The Practice of Truth
The Practice of Truth
hen the Scriptures are being destroyed by theological infiltration and compromise, and equally by cultural infiltration and compromise, will we have the courage as Biblebelieving Christians to mark the watershed? Will we have the
courage to draw a line, and to do it publicly, between those who
take a full view of Scripture and those who have been infiltrated
theologically and culturally? If we do not have the courage, we
will cut the ground out from under the feet of our children, and
we will destroy any hope of being the redeeming salt and light
of our dying culture.
We cannot wait for others to draw the line. We must draw the line. It will not be easy, and for many it may be costly. It certainly will not be popular. But if we truly believe in the infinite-personal God-the God of holiness and love-if we truly love the Lord and his Word and his church, we have no other choice.
A New "Fundamentalist Legalism"
When Dr. C. Everett Koop, my son Franky, and I were in the midst of seminars for the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race? an interesting thing happened. One of us received a letter from a prominent evangelical leader. He holds a good view theologically concerning Scripture, and I would also say that I like him. In his letter, however, he said, "I see the emergence of a new sort of fundamentalist legalism." He went on to explain what he meant like this: "That was the case in the thrust concerning false evangelicals in the inerrancy issue, and is also the case on the part of some who are now saying that the evangelical cause is betrayed by any who allow any exceptions of any sort in government funding to abortion." This needs some clarification. Basically he is saying that those who believe that we must hold to the inerrancy of Scripture in order to be truly evangelical, and those who also take a strong stand against abortion, are expressing a "new sort of fundamentalist legalism."
In one sense this evangelical leader is quite right. A high view of Scripture and a high view of life go hand-in-hand. You cannot be faithful to what the Bible teaches about the value of human life and be in favor of abortion. But the opposite is also true. Theological infiltration in the form of a low view of Scripture and cultural infiltration in the form of the devaluation of human life likewise go hand-in-hand. He correctly linked the two issues together.
But the term "fundamentalist legalism" presents a problem. Is this what we mean when we speak of drawing the line? Is that what we mean by being faithful to the love and holiness of God?
If what is involved is the heartless, loveless, "fundamentalist legalism" some of us have known so well in the past, of course we do not want it, and we reject it in the name of Christ. The love of God and the holiness of God must always be evident simultaneously. And if anyone has wandered off and returns, the attitude should not be one of pride that we have been right, but rather joy and the playing of songs, happy music, joyous music, singing of joyous songs, and I would add, even dancing in the streets because, and if, there has been a true return.
Again, if the term "fundamentalist legalism" means the down-playing of the humanities, as unhappily has so often been the case, the failure to know that the intellect is important, that human creativity by Christians and non-Christians is worth study; if it means the down-playing of the scholarly; if it means the downplaying of the Lordship of Christ in all of life-then my work of some forty years and all my books and films speak of my total rejection of this.
Again, if the term "fundamentalist legalism" means a confusion of primary and secondary points of doctrine and life, that too should be rejected.
Love and Holiness
But when we have said all of this, when we come to the central things of doctrine and to the central things of life itself, then something must be profoundly considered. As I mentioned at the close of the last chapter, truth carries with it confrontation-loving confrontation, but confrontation nonetheless. And if our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, then something is profoundly wrong. If we use the word love as our excuse for avoiding confrontation when it is necessary, then we have denied the holiness of God and failed to be faithful to him and his true character. In reality we have denied God himself.
It is hard to imagine how far things have gone in just a few years. Something is profoundly wrong when a Bible teacher at a prominent evangelical college teaches that one of the Gospel writers made up some of the stories about the birth of Jesus, and that some of the things which Jesus said as recorded in the Gospels really were not said by Jesus at all, but were made up by other people later. Something is profoundly wrong when many evangelical college and seminary professors now use highercritical methods to study the Scripture, when it was these same methods which began eighty to one hundred years ago to destroy the Scriptures for the liberal church in the United States. Something is profoundly wrong when the chairman of the philosophy and ethics department at a prominent Christian college holds a proabortion position. Something is profoundly wrong when a leading evangelical changes his position on the full authority of Scripture, endorses the neo-orthodox existential method, and ridicules those who uphold the full authority of Scripture by calling them "Fundamentalist obscurantists."'
How must we respond to this-when it is really the gospel itself that is at stake? And more than this, when the future of our culture and the lives of millions are being destroyed?
To be really Bible-believing Christians we need to practice, simultaneously, at each step of the way, two biblical principles. One principle is that of the purity of the visible church. Scripture commands that we must do more than just talk about the purity of the visible church; we must actually practice it, even when it is costly.
The second principle is that of an observable love among all true Christians. In the flesh we can stress purity without love, or we can stress love without purity; we cannot stress both simultaneously. To do so we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Without that, a stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic; likewise, without it a stress on love becomes sheer compromise. Spirituality begins to have real meaning in our lives as we begin to exhibit simul taneously the holiness of God and the love of God. We never do this perfectly, but we must look to the living Christ to help us do it truly. Without this simultaneous exhibition our marvelous God and Lord is not set forth. It is rather a caricature of him that is shown, and he is dishonored.
What Was at Stake?
This is the basis for how we need to respond today. But if we really want to know how these principles apply in the present religious situation, we need to understand what happened in the early decades of this century. We touched on this briefly in Chapter 1, but now we need to look at this much more carefully. During this time a whole course of events took place which left their mark on the church right up to our present day, and they surely will for generations to come. This was the time when the denominations in the United States were in the midst of what often is called the modernist/fundamentalist conflict. But I hesitate to even use this term because most people have a very mistaken understanding of this, especially with the total and deliberate distortion of the word fundamentalist.
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideas of liberal German theology came sweeping into this country. These ideas grew out of the German and Western European philosophy current at the time, which basically was an attempt to synthesize the idea of the Enlightenment with theology and thereby to arrive at a "modern" approach to religion in contrast to the "unscientific superstitions" of the past. But there is a problem here: the primary themes of the Enlightenment, as we have seen in Chapter 1, are the complete antithesis to Christian truth. The Enlightenment was founded on the opposition to the supernatural and upon belief in the allsufficiency in human reason. It held to the fundamental goodness of human nature and believed in the perfectibility of human society. By the time these ideas reached the United States in the late 1800s, they had already penetrated deeply into German Protestantism, disintegrating faith in the Bible through the methods of "higher criticism. "2 Later these ideas entered into portions of the Roman Catholic Church as well.
In the early years of this century, this new liberal theology was coming into the United States like a flood. Most of the large Protestant denominations were being knocked down like a row of tenpins, one after the other, being taken over by liberal theology. But what was really at stake? It was the gospel itself. We are not talking about minor variations in the interpretation of secondary doctrines. We are not talking about denominational differences. The things being denied by the liberals were at the heart of the Christian faith-the authority of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the meaning of salvation. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York and one of the most influential spokesmen of modernism, was a clear example. In his famous sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" given in 1922, he explained what the liberal means by the return of Christ. The liberals, Fosdick preached,
say "Christ is coming!" They say it with all their hearts; but they are not thinking of an external arrival on the clouds. They have assimilated as part of divine revelation the exhilarating insight which these recent generations have given to us, that development [i.e., modern progress] is God's way of working out His will. . . . When they say that Christ is coming, they mean that, slowly it may be, but surely, His will and principles will be worked out . . . in human institutions.'
Here we have what is at stake-the denial of the work of Christ and the actual return of Christ; the "new revelation" of modern thought replacing the Bible; salvation as the modern progress of human institutions. This is heretical denial of the gospel, and is directly related to the Enlightenment view of the perfectibility of Man.
Defending the Faith
In response to the wave of liberalism sweeping the denominations in the first three decades of this century, Bible-believing Christians tried to mount a spiritual defense of Christian truth. Here again the common understanding today is terribly distorted. The defense was led by some of the greatest minds and scholars of the day-men such as Benjamin B. Warfield, James Orr, W. H. Griffith Thomas, and G. Campbell Morgan. A key strategy in the defense was the publication of twelve paperback volumes from 1910 through 1915 called The Fundamentals and the later reissue of these in an edited four-volume set at the end of the decade. As one Christian historian pointed out recently, this was published as "a great `Testimony to the Truth' and [was] even something of a scholarly tour de force . . . [which] assembled a rather formidable array of conservative American and British scholars .... "' Likewise, there was Dr. J. Gresham Machen, the distinguished professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1923 Machen published Christianity and Liberalism. In this brilliant defense of Christian truth Machen argued that liberalism was really a new religion and not Christianity at all. Since liberalism did not believe in the fact that Christ died in history to atone for the sins of men and women, and that this was the only basis for salvation, liberalism was really religious faith in man dressed up in Christian language and symbols. Thus, Machen explained, the only honest thing for the liberal to do would be to leave the churches which were founded on biblical truth.-'
At the heart of the defense was the affirmation of the "essential fundamentals of the faith" by a broad base of Christian laymen and the defense of these by leading Christian scholars. The fundamentals themselves are usually identified in terms of five essential truths: 1) the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible; 2) the deity of Christ and his virgin birth; 3) the substitutionary atonement of Christ's death; 4) the literal resurrection of Christ from the dead; and 5) the literal return of Christ.
Two Groups
As Bible-believing Christians today we have nothing to be ashamed of concerning the early "fundamentalists"' attempts to defend the truth of the gospel. Indeed, the specific doctrines which were defended as The Fundamentals are what have always been affirmed through the ages. And those defending them were Christian scholars of the highest order. But then in the 1930s something began to change. Prior to the 1930s the Bible-believing Christians had stood together as liberalism came in to steal the churches. Then at different speeds the liberals achieved their theft of the various denominations by gaining control of the power centers of the seminaries and the bureaucracies. At this point onward, Bible-believing Christians, instead of standing together, divided into two groups: those who held to the principle of the purity of the visible church, and those who accepted and acted upon the concept of a pluralistic church. There was a line just like that. It is a line that began back there in the 1930s, that has continued, and that marks the religious life of the United States excruciatingly to this day. On one hand there are those who hold to the principle of the purity of the visible church, and on the other hand those who accept the concept of the pluralistic church. Looking back over the years, we can see that there have been problems on both sides.
Looking first at those who affirmed the purity of the visible church and left the liberal denominations, we must admit there was often a hardness, a lack of love. It didn't have to be that way, but it was a mistake that marked the "separatist movement" for years to come. What happened in the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the Northern branch of the Presbyterian Church) was typical of what happened in most of the denominations. There were many who said before the division that they would not allow a liberal takeover. But when the time came, many of these remained in the denomination. It is true to say of those who came out, without judging their motives, that they felt deserted and betrayed. Some of those who stayed in the Northern Presbyterian Church urged that the Constitutional Convention Union-the vehicle for all of their working together previously-should not be dissolved, so as to enable those who stayed in and those who came out to continue to work together. But in exasperation and perhaps some anger, those who left dissolved it at once. All the lines of a practical example of observable love among the brethren were destroyed.
The periodicals of those who left tended to devote more space to attacking people who differed with them on the issue of leaving than to dealing with the liberals. Things were said that are difficult to forget even now. Those who came out refused at times to pray with those who had not come out. Many who left broke off all forms of fellowship with true brothers in Christ who had not left. Christ's command to love one another was destroyed. What was left was frequently a turning inward, a selfrighteousness, a hardness. The impression often was left that coming out had made those who departed so right that anything could then be excused. Having learned such bad habits, they later treated each other badly when the resulting new groups had minor differences among themselves.
The Christian's Calling
In the midst of anger, frustration, and even self-righteousness, those who came out forgot what our calling as Christians always must be. Our calling is to exhibit the existence of God and to exhibit his character, individually and collectively. God is holy and God is love, and our calling is simultaneously to show forth holiness and love in every aspect of life-as parent and child, as husband and wife, in business, in our Christian organizations, in the church, in government, in everything-an exhibition of the character of God showing forth his holiness and his love simultaneously. If we depend on the flesh rather than the work of the Spirit, it is easy to say we are showing holiness and yet it is only egotistic pride and hardness. Equally, in the flesh rather than the work of the Spirit, it is easy to say we are showing forth love and it is only egotistic compromise, latitudinarianism, and accommodation. Both are equally easy in the flesh. Both are equally egotistic. To show forth both simultaneously, in personal matters or in church and public life, can only be done in any real degree by our consciously bowing, denying our egotistic selves, and letting Christ bring forth his fruit through us-not merely as a "religious" statement, but with some ongoing reality.
Thus whenever it becomes necessary to draw a line in the defense of a central Christian truth it is so easy to be proud, to be hard. It is easy to be self-righteous and to self-righteously think that we are so right on this one point that anything else may be excused-this is very easy, a very easy thing to fall into. These mistakes were indeed made, and we have suffered from this and the cause of Christ has suffered from this through some fifty years. By God's grace, let us consciously look to our Lord for his help not to give Satan the victory by making this tragic error again.
The Real Chasm
A second problem of those who left the Presbyterian Church was a confusion over where to place the chasm that marks off our identity. Is the chasm placed between Bible-believing churches and those that are not? Or is it between those who are part of our own denomination and those who are not? When we go into a town to start a church, do we go there primarily motivated to build a church that is loyal to Presbyterianism and the Reformed faith, or to the Baptistic position on baptism, or to the Lutheran view of the sacraments, etc., etc.? Or do we go to build a church that will preach the gospel that historic, Bible-believing churches of all denominations hold, and then, on this side of that chasm, teach what we believe is true to the Bible with respect to our own denominational distinctives? The answers to these questions make a great deal of difference. There is a difference of motivation, of breadth and outreach. One view is catholic and biblical and gives promise of success-on two levels: first, in church growth and then a healthy outlook among those we reach; second, in providing leadership to the whole church of Christ. The other view is inverted and self-limiting-and sectarian.
As Bible-believing Christians we come from a variety of backgrounds. But in our moment of history we need each other. Let us keep our doctrinal distinctives. Let us talk to each other about them. But let us recognize the proper hierarchy of things. The real chasm is not between Presbyterians and everyone else, or Lutherans and everyone else, or Anglicans and everyone else, or Baptists and everyone else. The real chasm is between those who have bowed to the living God and thus also to the verbal, propositional communication of God's inerrant Word, the Scriptures, and those who have not.
Latitudinarianism
Now for those who did not leave the liberally controlled denominations fifty years ago, there were also two problems. First there was the birth of a general latitudinarianism-a kind of acceptance of theological pluralism which easily slips into compromise and accommodation. If those who came out were inclined to become hard, some of those who stayed in tended to become soft. Some said: This is not the moment to come out, but we will do so if such-and-such occurs. These in principle did not accept the concept of a pluralistic church. Some developed their own kind of hardness-a decision to stay in, no matter what happened.
If one accepts an ecclesiastical latitudinarianism, it is easy to step into a cooperative latitudinarianism that easily encompasses doctrine, including one's view of Scripture. This is what happened historically. Out of the ecclesiastical latitudinarianism of the thirties and the forties has come the letdown with regard to Scripture in certain areas of evangelicalism in the eighties. Large sections of evangelicalism act as though it makes no real difference whether one holds the historic view of Scripture, or whether one holds the existential methodology that says the Bible is authoritative when it teaches religious things but not when it touches on what is historic or scientific, or on such things as the male/ female relationship.
Not all who stayed in the liberal-dominated denominations have done this, by any means. I do not believe, however, that those who made the choice to stay in "no matter what happens" can escape a latitudinarian mentality. They will struggle to paper over the difference regarding Scripture so as to keep an external veneer of evangelical unity-when indeed today there is no unity at that crucial point of Scripture. When doctrinal latitudinarianism sets in, we can be sure both from church history and from personal observation that in one or two generations those who are taught by the churches and schools that hold this mentality will lose still more, and the line between evangelical and liberal will be lost.
Moving Back the Line
The second problem for those who did not leave the liberally controlled denominations is the natural tendency to continually move back the line at which the final stand must be taken. For example, could such well-known evangelical Presbyterians in the 1930s as Clarence McCartney, Donald Grey Barnhouse, and T. Roland Phillips have stayed in a denomination where there is no possibility of disciplining those who hold patently heretical views? Take for instance the case of Professor John Hick, the author of The Myth of God Incarnate. How can a man who holds that the Incarnation is a myth call himself a Christian? Yet he was recently received into the Presbytery of Claremont, California as a minister in good standing. How could these men have stayed in a denomination which takes a militantly proabortion stand? Or where it is considered a "victory" to have stalled the ordination of practicing homosexuals and lesbians? What do you think McCartney, Barnhouse, and Phillips would have said? Such a situation in their denomination would have been inconceivable to them.
False Victories
Evangelicals must be aware of false victories. The liberal denominational power structure knows how to keep Bible-believing Christians off balance. There are many possible false victories they can throw to evangelicals to prevent them from making a clear stand. There are still those who say, "Don't break up our ranks. Wait a while longer. Wait for this, wait for that." Always wait, never act. But fifty years is a long time to wait while things are getting worse. Because of my failing health, I am in a good position to say that we do not have forever to take that courageous and costly stand for Christ we sometimes talk about.
Even what seems to be a major victory may end up having no practical effect. Again, a clear example of this happened in the Northern Presbyterian Church. In 1924 the conservatives decided the best way to meet the liberal challenge was to elect a moderator of the General Assembly who would clearly be Biblebelieving. As a result, 1924 saw elected as the moderator of the Northern Presbyterian Church an orthodox, Bible-believing man, Dr. Clarence Edward McCartney. The conservatives were jubilant. The secular newspapers carried the story of the conservative victory, and the conservatives rejoiced. But while all the rejoicing was going on, the liberals consolidated their power in the church bureaucracy. And because they were allowed to do so, the election of the conservative moderator proved to mean nothing. By 1936 the liberals were so in control that they were able to defrock Dr. J. Gresham Machen, putting him out of the ministry.
It seems to me that by the end of the 1930s almost all the major Protestant denominations in the United States came under the control of those holding liberal theological views, and that now in the 1980s those denominations not dominated by liberal theology in the 1930s are in the same place of decision as the others were in the 1930s. It should be noted that the Roman Catholic Church now also has many in the hierarchy, many theologians and teachers, called progressives, who are existential theologians who believe and teach the same things as the existential theologians in the Protestant churches do, but using traditional Roman Catholic, rather than Protestant, terms.
Two of the Protestant denominations in the United States now in the place of decision, interestingly enough, have recently tried to protect themselves, as did the Northern Presbyterian Church, by electing a conservative executive officer. But I would urge the true Christian today in these denominations to learn from the mistakes of the Presbyterian Church. Do not think that merely because a Bible-believing man is elected as an executive officer or is appointed to an important position, this will give safety to a denomination. If the two power centers in modern denominations-the bureaucracy and the seminaries-remain in the control of the liberals, nothing will be permanently changed. There must be a loving but definite practice of the purity of the visible church in any denomination if it is really to dwell in safety. The holiness of God must be exhibited in ecclesiastical affairs. We must practice truth, not just speak about it.
Flaming Truth
It must be understood that the new humanism and the new theology have no concept of true truth-absolute truth. Relativism has triumphed in the church as well as in the university and in society. The true Christian, however, is called upon not only to teach truth, but to practice truth in the midst of such relativism. And if we are ever to practice truth, it certainly must be in a day such as ours.
This means, among other things, that after we have done all we can on a personal level, if the liberals in the church persist in their liberalism, they should come under discipline. As I have shown at length in The Church Before the Watching World, the church must remain the faithful bride of Christ.' And, as I explained there in detail, the liberals are not faithful to the God of the Bible, the God who is there.7 Historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, believes that Christianity is not just doctrinal truth, but flaming truth-true to what is there, true to the great final environment, the infinite-personal God. Liberalism, on the other hand, is unfaithfulness; it is spiritual adultery toward the divine Bridegroom. We are involved, therefore, in a matter of loyaltyloyalty not only to the creeds, but to the Scripture, and beyond that to the divine Bridegroom-the infinite-personal divine Bridegroom who is there in an absolute antithesis to his not being there.
We not only believe in the existence of truth, but we believe we have the truth-a truth that has content and can be verbalized (and then can be lived)-a truth we can share with the twentieth-century world. Christ and the Bible have given us this truth. Do you think our contemporaries will take us seriously if we do not practice truth? Do you think for a moment that the really serious-minded twentieth-century young people-our own youth as they go off to universities, who are taught in the fields of sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc., that all is relative-will they take us seriously if we do not practice truth in very practical ways? In an age that does not believe that truth exists, do you really believe they will take seriously that their parents are speaking truth and believe in truth? Will their parents have credibility if they do not practice antithesis in religious matters?
It is therefore necessary for the true Christians in the church to oppose McLuhanesque "cool" communication employed by the liberal theologians with the "hot" communication of theological and biblical content. It is only thus that we can practice the exhibition of the holiness of God.
We believe in the hot communication of content, and as our age cools off more and more in its communication, as content is played down and reason is plowed under, I believe the historic Christian faith must more and more consciously emphasize content, content, and then more content. In this we are brought face-to-face in a complete antithesis with the existential theologian. If we are to talk truth at all, we must have content on the basis of antithesis; and to do this, we must have discipline with regard to those who depart from the historic Christian faith. It is thus that we can practice the exhibition of the holiness of God.
At the same time, however, we must show forth the love of God to those with whom we differ. Fifty years ago in the Presbyterian crisis in the United States, we forgot that. We did not speak with love about those with whom we differed, and we have been paying a price for it ever since. We must love men, including the existential theologians, even if they have given up content entirely. We must deal with them as our neighbors, for Christ gave us the second commandment telling us that we are to love all men as our neighbors.
We must stand clearly for the principle of the purity of the visible church, and we must call for the appropriate discipline of those who take a position which is not according to Scripture. But at the same time we must visibly love them as people as we speak and write about them. We must show it before both the church and the world. We must say that the liberals are desperately wrong and that they require discipline in and by the church, but we must do so in terms that show it is not merely the flesh speaking. This is beyond us, but not beyond the work of the Holy Spirit. I regret that years ago we did not do this in the Presbyterian Church; we did not talk of the need to show love as we stood against liberalism. And as the Presbyterian Church was lost, that lack has cost us dearly.
The Tragedy of Bishop Pike
But with prayer, both love and concern for truth can be shown. Several years ago at the Roosevelt University auditorium in Chicago, I had a dialogue with Bishop James Pike. (Bishop Pike was a leading liberal in the Episcopal Church.) Some years before our dialogue, he had been brought to trial in the Episcopal Church on heresy charges. However, the charges were eventually dropped-not because his views were in fact orthodox, but because the Episcopal denomination had accepted theological pluralism and relativism and therefore had no real basis upon which to practice discipline.
Before the dialogue, I asked those in L'Abri to pray for one thing-that I would be able to present a clear Christian position to him and to the audience, and at the same time end with a good human relationship between the two of us. It was something I could not do in myself, but God answered that prayer. A clear statement was raised, with a clear statement of differences, without destroying him as a human being. At the close he said, "If you ever come to California, please visit me in Santa Barbara." Later, when Edith and I were out in Santa Barbara, we went to his place and were able to carry on further a discussion with him without one iota of compromise, and yet again not destroying him, but letting him know that we respected him as a human being.
We also talked about the possibility that his belief that he was talking to his son "on the other side" was really a matter of demonology. This was some time after Bishop Pike's son had committed suicide, and he had tried to communicate with his son through a medium. And he did not get angry, though he was close to crying. It is possible to make clear statements, even the necessary negative ones, if simultaneously we treat people as people.
I will never forget the last time I saw him as Edith and I were leaving the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He said one of the saddest things I have ever heard: "When I turned from being agnostic, I went to Union Theological Seminary, eager for and expecting bread; but when I graduated, all that it left me was a handful of pebbles."
Who is responsible for the tragedy of Bishop James Pike? His liberal theological professors who robbed him of everything real and human. We cannot take lightly the fact that liberal theological professors in any theological school are leaving young men and women with a handful of pebbles and nothing more.
Yet, even in the midst of this situation, by God's grace we must do two things simultaneously. We must do all that is necessary for the purity of the visible church to exhibit the holiness of God; and yet, no matter how bitter the liberals become or what nasty things they say or what they release to the press, we must show forth the love of God in the midst of the strongest speaking we can do. If we let down one side or the other, we will not bear our testimony to God who is holy and who is love.
Discipline
Let us again go back to the Presbyterian struggles of the thirties when true Christians did not remember to keep this balance. On the one hand, they waited far too long to exert discipline, and so they lost the denomination, as did the Christians in almost every other denomination. On the other hand, some of them treated the liberals as less than human, and therefore they learned such bad habits that later, when those who formed new groups developed minor differences among themselves, they continued to treat each other badly. Beware of the habits we learn in controversy. Both must appear together: the holiness of God and the love of God exhibited simultaneously by the grace of God. It will not come automatically. It takes prayer. We must write about it in our denominational papers. We must talk about it to our congregations; we must preach sermons pointing out the necessity of standing for the holiness of God and the love of God simultaneously, and by our attitudes we must exhibit it to our congregations and to our own children.
It is important to notice the principle we are speaking about here and the language we use to express that principle. It is not the principle of separation. It is the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church. Words are important at this point, because we make attitudes with the words we choose and use year after year. So I repeat: the principle is the practice of the purity of the visible church. That principle may have to be exhibited in various ways, but that is the principle. The church belongs to those who by the grace of God are faithful to the Scriptures. Almost every church has in its history a process for exercising discipline, and when needed this should be used in the practice of the positive principle.
Between the 1890s and the 1930s we can see how the practice of discipline was turned on its head. In the early 1890s, disciplinary action was taken against Dr. Charles A. Briggs. Dr. Briggs was a vigorous advocate of higher criticism and a leader in the introduction of liberalism to Union Theological Seminary in New York. In 1881 he was tried for heresy and was eventually suspended from the ministry in 1883 by the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church. But by the 1930s the older type of liberals had taken over the denomination, and the situation was completely reversed. In 1936 the liberals were able to put Dr. Machen out of the denomination for his firm and practical stand for orthodoxy in belief and practice.
Dr. Machen was disciplined and put out of the ministry. What had happened in the intervening years? Discipline had not been consistently applied by the faithful men of the church. The church was able to discipline Dr. Briggs in the 1880s, but after that faithful men waited too long. Though they had achieved one outstanding victory, after that first burst of discipline they did nothing, until it was far too late. Discipline in the church and in our Christian organizations-as in the family-is not something that can be done in one great burst of enthusiasm, one great conference, one great anything. Men must be treated in love as human beings, but it is a case of continual, moment-by-moment care, for we are not dealing with a merely human organization but with the church of Christ. Hence, the practice of the purity of the visible church first means discipline of those who do not take a proper position in regard to the teaching of Scripture.
Why is it so unthinkable today to have discipline? Why is it that at least two denominations in the United States are now so much in the hands of liberals that it is officially and formally no longer possible to have a discipline trial, ever-even in theory? It is because both the world and the liberal church are totally caught up in the grasp of synthesis and relativism. It was not unthinkable to our forefathers to conduct discipline hearings, because they believed that truth existed. But because the world and the liberal church no longer believe in truth as truth, any concept of discipline in regard to doctrine has become unthinkable.
A Second Step
Let us now shift our focus. What does the future hold? What can we expect for ourselves, our congregations, our physical and spiritual children in the days ahead? America is moving at great speed toward a totally humanistic society and state. Do we suppose this trend will leave our own little projects, lives, and churches untouched? When a San Francisco Orthodox Presbyterian congregation can be dragged into court for breaking the law against discrimination because it dismissed an avowed, practicing homosexual as an organist, can we be so deaf as not to hear all the warning bells?
In what presbytery in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. can you bring an ordained man under biblical discipline for holding false views of doctrine and expect him to be disciplined? The same is true in many other denominations. We should first of all, of course, do all we can on a personal, loving level to help the liberal; but if he persists in his liberalism he should be brought under discipline, because the visible church should remain the faithful bride of Christ.
The church is not the world. When a denomination comes to a place where such discipline cannot operate, then before the Lord her members must consider a second step: that step, with regard to the practice of the principle of the purity of the visible church, is with tears to step out. Not with flags flying, not with shouts of hurrah or thoughts that in this fallen world we can build a perfect church, but that step is taken with tears.
Evangelicals who come to this point must still keep on loving the liberals, and must do so because it is right. If we do not know how to take a firm stand against organized liberalism and still love the liberals, we have failed in half of the call to exhibit simultaneously the love and the holiness of God before a watching world, before a watching church, before our children, before the watching angels, and before the face of the Lord himself.
Learning from the Past
As we face the watershed issue concerning the full authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures, what can we learn from the past? First, we must recognize that there is a direct parallel between what happened in the early decades of this century and what we are facing today. Will we repeat the mistakes we made in the past, or will we learn from these and remain faithful to God by simultaneously expressing his love and holiness?
Within the evangelical circles things are moving rapidly in the direction of what happened fifty years ago in the denominations. But there still is time to head off a complete takeover of the leadership and key organizations within evangelicalism by those who hold a weakened view of Scripture and have been infiltrated theologically and culturally by the surrounding world view-if we have the courage to clearly but lovingly draw a line. Sadly though, we must say that things are moving rapidly and in precisely the same way that the denominations went some fifty years ago. There is the growing acceptance of higher critical methods in our colleges and seminaries. There is a growing acceptance of the neo-orthodox existential methodology. There is a growing infiltration of humanistic ideas into both theology and practice. There is a growing acceptance of pluralism and accommodation. And what has been the response of the evangelical leadership? Overwhelmingly it has been to keep silent, to let the slide go further and further, to paper over the differences. Here again we see the great evangelical disaster-the failure of the evangelical leadership to take a stand really on anything that would stand decisively over against the relativistic slide of our culture-the failure to take a stand on anything that would "rock the boat" concerning our personal projects and acceptance. And now when our culture is all but lost, can we expect anything but further disaster in the form of a complete moral breakdown and the rise of a new humanistic authoritarianism if we do not take a stand?
Practical Steps
On a very practical level, in our evangelical organizations and institutions, as well as our churches and denominations, we will need to take some very specific steps. Where there is a departure from the historic view of Scripture and from obedience to God's Word, then those who take this weakened view need to be brought under discipline. It must be done according to all that has been said so far in this chapter-with genuine love, without selfrighteousness, and everything else that I have said. But a clear line must be drawn-by those who sit on the boards of evangelical organizations and colleges and seminaries; when we recommend schools for students to attend or avoid; when we are asked to work together for the sake of the gospel with others who hold a weakened view of the Bible; when we decide who and what we will publish in our magazines and publishing houses. In organizations such as these, and especially in the colleges and seminaries, the issues are crucial. For it was the failure of evangelicals fifty years ago to practice discipline and maintain control of the denominational centers of influence-in colleges and seminaries, in publishing, and in the organizational structures-which allowed the liberals to take control.
And if the moment should come for you when loyalty to Christ brings you to the place of bringing discipline to bear, or even to leaving your local church or denomination or Christian organization, I plead with you to find some way to show observable love among true Christians before the world. The practice of truth requires that a line be drawn between those who hold the historic view of Scripture and the new weaker one. But this is not to say that those who hold this view are not often brothers and sisters in Christ, nor that we should not have loving personal relationships with them. Don't just divide into ugly parties. If you do, the world will see an ugliness which will turn it off. Your children will see the ugliness, and you will lose some of your sons and daughters. They will hear such harsh things from your lips against men who they know have been your friends that they will turn away from you. Don't throw your children away; don't throw other people away by forgetting to observe, by God's grace, the two principles simultaneously-to show love and holiness.
When the World Is on Fire
Finally, we must not forget that the world is on fire. We are not only losing the church, but our entire culture as well. We live in the post-Christian world which is under the judgment of God. I believe today that we must speak as Jeremiah did. Some people think that just because the United States of America is the United States of America, because Britain is Britain, they will not come under the judgment of God. This is not so. I believe that we of Northern Europe since the Reformation have had such light as few others have ever possessed. We have stamped upon that light in our culture. Our cinemas, our novels, our art museums, our schools scream out as they stamp upon that light. And worst of all, modern theology screams out as it stamps upon that light. Do you think God will not judge our countries simply because they are our countries? Do you think that the holy God will not judge?
And if this is true in our moment of history, we need each other. Let us keep our denominational distinctives. And let us talk to each other about our distinctives as we keep them.
But in a day like ours, let us recognize a proper hierarchy of things. Our distinctives are not to be the chasm. We hold our distinctives because we are convinced that they are biblical. But God's call is to love and be one with all those who are in Christ Jesus, and then to let God's truth speak into the whole spectrum of life and the whole spectrum of society. That is our calling. The limiting circle is not to be the distinctives of our own particular denomination. We hold these things because we believe indeed they are taught in Scripture. But beyond that there is the responsibility, there is the call, to be something to the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and beyond the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to the whole society and to the whole culture. If we don't understand this, we understand neither how rich Christianity is and God's truth is, nor do we understand how wide is the call placed upon the Christian into the totality of life. Jesus cannot be said to be Savior unless we also say he is Lord. And we cannot honestly and rightly say he is our Lord if he is only a Lord of part of life and not of the totality of life, including all the social and political and cultural life.
In a day like ours, when the world is on fire, let us be careful to keep things in proper order. We must have the courage to draw the line between those who have compromised the full authority of the Scriptures, either by theological infiltration or cultural infiltration, and those who have not. But we must at the same time practice an observable oneness among all who have bowed to the living God and thus to the verbal propositional communication of God's Word, the Scriptures. Learning from the mistakes of the past, let us raise a testimony that may still turn both the churches and society around-for the salvation of souls, the building of God's people, and at least the slowing down of the slide toward a totally humanistic society and an authoritarian suppressive state.