saving work of Christ to deliver from it. In setting aside both the Old and New Testament’s historical explanation of the Fall to make of it a mere story to illustrate man’s development from childhood to adulthood, as Libolt at least suggested, he was radically altering fundamental doctrines of the gospel, more specifically, the whole First Part of the Heidelberg Catechism.
The speaker stated that he thought Genesis was the Word of God. He cited the example of John Calvin, who, he said, recognized the Bible because of the Holy Spirit’s testimony, but denied that there was any qualitative difference between it and other books. Anyone who is at all familiar with Calvin’s constant appeal to t he Bible as God’s Word, final in determining the Christian’s faith and way of life can see the error of Libolt’s claim. (For a careful refutation of this not uncommon charge about Calvin which the speaker was repeating, the reader may consult John Murray‘s book, Calvin on Scripture and Divine Sovereignty which consists of lectures given for the Reformed Fellowship in 1959 and printed by Baker in 1960 and 1978.)
Dr. Libolt’s lecture plainly showed how he had been moving into the “left field” of Liberal theology. Although he still believed, regarding the early part of Scripture, that there were human beings who (in some sense) fell, that the Bible distinguished Creator from creature as other old religious narratives did not, and distinguished man as “regent” over creation rather than making him a mere “servant” as other myths did, and although he still believed in a resurrection, it was plain that the Bible was no longer for him the uniquely inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God and ground for our faith. Over that faith the present day historian and scientist had been given at least a measure of veto power. When the fall is explained as a mere phase of man’s development from childhood to adulthood, and God’s law which reveals man’s sin is interpreted as a false invention of Moses, it is obvious that we are being introduced to a “gospel” which has little similarity to that which we and our churches confess. We may be thankful that in this case our churches in both 1981 and 1982 officially decided that such heretical views as these are not to be tolerated in their ministry.
We cannot fairly blame Calvin Seminary, as apparently some have done, for Dr. Libolt’s changing views since he left the school in 1971. But the school’s faculty and Board have been properly criticized for recommending him for candidacy in 1981. Now, when the seminary is making extra efforts to regain the churches’ confidence in it, which was in some degree shaken by that recommendation, inviting Dr. Libolt to promote his views among college and seminary students is hardly reassuring to those churches.
The speaker pointed out that we rely on two things to determine historicity, (1) evidence, and (2) a sense of the probability or improbability of alleged events. While many Christians do not hesitate to apply this historical test to apocryphal stories such as that of Tobit, they hesitate to apply it to Exodus, Matthew or John. Should we apply it to Biblical events such as the resurrection? Libolts’ answer is “Yes.” When we apply this test to the Bible we learn that: (1) Historians for a hundred years have been admitting that the Bible is far more historical than other writings of its time, (2) The Bible does not use the same standards of precision as that used by modern historians, as even our synods have admitted, and (3) There is far less historical data before the time of David than after, and most modern scholars say that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not history at all. Many people find this upsetting and some say that these conclusions are wrong. They hold that to believe in Christianity you must believe that Christ arose from the dead and that you must believe in creation, and they fear that if you follow the historical scholars in their view of Genesis, you will (eventually) deny the resurrection too. With this line of argument the speaker did not agree. If we believe that the Bible is history we must submit it to the test of history.
At this point it became obvious that Dr. Libolt was mistakenly identifying “history” with the opinions of some present-day historians. He was assuming (what Herbert Butterfield in his Christianity and History, p. 15, once characterized as the disastrous “optical illusion”) that some contemporary historical writings are definitive and final. For Dr. Libolt the Bible should be criticized by modern unbelieving scholars, but the opinions of those scholars may not be criticized by the Bible!
Dr. Libolt held that we believe the resurrection because of the testimony of the Spirit. The historians reassure us that they cannot either prove or disprove it. The tower of Babel, however, is denied by historians. Accordingly, we do not need to hold that, for it is not an article of faith buta prejudgment.
Adam and Eve
The speaker would have us read the Bible “attentively, sensitively and playfully.” Reviewing Genesis 3, he observed that the serpent was partly right because Adam and Eve did not immediately die. The “knowledge of good and evil,” he explained as the knowledge that is gained in the transition from childhood to adulthood which is connected with a feeling of alienation (noting also the reference to “nakedness” with its “heavy sexual overtones”). In the fact that the couple did not immediately die he saw a hint that God was not really against them and would try to find a way so that they might have life—thus beginning the Bible as the book of hope.
He was questioned about Paul’s allusion to Adam in Romans 5. He suggested that “federal (or covenant) theology” was a wonderful idea developed in the 16th century but was not what Paul was talking about. Did he believe that Adam and Eve were real flesh and blood people? He would not deny that there were first persons, but insisted that that story was not history. He observed that the statement of the Calvin Board of Trustees (that the members of the seminary faculty “without exception believe that Adam and Eve were created by God and are our first parents” and “accept the reality of an historical fall as recorded in the Scriptures”), did not use “historical” in the usual sense and was “deceptive.” He explained his own frank speaking on this matter with the remarks that “My job isn’t on the line; I’m lost already” and “I’m not campaigning.” Paul obviously thought that Adam was historical, but Libolt noted that the Old Testament, except possibly in Ezekiel, did not deal with Adam again, and it was only the later rabbis, in whose tradition Paul was trained, who began speculating about Adam. We could take Paul’s allusion to Adam in Romans 5 as we might use the expression “the good samaritan” without believing that there had really been such a person as the man in Jesus’ parable.
Reports in our church papers state that Dr. Libolt, who has been serving the River Terrace Christian Reformed Church of East Lansing, Michigan, on the university campus and in adult education, and who was licensed by Classis Lake Erie to exhort since 1972, is to have renewal of that license considered at the January, 1983, meeting of the classis. What will the classis do? Can the classis declare as acceptable in its pulpits views which the churches’ synod has declared must be barred as heretical?
*A week before this meeting Dr. Libolt had also addressed students of the seminary.