Truth Magazine

By L. A. Stauffer

Harry Emerson Fosdick, a twentieth-century preacher, could have lived at no other time in history. A product of eighteenth and nineteenth-century thought, Fosdick, a popular spokesman for modernism, was a thoroughly modern theologian. Some preachers cloaked modernism in Biblical terminology to conceal certain aspects of the new view, but Fosdick took the new theology outside the seminary and shouted it from the rooftop to the man on the street. The New York pastor openly admitted that modernism called for a new use of the Scriptures.

Fosdick, in fact, entitled a book he published in 1924: “The Modern Use of the Bible. ” The author displayed no reticence at all when he wrote of the Bible. “What once was said of Jehovah,” he declared, “can in a different sense be said of the Book-its thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are its ways our ways” (p. 36).

Known also as “Liberals” and “Neo-protestants,” the modernistic theologians showed no hesitancy in denouncing a number of unique Bible qualities. No Place, for example, could be found in modernism for miracles, a literal second coming of Christ, verbal inspiration or predictive prophecy. But did not God, according to the writer of Hebrews, speak “in times past unto the fathers by the prophets” (1:1)? Yes, the modernists admit. A wide gulf, however, separates the modernists’ and the Bible’s concept of a prophet.

The Meaning of Prophet

On one side the echoing shouts of the modernists stress their belief that a prophet is a mere moral and social philosopher. They emphasize this by demonstrating that the word prophet means a “forthteller” not a “foreteller.” In harmony with Thayer’s definition-“to speak forth, speak out,” Albert C. Knudson observes: “The prefix `pro’ in the word `prophet’ does not mean `beforehand,’ as in such words as `progress’ and `procession,’ but `instead of,’ as in the word `pronoun.’ The prophet, then, was not primarily one who foretold events, but one who spoke in God’s stead” (The Beacon Lights of Prophecy, p. 30).

On the other side the reverberating response of the Bible announces both its agreement and disagreement. A prophet is indeed a “forthteller,” a spokesman for God. Jehovah says of the prophet: “I will put my words in his mouth: and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18:18). Prophets, accordingly, often prefaced their words with: “Thus saith the Lord” (Amos 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13), “the word of the Lord came unto me saying” (Hos. 1:1; Joel 1:1), “Jehovah hath spoken” (Isa. 1:2), or “the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken” (Isa. 1:20). These and similar expressions occur more than 2500 times in the Old Testament. “No prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20, 21).

The Bible likewise agrees that Jehovah through the prophets addressed Himself to the moral and social issues of the time (Cf. Amos 5:5-10; 6:lff). The Bible, though,’ says more. The prophets also used common phrases such as “it shall come to pass” (Isa. 2:2; Joel 2:28) or “behold, the days cometh” (Amos 9:13), signifying that Jehovah enabled them to look into the future.

Jehovah, therefore, according to the Biblical view of prophecy, is a personal, omniscient God above nature who, concerning either present or future events, entered the natural process to inspire His spokesman with verbal or propositional truth. Is there any reason to doubt these qualities of God and, as a result, deny the Biblical phenomena of verbal inspiration and predictive prophecy? The modernists believe there is and begin their assault on predictive prophecy by an attack on the very nature of God. If the neo-theologians are correct about God, they open to question all claims to supernatural manifestations.

The Immanence of God

J. Gresham Machen, an important and staunch opponent of modernism in the twentieth century, wrote concerning the basis of the new theology: “The many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism-that is the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 2). Modernists, as Machen observes, do not believe in a transcendent God-one who is over nature. The new theologians speak of the immanence of God-one who is in nature.

Modernists are spiritual evolutionists. They combine Hegel’s idealistic philosophy of historical progress with Darwin’s hypothesis of natural evolution and conclude, in Fosdick’s words, that God is an “ideal-realizing Capacity in the universe or the Creative Spirit at the heart of it” (op. cit., p. 161). A spiritual analysis of history convinces modernists that God is an ethical or moral process which constitutes the soul of the universe. This process, their analysis indicates, will inevitably guide mankind onward and upward to the perfect society.

God, the modernists affirm, is not a person with a voice uttering words and phrases and sentences. The semipantheistic theologians, therefore, find no place in their theology for the supernatural, especially verbal inspiration and predictive prophecy. Supernatural events, to their way of thinking, would be freaks of nature much like the birth of a two-headed cow.

Knudsons puts it almost that way. “The clairvoyant quality of the prophetic mind has no special interest for us today. What we look to the prophets for is moral instruction and inspiration. That they had a peculiar psychological endowment which enabled them to hear voices and to peer into the future does not especially concern us. Perhaps it would be somewhat of a relief to us if it should be proven that they were not so endowed. In any case, we are disposed to look upon this feature of their life and work as wholly incidental, if not accidental” (op. cit., p. 42). Fosdick says the same of miracles (op. cit., p. 155).

Knudson and his modernistic cohorts seek relief from predictive prophecy because they know the immanence of God must fall if any evidence of supernaturalism stands. Predictive prophecy, since human wisdom has no vision of the future, argues for the existence in the universe of a transcendent God who is personal and omniscient. Jehovah Himself said as much when he challenged impersonal and dumb idols. “Declare the things that are to come to pass hereafter,” He chided, “that we may know that ye are gods” (Isa. 41:23; Cf. Deut. 18:18; Ezek. 33:33).

A Formidable Task

Disposing of predictive prophecy is no easy task for the modernists. The prophetic vision into the future is no isolated phenomenon in Scriptures. The Old Testament-whether books of law, history, poetry or prophecy-is literally saturated with descriptions of coming events. More than 600 illusions to the Old Testament, much of which was predictive, are found in the New Testament. Modernists must not be allowed to forget this.

Consider, for example, the words “forseeing” and “beforehand” in Galatians 3:8 where the apostle Paul referred to a prophecy in Genesis 12:3. “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed.” Moses likewise foresaw the raising up of a prophet like unto himself to whom men must hearken in all things (Deut. 18:15-19; Acts 3:22, 23). Nathan announced beforehand the coming of a king who would establish his throne forever (2 Sam. 7:12, 13, 16; Hebrews 1:5) and David prophesied that this king would have “the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession” (Ps. 2:8; Eph. 1:20, 21).

Consisting of Jews and Gentiles (Isa. 2:2; Eph. 2:13-18), the kingdom, as envisioned by other prophets, was to begin at Jerusalem (Isa. 2:3; Acts 2:lff) in the days of the Roman empire (Dan. 2:44, 45; Mk. 1:15; Col. 1:13). The king would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Mt. 1:22, 23) at Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2; Mt. 2:1, 5, 6) and live among men without sin (Isa. 53:9, 11, 12; 1 Pet. 2:22). The mighty ruler was to govern the kingdom in a glorious reign, be a priest on his throne (Zech. 6:13; Ps. 110:1, 2) and suffer as God’s servant for the iniquities of his subjects (Isa. 53:4-6, 10-12; 1 Pet. 2:24).

Arlie Hoover, in discussing the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, notes its detailed portrait of Jesus’ life. “Jesus,” he says, “was lowly in origin, he had God’s Spirit, he encountered opposition, he was unjustly convicted, he didn’t protest his mistreatment, he was executed with criminals, he died an atoning death, he was raised by God and he became a light to the gentiles. Can anyone else in history fit the picture so well?” (Dear Agnos, pp. 219, 220).

Hoover also notes that “Ps. 22 reads as if David wrote it at the foot of the cross. Jesus uttered the first verse from the cross: `My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27:46). I can count at least twelve clear reference to Christ in this short passage: (1) he was scorned and despised by men (v. 6); (2) people mocked his faith in God (vv. 7, 8); (3) his birth had been in God’s plan (v. 9); (4) he was surrounded by evil men `bulls,’ a `lion’ and `dogs’ (vv. 12, 13, 16); (5) his bones were out of joint and clearly visible-a standard result of crucifixion (vv. 14, 17); (6) his heart was collapsed within him (v. 14); (7) he had terrible thirst (v. 15); (8) his enemies pierced his hands and feet (v. 16); (9) they divided his garments among them (v. 18); nevertheless (10) God delivers him from this situation (vv. 22, 24); (11) he lives to tell future generations of God’s greatness (vv. 22, 31); and finally (12) `all the ends of the earth’ and `all the families of nations’ (v. 27) shall honor God for his deliverance” (Ibid., p. 221).

To these can be added the specific prophecy of Christ’s resurrection-that “neither was he left in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (Ps. 16:9-11; Acts 2:25-32)-and his ascension in the clouds to God’s right hand (Dan. 7:13, 14; Acts 1:9-11). Time will fail if all the prophecies of Christ are mentioned-his betrayal for thirty pieces of silver (tech. 11:12; Matt. 26:14, 15), the work of His harbinger, John the Baptist (Isa. 40:3; Matt. 3:3; Mal. 4:5; Lk. 1:17; Mt. 11:14), His entry into Jerusalem riding on a colt the foal of an ass (tech. 9:9; Matt. 21:5), His new covenant (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:8-12), etc. Peter exaggerated none at all when he wrote: “Yea and all the prophets from Samuel and them that followed after, as many as have spoke, they also told of these days” (Acts 3:24).

The examples cited touch only the hem of the vast garment of prophecy, and yet they r; Elect the challenge the modernists face. Added to this challenge is the modernists’ dilemma of not being able to win for losing. If they meet the challenge and eliminate predictive prophecy, the evidence that God has spoken is gone. If God has not spoken, the moral and social teaching of the Bible, which the modernists want, are reduced to the level of humanistic philosophy. And yet the modernists cannot have predictive prophecy if their theory of immanence is to remain.

The Modernists’ Assault

The modernists, therefore, must be on with the task of cutting their own throats. To do this they attack prophecy in four ways: one, they challenge the date of prophecy; two, the clarity; three, the fulfillment; four, the interpretation. The chief problem with any one or all of these assaults is their failure to explain away all predictive prophecy. What Bernard Ramm says of their claim that prophecy is unclear applies equally to all their criticisms. “If the critic is to make his case he must show that all fulfilled prophecies.are vague in nature. Showing that two or three or twenty are vague is not sufficient” (Protestand Christian Evidences, p. 87, 88). The modernists, as Ramm notes concerning another point, “must silence all of our guns: we need to fire only one of them” (Ibid., p. 88).

Prophecy is history. Notice, for example, the modernists’ argument from Daniel that prophecy is really history in disguise. Daniel claims his prophecies were delivered during the Babylonian captivity (606-536 B.C.). The modernists, admitting the book contains an accurate history of the period between 536 and 165 B.C., arbitrarily, on the basis of antisupernatural bias, assign the date of the book at 165 B.C. They then challenge the opposition to prove them wrong.

In the first place, no evidence can be cited for the modernists’ date. Secondly, this date is meaningless since Daniel looked beyond 165 B.C. and saw the rise of the Roman empire (Dan. 2 and 7). He also saw the coming of the anointed one, his death, his ascension and the establishment of the unshakeable kingdom in the days of Rome (9:25-27; 7:13, 14; 2:44, 45). Finally, this argument does not account for the vast body of prophecy, known to’ exist before the first century, outlining step by step the life of Christ from his birth of the virgin at Bethlehem unto the ascension in the clouds to God’s right hand.

Prophecy is vague. Granted, as the modernists also argue, some prophecy is vague. But can that be said of all prophecy? Before answering, one should reread those cited above. The charge, furthermore, fails to consider that prophecy, as a riddle when the solution is given, is clarified by fulfillment. “There is a measure of detail in a prophecy that is not apparent at the time of its utterance which is sharpened by fulfillment. Further, several such examples would indicate that more than human factors are at work. The calculus of probability starts to pile up in advantage for the Christian” (Ramm, op. cit., p. 87).

Fulfillment is contrived, Again, one must partly agree with modernists. Some prophecies, it must be admitted, are open to fulfillment by the power and contrivance of man. One, nonetheless, would have difficulty explaining by this method the taxation and enrollment which brought about the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem or the happenings at the foot of the cross foreseen in Psalms 22. And certainly this argument fails to dispose of prophetic utterances announcing the permanent downfall of cities and nations, such as Babylon, Edom and Tyre (Isa. 13:10; Mal. 1:2-5; Ezek. 26:14).

Prophecy is misinterpreted. It is needless to pursue modernism’s argument that prophecy is misinterpreted. It, like the others, offers no rebuttal to all prophecy. The biggest barrier to this assault is that the Jews, even before Christ, understood many prophecies in the same way Christ and the apostles interpreted them. Hoover points out that “long before Christ the Jews had a body of messianic literature that agrees substantially with what Christian said of Christ” (op. cit. p. 210).

After attempting to eliminate specific and clear prophecies, the modernists still have not met their most serious challenge. Prophecy is full of surprises and paradoxes which defy humanistic explanations.

Why, for example, would Jewish prophets, of their own wisdom, announce the coming of a kingdom that would include Gentiles alongside Jews? Or, why would they declare that the king would also be the priest of the new kingdom? Why, would they proclaim that the Messiah would be both a conquering king, the mighty God, and a suffering servant, the dying lamb? And why would they herald Bethlehem as the birthplace of this world-conquering king rather than, say, Jerusalem? The more one reads the Old Testament prophets the more irrational some aspects of their prophecies sound.

Old Testament prophecy, as Hoover notes, forms “a mysterious tangled web that puzzled many Jewish commentators. How could the Messiah be so many things at once: King, Priest, Prophet, Shepherd, Suffering-Servant, Sin-offering, Vicarious victim? Perhaps this was God’s way of making sure that no one could artificially fulfill all these vision until he should come who had the key” (op. cit., p. 221, 222).

Conclusion

Ramm’s conclusion, to the chagrin of the modernists, offers the Scriptural and only satisfactorily explanation for the Biblical phenomenon of predictive prophecy. “The very fact that the threads of the Old Testament seem hopelessly tangled and yet are so beautifully untangled in the life of Christ is further proof that beneath the letter of Scripture is the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit” (op. cit., p. 119).

Truth Magazine XXII: 41, pp. 667-670
October 19, 1978

By Weldon E. Warnock

“Hopelessness, however, is a condition a .man cannot for long endure. Man will have his objects of hope or he will invent them anew.”(1) Modernism, therefore, rejecting and repudiating the hope of immortality, invented its own hope of a better world, here. Modernism strives toward an improved social order that will bring earthly happiness. It seeks an earthly utopia and panacea through humanistic philosophy. This is the hope of Modernism.

Humanism is “a philosophy of Joyous service for the greater good of all ‘humanity in this natural world and according to the methods of reason and democracy.”(2) Hence, we can readily see that the aim of humanism is for man’s greater good in this world, reached by human reasoning. Attitudes that reflect the humanistic hope, which is the hope of the Modernist, are seen in the following quotations:

An Earthly Hope

Corliss Lamont, who taught at Columbia University; said, “The Humanist philosophy persistently strives to remind men that their only home is in the mundane world. There is no use in our searching elsewhere for happiness and fulfillment, for there is no place else to go …. If this life is our sole opportunity to make our actions count on behalf of the social good, to contribute significantly to the more lasting human values, and to leave a name behind us that will be honored and beloved by the community . . . as for the future, it is up to the human race to work out its own destiny upon this globe.”(3)

Walter Rauschenbush, a professor of church history at Rochester Theological Seminary at the turn of the 20th century, stated, “The purpose of all that Jesus said and did and hoped to do was always the social redemption of the entire life of the human race on earth …. Christianity set out with a great social ideal. The live substance of the Christian religion was the hope of seeing a divine social order established on earth.”(4)

William Hamilton, a radical, “God is dead,” Modernist, taught, “. . . the dominant mood of modern culture is optimistic and hopeful about its possibilities. The future is open and malleable to positive hopes. The hope that all things can be changed for the better is becoming contagious again, symbolized by Kennedy’s `New Frontier’ and Johnson’s `Great Society.’ Pessimism is now out of date, culturally and theologically.”(5)

Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844-1900), a German philosopher, said, “The task confronting enlightened men today is therefore the complete ‘transvaluation of all values.’ Instead of hiding his head in celestial sands, man must learn to hold up his head, his `terrestrial head,’ and to affirm rather than deny himself. Instead of listening for the voice of an imaginary God, he should listen to the pure and upright voice of the `healthy body, perfect and square built,’ and affirm the powers and potentialities of man himself.”(6)

These men, not believing in or looking at things eternal, sought to make the most of this earthly, mundane existence. As a Virginia preacher said, “We’re interested in human life and destiny on earth” (The Social Gospel, a tract by Harris J. Dark, p. 7). What else can the Modernists be interested in when they do not believe in heaven, hell or the second coming of Christ?

Pessimism of Modernism

Though the Modernist pursues happiness and contentment through the hope of Humanism, his dream is shattered when he awakes to face reality. Looking at world conditions, such as population explosion, famine, oppression, inflation, wars, etc., where is all the optimism about the envisioned world utopia? They have been chasing the rainbow, looking for the proverbial pot of gold. Left shipwrecked and marooned by the futile hope of human wisdom, the Modernist echoes the pessimism of those of yesteryear who put their trust in man instead of God. Listen to the statements of renowned men who had lost hope of tomorrow and immortality.

Voltaire, brilliantly gifted and highly acclaimed by the world, said at the end of his life, “Strike out a few sages, and the crowd of human beings is nothing but a horrible assemblage of unfortunate criminals, and the globe contains nothing but corpses. I tremble to have to complain once more of the Being of beings, in casting an attentive eye over this terrible picture. I wish I had never been born . . . . The box of Pandora is the most beautiful fable of antiquity. Hope was at the bottom.”(7)

David Strauss, a radical German theologian of the 19th century, stated, “In the enormous machine of the universe amid wheel and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening clash of its stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man finds himself placed with no security for a moment, that a wheel might not seize and render him, or a hammer crash him to pieces.”(8)

Bertrand Russell, an outstanding mathematician of the 20th century, said, “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the sotac system. . .”(9)

Will Durant, philosopher, historian and professor for many years at Columbia University, declared, “God, who was once the consolation of our brief life, and our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has apparently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no microscope discovers him. Life has become in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and death-a sleep from which, it seems, there is no awakening …. Faith and hope disappear; doubt and despair are the order of the day . . . . “(10)

What a bleak and gloomy future the skeptic offers with nothing but a momentary existence between “the cold and barren peaks of two eternities” (Ingersoll). As Ingersoll viewed it, every life, regardless of how rich with love and how filled with joy, would, at its close, become a tragedy, “as sad, and deep, and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.”(11)

The Christian’s Hope

Thank God that in the midst of pessimism and despair, hope shines forth-a hope that is both steadfast and sure (Heb. 6:19). This hope that we have in Christ (Col. 1:27) enables us to sing with exuberance, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine,” or “There’s a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar, For the Father waits over the way, To prepare us a dwelling place there.”

The Christian’s hope looks with great expectation to the following things:

(1) The appearing of the Lord. Listen to Paul: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13). A cardinal doctrine of the New Testament is the second coming of Christ for the consummation of God’s scheme of redemption. Jesus’ coming for us points our minds upward, beyond this world and life. We are not alone in the universe. God is there and all is well.

(2) The resurrection of the dead. Though the Christian at death moves out of his earthly tabernacle (2 Pet. 1:14), he knows that he will move into a new house, a house not made with human hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. 5:1-4).

The resurrected body will be a spiritual and immortal body (1 Cor. 15:42-54) that will neither be afflicted with disease, nor grow old by the passing of the ages or be subject to the enemy of death. These earthly sorrows will be gone forever.

Our hope is vividly stated by Paul in 1 Thess. 4:13-18 when he declares that God will bring with him at His second advent those who sleep in Jesus and the dead bodies will arise victorious over the grave and meet the Lord in the air, along with those who are alive at his coming. This was the hope that Paul preached, and for which he was called in question by the Jewish council (Acts 23:6).

(3) Eternal life. The reality of eternal life will be fully experienced when all of God’s people are received into that eternal home, clothed in their glorified bodies. This new life, eternal life, has to do particularly with the quality of life and not the duration of life, although life will be forever.

We are introduced in Rom. 2:7 to the kind of life that eternal life entails. Paul said, “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.” For every saved person, heaven will be a place where he will have glory, honor and immortality. This is the quality of eternal life.

Paul, a man who had laid hold on hope in Christ (Heb. 6:18), wrote, “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Tit. 1:2). “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Tit. 3:7). Being justified by God’s grace, and assured by God’s promise, we live with full expectation of life everlasting. What a contrast with the Modernist who sees nothing ahead but gloom and darkness.

(4) To be like Christ. When Jesus comes, we shall be like him. John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2-3).

Paul writes that when Jesus returns, he shall “change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). The “vile body” is the body of the present state, subject to diseases, infirmities and death. This body will be changed into a body that will be perfectly adapted to the glorious world where Jesus now resides. This is our hope.

(5) For salvation. “But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). The Wycliffe Bible Commentary states that the hope of salvation is “the eager expectation of being rescued from God’s final wrath (1:10) and destined for endless glory and fellowship with God.” This is the salvation that is “nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11). No wonder the Bible speaks of hope as “that blessed hope” (Tit. 2:13).

In conclusion, the Christian’s hope is laid up for him in heaven (Col. 1:5). In other words, the things hoped for are reserved in heaven. As Peter expressed it, “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4).

The Christian’s eternal welfare is just as secure as the integrity of the Lord. God says there is a place reserved for us and we believe it. On this our hope is based. We are preserved by “the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5).

Truth Magazine XXII: 42, pp. 682-684
October 26, 1978

1. Carl E. Braaten & Robert W. Jenson, The Futurist Option, p. 48.

2. Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, p. 9.

3. Ibid., pp. 12, 91.

4. Walter Rauschenbush, Christianizing the Social Order, pp. 67, 69.

5. The Futurist Option, op. cit.

6. Paul Schilling, God in an age of Atheism, p. 35.

7. James D. Bales, Atheism’s Faith and Fruits, p. 77.

8. Ibid., p. 78.

9. Ibid., pp. 79-80.

10. Wilbur M. Smith, Therefore Stand, p. 198.

11. Atheism’s Faith and Fruits, op. cit., p. 76.

By C. G. “Golly” Caldwell, III

“Modernism” has been variously defined or described depending upon the context of the discussion in which the word is used. Classical “modernism” is the radical, theological liberalism of the past two centuries centering in what is called “higher Biblical criticism.” IL is basically philosophical and results in moving the adherent away from belief in the existence of a personal God, acceptance of the Bible as a direct revelation of the mind of that personal God to mankind, the concept of religion’s resulting from revealed truth, faith in the supernatural character of Biblical events (such as the virgin birth, miracles, and bodily resurrection of Jesus), etc.

Modernism exalts humanism, seeking answers in the mind of man rather than in the revelation and power of Almighty God. It finds the source of religion in man’s social fears and needs. It looks upon the Bible as the product of man’s reasoning and literary effort. It denies all aspects of faith which cannot be understood through natural science and philosophy.

The Central Figure: Immanuel Kant

The so-called “watershed” of classical modernism is the influence of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). There were two primary philosophical streams flowing in Kant’s day. The first was “Idealism.” It came out of the rationalistic thinking of men like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, etc., and resulted in a revival of the Platonic romanticism and in mysticism. The second was “Empiricism.” It was the thinking of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and the Deists. This kind of scepticism resulted in a kind of Aristotelian realism. David Hume (1711-1776) is probably the most important of all these men to our study. Hume was a Scottish skeptic who reacted against the idealistic rationalism of the day. His significance in relation to the development of modernism is seen both in his denial that the design of the universe necessarily implies a personal Designer and in his attack upon miracles on the ground that the evidence rests upon human testimony. Hume said that it is always more reasonable to reject testimony concerning the extraordinary than to believe it. Hume espoused his views in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and in an essay entitled “Miracles” (1748).

Immanuel Kant faced the problem of harmonizing the rationalism in the idealistic stream and the empiricism of the Enlightenment. The formulation of his synthesis is found in his Critique of Pure Reason. “Reason” is the principle function in the acquisition of knowledge, Kant said. Moral action is determined by the sense of duty in man and nothing is moral in and of itself apart from this necessity. The logical conclusion is that all knowledge arises from sense experience and, therefore, God cannot be known from any rational proof. Kant argued that God may only be known through practical reason of moral law which forces us to accept the highest good in life. Religion, therefore, results not from revelation of the mind of God either through direct confrontation or inspired writings. God is unknowable and, therefore, religion results from man. The life of Christ upon the earth was also virtually meaningless to Kant because religion is attained through man’s reason, not through revelation of God’s nature in the incarnate Word (Son). These views were also expressed in Kant’s Religion Within The Limits of Mere Reason (1793).

Kant, of course, did not resolve forever the great philosophical questions of the centuries, but he did leave his mark on the three major directions of religious study usually identified with classical modernism. These three streams flowing out of the “watershed” were Idealism, Subjectivism, and Materialism.

Idealism

Idealism did not die with Kant. Especially influenced by the Romantic movement, it appeared again in Fichte and Hegel. George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) turned away from both subjectivism (that truth is produced in the individual’s mind) and realistic materialism (that truth exists independent of the mind). Hegel was a German idealist who saw religion as a way in which man pictures truth. Truth to Hegel is knowledge of ultimate reality and God is simply the process of world history unfolding itself. Hegel considered the state to be a spiritual organism which he identified as the “World Spirit.” Each particular generation produces a people, he said, who reflect a more advanced stage of reason and thus more clearly reflect the “World Spirit.” Although Hegel was not strictly a nationalist, his ideas produced a type of thinking (the dialectical process of reasoning) which was later adapted to Marxist philosophy. His emphasis upon “pure reason” reflects the influence of Kant.

A prime example of the influence of Gegel on the destructive Biblical criticism of the New Testament is found in the person of David Friedrich Strauss (18081874). In Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, this German theologian applied the concept that there truly was a historical Jesus but that the gospel writers had so interspersed the record with myths about Christ that the miracles and fulfilled prophetic statements were not dependable. Actually Strauss went further saying that these portions were merely what the people had believed on the basis of preconceived ideas and preconditioning rather than the result of actual fact. Christianity, he said, in its most pure form is the true “World Spirit” or absolute spirit about which Hegel had written. Strauss wrote another book entitled Christliche Glaubenslehre in which he affirmed that Biblical teaching cannot be harmonized with modern scientific and philosophic knowledge. He later produced a second volume on the life of Jesus which again denied the miracles and supernatural nature of the Lord. He proposed a religion of man based on the study of the philosophies of Plato and Hegel rather than a basically Biblical religion.

Another New Testament critic was Albrecht Benjamin Ritschl (1822-1889). Ritschl claimed that the deity of Christ was not substantiated by fact but by the faith of the early Christians. Ritschl made a great distinction between judgments of fact based on verifiable history and judgments of value based on “Christian experience.” He denied that mysteries included in the religion of God can be resolved by metaphysical, philosophical, or scientific means. The mysteries were unknowable and that was that. The existence of Christ, he believed, was a historical fact and it is known that Christ was the founder of the community of believers. Christ came to establish the kingdom of God. Man is to live morally and to serve the kingdom of God. Ritschl saw Christ’s death not as an effort to be a propitiation for man’s sins but as a moral effort to do his job which was to establish the kingdom. Religion, therefore, is social and Christ’s work was social. Our salvation is in being connected with the kingdom of God on earth in the community of believers. Roots of the social gospel concepts are always apparent in the study of modernism.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) wrote a history of the search for the true Jesus by men like Strauss and Ritschl. In his The Quest For The Historical Jesus (1906), Schweitzer drew his own conclusion that the historical Jesus was so different from the one revealed in the New Testament by the men who loved him that it is most difficult to really know him. He said that Jesus tried to force the coming of the kingdom of God by his radical activities in Jerusalem and ultimately by giving his own life as the result of the fact that he had been rejected. Schweitzer saw Jesus’ radical ethical demands in terms of the fact that there was to be only a short time to live before the coming of the glorious earthly kingdom. Paul’s teachings on morals are also to be explained that way. Schweitzer believed in a system of ethics as a necessary aspect of life but not the radical “interim ethic” of Jesus’ personal teachings. That type of thinking is seen in such books as Joseph Fletcher’s damnable Situation Ethics (1966).

The influence of Hegelian philosophy may also be seen in the emregence of the “literary-historical school” of critical study of the Old Testament. Although Julius Wellhausen (JEDP theory of Old Testament Pentateuch interpretation), the earlier writings of Abraham Kuenen(1828-1891) stated all the themes later developed by K. H. Graf and Wellhausen. Kuenen wrote The Hexateuch (1886) and The Religion of Israel (1873).

Subjectivism

To return to Kant again, the emphasis upon man’s “sense of ought” or moral duty led to the religious philosophy which centers in subjective feeling. The flow we will examine is from Kant’s “ought” . . . to Schliermacher’s “feeling” . . . to Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” . . . to Tillich and Bultmann’s existentialism . . . to Bruner and Barth’s “neo-orthodoxy.”

Friedrich Schleiermaeher (1768-1834) sought to find another alternative to what he considered to be the fallacy of revealed truth and the.fallacy of natural theology. He claimed in The Christian Faith (1821) that religion is based on true religious experience. Religion is not founded upon knowledge nor upon activity. It is based on one’s awareness of God or his feeling of dependency upon God. Sin is the effort of man to become independent of God. The problem to Schleiermacher was that man must be conscious of his need. My problem with Schleiermacher is that man’s dependence upon God is neither based on rational evidence nor written revelation informing him of the will of God. Religion is totally subjective in Schleiermacher’s view; the spiritual life is dependent upon one’s own inner consciousness.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher whose early writings were centered around explanations of life from a very melancholy point of view [cf. Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Concept of Dread(1844)]. After 1845, he wrote attacking formalized “Christianity” in the following works: Works of Love (1847), Christian Discourses (1848), and Training in Christianity (1850). To Kierkegaard, man and his world are altogether other than the realm of God and his operation. He also separated historical knowledge of Christ from faith and suggested that man cannot really know eternal things apart from a separate act of faith without evidences. His work served as a basic philosophy for existentialism but he was more concerned with the transcendence of God than with the existence of man. He attacked Hegel’s claims concerning the role of God in man’s affairs because they depersonalized God and because they involved God in this sphere. Kierkegaard rejected all the traditional arguments for the existence of God affirming instead the existence of God solely from the believer’s need and his subjective faith. The “leap of faith” concept is associated with these affirmations.

In existentialism man is asked to search for the origins and purposes of his existence. He makes his own existence by creating his own values. There is no personal, external, authoritative guide. Rudolph Bultmann (born in 1884) represents this movement in Die Geschichte Der Synoptischen Tradition with his appeal for the demythologizing of the New Testament. Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was a German forced by circumstances to come to America. He taught at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. He tied Eastern thought to Kant arguing for the relationship between philosophy and theology. God, he said, is the “Ground of Being” and man is the “ultimate concern.” Tillich’s philosophy synthesized with some of the materialism we will discuss is the basis of the “God is dead” movement enunciated by Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton (although Nietzsche apparently coined the phrase before the turn of the century).

At this point we must examine the misnamed “neoorthodoxy,” which I am going to call with others the “new liberalism.” Its two leading lights are Emil Brunner (18891966) who stressed the priority of revelation over human experience or natural reason in The Mediator (1927), theDivine Imperative (1932), and Revelation and Reason(1941), and Karl Barth (1886-1968). Barth proclaimed in Church Dogmatics a religion centered around Christ as the Word of God, Scripture as the revelation of that Word and evangelism as the effort to promote a Biblical statement of belief.

Be careful, however, before having read all that ungodly liberalism you fall into the trap of this supposed return to Scripture. Some of our young “scholars” have done just that. Barth was a Swiss theologian who studied under the great liberals of his day. He broke with “liberalism,” however, and became the leader of the Dialectical Theology (a system which sought to recover the reformation teachings). The “Dialectic” is that the religion of Christ contains a “No” (man cannot by human effort attain righteousness) and a “Yes” (God will provide a way of righteousness) and that the “No” is overcome by the “Yes” (God’s grace). Barth stressed the hiddenness of God, however, as Calvin and the reformers had not. He pressed the idea that God revealed Himself only in the person of Christ.

Barth reacted violently to the forms of natural theology which attempted to find God by means other than through the revelation of God through the person of Christ. To Barth, man was brought into partnership with God and sin is the attempt to break free from the grace God has given to him. Sin is not the violation of abstract law. To Barth, Christ was both the sinner and the redeemer for all men and, therefore, Barth almost took the universalist position. Barth expresses his positions in his commentary on Romans (1919).

Neo-orthodoxy is probably more dangerous to our brethren than any of the other systems we have discussed because of its supposed scripturalness. It is riddled with many of the liberal presuppositions, however, concerning the nature of God and the nature of man, and it is totally saturated with the reformation presuppositions of Calvin and others. It is filled with Biblical terminology but the Biblical words have been redefined.

Materialism

Philosophical thought swings back and forth from idealism to realism. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) reacting to Hegel’s idealism brought modernism into a materialistic stance for many leading theologians. Feuerbach published his Essence of Christianity in 1831. He argued that when we speak of religious truth, we are speaking of qualities possessed by man when he is measuring up to his ideals. Rationalism says that idealistic man is the originator of spiritual concepts including the concept of God’s existence itself. Whereas Hegel had his geist (World Spirit) which served as the ideal toward which man is reaching, Feuerbach inverted the process asserting that man simply projects God as he would have his god to be. In reality man does not need God. Once robbed of the necessity of God, reality suggests that we acknowledge that he does not exist.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), author of Positive Philosophy (1830) and Subjective Synthesis (1856), working from Feuerbach’s lead established his scientific religion (positivism). Comte sought to deify humanity by asserting that the perfect society results from the exaltation of the human intellect. The higher power within us is self-love and exalted emotion. God does not exist, he said, apart from our ability to sense him and that is purely emotional.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) formed a psychological religion (psychologism). Freud was an Austrian Jew who thought of religion as a social phenomenon which proceeded from the psychological needs of the people. Fears and guilts led to the need for God, Freud said in Totem and Taboo. Karl Marx (1818-1883) who collaborated with Friedrich Engels to produce the Communist Manifesto brought these concepts to a kind of economic religion (socialism).

In theology proper, the brazen voice of Feuerbach’s influence was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche viewed man as possessing a kind of “super-nature” which resides within man but which must be achieved through self mastery. Man’s superiority does not come about as the result of his being made in the image of God but in his survival arid achievement. Nietzsche’s Antichrist was published in 1895. With Nietzsche, as with Comte, Freud, and Marx, “God is dead” because he never really existed except in the mind of man and because man now understands that, he does not need the “idea” of God any longer.

Obviously, a survey such as this leaves much which needs to be said. It is understood that what is said is obviously subjectively selected. The reader is directed to the works cited in the article or to critical studies on the men and their ideas if he is particularly interested in pursuing this history. We are not, however, recommending that you get all that interested except as you are confronted by specific problems which need concentrated attack. Philosophy has been a dead-end street through the ages because it seeks answers in the mind of men that only God can answer in his revealed word if they are to be answered at all. The general reader would better spend his time with his Bible.

Truth Magazine XXII: 40, pp. 643-646
October 12, 1978

By Doug Seaton

Barnabas was a faithful, enthusiastic, dedicated, Christian. He was a “good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith” (Acts 11:24). Shortly after Barnabas became a Christian he sold some land he owned and gave the money to the apostles for the aid of those in need (Acts 4:37). Barnabas had an active religion. There are many good things about Barnabas that we could emulate. We could emulate his giving, his courage to suffer, his faith, or even his dedication to friends. The trait of Barnabas that seems to stand out above all others was his ability to encourage others.

Barnabas encouraged many people. H-a encouraged Paul when the disciples in Jerusalem were afraid of him (Acts 9:27). Barnabas stood by and encouraged Mark when Paul did not want him to go on the second journey (Acts 15:37-38). Barnabas was sent by the church in Jerusalem to encourage the brethren at Antioch. When Barnabas arrived in Antioch he “was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord” (Acts 11:23b).

The church needs men and women today that will encourage others. The church needs men that will encourage others by teaching sound doctrine, by living pure moral lives, and by their enthusiasm in doing the will of God. The church needs women who enjoy helping others, and women that enjoy teaching their children about God. The church also needs older Christians to teach the younger by word and example how important and gratifying it is to be a child of God. The church needs younger Christians that are unafraid to stand against immorality and ungodliness in the world today. Paul told Titus many of these same things 2,000 years ago. See Titus 2.

There are too many Christians walking around looking like they just lost their best friend. We need Christians to build us up and encourage us on the journey from earth to heaven. Are you an encouragement to others? If not, why not?

Truth Magazine XXII: 39, p. 636
October 5, 1978