To polarize is to take sides on an issue.
To do this may be either good or bad.
For example, to set black against white, haves against have-nots, poor against rich, young against old, Dutch against Polish, is to polarize on the ground of race, class, wealth, age, nationality—and to do that would be inexcusable and shameful. One should apologize for ever having truck with polarization the likes of that.
But then there also comes a time when polarization is positively a must. That time arrives when a man stands before Scripture and is called upon to answer what he believes or does not believe about it. Here’s the question: is that Bible the inspired, infallible, inerrant, authoritative Word of God in toto, or is it something less than that?
You see, you can’t have it both ways. The late John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State with President Eisenhower, claimed that to be neutral on the international tensions in his day was immoral. Just so, to straddle the fence on this far more important question about Scripture is to be immoral.
Someone has said it so well: either we belong to the cult of Pontius Pilate who said, What is truth? or we stand with the followers of Christ who said, Thy Word is truth! Those who confess Christ and at the same time undermine the authenticity and integrity of Scripture are guilty of treason.
I count it an honor indeed. hereby to enter upon the labors of the managing editor of TORCH AND TRUMPET. Chief among the reasons for this is the fact that those who publish this journal are not groping with respect to the issue of infallibility and inerrancy but are rather committed to an unequivocal position.
Like the man in the pulpit, a religious publication is sure to flounder and confuse rather than clarify the issues unless it has first gotten the right sense of direction as to what the Bible really is. It is both challenging and exciting to be identified in journalism with an endeavor undergirded by the word of our Lord: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). Masquerade as it will in the garb of modernity, the so-called new hermeneutics is old stuff, and only those who are uninformed will embrace it as the mark of being sophisticated or modern. Actually, this satanic assault on Scripture began already centuries ago in Paradise when the serpent said to the woman, “Yea, hath God said …?” That was the first lesson in liberal theology, and when the class was dismissed man’s doom was sealed. The anomaly of modernism is that it is old as the hills.
The challenge to head a journal that crusades for a return to Scripture in all its wholeness is so thrilling because apart from this we do not address ourselves to the root cause of all the woes that beset society at large and the church in particular in our time. To this day there is no substitute for that prescribed already in Isaiah’s time: “To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them” (Isa. 8:20).
The touchstone of what it means to be Christian and Reformed may never be that which is pragmatic. popular, or prevalent, but only and always the norm of the infallible and inerrant Word of God. Situation ethics, violence, marital problems, abortion, the lodge, priority in the mission of the church, whether sermons are to be or not to be, racism, war, and mention what you will—without the norm of an unassailed and uncompromised Thus saith the Lord, every man will do right in his own eyes, and all black and white will have had their day.
Surely the hue and cry against the evils of polarization can be carried too far. Fact is there can be no antithesis without it. Mind you, Jesus himself was all for bona-fide polarization, and he wanted nothing of peace at any price. “Think not” he said, “that I came to send peace on the earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law; and a man’s foes shall be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:34–36).
There are always those who remain spectators when controversy about basic issues agitates the church. They profess to belong to the church militant but their silence and trying to play it safe belies their profession. Those who always sit on the fence, wet a finger to see which way the wind is blowing, and always want to see where the majority goes—well, let’s pity them and pray that their eyes may be opened to see what phonies they are in the army of the Lord.
When the bedrock of Scripture is being assailed, when there are those steadily chipping away at the foundations, and when we cannot escape the conclusion that our mother church is actually in jeopardy then it becomes imperative that we polarize our constituency as defenders of the faith. Under God and without apology, we honestly avow this to be our intention.
To do this may be either good or bad.
For example, to set black against white, haves against have-nots, poor against rich, young against old, Dutch against Polish, is to polarize on the ground of race, class, wealth, age, nationality—and to do that would be inexcusable and shameful. One should apologize for ever having truck with polarization the likes of that.
But then there also comes a time when polarization is positively a must. That time arrives when a man stands before Scripture and is called upon to answer what he believes or does not believe about it. Here’s the question: is that Bible the inspired, infallible, inerrant, authoritative Word of God in toto, or is it something less than that?
You see, you can’t have it both ways. The late John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State with President Eisenhower, claimed that to be neutral on the international tensions in his day was immoral. Just so, to straddle the fence on this far more important question about Scripture is to be immoral.
Someone has said it so well: either we belong to the cult of Pontius Pilate who said, What is truth? or we stand with the followers of Christ who said, Thy Word is truth! Those who confess Christ and at the same time undermine the authenticity and integrity of Scripture are guilty of treason.
I count it an honor indeed. hereby to enter upon the labors of the managing editor of TORCH AND TRUMPET. Chief among the reasons for this is the fact that those who publish this journal are not groping with respect to the issue of infallibility and inerrancy but are rather committed to an unequivocal position.
Like the man in the pulpit, a religious publication is sure to flounder and confuse rather than clarify the issues unless it has first gotten the right sense of direction as to what the Bible really is. It is both challenging and exciting to be identified in journalism with an endeavor undergirded by the word of our Lord: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). Masquerade as it will in the garb of modernity, the so-called new hermeneutics is old stuff, and only those who are uninformed will embrace it as the mark of being sophisticated or modern. Actually, this satanic assault on Scripture began already centuries ago in Paradise when the serpent said to the woman, “Yea, hath God said …?” That was the first lesson in liberal theology, and when the class was dismissed man’s doom was sealed. The anomaly of modernism is that it is old as the hills.
The challenge to head a journal that crusades for a return to Scripture in all its wholeness is so thrilling because apart from this we do not address ourselves to the root cause of all the woes that beset society at large and the church in particular in our time. To this day there is no substitute for that prescribed already in Isaiah’s time: “To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them” (Isa. 8:20).
The touchstone of what it means to be Christian and Reformed may never be that which is pragmatic. popular, or prevalent, but only and always the norm of the infallible and inerrant Word of God. Situation ethics, violence, marital problems, abortion, the lodge, priority in the mission of the church, whether sermons are to be or not to be, racism, war, and mention what you will—without the norm of an unassailed and uncompromised Thus saith the Lord, every man will do right in his own eyes, and all black and white will have had their day.
Surely the hue and cry against the evils of polarization can be carried too far. Fact is there can be no antithesis without it. Mind you, Jesus himself was all for bona-fide polarization, and he wanted nothing of peace at any price. “Think not” he said, “that I came to send peace on the earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law; and a man’s foes shall be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:34–36).
There are always those who remain spectators when controversy about basic issues agitates the church. They profess to belong to the church militant but their silence and trying to play it safe belies their profession. Those who always sit on the fence, wet a finger to see which way the wind is blowing, and always want to see where the majority goes—well, let’s pity them and pray that their eyes may be opened to see what phonies they are in the army of the Lord.
When the bedrock of Scripture is being assailed, when there are those steadily chipping away at the foundations, and when we cannot escape the conclusion that our mother church is actually in jeopardy then it becomes imperative that we polarize our constituency as defenders of the faith. Under God and without apology, we honestly avow this to be our intention.