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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
May 1926 q j JU ' '
Surgery of the Scriptures NATHANIEL BERCOVITZ, M. D. Christ Hospital. American Presbyterian Mission Kachek, Hainan, China
Dr. Bercovitz is the son of a loyal Presbyterian minis ter, ( now gone to his well earned reward). Dr. Ber covitz himself was one of the first recruits o f The Fishermen’s Club {the or ganization of young men out of which the Bible Institute of Los Angeles grew), and later a student at the Institute. H e has been for some years now in ' China, and has manifested God-given ability in his sur gical work, but has not been m o v e d by “M o d e r n Thought” from his faith in the inerrant Word o f God. W e are glad to give ‘‘The King’s Business Family” these sterling words o f tes timony from a layman.
Repair Work Another type concerns the doctrines of the Bible. The critic cannot believe that God in His infinite Justice would condemn a soul to hell, in fact he can not believe in hell, or a real devil at all, and instead of salvation from sin preaches a vague kind of religion, a social religion as it were, in which the principles of Jesus shall be carried out in the world without the old fash ioned notion of having to be born again, and all that. This would cor respond to what we would call “ repair work” in surgery; a lot of diseased and useless tissue having been re moved, the attempt is made to restore as much natural function to the re maining organs as possible. The anal ogy is obvious— a lot of’ the Bible hav ing become worn out and useless— for modern conditions, the Bible is changed to suit the whim of the critic and patched up to form what might be called a proper religion to suit the problems of the day. Is an Operation Needed? The difficulty with all this surgical work being done on the Bible,— and there is a lot which has not yet been mentioned— is that the very fact that these operations are being performed on the Scriptures presupposes— in the the minds of those who do this work— that something is wrong with the Bible. Surgery is not performed on a healthy body. A normal eye is not removed; a sound limb is not ampu tated. When the leg becomes gan grenous it is removed; when a tumor develops it is excised. Neither does the Bible need to be mutilated unless it is diseased. And yet the present trend of religious thought by its destructive criticism practically as sumes that the Bible is in need of operative intervention in order to pro duce a religion suited to the hour. Now, since the Bible is held to be the Word of God, given for the guid ance of man, to bring man into the right relation with God, it would seem that nothing could be more serious than just such operative intervention. In the first place if the Bible is the Word of God it must be considered as an absolute authority. It is hardly for man— the creature, to make bold to assume that God was wrong when
R a a » lN a rather extensive surgical |£S k H experience over a number ot years I have neither oper- B B m ated on any case, or seen a case which needed operation, which was not definitely diseased or in some way abnormal. In other words, the healthy body does not require the sur geon. There is a tendency at the present time in many quarters to perform sur gical operations on the Scriptures. In some cases this takes the form of elimination of certain passages which for some reason or other do not hap pen to coincide with views held by the expositor. For example the creation of woman from man as recorded in Genesis is held to be fantastic, myth+ ological, not in accord with what mod ern reason could properly accept as sound; therefore it is read and passed over with a smile at the credulity of those who for centuries have believed that such was the manner of creation of woman— a sort of spiritual excision of an undesirable part of Scriptural narrative. Plastic Surgery Then there is the type of critic who performs what might be called “ plas tic surgery” on portions of Scripture—— in order to improve the Bible. Such an one substitutes evolution for the Bible account of creation, and tries to ex plain miracles on natural grounds— all in an attempt to make the Bible plausible, according to his view of what is reasonable. Another type of critic frankly denies certain things in the Bible. This par ticular type of mutilation of the Scrip tures might be compared with ampu tation. The virgin birth of Christ, for example, is frankly denied, hence elim inated; the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale is denied— (notwith standing the fact that Jesus believed it)— and is simply not accepted as a part of the Bible which is considered authentic. Exploratory Operations A favorite form of criticism is that regarding authorship of various books — “ exploratory operations,” as it were, in attempts to break down authentic ity of authorships, and the dates of writing of the books— research work to prove the Bible wrong.
He gave to men the Holy Scriptures. The colossal conceit of those who so believe is exceeded only by their reck lessness. And yet apparently sane men presume to set their knowledge against the Word of the Lord. Scriptural Surgery Senseless Everything hinges upon the Bible as an absolute authority. If the Bible is an authority at all it must be abso lute. Nothing could be more reason able than that. To begin with, it would hardly be reasonable to sup pose that when God gave the Holy Scriptures He did not mean that the whole should be accepted by men. Nor would it be reasonable to presume that ir. giving the Scriptures to guide men in their relation to Himself that He would allow error either in the way the Bible was written, or in His plan for man. To presume either nullifies the whole of the Bible as authority or guide for man. By the very nature of God it simply is impossible to conceive that His Word could contain error— in other words, that anything could be wrong with it, or that it is in need of improvement. At the outset, then, mutilation becomes an absurdity; sur gery simply isn’t called for. In the second place, granting for the sake of argument that human wisdom might be able to discover weaknesses, error, some pathological condition in the Bible which needs attention— Just who is going to determine what is wrong, how much is wrong, and how far, and what the treatment shall be?
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