Last month Rev. Henry Vanden Heuvel reported that for the present the continuing policy of the Christian Reformed Churches with respect to the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands (mother churches of many of our members) will be one of fraternal relations as though we shared a common faith. Despite their decision to condone homosexual practice within their churches, which prompted one of our classes to call for a break in relations, our denomination’s synod was persuaded to continue such relations, although with a protest against that decision. That decision was discussed as though it were an isolated issue, as Professor Stek argued, a minor ethical matter which would not justify a break in church relations.
I observed in an article in our April issue (“Time to Break Fellowship”), that that decision about homosexuals is one of a number of symptoms of a radical sickness that is destroying the whole of those churches’ faith and life. The character of that sickness is revealed with remarkable clarity by those churches’ published report on “the nature of Biblical Authority,” which I reviewed in the article.
On Feb. 20 the committee for contact and dialog of the Netherlands Reformed Churches published the following conclusions regarding that report. (These are relayed to us by the March 28 Reformatie and I give a free translation.)
With the acceptance, unanimously and without criticism worth mentioning, of the report on the nature of biblical authority as a confessionally responsible view of Scripture, in the opinion of this committee, a new low has been reached in the developments within the GKN (Reformed Churches of the Netherlands). To its regret the committee can come to no other conclusion than that the Reformed synod with this report, has switched course and, after individual individual theologians had preceded it, has left the track of a Reformed view of Scripture. In a time in which modern Biblical criticism sweeps over the churches as a flood, the report breaks down the necessary resistance to it instead of building it up.
Despite all assurances to the contrary, the report means a break in principle with the manner in which the churches of the Reformation have constantly understood the authority of the Scriptures, as it is confessed, for example, in Articles 3–7 of the Netherlands Confession of Faith (Belgic Confession).
We read further:
Through the large role which the report assigns to theological science, it, in fact, takes God’s Word from the church members and it makes of the Bible a book which can be read and understood only with the help of a theological elite—the modern cleric.
With the report in hand the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands can still loftily give to theologians such as Prof. Kuitert, Dr. Wiersinga, etc., soothing warnings not to go too far with their views. But there can be no thought of a principled and powerful denial of their false teaching after the acceptance of this report, because the synod and these theologians—although at some distance from one another are traveling the same road, the road that leads away from the confession of the Scriptures as the totally trustworthy and authoritative Word of God and leads to the destination of the complete subjection of God’s Word to human reason and human experience.
As far as the position of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in the Reformed Ecumenical Synod is concerned, the view of Scripture expressed in the above mentioned report is in flagrant conflict with the foundation of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod which says regarding the Bible, “The Scriptures in their totality, as in every part, are the infallible and ever continuing Word of the Living Triune God, having absolute authority in all matters of faith and life.”
Furthermore, the report accepted bv the Reformed synod gives no indication whatever that the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands were willing to listen to the urgent statements which the Reformed Ecumenical Synod issued in 1976 regarding the errors within the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. Regrettably, in this respect also, one has to speak of the hardening and sharpening of the stance of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands against the Reformed Ecumenical Synod.
How long will we keep up the pretence that the differences between us and those Dutch churches only concern minor, secondary issues?
Rev. Henry Vanden Heuvel reported in the Outlook, “What was amazing to this reporter was that Professor Stek saw the issue as just an ethical matter, whereas the advisory committee and even the fraternal delegate knew it to be a matter of Scriptural interpretation.” We cannot deal with our differences about homosexual practice without dealing with the bigger, more basic difference among us which is exposed in the Dutch churches’ report on the authority of the Bible.
