Our response to Dr. Borgdorff’s comments are best expressed by the article of Dr. Cornel Venema in this issue of The Outlook. We urge a careful reading of it.

We want to assure Dr. Borgdorff that our problem is not with the sculpture that was chosen. The “Understanding Opinions Metephor” depended on an abstract object for its success, and the whole exercise depended on the note on the bottom which states that this abstract object can be replaced with “topic, issue, subject, problem, etc.” This note implies that topics, issues, subjects and problems at Synod ‘93 (all dealing with Scriptural material) are abstract and can only be resolved by an accumulation of “community” opinion which only “approximates” truth. Whatever happened to the Reformers’ insistence on the “clarity and efficacy” of the Word of God itself? Whatever happened to the creeds and confessions of the church which we embrace as Forms of UNITY?

Dr. Borgdorff’s choice of a different object for the exercise as it makes its way throughout the denomination, will not eclipse the destructive relativism contained in the metaphor.

The Editors