In this second installment of his article Dr. Weeks of Sydney, Australia, a member of the Reformed Church with a Presbyterian background and training, takes up two problems, (1) the clergy–lay distinction and (2) the way of dealing with the Bible. Especially the latter is one which increasingly troubles also our North American churches. It is really the issue in the women in office argument and the Verhey case, as well as many other current problems. His observations may help us to understand and deal with them. (Editor)

THE CLASSLESS SOCIETY VERSUS THE CLASS SOCIETY

There is still in America and Australia a respect for the professional, but the prevailing ethos stresses human equality. The Americans would say that all men are equal and the Australian would boast “I am as good as you are, mate.” This attitude influences the churches. The gap between minister and elder is there because of practical things like training and time to devote to the ministry. Yet it does not tend to be seen as a difference in principle. The Dutch migrants tend to come from a situation where the professional/non-professional separation was much sharper. This is reflected in the reverence and respect for the minister and his opinions. It is reflected also in the role expectations for elders. They often do not see themselves as capable of studying the Bible or preaching. Despite the fact that the Dutch have a not-too-secret pride in being “stubborn” the outsider sees a church that indulges in much petty criticism of ministers and yet has a slavish dependence on ministers.

The Presbyterian churches have their share of clericalism but on the whole a higher role expectation of the elder and consequently of the knowledge of the church member as a whole. However the person with Reformed background sees also some less desirable qualities. There is a sense of independence from the church. The Presbyterian seems to leave one church to join t he next for the slightest reason. The mobility of the community applies also to church membership. The Reformed says to the Presbyterian: “I fear you do not take seriously enough your vows of faithfulness before God to this, Christ’s church.” And the Presbyterian says to the Reformed “I fear that your loyalty is to the church in which you were born, and not to Christ. You willingly follow your minister even if he leads the church into error.”

I realize that this picture is a caricature. It does not fully represent the complexity of the situation or the many factors which have brought it about. Nevertheless, I think the issues, the attitudes and the tensions they create are real and will be recognized by those who observe the interaction of Reformed and Presbyterian. Let us say for the sake of the argument that my amateur sociology is accurate enough at this point. Where can we go from here? Must there be a continual point of friction and misunderstanding as each one views the church out of his sociological perspective. Will each turn about, the Dutch church to march off united under its professional leadership, be it heretic professor or orthodox pastor; the Presbyterian to go a thousand different directions? Can Scripture triumph over the conditioning pressure of our social backgrounds?

This question leads in turn to one of the basic charges raised in the whole controversy: the charge of “Biblicism” (at present often made by some Reformed against Presbyterians).

   

Biblicism

It may surprise some that I link the question of the sociological captivity of the church with that of Biblicism. It seems to me that there are very close connections because one of the issues raised here is that of whether Scripture itself has to be seen and interpreted within its own sociological framework. Perhaps a more detailed discussion of “Biblicism” will make this clearer.

The charge of “Biblicism” often confuses rather than clarifies issues. It is not as though those who make this charge make no use of the Scripture themselves. So simply using Scripture is not t he point at issue. Sometimes the Westminster Confession with its strong statements on Scripture is singled out for criticism. However the use of Scripture in the Reformed Confessions is not basically different from that in Westminster. Hence they and especially the Canons of Dordt have come in for criticism on this score. The more one explores the charge, the more it emerges as a criticism not just of the Presbyterian tradition but of the whole older Reformed tradition. Therefore to avoid confusion I will refer to a “Neo-Reformed” rather than a “Reformed” point of view.

I think there are two basic charges combined in one in the charge of “Biblicism.” One is that people have used the Scripture without regard for its historical context. Passages have been plucked out and used as proof texts without regard for their meaning in context when originally composed. Thus this charge revolves around views of the historical context and environment of the Scripture. The second charge is about philosophy rather than about history. It is that the Bible is seen as a set of independent statements of truth, from which other truths of theology may be rationally deduced.

I think these two issues have to be treated somewhat separately. Someone who argues against the ordination of women as elders on the basis of explicit Biblical statements, could be called a Biblicist because he has, supposedly, ignored the cultural and historical context of those Biblical passages. The issue is then historical. Yet someone who argued that the Scripture says that all things are in the plan of God, therefore reprobation is in the eternal plan of God, could also be called a Biblicist for making this sort of step by step argument. The issue is then the way in which we obtain theological truth from Scripture.

The two questions do have a point of contact. The charge is made that the deductive use of Scripture in the older Reformed tradition ignored its real historical character. In other words somebody who was straight on the historical question would not use the Scripture as logical “proof–texts” to be built into a logical system of doctrine. Itis argued that only if we see Scripture divorced from its real human and historical origins could we treat it as containing unchanging theological truths.

John Murray is reported to have once depreciated the value of his own lectures in theology by saying that he was merely “adding exegetical footnotes to Charles Hodges’ Systematic Theology.” Whatever the truth of Murray’s modest claim it raises an interesting question. Did Hodge write a theology that needed exegetical footnotes to show how his theology came from the Bible? Hodge might then be accused of an overly speculative and philosophical theology. But where does that place Murray? You see, his attempt to found theology on exegesis, leaves him open even more to the charge of “Biblicism.”

By this example I want to make it clear that the question is not a simple one that would be resolved if the “Biblicists” studied the Bible more carefully. They could do so in a way which would make them even more Biblicist than before. It is a matter of basic approach.

Furthermore the historical question is not a simple matter of ignorance of the historical context of the Bible. Do the Neo-Reformed know more of the Ancient Near Eastern cultural and historical context than the Presbyterians? One would sometimes receive the impression that this is being claimed but I do not think that is the real claim or that it accords with the facts. The lack of a Reformed university in the Anglo-Saxon world has resulted in many of Presbyterian background taking higher degrees in faculties devoted to Near Eastern studies rather than Biblical studies. They suffer from the lack of concentrated Biblical studies such as have been available to Dutch students but they are not relatively more ignorant about the background. Indeed I think that some of the Neo–Reformed could do with a little more knowledge of the real, not the imagined, cultural context of the Bible!

However the issue is not really one of knowledge or ignorance of this context. It is the way the context is seen. Hence it comes down to different understandings of history and of the inspiration of Scripture.

The Historical Question

When one reads a study, critical of the older understanding of inspiration, such as Berkouwer on Scripture, you are aware that he is taking a new position. Yet it is hard to pin down exactly what this is. The older position is called “Docetic” (i.e. underestimating the human element in Scripture). The newer view is said to have a more “organic” concept of the nature of inspiration. The older view is guilty of “supernaturalism.” Unfortunately labels like these do not necessarily clarify. Such theological jargon means something to those in tune with it but little to outsiders.

Let me therefore make an attempt to explain what I think is being said. Suppose we start with an example of such thinking. Older Reformed thinking took the creation account in Genesis as an account of what happened in creation. If it reflected at all on the problem of how we know what went on when no men existed it would have answered that God told Moses what happened. On this basis we can conclude certain things from Genesis about how creation occurred.

This older understanding is being challenged. Itis said that it ignores the organic process by which these chapters came to be written. It ignores the fact that there is much polemic against idolatry in these chapters. It fails to see that they grow out of Israel’s reaction against the worship of the creature. Thus we should learn from them not how God created but that it is wrong to worship idols.

If I were to state that God dictated Genesis to Moses on the 14th April 1444 B.C. I would quite rightly be accused of passing off pure speculation as fact. There is no evidence to tell us that this is what happened. I lack Moses’ personal diary for that day. What if I were to say that Genesis one is Israel’s polemic response, born out of contact with idolatrous systems, to pagan stories of origins? I am being equally speculative! I am equally guilty of stating pure hypothesis as fact. For we do not have the rough drafts of the Israelite thinkers who prepare this polemic.

Why is this speculation being stated as fact in Neo-Reformed circles? One could of course point out that they are taking over a long established dogma of liberal Old Testament scholarship. But that just changes the question. Why has the approach that was once rejected by Reformed scholars now become acceptable?

I think the answer has a lot to do with the rejection of “supernaturalism.” “Supernaturalism” seems to include any idea of a direct act of God during the course of the historical process. The opposite is “organic” which seems meant to convey the idea that the historical process is an ongoing, developing self-contained (but not autonomous) one. It is being claimed that God does not work by injecting himself into the process at specific points. As far as this affects Scripture it implies that inspiration is not the transmission of specific information from God.

Before condemning such a view we need to understand what it is trying to do. I think it arises out of a feeling that God was being squeezed out of the world. God was seen as the “God of the gaps.” Miracles, inspiration, regeneration and whatever science could not explain was his domain. As science explained more, his domain shrunk. That part of the world which science explained was seen as operating according to inbuilt “laws” without need of God. In reaction to this decline in the role that God played we have the attempt to see God as the Lord of all. Rather than an occasional intervention by God in an autonomous nature it is claimed that God set all in motion at the beginning. Creation develops organically according to the norms and potentials implanted by God in the original creation.

The most careful development of this way of thinking has come from proponents of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea (as promoted among us by the AACS movement-Editor). A good example is J.H. Diemer, Nature and Miracle (Toronto, Wedge, 1977). That book wrestles with one of the paradoxical consequences of such thinking. What can “miracle” mean if all events, the most common and the most singular, are all an outworking of the laws and potentials that God implanted in creation in the beginning? The idea of special events, special divine intervention, special revelation, etc. must go. It is claimed that if we retain these special events then we leave the rest of nature as an autonomous realm. We end with a dualism of the natural and the supernatural.

There is a problem in this system which I have yet to see treated by its proponents. It is very close in structure to Deism. Deism also held that God ruled the universe by his laws, but without any direct intervention. Deism forms a n important background to our present discussion because the critical approach to the Bible develops out of a Deist background. The original “higher critics” did not claim to be. atheists. They tended rather to be Deists, arguing that the process of Scripture writing was not a different process from any other writing. In a Deist system, since God cannot intervene in any way, the making of the Bible must be similar to the making of any other book.

We know what the results of Deism are. Since the Bible is not different from any other book its authority is destroyed. God becomes remote, hidden behind his laws which he is unable to change. Evangelism is killed since any intervention of the Spirit to change hearts is denied. A man’s religious experience must develop naturally. Hence Deists insisted on education rather than evangelism. All these factors combined to make Deism a deadly influence on the church.

I am aware of the many differences in detail between the Neo-Reformed insistence on an “organic” understanding of inspiration and Deism. Yet one must ask whether the results will be the same. In fact one may ask whether the results are already similar. Part of the antipathy to Whitfield seems to come from the doctrine he so forcefully proclaimed in opposition to the Deists: the new birth.

Do we then go back to a dualism of autonomous nature and supernatural intervention? There is no reason why we should accept either position. The Scripture is clear that all God’s creations are servants. They act according to his command. For example his Word commands t he day and the night, the sun and the moon. The regularity of day and night is not outside his control. All things are creatures obeying his command. Yet Scripture never restricts God’s Word to a word spoken only at the beginning. He speaks and acts again and again throughout human history. His acting is closely related to that history. He shapes it by his prophetic word and when men forsake the way he responds in judgment.

It can of course be charged that I am guilty of over-emphasizing the divine element and ignoring the human element. Let us go back to that example of the first few chapters of Genesis. We have seen one speculation of how it came to be written, that is as Israel’s reaction to idolatry. Let us consider other speculations. Suppose God gave a description of creation to Adam (or Enoch or Abraham it matters little who the person was). That account was passed down with a certain amount of selectivity but not of invention, to Moses who wrote it down. We have human agency in the transmission and the writing down. Is this still laying too much stress on the divine? Suppose the person God spoke to was Moses. If we have only human activity in the writing down is it not enough? All these speculations ask only one question. What is t he real objection to the older Reformed doctrine of inspiration? Has God become so distant and remote; are we so far from the Biblical God, that we cannot conceive of a God who talks to man as a man to his friend, face to face? Does such a God not give enough place to the “human” element?

It may well be that I do a great injustice to the Neo-Reformed movement. I would honestly confess a difficulty in understanding what they are saying. They make it very clear that they differ from the older Reformed position even if there is a tendency to use jargon like “Biblicism,” “supernaturalism.” They are less clear on their differences from the older deistic liberalism. I believe that they do not want to deliver the church to the sort of disaster that Deism brought. Yet I have searched in vain for a description of the way in which they see themselves avoiding it. Here I would remind you of what I earlier described as the refugee status of Presbyterianism today. The Presbyterians have seen the results of liberalism. It is all very well to scorn them as reactionaries but I think more would be done for the cause of Reformed unity if t he Neo-Reformed would make clear their difference from the older liberalism. Otherwise their silence may be taken as evidence that there is no real difference. And maybe there is not.

(to be continued)