The King’s Business
Voi. 5
MARCH, 1914
No. 3
“Need Bible Criticism Make the Church Uneasy?” I N the January 8th issue of THE CONTINENT, there is a very specious but .misleading leading article under the above caption. O f course, Bible criti cism need not make the Church uneasy, neither has the true Church any reason to be uneasy about anything else, we know our God and can trust Him and He today, as well as in Isaiah’s time,- “ will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Him” (Isa. 26:3). We also know that the Bible is the Word 'of God, and that none of men’s attacks, no matter how specious nor how furious, can undermine the “ impregnable rock of Scripture.” Heaven and earth may pass away but His Word shall not pass away (Matt. 23:25). The .Book that has successfully withstood eighteen centuries of assault by the Devil’s heaviest artillery, is not going down before the air guns of modern biblical criticism. But while this is true, there can be no question that the faith of many young men and young women who are professed Christians is being undermined by the teaching that they receive in some of our present day universities, which they are assured is the result of the latest scholarship but which, in point o f fact, is utterly unscholarly. Neither can there be a doubt that there are a large number o f ministers in our evangelical churches who have been shorn of their power by the fallacies of the biblical criticism that is taught in some of our leading theological seminaries. The article to which we refer has many misleading statements in it. For example, we read, “ Of course, it is unthinkable that God would inspire a lie. But this question (that is, the question o f inaccuracies in.biblical statements re garding history and physical science) does not have reference to lies, it is con sidering such innocent inaccuracies as are bound to creep into the annals of any time or people even when transmitted through the most honest and sincere historians. Besides, it looks to various forms of fanciful literature as allegory, poetry and romance, which every intellectually alive nation has produced more or less abundantly.” Now the real meaning o f this any one who is posted as to present-day discussion knows. It is an attempt to insidiously poison people with the notion that statements which are plainly made as history in the Old Testament and are treated as history by our Lord Jesus Himself and by Paul are merely “ allegory," poetry and romance.” It also is meaut to suggest, as it does suggest, that the historical part of the Bible and such scientific statements as are made, abound in “ innocent inaccuracies.” It loses sight of, or seeks to obscure, the fact that biblical History is not merely “ transmitted through the most honest and sincere historians” but is inspired history, that is, the writers were inspired in their selection of their material and in their method of recording it. Here is another dangerous statement in the article, “ Suppose now, in form ing the canon of His inspired Word, God chose to speak a part of His message through some earnest man who, in common with his neighbors, accepted tra ditions of history not in all details literally exact—would God correct that man’s history before letting him speak the spiritual message inspired in him?”
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online