The International Association for Reformed Faith and Action now holds congresses every three years, and the fourth of these met in Cambridge during August. The Congress theme was “The Authority of the Bible Today,” and delegates numbered nearly one hundred. They had come from countries as far apart as Canada and Australia, U.S.A. and Japan, Eire and Korea.
A devotional address by the Rev. Dr. Pyeng Oh of Korea opened the Congress. Dr. Oh, who had endured the terrible fighting in defense of Pusan, declared that the roots of men’s problem is not political but moral. Man’s sin causes the trouble. The answer is not to be found in some clever new synthesis of all the world’s religions but rather in the cross of Christ. This he was ready to teach on his return to the Presbyterian seminary in Pusan.
Fashions in Theology
Dr. Leon Morris, new Warden of Tyndale House, the Evangelical Research Centre in Cambridge, delivered the first lecture on the Congress theme. He surveyed the attitude of the early Christians towards the Bible and the attempts of the Reformers to recover this after it had been lost in the Middle Ages. Turning to modern problems, Dr. Morris noted the growing recognition by scholars of the limitations of liberalism. He cited the late Professor T. W. Manson’s location of liberalism’s wrong turning: “The mischief was begun when the working hypotheses of natural science were allowed to become the dogmas of theology. At that moment God’s revelation of himself gives way to man’s thought about God.” Nowadays it was getting fashionable for everyone to call himself a “biblical theologian,” and while evangelicals could welcome the intention they were not always convinced that the old note of liberal subjectivism had gone, nor that evangelicals were always understood by their critics. Professor C. F. Evans of Durham had written, “We must beware of any sentence which begins with the words ‘surely God would have …’ for it is a religious a priori sentence. ‘Surely God would have seen to it that the Bible would have been preserved from error.’ ‘Surely God would have seen to it that there would be an instrument on earth which would teach without error.’ This is how the sentences run which are spoken from embattled positions. But for all their impressiveness must they not be judged irreligious and heretical sentences?” Dr. Morris commented that “this would make impressive reading except for the fact that the orthodox do not in fact reach their position this way.” They claim to follow Christ and what he said about the Scriptures of his day. “Their crime is that they prefer to find their guidance in the words of their Master rather than in the assured results of modern scholarship.”
The Burning of the Bishops
The next lecture by Professor Roger Nicole of Gordon Divinity School consisted of a detailed examination of the Lord’s attitude to the Old Testament. This was followed by a lecture by a Cambridge Vicar, the Rev. Herbert M. Carson, on the English Reformers and Martyrs. Some foreigners, said the chairman introducing Mr. Carson, imagined there had never been a proper Reformation in England, but this was not so. Mr. Carson traced the developments of the great revival from Wycliffe and the Lollards through to the cruel burnings of godly bishops under the Papist Sovereign Mary. The Rev. Dr. James I. Packer, Librarian of the Evangelical Anglican Research Library in Oxford (Latimer House), spoke of the conflict between humanism and the Church. A century or so ago most of the humanists were still “a cuckoo’s egg in the Church’s nest,” but now that had changed. With the revival of more biblical emphases in theology, humanism was now quite outside, and the conflict was a struggle to the death. The Christian cannot accept the authority of reason since this in effect means setting up man’s fallen mind and its judgments over against what God has said. To do this would be to fall into the same temptation as Eve, when Satan deluded her into believing something other than what God had actually said. Setting up reason as an authority can only result in ignorance of God (1 Cor. 1:21) and idolatry (Rom. 1:22 f.). The Christian must say to the humanist unambiguously, whether he be inside or outside the Church, that the only thing that will break men of the habit of looking to the authority of reason in religion is regeneration and revival.
The Rev. Donald Robinson, Vice-Principal of Moore College, Sydney, spoke on the authority of the Church. He insisted that the local church must at all times sit under the discipline of the Word of God. Dr. A. M. Donner. formerly Professor of Law at Amsterdam and now President of the Court of European Communities in Luxembourg, then examined the authority of the state. In New Testament times and at the Reformation there had been a considerable gulf between the rulers and the ruled. The latter merely obeyed the former. Then Christians directed their writing mainly to the leaders, and what they demanded was a rule of law. The state was an instrument of God ordained to rule, but the rulers were to be mindful of their high calling from above. Today, however, the situation has changed with modern democracies, and everyone is involved in the question of government to some degree. Now that the masses have the power, the rule of law and justice is even more important as it is so easy for a majority to be deluded into thinking it is the whole body, and so trample under foot the rights of a minority. The Church urgently needs to address itself to the new princes of our times, the masses, and remind them of the state’s divine callins.
Next in the Netherlands
The secretary, Dr. Jan Dengerink of Amsterdam, made his report on the progress of the association’s work. This was in two fields; first, they are now holding annual study conferences as well as the triennial congresses, the next of which is to be held in the Netherlands with the Church, the Ministry, and the Spirit as its theme. The Congress ended with a fine address by the eminent French Calvin scholar, Professor Jean Cadier, on the Word of God dwelling in the Christian.
GERVASE E. DUFFIELD
London, England
Excerpts from remarks by Dr. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, chairman of the International Reformed Congress, on “Reformed Faith and Action: Challenge and Response”:
Our situation today is by no means identical with that in which the Reformers of the sixteenth century were placed: we cannot lean exclusively upon them as though they had thought the last thought and said the last word. It is our solemn responsibility to think and plan and act for ourselves in accordance with the demands of our own age.
Similarly, the task of reform in our world today is not precisely the same in every country and every society. Some churches are young and impetuous; others are ancient and senile; others again are middle-aged and preoccupied with respectability.… However, the Church here on earth is in constant need of reform.…
In a word, the New Testament is the standard or principle in comparison with which the Church must always be reformed.… The rediscovery and application of this standard explains the Reformation of the sixteenth century.… The result was not only the exposure and eradication of error, but also positively the provision of doctrine and worship which once again were scriptural, and the placing of the Scriptures in the hands of the people, and in their own language, so that they could read and study God’s Word for themselves and thus themselves become integrally involved in the great work of reformation.…
What, then, are the issues which confront and challenge us today?… There are four in particular.…
Theological Relativism. This is beyond doubt the greatest menace to the survival of New Testament Christianity. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: in the depreciation, for example, of dogmatic or propositional theology; in the shifting sand of subjectivism which has found passionate expression in the egocentric individualism of contemporary existentialist religion; in the scarcely disguised rationalism of so much that goes by the name of biblical scholarship; in the new theory of missions which at this very time is being, so to speak, visibly formulated before our eyes.…
Because the New Testament Gospel is The Truth, uniquely so, it strikes at the root of all subjectivism and relativism. Wielding the Sword of the Spirit, we must strike at that root today. But our dogmatism must be precisely that of our Lord and his apostles—no more and no less. Otherwise we cease to be distinctively Christian: we dishonor God’s Act and Word.
The Ecumenical Movement. Impelled by a concern for the manifestation to the world of a unity that is visible as well as spiritual, the World Council of Churches is seeking to promote the co-operation and unification of the churches. Can it be denied that the multiplicity of our divisions is a scandal? that the Reformers of the sixteenth century would have viewed the contemporary scene with distaste and dismay? that the ecumenical impulse is good and commendable?
There are, however, some very definite dangers, the chief of which is connected with the temptation to allow zeal for outward unity to exalt unity to the dignity of the supreme Christian virtue and to denounce separateness as the one intolerable sin against the Holy Spirit. We must, in recognition of this danger, never cease to affirm that Christian unity must be unity in Truth, otherwise it is a mere facade without any substance behind it. And unity in truth means also unity in being separated from error.…
What ought our reaction to be to this modern movement? First of all, so far from holding ourselves aloof, we should be ready to take every opportunity … to exert an influence within the ecumenical movement in the interest of the crown rights of New Testament Christianity. Secondly, we should be open-hearted towards all our fellow-Christians and uninhibited in our willingness to give expression, before God and before the world, to the love that unites us (or should unite us) at the Lord’s Table. Thirdly, we should consider whether effective steps ought not now to be taken to remove the divisions which, in some places, have caused the fragmentation even of Reformed Christians into separated denominations.
Rome and Reunion. Among the most recent of contemporary developments is the unprecedented interest which the Roman Catholic church is beginning to show in the ecumenical movement, evidence of which is seen in the presence of Roman Catholic “observers” at assemblies of the World Council of Churches and also now in the setting up of an ecumenical office in Rome itself. This in itself need not be an unwelcome development, provided we know where we stand, and why, and maintain our position in love, though with firmness. Let us not forget that the Reformers themselves were originally devout papists: no man is beyond hope of reform because he is a Roman Catholic. But let us not forget the reasons, so clearly and frequently stated by them, why they found it necessary to dissent and separate from Rome—reasons, moreover, for which they were willing to be tortured and put to death. Those reasons are no less valid today than they were in the sixteenth century. What was false and unscriptural then is still false and unscriptural now. Nor let us overlook the anathemas which were hurled against the Reformation and its distinctive teachings by the Council of Trent—anathemas which never to this day were withdrawn.
We cannot leave out of account, either, that, officially at any rate, Rome has added to her efforts since the sixteenth century, in particular by the promulgation of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854), Papal Infallibility (1870), and the Assumption of Mary (1950); and it is appropriate to mention the expectation that the next dogma to be proclaimed as absolutely binding on all the faithful will be that of the Co-Redeemership of Mary with our Lord Jesus Christ. From such unscriptural error and blasphemy we cannot but hold ourselves in separation.
At the same time, however, we must not be blind to the fact that there are movements within the Roman Catholic church today which, in a variety of ways, give evidence of dissatisfaction with the prevailing ecclesiastical authoritarianism and of desires on the part of many for religion that is more simple, more evangelical, and more meaningful to the people. The Bible is, in some parts, being read and studied in a manner that has not been known for centuries. This means, if it means anything, that the possibility of a new reformation taking place within the ranks of Roman Catholicism is not a mere fantasy. By prayer and personal contact we should seek to encourage such trends.
The Cultic Hordes. The fourth phenomenon of our day is the veritable tidal-wave of strange cults that is now swirling alarmingly across the world.…
If this Satanic assault on the unique Gospel is to be repelled, it will only be, humanly speaking, as a result of penetrating study of the teachings and practices of the cults and a counter-attack in depth, not merely exposing their spurious and deceitful pretensions, but piercing their armour with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and by God’s grace reclaiming through the trumpet call of the genuine Gospel many who have been deluded by their falsehoods.
