The May-June issue of the conservative Mennonite magazine, Guidelines for Today, contains an address of its editor, Sanford G. Shetler, delivered at the meeting of the Fellowship of Concerned Mennonites at Landisville, PA, September 5, 6, 1984. He observed that it was the “rapid change in beliefs and practices that brought into being this organization . . . of Concerned,” just as such changes in other church circles had occasioned the rise of similar groups in “virtually all of the mainline Protestant churches . . . in the last 25 years.”
“The basic reasons for organizing these concern groups,” the speaker found in “the drastic changes in attitude toward the Bible and the accompanying pluralism in faith and practice which has developed because of this. The catch-phrase ‘It’s just a matter of interpretation,’ has virtually negated many of the long-accepted doctrines and practices of all denominations in such areas as the social gospel, social and political action, the role of women, evolutionism, and human sexuality.” After alluding to the rise of the Modernists and “neoorthodox,” he noted that “drinking at the fountain of these big-name theologians who held a very low view of the Scriptures, many Mennonite churchmen began to follow and promote their new subjective theology which views the Bible only in terms of what it means to the individual and not as objective truth applicable to all people for all time.” The result, in these churches as in many others, has been what Francis Schaeffer called in his last book, “The Great Evangelical Disaster . . . that the Bible is no longer considered by many biblical scholars to be the ‘inerrant guide to faith and life.’ This may well be called the greatest tragedy to befall Christianity since the days of the Reformation. The Reformation slogan Sola Scripture (the Bible alone) is coming to be replaced rapidly with Sola Persona (only what the individual wants it to mean).”
“This attitude toward the Scriptures is actually just a minor revision of the original satanic slur in the garden, ‘yea, hath God said?’ All other problems stem from this colossal apostasy which is becoming the earmark of our times. The solemn Biblical declaration of the prophets, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ has been exchanged for ‘Thus saith the scholar.’ The deep respect for the historical-critical method of Biblical exegesis has left many young seminarians to emerge with a faith that is riddled by doubt, leaving them to preach on the great themes of the Bible without conviction.” He cited Francis Schaeffer’s remark in his book, that “Something is profoundly wrong when a Bible teacher in a prominent evangelical college teaches that one of the Gospel writers made up some of the stories about the birth of Jesus, and that some of the things which Jesus said as recorded in the Gospels really were not said by Jesus at all, but were made up by other people later.” Harold Lindsell, in his The Battle for the Bible, observed that “More frequently than not, men with this kind of training did not go into the parish ministry,” but into teaching in educational institutions and “enjoyed teaching these new and attractive but irregular doctrines through the literature of the denomination. So they became editors and writers for church school materials.”
Again citing the writers who had so clearly diagnosed the present condition, the speaker emphasized their call to draw a firm line against this misuse of the Scriptures. “Will we have the courage to draw a line, and to do it publicly, between those who take a full view of Scripture and those who have been infiltrated theologically and culturally? If we do not have the courage, we will cut the ground out from under the feet of our children, and we will destroy any hope of being the redeeming salt and light of our dying culture.” Despite the cost and unpopularity of opposing the movement against the Bible, “. . . if we truly love the Lord and His Word and His church, we have no other choice.” The speaker observed that despite some 30 years of church conferences and consultations, “the great disappointment has been that little or nothing has been done to correct the shift away from the historic faith.”
“The true prophets of the past were not those who were accommodating themselves to the ways of backsliding Israel, but those who were calling for a return to the old paths. Our task . . . is to continue to be watchmen on the walls of Zion, alerting our people to the subtle attacks made from within and from without by the great enemy of our souls. This is no time for blind optimism, false acclamations of brotherhood and progress. In the true tradition of the prophets and the apostles, we must declare the whole counsel of God, warning our people about the many subtle dangers facing us, knowing that as leaders and laity we will be responsible to God.”
PDJ
